I read far enough to get to that working class people value directness. So I'm going to go with "you racist fuck" instead of "we should value diversity."
Ogged's special genius is to understand that the greatness of Unfogged is based in its providing a safe space to ridicule nonsense. I'm not done with this yet, but I had to stop here:
The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.
Right. Trump voters are put off by arrogance. And we're supposed to sympathize with people who think that even women are allowed to look down on men.
And that bit about Trump being unfit, or his supporters being racist, well, sure, it's true, but it's rude to just come out and say it.
Yeah, there's more to it than just racism. Elites have screwed the pooch in a number of ways (think Iraq and the economic crash). But Christ, this piece is a mess.
Following Moby, fuck coddling working-class white men, especially with patronizing overgeneralizations like these. I think she's misreading a number of the people she cites as supporting her. I also wonder if her father-in-law is still alive and if he'd approve of his characterization here. (I guess I'm ready to fight? Also I'm apparently working-class by her definition, which seems weird and wrong compared to how it usually gets used.)
The only thing mysterious about this election is how the pollsters fucked up so badly.
1-4 are all true, but offer nothing to work with. As has been pointed out in other threads, if you plan on getting your country back, you need to identify parts of the Trump coalition that can be won for the Democrats. First step there is understanding what those voters think, and this piece seems plausible to me.
The idea that conservative voters were not moved by pleas that their leader was racist is not remotely mysterious. They just showed up and voted for the guy on their ballot, same as always, while the KKK arm worked itself into a frenzied lather.
The only story is the pollsters failing to predict that Democrats would fail to show up. It is the only story, and it's only a story because the pollsters probably caused Clinton's whole misguided strategy. If the pollsters had been calling a close horse race, her whole campaign would have been organized differently, and she probably would have won.
I'm guessing what the white working class really needs is to be fawned over more, like racist zoo animals.
5: Okay, what do you think I'm doing with my life?
7: I always like to picture animals in zoos as being really racist. That way I don't feel so bad about them being in cages.
6.2: Yeah, WTF Latinos? Where's the thinkpiece there? I want analysis. I mean, I can do one in my head about conflict between generations of immigrants, but I wouldn't mind reading something by someone who knew what they were talking about.
8: How do you think the OP piece is wrong?
As has been pointed out in other threads, if you plan on getting your country back, you need to identify parts of the Trump coalition that can be won for the Democrats. First step there is understanding what those voters think, and this piece seems plausible to me.
This is super wrong. None of the Trump coalition can be won for Democrats, it was the same exact people who voted red for the past 16 years. The Democrats need to re-enfranchise part of the 74% of the country that is indifferent, like Obama managed to.
It's also not confusing or mysterious what Trump voters think. They don't think racism is a very big deal, certainly not compared to their myopic view of how hard their own life is. And then the deplorables among them are deplorable. End of story.
9: Well, I feel confident that they are speciest.
I think 6.2 is correct: campaign and pollsters made the same wrong assumptions about Dem voter probability of acting in a certain way in the face of the Trump menace. That's the elite blind spot that ought to be examined, not the endlessly flogged faux Brooklyn hipsters don't understand Appalachia narrative.
MC, we don't need to win over Romney/McCain/Trump voters (even if we could, which I doubt). We need to show up.
I always like to picture animals in zoos as being really racist. That way I don't feel so bad about them being in cages.
I really thought the monkeys stood for honesty.
We need to show up and to explicitly and repeatedly point out where Republicans have failed to delivery on what they promised in order to depress some of the Trump voters into staying home.
15: That's why they have bigger cages in comparison to their body size.
Of course, Archie Bunker is going to prefer the millionaire braggart macho guy over the nerdy smartypants woman.
Of course, Ralph Kramden is going to choose the financial advisor that promises him he's going to win the lottery over the woman that promises him a steady return on his investment.
16 I certainly want to see every single Pennsylvanian who voted Trump to bring back coal to be asked, on camera, whether Trump has brought coal back. Monthly, from September 2017 on.
12: Obama didn't re-enfranchise anyone, he enthused them, with apparently nothing but personal charisma, which the Democrats clearly have no institutional ability to replicate.
Has anybody pointed out this election was a retread of the Donald Trump Apprentice vs. the Martha Stewart Apprentice?
11: I'm not actually mad at YOU but I have thoughts. I'll come back when work lightens up a little and I have time to try to tease it out better. I just don't care about generalizations about what someone who was an adult in the 1950s as an explanation for today's Trump voters. If she's so close to these supposed WWC folks, where's the new information? Why should we trust her other than that she's so down with the gente she's willing to go out on a limb and say sometimes you have to shoot some black people to have a decent police force?
And maybe displaced industrial workers in Michigan can be asked about the new (if anything happens at all on manufacturing) non-union, largely automated factories in the South. Great Again!
Also as has been pointed out before, re-enfranchisement is what you do to entrench your victory after you've won. To get to that point you need first to win the game as currently played, under rigged rules. I've yet to see here a general acknowledgement that you yo lost the fucking election. The Dem platform as is is not working.
Obama didn't re-enfranchise anyone, he enthused them, with apparently nothing but personal charisma, which the Democrats clearly have no institutional ability to replicate.
He got them to turn out, is all I mean. Yes, purely on charisma, in hindsight.
I bet if the actual officials from Democratic party showed their faces regularly in minority community meetings over the next four years, turn out would improve. I'm basing that on what I think it would take to improve the Hispanic turnout in Heebieville - how about our city council actually go over to that side of the city and hear what kind of improvements they'd like, and implement them? You'd be voted in forever.
12.2: Yeah, the anti-Clinton advertising provided freely by the media was effective at suppressing Democratic turnout, whereas Clinton's negative ads did very little to discourage Republicans.
I agree that we don't need to win the Trump voters. But we certainly do need to win the people who voted for Obama in 2012 and then stayed home or voted 3rd party in 2016. That requires figuring out why they didn't support Clinton, and so far I've seen no will whatsoever to do that.
I'd also love to see one person associated with the Clinton campaign or the DNC accept one ounce of responsibility for the nightmare they've helped bring down on the country by losing to least qualified presidential candidate in history. Instead, all I've seen for the last week have been temper tantrums and petulant screeds about how the country is unworthy of their precious selves.
20 last: our electoral system is to a very large extent DIY. There's little institutional ability anywhere to do much of anything to craft candidacies -- the Republican establishment certainly isn't responsible for creating Trump or Trumpism. We're free of HRC now, and the field for 2020 is completely clear. But it's up to a few deluded individuals to present themselves, crafting their own message to mix with the standard party message, and finding a way to appeal to all the major constituent parts of the coalition.
First rule of Marxism. People change.
FWIW, the remnants of the Clintonites do think they have a plan for keeping their current coalition while not adding whites yet winning purple states. Got it Wendy Shiller and Theda Skocpol. Has to do with expanding and enhancing networks and organization in places like Wisconsin. I think they are serious, they don't want white rurals anywhere near their constituencies, who loathe them.
As far as moving to purplize states, someone made the point that coastal SWPL will only cluster around places like Austin and Lawrence where they can get their Thai food and biking leotards or whatever. So probably pointless.
People aren't asking you to surrender to all the white working class, just to get like 5% more of the males in Michigan, which should get you 10% more of the women.
And I think 24 completely wrong for the reasons Heebie is identifying. But she's not going far enough. Low information voters aren't low information because the parties haven't tried to communicate with them, or tried to enact policies that would help them. They're low information because they have other priorities altogether. They can be entertained enough to show up, but nothing about policies or platforms is going to get us that last mile.
We regularly get killed in the midterms, even immediately after winning a landslide like 2008, because continuing the status quo, as correct as that might be as a matter of policy, isn't exciting enough to draw out that last whatever percentage of the electorate.
Bob, I think the balance of who loathes whom is tilted very strongly in the other direction.
If it weren't for the terrifying onslaught of racially-motivated hate crimes, I'd be taking some pleasure in watching the RNC eat itself from the inside out.
We regularly get killed in the midterms, even immediately after winning a landslide like 2008, because continuing the status quo, as correct as that might be as a matter of policy, isn't exciting enough to draw out that last whatever percentage of the electorate.
This doesn't seem right. The Democrats are perfectly capable of getting killed in midterms during disastrous Republican administrations as well.
Rove really was a genius in finding a way to make 2002 a successful midterm -- too bad all those Iraqis had to die for it. I don't think, though, that 2006, or 1986 do much for your thesis. I wouldn't say that 1990 was in the midst of disaster, but we did pretty well nonetheless.
the Republican establishment certainly isn't responsible for creating Trump or Trumpism
I suppose it depends on how you define "Republican establishment", but, really? If you include Fox news, this is certainly false. Even if you don't, Republicans have cultivated a political environment in which facts are subordinate to attitudes. There was an exchange in the primary debates in which Trump countered Bush's promise of perpetual 4 % growth by promising perpetual 6 % growth.
Dem have got to get a majority of statehouses. Come up with your plan.
Got a neighbors. House burned next door a few years ago, so a contractor had an opportunity. Built a ridiculous McMansion on a too small lot, but a very nice house in this family neighborhood.
Latina lesbian couple with children, drives a big white SUV. Don't see the kids outside enough and not sure why.
DFW has tens of thousands of LGBTQIP, likely different from those in Austin or Manhattan. Maybe some vote Republican, but can be approached.
1) Secession
2) Armed insurrection
3) Emigration to red states
4) Attempt to intensify contradictions between Austin and rurals, for example to boost turnout. Watch for those trying a divide-and-make irrelevant opportunism.
Coasts and blue dots gonna be made less comfortable in Age of Trump
And I'd certainly take 1982 results in 2018, if we could get there.
6: If the pollsters had been calling a close horse race, her whole campaign would have been organized differently, and she probably would have won.
I don't think this is right. I think Clinton's internal polling showed reality, which is why PA was bombarded with ads and people and why the particular last-minute trips she made were where they were.
I think the horrifying possibility is that on the eve of the election, *only* the Clinton campaign knew that they were in trouble.
I don't think the Democrats should make any special effort to reach out to WWC voters, especially since their attempts to do so almost universally come off as pandering and inauthentic. IMO, almost all Democratic politicians and media representatives would be more effective dropping focus-group-tested rhetoric, and clearly, accurately describing policy's effects and the political obstacles to improving them.
36 You're right. I was going narrow, thinking of the money and institutional support for Bush and the like.
Yes. It was nearly impossible to avoid a Clinton campaign event around here. That's part of the reason Sam Wang's 99%-prediction made me feel more nervous than Nate Silver's 60% one.
40: Yes, they knew during the last week. But clearly for months before that, they weren't worried about Michigan and New Hampshire and Wisconsin. They were entertaining fantasies about Georgia and Utah, based strictly on the polling.
45: Which is why I think they are (probably correctly for all the good it does) blaming the FBI.
35: And the Democrats did reasonably well in 1996 and 2012. I don't think the poor performance of Democrats in off-year elections is well explained by complacency with current policy.
28. I agree that we don't need to win the Trump voters.
Yes you do. You will need numbers like 1964 just to get back to where you are now. Hell, by the time these people have had free run of the place for four years you'll probably need constitutional amendments. Also, Bob is right about statehouses.
If we are thinking about 2018, now that Republicans have everything, including 33 statehouses:
If I were Republicans I would try to get both a Right-to-Work and a Right-to-Life Amendment to the statehouses by spring of 2018. No, I don't know if they can get 2/3 of US Congress, but as we have seen already with Clinton and Obama kneeling to Trump, those Democrats you thought were loyal are gonna surprise you.
So Repubs send crowds of "persuaders" to every state to pressure Dems in marginal legislatures. Besides thugs and hooligans, those two amendments will excite and energize their bases (business and Xtian), which is much easier to do when you offer something
Anyway, just like Rove, Repubs now have actual power to boost their turnout in 2018.
And then they have supermajorities everywhere.
As Carp noted above, some of us can't even wait for 2018 because the people who will determine the restricting are up in 2017.
I don't think the poor performance of Democrats in off-year elections is well explained by complacency with current policy.
The poor performance of Democrats in off-years is based on young people not paying much attention.
Presidential elections are more entertaining than midterms.
Regarding the piece linked in the main post. The major complaints about "coddling" white working class voters that I've heard during this election have been people saying how tired they are of vacuous think pieces exactly like this one. But who reads these things? Not I'm guessing white working class voters. This is a game that's played entirely between different teams of UMC types.
But honestly, I was thinking politics until I started to pay attention, and saw Pence and motherfucking Steve Bannon. Strategy director to the White House.
Maybe take awhile, but we are no longer talking about Berlusconi or even Mussolini here. And Priebus is in for a shock.
I suspect that is the plan, to win the 2018 midterms and get coercive dominance.
And the wall? It's to keep you in.
How much did Republican voter suppression, voter ID laws and the like, affect the outcome and in which states? I saw something about Wisconsin where it may have made all the difference.
40: Yes, they knew during the last week. But clearly for months before that, they weren't worried about Michigan and New Hampshire and Wisconsin. They were entertaining fantasies about Georgia and Utah, based strictly on the polling.
I think there (internal) polling was correct -- they were comfortably ahead for most of the race (post convention), and then saw things break against them at the last minute.
Also, having seen other people say, "why was she in Arizona? She was never going to win Arizona" I'd also mention that I had been seeing a number of liberal commentators cheering for months about the idea of expanding the map -- that competing in traditionally red states would be good for down-ballot races and for building the new coalition. Even if Clinton couldn't win AZ it made sense to have events there as long as (a) she had a comfortable lead and (b) campaign events increased the chance of defeating McCain.
The strategy backfired badly, but it wasn't just a whim by the Clinton campaign, it both made sense, and was something that many people outside the campaign were calling for.
Also on the subject of "ideas which made sense but didn't work." For everybody saying, "the campaign should have put more energy into courting the white male working class" let's note that the campaign spent a lot of energy courting white Republican women -- and looked like it was succeeding until they backed out at the end. I feel like the question has to be asked, "why would make people think that white working class men would be a more likely source of votes than white Republican women?"
54: I just finished the article too. It seems like the argument is that democrats should lie bigger--if anyone knew how to develop middle class (~$60k) jobs per the article, they'd do it. So, as they noticed about the Republican platform-- just lie wildly. It's not like the media is going to excavate deeper than a teaspoon into your policy anyway.
I think there (internal) polling was correct -- they were comfortably ahead for most of the race (post convention), and then saw things break against them at the last minute.
This is interesting - do you have a link? If so, I'm more inclined to lay this ungodly mess at the feet of Comey and the media, and let the pollsters off the hook somewhat.
if anyone knew how to develop middle class (~$60k) jobs per the article, they'd do it
Perhaps no one knows how to raise middle class wages but it's trivially easy to raise income. There has just been no support for it from Democrats.
That's not true. Obama did bunches of it (Obamacare, Food Stamp expansion, unemployment extension) when he had a Democratic Congress.
...that the campaign spent a lot of energy courting white Republican women -- and looked like it was succeeding until they backed out at the end.
And what did they court them with? P-grabbing monster or jobs for them and their sons?
I do think you can create jobs, at least for a while. Putting on my post-Keynesian hat, you print til they make you stop and you build bridges to nowhere.
Mainland China showed the way a decade ago or something. Involves 10% inflation and "creative destruction" so Obama and Clinton* couldn't risk losing the Goldman speaking fees.
*And several layers of fucking supporters cashing in.
This is interesting - do you have a link?
Kevin Drum linked to a story about Clinton saying that the Comey letters were the turning point in the race. But, of course they would say that. I am, to some extent relying on my intuitions that I find that plausible.
Very fucking deliberately, that Keynesian expansion was blocked by Republicans in Congress, not Democrats.
And once again, bob is repeating Republican talking points blaming Clinton and Obama's "corruption" for something Republican elected officials did.
Go Fuck Yourself.
62: Right. The Democrats really haven't done anything like enough in terms of raising income for voters. But what they have done has been uphill, and hasn't gotten them much, if anything, in the way of popularity for it. It should still be done, but I think it's overly sanguine to think that it's a sure route to political popularity.
Boy. On the one hand, as the professional son of working-class parents, I find a lot of her observations about white working class mindsets familiar from my own experience (and therefore = "true"). But I, too, choked on stuff like the quote in 2.*
I don't see why the racism vs. economic narratives about wtf happened are so often posed as if in conflict.
When I read:,
Vance's book passes harsh judgment on his hard-living relatives, which is not uncommon among settled families who kept their nose clean through sheer force of will. [ed.: and luck]. This is a second source of resentment against the poor.
I thought, yeah, which is the exact same kind of resentment directed at black and brown people. Racism of the kind I am most acquainted with from the south is rarely unshirted white supremacy but almost always an untie-able knot of this very kind of primary attribution error-driven stance of moral superiority, cultural xenophobia, and thank-god-there's-a-bigger-loser-than-me status jockeying. A southern bigot's favourite way to assure you they're not really racist is to tell you they feel the same about white trash.
*Has the meaning of the word 'smug' changed in common parlance in a way that's left me behind? I'm reading a whole lot of accusations of smugness being thrown around right now that leave me thinking that either I don't know what this word means anymore, or that it is almost always the result of projection. Like, where even is the smugness supposed to be in this example, "basket of deplorables?" She *was* describing deplorable people/behaviour: white supremacists and Internet trolls, no? Was she supposed to be smug because the "basket of" construction was too cute? That's pretty smalltime smugness.
69 (last): Smug in her certainty of moral superiority.
And what did they court them with? P-grabbing monster or jobs for them and their sons?
I'm undecided on to what extent it's just Monday morning quarterbacking to say that it was a mistake to make it All About Trump's terrible behavior during the latter stages of the campaign.
On the one hand, of course it should have driven voters away from him. On the other hand, it hadn't so far, so maybe someone should have concluded that a lot of "Would you look at this clown?" wasn't going to do the job.
It's "Smaug". I may have set out to steel from her and caused her death, but I don't want to downplay her agency.
62, 67: Fair enough, but their redistributive measures, enacted and proposed, are miniscule compared to the regressive shift in income we've experienced for several decades.
65: Also blocked by conservative and moderate Democrats.
54. At least for me, a focus other than explicit racism as a primary motivator for R voters is helpful. Maybe not useful for Democrats strategically since there's no good jobs fairy to bring back the whaling ships.
But it's good to have some productive basis to talk to people who are not perceptive but not crazy and are unhappy and angry that their lives have getting worse.
70: Oh, fuck that shit. Yeah, cast the beam out of your own eye before criticizing anyone else's motes, but calling open racism racism isn't smug even if you're not perfect yourself (which Clinton certainly isn't).
Think about how that works. Literally only flawless saints can object to anyone else doing things that are literally evil, because identifying something as evil is a smug claim to be less evil yourself? That sounds like "Hey, everyone shut up and meditate on your own imperfections until you reach nirvana. When you're done with that, you can come out and interact with the outside world again. If there's anything left of it."
Um, looking back at that, can I assure you that all the hostility in 76 was aimed at the argument in 70, rather than at you personally?
Okay, but the best I can do is agree that assuming that 50% of Trump's supporters are deplorable is a little smug, but the same kind of smug that goes along with all the uncharitable generalisations being lobbed in both directions. And those characteristics she listed -- racism, xenophobia, etc., they ARE deplorable, and even if you're a white supremacist and disagree, it's not smug for her to say so, it's just, like, her opinion, man.
As an aside: hoo, boy:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/11/14/trump_reportedly_appeared_not_to_understand_scope_of_presidency_during_obama.html
78 was to 70 but I wish I'd just let LB do it.
In general, it's not going to be much of a campaign if you rule out disagreeing with anyone in case you hurt their feels.
65: Also blocked by conservative and moderate Democrats.
I, too, think that Democrats should be more explicitly liberal and explicitly redistributionist.
Note, however, the people that the linked article talks about do not favor redistributionist policies. So the question is can Democrats simultaneously (a) pursue stronger anti-poverty policies, (b) draw attention to institutionalized racism, (c) pursue policies which will help the middle-income working class, (d) create a political coalition which supports (a)-(c)?
Here's James Surowiecki talking about why the rhetoric of, "Democrats should do more to reach out to the white working class" is at least potentially concerning.
I did like this observation in the article:
The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable -- just with more money. "The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else," a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one's own business -- that's the goal. That's another part of Trump's appeal.
I think that's fairly obvious -- of course people would like to imagine success allowing them to retain the parts of their current lives that they like and value. That's a desire I can sympathize with. But. in terms of this conversation, it illustrates some of the political problems -- how can you promise somebody that you will make changes in they country without asking that they change as well?
We know Trump's answer. Clinton's answer was that small-town America is changing, and will continue to change, but that better policy can make that change easier.
I'm not quite sure what Sanders' answer would have been.
80, 81. I'm not thinking about the best strategy for a future DNC. I'm thinking about the repeated fb conversations I've seen between people who don't seem crazy, but don't care much about racism or civil rights, and a friend or relative who they hear having accused them of malice rather than indifference.
Since I do see the mindset Swope described nicely in 69 as accurate and problematic, having a benevolent alternative description of the mindset seems like a useful alternative to mutual dismissal. For me at least, policy later, ability to communicate now.
I'm in favor of safety pins. I hypothetically think that if I were not white, I'd continuously wonder who among me voted for Trump. It might be nice to have a cue that indicates "not Trump" and nothing more.
But the fucking hyperventilating and lack of consensus about the safety pins is driving me crazy. Oh, you just look ridiculous because it's not enough! Everyone who's really doing something to help is laughing at you for wearing a safety pin and thinking you're doing any good! You weren't wearing a BLM shirt, and now you want to wear a safety pin???
69: It fits my newly built suburban neighborhood in the late Forties & Fifties. Lots of hard striving blue collars and some newly minted professionals.
For me at least, policy later, ability to communicate now.
I don't have any advice, but how I think about it, personally, is that any party large enough to win national elections is going to be a broad coalition of people who have a lot to agree on and to disagree on internally.
I'm more aware of all of ways in which Democratic party includes people that I disagree with, but the same is true of the Republicans -- any given person voting Republican only has some points of overlap with the positions of the national party (or Trump).
But also note John Scalzi's post about how Trump voters who are not personally racist are still supporting racism.
Sorry. 85 is what I'd like to put on a few FB statuses but instead I'm venting here, in part because I'd thought that maybe my minority students would like to seem me wear a safety pin and now I feel foolish.
I'm concerned about my minority students and I don't quite know which advice to trust. Math and science students are generally more reserved than humanities - it's not obvious to me that checking in with someone verbally is helpful and not intrusive.
Of course there's little question that the core of Trump's support are racists.
But a few million people voted for Obama in 2012 and didn't vote for Clinton in 2016, and the explanation that they're all NaziWhiteSuppremicistSkinheads doesn't make sense.
When I look around various progressive venues the last few days, I see an absolute refusal to even consider that any other explanation is possible.
Maybe it's just the post-election trauma working itself out.
But a few million people voted for Obama in 2012 and didn't vote for Clinton in 2016, and the explanation that they're all NaziWhiteSuppremicistSkinheads doesn't make sense.
They didn't vote for Trump. They stayed home.
Going back to Thorn at 22:
I just don't care about generalizations about what someone who was an adult in the 1950s as an explanation for today's Trump voters.
I think this is very important. The white working class in many areas of the country, especially the places I know best, is not at all the same as it was in the 1950s. The better positioned families and just in general those with better skills, luck, and backing have been steadily going to college and leaving those areas. At first it was going to college and coming back to take the professional jobs there, but as the depopulation continued that became an option open to very few.
The people who lived in those areas in the 1950s who would have balked at somebody like Trump just on coarseness alone have died and their kids are mostly in Omaha or Pittsburgh or the coasts. It's useless to pretend somebody like the author's father-in-law is still there. He's dead and his kids live elsewhere. I know my hometown, the people who I got along with are nearly all gone and the people who would bully me for getting A's are still there.
Re-upping my question in 56 about voter suppression.
56, 92: Important and interesting, but I don't think there's going to be a reliable answer this early -- it'll take a lot of reporting, if someone does it.
92: My guess is that it affected things enough to matter.
I'm concerned about my minority students and I don't quite know which advice to trust. Math and science students are generally more reserved than humanities - it's not obvious to me that checking in with someone verbally is helpful and not intrusive.
At the overwhelmingly non-white professional school where I work, I was actually quite surprised at how normal everything seemed on the day after the election.
I guess it's a case of politics junkies being unable to comprehend the extent to which most people are disengaged from politics.
92. map here. WI scope has been quantified, enough to change the state outcome. PA or OH, as far as I know probably not a sufficient explanation.
I have not seen analysis of changes in the number of polling stations, no idea if this is a real effect or not.
Things are somewhat tense here. There was a sharply worded email sent out on Friday, describing a pattern of small incidents but not singling out anything in particular.
I'm unable to judge if my classes are tense. It felt somewhat tense on Wednesday and Thursday to me, but it's pretty impossible to untangle what the proximal causes are, unless I see someone white guy in class do something overt, which I haven't.
We got an email reminding everybody about the university's policies against discrimination.
You can talk about Democratic messaging all you want, but as long as the media is uninterested in telling people the truth, you're fucked. All those anti-Trump demonstrations would be better directed at the networks or the NYT.
Which isn't to say that there's anything wrong with picketing the various Trump things. But in a world where the e-mail scandal is a thing, we're just out of luck.
Very fucking deliberately, that Keynesian expansion was blocked by Republicans in Congress, not Democrats.
Oh ffs who re-appointed the Greenspan-Ayn Rand motherfuckering Republican who said "We'll get it right next time" as chair of the Fed? Fuck you back for not remembering Bernanke.
And part of the idea of inflation is that it makes holding money really stupid, so those billions in Apple's account get spent on investment. This also affects gov't. I know it didn't work in Japan, but they didn't go far enough.
And reverse hysteresis works in many ways.
Fuck it. Have some Tina Brown at the Guardian
My beef over Hillary Clinton's loss is with liberal feminists, young and old
Here's my own beef. Liberal feminists, young and old, need to question the role they played in Hillary's demise. The two weeks of media hyperventilation over grab-her-by-the-pussygate, when the airwaves were saturated with aghast liberal women equating Trump's gross comments with sexual assault, had the opposite effect on multiple women voters in the Heartland.These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's.
Like I said African-Americans deliver. American feminists blow up the world and then cry because everybody is so mean to them.
I honestly think we're better off over here without the press neutrality bs. Everybody knows the papers are all Tory except the Groan and the Mirror (and the Express- UKIP). Everybody knows the Beeb is a bunch of soft lefties who take orders from the government of the day and that the other channels are broadly right wing. There's no pretence about it, so people take it into account when the read/watch them.
I think the media is a chicken-and-egg problem. IMO a bigger issue than vacuous coverage of emails or Benghazi exists. People choose to inform themselves from Limbaugh/Breitbart or equally problematically from John Stewart.
The NYT/CNN could definitely have done better, but the FBI investigation and Comey letter, those are easy facts to report, just as the bs Benghazi hearings are easy facts to report.
I am hopeful that serious dysfunction in the white house will actually make a larger number of people take interest in facts.
None of the Trump coalition can be won for Democrats, it was the same exact people who voted red for the past 16 years.
I'm not so sure about that second point locally. Here in PA, there were a number of counties where Trump outperformed Romney. Using the NY Times's numbers:
County Romney Trump Trump-Romney Westmoreland 103429 116427 12998 Fayette 25845 34388 8543 York 111576 126933 15357 Butler 59416 61388 1972 Philadelphia 91840 105418 13578 Adams 26490 31429 4939 Allegheny 259304 257488 -1816 Lehigh 66091 70285 4194
So of the ones I looked into, the only one where his absolute number of votes decreased was in Allegheny, and that wasn't by much. Even that could be explained by people moving to exurbs. (On the whole, PA's population has barely grown over the last decade, so it's not as fallacious to use absolute numbers as it seems.)
Looking at the total for the state, which I should have done in the first place, it's even more obvious:
Democrats Republicans
2012 2907k 2619k
2016 2844k 2912k
Clinton went down a bit, but the Republicans gained 4.5 times that amount. The national narrative of Clinton not being able to get Obama voters to turn out doesn't seem to be the case here; it really is that Trump increased turnout.
So it's not the exact same people, although it might be the same kinds of people. But even that I'm not sure of. But I do suspect that, baring a Trump presidency going poorly for them, they're probably beyond the reach of the left forever.
Anyway let's abolish the Electoral College so that you never again have to think about the marginal Pennsylvanian barely-voter, or at least no more than anyone else.
Re: the article in the OP, if we really really shouldn't call Trump supporters racist (I agree with everyone else here that we have to call a spade a spade eventually, but wanted to bring something else up), then how about sexist? Some things from the article jumped out at me: "her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect... Manly dignity is a big deal for working-class men, and they're not feeling that they have it. Trump promises a world free of political correctness and a return to an earlier era, when men were men and women knew their place... Look, I wish manliness worked differently. But most men, like most women, seek to fulfill the ideals they've grown up with. For many blue-collar men, all they're asking for is basic human dignity (male varietal)." The author seems to be assuming that this definition of masculinity is universal, inevitable, and morally good or neutral. I'd disagree with all of that. I guess the average conservative these days would call me a "cuck" for it, which is telling right there. I don't have a solution, but let's identify the problem, at least.
36
Republicans have cultivated a political environment in which facts are subordinate to attitudes.
I also agree that this is a big problem. One thing that's jumped out at me over the past week or two is that there's a different sets of fact out there. Project Veritas is considered a reliable source, and it's literally a fraud. A big chunk of people cite the Clinton Foundation as a bad thing but just can't explain what is illegal or unethical about it. (I mean, I can see why insider-ism is disliked, but some people seem to think there's something wrong with it in and of itself.) Dozens of widely believed claims about Clinton are just plain false and were from the start. And, again, I have no idea what to do about this.
100: Still with the Republican talking point I see. The Fed hasn't been fighting inflation since the start of the recession. Monetarism wouldn't work any better from Obama than it worked for Reagan. Fiscal expansion was the only possible way out.
And double fuck you again for once again putting up a comment that basically says "liberal women should be part of a coalition but not actually want any policies from it."
103: Thanks for the numbers.
baring a Trump presidency going poorly for them
How could it not? (I'm not sure it would bring them back.)
I am hopeful that serious dysfunction in the white house will actually make a larger number of people take interest in facts.
We've seen this movie and we know how it ends. The question is not what will make people take an interest in the facts, but what will make the media report them.
a) Electoral college is here to stay, until you show me the plan to get Democratic supermajorities everywhere.
b) And the electoral college is not the problem. 2.5 million wasted votes in California is the problem.
I'm not paying close enough attention at this point, but it seems to me that Ryan's age threshold for voucherizing Medicare may end up an inflection point. Voucherize actual seniors, and you have a problem. Voucherize only people now under 50, and it takes too long for corporations to get that money.
107 And the answer is, in part, a celebrity candidate.
109: I think it's too early to tell, but certainly whatever Ryan does is going to determine how you run the 2018 races. Unfortunately, I think the 2017 races will have to be run without the Republicans having had the chance to fuck over a constituency.
106: "going poorly" might not include "fucks other people over more."
108.b): You're going to have to walk me through that slowly, because I don't understand that juxtaposition.
I am hopeful that serious dysfunction in the white house will actually make a larger number of people take interest in facts.
This is setting up to be the most corrupt administration in a very long time. Just think of the potential for graft between Trump's not releasing his taxes (and not taking his presidential salary seems to insulate him from having to do so in the future, though I'm not sure about this), his laughable "blind" trust controlled by his children who are also going to be part of his administration, and his floating a massive infrastructure package. Not to mention his ties to Russia, and all the abuse of power we know will be a regular thing, etc,
110: We should just stop flirting with it and actually put Bon Jovi on a ticket.
The problem is that using power to abuse people, just the right people, was an explicit campaign promise and one that I think got him elected.
107. I think that we disagree on this. I have a different perspective on this than most commenters here. I believe that a weak bottom-up desire for information is sufficient to create good sources of news, though not good television news because that's so expensive.
Dwelling on the disgareement will probably not be that helpful, so I won't follow up further in this thread.
For whatever it's worth, as a practical step, I subscribed to a bunch of worthwhile outlets including ProPublica which I had read without supporting before the election.
You can already see how the NYT is going on this. Climate "contrarian" -- as opposed to "skeptic" or "denier" -- will now be the accepted formulation, just as "enhanced interrogation" entered into common journalistic usage.
The media's treatment of climate change has been only one of the many disgraceful violations of what ought to be thought of as "objective journalism."
I had to google the safety pin thing. Godamn liberals, give me a warning or something. I'm not in my 20's anymore and rolling my eyes this hard might give me a real injury.
I can't tell if I'm part of the group you're rolling your eyes at. If so, super unfair, bro!
113: You want another signal on media corruption? Trump claimed he would release his taxes once the audit was complete. Is there any chance the media will follow up on that?
120: Nobody cares! Proof is he won election easily! (paraphrasing the Emperor)
They didn't vote for Trump. They stayed home.
Sure, but why did they stay home? If the Dems want any hope of winning in the near future, I think they need to actually think about that question, and not just shout NaziNaziNaziNazi. But that's all I'm seeing so far.
Maybe this is just a sign that I need to cut LGM out of my reading/time wasting rotation altogether for the sake of my mental health.
89
But a few million people voted for Obama in 2012 and didn't vote for Clinton in 2016, and the explanation that they're all NaziWhiteSuppremicistSkinheads doesn't make sense.
This woman seems to be the kind of person you're thinking of. A Muslim immigrant woman and Trump supporter. She was one of the people I was thinking of in 105 when I complained about a different set of facts. She brings up the Clinton Foundation specifically and the fact that they got money from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. She's one of the anti-Muslim-extremism types, which is banal in one sense but in the more relevant sense doesn't seem, well, relevant. I mean, I don't want to accuse anyone of disloyalty to their demographic, for many very good and obvious reasons, but preferring Trump to Clinton on this issue requires a completely different set of facts than the world as I know it.
The question is not what will make people take an interest in the facts, but what will make the media report them.
I've been wondering about paying for people to see them. Like, Whedon and his celebrity friends made all those PSA's in 2016. But what if, even if they were paid infomercials, there had been a slew of bits in 2014. 'This real-and-appealing person wasn't bankrupted by an emergency room visit due to Obamacare. [shows linkage]'. 'This real-and-appealing person got his teeth fixed by Obamacare. [shows linkage]'
Why aren't Democrats using Hollywood skills to tell what our policies do in real time, in small chunks? We bitched about Obama not doing it, and if he wasn't going to do it, maybe we should pay people that make good shows to put out small pieces that make that direct link to policy with a real face.
107 And the answer is, in part, a celebrity candidate.
Mark Ruffalo? He's charming.
125: The fact that he's an environmental advocate in relation to upstate NY has had me trying to construct a version of "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" incorporating his name for a couple of years now. Until he buys a bison ranch, though, it's hopeless.
...but preferring Trump to Clinton on this issue requires a completely different set of facts than the world as I know it. ok, this is interesting
Obama Has Overruled the Pro Nusra Faction
Two days after the election, the White House switched from sending arms to al-nusra to bombing them. The Saudis lost their influence overnight. Yes, the Clintons were all the way up the Saudi ass.
Ok, with Steve Bannon doing strategy it is clear that Trump was serious, yeah full on White Nationalist trending Nazi. What about foreign policy?
New Axis (Russia, US, white nationalists in Europe, India? West China? obvious suspect not included*) will I think go after Islam/ME in a big fucking way. How big probably depends on Islamic reaction. Think about the Russian-Saudi volatile relationship the last few years. How does Iran fit in? FuckIknow.
Alliances are shifting, and this is in part what the election was about, for the more conspiratorially minded.
Another tool for 2018.
*because dangerous anti-semitism is back
119: You haven't worn one yet? No eye rolling!
I'm thinking of wearing more tweed so I'll look less like somebody who might have voted for Obama.
129: I hear that tweed wearing academics are high on Trump's drone strike list.
My poor father. He couldn't look more plausibly like a Trump voter barring actual KKK paraphenalia. I am considering Christmas presents that will flag him as one of us without violating his personal esthetic too badly.
I didn't put predictions in the predictions thread, but my main prediction is that President Trump will bankrupt the country, probably irretrievably. I hope I'm wrong. It will be four years of peeing-on-legs.
The OP seemed like a bitter wound-licking validation of massive sexism from a person trying manfully not to feel (perceive herself as) personally harmed by it. I hope all the "good job, smartypants" comments were gratifying for her, but it makes me mad anyway. If the professional class has a choice between smug and self-hating, let me be the fucking first in line to vote for continued smugness. No "Let us look deep into our coastal elitist souls" trucker hat for me; it looks asinine.
Last points: voter suppression was and is a big deal, although I don't care to waste time directing blame for its effects on this election. It needs to be much more aggressively fought.
God fucking damn it I don't know if I can move back to Wisconsin. Wisconsin is not going to have two pennies to rub together in four years. I don't think I can siphon money from the coast that long.
117.1 is strangely infuriating. Is there a grossly enlarged part of every American liberal's brain dedicated to rage at the NYT? Kind of like the UK and the Guardian?
122: Those are all good thoughts. Actual Dems from the middle of the country have raised these issues before and did so again this election.
I know it is hard to imagine a US gov't turning on Israel, but fucking Steve Bannon. Especially since Israeli apartheid has been cited as a model. The guy implementing the anti-immigration transition has strong ties to White South Africa. Name has two k's, Karl Kobuchar or something.
No, these are not ordinary Republicans. Trump found a new base, a new coalition, and a new geopolitics.
Decent article on this topic at Vox
That's true on both ends -- conservative and progressive. Certainly, I'm not going to step back and say, during an argument about trans bathroom rights, "Wow, you really have a point about how trans people are just making up their identity so they can sneak into places where they don't belong." Trying to empathize with that point of view rejects the lived experience of every trans person I know. But I also immediately snap, too often, to calling such views intolerant, instead of trying to figure out where they come from.
Older rural whites usually express their frustrations in some variation of "I'm sick of political correctness," which I find maddening -- since political correctness in my view just means treating people politely. What's wrong with calling someone by their preferred pronouns? Nothing, if you're steeped in ideas about antiquated gender binaries and the like. But if you've never even met a trans person, the existence of trans people, much less the idea that they have inherent rights, can be a big leap to make, as is the case for plenty of older rural whites. (See also: the close cousin to "I'm sick of political correctness," "Why do people hate white men all of a sudden?")
To be clear: I do not want to advocate for giving an inch on any of these issues. Ending racial, misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, and classist power structures is essential to the future of this country, as is ending the enormous levels of income inequality. But I also think progressive America has become too quick to leap to crying racism or sexism -- even when talking about genuinely dangerous, racist, and sexist ideas -- instead of trying to unpack what's motivating those ideas. The rise of the alt-right shows that these dark ideas are not going away without a fight. That's what makes it so important for progressives to get better at communicating what they mean and fighting for what they believe in.
I say "racism" and mean "a system, built up over centuries of American history, that privileges white people over everybody else." Many rural whites hear "racism" and think it means, "You're a bad person who hates black people," when they believe they're not actively discriminating against anyone because of race. And that goes for plenty of other terms as well -- "privilege" or "rape culture" or even "feminism." There's a communication gap, and there has to be a way to bridge it. Much of that is on rural white America, yes, but some of it necessarily is on urban progressives, as well.
....
Again, I don't think there's an easy answer to this, but I think an answer does exist, and we ignore those who are receptive to it at our peril. But even if there isn't an answer, empathy is a good thing, whether or not we still condemn rural whites' various deeply held beliefs. Understanding where those beliefs come from is vital to crafting messages that will beat them back.
122: Those are all good thoughts. Actual Dems from the middle of the country have raised these issues before and did so again this election.
That is a good article, thanks.
Just to be clear, incidentally, I'm not saying that reaching out to these voters is a bad idea. I'm just saying that there are trade-offs, and let's not pretend that the campaign simply forgot that WI / MI /PA existed. They picked what they thought was a winning strategy -- and there were good reasons both to chose that strategy and to think it would work.
It didn't work; it's worth spending some time asking about what could have gone differently, and if they could have made better choices. But it's also worth having some humility about Monday morning quarterbacking.
117.1 is strangely infuriating. Is there a grossly enlarged part of every American liberal's brain dedicated to rage at the NYT?
I use the NYT as a synechdoche for "media sources that one ought to expect to be reliable." Those sources failed fantastically. Coverage of the election was grounded in unreality to the same degree that coverage of the runup to Iraq was.
People keep talking about Hillary's messaging and whatnot, but all the messaging in the world doesn't help if the credible sources of news are not, in fact, credible. The mainstream media coverage of e-mail was a disgrace, and it's coverage of Trump was woefully lacking. The NYT was, in fact, one of the best sources in the country regarding both Iraq and this election - and I think that tells you everything you need to know about how the public got to be so misinformed.
For example: Where was climate change in this election? We know Breitbart isn't interested in providing people with reliable information, but where was the NYT? Where was CBS?
135: Ah, so condescension is the solution! Why didn't we think of that before!
Not only did people not forget PA existed. PA Democrats won three state row offices, including two where the most recent prior election was won by a Democrat who is now a convicted felon because of their behavior in office.
Shit. The link works in 140, but meant to say: "A NYTimes Upshot look at state polling misses compared to prior elections."
Also let me opine that all of this attempts to sort out the whys of the election are stupidly premature, in part due to the immediacy of the emotions, and in part because better data will be available later.
Also, the extent of the systematic misogyny revealed through the course of this election is the most sobering and under-discussed part of the whole fucking thing. I hate everyone including myself.
107 And the answer is, in part, a celebrity candidate.
We need a celebrity candidate who combines liberal views with folksy charm. Someone who comes across as "heartland America," only sexier. Ideas?
Jerry Springer. (An extremely talented and progressive liberal Democrat from Ohio).
This American Life epricode on Springer's political career.
Yeah, we're in a weird moment where somehow misogyny is both over-discussed and under-discussed, and therefore almost impossible to talk about. It doesn't seem to register that both men and women can experience gender-based discrimination or disadvantages simultaneously. It isn't always and forever zero sum.
The Trump - Springer debate in October 2020 would be utterly amazing.
The Trump - Springer debate in October 2020 would be utterly amazing.
The Trump - Springer debate in October 2020 would be utterly amazing.
Look at Joan Walsh's timeline throughout this year if you want to experience it in the raw. (and it probably is one of these things that are not profitably discussed girth now.)
But a reply to her in the midst of current Twitter spat made me laugh:
"Twitter looks like the last scene in Reservoir Dogs right now"
Fuck me. 147-149: <insert Rumspringa joke here>
Also, I can tell I'm close to the tipping point where if I don't disengage from news and arguments now, I'll get the chronic and incurable full-blown illness. So I'm going to bow out and try to put myself in a better position to constructively reëngage later, once people (mostly not here) are done having their angry flip-outs.
153: my initial (and violated) pledge as well.
I've probably mentioned before that I talk to my father every night, and I've been pretty close to full on raging at him for his vote. It's very difficult to square having respect for this clearly not unintelligent man who simultaneously has explicitly praised the Electoral College (as a bulwark against the domination of the nation by CA and NY..which...no, that's not how it'd work). It saddens me that he truly does not give a damn about anyone outside his immediate friends and family, and will reach for any ideological justification that he can that this is acceptable.
||
Gwen Ifill, a veteran journalist and news anchor with the Public Broadcasting Service, is dead at 61, PBS reported Monday. She died of cancer.
|>
That's horrible. Whenever I'm with my parents, dad watches NewsHour. I didn't even know she was sick.
155:
My father has been bugging me to skype since last week and I haven't been able to do anything but put him off, I just can't take it.
he truly does not give a damn about anyone outside his immediate friends and family, and will reach for any ideological justification that he can that this is acceptable.
This is one of the most mystifying parts to me.
When I came out to my parents as a young man, everybody was decent enough about it, no big tantrums, all the I-still-love-yous. But forever after, there never developed a speck of comprehension about why I would take gay rights as a political issue so personally. Just eye-rolling impatience about how naïve I was being. My mother once proudly recounted putting a Republican phone-banker in her place by answering "do you support gay marriage" with "it's non of the government's business and that they should just stay out of it," beaming as though this was somehow coming to my defence. But she couldn't just say "yes."
My father and stepfather have both had bypass surgeries paid for by Medicare, but they never stopped screaming "socialised medicine" over the ACA.
This is some kind of crazy drug for their generation, this tribal identity, that they consistently prioritise before what should be their own most powerful personal motivations like love for their family or their own health.
I do not know how to work with that.
Damn. It's stupid feeling affectionate about celebrities, but she had a really nice face, and a really convincingly reasonable, sane affect, and I was fond of her. There was a period of time when Sally was pretty little when she'd reliably watch the NewsHour and then Washington Week In Review with Buck and me -- she's going to be sad.
Sorry, Swope. My mom may have voted for Trump, not really sure and not willing to ask. She was willing to be openly anti-Hillary (because abortion, that's why, supposedly) all the way up until the election but I think she regrets the outcome. It's so gross and hard to have a piece of yourself cut off like that. I compartmentalize a lot but being a fucking adult who has to think "Should I make sure she doesn't know I'm going to a lesbian movie so she'll agree to watch the kids?" is just awful. Maybe I'm making all the wrong choices now that I put it that way.
he truly does not give a damn about anyone outside his immediate friends and family, and will reach for any ideological justification that he can that this is acceptable.
This is my father, also. And because his family is inherently superior, they won't be inconvenienced by the government's withdrawal from socialized medicine -- and if they are, then that's their fault.
I've already swept through my Facebook and eliminated family members whose ignorance I can no longer handle.* I'm going to be looking for similarly painless ways to remove them from my life in general.**
*So it's all about class for the vast majority of Trump voters, I'm sure, but in my Facebook feed, it's all hate and ignorance, all the time.
**This, of course, is the attitude that led us here: Blue-state people segregating themselves from red-state types. Too bad. I can't take it any more.
Maybe I'm making all the wrong choices now that I put it that way.
No way. "Tell people what they want to hear and then go have a good time" is lesson I wish I'd learned way younger.
142: The key "why" of this election is, "Why was it even close?"
Figuring out what would have netted Hillary 40,000 more votes in Wisconsin is a mugs game -- any number of things might have done so. The macro issues are the relevant ones. (Hence my focus on the media, which, as I know you know, performed catastrophically.)
Oh no, I'm sad about that, too.
Medicare Part D was like the government dropping $100 bills on my parents while they walk through the grocery store. Not that I have to deal with them voting for Trump. My dad complains that all his friends are probably voting for Trump, but he doesn't understand it either.
This says that 300,000 registered voters in Wisconsin lack a valid form of voter ID, with a Trump election margin of 27,000.
So I had a paranoid thought. Republicans control 33 state houses and just need one more. Governors get to appoint replacements in some states.
Suppose some 'terrorists' blew up one of those state houses. The Republicans then might control 34 state legislatures and have an atmosphere of national mourning in which to pass their constitutional amendments.
I wonder if that is how Trump plans to pass down control of America to his son.
Economic populism is a good strategy for the dems to try to get the white working class. $15 minimum wage, stronger unions, stronger safety net. It might not work but (surprise) that shit is good anyway.
the article dismisses these concerns like this:
"WWC men aren't interested in working at McDonald's for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don't have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he'll deliver, but at least he understands what they need."
but ????? Trump isn't even going to try to do anything for these dudes.
I do think restricting non-skilled immigration would have helped. That isn't something dems can embrace at this point though.
Dems do need to give up on wall street.
The problem with white non-college educated men is that they have a hard time getting married and having a family due to societal changes. This is a real issue, but it is hard to think of a solution.
I wonder if that is how Trump plans to pass down control of America to his son.
My guess is the method won't be so procedurally correct.
Gwen Ifill
2016 is clearly just building up to a death at the end of December that will crush our spirits once and for all as the Trump era dawns, and Jimmy Carter seemed like an obvious choice, except that he's a 92-year-old cancer survivor and thus couldn't really be surprising enough to pack the requisite gut punch. Then I thought Ruth Bader Ginsburg would be worse (which it totally would be, for the obvious reasons), but again, 83-year-old cancer survivors don't surprise people by dying. And Fred Rogers already died.
So now I want legislation to keep the Obamas out of any automobiles or airplanes until January.
162:Publically called my Aunt out on her Trump vote/gloating, then unfriended her. The only vocal righty left in my friends list is my BIL, and I've hidden him. I just can't.
169: I don't know that the fight for $15 will work at all. From what I've seen, older men currently making $15-$20/hour see it as a threat. Not "and this will press wages up across the board" but "and this will mean I lose all status advantage over burger flippers."
Hot take: Trump's election is proof that all social media platforms are pernicious brain rotting garbage and should be shut down immediately.
Fred Dryer is still alive, but I don't know his politics.
Speaking of painful deaths in 2016, I don't know that we talked about Janet Reno on unfogged, but I thought this was a nice piece.
Ms. Reno said of her own reception in the public eye: "I've been alternately described as the 800-pound gorilla, a sad, slightly mad old lady that should rock in her chair, the sponsor of a teeny-bopper dance club on a program called 'Saturday Night Live.'" She didn't know what to make of it. All she knew was: "What you see, ladies and gentlemen, is what you get."
Ugh, I didn't know Reno died either.
I think this election proves once and for all that economic liberalism doesn't work as an election strategy. The Democrats have controlled the federal government for 4 years out of the last 24. Each time they took control of the government and tried to expand the welfare state, they immediately lost control of Congress at the next election. They spent 6 years having their agenda to help working people completely stymied by the Republicans. So what do white working people do? They decide that the Democrats "don't care about them", and throw in their lot with the party of inequality that is already gearing up to dismantle the welfare state. Basically, pocket-book issues only work for the Democrats after recessions, and then only as long as they don't try to enact any policies afterwards. What can they possibly do with that?
I don't think it proves that -- at most, I think it proves that the way Democrats have been doing it doesn't work. It's all soft-spoken technocratic reasonable sounding stuff -- I think to sell economic liberalism, you need some class warfare in there.
117: Roll your eyes all you like, but it's helpful on my campus. (Or maybe. Students tend to barge into my office to vent anyway.)
If Obama could have psyched himself up to say about insurance companies "They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred," I bet that would have gotten some voters energized.
But what's the point? They run on class warfare, they get elected, they implement the class warfare, and they're immediately thrown out of office.
And if it's such a great electoral message, then why doesn't an economic populist ever win the Democratic nomination? Every competitive primary somebody tries the economic populism angle, and they never win. The last candidate to win with a message that wasn't pablum about retraining, etc. was Mondale.
Unitary governments are hard to maintain in the United States republicans also imploded after 2004 full takeover. Working incomes have. Even stagnet/falling for at least the last generation, I think a movement to do something about this could be popular, but would be unlikely to lead long term electoral success, because it would become like Social Security or public education, the oppo party can't attack them directly because of their popularity.
They don't run on class warfare, though. They run on "We can make your lives better in inconspicuous ways that don't hurt anyone while we all join hands and sing Kumbaya." And then they pass some inconspicuously useful legislation, the voters don't notice, and they vote for the slavering lunatic saying he's going to fight their enemies.
Why don't the populists win the primaries? I admit that you've got me there, but I suspect it's that they can't muster up the support within the Democratic party organization.
Class warfare and income inequality were absolutely forbidden words until Occupy Wall Street. It has not been many election cycles since Democrats remembered that they don't have to be centrists, and not until this one do you see centrism getting seriously challenged.
They've haven't heavily marketed themselves under lefty principles in decades.
Or their given a huge mandate in 2008, and pass basically nothing while employment and incomes decline because the Dem party didn't have 50 votes for descent bills, or are floundering incompetents.
In '88, Gephardt ran on a populist agenda, and he got killed by Mr. Boring Technocrat, Dukakis. The Democratic establishment hated him so much that they made him House Majority Leader the next year. He ran again in '04, and was killed by Howard Dean, whose idea of economic policy was balanced budgets and tax cuts.
John Edwards ran essentially on a class warfare angle with his "two Americas" rhetoric. He rode this all the way to a second-place finish in '04, and a distant third-place finish in '08.d
Counterpoint -- he had no eyebrows. You can't expect the American voter to vote for a man missing an entire facial feature.
Seriously, Gephardt may have had a populist policy agenda (I would have to remind myself of the facts to be sure), but he didn't have a firebreathing style. Dean was much closer to the style I'm thinking of, regardless of whose policies were leftier.
They run on class warfare
But they really don't. They run on modest improvements to the welfare state and curbing the most egregious excesses of the oligarchy.
Bernie tried a bit of genuine class warfare and had a lot of success with it. Hillary moved in that direction, too, but she wasn't willing to pretend to break decisively with Wall Street.
Obama got elected and re-elected. Congress is gerrymandered.
Did Gephart literally hammer Japanese imports?
I haven't read this thread or the full article but:
Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict
NO SHIT DUH MEANS-TESTING SUCKS DONKEY TAINT
If the Dems want any hope of winning in the near future, I think they need to actually think about that question, and not just shout NaziNaziNaziNazi.
I meant to push back against this before. I don't see any downside whatsoever to shouting NaziNazi -- at Trump. Americans, for all their faults, really don't like Nazis, and Trump's alt-right proclivities are well-known.
If Trump's political opponents won't tell the truth, there's absolutely no hope that anyone else will.
When Mitt Fucking Romney threatens to become the voice of the American conscience, actual decent Americans are falling down on the job.
Merkley, on the other hand, is on the case. Good for him.
So when Trump nominates Jamie Dimon to be his Secretary of the Treasury, are Trump voters all going to slap themselves upside the head and exclaim "we've been had"? They just voted in the party that thinks Wall Street is too regulated, and having an agency that protects consumers from banks is an unfair infringement on banks.
194: No, because they don't have any meaningful sense of who Jamie Dimon is and why they should care -- maybe 5% of the electorate does, on either side, and they aren't the ones who are voting based on rhetorical style.
So if the Democrats yell about class warfare, but they carefully don't do anything, then they can win? Exciting.
There are two completely separate things going on here. "Populist" economic policies (depending on specifics) are a good idea and morally right -- making sure working people have money and jobs. One of the main points of having Democrats in power is to enact those kinds of policies, whether or not it's good politics. But they don't sell themselves -- the 2009 stimulus was the most inconspicuous government spending of my life. It did a lot of good, but you'd need to be a political obsessive to know that.
"Populist" politics is selling those policies loudly as "This is what we're doing for you and your family, and fuck those corporate bastards trying to stop us. If they want a fight, they've got one!" And you can use that message to sell anything, policy-wise: it's pretty much Trump's message. But if we won't talk like that, I think we lose.
199 sounds nice, but legal, unlimited, subsidized Oxytocin in central PA feels right and would probably work better.
In agreement with 199. This especially true at the state level, at the national level we have a popular majority and would win if we could stop nominating literally the least popular political figures in The country.
Trump's strength is in his ability to mobilize hatred. Democrats have trouble with that. Obama, for instance, more-or-less had to run as the kumbaya candidate.
But there are plenty of legitimate targets for hatred. Dimon is among of them. A party less beholden to Wall Street -- a party actually willing to deliver on class warfare -- will be able to take advantage of that.
And of course I'm talking as if I know how to win elections. I don't -- never won one in my life. But the sort of thing I'm talking about has been underused, I think, as a rhetorical strategy by Democrats, and I think it might help.
"If Obama could have psyched himself up to say about insurance companies "They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred," I bet that would have gotten some voters energized."
Exactly.
Btw, class is economic, political, social, cultural, and geographic. In all of that there are myriad (imbalances of) power-relations. In general, hinterland people are not as stupid as Vox would have you believe. People recognize, even if vaguely and imprecisely, how extreme the concentrations of power and wealth are, where the concentrations are located, and who is benefiting. Wealth extraction and nonstop increases to the power and reach of corporate/governmental nexuses which masquerade as bland, technocratic, neolibrul, centrist, incrementalism is not a dog that will hunt anymore.
The days of triangulating the populace and poll-humping one's way to high public office are closing. If Democrats want to win they have to confront real power and be willing to make some enemies--like the insurance industry, for example, or wall st; the list is endless. Problem is, the democrats are really no different from republicans on this score. Everybody knows where Clinton's and Obama's bread is buttered.
Consider every one of the gajillion valid criticisms of Trump as stipulated, he (seemingly at random with little to no forethought) did openly confront a few concentrations of power, especially in the primary against the republican field. Rightly or wrongly, based on the character of Trump and his eventual policies, a whole lot of people basically said, "yes, someone willing to call out the bullshit." Who or what did Clinton confront, besides the deplorables? Which was structurally the same sort of moronic ejaculation as Romney's 47% nonsense.
These issues are global and go much deeper than democrat/republican or even left/right for that matter. The axis is transnational concentrations of power, wealth, and decision-making vs. local (regional and national) sovereignty. Watch for the Dec. referendum in Italy as the next outcome in this rolling battle. If democrats want to win they better start forming new coalitions that address this dynamic. I have my doubts they want to win that badly, though. There's still a lot of bread to be made propping up the status quo.
I'm not worried about not having legitimate things to target for Democrats in the next elections. I'm wondering how you get the message to the target. There were so many negative ads here that I have to assume they were just completely disbelieved because they were done by "liberals" or deliberately ignored by people who explicitly looked at the two options and decided to affirmatively select racism and sexism.
171: It's pretty obvious that we're witnessing a slow motion rapture with Trump as the Antichrist.
Shit. We've all been... Left Behind?
Yep. I suppose Putin might be the Antichrist, with Trump as his prophet. I'm not a biblical scholar.
202. Obama had to run as a kumbaya candidate because he is black. If he had run as the second coming of Jesse Jackson or Malcolm X he would have lost.
He should have started with "The lesson of Nat Turner, act before anybody can tell whitey."
193: I think we might be talking past each other here. Absolutely shout Nazi! at Trump and his supporters.
I was talking about the sizable group that voted for Obama in 2012 and then didn't bother to show up for Clinton in 2016. Why did they stay away? And for that question, I think that "Well, obviously they're all Nazis" is not an adequate answer.
206, 208: Nah, as we've discussed before, Barack Obama is the Antichrist. Also, Mitt Romney is the Hidden Imam.
Also let me opine that all of this attempts to sort out the whys of the election are stupidly premature, in part due to the immediacy of the emotions, and in part because better data will be available later.
Strongly agree. People are putting forward all sorts of plausible theories about what went wrong in this election and how to keep it from happening again (note that these are separate questions that might have different answers). Any number of them might be correct, to varying degrees, but we don't yet have the information we would need to evaluate them properly. We will at some point, but we don't now.
"Jean-Jacques Dessalines's problem. If you're going to kill the whites on only one half of one island, why even bother? Especially when it's the smaller half."
187, 188: I don't think one can extrapolate from the fortunes of a handful of populist campaigns to that of a hypothetical fully populist Democratic party any more than one can take as evidence a focus group reacting with disbelief to accurate descriptions of Republican policies for the proposition that such criticism is hopeless.
he truly does not give a damn about anyone outside his immediate friends and family
True of many, many people. It turns out I'm such a bleeding heart liberal that this upsets me a great deal, but there it is.
205: I'm not worried about not having legitimate things to target for Democrats in the next elections. I'm wondering how you get the message to the target.
The only way to do that is to explain to people what's in it for them.
I had a fretful discussion today with my cow-orker, as I reported to him that Paul Ryan was on schedule to "modernize" Medicare -- phase it out. His first remark was, "They'll invite a revolution if they do that!" His second: "They're surely going to grandfather in those of us currently on Medicare." [Said coworker recently moved onto Medicare.)
As mildly as I could, I noted that yes, they probably would do that, but it wasn't particularly helpful for the vast majority of the country. His remark: "Okay for me, though!"
Jesus, this makes me sad. I just observed that, Yes, it was true that our country was currently moving to an "I'm alright, Jack! I've got mine!" mindset that has always been there, and while I've never particularly thought of myself as an especially compassionate person, it turns out I am, and I'm as concerned about everyone else as I am about myself.
This is a losing argument, trying to appeal to his better self, his moral instincts. A majority of people just don't. Care.
My dad just won Medicare again today. Apparently, getting old sucks.
I don't have anything like the energy to read a thread but 4 is so deeply right.
BTw, the polling errors extended to the exit polls, and pretty much in the same direction in the same states. So, shy Trump voter after all, maybe?
I dunno, and am tired of caring. Worn out. And after all I am an older white male from the Rust Belt. And I hate us. Among the most despicable living beings on the planet. No question.
Here is a table of exit polls versus actual results by state.
216. The argument to such people is yes, you'll get grandfathered in the first round, but there's no way that different tiers of benefits are going to be tenable over the long haul. If you let anyone get voucherized now, you'll get voucherized next time.
The other argument would be, you'll just as dead when it comes time to pay the taxes for those benefits as you are when it comes time to get those benefits. Why the fuck do you care so much that I die in a shitty hospital?
219- Lots of people are talking about voter suppression http://www.gregpalast.com/election-stolen-heres/ but I haven't seen people talk much about the possibility of election fraud in this election so far. Certainly Trump and his people would have no compunction. He's been plugged into Republican dirty tricksters for decades now. Is it so unlikely that he might have won, not because people voted for him, but because he cheated?
Given the results, it seems very unlikely that there was any fraud. So many states were involved and it doesn't appear that the shift was concentrated in just a few districts in those states.
Also, Trump didn't seem to really want to win, and he seemed genuinely surprised when he did. That doesn't sound like a guy who cheated.
226 But maybe Russian hackers cheated on his behalf.*
*I don't actually believe this to be the case. OTOH it's been a crazy year and I if I've learned anything its that I know nothing.
It looks like white people are just horrible.
Which is what I keep saying and people always respond with "Even if that's true, why should it be written on top of the Cracker Barrel menu?"
Of course, this year it goes in the Christmas letter.
Fuck you all, I'm drunk. And I had to sit through the WORST department event ever, where whiny-ass grad students complained that the worst thing ever about Trump is they have to fulfill course requirements. Then I got drunk at my advisor's retirement party.
But, fuck everything, fuck bourgeois assholes, and fuck people who think that apologizing for racism and sexism is being pro working class. I was raised in part in a poor neighborhood (otherwise known as a "ghetto") by my working class grandparents, and they somehow still managed to be socialists. It's not too much to ask.
But anyways, I'm drunk and fighty.
I had to sit through the WORST department event ever, where whiny-ass grad students complained that the worst thing ever about Trump is they have to fulfill course requirements.
What? That doesn't even come close to making sense.
232
Yeah, it didn't. Grad students fucking suck. They should be rounded up and shot. I'm willing to be part of the sacrifice.
White people are definitely the worst. Think I'm going to lynch myself.
Gallant Barry is always willing to take up a drunken fight.
Too bad it's 9 am here and this place is dry as a bone.
That just makes you more of a gentleman.
And it's 9 pm here, so I guess that makes us antipodean twins, at least in terms of time zones.
235
Aww, that means a lot. Almost enough to melt my drunken fighty heart.
But yeah, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck y'all.
240
I dedicate to you the extra beer I stole and drank in the parking lot.
Get a room, you two. (That may admittedly be difficult logistically.)
It's worth raising the possibility that the outcome is the result of foreign interference, and the circumstantial evidence is consistent with it, but I have to think that it would require hacking of a magnitude that it would be detected by the national security establishment, and it would have leaked by now.
The national security sure doesn't seem averse to leaking stuff.
245: Yes. It is an interesting pattern, but one of the "benefits" of having a fucked up squirrely hodgepodge of voting systems (even within many states) is that it would be very hard to do systematic manipulation
The tell would be if the states' voting systems have something in common.
OK. A week into this thing I am still as gutted as ever. Part of it was visiting my mother this weekend. She is aged and unwell; and this certainly is her last Presidential election. Politically active much of her life (she had been president of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters for instance), she has spent the last week alternatively fighting some new health challenges and stewing about the election results. She was not a big Hillary fan--and was a "liberal" Republican until Reagan--but is appalled that so many of her friends and neighbors would deign vote for this unqualified pig of a man. Very saddening for her. And me.
What a pathetic thing is decadence. Millions of Republicans as comfortable and secure as any people who have ever lived, who owe everything to the historic miracle that is the United States, chose to go along with a presidential candidacy shot through with moral degeneracy and contempt for the public good.A Wisconsin Republican correspondent of James Fallows.
This is a pretty insightful (and depressing, of course) observation from Kotsko.
250: My main response to bad news is bravado, and this has gone along so long, and gone so badly that I keep running out of it. And then I have nothing. (My wife is in a state of constant rage, which seems to work better.)
To my great surprise, I actually was able to laugh about the whole thing last night, for the first time. Not because it's funny, but because it's just so fucking absurd, and no we're really not going to wake up from this; this is going to be our life now.
Even in Berlin these days, you sit in a restaurant or bar and listen for a bit, and all you hear is just these anxious Trump convos coming from every table, in a half-dozen different languages.
255: I have barely had a conversation about anything other than Trump in the past week, but Europeans don't have the same level of panic and horror that Americans do. The only non-American I know who's having the same "my entire family died in a car accident" reaction was someone who lived in the US for 10 years. Though I think the Dutch and the French will be experiencing it soon enough.
256: YMMV. The German woman I share an office with actually wept at the news, and there were medium-sized but very angry anti-Trump protests in Berlin over the weekend - that's more emotional engagement than I've put into it so far, at least.
OK. A week into this thing I am still as gutted as ever. Part of it was visiting my mother this weekend. She is aged and unwell; and this certainly is her last Presidential election
I think I may actually be feeling worse by the day. Part of it is spending too much time wallowing in everyone's shock and horror on twitter, which I know isn't making me feel better. (But should I feel better? This is a fucking disaster.) I had brunch Sunday with my father, a Trump voter, and I could barely eat. I'm honestly thinking of skipping Thanksgiving family get-togetherness this year. That makes me feel like an asshole, but I'm really not sure I'm up for it yet.
253 is very good.
The Bannon thing just means this is going to go from bad to worse and then some. A fucking real life Nazi in the White House. I feel physically ill. I'm seriously contemplating not returning to the US on leave this summer. Maybe not even for the next four years. My parents tried to Skype me the other day but I couldn't bring myself to answer.
The link in 251 is very good.
Hot take: Trump's election is proof that all social media platforms are pernicious brain rotting garbage and should be shut down immediately.
This post by Kevin Drum is frightening:
[Mike Caulfield: ] To put this in perspective, if you combined the top stories from the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and LA Times, they still had only 5% the viewership of an article from a fake news site that intimated strongly that the Democratic Presidential candidate had had a husband and wife murdered then burned to cover up her crimes.
257: I haven't been able to have a productive conversation with my Italian boss for a week, because every time we try, all she can talk about is Trump, and her every sentence is first interrupted by nervous, compulsive, it's-either-this-or-I-vomit laughter, and then by apologies for the inappropriate laughter, and then by accidental lapses into Italian before she starts the cycle over again. It's nice to know I'm not the only emotional one, but the strained communication is beginning to be a problem.
I think in the end I'm still most terrified by Trump's ability to hypnotize vast numbers of people for years on end, capturing and holding their attention relentlessly. I've never seen anything like it in my life, not even among celebrities. I admit that a big part of my immediate, visceral reaction to the election results was "oh my God, now people will never shut up about Donald Trump, ever." I had really been looking forward to the shutting up.
A friend is worried he's going to have to get a new job, as his boss is moving back to Israel because of the election and he doesn't trust any other possible office politics configuration.
(I mean, I am terrified about many things, including the degree to which GWB exceeded our worst fears about his administration, multiplied by how much worse my fears are about Trump. But I think "no one could look away" underlies them all. Death by basilisk.)
I do not get the strength of the reactions to this election. Were you people not alive for the first two elections of this century?
266 Yes, and this is shaping up to be far worse.
Bush was an utter disaster but I don't remember Bush appointing an neo-Nazi white supremacists as his chief strategist a week after winning the election.
I'm so upset I can't even spell correctly
-n
-s
267: Anything's possible, but let's not let a little time dull us to the lunacy of 2004 where an administration filled with guys carved from blocks of evil won re-election by a comfortable margin.
Seriously though, contrasting what Bush said about Islam in the weeks after 9/11 with what Trump is saying just on any random week shows how much bigger the problem is.
After the election itself, what's scared me most is Moby breaking character.
Kevin Drum this morning: "Trump Transition Off To A Rocky Start"
Eliot Cohen is no Dick Cheney, but he is a longtime neocon who acted as a cheerleader for the Iraq War and just wrote a book subtitled The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force. In other words, not a guy who shies away from a toughminded foreign policy. And yet, today he said this:After exchange w Trump transition team, changed my recommendation: stay away. They're angry, arrogant, screaming "you LOST!" Will be ugly.
267: Anything's possible, but let's not let a little time dull us to the lunacy of 2004 where an administration filled with guys carved from blocks of evil won re-election by a comfortable margin.
I think the difference is the uncertainty. In 2004 we knew how bad they were but we also knew their basic agenda (much of which ended up floundering in 2008-08 because people were prepared to push back: see Social Security reform). In this case we have absolutely know idea what's going to happen next.
266, 271: Dude, you're not actually thinking the Trump administration will be better than W. because Trump said such uncharacteristically comforting things to Rust Belt voters... are you?
In this case we have absolutely know idea what's going to happen next.
I've been just assuming from things like the 2004 election, conversations about unions and such while I worked at ebay during those same years, etc., that things were really going to have to get worse in this country for a good long while before they were going to get better. I guess not everyone has been that pessimistic?
276: See above. I have no idea what's going to happen. But everyone's running around like all this is an asteroid from the sky. I don't get the surprise.
If my job allowed me to conduct car chases, I'd probably have a lower threshold for maintaining calm too.
I don't get the surprise.
Two answers. First I think John Holbo gets it right (emphasis mine)
I will point out, for the record, that I called the final results on February 17:
But really I didn't. I said that IF Trump were to win, he would win in precisely the way that he, in fact, did. And I gave him a 35% chance. And I caught shit for it at the time, looking back. Got accused of white privilege n' everything in that ol' thread. (Which is to say: it was a thread.) But of course I then spent the rest of the year making Trump jokes to friends and family, chuckling about apocalypse. Cognitive dissonance, man. It's a killer.
Second, on election night I was surprised, saddened, angry, etc . . .. But I wasn't shocked, I'd read enough of fivethirtyeight to know that a Trump victory was a possibility -- one that I underestimated, and didn't think hard about, but a real possibility.
But there's another level of surprise which is walking around and having thoughts like, "do I need to worry about the possibility that Trump will use nuclear weapons? I haven't (seriously) worried about that in decades."
But everyone's running around like all this is an asteroid from the sky. I don't get the surprise.
Bush was a nightmare, but he was way, way, way less horrifying in terms of what he was saying. Certainly before the 2000 election: remember 'compassionate conservativism'? 2004, you're right, he had an awful track record already, but he was still awful in a way that was, how to put this, not freakishly out the norm for prior administrations. (That's still not exactly right, he was freakishly out of the norm. But his advisors had at least worked in government before.)
Appointing some neo-Nazi rando alt-right journalist as his chief advisor is genuinely much freakier than anything from Bush. Not being administratively ready for the transition? Also much freakier than anything from Bush.
I'm not minimizing how bad Bush was -- he was horrific. But that doesn't rule out Trump being much worse.
Plus, it was possible, because of what Bush was saying, to believe that fellow Americans who voted for him weren't complete shitheads.
I actually not sure I'm any more upset than I would be if Ted Cruz had won. I feel like Trump is uniquely awful in a lot of ways, but it's really just that the Republican Party is thoroughly awful (much worse and more aggressively worse than they were during the Bush years), and they'll be in control of the entire federal government. And even if they were no worse than Bush (there is zero chance of that), we absolutely couldn't afford 4 more years of Bush right now. We've barely dug our way out of the Bush-created disasters (and in many ways we haven't yet.)
Trump does present a serious risk of genuine authoritarianism that I don't think would be present with someone like Cruz. Which lends a different character to my upsetness. But I'm not sure that overall my upsetness is any worse. Maybe it is. Hard to say. I'm very upset.
I wasn't shocked, I'd read enough of fivethirtyeight to know that a Trump victory was a possibility -- one that I underestimated, and didn't think hard about, but a real possibility.
Is kind of me. I don't know how I feel. I'm having waves of exhaustion and lethargy. My increasing takeaway is that I might actually live through a world war.
I do not get the strength of the reactions to this election. Were you people not alive for the first two elections of this century?
For me, this is Bush Years + KKK Supremacy. If it weren't for the racist vitriol that's been unleashed, I'd feel much more like we were back in known territory.
Also, very few people made serious preparations for resistance at all, and now (I would imagine) a lot of us in a position to leverage our advantages are scrambling to do so, and trying to take stock of what it will take. If I get a tax cut, say, do I keep it and pay my own debts to free up money later, or do I donate the tax money (where and how)? Do I prioritize volunteer efforts with reproductive health, or grassroots environmental action, or help immigrants, or go straight into bolstering the Democratic Party (enough bolsters that they physically can't roll over), or pay attention to things beyond U.S. borders, or help friends and family...?
We're eight years further along the ratchet than we were in 2000 (and for some things, sixteen years further), and while I'm certainly better off now than I was under Bush, I don't think I'm much closer to internalizing a sense of duty to collective action. And the scale is massive.
283: U.S./Russia vs China, or what? I'm willing to bet on "a ton of violence," but probably not great power conflict. Yet.
It's also a real gut punch to have spent the last eight years digging the economy out of a ditch and making some modest improvements on the social safety net, only to see a yahoo game show host waltz in with his merry band of white nationalists and shred the entire thing.
For me, this is worse because:
1. The shock! The polls! The complacency! I truly thought that the demographics favored us for a good long while.
2. The white supremecists
3. I'm trying to say something about climate change, but it was pretty horrifying when we elected Bush. We're worse off now, but my horror has been about constant.
285.1: Resistance against voter intimidation. Buy a rifle, organize with lefty military veterans. I've said and will keep saying, these are fascists, and the next move is to steal elections by force.
285 last: Fuck knows, but the pieces are falling into place. Aggressive revisionist dictators, multiple defections from the alliance system, total intellectual bankruptcy from progressive leaders. We're recapitulating The Deluge. So far in very diluted fashion, but it's all there and things seem to be speeding up.
This is America. Everybody already has a rifle.
I might ask for a nicer one for Christmas.
I have a shotgun and a pistol. My dad said I could have his .308, but I've never gone through the trouble of buying a case good enough that I could take it on a plane.
I think you're looking for a 5.56, these days.
Pistols are much more likely to be practical in everyday use, but rifles are better for actual war and not accidentally shooting your own balls by tucking it in your waistband.
I suspect there will be very good Christmas sales on guns. Nobody can say "Buy now before the vagenda of manocide makes it illegal."
The castration argument would be a winner, even in absence of fascists.
I'm still a pacifist. Not necessarily anti-castration.
(Sorry, Mossy, I never got back to post here. It was a rough night.)
No blame Thorn. But please reconsider the pacifism.
Mossy, what models of successful armed resistance do you have in mind when you think this over?
298: I have, but it's the most core part of my identity and I don't know that I have options there to change and still be me.
277: Yeah, I've thought the same way, I guess I just figured that it would be more of a gradual rollout of the insane white supremacy. But I guess folx were more desperate than I thought.
288: you're going to have to change your pseud to "Mossy Oak Breakup Character"
299: seriously. If you don't know what you're doing, a rifle is useless. And by "know what you are doing" I don't mean gun safety lessons and some time shooting deer, I mean several months or years of full time professional instruction in dismounted infantry combat. Talking about armed insurrection against the US arms forces was moronic when the Bundys did it and it still is now. The entire US army has spent the last fifteen years engaged in two enormous counter insurgency campaigns against an enemy far more capable and brutal and motivated than you will ever be. It is safe to say that they are at a higher level of skill in this area than ever before in history. This is crazy talk.
What I have in mind specifically is physical protection of voters, first, but not necessarily only, in R-governed areas. The legalities and logistics of this would be complicated, especially if crossing state lines, which you will absolutely need to do. Nonviolent work on the same lines is also necessary, but I think that it's clear by now that that isn't enough. If you wait for another election to see if this is actually necessary, and it is, it'll be too late. I'm hoping obviously for successful deterrence, not actual fighting.
I'm going to use my gun purchase waiting period to watch Red Dawn on a loop, if I buy a gun.
304 before seeing 303. I hope I've made clear I'm not advocating insurgency. I'm advocating legal self-defense against the KKK, basically. And you know what else is crazy talk? All the other impossible things that have happened this year.
You can't have a credible deterrent unless people actually give credence to the possibility of your using force effectively.
300: OK. I won't argue with that.
307 is very true. Wear your war face, hipsters.
Guns won't save us. The other side has more of them. All we have to protect us is the rule of law. If that goes, ain't nothing we can do.
309: No more waxing mustaches like it's the 1920s. Time to start waxing them like it's the 1910s.
The other side does have more guns, but only a very small minority of them are likely to turn out for the brownshirts. It should be possible to match that minority with your own minority. If nothing else, I think you need to be thinking seriously about the possibility.
310: I also have spaghetti. I'm not sure it helps, but it sure isn't hurting right now.
303: I figure on dying but not passively as too many of my relatives did in the Forties. I'll be happy if I can take just one Nazi with me. That shouldn't be terribly difficult.
The other side does have more guns, but only a very small minority of them are likely to turn out for the brownshirts.
1) Plenty will turn out for the brownshirts.
2) Any civil war scenario in 21st century America is going to have a lot more than two sides. Think Syria, not Gettysburg.
3) The only way to win that game is not to play.
312: this is based on what occasions in US history where something similar has happened and it's turned out well?
310 is right. As is 313. Either you win with the rule of law, bedded in a firm foundation of amiable spaghetti, or you don't win. Guns are not a realistic option here.
304/306: yeah, I'd put the odds of success at zero. Assuming you get anywhere with the Herculean task of organizing a militia of gun-hating leftists and training them to follow protocol, there is no way that the genuinely enthusiastic members of this militia won't get trigger happy once set loose in the wild, or the militia won't be infiltrated with agents provocateurs, or both -- and that's all you need for a next-level crisis. You won't find a population anywhere in the world where attitudes towards guns are this polarized, with all the gun-haters on the side you're trying to mobilize and the gun-friendly individuals tend disproportionately towards lunacy. It would be easier and safer to get UN troops to guard the polls, and you know that would be a fucking nightmare given the opposition. I'm sorry, because I understand where you're coming from and I too sometimes wish for paramilitary solutions. But no.
I'd also put at nearly zero the odds that Putin would refrain from interfering with the next election. He's got four years of smooth sailing to try whatever he wants. Four years is four years in Russia as well, though, and I'm less knowledgeable about the situation there.
...I mean several months or years of full time professional instruction in dismounted infantry combat.
Gun and horses then.
Ah, fuck. Yes, you're all right. I reiterate though, organize (lawfully) against voter intimidation. I hope we can agree on that.
Gun and horses then.
The 1st Volunteer Hipster Hussars Regiment.
298: I have, but it's the most core part of my identity and I don't know that I have options there to change and still be me.
I think there is plenty of evidence that pacifism is a valid choice.
I was remembering a scene early in a Dick Gregory's book when he's going to visit a civil rights activist in the South and is surprised to see a number of guns around the house. The host says (quoting from memory) that he won't be killed like Medgar Evers, "shot in the back, coming out of his house."
But Dick Gregory himself was a pacifist, and successful and influential as an activist. Looking now I find an interview with him from 1965 talking about the Watts riot (he was, famously, shot, in Watts, by a protestor. He describes the incident like this:)
I don't know exactly how it happened, but at some point I found myself right between riot-helmeted police and a group of very angry, armed Black men. This confrontation was happening in a houseing project; clearly innocent people were going to die in this standoff if someone did not stop them. I walked between the two groups and tried to calm things down, but after I'd walked about one hundred feet, bullets started to fly. I kept walking even when I felt a burning pain in my leg. It took me a few more minutes to realize that I had been shot.
I couldn't believe it! After all the marching I'd done in the South, after all the times I'd been arrested by redneck deputies in the past four years, here I was shot by a Black man in California! But the face of that little boy crying over his father's corpse, and the faces of all the little children of Watts who were in the line of fire, overshadowed any physical pain. I kept walking. Either side could have easily killed me, but I think the brothers were as shocked as I was that I'd been hit. When I yelled at them, "Alright, goddamn it. You shot me, now go home!" They turned and started going back into their homes.
In general I agree with ajay and lk that trying to create leftist militias isn't a promising project. But even if some leftists do feel like it's important to arm themselves, I understand, and don't think that everybody has to do so.
I'm an aspirational pacifist. I recognize the dangerous, violent beast lurking beneath the surface of my psyche. I pursue pacifism as a means of keeping him in line.
I pursue pacifism like Wile E. Coyote pursues the Road Runner.
I'm in the comfortable position of not having to take a principled stand on pacifism, because I'm absolutely convinced that I would be very bad at violence.
In practice, of course, I am completely pacifistic. I haven't committed an act of violence against any person in over 20 years. Frankly, I'm totally pessimistic about the possibility of revolution in this country. What worries me more is rampaging bands of white supremacists coming to my integrated neighborhood while the police look on or even participate. In that instance, I'd rather have the guns than not.
I'm in the comfortable position of not having to take a principled stand on pacifism, because I'm absolutely convinced that I would be very bad at violence.
Hmmm, I was going to say something like that but, unsurprisingly, you phrased it better than I would have.
325: And under what circumstances would the police be more likely to participate: in a right wing extremist attack on an area full of innocent unarmed citizens, or in a firefight between concerned respectable citizens and an extremist left wing militia that has been stockpiling weapons and training its members to fight the police?
324: I'm more inclined to take a strong principled stand as a pacifist, since I know I'm so utterly inept at violence.
But if want to take pacifism seriously (which I don't think we really do) there's a lot more to it -- do we oppose all our nations' wars?
And more than that -- I've wondered whether being a pacifist doesn't also mean that one must be an anarchist -- after all the state cannot exist without the threat of violence to enforce its laws.
My approach to firearms and investing are sort of the same. If my 401K totally disappears, something very bad has happened and I have bigger problems than retirement savings, for example where will I catch my next snack rat? If we live in a world where I personally need to use a gun, we have problems that my learning to use a gun won't solve.
I take back 329 not because it's wrong but because I instantly regretted engaging.
327: If the past is any guide the LAPD will either hide or attempt to kill old Asian women trying to deliver newspapers.
312 and similar: This is nonsense. They have the guns, the cops and the military. We have the movie stars, academia, and relative physical attractiveness. It'd be a bloodbath.
331: Come on, except for make, model, and color, that truck was identical to Dorner's.
Note to self: Never buy a Civic. And doubly never buy one in any neutral color.
Bunch of fun killers. We could get a kickstarter going for Mossy to buy an AR. Colt's are about 1000-1200.
Maybe I'll kill a deer over Thanksgiving. Not much good as practice for civil disorder, but maybe a good way to work out aggression.
285: while I'm certainly better off now than I was under Bush, I don't think I'm much closer to internalizing a sense of duty to collective action.
What should you/we do? I was surprised to read such a pragmatic and sensible column from Jon Chait.
327: an area full of innocent unarmed citizens
I can assure you that this is not how the police perceive my neighborhood. The cops *already* attack people here, every day. Look at how quick they abandoned the pretense of legality during Hurricane Katrina.
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NMM to Mose Allison.
"Everybody's Cryin Mercy" is apt for the current political discussion.
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I was thinking more along the lines of:
Now I don't worry about a thing
'Cuz I know nothing's going to be alright.
341: That too.
No shortage of good songs to chose.