Somehow Beto is only two years younger than Ted.
Making him only 3 years younger than Gwen Stefani.
Yes, "Our politicians are cooler than yours" has been such a winner so far.
It would be awesome if Foss really did play a reunion gig on Friday night and then went skateboarding. (Not that I know a single thing about Foss,, except for the connection to Beto.)
2: I'm finding glee in this, not necessarily electability prospects. That said, I'm pessimistic but I also don't think anybody has any fucking clue what's going to go down in November.
Also, people claim that "Our politicians are cooler than yours" sunk Al Gore all the time.
I guess I didn't see that.
I did see your post on blockwalking. I admire the work. I'm doing some small stuff, for the same exact reason, that I don't want to hate myself in November.
I've been thinking that writing postcards is like trying to cast a spell by wishful magic. If I write enough of these, magic will come true.
But then I went to see Steve Almond last night and he said that the work of the election is not to convert the other side, but to try to have and demonstrate faith in the democratic system at all (and hope that brings others along). That helped, because if postcards are just wishful spellcasting, then they are an appropriate act of faith and that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Also, afterwards, I feel less sick despair for a short time.
Anyway, blockwalking sounds harder and more relevant and worthy. I'm impressed you're doing it.
2: I'm finding glee in this, not necessarily electability prospects.
That's approximately my feeling about Beto's (great) answer to the question about NFL players kneeling during the anthem.
I'm just commenting out my irritation with everything and everybody as Agent Orange brings the death of all things upon us.
I'm not irritated with you people, of course. You're doing great. Not Neb, but the rest of you.
There was a new term proposed on Twitter: when Republicans try to freak people out with what sounds to them like crazy extremism (AOC supports health care for everyone!), and people say "Actually, that sounds great!", that can be called "taco-trucking".
7: Well, thank you! That's really nice. I really do hate it, and I'm feeling intensely guilty about heading out every evening when it's kid-time. I'm telling myself that I always hate September, it's always the worst month, why not make it even more the worst, and that six weeks of absenteeism is not the same as a longterm habit of absenteeism. My goal is to have the most unpleasant September I've ever experienced.
I have been a fan of Kevin Drum for many years, but I must, with great regret, withdraw my support for his continued blogging. It's not worth the bullshit anymore. Thank you for your time.
What, you aren't enthralled by his strawmanning those who want more housing as advocating for Manhattans everywhere?
It's a lot of things, but I think it boils down to his losing his empathy (his most recent post being a case in fucking point).
You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain or you take a multi-year break to become a programmer.
But, I clicked over there briefly and I have to say, "What about all the unarmed black children that aren't shot?" doesn't seem like the best argument ever.
12: Drum was somehow perfect the perfect blogger for Obama's second term, but just completely off in the Trump era.
I get so much joy from Cruz is Zodiac jokes on twitter, it doesn't even make sense.
I'm assuming this one. Which is on topic because it's about O'Rourke talking about BLM.
Huh, that seemed fine. Niggling over things where most people would think that the broader point is too important to niggle over is pretty much Drum's reason for being.
12 Same
22 OTOH Yggles has moved in the opposite direction and really risen to the occasion.
This is one of the best ones and inexplicably left out of the 2nd linked article
blockwalking sounds harder and more relevant and worthy. I'm impressed you're doing it.
Ditto this. I'd like to think I would blockwalk if I lived in a state or a district that was remotely up for grabs, but honestly it seems like it would be really hard. I'm super impressed. If my wildest hopes (jk, who has hopes anymore) come true in November you deserve a lot of credit. Thanks h-g!
25 link is totally unobjectionable.
It's a pretty objectionable post, and I clicked through to the Atrios link and half expected the Atrios comments link to launch Haloscan and started to write a more detailed comment and then decided it's not worth getting into comment fights like I used to. Or at least not worth it here.
31 I've found door knocking much less horrible than expected. In my experience if it's for a general campaign you'll generally start with voters of your party so you're just reminding them to go vote not trying to convince them of candidate / party. They leave the convincing opposite party voters to the experienced (or don't bother). People in Atlanta have generally been polite to me even if they were supporting the opposition
31 I've found door knocking much less horrible than expected. In my experience if it's for a general campaign you'll generally start with voters of your party so you're just reminding them to go vote not trying to convince them of candidate / party. They leave the convincing opposite party voters to the experienced (or don't bother). People in Atlanta have generally been polite to me even if they were supporting the opposition
You may as well kill two birds with one stone and try to sell some Amway at the same time.
31: Governance in the state isn't up for grabs, but the flippable district CA10 is just over an hour east of us.
Everyone who isn't blockwalking and has some economic margin is setting aside some money to Swingleft or a similar fund, right?
A donation has been made in my name to the Human Fund.
I've found door knocking much less horrible than expected. In my experience if it's for a general campaign you'll generally start with voters of your party so you're just reminding them to go vote not trying to convince them of candidate / party. They leave the convincing opposite party voters to the experienced (or don't bother).
I'm trying to register voters, not take any affiliation until closer to the election (and then only with sympathetic people). The thing that's wearing me down is the huge numbers of people who just won't open the door. I know some people have anxiety, or are in the shower, etc. But this is north of 50% - either I can hear them, there's two cars in the driveway and it's the evening, I can see a ceiling fan is on, etc. None of these is proof of anything in any one house, but the trend is demoralizing.
Don't people leave ceiling fans running all the time?
Yeah, maybe. Jammies and I differ on whether you should leave it on when you're not home. I say no.
Do you turn off your lights when you leave the house?
Yes but I don't turn off the air conditioner (assuming I'm gone for the day, not a trip away) and the ceiling fan makes the AC work less.
My parents have fought about turning lights on/off in empty rooms approximately 3 times a week, every week, for 30 years and counting.
In conclusion, Jammies may not be the one.
44: Aha! So you turn off your ceiling fans when you leave in the winter? Hypocrite.
45: Well, Jammies is unemployed, so no. Prior...I think we did, but I honestly can't remember if it went off altogether or just scaled down. It might have depended on the time of year.
The argument in 44 is at least different than the one Jammies makes, which is about keeping the air from getting stale and stagnant, regardless of whether the AC is on. I call bupkis on that one because I don't think that stale-ness accumulates over a day. I think that 30 seconds of running the fan will clear it out and resume non-stale-ness.
46: I used to think things like "my wife always forgets to turn off the lights! I never do that! I'm so superior especially because I won't even scold her about it". Then I started to notice that the lights were left on, and more often than not, after detailed historical analysis I determined that the guilty party was my immaculate self. I'm not sure if this indicates I'm becoming more careless or more self-aware.
How would a ceiling fan prevent staleness, if it's just circulating existing air?
We have a heat exchanger system:
http://www.titon.co.uk/pages/ventilation-systems/mvhr.php
Which continually circulates air, removes moisture, and keeps the heat in. We leave that on all the time.
Now that I have AC, I turn it off when I leave the flat (and at night, unless I'm sleeping on the couch as I did a few times this summer because the bedroom was intolerably hot). I've always turned lights off.
Yeah, the heat exchanger stays on, mainly for moisture reasons.
47: Mostly we just turn them off all winter, except the one at the top of the stairs that we don't turn off.
12: Drum was somehow perfect the perfect blogger for Obama's second term, but just completely off in the Trump era.
This happened to many of the original giants of the liberal blogosphere, driven mad by the 2016 primary and ending up thinking Bernie Sanders is the same person as Ralph Nader, Jill Stein and Susan Sarandon. Scott Lemieux developed a truly strange obsession with some Bernie-to-Trump voter named "HA Goodman" that nobody but Lemieux has ever heard of. Mark Ark Leiman is another one.
On the original subject, it feels like "my opponent is a weirdo" is never a bad attack, and "my opponent is a spoiled suburban kid" will probably work fine with the people Cruz needs to reach.
12: I want a filter that removes the final sentence from all Lemieux posts on LGM.
55,57: The decline of LGM has been sad to watch. It was one of the sole survivors, along with CT and this place, from my original list of blogs I started reading in 2004-5.
Re: the Drum post in 25, it seems fairly typical of him, for better or for worse, and it's not nearly as objectionable as the average thought from Glenn Beck, Greenwald, or Reynolds. This line was pretty stupid, though:
Kessler, by contrast, uses an independent Washington Post database that contains more detail on age and race, and concludes that during the period 2015-2018 there was at most one shooting of an unarmed black child (it depends on whether you consider 12-year-old Tamir Rice "armed" because he had a toy gun).
No, of course you shouldn't, how is that even a question?
If the issue in question is the behavior of the police, that makes a big difference.
Not in that case. The cop just rolled in and shot with no pause.
Yes, "Our politicians are cooler than yours" has been such a winner so far.
This statement omits the obvious.
No, of course you shouldn't, how is that even a question?
If you rob someone at gunpoint, it's armed robbery, even if the gun is a toy.
If you're a kid in a park playing with a toy you're not armed.
It's hard to put my finger on the difference, but I think one is a robber robbing at gunpoint, and the other is a kid kidding at a park.
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Solomon Burke's "Flesh and Blood" is an extremely successful slow song. So great.
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The video shows how quickly the officer sped in and shot. Bringing up the issue as to whether or not a toy gun could be mistaken for a real gun is just distraction for that shooting. It was just an execution.
It may be that Drum is right that there isn't actually an epidemic of police officers shooting unarmed black kids. There is, however, an epidemic of (mostly?) white people straining to justify shootings of people of color by police officers.
I'm fully on board with reasonable doubt as our standard for criminal conviction in these shootings, and recognize how difficult it can be to get convictions. And agree that unless the state has a good faith belief in a reasonable possibility of conviction, it shouldn't prosecute. Where I get off the bus on these things is the unwillingness to charge negligent homicide which, it seems to me, ought to depend on the duty of the officer to figure out what is actually going on. I'm not an expert on this, and if we have to modify self-defense to exclude gross negligence, then I'm good with at least seriously exploring that.
55: Lemieux's beef with Goodman could be reasonably described as taking issue with Goodman's belief that Stein types and Bernie voters were essentially interchangeable. Goodman was a Salon writer and a reasonable synecdoche for 'Bernie Bros,' who were certainly not characteristic of actual Bernie supporters, but absorbed a lot of online oxygen all the same. If memory serves, Lemieux himself supported Sanders and, like the vast majority of Sanders supporters, had an entirely sensible loathing of Stein.
'Loathing' isn't really the right word in my prior comment. 'Refusal to vote for' is what Lemieux had in common with other left-of-Clinton voters regarding Stein.
Lemieux is great, but he likes being angry and he's not above nutpicking to have something to be angry about.
I keep thinking of the hockey player when I see the name.
There is a big problem with a world where Tamir Rice's killer can't be convicted of something.
On the OP, 538 has an article where the author tries hard to downplay the conclusion that Beto really is within striking distance of Cruz. But that's clearly how the evidence stacks up.
It may be that Drum is right that there isn't actually an epidemic of police officers shooting unarmed black kids. There is, however, an epidemic of (mostly?) white people straining to justify shootings of people of color by police officers.
That is an excellent summary. I had been thinking similarly, but that's a clearer way to put it than I had figured out.
57 His posts started to become almost unreadable (and largely uninformative) after the 2016 election. All that "BUT HER EMAILS!!!" ranting. I mean we know, you're preaching to the choir here.
Sad.
59 Yes, along with the horrible web redesign and moving to diqus. I blame myself partly because I dropped them a generous donation just prior to the announcement of the redesign. Like the kiss of death.
78.1 That's largely unfair. I've learned a lot reading him, especially on SCOTUS decisions and the like. And maybe he's returned to form but the redesign and disqus move happening around the same time drove me away so I don't know.
76: Do you mean the one dated today, 8/31? It seems to get the direction and level of uncertainty right to me, saying "we shouldn't be surprised" by either outcomes, but also "not a single poll so far has shown O'Rourke ahead of Cruz", and "it's still too early to get carried away". Not sure why it's focusing on the predictive ability of August-polls alone though.
Doing my own deliberately naive analysis, of all the polls on Wikipedia for Cruz's election in 2012, his average lead was 16.2%, and he won by 17.2%. Looking at the larger number of polls so far for the 2018 matchup, the average lead is 7%. If you narrow to the 9 polls taken from June forward, it's 5%. So sure: Beto is within striking distance, but it's not neck-and-neck either.
Bruce Willis was in Striking Distance.
74: agreed. Negligent homicide or something.
I still skim a lot of it, but I think LGM has eased way back on the Goodman-and-like-clowns dial in the past year or so.
I have fantasies of taking a week off to try and help with the defeat of Cruz but I knock on doors for my job now and it's become aversive.
February, not September, is the worst month.
NMM to the Village Voice.
I just spent way too long trying to track down why I've been so annoyed with Drum the past few years. Most of his stuff is fine, but around once a month or so he has a post expressing some sort of sympathy or solidarity with old white men (or subsets thereof) in a way that, although it's usually reasonably expressed, super annoys me in the Trump era. Often this is "come on, they have a point that PC culture has gone too far." There were a few particular posts that I'm having trouble finding, which initially set me off mostly on the "what the fuck is this guy whose only lived in Orange county telling *me* about what Trump country is like, as if he's ever fucking lived there." Something in this direction (but only medium annoying) is: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/05/contempt/
In the late Obama era Drum was really good at understanding that McConnell will never compromise and Republicans politicians are just pure evil. But in the Trump era he really wants to understand Trump voters and figure out how to appeal to some of them, and although that's necessary it really doesn't appeal to me and often annoys me a lot.
Here are some other posts that I found annoying (I'm really going to test the spam filter here...)
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17
37: I think jms is in southern California but I'm still in the Bay Area. What are your suggestions for getting involved? I may get over my aversion to talking to people I don't already know. And have some (small) margin for making donations.
86: Maybe this is a good thread idea.
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This really hurts. The Village Voice was essential reading when I was in my teens and twenties. For the lefty reporting, the music and movie reviews (Robert Christgau, J. Hoberman, Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell, Jules Feiffer....), and probably most of all the repertory cinema and music gig listings.
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86.last Jesus, UPETGI, did you hand-roll all that HTML yourself?
Not sure why it's focusing on the predictive ability of August-polls alone though.
Because it's August and they have to find something to write about every week.
Most of his stuff is fine, but around once a month or so he has a post expressing some sort of sympathy or solidarity with old white men (or subsets thereof) in a way that, although it's usually reasonably expressed, super annoys me in the Trump era. Often this is "come on, they have a point that PC culture has gone too far."
I recognize the sort of posts that you're talking about and they haven't annoyed me. At the risk of engaging in special pleading, I've had more patience for them and, in general, for self-indulgent posts being grumpy about personal pet peeves in the context of his posts about chemotherapy.
First of all, that seems like a more than sufficient excuse for self-indulgent grumpiness, second (even though his most recent posts about his prognosis have been positive) I read some of his posts about long-term culture wars issues with a subtext of ("other people will have to resolve these issues; I'm just putting a record of what it looks like to me at this moment in time.")
*shrug*
Yeah, I was thinking about that before and going to put at as "I guess I should have a little sympathy for a terminally ill boomer being less excited about the 'well we just have to wait for boomers to start dying before any progress will happen' point of view." Which I felt slightly horrible saying, so didn't say it before.
I went to the local Indivisible website and started doing the things that fit into my calendar. It has me supporting blue candidates that I don't know much about or love, but they fit when I can get a babysitter. I would love to do the most important parts ever, but figuring that out will take ages and paralyze me from the start. So "convenient" is my filter. Honestly, I've done about five things now and I'm starting to see the same faces at them; I'm not sure that they're all that different.
The postcard parties are pleasant. Last night was at a cute house with lots of old people playing bluegrass on their CD player and I hoped I was looking at my future. They're better than nothing, and the short feeling of relief from doing something starts to become a compelling reason to do the next.
This can't be a time for skeptical and critical analysis of how to find the best possible lever. That was last January, or now for 2020 maybe. Now you gotta just throw in with some plausible local group and have faith.
Aaand, I would say, at this point, people like us are just labor for them. Like, the well-funded political organizations (like labor or NextGen) are paying professionals to be canvassing 40 hours a week in Fresno. There are professional organizers out there executing a strategy. Volunteers at our level are the hopeful increment. So do something.
I went to the local Indivisible website and started doing the things that fit into my calendar.
Okay, this is good advice. There are a lot of upcoming events in my area, including ones that don't seem too daunting. I'm not willing to take time off of work to drive to Modesto and knock on doors, but I can write postcards and make phone calls.
Actually, I think what H-G is doing is a step above my level of "hopeful incremental voter engagement". But what I am doing is not. Also, what she's doing is harder. Start where you are.
And, frankly, it is all filtering down as well. H-G and I and my other friends are doing wouldn't be possible if their partners weren't stepping up at home. They also serve, who take the kids for the afternoon while we're out.
paying professionals to be canvassing 40 hours a week in Fresno
They're recent college grads who are all youthfully beautiful and bilingual and somehow more impossibly articulate and inspired than I know how to be.
I know that the big organizations have more money for paid canvassers and positions than they can fill right now.
H.A. Goodman is the Salon columnist who kept calling "Blackmail!" whenever someone pointed out that Supreme Court nominations were an extremely important reason for anyone who considered themselves remotely liberal to vote for Clinton over Trump. It was obvious at the time that Republican Senators considered this a major issue, which is why they refused Merrick Garland a hearing. Goodman thoroughly deserves whatever mocking Scott L. can muster, and worse.
I get the impression Lemieux and the rest of LGM lost their mind on that topic in particular because their comments sections were infested with tons of Bernie Bros and lefter-than-thou types. Glem Gree/nwald and Fr/eddie deB/oer often commented there.
I will keep reminding us that some outrageous Bernie Bros were actually real Russian trolls playing the left. So much as they permanently created an image of lefties being worthy of that much scorn, they won.
Did people read the New Yorker Greenwald profile? The man has twenty-four dogs, I have learned. (Doubly-tangentially related: this artwork is very special to me.)
98: Do people still read Salon? I drifted away after their front page became filled with shrieking clickbait, and gave up on them entirely about 2 years ago.
100
No doubt. My stance is far to the left of the Democratic party, but I'm not dumb enough to think that attacking Democratic candidates will help bring about my preferred policies.
And GG is the ultimate Russian troll, and yet he still has enormous influence.
Not entirely OT, how is it that Disqus exists? I've never heard a good word from people who use comment sections, their JS is so heavy and so crash-prone I have it blocked globally.
Bless you for the mime memes. I hadn't seen them (I had seen the original pic).
100 is correct, but there are also IRL reports of incredibly boorishabusive bro behavior at e.g. the Washington Caucuses. Hell, I can name personal friends who were IMO over the line.
The Russians weren't inventing ex nihilo.
The Russians didn't invent everything the Soviets said they did, but they put the first satellite in orbit.
And GG is the ultimate Russian troll, and yet he still has enormous influence.
This is an astonishing thing. As time has passed, it's become clear that, whatever blend of denial and actual desire for Trump to win has bent his mind, GG is a de facto Trump supporter.
But there's no real reason for a person who liked the things he said a few years ago to look at his incredibly wrong 2016 proclamations (e.g. "elite DC is 100% behind Clinton" and "non-interventionist mindset") and think, "that's the ship I'm going down with." Just say, "I like his critiques of the national security state, but Trump seems to have driven him around the bend," and walk away. He's just some guy, not anyone who merits a personality cult.
85: I agree that Drum's level of (for want of a better term) trolling his readers has gone up in quantity and down in quality. He still has a point much of the time, but all too often it boils down to "everyone's mad about this thing that's basically fine." But his argument for why it's fine is pretty weak, and he doesn't engage beyond the initial proclamation.
I absolutely cut him slack due to the cancer, but at the same time, his current treatment has driven down his production, and as a result, the trollish posts are an increasing percentage of the total.
That said, I think he's basically right about urbanism fights online. It's mostly yuppies and wannabe yuppies arguing for something that will benefit them narrowly (enough luxury apartments built to lower rents on near-luxury apartments) while painting it as a panacea for all. Completely detached from political realities (yesterday I had a reasonable interaction with someone who wanted to remove all local control over land use--as if state legislatures, dominated as they are by white suburbanites, are just aching to eliminate single family zoning statewide; it's delusional).
For the record, ceiling fans in empty rooms accomplish very, very little. AFAIK they're pretty efficient (moreso than lights), so it's not a hill to die on, but--especially in closed rooms--they're not doing anything.
I'm doing a decent job taking over the sidebar, but since I'll never comment, or even glance at, the programming thread, I can't get the perfecta.
It's mostly about restaurants now.
I'm all for lower rents, but I don't think that's even the main argument for increased construction. Even if rents didn't go down at all more people would get to live in the places that they want to live. Or even just live *anywhere*. Drum's argument that's like "oh, well my parents just moved to Orange county" doesn't work when Orange county is full too. You can't commute to LA from Nevada just because that's where new housing is allowed. I feel like it's one of just a dozen ways that boomers have completely ignored that younger generations have a right to live somewhere. They've destroyed the planet, they haven't built us houses, they made sure that state governments took all the money they used to spend paying for college and made sure it all goes to seniors instead, etc.
And there are all sorts of special important things that really are just completely specific to California in general and Silicon Valley in particular. That new industries no longer make new cities (and all the jobs that come along with a new city) is a big problem.
I certainly see your point on the local vs. state thing. Though I do think cities would be better at this than neighborhoods. There's a real collective action problem, that might well become easier if people knew that the growth would be spread out across the city.
You know, if there's a better munchies food than a fresh bag of dryed apricots, Baphomet must've kept it for himself.
Do you not even see crystallized ginger??
Indeed, I did used to partake in Ting Ting Jahe, but ginger is kinda strong.
Sorry, s/b "dryad apricots" -- I only get produce picked by a member of the Seelie Court.
ceiling fans in empty rooms accomplish very, very little
Does the "empty" here imply that ceiling fans in non-empty rooms accomplish something? And by "empty" do you mean "no humans currently" or "nothing at all, including furniture (or cats)?"