by liberal japonicus
Unfortunately, not good tidings of great joy, just some talk about the latest internecine struggle. Oh well…
As promised, here’s a discussion of AOC’s interview, found here
I should also note that this is an edited transcript and I wonder if any reordering took place. With that caveat in mind
The interview starts off with AOC saying
We know that race is a problem, and avoiding it is not going to solve any electoral issues. We have to actively disarm the potent influence of racism at the polls.
Can I hear an amen? I don’t think any honest observer can fail to note that racism is the horse Trump rode in on and he stayed on it the whole time. But the next bit is where things start to fray
But we also learned that progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levin was an original co-sponsor of the legislation, and he kept his seat.
Not socialism, Medicare for All and Green New Deal. Admittedly, Biden edged away from those, but my feeling is something with national insurance and something linked to climate change has to get done. So I’m not sure about the vapors here.
I think it’s going to be really important how the party deals with this internally, and whether the party is going to be honest about doing a real post-mortem and actually digging into why they lost. Because before we even had any data yet in a lot of these races, there was already finger-pointing that this was progressives’ fault and that this was the fault of the Movement for Black Lives.
I’m hoping to see some reporting on this, but I don’t think AOC is a fabulist. If she says there is finger-pointing, (and I’ve seen some articles, but with the whole shitshow election, it is hard to evaluate them clearly), I don’t think she’s making it up. Admittedly, it’s not like being called a bitch on the Capitol steps, but I don’t think her radar is busted
I have been defeating Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee-run campaigns for two years.
Ouch! But details?
Some of this is criminal. It’s malpractice. Conor Lamb spent $2,000 on Facebook the week before the election. I don’t think anybody who is not on the internet in a real way in the Year of our Lord 2020 and loses an election can blame anyone else when you’re not even really on the internet.
And I’ve looked through a lot of these campaigns that lost, and the fact of the matter is if you’re not spending $200,000 on Facebook with fund-raising, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, get-out-the-vote the week before the election, you are not firing on all cylinders. And not a single one of these campaigns were firing on all cylinders.
So this is precisely what Cleek was pointing out. I think she picks the example of Conor Lamb because he won. He is PA-17 encompassing Pittsburg. So I think, sub rosa, she is pointing out that better organization would have been able to totally erase the possibility of Trump claiming a win there. And it’s not that she doesn’t say Conor Lamb didn’t support the right policies, she specifically says that he wasn’t organized. There was no reason on earth that an incumbent in a swing state should _not_ be doing everything they can because every vote he brings out is another one in Biden’s column. So I think that AOC has a lot more sophisticated understanding of what is happening than some are giving her credit for.
There’s a reason Barack Obama built an entire national campaign apparatus outside of the Democratic National Committee. And there’s a reason that when he didn’t activate or continue that, we lost House majorities. Because the party — in and of itself — does not have the core competencies, and no amount of money is going to fix that.
Again, it’s easy to shut down conversation by asking if people if they have actually read the interview, but I’m wondering, did everyone read this? Sapient says that AOC is “not a freaking expert on the southeastern swing states”, but in the article, she never says anything about particular states, she talks about the inability for the national party to lead. I admit, I didn’t look at it too closely, so when cleek said ‘socialism’, it triggered me. But it isn’t so what’s the problem? If this is an issue of ‘tone’, well, haven’t we had enough of those?
bobbyp chimes in with this post from Loomis at LGM, which is very related to these discussions. Exactly how does the National party move into these local elections in a meaningful way? That’s an important conversation to have, but claiming that AOC is not addressing that is misreading this article. And if we get to Feb and not everyone knows where these potholes are, we’ll just drive into them again.
We had Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro were begging for more attention in Texas, in Mississippi, Mike Espy was trying to tell everyone that he had a chance, but the National Party only caught on in Oct. Whatever was the thought process, it was sub-optimal.
Again, maybe AOC is just telling porkies, but I shudder when I read this
Is there a universe in which they’re [institutional forces in the Democratic party] hostile enough that we’re talking about a Senate run in a couple years?
I genuinely don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to be in politics. (emph. mine) You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn’t even know if I was going to run for re-election this year.
Really? Why?
It’s the incoming. It’s the stress. It’s the violence. It’s the lack of support from your own party. It’s your own party thinking you’re the enemy. When your own colleagues talk anonymously in the press and then turn around and say you’re bad because you actually append your name to your opinion.
I chose to run for re-election because I felt like I had to prove that this is real. That this movement was real. That I wasn’t a fluke. That people really want guaranteed health care and that people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them.
But I’m serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.
This twitter thread by Richard Cooke lays out the problem in detail
The comments @aoc is making about Democratic ground-game weakness are being dismissed. I have seen, up close, exactly what she is talking about.
Covering the 2018 election, I decided to report on key swing seats. FL-26 and FL-27 were at the top of my list. If Dems faltered, Miami-Dade would be written up as a missed opportunity.
After arriving in Miami, my first task was perfunctory: find out where and when candidates were speaking. For Republicans, this took around 15 minutes. For Democrats, it took five days.
That is not five days spent waiting for Facebook updates to be posted, or emails or calls to be returned. I drove all over Miami, visiting every Democratic campaign office I could get to in person.
What I found was a stunning level of disorganisation. No-one was in charge. No-one knew who was in charge. Even entry levels of enquiry like “who is your press contact” were unanswerable.
More senior staff (when people knew who they were) were AWOL, not on the trail but at home or on leave. I kept being told a particular individual “knew everything”; when I finally found him (it took several days), he was a backpacker volunteer who had been living in Spain.
(Needless to say, he didn’t know anything). Meanwhile, GOP staff were sharing booth-by-booth early voting totals with me. Their granular understanding was impressive.
When I asked a Democratic staff member about this, she said (on the record!) that “Republicans are a lot more organised than we are”.
There were almost no other press there, and no-one (apart from Republicans) with a sense that these seats could decide the election if it was close.
Driving around polling locations, the physical GOP presence at polling booth, in terms of signage, personnel and voter information, dramatically outweighed their opponents.
When I finally heard Debbie Mucarsel-Powell speak, I was contacted by someone from the Democratic campaign in Washington. They were unhappy about my questions to the local campaign (after days of being messed around, I was also letting my frustration show).
I asked them questions about what I had seen, and was surprised when they berated me. The campaign was excellent, they were going to win, lawn signs don’t matter, etc. They would speak to me after the election, and I would see they would win FL-26 and FL-27.
And they were right – they did win those seats. Only Andrew Gillum, the Demoractic candidate for Florida governor who had been a polling favourite, lost a narrow election because of weak turnout in… Miami-Dade.
You can imagine that now, in 2020, the Democrats losing FL-26 and FL-27 is absolutely unsurprising to me. And the Democratic establishment response to those who impugn the ground game is the same thing I heard: you are wrong.
So, something to talk about. Have at it.
This is big enough that I’m going to have to take small bites.
First up:
Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker.
All this proves is that, in some places, explicitly supporting those was not a loser. And candidates generally were aware enough that, in places where they would be losers, candidates didn’t run on them. It definitely doesn’t prove candidates in other districts would have won, if only they had run on these.
That said, it appears to me that AOC and Cooke are making the same, quite correct, point. The Democratic Party has lots of room to improve their campaign ground game and infrastructure.
Only consider how well they have been doing recently. With what sounds, frankly, like mass chaos. Then think how well they could be doing, if only….
wj, thanks for the second comment (first comment too, but second comment especially) As I was walking home, I realized that this is the typical bullshit that the left of center has to put up with. sapient, as solid a Democratic voter as could be imagined, gets drawn into denouncing AOC on the basis of the reporting. This isn’t to bust anyone about not reading the interview, at some point, you would hope that it would be reported properly, but rather than a AOC identifies possible reasons why the blue wave didn’t happen, we get this progressive vs. liberal death match.
7, I think, republican states have opted for Medicare expansion. Yet when AOC suggests that this is something that Dems should run on, it’s ‘omg, look at them fighting each other’. Meanwhile, no one puts the question each and every day to evangelicals ‘why are you still supporting an adulterer’.
Apologies for the rant, but the more I think about it, the less it looks like internecine war and more like something drummed up.
I’m hoping to see some reporting on this, but I don’t think AOC is a fabulist. If she says there is finger-pointing,
i stopped visiting a few of my old standby websites over the past year or so, and i’ve noticed that the argument between left and left™ simply does not exist if you don’t go looking for it.
literally nobody talked about Sanders or got mad about which impossible thing the weak corporate Dems were going to fail to do next.
in other words… maybe AOC is doing what a lot of people do: mistaking Twitter for real life.
“Meanwhile, no one puts the question each and every day to evangelicals ‘why are you still supporting an adulterer’.”
Because human beings are weak, we all sin and judgement is God’s job. All evangelical Christian tenets.
Simply to point out why asking the question every day wouldn’t be effective.
… reading more…
yes, i’m sure she made some enemies in the Congressional Dems, by leading off her term with an attack on Pelosi. sheesh. what was she expecting?
but yes, it would be great if the Dems could run local campaigns at least as effectively as the GOP does.
Because human beings are weak, we all sin and judgement is God’s job. All evangelical Christian tenets.
lol
after Cal Cunningham was outed as being an adulterer, NC ws treated to weeks of ads where Republicans would stand in front of a camera and pretend to be shocked and saddened and sickened by his bad judgement. they’d tell us in their fake outrage how this proves that he just can’t be trusted, how he’s not the man he says he is, how he’s just not right for NC. the same sanctimonious twaddle the GOP has always peddled.
i swear they’re just trolling, because there’s no way any Democrat could have watched that without shouting “And you’re going to vote for Trump?!” at the TV.
in other words… maybe AOC is doing what a lot of people do: mistaking Twitter for real life
Frankly, I think that’s just untrue.
And those who confuse Twitter with real life don’t get themselves elected to Congress from nowhere.
She’s probably the one person in the party who understands best how to use new media. I’ll bet half of the DNC haven’t even heard of Twitch.
I don’t share her politics – I’d likely be much closer to the centre of the party, if I lived in the US – but I think her analysis of the party national organisation seems spot on.
I’ll bet Elissa Slotkin would say much the same thing, though perhaps less argumentatively, and she is on a very different side of the party.
Maybe my Christianity is a bit rusty, but I thought there was something about asking forgiveness. Feel free to toss a link if I missed it.
I don’t dislike AOC, and I did read the interview, as well as the story it linked to about the post-mortem phone call.
Certainly I hope that what was described as the disorganization in Florida isn’t typical. On the other hand, isn’t it possible that Democratic candidates weren’t having a lot of live rallies this year? That’s certainly true where I live.
I agree with a lot of what AOC says, and even the way she says it. Now is just not the time to have to read articles about infighting, or even a post-mortem, not until we’re sure we can actually inaugurate Biden, and work on the race in Georgia. If democrats (progressive and less progressive) want to help with that, and think they know how, they should be doing that.
I hope that AOC is on Facebook right now supporting the GA senatorial candidates. Abigail Stanberger should be organizing as well. We need all hands on deck.
The (D)’s as a party haven’t invested as much in building out organization and infrastructure outside of their traditional strongholds in major cities.
When he was DNC chair, Howard Dean tried to address this with his 50 state strategy. Perez apparently continues to support this, but the implementation is weak.
(D)’s have plenty to offer rural voters, they need to get their story out there.
I agree with a lot of what AOC has to say in the interview. To some degree, I think here comments are a response to the criticism leveled at progressive (D)’s after the poor showing of down-ticket (D)’s running for Senate and House seats. But the basic idea that the (D)’s ground game needs improvement seems uncontroversial, to me.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
As well as poor tactics, the Ds have poor strategy. There was much talk before the election of blowing up the Senate filibuster: that’s a horrible idea. The Senate is stacked against the Ds by the outdated voting system, and will usually be held by the Rs. It’s in the Ds interest to protect the rights of the Senate minority.
The R’s electoral strategy is clear: gain control of state legislatures in wave elections, and use that control to cheat in subsequent elections. The Ds need to fight this, and the 14th and 15th amendments empower the federal legislature to do it. They should be ready to bring forward a new Voting Rights Act, which lays down a minimum density of polling stations and requires states to conduct redistricting in a way which largely eliminates partisan gerrymandering. Could they get that through the Senate? Well, let’s at least make the decent Republicans decide whether to vote against it.
I ask, you receive
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/3/5/16796892/trump-cyrus-christian-right-bible-cbn-evangelical-propaganda
I remeber reading this before. This is why it won’t work, they’ll rationalize anything including their incipient racism, sexism and fascism…
And those who confuse Twitter with real life don’t get themselves elected to Congress from nowhere.
mmm…
the GOP’s success with Q-Anon candidates makes me think otherwise. Trump himself often seems more attached to the digital fantasy world than the real one.
We need all hands on deck.
Yup.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
Yup to that, too.
Speaking of QAnon …
offered without comment…
https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2020/11/10/its-time-for-republicans-to-reach-out-and-begin-healing-the-nation/
Bookmark the site. It has the bobbyp stamp of approval.
“The Cyrus narrative allows evangelicals to thread a difficult rhetorical needle. It allows them to see Trump as “their” candidate — a candidate who will effect God’s will that America become a truly Christian nation — without requiring Trump himself to manifest any Christian virtues. He is, like Cyrus, anointed by God and thus has divine legitimacy (Trump’s spiritual advisers, including evangelical figures Robert Jeffress and Paula White, have repeatedly hammered this point), but he has no obligation to live out Christian principles in his personal life.”
Great gig if you can get it.
To be God’s chosen instrument and retain access to the Poon Tang.
Accounts vary, but:
“According to the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian (1166–1199 AD) Cyrus was killed by his wife Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae (Maksata), in the 60th year of Jewish captivity.[87]”
I hate these people. They will lead me neither in or out of the promised land.
Not a new angle by any means.
Their promises are shit.
Their promises are mobile pandemic morgues in El Paso, Texas with more promised and desired by Christian Republican murderers from above.
Some here have asked, “Just where did all of this (AOC derangement syndrome) bruhaha start, anyway?”
Charlie Pierce is on the case….
If Trump is Cyrus not the Vance, what theophany is this murderous piece of right wing garbage beloved by Rod Dreher and his acolytes?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-charged-for-buying-gun-used-by-kyle-rittenhouse-to-kill-two-kenosha-protesters/ar-BB1aQOPV?ocid=uxbndlbing
Which Savior mantle does vermin William Barr assign himself?
None of what is happening right now will stand without catastrophe for them.
They crave martyrdom.
Trump will gaze imperiously over his taco bowl as they fling themselves upon the pyre in his name, and then find a Roy Cohn loophole thru which to escape with the realm’s jewels.
A friend of mine from Arizona who is very active in Democratic electoral politics (and a journalist, author, and college professor) wrote on facebook recently how badly local GOTV efforts were in (very red) rural Arizona. They didn’t knock on a single door, leaving thousands of potential votes for Democrats, particularly for Senate and the presidency, where their votes had a chance of changing the statewide outcomes, uncast. (Blueberries in the tomato soup, as he put it.)
He took it upon himself on election day to knock on the doors of registered Democrats in Kingman (pop. ~30k) and estimates that he got to half of them in a matter of hours, after the party did nothing in that regard over the 3 months prior.
He goes into much more detail, and I might ask him if I can copy and paste his entire post here.
Also, too, he’s far more aligned with the moderates than with the progressives in the party (for example, he takes a lot of heat from people to his left for his criticisms of wokeness and cancel culture and such – mostly from a strategic standpoint, but still). My point here is that these sorts of criticisms of the Democratic party’s electoral efforts aren’t exclusively coming from self-described democratic socialists.
Re: Conor Lamb’s support of fracking:
gas is better than oil
oil is better than coal
At least it’s a move in the right direction (yes, methane itself is a GHG, but it doesn’t stay in the atmosphere nearly as long as CO2)
What *does* need to happen is to require
fracking wildcatters to post a bond prior to drilling, to pay for cleanup expenses. Right now, they can just declare bankruptcy and walk away from their messes.
If they don’t want to post a bond? Then they’re fair game for summary execution. Their choice.
Because human beings are weak, we all sin and judgement is God’s job. All evangelical Christian tenets.
Much like lj said at 9:30, in most forms of Christianity that I’m familiar with (not sure about evangelicals specifically), repentance is a critical feature. If you can’t bring yourself to say, or just don’t believe, “I made a mistake. I sinned.” then forgiveness is not on offer. No sign of that from Trump.
@ bobbyp at 10:27
Mad Mike makes a good point that the Republicans should be reaching out to heal the nation.
On the other hand, advising the Democrats to reach out, even though they won, isn’t really unfair. It’s more a matter of smart tactics going forward. Because what the Democrats really, really need, even if they somehow capture both Georgia Senate seats, is a blue wave election in 2022.
This is just way too much fun not to share.
https://xkcd.com/2383/
We sometimes forget just what small sample sizes we are looking at….
The only sin certain christians recognize is soshulism.
I don’t know whether Marty is that kind of christian. I don’t even know for sure that he agrees with those “evangelical Christian tenets” himself. Maybe he was just trying to educate us librul heathens who presumably know nothing about evangelical Christianity. Being full of faith, hope, and charity myself, I am willing to give Marty the benefit of the doubt. It bothers me a bit that I don’t remember Marty citing those tenets in defense of Al Franken, but mainly because it may be an early Alzheimer’s symptom on my part.
Anyway, Georgia. Senate run-offs. That’s what’s on MY mind these days.
–TP
Evangelical tolerance for the wayward and disinclination to judge seems to vary with the party affiliation of the transgressor.
We’re all prone to seeing things through a lens of self-interest, nothing special there.
Also nothing wrong with pointing it out.
advising the Democrats to reach out
I guess I’m unclear on what this means. What does “reaching out” consist of?
I have friends and family who support Trump. I treat them the same as I did before Trump ran for election, and the same as I did during the four years of his presidency. I don’t really talk about politics with them, I have other things in common with them and we talk about those.
Their guy lost. I’m sure some of them are upset about it. What is it that I am supposed to do about that?
Whatever it is people like me are supposed to be doing to help “heal the nation”, it ain’t gonna come for free. Because things don’t work that way.
One thing I’ve considered as something to say to Trump supporters I know is that I take no joy in the possibility that they feel the way that I would have had the election gone the other way. Maybe that’s passive-aggressive, because the implication is that I think, had the election gone the other way, they would have been pleased as punch that I was really upset about it. But it’s true that their displeasure brings me no joy (as concerns most of them, anyway, if I’m being honest).
I particularly don’t like how upset they are because I think they’re upset about things that aren’t remotely likely to happen, or to have already happened, given what they have to say about it. Some policy stuff, yes, but mostly boogie men.
I take no joy in the possibility that they feel the way that I would have
ok, that works. I’m not really interested in sticking it to anyone.
is that what’s being asked for? don’t be a jerk?
Anyway, Georgia. Senate run-offs. That’s what’s on MY mind these days.
Quite right, Tony P. First things first (assuming DJT’s current attempt to steal the presidency doesn’t work).
is that what’s being asked for? don’t be a jerk?
I’d draw one of those “beats me” emoji deals with ascii characters if I knew how.
assuming DJT’s current attempt to steal the presidency doesn’t work
frankly, i fear for Biden’s and Harris’ lives right now. and once it’s finally called, i don’t see that fear easing up.
a lot of very unstable people are very dedicated to Trump. and Trump (and his deplorable allies in Congress and greater Conservativeland) are doing their damnedest to rile them up.
You’re not wrong, cleek, but I console myself they kept Obama alive….
those “beats me” emoji
it’s the “shrug” emoji: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
frankly, i fear for Biden’s and Harris’ lives right now. and once it’s finally called, i don’t see that fear easing up.
Considering who we’re talking about, I’d say that Harris being black means Biden is unlikely to get attacked. At least not first. Really tragic for our country to say that, but it’s true.
cleek, in the All Good Things thread: why police the borders of liberaldom?
I just have to say, in the context of this thread, that “liberaldom” has at least two borders: the Lincoln Project one, and the AOC one.
–TP
and, just for the ickkyness: all the paths for replacing a VP go through Congress. can you imagine the horrorshow McConnell could make of that ?
cleek, was just realizing that earlier. I don’t think McConnell would bring a VP appointment to a vote, if it were to be before 2022 elections. And not after if Dems retain control of House
I meant, not after if GOP takes House.
I don’t think McConnell would bring a VP appointment to a vote, if it were to be before 2022 elections.
Depends entirely on his relative opinions of the VP nominee vs the Speaker of the House. Considering how big a boogieman Pelosi is, there might be quite a few possibilities that he would go for.
are we discussing eventualities if Harris is assassinated?
if so, McConnell’s opinions about her possible replacement are not even close to the top of the list of things to worry about.
the wheels will be coming off the bus at that point.
maybe I’m misunderstanding what’s under discussion here.
I was thinking about what would happen to Harris’s appointee for VP should she become president due to Biden’s “natural” demise.
Perhaps I’m being naive, but I think in the event of assassination of either Biden or Harris that McConnell couldn’t hold everyone together to stonewall a replacement.
I didn’t read much of the thread, but tentatively, kinda sorta agree with sapient. Get Biden safely in the WH and see if the Democrats can take the Senate in Georgia. Then back to our regularly scheduled internecine warfare. I have a few things to rant about ( whether I do them here will depend on my mood on a given day), But it can wait a month or so.
I do think the squabble here ( not at ObiWi but on the larger political scene) was started by the centrists. After months of being told that every leftist has an absolute duty to vote for the ham sandwich, some are now saying this was an unambiguous endorsement of ham sandwichism. Um, no, it really wasn’t.
But yeah, let’s be sure Biden gets in ( I don’t think Trump’s temper tantrums will succeed) and also see if the Democrats will win in Georgia. I am giving them money ( or will soon, that is). But I am not crazy about some of what they have said on certain issues.
If the Democrats don’t win the GA run-offs, at least it won’t be fraudulent.
I don’t know why there is a dispute here.
Surely it’s possible that both political positions, real or imagined, and incompetence played a role in the disappointing results.
As to the incompetence, AOC’s comments certainly sound convincing. I’d like to hear more from various Democratic leaders. It’s worth remembering, as she reminds us, that she won her first primary in an upset, so it may be that she knows a thing or two about organizing and running a campaign.
Meanwhile, I find it hard to figure out the ideological angle. I think the (overblown) violence at the protests did some damage. Sadly the “Bunch of socialists – look at Venezuela,” rhetoric from the GOP probably had an effect also, but you can’t stop that. You just have to respond as effectively as you can.
Maybe, just maybe, we don’t actually want high turnout?
On defund the police, this is brilliant.
https://twitter.com/dannybarefoot/status/1326216451896844289
We are explaining the actual policies behind defund the police. One woman interrupts “that is not what defund the police means, I’m sorry. It means they want to defund the police.”
https://twitter.com/dannybarefoot/status/1326217089556865025
We ask if they support reducing police funding and reallocating it to social services and other agencies to reduce police presence in community conflict. 70% say they support that proposal.
Good luck getting that across to more than one person at a time now…
bobbyp – the problem with saying that the turnout brought out people who split their vote is that the pattern we are looking at there is one in which people voted to install Biden in place of Trump but did not want to give Biden too much power. Had those people not shown up, it would likely have been 2016 for results, not a repeat of 2018.
I’m not sure, given what we are seeing in the aftermath here, that we’d be better off with control of the Senate, but Trump still president. I think that would be more dangerous in some ways than the imperfect results that we got.
Doug Jones was good as proof-of-concept and shows a way forward, but I don’t think his seat could ever survive congress breaking the gridlock and enacting policies that the voters in those districts perceived as being too far to the left (which is, to them, pretty much anything that a centrist R would have proposed in the 90s).
The problem is not messaging per se. The problem is that the Ds need to change the base assumptions on which Americans base their economic and social views and that goes deeper than messaging and takes longer to achieve. Until they put a stake in the Free Trade prosperity axioms, and blast Wall Street as a false measure of economic wellbeing, and show that our real welfare bums are all at the top, not the bottom…
But if those base assumptions change, then everyone has to recalibrate their campaigning and new bridges open up for reaching people in their information silos.
Maybe Harris can do that in a way that Obama could not, now that we have a bunch of voters coming in for whom Obama is their ur scene of politics. One can hope.
nous,
I posted that link mostly because it cut against a lot of common wisdoms, not because I agreed with it…one of those ‘lookee what I found here’ things.
I very much agree with your reply. The Dems do need to get away from Clintonian “free trade axioms”, etc. We lost the “Reagan Democrats” (insert white working class meme here) over race and Viet Nam, and whatever economic prosperity we have been able to maintain since has kept them away. People tend to forget that the rust belt started rusting back in the 1970’s and accelerated once China was admitted to the WTO.
Magic messaging will not bring them back. Results will (one hopes). Card check is one small example.
One woman interrupts “that is not what defund the police means, I’m sorry. It means they want to defund the police.”
as the saying goes: if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
there was a House candidate for one of the districts around me (Fayetteville, I think). she’s a black woman, a lawyer, a judge and she seemed like a decent person. she had the misfortune of being asked about “defund the police” while someone was filming, and her reply included the phrase “well, that depends on what you mean by ‘defund'”. because she’s a serious person and wanted to dig into the issue, etc. etc..
and her opponent ran ads of her saying that. he didn’t say she said she wanted to defund anything. the ad was her setting up an explaination of her thoughts on the issue. but just having her explaining was enough for him.
that’s how poisonous “defund” is.
AOC is probably right about the local Dem party’s incompetence (i feel the same about the NC Dem party). but she then tries to attach her preferred policies and positions to the argument. and that’s where it breaks down.
you can run Dem candidates everywhere. but they can’t all run ‘defund’, NGD, govt-run-healthcare campaigns. local situations are different.
Good luck getting that across to more than one person at a time now…
Yes, the oppressed, the hurt, those grieving may not have the best messaging. That’s a real pity. I prefer to let others know I am with them. That’s what should be our message.
cleek,
My sympathies go out to that good and decent candidate. She was put in a tough spot.
The GOP gets caught in these spots from time to time also. Their response is to generally go on the offense.
Maybe there is something to learn from that.
“that’s how poisonous “defund” is.”
For the first time in conservative history.
Then they can stop yelling “defund” my priorities from A to Z, because if they keep it up (and they have about a week), they’ll never find enough law enforcement to keep me from killing their entire conservative authoritarian governments.
Conservatives are murderers.
Then they can stop yelling “defund” my priorities from A to Z
Exactly this.
I remember the days when Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) uttered those terrible words, “black power”. “You can’t say that,” good moderates chided, “It sends the wrong message.”
Some things never change.
that’s how poisonous “defund” is.
That was my point.
AOC’s critiques have some merit, but equally the left of the party has walked into a couple of right hooks which might have been avoided.
And both sides of the Democratic party have to realise that without a coalition between the them, they can’t govern.
both sides of the Democratic party have to realise that without a coalition between the them, they can’t govern.
More precisely, they have to realize that there really are only rwo options:
1) they work together, with all the irritating compromises that necessitates, or
2) they let the GOP reactionaries and/or Trumpistas run things.
It might be nice, for either faction, if they could have it all. But that ain’t the real world.
That was my point.
sorry. didn’t mean to come across like i was arguing with you – just using that line as a point to tell a little story.
Then they can stop yelling “defund” my priorities from A to Z
they won’t.
I’m now wondering where the ‘defund the police’ movement started. Did the left of the party start it or was it something that protestors picked up on? Wikipedia is remarkably vague on who gets credit.
For once I agree with a centrist critique of the left. “ Defund the police” was a terrible slogan, guaranteed to scare people. But now people’s egos are engaged, can’t back down, man the barricades, don’t let the other side win, etc…
Pick a better slogan.
“I’m now wondering where the ‘defund the police’ movement started.”
A lot longer ago than this:
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/16/battle-over-police-pensions-in-us-cities-takes-ugly-turn.html
All public pensions, federal, state, and local, will be eliminated by the subhuman conservative movement, except now for ICE and Homeland Security thugs because they have earned their pensions by kidnapping and killing immigrants and their children and maintaining the authoritarian “order” that permits the conservative movement to fuck my country.
Here’s a selection of what “defunding the police” might look like:
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=what+does+defunding+the+police+mean+in+minneapolis&atb=v204-1&ia=web
I can’t find the specific link, but the Minneapolis City Council is merely talking about middling measures in which some funds would be directed away from enforcement to mitigation before enforcement becomes necessary and retaining an armed police force for when force is possibly required and an unarmed force to serve as a less “military” style point of sale with the public in needs of their services.
Seems reasonable, but lying filthy conservatives will have none of it except maybe taking away police pensions, health coverage, and union membership once the fuckers get full power.
Yeah, defunding the police was a dumb slogan.
So is defund the EPA.
Defund Social Security.
Defund NPR.
Defund Medicaid.
Defund Obamacare.
Defund Medicare.
Defund the National Endowment for the Arts.
…. and so the fuck on.
You know the difference between those last half-dozen or so defunding slogans and defund the police.
The police are heavily armed and that’s the only thing the thug conservative and libertarian movements cower from.
Being shot for defunding people and their jobs.
Terri Gross on NPR is not armed.
She should be, for when her enemies come calling.
Sargeant Krupke is armed, and knows where the prominent conservative and libertarian filth live in his town.
It’s like Citizens United, except bullets are the free speech.
Pick a better slogan.
Well, sure. So we have a spectrum from A-B
A: Reform the police! Not exactly inspiring, and usually cover for cosmetic measures that are pure pablum.
B: Defund the police! A call for a radical transformation of our entire approach to law enforcement and the carceral state that strikes a lot of people as really scary.
But hey….I’m a reasonable person. Suggest something else. I’m all ears if it works better.
A sample of the view from the standpoint of pure communism can be found here. A more nuanced view here.
if you want to change the police, reform/transform are what you should say. if you want to say “defund” because it sounds more radical, then you’re going to scare off allies while you spend your time explaining that your slogan doesn’t mean what it says.
When you say “defund the police” that doesn’t say “move some funding from the police to other approaches to crime”. It says (intentionally or not) “remove ALL funding for the police.” Which is the problem.
It may well not be what it intended. But it is all too easily taken that way. And that’s a problem.
I am not good at slogans. They are usually stupid anyway, precisely because they can be misunderstood. There are rare exceptions wher a slogan is both accurate and easily understood— “ defund the police” is not one of them.
By the way, “ Black Lives Matter” is a good slogan with a clear meaning and the people who respond with all lives matter or blue lives matter are revealing their unwillingness to admit the problem of racism in our society, in particular with the police. But “defund the police” — it’s hard to say what it means when you hear it. Eliminate them? Or cut back on militarized police forces so we can spend more money on social workers and others? I am for that. A few weeks ago I saw a policeman in one of the small suburban towns carrying an assault rifle. It was bizarre. Imagine Barney Fife with an M-16.
But “defund the police” — it’s hard to say what it means when you hear it. Eliminate them? Or cut back on militarized police forces so we can spend more money on social workers and others? I am for that. A few weeks ago I saw a policeman in one of the small suburban towns carrying an assault rifle. It was bizarre.
Amen
Let us be clear here, however, that the problem with “defund” is not misunderstanding. The problem is disinformation. No amount of reframing or clarification will change how the RW media approaches this.
The only way out is an information counter-offensive. Not explanation or clarification, but a policy slug fest. Stick Warren and Franken and the late night guys in a room together and have them craft the messaging. It will get farther than any limp attempt to find alternatives to “defund” and “socialist” that poll better with more clarity.
Since the vigilantes won’t be paid to murder people in the streets, whether looting or not, we can’t defund them.
https://atlantablackstar.com/2020/11/12/florida-governor-drafts-anti-mob-bill-that-could-allow-citizens-to-shoot-suspected-looters-under-stand-your-ground-law-expansion/
Better just to gun the Florida vigilantes down when they take the law into their own hands.
Let us be clear here, however, that the problem with “defund” is not misunderstanding.
if you’re arguing your words don’t mean what they mean, the problem is that you have created a misunderstanding.
People argue that words don’t mean what they mean all the time.
Bad. Ill. Dope. Trickle Down. Repeal and Replace. Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas.
There is no misunderstanding. The outrage over the word is all just pretext for reminding the home team just how awful the other side is.
Stop saying the word and all the RW will do is claim that the Ds are afraid to say the word but that Real Americans know what they really mean to do is full on Maoist Cultural Revolution, Sharia Law, and bland ecumenical Starbucks cups every winter.
And if no D ever had said “defund,” the RW would still make the claims and would deep fake the evidence. Hillary’s illness. Biden’s cognitive issues. Jade Helm.
This is how disinformation works.
Quit trying to avoid a fight. Fight harder and smarter.
Jade Helm didn’t leave the swamps. “defund” was front and center.
i have no idea why you’re arguing for adding confusion to the discourse. but you seemed determined. have it your way.
Not what I am saying. What I am saying is that it is spilt milk. Look forward, not back. If it is a fight worth having, then fight and don’t worry over the past mistake.
what nous said. The horse is out of the barn (heard that somewhere).
The horse may be out of the barn. Doesn’t mean you have to light it up with spotlights.
How close to the speed of light does the horse have to travel to fit inside the tiny barn momentarily?
wj,
I would have never brought it up to begin with…but nigel did above. So there you are. Go talk with him.
The earth continues to move.
Hard to believe at times, I know.
Shoot the horse as it escapes from the barn.
Burn the entire barn and all of the outbuildings down, using the last 40 years of conservative horseshit muck as fuel.
Then blow up the big house where Lindsay Graham is soiling the linen.
Now that the horse is out of the barn, let’s beat it to death. Alex Pareene is just about always a good read.
So read this.
TBH, I myself am confused by what is intended by “defund the police”.
Do we just want to cut police department budgets? Why?
Are we just trying to stick it to cops because they suck?
Do we want to take funds allocated to police forces and use it somewhere else? Where else?
As part of this, are we planning to reallocate some part of current police department responsibilities to other organizations? What parts? What other organizations?
What is the actual plan, here?
I can understand public anger at cops, because it seems like every other day, there’s a cop somewhere behaving badly. Yes, I understand about “not all cops..”, but still.
But I’m not sure how simply cutting police budgets, in the absence of any other actions, will make anything better.
What is the goal of this? How and why does reducing police budgets further that goal?
I’m generally in agreement with cleek and wj and Donald on this issue, “defund the police” seems like an intemperate comment that has escaped into common public use, with nobody understanding what exactly it means, what it will accomplish, or how it will accomplish it.
I’m all for fighting, and I’m not particularly worried about how policy goals make people “feel”.
I just don’t think the phrase “defund the police” actually describes what is intended, and in fact is harmfully confusing.
If I (from the outside) understand correctly, at least part of the intention is to reallocate some of police departments’ current budgets to some other (not clear what, or if it even exists) department*s(. One that would take a non-criminal approach to addressing some problems which are currently dumped on the police.
One concern I have is that I have seen something reminiscent of this before. In the 1970s in California, there was a lot of push to stop putting the mentally ill into state-run facilities (mental hospitals). And to instead treat them with a “community care” approach. Unfortunately, what we got was an elimination of the facilities which were treating them. But nothing resembling even equivalent, let alone adequate, funding for said community care.
Which is to say, I’d really, really hope that those arguing to redirect current police funds first get those alternative departments up and running. And only then reduce the police budgets.
Of course, if I have misunderstood what the slogan is being used for….
You are not going to get a univocal explanation of what people mean by “defund the police” because the activist coalition that is working to end the excessive killing of black people by sanctioned agents of state violence is diverse in their approaches and goals.
Start asking questions and you will soon find yourself in the thicket. Only full-time activists, academics and policy junkies want any part of the thicket. The thicket eats hours and souls. I’d figure on at least a week of dedicated research to get a good sense of the shape of the “abolish the police” arguments and their various factions.
Such is the nature of things.
I am mostly in favor of radicals openly defending radical positions if they are well thought out, but defund the police is just confusing.
I am reading some of the positions of Warnock and the other guy ( forgot how to spell his name and I am too lazy to look it up) and they are making me angry on a couple of my “ pet” issues. It doesn’t really matter if I go off at some blog, but rather than do that now ( it will happen sooner or later) it is making me think about the proper time to pressure politicians or alternatively, attack the people who pressure them to move in the wrong way. I don’t really know the answer to this.
Right now I really want the Democrats to get 50 in the Senate, so I think it might be right for people to go easy on them for another month or two. People should have zero compunction about blasting Democrats when all the elections are over and Trump is safely out of the WH. With a lot of people everything is seen through the lens of whether a given discussion helps or hurts the Democrats. Sapient and I traditionally go after each other on this. My proposed compromise is that what I take to be sapient’s approach of party discipline might be right for a few months every two to four years ( during general elections, but not primaries) but otherwise people should just say exactly what they think. Focus on how you think the world should be and don’t put your primary emphasis on what is supposedly politically pragmatic. The point should be to shift people’s views.
The defund the police example is partly about this. It isn’t exactly clear what it means, but if you care about implementing it then try a different slogan, unless of course you really want to dissolve the police entirely and try a new model. Then make that case, but you should expect most politicians to run away from you until you have convinced most people that you are right.
Thanks, Donald. I do think discipline is important (for a longer time frame than you do), but a lot of it is messaging.
The issue of police violence is complicated. Yes, there are too many police who have white supremacist leanings. But there are also non-white police. Yes, police have too many weapons of war. But civilians too have way too many deadly weapons that they can legally wield without consequence.
Better hiring, training and accountability doesn’t necessarily involve less money. And what we do about the surfeit of guns in this country is beyond me.
Start asking questions and you will soon find yourself in the thicket.
defund the police is just confusing.
I think we have a consensus that there is no consensus about what “defund the police” means.
Seems like that would undermine it as a compelling argument. Also seems like it’s more or less an invitation for anyone to say it means whatever they think it means, good bad or indifferent.
Such is the nature of things.
Not necessarily. But, it certainly seems to be so in this case.
seems like it’s not an argument. it’s a phrase we’re supposed to use because it signifies alliance with something. it’s a shibboleth.
Not necessarily. But, it certainly seems to be so in this case.
Such is the nature of things that arise out of grassroots activism, especially within academic activism circles. It’s all ad-hocracy and loose coalitions. Sometimes maddeningly so.
Well, I’m half-way through “Trial 4” on Netflix and if the Boston police is anything to go by, the people really would have been better of without them.
“Defund the Shibboleth!” does have a more musical feel to it.
And apparently, so does “It’s too soon to talk about it!” regarding shootings of black people, not to mention large groups of innocent children in schools.
Perhaps we should run around yelling “Double the Funding of the Police!” and see where that gets us with the conservative budget cutting subhumans.
We might have won Texas and maybe one of the fucked up Carolinas.
After all, look at the daily diarrhea flowing from trump’s mouth that 50-some percent of them lap up like their own sick.
Conservative and Libertarian gummint-haters intone “Obey the Police!” and no one bats an eye.
This is the one and only full of shit America, after all, where if you claim “Paul is Dead”, you’ve made a career for yourself, but when Macca actually does die many, many years from now, you can start an even more profitable business claiming “Paul’s Death is a Hoax!”.
How do you know he’s not dead, we may well arsk?
Well, because I just saw him with Elvis down at the local 7-Eleven buying three Slurpies.
Three Slurpies?
Yeah, one was for John Lennon waiting in the car.
MAGA! Now THERE was a winning slogan!
My take is that the reason ‘defund the police’ arose (as I said, I’m not sure where it is from and it is short enough to have a lot of parents) was a number of incidents culminating with a police officer murdering a man in broad daylight and taking almost 9 minutes to do it. So I’m not really sure the time has come to start complaining about how defund the police doesn’t seem to explore all the nuances of policing in the moderrn world. (one could say in the context of this election, perhaps people should have been quiet about it, but I think that is a locale by locale call)
It’s a lot like something that I’ve (far too slowly) come to realize about listening to the complaints of women–steps 1-10 are to listen rather than get in a debate about what they mean. After that, you support their goals by being proactive and identifying the situtation at the beginning rather than offer them a forensic analysis after the fact.
You also have ‘defund the police’ arising because in some (many?) jurisdictions, they are funding themselves thru seizures that target minorities and they are increasingly becoming militarized, though both equipment and the flow of former military moving to their ranks.
I realize that doesn’t sit so well in a place like this, which is all about forensic analysis. But there is a world of difference between ‘defund the police is wrong, here is what you really mean’ and ‘defund the police, ok, let’s do X’
You also have ‘defund the police’ arising because in some (many?) jurisdictions, they are funding themselves thru seizures…
Except the defunding the police is precisely the wrong approach for stopping that. It pushes them to self-funding via seizures.
Liberal Japonicus’ of 6:19 pm says what I feel I need to.
I also feel like if more temperate campaigns were going to work, well, they’ve had a lot of time to do that. The very fact that we are here now looking at this rate and nature of police murder and mayhem means they didn’t.
Such is the nature of things that arise out of grassroots activism
I would put forward that the words arose spontaneously in a street demonstration, and the cry was taken up from there. It is always, always so disheartening to me to see otherwise good people go into “tut, tut, tut” mode in the face of emotional anger by the oppressed.
One would think they have all the justification in the world to be a bit emotional when their neighbors are being gunned down.
Is the real problem here that an movement for freedom from oppression uses the wrong words, or is it the fact, the very fact of their oppression?
There is a huge disconnect here, and it saddens me.
It pushes them to self-funding via seizures.
The policies and actions of the Ferguson police prior to the Michael Brown incident pretty much demonstrate the self-refuting nature of your assertion.
the self-refuting nature of your assertion.
I don’t see how.
I didn’t say defunding efforts were the only way to get police hooked on seizures. Clearly it is not. I didn’t say that the way in which police were funded would have any correlation with the incidence of police misconduct. Although I suspect that funding via seizures would correlate with some kinds of misconduct — though perhaps not with fatal kinds, which don’t generate seizeures.
I just said that, if you have a police department, and you cut its funding, it will become more likely to take up seizures as a way of maintaining itself — something all institutions, not just police, tend to try to do.
Real, necessary transformation of our broken public safety system was never going to come without a backlash and without fear. It’s not ideal in terms of moving steadily forward, but it is necessary to break through the collective apathy and self-justification.
The key now is to find the people who have not decided that black lives are an acceptable cost for maintaining order and pull them into the conversation about change.
The people who have noped out of talking about change were never going to be allies no matter the innocuousness of the language used. And questioning the timing is asking communities of color to continue bearing the brunt of state brutality.
It is always, always so disheartening to me to see otherwise good people go into “tut, tut, tut” mode in the face of emotional anger by the oppressed.
Good thing no one is doing that.
When expressions of outrage become political slogans, their effectiveness in communicating the desire for a certain political result (that most here share) becomes relevant. When Republicans pick up state legislatures, it’s unlikely that resources will be reallocated from police funding to better human services.
Interesting data.
Aim for the white vermin of his right eye:
https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/militia-leader-stewart-rhodes-says-he-has-men-stationed-outside-dc-ready-engage-violence
His genitals are too small for a target.
Subhuman violent Trump dick suckers like a round of golf too, just like their God:
https://juanitajean.com/fun-with-golf-clubs/
Seems like an occasion for semi-automatic vicious self-defense.
Whaddya say, NRA subhumans?
Want abuse of civil forfeiture to stop?
Require that all the money go to Public Defenders and Environmental Protection.
a number of incidents culminating with a police officer murdering a man in broad daylight and taking almost 9 minutes to do it.
How about “eliminate qualified immunity”?
Or “eliminate civil forfeiture”?
Either of those will get to the goal you’re calling for faster than “defund the police”. Because they actually address the goal you’re after.
It is always, always so disheartening to me to see otherwise good people go into “tut, tut, tut” mode in the face of emotional anger by the oppressed.
Meh.
If you want change, you need to be clear about what it is that needs to change.
Is the problem that police departments have money?
Or is the problem that cops are not accountable? Or that they tolerate bigots in their ranks? Or that they are used as a back-door way to raise revenue via forfeitures, property seizures, and harassing fines?
*What is it that you actually want to change*?
Call for that. Use language that expresses your actual goal.
Want abuse of civil forfeiture to stop?
Require that all the money go to Public Defenders and Environmental Protection.
What a beautiful concept!
It’s odd for me in this thread, because AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashid Tlaib are among my favorite politicians and Omar and Tlaib apparently did a lot to increase turnou in their districts and it might have made a real difference. I also have little patience with Lamb on fracking or Spanberger when she tells the socialists to shut up. Warnock takes positions on Palestine and health care that I don’t like and Warnock is retreating from things he said before running for Senate ( The BLM and Palestinian rights movements are close, btw.)
But sorry, “ defund the police” is a vague slogan. Most people don’t know what it means. That matters. Sometimes people I generally disagree with on nearly everything make a valid point. Police brutality was captured on tape, over and over again, But we end up arguing about a slogan. Part of this is just the bad faith of the right, but part of it is just this frustrating thing that activists do. I am not talking about ordinary people— I am talking about activists. They have to be pure.
I used to get into arguments several years ago on pro Palestinian websites. You have what should be, yes, a black and white issue of oppression and brutality and the mainstream (including liberals) ignores it or spouts meaningless fluff about a peace process and it’s all hypocritical bullshit and frankly much of it is racist, smug, complacent and arrogant.. But then the pro Palestinian side attracts the purists who compete to see who can be the most radical. I am pretty sure this is a big chunk of what people are really talking about with Labour in Britain. Purism can get ugly. Really ugly. But I will pull back from getting too deeply into that. The point is that just because you have a good cause doesn’t mean you have no responsibility to make a clear case. If you have a lot of complacency and unconscious bigotry to overcome it just makes it all that much more necessary to be clear.
There is a battle between centrists and leftists about who is responsible for the disappointing results of the election. We were thinking Trump would be slaughtered, having shown his utter incompetence at handling the pandemic, and the Democrats would gain seats in the House and take the Senate. If we are lucky, they might take the Senate, just barely. Lefties say that Biden ran a too cautious uninspiring campaign and centrists say that leftists scared people off.
I suspect it is all of the above.
Did “leftists” cost Biden Georgia and Arizona? Did leftists force Cunningham to not keep his virtual dick in his pants? Were leftists parading around Miami-Dade waving red flags? Howard Dean is vindicated again, fight everywhere, but localize the fight, as best possible.
To back away from the declarative, I am curious about the local vibe in Wisconsin, if anyone can enlighten. Here in Georgia there was intense energy to flip things. The percentage change from 2016 was much more than the change in Wisconsin. Different demographics? Local specifics? The change was less there than here.
The point is that just because you have a good cause doesn’t mean you have no responsibility to make a clear case.
Very well put, Donald.
Although, to be fair, we are both assuming a fact not so much in evidence: that the goal is to actually make something happen. For those who care more about gaining personal status and point scoring, clarity may be an irrelevance.
Also, when it comes to slogans, I’m betting we have “Defund the Police” in part because it was the less scary sounding alternative to “Abolish the Police,” which is the position of the actual marxist leftists and anarchist punk activists. Defund was the softer version that would get the beanie wearing, BDS trustafarians on board.
The rest of the coalition is along because they are practicing allyship but figure that what we will actually get is probably a hopelessly watered down non-reform. But any movement on public safety reform that gets wide agreement that the police need to change is a step in the right direction. Take what you can get and keep dragging that Overton left.
Mark your calendars, I have to disagree with Russell here. I guess it is that hard-left Marxist center…
We (and I’m referring to this blog really) are pretty pale, cis-gendery, average age being the mid century mark? So why (and I’m not going to wave anyone’s quotes here, most everyone who is speaking in good faith knows what they wrote) do we have posts about how we need to listen to the unemployed rust belt workers grievances and pay them great heed, yet when we see the kind of anger and hurt after the George Floyd case, we say ‘errr, can’t really go for that’. It’s not a surprise that some figure the answer is just to burn the mfer down…
This is not saying you need to crap on white lower class, it’s that here is the parallel situation yet for one, we lecture each other about treating them correctly and the other, we feel that we need to caveat things to death. I’m assuming the big push for defund the police was George Floyd’s murder, and while the police officers were fired the next day, a Tuesday, Chauvin wasn’t arrested until the Friday. So “eliminate qualified immunity”? “eliminate civil forfeiture” doesn’t really ring the bell, at least for me. And the Minneapolis police don’t seem to have the kind of civil forfeiture rules that were in Missouri, where Michael Brown was shot.
If you were a suspicious sort, you’d almost think that all of these localities with different rules and approaches is a way to institutionalize racism.
wj – I’d be willing to bet that most of the actual activists on the ground are not interested in scoring points, but in ending state violence against their communities. The point scoring is all in the kombucha sipping penumbra of the protest tourists. They are the ones who would grab hold of “defund” in place of “abolish” because it is less messy and threatening.
I don’t claim to be either, but I run in some interesting crowds and know plenty of both.
And what LJ said at 12:17.
“ do we have posts about how we need to listen to the unemployed rust belt workers grievances and pay them great heed, yet when we see the kind of anger and hurt after the George Floyd case, we say ‘errr, can’t really go for that’.”
I will respond to that. Listening to rust belt workers doesn’t mean endorsing all their views. Why would it? It is also odd that you assume that when talking about rust belt workers that they must be white —in fact, when I read about such people it is usually made clear that they come in various colors. They all suffered. Working class doesn’t mean white. You have heard about the great migration northwards? I don’t really follow the rest of your comment except as an attempt to say that criticism of a slogan is racist. I favor most of the left wing proposals I have actually seen, More money for social workers. Police should not treat communities as occupied territory. The militaristic outlook of many police is outrageous. Quite possibly some police departments need to be uprooted from top to bottom. Be specific, more specific than I am, in your proposals and I will probably agree with them.
As for saying everyone agrees that we should be kind to the working class of all colors, no they don’t. It’s just flatly not true. Sure, maybe here, though you spot the unconscious racism and not classism. But it exists everywhere else. The NYT carried that story about non voters I linked recently. They were largely poor and of both colors. The article specifically said that for these non voters they thought that low pay was one of the biggest issues. They had trouble making ends meet. They didn’t see how voting would help them. Do I agree? No, but yes, we should listen to them. How did the liberal Nyt readers react? Most of the ones I read were a bunch of proud vote shamers.
American politics is really very weird and dysfunctional. The racism and the classism are both blindingly obvious, but in this country they get set against each other, as though if you care about one you have to brush off the other. Part of this has been a moronic side effect of the Democratic primaries in 2016 and 2020.
Incidentally, the I- P conflict is one where the pieties of identity politics are at war with each other in both the US and from what I can tell in Great Britain. Nobody truly concerned about structural racism could avoid seeing it at work in that issue and yet people rarely talk about it. Funny, that. It is what Warnock is running from in his Senate race. He said a couple of “ radical” things in his recent past and now he feels he should recite the usual toothless pieties. There is something fucking structural about that. Try googling BLM and BDS or look up what Angela Davis says on the subject of their relationship.
I don’t really follow the rest of your comment except as an attempt to say that criticism of a slogan is racist
I suppose one could reduce it to that, but that seems like an over-simplification. Why is the grievances of lower class whites taken as something that has to be taken seriously, but a slogan that is clearly the product of anger and poor treatment have to be dissected? Why do they have to be so specific in their proposals, but the general howl of outrage of the Vance’s subjects needs to be treated with kid gloves? If you favor most proposals have you have seen, are you just objecting to the tone?
As far as how the NYTimes readers react, I was specifically talking to us here and what people have said here. People can look at what they have written and when they have written and make their own judgements.
Why … a slogan that is clearly the product of anger and poor treatment have to be dissected?
because if voters don’t know what the slogan means, they’re unlikely to vote for people who support it.
frankly, ‘pay attention to what we mean, not what we say’ sounds like a defense of Trump.
and pretending that people who have trouble with confusing messaging are against changing police practices is also pretty gross.
is the GOP going to twist what we say no matter what? yes. do we have to do it for them so that even potential allies can’t figure out WTF we’re chanting about? apparently, yes.
defund the lift’s marketing team. the stuff it’s coming up with lately is bananas.
“the lift’s”?
The Left’s? and the Lyft’s?
Bottom Line:
One day, a talented politician, or another terrible demagogue ala Trump, will come along to unite the underclasses in all of their colors and woes and whatever slogan they come up with will cause the blood to drain from the faces of all who expected to keep the former’s houses divided, non-unionized, uninsured, and out of the tony suburbs, either to move in or burn them down:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-we-can-learn-from-the-labor-left/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/losing-the-democratic-habit/568336/
Why, the CCP, the Politburo, and the conservative corporate right powers that control American capital might have to join together in a summit to figure out how to destroy such a movement if it became a cross border phenomenon.
Oilfield workers have been on my mind lately.
Who destroyed the American fracking industry and oilfield worker jobs and pay, by creating an oil price war via vast over-production?
It wasn’t Biden. A man can only do so much from his basement zooming next to the water heater.
The Saudis had a hand in it, but only out of desperation with them who started the worldwide price war.
Will it occur to someone to point out to out-of work Permian Basin labor, where drilling is down 60% to 70%, and Brett Bellmore’s forced farm field hand low-paid labor, including immigrants, their commonalities as the universally fucked over?
Trump was all over Pennsylvania bloviating about fracking, when it is he and his oil company lobby who cut the bottom out of product prices and worker jobs, while the rest of America spent the summer on cheaply fueled Winnebago Covid tours of the US.
One problem is that a plurality of Americans condemn any type of inflation, particularly wage inflation, while of course throwing their martini in the air celebrating massive inflation in the value of their homes, their financial assets, their various collectibles, and THEIR wages, which the underclasses have not benefited from, by and large.
Yes, there are major structural and probably insurmountable long term problems with the oil and gas industry, EVs, global warming, the cleaner fuel industry.
Unionize those industries too.
While de-unionizing the medical, legal, and financial industries.
And Citizen’s United, which is merely a union for politicians and David Bossie’s kids.
Burn that to the ground.
You did it again, LJ— you made class about whites. I don’t care about Vance especially. I have only read about him. The problems of poor whites are the problems of class generally, but poor whites sometimes react by not voting or by voting for Trump.. their suffering is real— I don’t have to endorse their solution. Am I dissecting them or brushing off their pain? Apparently so.
I object to slogans that are easily misunderstood. In politics, that matters. If you are condemning police brutality you condemn it. If you have solutions you try not to summarize them in ways that are confusing.
One of the things coming up with Warnock, or so I have read, is that he allegedly defended Jeremiah Wright back in 2008. People here are as old as dirt — I am—and probably remember the Wright controversy. . Here is a summary—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Wright_controversy
Another Wikipedia piece on him mentions his statements about Jews in 2009.. He has trouble distinguishing antizionism from antisemitism ( so do some people on the other side). But that wasn’t the focus of the 2008 controversy, which was mostly about his claim that America is a vicious white supremacist hypocritical country. He als bashes our foreign policy. He was 12 years ahead of his time on race and still ahead o his time on foreign policy. The facts about America haven’t changed. What is acceptable language in mainstream circles has.
I agreed with about 90 percent of his claims, but even apart from the antisemitism he went too far. I remember he half endorsed the ice people theory about whites. Obama’s reaction to him came in two stages— first he said he was like family even if he didn’t agree with him and then Wright kept being an embarrassment so he threw him under the bus. Most liberals applauded and boarded Obama’s bus.
My feeling was that Wright went too far at times, but I didn’t like the Obama response either. However, he definitely had to distance himself. But it seems to me that virtually all of what Wright said that was shockingly harsh about American race relations in 2008 is standard liberal belief now. But I don’t think a politician could run on it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/amber-n-ford-mistaken-identity/616927/
Why do ya spose?
Maybe the NRA could demand that car keys, cellphones, lipstick dispensers, and wallets have the same legal carry Second Amendment protections as our dumb bitch weapons.
And additionally, that white people are shot down in equal proportion to the OTHERS for packing cigarette lighters.
Or maybe mandate that the police respond in kind: a suspect produces car keys and the officer may fight back with his car keys; a cell phone reached for is countered with speed dialing by the attending officer on his cellphone, a driver’s license reached for is countered with a swift move by the officer to produce his kids’ photos from HIS or HER wallet.
But seriously, the proliferation of weaponry in the hands of the citizenry has made cops scared shitless of the very citizenry that are paid to protect and serve.
What would the slogan be to address this deadly malfeasance on the part of the rancid pigfucking conservative movement gun lobby?
Disarm America?
Both citizen and law enforcement.
Maybe just shoot Wayne La Pierre.
Slogan: The Wicked Witch is Dead!
Vance has his own Hollywood movie adaptation now, directed by Opie Taylor of all people.
Black Lives Matter, meanwhile, is greeted with their own wanted posters because of a nearly exclusively violent white street presence by both Antifa and neo-Nazis Trumpers.
Sounds about par for the course.
This is a Fox news link, but it seems straight news as best I can tell. There are probably far left links on this too.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/warnock-discusses-reverend-wright-relationship
It’s about the Warnock race and his ties with Jeremiah Wright and his past criticism of Israel. ( past as in from 2019).
Mainstream liberals are not going to be able to brush off the Israeli racism issue for much longer. The Labour controversy is coming to a political party near you. Warnock is handling it in the usual way, by backpedaling to make up for his harsh criticism way back in 2019. I read his long statement where he basically says BDS is antisemitic. Barf. But I don’t blame him much. You run for office in Georgia and the last thing you want to do is get into a deep discussion of the I- P conflict.
But BLM and BDS are the same issue and leftists know it. At the same time some antizionists are in fact antisemitic. And if you propose a solution, a vague one will be misinterpreted, sometimes in bad faith and sometimes not.
I didn’t realize that in 2029 BLM backed off mentioning Israel.
https://www.ijn.com/blm-israel-not-in-new-platform/
why (and I’m not going to wave anyone’s quotes here, most everyone who is speaking in good faith knows what they wrote) do we have posts about how we need to listen to the unemployed rust belt workers grievances and pay them great heed, yet when we see the kind of anger and hurt after the George Floyd case, we say ‘errr, can’t really go for that’.
I’m not sure it’s an either/or thing. You can recognize that blue collar working people have legitimate concerns, and also recognize that there are large problems with policing in this country.
Also, I don’t really hear anybody dismissing or diminishing the grievances of people who are calling for cops to be defunded. The issue with “defund the police” as a rallying cry is that it’s not clear how defunding police forces addresses those grievances, at least in any way that doesn’t create 1,000 other problems.
There is definitely a tension – a balance to be struck – between expressing your anger about injustice, and doing the laborious work of making tangible changes actually happen in the world. There is a time and place for both, but the same means may not be equally useful in both contexts.
It’s reasonable and legitimate to ask if the way someone is going about something is actually going to create the result they want. Even if, or maybe especially if, it’s really important for that result to happen.
It’s reasonable and legitimate to ask if the way someone is going about something is actually going to create the result they want.
This is reasonable, but I feel it misses the point. Look (to borrow a Bidenism), this kerfluffle starts with some pols in swing districts berating “defund the police” because they felt it hurt their political prospects, not that it harmed the movement for racial justice.
That whole outburst of political pain strikes me as missing the mark in a deep and meaningful way.
And to throw gas on the flames, the black activist community gets a whole heaping helping of, “You’re doing it wrong.”
This is an old pattern, and I ask that we give it some thought. Lj’s question above @ 01`:44am has not been answered.
Why the difference? Why?
Thanks.
Another take here.
Did the protests set back the movement for racial justice? Maybe not so much as you believe.
Here’s hoping the links work for a change!
As far as political slogans go, you win some, you lose some. I leave you with this great hit from Alf Landon’s campaign:
Make your wet dreams come true!
Win the battle? LOL. Win the war…well
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/samuel-alito-made-strong-case-for-supreme-court-reform-say-critics-after-justices-controversial-speech/ar-BB1aYFWR?ocid=uxbndlbing
Why the difference? Why?
What difference are we talking about?
The anger of disaffected blue collar whites shows up, among other ways, as a “F*** Your Feelings” T-shirt. I hear their anger, but it doesn’t move the ball at all in terms of making their lives better, at all, in any way. If anything, it prompts a response more or less in kind.
Or, you know, they vote for DJT. Which inspires people like, for instance, me, to spend many hours and dollars doing my best to resist them anywhere and any way I can.
Do they want their lives to improve? Or do they just want to flip people like me off?
Right?
So, same dynamic applies to both cases.
I disagree with LJ’s characterization of the various threads under discussion here. I don’t see people lining up to embrace working class complaints, but dismissing the complaints of people who are being killed by cops in disproportionate numbers.
The only criticism, such as it is, of the “defund the police” slogan is that it alienates people who aren’t already on board with police reform. And even some folks who are on board. Less so than “all cops are bad” or “f*** the police”, because it’s less blatantly rageful. But it’s still not going to win allies, FWIW, because the obvious next question is “OK, and then what?”.
People generally don’t want no cops at all. So if what you’re going for is something other than “no cops at all”, that needs to be clear.
Or not, and then the reality is your expression of anger is just going to scare the crap out of a lot of folks and alienate people who might otherwise be interested in what you have to say.
I ain’t hating on angry black people, that’s for damned sure.
At its heart, this particular debate here at ObWi seems to be fueled by a difference of methodology. “Defund the Police” is a slogan with definite rhetorical drawbacks that create political difficulties. But “Defund the Police” is also something that can be understood in more depth as a cultural response when viewed anthropologically rather than rhetorically.
I understand why someone would think that the slogan is not rhetorically effective. I also understand why someone like Son of Baldwin would look at all the balking on the left *in the moment of mourning* and question his white allies’ commitment to pushing hard for change.
The slogan works on both these levels, and there is a disconnect there that needs to be mended if we are to actually achieve lasting , meaningful change.
the protest tourists. They are the ones who would grab hold of “defund” in place of “abolish” because it is less messy and threatening.
nous, I confess that I tend to view anyone who suggests abolishing the police as having the same level of grip on reality as Trump and his fellow fantasists. We have police for a reason, and we have them (or someone doing the same things) pretty much everywhere and every time we have records for.
When we get a situation without police, they quickly get set up. Think of the Capitol Hill part of Seattle last summer. It was a “police free” zone. But in a week or two they had “armed volunteer guards” performing what were essentially police functions.
Now if someone wants to restructure, even drastically restructure, how we perform police functions, fine. I can see that — I may disagree about details, but that’s OK. Lay out the proposal and we can talk. But “abolish” simply isn’t connected to reality.
At its heart, this particular debate here at ObWi seems to be fueled by a difference of methodology. “Defund the Police” is a slogan with definite rhetorical drawbacks that create political difficulties. But “Defund the Police” is also something that can be understood in more depth as a cultural response when viewed anthropologically rather than rhetorically….
Which is all very well, but the bottom line is that a policy whose details appear to poll very well indeed ended up being an electoral drag at the last election.
We have police for a reason…
We should be working to eliminate police violence as an urgent priority, but people need police.
There are really no words.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/charles-koch-says-his-partisanship-was-a-mistake-11605286893
nous: You lost me with “Son of Baldwin”. What is that about?
russell: “I ain’t hating on angry black people, that’s for damned sure.” Nobody here said you were.
Perhaps the only police that should be abolished are the tone police (I kid), defunding sees out of the question. They work for free.
Have a nice day.
sapient, Amen!
Thanks, wj. Not much to be happy about on this subject generally.
nous: You lost me with “Son of Baldwin”. What is that about?
Robert Jones Jr. on FB and Twitter as Son of Baldwin: https://twitter.com/SonofBaldwin
News aggregation and opinions from a black queer perspective. Much reposted by my LGBTQ and BIPOC friends.
NWA was going to use “defund the police” on their debut album, but thought it would be too controversial.
Which is all very well, but the bottom line is that a policy whose details appear to poll very well indeed ended up being an electoral drag at the last election.
It is certainly one narrative about the lack of a wave, and I am sure that it had some effect on the results, but we don’t know how solid that appearance is.
We have police for a reason, and we have them (or someone doing the same things) pretty much everywhere and every time we have records for.
Human societies have always created some system of public safety, true, but what we think of as the police are a modern invention.
https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/history-policing-united-states-part-1
And the current form of militarized peacekeepers is only a little older than I am. These are not timeless human institutions.
What we are really arguing over here is how we should brand a paradigm shift for public safety. But what I think we really need first is some public commitment to the necessity of that shift and the willingness to make uncomfortable changes in pursuit of that goal.
And the current form of militarized peacekeepers is only a little older than I am. These are not timeless human institutions.
No argument that we need less militarized police. But I wonder how much of that militarization is a reaction to the ready availability of military grade weapons, not least to criminals, under our gun laws. Perhaps we need to address that insanity first. Just a thought.
but mah rights
But I wonder how much of that militarization is a reaction to the ready availability of military grade weapons, not least to criminals, under our gun laws.
The 1033 program started in 1997 and provides state and local law enforcement with surplus military gear for the cost of shipping. Some of it is life saving: Maricopa County, AZ acquired at least two helicopters that way that are heavily used for search and rescue (eg, lifting people off the roofs of their homes during flash floods). Much of it is simply dangerous.
Just stopping by briefly with a link. I am not entirely happy with the message, but this is something lefties should think about.
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/latinx-plaining-the-election
interesting article, Donald.
“Defund the police” was a stupid slogan and absolutely everyone knows it, and everyone pretending not to know it is being disingenuous.
If your plan is “spend more money on health care by raising taxes on the wealthy” you don’t call it “tax the rich!” You call it, “better healthcare!”
If your plan is to cut back funding for high school athletics in order to spend more on academics, you don’t call it, “defund football!” You call it “fund education!”
No one with a brain names a program after the thing they’re cutting in order to fund it.
If what you want is more community mediators or whatever, CALL THE PROGRAM THAT.
This is basic, basic stuff.
No one is saying “defund the police” because they have a deep commitment to Things Not Present In This Slogan that they hope to fund with the money they save by cutting police funding. They say “defund the police” in order to either signal animosity towards the police, or to signal allegiance with people who have animosity towards the police.
Which is politically stupid, because the police are very popular and Democrats are less so.
No one is saying “defund the police” because they have a deep commitment to Things Not Present In This Slogan that they hope to fund with the money they save by cutting police funding. They say “defund the police” in order to either signal animosity towards the police, or to signal allegiance with people who have animosity towards the police.
Which is politically stupid, because the police are very popular and Democrats are less so.
You can get political change either by keeping the existing framework in place and convincing fence sitters to move incrementally to your side or by creating enough of a credible crisis or threat to the status quo that they adopt a compromise change to head off the more radical threat. The latter often gets a bigger concession and is how a lot of union bargaining and disaster capitalism function.
It’s not politically stupid if it works, but it does have some opportunity costs, so the cost/benefit decisions can be tricky.
It’s a good article, Donald.
As, I think, is this one:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/13/elissa-slotkin-braces-for-a-democratic-civil-war-436301
I guess what both have in common is the message that politics is local. And national messages have to resonate in a lot if very different localities.
the police are very popular and Democrats are less so.
Just to re-center the discussion a bit.
If you’re black, you are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a cop than a white person is.
Things like that engender animosity. Or at least, mistrust.
Whatever we want to say about the practical or political usefulness of a particular slogan, it doesn’t erase the fact that, for a lot of people, cops are not a friendly presence.
That ought to change.
I’m also unsurprised that Hispanic Americans look favorably at (R)’s. They are in general socially conservative, entrepreneurial, more likely to be religious than not, and family oriented. All of the (R) talking points rolled up in one demographic, to the degree that it’s fair to characterize Spanish speaking Americans as “one demographic”.
I’m only surprised it has ever been any other way, and for that I credit the (R) party’s habit of demonizing Spanish-speaking communities and people of color in general.
Not that all Hispanic Americans are “people of color”, many if not most identify as white.
I am, however, surprised that so many voted for Trump, specifically, because he is such a freaking bigot. But so be it.
What I’m trying to get my head around, personally, is the whole freak-out about “socialism”.
There is nothing in any (D) party platform that I’m aware of that would be anything but normal in the United States that I grew up in. Nothing that would be out of place in this country at any point since at least the New Deal. Nothing that would not have fit perfectly well in a (R) party platform prior to about 1980.
Where are we at, today, in the US?
Working people’s real wages have been flat for the last 40 years, while GDP has grown enormously.
Black people continue, 50 and 60 years after the gains of the mid-20th C civil rights movement, to gain a toehold in American life.
People from poorer places would like to come here to work and perhaps to live permanently. We cap visas at something 1/3 of 1 percent of the population per year, then exploit the folks who manage to come anyway. Because they’ll work cheap, because they’re desperate. And to persuade them not to come, we treat them like animals and take their kids away from them.
100,000 people a day or more are getting infected with COVID-19, and 1,000 a day or more are dying from it. Heart disease – all forms – and cancer – all forms – are the only things that kill more people in this country than COVID-19 right now. And at the national level, we are doing f**-all about it.
Right?
There are probably a dozen other red alert issues that deserve our attention, but I’ll leave it with those.
In general, the (R) response to all of this is keep government out of it, let private initiative and the magic of the markets sort it out.
Government is the problem, right?
As far as I can tell, that is a half-@ssed response, and an abdication of the proper responsibility of government.
On top of all of that, the Trump years have turned the flaming asshole factor that is always latent in a party oriented toward jingoistic nationalism up to 11.
So I prefer (D)’s.
I’ve yet to meet somebody yammering about the horrors of socialism that can give me even an approximately accurate definition for what it is. The idea that a guy like Joe Biden represents a slippery slope to Fidel Castro’s Cuba is… beyond wacky.
Conversely, the dots from a guy like DJT to Pinochet are pretty easy to follow.
So I prefer (D)’s.
It’s cool if we all quibble about the political wisdom of “defund the police”, but let’s not lose track of what’s really on the table here.
The (R) party has become a cabal of authoritarian knuckleheads.
The (D)’s want you to have health insurance.
I prefer the (D)’s.
And suddenly, reality intrudes into what had been an interesting intra-movement debate over issues of interest only in the prog+ wing of the Democratic Party. Donald’s article was awesome. A great quote:
If the Democratic Party continues its leftward drift and flirtation with socialist rhetoric, as well as being utterly disconnected from real-world concerns around law enforcement and border security, ‘Latinos’ might just realize where they really stand in the American political duality.
Who the fuck came up with LatinX? That is so Woke and so stupid it isn’t even funny. This morning, I drove out to my law partner’s father-in-law’s ranch to pick up an off-road vehicle. His name is Rigo Flores. He’s a bazzillionaire. And very, very much of Mexican extraction.
I have Hispanic friends all over the state, including a lot friends in Starr, Cameron and Hidalgo Counties not to mention Bexar County (San Antonio). Almost all of the Democrats are way more conservative than the Woke Whites would ever imagine. And they like their guns.
My client in my first jury trial was named Ralph DeAyala, a Cuban expat who was at the Bay of Pigs, who fought his way through the Cuban army and was smuggled out of the country six months later by the Argentinians. Argentina is a great place to visit. People there are pretty much white.
My wife was born in Tanzania and is a naturalized American citizen. Does that make her and our children African American? Because she came here on a Venezuelan passport, does that make her LatinX? Or whatever? What if, ethnically and culturally, she’s half French and half Spanish?
Yesterday, we hired our newest attorney, a Muslim female. Our next-most recent hire–3 months ago–was an African American female
While y’all are yammering about race vs class and other minutiae of the lefty-left, the rest of the world is doing just fine and, at least in my corner of the world, getting along with each other better and better everyday.
I did my rant last week because y’all seem oblivious to the fact that most of the trendy shit that resonates on the far’ish left is pretty much echo-chamber stuff.
Defund the police, America is fundamentally racist, blah, blah, blah is not a winning argument because it is not true. Everyone who immigrates here does so because, on balance, this is a great place to live.
You want to see poverty–travel in rural Mexico, Central America and South America.
Or, Cuba, the home of universal literacy, free healthcare and food rationing for the hoi poloi.
Also, no one like suspects of any color being killed by the police. That’s a no-brainer, so quit acting like your anger is something that no one else understands. Jesus.
To repeat what I said several days ago, if the Dems had run Bernie or Warren, DT would have won for real. Biden’s margin was people like me, not newly Woke peeps who hate the police. Only people like Nous and LJ hate the police. Which is cool, since they live and work in places where they are highly unlikely to need the police. In their weird-ass world, the police are white, gunned-up, kevlar-wearing storm troopers. They really need to get out more. If you like diversity, you’ll love virtually every urban PD in the country.
In general, the (R) response to all of this is keep government out of it, let private initiative and the magic of the markets sort it out.
Although definitely not when it comes to immigration. There, pandering to bigotry is FAR more important than letting markets work it out. I suppose it’s the price their donors feel they have to pay to keep the rubes on board.
What I’m trying to get my head around, personally, is the whole freak-out about “socialism”.
Again, Bernie Sanders was the second leading vote getter in the Dem primary. He told everyone he was a Socialist. He honeymooned in the USSR.
No one here ever says anything nice about capitalism or free markets. “Profit” is a bad word for a lot of lefties.
You have lefties wearing their Che’ tee shirts and skirts and still finding soft spots in their heart for Castro.
So, why people associate Socialism with a sizeable piece of the Dem party really shouldn’t be all that much of a mystery. And, yes, DT is an asshole and is beclowning himself daily and should have been impeached. None of that changes tthe Left’s flirtation with Socialism.
Oh, and people caught on to who started BLM and what the platform actually was. So, again, no mystery.
If you think there is a line between DJT and Pinochet, then it’s just as reasonable for others to see a line from Bernie to Maduro or Castro, even if you think you’re right and they are nuts.
Ok boomer
but the concern trolling is a bit much to be honest
but the concern trolling is a bit much to be honest
Oh yeah, another reason why the left doesn’t play well: they can’t deal with criticism substantively–for the most part–and instead fall back on snark and name-calling.
Concern trolling. Jesus.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around what happened with the LatinX community. Not that I think the community is monolithic, but I would have thought that an admin that has acted the way it does towards people seeking asylum and the undocumented would have at least made most of the members of that community really question supporting Trump.
On the other hand, when you look at the voting, African-Americans were pretty united and have been. There were attempts to split them (like the whole Harris wasn’t descended from slaves so she’s not really black)
Also, as a teacher, I’m partial to those memes that draw a parallel between defunding the police and what has been going on in education. When they ‘defunded’ education, they didn’t close all the schools. So why does everyone thing defund means that every one in the police force is going to be collecting unemployment?
I wonder why so many people, including people here, equate defunding with abolishing. Like I said, you can look into your own heads and analyze it, but the ferocity that the concept is held is something I’m pointing out.
Obviously fiction, but in WWZ, about a zombie invasion, there is an idea about how a lot of the military response didn’t work because the training was incompatible. While they still had to shoot zombies, they adopted different tactics, they changed the uniforms, did different training. Perhaps this is just me fleeing to a fictional world, but I tend to think that real world policing needs a similar rethink.
https://zombie.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_of_Hope
And the straw flies!
Wrote that as McK was invoking Jesus, so none of that was in response to him. Though the zombie concern trolling is part of the zeitgeist.
Who the fuck came up with LatinX?
This made me laugh out loud.
Yes, it’s well-meaning, politically correct dumb-assery. And kind of condescending, because the people it’s applied to have no idea what it’s supposed to be about.
Yesterday, we hired our newest attorney, a Muslim female. Our next-most recent hire–3 months ago–was an African American female
I appreciate this, and commend you for it, although you don’t need any of that from me.
You live in Houston, which is a fairly forward-looking city. You work in a somewhat elite profession, where qualities of personal achievement and credentials may carry more weight than skin color or other demographic marker.
So, it’s great, for you, that all of the things we crazy lefties go on about seem beside the point, to you. It’s great that your guy Flores is a bazillionaire, it’s great that your practice is doing well and that you’re hiring women, and people of color, and Muslim Americans.
No snark.
But somehow thousands and thousands of people feel compelled to take to the streets. Because they’re angry and afraid.
So, there are other sides to the total picture.
Almost half the people who voted last Tuesday, voted for DJT. That concerns the hell out of me, because it’s very hard for me to imagine anybody less well suited to the office of POTUS.
And for some reason they thought he was their best choice.
That is messed up. It tells me we have problems.
Biden’s margin was people like me, not newly Woke peeps who hate the police.
You voted for Biden, McKinney? Thank you!
Yes, it’s well-meaning, politically correct dumb-assery. And kind of condescending, because the people it’s applied to have no idea what it’s supposed to be about.
Except that the people who came up with it were Latinas who had gotten sick of the linguistic condescension of “Latino” being used for them collectively. I watched that change happen real time in student papers.
Seems to me that they can absolutely lay claim to being the people it applies to, since they chose it for themselves.
Except that the people who came up with it were Latinas who had gotten sick of the linguistic condescension of “Latino” being used for them collectively.
Interesting that “Latin” wasn’t adopted. Just a thought – not ‘splaining to anybody.
When they ‘defunded’ education, they didn’t close all the schools. So why does everyone thing defund means that every one in the police force is going to be collecting unemployment?
I find myself in a state of massive ignorance. When (and perhaps where) was education “defunded”?
Almost half the people who voted last Tuesday, voted for DJT.
Apparently people couldn’t make up their minds between a ham sandwich and a shit sandwich…
The suggestion I saw recently was “Latine” because it is (according to the folks doing the suggesting) non-gendered while being a sensible construction in Spanish and pronounceable.
Latinx seems more suited to a PornHub subcategory.
Apparently people couldn’t make up their minds between a ham sandwich and a shit sandwich…
You AND McKinney, CharlesWT? Made my day.
No one here ever says anything nice about capitalism or free markets.
It’s because we’re generally pushing back on the idea the capitalism and free markets are the best solutions for many things they aren’t the best solutions for. We’re swimming in capitalism and what’s referred to as the free market (even though it’s a market with thumbs on various scales, so not as free as some like to think). I guess the long and short of it is that capitalism and “free markets” (in scare quotes) don’t need our help.
When the government starts setting prices for iPhones and Nike sneakers, I’ll start advocating for the free market.
If you can’t handle Latinx, then I’m not sure you could survive the mind bending power of Chican@.
Yes, the Latinx is primarily a self appellation as I understand it. I’m happy to discuss that, it’s sort of in my wheelhouse. Nous’ comment about it taking place in student papers makes me wonder if it’s being adopted by those who are moving into ‘white’ society (as higher education certainly is) and trying to carve out their identity. We will probably then see it as derided, a way to police identity. Then, anyone saying Latinx can be dismissed as not really representative. Pretty nifty, eh?
Wj, Im out and on my phone so I’ll try to get some links for you in a few days
I saw Latinx first adopted by my feminist Latina students who wanted to write about both themselves and LGBTQ people who were pushing back against (what they called) the patriarchal machismo of the Latino identity. Some of them used Chican@ for a while, but that seemed to be tied most deeply to Mexican-Americans, so they tried to widen the net a bit. Hispanic was a possibility, but the anti-colonialist among them thought that it was better to tie themselves to a dead language than to the colonizers.
My only role in any of it is to listen and to respect their self-identification.
All the people that talk about PC snowflakes and their language silliness have never seen the fierce resilience of the first gen college Latinx trans woman who has just come out to her family and friends and gone home for the holidays for the first time in full makeup. That’s a study in courage.
Why be a dick to her?
lj, no worries.
Except that the people who came up with it were Latinas who had gotten sick of the linguistic condescension of “Latino” being used for them collectively.
All the people that talk about PC snowflakes and their language silliness have never seen the fierce resilience of the first gen college Latinx trans woman who has just come out to her family and friends and gone home for the holidays for the first time in full makeup. That’s a study in courage.
OK, so my first rule about stuff like this is that people are entitled to be called by the names they prefer and choose.
So if people want to be called Latinx, I am happy to refer to them as such.
My general understanding is that, for a lot of the Spanish-speaking population, Latinx is not a term that they relate to. My general understanding is that, Spanish being a gendered language, the need for a gender-neutral name is less pressing than it might be in other contexts.
And, my understanding is, at best, second-hand. So I’m not the expert. If the kids in your classes speak for the Spanish speaking population as a whole, Latinx it is.
And if they don’t, I’m happy to call them Latinx anyway.
Whatever they prefer.
That’s a study in courage.
No doubt. And not an ounce of snark there, either.
Bernie Sanders was the second leading vote getter in the Dem primary. He told everyone he was a Socialist. He honeymooned in the USSR.
OK. All true. Bernie calls himself a socialist and he honeymooned in the USSR.
If you ask 100 people who are bent out of shape about America “becoming a socialist country”, my money says 95 of them will not be able to tell you what socialism is.
As far as they know, socialism means you don’t comb your hair, because Bernie’s a socialist and he doesn’t comb his hair.
No one here ever says anything nice about capitalism or free markets. “Profit” is a bad word for a lot of lefties.
Profit pays my bills. How’s that?
You have lefties wearing their Che’ tee shirts and skirts and still finding soft spots in their heart for Castro.
There are probably some Cubans in Miami with a soft spot for Batista.
No accounting for taste.
Show me something in the (D) platform that calls for the public seizure of the means of production. Anything to the left of the New Deal will do.
Here’s the platform. Lemme know what you find.
If you ask 100 people who are bent out of shape about America “becoming a socialist country”, my money says 95 of them will not be able to tell you what socialism is.
Actually, while Senator Sanders labels himself a socialist, the fact that he does so suggests to me that he’s a bit vague on what the word means, too. Just being to the left of most of the Democratic Party isn’t actually sufficient.
Slightly OT, but certainly related to the topic of Black Lives, I’ve been watching The Good Lord Bird, the Showtime miniseries based on the book by James McBride. (I meant to read the book, and when I found out about the series, meant to read it sooner, and watch later, but didn’t get around to it, so whatever.)
Anyway, John Brown. If anyone is watching the series (which isn’t yet finished airing), I found this interview with one of his descendants, Marty Brown, fascinating.
Don’t mean to threadjack. Please carry on.
MxTX: … DT is an asshole and is beclowning himself daily and should have been impeached …
He, Trump WAS impeached.
He was acquitted by the pro-capitalist cabal led by Mitch McConnell. Capitalism has its good points, but its most vocal proponents often turn out to be assholes.
–TP
He was acquitted by the pro-capitalist cabal led by Mitch McConnell
He was acquitted by the cabal led by Mitch McConnell, no question. But that said cabal is any more pro-capitalist than, for example, the Democrats is not obvious. Sure, they shout more about being pro-capitalist, or at least claiming that their opponents are not. But if you look at the actions of both sides?
Pro-capitalism? Capitalists are often anti-capitalism.
Capitalists are often anti-capitalism
I don’t see much anti-capitalism in the USA. But I see a lot of opposition to free markets.
It’s absurd for Rs to claim to be the party of free markets when they campaign on protectionism.
Biden’s margin was people like me, not newly Woke peeps who hate the police.
some votes count more than others.
Bernie Sanders was the second leading vote getter in the Dem primary.
and Trump was the second leading vote getter in the Presidential election.
fix your own fucking party.
Just putting this out there.
If you want to change policy, you have to win. If you don’t show up, you don’t win.
If (D)’s want to expand their reach – and they should – they need to show up.
If for no other reason than showing up means the other side doesn’t get to paint you as the Che T-shirt wearing antifa cadre of McK’s imagination.
It is beyond good that Biden won. Trump is more than a clown, he is a menace. But (D)’s are losing in places they should not be losing.
When they show up and do the work, they win. See also Georgia, surprising blue patch in a sea of red, and that largely due to the hard work of Abrams and her crew.
If you don’t show up and do the work, you lose. If you lose, you don’t get to make policy. Making and implementing law and policy is where the rubber meets the road. It’s where talk becomes reality. It’s what governing is.
The (D) party needs to get its head out of its @ss and start showing up. Run everywhere, for everything. They’ll win some and lose some, but they’ll win some.
When you win, you actually get to do stuff.
I was just looking back over this, and my eye had skipped over Donald’s article about Latinx, which seems to have gotten McT in a tizzy (I thought it was me, but I guess it isn’t). That article is interesting, but is written from the standpoint of ‘I am one of them, so here’s what I think’, which brings with it its own problems.
Here’s a more historically minded article about the various terms used.
https://www.history.com/news/hispanic-latino-latinx-chicano-background
This article also tracks with my understanding.
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2019/06/digging-into-the-messy-history-of-latinx-helped-me-embrace-my-complex-identity/
What most of the American left favors is social democracy, though people furthest to the left favor socialism. I can’t tell what exactly the most extreme Jacobin writers really want, but the more moderate far lefties want a Green New Deal and single payer. Basically Bernie is FDR. And yeah, lefties in the 30’s flirted with communism and the really stupid ones ended up spying for the Soviets.
I have the feeling towards the “ socialism” word that Nous has towards “ defund the olive” — it’s a politically high risk attempt at shifting the Overton Window. I think it needs to be shifted pretty far economically and also on foreign policy. A big part of me wants a leftist takeover in the Democratic Party, but the war should wait until January.
On the article, I think Miami Cubans who are reflexively hostile to socialism are a lost cause for AOC types. There was a similar article in the NYT which had this very strange phrase— the writer said that many in Florida were from Central America and had seen governments imposed from the outside and were consequently very conservative. The implication was that they hated authoritarian governments and sided with a Republicans. But the only Central American government that fit the stereotype was Nicaragua under the Sandinistas. The others were death squad, fascist, and even genocidal governments of the right, and from what I have read some of the right wing Cuban community in Miami were up to their eyeballs in supporting right wing extremism.
So I want to understand the POV of people who don’t fall neatly into simpleminded left wing notions of who should be on our side but that doesn’t mean admiring or even respecting all of their views.
On LatinX, Russell is right, Call people what they want to be called. From what I have read, it is an unpopular label for most in that community, but wildly popular in academia. But if someone wants to be called that, russell’s rule applies.
I think the link also said some in the Hispanic community in Texas work in the oil industry and don’t like to hear that we need to move away from fossil fuels. That came up with fracking in PA and Conor Lamb complained about that. I don’t think there is an easy answer—actually, there is. A massive investment in environmentally friendly infrastructure that would fight global warming and provide jobs. It needs a catchy slogan. Something that conveys the spirit of providing jobs with the idea of being green. Or not. Sometimes catchy slogans just become a target for attacks. Maybe they are usually more trouble than they are worth.
“Defund the olive” was one of the more creative spell check decisions I have seen.
“Defund the olive” was one of the more creative spell check decisions I have seen.
I’m for it!
You can defund my olive when you pry it from my cold dead hands!!
Btw, MkT’s workplace reminds me of what Adolph Reed says about the race side in the race vs class debate.
Paraphrasing, some folks want a utopia where the very well paid professional classes look exactly like America. The Gini coefficient stays right where it is.
( I am not criticizing MkT’s firm. It sounds like they are doing the right thing.)
Poll on LatinX
https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in-four-u-s-hispanics-have-heard-of-latinx-but-just-3-use-it/
#NotAllPimentos
I just read Nigel’s link about Slotkin. Here it is again—
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/13/elissa-slotkin-braces-for-a-democratic-civil-war-436301
It’s pretty good. Not saying I agree with everything, but most of her criticisms are things that even a lefty could either embrace or grudgingly acknowledge.
there will be no “civil war” between Democrats.
no Democrats are going to start killing each other over any of this.
I guess ‘Green is the new Black’ doesn’t cut it. 😉
Sick of black lung? Green New Deal may be the thing for you!
from Donald’s civil war link:
Will Rogers agrees.
maybe that’s part of the nature of being a Democrat, whatever that is.
Civil war just means name calling in this context.
Btw, the last line in the LatinX link rang a little false to me. It seems overstated—
“ Race is just this immense Anglo American hang-up that even Hispanic new arrivals can’t quite manage to escape: they’ve got to decide on a racial label for themselves too, even if it’s largely nonsensical.”
I haven’t traveled much, but I was in Bolivia decades ago and the correlation between race and class was about as obvious as anything could be. And I am not sure Cuba before the revolution was some sort of racist free zone. I vaguely recall reading otherwise. I don’t doubt that racism in the Anglo world is different and probably worse.
this immense Anglo American hang-up that even Hispanic new arrivals can’t quite manage to escape: they’ve got to decide on a racial label for themselves too, even if it’s largely nonsensical.
On the other hand, Hispanic immigrants pretty much get to choose which racial label they will use. Without any particular reference to what their actual ancestry is — white, black, Native American, mixed in various proportions, etc. If they don’t make a choice, “Hispanic,” as far as I can see, generally defaults to White. Whatever that actually means.
I agree with Slotkin’s description of how many people in the rural midwest feel stupid and demeaned, and why they respond to that feeling the way that they do. I just don’t see how any of what she describes has a solution that both includes them and relieves the deep insecurity that is driving the hostility.
Every time I have visited friends and family in the midwest since starting grad school I have engaged them in conversations where I ask them questions about their work and listen to them talk with obvious pride and expertise. I appreciate that in them. I learn a lot from them. And the conversations are really good when we are talking about things with which I have some practical experience or we have worked together in the past and I can ask good questions that give them the opportunity to show their own experience and skill.
Only a couple of them have ever asked me any similar questions about how universities work or what I do. And any question that does even begin to touch on my expertise is usually met with a joke and a change of subject the moment they hit the limits of their own understanding. And more than a few of them have spent our time telling me how they think my world works and ranting about what is wrong with it without once asking any questions or trying to get a deeper understanding of how my world works.
I’m not the source of that block that makes them shut down. I am the occasion for their insecurity, not the cause.
Race is just this immense Anglo American hang-up
yeah. that’s just plain bonkers.
racism is a human failing, not an Anglo American failing.
there was a lot of good stuff in there, but it was also full of of attacks on liberals caricatures who were caricaturing of people from central and south America. come on.
racism is a human failing, not an Anglo American failing.
I’m betting lj can give us some striking examples of racism in Japan.
Certainly the Asian Americans I have known over the years are no more or less likely to exhibit it than the Anglos I know.
I find the idea that Trump “doesn’t talk down to anybody” quite laughable. He demeans disabled people, calls immigrants rapists and criminals, talks about his predecessor as someone who isn’t a real citizen, maligns women’s appearance as dogs, describes the military as losers.
Maybe he doesn’t talk down to the audience at his rallies, but really?
It’s not that Trump doesn’t talk down to anybody, it’s that Trump doesn’t make them personally feel small or stupid.
Meanwhile, everyone else is just too sensitive and easily offended.
Or perhaps it’s that Trump makes them see everybody else as small and stupid. And therefore better about themselves in comparison.
I’m betting lj can give us some striking examples of racism in Japan.
i seem to recall something in Germany.
and something about Uighurs ? Rohingyas ? Hutus ?
i forget. i get so busy being racist.
I find the idea that Trump “doesn’t talk down to anybody” quite laughable.
in this, too, he is just another grifter, racking the bucks from the suckers in the GOP.
In Germany, the Turks are the traditional (in the last half century) target.
Makes the folks who developed the covid-19 vaccine even more impressive.
McK,
You have lefties wearing their Che’ tee shirts and skirts and still finding soft spots in their heart for Castro.
So, why people associate Socialism with a sizeable piece of the Dem party really shouldn’t be all that much of a mystery.
How sizeable a piece?
You have righties waving Confederate flags and still finding more than a soft spot in their heart for Robert E. Lee and company. I’d say there are more of those flag-wavers, by far, than Che t-shirt wearers.
So why people associate racism – a pretty strong version – with a sizeable piece of the Republican Party shouldn’t be that much of a mystery.
I’ve started a comment that is turning into a post, but I’ll just point to this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
A 2020 study based on interviews with 34 Latinx/a/o students from the US found that they “perceive higher education as a privileged space where they use the term Latinx. Once they return to their communities, they do not use the term
Now, I have taught the occasional Latinx/Latino/Hispanic student, but I’m usually asking them to write about what they find in Japan, and while that may include some discussion about their own identity, it’s not the focus. If there are any Latinx/Latino/Hispanic commenters here who bridle at the use of an academic term, please drop a line as to what you want to be called.
“If you’re black, you are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a cop than a white person is.
Things like that engender animosity. Or at least, mistrust.
Whatever we want to say about the practical or political usefulness of a particular slogan, it doesn’t erase the fact that, for a lot of people, cops are not a friendly presence.”
It sounds like you’re trying to bootstrap an analytical argument about what “some people” might think and why into an empirical claim about what is or is not popular, and with whom.
You don’t need to do that. You can just look at polls.
You don’t need to do that. You can just look at polls.
Don’t you want to know what’s at the bottom of popular/unpopular? Seems relevant to fixing whatever problem might exist.
We need police, therefore police should be popular. They’re unpopular with some communities. Why? Because they are perceived as being unfair and/or abusive. If this perception is grounded in reality, we have to investigate whether there’s something we need to fix, what that is, and how to fix it.
offered without comment….
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/14/us/politics/biden-trump-republicans.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
From bobbyp’s link
It must be said, the man got the first half right. This is contempt by him and his (slightly less than) half of the country for the other half. Not to mention for our country and its governing institutions.
It sounds like you’re trying to bootstrap an analytical argument about…
I’m not sure I followed all of that, but I think you’re making it more complicated than it needs to be.
I’m asserting that there are communities who feel ill used by cops.
“Now you want healing,” she added. “Now you want to come together. You have not earned it.”
Right back atcha, Jeannie Smith.
I’m still waiting to meet the Trumpie who isn’t motivated by a deep desire to flip people like me the bird.
Why would I want to “come together” with them?
Regime cleavage.
Two competing visions of nationalism, one of which rejects pluralism. And that side has deep pockets backing its move to create its own media ecology untroubled by soul-searching think pieces about how to reach across the divide.
Serious question: what would coming together even look like?
What do I and Jeannie Smith have in common?
Terrific interview with Stacey Abrams (starting at 0.52 approx), only partly (but importantly!) dealing with how to help for the senate runoffs in Georgia (h/t BJ).
https://crooked.com/podcast/one-flew-over-the-coup-coups-nest/
Hi Patrick, unless you’ve commented under another name, I think you are new, so welcome.
I agree with sapient’s question, and wonder what polls you are referring to when you say we can look at them. Specifically, what questions underlie your take on this.
Thanks in advance and again, welcome!
I woke up this morning wondering if the best framework for thinking about the current divide in the US was not one of civil wars and sides or tribal conflicts, but rather the structure of the feud. It starts with a grievance and an attempt at a settlement within the structure of the law, but some number of belligerents on either side refuse to accept the settlement and resort to extra-judicial action. This cycle gets repeated a few times, drawing in more belligerents each time until it hits critical mass and spills out to affect the broader community and threaten the fabric of the legal structure.
Let us hope that the peacemakers manage to tamp this all down with settlements and self-policing, because the other way that feuds get resolved is for the bulk of the grieved belligerents to die and the feud to burn out from lack of people on either side to carry it on.
I find the whole situation profoundly discouraging.
I don’t understand how we move forward from here.
self-policing
there will be no self-policing on the right. the grievance industry is too big, too powerful, and too entrenched.
I don’t understand how we move forward from here.
Consider that the counties which voted for Biden produce something like 70% of the national GDP. In fact, being a high wealth producing county is an even better way to predict voting than rural/urban. So ask yourself, what would it take to create that kind of county in, say, Wyoming? Move a couple high tech (IT or MedTech, doesn’t really matter) to the town with the state University — to give a steady flow of potential employees. Seed them with a bunch of existing tech types.
In relatively short order, I suspect that you could produce a new blue state. Given the low current population, it wouldn’t take that many new people. Especially combined with the 25% of the population which is already voting Democrat.
True, it doesn’t change the minds of those who actually approve of Trump. But that’s a harder task than just picking off a couple more Senate seats.
wj – that’s something I had considered in the past, and it would certainly monkey wrench the electoral college minority strategy, but it’s also going to amplify the economic inequality that is driving a lot of the grievance industry.
I think you’d have to get communities and universities to come together with public investment to create some sort of collective infrastructure in order to seed the wealth rather than just moving it but keeping the existing divides in place.
So ask yourself, what would it take to create that kind of county in, say, Wyoming?
it would take decades.
see NC for a perfect example.
the “Research Triangle Park” is a high-tech business park between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. every major biotech and software company you can think of has a facility here. it brings people from all over the world. and it’s a big part of why NC is a purple state.
it was established in 1959.
I think you’d have to get communities and universities to come together with public investment to create some sort of collective infrastructure in order to seed the wealth rather than just moving it but keeping the existing divides in place.
Certainly you’d want to make sure that the wealth being created there got spread around. But part of that would just be kids who didn’t get educated and then head for the coast and good jobs. And part would be businesses which support all those affluent people who now live there. Yes, there would still be some who wouldn’t be noticeably better off. But it’s a start at stopping the local economy petering out.
it would take decades.
see NC for a perfect example.
Except North Carolina was a who lot more populous when they started the Research Triangle. So you’ve got a smaller population you are trying to lift up.
Yes, if you tried to do it entirely by the local state government bootstrapping itself it would take a long time. First because the state government just doesn’t have the resources. And second because the local political philosophy is so libertarian that you couldn’t get them to make a public effort. So you have to come in from outside anyway.
Consider that the counties which voted for Biden produce something like 70% of the national GDP. In fact, being a high wealth producing county is an even better way to predict voting than rural/urban.
To be pedantic, GDP is a measure of spending. And not all spending creates wealth. As an exaggerated example, the government could pay 100,000 people to dig and fill up holes for a year. That would add to GDP but no new wealth would be created. The hole diggers could spend some of their earnings on food. But the new wealth in the form of food production would be, in short order, literally flushed down the toliet. They could spend some of it on more enduring wealth like building a house or investing in wealth producing enterprises. The hole digging could create some new wealth indirectly, but there would be less than a dollar returned on a dollar spent.
“Gross Domestic Product is a measurement of production in an economy, the idea is that the more stuff that is being created and transacted the wealthier the economy is and while this isn’t necessarily wrong it’s not the whole story”
Why GDP Is Overrated & Nobody Should Care About It!: (YouTube)
while this isn’t necessarily wrong it’s not the whole story [emphasis added]
So what do you think is a better metric? And is it available anywhere? (As opposed to just being a theory some guy has.)
As pointed out in the video, better metrics are, unfortunately, hard to come by.
So ask yourself, what would it take to create that kind of county in, say, Wyoming?
it would take decades.
see NC for a perfect example.
Or Idaho. HP and Micron both moved into Boise during the late 1970s. Lots of other tech companies since then. Population and tech jobs are both currently booming in Boise. In Idaho overall, Trump looks to have won by 30 percentage points this year, down from 32 in 2016.
Or Utah, with a ton of tech moving into the Wasatch Front. I assume the Republicans there took note that in 2018 Utah voters approved all of medical marijuana, expanded Medicaid, and an independent redistricting commission.
But as cleek notes, it’s a decades-long project.
Except North Carolina was a who lot more populous when they started the Research Triangle
partly because it’s a nice place, climate-wise.
WY is a bit tougher.
partly because it’s a nice place, climate-wise.
WY is a bit tougher.
Happily, taste in climate varies. Some people love Florida; I simply couldn’t cope with the heat and humidity. Some people love New England; some people hate snow. Etc.m etc., etc.
But as cleek notes, it’s a decades-long project.
We, unfortunately, have to continue to play the long game. The arc of history …
I’m going to be dead before a lot of things I want happen, and there are doubtless going to be a lot of things that I don’t want to happen that do happen. I’m hoping to play my part to keep utter fascism and civil war at bay (unless it’s a civil war that we can win).
So yeah. We’re pawns in history, just as our forbearers. We have to hope that whatever we do helps somebody down the road. (And, yes, climate change seems apocalyptic, but we don’t know that for sure, so we just have to do the best we can.)
I don’t understand how we move forward from here.
For the one day at a time approach, electing two Democratic senators from GA would be good. Obviously, a long shot, but what we’ve got.
Laramie is quite lovely, as is the area around Jackson Hole.
Teton County already has great wealth inequality and skews techno-libertarian environmentalist.
I don’t see how that is going to change attitudes in Chugwater.
But WY as a purple state like Wi would still be an improvement.
partly because it’s a nice place, climate-wise.
WY is a bit tougher.
Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, is 40 miles north of Fort Collins, CO. Fort Collins sits at the north end of the Colorado Front Range urban corridor, and is growing at a staggering pace. Between the two, though, is the Cheyenne Ridge. Mesoscale weather on the two sides of the ridge is very different — Fort Collins enjoys the quite moderate Front Range pattern, Cheyenne does not.
Full disclosure, my wife and I finished moving from the Denver metro area to Fort Collins this month. There’s construction everywhere you look in Fort Collins, and the real estate prices are doing the same kind of insane appreciation that Denver is. I don’t expect the growth to jump over the ridge in my lifetime.
OMG, Michael Cain. I thought y’all were moving out of CO. Is that much of a lifestyle change?
not all spending creates wealth.
Define ‘wealth’.
Like sapient says: the immediate task is to try like hell to win both senate run-offs in Georgia. Not to figure out the right message, policy, or long-term strategy. Ditch Mitch, and you have more options on the other stuff.
Having made more contributions via Act Blue than I could easily afford, I was bombarded with emails and texts asking for more all the way through election day. Since then, nothing. It’s like the Democratic Party can’t be bothered to keep fighting in Georgia. Do I have to go down there myself?
–TP
I don’t understand how we move forward from here.
Tough call. Might help to start with a “glass half full” take on things?
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-lost-denial-pompeo/
Define ‘wealth’.
“Wealth is a concept generally agreed to be the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions or the control of such assets. While “wealth” is considered to be an ambiguous and nebulous term, it is a concept that nonetheless has an important place in economics.
More specifically wealth can be defined as a claim on, or command of, resources (commodities, capital equipment, time, physical labor, et cetera) that have the potential to make the individual’s existence easier, more comfortable, or more enjoyable (i.e. “better”) than it would be in the absence of such things. Because value is subjective, wealth cannot be measured cardinally, but it is possible to measure ordinally.
In short, wealth can be said to be the ability to have desires fulfilled. “
Wealth
Tony:
https://mashable.com/article/how-to-help-stacey-abrams-election-support/
Spread the word.
If we infiltrated Wyoming with 125,000 stealth dedicated Democratic Party partisans, we could take over the state. Cost? About $100 from each of the 75,000,000+ Biden voters nationwide ($60K stipend for each of our new Wyoming citizens).
Think big. Commit. That’s what they’ve been doing since the 70’s (cf Mayer, “Dark Money”, Powell Memorandum, Rick Perlstein, etc., etc.).
If we infiltrated Wyoming with 125,000 stealth dedicated Democratic Party partisans, we could take over the state.
You know, this would be so much better than civil war. And we could actually do this with a few states. Also, rich people could do a whole lot for this idea. Spread the word? Or at least, discuss!
You know, this would be so much better than civil war. And we could actually do this with a few states.
Better than a civil war? Absolutely!
But far better still if who moved in were people with regular jobs outside politics. If their political inclinations are just incidental, it’s much harder to characterize what’s happening as a hostile invasion. Which, in turn, makes to easier to acquire converts among those already there and benefiting from the increased economic activity.
Not to mention it being a heck of a lot cheaper if the people moving in have jobs which support them. Rather than just being an expense to the party.
If we infiltrated Wyoming with 125,000 stealth dedicated Democratic Party partisans, we could take over the state.
The two Senators might be important, but the three EC votes are insignificant. If you’re trying to reliably win the White House, you need Texas, and Florida, and Ohio, and North Carolina.
see NC for a perfect example.
If there’s one place I’m tired of it’s goddamn NC.
The state is a perpetual tease for Democrats, and it never comes through. It’s been “on the verge” of turning blue for fifty years, since before “turning blue” was a phrase that meant anything.
Screw it.
Screw it.
No. Help it. I live in VA, and NC is right down south. We’re almost there.
Also, I know a lot of NC Democrats. So that’s why I’m where I’m at. It’s the South, people. Virginia, the Capital of the Confederacy is now [I dare not say it] blu …
The Confederacy. Virginia. Nat Turner. John Brown [the larger Virginia]. Massive Resistance in the ’60s (my lifetime). We can continue to do this even if we’re not gratified by the results.
And, yes, I wish we could be happy with it right now.
If we infiltrated Wyoming with 125,000 stealth dedicated Democratic Party partisans, we could take over the state.
I’m not sure this completely answers the question of how we move forward.
It answers the question of how might People Like Us dominate People Like Them, politically.
Which is, I think, a different question.
Spreading the tech industry around is an interesting idea, and to some degree is already underway. But not everybody is going to be a tech-bot.
How do **we** – plural – move forward? Or is there a “we”?
What does “move forward” mean, russell?
To me, it means “make a country where people are treated fairly and compassionately.” That involves policy choices like health care. That means electing Democrats.
It doesn’t mean converting deplorables. It means winning, and keeping them down.
I guess, russell, you [correct me if I’m wrong] envision a world where everyone is loving each other because we all have a stake in our community. Is that what you mean by “moving forward”?
I would love that world, but I don’t see that as an option. Nothing about human history suggests that we’re all good folks.
Of some interest [to me]:
I told y’all to watch “The Good Lord Bird”.
I also just watched “Chicago 7” on Netflix.
Of course, I was alive during the actual 1968 happenings, and because my family was very politically aware and talked nonstop about things, I knew about what transpired. [My family was anti-Vietnam War, but it was complicated for a number of reasons.]
It was interesting to take a look at the slightly fictionalized, dramatized version of events.
How to move forward? What choice do we have but to do our best with whatever we’ve got? Nirvana probably isn’t the endgame. We need to keep trying to make a better world, and we should do all we can. But we can only do what we can do, and if we die on the scaffold in December of 1859, we can’t think that we failed.
Spreading the tech industry around is an interesting idea, and to some degree is already underway. But not everybody is going to be a tech-bot.
How do **we** – plural – move forward? Or is there a “we”?
Spreading the tech industry around was a means to an end. The point I was attempting (and failing) to make is this. Relative poverty seems to be what drives Republican voters (as distinct from donors) these days. So the path forward is to lift them out of it. They don’t all need to be tech-bots for that. They just need to get folded in to the growing economy; no longer stuck in an economy which is shrinking (or, at best stagnant).
What constitutes “we” is shifting. Once it was effectively white Americans, regardless of their economic circumstances. Now it’s more like financially comfortable Americans.** (Including those who aren’t there yet, but can see a path forward. That also includes those from minorities, for whom the path forward includes the government removing existing barriers so they can move forward.)
** Not surprisingly, those now finding themselves outside “we” aren’t happy about it. Which is why we need to move them (or, as may be, drag them kicking and screaming) into the new “we.” Even though many of them can’t see it as an option.
What does “move forward” mean, russell?
I guess that’s more or less the question I’m asking.
How does a divided nation even function?
I’m not talking about kum-ba-ya nirvana. Even passing a budget without “shut it down” brinksmanship would be a win.
It doesn’t mean converting deplorables.
That’s good, because I doubt that’s on offer.
It means winning, and keeping them down.
Since “them” appears to be about half the country, this sounds like a recipe for a stalemate.
I have no solution to offer here, I’m just asking questions. Cos that’s all I got.
I don’t know that we can heal this divide, but perhaps we can find a new coalition built on a new set of goals and values that crosscuts the idiocy of the Culture Wars. I don’t see anything else that will work.
Crosscut the Culture Wars and we may be able to find issues that have not already been lashed down so tight that they require no deliberation.
If we want to do that, though, we need to look to the 40-and-under crowd to find that ground, and we need to lean on the utopian mode a lot harder.
The state is a perpetual tease for Democrats, and it never comes through.
in 2008 it did.
this year, it missed by 73K.
could be that the GOP’s current configuration of hysterical conspiracies and cork-on-fork idiocy is actually just a temporary situation, maybe even a fad.
a lot of people have jumped onto the internet who don’t really understand how it differs from traditional media – they don’t quite get that posting nonsense in a nice font is something literally anyone can do. and those people are, in general, older people. they won’t be a political force forever.
if the potential hosts for disinfo are fewer, maybe the hold it has on the country will be lessened enough for some kind of reality-based politics to take hold.
/dreamin, dreamin is free
The Wyoming coup was merely an exercise in pushing some numbers around, and was not intended to be a realistic tactic.
I would offer it demonstrates this: You get a big number of folks energized and committed by an idea…well, you can do big things.
Have a good day.
I have no solution to offer here, I’m just asking questions. Cos that’s all I got.
You appear to be in good company.
Help it. I live in VA, and NC is right down south. We’re almost there.
NC has been “almost there” forever. How long have we been hearing about Research Triangle and New South and the rest of it?
in 2008 it did.
this year, it missed by 73K.
And in 2016 it was 173K.
92K in 2012.
turns out Republicans move to places where jobs are, too.
So if it hasn’t happened regularly yet, the right thing to do is just give up on it? I’d think you’d look at, for example, Georgia and say something more like “Here’s what we have to do to finally make this happen.”
This inspires Thullenesque rhetoric in my head.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/15/politics/scott-atlas-coronavirus-michigan/index.html
the GOP is a public health hazard.
ban it, burn it, bury it.
The Wyoming coup was merely an exercise in pushing some numbers around, and was not intended to be a realistic tactic.
I believe libertarians and assorted RWers have/had similar ideas (with a potential option for later secession). Didn’t the Civil War have similar precursors (with the South seceding when they thought they were losing the race* westwards** to create more slave than free staes)?
*no pun intended
**after the idea of the Greater South American Slave Empire(TM) failed due to undue lack of expansionsist urges in DC
The Wyoming coup was merely an exercise in pushing some numbers around, and was not intended to be a realistic tactic.
It may not have been a serious suggestion on my part. But I do not see it as unrealistic. That is, it could be done. And it would work (if executed properly).
The GOP is setting a nuclear boobytrap under the economy, it seems:
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-readies-most-consequential-vote-lame-duck-session-n1247879
They have to destroy the economy in order to save…who actually, I mean longterm?
yeah, McConnell is definitely teeing up a crash to leave for Biden.
Truly frightening, Harmut.
As if we did not have enough….more to worry about.
I believe libertarians and assorted RWers have/had similar ideas
libertarians have a more or less ongoing effort to turn New Hampshire into a low-government nirvana.
long time residents generally find them annoying.
The Republican Party Is Dead. It’s the Trump Cult Now.
Some people now love to refer to themselves proudly as “deplorables.” They can rock out with their cocks out, or however you want to put it.
there’s a whole Etsy section for “Deplorables” !
they live up to the label.
If someone says that they are deplorable, chances are excellent that they are entirely correct. (The only chance they’re wrong is if they’re simply clueless about what the word means. And maybe not even then.)
This inspires Thullenesque rhetoric in my head.
someone should charge Atlas with sedition.
someone should charge Atlas with sedition.
Probably easier to nail him for inciting to riot. (Plus that’s a state charge, so Trump can’t pardon him.)
why not both!
The final fallacy is that Donald Trump is a Republican. He is not.
Johnathan Last apparently wishes DJT was not a (R). If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
90+ percent of (R)’s approve of Trump. If he isn’t a (R) I’m not sure what “being a (R)” means.
When NationsBank bought Bank of America, it took on the name. But the management was entirely from Nations Bank and the place was then run their way. The label said BofA, but it simply wasn’t the same company any more.
Same thing with the GOP since Trump. The optimists may think they can purge the Trump management and rebuild. But the rot may be too deep for that to work.
So if it hasn’t happened regularly yet, the right thing to do is just give up on it?
Not just a question of “regularly.” It only happens very occasionally. And of course we shouldn’t give up on it, but neither should we have the kind of hopes for it Democrats had this year.
I’d think you’d look at, for example, Georgia and say something more like “Here’s what we have to do to finally make this happen.”
Sure. Find NC’s Stacey Abrams, and then take its Black population from 22% to 31%.
The Republicans are an interesting take on the Ship of Theseus problem
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
If the replacement parts were all cheap knockoffs. But don’t worry, Repubs are still the party of Lincoln, at least according to the president (but only for the next 64 days)
Actually, has anyone made a countdown clock to the inauguration that could be posted all over the web?
90+ percent of (R)’s approve of Trump. If he isn’t a (R) I’m not sure what “being a (R)” means.
right, since 95% of Republicans approve, that means Trump’s a Republican. but Last wants to keep the old definition of Republican alive and say that the GOP is now a party of Trumpism. and that everyone trying to keep the old Republican party alive are going to fail because the GOP no longer cares about policy. its only concern is racial and social grievance.
anyway. i always love reading about how the GOP killed itself.
Is the GOP a lich? If so, where is the phylactery?
possibly a lich. i was thinking more of a ghoul – it resembles what it used to be, but now it shambles around, killing and consuming people in order to survive.
Lovecraftian ghouls* are actually quite likable (apart from their eating habits). Childlike, playful, even adopting abandoned children.
Plus, they don’t kill but feast on the already dead. His metaphorical ghouls (type: Rats in the Walls) are a different matter.
*in particular in ‘The Dreamquest for unknown Kaddath’, HPL’s longest single work.
Lindsey Graham is a Lovecraftian dick:
tee hee:
And here’s Raffensperger’s response
For those here who think the GOP is beyond possible reform, keep in mind that once you get past the Senators and Governors there are still Republican officials who can say “Integrity, in this office, matters.” and obviously mean it.
with any luck, the death threats will convince him to take his integrity to a party that can use it for good.
It’s the 90% of corrupt MAGAt Republicans that give the others a bad name, it’s true.
Raffensperger’s response
I wonder if Rule of Law includes prosecuting Republicans for electoral crimes.
it is nice that Republicans are looking at the various voting processes and coming to the conclusion that it’s all a giant mess.
maybe they’ll back some process reform (as long as the Dems can trick them into thinking it was their own idea, of course)
90+ percent of (R)’s approve of Trump.
And even our own conservatives here (not counting wj, naturally), think (McKinney) “he is beclowning himself and should have been impeached” (haven’t checked exact quote), or (Marty) that he has not trashed the norms and institutions of the US any more than anybody else, particularly Obama, and hasn’t handled Covid-19 worse than anybody else. I wonder what those two Trump-haters think of the beclowning, non-norm-trashing, and Covid-19 tackling now?
All snark aside, I do think that the destruction of the concept of truth and facts, as well as affecting those two, is now so entrenched that russell is right: it is hard to see what on earth can be done to start putting it right.
I wonder what those two Trump-haters think of the beclowning, non-norm-trashing, and Covid-19 tackling now?
they think liberals are always worse about everything therefore anyone who says anything bad about a Republican is a filthy hypocrite.
/just guessing
Speaking of ghouls, Ghouliani wants $20K a day to represent the tRump campaign. Is it grifting the grifter, or is there some kind of kick-back whereby tRump personally receives campaign donations after laundering them through counsel?
Maybe Rudi figures, what will all the other Trump attorneys bailing out, he’s got a seller’s market.
The Wayne County, MI (Detroit) elections board has refused to certify the county results, splitting along party lines. This is apparently not that unusual.
If it’s not that unusual, how do they usually resolve it?
Since presumably at some point they have to produce some kind of results for the local races. And it would be really tricky to argue convincingly** that the results for those were OK, but the results off the same ballots were wrong for the higher level races.
** Not the plausibility seems to be a factor with some of these folks this year.
I see that “The Trump campaign has claimed in a federal suit that GOP observers witnessed irregularities in the ballot count — allegations that city officials have vigorously denied.” It will be fascinating to see what happens when they are in court, and are required to testify under penalty of purjury. I’m betting that, at lost, they will claim someone was rude to them at some point. That being the usual pattern; followed the the judge laughing them out of court.
“at lost” => “at most” sigh
And sometimes, good sense prevails
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/17/shelton-fed-mcconnell/
If it’s not that unusual, how do they usually resolve it?
It goes up to the state board, who (so far as I can tell) is required by statute to certify something with very little ability to change the numbers. My impression is the whole thing is set up to allow local officials to grandstand.
Amusingly — well, sort of — the Trump campaign has been challenging Michigan’s numbers based on the absentee ballots. The Republicans on the Wayne County board are fussing about discrepancies in the in-person voting.
Rudy’s cunning plan is to set up Trump with an appeal for “ineffective assistance of counsel”.
If it works, the courts would have to throw out Trump’s conviction and re-try him.
Gotta give ’em credit, they’re thinking ahead.
The Wayne County, MI (Detroit) elections board has refused to certify the county results, splitting along party lines
This, as I understand, has been reversed. Don’t ask me anything more about it.
Balls and strikes…
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/cheri-beasley-paul-newby-north-carolina-supreme-court-recount-racism.html
maybe it isn’t the awesome Dem policies that flipped GA. maybe it was Trump’s awesome electoral strategy.
I’ve been more or less out of action for several days, so may have missed if somebody else linked this, but I think it’s an interesting analysis and goes to whether Trump is pursued for criminal activity after his presidency, whether by the US, or in this case, by us:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/11/we-asked-finance-experts-to-explain-trumps-odd-business-methods-in-scotland-they-were-mystified/
Partisan courts are a horrible idea in the first place (one which the Republican legislature in North Carolina voted for).
A 6-1 liberal majority in North Carolina is as bad, in a smaller way, as a 6-3 Federalist Society majority on the Supreme Court.
Depending on what ‘liberal’ means in that context. These days judges that Republicans could have nominated not that long ago (or even did) now are considered liberal because the ‘conservatives’ moved to the right in ways that the above-mentioned GOPistas would have seen as beyond the pale.
But judicial activism (in its original sense, not just ‘decisions I don’t like’) is indeed bad whether it is from the left or right.
As Hartmut notes, lots of quite conservative judges get labeled (denounced) as “liberal” these days. Just like the extremely conservative Georgia Secretary of State. For some people, actually following the letter of the law is unacceptable (=liberal).
I note that in the article, what the so-called conservative NC Supreme Court judge was objecting to was the other justices following the law as written. And then, when it was changed, declining to apply it ex post facto to cases already in progress. Either he doesn’t care about the law (not good in a judge at any level) or he should have flunked out of law school.
Back to the original topic here.
I think this NYT piece does a surprisingly fair minded job presenting the problems Democrats have in uniting. This is the discussion people should have been having four years ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/opinion/biden-democrats-moderate-progressive.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Fun!
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1328796478924611588
Their honesty and sincerity in publicly supporting Trump’s tantrums is most impressive.
Some of the people in the comment section of my NYT link are really depressing to me.
I have been critical of Defund the police as a slogan and even of the Green New Deal as a slogan because I think that in the majority of cases, including these two, bumper sticker slogans do not advance substantive debate and also, they often do more harm for the cause than they help, I could go on, but am not especially interested in arguing it further.
But I am really tired of the centrist assumption that their views are automatically the epitome of both practical politics and sound common sense on policy. Something like the Green New Deal is necessary to confront climate change and police really do need drastic reform. We can’t keep screwing around on this. ( Both issues.) One can maybe think about better ways to argue the point, and that’s where I think one think carefully before printing bumper stickers, but IMHO the centrist attitude is not fact based in the way they imagine. At most they are experts on their own knee jerk reactions to poorly chosen slogans, but they have no deep insights into correct policy merely because they are moderates and can recite the standard moderate sounding slogans.
But I am really tired of the centrist assumption that their views are automatically the epitome of both practical politics and sound common sense on policy.
not many pundits think their preferred solutions are impossible or illogical.
“Something like the Green New Deal is necessary to confront climate change and police really do need drastic reform.”
Actually neither is true. Both are issues that need to be addressed with practical long term solutions. There is no evidence that frantic, overreactive solutions are required.
So it’s really not the slogan that’s the problem. It’s the overreaction the slogan represents that is the problem. The slogan, in both cases, accurately reflects a poor policy. I think they should be used as a means to force discussions on the merits, and they are.
Voting blocks are becoming more fragmented.
Growing numbers of minorities are deciding that they don’t want their race or ethnicity to be their identification. Much less their primary one.
Political power is becoming easier to get and harder to keep. Just ask Donald Trump.
There is no evidence that frantic, overreactive solutions are required.
imma listen to scientists on this. the anti-science, anti-expertise party has no place at the table.
It’s the overreaction
what does an appropriate long term solution to climate change look like?
same question for police reform.
DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY is a common motif in the media. So common that you can hardly call it news. Know what WOULD be major news? Headlines like:
GOP SPLIT OVER TRUMP TANTRUMS
McConnell’s Leadership Threatened
REPUBLICAN IDENTITY CRISIS
Populist or Authoritarian?
PARTY OF LINCOLN SECEDES FROM GOP
Marty Faces Tough Choice
–TP
the GOP is literally killing people with their anti-science, anti-expertise bullshit.
so, no, fuck no, they get no seat at the table.
the GOP is literally killing people with their anti-science, anti-expertise bullshit.
It feels really horrible to be thinking, “Well, with any luck they are killing more of themselves than they are of everybody else.” yet I am. Except, of course, there’s no guarantee that things will work out that way.
There is no evidence that frantic, overreactive solutions are required.
OK, point taken, let’s all oppose frantic overreaction.
Now, what are we going to do about climate change. Just to remind you, the problem so far is that the Republican Party has refused to doing anything about it, denying the science on the grounds that, er, well the actual grounds are that there are votes in telling people there’s no need to do anything inconvenient.
And they’re enabled by people like Marty who believe, and reproduce here, ridiculous Republican talking points which he could disprove for himself if he could be bothered to look up the facts.
Still, never mind. We can always get a new planet.
the free market will sort it out. it has humankind’s best interests at heart.
If you want to have a climate change discussion I am good with that. But bring facts, not the Dem fear mongering to get votes. And I will engage when things like potential outcomes are presented with probabilities and confidence levels over multiple studies.
It is not denying science to discuss policy in terms of mist likely outcomes that have high confidence levels while recognizing that the worst case could happen and having a plan for that.
We, just the US, are constantly being asked to set our public policy using worst case pretty unlikely outcomes.
I believe what I read in the studies, that was about three years ago.
And no, I dont have a link to disprove your Dem talking point that was presented with no evidence.
I could get on board with this.
I will engage when things like potential outcomes are presented with probabilities and confidence levels over multiple studies.
I’ll take that with a grain or two of salt, but here you go…..
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/
Does that at least mean Marty doesn’t think climate change (anthropogenic global warming, really) isn’t a Chinese hoax or just a way for grifting climate scientists to get all that grant lucre? Does that at least mean Marty can imagine that you don’t have to ruin the economy by employing people to build the infrastructure for renewable energy (instead of, say, to dig for coal and drill for oil)? Which studies does Marty believe from 3 years ago? The credible ones, or the fossil-fuel industry-funded ones?
is, not isn’t, a Chinese hoax, et cetera and so forth.
Interesting Politico article on Florida.
From what I can understand, the left/right argument amongst Democrats there is pretty well irrelevant to their defeat (though it still seems to be in full flow).
The real problem seems to be a dire lack of leadership and organisation on the ground.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/18/florida-democrats-meltdown-437113
… This year, the lack of embedded community organizing hampered the party’s ability to push back at Republican branding that proved brutally effective, even after Michael Bloomberg dumped $100 million in the state to defeat Trump.
“Given the fact every Hispanic voter is either directly or indirectly gone through their own experience as a victim of a socialist or communist regime, the potency around the branding of a political party as the second coming of socialism or communism in the United States is very effective,” Miami-based pollster Fernand Amandi said….
The Republican line, even if you’re talking the left of the party, is pretty well 100% bullshit, but it seems to have dominated the election.
I don’t know how the Democrats remedy this, but arguing about whom to blame isn’t it.
And in any event, they should all zip it until the Georgia runoffs are done.
Well bobbyp, I found the studies credibke, and I didn’t question their relative accuracy. I had to smile at this line in the article:
“Moreover, after accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other factors that drive climate, the number increased to 14. ”
The models aren’t really the question, the inputs and outcomes are. Several years ago there was a big to do about climate scientists agreeing on a study of studies and 90% of 2500 of them agreed or some such number.
So I spent a day going through all the numbers and notes, etc. And learned three things.
The headline outcome had a very low probability with a lower confidence level. The 2509 authors that supposedly all agreed with this were really the 125 they had been able to contact. And third, no one gave a shit what the studies really said.
I never have doubted there is climate change. It would be ridiculous to imagine humans aren’t contributing to it. It is not realistic or rational to set public policy based in the worst case potential outcome, but if we had a realistic discussion the ultimate outcome, which we are seeing today, is that the private sector will accelerate the transition from fossil fuels better than the government.
the private sector will accelerate the transition from fossil fuels better than the government.
Fine with me. As long as it gets done, I don’t really care who does it.
So far what you’ve brought to the discussion are:
Which all seem, to me, to be assertions about people who you disagree with politically, but which don’t really put much on the table as far as an actionable plan.
You’ll “engage when things like potential outcomes are presented with probabilities and confidence levels over multiple studies”, but you offer nothing along those lines.
So, we are left with:
Democrats suck. Private sector better.
Which is not really a conversation about climate change.
Are there specific policies that the (D)’s are advocating that you think are not well-taken? What are they? What would be a better alternative?
Marty: It would be ridiculous to imagine humans aren’t contributing to it.
Lots of Republican politicians, not to mention right-wing bloviators, must have ridiculous imaginations, then.
… the ultimate outcome, which we are seeing today …
“Today” and “ultimate” might be compatible under some End Times theology, but otherwise I do not understand Marty’s grammar here.
… the private sector will accelerate the transition from fossil fuels better than the government.
This could be a simple ideological premise, or it could be an empirical truth supported by evidence available to everybody. So, what’s Marty’s evidence? Serious question, not rhetorical.
I’ve asked this question before: will American GDP in 2120 be higher, or lower, if “the government” leaves global warming mitigation entirely to “the private sector”? I’m asking it of Marty specifically this time.
–TP
the private sector will accelerate the transition from fossil fuels better than the government.
it’s not either / or. government can help get the technology moving. because the fossil fuel industry has little incentive to transition as long as fossil fuels make them money. they can dabble in renewables because it gives them good PR. but there’s no way they’re going to leave cheap oil in the ground as long as someone is willing to buy it. are we supposed to wait for the supply to get low enough that oil can no longer compete with renewables?
if we had a realistic discussion the ultimate outcome, which we are seeing today, is that the private sector will accelerate the transition from fossil fuels better than the government.
Why will it? What mechanism will operate to accomplish this? You can’t just assert this out of some sort of blind faith in “the market.”
Where the market works it is possible to identify what makes it work – the various incentives faced by participants. Here?
Right now the incentives look perverse. Why not keep on using fossil fuels if you don’t bear all the costs? One thing government needs to do is rationalize that. Carbon tax, Marty?
the private sector will accelerate the transition from fossil fuels better than the government.
The private sector does a far better job of transporting goods around the country than the government would. Which doesn’t change the fact that they use the government-built Interstate Highway System to do it.
Or, to go back another century, private companies built the railroads which tied the country together. But they could do it because the government not only gave them the land for the right-of-way, but half of the square miles adjacent to the track on either side. Free gift, which they could sell for whatever they could get for it.
“accelerating the transition” from fossil fuels is going to require the same kinds of government interventions in the private sector as those bits of infrastructure did.
the fossil fuel industry has little incentive to transition as long as fossil fuels make them money
Hansen first spoke to Congress about climate change in 1988. 32 years ago.
The book value of the fossil fuel companies mostly represents oil that is in the ground, and which they have the right to pump out of the ground. They have zero incentive to leave it there. More accurately, they have an incentive, measurable in many billions of dollars, to NOT leave it there.
How long do we wait for market forces to stop incentivizing the extraction and burning of fossil fuels?
Marty—
What Bernard and others have said.
I would be happy to listen to free market solutions, but the incentives have to be there and environmental pollution is an economics textbook example of a negative externality that the free market ignores unless one imposes ( via government) the incentive to deal with it. It can be a carbon tax. I was reading about carbon taxes recently, There are several problems in deciding how big they need to be and one of them is in trying to calculate the probability of a truly catastrophic event. What sort of tax do you impose to prevent a ten percent chance of the collapse of civilization, for instance?
And no debate is occurring because there is a worthless political party that has decided climate change is part of the culture war, so it is their duty to deny it is happening.
there is a worthless political party that has decided climate change is part of the culture war, so it is their duty to deny it is happening.
if only there was some other analogous situation that we could point to to reinforce this point!
https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/
How long do we wait for market forces to stop incentivizing the extraction and burning of fossil fuels?
75%-seriously: when there are too few customers for oil that the oil companies can’t stay in business. and the easiest way to get there is to kill everyone who drives. GCC will do that.
the private sector will accelerate the transition from fossil fuels better than the government.
What Donald said.
The private sector is (absent market power and monopoly-topic for another day) for the most part just fine responding to price signals.
But in this case, the price signals are wrong. As long as all cost externalities are not incorporated into that industry’s cost structure, it will not happen “faster” or “better”.
The result is a supply curve for coal, oil, and natural gas that shows “too much” supply at any given market price, cetirus paribus. The true “equilibrium price” should be much higher, but that would result in less demand, less output and lower profits to the industry…hence the incentive to resist all attempts to correct what is essentially, as the science shows, a market failure.
Market failure is something that cannot be solved by the free interaction of buyers and sellers when huge cost implications can simply be ignored by market participants.
This also points to the obvious fact that effectively addressing climate change is essentially a political problem, not an economic problem.
Anthropogenic climate change: The mother of all collective action problems.
Note the absence in the above of the following terms: “free”, “prices”, “markets”, or “capitalism”
also “rights”, “freedom”, “tyranny” and “Dmes are poopyheads”
if you want a mournful laugh, go read about libertarians and negative exernalities.
hint: ME > you
“mordant chuckle” would have been better, for those of you who remember the wayback times when bob somerby [his capitalization] was essential.
And no, I dont have a link to disprove your Dem talking point that was presented with no evidence.
Marty, if you’re referring to the same exchange as I was, you said:
The climate accords required levels of sacrifice from us demanded of literally no one else in the world
To which I replied:
The US pledged in the Paris accords to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26% by 2025 compared with 2005 (which would be about a 9% reduction from 1990). The EU pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 compared with 1990.
This in the context that US per capita emissions are currently about double EU per capita emissions.
I didn’t provide a link because these are plain facts which are easy to look up. But this site is a registry of each country’s (and the EU’s) Nationally Determined Contribution.
I wouldn’t know if that’s a Dem talking point – I’m English. But if it is, the Dem talking point is factual.
And no, I dont have a link to disprove your Dem talking point
Personally, I’m not really all that interested in links.
You say the climate change rhetoric is too frantic and overly reactive. Police reform rhetoric, likewise.
Ok, fine.
So, with or without links, what do non-frantic and non-overly-reactive approaches to climate change and police reform look like?
Just, you know, in your own words.
It might be useful to offer cites for specific points of fact, but all I’m looking for at the moment are the high points.
Something with more detail than “the private sector will do it” would be good. The private sector will do *what*, exactly?
Regarding climate change, at the moment I see very large and highly capitalized private companies that are gonna lose a great big pile of money if they don’t pull fossil fuels out of the ground. They, and their investors, probably including me. What will persuade them to leave that stuff in the ground? Should they be persuaded to leave that stuff in the ground? If they aren’t persuaded to leave it in the ground, where does that leave us in terms of greenhouse gases?
The US subsidizes the extraction of fossil fuels to the tune of many billions of dollars a year. Should we stop doing that?
Trump wants to sell rights to extract fossil fuels from areas that have so far not been exploited, notably in the Arctic. Should we do that? Or not?
What is going to motivate all of the people who currently make their living from the extraction, distribution, and consumption of fossil fuels to do something else instead?
Relying exclusively on the private sector to make all of that happen seems, to me, to rely on somebody somehow discovering or inventing some kind of magic bean. Some remarkable innovation that provides all of the benefits we get from fossil fuels – energy density, portability, convenience – but at a sufficiently better cost to somehow make the idea of retiring all of the infrastructure and other investments we’ve currently sunk into fossil fuels seem like a very very good and profitable one.
Where’s the magic bean?
Absent the magic bean, what is going to persuade folks to walk away from all of that money?
All good questions russell. I hope to have time to get back to this today.
But it is simple. As technology drives the cost of various types of energy down so they are a realistic option, those options are being leveraged to compete in the marketplace at an accelerated rate.
New coal plants are being cancelled, the percentage of companies working to be carbon neutral is accelerating and the race for a fleet of zero carbon vehicles is well underway.
Perhaps one of the more telling market indicators is the difference in how various oil companies are valued. Exxon is the one large oil company that is almost entirely committed to ride out its oil reserves with little investment in alternative energy businesses. Its stock lags almost everyone in the industry as investors look to companies that are investing in a growing business model rather than running out clock. This is accelerating investment in broader energy alternatives in lots of related industries.
I will try to find a link that discusses this, too.
I’d say there’s no opposition here to purely private-sector solutions to climate change. What people are expressing is skepticism, or so it seems to me. I, personally, would love to be wrong in being skeptical of the idea that the market will work this out all by itself. I’d run through the streets naked, alternately chugging champagne and singing “Hallelujah!” if that were to happen.
Also, too, Marty, you’re commie for admitting that climate change is real. ;^)
a!
As technology drives the cost of various types of energy down
and the government can, and should (must!), do what it can to help those technologies.
we simply can’t wait for ‘the market’, which literally has no goal beyond increasing profits, to end up in the right place.
As technology drives the cost of various types of energy down
and the government can, and should (must!), do what it can to help those technologies.
Technology is *a* factor in the cost equation. But it’s not the only one; perhaps not even the main one. Think “oil depletion allowance,” for example.
To level the playing field, I can see two choices. 1) We can eliminate all the subsidies (both direct and in the tax code) for coal, oil, gas, etc. But that’s a bit hard on those who, in good faith, made investment decisions based on what the law currently is. Or,
2) We can add some kind of new subsidies for the new technologies, just to get them a fair shake. That’s tricky, in that it can miss new technologies that the government hasn’t thought of yet. And I’d hope that they’d include sunset provisions (and clauses sunsetting the subsidies for traditional energy sources in parallel) — just to back government out of the whole arena.
I’d say there’s no opposition here to purely private-sector solutions to climate change. What people are expressing is skepticism, or so it seems to me.
This is pretty much where I’m at. Including the part about running around naked and chugging champagne.
This is sort of optimistic. But this makes me skeptical.
Long story short, I don’t see an either/or.
Most of the innovation is probably going to come from the private sector. The feds will probably make some contributions in terms of basic science, but actually applying that to create practical solutions tends to happen in the private sector.
But we’re not really close to replacing fossil fuels at this point, especially for transportation and industrial applications. As far as I can see. And there is a really huge amount of money that will be left on the table if we don’t pull all of that stuff out of the ground – I don’t see purely market forces providing a sufficient disincentive there.
The path of least resistance, across many dimensions, is to extract oil and gas out of the ground and burn it up. Some motivation is needed to make basically everybody do the harder thing. That isn’t something markets are particularly good at, as far as I can tell.
Both AOC and you miss the point.
The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is not incompetent, it is corrupt and malicious.
For every dollar spent on media buys, the consultants get a percentage.
Every time you use the DCCC mailing list, NGP-VAN gets a fee.
If you run a grass roots campaign, and you work smart, the CD consultants, and their friends in the DCCC, DSCC, and DNC make less money.
Their perfect candidate is Gil Cisneros, whose only qualification was that he literally won the lottery, and won in 2018, but lost this year.
The consultants don’t care, they get their vigorish.
Go back to Dean’s 50 state strategy, which devolved money and other resources to away from DC, because even if the locals are incompetent (Florida) they are not thieves.
US Electricity Generation by Energy Source (%), 1949 to 2019: Source: Energy Information Administration
what an exciting graph ! 🙂
sucks that 60+% of our electricity is still non-renewable. and most importantly, nobody changed to gas because coal was bad for the environment, gas is just cheaper right now.
The Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal is to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, and to try to keep limit it to 1.5 degrees above.
To achieve this, each country or group of countries commits (in a non-binding way) to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions which it decides for itself (its Nationally Determined Contribution).
According to all plausible projections, the combined NDCs are inadequate to meet the 2 degree target.
The USA’s NDC is particularly feeble, and has not been kept to – one promise Trump did keep was to ratchet up the damage the USA causes to the environment.
This is the context in which Marty wrote in another thread of the “levels of sacrifice from us demanded of literally no one else in the world”. And wrote in this thread of “frantic overreactive solutions”.
Marty speaks of free markets: personally I have no problem at all with governments regulating and taxing externalities, then standing clear and letting a free market find the best solutions. I do have a big problem with the Republican version of “free markets”, which means the government giving money to their rich friends.
I do have a big problem with the Republican version of “free markets”, which means the government giving money to their rich friends.
Well stated.
@russell: Yeah, the electric grid is actually the low-hanging fruit. The follow-on step of electrifying everything is going to be painful.
@cleek: Keep in mind that the US has three almost entirely independent power grids, each with its own fuel mix and distribution problems. Nuclear is an eastern thing. Texas has been more than 50% natural gas for a long time. Hydro has as big a share in the West, or some years bigger, as nuclear has in the East.
…I have no problem at all with governments regulating and taxing [negative] externalities, …
Does that include renewable energy negative externalities? It certainly has some.
levels of sacrifice from us demanded of literally no one else in the world
The most popular vehicles in the US are, in order:
Climate change is on track for putting some parts of the world underwater. Literally.
I’m not sure that we’re measuring “levels of sacrifice” with the same yardstick in all places.
Does that include renewable energy negative externalities? It certainly has some.
I’d be interested in what you think those are. I mean specifically the ones within an order of magnitude or two of those of non-renewable ones. (Always up for learning something new.)
Tax fossil carbon at source. A flat tax of $X/kilomole of carbon atoms mined, pumped, or imported, to be collected from the extractor or importer.
Distribute the proceeds, monthly, to all breathing humans in the US on a per-capita basis. No means testing, or sliding scale, or any of that “socialist tyranny” stuff.
Let The Free Market decide how to distribute the “incidence” of the tax; let individual humans decide how to spend their own personal dividend.
Set the tax rate at whatever $X is predicted to reduce CO2 emissions by whatever Y% you want to target. The prediction will be wrong. So, raise or lower the tax rate (and therefore the per-capita dividend) next year — after the MAGAts and sane people both have become accustomed to the monthly dividend.
Pop some corn, and watch the fun as McConnell and his ilk argue to their “base” that its dividends must be cut because poor Exxon can’t afford to pay the $X tax and Y% is not important anyway because it’s snowing in December so where is that so-called global warming now, huh? At least some of the “base” will only hear the part about McConnell wanting to cut their dividends. Like I say, fun.
–TP
Depending on what renewable energy source we talk of, there are some negative externalities, some more problematic than others. Biofuel needs land to grow the plants which either comes out of the land used for food production or as of yet unused nature (e.g. rain forests). In Africa there have been cases were land with good soil got diverted to oil plants (profitable) from subsistance agriculture (not profitable) forcing the poor to ever poorer soil.
The production of batteries and high yield solar cells needs raw materials mined in environmentally unfriendly ways and employs lots of hazardous chemicals. This is externalised by mining and producing elsewhere where the standards are lower (it’s usually not our own backyard where rare earths are mined and not the local river poisoned by the runoff of both the mines and the factories.).
No comparision to the moonscape* left by e.g. tar sand surface mining or mountain top removal for coal but not to be ignored either.
So, yes, there are negative externalities that have to be dealt with but, as of yet, a significantly lower scale.
I am not talking about people not liking the sight of wind turbines or solar farms (the latter at least can be put into deserts where it offends few people aesthetically).
*actually the moon looks more friendly and probably smells less bad.
All forms of energy use have negative externalities,which is why some urge “ degrowth”
If people dislike the Green New Deal even when explained, they will absolutely hate this. Unfortunately if the degrowth people are right, facts don’t care about our feelings or political pragmatism in any of its essentially narcissistic manifestations. I hope the degrowth people are wrong. ( And yes, I know about Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. But exponential growth is what it is.)
https://cepr.net/stability-without-growth-keynes-in-an-age-of-climate-breakdown/
Nickel’s concluding argument
https://cepr.net/hickel-response-on-degrowth/
I think if one believes in exponential growth continuing indefinitely, you end up with some sort of SF scenario like dismantling planets to construct Dyson spheres or Matrioshka brains or alternatively, you have faster than light travel and computer gods running things as in the Cukture series. And even they either stagnate or transcend to a higher plane of existence. I guess that is what capitalism is all about. Or socialism, in the case of the Culture series.
bah. the market will never lead us to dystopia, for it is good and kind and wants only what’s best for all humanity. rest your cheek in its warm and loving hands, citizen. fear not.
rest your cheek in its warm and loving hands
Where? Where?
kind citizen, please allow me to sell you these Invisibility Detecting Glasses! only $19.95, plus $8 S/H.
If the world’s prevailing macroeconomic mindset was to seek to minimize the use of real resources needed to meet a sufficient quality of life (as opposed to standard of living) rather than simply measuring how much money gets pushed around and seeking for that to be ever greater, things would be … um, different.
As far as I can tell, the “free market” (scare quotes as a nod to Pro Bono) is incredibly wasteful. So are wars.
Looks like Jabbabonk cost himself Georgia by his scare tactics against absentee voting.
https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2020/11/20/some-friday-schadenfreude-the-voter-suppression-edition/
I think if one believes in exponential growth continuing indefinitely, you end up with some sort of SF scenario….
The problem we have is that, in the early phases, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between an exponential curve and the beginning of an S curve. And that’s before the detail that actual growth isn’t really a smooth curve anyway.
Just wanted to note in passing that the POTUS is openly trying to steal the election he just lost.
To my knowledge, no (R) at the national level has called him out on it.
It really is kind of astounding.
To my knowledge, no (R) at the national level has called him out on it.
I believe Romney and Sasse both have. Which is a pathetically small number, certainly.
https://mobile.twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1329595108078063619
When Tucker Carlson isn’t buying your crazy conspiracy delusion any more, it’s time to admit you’ve lost.
it truly is.
not a peep. not a sideways glace. they just enable him.
i’m sure some would like to stand up and tell him to STFU, but they’re too terrified of the lunatic GOP base. sucks to be everybody.
i know people think i’m being hyperbolic when i say the GOP is a cult; but every day they find a new way to demonstrate that it’s true.
say, what’s the GOP-controlled Senate doing these days?
they’re pushing hydroxychloroquine?
i’m sure they also have tons of great ideas about climate change, too. i can’t wait to hear them.
When Tucker Carlson isn’t buying your crazy conspiracy delusion any more, it’s time to admit you’ve lost.
sounds like he’s still on-board with the idea that there were problems in Detroit and Philly – he mentions them at the very end of that clip. he just doesn’t buy the computerized vote switching stuff.
he’s an odd duck, though.
It really is kind of astounding.
Yup. And I wonder whether any of the people shouting about what a threat the Dems/Biden are to the American way of life have stopped to consider how this unprecedented behaviour after the election is an unprecedented threat to the American way of life (which after all has always included plenty of racism etc, but demonisation of the press and refusing to accept the results of an election are new).
Actually, I don’t wonder. Anybody who was capable of voting for DJT after the last three years, and who believes this crap, is clearly incompetent to look at anything at all within a historical context.
I believe Romney and Sasse both have.
Noted.
That leaves 51 (R) Senators and whatever number of House Reps. Also governors, state legislators, etc.
It’s despicable.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has gone at least as far as saying the Trump administration should be working with the Biden people “to ensure a smooth transition.”
not even close to good enough.
It’s despicable.
not even close to good enough.
Both true. But unlike the Trumpists, we aspire to accuracy.
i know people think i’m being hyperbolic when i say the GOP is a cult
I’d say the (R) at the national level and probably most levels at this point meets the dictionary definition of a cult of personality.
The national party didn’t even have a platform in this election cycle. I don’t mean they had a bad platform, I mean they literally had no platform. What they had was “we support Trump” and oh yeah, whatever we said in 2016.
No analysis, non policy statements, no discussion of issues, no programs, no proposals. Their platform was DJT should be POTUS again.
Cult is accurate.
It’s despicable.
It’s a crime.
Lock him up.
Cult is accurate.
At the national level (with a couple possible exceptions as noted), yes. And for a huge chunk of their voting base (although exactly how much is unclear, at least to me), also yes.
But the behavior of actually quite a large number of Republican local (and in some cases state) officials suggests that there are also a lot of Republicans, specifically Republican office holders, who still have values which trump Trump. You may intensely dislike their political/ideological views. But they clearly draw the line at violating the law, or their oaths of office, for Trump. Unlike the vast majority of Republican members of Congress.
It’s a crime.
legality is moot when nobody will enforce the law.
there are also a lot of Republicans, specifically Republican office holders, who still have values which trump Trump
i invite them to rise up and smack Trump down.
The people in this piece are definitely cultists. One calls Trump the greatest patriot who ever lived and can’t conceive of him being a con man.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-republican-voters-no-way-120755031.html
i invite them to rise up and smack Trump down.
The 10% (at most) who will do that are to be commended. Too bad that I can’t vote for any of them because I don’t like what they want for the country.
As to the Trumpies, we actually need to figure out what to do. I saw this thing from a commenter on LGM. Time is of the essence.
It’s hard for me to take the initiative to get motivated without others to help me along. What do you all think? Sitting around shouldn’t actually be an option right now, but getting off my butt is quite difficult. Depression, lack of faith in an outcome, COVID. All of these things are working against mobilizing. I need a jolt.
i invite them to rise up and smack Trump down.
They’re doing exactly that. Saying that there was NO election fraud. And that anyone who claims there was (i.e. Trump and his toadies) is not just wrong but doing harm to the nation.
As to the Trumpies, we actually need to figure out what to do.
And, from Donald’s cite:
And:
And
You know what? Rudy Giuliani *is* crazy. He is out of his freaking mind.
I’m not going to spend any more time figuring out what to do about Trump supporters. They live in their own world. If the first guy wants to come to where I live and try to shoot me, then I guess I’ll get a gun and shoot him first.
Other than that, I got nothing.
I’m tired of talking about Trump supporters and what it will take to get them to change their minds. Nothing will make them change their minds. If reality doesn’t do it, nothing I have to say is going to make a dent.
Out-vote them until they die off. That’s all I got.
I’m tired of the public discourse being dominated by people who live in a fucking fantasy land. Enough already with the interviews with “salt of the earth” folks who get their reality from vendors of insane tin foil hat propaganda machines and who couldn’t pass a 7th grade civics exam if their lives depended on it. Enough expeditions to quaint diners where “the waitress remembers your order”.
The waitresses remember your order where I live, too. Big fucking deal.
These people need to educate themselves. They need to get their heads the hell out of whatever QAnon puke funnel they’re hooked up to, and maybe expose themselves to a bigger world. They need to get over their freaking pathological fear of people in the “big cities”, who are just trying to get through their lives just like they are.
Or, not. Whatever.
In any case, I can’t do any of that for them. It’s up to them.
I should probably have explained the link I offered.
It’s a playbook on what we should actually do. It’s divided into parts, and the first part is obsolete – it’s about the election, and that’s over.
The second part is what to do when the election results are rejected by Trump & Co.
Please give it a look through (and, yeah, I haven’t actually read the whole thing either). I would suggest looking at Part II, Strategies to Respond.
I am going to be looking at that, maybe doing a summary for friends, and sending it on.
(There was a twitter thread related to this, and possibly a New Yorker article. If I happen to find those things, I will put them up in a comment.)
Thanks.
As to the Trumpies, we actually need to figure out what to do.
I have the unsettling feeling that I’m on a roll for long time horizons here. Sigh.
But the real answer is: we wait for Trump to die. Just that, nothing more. Certainly his kids don’t have his deft hand for scamming the marks. And I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone among the Republican Senators and Governors (i.e. the obvious possible future candidates) who does either.
Without their Dear Leader, the Trumpies fragment and become much less of a threat.
I think there are a range of Trump voters and not all of them seriously believe that crackpot stuff, though many will say they think Trump was cheated because it is what they are supposed to think. Fred Clark ( the slacktivist blogger who writes about the bad side of white evangelical culture) says they embrace all kinds of things, but don’t seriously believe it. Back when I was evangelical, the Abortion = Holocaust claim bugged me. We couldn’t possibly really believe it. A tiny handful do— they bomb clinics or at the very least devote their lives to protest. Or alternatively you could say that most of us ( now looking at myself) are too comfortable to act on our alleged beliefs. Clark and others have also described how evangelicals became hardline anti abortion— this only happened a few decades ago and was not as you might think simply a reaction to Roe.
Which is tangential, but my point is that most people say they believe something extreme, but it has zero effect on how they behave. Except for a handful, some of whom are dangerous.
Most Trump voters are just Romney voters with absolutely no standards. I don’t think they can be reached except maybe many will gradually admit Biden won. And a few of them might become never Trumpers, though at this stage that should have happened by now.
The subset that could conceivably be reached would be the white working class who feel betrayed by the loss of manufacturing. Maybe you reach them with centrist blue dog Democrats or maybe you reach them with people like Sanders ( who I think gets respect from a lot of working class people) or maybe Fetterman. ( Not that Sanders will run again.). You might reach a few. But mainly I think people in that category should be helped because it is the right thing to do, even if they won’t vote for you.
There are also the Hispanic Trump voters. Personally I don’t care about the Miami Cubans but if some conservative Democrat can win them over in local elections, fine, But Democrats should be able to win back working class Hispanic voters in Texas. Something went wrong there.
This isn’t about reaching Trump voters. We’re in a cold war with Trump voters. This is about doing something now to get Biden in office without Trump further sabotaging whatever it is he might be able to do, given that he probably won’t be able to get his own legislation passed unless we get GA’s senators.
This is about getting him to STFU right now, and making him stop. It’s about mitigating whatever damage he’s going to do in the next two months.
It’s urgent that we stop this now, that we get what’s happening, and rise to the challenge. The Republicans want us dead.
“ Personally I don’t care about the Miami Cubans”
Fleshing that out, I wish I could remember who wrote the recent nyt opinion piece I mentioned recently, where the writer explained that Miami Cubans remembered all the authoritarian regimes imposed on Central America and so they respected Reagan. Reagan, whose Administration defended the humans rights record of the death squad givernment in El Salvador and who personally gave his approval to the genocidal evangelical Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt. If that was an accurate representation of the opposition to authoritarianism to be found in Miami among people who hate Sanders, I would just as soon go after the votes of the white nutcases in the article I linked.
I don’t know how you would get Trump to shut up. He is President for two more months. I don’t have any good ideas on that.
I just looked for the nyt opinion piece I think I remember and found others, but not that one. The ones I found were warning before the election that Trump was stronger with Hispanics than many realized.
I don’t know how you would get Trump to shut up. He is President for two more months. I don’t have any good ideas on that.
Me neither. In point of fact, I don’t think there is anything that can be done to shut him up. Or to mitigate the damage he is going to do on this way out. About the most we can do is work out the quickest ways, after 20 January, to repair the damage. In so far as possible.
many will say they think Trump was cheated because it is what they are supposed to think.
Right.
And there is not one damned thing I can do about that.
The subset that could conceivably be reached would be the white working class who feel betrayed by the loss of manufacturing.
Or, wage labor in general.
The reason people like Bernie and Fetterman get traction with those people is that they address the concrete issues faced by those people.
Work, health care, basic financial security. Quality of life if you don’t have a lot of money.
That used to be the (D)’s territory, they’ve given too much of it up to the (R)’s.
The (R) solution is trickle down. It’s been 40 years, it ain’t trickling down
But the real answer is: we wait for Trump to die.
That’s probably about right. He has a perverse charisma that some folks respond to, and a lot of that will die with him.
If it happens before 2024, I will not complain.
I should probably have explained the link I offered.
It’s a playbook on what we should actually do.
If Trump or anything like Trump returns and manages to push things any further than Trump did this time around, I vote for shutting stuff down.
General strike, whatever. Just get in the damned way and shut it down. Turn the lights off.
My two cents.
In the meantime my suggestion is spending the next four years making sure everybody can vote.
In the meantime my suggestion is spending the next four years making sure everybody can vote.
This is going to be a difficult strategy given that R’s just won a bunch of statehouses, even overturned some, which translates into gerrymandered for R’s.
I’m for it, with whatever gas we have.
However, I suggest that we start studying alternatives right now. I’m 90% confident that Biden will take office, but similarly confident that any agenda we voted for is screwed because of R bs. Maybe there’s an alternative to me just sitting back on my couch and crying.
Time to attack, and make people pay. Somebody has put together a plan? I’m going to study it, and sign up, by Thanksgiving.
This is going to be a difficult strategy given that R’s just won a bunch of statehouses, even overturned some, which translates into gerrymandered for R’s…. I’m for it, with whatever gas we have…. However, I suggest that we start studying alternatives right now.
I have no idea about other parts of the country. I live in the land of ballot initiatives, vote by mail, and independent redistricting commissions. Regionally — the 13-state Census Bureau West — there are two states with (R) legislatures and no redistricting commission with a total of four Representatives (one with one if you include Utah’s commission, which can be overridden). Three states with an (R) legislature and vote by mail below 75% usage with four Representatives. Vote by mail and redistricting commissions are popular here on a bipartisan basis. Legislatures that ignore that face having the voters implement them by initiative.
Interesting weekend. I just did an entrance exam interview in Okinawa, and, in order to avoid Covid, I’ll be at the airport for the next three hours. Oh well.
Just wanted to say that one thing that could be done is to develop a national standard for voting That would ensure every state follow the same regulations and procedures. That would be a nice way to flush out any people who are arguing in bad faith.
…one thing that could be done is to develop a national standard for voting…
Developing a standard may be possible but legally implementing it is imo out of the question for the time being. And not just because it would require a constitutional amendment. Unless it would be a pure disenfranchisment and gerrymandering manual it would get a near 100% ‘No’ from the GOP, and a significant part of the Dem side of the political class would also not be willing to give up so much power. It’s an iron principle that first the politicians choose their voters before the latter can be allowed to choose (within limits) their representatives.
I think there is a lot of room to propose some guidelines/ steps. Election day moved to a weekend, made a national holiday, etc.
Especially those two ideas are absolute anathema. Bad enough that people get days off at all (the US are the only Western country that does not guarantee paid holidays for workers), an extra day would be poison for the economy. And anything that increases turnout is just a commie plot to steal elections from their right-ful winners. Remember: a republic, not a democracy.
I think there is a lot of room to propose some guidelines/ steps. Election day moved to a weekend, made a national holiday, etc.
Police and fire are still going to work. Hospitals and urgent care will be open. It will be almost impossible to get retail and food to close completely. Whenever the experts rank state voting systems for security, accuracy, ease of voting, etc, the top ranked states are almost always the vote by mail (plus vote centers) states. On the order of 25% of Americans already vote by mail. This year, >90% of votes in the 13-state West were mail-distributed ballots. As far as I’m concerned, voting is a solved problem, some people just don’t like it.
Registration is a much bigger issue. Inadequate resources to do ongoing maintenance. Massive voter purges. Bugs in software, eg, statewide polling book systems crash. Everyone talks about fraud in casting ballots, a problem that is vanishingly small. Too few people talk about fraud in the registration system, particularly fraud done by the election officials.
The biggest problem with mail ballots? People not remembering what their signature on file looks like. I sure don’t. Which can lead to perfectly valid ballots getting tossed.
Plus the fact that signature comparisons are seriously subjective.
The biggest problem with mail ballots? People not remembering what their signature on file looks like. I sure don’t.
How do you keep track of what things you’ve used which signatures for? Do you have a computer file somewhere with a collection of scanned signatures and lists? That’s a serious question; the idea of having different versions of my signature for different things has never occurred to me.
A couple of months back I was doing some financial thing at the bank that required me showing an actual physical Social Security card. I fetched it from the safe deposit box. I probably got it after sixth or seventh grade for some part-time job. An expert might compare it to my current signature and reject them as not matching, but they were both “Michael E. Cain” and recognizably related.
I’m 66 now, so the two signatures are separated by something over a half century.
That’s a serious question; the idea of having different versions of my signature for different things has never occurred to me.
It’s not about having different versions for different purposes. It’s more about losing detail, depending on how fast and casually I’m signing. Sometimes, most or all of the letters are distinct. At the other extreme, you can make out my initials, but otherwise it’s just a wavy line.
So, was I in a hurry at the DMV? Or was I being precise, because I remembered that the signature was going to the elections folks, too? It’s been a while, and I don’t recall.
P.S. My signature on my (ancient) Social Security card is likewise recognizably the same as my current (precise) signature. No change, . . . just less precision in many cases.
Haven’t got a whole lot of time, but thought those on ObWi who don’t routinely read the Guardian might be interested in this, by Sarah Churchwell, an American academic working in the UK. The headline is Can American Democracy Survive Donald Trump?, the person who sent it to me said there are helpful suggestions in it, and the link is:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/21/can-american-democracy-survive-donald-trump
“IWON THE ELECTION!” Donald Trump tweeted in the early hours of 16 November 2020, 10 days after he lost the election. At the same time, Atlantic magazine announced an interview with Barack Obama, in which he warns that the US is “entering into an epistemological crisis” – a crisis of knowing. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false,” Obama explains, “by definition our democracy doesn’t work.” I saw the two assertions juxtaposed on Twitter as I was finishing writing this essay, and together they demonstrate its proposition: that American democracy is facing not merely a crisis in trust, but in knowledge itself, largely because language has become increasingly untethered from reality, as we find ourselves in a swirling maelstrom of lies, disinformation, paranoia and conspiracy theories.
The problem is exemplified by Trump’s utterance, which bears only the most tenuous relation to reality: Trump participated in an election, giving his declaration some contextual force, but he had not won the election, rendering the claim farcical to those who reject it. The capital letters make it even funnier, a failed tyrant trying to exert mastery through typography. But it stops being funny when we acknowledge that millions of people accept this lie as a decree. Their sheer volume creates a crisis in knowing, because truth-claims largely depend on consensual agreement. This is why the debates about the US’s alarming political situation have orbited so magnetically around language itself. For months, American political and historical commentators have disputed whether the Trump administration can be properly called “fascist”, whether in refusing to concede he is trying to effect a “coup”. Are these the right words to use to describe reality? Not knowing reflects a crisis of knowledge, which derives in part from a crisis in authority.
However, the very fact that we need to ask this question helps answer it – for lying, paranoia and conspiracy are also defining features of the totalitarian societies to which American society’s resemblance is being so hotly contested. As Federico Finchelstein maintained in his recent A Brief History of Fascist Lies: “As facts are presented as ‘fake news’ and ideas originating among those who deny the facts become government policy, we must remember that current talk about ‘post-truth’ has a political and intellectual lineage: the history of fascist lying.”
Thanks, GftNC. That people happily embrace these blatant lies (and I say “embrace” because I don’t accept that they all “believe” them) is among the most disturbing and telling things about all of this.
An expert might compare it to my current signature and reject them as not matching, but they were both “Michael E. Cain” and recognizably related.
The problem with signatures is that they are so amenable to bad faith arguments and they need to provide a paper trail. What is happening in Wisconsin, while not directly related to questions of signature matching, just demonstrate how things that can be taken as a reasonable measure in normal times, can be weaponized
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/wisconsin-officials-trump-observers-obstructing-recount/article_8bc1128a-2682-5e64-ac46-c71ed4396072.html
At one recount table, a Trump observer objected to every ballot that tabulators pulled from a bag simply because they were folded, election officials told the panel.
Posnanski called it “prima facie evidence of bad faith by the Trump campaign.”
The problem with signatures is that they are so amenable to bad faith arguments and they need to provide a paper trail. What is happening in Wisconsin, while not directly related to questions of signature matching, just demonstrate how things that can be taken as a reasonable measure in normal times, can be weaponized
Yes. States “making it up as they go along” to do much larger VBM volumes like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia this year, are potentially subject to a bunch of signature problems. States who plan it out in advance, build infrastructure, and train their people — Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Hawaii, Utah — run tens of millions of ballots through and signatures are not a problem.
One of the reasons the VBM states get put at the top of the security evaluations is that the systems are designed so that signatures can’t be weaponized.
I have been pleasantly surprised this month and admit I was wrong two months ago. I figured that at least one of GA, NY, PA or MI was going to have an absolute disaster with their increased mail ballot efforts.
I have been pleasantly surprised this month and admit I was wrong two months ago. I figured that at least one of GA, NY, PA or MI was going to have an absolute disaster with their increased mail ballot efforts.
Happily, they generally had their disasters in the primaries. And they used the six months until the general election to fix the problems and get ready. The “deep state” at its best: focus on getting the job done, rather than exclusively on partisan advantage.
Newsnight just said that the GSA has just confirmed that the transition can now begin. Trump tweeted that it was at his behest, but Emily Murphy tweeted that she came to her decision “independently”.
The guy lies like he breathes…
Things reached the point where the head of the GSA just looks stupid if she continues to drag her feet. GA and MI have certified. Among the remaining states, Trump would somehow have to get the EC votes in enough of AZ, NV, PA, and WI to win. The Trump campaign has never had their heart in the court fight in AZ. The SCOTUS signaled today that they’re not going to overturn the PA voters. NV’s state government is solidly blue.
Minor correction: Emily Murphy does not, I believe, tweet. She touted her independent judgement in her letter to Biden. Anyway, I thank any God loitering in the vicinity.
Off topic of almost anything, the new place felt like home: cooking supper, every pan and utensil was in the first place I looked, Alexa was playing Eagles’ tunes, nothing was undercooked or burnt.
Welcome to Fort Fun, Michael. I miss it, sometimes.
and Trump is still pretending he has a chance. and his idiot followers are still following him.
it’s amazing how he never does anything without turning it into a howling shitstorm, guaranteeing that he always looks worse after its passed.
but at least he isn’t a Democrat!
Completely off topic, but I have always been curious to know where “also, too” (as often used by Snarki) comes from, but never asked. Today, I see that hilzoy tweets:
I am the sort of person who still uses Sarah Palin’s “also, too”, which for some unfathomable reason I find very funny.
Aha!
but at least he isn’t a Democrat!
I thought it was at least he’s not a Marxist…
it’s amazing how he never does anything without turning it into a howling shitstorm, guaranteeing that he always looks worse after its passed.
But it gets him looked at, which is all he really cares about.
The GOP delenda est.
That’s it, that’s the comment
I thought it was at least he’s not a Marxist…
oh lie there’s a difference.
[1200 words]
harrumph.
s/lie/like/FFS
If nothing else, they’ve made shorthand more useful.
Okay, nitpicking, but none of the editors/languages that have regular expressions for manipulating strings that I’ve tried will accept “FFS” as a qualifier. That I plugged it into a number of them probably says something about me. As I understand the distinctions, I am both a wonk and a nerd, but only borderline on geek.