Over-Generalizing

by

by wj

There have been a number of analyses of the 2020 election which comment on the fact that pre-election analyses tended to treat Latino voters as a group. When, in fact, there are a large number of groups there, with quite different world-views, experiences, etc. You’ve got descendants of Cubans who fled Fidel Castro. You’ve got economic and political refugees from Central America. You’ve got folks whose families have been here a couple of centuries, since California was a Spanish colony. The quite valid point being: if you don’t pay attention to things below the broadest generalizations, you are going to miss something significant.

The same might be said for current views (including here) of the Republican Party. No question, a lot of the GOP, especially national level politicians, have behaved appallingly. And this isn’t a sudden new turn for many of them. But that misses some details. Consider:

  • Yes, 17 GOP Attorneys General signed on to the Texas’ AG’s lunatic suit. (Rejected unanimously by a Supreme Court which is 6-3 conservative, including 3 Trump appointees. Which tells you something.) But another 9 refused to have any part of it.
  • Numerous state and local GOP election officials insisted on doing their job according to the law. Even though it meant that their preferred candidate lost. Even when their actions resulted in threats against their lives and their families.
  • And then there’s something here in California. Note that, as I’ve said before, the California GOP is actually on the leading edge of the race to insanity in the party. But there are still some sane Republicans even here. Republican Kevin Faulconer, the mayor or San Diego**, is contemplating a run for governor.

And he might well have a chance. Why? How? Well, first off he is your basic traditional moderate Republican. (An increasingly rare type, but not quite extinct.) That is, pro-choice, pro gun control, pushed for more housing services for the homeless, released San Diego’s first Climate Action Plan to address global warming, supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, etc. Which is how he got elected mayor of a blue city.

Second, California runs an open primary. Which means, to make it to the general election, all you have to do is finish in the top two – no matter what party you are in. (Mostly because, otherwise, the Democratic primary was essentially determining who got elected in most statewide races.) Typically, there will be several rwnj Republicans running, which would split that vote. So all he would need to do is be the lone sane one to have a shot at a plurality.

Of course, the critical question is, will another Democrat run against Governor Newsome? Because frankly, Newsome has done a poor job of dealing with covid-19. Better than most Republican governors (a seriously low bar), but well below the average for governors who at least took the problem seriously.

I mean, how dumb do you have to be to make a production of urging people of the state to avoid big gatherings in order to slow the spread. And then turn around that weekend and attend a party of 50+ people in the close confines of a fancy restaurant?

Plus, just to gild the lily a bit, the state Employment Development Department had been mistakenly paying out unemployment benefits to convicted murderers, and other state prisoners and local jail inmates. It’s being characterized as “the biggest fraud in California history.”

What it comes down to is, Newsome has demonstrated serious incompetence. So unless there is another Democrat running, Mayor Faulconer would be an acceptable option for lots of Californians. After all, given that both the Assembly and state Senate have veto-proof Democratic majorities, it’s not like he would be doing anything radical if in office. Well, except for possibly getting the attention of the state GOP that someone who isn’t a froth-at-the-mouth conservative can still win here.

I submit that, however much you may disagree philosophically with these folks, they are still people you could work with. Because they are actually interested in governance, and in doing what’s right for the people they represent. Someone like that, you can make a deal with and get things done. And not waste time arguing about whether the other guy is an existential threat to the future of the nation.

Open thread –- ‘cause we’re way over due for one.

** That makes San Diego the largest city in the US with a Republican mayor.

431 thoughts on “Over-Generalizing”

  2. Due to term limits restrictions, Faulconer is no longer mayor of San Diego and the genius top-two primary system coughed up two Democrats to duke it out in the final election, apparently won by the more ‘conservative’ Dem with all the sparkling endorsements (Feinstein, Newsome, Brown, Harris….an impressive list!).
    It’s good to see a rational Republican, but then…why is he a Republican? Oh, right, he vetoed a moderate minimum wage increase because it’s all about the business community uber alles.
    From what little I have gleaned, a lot of the local politics concerns land use and NIMBYism (In La Jolla, no less…I am shocked, shocked I tell you)….a terrible trait shared by the comfortable to well off in both parties.
    This is not to say “both parties are the same” because that would lead to overgeneralization pegging me in the company not only with Vladimir Lenin, but also Glenn Greenwald, which would be a terrible manifestation of this lamentable tendency. 🙂

  3. Newsome’s dining at a fancy restaurant while publicly pushing COVID restrictions is deeply appalling, and his response to the pandemic has come under a good deal of fire…..but it is most likely better than just about any GOP governor you could name.
    This is just another example of why, to me, just about any Democrat is better than any Republican in just about any and all circumstances.

  4. Thanks for the open thread, I’m having trouble finding hooks to hang them on.
    Having said that, I realize that you would like to keep that Republican brand alive, but when you have the House F**king Minority leader (and 126 more! FFS) sign on to that Trump bullshit, I think you are dealing with a lost cause. From the Grauniad
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/11/house-republicans-texas-election-lawsuit-supreme-court
    Among the 126 lawmakers who signed on to the brief is a particularly puzzling group: 19 Republican members of Congress who represent districts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin.
    Those members all appeared on the same ballot as the presidential candidates and all but one were elected under the same rules to which they are now objecting.

  5. lj, no question that, for most (but not all) Republican members of the House, hypocracy is but one of their numerous shortcomings. Both as politicians and as human beings. And their “leaders” are the worst of all.
    But my point was, once you get below that level, things are nowhere near as bad. And the further down you get, the more likely it is that you will find good people. Which means that the kind of major reformation which the GOP needs, while admittedly unlikely any time soon, does have some decent material available to work from.

  6. Oh, right, he vetoed a moderate minimum wage increase because it’s all about the business community uber alles.
    I misread something. Which had me thinking he had pushed, rather than vetoed, that minimum wage increase. Apologies for that.
    On the other hand, it was an increase over the California state minimum wage. That is, one set by the overwhelmingly Democratic state government. So it’s hard to argue that it makes him all that reactionary. Otherwise, those liberals in the state government would have raised the minimum for all of us. He just isn’t more liberal than the average Democrat in this deep blue state.

  7. I’m sure that you are right that maybe in the entire USA there might be one hundred non-fascist Republicans who are interested in governance, But the Others–by which I mean other elected R and the R voters–will make sure their careers end

  8. I feel like I need to reply with a Christmas joke, which I hope isn’t too harsh, but it is the image that pops up for me and bear in mind, it’s just teasing.
    A kid wants a pony for Christmas, and is obnoxiously vocal about it, so the parents want to teach him a lesson, and they figure that if he confronts the actual reality of what it would be like to own a pony, the kid might readjust his notions. So it is Christmas day and the parents tell him that they are going to a farm down the road. So off they go and they get to the farm and before the parents can say anything, the kid sees a massively huge pile of horseshit, jumps out of the car and immediately starts burrowing into it. His parents say ‘wait, what are you doing?’ and the kid replies, ‘if there is all this horseshit, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere!’

  10. Rod Dreher is worried that Rod Dreher’s schtick has been taken on the road going over the cliff, where his books don’t sell quite as well on account of bonfires.
    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/what-i-saw-at-the-jericho-march/
    He just wanted men and women to stick to their plumbing and those that don’t to be canceled and discriminated against like ….. forever …. since plumbing was invented and priests took it upon themselves to keep all of the fun to themselves.
    Now it’s gotten out of hand, and he can’t quite fathom how this has come about, not having read the news over the PAST 3O YEARS.
    They want to kill EVERYONE who is not them. Whodathunkit?
    I look forward to the good people, these conservatives further down to be found and to step up and take care of this problem, maybe first by moving out of conservative gerrymandered districts and voting differently and, if necessary, by showing up with the guns they normally use for doorstops, duck hunting, and imaginary and not yet attempted break-ins to their castles and pointing them at the armed conservative movement nutcases, of them, who now outnumber the normative crazy people, and yelling “STOP! or we’ll shoot!”
    Who did these conservative further down vote for that our government is now infested with insurrectionist vermin?
    They have a few weeks at best to do this, give or take, having procrastinated since, I don’t know, Rush Limbaugh left high school sports annnouncing.
    After that, I suspect, it’ll be back to generalizing about them for those us who have HAD IT.
    Heck, all the so-called Left could muster in the way of revolutionaries-turned-professional politicians back in the dank, dark 1970s after the troubles was Tom Hayden, whose main contribution to insurrectionist mayhem once in office was bedding Jane Fonda and smoking a little hash in the Capitol cloakrooms while the rest of the Left went to work on Wall Street and became vegetarians, gurus, and self-help mavens.
    Now we have flaming asshole arsonists running amok in my fucking government, which was supposed to move slowly, not swiftly backward down the drain and not at all, motherf*ckers.
    No one taught me more than my conservative family members, friends, and conservative movement stalwarts about generalizing throughout my life.
    All men are created equal. Treat everyone as an individual.
    Except two thirds of the human race.
    Yes, yes, progress has been afoot.
    But this WILL be the last reactionary uprising attempting to stand athwart progress in this country, or goddamned else, if you want a country.
    Well, the weekend is ruined stem to stern and here comes another pandemic Monday and another week of unbelievable threatening dumbassery from thugs and jagoffs.
    At least the Black Panthers handed out food and manned the clinics between bouts of fighting the conservative movement for their gun rights.
    It’s all Hillary Clinton’s fault, or Clarence Darrow’s, or Little Richard’s, or somebody’s, but I want to GO BACK to her more traditional, conventional, bog standard blockheadedness, when things were calm by comparison and HER flu was actually THE flu, despite fucking liars saying the contrary.
    I’m conservative that way.

  11. But my point was, once you get below that level, things are nowhere near as bad.
    You mean Republicans like Matt Shea?
    Admittedly, the GOP caucus stripped him of his legislative prerogatives, but not a one of these “good Republicans” would sign up to support expelling him from the Legislature. These fine people also rummaged around in the sewer and found this guy in our also lamentable “top-two” primary system to run against our beloved dictator, Jay Inslee, and like Trump, he has refused to concede that he was essentially routed overwhelmingly.

  12. You mean Republicans like Matt Shea?
    I admit I haven’t been tracking doings the state of Washington. But here, I see to my current Assembly member (Rebecca Bauer-Kahan). Who beat an incumbent moderate Republican in 2018 by running a campaign with a devotion to truth rivaling Donald Trump — and I use that comparison deliberately, because it’s accurate. But perhaps due to Trump, she won anyway.

  13. I admit I haven’t been tracking doings the state of Washington.
    Understandable. Here’s a piece on northern Idaho and what can happen when the whackadoodles take over and the “good people” are simply pushed out.
    The breathtaking natural grandeur of the region is befouled by its current politics and its feces flinging conservatives. I remember when the state elected leaders like Frank Church…alas, no more.

  14. Really fascinating article on Northern Idaho politics, bobbyp. Thank you.
    Definitely shows what happens when your political model is based on being “against.” If you’ve eliminated your traditional opposition, you have to find reasons to be against some of your own. And keep getting progressively crazier, in order to keep having people to be against.
    It’s actually what I was imagining when I suggested giving them a foreign destination to migrate to. Just because . . . why would anyone want these lunatics in any part of my country?

  15. From the Count’s link:
    Though he was puffing a bit as he talked — as I said, he is not small — he came through in the clutch, blowing two shofars at once, impressively. Then he blew a special red, white, and blue shofar made especially for You Know Who. He referred to it as the “Trump Shofar.”
    This sounds like either a scene form a Mel Brooks movie or a good reason for actual orthodox Jews to go Old Testament* on the guy (meaning parabolic movement of silicate aggregates in the high pebble or low cobble range).
    *maybe full Torah would be more appropriate given that OT is decidely not a Jewish term.

  16. go Old Testament* on the guy (meaning parabolic movement of silicate aggregates in the high pebble or low cobble range).
    Giving new (more accurately, old) meaning to the phrase “must get stoned.”

  17. It’s the 90% of awful racist fascist MAGAt Republicans that give the rest a bad name, it’s true.

  18. Having read most of the TAC piece, I find myself genuinely surprised by the depth of Dreher’s naïveté.
    He’s a 50+ year old man who’s been toiling in the conservative vineyards for most of his adult life. This is the first time he’s seen the kinds of shenanigans he describes in the piece?
    Apparently he needs to get out more.

  19. Apparently he needs to get out more.
    Yes. And he apparently is unaware that his unquestioning assumptions (which we must suppose he has been elaborating and transmitting for decades) about the evils of the “intersectional woke left” have contributed considerably to this phenomenon. It’s interesting to see the kind of wellspring from which McKinney gets his worldview (I’d never read any Dreher before, I don’t think), particularly when you are aware (as we here all should be from many previous conversations) that however much people like us decry, criticise or demur from some of the articles of faith of that so-called “intersectional woke left” it slides off the preconceptions of the McKinneys and Drehers of this world like water off the proverbial.

  20. Dreher has a history of this. He totally bought into the need to go into Iraq and years later admitted he had been wrong. I’ve been reading his blog for several years. About one post in ten ( lately more like one in a hundred) can be reasonable.
    During the Trump era he writes a book entitled “ Live not by Lies” which is about how we slide into totalitarianism when we don’t care about the truth. He is talking about transgender activism and anti racist people like Robin DiAngelo. The latter is not my favorite person, but this is the Trump era. We have a President beloved on the Right who lies like he breathes. Dreher graciously has allowed that sometimes the Right can be dishonest too. But his good pal Eric going full fascist seems to have surprised him.
    Rod is sincere— I mean that— but he has a book to sell and left wingers aren’t going to buy it. That implies I think he is a grifter but really he is just someone who fixates fanatically on left wingers who go too far. He is ny interested in lies as he sees them told by the left and so he thinks most liars are leftists. He is like the drunk who looks for his car keys across the street under the lamppost because the light is better there.
    Here is a typical Dreher view— he thinks white nationalism is a reaction to the SJW’s, as if white racism had mostly vanished and only came back because of campus radicals and corporate diversity training sessions.

  21. Since I have never read much of anything by Mr. Dreher, I thought it time to look around….an interesting and more or less sympathetic view is found here.
    The problems start, as all problems generally do, when we enter the public square.
    Enjoy your Sunday.

  22. I have gone past my free limit for the New Yorker.
    Rod is the intellectual version ( and Eastern Orthodox) of the fundamentalist who thinks Western civilization is collapsing due to moral decadence. Lately it’s been the transgender community who will bring us all to ruin, though sometimes it is Kendi and DiAngelo. But it has to be somebody.
    He wants to b thought of as a great public intellectual, but most of the time he only sees things through this narrow lens. What makes it more bizarre is that he really can be self reflective and self critical and when he is, he is good, But I have been fooled by him too much. He will write something good about how we can all be dishonest or he will write a piece about the racism in his hometown and you think that maybe this is a guy who can step outside his ideological bubble, which is a rare thing anywhere. But then it’s back to the regularly scheduled freak out about a drag queen story hour someplace and how “ soft totalitarianism” from the left is going to destroy our society and yes, right wingers can be dishonest too. He doesn’t like Trump. But because he finds certain aspects of leftism so threatening, he can’t admit to just how much dishonesty there is on the right.
    .

  23. FWIW, “soft totalitarianism” is an oxymoron. And I’ll believe in a totalitarian “woke left” when somebody is required by law to marry someone of the same gender.
    I have no real problem with conservative religious people. I have a problem with people who can’t abide the existence of people who aren’t like them.

  24. “ I wish I could add a new chapter about how we conservatives are allowing ourselves to be conquered by the same kind of unreality. We can’t look away from it, or fall back on whataboutism.”
    From Rod’s piece. That part was bull and I think he knows it. He can’t possibly be as blind to the pathologies on the right as he sometimes pretends. If he ever drove a car and listened to something on AM radio in the past few decades he knew this.
    The bit in that piece about the right being authoritarian vs the left being totalitarian brings back memories of Reagan era apologetics for supporting Salvadoran death squads. I remember seeing him say in a comment thread that slavery was authoritarian and not totalitarian.
    Anyway, enough of Rod. That piece contained both Rod at his best and also bits of Rod being an idiot.

  25. I have a problem with people who can’t abide the existence of people who aren’t like them.
    Totally agree. But I would point out that you can find that on the left as well. Even short of anyone being “required by law to marry someone of the same gender.”
    For example, I’ve come across something on Andrew Sullivan’s blog being irritated by others who are not traditional heterosexuals insisting that simple homosexuals, whether gay or lesbian, don’t really exist. https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/where-have-all-the-lesbians-gone

  27. But I would point out that you can find that on the left as well.
    Um, not.
    You might, if you delved deep into the literature of the totally marginalized tiny Trotskyite or Maoist sects that actually do exist here…none of whom, I might add, are ever provided space on the New York Times editorial page…unlike, say, Tom Cotton, or yes, Andrew Sullivan.

  28. Finding outliers on any part of the political spectrum is not difficult, the next step of identifying how much power or influence they wield is apparently much harder.
    One thing that gets short shrift in discussions of the current Unpleasantness is the large number of eligible voters who can’t be bothered. There is a long and proud tradition in these U.S. of treating politics and politicians with contempt: Menken, Twain, and Will Rogers are the go-to examples, but it’s everywhere and when in popular culture if you look. Since the end of WW II Americans have had the luxury of ignoring politics, secure in the knowledge that whoever won, the road goes on forever and the party never ends. This was the perfect environment for the Worst, full of Passionate Intensity, to take over the process in the name of saving Real America, meaning themselves. So they did. They only way out of this widening gyre is for a majority of those bored not-voters to start caring, and hope that they want to live in the real world and not Real America.

  29. One last thing about Rod—
    A really good thing about him is that sometimes his comment section has the widest range of comments you can find anywhere and some are really good. I say this as someone who got banned— I was starting to lose my temper with Rod’s own crap and openly expressing contempt. The current thread is pretty good.
    I qualified that a bit with a “ sometimes”, because there are also times when the comments are full of white nationalists and even one guy who called himself, unironically, a fascist. Rod is much quicker to ban people who get sarcastic with him than the creepy element. Still, it is educational to read the creeps, along with thoughtful people from different parts of the spectrum.

  30. Any of you folks in the UK have any thoughts on the looming “no-deal Brexit”?
    I can’t even. Words cannot express my opinion of the incompetents, idiots and grifters who landed us in this, and continue to “lead” us.

  31. If Rod Dreher didn’t exist, he would have to be invented, just to provide comic material for alicublog. Particularly in the contents of his “almost as believable as letters to Penthouse” mailbag.
    Megan “numbers are NOT my friends” McArdle also, too.

  34. They(sic) only way out of this widening gyre is for a majority of those bored not-voters to start caring, and hope that they want to live in the real world and not Real America.
    Which is basically what Stacey Abrams has been doing in Georgia for the past six years or so. She has given us Proof of Concept. Now it’s just up to the rest of us to implement it generally.

  35. Is this the future of the Republicon Party?
    In the immediate future, very likely. The question is, once their noses are rubbed in the fact that they can never placate Trump enough, what will guys who care about power and holding office do? They may not want to start a new party.** But Trump may leave them no choice.
    Of course, without Trump’s fanboys, can they win? Not without a radical revision of their ideology. (Way more than the post Romney loss postmortem envisioned.) Rock, meet hard place. But it’s what you bought by not slapping Trump down early and often.
    ** And I shudder to think what a McConnell-ite party might be like.

  36. Which is basically what Stacey Abrams has been doing in Georgia for the past six years or so.
    There’s a difference between “people who haven’t voted because their voices haven’t been heard” and “people who don’t vote because they can’t be bothered.” Abrams’ efforts in Georgia have been geared towards the former group, SFAIK, not the latter.
    I don’t know how you break through to the can’t-be-bothered group. They include people well off enough that horrible policies don’t affect them (and they can’t be arsed to worry about anyone else) to people whose families have been poor and ignorant for multiple generations (who are barely capable of understanding basic civics). And of course, such people are nearly always white.
    I’ve done a fair bit of precinct canvassing. There’s nothing quite like being faced with someone who says they’ve never voted and don’t intend to, who just shrugs when you ask why not. I have no idea how to even start a conversation with someone like that.

  37. Well, I read the Dreher article, violating my rule about having nothing to do with anything involving Pat Buchanan.
    I’m glad he is revolted by these shenanigans, though his repeated mouth-frothing at Critical Race Theory is more than a little over the top.
    I think he is wrong to claim that the right’s insanity is a new phenomenon; in fact I think that’s plain blindness. He quotes approvingly a preist who wrote him saying,
    I unfortunately think that too many American Christian fundamentalists now emphasize God’s Will over His Intellect, and these Jericho Marches are just the beginning of a bad current of philosophy beginning to enter American Christian life.
    “Beginning to enter?”

  38. I’d say the state of the Republican party is incredibly bad, AND that California is becoming a good example of what happens when the out-Party is insane–you don’t have much check on the Democratic Party itself so we get things like: Dianne Feinstein hanging on essentially into the grave; Newsome ruling in a ‘rules for thee but not for me’ atmosphere; and big cities complaining about how Republicans who haven’t ruled in decades are making their rents too high.

  39. I’d say the state of the Republican party is incredibly bad, AND that California is becoming a good example of what happens when the out-Party is insane–you don’t have much check on the Democratic Party itself
    As a California resident, I can only say Amen.
    Things aren’t as bad as what’s described in the article bobbyp linked to above on northern Idaho. But the same lack of a viable opposition party is a serious problem, if you care about responsible governance.

  40. you don’t have much check on the Democratic Party itself…
    I’m not much up on CA politics, but given one-party dominance, why wouldn’t there be a tendency for that party to factionalize, with the conflict between factions providing the sort of balance that an opposition party would?

  41. so we get things like: Dianne Feinstein hanging on essentially into the grave
    Strom Thurmond (cough, cough)
    Newsome ruling in a ‘rules for thee but not for me’ atmosphere..
    Oh, posh (read this somewhere :)). Stack this bit of poli-porn up against gerrymandering (WI, Penn, NC, etc.) and outright voter suppression (I can vote, but you? Not so much).
    The rent it too high? The communists in California put a nail in the coffin of rent control, and granted Uber and Lyft their need to continue to take advantage of their workers.
    But other than that, pure communism, eh? JFC.

  42. But the same lack of a viable opposition party is a serious problem….
    All else being equal, if the California GOP disbanded and disappeared tomorrow, I guarantee you there would soon be two competing political parties in the state.

  43. if the California GOP disbanded and disappeared tomorrow, I guarantee you there would soon be two competing political parties in the state.
    Quite possibly true. But unfortunately, it shows no signs of doing so. And until and unless they do, I can’t see the Democratic party fissioning.
    Although, given our open primaries, there wouldn’t be that much need.** We already can see multiple Democratic candidates in the primaries. And two of them, often with rather different ideological profiles, can be in the general election.
    ** The only place party membership matters here is for Presidential primaries. Otherwise, it’s simply ignored in the electoral process.

  44. I can’t see the Democratic party fissioning.
    Henry Wallace in ’48? The ’68 and ’72 disasters? The Sanders’ insurgencies? The rupture is bubbling beneath the surface. Only a common foe unites them.
    GOP moderates have nowhere to go. They are not going to “recapture” the GOP. They have lost their base. They will go where the money goes.
    I opine that is the $64 question.

  46. Henry Wallace in ’48? The ’68 and ’72 disasters? The Sanders’ insurgencies? The rupture is bubbling beneath the surface. Only a common foe unites them.
    So you’re picturing the left splitting off? I had been thinking (self-centeredly, no doubt) of the moderates splitting off to pick up more of the moderates. But your idea does seem more likely.
    The moderates would see the prospect of a split leaving the Trumpists in a position to win with a plurality, after splitting the non-Trumpist vote. Which would be a dis-incentive for them. But the left wing does seem, historically, less concerned about practical details like that.

  47. Not exactly. Remember, the premise is there is no GOP. It’s gone. As the only standing party, and due to the existing political structure, either a new one arises to take its place or the Dems split.
    My hope is the GOP tears itself apart into irrelevance or gets ground into dust. I would prefer the latter, but could live with the former.
    A polity where the big issues and political struggle are as between social democrats (i.e., New Dealers) and left moderates (i.e., deficit hawks, free traders, and their hangers on), and the racists, xenophobes, economic elites, and evangelicals are not cast out, but no longer have any meaningful sway in how we are governed.
    Most likely this will not happen. Reactionaries, buttressed by corporate and financial power, will always be with us, and they will always find allies.
    Hopefully, I am overgeneralizing 🙂

  48. I have no idea how Sebastian and wj see Feinstein as a sign of rampant Democratic dominance. She’s mostly a sign of the aging. propertied Limousine Liberals not having to have their feathers ruffled.
    She’s the candidate of the moneyed socially liberal non-progressive.
    If CA were as liberal as people pretend, the property tax measure would have won and Feinstein would have been replaced a decade ago.

  49. When I believed the polls in early November I was hoping for what bobbyp outlined— the Republican Party becomes irrelevant. The Democratic Party swells with moderate conservatives joining and then either the Democrats split or else the Democratic primaries become the real election. Even as things stand, what holds the Democrats together. is the lesser evil argument— whatever we think about each other, Republicans are worse.
    But the polls were wrong and Republicans are still here, The demographic argument people make for the Democrats taking over is oversimplified, as shown by the nonexistent “ Latino” voting bloc.

  51. But the polls were wrong and Republicans are still here, The demographic argument people make for the Democrats taking over is oversimplified, as shown by the nonexistent “ Latino” voting bloc.
    Yes, GOP overperformance downticket was an unhappy outcome.
    As for the Latino vote – I said to a friend who still lives in South Florida, “The old anti-Castro Cubans are dying off, but unfortunately they’re being replaced by the new anti-Chavez Venezuelans” as the voters who can be frightened by the “Democrats=Socialism!”booga booga. Meanwhile, the Latinx vote fleeing from RW tyranny are the ones who can’t get into this country, since they tend to be poor and without political advantages.
    I’m not going to say that being the Party of No won’t “work” for the GOP, since that’s basically all they’ve been for the last 30-ish years. But I do kind of wonder how well that will continue to work when it’s saying “No!” not only to Democratic policy proposals, but to any kind of policy at all.
    GOP politicians’ sole reason for existing is to cosset and flatter the aggressively ignorant for the purpose of fleecing their benighted voters in order to line their own pockets. How sustainable is that, outside of the Evangelical churches? (And how long will the Evangels put up with a rival organization horning in on their grift?)

  52. I have no idea how Sebastian and wj see Feinstein as a sign of rampant Democratic dominance.
    I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever even mentioned Feinstein. After all these years, I suppose I must have. Just have no memory of doing so.
    I think what you meant was Feinstein is not a sign of serious liberal dominance. I can see how you and bobbyp would not regard her as a liberal at all. And for California, she’s definitely on the conservative (i.e. moderate) end of the Democratic party. Although in large parts of the country she would be considered a liberal. (And not just by the lunatics who think Obama is a socialist.)
    As for rampant Democratic party dominance in California, I’d say the years-long veto-proof majorities in both houses of the state legislature pretty much establish that beyond argument.

  54. I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever even mentioned Feinstein.
    Could be, wj. She is no flamethrower, that’s for sure. However, I do recall quite distinctly a trip you made to the fainting couch about one B. Boxer.
    Overwhelming Dem majorities are essential for just about anything to get done in Sacramento. Isn’t Prop 13 still in force requiring a 2/3 majority to pass tax legislation? You know Prop 13, right? The one that Jerry Brown (OMG, that ‘effing hippie?) did an about face on and supported?*
    Thus for decades, the GOP minority was able to block just about anything. Minority rule is now in their bones.
    *currently reading Rick Perlstein’s history of the Carter admin and the conservative movement embodied by Reagan – what a trip down memory lane. I had forgotten how much I had forgot.

  55. I do recall quite distinctly a trip you made to the fainting couch about one B. Boxer.
    I can believe that. But it seems to me Boxer was substantially more liberal than Feinstein. Am I wrong?
    Isn’t Prop 13 still in force requiring a 2/3 majority to pass tax legislation? You know Prop 13, right?
    Yeah, I know Prop 13. It was a piece of damn foolishness when it was passed.** And it’s gotten even worse in its impact over time. (The good news, such as it is, is that it only applies to property taxes, not all taxes.) But our education system, mostly paid for by local property taxes, has been deteriorating ever since. Since costs rise with inflation, but those taxes can’t.
    ** On a fear campaign about retired folks losing their homes due to rising property taxes. Due, in turn, to the massive inflation in the early 1970s running up the value of their houses. Of course, it applies to commercial property, too. Just because.

  56. Any of you folks in the UK have any thoughts on the looming “no-deal Brexit”?
    There won’t be, at least in the long run. Brexit is an illusion – the UK wouldn’t be able to sustain it for more than a few months at most and even if it happens, they will keep talking to the EU until a solution is found. Most of this is just bluster, even BoJo, who is not the brightest, gets this.
    I am currently undecided if it’s better to have a no-deal crash out as a kind of shock therapy or if the costs to society would be too high – the UK in general is in a terrible shape thanks to 10 years of Tory rule (or shall we go back to Thatcher? the class system? the Empire? but I wouldn’t want to bore anyone…).

  58. Democratic politicians’ sole reason for existing is to cosset and flatter the aggressively, often well educated, ignorant for the purpose of fleecing their benighted voters in order to line their own pockets.
    Fixed that.

  59. currently reading Rick Perlstein’s history of the Carter admin and the conservative movement embodied by Reagan – what a trip down memory lane. I had forgotten how much I had forgot.
    I’ve recently started on that, too.
    There are not a few parallels between Reagan and Trump which crop up in there.

  61. Another time burner—drivers cab view from Norwegian passenger trains.
    “Xmas winter train! Drivers cab view from the Bergen Line and Flåm Railway in NORWAY. Rated as two of the most scenic and breathtaking railways in the world.”
    CABVIEW: Xmas winter train

  64. Open thread, huh? Today the Supreme Court announced a decision in the Texas v. New Mexico Pecos River case. Perhaps I’ll live long enough to see them decide the Texas v. New Mexico and Colorado Rio Grande case, which is much more interesting.

  65. That Pecos River case looks to be Texas agreeing to a process. And then, when the result was not to their liking, claiming the process was somehow invalid. How very Trumpian. (And, like Trump’s claims, the Supreme Court unanimously told them they had no valid reason to complain.)

  66. Has anyone’s state said anything about how the actual vaccinations are going to be handled? The state calls you? You call some provider that has vaccine? Make an appointment? Stand in line with social distancing until they run out? (Had visions this morning of standing outside in the single-digit temperature.)

  67. In California, the plan is to start out with health care workers and “residents of skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, and similar long-term care settings for older or medically vulnerable individuals.” The former will presumably be handled on a workplace-by-workplace basis. And the latter will be vaccinated at the facility where they are, again on a place by place basis.
    Followed by “essential workers”: farm laborers, police officers, child care staff and teachers. I’m guessing they will be done on a workplace-by-workplace basis as well. Then “at-risk populations” — no clue how that will be approached.
    The state has been broken down into 6 regions, each of which will organize their own distribution for those locations.
    By the time vaccinations are available to any of the rest of us, there will have been plenty of time to work out the details of where and how. I’m guessing that it will be late enough that you won’t have to worry about standing in line in the cold.

  68. All I’ve seen for Maine, which tracks wj’s account, more or less (my bold):

    When can I get the shot?
    The timing of future vaccine deliveries is not yet known, but the general public is not expected to have access to vaccinations in Maine until spring or summer, according to Maine’s plan.
    Phase 1 is expected to begin this week and includes front-line health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities.
    Phase 2 would distribute the vaccine to people with underlying health conditions, school staff, correctional facilities, and seniors, although the plan did not specify an age range.
    Phase 3 would include further broadening to more populations, such as young adults, children and people who work in higher-risk industries or essential jobs who weren’t previously offered the vaccine.
    Phase 4 means the vaccine would be available to all Maine residents.

    As to seniors, I’m content to let people with a more pressing need to get out and about go before me, so I’ll be curious to see how that gets handled.

  69. Massachusetts. Looks like:

    1. medical caregivers and first responders
    2. people with multiple co-morbidities
    3. essential workers
    4. over 65’s
    5. single co-morbidities
    6. all y’all

    With all y’all kicking in around April.
    Personally I’m not in a rush. I’m working from home, will probably continue to do so even after lockdown ends, and have not been especially bothered by lockdown. Lucky, lucky, lucky me. So I don’t mind waiting for any wrinkles to be ironed out.
    If I can get out and about and maybe travel and see some live music by summer 2021 I’ll be more than pleased. I recognize that I’m living in first-world-problem nirvana, am grateful for it, and I’m happy to do whatever will get folks who don’t have the same luxury as safe as they can be, as quickly as they can be.
    A really great job by pharma researchers in getting what looks like plausible vaccines to market in less than a year. We owe them our thanks.
    Stay safe everyone.

  70. Since it is an open thread, and following the death of John Le Carre, I just want to say that if by chance any of you have never seen the TV series adaptation of Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley, I strongly recommend that you find it and watch it.
    It is the best thing I ever saw on TV (although admittedly I have never watched the Sopranos, or the Wire), and Guiness’s Smiley is absolutely astonishing. It looks like a bit of a period piece now (the cars etc – it was made in the 70s), but there are about 6 episodes, and when it was first shown each episode was repeated once in the middle of the week before the next one aired, and I (and everyone I knew) watched both transmissions. I have also watched it every time it has been repeated. I must have seen the whole thing 6 or 7 times. I do believe that any of you who follow this recommendation will be glad you did so.

  71. I’m reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy now.
    Haven’t seen the TV version, but will look for it. Period piece cars are not a problem for me, they are one of my favorite things about about watching older shows or shows set in earlier times. 🙂

  73. It is on YouTube. As is Smiley’s People, nearly as good.
    Also Netflix, though not streaming.
    Re-watched both a couple of months ago.
    Really well done. Alec Guinness’s advice to young actors that doing “as little as possible” is the key in front of the camera is displayed as a master class in acting in these productions.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/12/john-le-carre-england-politics/617379/
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/books/john-le-carre-dead.html

  77. I must say I would never call the Beeb TTSS cosy. I would characterise it more as bleak and claustrophobic, in a particularly English way, but please anyone don’t let that put you off! There are still occasional moments in it that raise the hairs on the back of your neck, and with subsequent watchings I am still unable to say quite how Guinness wordlessly achieves them (no spoilers until russell has seen it!).
    As for Smiley’s People, IMO despite many incidental pleasures, and an important sense of closure, I don’t think it ever ascends to the same heights. But chacun a son gout, etc.

  78. One item that stood out for me when re-watching “Tinker …..” and its sequel, was technology, or rather the lack thereof.
    More than once, Circus agents, collars up, had to sneaky-pete down the street from a safe house and use a payphone to make highly classified calls.
    Like lovers, agents signal assignations by concealing clues and notes in trees in parks, for example.
    And no Bondian/Austin Powers high-tech fireworks.
    Smiley’s cars didn’t spew out slippery oil from the rear to foil tails. And none of the female characters sported breasts that doubled as assault weapons.
    Instead, intense ratiocination inside Smiley’s skull communicated to the camera by the slightest flickers of facial expressions, like barely-formed clouds passing over the sun and hardly, noticeably casting a darkening, fleeting shadow on the proceedings.
    Notice when Smiley wordlessly removes his eyeglasses to clean the lenses and casts his owlish, weary, but razor-sharp perspicacious eye beams outwardly and inwardly.
    Guinness thought of that little tic, but maybe it was in the book as well.
    All of the characters conceal their many-layered agendas and betrayals, spy-wise, business-wise and personal (Smiley is most inept in that later sphere), and each, particularly and most acutely Smiley, is on to the others as they move inexorably to the revelation of the “Spy” identity and the machinations of the mysterious bigger game, the Soviet counterpart, Karla.
    Bleak and claustrophobic, absolutely, but the pacing of the hardly-moving action gives the illusion of real, slowly unfolding time, not just several hours of TV drama but months and years of workaday sleuthing which builds excruciating dramatic tension.
    That Smiley, a one-man NSA, might have been Robert Mueller to get to the rancid bottom of our current, monstrous bout of seditious and malignant home-grown conservative movement treachery.
    The Circus, indeed.

  79. …the revelation of the “Spy” identity and the machinations of the mysterious bigger game, the Soviet counterpart, Karla.
    I’m not familiar with the work, so I can’t be at all sure, but this at least smells like a spoiler. Or is it something the audience knows more or less the whole time, and only the characters have to figure it out?

  80. One item that stood out for me when re-watching “Tinker …..” and its sequel, was technology, or rather the lack thereof.
    I’ve been toying with a short story where the investigator routinely uses his smartphone to do all the things investigators need: make phone calls, take notes, flashlight, still camera, video camera, auto-recognize sounds and objects, look up when it last rained…
    I wonder how much spy tradecraft is being updated. An encrypted RFID device hidden under the park bench that only responds when pinged with the proper message as a dead drop?

  81. Or is it something the audience knows more or less the whole time, and only the characters have to figure it out?
    Yes. Not a spoiler.

  82. Yes, Karla is a named presence throughout and from the getgo, like Athena in the Iliad, Lucifer in Paradise Lost, Darth Vader in Star Wars, or the neighbor peeking over the fence in Home Improvement.
    I could have said Russia, or KGB, and given up as much.
    It’s not like I’m being waterboarded here, in which case I’d confess all, most of which wouldn’t be reliable, like pretty much everything that comes out of my mouth WITHOUT the goosing of torture.

  83. GftNC:
    I guess what I mean by ‘cozy’ is a certain nostalgia which colours Smiley and his world in the book and TV series.

  84. Tinker, Tailor is on my Top 10 list of novels. I can’t remember whether I first read it before or after seeing Alec Guiness in the BBC adaptation, but I have not been able to picture George Smiley as anyone else for decades. That may be why I found the recent movie version quite off-putting.
    I have read all the Le Carre stories in which Smiley figures even tangentially, and loved them all. That includes the two short novels in which Smiley first appeared: Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality. The latter was made into a 1991 TV movie with Denholm Eliot as Smiley. I watched it on YouTube last night, after stumbling onto it as I was looking for a video version of The Honourable Schoolboy. I could swear I have, sometime, somewhere, seen a movie version of Schoolboy, which is something of a sequel to Tinker, Tailor and something of a prelude to Smiley’s People. But maybe my memory is playing tricks; maybe, as I read the book, I was picturing George and Toby and Peter and Jerry Westerby so vividly in my head (based on the BBC cast) that it felt like seeing a movie.
    In any case, I am reminded now of how it occurred to me to observe a few long years ago that “He, Trump can’t be a Russian mole because the first rule of being a Russian mole is to not act like a fucking Russian mole”. All I know about Russian moles I learned from John Le Carre.
    –TP

  85. the first rule of being a Russian mole is to not act like a fucking Russian mole
    I was watching some cop show last night (back episode of NCIS LA, I think). They’re trying to tail a bad guy, but their car is a Porsche. One character says: “This would work better in something nondescript.” To which the response is: “If it was nondescript, they’d immediately spot it as an undercover cop car. To avoid notice, you have to be a little flashy!”

  86. Tony P: You are a man of excellent taste, as any of us could have predicted (although I must admit that I do not tend to read books about spies, and in fact have read very little Le Carre except his recent memoir).
    novakant: Well, Le Carre is, famously, something of a moralist, so I suppose you might say that “nostalgia” (but not cosiness) is appropriate for a time when the warriors of the secret world may have had a sense, even if a compromised, self-aware sense like Smiley, of good and evil and their partial, compromised place within that framework. And Le Carre maintained that on the whole that had been the case in his days in MI6, and apparently he was horrified by e.g. the Iraq war and the justifications for torture which were thrown about by e.g. the Dubya administration.

  87. Good news for Democrats, if not for the reason you’d first think.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/15/mcconnell-sets-up-clash-with-trump-over-whos-charge-gop/
    McConnell (finally!) acknowledges Biden’s victory. Considering how vindictive and generally petulant Trump is, it’s easy seeing him deciding to take revenge for McConnell’s “betrayal” by urging his followers to boycott the Georgia run-off. This time, I could positively cheer Trump acting like a spoiled 3-year-old.

  88. I can’t remember whether I first read it before or after seeing Alec Guiness in the BBC adaptation, but I have not been able to picture George Smiley as anyone else for decades.
    Definitely the latter for me: I just happened to start watching the series way back when it first aired because my POSSLQ at the time (remember that terminology?) was friends with people who loved LeCarre and were eager to see the series. So we had weekly dinner dates to see the whole thing. I was completed bowled over and started reading All The Books afterwards! (And was in hog heaven when Smiley’s People aired.)
    And, yes: Guinness is Smiley for me. I think the only cast change I would keep is Tom Hardy, and that’s mostly Tom Hardy is so excellent and luscious. Always worth watching. (Except for Bane; my god, what a waste of an actor.)
    I actually disliked the movie intensely, because it of necessity compressed many plotlines, which removed most if not all of the atmosphere, worldbuilding, and nuance.
    Positively **loathed** what the film did to Peter Guillam (a spun-from-whole-cloth subplot not in the novel at all) for no reason I could think of but to “show” how secretive Smiley’s counterintel operation had to be.
    And, yeah, that whole last bit with what happens to Bill Haydon.
    So many changes for the sake of movie plot that felt to me like serious violations.

  89. In a return to the original topic and theme
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/15/democrats-can-win-over-sane-republicans-there-are-some/
    Note, she’s focused on voters, not politicians, when she points out that there are some sane Republicans. Which she mostly characterizes as the 40% of Republican voters (that is, folks who, unlike me, actually voted for Trump) who say that in the month since the election, Biden’s behavior has mostly been right, and Trump’s wrong.

  90. Recognizing, finally and belatedly, that He, Trump is a crybaby with fascist tendencies is a very low bar for sanity.
    Actually sane Republicans would be disgusted with Mitch McConnell for humoring the MAGAts as long as he did. How many Republicans like that are there?
    –TP

  91. Which she mostly characterizes as the 40% of Republican voters (that is, folks who, unlike me, actually voted for Trump) who say that in the month since the election, Biden’s behavior has mostly been right, and Trump’s wrong.
    Why don’t they just become Democrats?

  92. russell – Because they aren’t Democrats. They don’t agree with our policies, our priorities, or our values. Even the “sane” ones.
    I’m appreciate of the Never Trumpers; I do believe they helped defeat Trump. But they voted to keep the Senate in GOP hands, and voted for the GOP candidates in the House.
    They are NOT Democrats and frankly, I don’t want them in my Party telling me we really don’t need to focus on things like systemic racism and escalating environmental destruction. I don’t want them telling me, even in a well-meaning way, that enabling vulture capitalism must always have the highest priority.
    If they want to be conservatives, if they want to show that conservatism is about something other than privilege-protection,they can form a new Party and show us. I don’t want them making the Democratic Party “GOP-Lite.”

  93. Because they aren’t Democrats. They don’t agree with our policies, our priorities, or our values. Even the “sane” ones.
    I would note that, a) there may be other reasons. And b) the same could be said of a fair number of long-time Democrats. Including, I suspect, the man we just elected to get rid of Trump — depending, of course, on where along the liberal spectrum you personally fall.

  94. My question is how many decades will it be before we have a 21st-century government administration instead of a 20th-century one? Biden is population his administration with Obama retreads with an average age of over 60. Looks like it may be Obama 2.0.

  96. My question is how many decades will it be before we have a 21st-century government administration instead of a 20th-century one?
    Just to start with the obvious, you have to wait another 5 years before those who were born in the 21st century are even eligible to be in the House. Another 10 years for the US Senate. And another 15 years for the Presidency. And that’s assuming they run and win the first year that they are eligible . . . which would be unusual, to say the least.
    Realistically, no matter what the government job or whether it has an age minimum, you aren’t going to have people with the experience for the top jobs until they are at least in their 40s. So another 20 years.
    Sure, lots of people in their early 20s think they know all the answers and could do a far better job. They thought that when I was that age, and they do today. But unless you are getting appointed by someone with a distain for expertise like Trump, it’s going to be a while.

  97. And b) the same could be said of a fair number of long-time Democrats. Including, I suspect, the man we just elected to get rid of Trump — depending, of course, on where along the liberal spectrum you personally fall.
    The progressives I know would never say that Biden is not a Democrat, or even that Clinton was not a Democrat. They would just argue that the Democratic party is a MOR organization that is far too weak on actual change.
    Those progressives are, for the most part, split between the pragmatists who are committed to working within the party to drag it towards change and the idealists who ignore the party in favor of direct activism.
    Well, and the useless purity bingo types who mostly post critical Jacobin articles and get riled up and steered off into ineffectual noise by Russian trolls.

  98. My question is how many decades will it be before we have a 21st-century government administration instead of a 20th-century one?
    Three, using the House Democratic leadership as a gauge. By the end of this Congress all of the top leadership will be 80+. 70-year-olds running committees. A whole bunch of 50s and 60s who have been waiting 20 years for their turn, and are not about to give it up. AOC and company are 40 years out, 30 years for the best of them.
    Unless the youngsters come out in droves and primary the oldsters on the basis of age. Me, I’m a mid-Boomer (1953). Chances are excellent that no 1947-1960 inclusive Boomers are going to be President. Congressional leadership, at least on the Dem side, is also likely to skip us. I was born in 1953 and we have been singularly unsuccessful in getting the folks almost ten years younger, or ten years older, regardless of sharing a label, to make painful decisions.
    My cohort’s time is past. We didn’t get a shot. Give me someone younger and good to vote for.

  99. If they want to be conservatives, if they want to show that conservatism is about something other than privilege-protection,they can form a new Party and show us.
    That works. Also, take their party back and kick the nutjobs out.
    In any case, as it stands, I don’t see that the folks under discussion are well served by being (R)’s. Just thought I’d extend the invitation.
    Not my circus, as they say, although we all end up having to live with it.

  100. Russell, getting down to plain basics, asks:
    “Why don’t they just become Democrats?”
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/15/2002219/-Steve-Schmidt-Literally-Joins-the-Democratic-Party
    He’s “neo” everything, but so was Colonel Stauffenberg.
    There’s upside to this, but then Stauffenberg wanted to keep conquered territory for post-Nazi Germany, so keep an eye on him.
    Maybe Tom Cruise can play him in the movie, because the original ain’t that good-looking.

  101. Even the Grim Reaper hates the subhuman genocidal republican conservative movement, particularly its murderous minion in Florida.
    He’s run out of burial space and the cremation ovens are full, sez Death:
    In addition to bleaching every surface and burning all of the linen in the White House, scan the entire square footage of government office space stock for land minds and IEDs:
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-trump-admin-has-a-plan-to-distribute-the-vaccine-that-ends-when-biden-takes-office
    The Republican Party is a terrorist organization.

  102. On the other hand we have guys like Joe Manchin that are quite vocal about not willing to tolerate any ‘radical’ reforms (i.e. anything changing the status quo in any meaningful way leftwards and that includes undoing any steps rightward in the past made by either party).

  103. al qaeda/ISIL by any other name:
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kansas-mayor-resigns-over-violent-threats-for-backing-mask-mandate-i-do-not-feel-safe-anymore/ar-BB1bYgkV?ocid=uxbndlbing
    The Republican Party IS the name.
    Trump IS the name.
    FOX News IS the name.
    Breitbart IS the name.
    Bannon IS the name.
    DeSantis IS the name.
    QAnon IS the name.
    Newsmax IS the name.
    OAN IS the name.
    Dan Patrick IS the name.
    Limbaugh IS the name.
    Stephen Miller IS the name.
    NRA IS the name.
    Many, many others. They are legion.
    They don’t live in caves in remote mountain ranges.
    They are publicly available for interdiction by national security forces and liquidation should they resist.
    My government, secreting itself in its fake constitutional hidey hole, refuses to protect me and mine from savage terrorists.
    What to do?

  106. I’m going to await my turn for the vaccine despite the fact that I am a self-proclaimed, very, very special, cream of the crop, popper-most of the toppermost .0000001%, most exceptional specimen of the American race to the bottom:
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-a-covid-19-vaccine-could-make-its-way-into-wealthier-americans-arms-first-11607711708?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
    My son is being given priority, behind only medical workers, because he currently works in a lab, so the best part of me will be protected.
    Laura Ingraham, Charlie Kirk, and &ucker Carlson, and their children, all now ginning up anti-vaccine bullshit, while extolling trump as Jonas Salk’s love child, may cut in front of me for the vaccine, but they will be hustled to another, longer queue to receive shots of a different caliber for their pains.

  108. Assuming that Biden is serious about pursuing his climate change policies, Buttigieg is going to be up to his ears in semi-technical stuff. CAFE standards, national rail policies, and getting started on electrification all fall under DoT.

  110. Buttigieg is going to be up to his ears in semi-technical stuff.
    IF he’s willing to have faith in people who are experts, he doesn’t really need to have an in depth understanding of the technical stuff. His job is more to explain policy/direction to the staff, and to sell the regulations to the public. (Or needed legislation to Congressmen — who have even less technical understanding than he does.)

  115. Dreher goes full non-satirical Charlie Hebdo and crucifies rancid right wing American Christian bullshit.
    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-christians-trumpianity/
    But only because the idol-worshipers threaten to queer Dreher’s demonic notion of defeating “whatever Biden has planned”, apparently without exception.
    To my mind, Dreher, is the most dangerous conservative for a plurality of Americans, including less orthodox Christians, who will be canceled from American life and culture by his steadfast and visceral aversion to icky love and marriage among those not him.
    The idol-worshipers merely want to kill us and soon, burn Dreher’s books, which like the Beatles, are more popular than Jesus.

  117. I suppose that we should not be surprised that, when a sensible map showing voting for president was created, it is xkcd who did it.
    https://xkcd.com/2399/
    No distortion of state boundaries. No focus on land area rather than population. No confusing big and little circles. Just the facts. The man is simply amazing!

  118. What does it say that my first thought, on seeing the title of that TPM article, was that the doctor was preventing half of his nurses from getting the vaccine? Guess I figured the nursing profession wouldn’t have that many antivaxxers, even in Texas.

  120. No distortion of state boundaries. No focus on land area rather than population. No confusing big and little circles.
    Dot density maps are useful, especially when two or more colors make the point. The single-color ones, like those showing where most assaults occur, are largely worthless because they’re basically a population map.
    On US dot density maps related to population (like this one), I am always struck by how different the population pattern (and underlying settlement patterns) change at the eastern edge of the Great Plains.

  121. I especially like the “hover note”:

    There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.

    Assuming it’s all true, it lends a fascinating perspective to all sorts of arguments about “federalism”.
    –TP

  122. I am always struck by how different the population pattern (and underlying settlement patterns) change at the eastern edge of the Great Plains.
    There’s a reason the Great Plains were originally referred to as the Great American Desert. Even after John Deere invented the sod buster plow, they were a hard place to farm.

  124. The green “Other” vote dots are a little misleading, the nationwide number of dots is accurate, but California is the only state with as many as 250,000 other votes (about 400,000), with Texas second at about 165,000. The other 9 states with green dots have more other votes than states without them, which I guess is the most sensible way to apportion them given the limited parameters of the illustration.

  126. Native American interior secretary. Sweet!
    Indeed. But I’d be happier if her appointment didn’t (at least temporary) reduce the already microscopic Democratic majority in the House.

  127. But I’d be happier if her appointment didn’t (at least temporary) reduce the already microscopic Democratic majority in the House.
    What are NM’s laws on special elections? Vacated House seats can only be filled by election.

  128. I envy the eyes of people who can distinguish xkcd’s green dots from xkcd’s blue dots!
    And you can’t tell if you’re green with envy…

  130. That Dreher dreck has this in the first para
    No doubt about it, cancel culture is no longer just a left-wing thing.
    How long before he’s claiming that none of this wouldn’t have happened if those left wing hippies hadn’t started it? It is all projection with this losers. I’m understanding the French revolution better and better these days…

  131. How long before he’s claiming that none of this wouldn’t have happened if those left wing hippies hadn’t started it?
    At least he’s now admitting that the problem exists on the right. Baby steps.

  132. it’s lonely out there in WY and ND.
    I’ve said it before… based on the 2010 census data, the GP are a bit over a half million square miles (a third the size of Russia, bigger than any other two European countries) averaging 9.6 people per square mile. 222 of 362 counties are below 7.0 people per square mile, the traditional definition of “frontier.” Chances are good that in the 2020 data the average will go down slightly and the number of frontier counties up: the population peaked in the 1930 census and has dropped in every census since then.
    I have an East Coast friend who once went to a technical conference in Kansas City. When he had a half-day free, he took the rental car and headed west on I-70 in Kansas. He turned back when the “empty” began to make him nervous. That was somewhere short of Topeka. I never had the heart to tell him that he would have had to go another hundred miles west before he got to the beginning of the real empty.
    It’s kind of amazing that some of our ancestors walked from Kansas City in the spring, across the Great Plains, through the South Pass in Wyoming, and then across multiple mountain ranges or deep canyons to reach Oregon before snow closed the passes in the Cascades. Walked because oxen were valuable and people added weight to the wagon load.

  135. The Great Plains are on their way to being populated mostly by autonomous agriculture equipment.
    Assumes facts about water supplies and effective moisture levels that are not in evidence. The Nebraska Sandhills are currently classified as the US’s single largest contiguous wetlands ecology. Two inches less effective rainfall per year and the grass dies and the dunes go mobile again. Last time it happened was circa 1400 CE. Critically, no one has any real idea what climate change does to the North American Monsoon. My son’s girlfriend is a climate researcher who specializes in the NAM. She is so tired of me bugging her about which papers I should be reading. None of the climate models today are nearly down to the size scale necessary to make predictions about the future of the NAM.

  136. It’s kind of amazing that some of our ancestors walked from Kansas City in the spring, across the Great Plains, through the South Pass in Wyoming, and then across multiple mountain ranges or deep canyons to reach Oregon
    And Sacagawea made the hike while carrying an infant (born just before they left). Those folks were far tougher than we are.

  137. CharlesWT,
    You made me wonder whether someday one of the Great Plains states will get down to a population of 3 people: two Senators and a Congressman:)
    –TP

  138. two Senators and a Congressman
    Who will have nominal mailing addresses in the state, but actual residences in northern Virginia.

  139. Just can’t resist quoting this from Eugene Robinson:

    Biden’s team shares an aversion to public histrionics. Pete Buttigieg describing Chicago’s O’Hare Airport as “romantic” is the most controversial thing any of them have said all week.

  140. Matthew Yglesias suggests filling some of the empty spaces by tripling the population.
    “What would actually make America great: more people.
    If the most challenging crisis in living memory has shown us anything, it’s that America has lost the will and the means to lead. We can’t compete with the huge population clusters of the global marketplace by keeping our population static or letting it diminish, or with our crumbling transit and unaffordable housing. The winner in the future world is going to have more—more ideas, more ambition, more utilization of resources, more people.
    Exactly how many Americans do we need to win? According to Matthew Yglesias, one billion.”
    One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger

  141. Empty relaxes me.
    More guns and less water to go around.
    Shall we wipe out Ted Turner’s bison herds … again?
    Then it’s off to Fiji and/or Scotland for me.
    America’s won enough.

  143. Georgia runoffs update: over 900,000 votes already, slightly skewed toward early voting (which started Monday) vs. received absentee. Over 800,000 unreturned requested absentee ballots potentially outstanding but no way to know how many of those have already or will vote early.

  144. For context, there have been more early votes this week than the same period in the general. Total votes in general were close to 5 million.

  146. North Korea, Zimbabwe, and the NRA have had worse Presidents:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/the-things-trump-got-right/617424/
    “I should never have done that f*cking vaping thing”, and “What coal? Who said anything about coal?” can serve as epitaphs carved into the marzipan facade of the entirely bookless Trump Presidential Library, which will feature a single enormous video screen of looped “Fox and Friends” re-runs and a gigantic waste basket containing the wadded up memos/paperwork retrieved from the Oval Office by diligent White House archivists who previously saved for posterity the collected cigar wrappers salvaged from underneath Frank Nitti’s fainting couch.
    Frum’s judgement on the Middle East is intriguing from the standpoint of ever wondering what would happen if you parachuted a self-taught colossal asshole into the midst of a world federation of incorrigibly dyspeptic assholes to see what might happen.
    As Stormy Daniels might say: I was hired to do a job and I did that job and was damned good at it. Can anyone else around this guy claim such a thing? The secret to my success with the lout was the handcuffs and the ball gag, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten a word in edgewise. AND, I collected what was owed me. Tell THAT to the dry-wallers at Mar-a-Farrago.

  147. “One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger”
    Traffic jams in Cody, Wyoming brought to you by the same people who designed the express security line for armed “legislators” at the Austin, Texas statehouse side-by-side with the queue for everyone else.
    Isn’t there an inverse relation between jam-packed population density and the ability to maintain the standards of the libertarian dreamscape?
    God, I’ve just solicited another cite to Reason Magazine proving that a bird in the hand is worth 50 chickens and their feces jammed together in tiny cages for the entirety of their short lives and, moreover, improves the National Index of Freedom and Bed Sores.

  149. Other sports team names that were rejected after much consideration.
    The Sacramento Scalpers
    The Toledo Tumors
    The Philadelphia Perverts
    The Atlanta Atheists
    The Detroit Dumbasses
    The Toronto Traitors
    The Potstown Pickaninnies
    The Boston Bastards
    The Minnesota Miscarriages
    The New York Neurosthenics
    The Jersey Junkies
    The Cleveland Cleft Palates
    The Van Nuys Viruses
    The Florida Farts
    The Indianapolis Infections
    The Washington WTFs
    The Galveston Gets
    The Hackensack Hitmen
    The Pittsburgh Pandemics
    The Oklahoma Onanists
    The Astubula Assassins
    The Newark Nipples.
    The Zelienople Zeros
    The Mount Aerie Morons
    The New Orleans Nodules
    The Dallas Downtown Dingleberries
    The Montana Mumblers
    The Denver Disasters
    The St. Louis Slave Owners
    You don’t find this sort of thing in your retirement homes for Agnostics. We die without an opinion one way or the other.
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/8-nuns-die-coronavirus-one-week-wisconsin-convent/

  150. Frum on Trump in the Middle East:

    Whatever the cause, he leaves office with this particular conflict closer to resolution than when he entered office.

    And what is the resolution?
    Granting points for things achieved against Trump’s wishes also seems… like a stretch.
    Jan 20 can’t come soon enough, for me.

  151. And Sacagawea made the hike while carrying an infant (born just before they left).
    Just for the historical record, Lewis and Clark took a different route and did most of the journey by small boat. The Oregon, California, and Oregon trails were critically dependent on being able to follow the Platte River. We know from the Lewis and Clark map sketches that they tried the Platte, but gave it up after less than 20 miles and returned to the Missouri. As anyone who has floated the Platte in anything with more draft than a small jonboat knows, it was a good choice on their part.

  152. “Jan 20 can’t come soon enough, for me.”
    Me too.
    Though I’m not so sure about January 21st.
    At our age, that we have been put in the position of wishing time to go faster than it already has.

  154. Frum’s comment on the Middle East is complete crap, as one would expect given the source. There was no hostility between Israel and the Arab countries that now recognize it. What Trump did accomplish was put another nail in the coffin of a 2ss, which is part of what this was about. The 2ss hope seems pretty farcical anyway, so it might be a good thing if it ended the illusion about that. Of course Democrats will cling to this illusion, so it won’t. And Trump of course endorsed the Moroccan occupation of West Sahara, so endorsing occupations seems to be a thing with him
    Frum frankly doesn’t give a damn what harm we or our allies do to others, so the brutal sanctions on Iran, the occupation of the WB, the blockade of Gaza and the war in Yemen mean nothing to him.

  155. I am getting emails about Biden swag and about the inauguration. I would prefer to get emails from them about their stances on issues. Pretty soon they are going into the spam filter.

  157. But swag is supposed to be free, right?
    Absolutely not! Swag is supposed to be seriously overpriced.
    Like the guy at LGM, I’ve been getting spammed since the election by those guys — Trump, Pence, other Trumps, etc. Both on my personal email and on my work email. No idea who they bought the latter address from. Fortunately, my spam filter has been doing its job.

  161. Even in my outpost on the edge of the civilized world (sic), I’m getting swag announcements. Though I’d argue that it is pretty important that people get things like t-shirts and such, it’s going to be important to demonstrate that support. The whole phenomenon of MAGA hats and fuck your feeling t-shirts has succeeded because they have exploited norms. Putting on something like that is sort of like creating your own epestemic bubble and you get bunches of people doing that, it’s like a star trek convention or a harry potter cosplay event.
    A lot of Trump’s success was founded in dividing off his followers and making it seem like they were everywhere. It’s an unfortunate case of having to use fire to fight fire. If lots of people are sporting Biden Kamala [your choice of phrase here], it forces a choice for the MAGA wearing folks. Of course, some will take it as evidence that they are right because everyone else is wrong (See the Reason website for an example of that kind of logic) but if done well, you will effectively cordon off the crazy.

  162. San Jose Earthquakes is actually in use.
    Colorado Avalanche. Miami Hurricanes. Iowa State Cyclones (used in the old plains/prairies sense of a tornado).

  165. The Potomac Pissuparopes
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/18/2002802/-Trumps-pulled-617-million-from-campaign-largest-campaign-fraud-in-history
    Citizen’s De-panted.
    Look, screw pardons.
    Screw jail time.
    Public Executions deep into the corrupt Republican conservative movement terrorist front.
    We do not go forward as a country until this republican monster is beheaded and disemboweled, and not figuratively.
    Every conservative and republican in America is complicit in this criminal, subhuman travesty.
    We’re coming after every one of ya.
    Bleat “both sides do it” and those will stand as your last words, ya cheats and liars.

  166. The nonchalance with which Frum praises state sanctioned murder of foreign officials would be breathtaking if the US hadn’t gone down the rabbit hole to become a rogue state a long time ago.

  169. Georgia polls going the wrong way according to FiveThirtyEight….
    As a dedicated optimist, I prefer to believe McConnell when he says their guys are “getting hammered.” 538, after all, is looking at the very few publicly available polls that have been taken. McConnell has access to the GOP candidates’ internal polls as well.

  171. I prefer to believe McConnell when he says their guys are “getting hammered.”
    As I recall this was in the specific context of “They don’t have a good answer for why the Senate hasn’t passed another stimulus bill,” and some of the media have run with the idea that McConnell was talking about the big picture.

  172. Trump himself was the overwhelming favorite with Israeli Jews
    https://en.idi.org.il/articles/32761
    On bobbyp’s other article, I see nothing wrong with trying to understand Trump ( or Netanyahu) voters. To the extent it is the bigotry that attracts them, then Democrats shouldn’t try to pander to that. If you can pull a probably small fraction of them away from Trump on other issues, that’s what you should do.

  173. If you can pull a probably small fraction of them away from Trump on other issues, that’s what you should do.
    When the country is as closely divided as the last election suggests, every little gain is a big deal. Whether you get it by voter registration drives or by peeling off a few of the opposition’s voters.

  174. To the extent it is the bigotry that attracts them, then Democrats shouldn’t try to pander to that. If you can pull a probably small fraction of them away from Trump on other issues, that’s what you should do.
    Completely agree. As for McConnell and “Our guys are getting hammered”, apart from what Michael Cain says, which may well be the case, it is more likely that McC was saying it to galvanise the R base in Georgia, than being honest (McConnell? Give me a break) about their internal polling.

  175. As I recall this was in the specific context of “They don’t have a good answer for why the Senate hasn’t passed another stimulus bill”.
    This seems about right. As they get to the wire to pass something the political winds may be shifting from “why won’t the Democrats compromise on this?” to “why the fuck won’t the republicans agree to pass anything?”.
    Fascist thug that he is, McConnell does know politics.

  176. If you can pull a probably small fraction of them away from Trump on other issues, that’s what you should do.
    What issues would those be? I am all ears.
    The question is one of where do you put scarce resources….voter outreach and registration or vainly trying to peel a few voters who repeatedly tell you they are all in for fascism no matter what?
    I would opine the question answers itself.

  178. a few voters who repeatedly tell you they are all in for fascism no matter what
    Fortunately, while there are an appalling number of such voters, there are also some who are NOT of that mind. They like some of the things that they think Trump was doing. (Which, often, he wasn’t.) But are not happy about some other aspects of his presidency. THOSE are the ones you can peel away.

  179. THOSE are the ones you can peel away.
    Well, maybe.
    I’m all for helping to solve some of the real problems faced by Trump supporters – improve health care and education, better Internet since that seems to be an issue, maybe other stuff.
    The problem is that they don’t actually seem to want that sort of help, at least not from Washington. I don’t actually know what they want.
    Well, I take that back. I know one set of Trumpists just wants tax cuts and vast deregulation. Another, overlapping group, wants right-wing judges. I’m not all for either of these things, and I don’t think they do much for the supposedly embittered rural Trump voters.
    So tell me. What will get the job done?

  180. The problem is that they don’t actually seem to want that sort of help, at least not from Washington. I don’t actually know what they want.
    I think most of them are fine with that kind of help. They’d prefer it not be labeled as “from Washington,” so they can keep telling themselves how self-made they are. But mostly they’ll take it with the label, if that’s the price of getting help.
    There are certainly ideologues who will rant against it. And politicians who will claim to agree with them. In both cases, generally folks who are comfortably fixed, so they personally are OK without the help.

  181. Time to call a spade a bloody shovel.
    If we can’t “peel off” enough Trump voters, the result will be an outright traitorist Party doing its best to ensure maximum death by virus, maximum descent into poverty by virus-affected economy, and maximum penetration into the US government and infrastructure by hostile foreign powers.
    The GOP is an asset of the enemies of the US, a loud and proud enemy of democracy, and an out and loud enemy of most American citizens.
    If we don’t destroy them, they will destroy us.

  182. What issues would those be? I am all ears.
    So tell me. What will get the job done?
    Question submitted. Answer? Maybe they give you your votes if you give them the stuff, but absent the stuff, you don’t get their votes.
    So….pending.

  183. I think most of them are fine with that kind of help. They’d prefer it not be labeled as “from Washington,” so they can keep telling themselves how self-made they are. But mostly they’ll take it with the label, if that’s the price of getting help.
    They’d prefer? You mean they don’t want to face reality – that they too are the beneficiaries of “government handouts?” Too bad.
    And I don’t think they are “fine with that.”
    See, e.g. Medicaid expansion under Obamacare.

  184. You mean they don’t want to face reality – that they too are the beneficiaries of “government handouts?” Too bad.
    I can definitely see the attraction of rubbing someone’s nose in it, to force them to face reality. Tempting, very tempting. But as a methodology for gaining votes, it seems . . . flawed.

  185. Georgia polls going the wrong way according to FiveThirtyEight….
    Almost half of the people who could be bothered to vote, voted for Trump. It’s remarkable that the GA senate races are as close as they are.
    As weird as it seems to people like me, a hell of a lot of people think (R) governance is exactly what they want. They’re not deluded, they aren’t mistaken about what that would mean, for them and for everyone else.
    It’s what they want. More or less half the country.
    Trump is, personally, a cartoonishly corrupt and offensive person. So he lost, and remarkably enough, Biden is probably the only (D) in the running who could have beat him. Oddly enough, the only other person I can think of who might have pulled it off is Bernie.
    The rest of the (R) slate did pretty well. Much better than expected.
    You can blame it on Fox or One America or whoever, but nobody makes anybody watch that stuff. People watch it because they want to.
    And lots and lots and lots of Trump voters and (R) voters in general don’t watch it. They just prefer (R) governance, with or without drinking the Fox et al Kool-aid.
    I wish “Trumpism” was some weird aberration. It’s not. Trump himself is personally kind of de trop, Trumpism is not.

  186. Well, I take that back. I know one set of Trumpists just wants tax cuts and vast deregulation. Another, overlapping group, wants right-wing judges. I’m not all for either of these things, and I don’t think they do much for the supposedly embittered rural Trump voters.
    None of this will satisfy them. They want civil war, excitement, killing people, drama. They want TV. Then more TV.

  187. They want civil war, excitement, killing people, drama. They want TV. Then more TV.
    Specifically, they want “reality” TV. The actual reality, not so much. Be a nasty shock if they find it appearing in their lives. Which, with another Trumpism president, it just might.

  189. “ Instead of worrying about peeling people off, I’m more for letting everyone vote who is eligible and stop thinking up ways to stop them from voting”
    Didn’t know it had to be one or the other.
    “ They’re not deluded, they aren’t mistaken about what that would mean, for them and for everyone else.”
    I think a lot of people are deluded to varying degrees. The majority of people don’t really follow politics that closely and just go along with the tribe. And even those of us who do follow politics obsessively don’t agree on all the facts.
    Not sure what to do about that, but I don’t think the average American voter is terribly well informed. You get weird contradictory voting results, where people vote for leftish politics and against leftish proposals and vice versa. I am too lazy to look up the examples, but there were some in the past election.

  190. I’m more for letting everyone vote who is eligible
    Make it easy to register and vote? Sure. But lots of places, it’s already pretty easy.** You get automatically registered when you get a drivers license. You can have a ballot mailed to you, and return it with prepaid postage provided. And yet roughly half of the registered voters don’t bother.
    So the question becomes: Is it easier to induce those who don’t vote already to do so? Or to change the minds of those who already do? I’m guessing the former. But I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it.
    ** The places doing voter suppression are a different problem. But slow and frustrating as it is, we do already know how to do that.

  191. Didn’t know it had to be one or the other.
    The problem is that every time you try to peel off these groups, you end up triangulating, which is something I think you’ve (often) said ails us. Peel off some of that Cuban-American population and you end up taking baby steps with sanctions, those AIPACers off, well, you know.
    If it were a bigger pie, pressure groups might find their power diluted.
    As for wj’s point, if you make it clear that you are fighting voter suppression, those people who think their vote doesn’t matter might choose to vote.
    https://www.propublica.org/article/in-florida-the-gutting-of-a-landmark-law-leaves-few-felons-likely-to-vote
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/us/florida-felons-voting.html
    https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/10/19/georgia-voter-purge
    APM Reports found that at least nine states — most of them with Republican leadership, including the key battlegrounds of Georgia and Ohio — have purged an estimated hundreds of thousands of people from the rolls for infrequent voting since the 2014 general election. States with these policies are removing voters at some of the highest rates in the nation, no matter the reason.

  193. I can definitely see the attraction of rubbing someone’s nose in it, to force them to face reality. Tempting, very tempting. But as a methodology for gaining votes, it seems . . . flawed.
    Not so much rubbing their nose in it as getting them to see that there are community values, that they are not the put-upon workers supporting the big-city layabouts.

  194. I guess I’m just generally unclear on what it is that someone like me is going to do or say that is going to “peel off” folks who voted for Trump.

  195. I guess I’m just generally unclear on what it is that someone like me is going to do or say that is going to “peel off” folks who voted for Trump.
    Perhaps the start of an answer
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-biden-can-make-us-hate-each-other-a-little-bit-less/2020/12/18/2e988662-4172-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html
    Short version: Try to help lower the temperature a bit. (An analogy which, I realize, may not resonate in the Northeast just at the moment.)

  196. Try to help lower the temperature a bit.
    What does that mean, as a practical matter?
    I rarely talk about any of this stuff outside ObWi other than maybe with my wife. I have friends and family who are Trumpsters and I treat them exactly as I have always treated them. We talk about other stuff, stuff we have in common.
    Their social and political values are not the same as mine. We are not going to agree. In some important areas of life, we don’t share common ground.
    I’m not hating them for it, I’m not arguing with them about it. I don’t agree with them, and they don’t agree with me.
    They therefore vote for people like Trump, and do so enthusiastically in many cases.
    It’s not me or people like me who are raising the temperature.
    About half the country voted for the most blatantly corrupt and inappropriate person to hold the office of POTUS in my lifetime, probably in the history of the country. It is utterly unclear to me what I should have done to persuade them not to do so.
    Their vote, their choice. If you want to persuade anyone to speak or act differently, perhaps that should be directed to them.

  197. “I can definitely see the attraction of rubbing someone’s nose in it, to force them to face reality. Tempting, very tempting. But as a methodology for gaining votes, it seems . . . flawed.”
    All of this is irrelevant. We are not dealing with pedestrian malign powers that succumb to either nose-rubbing or other more civil “methodologies.
    They are dealing from a deck none of us has ever experienced or imagined, immune to electoral petition.
    Like the Covid-19 virus in London now mutating exponentially, the subhuman, armed, insurrectionist conservative movement is metastasizing daily, hourly into unthinkable variants without precedent in America, except during the Civil War, but even in that era the enemies of America at least draped their rhetoric in the fake, hornswoggling bullshit of southern Confederate honor.
    These ilk are just plain killers. Hitmen and women.
    ttps://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/12/19/2003084/-Flynn-and-Powell-came-to-White-House-to-convince-Trump-to-move-forward-with-the-coup
    Meanwhile, Trump is defending Russian’s breach of our nuclear security.
    But that is now “routine” in pigfucking republican America.
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/virginia-state-senator-2021-gubernatorial-candidate-amanda-chase-is-next-level-maga?ref=home
    It was “peaceful”.
    https://redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/01/19/virginia-state-senator-n125953
    If thugs are carrying military grade weaponry in demonstrations, that’s not “peaceful”, anymore than a thug coming through the skylight in your “castle” is coming in peace, and we know how armed conservatives behave when that happens.
    They shoot to kill. The rest of us aren’t permitted, just as the subhuman republican party attempts to deny governance by all and every means to our chosen political party, to do that against rightwing thugs in the streets obviously threatening us with deadly violence, not Antifa window-breaking and sucker punching, which is bad enough, but fucking shooting us.
    A jackass carrying a weapon and trying to engage me in a political conversation is not “engaging” me in anything, anymore than an armed cuck passing a note across the counter to a bank teller is engaging the teller in a financial transaction.
    All bets off with these threatening scum. They have only one gambit left in their inexorable purpose: Murder.
    In one of Sebastian’s recent rare comments several weeks ago, he rightly condemns the jamming of Coney Barrett down our throats as very bad for the country, but the question now is: How is it that Coney Barrett, the fake Christian, found the jamming of her presence on the Supreme Court down out throats something she could run with.
    How is it that these reprehensible actions keep happening despite and against even decent conservatives’ better judgements?
    We’re in grave danger.
    With any luck, that will do me for the week.
    Merry Christmas, and Bill O’Reilly can kiss my patootie.

  198. wrs
    Trump votes abandoned shared reality, we didn’t. And they’re having a good time in their world of make believe -the first rule of which is “Don’t believe anyone from outside. They hate you and want you dead. “
    The only way they come back is if they choose to leave that fantasy world. We can’t talk them out of it.
    My hope is that it just gets crazier and crazier until people start questioning what the grifters and con men at the top are trying to sell them. Lol. It’s gonna be a long tiresome slog till that happens, I fear.

  199. From an unlikely source—
    https://www.teenvogue.com/story/john-giselle-fetterman-2020-workers-rights
    This is the sort of thing I have in mind, at least if you want to appeal to people on leftist grounds.People here already say they like Fetterman. At least from a leftist POV that is what you do. No appeal to bigotry at all. Just an appeal to working class people ( no, not white working classs but working class). Those people in the Rust Belt who aren’t motivated first and foremost by bigotry might find this appealing.
    “ The problem is that every time you try to peel off these groups, you end up triangulating, which is something I think you’ve (often) said ails us. Peel off some of that Cuban-American population and you end up taking baby steps with sanctions, those AIPACers off, well, you know.”
    Strawman. I already said we shouldn’t be appealing to Trump voters on bigotry.
    Though since you mention it, on the subject of Israel, Democrats and Republicans and over in Britain people like Starmer already do appeal to bigotry. I might rant about this after the Georgia elections. ,
    And with Miami Cubans you mostly get conservative Democrats winning local primaries, I would guess. But there were also the Hispanics near the Texas- Mexico border who voted for Trump. It might be good to know why and to find out if they could be peeled off.
    I’m not doing any of this. II know a few Trump voters. They have varying views, but I don’t think they could be persuaded to vote Democratic in general. Conceivably you might get someone like that to vote against Trump because of his grotesque fascist personality, but it would be a one time thing. But I am not talking about each of us going down to Texas or into impoverished Appalachian communities and asking them what they think and why they think that. This is just a blog comment section.

  200. What does that mean, as a practical matter?
    I’d say generally doing what you are doing: don’t start arguments.
    In particular, don’t go on JDT-style rants. (We can tolerate them in a small circle like this. But keep them out of our more public discourse.)
    And then, perhaps only occasionally, talk about the issues you have a common take on. Maybe the need for unemployment to run longer, at least until the vaccine has been distributed and the economy is recovering. No need to say anything about who is pushing/blocking it (if asked, something low key like “I think it’s hung up in the Senate”).
    I’m guessing they, too, know you have a different set of social and political values. This gives them a glimmer that maybe there are a few points in common.

  201. Conceivably you might get someone like that to vote against Trump because of his grotesque fascist personality, but it would be a one time thing.
    Likely true. But the hardest step is always the first one. After they have voted against one Republican (Trump — no matter that he pushed stuff that the GOP has opposed for years), it’s easier to contemplate doing so a second time.

  202. No need to say anything about who is pushing/blocking it
    The thing is, somebody is blocking it. Does pointing that out amount to “rubbing their noses in it?” Is it legitimate for me to express my own frustration or anger with the harms being done by (R) policies? Are (R) voters so fragile that they will receive that as some kind of personal attack, and then decide to double down and never consider voting for a (D)?
    Remember that many of these folks regularly talk about shooting the rest of us. But we should not, in a discussion of public affairs, mention the fact that the (R)’s are holding up a relief bill with a requirement that the Fed be kneecapped in the middle of an economic turndown?
    That’s not a conversation, it’s a hostage negotiation.
    People voted for Trump because they wanted to. They like him. They find his belligerence and bullying attractive. They don’t care, at all, about his corruption and self-dealing.
    Some folks got sick enough of all of it to consider voting for someone else, and Biden is sufficiently middle of the road that he was an acceptable alternative. So Trump lost, basically because things tipped at the margins in a handful of key states. Absent COVID, Trump would probably have won.
    I’m not trying to stick it to you here, but I find it somewhat offensive that any of this is somehow my responsibility.
    I don’t make a point of giving anybody a hard time about how they personally voted, or about their personal point of view about any of the issues we discuss here. russell on ObWi is not the same as russell not on ObWi. This is a forum for political conversation, daily life and most personal relationships are not. My guess is that, in regular old daily life, the same is true even for our in-house wild man JDT.
    The people who supported and voted for Trump are not going to change their minds until they take a look at themselves and their lives, and the lives of the people close to them, and figure out, for themselves, that (R) policies are screwing them the hell over. Or, perhaps, that (R) policies are screwing other people the hell over, but I don’t hold out much hope for that being persuasive.
    Folks have to figure this stuff out for themselves. It may or may not happen, but there’s not much I can do or say that will make a difference. Best thing I can do is just not get into it with them. And I don’t.

  203. To win over conservatives, Democrats need to lean hard on a more utopian narrative of politics and sidestep the constant amygdala hijack of right wing media.
    https://acmelab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/napier_et_al_in_press_superheroes_for_change.pdf
    Across two studies, we find evidence for our prediction that experimentally increasing feelings of physical safety increases conservatives’ socially progressive attitudes. Specifically, Republican and conservative participants who imagined being endowed with a superpower that made them invulnerable to physical harm (vs. the ability to fly) were more socially (but not economically) liberal (Study 1) and less resistant to social change (Study 2). Results suggest that socially (but not economically) conservative attitudes are driven, at least in part, by needs for safety and security.
    In other words, the Democrats need to make us want to be Superman, not Batman.

  204. To win over conservatives, Democrats need to lean hard on a more utopian narrative of politics and sidestep the constant amygdala hijack of right wing media.
    I would amend this.
    (D)’s are not going to win over conservatives. However, they *can* win in places that are currently “red”. Because not everybody in those places are conservative.
    If they want to do that, they need to invest in party infrastructure in those places. They need to run everywhere, all the time, for everything.
    It’s easy for (D)’s to win in urban areas, so that’s where their focus is. It’s not easy for them to win in other places, but it’s do-able. They just have to work a little harder for it.
    But the only way to win over conservatives is to be conservative. I don’t see how you can be a (D) and also be “conservative”, given what “conservatism” means in the current social and political environment in the US.

  205. Remember that many of these folks regularly talk about shooting the rest of us. But we should not, in a discussion of public affairs, mention the fact that the (R)’s are holding up a relief bill with a requirement that the Fed be kneecapped in the middle of an economic turndown?
    Are these your relatives talking about shooting the rest of us? If so, then yeah, you got nothing.
    On the other hand, I was thinking that these were folks where you could start with something about how they (or someone you know) is suffering because of the state of the economy. And how, for example, extending unemployment could keep them going.
    You: “I really wish that would happen!”
    Them: “Too right. Why isn’t it?”
    You: “I think it’s gotten held up in the Senate. I know the House passed something like that months ago.”
    Then, maybe,
    Them: “What’s their problem???”
    You: “McConnell won’t let it come up for a vote.
    Not sure what his problem is.” (Even though you’re pretty damn sure you do know why he’s doing that.)
    Still nothing about “The people you voted for are blocking it.”

  206. Are these your relatives talking about shooting the rest of us?
    Haha!!
    Yeah, some probably are. Not to my face, but otherwise, judging from social media presence and occasional email blasts, yeah.
    FWIW, I never approach a conversation about stuff like this with lead-ins like “The people you voted for are…”. I doubt I’d even get as far as “McConnell won’t let it come to a vote”.
    So maybe I’m already there.
    Once, in a conversation with a good friend who was upset because a woman he really liked broke it off with him because of his support for Trump, I said “I have no use for the guy, but I’m sorry about your girlfriend”.
    That’s probably the strongest anti-Trump comment I’ve made, with a Trump supporter.
    And yeah, the guy and I are still friends.

  207. Strawman. I already said we shouldn’t be appealing to Trump voters on bigotry.
    Don’t think it’s a strawman. The whole narrative of peeling off the ‘good voters’ from the truely unredeemable is really, at it’s heart, based on an idea that somehow, we can isolate the badness and just have the good folks with us. While I’m all for laying out what should happen, “peeling off” is just going to result in things being watered down.
    It might be possible to create some sort of utopian narrative, as nous suggests, but isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place? America, land f the free, home of the brave, but when people start saying that freedom ain’t free, it’s funny how that splits down old dividing lines.

  208. wj: don’t start arguments
    Sounds like a good way to accomplish a couple of things:
    1) Give MAGAts the impression that nobody they know disagrees with them;
    2) Give bystanders the impression that only MAGAts have points to make.
    And FFS, “I think it’s hung up in the Senate” instead of “Mitch McConnell is blocking it” is the kind of over-generalization that makes a mockery of reality.
    The MAGAts don’t believe they were outnumbered at the polls. They have no reason to start believing it until they find themselves outnumbered in what we laughably call “real life”. And that can’t happen if sane people keep avoiding “arguments”.
    Not all Republicans are MAGAts, I hear you cry? Okay, so what’s stopping those Republicans from arguing with the MAGAts? And how dainty should they be about it? Have those Republicans tried wj’s approach? Have they had much success? Or have they given it up as hopeless?
    –TP

  209. If they want to do that, they need to invest in party infrastructure in those places. They need to run everywhere, all the time, for everything.
    I often recommend The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado. Money matters (here self-generated from the Gang of Four multi-millionaires). IT infrastructure helps (they built the predecessor of the Obama campaign’s system for targeting voters). People on the ground help. Focusing on Republicans that are potentially vulnerable on Democratic policies helps. One of the things that the authors — a journalist and a Republican — note is that the money people were willing to subordinate their personal policy interest if a different subject was what was going to put a Democratic butt in the seat.
    Disclosures: I at least met many of the people in the book during my time on the legislative staff. When the book came out, I thought the writers got their personalities pretty close.

  210. (D)’s are not going to win over conservatives. However, they *can* win in places that are currently “red”. Because not everybody in those places are conservative.
    If they want to do that, they need to invest in party infrastructure in those places. They need to run everywhere, all the time, for everything.
    Hammer, meet the head of the nail.
    Or: Instead of a chicken in every pot, a Stacey Abrams for every red state.

  211. lj – utopian doesn’t always mean mythic. What I mean is that the Dems need to lay out a vision that focuses on being able to fix things and move towards a better future for everyone in a way that does not divide and conquer.
    Not battles to be fought but opportunities to build a better, fairer US.
    Group project, not a competition.

  212. I don’t disagree but that line between utopian and mythic is mighty fine…
    I had a germ of an OP, but I’ll subject y’all to it here, and apologies for all the exposition. From what comes thru my computer, I’m apparently a trekkie (you click on one link about Klingon phonology and boom!) and there was an article talking about the Discovery series and how it appeared that that the Federation (which has gone thru its own problems) seemed to now have a Cardassian captain, which, as I’m sure you all know, was an enemy of the Federation back in the day. The article pointed out that there were a lot of other examples of the pioneer of another race joining Starfleet and it occurred to me that this is the standard narrative, someone is able to take all the crap dished out and then show the way for others.
    Yet as a narrative, it sucks for creating change, cause it creates a situation where the people who didn’t get in or weren’t able to create change ‘just didn’t want it enough’.
    Starfleet is generally sort of the paradise that many liberals imagine the future holds, something that was also reinforced by the episodic nature (I think it was Norman Spinrad who pointed out that the key ingredient for any Star Trek story was that the characters returned to their places and I’ve heard that contracts for Star Trek stories etc have a clause that you can’t do anything lasting to the characters) and the emphasis on individuality (going across parallel dimensions and all the characters are recognizably the same)
    A lot of this is based on strictures that can’t be avoided. They can’t hire a new actors to play the cast in a separate universe (but you can reboot!), you don’t get any buy-in and it would confuse the hell out of the audience. If you multiple people writing star trek novels to be sold, you can’t have them all imagining different fates for the crew and expect to build on that. (On the other hand, you can and do have that in fan fiction) I assume that the explosions of multiverses in comics and such is an attempt to try and introduce, in some small way, variety and ease those strictures, but you still have a base where the hero is the hero because they were destined to be the hero. There is the genre of what if where some key event plays out differently, but usually, the larger reality plays out the same way.

  213. While I’m all for laying out what should happen, “peeling off” is just going to result in things being watered down.
    It’s called compromise. At least when you are willing to take part of what you want, rather than going all-or-nothing (aka “not watered down”).

  214. Not all Republicans are MAGAts, I hear you cry? Okay, so what’s stopping those Republicans from arguing with the MAGAts? And how dainty should they be about it? Have those Republicans tried wj’s approach? Have they had much success? Or have they given it up as hopeless?
    Some of us have. Does it always work? Not even close. Does it sometimes work? Yes. And every one I can turn around is worth two new voters, after all.
    Yes, there are some who are simply hopeless. (I just did my first ever LinkedIn Disconnect from a long-time professional colleague because she is a lost cause.) I can see trying with people who are on the “Trump has done some good things” frequency. I have my doubts about that, but I can at least talk to them. Those who go with “Trump is the greatest president ever!” are not worth wasting time on.

  215. It’s called compromise.
    As russell pointed out, it seems we pretty much reached the point of hostage negotiation.

  218. I’ll leave reaching out to reachable GOP voters to GOP-adjacent folks like wj.
    wj at least knows what kind of arguments are likely to work.
    I don’t. I have no ability, or interest, in trying to find a tiny kernel of humanity in people whose idea of a good time is separating children from their families.

  219. It’s called compromise.
    Bill Clinton.
    Barack Obama.
    Joe Biden.
    I guess (D)’s could just give away the whole store, but at some point you have to draw a line.
    I appreciate what you’re saying here, but TBH I think the (D)’s would do far better by reaching out to and organizing the people in “red” places who are already on board with their agenda, than trying to persuade people who basically think they are evil on wheels to reconsider their position.
    Run (D)’s in every city, town, and county in the country. Everywhere. Flip 10-20% of state legislatures and pick up some governships and you get start to get leverage over districting, which means people who are aligned with (D)’s will have their votes actually count.
    Bottom up. Howard Dean preached this stuff back in ’04 and the DNC has apparently forgotten how to do it. Put people in positions of consequence who know how to do it.
    The level of energy and resources it would take to do that is tiny compared to what it would take to win over even as many as 10% of the folks who vote for Trump. And they wouldn’t have to compromise their positions to do it.
    Compromise is fine *when you have a way to get your point of view on the table to begin with*. If your start from a compromised position, where does that leave you?
    I’m not interested in picking fights with Trumpsters. I am not raising the temperature. I treat everybody I know – Trump supporter or not – with equal respect.
    And that’s as far as I can go.
    I DO NOT WANT (R) policies to be implemented, and I will do what I can within obvious practical limits to prevent them from being implemented. I recognize the need for compromise, because there are lots of different kinds of people in this country, but compromise is not going to be my opening position.
    There is a difference between treating people with a basic level of respect, and accommodating fanatics and bullies. I’m fine with the first, not fine with the second.

  220. When I think about winning over conservatives I don’t think of it as an appeal primarily to those voters so much as I think of it as being a scrappy and unapologetic articulation of Democratic values that resists and refuses the language of conflict and blame and instead focuses on the idea of renewing our commitment to building a better future for all Americans.
    “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
    Articulate the vision. Defend the vision. Build it in a way that lets people envision themselves living in that future.

  221. nous,
    The problem is that D’s have no vision for the future. R’s have a vision of improving the economy, expanding quality education, supporting private investment in climate change, in essence investing a better future.
    D’s policies all involve giving people cash today at the expense of a better future. Higher taxes, more regulation, less freedom of choice, in almost every situation sacrificing a better future for a vote getting bandaid today. Its hard to create a Kennedy vision when all of your policies are to limit investment in the very things he thought were important.
    Even if you don’t agree with that it is an assessment over 70 million voters made in this election. Any reasonable Republican would have won, the assessment that Trump voters will abandon these principles without his obnoxiousness is belied by the down ballot success of Republicans, who in many cases won despite him.
    Compromise might be a good way to go, a middle ground between untethered capitalism and untethered free lunches for all. But that starts with some level recognition that R’s, and D’s, aren’t actually the caricature created by the opposition and the press. And certainly largely not remotely the caricature promoted by the Juanita Jeans of the world.

  222. R’s have a vision of improving the economy, expanding quality education, supporting private investment in climate change, in essence investing a better future.
    The GOP once had such a vision. Absent a platform this year, it’s hard to tell if it still applies to the party overall. What is clear is that their actions, both in Congress and in the outgoing administration, showed no inclination to do anything to forward any of those goals.
    Judging by their actions, the GOP vision today involves

    • Cutting taxes at the top. This has demonstrated zero success at improving the economy. Though it does do well for stock prices. (Contrast with the tax regime in the 1950s, when the economy for the general population was booming. Which, if you are too young to remember, it was.)
    • Reducing the cost of private education. Thus making it easier to run schools which avoid teaching real science (or anything else involving understanding the real world). Interest in improving public education, which is what the majority of the population gets, is nil.
    • Denying that climate change is happening. Or, if the evidence for that can no longer be disputed, claiming that human activities are totally unrelated. In extreme circumstances, arguing that, while human activities are indeed making it worse, changing anything would be too expensive. (See, for example, Trump on coal.)

    If any of that constitutes investment in a better future, it is not obvious.
    Other activities include starting (and consistently losing) trade wars, both with opponents whose policies should changed (e.g. China) and allies whose policies are generally fine (e.g. Canada). Also, cozying up to autocrats (Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Philippines) while insulting allies at avery turn. (And that doesn’t count praising China for establishing concentration camps for the Uyghurs.) Breaking up families of those arriving illegally, and not even bothering to keep of parents and children (the cruelty of this being the point of the exercise, rather than an unfortunate side effect).
    Overall, the contrast with the party in, for example, the 1950s or 1980s, is stark.

  223. I deliberately omit policies regarding covid-19. Simply because it isn’t obvious that there are such policies. At best, there is reluctant, minimalist, action when the political cost of doing nothing grows too high. While turning opposition to attempts by others to address the problem into culture wars icons.

  224. The problem is that D’s have no vision for the future
    that’s a new and interesting change of attack from the party who has been chanting “Dems want to create a socialist utopia!” since i was a toddler.
    No vision here!
    Paris Climate Agreement – Not a Vision!
    Green New Deal – Not a Vision!
    like i said – they live in a fantasy world. and they have absolutely no idea what reality looks like.

  225. Paris Climate Agreement and Green New Deal provide the expense side of a future while defining no benefit. You can’t sell people on surrendering their job and livelihood so there won’t be flooding at the turn of the century.
    And without either of those two things the climate gets fixed. The things that pass for a vision of the future seem to be the problem.

  227. a scrappy and unapologetic articulation of Democratic values that resists and refuses the language of conflict and blame and instead focuses on the idea of renewing our commitment to building a better future for all Americans.
    for example ?

  228. R’s have a vision of improving the economy, expanding quality education, supporting private investment in climate change, in essence investing a better future.
    Balderdash.
    If Republicans want to improve the economy why are working as hard as they can to hold down the stimulus package, and hamstring the Fed? And no crap about the deficit, please.
    If they want to “expand quality education” why do they have an imbecile like DeVos as Secretary of Education?
    supporting private investment in climate change,
    Yeah. In the sense that they like to encourage action that accelerates climate change, but not the way you meant. Tell us what they are doing besides claiming the whole thing is a hoax, perpetrated by the Chinese, or maybe by an international cabal of grant-hungry climate scientists.
    Really Marty, claiming the GOP wants to do something meaningful about climate change is utterly bizarre. They mostly don’t accept that it’s a problem.
    In fact, one of the issues I have with the whole “reaching out” to conservatives arguments is one that others here have mentioned. They live in a fantasy world. There is no agreement on plain facts. Until there is, nothing will work.

  229. Paris Climate Agreement and Green New Deal provide the expense side of a future while defining no benefit. You can’t sell people on surrendering their job and livelihood so there won’t be flooding at the turn of the century.
    No problem with disagreeing with those particular approaches. But I’m not seeing any GOP alternative approaches being articulated. Let alone any actions to deal with the subject.

  230. Paris Climate Agreement and Green New Deal provide the expense side of a future while defining no benefit.
    Well, I dunno’…preserving anything like modern industrial civilization, and possibly the human species itself strikes me as a benefit. The GOP basically argues that enhancing and/or preserving the status and wealth of those who currently hold it is more important.
    Yet marty brings the propaganda and calls it optimism for the future.
    I disagree.

  232. “The problem is that D’s have no vision for the future.”
    Then, two paragraphs later:
    “But that starts with some level recognition that R’s, and D’s, aren’t actually the caricature created by the opposition and the press.”
    Well, this IS the over-generalization thread.
    Marnita Jean, your counterpart in caricature, Juanita Jean, is a Texan, a state in whose politicians, including Democrats Anne Richards, LBJ, and pick any historical Comanche-fighter you like, create and flagrantly nurture their own caricatures (I mean, Charles is a cartoon rootin’, tootin’ Libertarian and likes it that way, and McKinneyTexas does seem to have a tendency to jam the CCP and nous together in one outsized-featured Thomas Nast jam-up, and I, natch, have created a self-caricature that has made a mockery of Dr. Jekyll’s barely detectable personality disorder; I utter more words in writing here in a week than I do verbally in the same amount of time weekly in real life), and just so, Juanita has conjured a B-52-coiffed, rumor-has-it-if my clientele-under-the-driers-are-on-to-something hairdresser caricature for her own self.
    As to taxation and regulation, and free lunches, and sacrificing better futures, next time you tuck in to a 64-ounce porterhouse in your pandemic-mongering, cheek to jowl Florida restaurant (the Covid weather in El Paso, too is unseasonably rich with viral loads thanks to the fascist Republican death cultish under-regulators in their Governor’s Mansion), say a little prayer for the meatpacking slaves, Latin American rapists and gang members all, according to conservative fact chuckers, who have been murdered, maimed, and deprived with prejudice of all freedom of choice by conservative cannibals in South Dakota to make sure your meal is well-marbled.
    And, yes, to extend the caricatures to a wider net, Los Angeles County, which went for Biden, is having a hell of a Covid-19 hangover its own Democratic Party self because it turns out, America and Americans in over-general are fucking hard-headed mouth-breathing assholes, though I’m still holding out hope that that disaster was transmitted by the few successful down market republicans who won office (Beverly Hills went for Trump in 2016) and who were handing out political flyers and unmasked viral loads to suppress voter turnout.
    “a middle ground between untethered capitalism and untethered free lunches for all.”
    Where, in this country’s history, has either been wholly untethered for even one second?
    You want untethered?
    There were meetings in the Oval Office this weekend discussing Nation-wide martial law and the total untethering of America from anything resembling small-d democratic rule-of law, but this goes unmentioned because your myopic, short-sighted vision of the future four years ago consisted of a price tag hanging from your nose that said: “Buy me with my own taxes and I’ll keep it on the down low that we’ve had 44 worse Presidents, and I voted for a third guy who couldn’t find Bethesda on a Google map unless he became President and actually personally needed to be rushed to a hospital for government-subsidized catheterization”.
    I’ll pause here to allow you time to tell us you are a vegetarian.
    “Supporting private investment in climate change.”
    I’m tired, and its only Monday morning, so ………
    ………… take that up with Elon Musk. I own Tesla stock and have made a tidy sum in and out over the past year or so.
    Thank you, free lunch gummint subsidies.
    I’m such a hypocrite, but as Russell wisely pointed out up thread, that’s the me in my real life as opposed to my self-created doppe(dope)lganger caricature on political blogs.
    Have a good week, and Merry Christmas!
    We ain’t seen nuthin yet.

  233. Republicans have really good policies for voter suppression. You have to give them that.
    Nah. Good (i.e. effective) voter suppression techniques are ones which don’t get noticed at all. Or, if they are, can’t be effectively countered. And which are effective long term, regardless of demographic changes.
    The most that can be said for what we’re seeing lately is that they have implausible deniability. And are helpful . . . for a while.

  234. “ The whole narrative of peeling off the ‘good voters’ from the truely unredeemable is really, at it’s heart, based on an idea that somehow, we can isolate the badness and just have the good folks with us. While I’m all for laying out what should happen, “peeling off” is just going to result in things being watered down.”
    This is a useless discussion and I am dropping out. I spell out what I am suggesting and explicitly tell you what I am not in favor of doing and furthermore suggest that in the real world, right now in Georgia Democrats are throwing Palestinians under the bus to pander to bigots and you go back to the strawman.
    Argue with him.

  235. D’s policies all involve giving people cash today at the expense of a better future.
    I recall Marty’s enthusiastic support for economically illiterate tax cuts which gave people, mainly rich people, cash today at the expense of a better future.
    Those tax cuts have already proved to be harmful. See the response to Covid.

  236. Warnock, btw, really is or was a “ radical” by American standards, He has said “ radical” things.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/us/georgia-pastors-see-attack-on-black-church-in-campaign-against-warnock.html
    Note in particular the comment about Israel gunning down unarmed protestors. He also signed a letter comparing Israel to apartheid SA.
    I have to go so I won’t look for the link, but he recently wrote a letter saying he is a friend and supporter of Israel and says BDS is antisemitic.
    I hope he wins, but fuck him. Maybe a “ radical” can’t win in a purple state, but in the primaries, if GA has them, he should have stuck by his beliefs and let voters decide. He is lying now.

  237. And making this an attack on the black church is just how politics is done these days. His opponent is a disgusting sleaze, an absolute disgrace, which is why I hope Warnock wins, but American political campaigns are just about the worst venue imaginable for radicals. You either state your beliefs and get called a commie or you backtrack and get called a lying commie. So either don’t run or don’t lie.

  238. I spell out what I am suggesting and explicitly tell you what I am not in favor of doing and furthermore suggest that in the real world, right now in Georgia Democrats are throwing Palestinians under the bus to pander to bigots and you go back to the strawman.
    Argue with him.
    Not sure who is ‘him’, you are the one who came with the “Didn’t know it had to be one or the other.” I also linked to the Guardian that listed some of the things Biden could do. Not really sure how much more I need to spell out. And when I pointed out that peeling folks off meant harming causes that you’ve gone off on everyone here about, you called it a strawman. So argue with yourself.

  239. “The problem is that D’s have no vision for the future.”
    Then, two paragraphs later:
    “But that starts with some level recognition that R’s, and D’s, aren’t actually the caricature created by the opposition and the press.”
    Well, this IS the over-generalization thread.
    My thoughts precisely.
    Note in particular the comment about Israel gunning down unarmed protestors. He also signed a letter comparing Israel to apartheid SA.
    I have to go so I won’t look for the link, but he recently wrote a letter saying he is a friend and supporter of Israel and says BDS is antisemitic.
    These two positions are not mutually exclusive, in a world where nuance counts. You don’t have to be lying to hold both of them, you just have to be able to explain how they can co-exist, and many reasonable and thoughtful people can. (Unless, of course, being “a friend and supporter of Israel” specifically involves supporting the policies of e.g. the Netanyahu government).

  240. as soon as the words “Israel” or “Palestine” come up, nuance leaves the building.
    and for that reason, that’s the most i’ve said about that part of the world in probably a decade.

  243. Rs have been following their vision of improving the economy for 50 years with occasional assists from the market minded Ds. The result has been record profits and the cratering of any gains for small businesses or the working class as the infrastructure has crumbled and work has been outsourced.
    The R vision of the future is the vision of the future from 1980. Fifty years on it is pretty damn clear that vision was flawed because we are farther from that goal than we were when we started.
    Let’s have a vision of the future that is rooted in the actual present, please.

  244. R’s have a vision of improving the economy, expanding quality education, supporting private investment in climate change, in essence investing a better future.
    The GOP once had such a vision.
    we’ve been living with “such a vision” for 40+ years.
    tell me when the good part starts.

  245. “You can’t sell people on surrendering their job and livelihood so there won’t be flooding at the turn of the century.”
    Well, true, you can’t. That’s about the only line you CAN’T sell in America because you can’t put ketchup on it.
    It’s hard to fathom this lack of selling chops in multilevel marketing America when you consider we were fully sold for two centuries and counting on depriving full access to education, jobs and livelihoods to blacks, Native Americans, Mexicans, women, Jews, gays, and the halt, the blind, and the lame.
    Thank God William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Rush Limbaugh came along to stand athwart history and yell “Onward Christian soldiers!” to disabuse us of those discriminatory notions and convince government to loosen up a bit on those scores while depriving me of my rightful freedoms.
    What YOU can do however, along with Trump, is sell people on vastly over-producing fossil fuels via a supply side global price war to cynically lower prices to flood the atmospheric zone with carbon, while in full denial that global climate change is a thing, no, it’s a fucking chink-thing, and to such an extent that oil exploration companies, also subsidized, go belly-up by the pipeline-full and oilfield workers hit the unemployment lines alongside the same people you have been telling to “get a job, ya layabouts!”
    https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/08/texas-businesses-open-oil-gas-industry-will-slow-economic-rebound/
    The Bakken oilfield in North Dakota is up to 11.5% employment, three points above the overall pandemic-blessed ND unemployment rate.
    It’s unfortunate for those workers that they weren’t gang-pressed and union-busted by their employers and Presidential decree to get back on the job and keep those pumps at full pressure like the dead meatpacking no-counts.
    Long about January 21, however, we’ll hear loud and clear from the usual lying suspects that the poor oil companies have been deregulated out of business by some fairly pedestrian and not very costly methane capture regs that save fucking lives, nameless lives, yes (conservatives’ favorite kind), all the more reason to declare the regs cost-inefficient.
    Maybe the oilfield workers can score a fix for their pain from the unregulated oxycontin motherfuckers:
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sacklers-cited-fear-oxycontin-lawsuits-100404571.html
    In the meantime, Cuban immigrant shit heel Mario Rubio cuts to the head-of-the-line for a Covid vaccination before DeSantis can declare herd immunity with vaccination for every other Floridian.
    It’s a race to the emergency room.
    Not since undercover Soviet intelligence sent Ayn Rand over here to sign up for Stalinist Medicare has any foreign agent done more to legitimize government intervention in the economy.
    By the way, I understand a private sector consortium has recommended James Hanson, the government climate scientists at NOAA and the long-term thinking subsidy-mongers among our gummint elite for Medals of Freedom, the Nobel Prize, and a Tony Award for thinking enough of them to recommend decades ago that entrepreneurial capitalists get off their duffs and start underwriting global-warming ameliorative technologies to help out, even if it is at the last minute.
    I hope Hanson delivers a hat tip to the Chinese Communist Party (where DO they find the time while organizing a worldwide pandemic and loading all of those travelers on airplanes, but only the ones with fevers and a cough for the American mainland, and then, for good measure giving us the virus’ genome for free) for thinking the entire hoax up, because at least it has juked my alternative energy, electric car (not exactly carbon-neutral, but ..) and building insulation stocks.

  247. It’s hard to fathom this lack of selling chops in multilevel marketing America when you consider we were fully sold for two centuries and counting on depriving full access to education, jobs and livelihoods to blacks, Native Americans, Mexicans, women, Jews, gays, and the halt, the blind, and the lame.
    ABC…Always Be Closing…until the sale might hurt your pocketbook. Money talks. Bullshit walks.
    Ain’t America great?

  248. Is it only slightly concerning that America for decades has been led by a financial elite who have force-chugged three martinis in the middle of the day and deduct the expense and then run the country shitfaced all afternoon.
    What about the three-lunch martini instead so America doesn’t have to stagger back to work and hiccup while increasing productivity and wolf-whistling the boss’ secretary as she walks past yer cubicle while being female?
    Like the gownless evening-strap, who knows what might be revealed?
    Why not a deductible wet bar in every airline cockpit?
    Yet another reason to never schedule a court date after lunch, when your attorney, the district attorney, the judge, and the bailiff stagger in arm in arm and in a cockeyed harmony yodel “Order in the Court!” to the assembled.
    I like a hospital wherein the nurses and attendants too get to join the doctors in a three-tipple lunch before handing me the backless gown and then breaking the news.

  249. Is it only slightly concerning that America for decades has been led by a financial elite who have force-chugged three martinis in the middle of the day and deduct the expense and then run the country shitfaced all afternoon.
    Clearly the solution is to have them downing more alcohol at lunch, lots more! So they won’t be able to do anything (i.e. any damage) all afternoon.

  250. “You can’t sell people on surrendering their job and livelihood so there won’t be flooding at the turn of the century.”
    not ‘flooding’, but actual permanent submersion of places that are now land.
    but, no, that’s not something people are going to be happy to buy. but just wait until it’s their land that becomes part of the ocean floor. then we’re going to hear an awful lot from the rich people who are currently enjoying beach life and their Trump-flag-sporting toy boats about how the government needs to bail them out of their underwater property values.
    and they can Suck. It.

  251. Clearly the solution is to have them downing more alcohol at lunch, lots more! So they won’t be able to do anything (i.e. any damage) all afternoon.
    Their underlings would be just as bad. Clearly the problem is the social structures and their associated positions we have created that allow the occupants to do these terrible deeds.
    It’s not bad people. It’s worse.

  252. A note on EV and greenhouse emissions:
    https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/heres-why-ev-stock-pivotal-is-spiking-51608580044?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
    Key utterance:
    ‘“The commercial [vehicle] industry is typically risk averse, electric fleets were nice to have,” founder Tod Hynes tells us. “Now it’s a must have.” That’s because governments as well as large and small companies want to lower costs and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Both are possible now with EV technology improving.’
    And if we ever find out who the gummint fuckers were who repeatedly suggested, and even threw money at us for decades to jump-start this effort to help lower greenhouse emissions, why, we’ll send them over to pigfucker Sean Hannity for a lawsuit-inspiring tongue-lashing.
    https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/after-legal-threat-fox-shows-aired-identical-fact-checks-of-election-conspiracy-mongering

  254. “The R vision of the future is the vision of the future from 1980. Fifty years on it is pretty damn clear that vision was flawed because we are farther from that goal than we were when we started.”
    This is a D myth. First, if not for those policies that did get implemented we would be worse off, and second, the actual R vision was compromised by D’s. Since 1980 there have been 16 of those years with a D President and some number with a D House.
    It might could use a review but its worked reasonably well. Pick a startistic from January(precovid) that hasn’t improved since 1980

  255. You can’t sell people on surrendering their job and livelihood so there won’t be flooding at the turn of the century.
    My wife’s grandfather was a coal delivery man. Nobody does that anymore. Nobody heats their home with coal now.
    My step-mother’s father was an ice delivery man. Nobody does that anymore. People have refrigerators now.
    Right?
    Industries come and go.
    If we don’t stop pulling fossil fuels out of the ground and burning them up in the amounts we do now, we’re gonna have much bigger problems than some industries going away.
    Leaders understand that and figure out how to address it. Greedy idiots ignore it and make hay while the sun shines, until it doesn’t.
    The world does not need more greedy idiots.
    Plus, not for nothing, but flooding is here, now. Too late on that one.
    I once worked in a programming shop where a number of the programmers had two beer lunches every day.
    I bet their work product was simply outstanding.

  256. the actual R vision was compromised by D’s
    the Republican vision, which is the only True America Vision™ can not fail.

  258. I bet their work product was simply outstanding.
    We wrote code to monitor and control oil and gas pipeline pumping stations. FORTRAN spaghetti code. 8|

  259. First, if not for those policies that did get implemented we would be worse off, and second, the actual R vision was compromised by D’s.
    “Otherwise things would have been worse” is your basic non-falsifiable assertion. Which can be used equally well by either side of the argument.
    Pick a startistic from January(precovid) that hasn’t improved since 1980
    Median wage vs cost of living.
    Fraction of the economy supporting the financially lower 2/3 (or pick your fraction) of the population.

  260. Pick a startistic from January(precovid) that hasn’t improved since 1980
    from the article you linked:

    In 1971, the top 10 percent of households earned 31 percent of total income. By 2016, the top 10 percent took 48 percent.

  262. Russian nuclear missile silo military techs load up on vodka while on duty (the three-shot launch liftoff) and never think to take a tax deduction for their trouble.
    Marty, that was a good article.
    Unions jointly destroyed by the Mafia and the Republican Party, jobs outsourced and sent abroad by conservative, cost-cutting, union-busting shareholder-friendly business leaders, the latter including Trump’s various business grifts, and Lawrence Kudlow at the center of it all, working both sides of the street like a six-holed hooker during a three-martini lunch and lying all the way through, and the Democratic Party triangulating conservative Kudlow-style absolutism on “free” trade and then joining the conservative movement in ignoring the predation wreaked upon the working class, white and black, but at least not demonizing their unemployment like Romney did and then cynically valorizing their victimhood like Trump has, while rogering them from behind.
    I’m a moderate on trade.
    I’m against the wholesale hollowing out of the American industrial base (born in Middletown, Ohio, in an Armco Steel family long before fake hillbillies came along to make a mint off their relatives’ plights, though Vance has accomplished subsequent good things in fighting opioids, but there you go with insufficient regulation of the evildoers, noticed only because many of the new victims were white; if they’d been black it would have been chalked up to racial infirmities and sociopathy, but on the other hand opening markets has been a vast wealth-building boon for the rest of the world.
    And it seems the conservative movement can only correct its past misjudged pro-free world absolutism by appealing to outright, absolutist xenophobia of the Trump and Brexit brand.
    Yet the newly rich (relative to the past) countries now increasingly have leaders who are trying to eviscerate unions, worker rights, and pollution regulation, for example, and fighting efforts to even out wealth inequality, to keep industries happy and from moving even further down the development chain of countries on behalf of their shareholders, who can do three martini lunches and then nap all afternoon (not, mind you, that I disapprove personally of such behavior, because being unproductive accords with my ethos of leaving time for reading, throwing a baseball, making some music and otherwise goofing off) because their productivity is not an issue in actually producing things.

  263. Our pets’ lives have improved more than the lives of the working class over time.
    Have you looked at the stock charts of companies which provide veterinary healthcare and pet food and recreational junk over the past 15 years.
    Pet insurance.
    Pet spas.
    Very heavy petting for some, but not for the two-legged.

  264. The article that Marty links to is making the same argument that the National Review made in 1992. I know because I read NR every month at the local library and was very taken with its arguments.
    It’s okay that wages are stagnant because benefits are growing and the children of some poor people often get richer.
    Of course those benefits are increasing in cost all the time and, like wages, the argument is always that the non-wealthy need to use those benefits less. Likewise, what those benefits cover shrinks continually.
    But it is all great because record profits.
    Give the workers more non-discretionary income, then take that away, too, with rising costs to deliver less in return.
    Certainly a vision of the future. Just pick up any cyberpunk novel from the 80s and 90s and it is all right there to see.
    The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

  266. The Netherlands is the country with the highest wealth inequality. There’s a lot of old money there. Hundreds of years old.

  267. Benefits are growing?
    You doubt? 60″ flat screens for $200. Think about it. This is the best of all possible worlds!
    And I have the charts to prove it.

  268. Benefits are growing?
    You doubt? 60″ flat screens for $200. Think about it. This is the best of all possible worlds!
    Why don’t I find a job which offers a 60″ flat screen as an employee benefit????

  270. Why don’t I find a job which offers a 60″ flat screen as an employee benefit????
    LOL…obviously, you are not looking hard enough, thus failing miserably to maximize your utility curves. Also, you are kidding me, as you are not out anywhere looking for a job 🙂
    In 1971 I was a union construction laborer knocking down $12/hr. which would put me in the top 10% of annual household income at that time (rough calc at 1,800 hrs/year).
    Now?… 50 g’dammned years later? Look at all the marvelous jobs out there knocking down $12/hr. You might be aware there appear to be a whole lot of them….if you look around.
    Boy, are they living the high life or what!
    Another chart!

  271. Household income comparisons aren’t quite apples to apples since households, on average, are smaller than they use to be.

  272. Household income comparisons aren’t quite apples to apples since households, on average, are smaller than they use to be.
    Well, just make the kids work 2 or 3 jobs. Problem solved.
    Ya’ know, if the pie had been distributed more evenly over the last 50 years or so, our political horizons would be a whole lot ‘effing wider.
    Think about it.

  273. For people whose value system puts “wealthier wealthy” at the tippy-top, the fact that about 5% of the population owns something like 60% of the nation’s wealth is a GOOD thing.
    I happen not to be a feudalist. I like the idea of a large, thriving, middle class. I prefer a society where upward mobility is possible to one where it is not.
    Funny how upward mobility ended and the pro-plutocrat economy really took off once unions were destroyed.
    Funny how, once private sector unions were destroyed, the Right then used the resultant impoverishment of the middle class to… attack and destroy public sector unions.
    GOPsters lie and mislead about, well, everything.

  275. Also, you are kidding me, as you are not out anywhere looking for a job 🙂
    Too true. 😉
    On the other hand, my current job keeps me plenty busy. (This weekend’s task: install Win 10 Pro, so I can run Remote Desktop to work on the next product. At my own expense.) Not bad for a guy closing in fast on his mid-70s.

  276. Funny how, once private sector unions were destroyed, the Right then used the resultant impoverishment of the middle class to… attack and destroy public sector unions.
    We’d have been far better off keeping the private sector unions, and ditching the public sector ones. Or, if we kept the public sector ones, eliminate civil service protections — you can have one or the other, not both. And install serious anti-strike provisions.

  277. Last summer, the Air Force Inspector General was directed to investigate racism in the USAF.

    Black members of the Air Force are treated differently than their White counterparts when it comes to job placement, leadership opportunities, educational options, criminal investigations and administrative discipline, according to the findings of a months-long investigation by the service’s independent watchdog.
    In a 150-page report released Monday, the Air Force Inspector General’s Office recommended that leaders develop action plans and schedule additional reviews to ensure that changes are made.

    The Air Force Command Master Sgt. Ramón Colón-López, the senior enlisted adviser to Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said “Candidly, the Pentagon’s work on this should take no more than six months getting our policies straight. The work then goes to commanders to do what commanders do — lead and care for their people.”
    Perhaps, as in some earlier cases, progress in the military will presage progress in the rest of the country. Just hoping that it doesn’t take the couple of decades that integration took.

  278. Marty, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank you for posting a link. Don’t really think much of the content, but it does help to discuss some of the issues.

  279. Another point of view on people’s changing economic statuses.
    “Economic prosperity is often measured in terms of personal income or wealth. Neither of those two measures, however, provides a full picture of people’s material wellbeing, for standards of living can increase due to either income growth or falling prices. People with stagnating incomes, for example, can experience material improvements if prices decline. Even people with falling incomes can be better off – as long as the cost of living decreases at a faster pace than incomes shrink.
    As Ball State University economist Steven Horwitz wrote in his 2015 article Inequality, Mobility and Being Poor in America, “If the reason we care about incomes and wealth is because of what they enable people to consume, and thereby acquire goods that add to some broad notion of well-being, then it might also be worthwhile to look at some of the data on consumption to see what it suggests about … the real condition of the poor.”
    …
    As Horwitz noted, “Poor US households are more likely to have basic appliances than the average household of the 1970s, and those appliances are of much higher quality.” Not only do more people across the income spectrum enjoy access to previously unaffordable goods, but the speed of adoption of new products is increasing.”
    Are We Really Poorer Than Our Parents?: Hourly wages do not reflect the massive expansion in non-wage benefits since the 1950’s.
    As an aside, I paid about $600 for a microwave oven in 1983. About $1,600 in today’s money. Still works well. An equally good or better new one would cost about $150-$200.

  280. People with stagnating incomes, for example, can experience material improvements if prices decline. Even people with falling incomes can be better off – as long as the cost of living decreases at a faster pace than incomes shrink.
    In other words, if we’ve got deflation, stagnating wages are fine. The thing is, while some stuff, especially tech stuff, has gotten cheaper, overall things have gotten more expensive in dollar terms. Especially basics like food and housing. That is, we’ve had constant inflation. Usually not hyper, like we had in the 70s, but always going up.
    If you’ve got a time when we did see deflation, by all means point to it. Perferably a couple of years straight, at least, so it actually means something. (If you’re not using the Cost of Living used for COLAs for Social Security, etc., please specify what is being used.)

  281. From Marty’s link:

    On the one hand, you used to be able to raise a family on the median income. On the other hand, think about the improvements in technology and entertainment.

    So, first of all, QED.
    Look, I’m a big fan of technology and entertainment, but you can’t eat it.
    The author also offers this:

    I wasn’t around in 1972, but I’m confident in saying that life is better today.

    I was around in 1972. In what ways is it better?
    Technology is better, but absent profound societal disruption on the scale of things like the fall of the Roman Empire, the invasion of the Huns, or the irruption of Black Death, technology is always better.
    Mastery of fire, writing, celestial navigation, the moldboard plow, the stirrup, the escapement mechanism. One generation builds on the next. If circumstances don’t totally burn everything down, technology just advances.
    That’s all lovely.
    Can a couple in their 30’s who want to have a couple of kids buy a house? How much of their budget do working people have to put aside every year to make sure they aren’t knackered by unexpected medical expenses? What does it cost to go to college? How much of a tradesperson’s income does it take to pay the monthly nut on his or her truck?
    Somewhere around 1970, my folks bought a house for about $20K. My father made about $10K at the time.
    From 1978 to 1981, I attended an outstanding public university basically for free.
    A history of personal bankruptcies in the US over the last 100 years, from those hippies at the St Louis Fed.
    The dude wasn’t even alive in 1972, but he’s confident that life is better today. His confidence is… less than persuasive, to me anyway.

  282. In other words, if we’ve got deflation, stagnating wages are fine.
    All else being equal (ceteris paribus)-well, OK. The problem is this: It rarely is.

  284. “The chart above … shows the percent changes since January 1997 in the prices of selected consumer goods and services, along with the increase in average hourly earnings in this version (which have increased by 81.5% over the last 21 years vs. the 55.6% increase in the CPI).”
    Chart of the day (century?): Price changes 1997 to 2017

  285. “ And when I pointed out that peeling folks off meant harming causes that you’ve gone off on everyone here about”
    Yeah, it’s really been annoying, hasn’t it? What people think they are doing in blog comment sections actually mystifies me, but examining myself, it appears to be some form of self indulgence with no relationship to anything real. The US is complicit in mass murder under two Presidents. What do I do? Talk about it at Obsidian Wings. We might as well be nerds arguing the relative merits of Star Wars vs Star Trek. There were some interesting ethical dilemmas in Star Trek. I thought it was shocking when Janeway murdered Tuvix.
    But in that spirit of nothing we say here matters, of course appealing to the bigotry of Trump voters is exactly not what I was advocating as a way to peel off Trump voters,
    I suggested that we not appeal to Trump voters based on their bigotry and you keep responding in a way that sounds like I said the exact opposite.. it’s bizarre. It seems impossible to fix. I want Democrats to run on a platform that says we will help working class people of all colors. Those Trump voters who are not primarily motivated by either bigotry or simply basic conservative views might listen. It will be a minority, but it might win some over. The very idea of winning over a minority of Trump voters does not mean we should pander to the bigotry that motivates many Trump voters.
    I then pointed out that in the real world Democrats and Republicans actually sometimes do run by appealing to bigotry. That isn’t the way we should be trying to peel off Trump voters. It implicitly supports their worst views. What Warnock is doing is a betrayal of his own principles and makes me wonder why he is running or if he gave any thought to what people would say about his past statements. And the defenses of Warnock, including his own, are almost as bad as the attacks. The Warnock campaign is a classic example of what we should not be doing. If you have a history of pro Palestinian activism and you think that Georgia is a bigoted state and you can’t win, either don’t run at all or if you do run, don’t back down. Let voters decide based on your actual views. But Warnock is taking a different path, I hope he wins, but it leaves a very sour taste.
    But anyway, back in the real world the Trump campaign made some inroads n non white communities. It would be worth asking if we can win some of them back without dumping on our principles, whatever those are supposed to be. Here is a link
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/20/us/politics/election-hispanics-asians-voting.html

  286. There was a deflationary period from about 1850 to 1900.
    From which I deduce that you don’t know of one since WW II either. That being the time when the policies we have been discussing, and the effects, have been visible. And we have good data.

  287. Gosh, look how little everything* costs at the company store.
    *Except housing, health care, education, and retirement.

  290. It’s difficult to have deflation with a central bank and a government printing money.
    And so, wages which are stagnant for decades are, in fact, a problem.

  291. What’s annoying to me is the passive aggressiveness of your comments, Donald. And the fact that you don’t seem to understand how time works as consecutive moments. I thought we were having a discussion about what the Dems should do in the future. You think I should be able to leap ahead and defend Warnock campaign’s because I somehow should have known that was going to be discussed discussed any number of comments down the page.
    As a practical approach, the idea of peeling off voters has had the Democrats look to people like Dick Morris and other candidate whisperers, often more driven by how much they can pick up in ad buys than if they are going to move the needle of change. But you seem to responding to the idea that I’m suggesting that any attempt to address Trump voters means pandering to their bigotry. I’m not going to deny that the possibility is there, but because no particular attempts were presented by you or anyone else, it’s hard to address your complaint.
    I mean, wj tells us that anyone with a drivers license can register to vote. Well, 1/5th of African Americans live in households where no one owns a car. Imagine that.
    If you want to get into the Warnock campaign, I’d suggest that the reason it is like that is because we have had this idea of triangulation, which then rewards the squeekiest wheels who, mysteriously seem to get more attention.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/climate/wildfires-minorities-aid.html
    Wealthier and whiter neighborhoods stricken by wildfires are more likely to get help to reduce the risk of future fires, new data suggest, the latest evidence that racial and economic inequality leaves some Americans more exposed to the worsening effects of climate change.
    The findings, issued Wednesday by Resources for the Future, a Washington-based research group, show that after a wildfire, the federal government is more likely to take steps to reduce the severity of future fires in the same area, but only when the communities nearby are whiter or have higher incomes than average.
    “Certain communities are better able to rally government support,” said Matthew Wibbenmeyer, an economist and researcher at Resources for the Future who wrote the paper with Sarah Anderson and Andrew Plantinga, professors at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It can change the amount of risk communities face.”
    I really don’t see how anything I said pulled on your chain about the Middle East, but when I point out that we have a lot of people who don’t vote tends to make groups that are able to summon up voters more powerful, you claim it is a strawman, the implication being that I’m tossing out arguments that are false to make my point. So go piss up a rope. I’m done.

  293. I want Democrats to run on a platform that says we will help working class people of all colors. Those Trump voters who are not primarily motivated by either bigotry or simply basic conservative views might listen.
    This ^^^^^^.

  295. In other words, if we’ve got deflation, stagnating wages are fine.
    That makes no sense. That the price of some goods declines does not mean we have deflation, and a good thing it is too.
    When discussing wage levels it’s customary to use inflation-adjusted numbers, which the chart at Marty’s link does. “Stagnating wages” generally means wages are constant in real terms. The price of microwave ovens is irrelevant to the point.

  296. How much have the wages risen, or dropped, or stagnated of the folks who work on the line manufacturing the microwave ovens would maybe be a question …. to start.
    And when they are laid off due to automation, outsourcing, etc. do conservatives and libertarians label them “takers” for receiving unemployment and welfare?
    Central banks and governments have been finding it difficult to keep inflation above 1.5% because of deflationary pull throughout the world, despite the flood of liquidity in the world, particularly since 2007.
    Of course, so many items have been removed from the inflation index, that we know little and prefer it way.
    Why?
    Because I love inflation in my financial assets, my home and rental properties (I mean, I would, in the latter two, if I still had some), my little Bitcoin derivative, my collectibles and corporations love inflation in the price of their products.
    My imaginary yacht has skyrocketed in price, so much so that it is even more imaginary as each day passes.
    My landlord adores rent inflation, despite willy nilly additions to the rental stock in my city.
    Try purchasing anything from a guy who sez he hates inflation.
    Tell you what I’m gonna do, he’ll say. And he hands you a jar of Vaseline and summons the next guy in the buying queue.
    He’s a liar, standing next to a hole in the ground.
    If folks disapprove of inflation, then sell me that item at half the asking price.
    Then I in turn will love inflation as I flip that sucker and double my money, just before holding a press conference condemning in stentorian intonations the ravages of inflation.
    The market made me do it, that collectivized escape from personal responsibility for me, not you.

  297. I want Democrats to run on a platform that says we will help working class people of all colors. Those Trump voters who are not primarily motivated by either bigotry or simply basic conservative views might listen.
    and they do. every single time.

    I ran as a proud Democrat. I will now be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me — as those who did.
    Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end — here and now.
    The refusal of Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with one another is not due to some mysterious force beyond our control.
    It’s a decision. It’s a choice we make.
    And if we can decide not to cooperate, then we can decide to cooperate. And I believe that this is part of the mandate from the American people. They want us to cooperate.
    That’s the choice I’ll make. And I call on the Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — to make that choice with me.
    The American story is about the slow, yet steady widening of opportunity.
    Make no mistake: Too many dreams have been deferred for too long.

    JoeBiden.com

  298. Thanks for that video, lj. I watched it yesterday, when my troubles seemed here to stay.
    Long overdue.
    The original Let it Be docu-movie, I always thought was a bit of a con, soap-opera-ed up …. like everything. All Beatle humor for the most part erased and ignored.
    I thought to myself, well, if THESE four guys are so unhappy, and they were in certain ways, I’d be happy to take one of their jobs and have a go.
    To this day, when my genius musician buddy tells me I’m screwing up a guitar or vocal part (I do, I do; it’s all hard … this is all studio stuff, we do nothing live) I put on my best Liverpudlian George voice and looking up from under at him, say: ‘Look, Paul, I’ll play whatever you like, or I won’t play at’all if THAT’s what you want. Hari Krishna, which is Hindi for “shut yer gob”.’
    It breaks the tension and we howl with laughter.
    Then Yoko and I pile into the Rolls and consume vast fishing boats full of shashimi on the way to a hunger strike.

  301. Joe Biden today said: “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me — as those who did.”
    Though he provided no evidence.
    No, he won’t. He is a liar. He knows he will work against almost everything I believe. He may work hard to do what he thinks is good for me, but probably not even that.

  302. Though he provided no evidence.
    like you would believe any “evidence” anyway.
    No, he won’t. He is a liar. He knows he will work against almost everything I believe.
    of course. of course. confirmation bias is going to do a lot of work for you in the next four years, i bet.

  305. No, he won’t. He is a liar. He knows he will work against almost everything I believe. He may work hard to do what he thinks is good for me, but probably not even that.
    The sheer comedy and tragedy is that Joe Biden means every word and will make an honest, if not Herculean, effort to keep his promise. Everything in his life and public career confirms that.
    Marty’s comment is the clearest, purest, most distilled example of why Biden won’t get anywhere.
    Marty’s comment is the clearest, purest, most distilled example of why Biden and the country would be far better off if he (Biden) didn’t actually bother trying.

  306. Marty, about President-Elect Biden: No, he won’t. He is a liar. He knows he will work against almost everything I believe. He may work hard to do what he thinks is good for me, but probably not even that.
    Marty is a troll. I know his thoughts as well as he knows Biden’s, you see.
    I don’t know Biden’s thoughts, though, so I encourage anybody who still believes Marty is NOT a troll to ask Marty: name just three things that you “believe”, which Biden “will work against”.
    –TP

  307. I mean, wj tells us that anyone with a drivers license can register to vote. Well, 1/5th of African Americans live in households where no one owns a car. Imagine that.
    My point was that, if you do get a drivers licence, you get registered automatically. It’s not like it’s the only path.
    And, if you aren’t already registered, you can do a same-day registration at the polls.

  308. byomtov: In other words, if we’ve got deflation, stagnating wages are fine.
    That makes no sense.
    Just to be clear, I wasn’t endorsing that opinion. Just attempting to summarize the view I was rexponding to.

  309. My expectation is that Biden will work hard to do what he believes is good for the country, including Marty. I’m sure some what gets done will be wrong-headed, and I’m sure some will be excellent.
    I’m looking forward to a POTUS who isn’t an utterly corrupt self-dealing bag of belligerent toxic spew, and I’m looking forward to all of the violent assholes who found the regime of the current POTUS to be the perfect moment to crawl out from under their rocks crawling back under them again, where they belong.
    If we get that far, I’ll be delighted.
    When a reasonable (R) is on offer, we can all chat about issues like what the correct marginal tax rates should be. Lemme know when that happens.

  310. Marty’s comment is the clearest, purest, most distilled example of why Biden and the country would be far better off if he (Biden) didn’t actually bother trying.
    yup.
    it would be hard to imagine a Dem more likely to work with Republicans to get things done. Biden is going to infuriate the Pure Progressives over and over with his trying to work with the GOP to get things done.
    and the Marty Party will guarantee nothing gets done, and to complain about anything that sneaks through, because it would be wrong to let a Dem have a win.

  312. name just three things that you “believe”, which Biden “will work against”.
    Helpful suggestions (if not for Marty personally, then for others of a similar view of Biden):

    • The names of military bases should not be changed, for “historical” reasons. Even though they are named for traitors.
    • States and local governments should not receive additional funds from the Federal government. If that means they have to layoff people, including police and fire, good — that’s one way to shrink government.
      The fact that it will further trash the economy is a feature, not a bug.
    • Unemployment benefits should not be extended. Even for people who are unemployed because covid drove their employer out of business.

    I can definitely see Biden intending to “work against” those.

  313. As an aside, I paid about $600 for a microwave oven in 1983. About $1,600 in today’s money. Still works well. An equally good or better new one would cost about $150-$200.
    cool.
    so why do wealthy people need so much more money than they used to have, if everything is better any cheaper?

  315. so why do wealthy people need so much more money than they used to have, if everything is better any cheaper?
    Because, while they are long past the point where more money has any economic use for them, it has other uses. Specifically, it is a way to signal, to those who have no clue what (if anything) they do or what value (if any) it has, just how important they are. It is, to be blunt, just a dick-measuring contest. And about as valid.

  316. You either think that economic inequality of some magnitude is a problem in and of itself or you don’t. You recognize that extreme concentrations of wealth cause social and political problems, even if people at the bottom are somehow better off in absolute terms than in the past, or you don’t. In both cases, if you don’t, you are wrong. I don’t give a f**k what a TV costs as it concerns any of that, even if I like spending less on a TV.

  317. wj,
    The word “not” is key to all 3 of your suggestions about what the likes of Marty “believe”. Rephrasing them in positive terms,
    1) Bases should be named after traitors.
    2) States should go broke.
    3) The unemployed should starve.
    I freely acknowledge that “not” is essential to “conservatism”, but “should” ought to figure in any sort of “vision”, right?
    As for “dick-measuring contests”: the likes of CharlesWT purport to cherish Liberty(TM) over and above microwaves. Vast wealth buys a lot more liberty –for the owners of vast wealth– than the microwave-owning job consumers of the world could ever aspire to. So vast wealth, concentrated in a few hands, is just fine with Libertarians. Liberty(TM) doesn’t have to be widely distributed to be a Good Thing.
    –TP

  318. so why do wealthy people need so much more money than they used to have, if everything is better any cheaper?
    Yachts are way more expensive these days. Gotta’ keep up.

  320. The research that FiveThirtyEight writes about there is neither novel nor new. I was teaching a class where several students wrote about those sorts of deliberative projects over a decade ago. A big part of the “Web 2.0” discussion had to do with the echo chamber nature of social media and how to overcome it.
    The Obama presidency was aligned with this sort of research and the attempt to engage in something like it. Those little breakaway groups of bipartisan centrists did a really limited version of this among themselves, but never widely enough to get outside of their own white, blue collar silos.
    Let me know when you think that such a project might be met with any measure of buy-in and cooperation from any public figure on the right.

  321. Those little breakaway groups of bipartisan centrists did a really limited version of this among themselves, but never widely enough to get outside of their own white, blue collar silos.
    Are you saying that those efforts DID work in their white, blue collar silos? Because that sounds like where the Democrats are looking to make gains.
    But perhaps I am mis-reading you….

  322. Let me know when you think that such a project might be met with any measure of buy-in and cooperation from any public figure on the right.
    I’m sure someone could point us to the cottage industry of R/Clickbait-ian pundits, reporters, politicians, bloggers, and ordinary citizens who were stewing over how to build bridges to Hillary voters in 2016.
    Oh, wait.

  324. wj – Are you saying that those efforts DID work in their white, blue collar silos? Because that sounds like where the Democrats are looking to make gains.
    I don’t have faith in this being any sort of solution when the groups involved are so narrowly drawn. White centrists are their own sort of exclusive silo, and the fact that they view themselves as broadly representative is part of the problem.
    The groups must be diverse and they must cross-cut each other on a number of issues for this sort of deliberative democracy project to work.
    I mean, my HS classmates in WI talk to each other all the time across the R/D divide. Small towns are like that. Doesn’t change their policy positions or change their minds about anything outside their own monkeysphere. It’s like an episodic sitcom. The characters never develop and the premise never evolves.

  325. OT: My aunt is dying of lung cancer – as in, she could die any day/minute. I just found out my cousin’s (my dying aunt’s daughter’s) father-in-law just died suddenly of a massive stroke. Two parents, grandparents to the kids, likely within days of each other, within days of Christmas, during a surging pandemic that prevents the normal ways of dealing with the losses of loved ones. I don’t even know.

  326. Sorry, hsh. That’s awful. There’s no way to make it something it isn’t, but I’ll at least say that a saving grace for us when my mom died last spring was that we held each other close, even though we couldn’t be together physically. I have a collection of long text and email strings, in various groupings, and that’s not even to mention the phone calls. More often than not I want to throw my phone in the lake, but in that situation it was a blessing to be able to talk to everyone ad, which certainly wouldn’t have been possible when I was young. The Ohio folks even video-called and Facetimed the rest of us so that we could “attend” my mom’s burial.
    Good thoughts going your way, for your whole family.

  328. Biden has been light years more gracious and balanced than Trump whose current behavior is impossible for me to describe. Biden didn’t say he was going to flip to being a Republican. He said he “would work as hard” for R’s as he would for D’s. There’s not a lot of substance there, but it is the decent, conciliatory thing to say. He did signal that he is open to compromise. What’s wrong with that? That probably pisses off his base more than it bothers me. Regardless, it is the right thing to say.
    I’m as conservative today as I was four years ago, which doesn’t mean I don’t welcome a bit of comity for a change. A long overdue change. It is incumbent on Republicans to give Biden a decent shot. They owe the country a lot after the shitshow we’ve been treated to by DT and his idiot lawyers.
    For sure, when DT beat HRC, there was zero kumbaya lip service. I still can’t believe DT and his supporters were ok with threatening to lock up HRC (skip the trial!). It’s one thing for the extremes to want to investigate and prosecute the opposition–that’s what extremes do. But for a president to do that is beyond words.
    Just so that you don’t think I’ve gone soft, I officially disagree with everything every one of you commies has said on this and the last 10 threads.
    Merry Christmas!

  329. Just so that you don’t think I’ve gone soft, I officially disagree with everything every one of you commies has said on this and the last 10 threads.
    Well, I disagree with that one sentence. (I only disagree with about 25% of what gets written here. And doubt there’s more than one or two who are even close to Marxists — “communist” having been done to by the USSR the way “conservative” has been done to by the Trumpists.)
    But otherwise, very well said McKinney! Merry Christmas to you as well.

  330. Biden didn’t say he was going to flip to being a Republican. He said he “would work as hard” for R’s as he would for D’s. There’s not a lot of substance there, but it is the decent, conciliatory thing to say.
    But there is some. I think it means he is going to push for things that he thinks will benefit people regardless of where they live, or how they are likely to vote, for example. No trashing of red states, unlike the GOP efforts to trash blue states.

  334. I’m so sorry, hsh. There’s nothing much one can say, except this year has been such a bitch.

  335. First try may have gone into the spam trap, so take 2:
    And for everybody here, merry Christmas and the happiest possible of new years, may it be many hundreds of times better than this one!

  336. I think I may be in the spam trap, too. My cousin’s father-in-law did not actually die, but it appears he is hanging by a thread. My aunt passed away less than an hour ago. I appreciate the sympathies, but I’m far more concerned for my cousin’s family than myself. It sucks losing an aunt, but losing a mother and father-in-law, a father and mother-in-law, or two grandparents, almost simultaneously, is far worse.

  338. Sorry, guys. The most recent item in the Spam trap currently is from 4 days ago. Don’t know what is causing your problem, but that ain’t it.

  339. so sorry to hear about your family stuff, hairshirt. I wish I had something to say that would be helpful or useful. All I got is sympathy, from afar.
    Stay safe and well, buddy.
    this year has been such a bitch.
    Right?
    I think for New Year’s Eve I’m gonnna buy a big old pile of outdated 2020 calendars, take them out in the back yard and burn them, and then dance on the ashes.
    Who’s in?
    Oh, wait.
    LOL
    I still can’t believe DT and his supporters were ok with threatening to lock up HRC (skip the trial!).
    Believe it.
    January 20 can’t come soon enough.
    Merry Christmas!
    Back atcha!!

  341. I think for New Year’s Eve I’m gonnna buy a big old pile of outdated 2020 calendars, take them out in the back yard and burn them, and then dance on the ashes.
    Who’s in?
    I’m thinking I’ll celebrate the New Year on the 21st. But otherwise, I’m for it.

  342. McK: It is incumbent on Republicans to give Biden a decent shot. They owe the country a lot after the shitshow we’ve been treated to by DT and his idiot lawyers.
    Too bad they don’t agree with you about what’s “incumbent” on them and what they “owe” the country. I mean, this is the stuff of fever dreams. What fantasy world have you been living in for the past forty years?

  343. I confess to a temptation. I almost hope Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) manages to find a Senator to join his daft effort to contest some states’ electoral votes at Congress’ January 6 session. And it appears that Senator-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) just might be dumb enough to be the one.
    Why hope for that? Because it will force every Senator, and every Congressman, to go on record voting explicitly For Trump and his fantasies, or Against. And the latter would infuriate Trump. Which could result in a lot of folks getting primaried in a couple years. And that, in turn, could flip some otherwise safe seats. See, for example, what happened to Eric Cantor’s seat after he was successfully primaried by a rwnj.
    Granted there is a small risk that the spinless toadies might get the Senate to go full-Trump. And I am reluctant to take even that small chance. But still, a temptation.

  344. And I am reluctant to take even that small chance. But still a temptation.
    So, even moderate conservatives consider going full “heighten the contradictions”. Nice.
    LOL.

  345. McKinney wrote:
    “Just so that you don’t think I’ve gone soft, I officially disagree with everything every one of you commies has said on this and the last 10 threads.”
    I’m tempted to reread the 11th thread ago to detect where we might have slipped up and let down our guard.
    Merry Christmas.

  347. Well, I disagree with that one sentence. (I only disagree with about 25% of what gets written here. And doubt there’s more than one or two who are even close to Marxists — “communist” having been done to by the USSR the way “conservative” has been done to by the Trumpists.)
    Hey, WJ, that was hyperbolic humor. Timing was awful, given HSH’s circumstances. But it was intended in fun.

  348. Timing was awful, given HSH’s circumstances.
    Not at all. My comment was more or less a rant about how something so sh*tty could be happening to my cousin’s family and the shocking nature of it. I don’t want to suppress conversation about other things. I happened to get the news of the father-in-law’s stroke while I was sitting alone in my office and this was my outlet.
    Let the hyperbolic humor continue!

  349. But it was intended in fun.
    And received as such by this comsymp. 😉
    I have achieved a personal best this year – only thing left to do is wrap some stuff, and there are 36 hours to go.
    Usually the “I ordered it online” stuff dribbles in for a week or so after. I pretend it’s a “12 days of Christmas” thing, but my wife knows better. And happily, has never held it against me.

  350. Hey, WJ, that was hyperbolic humor. Timing was awful, given HSH’s circumstances. But it was intended in fun.
    And I took it that way. But I figured that, if I was going to applaud the rest of the post (and I do!), I should include a caveat.

  352. Absolutely there was voter fraud. Not much, but some. For example:

    In Pennsylvania, where Biden won by more than 80,500 votes, three voters have been charged with voting illegally this year — all Republicans.
    Police have alleged that Ralph H. Thurman, 71, voted in Chester County on Election Day — then returned to his polling place wearing sunglasses and attempted to cast a second ballot in the name of his son. He faces four charges, including repeat voting, a felony.
    In Wilkes-Barre, Robert R. Lynn, 67, has been charged with requesting an absentee ballot in the name of his mother, who died in 2015, and then attempting to vote in her name by forging her signature. He is charged with forgery and interference with an election, both felonies.
    . . .
    A third case in Pennsylvania surfaced Monday, when the district attorney of Delaware County, outside Philadelphia, announced a 70-year-old man had been charged with requesting and casting a ballot in the name of his mother, who died in 2008. In a statement, District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said the man has admitted voting in his mother’s name — for Trump. [emphasis added]

    All the other (less than a dozen) suspected cases that were reported were found to be normal election processes. Just those reporting them were unfamiliar.

  353. I have achieved a personal best this year – only thing left to do is wrap some stuff, and there are 36 hours to go.
    Pretty much the same for me. I do have one curbside-pickup item to grab and, just as a fun extra, a six-pack of Mad Elf before it runs out.

  354. hairshirt: my condolences to you for your family losses. Some year it has been.
    In happier news, low IQ conservative fake news generator and superspreader FoxNews’ Maria Bartiromo, known as the Money Honey among the swine business, and June, 2019 centerfold in the industry rag, Pork Butt Journal, finally gets a taste of what she has been spewing all over the rest of us since her “journalism” career started as a stock market fluffer at CNBC many pounds, er … YEARS ago.
    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fox-business-anchor-maria-bartiromo-gets-punkd-by-an-animal-rights-activist-11608749232?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts
    Gotta say, the punker’s satire was a little wordy.

  355. But it was intended in fun.
    And received as such by this comsymp. 😉
    This one too!
    “Just so that you don’t think I’ve gone soft, I officially disagree with everything every one of you commies has said on this and the last 10 threads.”
    I’m tempted to reread the 11th thread ago to detect where we might have slipped up and let down our guard.
    LOL.
    But seriously, when DJT was elected (and just before, when he was running and not doing as badly as expected) the main commentariat here predicted a great deal of what has happened, and what he has gone on to do. So although McK and Marty made it clear they despised him personally, Janie’s comment to McK, only partly on recent developments and his hopes for how Rs will deal with Biden, “I mean, this is the stuff of fever dreams” made me laugh a lot too.
    What a totally predictable nightmare it’s all been, and let anybody (like the loathsome and corrupt liar McConnell) who tries to say for example “But who could have predicted the pandemic? The Obama administration left us no playbook.” go to factcheck hell.
    Sorry. I’m trying to get into the “goodwill to all men and women” frame of mind, but the real world keeps breaking through. Bah. But tomorrow will be Carols from King’s, so that will help.

  356. McK et al, the death of kumbayah moments preceded Trump by 12 years. The merciless trashing every Republican took at the end of Bushes Presidency permanently changed how I will hear any conciliatory rhetoric from Democrats. Obama had every chance to build compromise and at every step in every major speech was as big an asshole as Trump in prettier sentences. “Elections have consequences” was his tag line. Then Trump didn’t get inaugurated before the lies started about him. A man who provided plenty to not like was illegally eviscerated for four years because the Dems couldnt accept they lost.
    But long before that. I simply won’t forget the absolute lack of empathy for what Bush tried to accomplish, with full throated Dem support as they all turned on him. Its ok for Dems to say “I made a mistake” but Bush is a war criminal?
    So fuck Joe Biden and every Democrat that supported everything that’s happened the last 12 years. We owe Joe Biden nothing short of a 4 year impeachment inquiry.

  359. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were, unambiguously, guilty of war crimes. Because torture is a war crime.
    And Obama let them off. There is no symmetry here whatsoever.
    Bush was a spectacularly bad president. One has to admire the way the Rs have managed to make him look normal by getting Trump elected.
    Marty seems to have been badly affected by the electorate’s emphatic rejection of Trump, whom evidently he secretly embraced. By way of consolation, I wish him the merriest of Christmases.

  360. I’m quite pleased Trump isn’t President as of January, doesn’t have any bearing on my opinion of what we “owe” Joe Biden.

  361. The merciless trashing every Republican took at the end of Bushes Presidency permanently changed how I will hear any conciliatory rhetoric from Democrats.
    yes, because history started in 2000.
    the Clinton years never happened. you fucking hypocrite.
    So fuck Joe Biden and every Democrat that supported everything that’s happened the last 12 years. We owe Joe Biden nothing short of a 4 year impeachment inquiry.
    and here i bring back the ObWi pie filter, so that i never have to read any of Marty’s inane bullshit ever again.

  362. ObWi greasemonkey script:

    // ==UserScript==
    // @name ObWi Fixer
    // @version 1
    // @grant none
    // @include /^https?://obsidianwings\.blogs\.com/.*$/
    // @require https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js
    // ==/UserScript==
    var targets = [“Marty”];
    $(“.comment”).each(function() {
      var who = $(this).find(“.comment-footer”).text().trim();
      who = who.substring(11).trim();
      var idx = who.indexOf(“|”);
      if (idx >= 0) {
        who = who.substring(0, idx).trim();
        if (targets.includes(who)) {
          $(this).find(“.comment-content”).text(“Yes, but liberals are worse.”) } } });

  364. Obama had every chance to build compromise and at every step in every major speech was as big an asshole as Trump in prettier sentences. “Elections have consequences” was his tag line”.
    ***
    Then Trump didn’t get inaugurated before the lies started about him. A man who provided plenty to not like was illegally eviscerated for four years because the Dems couldnt accept they lost.
    Where does one even start?
    “Elections have consequences” (a true and necessary statement sometimes) v “Lock her up.”
    Plus, what lies started about Trump? How was he illegally eviscerated?
    The triumph of the alternate reality bubble of the RWNJ project has rarely been illustrated more completely. And by a decent man, who says he never liked Trump, but has nonetheless been captured by the stream of lies and distortions which have made millions of Americans cheer and advocate for the overthrow of American democracy.
    Jesus H Christ.

  365. How was he illegally eviscerated?
    forget it, GftNC, the mythology is arcane and self-sealing. it’s true because it says it is and once you’re in you aren’t coming out.

  366. Looks like we’ll need an “Over-Eviscerating” thread
    “illegally eviscerated”
    That is such a typical Trumpian formulation, though it sounds like a Monty Python sketch regarding organ harvesting, as much a pure projection of the accusing speaker’s intent as when a Mafia hit man growls “You’re killin me, ovah heah!” to the hapless waiter, later witnessed with both feet in a tub of drying concrete at the end of a lower East River pier, who spills a hot bowl of minestrone in the former’s lap during the Don’s son’s made man christening dinner.
    I thought Trump passed an executive order early on getting rid of laws prohibiting evisceration because you viewed that as unnecessary and overweening regulation at the federal level, citing the Founders’ very words that if there is evisceration to be done, it will be handled by the States, the reasoning I suppose being that those laboratories might experiment with 50 different and more efficient means of evisceration, as practiced by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson among themselves, when evisceration was a mere art form rather than what it is today, a national fetish, nay, a pandemic, a social media wood chipper, a vicious doomsday algorithm commanding a nose down plunge to Earth of these here once united and now eviscerated States of America, so help me, Gollum.
    “Then Trump didn’t get inaugurated before the lies started about him.”
    Well, we had the good grace to wait THAT long to lie about him, seeing as how his every utterance since birth has been a wholesale lie, including “and”, “the”, “gimme that”, and “you’re fired!”, and every business act some variety of outright fraud, and every personal “relationship” a one-sided loyalty test the victim can’t reply to because their mouth is full.
    We’d have started even sooner if we’d had the imagination that the lout was actually, seriously going to run for President, first off, but then win the primary and the whole enchilada as well.
    The First Amendment guarantees freedom of evisceration, in fact, now lately it guarantees God the freedom to eviscerate and his faithful to give money speech to others in order to eviscerate their enemies.
    Citizens Eviscerated.
    Now that Trump is eviscerating Pence and McConnell (I’d chalk it up to self-evisceration for all the parties involved, but we’ll take it), I have to say one of Biden’s first acts on January 21 should be sending legislation to Congress proposing and funding via new taxes a Cabinet Level Department of Evisceration which will oversee the professionalization and licensing of evisceration throughout the land, because this amateur crap is getting me down.

  367. Ralph H. Thurman, 71, voted in Chester County on Election Day — then returned to his polling place wearing sunglasses and attempted to cast a second ballot in the name of his son.
    LOL.
    Nothing like a pair of shades to make you look 30 years younger.
    McK et al, the death of kumbayah moments preceded Trump by 12 years.
    I think you mean 8. Bush left office in 2009, Trump took office in 2017.
    2017 – 2009 = 8.
    FWIW, the statement “elections have consequences” precedes Obama’s quote, and if I’m not mistaken can also be attributed to his predecessor. As well as his successor.
    I’m happy to write off the rest of your post as some kind of crazy rant. Perhaps you’re unhinged.
    You don’t owe Biden anything in particular, and Biden doesn’t need anything in particular from you.
    There is nothing a (R) POTUS can do that you will not support, and nothing a (D) POTUS can do that you will.
    So be it.

  368. GftNC, about Marty: …a decent man, who says he never liked Trump…
    That’ll teach you to be careful about what “decent” men say, GftNC.
    Merry Christmas,
    –TP

  369. Perhaps you’re unhinged.
    LOL, best shade of 2020, no contest.
    Reminds me of a story about Atlanta Braves pitcher Greg Maddox. I read the story years ago and lo and behold Wikipedia has it:

    Early in the 2000 season, Maddux was asked by sportswriter Bob Nightengale what had been the most memorable at-bat of his pitching career. Maddux said it was striking out Dave Martinez to end a regular season game. Nightengale was surprised Maddux hadn’t picked a postseason game, or a more famous player. Maddux explained: “I remember that one because he got a hit off me in the same situation (full count, bases loaded, two out in the 9th inning) seven years earlier. I told myself if I ever got in the same situation again, I’ll pitch him differently. It took me seven years, but I got him.”

  370. That Biden’s conciliatory, obligatory words are taken as those of a liar is so childlike.
    My sister, when she was little, literally asked Santa at Horne’s in Pittsburgh for a pony one Christmas and my mother, doing her best, left her a plastic replica of a pony in her stocking.
    My sister wept inconsolably when the real item didn’t show up under the tree.
    She still has that plastic pony, and has owned two horses since as an adult.
    The only President I can think of who spoke literal words of truth, sooner rather than later fulfilled to the letter after his election, was William Henry Harrison who told his supporters before leaving for the White House that he probably would not see any of them again.
    A man who kept his word.
    Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country, or vice versa, whatever.
    A thousand points of light. ONLY a thousand? And what did we get ….. eleven, maybe twelve?
    A shining city on the Hill. No, here, pull the other finger.
    The angels of our better natures. Someone run out and find me, first, some angels, and see if you can rustle up a better nature or three while you are at it.
    A chicken in every pot. Ain’t got a pot for the chicken to pee in.
    Tippecanoe and Ty ….. well, no just Tyler.
    Nixon: “What kind of a nation we will be, what kind of a world we will live in, whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes, is ours to determine by our actions and our choices.”
    I need a drink.

  372. Where does one even start?
    One doesn’t.
    A shining city on the Hill.
    The original citation for this is a sermon by John Winthrop, given in Southampton, before he and some of the earliest English-speaking folks to settle in Boston embarked on their way here.
    The sense of how the quote is used in the sermon is less “look how great we are” and more “we better not f*** up because the eyes of the world are upon us”.
    Funny how things get used in different ways.

  373. forget it, GftNC, the mythology is arcane and self-sealing.
    You’re obviously right, cleek.
    GftNC, about Marty: …a decent man, who says he never liked Trump…
    That’ll teach you to be careful about what “decent” men say, GftNC.
    Marty is a decent man, Tony P, and it is therefore horrifying (and, alas, instructive) to see how he has been captured by repetition of the (easily disprovable) Big Lie.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
    And Merry Christmas right backatcha, and once again to all the decent men and women with whom ObWi is so plentifully peopled.

  374. I’ve been captured by nothing. The point of my last two comments is the insanity that after being told one was captured and all the other insults for four years that somehow we should now play nice. Why would we do that? Because Joe Biden? Really? No.

  375. and here i bring back the ObWi pie filter, so that i never have to read any of Marty’s inane bullshit ever again.
    Thank you for this lovely thing in my Christmas stocking!
    Marty is a decent man, Tony P, and it is therefore horrifying (and, alas, instructive) to see how he has been captured by repetition of the (easily disprovable) Big Lie.
    At a certain point, willfully stupid, evil, whatever, makes someone no longer decent. Until they feel it, they will not learn.

  377. Why would we do that?
    Two answers.
    1. Because Joe Biden and Donald Trump are fucking different kinds of people, by orders of magnitude.
    2. No reason at all. If you don’t feel it, don’t fake it. Do as you wish. Don’t let it trouble you.
    It’s kind of insulting to say that Marty has been “captured by the Big Lie”. I understand that it comes from a generous impulse, but it’s sort of infantilizing. Marty understands what he is embracing, and is embracing it. As far as I can tell.
    Credit where credit is due.

  379. The only President I can think of who spoke literal words of truth
    Presidents rarely speak “literal words of truth”. At their very best, they speak a somewhat hyperbolic aspirational lingo that… often departs from reality in significant ways.
    So do the CEOs and other management of most medium to large size businesses. They don’t (for example) fuck up, they “pivot”. Right?
    Likewise salespeople, ministers, personal trainers, and not infrequently spouses and other romantic and domestic partners.
    Language has many uses. Accurately describing concrete facts on the ground is only one, and quite often not the most important.
    Joe Biden has decided to adopt a tone of not verbally spitting in his counterparties’ eye every time he opens his mouth.
    That appeals to some people, and not to others. So be it. Po-tee-weet.

  380. after being told one was captured and all the other insults for four years that somehow we should now play nice. Why would we do that? Because Joe Biden? Really? No.
    Why does this sound like guilt by association? Yes, lots of people have been unkind. Nasty, even. But was Biden one of them?
    If not, why not show that you can and will play nice with those who don’t trash you? Who knows, it might even make the point to the other side that they would get further that way. If you attack indiscriminately, there’s no reason for them to play nice with you in the future.

  381. Marty will write something sensible and insightful again one of these days. It happens – just not today. Today’s contributions are good for a head shake and a chuckle, nothing more.

  382. No doubt.
    I am, however, sick of the both sides bullshit.
    Somebody else is gonna have to play nice guy today. I’m out.
    Trump != Biden. Not that I’m in unqualified love with Joe Biden, they’re just utterly different human beings. I’m not sure what it takes to not recognize that.
    And today’s (D)’s != today’s (R)’s. Whether you think the policies of either party are good bad or indifferent, the character of the two parties are not equivalent or even commensurable.
    I’d love to see a world full of (R) conservatives who spent their days trying to bring the wild utopian impulses of American liberals back to earth. I’d argue with them, but I’d welcome the conversation. It would be productive.
    That’s not the world we live in now.
    Trump was investigated and impeached because he is a freaking crook. Always was, likely always will be. His old man was a crook, his kids are crooks, his entourage are crooks. Criminal fraudsters.
    That is why he and his campaign were subject to investigation from before he even won and took office, it is why he continued to be investigated while in office, it is why he was impeached. It is why he will likely continue to be investigated long after he leaves office.
    Because he is a corrupt, self-dealing criminal.
    The divisive toxic belligerent rhetoric and personal style are just the cherry on top.
    January 20 can’t come soon enough.

  383. Trump was investigated and impeached because he is a freaking crook. Always was, likely always will be. His old man was a crook, his kids are crooks, his entourage are crooks. Criminal fraudsters.
    This is true, but there is another thing that infuriates me about Trump defenders’ pearl-clutching about how Trump was being investigated “before he ever took office!”
    Trump was being investigated before he ever took office because his campaign was full of people who were known Russian assets, people who were working hand in glove with known Russian assets, people who consistently lied about meetings with known Russian assets, and people who were themselves under investigation for illegal contacts and deals with foreign governments, many if not all hostile to the US.
    The campaign wasn’t just a red flag of foreign interference in US politics; it was a Red Light Special, a Red Alert, with sirens and firecrackers and spies doing interpretive dances.
    A question I have always wanted to ask is, given all that, what the devil do Trumpsters think the US government should have done instead of investigating?
    Or are Trumpsters so deeply in love with Putin’s Russia that they believe Russian interference in US elections and policies is a Good Thing?

  386. “people who were sleeping with known Russian assets”
    :
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/a-tycoons-deep-state-conspiracy-dive
    Stole second, head first slide into third base, and Pete Rosed the catcher scoring at home plate.
    Full of shit and well compensated for it in bullshit America.
    “what the devil do Trumpsters think the US government should have done instead of investigating?
    NOTHING.
    What Michael Huffington, former Republican Congressman from California and ex- of Arianna Huffington, a grifting freak in her own right, but definitely a both sides do it gal, and she’s done it FOR both sides, who (referring now again to michael huffington) even before the squalid Gingrich revolution said “I want a government that does nothing”, like an atheist who shakes his fist at God, while of course spending tens of millions of dollars repeatedly to gain office to run the government that does nothing but pay him a salary and spit shine his limo.
    He’s been all over the place since, including coming out as having done both sides as a bisexual, not that there is anything … etc, blah, blah.
    We have 40 years of concentrated effort to abolish government at all levels from the conservative movement, while they transfer its largesse into their offshore accounts.
    They got us here, and here we are. Trump is their apotheosis.
    And now they wear government’s big grey David Byrne suit, especially its authoritarian powers, like an alien conceals himself inside a humanoid husk, staggering about leaving interplanetary bug shit all over the place as they burn down the house.
    We must destroy them.
    But I’m ranting. Pay no attention.

  387. I’m super-aware that calling Marty “captured” is insulting, and even infantilising. I’ve apologised to him before, and had already decided to do so again just before I went to sleep last night, before russell posted.
    But the thing is, I think it is the literal truth. I have always hoped Marty wouldn’t hold it too much against me, because I’ve also made it clear how much I value him (for many reasons, some of which hsh mentions), but I can’t ignore that with all the theorising we do about why and how people allow themselves to be swayed by the Trump-exonerating propaganda, we actually have a real, live example posting here, one moreover who is not and was not exactly all-in for Trump.
    Every time in the past we have given concrete examples to contradict some of the concrete accusations Marty makes, after a bit he ends up disappearing for a while (rather like McKinney, but McKinney has retained more of an unbiased view of Trump qua Trump, and his enablers in the R party), and I think in some ways he knows it but keeps on doing it as an act of loyalty to a foundational political position and identity. But if I end up doing harm by alienating the excellent Dr Jekyll-Marty, and further loosening the unconstrained Mr Hyde-Marty, I apologise not only to him but to all of you too. I only continue because I feel sure he is reachable, not to become a lefty or a liberal but to actually look with a cold eye on Trump and all his works, and his corrupt and/or criminal enablers, and pull back from the precipice of “they’re exactly as bad as each other”.
    So Marty, if you find me so insulting that it further hardens your prejudices against the condescending elite liberals, tell me and I will stop. If you find it personally hurtful, tell me and I will stop. But I hope you are aware (I have said it often enough) that I not only value you but like you, and that I understand perfectly that however misguided I think your opinions and political attitudes are, I am certain they do not come from a greedy or uncaring, let alone a sadistic place (and I think those qualities apply to most of the real Trumpistas).

  388. GftNC,
    Every time you insult me I shake my head at the arrogance of people who not only tell me what I really think (Tony) but why I think it.
    I have long and heated conversations with my friends on the right about Trump who refuse to recognize what a POS he is.
    I am equally animated in policy discussions that include being for some of the things the Republicans have accomplished in the last four years.
    I aggressively criticize the whole Russian assets bullshit, that is the left being captured.
    Clearly Biden is not Trump. But that is irrelevant when he starts recreating the Obama regulatory regime, increasing taxes on our businesses, back pedaling on trade with China, taking us into the next war, backing off the insistence that our partners pay their fair share and creating an open southern border.
    In all of those areas, and more, he won’t be working for me. These are policy areas that have nothing to do with Trump being a crook or me being evil. Or captured.
    But let’s not pretend that people like me, millions of us, have been treated like shit because we were required to either become a Democrat like wj or we “really” liked Trump, were racist and bad people that deserved to die. I won’t forget that.

  390. But Marty, speaking personally so I can make adjustments to my own behaviour if necessary, do you think that I have treated you like shit?

  391. GftNC, only to the extent that you can’t conceive that I might not like Hillary and Biden, and Obama for that matter, because I believe the Clinton’s are crooks. Obama is the epitome of the opportunist politician and Biden isn’t really competent to be President. Biden has spent his life failing to get the job.
    Those are my assessments from watching what those people have done and said. Not because some right wing commentator agreed in part with me. Each of those is tempered with some nuance but that’s my assessment overall. And, to add context, I have a higher opinion of McConnell than most but I think Rubio is an opportunist in the same way as Obama. Cruz is a sketchy guy, Nunes is a flamethrower probably because it gets him reelected in his district, Schiff is a crook, he lied multiple times to keep the Russia thing going. Pence is basically a good guy doing what he perceives his job is, Pelosi is an enigma because she is an old style politician surviving still against the odds. Paul is a politician but tends to be consistent.
    AOC is smart but not savvy. She is like the Tea Party folks in that, she has created a soapbox while delaying the opportunity to have more real institutional power.
    Graham is odd as he is too much pro Trump while having some stances I think are fairly principled. He might be considered captured.
    Rudy Giuliani has always been a crook. How he got elected in NY has always been a mystery.
    Kamala Harris may end up being the most consequential political person this century.
    I form these opinions on my own, despite both left and right media being ridiculously captured.
    So you should trust me that intelligent people can look at these people and conclude they aren’t great, while accepting that there is a way to look at them as you do. I do understand that you feel strongly that I must be captured or be stupid or bad to hold these opinions, I think you are wrong, but none of those things.

  392. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/secretly-recorded-white-house-video-caught-trump-aides-off-guard-and-ramped-up-chaos-01608767982?mod=mw_more_headlines
    We’re well into Henry VIII territory here.
    Footmen, prelates, minions, courtiers, wives, consorts, and privy counselors scurrying about ducking their heads, pointing blame at each other as they desperately try to avoid their noggins rolling into the same basket as Ann Boleyn’s and the King stews and rages and his solidly corrupted, evil loyalists prepare the Tower for his enemies.
    Meanwhile, all of the King’s nuclear footballs and all of the King’s sketchy constitutional, of-the-Office perogatives are tossed to and fro, fuses inexorably burning down to the nubbins.
    Perhaps only Hilary Mantel could do the saga justice, once we know the ending, which will contain in its absurd outline and shape yet another outrageous and dangerous beginning (like Godzilla, the malign conservative movement might wade back into the sea temporarily after wrecking the city, but only to refresh and re-appear again ratcheted up to its next destructive gambit and sequel; and its eggs, containing new monsters, incubate within our institutions) as 2021 virally reveals itself like a poisonous flower, scented with brimstone and durian-like rot, blooming malignantly.
    All of our hapless, useless, discursive predictive modeling of the crocodile’s behavior we’ve entertained ourselves with over the past five years will prove inadequate yet again, as, yes, we have maybe one thrashing leviathan crocodile foot snagged in the net, but he dives deep into the murk with us in his jaws, roiling and twisting and shaking us, disorienting us as is his basic reptilian habit, hoping we drown and can be eaten again at his leisure.
    He and his must be destroyed, removed from any equation of America going forward, and the Beast dragged to shore and his belly slit opened in a thorough, messy autopsy of this filthy conservative movement to witness and examine the contents, all of its victims in bloody, partially digested chunks.
    Trump is not a clown. He is not insane. He merely operates fully from the blunt edge of his prehistoric, predatory brain stem, not in any normative manner as we are accustomed to.
    And the conservative movement, like the financiers and operators of Jurassic Park, stand in admiring awe of the sheer primitive logic of it, converting their own diets to raw meat … us.
    Does not William Barr’s (this malign King’s calculating, ruthless Cromwell) behavior over the past weeks not tell us that THAT ruthless motherf*cker, Barr himself, (and he will be goddamned punished, too) is very, very afraid as he tip toes around the palace at night gathering his things, burning his papers, and averting his eyes from the utterly pointless, laughable constitutional leashes and lassos the raging Beast has eaten and spit out, hoping to scuttle into the night unremarked after the New Year.
    I hope Biden IS lying with his proffered hand, while keeping the other concealed among his vestments, but with acute, strategic purpose, as he prepares a massive, scouring purgative, followed by ruthless vaccination, to rid this country of this blight and infestation.
    Is it any wonder that the usual vermin suspects are now, as predicted, raging and attempting to derail and sabotage the Covid vaccination effort, even as the filth shoulder their way to the head of the line.
    As one of the King’s cold-blooded murderers blurted last week, they want EVERYONE to suffer this virus, and now I’m not speaking of Covid-19.
    My metaphors mix like horny pre-teens under dim lighting at a basement make-out party with the parents out of town.
    They can’t help it.
    Aye, ’tis the night before something, we know not what.

  393. Trump was investigated and impeached because he is a freaking crook. Always was, likely always will be. His old man was a crook, his kids are crooks, his entourage are crooks. Criminal fraudsters.
    and not just investigated – quote often actual wrongdoing has been found and he’s been punished for it: Trump U, the Trump Foundation, tax fraud, etc. he keeps getting investigated and the investigations keep turning up actual wrongdoing. he’s been privileged enough to be able to avoid criminal convictions, but he has a long history of being told by courts that what he’s up to is not acceptable.
    if he doesn’t want to be investigated, maybe he should try doing business a step or two away from the edges of legality.

  394. Well Marty, as I hope I have made abundantly clear, I do not think you are either stupid or bad. I do think you have been captured, but it’s not mainly because of your individual assessments of various politicians (always excepting your assumption that HRC was an inveterate criminal based on her history versus your assertion that Trump was lied about and “illegally eviscerated” despite his history). It’s mainly because you sometimes say things like:
    I aggressively criticize the whole Russian assets bullshit, that is the left being captured.
    despite the clear findings of the US intelligence community, and (to give just one example) Mueller, that lifelong Republican.
    So to me, that is a product of the Big Lie told by Trump (“Russia, Russia, Russia”) in clear defiance of all actual evidence, and the only explanation I can see for your saying it is that you have been captured. But I do understand that that is on the face of it an insulting assessment, and I can only reiterate that I mean no insult, the best of people can be captured by incessant repetition of “facts”, when time is too short to conduct one’s own research, or find media outlets one can trust (partly also because of the Big Lie asserting that the Media are the enemy of the people and only disseminate fake news), or because one’s own prejudices incline one more to accept certain theories when proposed by people on “one’s own side”. Any of this can happen to people on either side of the ideological divide, and it does. We all try to avoid it, but it is a danger, and when I say I think it has happened to you I hope you are no more insulted than e.g. wj, when you say he has been “required” to be a Democrat. I am damn sure he would disagree with this, and could give you chapter and verse on it if he wanted to.
    But in any case, and FWIW, I reiterate that I am absolutely sure that none of your opinions come from a place of greed, uncaringness, or sadism, and I hope very much that this takes some of the sting out of what might otherwise be considered truly insulting.

  395. Or are Trumpsters so deeply in love with Putin’s Russia that they believe Russian interference in US elections and policies is a Good Thing?
    they don’t think it happened. or maybe something happened but it wasn’t a big deal. or it was a liberal set-up. or it was a bad dream: an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.
    in the end, what they are really saying is “fuck you, liberal trash. this is our country, and nothing you do, say, or think is legitimate.”
    they must oppose any investigation into anyone on their team because liberals must not be allowed to have any say in things.

  396. Perhaps oddly enough, my own assessment of today’s political figures is not that far off of Marty’s.
    I also recognize many of the things the (R)’s have accomplished, not just over the last four years but over the last 40. I just find most of them to be undesirable. I’m measuring my language, here.
    Marty and people like Marty, and me and people like me, don’t want the same things. We have different ideas about what things are good, from point of view of public policy.
    It’s not a difference as simple as disagreement. We’re probably in agreement about many points of fact.
    We begin from different assumptions. The things we value are different.
    As a result, Marty will find things acceptable that I, personally, find abhorrent. And vice versa, no doubt.
    So, the difference has more weight than mere disagreement.
    I don’t think Marty is evil, or especially racist. I just think his point of view is, not simply incorrect, but harmful.
    As far as this goes:
    people like me, millions of us, have been treated like shit because we were required to either become a Democrat like wj or we “really” liked Trump, were racist and bad people that deserved to die.
    Imagine all of that, in reverse, only with a detailed accounting of personal arsenals and daily threats of violence.
    And, not infrequently, more than threats.
    Welcome to my world.
    I won’t forget that.
    None of us will.
    Gonna take a lot to walk all of this crap back. And then, we still have to decide how to move forward.
    And there is a large, very very large, gap there. One that will take a lot of bridge.

  398. I am equally animated in policy discussions that include being for some of the things the Republicans have accomplished in the last four years.
    Like tax cuts for the rich? (Brown) children in cages? Muslim travel bans? Alienating our allies? Disrupting trade relationships? Overseeing a totally inept response to COVID?
    Now Marty may be a very nice guy and would be a great person to have a beer with, but he heartily supports public policies that reinforce greed, redistribute wealth to the already wealthy, put a thumb on the scales of the market playing field to favor employers, ignore the danger of global climate change, and are deeply racist in their effect.
    But other than that? OK…nice guy. Hey, I was nice at one time. Really! But the GOP pushed me over the edge.

  400. pity the poor put-upon conservatives.
    “Elections have consequences” was his tag line”.
    this is a treasured GOP myth. it’s also false.
    it’s a line John McCain used in 2008, at the third Presidential debate to criticize Obama.

    I voted for Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg. Not because I agreed with their ideology, but because I thought they were qualified and that elections have consequences when presidents are nominated. This is a very important issue we’re talking about.
    Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn’t meet his ideological standards. That’s not the way we should judge these nominees. Elections have consequences. They should be judged on their qualifications. And so that’s what I will do.

    Obama slapped back with it, after he soundly beat McCain and the GOP was pretending they still ran the place (despite holding neither the WH, the Senate of the House).
    the GOP myth is comforting, i’m sure. but it’s not actually what happened.

  401. Is this the same McCain who later said a President Hillary would get no judges confirmed? Gee, Honest John, as mavericky as Her Weaseliness up here in Maine.

  402. See, Marty, that factcheck on “Elections have consequences” is an example of something that could be acknowledged, because if totally ignored it rather supports the idea that GOP (or even RWNJ) talking points have had a disproportionate effect on what you believe (ie and less diplomatically, have captured you), in defiance of actual evidence and facts.

  405. As an aside:
    How he got elected in NY has always been a mystery.
    There is a large “law and order” constituency in NYC, mostly made up of non-wealthy white people and small business owners of whatever color.
    For the concentrated essence, see also Staten Island and some sections of Queens.
    And thus, Rudy.

  406. back pedaling on trade with China, taking us into the next war, backing off the insistence that our partners pay their fair share and creating an open southern border.
    Wow, where to start?
    The best approach to dealing with China and trade was (is?) the TransPacific Partnership. Which Trump took us out of. While getting us into a trade war with China which has mostly just generated big subsidies for farmers who lost their export market — probably permanently.
    Whether any particular president will take us into a war, regardless of his personal views, is impossible to predict with any accuracy. At least in my half century plus of observation. Sometimes one who campaigned on getting us out of a war will actually do so. But that’s far from a sure thing either.
    Our allies generally are paying their share. They don’t spend as much of their GDP on their military as we do. But then, they aren’t typically engaged militarily across the whole planet. (Except when they have fought in support of us somewhere far from home where they otherwise have no interest.)
    I’ve seen no sign of any significant support for an open border. Neither from Democrats nor Republicans. What support there is tends to be from businesses (typically run by Republicans) who like the cheap labor. And Biden is at least talking about putting some effort into improving economic and political conditions in Central America. Which would reduce the motivation for people to leave there.

  408. people like me, millions of us, have been treated like shit because we were required to either become a Democrat like wj or we “really” liked Trump, were racist and bad people that deserved to die.
    I’m trying to remember when any of the liberals here told me I was “required” to become a Democrat. Though they have suggested I ought to cease being a Republican. So far without success. 😉
    And, outside JDT’s rants, I haven’t see much argument that people who disagree with them are “racist and bad people that deserved to die.” Certainly some Trump supporters (not to mention Trump himself) are racists — no disputing that. There’s even an argument to be made that most white racists are big Trump supporters. But that’s far from an argument that all Trump supporters are racists. At most, you can say that all Trump supporters are willing to tolerate racists.

  409. Obama used the line regularly, I dont remember saying it was the first time. I’m pretty sure someone said it before McCain. Obama used it as a tag line. Even though the government was Democratic for one shiny moment that didn’t mean the GOP should just capitulate, which is what he was saying. I think he was as surprised he couldn’t just get his way as Trump was.
    But, I heard him use the line multiple times, i heard him castigated the SC myself. I didn’t need rw media to quote it back to me.
    And lastly, there is no actual evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with the Russians. Certainly it seems their goals were consistent but there is no evidence anyone broke the law to conspire with a foreign government.
    If you believe there is ample evidence of that I guess I should conclude you have been captured by the left wing media and Adam Schiff although, in the end there wasn’t even a recommendation for impeachment on those grounds. In defiance of the lack of evidence or action.
    In the end, each of us had to evaluate what was released and leaked and decide if there was first, any legitimate basis for the investigation and second, any actual evidence of wrongdoing and third, what level of wrongdoing.
    I trust you evaluated allow that and came to your own conclusion. I did.

  410. Larry Craig, 2001:

    Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho said, “I think we’re all recognizing the reality of 50-50. It’s obviously a bit frustrating, but it’s the reality we have to deal with it.”
    “The November election changed the character of the United States Senate. Elections have consequences,” Craig said later on the floor.

    George Allen, 2004:

    “I’m ecstatic,” said Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
    Mr. Reynolds and his Senate counterpart, George Allen of Virginia, said the returns validated the approach of Congressional Republicans and should make it easier to pursue the economic, environmental and social agenda they favor, an agenda they blamed Mr. Daschle for helping to block. Mr. Allen said he hoped Democrats would see Mr. Daschle’s defeat as a warning from voters that they did not favor the use of Senate procedural tools to stall legislation and White House nominees.
    “Elections have consequences,” Mr. Allen said. “There are messages and lessons that I hope members of the Senate will understand.”

    Pelosi 2007:

    In April 2007, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi infuriated the White House by leading a delegation to Syria, explaining that “elections have consequences” and that she refused to leave foreign policy uniquely in the hands of an unpopular executive branch.

  411. NY Mag, 1988

    Steve Murphy, the Gephardt organizer, proudly calls himself a child of the 60’s, a member of the generation that was going to change the world. He volunteered for George McGovern’s campaign while he was a student at the University of Delaware. After he graduated, he worked as a VISTA volunteer, doing community organizing on New York’s Lower East Side. The work satisfied his idealism, but he came to feel that changing Christie Street and changing the world were two different propositions.
    ”I guess I’m much too impatient,” he said. ”I figured out that if I wanted to have a real impact, electoral politics was the way to do it.”
    In 1976, he joined Jimmy Carter’s campaign as a paid field organizer, corraling votes in the South and the Middle West, sacrificing the minuscule but concrete increments of change that community organizing can produce for the gamble that his man would get to the White House. He loved it. The results were measurable. ”Elections have consequences,” said Murphy.

    why, i’m starting to think the phrase has fuck-all to do with Obama.

  412. If only today’s Republicon Party were willing to acknowledge that elections have results, Marty’s obsession with “elections have consequences” would be less risible.
    BTW, “Republicon” is not a typo. It is meant to name a faction of the GOP which may or may not be the bolshevik faction.
    –TP

  413. And lastly, there is no actual evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with the Russians.
    I’m at a loss to understand how anyone can look at what is known, from the public record, about that topic and come to the conclusion that there’s nothing to see there. Not just, the evidence doesn’t amount to a basis for criminal prosecution, but “no actual evidence”. Nothing at all.
    You appear to be impervious to any reference to plain fact, at least on some topics. All of which, I think, underlines GFTNC’s point throughout this thread.
    It’s hard for me to find an explanation that doesn’t assume either profound ignorance or bad faith on your part. Or just, you know, an odd inability to absorb reality on some topics. I mean that sincerely, and I don’t really enjoy saying it.
    So it’s just one of those topics on which I will not engage in conversation with you.
    No ill will from me toward you in any of that, no negative feeling other than maybe exasperation. I wish you well.
    Have a nice Christmas.

  414. If only today’s Republicon Party were willing to acknowledge that elections have results
    but that would hurt the grifting fund-raising!

  415. I may have a long comment from this morning stuck in limbo**, but if not, I probably forgot to click “post”.
    Statements to the effect that elections matter and have consequences are as old and trite as the hills.
    The new and dangerous malignity was McConnell declaring that elections DON’T matter in 2009 when he halted consideration of all legislation put forward by the Obama White House and then declared in late 2015 that the 2012 election DID NOT matter and that an election which hadn’t occurred yet was reason to, without historical precedent, keep Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland from not just receiving a vote, but even a hearing.
    Then of course jamming thru Coney Barrett, thereby declaring the 2020 election of Joe Biden a null thing.
    Now, of course, we have tens of millions of non-Americans and their fascist, and yes, racist (when Obama declared elections have consequences, what raised conservatives gorges was the daring uppityness of the statement; it’s a gut thing with many of them, just as it was for southern sheriffs who back in the day could sic dogs on the uppity blacks if they sassed back) conservative movement politicians declaring the 2020 election a nullity and refusing to recognize that it MATTERS.
    We don’t yet know the consequences of this behavior, a travesty, an attempted coup, but they are not dire and fatal to the conservative movement, and punished as crimes and these pardons of criminal filth are not reversed and the entire Trump Republican edifice is not toppled and spat upon and shunned from public life, then America is no longer a serious going concern and any claim of exceptionalism for this dead thing is a miserable lie.
    It’s Christmas, so I’ll forego the f*ck yous.
    ** fixed — wj

  417. And lastly, there is no actual evidence that Trump or his campaign conspired with the Russians.
    I’m at a loss to understand how anyone can look at what is known, from the public record, about that topic and come to the conclusion that there’s nothing to see there. Not just, the evidence doesn’t amount to a basis for criminal prosecution, but “no actual evidence”. Nothing at all.
    It will be interesting to hear what testimony will come from those folks who got obstruction of justice and/or perjury convictions over “the Russia thing.” Now that, having been pardoned, they can’t take the 5th. How many will be willing to risk new convictions for repeating their previous offense?

  418. Limbaugh retired.
    Now retire the Medal of Freedom.
    He made dog shit of it and a badge of shame for all who might aspire after.

  420. The Senate probe is the first to flatly declare that a longtime partner of Manafort was, in fact, a Russian intelligence officer. The report also for the first time cites evidence that that alleged operative, Konstantin Kilimnik, may have been directly involved in the Russian plot to break into a Democratic Party computer network and provide plundered files to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.
    …
    In addition, the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, with Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. included Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian attorney and, according to the report “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government.”

    or so said notoriously-biased-against-Trump GOP-controlled Senate.
    but, no, they will never admit it’s true. if they did, it would mean admitting the investigation wasn’t a hoax, that there was reason to investigate, that the Dems weren’t unfair to him, and that their entire four years of moaning and groaning and posturing was bullshit.
    they’ve put time and money and a whole lot of energy into building their mythology. they’re not going to let something as subjective as facts raise any kind of questions about it. can’t have any of the flock wondering if it’s all a scam, after all.

  421. time to start the beef wellington preparations. so, all y’all have a merry Christmas, be you believers, heathens or atheists.

  422. Its Christmas Eve,
    We have a new President elect, we have a more Republican country at almost every other level of government. I will be hoping that I’m wrong and that, at some point, I nod my head in appreciation for something President Biden has accomplished. It would be nice.
    In the meantime, best wishes of the season to all. I’m going to watch White Christmas.

  423. I thought Donald might want to read this article and all of you might find it informative:
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-on-syrian-civilians
    Meanwhile, this morning I learned that an old friend, a few years younger than me, the father of a girl who attended school with my son from the first grade onwards, perished from the Covid-19 pandemic here in Denver.
    He had suffered from and survived colon cancer around 15 years ago, not without lingering difficulties, but had gone into the hospital recently to treat an infection of some kind in his hip.
    He contracted the virus IN the hospital and never came out.
    God damn it.

  426. …we have a more Republican country at almost every other level of government.
    Depends on where you live. Colorado’s 15-year trend continued. R’s lost the US Senate seat and one seat in each of the state house and state senate (both were already majority D). For the first time in 40-some years, the Board of Regents for the University of Colorado system is majority Democrats. Trump lost by 13.5% — the administration has spent four years pursuing environment and public lands policies that are immensely unpopular here.
    Sunny and mid-50s here today. Supposed to be a touch warmer tomorrow, I may have to strap the bicycle on and do some exploring. Maybe some snow by Monday.
    Best wishes to everyone.

  430. All their exes now live in Texas…
    Where the large majority of the population growth has been in suburbs around the big cities (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio)*. Plus seats gained in Arizona, Colorado, and Oregon, again with the population growth largely in the ‘burbs. Even in North Carolina it may be difficult to gerrymander to the point that the Dems don’t get the new seat.
    * My friend in Texas suggests that there is the beginnings of a rural/suburban Republican split over water. (Among states far enough south/west to have odd water law, Texas is unique in that all of the surface water belongs to the state.) I’d like to hear McKinney’s thoughts on that.

  431. He contracted the virus IN the hospital and never came out.
    I hate that crappy virus. Vaccines, soon come.
    In the meantime, best wishes of the season to all.
    Back atcha.

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