Autocracy has only come to America if we accede to it. We know how to fight back.
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Before I read the MM, a comment noted by Josh…
people are in their own bubble because of social media and the way people consume media now.
Yes. The media landscape changed with ownership laws, and it continues to change even now. Social media, including TikTok, puts mass media access in everyone’s pocket. It makes everyone a citizen journalist.
Also, a second Trump administration will be different (hopefully) in one respect. Trump #1 botched COVID, but COVID forced Donald in front of the media constantly. Remove the pandemic, and Trump #1’s effort was to avoid the media.
Further, all Republicans are on the hook for Trump #2. Donald may lie and hide, but you, Senator Representative, spokesman, voter… explain why you favor a 20% tax, or terrorizing immigrant children, or handing freedom-loving, America-loving nations to the greedy criminal Putin.
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Half of America can now relate to Charlton Heston’s scene at the ending of Planet of the Apes.
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My thoughts from the continued haze this morning.
If you were marketing a product, you find out what people like about it and you shape your strategy around it. Dems continue to race to the middle and chase moderate Rs. Essentially focusing on the things people like me DON’T like about Dems and making it their main message (ex: let’s do a road trip with Liz Cheney because she says 1 thing we like but has an overflowing bag of things we don’t).
I think that’s why you see the slips in places like New York and NJ. We’re being ignored. It’s taken for granted that I’m reading policy ideas and will eventually accept watered down ideas that filter through moderate Ds.
Rs don’t do that. Rs like the anger and hate. It doesn’t matter what’s true. They hammer that message and motivate. They let the cult go after the undecideds. Everybody gets what they want.
I know it’s tough to find one message for the big tent but NY is a great example. It’s really tough to live on Long island. It costs a lot. Everything is a battle. It takes an hour to go down the street. They may have fancy cars and houses, but it’s not easy to live there. They’re angry, and now voting R.
Never been a Bernie guy, but he’s the only one out there angry right now and ready to fight. I’ve gotten nothing from Schumer.
Longest post I’ve written here, and mostly just to vent. Thanks for the space.
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This article from the MM sums it up pretty good.
…https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/07/trump-legal-failures-blame-column-00187945…
“We have just witnessed the greatest failure of federal law enforcement in American history.”
Our govt. didn’t protect us, and it wouldn’t even protect itself. That is no excuse for what the RW has wrought…and they are the true villains. But we voted in 2020 to end this MFer and THEN he ran an insurrection and we finally rolled out, way too late, Operation Pussyfoot.
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The nonsensical parade of vapid commentary from the so called liberal media describing the outcome of the election as kitchen table economics is about what one would expect from those who refuse to ask follow up questions. For example, have your wages increased at a higher rate than inflation? The lazy tropes bantered about by the cluelessly sympathetic voices on radio & TV are maddening.
This election was lost because a plurality of US citizens do not understand their own motivations for voting choices and repeat those tired tropes spoon fed to them by the corporate media. Yes, deep seated racism & misogyny are very strong underlying currents that move people without their understanding. More than these factors though are union members who love union wages but hate union values & abortion rights supporters who vote for those seeking to take away reproductive freedoms in the microcosm and citizens of a democracy who take no responsibility for their choices in the macrocosm. It is this basic contradiction of motivations that overwhelm the psyche and bring the low information voter so loved by the right wing media to this moment of muddled choice making that brings us to this impasse. Things must get far worse before they get better.
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As good a place as any to put this out there. It’s gonna come up again and again. The Senate results, and the POTUS results to a lesser extent, show that we are going to have to expand the electoral map once again or be in the wilderness for a long time. BHO did it, but VA, Colorado and NV are all we have left from that expansion. NV hangs in the balance. Joe did it with GA and AZ and AZ is hanging on by a thread. Record turnout I think in GA and we lost.
The Democratic coalition is hard to bring together under the best of circumstances. If we are gonna expand the map, we gotta go through some things. Emotions are still raw. Might be too soon to get into the weeds of the things we gotta go through. I’m tired and not ready for that yet.
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David Brooks has a column this morning predictably blaming Democrats for the fact that people don’t feel seen, and paying particular attention to the fact that people who aren’t “academically gifted” are unhappy.
Society worked as a vast segregation system, elevating the academically gifted above everybody else. Before long, the diploma divide became the most important chasm in American life. High school graduates die nine years sooner than college-educated people. They die of opioid overdoses at six times the rate. They marry less and divorce more and are more likely to have a child out of wedlock. They are more likely to be obese. A recent American Enterprise Institute study found that 24 percent of people who graduated from high school at most have no close friends. They are less likely than college grads to visit public spaces or join community groups and sports leagues. They don’t speak in the right social justice jargon or hold the sort of luxury beliefs that are markers of public virtue. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/opinion/trump-elites-working-class.html
He argues that this has led to “a loss of faith, a loss of trust, a sense of betrayal”.
So I guess it’s the knowledge economy at fault, and those who chose to train themselves in ways to function in that economy are the evil doers now.
I’m so tired.
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He can do a final report. It’s mentioned in the MM that if he does so - and he can lay it all out - the report will be published. That’s about it.
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Dems have been telling themselves lies that ‘there are more of us than them’ and ‘when we fight we win’ related to motivating our voters. Or, that the demos we are fighting are ‘dying off’.
The truth is, we have wrung and wrung and wrung the population and we get 70-80 million. There aren’t anymore decent, civic-minded people. The other 250 million are Rs or worse.
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We have a whole lot of learning to do. How to cope, how to prepare, how to resist effectively. How to survive. It’s a very different world we’ve entered.
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Also, I think it’s time to retire the worn-out “That’s not who we are.”
This election showed us who America really is, to the horror of the minority (us) and the rest of the world. Knowing everything about him, trumpism is what America chose.
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If you have a minute, this review of Rudy’s book is interesting.
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I suggest we have a funeral instead of a birthday party.
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“It’s the economy, Stupid,” to quote James Carville. That’s the key to most Presidential elections. And yes, it will take priority over racism and misogyny. You have run and be elected based mostly on an economic plan. If you get elected, then you can try to ameliorate the evils of racism and misogyny. But if you don’t get elected, you have little muscle to solve societal ills. you’re just pissing into the wind.
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I’m still trying to wrap my head around the results in Missouri. If the voters voted successfully for reproductive rights to be enshrined in the state’s constitution, but then elect all Republicans to state positions, plus to retain two MO Supreme Court judges that voted against putting the amendment on the Nov 5th ballot…where is the logic?
As for inflation, and economic anxiety, why would you vote for the guy that bankrupted two gambling casinos, who gave tax breaks to the richest amongst us, and quite frankly did nothing but sell cheap, tacky, and not Made In America junk?
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Will Rudy get his assets back?
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If you haven’t read Josh’s edblog “Your Reactions” columns with emails, you should. Your Reactions #4 - TPM – Talking Points Memo is a critical read. From a twenty-two year reader.
Harris closed her concession speech by saying that it is only in the dark that we can see the stars. I agree. Playing our cards right now, we can lay a foundation for a great revival of left-wing politics in the United States if we build the messaging and information environment that communicates, on a simple level, and ancillary to other interests that young men and Latinos may have, the themes that need to be communicated to the electorate about how Democratic policies are different, and how they are working to help you.
As well as Your Reactions #5 - TPM – Talking Points Memo (bolding is from Josh) From a fifteen year reader.
So, you were right and I fully agree that I think your observation that I don’t know that it’s any more complicated than that they’re being basted in this conservative media constantly and we don’t break into that environment.
I would love to hear your thoughts on why 15 million people didn’t vote this time around. Biden got 81 million votes, last time. We’ll be lucky if Harris gets to 70 million. That doesn’t make any sense to me because there were more Republicans willing to vote for her than ever before, and I assumed that every Democrat that voted for Biden was still on board… and the idea that the Democratic Party did not have a clear plan to stay in touch with, connect and cultivate the 80 million people that voted for him last time is where the failure began. We lost this election by November 2021 because the conservatives had regrouped and were back in attack mode while Democrats were busy governing.
Please, guys, take a few moments and read these.
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