Maybe I have an unusual reaction to this:
Donald Trump mocked the media at a rally last night saying they were in a “state of panic” on Election Night, The Hill reports.
Trump specifically targeted CNN’s John King: “Now they’re getting nervous on television, and you see these anchors they’re like sweating and crying and throwing up all over the place. All those months he’s saying there is no path to 270 for Donald Trump.”
He added: “He’s up with the red map, and he’s going and his hands start to shake, and he’s gasping for breath, he can’t breathe, he’s choking like a dog. And for months he’s been saying I have no path to victory and you know, the bad news is a lot of people probably believed him and they didn’t go out to vote. It’s called suppressing the vote.”
You might think that getting taunted by Donald Trump would make me feel worse, but it actually makes me feel better in several ways.
First, it only confirms what I always believed about his character.
Second, it does way more to diminish him than it does it diminish me.
Third, it demonstrates better than I ever could both why he should never be president and why he is such a lesser man than the current occupant of the Oval Office.
It also shows you completely misjudged who was going to win.
The lack of any sense of reflection at want went wrong, or any sense that maybe people should be thinking why they were wrong is simply mind blowing.
The same people who were so confident before the election have lost none of that confidence despite completely misjudging the politics before the election.
Booman,can we please get some gold stars for fladem as an acknowledgment of his superior insights ?
Fladem is right on the money.
Booman quoted Trump:
He’s right.
Trump also said:
He’s right again.
I watched CNN during election night., The panic on Wolf Blitzer’s face and in his voice and general demeanor as the upset began to roll in was obvious. Was it due to fear of the evil Trump bogeyman and what he would do tho the country? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I wasn’t panicking. Why? My career wasn’t on the line, that’s why. As far as I am concerned Trump is just another incarnation of Reagan and Nixon. We survived those villains and we’ll survive this one.
Blitzer, on the other hand, was an important part of a massive attempt to stop Trump by the media. Not only did they fail to do so, the failure marked the beginning of the end for the current PermaGov media complex. People simply aren’t buying its shit anymore. Not enough of them, and quite probably less of them than before the media’s electoral failure.
The media attempt to suppress the vote of a huge percentage of the population of the U.S. not only failed, it also succeeded in suppressing the vote of many people who believed that HRC was a shoo-in.
Bet on it.
And here is Booman…now apparently part of the Dem mainstream which is in turn being (Finally!!!) widely recognized as being simply another cog in the discredited Permanent Government system…making the same mistake that he and almost the entire PermaGov media made regarding Trump.
They’re calling him names!!!
He’s “nasty.”
Duh.
He’s a “lesser man” than President Obama.
Just because that is demonstrably true makes no difference, Marco. It didn’t work to stop him from being elected President of the Nuclear United States, and it will do even less good once he is in office, especially since much of the media will begin to grovel to him in sheer self-interest.
I said over and over and over again during the campaign that only definitive proof of criminal acts or at the very least truly horrifying personal scandal will work against him. And I am totally through with even paying attention to the impotent maunderings of ex-progressives as they “Nyah nyah nya nyah nyah!!!” themselves into total powerlessness.
So far, the only Dem who has stood up and said “No!!! I will fight this man step by step by every legal means in my power” has been Elizabeth Warren. Even Bernie Saunders has been making nice. Chuck Schumer…the Senator from Israel…is a particularly repellent and obvious Blue Dog, but there will be many others shedding their progressive disguises in the coming months.
Watch.
If the Dems wish to remain a powerful party, they must immediately begin to reform their whole set of positions to the left. Way to the left, seeing as how their recent attempt at winning the presidency ran a creature who was totally beholden to the corporate interests that have been pulling this country hard right for 50+ years.
And…my own bet is that they will not do that.
Sorry, but there it is. Corporate money still owns the party. If Trump’s win proves anything , it is that in the current, internet-dominated infosystem the old, big-money-for-big-advertisning-and-control-of-the-media schtick no longer works.
A new party is needed, and quickly!!!
A year or two into the Trump reign..should he survive as president when the Permanent Government begins to oppose him by “other means that electoral,” of course…if the Dem party remains corpulent as it is today? It’s all over but the shouting.
Impotent shouting.
Sorry, but there that is, too.
Watch.
AG
Pretty remarkable that the shtick-meister of embedded images and video somehow neglected to include the evidence to support that “he’s right” that
Where’s the link I click to
No doubt you just forgot to include it, right? But you’ll immediately fix that . . . right?
Dont be absurd. That’s just Trumpian over-the-top bullshit. You can’t really mean to be so literal. If you were, you would be clamoring for…oh, say Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s head after he blatantly lied “No” to direct questioning from the Senate about the degree of illegal NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens.
Compared to that statement, Trump’s is just a little political hyperbole.
Get real.
AG
Maybe Nancy Pelosi’s head? She’s living evidence that the Democratic Party is going nowhere…in a basket (remember the deplorables?). Hillary Clinton recently had a dinner at the Plaza with funders. What might that be all about: gearing up for 2020, demanding continued control of the Democratic Party for her and her consort or asking if she can keep the leftover money from the campaign (which, I understand she may as long as she pays tax: read that somewhere)?
Yes.
the heads of all of these well-paid liars should be displayed on (possibly metaphorical) pikes around the (equally metaphorical) political city of Washington, D.C.
All of them.
But of course…that is not to be.
Band-aids are already being applied to the wounds of the not-at-all metaphorical Permanent Government.
Dr. Kissinger will soon be consulted. “The operation was a failure but the patient survived” will no doubt be his diagnosis.
Bet on it.
And then the next operation will begin.
Watch.
AG
Marduk/Nalbar: to paraphrase our national verbal wonder of all wonders, ‘Just cut it out’. Yes, that’s what he told Vladimir Putin—can you imagine?— but you won’t follow this tough-guy talk anymore than Putin did. So there!
Didn’t HRC also say that she told Wall St “just to cut it out?” Guess they giggled when she did so because they knew that she didn’t mean it.
Yes little smarty pants really, really did, she did, so there Wall Street put that in your hat and eat it!
according to the same source:
Dishonest, ignorant, or stupid?
How about all three?
there.
Looks like someone didn’t quite manage to follow the thread.
LOL — I was thinking that myself.
all a sudden?
. . . bullshit” approvingly, then went even further out of your way to endorse it with “He’s right again.” When, as you now admit without the decency to actually admit it, in fact he’s the opposite of “right”, i.e., “wrong”.
AG approves and endorses “Trumpian over-the-top bullshit”.
Good to know.
Also too, completely unsurprising.
More bullshit. How do you defend the many more…and so far more serious…”bullshit” statements that have come from Dem officials, candidates and officeholders over the preceding 8 years?
How many lives has Trump…so far, of course…snuffed out in pursuit of power?
There is no comparison.
Trump now has his chance to get even in the murder sweepstakes. He probably will do so if not surpass his predecessors, but so far?
No contest.
Meanwhile, back at the D. C. ranch…
Obama Confronts Complexity of Using a Mighty Cyberarsenal Against Russia
Even more bullshit!!!
WTFU.
AG
re:
Er . . . I don’t? (But feel free to waste your time trying to document me doing so.)
Why do you ask?
Not calling them out is defending them, oaguabonita, especially when they have had such murderous results.
But nooooooo…
You split hairs about the hyperbole of a…so far…relatively harmless hustler. Relatively harmless compared to the chaos that has been created by our current crop of warmongers in the Middle East, anyway.
Their mistakes…their lies, their Blood For Oil wars… are what have brought us to our current sad state.
Where does the blamwe for Trump’s win really sit?
i sits n the heads of the PermaGov hustlers Clinton I, Bush II and Obama, that’s where. And further, on the heads of those who thought that they could get away with foisting Clinton II on a population that feeling it has beed betrayed by all of its recent leaders.
And you want to nitpick about Trump’s exaggeration regarding the obviously troubled media hustlers who are worried about covering their asses after they failed to get Clinton II elected?
WTFU.
AG
while you’re at it a single iota of bullshit in my comment you libeled as “more bullshit”.
You can’t, of course.
Do I sense a tectonic shift in the overarching PermaGov meta-narrative? You are my mentor on this, my Fukayama.
Tectonic.
Yes.
A shifting of the plates, so to speak.
The tension became too great, and something had to give.
Now…as always after an earthquake…the cleanup begins.
Soon…a new city.
A better city?
Let us pray.
AG
Well if my estimation of Trump’s historical significance is as prescient as yours has been I would assume the ‘clean-up’ includes the unceremonious bulldozing of progressive institutions laboriously constructed during a quarter century of US political and social evolution; perhaps never to be seen again.
My concerns are legion but first among them is that our corporate thought leaders are thinking, “Neo-liberalism has clearly failed, let’s try it the old-fashioned way.” They are not intellectual lions, you know.
You write:
No, they are not. However…”intellectual lions” only predominate…usually vey briefly… at the far end(s) of the socioopolitical pendulum.
In between?
Jes’ folks.
Power lies in numbers as well as intellectual wattage, Shaun.
It’s just the plain truth of the matter.
Ain’t gonna change anytime soon…
AG
People have always needed leadership; it is discerning their genuine self-interest which seems the problem.
I’ve been discussing this a lot recently. I think there’s a crucial point that’s being almost universally misunderstood:
The entire campaign, as it happened, was being viewed as the collapse of Republicanism…as the failure and demise of American Conservatism. Look at the primaries; look how existentially depressed all the conservative pundits were. Look at how Trump destroyed all the sacred cows (Bush “kept us safe” etc.) and then himself imploded, a Kamikaze hell-bent on burning it all down.
Then he won. And everyone said, Gee, I guess we got that all wrong; I guess this was actually the triumph of American conservatism. (“The American people rejected the Progressive agenda,” is the nonsense that keeps getting disseminated by people who should know better.)
Because the fact is, everyone was right the first time: this really is the collapse and failure of American Conservatism. Our “winning”-fixated culture keeps people from understanding how catastrophic this is for Republicans — how any hope of achieving anything of any lasting value or of surviving into the rest of the century is now permanently scuttled (just like happened to them when Nixon won in 1972–it just took a couple of years for the boom to land). If I were a Republican — a smart Republican — I’d be appalled.
Ian Kershaw called the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Hitler’s reign as “a collapse of civilization.” No-one would disagree with this — you’d have to be an idiot to say, “What do you mean, ‘collapse’? It was a triumph! They won!”
I was watching a documentary on the Hitler Channel — er, I mean the American Heroes Channel — last night, about the rise, triumph, and fall of You Know Who, and the segment was discussing all the things Der Fuehrer did in the 1930s to lift Germany out of its disastrous post-stock-market-crash economic collapse. The program (some BBC production, to judge by the voice-over accent) was old enough to have interviews with people who were around then. One interviewee, after pointing out Hitler’s successful economic and diplomatic moves through the mid/late ’30s, said that if he had died then, before launching the war, he would be remembered to this (the interviewee’s) day as one of Germany’s greatest statesmen.
So I’m watching this, and thinking about how the stock market is surging now that it’s over the first shock of Trump’s win, and looking at the likelihood of near-term successes for whatever policies he trots out that are aimed at goosing the economy in ways that will stroke his fans, and can’t help wondering — what kind of disasters (that can’t be hand-waved away as Obama’s fault) short of global war will it take to destroy Der Trumpenfuehrer?
. . . collapse?
Actually, that arguably may not qualify as “short of” global war.
Though my best guess is that either would be accompanied by the other. Ecological degradation, including global-warming-driven drought, is already a clear contributor to phenomena like extremist terrorism, the refugee crisis (crises), the re-emergence in Europe and here of racism, xenophobia, and virulent nationalism, etc., etc., as available resources fall ever-shorter of demand driven by relentless population growth multiplied by individual-expectations growth. (The 20-30-something university-, or even grad-school-educated male from the Mid-East who finds himself with none of the promised prospects is already a stereotype for a potential terrorist recruit — with recent history the source of that stereotype.)
And neither is far-fetched at all at this point. Major, widespread ecological degradation beyond what’s currently evident is virtually guaranteed: the “forcing” (in climatologist-speak) is already loaded into the pipeline and coursing irrevocably into the system, with lag time until it’s fully expressed.
I wonder if increased terror attacks in America don’t just play into Der Trumper’s hands. Increased Islamic terrorism may result in military overreach and bring on another Iraq War just like with Bushco, I suppose.
Unfortunately, that’s true. And it would be worse than Bush.
This is a pretty critical point and we might as well start thinking about it.
The stock market, in my view, is going to have some pretty serious buyer’s regret in the next year. I predict that Trump is going to bring serious volatility to world markets, mostly for the reason Tarheel mentioned the other day–the endemic uncertainty that the American Madman will bring to global affairs. Increased tension with China, Europe and all the Americas, as well as the return of US intervention in the ME, will also bring market instability.
Domestically he gets his tax cuts, and Repubs get some of their SS and Medicare gutting, as well as the repeal of Obamacare, with no possible “replacement”. Tax cuts mostly for plutocrats, and bloated military spending are not very expansionary, as we well know, and the rest of the wish list is contractionary, since it’s just massive austerity under another name. As always, “conservatism” is great for the rich, but bad macroeconomic policy for the nation as a whole. This should bring on a recession and drag the markets down, ultimately.
It seems likely that Der Trumper gets his dick caught in some serious incident with China, Iran, North Korea or even Russia, and his incompetence, narcissism and lack of sense in those around him escalates this into a new Cuban Missile Crisis. He has no way to get himself out of it, short of threats of nuclear retaliation. I guess we have to hope the other side is better led and willing to back down, which just makes the world’s situation with Trump even worse. I could also foresee some sort of League Against American being formed to combat the American Caesar, since domestic political opposition will fail for lack of national leaders.
With our failed and corrupt political system and destroyed institutions (such as the courts and corporate media), I would not foresee “the people” being too much involved in the equation going forward, just as they weren’t in Nazi Germany.
Great minds think alike. I have been doing some light reading about bond prices prior to 1914, lately. Shorter: they never saw it coming.
You may have hit this right on the head. Short term, we see euphoria at tax cuts and gutting of major programs and departments. But those things have a way of biting you in the ass with time. Ultimately we have a recession or about the same time there is a major dust up with Iran or China or Russia or all three. Hitler rode the wave of prosperity until 1939 and then embarked on world conquest. These days we have super bombs and climate change. The collapse will not be pretty. I fear for my kids and grandkids whether war or severe poverty. Could we have refugees in our own land? Take ur pick. I despair for the response to this I see so far. Someone tell me why we need Pelosi and why should Obama be putting forth his own candidate for the DNC? Who in hell is leading us?
Parenthetically, I would consider it a disaster if Perez wins. Got my fingers crossed, Ellison has very strong and wide support.
Unlike a lot of others here, I do not see Pelosi as a problem, I see her as kind of a scapegoat. She’s an easy target.
I think a lot of these old timers do “get it”, and would be happy to get out from under the Clintons. Of course, a lot of them don’t, but I don’t see why I would put Pelosi in that category.
I’m not even ready to write off Schumer. I consider this “working with Trump” thing to be nothing more than political positioning. Not unlike what Obama was constantly doing, especially in his first term. When Schumer actually starts selling out I’ll be the first one on the barricades.
People say his teaming up with Sanders and Ellison is just a cover for “business as usual.” This strikes me as backwards. I don’t see why Schumer would team up with such a notorious anti-semite (LOL) and radical collectivist (LOL), unless he meant it.
Assuming the best will in the world, Schumer is in a very difficult and crucial position, and it will take tremendous skills to navigate the course. And he knows it. And perhaps he’s thinking about who he would really want in that foxhole with him.
This may sound silly to some of you, but it isn’t to me: Schumer and Sanders went to he same high school.
If I had lived one block from where I did live, I would have gone to that school myself. Schumer is around ten years younger than Sanders, and I’m a little older than Schumer. So if neighborhood culture means anything, I’m not ready to write him off when he indicates that he’s an ally of Sanders. I think some establishment Dems do hate Sanders (like Barney Frank) — but others actually have tremendous respect for him, especially considering what he pulled off.
I could be wrong about all of this, but let’s not jump to conclusions.
What’s wrong with Perez? He did damn fine work as Labor Secretary. Why is he getting dragged through the mud here?
It’s not Perez, it’s the faction that’s backing him. Unfortunately, sometimes things work that way.
So here’s a guy who’s done good work at all levels, and unlike Ellison (who’s totally awesome btw), doesn’t already have a full time job, but people you don’t like are backing him, so fuck him? Makes sense. Also explains why we don’t get higher quality people going into public service.
It’s not just “people I don’t like” It’s the very faction in the Democratic Party that will keep it going in the same hopeless direction. In other words, the Clintonists. They are putting up Perez precisely because he is an attractive candidate. This contest will determine whether the Democratic Party has learned anything from this disastrous defeat. I take hert in the fact that Ellison has very strong and diverse backing.
I prefer Ellison to Perez. However, I find your logic here unpersuasive. Both are good candidates. It’s true that Clinton-supporting figures (most of the public is not paying attention to this) seem to prefer Perez.
But, so does Obama. He managed to win his elections.
I have a lot of respect and liking for Obama. But I’m afraid he has to be considered one of the Clinton-supporting figures.
Obama won his elections, and if he had been able to run for a third term I’m sure he would have won this one. But he wasn’t, and this election has put the Democratic Party in a critical situation.
Perez supported the TPP. As a member of the administration, I supposed he had to, but anyway, he did.
Perez’s decision is seen as an effort by the exiting Obama-era leadership to keep control of the party in trusted hands,” the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
We need to take this seriously. If those same people remain in control, the Democratic Party is doomed, and that means the country is doomed.
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/12/15/ellison-pitches-bold-vision-race-dnc-chair-becomes-battl
e-soul-party
I like both candidates, the only reason I tack towards Perez is he can devote all his effort to the job, where Ellison will have to divide his efforts between legislating, campaigning and running the DNC. I just think it’s funny that it’s cool to crap all over Obama now. Best president of our lifetimes. smdh
Well, if you like Ellison, you will be glad to know this, which you seem to have missed:
http://www.startribune.com/rep-keith-ellison-i-will-resign-my-seat-if-i-win-dnc-chair/405232966/
I don’t know who is “crapping all over Obama now” (currently receiving a favorability rate of 54.9% and rising), but it is not me.
Still, no one is perfect, and I think it is unreasonable to treat Obama as if nothing he did can be criticized. Obama supported the TPP, supported Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as chair of the DNC, and from 2008 supported Clinton’s path to a lock-in nomination. None of these things were good for Democrats’ chances in 2016.
Good that he would do that, I think the record shows that either would be great at the job.
I was beaten to the punch, but as it has already been mentioned, Ellison has pledged to resign his House seat and devote himself full-time to his duties at the DNC if he is elected. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about a part-timer heading the DNC after the clusterf*ck the previous one created. Either way, as long as whoever is in charge gets the need to build the party back from the ground up, I’m good.
What troubles me is that many commenters are either unaware of the deeper significance of the choice, or are if they are, are perfectly happy with the faction that led us to this disaster. And Marie is right, the direction of the party was set long before Obama came on the scene.
Even Donna Brazile admits “I’m not going to sugarcoat what happened on Election Day.” The Democratic Party “has a lot of things that we have to do,” Brazile said. “Donald Trump cracked the blue wall, OK? He cracked the blue wall.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donna-brazile-democratic-emails-232784
It’s nice to know that Donna Brazile at least understands the party “has a lot of things that we have to do.” The question is “What things?” In my view, the cracking of the “blue wall” was due not simply to Tump’s strength, but to Hillary’s (and the establshment party’s) weakness. And this weakness is something that goes back a long way and lies very deep. It goes back to the 1980s and especially 1990s, when Clinton blew off the working class.
Part of the problem is that the party tends to look for technical fixes. But “fixing the blue wall” is not a technical problem, it’s a moral problem.
This is an existential problem for the Party. It is not new, it keeps coming back, but it’s here now in an absolutely critical moment.
You’re all entitled to your choice, but please don’t be under the illusion that, since Ellison and Perez are both cool, it doesn’t really matter that much.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/obama-keith-ellison-dnc_us_585460a1e4b0b3ddfd8cd1b5
Is Perez then expected to be someone else who will be complicit in undermining the DNC then? Just trying to make sure I understand.
It would tend to work that way. I’m not saying that’s his intention, but surely you don’t think the head of the DNC is the one who gets to decide where the party is going? It’s the people behind him. He carries it out.
Basically whoever gets this role has no real agency at all then?
At a time when the party is divided, anyone who gets that position will have the agency that comes from being the executive member of a group of supporters with a particular philosophy about where the party needs to go. Hopefully, once elected, that person would be supported by the entire DNC, but we all know it doesn’t quite work that way. What it does mean is that the group behind the peron elected DNC head will have effective control, just as DWS represented a group (Clinton/Obama) that had effective control.
Sounds like regardless of who gets the nod in a couple months, the party will remain fragmented and the chair will have the support of only a specific faction and no one else. Is that a correct reading? If so, that doesn’t bode well. Too bad. I though Ellison would have been wonderful. Sounds like he’d have little influence outside his circle of support.
No, I don’t think that’s quite it. I think there are a large number of members who will go the way the wind blows. That’s usually how it goes.
Look, the DNC chair doesn’t set the policy, he just executes it. This is no small thing, it takes lots of skills, energy, dedication, good relationships. etc. But still, he has to have people behind him, and this year there cannot be a single DNC member that doesn’t understand there is a lot more at stake than just Ellison and Perez as individuals.
It’s not unlike 2005, when Howard Dean was elected, but even more auspicious. Dean had some new ideas, but obviously there were others that were unhappy with him and couldn’t wait to get back in power, which they did in 2009.
The problem of disunity does not lie with either Ellison or Perez, it lies in the fact that the Democratic Party really is split by the results of 2016 and cannot avoid being aware that it is.
Hopefully we’re not overestimating either Obama or the Clintons’ power in the decision making process. It is highly doubtful Obama will ever hold another public office. The Clintons are simply finished. HRC is never running again for anything, and if she tried, she’d never make it out of the first few week of a primary season. I suppose the voting members (or at least a significant enough subset) in the DNC could still be in denial about the last half decade in particular went down under the previous leadership. I hope for all our sakes that the next several weeks offer plenty of opportunity for reflection before any decision gets made. My personal take: Ditching the 50 state strategy was enormously stupid, and the proof is in the pudding. Pretending the 2010s were going to end as the 1990s redux was also enormously stupid, and in reality the 1990s weren’t so wonderful. If these folks have so much as a functioning brainstem, they’ll bear in mind that Sanders’ performance in the primary was not a fluke (his candidacy convinced me to actually register as a Democrat for the first time in, like ever), and although I doubt Sanders himself could repeat in 2020, the ideas he promoted could prevail assuming there are candidates who can be groomed who are willing to promote them. If whoever is chair can pave the way to do that, all the better. And if whoever is chair can go into the job keenly aware that there are states outside of the coasts and a ton of counties where the DP has atrophied that need immediate attention, I’ll be ecstatic.
I agree with most of what you say here. And you are right that neither Bill or Hillary will ever run again. But then there’s Chelsea. And even if Chelsea decides that politics is not for her, I don’t think the Clintons will ever give up the power game unless they are literally orced out. Mostly it’s behind the scenes anyway, so why could it not continue to be? Proxies too. And that’s what this DNC election is really about, as far as I understand it.
Right now I suspect all we can do is speculate from our respective electronic devices. As of the moment, Ellison still seems to have the momentum. Of course nearly two months is a long time. Right now I’ll wait and see, and hope for the best.
Yes. I just want to repeat: to assume the Clintons are out of the power game in the Democratic Party would be a big mistake. I grant you, by all rights they should be. But as a matter of fact, they are very angry at how things turned out and, I think, are not at all inclined to relinquish whatever power they still have, which is considerable.
“the Clintons”‘ (I presume you don’t mean the rock band of that name) thoughts and emotions:
Now, neither part of what you declare to be “a matter of fact” seems preposterous on its face to me; not even unlikely; perhaps even probable. The first claim even invites “how could it be otherwise?”
But how did you acquire the intimate access to the innermost contents of their hearts and minds sufficient to confidently declare those assertions to be “fact”? (Gotta be a way you could cash in “bigly” on that superpower. Have you given that any thought?)
If you want to know why I put in “as a matter of fact” you have to look at the context. I said it both to contrast with the OP’s statement that the Clintons were “finished” and to introduce my counter-claim that they were far from finished.
How do I acquire the intimate access to the innermost content of their hearts and minds, etc. ? The same way most people do, by observing and interpreting their words and actions.
This is not Journalism 101, but you can keep picking nits if you enjoy it.
Because they CAN’T do that.
They may believe they can. They may convince themselves they can (as you seem to have).
But they don’t actually possess that superpower they/you claim.
Pretty basic, really.
I don’t actually care why you put in “as a matter of fact”. The point is: what you declared “a matter of fact” is not “a matter of fact”.
I should have said people with “normal emotional intelligence.” Which, I’m beginning to suspect, you lack — if really think it’s not possible to tell, by observation, whether a person is happy, angry, etc. Most people can, not perfectly, but with pretty good success. But then, scientists aren’t always right either. It may take a few tries.
I’m reminded you did insert “I think” for the second proposition. So I withdraw that bit.
Thank you.
I think the thing that pisses me off about this is Obama allowing the party apparatuses to die (I’m not sitting in shining glory on this either, but it’s been brought up endlessly since 2009, and especially after 2010), appointing DWS and never getting rid of her for her failures because of the “headache”, yet now he comes in and intervenes. I like Perez — my choice for VP. And I don’t mind an actual contest between the two. But if he wins because of Clintonite members aching to continue their control, the party really hasn’t learned anything.
Of course it would be because of actual Clintonite members.
Ellison has a very impressive list of endorsements, including Senators Sanders, Warren, Schumer, Tammy Baldwin, Sen-Elect Tammy Duckworth, Reps. Elijah Cummings, Maxine Waters, Raul Grijalva, Tammy Baldwin, John Lewis (yes!), Luis Gutierrez and Tulsi Gabbard (former DNC vice chair), Sen. Martin Heinrich, the AFL-CIO, n=and the DFA, and many more.
I find it particularly noteworthy that he has the endorsement of the AFL-CIO.
Perez has Obama and his immediate circle, the ADL, and (at the moment) most members of the DNC, who are the only ones who can actually vote.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-perez-enters-race-dnc-chair-setting-test-obama-pro
gressives-n696651
To qualify my comment slightly, it would be because of Clintonite members both active and passive, in other words, Clintonites and those who would respond to pressure from Clintonites.
Like make sure any candidates you put up are not “attractive” (whatever that means to you)?
WTF?
He can goose the economy all he wants.
He has to build the wall.
And put Muslims in boxcars.
And liberals in camps.
His people don’t care what the Dow is.
They don’t actually care whether they’re employed.
This is an interesting observation, but allow me to quibble a bit.
Another way that the GOoPer primary was seen was as a collapse of “establishment” control over the Repub masses (the Bushco denunciations, etc.) And to a lesser extent a collapse of traditional conservative ideology, especially as to free trade and neocon warmongering. Der Trumper was obviously playing pick-and-choose among “conservative” tenets, picking those most popular with the biggest ignoramuses (and racists), which obviously make up the plurality of Repubs. Thus xenophobia, white identity celebration, immigrant bashing, Job-Killin'(tm) gub’mint regyoulayshun, all rolled up with tax cuts (of course) became the platform. (With the usual War on Wimmin as a way to hold the Christianists.) This is reactionary “conservatism”, very recognizable in American history. They have long had Strongman desires.
I’ve been waiting 30 years for the Conservative Crack-up. I suspect I’m Waiting for Godot. There was no serious thought in election 2016 that the House could ever be wrested from the Repubs. The numbers for a Dem senate always looked very shaky IMO, Trump or no Trump. Repubs totally controlled a majority of the states. The election was basically Hillary or Bust.
So there were plenty who doubted the demise of “conservatism” was upon us simply because Der Trumper was the nominee. And as we observe total Repub control of every branch of the federal government and practically all the states, with a horrific senate map in 2018 that will get them over 60, I have to say I do see 2016 as a Triumph for Repubs, who will now try to morph into a Trumpite party.
We will see how the plutocrat funders respond to the situation. But Repubs certainly see 2016 as a fabulous triumph, and they have a pretty strong hand. Don’t forget that Hitler had a dozen years of absolute power before the Hammer and Sickle flew over the Reichstag and Deutschland lay in ruins. So I wonder how many are going to be around to see the conservative crackup happen here, assuming it ever will…
Since we are quibbling, let me do mine.
Look to Trump’s appointments. Virtually no experience for the jobs they have been picked for, except Flynn…who is a nut. Now I’m sure he’s picking them for ‘griftiness’ and loyalty. But what’s almost certain is more experienced types have refused to participate in his foreseeable trainwreck. This situation will only get worse, because when things go bad (and they will), what republican will want to come in and fix it, knowing Trump is the ultimate cause? Things are not all that peachy for republicans.
The democrats have reason to be in disarray, they lost. They (she) had one fucking job and fucked it up. But the republicans won, so have no excuse, and in the light of day….they look worse.
I’m reminded of the old sports saying….
Things are not as good as they look when you are winning, and not as bad as when you are losing.
I agree with you that chaos in the executive branch seems very likely. And hard to see how any Repub with expertise is able to intervene.
Maybe the Trump kids will come to demand competence, haha…or are they just the enforcers of Daddy’s Policy? Like Saddam’s two sons, for example. Saddam had no Ivanka, as far as I know!
GDI! That’s the word I was looking for! ‘Expertise’.
SIGH, the kids.
They seem incredibly desperate to get the kids in an office down the hall.
I always thought it was because they could be a conduit for the bribes. Certainly this is pointing to everyone in the room on who to pay off.
While I still think that is true, I think a more important roll is minder…..explaining to Trump what was said, and what it means. It makes me wonder. I bet Evanka attends every meeting. Very strange.
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Oh yes, the trumpsters expect to work the grift from the first ladies office. They think they can sign those secret business deals in the Oval Office. I don’t believe you can keep secrets like that in the 21st century. There are hackers and people that know there will be a monetary value for such secrets.
Trump’s victory, perhaps, is neither the triumph or failure of conservatism. Republicans thrived for decades on the proposition that they would deliver a voting bloc for business, whom had plenty of money but no actual votes. Trump realised that they had overplayed their hand and had made their voting bloc vulnerable to his con; he moved in on their territory.
Having thought about it I’m guessing like all real estate professionals Trump merely wants to interpose himself in this lucrative business as a classic rentier. The one consistent theme of his administration seems to be doubt, unpredictability and resolution of uncertainty by reference to the great man alone, in the moment of his choosing. The affairs of state, the petitions of his constituents, the stratagems of CEOs, the relations with states and enterprises great and small must, seemingly, all cross his desk.
As long as he keeps ‘his’ voting bloc on a string he will be impossible to dislodge. It seems we have acquired a tapeworm but will the host survive.
Shaun, I watched a program the other day on the HBO series “Vice”, called “A House Divided”. I recommend it to everybody.
In this one program you will see the entire eight years of the Republican congress and how they fought Obama. It concludes with the Trump victory at the end.
The program was very well done, but I found it gut-wrenching and infuriating just to see all of that within a short space of time. But also very instructive. You can’t watch it without seeing it as a DIRECT buildup to Trump.
They didn’t know Trump was coming, true, but what they did wind up with was seventeen sociopaths, the best of whom would have been extremely bad.
The Republicans went over to the dark side. They did not one positive thing in those entire 8 years. They calculatedly broke our civic system and destroyed this country, because they cared about themselves rather than about the country.
You can’t even say they stand for “small government” or “family values” or “religion”. I mean look at how they support Trump, who cares for none of those things. He’s just and SOB but he’s their SOB. They were out to win, country be damned, and that’s all there is to it.
Trump, in retrospect, was inevitable. Unless the Dems had put up an effective candidate. And that just wasn’t going to happen. The candidate they put up was not only ineffective, and unmotivating to potential Democratic voters — she was THE red flag to the bull.
To be fair, confidence that HRC would win was 100% here. What varied was the level of confidence. From low (AG) to high (a landslide for HRC). Those at or near the latter camp, spent months denigrating those that pointed out legitimate shortcomings of HRC and her campaign and that it was 2016 and not 2012. And they’re still doing it. Some obnoxiously so with their use of inappropriate down-ratings.
One possible reason for the lack of reflection by those most confident in a HRC win is an inability to comprehend how such a wretch like Trump could win. But that’s narcissistic thinking. As contrasted with an ability to see, hear, listen to a majority of voters in “purple” states, including the newly “purple” states. For some reason pondering that is too threatening for some people. Yet not to do so is the best way to repeat the errors of 2016. It’s not as if there weren’t warning signs in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, but those outcomes didn’t lead to any reflection here and at larger Democratic blogs either.
And we simply CANNOT AFFORD to repeat the errors of 2016. If we do, this country is doomed — unless a new party truly responsive to the needs of this country arises from the ashes of the Democratic Party.
Don’t know who you me by “we.” Seems to me that the “we” errors were the making of the Democratic Party elites and they’re hardly new errors. Have been making the same ones since at least 2002. I’d argue the errors are vintage 1992 but they were in the making in the decade before then.
The errors of the Democratic hoi polloi is going along with whatever crap the DP elites toss out and getting so fully invested in DINO wins that “we” feel personally crushed when Democrats lose. Yet, Democratic elites must be doing fine with the outcomes or they would have changed.
HRC lost this election all by herself. On the way to the coronation she was so confident that she thought she could pick off Republican votes on the right and ignored her left. And she remained surprisingly silent over all the crap and fake news about her. She reminded me of John Kerry who I thought just folded in a fetal position after the swift boat attacks, kinda like he really didn’t deserve those medals anyway.
If the roles were reversed, can you even imagine Donald Trump taking it and listening to the crap about Benghazi, her servers and e mails and then Comey saying she was extremely careless and coming out eleven days before the election? And being called a liar and crooked? Hell no. He would have been on TV every day with a rally telling Comey and everyone else they were lying.
And after the election he would have demanded recounts. My heavens you couldn’t have shut him up if it was that close. So HRC slid into her comfort zone in a fetal position all the way through, cause we all knew, she broke the glass ceiling and was on the way to the coronation. Funny thing happened.
She and her campaign are responsible for this disaster. Or let’s just say there was no fight there.
I think you know what I meant by “we”, and if you can honestly exclude yourself from that collective pronoun for the last 35 years, you occupy a more exalted position in the American political spectrum than I suspected. But even so, I don’t know what candidates you could have gotten elected.
“…the errors are vintage 1992 but they were in the making in the decade before then.”
I wouldn’t argue with that. The decade before 1992 was the era of Reagan and Bush 41. Already a lot of Democrats jumped ship to vote for Reagan. Then 1992 saw the election of Bill Clinton. Nevertheless, after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, and with Bush going for a second term, I hardly think Democrats could be blamed for voting for Clinton. And yet, a lot of the hoi-polloi and “Reagan Democrats” preferred the spoiler Ross Perot. Of course in a three-way race this hurt Bush and actually helped Clinton.
But 1992 also began the run-up to NAFTA, which immediately alienated a lot of Clinton’s most enthusiastic supporters. I remember it well because I worked to oppose NAFTA. I still recall talking on the phone with an aide to Rep. David Bonior of Michigan ( a leader in the fight against NAFTA) a short time before the vote, in which he told me that they thought the “Nays” had the votes in the House. (It passed 234-200.)
But this deviation of the Party has been a gradual process, and coming to UNDERSTAND what happened has taken even longer for most of us mere mortals. For example, the savage GOP onslaught against Bill Clinton did stir up a lot of loyalty to him among Democrats, even if you didn’t like the guy all that much.
I confess I didn’t really get what was going on until around 2003, and just as I started getting it, Howard Dean started saying publicly what I was thinking.
So — as far as the hoi polloi blindly going along, for all practical purposes there have been few occasions when they, or should I say “we”, had any viable choices. Bernie Sanders was, and I would say, remains, the clearest and most successful alternative. And I support him wholeheartedly.
Really, if there had been viable choices, we wouldn’t have seen this drift of working-class voters to the Republicans since 1980, something which makes little sense otherwise.
I don’t know who you voted for in this last election, or if you voted, but most Sanders supporters voted for Clinton. Sanders urged us to do that, and in doing so, he was not “selling out” as a few of his less discerning supporters claim. I don’t think I have to explain why Sanders people voted for Clinton, but “going along with whatever crap the DP elites toss out and getting so fully invested in DINO wins that ‘we’ feel personally crushed when Democrats lose” — is a complete distortion.
I can’t stand Hillary Clinton and I still felt personally crushed by the outcome of this election.
So whatever your intention (and you have every right to be angry), your comment comes across as self-righteous and grossly simplistic. And that’s not even counting the relentless, deliberate, calculated contribution to this disaster made by the Republicans, which is so obvious that it’s now actually being overlooked.
The sin of the establishment Democrats in the face of all this was smug complacency and, as you say, keeping their own cushy connections and other privileges intact. These people never learn anything. As Upton Sinclair so wisely put it, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I wouldn’t blame the hoi polloi for that.
through the heart of this Zombie Lie* to stop its staggering on?
This notion was heavily promoted and eventually widely accepted as conventional wisdom (as you demonstrate), including by the Worse-Than-Useless Corporate Media.
Only problem? It’s false.
Exit polls (the only relevant, available data) showed that Perot drew almost exactly equally from Bush and Clinton (based on respondents’ answers to who would have been their second choice without Perot in the race).
You could look it up!
*yeah, I know, mixed metaphor; so sue me
Note: this is longer than intended. My use of Democratic “hoi polloi” was well considered and factors into both assessing the current position of the DP and socialism and a major difficulty in how to positively move forward from here. As Democratic “hoi polloi” wasn’t intuitively obvious to you and you also took great exception to it, there isn’t a shorter way to explain it.
Recent history:
I include myself in the DP hoi polloi through 2008. Although I managed to see “what was going on” by 1998 when Citigroup purchased Travelers. Even though I agreed with Nader’s critique in 2000 didn’t even flirt with the option to vote for him. Rightly or wrongly, I viewed Gore as a decent person that understood policy.
The “awakening” many Democrats had in 2003 was mostly about the seeming incompetence of Democrats in electoral politics — Gore’s campaign figured large in that assessment but it was the 2002 midterms that added weight to it. Added to that was the significant (but probably minority) disgust among Democrats on the IWR vote and all the non-office holding liberals with public stature that also went along with the FakeNews WMD. The DP along with the Democratic hoi polloi squandered the 2004 opportunity to confront both the electoral incompetence and getting it very wrong on a major public policy issue. Going with a ticket that had supported the Iraq War and continuing to run poor to dreadful campaigns from President down through the House. With the predictable results.
Howard Dean (2003-2004) represented a slight break from where the DP was at that time. He acknowledged his error in supporting NAFTA, had opposed the IWR, and pointed out that continuing to concede Senate and House races before the election cycles began was a perfect way to lose. Could he as the nominee have beat GWB? Probably not because the country was still at that 50/50 split, but as the nominee he would have drawn three important lines in the sand for the DP. Which Kerry/Edwards couldn’t do. Gore would have been a better nominee than Kerry/Edwards that year because he had vociferously opposed the IWR.
Picking up the shards from the 2004 defeats, enough Democrats saw that Dean hadn’t been complacent about the DP down-ballot races and therefore, insisted on him being appointed to DNC chair. 2006 was more about GWB and the GOP losing than Democrats winning, but at least a higher percentage of Democratic nominees were more attractive than they’d been in the most recent elections.
No way would Obama have been the ’08 nominee if a DWS had been party chair. No way a young white challenger with some charisma would have defeated Hillary. Not even Edwards would have made it through her SC/southern “firewall.” Obama had two advantages: one being (and wasn’t expected to be relevant after the Kerry/Edwards nomination) his claimed opposition to the IWR and the second being a better campaign organization. Beyond that there was the possibility that he wasn’t a neoliberal. Not a strong possibility given his support in the financial sector that had split that year between him and Clinton.
Clinton fought on for the ’08 nomination because any idiot could see that GWB had so tarnished the GOP brand that a GE win was practically guaranteed. And it trickled down and continued the 2006 shift to reject Republicans in Senate and House races. Seemed like a good start even if not so many “better Democrats” had won.
Then the Democratic “hoi polloi” repeated exactly what they had done in 2004 by silently accepting a continuation of the how and why the party had become weak in the first place. Where was the outrage over Obama’s appointments? Why wasn’t the irrefutable outcome of the 2010 midterms and state elections a wake-up call? The GOP didn’t have a candidate that could beat Obama in 2012, but that election became the focus of attention for the hoi polloi as if they were pushing a huge rock up a steep incline. The terrain that year was slightly sloped in favor of Obama and Democrats. The hill came in 2014 — and it was much steeper than even normally objective liberals like me recognized.
Where did the DP “hoi polloi” get the notion that “more of the same” with an old political face was the way to go in 2016? From the set-up, another Clinton v. Bush general election? The Republican “hoi polloi” said no to that. Although looking at the results of the Senate races (GOP incumbents generally did better than Trump) they may have gotten that wrong. But I too expected that Clinton would beat Jeb? So, maybe all of us got that wrong. (Factoring in the impact of Lib/Grn voters, Democratic incumbents also did better than Clinton in all but two, including their seats, but the incumbents and the seats entered the race in a strong position. The two flips, IL and NH, were in line with presidential election results in those states.)
Older history:
Nixon went to China. Nixon also went to the USSR. How many people today fully appreciate how much of a break those moves were for both Nixon and the GOP. The fortunes of both in the post-WWII period were based on their strident opposition to any country that could be turned into an enemy by citing a lack of fealty to capitalism? That GOP position didn’t end with Nixon’s moves — there was still Cuba, Chile, and any other country that shifted leftward and support for countries that moved rightward — but it did lessen the tensions between nominally communistic, nuclear armed countries.
Did liberals and lefties object to Nixon’s moves? Of course not. Would have preferred that Democratic politicians had done it, but those pols either didn’t know how to do it or were infected with rapid anti-communism themselves. Or wished that they could simultaneously play both tunes as Nixon, Reagan, and GHWB did. From the first efforts, it took Democrats over thirty years to drop the US hostility towards little ole Cuba.
By the time of the collapse of the USSR, the GOP dominated among Cold War warriors. So, why didn’t we see their reemergence on the national stage with the GWB administration? Why did the DP suddenly embrace a descendant gaggle of Cold War warriors? As if Scoop Jacksonites now dominated the party?
During the 2016 primaries and at an intuitive level, I described it as if Nixon were the leading Democratic candidate. Including the Nixon that won his earliest election by labeling Voorhis and Gahagan Douglas “pinkos.”
Now:
Democrats are in the minority in DC and a majority of the states. Why? Putin/Russia, Comey, the FBI, etc? Is that who caused D losses in 2010 and 2014? Odd that Democratic elites and the Democratic “hoi polloi” haven’t been screaming that for the past six years.
Republicans may have been out of ideas and talent at the presidential level after GWB, but that didn’t stop them from beefing up at the congressional and state level. By all means fair and foul. Democrats chose to put all their eggs in the presidential basket as they’ve been doing since 1992 and keeping their fingers crossed that GOP excesses will cause Republicans to lose in congressional and state elections. Ignoring candidate and campaign weaknesses.
The GOP has an advantage (despite their wretched policies that fall short of 50% with the public) in that they know given a choice between a real Republican that exhibits some leadership abilities (including the Newtlets and teabaggers that they don’t much like) or a mush-mouth, fake Republican (aka DINO) that they’ll win more than 50% of the time. And they do party building on each of those wins at the local, state, and national level. While Democrats laughed, Priebus has been racking up wins since 2007. Meanwhile, the bits and pieces that had led to DP gains in 2006 and 2008 were jettisoned in 2009. Back to “the Big Dog” is all the party needs.
Democrats, myself included, were smarting after the 2000 election (and Gore was authentically robbed), but it was dumb to waste two years licking our wounds and scapegoating culprits and then extend it for another two years. The Democratic wound licking and scapegoating this time appears to me to be far more prevalent and with far less reason than it was in the aftermath of 2000. My support for and liking Gore notwithstanding, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Clinton negatively impacted the 2000 election and that was compounded by Gore’s multiple campaign shortcomings and errors.
not looking at what went wrong and not looking at problems ahead. T and T’s cabinet making common cause with the .1% ers for their personal profit. it’s not about wars, and a new 3rd Reich, it’s about oligarchs controlling resources. I’m not optimistic
put another way, it’s not about Hitler it’s about Standing Rock, Standing Rock writ large.
This is a bad take.
heh
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Double heh
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You know when I got my ballot and looked at the presidential line I thought about you for a minute.
It’s understandable that you would want to write me in, because frankly..I would do better than either.
But you should know…nalbar is not my real name.
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It still wasnt a vote for HRC was it?
didn’t you do exactly the same? Consistent prediction of 10-point Clinton win, iirc? That wasn’t you?
Something about a pot and a kettle?
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
Forget the past!
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No. You saw it in nalbars links. He actually said a small shift gets Clinton under 270. Thats a damn sight better than a lot of other folks.
And look, so many polls indicated a HRC win. Even Trumps own polls only matched his odds to Nate Silver. If you got it wrong, well you trusted the facts but the facts relied on were in error. But the talk of landslides and shouting down of legitimate criticisms (remember the open war on Nate Silver that final weekend? Boosting Trump for clicks?) is what should make you lot a little more fucking introspective.
refute you, but think someone with that motivation could demonstrate that, repeatedly and over an extended period of time, fladem consistently said things pre-election along the lines of “still think she wins by 10” even in the course of detailing causes of concern about that.
nalbar’s links demonstrate that fladem moderated only the size of Clinton’s margin that s/he was still predicting right up to Election Day.
Just like everybody else that s/he is now incongruously scolding.
Revisionism has become quite the sport as of late. So it goes.
no fladem was reading state polls, had a chart w states and ev’s locating the firewall and at one point thought C might lose, iirc towards the end thought it would be Clinton by 2 but also very close. hair on fire re: firewalls, actually
what shows it? that I accept myself as a target of his taunts?
We all did. Some by a little and some by a lot.
On the popular vote, you at least went on record as to a projected margin while few others did so. That was a bit tough to do this time around because of the two third party candidates. My only guesstimate was that the margin would be far less than you guesstimate and no more than Obama’s 3.9% margin in 2012.
The EC is where we all blew it. The only state I’d marked as questionable was NV, but it was also irrelevant as without it, HRC had 272 EV votes in my scorecard. None of us questioned MI, PA, or WI. Or I should say that I couldn’t see how Trump could get any one of the three which is all he needed to win. Perhaps we were misled by HRC’s campaign expending resources on AZ, FL, NV and NC, and both Clintons were campaigning in OH in mid/late October, long after OH was so gone.
shorter donald: “I only won because people didn’t vote.”
I’ve not yet seen the percentage of voter turnout, have you? What I have seen is that Hillary has actually gotten more votes than any Presidential candidate in history and that we’ve amassed a vote total of over 136 million, 6 million more than voted in 2012. Clinton has received 48.2% of the votes and independent/third party candidates have received 5.7%. Trump stands at 46.1% of the vote. So, it will be interesting to see where the final percentages of registered voters voting lands.
In my state Clinton did about 2 or 3 percent better than did Obama in 2012. My minority/majority midstate county, with about 200,000 residents had a 73% turnout among registered voters. I believe the election documents how very polarized we are. Not how apathetic or depressed we are.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/133Eb4qQmOxNvtesw2hdVns073R68EZx4SfCnP4IGQf8/htmlview?usp=sha
ring&sle=true
So, someone needs to tell me how I should have made my link work. This hasn’t been an issue for me before.
Your link copies and pastes fine, so I assume you just left the code off.
how to make a hotlink in HTML
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I’ve never been able to solve when trying to explain in a comment how to make a link: she got the html code, complete with pointy brackets, to display rather than execute. (When it executes instead, you can’t see the code/syntax.)
I’d like to know how she managed that!
OT, but what the hell, Booman has declared a holiday.
It never ceases to amaze me how the internet has changed everything. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is at our finger tips. One of my favorite sayings is ‘All Knowledge is Worth Having’, and the Internet reflect that saying. I spend hours on YouTube, watching video after video. Need to rebuild the motor from a 1969 Fiat 500? It’s there
Remove the radio from Porsche I got you covered.
It’s all right there, somewhere. The whole GD world has access to it, unless their government restricts it, which long term will be futile. We won’t fully realize what has happened to us for 20-30 years from now. It’s crazy, and it’s right there in front of us.
It’s absolutely mind boggling.
BTW, that quote comes from a terrific book called,
Kushiel’s Dart
It’s a pretty unusual fantasy story…and definitely not for everyone.
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was new, being astonished that in .23 seconds (or whatever) it had searched through the entire internet (well, mostly) and returned many, many thousands of (variably) relevant results.
In fact, still pretty boggled by that.
My wife and I were early on the whole computer (yes, I predate home computers, and remember dial phones very well) thing. Then we visited one of her friends in Los Angeles and her kid, who was something like 13, very enthusiasticly introduced me to the online version of this,
this
And I was caught! It was amazing. People from all over the world (a lot of Australians) staying up all night. He had told me ‘one thing for sure…you will learn to type fast!’
The world has changed, and the world still has not caught up to those changes.
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Total turnout was ~60%. ~58-59% for presidential ballots. Turnout down in WI and MI, up in PA. Turnout per se was not the issue, but who turned out.
Thanks.
Do. Not. Contradict. Narrative.
I’m not warning you twice.
More signs of that economic anxiety from Trump supporters we keep hearing about.
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One Trump supporter who obtained a media pass from the Trump transition office shouted from the press pen that Trump’s former opponent Hillary Clinton should be waterboarded.
And a Trump supporter threw an empty water bottle at a reporter following the rally, calling the reporter “trash.”
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ht Lawyers, Guns, and Money
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Thats good. Emotion is a powerful fuel and something we will need in the resistance to come. Hold on to that feeling Booman.
“A few weeks after the election, Science of Us sought out counselors, therapists, psychologists, and others in the mental-health field, posing two simple questions: Had they been seeing many patients with anxiety about the election result? And, if so, how had they managed their own concerns in sessions with their worried patients? The response was so overwhelming we had to stop taking calls. As a marriage and family therapist from the Bay Area glibly mused, “He says he’s the jobs president — well, he certainly is for me and my fellow therapists.””
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/12/8-therapists-on-post-election-anxiety.html
Der Trumper can taunt all he wants (and we’re going to have at least 4 years of this sort of juvenile shit because that’s what he’s all about), but the pundits and John Kings said the American Madman was going to lose because all the data very strongly indicated that was what was going to happen. And so no one thought that the demonstrable Dem vote suppression in NC and WI was going to matter. Looks like it did.
Now, a day before the first debate fladem had collected some state polls that had Der Trumper leading in enough states for 271-2, I forget. And this was very worrying. But that lead then flagged after the debates, and HRC was substantially up in the polls until the final catastrophic week, when everyone saw that the numbers were tightening.
But basically no one predicted a Trump win, in the sense of clearly writing—“Trump is going to win”. Show me who did. The problem always was that the ONLY way Trump could “win” was via some electoral college misfire, which is what happened. And I saw no one predict that Der Trumper wins an electoral college victory while losing the popular vote (by the greatest variance ever).
As for the 99.9% of pundits who thought HRC was a sure thing, their defense is the mountain of polls, of course. The pollsters are now covering their ass with the universal 3% margin of error. Well, fine, I get that. But then shouldn’t we have expected to see SOME poll in WI, MI and/or PA showing a Trump lead? At least one? At least once? And as far as I know that didn’t happen. And that seems like quite a serious goddam error that the margin of error doesn’t really explain. So the nation’s pundits have a pretty strong defense, Trumpites.
I haven’t read how these critical state polls never registered a Trump lead, however small. I presume the election results in WI MI and PA and FL and NC are all correct and not manufactured. So that means the nation’s polls and polling methods are inaccurate and cannot be relied upon to predict outcomes–and no one should in future think they can or will–to the extent that one thinks that future American elections will be in any sense free and fair. “Rely” on future polls at your own risk, as pundit and voter. To cite them in future is to commit analytical malpractice.
And as for overall vote suppression, one of the most effective vote suppressors is the anachronistic anti-democratic electoral college. But since Repubs (and Americans generally) don’t really care about voter participation, that absurd device is now elevated to the Founders’ Greatest Inspiration…
This is your daily reminder that Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million plus.
So the national polls were not all that far off.
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So what? Gore (266) and Kerry (251) got more EC votes than Clinton (232) did. They also lost, but I sure didn’t see anyone in lefty blogland making claims that Gore and Kerry was a swell candidates and that they’d run a great campaigns.
One state, CA, gave HRC a 4.3 million popular vote margin. IOW a 1.5 million vote margin more than she got in the the combined total from the other 49 states and DC. Or excluding CA, Trump got 1.5 million more votes than HRC. Again irrelevant, but puts some perspective on the 2.8 million more votes that you’re taking comfort in.
Is anyone here in these comments (or Booman?) making a claim that Clinton ran a great campaign? If so, I certainly missed it. While it’s true that Clinton amassed an overwhelming majority in California, far greater than she achieved elsewhere, I’d say that personally reflects well on California voters. Would you not agree?
In fact, I’d also opine, that true to our lefty progressive leanings, we liberals have been plenty willing to criticize our Presidential nominees and their campaigns. Indeed, there could be a valid argument made that Clinton was not only damaged by 25 plus years of right-wing smearing and conspiracy theorying, but that a not unlarge segment in her own party continued to do their bit to add to her high negatives, even after her nomination.
It’s obvious that none of Trump’s cabinet and staff picks lean anywhere toward moderate and that he’s not acknowledging that more than 1/2 the country didn’t vote for him. So, I’ll bring up Clinton’s popular vote plurality at every opportunity, along with reminding Trump voters that he is a minority President with no mandate. Trump is our enemy, not Hillary Clinton.
I think you’re absolutely right here. The majority of Americans voted for another candidate. Republicans will use this victory as a mandate to do some terrible things so it’s important to frame their agenda correctly.
There are reasons it should be brought up as much as possible,
People claim we need a fighter to lead the democrats, that the same old, same old won’t work. I agree. We need people at the top to use every weapon we have, every rhetorical trick in the book. To fight just as dirty as republicans do. What could possibly be the motivation for any progressive to disagree? To even attempt to take weapons, even truthful ones, away?
Look warily at those who want to take weapons away. THAT is why it matters.
.
You write:
“…there is a meme with the establishment that America is a ‘center right’ country. Well, here is counter evidence. Use it.”
There is another meme that it is a “center left” country among so-called Democrats like Clinton I, Obama and Clinton II.
And yet another that “the center” is rotted out to the core.
“Center left,” “center right”
You say tomato and I say tomahto.
No matter how we say it, this particular tomato is rotten.
let’s call the whole thing off.
The whole center thing.
ASG
P.S. HRC famously spoke of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
The real conspiracy is a conspiracy of the center.
Left center, right center?
Thick as thieves.
Which they all are.
Honor among thieves? The only “honor” among thieves lies in sharing the profits when they show up, and it is only honor in a practical sense. Gang wars are bad for the theft business. The theft itself remains dishonorable.
re:
This liberal (“meh” on “progressive”) disagrees with that bolded bit. Vehemently.
Becoming them to defeat them is empty “victory”, even if it were attainable by such means, which I doubt.
Fight just as hard as republicans do? Yes. Of course. Harder if possible. Smarter for sure. But no “truthful” weapons need be taken away in order to not fight “dirty”.
Well, yes. I wrote that and realized I should have been a little more specific in my rhetoric. But no edit feature.
Of course things like suppressing the vote, doing what North Carolina (restricting power once you lose) is doing, or appealing to pure identity politics would be too far.
I meant that in more of verbal use.
.
you didn’t really mean that quite the way you’d put it, but thought it worth making sure it got clarified.
Hollywood is big biz in CA and it was publicly like 98% in support of Clinton.* There is also a large Hispanic population and we are a generation removed from trashing Hispanics and don’t want to go back to those days.
*Note: when Hollywood splits politically, even an totally inexperienced Republican can be elected governor of the state. And re-elected as happened in 2006. Going back much further to a time when CA was accustomed to Republicans often being okay, the totally inexperienced George Murphy was elected Senator and two years later the totally inexperienced Reagan was elected governor. And as bad as he was as governor, Reagan was several times worse as POTUS.
When I read about George Murphy, I can’t help but think of this song by Tom Lehrer from 1965. He was very prescient.
And this is your daily reminder that she was likely to have been just as bad…in different ways…as will be Trump. At least with trump the agenda is right out front. HRC/ Public and private agendas would have diverged.
Trump is a thug, HRC is a pickpocket.
AG
Yes, HRC would have appointed Nathan Bedford Forrest Attorney General, and seeded the judiciary with a bunch of 45 year old Federalist Society hacks, so not a dimes worth of difference. #bothsidesdoit
Actually, it’s yet another of our ongoing reminders that you’re a simple-minded fool.
Neither simple-minded nor a fool, marduk.
Honor is neither foolish nor simple-minded, and that is all i am demanding.
We have not gotten much of that from our leaders over the past 50+ years or so, be they Dems or RatPubs, and look at what has happened to the country and society.
Just look around!!! It’s not that hard. Look at who is now coming to power. Look at the riots in black neigborhoods, the constant gun violence from and within all levels of the society, the fear that drove people to vote for Trump. The country is failing, marduk, and all you can do is downrate me for asking for some honor from our leaders?
Get real.
AG
Why am I not surprised you respond with sloganeering inanity?
Yeah, the problem isn’t the success of the right wing implementing policies hostile to the American people, or the failure of the left wing to advance their policies sufficiently. It’s honor: that subjective and ephemeral quality defined of course by you, which both parties must somehow lack in equal measure.
Just learn how to brain or stop polluting this board with your irritable mental gestures that seek to resemble ideas.
Honor is not a slogan, marduk. It is a a force that governs human behavior for good or evil, and when it is ignored very bad things eventually happen. Neither are the ideas of morality and karma slogans. This country is getting exactly what it has earned by its collective actions over the last 50+ years, another Roy Cohn-influenced president.
Dishnorable partisan politics of the type that you practice rewards one set of criminals while condemning another set. The temporary result of this mistake? Increasing criminality on both sides.
The solution?
Do not support politicians who do not act in an honorable manner.
You continue to support a Democratic Party that presented a dishonorable woman from a dishonorable family as a candidate for president and…equally dishonorably…cut the legs out from underneath an honorable man in the process. Nothing good can come of such actions, and we are now paying the price w/the Trump regime.
I predicted Trump’s rise to power for a year and a half here, and I was right on the money. Now I am going to make another prediction. Due to people just like you, marduk, the Democratic Party will fail to change itself into an effective…an honorable…force, and as a result the burgeoning negative national karma that is as we speak rapidly accelerating/building up to a real crisis point will reach an explosive peak sometime during the first year of the Trump presidency. God help us all when it does. Trump’s generals will eventually take charge of repressing protest and in the long term the results of this will be catastrophic.
It is apparently out of our hands, now.
Good work, left-centrist Dems. You had you chance with Sanders and you blew it.
AG
P.S. Cowardice is dishonorable. Your whole downrating thing is coward’s work, thus you have no honor. But don’t feel bad, marduk. You have lots of company on both sides of the nonexistent aisle.
comments without otherwise explaining or commenting in reply, is that likewise cowardice (by those cowardly cowards who cower, presumably [h/t Franken])?
Some of this stuff gets beyond absurd. There has never been a rule or a social norm on this blog that one must directly interact with those one uprates or downrates, or explain themselves. The only time someone ever bothered to explain a negative rating to me was to say that essentially I was being punished for someone else’s downrates over which I would have no control. Turned out the explanation was worse than simply doing the deed and letting it go. This place is quite funny at times.
right out of Ionesco.
Are you sure that you don’t mean “Unesco,” oaguabonita? Another globalist bullshit bureaucracy?
Sounds like it to me…
AG
I wrote exactly what I meant.
I meant exactly what I wrote.
You write:
I’m sure you did. I am simply asking you to question the validity of what you wrote to some degree.
Do your really think Ionesco would have been be willing to ignore the validity of what I am saying regarding the total incompetence of the globalist bureaucratic system as it stands today?
I don’t.
AG
straightforward, and obvious question I asked, which you’re ignoring/avoiding while spewing this diversionary dreck, you lack standing.
(Note: not saying you’ll gain standing by answering, just so we’re clear. But you sure won’t ever have any otherwise.)
Oh. I missed the question.
Sorry.
You asked:
Here is my equally “straightforward and obvious” answer.
No, it is not cowardice.
Why?
Because it means that they agree with whatever statement I made that they are rating. One does not have to explain agreement except to signal that agreement. But disagreement needs to be backed up or it is:
Weak
Lame
And cowardly.
Straight enough for you?
I certainly hope so.
AG
a conversation not even knowing what it’s about:
[Which, remarkably, “earns” an uprate from Marie. Looks like she’s operating in junior-high-mean-girls mode, too!]
Seems that might explain a lot about the ridiculousness of much of what you write here. (Don’t take offense. I’m trying to find an excuse for you here!)
Perhaps if you paid better attention . . .
By the way…I do not “lack standing.”
I stand behind everything I say here with all the time that I can can afford to dedicate to that standing.
If you knew me personally it would be obvious to you that I stand behind what I am saying here in my life as well…no mater whether it results in profit or loss.
That is the very definition of “honor” as far as I am concerned.
The one-line posters here? The reflexive, centrist naysayers?
It is:
Easy to talk.
Easy to downrate.
Easy to snipe.
And harder than hell to stand behind what you believe to be true, especially when it contradicts a great deal of what passes for mainstream belief.
I have spent a lifetime doing just that.
I fight.
You?
Sounds like to me that you mostly snipe.
You can’t snipe me, though. Why? Because you’re shooting blanks.
AG
mean-girls’ (mis)understanding of what ratings are supposed to be for and about (hint: it’s not “agrees with me!”).
That, of course, has been apparent approximately forever in your childish whining and rating behavior. Hard to imagine a self-revelation any less surprising than that.
And you have no first clue what it means to have or lack standing (hint: nothing whatsoever to do with whether you “stand behind” your drivel [no matter how ridiculous]; nor is it anything you have the power to bestow on yourself simply by declaration; it is bestowed by others, if and when you’ve earned it).
Not even a tiny surprise there, either.
You write:
“So. You have a junior-high-mean-girls’ (mis)understanding of what ratings are supposed to be for and about (hint: it’s not “agrees with me!”).”
Oh.
Sorry.
Please tell me what your OH so grown-up opinion might be regarding the meanings of rating on blogs like this.
Thanks…
AG
on the ratings pull-down menu (can I get a “duuuhhhh!”).
Each numerical rating has a descriptor.
None says “agrees with me”.
Again, duh!
4=Excellent
3=Good
2=Warning!
1=Troll
Are you trying tell me that you are so literal that “Excellent” or “Good” do not strongly imply agreement to you? Or that “Warning!” or “Troll” do not imply censure and disagreement?
On what planet are you living?
AG
mean what they mean.
What a concept, eh?
mean is a prerequisite to honest, meaningful, worthwhile discussion.
Refusing to do so is . . . well . . . what you do.
Unbelievable!!!
Words only mean what you say they mean.
A narrow mind.
Here is a screenshot of a site that offers synonyms for the word “Excellent”.
Do you seriously argue that these words do not imply argreement?
Hmmm…
Are you a robot? An android of some sort? An AI bot?
If so, ask your programmer for some more info.
You are about to be replaced by a more advanced program.
A human being.
AG
of those equates to “agrees with me”.
Have I mentioned you’re ridiculous? (And ever more so the longer you flog this dead horse in service to this lost cause.)
You are the lost cause, oaguabonita. Your dead horse will receive no more flogging from me. I tried to talk reasonably with you, as I initially do with every human being I meet both online and in what we laughingly call “real life.”
I failed.
So it goes.
I do keep trying, at least until it becomes evident that I have met yet another lost cause.
Have a good life.
AG
So much syntax, so little semantics. As usual. Clear out those mental cobwebs and express one single thought without your idiosyncratic dictionary of meaningless catch phrases. Just try it, for once.
Please be so kind as to tell me what portions of the above post puzzle you as to their meanings and I will try very hard to clear them up for you. This is an honest…an <u<honorable</u>…answer, I will pursue the result equally honestly.
If you do not? Then…to be [erfectl;y honest…it appears to me that you are full of shit.
AG
There’s nothing puzzling about the words you used. They simply have no content. You might as well be using grunts.
“I have opinions about things! Strong opinions!”
“What things?”
“THINGS!!!! Hillary BAD! Democrats BAD! Everything BAD! AG GOOD!”
“You’re not saying anything.”
“I said BAD and GOOD!!! What don’t you understand? I am pure and superior! All else are inferior and wrong! Facts or concrete objective statements about reality merely get in the way of this ultimate truth.”
“Ugh, 1 – Troll, again.”
If you’d like to post something with actual semantic content, ever, I’d be happy to discuss. Otherwise, enjoy your trolling.
Yes, there should have been state polls showing Trump in the lead in the states he won. The lack of such polls is an indication of systematic, non-random, errors.
I think reliable, cheap polling is going to end up on the same garbage heap as CDs. Probably already has.
Probable factors:
Yougov and similar attempts at ignoring the problem of getting a good sample by obscuring that they have no idea who really answers are basically huge GIGO operations. And I know Yougov adjusted their polling numbers in the Swedish European Parliament election of 2014, so I have no reason to think they leave their thumbs of the scale otherwise.
Tracking polls should still work if you put in legwork or old-fashioned mail to collect your panel. Probably more expensive and you need to keep your panel replying. And as the LA tracking poll showed, once you have your panel they can make you look stupid.
Trump and Sanders had the most reliable polling–response in person to their message. I believe both of them recognized the extent, depth and nature of the discontent about in the land.
LATimes/USC maintained a tracking poll, and as it was at odds with the other pollsters, it was discounted as an outlier. I felt a bit queasy discounting it bc I appreciate that tracking polls are stronger, but I only gave it half as much weight as it deserved.
Apparently there were MANY lost votes in Detroit, Flint, and Milwaukee.
Don’t know how much stock to put in this, but Greg Palast is a highly credible journalist.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38767-the-republican-sabotage-of-the-vote-recounts-in-michigan-an
d-wisconsin
The whole thing is getting sketchier by the day, and was entirely predictable considering what the GOP has done in both MI and WI over the past three election cycles.
Here is the list of traitors that should be tried for treason.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_electors,_2016
Have fun. Where is the twitter mob when you need it?
If (I say if) you are going to incite, then the back of my hand to you^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hat least name your proposed target. (Don’t fall back on shared assumptions with this audience, either, as they are no great fans of assumptions, period, shared or unshared.)
On the other hand, if you are alleging complicity (not merely complaisance) on the part of all 538 electors, that would be a novel argument, not seen elsewhere. Elaborate.
. . . nothing left to lose.” (Paraphrased homage to Kristofferson’s line, immortalized by Janis.)
QOTD from Tom Sullivan at digby’s place.
Context is suggestion Dems (semi-officially?) designate an Opposition Leader (who isn’t Pelosi or Schumer; he “nominates” Warren [“I second that emotion”]).
Sullivan has become a ‘must read’, just like much of Lawyers,Guns, and Money.
He hits the nail on the head. NC and the GOP in general have shown that they don’t respect the norms that hold us together.
Im not sure on Warren, but the democrats have never been good on following leaders anyway.
.
Not sure on Warren?
Why?
Not “centrist” enough?
You want to lose again?
Bigger?
AG
Worth reading (for those that can handle the truth) Slate, Sam Kriss — The Rise of the Alt-Center
A money quote (but the discussion of Eric Garland and his childish understanding of game theory that precedes it may be the most important part of the article):
Confirmation bias. How does it work again?
Doesn’t appear that you read the article. What are losers that refuse to learn anything (or even accept the reality that they lost) and persist in doing it the same way over and over again called?
Yes, I read the article. However, you chose to highlight a paragraph that reaffirms your belief that HRC lost because HRC is/was a terrible candidate/person.
Reasons HRC lost:
3.Ratfucking by the FBI, not once, twice, but three times for the lady.
I can consider all of these possibilities, you cannot see past #1.
Number 1. won’t be a factor in 2020 but the other four will remain, and possibly be even stronger.
HRC was in a street fight and had no idea or stomach for fighting back. She lost it herself. Do you believe for an instant that if the roles were reversed that Trump would slip quietly into the night. That suboptimal candidate you saw lost it all be herself- with a little help from her friends. She had all kinds of things to defend herself and ratfuck Trump but refused it all. Better to win over all those conservative republicans than open your mouth and tell the world what was going on. Tell me this. Why did she not shove those words,down Comeys throat- twice.
The Democratic Party did not “…abandon the working-class people of all races who used to form its electoral base.” This is just a nasty lie, and reductive to boot. The passage and implementation of the ACA, the actions of Obama’s Labor Department and NLRB, and many other actions taken in recent years by governments at the Federal, State and local level under control of Democratic Party leaders have highly disproportionately benefited the working class and the poor.
Because these Democratic Party-led policies benefit lower-income Americans of all races, they are seen by many white Americans across the economic scale as giveaways to “undeserving people”. Look at this summary of Trump voters in Kentucky who value the ACA yet voted to place leaders in power who pledged to take the ACA away:
http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/13/13848794/kentucky-obamacare-trump
“Medicaid is reserved for people who earn less than 138 percent of the poverty line — about $22,000 for a couple. This woman understood the Medicaid expansion is also part of Obamacare, and she doesn’t think the system is fair.
“They can go to the emergency room for a headache,” she says. “They’re going to the doctor for pills, and that’s what they’re on.”
She felt like this happened a lot to her: that she and her husband have worked most their lives but don’t seem to get nearly as much help as the poorer people she knows. She told a story about when she used to work as a school secretary: “They had a Christmas program. Some of the area programs would talk to teachers, and ask for a list of their poorest kids and get them clothes and toys and stuff. They’re not the ones who need help. They’re the ones getting the welfare and food stamps. I’m the one who is the working poor.”
Oller, the (ACA) enrollment worker, expressed similar ideas the day we met.
“I really think Medicaid is good, but I’m really having a problem with the people that don’t want to work,” she said. “Us middle-class people are really, really upset about having to work constantly, and then these people are not responsible.”
Oller had told me earlier that she had enrolled on Medicaid for a few months, right before she started this job. She was taking some time off to care for her husband, who has cancer and was in chemotherapy treatment. I asked how she felt about enrolling in a program she sometimes criticizes.
“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I worked my whole life, so I know I paid into it. I just felt like it was a time that I needed it. That’s what the system is set up for.”
These are views held by an unfortunately large number of Americans.
President Johnson understood this: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
I’ve seen this floating around liberal media for a while and what you see as an indictment of racism I see a shit health care delivery system. Are they racist? Probably. Who gives a shit? Telling someone making $30k a year that they need to be forced to buy a private insurance package that costs $300 a month with a $4-10k deductible while “others” whose HH makes $27k a year (whoever those others may be, in many cases it’s “my lazy cousin”) get free health care is going to build and exacerbate resentments that are already there.
Maybe they’d make up a new excuse about those others. I’d say a good chunk, even majorities, would. The point is the people on the margins. That’s where Clinton’s lost and where Dems are losing.
Re. this:
“Telling someone making $30k a year that they need to be forced to buy a private insurance package that costs $300 a month with a $4-10k deductible while “others” whose HH makes $27k a year (whoever those others may be, in many cases it’s “my lazy cousin”) get free health care…”.
Almost any private health care plan provides better, broader health care access than any States’ Medicaid plan. The claim that a person on Medicaid gets better or equal treatment for free compared to a private policy beneficiary is simply untrue. Anyone who has been on Medicaid can attest to this. The uninsured and underinsured can also attest to the fact that hospital Emergency Departments are time-consuming, medically inappropriate places to seek basic care.
The person who is on the far low end of the income scale to qualify for health insurance exchange plans gets the largest tax subsidy to help them pay for their insurance. And the ACA outlawed junk insurance and created substantial limits on how much money Americans with health insurance can be made to pay on a yearly basis.
These plans can carry higher premiums and co-pays in some geographic regions and care modules than the old junk insurance plans, but they’re real insurance plans which defend consumers and the public. The old junk insurance plans played a significant part in making medical bills the #1 cause of bankruptcies in the U.S., and left hospitals and other care providers largely uncompensated for the care they gave the many tens of millions of Americans with no insurance or junk insurance.
The ACA needs policy tweaks, but it has been superior in almost all ways to the previous status quo.
The incredible failure of citizens to fail to think things through is reflected in statements like this in the Vox report:
“Oller renewed a 59-year-old woman’s coverage (who asked her personal information be left out of this story) just after lunchtime on a Tuesday. She and her husband received a monthly tax credit that would cover most of their premium. But they would still need to contribute $244 each month — and face a $6,000 deductible.
The woman said she had insurance before the Affordable Care Act that was significantly more affordable, with $5 copays and no deductible at all. She said she paid only $200 or $300 each month without a subsidy.
The deductible left her exasperated. “I am totally afraid to be sick,” she says. “I don’t have [that money] to pay upfront if I go to the hospital tomorrow.”
Her plan did offer free preventive care, an Obamacare mandate. But she skips mammograms and colonoscopies because she doesn’t think she’d have the money to pay for any follow-up care if the doctors did detect something.”
So, what she’s saying is that she’d rather suffer debilitating symptoms from Stage 4 breast or colon cancer instead of catching the diseases much earlier and saving herself both the debilitation and the ruinous financial bills of advanced cancer treatments. And becoming physically debilitated will cause her to lose most of her ability to increase her income, which makes her financial vulnerability much worse.
This foolish thinking doesn’t just hurt her and others like her. It hurts all of us.
See there’s the problem. You call it foolish thinking, Maybe you are right but that won’t win the day.The ACA needs to be fixed. It is too expensive for too many people. Or you can keep telling people they are foolish and keep on losing.
ACA plans bought on the exchanges are more highly rated than plans bought off-exchange. People who actually use the exchanges prefer the health insurance they get. I can personally attest to the superiority of exchange plans over small group insurance for business because our business transitioned to use the SHOP exchange for our insurance and saved a ton of money, and got superior insurance with the option of paying slightly more (but still far less than previously) for a zero-deductible plan. Mind you, this is unsubsidized insurance. Subsidies are available up to 400% of the poverty level for those who don’t have health insurance provided by their workplace and deductible supplements are available as well.
There is certainly room for improvement but you can’t craft a solution without understanding this fact. The ACA is strictly better than the status quo ante. The large majority of the complaints about the ACA are just complaints about health insurance in general, misdirected at Obamacare, because Obamacare didn’t solve everything. I’d love to see regulations limiting high deductible plans, which would drive up rates but offer better actual insurance. I’d love the establishment of a Public Option (Joe Lieberman can still FOAD for that). I even support a transition to single payer but the challenges to making that transition are quite enormous.
With that being said, now compare this to the real world we live in, where soon enough the ACA is simply going away, millions will lose the insurance they rely on, and many thousands will quite literally die. My life is going to get objectively worse and I’m going to be one of the lucky ones that just has to revert to shitty high deductible high price small group insurance. The imperfect ACA is so vastly superior to what we’re actually going to get that I have a hard time with this “it’s not good enough” criticism. It’s not going to be improved. It’s going to be made worse in every respect.
I like to see substantiative criticism of the ACA, made with specificity and care. I really don’t like blanket carping about its half-a-loaf nature because the alternative is no loaf at all. And the half-a-loaf might not have the best flavor but it’s pretty damn filling.
Well, the ACA won’t get fixed now. And who is to blame for that? The American people, Congressional Republicans, the modern conservative movement, Chief Justice Roberts for killing the near-mandatory Medicaid expansions, our absolutely despicable media, the sentient circus peanut who won the Electoral College…it seems to me the Democrats and the President are far, far down the list of those we should hold primarily responsible for our collective failure to fix the ACA.
I do not tell people who are on the fence or opposed to the ACA that they are engaged in foolish thinking. I am much more patient than that. I agree with them that it needs improvement, point out how we all benefit from it, and try to dislodge from their heads some of the many despicable lies they have internalized about the ACA. Opposition to or cynicism about the ACA have become cultural signifiers, however, so it’s a challenge.
You come close to agreeing with me that “people who have benefited from the ACA but hate the fact that they have to share it with people they dislike but all the same can’t believe that Trump and Congressional Republicans would take away their benefits because after all they deserve the help” are engaged in foolish thinking. Maybe we can just let that essential agreement carry us for the moment while we prepare for our next round of calls to members of Congress in an attempt to salvage the Act.
Here, let’s hear about this flawed Law from one of its beneficiaries:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/no-words–5
“So many times in these discussions words fail to capture the stakes of the issue. When we speak of 20 million, or 23 million people who may “lose their health insurance” if the ACA is repealed, I suspect most of your readers absorb that as a useful data point and then, quite naturally, move on. Their eyes slide to the sentence that follows.
I am writing in the hope that I can get your readers to pause for a moment and consider what this loss truly means, behind the abstractions.
My wife has advanced colo-rectal cancer. She was diagnosed in 2008 when our three children were 3, 2 and 9 months old.
At the time the only insurance available to her was California’s Major Risk Insurance Program (MRIP). This was a program designed at the state level to address the insurance needs of people like my wife who have pre-existing conditions (she happens to have a genetic mutation that can lead to colo-rectal cancer). MRIP was better than nothing, but it was paltry: it had an annual cap of $75,000 per year. That first year, we blew through this cap by February. Same thing the second and third years, 2009 and 2010. All the rest of our medical bills — for multiple surgeries, hospital stays, chemotherapy, radiation, CT-scans, etc. — we had to pay entirely out of pocket. In 2011, to our huge relief, the ACA came into effect. Amid all the pain and the heartache and soothing our children and long days and nights and fears for the future, we at least knew that we had help with the expenses. We felt our country had our backs.
For many families, if the GOP repeals the ACA it means that they will be thrown back on state programs like MRIP again, at best. Politicians will be able to say proudly that everyone with a pre-existing condition can still get insurance! But without the structure of the ACA and its mandate they will know full well that these insurance programs will severely limit what they cover. Private insurance plans would simply not have large enough pools to do better. State programs would lack funding. People like us would be left in the lurch once again.
This doesn’t just mean that “millions will lose their health insurance.”
it means someone’s mother coughing blood. Or a father groaning in pain and yelling behind a closed door. It means parents or other family members arguing because after one of them missed a promotion at work — because of all the time spent taking care of a loved one. It means slammed doors. It means missed dinners. Most of all, it means a child somewhere, in some inconsequential town, crying, heaving sobs into his pillow, because his parent is going to die. Another child sitting in stunned silence in class, not listening to a word the teacher says.
I want TPM’s readers to visualize this as concretely as possible whenever they consider millions losing their health insurance. Of course I would like members of the GOP leadership and the Trump transition team to visualize this too. Repealing a health insurance program that has been working for millions of people is worse than proposing something ineffective. It demonstrates outright a willingness to be cruel. To hurt people unnecessarily. There is no other word for it. It is heartless.”
That’s it! Right there. Real living breathing human beings will in all likelihood suffer needlessly as a consequence of an impending repeal and (not) replace of the ACA. Chances are very fucking good that each of us will know someone who will be among those needlessly suffering. Even those more complacent types who will say “I have my insurance through work, so what could possibly go wrong” will find that they too are vulnerable if they or their loved ones become seriously injured or ill. My spouse, for example, is permanently disabled and has been for a lifetime, yet until recently had been quite independent. Because of the way the law currently stands, the insurance we have has no lifetime cap on coverage, which we would have blown through this past year after a serious fall that led to hip replacement surgery and a post-surgery stroke. Yeah, there are some bills to deal with, and there is still some heavy stuff for us to deal with that goes with reduced independence, but we aren’t worrying about going bankrupt simply because of some bad luck. Given what is being threatened by Comrade Donny and his GOP apparatchiks, the next time something serious happens will probably mean foreclosure, repos, and no hope of getting needed rehab services or recovering semi-comfortably in a familiar home. Also got a buddy who has all sorts of chronic health issues (some related to his days in the service) who suffered a back injury in a freak accident on the job. Two surgeries and counting. Barely able to work, but doing what he can. Do we as a society kick him to the curb too? So if I seem a lot more confrontational these days – not just to GOP assholes, but to those holier than thou lefties who kept complaining about HRC or extolling the virtues of Saint Jill as well (and who still smugly do their “I told you so” schtick) – you know why. I don’t plan on getting any nicer. If anything, quite the opposite.
Have you ever noticed that it’s the people who howl the loudest and most often about “hippie punching” who do the most frequent and strident “neolib” punching?
I get absolutely outraged at reflexive centrist hippie punching, which is a real thing. Democrats who attacked Bernie’s policy proposals from the economic right did us all a real disservice. Kevin Drum in particular did not acquit himself well in the primary, though I generally enjoy his analysis because he’s numerate and specific (which is nice because you can usually clearly tell when he’s wrong).
And then the wannabe “leftists” (they wish) here accuse me of being a neolib centrist. The possibility that I’m to your policy left but you’re just a political idiot working against progressive results is utterly incomprehensible to the purity crowd for whom imperfect improvements are worse than heightened contradictions and widespread suffering.
But isn’t the ‘working against progressive results’ the tell?
‘Let’s burn it all down and rebuild something better’ is not a realistic point of view, at least to me. What the republicans know so well is that if they can get rid of something, or ruin something, then replaceing it is impossible because they can use the ‘choke points’ built into our system. Better yet, use the idiots on the Supreme Court to make change impossible…..unless you are republican.
Because that is so self evident, I’m not at all convinced they actually want ‘progressive results’. This is particularly true when staring a Trump (who in many ways is an ordinary modern republican, and his domestic policies will reflect that) administration in the face.
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Well there are some trollish posters who are pretty clearly right-libertarian (insofar as they actually have any coherent political views) but I’m thinking of the folk who really do seem to believe in some semblance of economic left/liberalism but just refuse to sully their precious, precious essence supporting imperfect efforts to improve things and consider anyone supporting imperfect improvements neoliberal sellouts. They act in opposition to progressive improvements but they don’t believe that’s what they’re doing. “After Hitler, our turn” is a very seductive battle cry to purists who don’t really think things all the way through.
Everybody is a sellout in some way.
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One thing is clear: “burning it down” won’t help those who would be truly receptive to a progressive party or progressive ideas. It may be cathartic, but the thing about catharsis is that it fails to satisfy. And then those doing the burning are left with nothing but rubble.
Oh I have noticed, and then some. At some point I am going to write a memoir entitled “How I went from being hippie punched to a neoliberal sellout in one easy election.” I expect it will be a real hit (pun intended).
Differing perspectives – that’s one thing. The so-called left blogosphere was at one point a big if sometimes rowdy tent. But at some point the rubber has to meet the road. If there is a chance to improve some facet of life for people who really need it, do we turn that down because it is not pure or perfect enough? Do we turn down candidates because they don’t live up to some Platonic ideal, in favor of certain defeat? There are plenty of windmills to battle. What I do know are that there are battles far more important. If a significant portion of these so-called progressives are going to turn their backs on me and my family because what was not perfect to them was just good enough for us (and yes, we too want to see better eventually), then fine I get it – we’re on our own. I just hope they don’t come begging for solidarity from me in the future. Gotta take care of my own.
What we are also seeing is some sort of veneration of ‘white trash’, another nebulous and completely arbitrary description. And this is by the so called left! I get that republicans need to take advantage of that demographic (???) to win, but to do that republicans have to appeal to the lowest common denominator of human nature, grievance. Now democrats are supposed to do the same? At what price to the democratic core?
I’ll answer that…the price is an acceptance that the base are not as important or valuable as a jingoistic white person.
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Also, too:
http://fair.org/uncategorized/inform-the-public-not-my-job-says-chuck-todd/
“Appearing on MSNBC`s Morning Joe today (9/18/13), Todd responded to Ed Rendell’s claim that Obamacare opponents are full of misinformation about the program by explaining that this was because Republicans “have successfully messaged against it.” But wasn’t journalism’s job to expose misinformation? No, Todd insisted; if the public was misinformed about the Affordable Care Act, it was the president’s fault for not pushing back:
What I always love is people say, “Well, it’s you folks’ fault in the media.” No, it’s the president of the United States’ fault for not selling it.
…It’s embarrassing to have to cite elementary principles to one the nation’s most influential reporters, but Todd should consider reviewing the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, where, under the heading “Seek Truth and Report It,” the very first tenet implores journalists to “test the accuracy of information from all sources.””
I would give this a 10 if I could.
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An old Russian joke tells about a poor peasant whose better-off neighbor has just gotten a cow. In his anguish, the peasant cries out to God for relief from his distress. When God replies and asks him what he wants him to do, the peasant replies, “Kill the cow.”
That sums up Trump voters.
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A follower of Chuck Colson now … christian believer, halleluja!
The quote is about envy of thy neighbor’s wealth. Preaching the value of profit as reward for the elites who are “believers”.
I’m not sure I follow you. Are you saying we should just ignore the people who feel some are ripping off the system? Explain it better to them? What? We got to fix the damn problem and that involves a major,overhaul of our health care system. The ACA helped a lot of people but it is very expensive. And yet some get health care for nothing. How come?
The Democratic Party did not “…abandon the working-class people of all races who used to form its electoral base.”
Yes, I remember HRC saying something similar – we just need some policy tweaking and everything will stay great. How did that work out?
The ACA stinks and is inferior to almost any other western country’s healthcare system. But it was the best we could do because …<insert excuse here>… Yet somehow all of those other countries were able to pull it off. Maybe we’re not as exceptional as we think we are.
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/02/in-nearly-every-swing-state-voters-preferr
ed-hillary-clinton-on-the-economy?postshare=6201480712229602&tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.240d2f7ba0
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“…to every state in which we have exit polling, in 22 of those 27 states a majority of people said that the economy was the most important issue. And in 20 of those states, voters who said so preferred Hillary Clinton. In 17, in fact, a majority of those voters backed Clinton…
…How can that be? How can she win a majority of the majority and still lose? Because she lost with other groups worse…
…On average, about 13 percent of people in the 27 states said foreign policy was most important and they preferred Clinton by an average of 30 points. On average, voters who said the economy was most important preferred Clinton by 7.3%. But on terrorism, rated most important by a fifth of voters, on average, Trump led by an average of 21.8 points. On immigration (most important to an average of 12.2% of respondents? A huge 42.1% lead for Trump…
how to make a hotlink in HTML
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Today, I finally applied this help properly on another thread! Thanks for your patience.
I saw.
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