I can’t imagine saying this even though I suppose that there are a few ways in which it is actually true:
Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna Romney McDaniel says the GOP is “in the best place” it’s ever been.
During a visit to Denver, McDaniel said the party’s high fundraising shows a strong base, the Denver Post reported.
“The RNC has had, actually, record fundraising in a post-presidential year,” Romney McDaniel said. “That shows that our base is rallying around what our president put forward in terms of his agenda. … I think we’re in the best place we’ve ever been as a party.”
The GOP hasn’t had this much power across the country since the 1920’s, although that says little about how they’re positioned to do in the upcoming elections. And while it’s true that the RNC is raising money hand over fist, the same can’t be said for other party organizations like the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Mainly, I can’t look at classic metrics like money raised and early poll numbers as meaningful indicators of the quality of “the place’ the Republican Party is in. The GOP is a suppurating wound on the body politic. It’s a twenty-car pileup with toxic waste strewn across the highway, unsafe even for idle rubbernecking.
The only thing I’m interested in knowing is whether there’s really any distinction between the health of the Republican Party and “the place” of the nation. Are we as terminally sick as they are? Can we decouple ourselves from them before it’s too late?
Because if people go ahead and vote for these folks again and return them to power, it’ll be time to call the coroner and have him note the time of death.
Because if people go ahead and vote for these folks again and return them to power, it’ll be time to call the coroner and have him note the time of death.
What are Democrats offering, exactly? I mean in places like where you live, Boo. Or in Alabama and Mississippi. Or heck, even a place like NY. Are NYC residents happy with the subways? If not, thanks Cuomo!! The point being is that while some Democrats(say Barbara Lee or Keith Ellison) are good, there are plenty who are not. And the only long-term solution to crushing the GOP is for better Democrats. No more Rahm Emanuel types, or his sycophants.
https://www.democrats.org/party-platform
In other words, 2016 all over again.
They need someone to lead that platform. Someone.
The 2016 platform was left utopia. If we can’t organize for that we can’t organize for anything.
Not much to disagree with that except to say we need a committed team and a leader who can carry that ball. That failed during the election. And today we still don’t have it and it seems to me the democrats are in a crouching position waiting for something to happen to save them.
It’s nice to have a charismatic proponent of your policy preferences but ultimately we can’t control how cool the politicians who promote those policies are.
You know Cuomo might be faulted for the subways and any number of things. But his is not a nation. They cannot simply print money like the feds. They have to tax it. And they pretty high taxes as it is even out there on Long Island.
And now our betters tax plan wants to eliminate the deductibility of SALT. So instead of getting a break in federal taxes, you pay it in addition. So that means those Blue havens in California, Illinois and New York get to pay more.
Now chances are they won’t eliminate it entirely since, well other states have that problem too. But do you suppose Trump will find a way to fix that?
Do you know why Rauner is governor in Illinois? Because Quinn fucked over his base. When does the GOP fuck over its base? They don’t actively work to fuck over their base like the Democrats, especially at the state level, work to fuck over theirs. The point being is that it depresses turnout. Convinces people that the Democrats care more about the plutocrats than the working man.
These days the democrats are leaderless. And they have grown mute afraid to say shit.
Or operating out of the idea not to help an opponent who is destroying himself.
Not formally leaderless. Same folks who have been there in apostolic succession to Tip O’Neill and Robert Byrd.
Not acting as if the crisis really is as serious as they rhetorically claim, which destroys their credibility as resistance or opposition.
It really is that serious. It really is a Constitutional crisis. The GOP really are so compromised that they will not invoke the 25th Amendment. But just in case, Herr Trump had Pence call him back and remind him to sign the health care executive order so that Pence’s fingerprints now are on it (in Trump’s mind and the GOPivestia).
So they are in silent prayer awaiting an awakening I suppose.
. . . the plutocrats than the working man” is . . .
. . . wait for it . . .
[drumroll]
. . . “the Democrats”!
Obviously, no other option even comes to mind.
I mean, duh!
when did Quinn fuck over his base?
…but this was encouraging for me:
How a Far Left Candidate Won in a Deep Red State
It’s less what can be offered as much as what can be reasonably delivered. There is a sense of hopelessness among Democrats I talk to. Not about winning elections. But about being able to realistically change anything.
What could Clinton realistically have accomplished had she won? A Supreme Court appointment. Beyond that? Not much. This isn’t a there is no difference between the parties argument. There certainly is.
But I think GOP intransigence began to suck the hope out of people. I wrote here about the lack of enthusiasm among Democratic Volunteers fairly often in 2016 here. Overtime I have come to wonder if it wasn’t Bernie versus HRC but a sense that the best we can hope for is a stalemate.
People don’t storm the barricades for stalemates. Since stalemate becomes the best we can hope for, fear is all that remains as a political message.
For Republicans fear is enough. But it isn’t for those left of center. There needs to be a sense of hope that we can actually deliver something for our key groups to do the hard work. And there just wasn’t in 2016 and there isn’t now.
This all gets back to what Tarheel said in a previous thread, and has been saying here for years. We need to find a way to articulate a believable story of change that people believe will matter in their day to day lives.
In a battle of fear versus fear the advantage is with the Republicans.
Which is why they are in better shape than we are.
Hillary may not have even gotten a supreme court selection since the republicans control the senate. Imagine a multi year stalemate.
And Obama faced the same thing for 6 of his eight years.
I think the democrats simply do not have the people who can excite others to come out and vote. Tarheel is right about that. We need to find a way to express a hope for people. Right now, right now, Trump is stomping all over us in PR, on health care, on Iran and NK and all the things some progressives wanted like medicare for all, free education, $15 an hour, reduction in inequality. The progressive list is endless and it will never get filled given our lack of leaders. We cannot say shit even though we have a mouthful of it. I am coming to believe the only way we win it back is another depression. We are now replaying the roaring twenties with an evil twist.
This is your weekly reminder that Clinton got 3 million more votes than Trump.
That’s pretty good proof that someone ‘came out to vote’.
.
But not where it counted. Right? You can win lots of votes in California and Ny but the middle of the country and states without large cities are another thing entirely. Who is going to get the challenge next time around?
OK, I understand now. You did not mean ‘votes’, you meant the wrong ‘votes’.
Got it.
.
Well, if we lived in a democracy, all would be fine. But we don’t. So you gotta get the rednecks to vote for you a little.
Because no one knew about the electoral college before 2016?
It’s a bullshit fact and you know it.
Well, one thing I have noticed is that ethics and accepting indisputable facts are directly connected. Those that have a certain ethical ‘flexibility’ are more willing to yell ‘indisputable fact = bullshit’. In my opinion this is because those with ethical flexibility have no solid foundation to look at the world, this is because their ‘vision’ needs to keep shifting to keep up with their shifting ethical standards. Just for the sake of discussion, take someone who downloads stolen property onto their hard drive and then uses that property for personal profit/satisfaction. Now that persons world view needs to shift in order to fit that ethical lapse into something that can be made to be acceptable behavior. Now imagine that person is an officer of the court…or even an ex-prosecutor, and imagine how their world view would have to twist, and how facts need to be dismissed. It’s simple human nature.
The whole world can see this dynamic with Trump, Kushner, and everyone in Trumps administration, and everyone that fed off the Russian smorgasbord. Their ethical flexibility gives them the ability to ignore any evidence of Russian co option of their campaign. It’s understandable, because to accept the facts means at worst they are traitors..and at best they were duped into being manipulated by Russian propaganda.
It’s all ‘bullshit’ to them, too.
.
She ran 4% behind Obama in 2012, 8% behind Obama’s 2008 number, and 6% of exit poll participants who approved of Obama did not vote for her.
In the Voter Study Group post election poll Bernie Sanders beats Donald Trump by 51-43.
Interesting that a mere resuscitation of the facts gets a troll rating from some here.
Uprated to counter.
He could potentially have beaten Trump but lost soundly to Clinton.
Should Bernie have run as an independent?
He didn’t “lose soundly” to $hillary, he was robbed of the nomination by the DNC and the four million more voters who insisted on shoving that venal, incompetent whore down the throat of us “real democrats.”
In the general election, such shenanigans wouldn’t have happened and Bern would’ve cruised to a landslide.
NEVER FORGET
LOL
She ran 4% behind Obama in 2012, 8% behind Obama’s 2008 number, and 6% of exit poll participants who approved of Obama did not vote for her.
In the Voter Study Group post election poll Bernie Sanders beats Donald Trump by 51-43.
You write (Astoundingly!!!):
Bernie Sanders had that power in 2017. In spades!!! (How soon the neos forget.) They shut him out because basically they did not want those people to vote. Too much shakin’ goin’ on; too much danger to the corporate status quo. They thought they could win by running against the deplorables, but in reality they needed another voting bloc. They essentially lost that bloc…plus an unexpected number of minority votes in my opinion…by dissing Sanders and getting caught with their digital pants down while doing it.
Same people in control now, making the same mistakes.
If indeed “mistakes” is what they were.
AG
It is unfortunate Sanders couldn’t get enough votes to win the nomination. But he did make a strong run for it.
Had Sanders been in from the beginning of the cycle, it might have been stronger. Some candidates had been setting up for multiple cycles even while they were running for other offices.
Maybe. We needed to run the table in Iowa, NH and Nevada and limit the damage in SC.
If we won the first three I do think Clinton would have gone into free fall (a la Dean, Muskie, etc).
I am not sure Nevada was winnable in the end. We got close in Iowa but didn’t win.
Are you sure “we” didn’t?
The Des Moines Register was unsatisfied enough with the caucus tallies that it called for a recount. The IA DP refused. Wonder why?
NH – Sanders 60.1% and Clinton 37.7%
NV – the Reid machine went into high gear on that.
For the nomination, Clinton avoided all her ’08 “mistakes.” 1) DP in the bag before the electoral cycle began, including super delegate pledges and DP machines in IA, NV, and SC (also true in NH but voters there are more independent). 2) No young and well organized challenger. 3) Big money not split between her and another candidate and lined up before the campaign 4) No challenger (except the hapless O’Malley who had no calling card for a significant number of larger donors (unlike Edwards) and incapable of generating the requisite enthusiasm to tap into the small donor spigot). 5) The MSM in the bag. 6) No early debates that could raise the name ID of anyone that dared to challenge her.
A primary campaign formally in the making over a year before it was launched and in the making for at least decade.
No name/no money/no planned POTUS campaign Sanders was expected to do worse than and drop out before O’Malley who had been planning to run long before he entered the race. Sanders accomplished what Jerry Brown dreamed of doing in his three attempts (’76, ’80 and ’92) and probably still doesn’t know why he failed. What more worthy candidates Mo Udall and Frank Church were unfortunately unable to accomplish in ’76. And what Sanders accomplished has freaked out the DP movers and shakers.
Sigh.
A recount in Iowa is not possible because the raw vote is not recorded. I have said this over and over and maybe you actually have to go to a Caucus to understand why.
I was at 6 precincts in Iowa on election night. I recorded the raw vote in 3. I am sure the only evidence of the raw vote in those 3 is in my twitter feed. In all they counted the votes, translated that into delegates, and selected the delegates. Raw vote is not reported, only county delegates.
By my estimate a switch of about 24 votes in the raw vote would have flipped enough county delegates to flip Iowa to us. If you switch 16 votes in the 3 precincts I managed you go from a 10-10 split to a 12-8 split.
Clinton won 701 to 697 – so that would have been enough to have the a statewide tie.
I don’t think people get how really close Iowa was. It was closer than Florida in 2000.
But we probably needed a more clear cut win to really draw blood.
We caught Clinton by surprise in Iowa – and their organization was late. I think most had looked back to the Bradley-Gore Iowa race and thought Sanders would not get close (like Bradley, Sanders’s strength was among independents who traditionally do not vote in caucuses). But after the turnout explosion in 2008 the Clinton people should have seen it coming.
I don’t understand Nevada well enough to know what it would have taken to win it, or even if it could have been won.
Really Nevada was critical.
Bernie was not perfect, but damn he was a good candidate.
Read all your on-the-ground real time reports. However, the DM Register isn’t a slouch, doesn’t know how the caucuses are conducted, and isn’t a wild-eyed lefty publication. So, why should I discount the DM Register’s position? You observed and collected information from one caucus. Was DM’s data set as limited? None of the pollsters came close to nailing the outcome, but DM was the most cautious with its larger zone of undefined. iirc you were more pessimistic in your projections than DM.
He could have taken the “deep south” seriously.
Exactly how was that possible?
Nevada was on February 20th. 12 states, including Texas and Florida voted on March 1.
The whole point of front loading the process like that was to keep an insurgent candidate from winning.
It would take at least $150 million to compete in those primaries. There was no way we could build an organization and get Bernie well enough to compete in states like Texas and Florida.
We tried to pick off delegates in certain CD’s: but March 1 was a set-up designed to make sure Clinton won.
Front-loading is how you rig the system to make it hard for insurgents to win.
He wuz jobbed and he wuz robbed, and if you don’t know it?
Put this picture up on your wall.
Blinky Palermo, NYC mob boxing fixer extraordinaire in the ’40 and ’50s.
Dems?
Different tools, same rules.
They belong in jail too.
Instead?
They’re in the Senate, in the House, in the DNC and they’re running …ahem…”foundations.”
So it goes.
Shey lost, but they didn’t lose their positions of power.
Same game., different name.
AG
I think it’s important to remember that several major players in this round of the game — Bannon, Miller, and certainly Trump’s base (although it’s ambiguous whether Trump is fully on board) — are operating from a standpoint of pure nihilistic destruction, in so many words. They want to tear down all the edifices they hate, and (like the Evangelicals, for whom the next page of the story is everyone going to Heaven except us liberals) they’re not even particularly concerned with building anything new atop the wreckage.
Trump’s a different story insofar as he, like Hitler, fantasizes himself a builder throughout a lifetime of escalating destruction. But Bannon etc. have no such illusions…and people like Paul Ryan have read those idiotic Ayn Rand books where it’s somehow supposed to come out right in the end if you burn down the missions and blow up the buildings.
And what have they done with this power? Have they passed any legislation at all? Trump is popular with their base because he spends all his time polarizing and attacking every political enemy.
But, they’re not going to be able to wield power effectively if they remain divided against themselves. And they are divided as never before.
Try and imagine President Obama getting into a Twitter battle with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Try and conceive of John Kerry as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee telling the country that Obama was a threat to start a nuclear war and that anybody who loves America should be “concerned” only to have Obama strike back on Twitter and call him “Little Harry” and scornfully demean him in public.
Now try and add to this impossibility the notion that Secretary Clinton openly referred to Obama as a “Fucking moron” while Obama openly raged against Attorney General Loretta Lynch and had to be talked out of firing her because she refused to violate the law in order to protect his cronies and members of his family from criminal investigation.
In a Bizarro-Universe in which that could conceivably be would the Democrats be portrayed as strong or weak? They would be considered as falling apart, regardless of how loyal the Democratic base was to the President.
Same thing here.
They might be able to hold onto power in the short term, but how can this possibly end well for the GOP?
I love this thought experiment. Also try to imagine Obama personally attacking Sens. Lieberman, Nelson and Landrieu for opposing the public option in the original draft of the ACA. Add in the sight of Bill Daley holding a press conference to say he isn’t leaving or being fired (yet) and that “it’s hard running the country.”
What is really weird and bizarro is that Republicans can spin their present disarray as “strength” and that some seem actually to believe that, for example the piece by Mark Penn I read this morning about how well-positioned #45 is in the polls.
That there is no effective (or even possible) national reaction to this (government-wide) chaos and lunacy merely proves that the nation and its institutions have become just as sick as the Repubs and the “conservative” movement.
It took some time for the tipping point to be reached, 35 years or so, but it did arrive…
Will election 2018 be the Last Hurrah?
Thus far with this power they are in the process of dismantling environmental regulations, dismantling Obamacare regulations and are one Supreme Court Justice away from remaking American Jurisprudence.
They are accomplishing plenty.
Left the Paris agreement
Destroyed Obamacare
Wrecked the treaty with Iran
Destabilized Asia
Re-instittutionalized LGBT discrimination
And that’s just the start. Trump is nominating judges who think that Lochner was correctly decided. He’s stacking the courts in favor of the oligarchs for a generation or more.
They’re establishing a fascist state.
They’re perilously close to being able to call for a Constitutional Convention, which would allow them to re-write the entire thing!
And this is just in the first year!
AT BEST if we can gain enogh power to start blocking them in 2018 we’ve got decades of work to repair the damage they’re doing because they will drag us down every chance they’ve got.
Their goal is to smash the federal government, and by extension the United States, and raise up the New Confederacy, because they’re arrogant enough to believe they can do that and remain a world superpower.
Senator root and branch McConnell returned to power in 2014 despite stating his intention to directly go against his constituents’ beloved Kynect.
I caught a bit of Trump praising himself on TV this morning. He gets free time, all the time. And there is no one, I say again, no one to challenge him. Where in the world are the democrats?
My guess is laughing in a corner, thinking he is sinking himself.
IOW, what they’ve been doing for more than two years. Stubbornly clinging to what clearly didn’t work. A metaphor for the national Democratic Party for the past three decades.
I think you laugh at this man at your peril. But you pays your money you take your shot.
My answers are no and no. Without a radical restructuring I’m pretty sure as a society we are fucked.
“Are we as terminally sick as they are?”
It depends upon who the “we” is. The nation state known as the USA is definitely as terminally sick as the Repubs are—the Repubs ARE the state, and the “conservative” movement is and has been its soul for over 35 years, a couple of failed 2 term Dem presidencies and an (historically short) Dem Congress notwithstanding.
Since the Repubs operated on structural areas such as nationwide schemes of voter suppression and gerrymandering while we did not successfully engage on those issues when we had a chance, they have successfully set up a Potemkin “democracy” which flouts the will of the majority and does not possess the consent of the governed. This doesn’t trouble Repubs, who are delighted to wield power however it was conferred.
The white demographic was finally successfully cretinized by the “conservative” movement and its plutocrat funders until it reached its final transformation into the manifestly incompetent electorate that thought a woefully unqualified conman with quite obvious psychological problems was just dandy for a prez. Their judgement has been destroyed and can never be trusted again.
They might respond sensibly in the face of a Trumpian Apocalypse, but they very well might not. There’s no way to predict anymore, they have shown themselves to be a wholly unreliable factor in the political future of the nation. National failure may very well be meaningless to the incompetent white electorate as long as their leaders promise that other demographics that make up the nation they now hate can be seen to be hurt worse than them.
The nation is spiritually in the worst place it has been since Reconstruction was abandoned. That period featured the last electoral college prez before the modern age—Hayes–and ushered in a great age of plutocrat exploitation, which was then somewhat successfully combated in a “progressive” reaction. The current version of Gilded Age 2.0 hasn’t even the energy to become aroused at the spectacle of a minority party’s last two prezes being popular vote losers. We don’t have the political energy or outrage of our great grandfathers.
Godfather Trumper has now clearly embarked on his campaign of actual destruction. The journalists are being cowed with threats, and 45% of the (white) electorate won’t listen to actual facts anyway, as they think responsible citizenship means listening to “tweets” of an ignorant Strongman. The supposed “check” on a tyrannical and unfit executive is a bribed and corrupt institution controlled by monsters and/or weaklings, take your pick. The “conservative” judicial branch has been happily in on the destruction of the democracy since it shit its pants with Bush v. Gore–and it has only gotten worse since then with the rise of Roberts’ Radical Repubs. The engines of American progress, the ballot box and the federal courtroom, have been sabotaged by “conservatism”.
In the month of the 500th anniversary of Luther’s Reformation, resistance and rebellion come naturally to mind. How did he do it? Was it luck or bravery? How long will our Popery of “conservatism” oppress the nation? Only one thing is certain with corrupt and powerful regimes—they won’t retreat on their own.
This!! Well Said. I agree.
Frankly, the Democratic Party is a giant sucking failure, imo. Pile on if you wish, but WHAT, pray tell, are they offering?
Anecdotally I keep reading and hearing about entrenched old school Democratic party members at the local level kicking and screaming about any new members who, finally nowadays due to Trump, actually want to get involved and get active.
Pile on if you want, but the Democratic Party did precious little about all the Gerrymandering that has gone on, mainly because they stopped doing much of anything at the local and state level.
We all have eyes and brains to see & know the massive, well-coordinated campaign that the Rs waged to gain control at local and state levels – and frankly, the Rs have been VERY successful. Call them crooks all you want (I’m first in line), they DID it. They got out there and did it.
Since Obama kicked Howard Dean to the curb (and now Dean has been tamed and become yet another NeoLib corporatist, aka worthless, D) and ripped up the 50 State strategy, which was successful, what has any D done to replace it? Shorter A: sweet EFF all.
Frankly I’m sick and tired of hearing about Russia. I personally don’t believe Russia made much of a difference in the election results. Sure, investigate. That’s fine. But I lay Clinton’s giant sucking LOSS directly at her feet and the feet of her “advisors.” I’ll go right out on that limb and state baldly that Clinton ran a sh*t campaign, and I was predicting in early August 2016 that she’d LOSE. I am dead sorry that I’m correct. I’d much rather be wrong.
But what did Clinton do? Rub shoulders with Pop Stars, Star Atheletes, and Hollywood stars, and then campaign for the votes of suburban WHTE REPUBLICANS.
R U Kidding me???
Yes, the R Party is one giant sucking hot racist white supremacist MESS with a clearly unstable megolomanic “leader” at the top.
WHAT, pray tell, are the Ds OFFERING?? What, pray tell, are they DOING??
Oh yeah: 80 bazillion year old NeoLib corporatist greedy rip-off artist DiFi is gonna run again for Senate (so that she and her greedy husband can continue their rapine and plunder of whatever’s not currently nailed down). Am I supposed to feel cheered up by this fact??
UGH. As they say: it’s turtles all the way down, and I think we’re all royally screwed.
Martin Luther was protected by the ruler of Saxony, the German state where he lived. (Remember this was 350+ years before German unification.) Otherwise, he’d have been killed by the Roman church after being convicted of heresy and declared an outlaw.
How Luther survived
Yes, indeed. But he did quite a bit more than survive.
I suppose his greatest asset was that a very large part of the German people, from the princes to the peasants, were ready to explode.
Washington was sick even when Reagan took office. The explosion of lobbying and the Citizens United decision caused a metastasis of money disrupting actual voters.
This benefitted GOP politicans’ power and post-political incomes. They love the fact that they don’t have to work for their voters, just make sure the voters respond to the 24-7 propaganda cloud.
Democrats thought they could compete with the money chase; they had for 200 years after all. They sacrificed their brand of responsible government services for personal enrichment, and then the voters hated them. They can’t get back without either sacrificing future personal income or stepping aside for reform candidates.
But parties are mired in corruption and can’t get out. It’s just that the GOP propaganda cloud has made the Democrats look corrupt and the Republicans “making America white again”. And they got just enough votes to take the whole enchilada in 2016 because Democratic consultants kept shedding “difficult geography” to make easy campaigning.
The only current question is how many parties will collapse before this realignment is complete, and what the damage to American society will be.
The GOP might well be in the best place since 1925. Then, they were presiding over the fifth year of a harsh long-term agricultural depression. They were in a crime wave brought about by Prohibition. The opposition to Republicans were white nationalists and often Democrats. But they were not concerned when a huge march of Ku Klux Klan members marched on Washington. Nor were they or the Congress concerned enough about lynchings to do anything about it. No anti-lynching law was passed despite Republican power. The first actual prosecution of a lynching as an ordinary crime (without a special lynching law) was in 1946, the year I was born. The GOP, like today though the business of America is business. When the Great Depression hit, the GOP (and Democrats) were reluctant to use government power to redress it for two years.
Yes, good times. The consequences of neglect is that the GOP lost the Presidency for 20 years, had to be coy about conservatism for 36 years, lost the Congress for 42 years and lost the political conversation for 38 years. The got those back by first attacking on foreign policy and national security, forcing the Truman administration to end wage-price restaints prematurely, and putting up a barely Republican candidate for President. After 18 years of this conservatives where champing at the bit and ran a hugely losing candidate. Then built the story that Carter was a catastrophe. And united the white supremacists, religious evangelicals, Roman Catholic anti-abortion activists, and “pro-family” entrepreneurial lobbyists. Then, Reagan was the “good times”, the guy who brought the tax cuts that were going to enrich us all. All those tax shelter guys that were cut out of that bill showed up to do 401(k) plans, hedge funds, and the beginning financial zoo that took down the economy in 2008.
There is the nostalgia for the “great” that Trump is supposed to be making America. A twelve-year depression and a 40-year loss of income growth. This is the supposed best place.
The Democrats are where the Republicans were in 1880, having eaten the shit sandwich of Grant’s second term and Hayes minority popular vote victory.
The 1930s had Hooverism to run against with Hoovervilles and Hoover Buggies. There are Trumpvilles in the continental US but Puerto Rico has become one huge Trumpville.
When the mood swings, it will surprise a lot of people outside the Beltway. If it doesn’t we are on the tractor beam to catastrophe; just don’t know its ETA.
Best look up that coroner’s phone number now, Booman.
It looks like we’re going to need it if the DNC Dems don’t get their post-Hillary, post-neocenrist shit together, and quickly!!!
I see no real signs of that happening, though. They’re just going to continue to try to mealy-mouth their way through and hope that Trump topples before it’s too late.
If it isn’t too late already.
ASG
Was the Democratic Party in a great place in 2009?
It is difficult to know whether petulance or Citizens United destroyed the Dems in 2010. I’d say the latter.
But one also can’t gainsay the systematic efforts Repubs have undertaken since their great 2010 victory to illegitimately hold onto power using whatever device they can construct. Repubs are structurally much more entrenched now than Dems were then.
Their whole governing theory is that they are unaccountable.
Do you think the Republican party is anything but a death cult?
The Republican party has embraced a Jim Jones level of madness. The rubes have drunk the kool-aid and want to see the whole thing blown up. I sort of get it, in that their economic status is under threat and they see America changing and can’t stand that there are people of different colors, religions, heritage, and sexual orientations that have increasing influence, power and economic status then them. Plus the billionaires and grifters have lied their asses off to the rubes in the party and now they get all of their “information” from Fox news or worst. And then Trump went pretty much full demagogue and finally revealed the Republican party for what it always was, and they couldn’t get enough smoke blown up their asses.
But the thing is, blowing the whole thing up is going to make things so much worse for them. For one thing, the current constitution gives them proportionally way more power than they deserve- how many other countries would tolerate letting the popular vote loser become president? Do they really think they can suck more resources from the blue states then they can now? My guess is that the Republican tax “reform” proposal that eliminates the state income tax deduction might be the last straw- do they think they can get a majority without any representation from New York and California? And how great do you think the corrupt oligarchy that the Republican billionaire class wants to implement would work out for them?
But unfortunately, it appears we might be at the point where enough Republican voters are so all-in that they will succeed in blowing the whole thing up… either figuratively (if we are lucky?) or, god help us, literally.
My experience with many of the Republican voters I know – or some I encounter here & there (like on a plane that I wrote about this past Tuesday) – is that they are so far divorced from reality, that all they know is to go reflexively tribal.
There are some R voters who are getting more leary & queasy about Trump. I know a few of those. But there’s far too many – and they are simply not all stupid or dumb or whatever – who are thrilled to the very marrow by Trump. As indicated, above, Trump voters are akinto the Jim Jones cult, and from my experience, that’s the way they seem to me. So far gone down the rabbit hole that I see no way of reaching them.
It’s totally and solely and only party over country, but in fact, these R voters actually believe to the bottom of their souls that Trump is “great” and doing a “fantastic job.” I have no idea what they really mean by “fantastic job.” Whenever I ask questions – in a very low-key, non-aggressive way – I typically get next to no follow up examples. It’s rightwing talking points with no substance behind them.
If nothing else, the vast majority of Trump voters simply do NOT want to ever admit what a yuuuge sucking mistake it was to vote for Trump. Most will never ever admit they are wrong – bc, seriously, these voters will never in a bazillion years admit that Libtards are right. Nuh gunna happen. No way.
And that’s the fix we’re in. A real mess.
Unless or until the D party figures out how to offer these voters something of real value, well… I’m not optimistic. The Ds could possibly woo away some contingent of Trump voters, but they have to get off of their collective butts and offer something of REAL value. All I see is Ds running away from Single Payer as hard as they can. Great. Just great.
Or whining about Bernie Sanders. Great. Just great.
So
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times….