Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

If you'd like to get some LOLs at the deputy Washington editor at the NYT getting his ass handed to him by All Of Twitter, today is your lucky day!!

https://twitter.com/jonathanweisman/status/797120114042793984

Jonathan Weisman

‏@jonathanweisman

Defeated Dems could've tapped Rust Belt populist to head party. Instead, black, Muslim progressive from Minneapolis?

adam serwer drives me nuts on twitter but he can write, great piece: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/welcome-to-the-second-redemption/507317/

The broad economic devastation [following Reconstruction] wrought by the Redeemers might have been seen by [turn of the 20th-century] Republicans as a political opportunity to forge an interracial coalition. But it was not to be. “The failure to develop an effective long-term appeal to white voters made it increasingly difficult for Republicans to combat the racial politics of the Redeemers,” Foner argued.

Democrats now face a renewed white-identity politics whose appeal will be immensely difficult to neutralize, and the notion that a more vigorous, left wing economics will return the white working class to the Democratic fold is likely a fantasy. The last Democrat to come close to winning the white vote was Bill Clinton, who combined his economic populism with promises to “end welfare as we know it” and advertised his willingness to use state violence against black Americans, turning the execution of Ricky Ray Rector to his political advantage.

The uncomfortable truth is that, whether you’re Donald Trump or Bill Clinton, economic populism is most effective in American politics when it is paired with appeals to racism. Maybe the Democrats can and will find a way to do so without such appeals. By the time they do, it may simply be too late to stop what is coming.

many xps to old lunch but otm and i'm with you there

CNN sez DT's 'inner circle' urging Priebus as chief of staff

NY Times published a few 'how dare you call me a racist' letters from Trump voters today. And this:

Political commentators just don’t get it.

I am a middle-of-the-road Republican. If Joe Biden had been nominated, I would have voted for him. If Bernie Sanders had been nominated, I would have voted for him. If my next-door neighbor had been nominated, I would have voted for her. Hillary Clinton was nominated. I voted for Donald Trump.

JIM PETERSON

San Diego

I'm a middle of the road Republican who will absolutely refuse to ever take orders from some woman she must be a criminal or something EMAIL

aside from his obvious qualifications and strengths, bernie sanders has a weird pull among low-information voters. my mom, a moderate democrat who for reasons i can't quite discern dislikes hillary (the trust issues and "too liberal", she told me last christmas or so) apparently wrote in bernie for president on tuesday.

he'd take orders from his neighbor woman

xp

kev what state did Mom vote in?

it's because he's smart enough to dumb down his rhetoric to catchy slogans and use them endlessly xxp

in addition to "bigly," i wonder if we could stop throwing around these "racist" and "fascist" bombs as often as we do, particularly as applied to whole swaths of the population we don't know very well, and whose votes we need.

Political commentators just don't get Jim Peterson from San Diego's particular voting preferences.

good fuck I haven't felt this bleak about the world since I was a kid in the 80's. even bush winning a second term didn't seem as bleak and awful.

― akm, Friday, November 11, 2016 10:26 AM (forty-four minutes ago)

yeah. I remember Reagan winning in 1984, and I think that might have been my strongest early memory of feeling like people were delusional and stupid and evil. I remember my best friend (this was 4th grade) saying she liked Reagan because he was so fond of jelly beans.

NY, morbs

All right. Deep breath.

I made a blog. I put a bunch of the stuff I've written over the past few days on it.

I'm terrified.

http://rebuildingeverything.blogspot.com/

attaboy

Just linked, rushomancy

yeah. I remember Reagan winning in 1984, and I think that might have been my strongest early memory of feeling like people were delusional and stupid and evil. I remember my best friend (this was 4th grade) saying she liked Reagan because he was so fond of jelly beans.

― sarahell,

whereas we can't even say what Hillary was fond of -- the NYT crossword?

it's because he's smart enough to dumb down his rhetoric to catchy slogans and use them endlessly xxp

― global tetrahedron, Friday, November 11, 2016

this is it -- precisely it

in addition to "bigly," i wonder if we could stop throwing around these "racist" and "fascist" bombs as often as we do, particularly as applied to whole swaths of the population we don't know very well, and whose votes we need.

not sure this concession is warranted or appropriate at this time, perhaps this perception is simply a failing of mine

HuffPo discontinuing, removing Editors' Note from Trump stories about his history of racism and xenophobia:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/11/the-huffington-post-ending-its-editors-note-about-donald-trump-231044

THE LIBERAL MEDIA

wtf

The cute dude who didn't return my OKCupid text? I called him a fascist a month ago. That's when I knew I abused the word.

in addition to "bigly," i wonder if we could stop throwing around these "racist" and "fascist" bombs as often as we do, particularly as applied to whole swaths of the population we don't know very well, and whose votes we need.

― Thus Sang Freud, Friday, November 11, 2016 7:16 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think we should ignore the fascist and racist tendencies of people who voted for trump, or the tendencies of people to just not care about that issue as long as they aren't the ones affected. but obviously their votes are important and need to be won over with something, particularly since they have these tendencies of fascism and apathy.

bernie sanders has a weird pull among low-information voters. my mom, a moderate democrat who for reasons i can't quite discern dislikes hillary (the trust issues and "too liberal", she told me last christmas or so)

yeah, I have an unfortunately large number of "low-information" friends that were all about Bernie. Had never seen them enthusiastically support any other political candidate before. My mom is a bit like your mom, though she voted for Hillary anyway. My mom believed a lot of the Clinton conspiracies/issues from when Bill was president.

attaboy

Just linked, rushomancy

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

thanks

i'm going to take a little break until i stop shaking again :)

whereas we can't even say what Hillary was fond of -- the NYT crossword?

bourbon

Good news for us this side of the Atlantic is that we are already starting to see fewer obnoxious Republican wankers infesting our TV screens.

... back to our homegrown Tory wankers.

also given that Clinton won the popular vote and roughly half the population stayed home, i struggle with the notion that courting the votes of racist misogynists is necessary or even worth the moral compromise required but again im still boiling and keeping this shit largely to myself outside this space

come January you will see a lot more of them! They will meet with your elected officials, shake hands with the royal family ... sorry Britain.

So, what if the things that need to be done to "win over" the votes of people who have racist/fascist tendencies (or, you know, are racist or fascist), or are willing to ignore them, aren't worth doing? What if they're *bad things*?

yeah some of these arguments about meeting the 'other' halfway makes it seem like trump won a resounding victory. dude barely fucking won and half the population didn't vote.

the goal should be to make more voters who are not racists/fascists/etc.

also we should stop generalizing about half the population of the country. that's a lot of people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/11/11/trump-got-more-votes-from-people-of-color-than-romney-did-heres-the-data/

NY, morbs

well they didn't count her vote (not that it mattered, Clinton winning the state by 22 points). There were 32 sanctioned write-in candidates in NY. All other prez ballots w/ unapproved choices were disregarded.

Are you really going to do this?

xp

also we should stop generalizing about half the population of the country.

"Half the people who voted in the 2016 election" is not "half the population of the country." This shouldn't even be necessary to point out, but here we are.

well there's that. half the people who voted i mean. same diff.

that is not same diff

also given that Clinton won the popular vote and roughly half the population stayed home, i struggle with the notion that courting the votes of racist misogynists is necessary or even worth the moral compromise required but again im still boiling and keeping this shit largely to myself outside this space

― geometry-stabilized craft (art), Friday, November 11, 2016 7:27 PM (two seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was thinking about this too, but then i remembered brexit. there's a world-wide far right movement going on, not just in the US. so it's hard to say whether or not it was just Clinton being terrible as a candidate, or if there's been a significant change in how things work, making it hard to use older examples to fill in the blanks. nearly all of the candidates of one of our major parties had far-right leanings, and Trump was the most radical of them. and he won the primary. so that right there already shoots the odds way up of having one of these far-right guys as president. then among the Democrats your best choices were Clinton and Sanders, and Sanders didn't even win the primary.

Joe Biden? But it's like, all of this radical far-right shit that helped get Trump elected has been bubbling and foaming for years now. I watched how it went from a little blip to growing to this wide-spread movement that helped win the presidency. i don't think ignoring what's going on here is a good idea, because the US isn't the only place this is happening.

haven't there been studies finding that people who don't vote roughly have the same opinions (proportionally) as ppl who do?

Biden could've been hit over his history of being a credit-card-co Muppet?

That was so long ago it might not have mattered; all people know is the smiling vice president

This is not an endorsement of the former senator from MBNA

probably the only thing that can be said for sure in favor of a different candidate, when evaluating this election in hindsight, is that none of the other potential democratic candidates were the subject of two decades of smear by the right and that perhaps this would have improved their chances

well there's that. half the people who voted i mean. same diff.

Given that the Democrats' vote turnout went down by a shit-ton this year I'm not taking that as a given.

here's an alternative version of "Bernie dumbs it down" and low-information voter stuff - he offered up a vision that centered around economic justice but was also completely and utterly supportive of social justice.

If you're still intent on making fun of that, I don't know what to say. Veiled accusations of racism against him or the people who supported him is NAGL.

I don't think anyone is criticizing Bernie for appealing to low-information voters. He had an attractive vision and he/his campaign communicated it well to people.

hope it was clear i wasn't dissing any bernie voters or bernie himself obviously -- i think he was a great candidate on the merits -- i was just pointing out that in this world we live in where people don't pay attention to politics and vote anyway, being a genuinely nice guy who appeals to those types of voters is a nice bonus