Joe Money, Joe Problems: the November 2021 U.S. Politics Thread

"we're all fucked" was kind of a joke.

but definitely if we do turn out to be fucked, i will later say that i thought it was possible

i have to say, the 23-year-old conservative may very well have a chance. i talked to him for about an hour. he's stuck in "let me play devil's advocate here" mode, but so was i at that age.

i can fix him

Okay so let's factor in the cost of midrange whiskey...

yup

we're fucked

Maybe if we bring out the good whiskey? I have some Woodford Reserve I will happily donate to the cause of unfucking the nation.

I don't think "we're all fucked" should be a controversial take at this point.

Yes let's deprogram neighbors one at a time, which, let's see... is... maybe we're all fucked

"We're fucked" is a given in any proposals I put forth, maybe I should have been more clear.

KM seriously tho I wonder if any of that generation can be reached without a deep dive into the slimier political corners of Instagram and Reddit to understand specifically which sort of disingenuous bad-faith concern trolling the individual is susceptible to.

xp

Not with that attitude, jon. You're probably still offering Jim Beam or something.

At least get some Maker's Mark and let's get this country back on track.

xp this kid was so kind that he venmo'd me $50 for the whisky he drank and the glass pipe he dropped and broke. except he was drunk so he accidentally venmo'd me $150. I sent it all back this morning :)

xp viborg

i wonder that too. but, a good sign: he's a total gaming nerd, and i showed him my Steam (pc games) collection and he likes a lot of the solo simulation/strategy games that i do. so we have that in common. and also, we "broke bread" and hung out on my couch for a while, and got along ok, and he seemed to actually be listening to the things i said. he was ignoring his girlfriend's calls and he called out sick this morning with a hangover, but still, i think we made good progress

Maybe we're overthinking this, Karl. St. Louis is a beer city. Let's get Schlafly on board somehow.

(the brewery, not Phyllis)

it all goes back to public citizen/private partnerships. we all need to get sponsored by our favorite companies

A lot of progressives across the country as well as in Buffalo were enthused by what a few months ago had seemed like the near certainty that India Walton, a self-described democratic socialist who won the Democratic primary against longtime Mayor Byron Brown, would be the next Mayor of Buffalo. But it appears that Mayor Byron Brown has managed a comeback victory as a write-in candidate.

...To me though the big lesson here is that it is unbelievably hard to win an election as a write-in candidate. We don’t know the margin of Brown’s apparent victory yet. At the moment it’s about 40% of the votes for Walton and roughly 60% are write-ins. Presumably virtually all of those write-ins are for Brown. But given the nature of write-ins those ballots all have to be visually inspected. There are already a lot of claims that the fix was somehow in for Brown, the establishment candidate. That’s the wrong lesson. When you manage to lose that decisively to a write-in candidate the only reasonable interpretation is that the city’s voters didn’t want you to be mayor. Period.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/india-walton-goes-down-to-defeat-to-write-in-mayor

i'm not in full on catastrophe mode yet, but it strikes me that since i don't have family and don't own a home, i might be able to truly "escape" America before 2022/24 hits

I do wonder what the strategy for the Dems is going forward. I get that McAuliffe ran an uninspiring campaign and it's probably a big mistake to talk a lot about Trump in elections where he's not even running...but he got more votes than Northam did. It's the Republican base that's energized, despite the fact that the Dems have done basically nothing, and that Trump before them didn't really deliver a damn thing either (for those making less than $50,000,000). not only is the deck massively stacked in the GOP's favor, but there is legitimately no political gravity on their side, as posted above you can incite a goddamn insurrection and pay zero price for it. not only that but Congress is fucked to the point where Dem senators representing like 70% of the population can get their entire agenda shuttered by a single moderate. What do they do?

Personally, I think it starts with messaging, which they are incredibly bad at. Biden is getting hammered about Afghanistan (not saying it's relevant here) & his bill is just a constant source of "Dems in disarray" stories, and none of that is coming with any pushback. They aren't blitzing the media the way the GOP does, they aren't really making a case for themselves, they sure as hell aren't accomplishing anything, it's all "remember Trump" and "remember 1/6" and dumb little "pass it on" messages about climate change. Is it really smart to lean into the more progressive wing of the party, given that Bernie got defeated pretty soundly by Biden and progressives aren't really tearing it up at the polls either? I don't really have the answers. But they really need to figure this out quick.

i'm sure they'll figure it out soon

blitzing the media the way the GOP does

for all the talk of the biased MSM they are pretty shitty with their both sides crap and bad headlines while fox and the like are squarely in their corners.

I'm sort of in the "we're all fucked" camp. Messaging, sure, but if the other side just doesn't give a shit about honesty (intellectual or literal), and has a sizable chunk that is either essentially voting/running on restricting rights and overturning elections for make-believe reasons, or has fallen so deep into dystopian fantasy that they believe Jesus/JFK Jr./whomever is coming back from the dead to reinvade Afghanistan because Toni Morrison is making our kids trans, and also covid is fake but so is the vaccine, which is why they took (real) horse dewormer to counter the (fake) virus, then how do you counter that? You just end up wasting all your time and energy and money and oxygen and capital trying to convince a fraction of them that, yes, the world is round and the sky is blue, and meanwhile the rest of them will push back with all their might and ignorance against even the most basic stuff that really shouldn't need correction, amplification or affirmation.

blitzing the media the way the GOP does

there's also the thought of what this world would be like if that "worked" for democrats. breitbart/carlson/levin on the right, and some equivalent on the left, creating a bubble of complete nonsense on the left. of course that bubble of nonsense on the left already exists, but it's nowhere near the size/influence of the right. but if it were to grow and counter the GOP's nonsense? maybe that would work, politically, but man, what a shitty world

JoshinC sadly approaching otm, and I am a latecomer to this viewpoint (having imbibed straight hopey-changey-yes we can stuff since 92ish)

When you manage to lose that decisively to a write-in candidate the only reasonable interpretation is that the city’s voters didn’t want you to be mayor. Period.

As a Democrat, Brown won by a roughly 2-to-1 margin in both 2013 (vs. a Republican) and 2017 (vs. a Reform Party candidate). Which means there are about 30% of voters in Buffalo who prefer whichever candidate is on the right. This year, *Brown* was the candidate on the right. (There was no Republican on the ballot.) So he managed to pick up votes both from Democrats scared off by socialism and from a bunch of Republicans and independents who viewed him as the lesser of two evils.

I was seeing some stuff about Walton making disastrous choices wrt unions during the campaign.

Yeah, tbh, I wasn't following the campaign at all and so was surprised at the strength of the write-in campaign, especially after Walton was endorsed by statewide Democrats, but once I saw that Walton and Brown were effectively the only two candidates, it made more sense.

Is it really smart to lean into the more progressive wing of the party, given that Bernie got defeated pretty soundly by Biden and progressives aren't really tearing it up at the polls either?

Tbh 'progressive' is such a vague term, encompassing a very wide range of political views. If we're to trust polling then it would seem to indicate broad public support for progressive action on economic issues, while progressive positions on social issues are much more controversial. To me this clearly ties in with the DLC wing of the party's insistence on focusing solely on progressive social issues lest they stray too far left on economics and offend their corporate sponsors. Meanwhile Republicans are apparently motivated almost solely by their conception of a "culture war" in which they become enraged by the inappropriate use of smears ostensibly based on left wing economic policy but which are in reality used to attack opponents for their positions on social issues. I'm saying "let's just cede the fight over critical race theory" but that A) twitter is not a real place; and B) maybe let's thinking about sending the Manchins and Sinemas a memo to let them know it's time to either crap or get off the pot.

"maybe let's think" <EDIT> <EDIT> shit

xp jaymc

but still, i think there was only one name on the ballot: walton. i understand that Brown, a Democrat was effectively the only other option for voters, but all those voters still had to write-in his name (or use a rubber stamp - apparently Brown's campaign spent $100K on little rubber stamps for people to use to write stamp-in his name on the ballot). to get trounced by write-in is pretty extraordinarily bad

I get what you're saying Josh but lets not forget that the QAnon/MTG/Jan 6 crowd is a pretty small slice of Republicans, and that something like 60% of Republicans have gotten at least one shot of the vaccine, so idk if we're really at "no one can be reasoned with". One issue that Dems seem to have is that there's such a broad distrust of government and the media, and I think Biden walking back most of his campaign promises for fucking SALT repeal isn't really helping there.

another thing is that Dem politicians are so fucking boring and focus grouped, one would think they'd loosen up a bit since Trump was elected but putting all the cards on the table for the 78 year old Joe Biden indicates they haven't really learned anything. I feel like a lot of Obama's popularity stemmed from his personality and general likeability. he seemed like someone you wanted to be around. they've got nobody like that now and that is why I see fucking Ted Cruz's face these days more than any Democrat save Biden himself

60% of Republicans have gotten at least one shot of the vaccine

Miami-Dade Republicans, ladies and gents.

The issue is less about whatever percentage of the GOP constituency still has a grip on some degree of sanity and more about an increasing percentage of their representatives who are kowtowing to the constituency whose marbles have long ago rolled down the storm drain.

And if the supposedly-sane GOP-ers are still showing up in droves to vote for Larry Insurrectionstoker, there's no effective difference between the two.

^^^^ otm

The (even more) extreme wing of the GOP might be a minority, but there are still millions and millions of them, enough so that it regularly takes an all-out struggle for Dems to come out on top when they seemingly hold even a modest advantage. All the reactionary other side has to do is invoke a book most of them have never read and an academic philosophy most of them don't understand to get a surge of votes, and those are the ones that aren't just inventing or pursuing outright bullshit. Like, at least "Beloved" and CRT are *real*. I mean, sure, 60% of Republicans got a shot, but 40% of the GOP not getting vaxxed ... that's a *huge* number! If 40% of your party is basically beyond reason, then it ultimately doesn't really matter if 30% of them are slightly more reasonable than the utterly batshit last 10%. The 30% and the 10% still mostly vote the same as the other 60%.

So, yeah, see above.

Is it really smart to lean into the more progressive wing of the party, given that Bernie got defeated pretty soundly by Biden and progressives aren't really tearing it up at the polls either?

Leaning into the progressive wing might be a massive failure - but the centrist project also doesn't work so YOLO. The Democrats lost hundreds or maybe even a thousand offices nationally post-2008, so technocratic efficiency doesn't seem to be a better plan than moonshot ideas. Those moonshots also remain popular - a lot of the crosstalk between certain wings/politicians being unpopular and the ideas being popular is what we saw in 2020 primary polls. Voters liked Bernie's ideas better but don't expect politicians to ever deliver so they might as well go for one the one deemed (by the media, natch) a safer choice to beat Trump. The only way you can combat that nihilism is delivering. Oops.

The numbers were starker than ever in VA about "white, college-educated" and "white, non-college-educated" - so in the medium to long game, creating more college grads should be a Democratic strategy right? But we can't even get 50 of them onboard for free community college.

But we can't even get 50 of them onboard for free community college.

google translate: but we only got 98% of them onboard for free community college

i know, i know - there are a handful of secret democrats who hate community college but are happy to let manchin destroy it instead. so maybe the number's more like 90% of them.

22% of voters turned out in Seattle, and we're getting the mayor whose platform for reforming policing was "force every officer to watch the George Floyd video and withhold a Friday afternoon pizza party if they do a racist murder that week"

I don't care if the entire Democratic senatorial caucus secretly hates the progressive agenda, as long as they keep it a deep, dark secret and vote for the legislation. Their votes matter. Their secret feelings don't.

google translate: but we only got 98% of them onboard for free community college

So what? Does it feel better to lose by 2 than by 20 if it's still not going to be the law?

As I clean my sniper rifle in the Potable Water War of 2040, "well, we had 35 Senate Democrats on board for fighting climate change so at least someone cared."

Even though Murphy (D) eked out a statewide win, Dems' collapse in blue-collar parts of South Jersey is breathtaking - including State Senate President Steve Sweeney (D) currently trailing a truck driver who spent $153. #NJGOV

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2021

How much of the present situation, I wonder, is sheer, blinkered COVID-related frustration?

How much of the present situation, I wonder, is sheer, blinkered COVID-related frustration white resentment?

― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Wednesday, November 3, 2021 6:44 PM (eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

Time for another stimmy check IMO

the school stuff is mostly drummed up by koch dark money, but that was only possible because of covid. without covid, a lot of parents would have no idea what their kids were learning in schools. that combined with them being told CRT is bad by the tv is a good trick for the GOP.

I apologize, that's not aimed at you necessarily! But when I hear about all this backlash etc etc all I can see is a huge blinking "white resentment" sign.

Yes, white resentment is some of it, but is it all of it?

Biden's approval has dropped 20 points with Black voters since August, I don't know that "white resentment" is a fully coherent explanation for the political winds.

No worries!

Time for another stimmy check IMO

Today, I'm introducing the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act to provide $2,000 every month throughout this crisis.

I've been saying it for months: a one-time payment is not enough when millions of people are unemployed and need to eat. We need bold action, immediately.

— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) May 8, 2020

Or about 12 points each with Black and Hispanic Americans since August if you prefer 538's aggregate polling.

well, at least this is nice

Breaking: House Democrats are putting paid family and medical leave back into their Build Back Better framework.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 3, 2021