US Politics, July 2024 - "Will you just drop out, man?"

any major ILX dude will tell you

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ITcOcQi4L._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg

Honestly, I anticipate martial law and civil war in my lifetime. I want neither and am not happy about it.

But reading David Brooks’ interview with Steve Bannon in the Times this morning, there was something that Bannon said that struck me as 100 per cent correct.

This is spiritual warfare, and those of us who value humanity need to start acting like it. This is about seeing people as siblings, about increasing connection and joy within our communities, and about proselytizing to those who don’t see things this way that life is better when it is lived in compassion for and faith in others.

I know I am often a crabby motherfucker who gets on all of your nerves, but all of my haranguing and testiness has a lot to do with these views. We are fighting against forces that would have us divided, starved, dead, but I believe many who follow this bleak line of thinking are persuadable and might see the light, particularly given how bleak their own lives must be.

In any case, good luck USA

You could say he's ... increasingly isolated.

irl lol

This is spiritual warfare, and those of us who value humanity need to start acting like it. This is about seeing people as siblings, about increasing connection and joy within our communities, and about proselytizing to those who don’t see things this way that life is better when it is lived in compassion for and faith in others.

These are the best tenets of Christianity, and it comes naturally to me as a longtime non-believer to hold myself to those tenets. So, OTM on the merits. A genuine lol if Bannon told Brooks he believes in compassion for and faith in others.

he said this:

"What we should be doing is cutting the number of foreign students in American universities by 50 percent immediately, because we’re never going to get a Hispanic and Black population in Silicon Valley unless you get them into the engineering schools. No. 2, we should staple an exit visa to their diploma. The foreign students can hang around for a week and party, but then they got to go home and make their own country great."

This isn’t what Bannon said to Brooks

We are fighting against forces that would have us divided, starved, dead, but I believe many who follow this bleak line of thinking are persuadable and might see the light,

I think there's a fundamental truth in this, all people are more pliable and less rigid than they might appear, even if only marginally, and its better to err on the side of assuming so rather than assuming not, where possible

As horrible as Clinton is, she wouldn’t have rolled over and played dead (sorry-“reaching across the aisle”) for 8 fucking years like Obama did

there is a metaphor I like to remind myself of from time to time: right before a star dies, it gets really big and bright and powerful

I kinda feel this way with America's right... the demographic/urbanization shifts are inevitable, but they're not gonna go down without a fight

I can’t believe Biden still isn’t even pushing harder on marijuana legalization. It’s a winning issue with Republicans, even, you goddamn idiot

"This isn’t what Bannon said to Brooks"

that quote was from the interview in the nyt.

the demographic/urbanization shifts are inevitable

the notion that these shifts will naturally favor the Democratic party is the weirdest white liberal fantasy and I've been hearing it for so many years -- this'll sort itself out, the bad guys are on their last legs, they're getting their licks in before they're obsolete. actually the bad guys are remarkably adaptable, and have made considerable inroads with the very demographics that Democrats think of as "theirs"/"ours." Any person who makes less than six figures a year is voting against their interests when they vote (R), but the Republicans have done a great job getting votes from those very people. indeed there will be many demographic shifts in the years to come, but to take those votes as tallied is a grave error imo. one I wholly expect the (D) establishment to make!

i was replying to alfred and xposted by accident, apologies for confusing scott!

lol I got confused too

JCLC otm

the notion that these shifts will naturally favor the Democratic party is the weirdest white liberal fantasy and I've been hearing it for so many years -- this'll sort itself out, the bad guys are on their last legs, they're getting their licks in before they're obsolete. actually the bad guys are remarkably adaptable, and have made considerable inroads with the very demographics that Democrats think of as "theirs"/"ours." Any person who makes less than six figures a year is voting against their interests when they vote (R), but the Republicans have done a great job getting votes from those very people. indeed there will be many demographic shifts in the years to come, but to take those votes as tallied is a grave error imo. one I wholly expect the (D) establishment to make!

As they say in Brazil, "money makes you whiter."

See: most people fleeing Venezuela, Columbia, and Cuba to South Florida.

...and Hispanics in Texas who aspire to be Rednecks.

A lot of Venezuelans went to Aruba, which is where my mother resides. They don’t tend to speak Dutch or Papiamento, so I’m guessing they’ll probably have a very hard time acclimating

I acknowledge my white liberal fantasy, but are there any major cities in the U.S. that are heavily conservative? Maybe Oklahoma City? Cities are where most people live, the majority

Salt Lake City, although they’ve elected Democrat mayors in recent years

Jacksonville was one of the last big cities with a GOP mayor until 2022, one of Florida's only bright spots.

SLC is a weird one, Mormons are not your average conservatives for a variety of reasons

Art makes him nervous, it's weird and deviant

Ron DeSantis strips more than $32m in Florida arts funding

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/30/ron-desantis-florida-art-funding-cut

I'm surprised. DeSantis really struck me as an art lover.

he called our local Fringe festival "a sex festival".

if only.

"and stuff like that"

Seems to be the new right wing target--like the LGBTQ+ Center in PA that supposedly had "sex parties"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-01/democrats-weigh-early-biden-nomination-to-squash-talk-of-a-swap

I mean I have done full frontal on the Orlando Fringe stage twice but I can tell you audience exit surveys showed 75% of them vomited. nothing sexy going on at all.

Columbia

The Morningside Heights to Florida pipeline

Speaking of Colombia, I am ready for Judge Merchan to send Trump to Rikers for some actual time served, or set up some conditions of probation that he will surely violate. Since we are in This Is Fine world anyway.

I sure hope that happens, felicity! The judge must be having a really weird year; hopefully he’s holding up OK.

Many XPs... Houston just elected an aging DINO for mayor, and it's going like you'd expect (public transit issues, library funding appearing then disappearing, went a ridiculously long time without meeting our millennial county judge etc.).

I think Dallas is the last major/big city with a Republican mayor.

and he was elected as a Democrat

On loan from the "the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive" thread, CNN just had James Carville on. I thought he'd be the ultimate circle-the-wagons guy, so it was surprising how adamantly he wants Biden to step aside. "I'm a great guy too, but I have no business running a campaign anymore."

massachusetts really likes republican governors. though now we have our beloved dem lesbian to lead us into victory. wait can she be president? she's cool.

I heard this good hour with Carville from last Friday morning, just after the debate. The podcaster is an excellent researcher and interviewer, and is also usually an atypical Gen Z-er (he's 29). He usually interviews artists, so it was interesting hearing him push back gracefully at Carville on issues related to Gaza, BLM, and so on. Anyway, unless you can't stand Carville, this is really good (and much better than seeing/hearing him beaming in via Zoom on TV).

“Uncertainty and anxiety translates into viewership” -Matthew Belloni on his podcast, The Town, a few days ago

The below is a long but interesting Bluesky thread that I'm just gonna reproduce in its (more-or-less, omitting some unimportant links) entirety.

*****

i'm getting so, so tired of the doomerism on here, and the press loves covering shit like a horse race instead of explaining fundamentals and what's at play, a job that seems to fall to

so here's a thread about why i'd rather be biden — yes, biden — right now

the baseline for this election is 2020. normally "the last election" might not be a perfect baseline, but it's the same guys with the roles reversed. both are quasi-incumbents, and we have a four year record for the both of them, with some recency bias for biden.

here's that map

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lui5epjfu4cdbyg6ujyn27tl/bafkreief6uqazuaak52yuq2yikh3twcnkm2ynwbv6zyem324lfyowfesza@jpeg

now, for trump to win, he has to do three things:

1) hold nc
2) flip georgia and arizona
3) make headway in wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania

for biden to win, he has to hold wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania.

holding nc:

trump won nc in 2020 by 1.5 points, the closest red state of 2020. in 2020 dem roy cooper won the governor's race by 4.5 pts, meaning a lot of trump/cooper split tickets.

for this round, the nc gop nominated a literal nazi as their gubernatorial candidate. not ideal!

next order of business is flipping arizona and georgia. i think both of these states were at least modest surprises to everyone in 2020, and on paper should be the most tenuous biden holds. trump should be able to flip them back, right?

well, it's still an uphill battle.

for arizona, we have multiple state-wide races to look at from 2022 to establish a baseline. katie hobbs beat kari lake by about 10k votes for the governorship. adrian fontes beat the far-more-trumpy mark finchem in sos by ~5 pts. trumpy blake masters lost by same margin to incumbent kelly.

so arizona, in 2022, given a slate of very trumpy candidates, rejected all of them. the most likeable (least serial killer like), kari lake, is running for senate again.

the az gop is bankrupt, and fake elector trials will start some time before the election, and will be big local news.

so trump has to overcome all that, which he may, it was extremely close in 2020 in arizona.

which brings us to the other surprise swing, georgia

georgia's gov kemp is not a fan of trump. there's been a lot of effort to pull electoral shenanigans there, but kemp isn't going to put his fist on the scales for trump if he comes up short, so on paper at least a decent dem margin in ga will hold.

like az, ga has had a few state level trumper candidates. in 2020 warnock beat loeffler by 2 pts, and ossoff beat perdue by ~1 pt. that's really close, but it's a margin that's pretty shenanigans-proof.

then in 22 ga gop nominated herschel for senate. warnock won by 1 pt in a "red wave" year.

so, like az, ga has rejected trumpist candidates at the state level multiple times in favor of dems, even facing national headwinds for the dem party like the summer 2022 inflation.

i'm not saying trump won't flip one or both of az or ga, but it's not a slam dunk, work must be done.

which brings us to the blue wall. if trump accomplishes the previous two things, he has to flip one of wisconsin, michigan, or pennsylvania.

wi is probably the most vulnerable, followed by mi, then pa.

wi re-elected ron johnson in 2022. god damn it, but by about 20k votes. in the same election, tony evers won the gubernatorial election by a 3 pt margin, so it's hard to draw a conclusion there.

since then, wi had a high-profile supreme court election, which flipped the court's make-up.

so this year wi is having its state leg elections under maps drawn up by evers after the sc ordered them to get their shit together, meaning this'll be the first competitive state leg elections in wi in 15 yrs.

elections have consequences.

meanwhile, the wi gop was doing this. (14-week abortion ban that the governor will veto)

abortion is very much on the ballot in wisconsin this year.

michigan just re-elected big gretch by ten points, the michigan gop is somehow worse off than the az gop (which has been taken over by complete psychopaths) by having a schismatic civil war, and is also broke.

biden was very public in supporting the uaw strike, among other union supports.

the big concern in michigan is the large muslim-american population who are, justifiably and understandably, pissed off at biden for not doing more to restrain israel in gaza.

i have no idea how important this will be, but if israel and hamas agree a biden-backed ceasefire it probably helps.

and this is why it's deeply unlikely a netanyahu-led gov't is going to agree to a ceasefire before the election.

of course, trump is doing everything he can to ruin his chances by using "palestinian" as a slur for biden and schumer; holding rallies at non-union factories; "black jobs"; things of that nature.

i think mi is the biggest wild card, but trump has to make inroads with people of color to win.

if pennsylvania falls, i think we're in full democratic collapse mode, and ironically the fall of the keystone state would herald the end to constitutional governance in this country.

we all watched dr oz lose, hilariously, to fetterman. the leg is split, and the gov is blue.

so trump's path to winning is:

1) hold nc
2) flip az and ga
3) flip wi

i've covered why nc is touchy, az and ga are uphill battles, and wi dems have shown the payoff of working with stacey abrams to get it together and start winning elections.

each of these things would be hard, but...

dobbs.

i haven't mentioned dobbs. which is funny, because it's the giant fucking blue whale in the room.

fielding weirdos and people who genuinely need help as senate candidates is enough of a handicap.

but now we're seeing the full influence of dobbs, and it's not pretty if you're a trumper

2022 midterm should have been a red wave based on fundamentals.

incumbent party, inflation not doing great, weird economy coming out of covid. 538's most likely house split was ~228-207 based on polls.

lol, nope.

and that was before the abortion bans really started to hit.

*since dobbs*, and the news that abortion bans are indeed as psychotic as people feared, you've had elections like this, a d+25 swing over a year earlier (Oklahoma state legislature)

in alabama, a d+30 swing (State House of Representatives)

things of that nature. you've also seen multiple amendments protecting abortion passing in places like 2020 r+8 ohio by 14 points, even after ratfucking shenanigans by the ohio sos.

there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that dobbs is a near-national d+20 swing in all but the safest seats.

a d+5 swing flips nc and florida, and puts texas in play.

fucking texas.

where ted cruz's internal polling numbers had him creating shit like this and trying to make himself out as a bipartisan dealmaker.

btw that cruz rebranding effort is going about as well as you'd expect.

dobbs is a god damned nuclear bomb on the political landscape. likely voter models have no idea how to deal with it. with polling response rates in the gutter, but the vibe from every actual election is this:

women. are. pissed.

it is sad that dobbs could end up saving the republic

so maybe it was a really bad idea for trump to say this during the debate:

“It’s bringing it back to the vote of the people, which is what everybody wanted, including the founders. Everybody wanted it brought back. And many Presidents had tried to get it back. I was the one to do it.”

which was doubling down on these comments a year earlier

“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone.”

maybe trump could overcome this if he could flood the zone with bullshit, or could capitalize on disillusioned dems with aggressive gotv, or create legal chaos with voting outcomes.

but the rnc is broke, its infrastructure dismantled. their gotv effort is being contracted to charlie kirk.

so, in conclusion, biden could lose and i could be wrong and in that case having a bunch of people on bluesky tell me "i told you so" is the least of my concerns. but the trump team has a lot of ground to make up to improve on 2020, and a lot of headwinds of their own making.

That's a not-bad political landscape for a well-liked and energetic Democratic candidate with a strong and coherent message.

Who wrote that?

People who can't find the effort to use capital letters drive me fucking crazy.

Trump’s ahead in NH post debate. This scenario is a bit rosy.

And this all assumes the election even matters, since Trump's already got a corrupt Supreme Court ready to install him no matter the outcome of the election. All this speculation as if this is a normal election feels pretty stupid and pointless to me.

Well, to quote the title of a 20-year-old book by noted Republican hack Hugh Hewitt, If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat. So we'll see.

one other factor is the Dems have a ton of money to spend and the GOP is funneling a lot of their cash towards Trump's legal bills, the whole GOTV operation could make a huge difference

There are some good, hopeful points in that Bluesky piece, but characterizing Kari Lake as in any way likeable makes me question the rest of it.

They know at some level that performing a hostile takeover of someone’s identity is the quintessential act of domination by the slaver. Denying a person of their name , their social status, their kinship ties — these are signature moves of the Virginia plantation owner, and went hand-in-hand with ownership, droit de seigneur, the whole nine. The fact that a certain version of this tactic has been deployed against the occasional white individual (e.g., E Warren) doesn’t contradict this : tactics that have been perfected in the plantation can be deployed elsewhere: on the reservation, in the prisons, at the border, and so on. But that’s what I see, beneath the crude political calculations: a will to dominate that is unquenchable.

^and yeah, President Keyes otm

this was posted in the kendrick lamar thread:

My boy on the PBS News stream was going crazy for Not Like Us pic.twitter.com/97tPdR35uJ

— I talk music and music accessories (@tribblez) July 30, 2024

― Jersey Devil Vance (President Keyes), Wednesday, 31 July 2024 00:47 (yesterday) link

but MSNBC interviewed him and he's the president of Georgia's Young Democrats!

Kennedy, Stills & Clap

― BrianB, Wednesday, July 31, 2024 8:21 PM

Kennedy, Stills & Please Clap

Republicans see non-white ethnicity as some kind of cynical cheat code to get into higher office.

If that was true, why don't we have a Rafael Cruz on the hustings then.

I realize Loomer is a fucking moron but, does she actually think Jamaicans aren't black?

There are various layers of crank opinion at work but, at minimum, yes - she is claiming that Donald Harris isn’t black. She’s not the first person to come up with this. idk how you go about trying to explain this to normal people but Race Science Enthusiasts (not necessarily only white ones) point to the fact that Jamaica is a country where a lot of people have mixed ancestry as invalidating claims of ‘blackness’. Within Jamaica, you also have perceived ‘degrees of blackness’ going back to the 18th century. This is what Loomer’s claim that Harris is ‘descended from slave owners’ appears to be referring to.

How that’s mean to play in a US context idk, I can’t imagine the response from 99.9% of people being anything other than ‘huh?’.

The entire “she’s not Black” argument is this weird inversion of hundreds of years of white supremacist “race science” that defined anyone with pretty much any amount of African ancestry as Black. But of course it’s also of a perfect piece with it, because in both cases it’s about denying or attempting to deny people certain kinds of power and autonomy on the basis of racial categorization (with white people as the categorizers of course).

I continue to be gobsmacked by the racism that Trump habitually gets away with.

“Don’t Couch Me, Bro”

they're suddenly critical of race theory? xposts

There’s a weird kind of Swiftboat / stolen valour element that runs along the lines of ‘you say that you’re black, which implies that you’ve overcome hardships and prejudice, but you’re actually from this other privileged category that’s too complicated to explain but, you know how Sean Paul is Jamaican but he kind of looks……..’ which is, as noted, completely at odds with how race is typically enforced in the US. Irrespective of how Donald Harris identified in Jamaica (which afaik is ‘black’) he was black the minute he set foot in America.

unburdened by a has-been

this is p good

i'm not sure the best approach from harris here, either ignore completely or be like, oh, okay, you want to get into this? let's get into it. am i black? can black people be the descendents of slave owners? can jamaicans be black? let me take you back...

Do we have an August thread yet

We do now!

I wouldn’t overthink the “she’s not really black” thing. It’s the kind of thing that will make some trumpers feel smug but resonate with exactly zero Harris or potential Harris voters. If this is the brilliant MAGA plan to get more non-white voters to go over to Trump, I’m not very worried. People don’t tend to take well to someone outside their group trying to define who counts.

I think he’s trying to pull an Elizabeth Warren on her and failing to read the room/understand why it doesn’t land in this situation.

yeah for sure

afaic this LGM post about the Kamala race thing nails it pretty succinctly:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/07/theyre-going-all-in-with-the-kamala-harris-isnt-really-black-thing

It's a rerun. They did this with Obama, and it didn't work then. It makes them look pathetic and limited in how they respond to them. Bringing up Kamala's birth certificate? It's not convincing or shocking, it's "oh, this shit again."

US Politics, August 2024 -- "Unburdened By a Has-Been"