Are We Shocked Anymore?

[Lucky]

President Trump’s campaign is focusing on suburban housewives with a race-baiting message that includes trying to convince them that if Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Harris, are elected, they will be “bringing who knows into your suburbs, so your communities will be unsafe and your housing values will go down.” NYDailyNews

[tassojunior]

The new reality: Rich suburban Republican women are the most important voting block in America. The new backbone of the Democratic party. 

[tassojunior]

It's official from Rahm; the Democratic Party is now the Republican Party:

https://www.axios.com/rahm-emanuel-biden-republican-2020-0a06c703-e017-4446-b2ea-92dac87d7035.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

Rahm Emanuel sees wave of "Biden Republicans"

[tassojunior]

The convention will have a 15-minute speech by homophobe sexist GOP governor John Kaisch and a 15-minute speech by racist, sexist former GOP mayor Mike Bloomberg. The Democratic Convention. Democratic Congresswoman AOC will be allowed a 1-minute taped approved message and no other member of the progressive House 'squad" will be allowed to speak. No word yet if there will be "white" and "colored" water fountains to make racists feel more at home.

Update: Andrew Yang has been taken off the speakers list. Maybe they need time for John Bolton.

[Pete1111]

17 hours ago, Lucky said:

President Trump’s campaign is focusing on suburban housewives with a race-baiting message that includes trying to convince them that if Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Harris, are elected, they will be “bringing who knows into your suburbs, so your communities will be unsafe and your housing values will go down.” NYDailyNews

Our beautiful suburbs will be no more.    What an oaf!

Is he the worst f*cking campaigner?  No wonder he needs to cheat to win.

 

Will we ever learn what Senator Blumenthal was warning about last week, Russia's attempt to interfere with the election?

 

The linked article mentions how they sow discord in our media and that they deploy fake individuals on line to divide our political will.  Who knows, perhaps there are 1 or 2 or more even here on this forum.  Wouldn't that be a surprise!!

 

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Pete1111
errors

[Buddy2]

On 8/15/2020 at 7:27 AM, Lucky said:

President Trump’s campaign is focusing on suburban housewives with a race-baiting message that includes trying to convince them that if Democratic candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Harris, are elected, they will be “bringing who knows into your suburbs, so your communities will be unsafe and your housing values will go down.” NYDailyNews

Trump is the new George Wallace, and much more  dangerous. That is why his older sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, complained so bitterly about him. Donald kept  asking her if she watched Fox News  Her answer, "No, I read books instead."

[AdamSmith]

On 8/16/2020 at 1:02 AM, tassojunior said:

The convention will have a 15-minute speech by homophobe sexist GOP governor John Kaisch and a 15-minute speech by racist, sexist former GOP mayor Mike Bloomberg. The Democratic Convention.

I think in an election, you take your allies & vote-getters wherever you find them.

[stevenkesslar]

On 8/15/2020 at 10:54 AM, tassojunior said:

The new reality: Rich suburban Republican women are the most important voting block in America. The new backbone of the Democratic party. 

We're never going to agree on this.  But when you go off I feel like I have say, "Uh, not really."  That makes us like bitchy old suburban housewives, right?   

So:

First, you're part right.  The danger to me is that we do to the Democratic Party what President Toxic did to the Republicans.  Which is let people in that will eventually destroy our ability to work as a party and lead the nation.  And that's not quite fair to President Toxic.  Because these people (The Tea Party, to label them) came in to the GOP of their own accord, back when Donald Trump was donating to Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton.  Arguably, the GOP didn't have a choice.  They were not going to say, "Fuck you and your vote."  But they are now paying the price for what happened in the last decade.

After that, the comparison pretty much stops.  In the GOP, the "cancer" that invaded drew a party already moving right further right.  In the Democratic Party, the impact of the new suburban or Never Trump Republican "cancer" was to take a primary that maybe could have gone to Sanders, and tip it to Biden.  In other words, toward the center.  Most Democrats would not call that "cancer".  Most Blacks would not call it cancer, since they tipped it to Biden more than the suburbs did.  Bernie is not calling Biden "cancer".   (My word, not your's, but the idea among some progressives is that these people are like an invading organism.)

These rich suburban Republican women are not Republican, of course, if they are now the new backbone of the Democratic Party.  I won't bother with the data, but they are also increasingly not rich.  You didn't bring up race, but suburban women are also increasingly not White.  When was the last time a suburban woman who is not White was elected President?  So speaking man to man, if the problem is that suburban women are using the Democratic Party to take power, what is the problem?

I agree with what David Axelrod just wrote, who agrees with Ron Brownstein in an article I already cited in my long opus to Alan Lichtman.  Here's the guts of what Axelrod said that is relevant to your point:

Quote

The economy, which is paramount to most Americans, generally was squeezed into a limited slot on Wednesday night, as Democrats focused on the virus, health care, social justice, guns and climate change. Biden covered it in his contrasting vision in his speech but it was not the major thrust.

 

That economic message goes hand-in-hand with the cultural one and would further frustrate Trump's effort to fully reassemble his white, working class base and eke out a second electoral college victory.

Axelrod and Brownstein both think the DNC could have been clearer about an economic message for both those mythical Joe Sixpacks in Michigan who voted for President Toxic in 2016, and the hordes of rich suburban women you keep bringing up.  It was more subtext than text, but I think they both feel that Democrats perhaps focused TOO MUCH on messages that appeal to the progressive base - like climate change, Black Lives Matter, gun control.  A little bit goes a long way with some of these folks.  So just me typing the words "Black Lives Matter" and "gun control" already makes me a radical.  Obviously I think all Republicans are racist and we should confiscate their guns and send them to socialist re-education camps.

One of these two, or maybe somebody else, just argued that Democrats could repeat the same mistake as 2016, and pander so much to the ascendant part of the party that we lose the old working class part, and the election, like we did in 2016.  I doubt most Blacks or progressives would agree that Hillary or Tim Kaine pandered to them in 2016.  I agree with what Axelrod wrote.  I was slightly surprised, and not at all unhappy, that Biden's convention implicitly did seem to put a slightly higher priority on progressive messages - gun control, racial justice, racism, climate change - than on a neo-liberal "I won't raise your taxes, folks" message that worked for Bill Clinton in the 1990's. Black Lives Matter people said last week was all just lip service.  That's absolutely true.  Because until Democrats take power, it will of course be lips moving, not laws.  I'm not sure.  But I'm growing increasingly optimistic that everybody who isn't in love with Biden - like young people and BLM activists - get that, and will simply vote out of a burning desire to be a nail in President Toxic's coffin.

It's a small thing, and a subjective guess, but Rasmussen's daily tracking of Trump's approval blipped up for President Toxic during the DNC.  He went from - 4 % net approval right before the DNC started to + 4 % approval end of last week and yesterday and he's now back to dead even today.  Rasmussen is always way more favorable to Trump than other polls.  But my read is that when center and center/right people, like your rich suburban women, turn on the TV and see Bernie Sanders and AOC and Warren and hear Green New Deal, maybe 4 % of them or so all of a sudden like President Toxic a little more. In other words, enough voters to swing an election.  When they turned on the TV last night, they now say they like President Toxic just a little less today.

It's increasingly clear that mostly Biden needs to keep his mask on and his mouth shut until he wins.  I didn't watch the RNC last night, because I figured they'd do a competent job.  Why ruin the good buzz I have coming off the DNC last week?  And because my favorite voodoo guy who is always right is now saying Biden is going to win?

When I watched pieces of the RNC today, I really just couldn't stop laughing.  And on this one, again, a picture is worth 1000 Kesslar words.  But the idea is that these people are just "normal" suburban people.  And they are simply and humbly speaking to what everybody in suburbia who lives on a "quiet" street feels.  Okay.  So show me, Patricia and Mark.

Okay, Patricia and Mark.  I get it.  You are just normal suburban people.  Just like most people who live in humble homes on most suburban streets.  And like most normal and humble suburbanites, you just feel that when anarchy strikes the obvious solution is to wave a gun at a Black woman who is so radical and socialist that she just got elected to be a member of the US House of Representatives.  

I'm assuming this is the "radical" Patricia talked about.  She's Black, so I'm assuming she isn't like your normal suburban woman who lives on a normal quiet suburban street.  And if soon-to-be U.S. Rep Cori Bush is out being all radicaly and socialisty about her safety, and her community's safety, the obvious thing a normal suburban woman like Patricia should do is grab your gun and point it at her.

I thought it was a very sweet touch that just like movies tell us that love means never having to say you're sorry, and the DNC told us that love means having the courage to stand up like John Lewis did for racial justice and healing, the reality show RNC told us that being a good Republican means giving free advice on how to use your firearms.  I guess when you are waving your gun at radical and socialist Black women who got elected to Congress like Cori Bush, free advice on using your gun is a plus.  Hell, thousands of Republicans will help you with that, Patricia said. 

How sweet.  How suburban.  How normal.  I grew up in an all-white suburban of Chicago.  And every day White neighbors were helpfully instructing me or my Mom and Dad in how to use guns.  I guess that's just what makes America, and the suburbs, great.

Joe, just keep your mask on and your mouth shut.  We just need to give people like Patricia and Mark a bullhorn and a gun and let them go on and on.  Oh, wait.  They have the guns already.  Just a bullhorn will do, I guess.

Final note to you, @tassojunior.  If Patricia is speaking for other rich Republican women who live in nice houses (or mansions) in suburbs or gated urban enclaves, we thankfully don't have to worry about her infecting the Democratic Party anytime soon.  I can live with that.

Edited August 26, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

43 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

We're never going to agree on this.  But when you go off I feel like I have say, "Uh, not really."  That makes us like bitchy old suburban housewives, right?   

So:

First, you're part right.  The danger to me is that we do to the Democratic Party what President Toxic did to the Republicans.  Which is let people in that will eventually destroy our ability to work as a party and lead the nation.  And that's not quite fair to President Toxic, because these people (The Tea Party, to label it) came in of to the GOP of their own accord, back when Donald Trump was donating to Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton.  Arguably, the GOP didn't have a choice.  They were not going to say, "Fuck you and your vote."  But they are now paying the price for what happened in the last decade.

After that, the comparison pretty much stops.  In the GOP, the "cancer" that invaded drew a party already moving right further right.  In the Democratic Party, the impact of the new suburban or Never Trump Republican "cancer" was to take a primary that maybe could have gone to Sanders, and tip it to Biden.  In other words, toward the center.  Most Democrats would not call that "cancer".  Bernie is not calling Biden "cancer".   (My word, not your's, but the idea among some progressives is that someone this is like an invading organism.)

These rich suburban Republican women are not Republican, of course, if they are now the new backbone of the Democratic Party.  I won't bother with the data, but they are also increasingly not rich.  You didn't bring up race, but suburban women are also increasingly not White.  When was the last time a suburban woman who is not White was elected President?  So speaking man to man, if the problem is that suburban women are using the Democratic Party to take power, what is the problem?

I agree with what David Axelrod just wrote, who agrees with Ron Brownstein in an article I already cited in my long opus to Alan Lichtman.  Here's the guts of what Axelrod said that is relevant to your point:

Axelrod and Brownstein both think the DNC could have been clearer about an economic message for both those mythical Joe Sixpacks in Michigan who voted for President Toxic in 2016, and the hordes of rich suburban women you keep bringing up.  It was more subtext than text, but I think they both feel that Democrats perhaps focused TOO MUCH on messages that appeal to the progressive base - like climate change, Black Lives Matter, gun control.  A little bit goes a long way with some of these folks.  So just me typing the words "Black Lives Matter" and "gun control" already makes me a radical.  Obviously I think all Republicans are racist and we should confiscate their guns and send them to socialist re-education camps.

One of these two, or maybe somebody else, just argued that Democrats could repeat the same mistake as 2016, and pander so much to the ascendant part of the party that we lose the old working class part, and the election, like we did in 2016.  I doubt most Blacks or progressives would agree that Hillary or Tim Kaine pandered to them in 2016.  I agree with what Axelrod wrote.  I was slightly surprised, and not at all unhappy, that Biden's convention implicitly did seem to put a slightly higher priority on progressive messages - gun control, racial justice, racism, climate change - than on a neo-liberal "I won't raise your taxes, folks" message that worked for Bill Clinton in the 1990's. Black Lives Matter people said last week was all just lip service.  That's absolutely true.  Because until Democrats take power, it will of course be lips moving, not laws.  I'm not sure.  But I'm growing increasingly optimistic that everybody who isn't in love with Biden - like young people and BLM activists - get that, and will simply vote out of a burning desire to be a nail in President Toxic's coffin.

It's a small thing, and a subjective guess, but Rasmussen's daily tracking of Trump's approval blipped up for President Toxic during the DNC.  He went from - 4 % net approval right before the DNC started to + 4 % approval end of last week and yesterday and he's now back to dead even today.  Rasmussen is always way more favorable to Trump than other polls.  But my read is that when center and center/right people, like your rich suburban woman, turn on the TV and see Bernie Sanders and AOC and Warren and hear Green New Deal, maybe 4 or 5 or 6 % of them like President Toxic more all of a sudden. In other words, enough to swing an election.  When they turned on the TV last night, they now say they like President Toxic a little less today.

It's increasingly clear that mostly Biden needs to keep his mask on and his mouth shut until he wins.  I didn't watch the RNC last night, because I figured they'd do a competent job.  Why ruin the good buzz I have coming off last week, and my favorite voodoo guy who is always right saying Biden is going to win?

When I watched pieces of it today, I really just couldn't stop laughing.  And on this one, again, a picture is worth 1000 Kesslar words.  But the idea is that these people are just "normal" suburban people.  And they are simply and humbly speaking to what everybody in suburbia who lives on a "quiet" street feels.  Okay.  So show me, Patricia and Mark.

 

Steven, You do realize that the largest part of Bernie's support (and Tulsi's and Yang's) were independents and Republicans, not even Democrats. There's a broad anti-war alliance across party lines against American genocide and against corruption that is frustrated with both party's morals. Rich suburban women don't want "Democratic taxes", but they don't want genocide in their name either. Poll after poll showed those 3 polling better with Republicans, and certainly with independents, than the DLC crooks/warmongers. This oldtimer strategy dating back to the 70's that Republicans and independents are more likely to cross over to vote for a "Democrat who's almost a Republican" is just nonsense in places other than maybe West Virginia or Louisiana. People will cross over for moral and ethical reasons and patriotism. That ain't Biden/Harris and the assumption they'll cross over to vote for the other party's crooks over their own is logic only these morans get. (and yes, I have to deal and listen to Hilary Rosen and Buttigieg's crowd here spout this strategy baloney constantly.)  These Clintonistas are dumb. Why they don't argue from intelligence, just brute power. They think Republicans, women mostly, will make up in numbers for expelling the reformers and anti-war crowd from the party. 5% ain't gonna do it saps. You just killed your party. (Which to them is still better than reformers taking it over.) 

It is really hard to lose to an obnoxious moran like Trump but the DNC figured out how to do it in 2016 and can do it again. (and btw--Cori Bush was a strong Bernie supporter the Democratic Party  worked hard to keep from winning her primary and I heard a comment from one of her workers on the ticket too nasty to print.) 

Edited August 26, 2020 by tassojunior

[stevenkesslar]

As I just ranted about, it seems like the Republicans are simply being ridiculous this.  This talk made me feel differet.

When I watch that video of the McCloskeys, it's easy to feel shocked and indignant as a Democrat.  It feels like a parody.  Even though I know it's dead serious.  Patricia McCloskey may really believe the suburbs will be "abolished".  Even though she is obviously reading from a script. Who knows?  I do know she exudes a feeling of moral superiority over the Black woman who she presumably pointed her gun at and who - can you believe it? - is a Marxist who actually got elected to the US Congress!

When I listen to Nick I feel exactly the opposite.  Meaning, if I want to understand how it is that Republicans could feel deeply shocked and indignant, this does it.  Whoever produced this piece did a superb job.  And Nick did a superb job.  It feels like he deeply believes every word he said.  Almost certainly, because he does.  

I won't comment on what some in the media said about him, or later corrected.  Or the substance of the lawsuit.  But part of the power of this is that I think everyone now knows that the only wrong thing Nick did, in the context of big big media moment,  was to stand at The Lincoln Memorial wearing a MAGA hat.  Which is to say, he did nothing wrong.  So right out of the gate he has legitimate grounds for moral indignation that are very different than a rich White woman who lives in a mansion waving her gun at a Black woman who was once homeless for a few months.  

I think this is the real rub of the 2020 election.  Speaking as a Democrat, I'd rather believe that this is about cranks and fat cats like the McCloskeys, who reek of privilege and guns and arrogance.  They are certainly a part of President Toxic's base.  They likely donate to him generously.  But, in reality, Nick is probably a far better spokesperson for all the grassroots forces and interests behind President Toxic, and what's driving them.  His speech has the tenor or a fervent moral crusade.  It's not unlike the tone John Lewis or John Meacham would use to advocate for very different policies and politicians.

It's only Day Two.  But I'd guess this will be the RNC's equivalent of the DNC's Brayden Harrington moment.  Brayden's compelling message was that he wanted us to know that Joe Biden is a guy who empathizes with and helps kids that stutter like him.  Nick wants us to know that Donald Trump is the kind of leader that supports kids like him, who the forces of intolerance and untruth in America - like the media - actually want to cancel. 

He doesn't use the image of light and darkness.  He does uses metaphors of war, and moral crusade.  To quote:  "The full war machine of the mainstream media revved up into attack mode."  He says the media is anti-Catholic, anti-conservative, anti-Trump, doesn't care about the truth, and could certainly care less if they destroy some kid from Covington, Kentucky. 

Like I said, if I want to understand the deep emotional power of The Tea Party, or what it has morphed into - Trumpism - this is where to go.  If I want to understand why President Toxic will win Kentucky and could win re-election, and why Mitch McConnell will probably thrash Amy McGrath, this is where to go.  If I want to know how Trump supporters could feel shocked and indignant and righteous, this is where to go.   If "abolishing" the suburbs is bad, then cancelling people and cultures is worse.  Nick makes a compelling case.

Now for the flip side.  Other people might say that Nick is not being cancelled when a politically connected law firm helps him win a lawsuit against the media outlets that are President Toxic's whipping boys.  Or that Nick is being cancelled by being invited to speak to the nation at the Republican National Convention.

If you followed the story, you already know that maybe this is a story about a kid from Covington, and a culture, being cancelled.  But the kid is not Nick, as this article lays out:

Quote

Last May, Christian Bales, who is gay, was banned from giving his valedictorian speech hours before Holy Cross High School's ceremony. He was told the themes "were political and inconsistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church," NBC News reported.

I haven't bothered to check whether Nick was ever asked about what happened to Christian, who was a student at a different local Catholic high school.  Or whether he feels Christian was "cancelled".  You can argue this is unfair to bring up, since it has nothing directly to do with what happened to Nick.  But Nick himself explains his actions by saying he didn't want to do anything to "embarrass my family, my school, or my community."  And the emotional punch of his talk is that people like him should not be "cancelled" for who they are, or what they believe.  So it's fair to ask:  was Christian cancelled because he was Gay?  And is that an embarrassment to Nick's school and church and community?

The only way to make this argument is "where there's smoke, there's fire."  Nick is not saying anything about Catholics (my religion) and their long culture war against Gays.  Richard Grenell says Donald Trump is the most pro-LGBTQ President ever.  But HRC has a long list of how President Toxic is trying to push back the advance of LGBTQ rights.  Nick comes from a Catholic community that "cancelled" a Gay valedictorian.  If I were to have a chat with Nick, I'd ask about that.  And about how Gay culture has perhaps been "cancelled" more than any other culture in history.  Other than the Nazis, most oppressors at least allowed Jews to convert.  Blacks could live as long as they accepted their slavery.  Gays simply were not allowed to live, period.  Certainly not as a culture.  And often not as individuals.  Is that the kind of cancellation of people and culture you are fighting, Nick?

Whether bringing up the LGBTQ culture war is fair with a young man who has never spoken out about it, bringing up the abortion culture war definitely is.  That is why Nick was in Washington.  That is why he bought the red hat, Nick says in his talk.  To support Donald Trump for defending the unborn, in his words.  Of course, many women would say that men don't have the right to cancel women's right to choose.  Many women would say men also don't have the right to cancel their control over their own body.

Nick is both more appealing and more frightening than the McCloskeys.  The McCloskeys feel like freaks.  If I were a Democrat in Congress, I could see at least two ways of dealing with them, or the politicians who speak for them.  One is to ignore them.  In effect:  "We have the votes.  You will have higher taxes, and gun control.  Deal with it."  Or, depending on the circumstances and who those politicians are, there might be reason for a different approach.  "We have the votes for higher taxes and gun control.  Would you prefer to negotiate with us, or just oppose us?"

I know nothing about Nick.  But he strikes me as a budding member of the Tea Party.  Or what is now the Trump Toxic Party.  Or whatever it ends up calling itself after President Toxic loses.  I will simply draw conclusions from the tone of moral crusade he uses in his speech.  About the "war machine" out to attack and "cancel" people and their way of life.  That's Tea Party talk.  And for the most part, if it's Tea Party, there is no compromise.  Compromise is the problem.  For some of those folks, it is actually evil.  You don't unify or negotiate with people who live in the swamp and want to kill the unborn.  Or who want to cancel who we are or what we stand for.

I've watched enough talks of Never Trump Republicans  like Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens to know they were fully aware all along the way that the base they were persuading and mobilizing to vote Republican harbored some deeply racist and homophobic views.  And they were more than willing to play at the edges of those sentiments.  Willie Horton and the 2004 Ohio campaign to prohibit same sex marriage (and win Ohio for W. in a close race) are two great examples.  So now they see things like the fat cat McCloskeys pointing a gun at Blacks marching by their home, and they feel a sense of regret.  Stevens titled his book:  "It Was All A Lie."  That's honest.

The McCloskeys are a meme all over America today.  If all goes well, they can just sit in their nice mansion with their guns for a few years - or maybe a decade - and feel bitter about how America changed on them.  I get the sense that Wilson and Stevens and the Never Trump political hacks are perfectly fine with the McCloskeys of America being thrown under the bus.  The never Trumpers will perhaps work with the Biden Democrats on what kind of marginal tax hikes on the rich or what kind of gun control or what kind of universal health care funded by some kind of wealth tax might be acceptable.  I have no idea whether this will happen or not.  But it is one path I can see out of the deep polarization, or sort of civil war, we are in.

I have no idea what to do with Nick.  Like with Brayden Harrington, my first impulse is that my heart goes out to him.  He wants to be seen as a victim.  And to some degree he is.  I get that many if not most in his family, school, and community are genuinely shocked about what happened to him. 

But behind all that is a young man in a MAGA hat who seems to have all the deep convictions of the Tea Party.  He's fine with cancelling a woman's right to choose, it seems.  His school and community were fine with cancelling a Gay valedictorian.   And whatever pain it caused to be a kid thrust into a national media circus, he seemed to be just fine with throwing himself in  front of the national media circus tonight.  No Indian dude.  No drums.  No smirk.  Just a deep set of conservative convictions.

If Stuart Stevens is right - that the post-Trump Republican Party will just slowly become more irrelevant - Nick will likely be a proud member of that irrelevant minority.  But like after the Civil War, my guess is they'll be more than irrelevant.  They'll resist, thwart, and continue to feel that this is a threat by people who want to "cancel" who they are.

Watching the McCloskeys makes me laugh, because they feel like caricatures.  Watching Nick makes me feel very sad.  He has a compelling message.  A whole hell of a lot of people who vote for President Toxic will feel just as passionately about many of the things he says.  But I don't see how we get to unity and healing after it's over.  If there's anything we actually agree on, it may simply be that this is like a civil war.  One side is going to win, and the other side is going to lose.  And it will just continue to be painful, and ugly.

[tassojunior]

@stevenkesslar

Here's a good vid from CBS on the horrors of cancel culture. In the case of the 14 yr old who had a huge lie spread about him, by name,  on national media, he deserves the huge defamation award he got from WaPo. Defamation has serious consequences for victims and I doubt many progressives support this horror. It's worse than McCarthyism even.

https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbsn-originals/video/JsqwSZCOA8PXGZBOMqs5B34j7gVBvR59/cbsn-originals-presents-speaking-frankly-cancel-culture-/

Edited August 26, 2020 by tassojunior

[stevenkesslar]

2 hours ago, tassojunior said:

@stevenkesslar

Here's a good vid from CBS on the horrors of cancel culture. In the case of the 14 yr old who had a huge lie spread about him, by name,  on national media, he deserves the huge defamation award he got from WaPo. Defamation has serious consequences for victims and I doubt many progressives support this horror. It's worse than McCarthyism even.

https://www.cbs.com/shows/cbsn-originals/video/JsqwSZCOA8PXGZBOMqs5B34j7gVBvR59/cbsn-originals-presents-speaking-frankly-cancel-culture-/

That's a great video.  Thanks for posting it.

Like a lot of things with the internet, it's a blessing and a curse.  Two words stuck out for me:  "conversation" and "power".  As in, this should be about having a conversation.  Instead, it's sometimes about a mob exercising their power, sometimes seemingly irrationally.  It's very easy to find examples where it just seems like a mob ranting. 

Nick's case was different.  WaPo isn't exactly the poster child of a ranting mob.  But it is a very good example of people jumping to conclusions with almost no information to back those conclusions up.  Without the internet, nobody would know who Nick Sandmann is.  Even for Nick, I suspect that's a blessing and a curse.  He certainly wasn't forced to speak to the nation at the RNC.  It's actually kind of cool that he's using all this to elevate a message he clearly feels passionately about, whether I agree with him or not.  This is a democracy.  We're having a conversation.

I'll reinforce my main point.  He still wants to cancel women's right to choose.  And his Catholic community still did cancel a valedictorian from speaking because he was Gay.  That kind of shit has been going on for a long time.  Many of those incidents in the video you posted had to do with race and homophobia. 

So maybe this does goes too far.  But as stated in the video it also gives Blacks and Gays, to name two groups that have been victims of lots of discrimination for a very long time, a way to fight back.   We've of course had Selma and Stonewall and the ability to protest all along.  Although sometimes that involved getting your head bashed in.  But when you think about Jim Crow, or the idea that LGBTQ folks essentially were cancelled as a culture or as individuals and had to hide in closets, how we got to where we are makes some sense to me.  The part of this that's good, even if it sometimes seems like thought policing, is that there's a whole bunch of racist or homophobic or anti-Semitic garbage that's just much harder to get away with now.

To bring this back to what the OP started with, the internet and Twitter has enabled President Toxic and some of his followers to spew what I see as racist rants about Blacks coming into the suburbs and "abolishing" them all over the country to millions of people.  Same shit, different technology.  But it's also given people a way to fight back.  While it is definitely crude, it amounts to a sort of conversation.  In the end, the gun-toting rich White folks aren't really going to help President Toxic.

This line from Never Trumper Stuart Stevens from a Vox interview kind of fits in here, I think:

Quote

“Donald Trump did not change the Republican Party as much as he gave the party permission to reveal its true self.”

Historians will debate forever whether Nixon or Reagan were racists using racist dog whistles.  Stevens himself has now weighed in that the racism in his former party goes back to Nixon and the Southern strategy, and now has revealed itself more openly, sans dog whistles, with Trump's racist tweets (which even a former Black RNC head calls out) and the crazy rich White people with guns pointed at Black protesters.

So the discussion about how cancel culture goes too far - it does, in my opinion - has to include the idea that it is often a reaction against vile racist or homophobic filth that's targeted some minority that was easy to pick on for a very long time.

Edited August 26, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

1 hour ago, stevenkesslar said:

That's a great video.  Thanks for posting it.

Like a lot of things with the internet, it's a blessing and a curse.  Two words stuck out for me:  "conversation" and "power".  As in, this should be about having a conversation.  Instead, it's sometimes about a mob exercising their power, sometimes seemingly irrationally.  It's very easy to find examples where it just seems like a mob ranting. 

Nick's case was different.  WaPo isn't exactly the poster child of a ranting mob.  But it is a very good example of people jumping to conclusions with almost no information to back those conclusions up.  Without the internet, nobody would know who Nick Sandmann is.  Even for Nick, I suspect that's a blessing and a curse.  He certainly wasn't forced to speak to the nation at the RNC.  It's actually kind of cool that he's using all this to elevate a message he clearly feels passionately about, whether I agree with him or not.  This is a democracy.  We're having a conversation.

I'll reinforce my main point.  He still wants to cancel women's right to choose.  And his Catholic community still did cancel a valedictorian from speaking because he was Gay.  That kind of shit has been going on for a long time.  Many of those incidents in the video you posted had to do with race and homophobia. 

So maybe this does goes too far.  But as stated in the video it also gives Blacks and Gays, to name two groups that have been victims of lots of discrimination for a very long time, a way to fight back.   We've of course had Selma and Stonewall and the ability to protest all along.  Although sometimes that involved getting your head bashed in.  But when you think about Jim Crow, or the idea that LGBTQ folks essentially were cancelled as a culture or as individuals and had to hide in closets, how we got to where we are makes some sense to me.  The part of this that's good, even if it sometimes seems like thought policing, is that there's a whole bunch of racist or homophobic or anti-Semitic garbage that's just much harder to get away with now.

 

no,no,no,no,no !

Canceling someone as a person without any rights for life can be used against gays or straights, against black, white, Latino, anyone. And it can be used by either side. And usually it's used by the pro-government side and against political minorities. Maybe 14 yr old Nick would have become a radical reformer in college like most do if he had not been nationally defamed as a violent bigot for smiling at a grown man physically assaulting him as the case turned out. The St Louis couple are morons and bigots but stay away from destroying children just to have a nightly story to fit the current "narrative". (And btw, how does Bill Clinton's spotlight at the DNC figure into the MeToo narrative after it turns out he went with Epstein 26 times to fuck female children Epstein kept and 2 days after a UK paper published photos of him with one of Epstein's young girls?..... no one sees any problems there at all because it doesn't fit the current narrative. The Queen even disowned her son over this but the DNC couldn't leave Bill off?)

 

 

Here in DC last night by my house we had an incident where an all-white march claiming to support "BLM" attacked a pregnant woman of color at an outdoor cafe because she didn't raise a fist when told to . The ironies are really sad: 

 

 

 

  When we lose the freedom of speech racial and political minorities will be the ones hurt most. 

 

And this type thing gets many many more votes for Trump than he can ever get for himself. Think. 

Edited August 26, 2020 by tassojunior

[stevenkesslar]

13 hours ago, tassojunior said:

Steven, You do realize that the largest part of Bernie's support (and Tulsi's and Yang's) were independents and Republicans, not even Democrats. There's a broad anti-war alliance across party lines against American genocide and against corruption that is frustrated with both party's morals. Rich suburban women don't want "Democratic taxes", but they don't want genocide in their name either.

If you have data that neatly slices and dices who supported Bernie, please post it. 

I have read lots of postmortems on his campaign.  And the data is kind of a confused mess, I think.  It's not clear to me that anyone knows exactly what worked, and didn't. 

Bernie certainly was not able to build the kind of class-based/working class majoritarian party he talked about.  In deference to the OP, I'm going to tilt my comments to talking about the suburbs.  So I'll say again. No one like AOC or Bernie has demonstrated they can actually win House seats in places like Orange County.

As it relates to the suburbs, I think Rahm Emanuel is right about one big important thing.  And President Toxic is wrong about one big important thing.  And I think this is clearly working to the advantage of the Democratic Party.

Emanuel is saying Democrats should focus on building metropolitan alliances of cities and suburbs as a path to sustainable majoritarian power.  I think he is exactly right.  If we have this idea that the suburbs are all rich White women with guns like Patricia McCloskey, we need to cancel that idea in our minds.  The McCloskeys are Toxic Trumpists, not Democrats. 

Their performance is going to rev up the shrinking toxic base but also drive more suburban women out of their diminishing party, I suspect.  MSNBC and The Daily Show, to name two, have struck the appropriate tone about this, I think.  The right word is this:  incredulity.  This is about some alternative reality that maybe was what the suburbs were when I was a kid, a long time ago.  One of the MSNBC hosts joked to Eugene Robinson of WaPo, "Welcome to the 21st century."  That was a good line.  The Republican Party seems completely out of touch with what the suburbs are today, and the values they have today.  There's just no question that when President Toxic opens his mouth, Democrats win suburban votes.

I'll give an example that's near and dear to my heart, as a Chicago boy.  Chicago used to be where you could maybe elect a Black Mayor, which was a historic first.  Now they have a Black lesbian Mayor and that's not such a big deal.  Meanwhile, the Chicago suburbs used to be where the White Republicans lived.  And a lot of them were racists, I thought - having grown up there and heard as a kid what racist jokes get told at parties.  (My Dad would have been cancelled in a heartbeat for the jokes he told.  He was not unique.)  These days Rep. Lauren Underwood gets elected in the Chicago suburbs.  And the crowds at her victory party are mostly White people, who I'm guessing feel a lot like I do.  So something has changed.  Democrats like Lauren Underwood are taking power there.  

If you want to put a face on the suburbs that explains why they are worth fighting for, I'd suggest you put Lauren's face in your mind.  She won in Denny Hastert's old district, which is 85 % White.  She's only the second Democrat to win  that seat since World War 2.  But the first was after Hastert was forced out.  So it is a suburban seat trending blue.

Back to Bernie, I'll summarize what I think I know from the postmortems I've read.

The thing that obviously worked best for him was Millennials.  And that cuts across race, and perhaps class.  So what happened in his campaign may be a preview of the future we'll get to in ................ I don't know.  10 years?  20 years?  At some point the Berniecrats will come to power.  Will someone like AOC be their chosen leader?  Or Kamala?  Who knows.

Bernie did well among Independents.  But that itself is more than a little confusing.  There are the Independents who are progressives and would never vote for President Toxic.  Many of them don't even feel Elizabeth Warren passes their purity test.  Then there are the Independents who are former Republicans like Stuart Stevens, who says maybe he could hold his nose and vote for Elizabeth Warren.  I've posted it before but here's a state by state set of CNN exit polls from all the 2020 Democratic primaries that is very informative.  In most states, the vast majority of primary voters identified as Democrats - no surprise - and favored Biden.  A minority of Independents tended to favor Bernie.  But that's not true in every state. 

Where enough self-identified Republicans voted in a primary to even accurately poll them, they seem to have heavily favored Biden.  Virginia is a good example of that.  My strong impression is that Biden won in part because Republicans in states like Virginia crossed over and voted for him as an acceptable alternative to President Toxic.  I'm not 100 % sure of that.  But the conclusion that I reached is that if Republicans who hate Trump can live with and vote for Biden, probably I should be able to live with him, too.  There's no evidence I saw this Spring that if we'd nominated either Sanders or Warren they would have had more appeal to Never Trump Republicans.  And to be clear, I'm not arguing that winning Never Trump Republicans over is the goal.  I don't think it is.  I perceived the DNC last week as clearly tilted to messages that appealed to the Democratic base: racial justice, gun control, climate change, etc.  Kasich spoke.  But last week was not the John Kasich show.

In the postmortems I have read there is one big important thing that seems to have been a dead end for Bernie - the White working class - and two things that maybe have potential to focus on in the future - the suburbs, and Latinos - if the goal is to build a progressive majoritarian coalition.

I think the theory of the case for Bernie 2020 was that he could build on his surprise win in the 2016 Michigan primary and go in and win the Rust Belt with a heavily class-based message about economic justice and income inequality.  It just didn't work.  Biden won every county in Michigan. 

To oversimplify my takeaway, a lot of White working class voters cast an anti-Hillary primary vote in Spring 2016 that should have been taken as a warning sign of her weaknesses.  In some cases, I'm pretty sure that voting for Bernie rather than Hillary was a statement that Bernie was less threatening, not more progressive.  But when it came to Bernie or Biden in 2020, Bernie's progressive message obviously did not win the day. 

Much of what I've read is that to the degree that we are talking about White, and working class, and rural or small town, they are culturally conservative people.  And we're just not going to be able to organize enough of them to win.  My best guess is that they increasingly identify as the heart and soul of the Trumpist Party.  But to the degree that they were Obama/Biden voters in 2008 and 2012 and they shifted to Trump in 2016, everything I've read suggests that Biden, not Bernie, was the Democrat that drew them back in.  If you have data that says something else - particularly from states like Michigan or Wisconsin - please post it.  My main takeaway is that if we want to win Michigan, and Biden wins every county in Michigan in the primary, he's the best candidate to take Michigan back.

This Vox article called "Why Bernie Lost" has a lot of good analysis about what happened this year.  A key takeaway I agree with is that in America 2020 identity politics trumps class politics.  Period.  Black Lives Matter is of course a perfect example.  If we want to win, we have to understand that people identify as Black.  Or Gay.  Or a woman.  Or a Mexican immigrant.  So many White working class people identify as White more than working class.  And they identify with the red hat that says "Make America Great Again". 

While Axelrod and Brownstein are arguing that maybe the DNC played a little more than it should have to all this identity stuff, as opposed to bread and butter economics, I think it was a good call that reflected an accurate understanding of what moves the electorate. And especially what moves the base, which is what conventions are about.  President Toxic is doing the same.  It's red meat to a base that can be accurately called White nationalist, I think.  You can perhaps even call it an increasingly White supremacist base.  Rich white women pointing guns at Black women and bitching and moaning about how those Black Marxists are getting elected to Congress is just not a very good look.  As Stuart Stevens said, maybe the true self of the Republican Toxic Party is coming out.

That Vox article and lots of other postmortems I read strongly suggest that in the future it may make sense for Democrats to put more focus on the suburbs, not less.  They argue that polling suggests that suburban voters in 2020 are more open to "progressive" values than many of those small town White working class folks.  An example that's used is support for a wealth tax.  The polls this Spring showed that a wealth tax - if targeted to the "ultra-rich" like Jeff Bezos - is wildly popular.  Even a majority of Republicans support they idea.  I can't find polling that breaks down views on a wealth tax by urban/suburban/rural.  So I don't know that we know.  But my theory of the case moving forward is that a tax on people like Jeff Bezos that pays for things like universal health care or universal child care might be very popular with suburban women.  I don't think we know.  But the polls say that if we want a progressive majority, the suburbs are a place to go to to build it. 

Lauren Underwood didn't push single payer.  But she did push the idea that affordable health care for all is a priority.  She's a Black woman and nurse who won in a Republican-leaning district that is 85 % White.  So I think that says some things about the blend of identity politics and progressive values and policies that can work in the real world in the suburbs.  It also explains how President Toxic has serious problems if he thinks celebrating the rich White McCloskeys pointing guns at Blacks is how you win in 2020.

The other thing Bernie did that is very promising is Latinos.  Again, I think we don't know more than we know.  At the 30,000 foot level, a lot of people concluded that Bernie just underperformed.  And that his coalition of people who don't vote just never emerged and actually voted.  But in Nevada, they did vote enough for him to win.  I looked at the Texas numbers a lot.  Biden benefited from what I suspect was a huge organic wave of both Democrats and Never Trump Republicans that are fed up with President Toxic.  That said, while Bernie lost Texas, he did substantially top his 2016 primary vote total there.  He went from 476,547 votes in the 2016 Texas primary to 626,339 votes in the 2020 Texas primary.  And I think a lot of the "new voters" Bernie brought in were Latinos, through his organizing and messages.  The fact that more was actually less, and Bernie lost, was bad news for Bernie.  But the fact that so many people turned out to vote Democratic in Texas this Spring is potentially very good news for Democrats.  Again, a lot of those voters live in the suburbs of Dallas or Houston.

I bring up Latinos in the context of Texas for this reason:  EVERY VOTE COUNTS.  At least in Texas.  If we are ever going to win the electoral votes, or the Senate seats, it's not an either/or choice.  It's both/and.  So if Bernie somehow managed to find 150,000 more voters in Texas than he did in 2016, that's a big deal.  It could be some future Democrat's margin of victory.  I think it is a huge mistake to dismiss Bernie or the work he did.  It is very good news that Bernie and Biden have the rapport and and the ability to think about building coalitions that they seem to have.  So I'm hoping that all the work that Bernie and Berniecrats did in places like Nevada and Texas, especially with Latinos, becomes a priority of the Democratic Party moving forward.

On Latinos, I'll go back to cite Stuart Stevens in an interview I just read.  On the negative side, he said one of his biggest regrets as someone who ran campaigns for George W. Bush and Mitt Romney was the Gay-baiting (my word, not his) they used to mobilize conservative voters.  That is actually about the suburbs, too.  I've had some interesting conversations with Gay men who live in Orange County.  Orange County is increasingly Gay.  So what may have helped George W. Bush win, at the margin, a generation ago just doesn't work in  places like Orange County anymore.  The thing that Stevens said that was a positive is he still thinks W. is a good and very authentic guy.  He believes W. really did want to reach out to and elevate Latinos - both as Texas Governor and President.  We know, and Stevens cited, that W. did get a higher percentage of the Latino vote than any other Republican Presidential candidate has.  That was key to his victories in  both 2000 and 2004. 

So my point is that when W. and Bernie or anyone go out and make a point to say to Latinos that I'm listening to you and I want your vote, it seems to work pretty well.  It was clear to me from stories I read about Nevada in particular that a lot of Latinos felt nobody did that before Bernie.  Which is why they turned out and handed him his victory there.

To hammer the point again, a lot of those Latinos live in suburbs, not cities.  So if we're talking about Latina women who live in the suburbs or Dallas or Houston, I for one very much want them at the heart and soul of the future Democratic majority.

 

[tassojunior]

@stevenkesslar

Steven there are plenty of exit polls and they all showed both in 2016 and 2020 that Bernie had a very high % of independents. He is an independent. The biggest knock against him was that his supporters were independents and Republicans as much as Democrats. You can't have it both ways. Here's one:

 

 

and here's a good summary on how Latinx voters overwhelmingly polled for Sanders with Biden only holding a decent share among old Latinx. They were treated very poorly at the DNC also , with even Castro not given a minute, and they know it.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/04/811942583/who-different-groups-supported-on-super-tuesday

Edited August 26, 2020 by tassojunior

[stevenkesslar]

3 hours ago, tassojunior said:

no,no,no,no,no !

Canceling someone as a person without any rights for life can be used against gays or straights, against black, white, Latino, anyone. And it can be used by either side. And usually it's used by the pro-government side and against political minorities.

I'm not sure what the "no, no, no, no, no" is about. 

I mostly agree with your statement below all the no's.  But he last part is questionable, about how cancel culture is usually used against political minorities.   In the video you posted, most of the examples of cancel culture warriors given were minorities using the internet to fight back against what they perceived as racism, or homophobia, or some other form of intolerance.  The irony, as the anecdotes you just posted prove, is that the protesters or cancel culture crowd ends up looking just as intolerant, or worse.

I'll repeat.  Blacks and Gays have been among the biggest victims of cancel culture for thousands of years.  Blacks were cancelled into slavery.  Gays were cancelled on a noose or a cross.  Hitler decided to cancel all of Jewish culture. 

That Straight guy that went after Chick Fil A by harassing a seemingly innocent employee, and lost his job over it, is a perfect example.  Was he being mean?  Yes.  But I've done similar things.  While I could make distinctions about how he did it, I think it is fair to call anyone who works for a company to account for the horrible values or practices of that company.  And as a Gay man, I'm not going to be too upset about some Straight guy who thinks that Chick Fil A's anti-Gay messaging is horrible.

In terms of the shit he got for what he did,  I understand why people felt he should be called out for just being mean.  Obviously, it is more mean to call his employer and make bomb threats.  Or to tell him on social media to "off himself"  (which he says he actually considered doing) because he went after some Chick Fil A employee for homophobic company PR.  The guy mentions that some of the supportive comments he got were from Gays and lesbians who thanked him for speaking out about Chick Fil A.

I think all the problems with cancel culture are a subset of all the problems with internet culture.  The internet is the weapon of choice in every example given in that video.  As one of the Black women in the video stated, she thinks it's basically good that these days Blacks can use Twitter or other social media to go after White bosses that could not be held to account before - at least not as easily.  To your point, the problem is that President Toxic uses Twitter, too.  And the way he uses it is very destructive, I think.  The harm he's done far outweighs whatever good came from the Black woman getting a White boss fired.  

People being ignorant or hateful or stupid is not new.  New technologies - newspapers, radio, TV - were all subject to this before.  Long before Breitbart there were news rags that were just awful racist or anti-Semitic or anti-[fill in the blank] screeds.  On the flip side, FDR used fireside chats to organize people around The New Deal.  So while Twitter is new, the idea that President Toxic could use it to build a mostly White nationalist party isn't.  

I think Democrats should keep reminding themselves that all this new technology mostly helped Obama in 2008 or 2012.  There's a line I read about 2012 I keep citing:  "Obama won the election because young people in Florida who Romney didn't even know existed turned out and voted for him."  That was a victory engineered in part through Facebook and Twitter.  So back then we thought it was cute, and good.  Then Team Toxic figured out how to use it, and Democrats feel it has turned into a gremlin.

I am so antiquated on this issue that I have, in effect, cancelled myself.  I write posts today the way I wrote Congressional testimony in my 20's.  Do I go on and on?  Yes.  Are there facts that  support an argument?  Yes.  Are there zingers?  Yes.  I'll always be proud that a Republican House Banking Committee staffer came up to me after I testified one time and said something like, "Your testimony is great because there's a zinger on every page."  Can I figure out how to write a line that the AP will pick up and get into papers all over the country?  Yes, I can and did.

Now that I've congratulated myself,  I'll spell out that I know I write boring walls of text.  And it's so much easier to just post stuff on Twitter.  Even though it often makes no sense whatsoever, can spread lies, and can mostly just be bile and hate.  3+ years of President Toxic and his Twitter tirades have confirmed everything I felt about Facebook and Twitter before his election. 

So, for example, if we are going to win the suburbs, I'm very skeptical of the idea that Twitter is the best way to do it.  For me, the old fashioned way works better, after COVID-19.  Turn off the phone and go knock on people's doors and talk to them.  Or, if we're going to use our phones, let's use it call people and talk to them.

 

 

Edited August 26, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

@stevenkesslar

But always remember that it is the establishment and the majority that will always have the greater ability to "cancel" opponents and minorities. And it's victims  get a lot of sympathy. Free speech is always the best hope of dissenters.

[stevenkesslar]

59 minutes ago, tassojunior said:

@stevenkesslar

Steven there are plenty of exit polls and they all showed both in 2016 and 2020 that Bernie had a very high % of independents. He is an independent. The biggest knock against him was that his supporters were independents and Republicans as much as Democrats. You can't have it both ways. Here's one:

 

 

and here's a good summary on how Latinx voters overwhelmingly polled for Sanders with Biden only holding a decent share among old Latinx. They were treated very poorly at the DNC also , with even Castro not given a minute, and they know it.

https://www.npr.org/2020/03/04/811942583/who-different-groups-supported-on-super-tuesday

I think we agree.  And 13 out of 16 sounds right.  Sirota is actually using the same CNN exit polls I cited.  But I'll say again that "Independent" can mean a lot of things.  It can mean a Black woman who voted for Bernie and would never vote Republican.  Or, it can mean Stuart Stevens, who ran the campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney and is now a Never Trumper.

When  it comes to Republicans or crossover Republicans or Never Trump Republicans or now, thanks to Rahm, "Biden Republicans", I'm very skeptical of the idea that nominating Bernie would have been a better way to get Republicans who have distaste for Trump to vote Democratic.  The polls Sirota and I both cite seem to say that Republicans who voted in the Democratic primaries tended to heavily favor Biden.  And you can't have it both ways, either.  You want to slam Rahm for promoting the idea of "Biden Republicans".  But you've been promoting the idea of Bernie Republicans for a long time.  So do we want disaffected Republicans in the Democratic tent, or not?

I think we mostly agree.  If there is something we mostly disagree about, it may be the suburbs.  You seem to view them more like the place Democrats go to die.  Or at least sell out or abandon their principles to rich suburban women.  I look at Lauren Underwood and think suburbs is where Democrats go to grow, and take power.   Neither of us are completely right or wrong.

The lesson of President Toxic and poor Stuart Stevens and the Never Trumpers is that, ultimately, we have to have sex with whoever we get in bed with.  I can say for a fact that that's as true in politics as it is in escorting.  Stuart is dismayed about having to have sex (politically speaking) with some of the people he mobilized to elect W. and almost elect Mitt.  He finds it so distasteful that now he wants to jump into bed with us.  So one thing I take away from  your warnings is that we ought to be aware of who these people are we're getting in bed with, and what they really believe in.

Again, I'll keep repeating.  Lots of liberal journals and polls are saying that if you want progressive values and voters, suburbs are a good place to find them.  That's a theory which I think has yet to proven in the decade to come.

Edited August 26, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

@stevenkesslar

Yes I want anti-genocide people of any party or none to vote and have influence together. So anti-war Republicans coming over are fine. But the Democrats are only bringing over the NeoCon Republicans who are pissed Trump hasn't invaded Iran yet and stopped bombing Syria. It makes me wonder what understanding they have.

[AdamSmith]

6 hours ago, tassojunior said:

@stevenkesslar

But the Democrats are only bringing over the NeoCon Republicans who are pissed Trump hasn't invaded Iran yet and stopped bombing Syria.

Odd statement. Evidence factual?

[stevenkesslar]

3 hours ago, AdamSmith said:

Odd statement. Evidence factual?

I understand your question was directed to @tassojunior.  I'd like to see his reply.  Here's a different reply, which he may not like so much.

From a Vox article called "Why Bernie Lost".

Quote

Second, it seems that Sanders and his campaign assumed that his popularity with the white working class in 2016 was about him and his policies — when, in fact, it wasn’t.

“The white working-class voters that Sanders won were mostly anti-Clinton voters,” McElwee tells me.

A regression analysis by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver finds support for this theory. Silver’s data shows that Clinton-skeptical Bernie supporters in 2016 were not progressives who opposed Clinton from the left, but from moderate or conservative Democrats who tended to have right-leaning views on racial issues and were more likely to support repealing Obamacare. These #NeverHillary voters also tended to be rural, lower-class, and white.

That quote doesn't deal directly with the warmonger wing of either party.  I'd argue it does, indirectly.

I find it hard to believe that moderate or conservative Democrats could perceive Bernie as preferable to Hillary.  But if I make a few assumptions - these are some of the people that also viewed President Toxic as a lesser evil than Hillary, and they are basically not very interested in information - I can get there. This idea is consistent with what @tassojunior keeps saying about how Bernie appeals to Republicans and Independents.  In this instance, that would presumably mean Obama/Obama/Trump Democrats (or are they Republicans?) who could not stomach Hillary but could stomach Bernie.  And, seemingly based on 2020 primary results, can stomach Biden even better.

It might also be a fair enough assumption that conservative White working class Democrats (Republicans?) who are just a little more racist and a little bit more opposed to Obamacare might be a little bit more warmongerish, too.  

My point is this.  One of the conclusions I reached is that The Bernie Show was not ready for prime time.  I've also worried (less after last week) that The Biden Show was past prime time, and had been around so long it just needed to be cancelled.  I was hoping last year The Warren Show would hit the sweet spot.  And she came close in the previews.  I think it actually matters to this point that her fatal flaw was that she embraced Medicare For All and could not sell an explanation of why.  You can interpret that failure in many ways.  But at least one way is that any version of The Progressive Show  (or, if you prefer, The Democratic Socialist Show) just didn't get the ratings some were hoping for.  Because it just didn't quite make sense to enough people.

Relating to that quote above, if it is accurate, what happened in 2016 could have been a marriage from hell.  The young progressives who voted for Bernie knew what he stood for.  If a big chunk of the older White working class voters who played footsie with him did so because he's an old White guy who is NOT HILLARY, that's not a good thing for the party or for winning.  It's also not a good thing for having a stable governing coalition.

So if @tassojunioris saying we don't want W. warmongers who want to start a war with Iran, I agree.  But that's not what Biden is saying.  And Grinell of course just said that Gays should love President Toxic, because he wants to blow the shit out of Iran, where they kill Gays for being Gay.  (Have to mention.  They kills Gays for being Gay in Saudi Arabia, too.  Plus, they will peel you and slice you and dice you at no extra charge.  It might be part of that whole Q Anon thing.  How cool is that?)

But some of these 2016 "Bernie people" who maybe could not stomach Hillary (because she's a woman?  who is for Obamacare?  and talks about implicit racism?) but liked Bernie (because he's old and White and pro-union?) but voted for President Toxic are not exactly gifts to the Democratic Party, either.

My main point is that I decided that 2020 was previews of something yet to come.  Maybe it actually won't come until the 2030's.  If I had to bet, the Millennials and Gen Z will be like the New Deal Generation.  The Great Recession and Iraq and this unnamed shit show under President Toxic have formed their political identity for life.   So at some point they will take over.  And their formative experience of a top-down economy that left many if not most of them behind will likely push the US to be more like Canada or Europe.  That's my guess.  And by the time this gets sorted out, to be blunt about it, those older White working class voters will be dead voters.

I can live with all this.  Under President Biden, I'm hoping that some of the Millennial/Gen Z cohort that don't sound like they know the difference between "politics" and "The Revolution" will get a clearer picture of what it actually takes to govern in a way that gets shit done.  If they learned that all you do is disagree and throw shade (under Obama) and rant (under Trump), who can blame them?  Whoever "The Progressive One" is, it won't be Bernie.  So a different candidate with an older and larger and somewhat more mature cohort of progressives could actually crack the code that Bernie and Elizabeth failed to crack in 2020.  As a progressive wannabe, I'm at least hoping that this is what happens down the line.

For now, I don't think we have the progressive thing figured out.  @tassojunior himself has a fear of the suburbs, which other people say is exactly where we should go to find these latent progressives.  The honest answer is I just don't think we know.  And in the mean time, I think we can conclude that we don't need to become the Toxic Party.  Again, I think President Toxic is symptom, not cause.  It started when The Tea Party folks had a great year in 2010.  They fired Pelosi.  What's not to like?  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, now we know.  As does Stuart Stevens and Morning Joe and any Republican still dealing with reality.

I felt really good last week about the DNC.  I agree with Axelrod and Brownstein who I keep mentioning.  Maybe Biden should have presented a more pointed economic program that would sound good to those White working class folks, as well as the rest of the base.  But if he erred on the side of "progressive" messages like racial justice or gun control or climate change, I'm very good with that.  It implies an awareness of where the Democratic Party is going.  I think it's clear that in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Biden himself is less nails on the chalkboard to some people than Hillary.

Mostly, I'm increasingly convinced that while we need to offer more on policies and platform - and that will happen during the debates - what we most need to offer is as much rope as we can possibly find to give to the Republicans.  They are doing an amazing job of finding creative ways to hang themselves.  That policy works for me.

And if the Democrats are going to become the Toxic Party, Leftwing Edition, I don't think the real danger is the warmongers.  I think it's the progressives. 

@tassojunior himself started to paint the picture in his comments about cancel culture.  Add the picture of the shit show in the UK under Corbyn, where one of his own labor PM's said they lost because they'd acted like "the nasty party".  The claims of anti-Semitism were part of it.  But it was this broader picture of the mob, armed with their Twitter and venom and elitism, who employed purity standards no one could meet.  I'm not sure that was a fair characterization.  But it was used to blow Labor off the map.  And I'm not that worried that this will happen anytime soon.  We don't even have power yet.  But every revolution  goes too far, as what started as The Reagan Revolution now has.  When the progressive revolution happens, which I think it will, that will be one of part of it that may eventually help kill it. 

It's a problem for another day, I think.

Edited August 27, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[AdamSmith]

2 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

I understand your question was directed to @tassojunior.  I'd like to see his reply.  Here's a different reply, which he may not like so much.

From a Vox article called "Why Bernie Lost".

That quote doesn't deal directly with the warmonger wing of either party.  I'd argue it does, indirectly.

I find it hard to believe that moderate or conservative Democrats could perceive Bernie as preferable to Hillary.  But if I make a few assumptions - these are some of the people that also viewed President Toxic as a lesser evil than Hillary, and they are basically not very interested in information - I can get there. This idea is consistent with what @tassojunior keeps saying about how Bernie appeals to Republicans and Independents.  In this instance, that would presumably mean Obama/Obama/Trump Democrats (or are they Republicans?) who could not stomach Hillary but could stomach Bernie.  And, seemingly based on 2020 primary results, can stomach Biden even better.

It might also be a fair enough assumption that conservative White working class Democrats (Republicans?) who are just a little more racist and a little bit more opposed to Obamacare might be a little bit more warmongerish, too.  

My point is this.  One of the conclusions I reached is that The Bernie Show was not ready for prime time.  I've also worried (less after last week) that The Biden Show was past prime time, and had been around so long it just needed to be cancelled.  I was hoping last year The Warren Show would hit the sweet spot.  And she came close in the previews.  I think it actually matters to this point that her fatal flaw was that she embraced Medicare For All and could not sell an explanation of why.  You can interpret that failure in many ways.  But at least one way is that any version of The Progressive Show  (or, if you prefer, The Democratic Socialist Show) just didn't get the ratings some were hoping for.  Because it just didn't quite make sense to enough people.

Relating to that quote above, if it is accurate, what happened in 2016 could have been a marriage from hell.  The young progressives who voted for Bernie knew what he stood for.  If a big chunk of the older White working class voters who played footsie with him did so because he's an old White guy who is NOT HILLARY, that's not a good thing for the party or for winning.  It's also not a good thing for having a stable governing coalition.

So if @tassojunioris saying we don't want W. warmongers who want to start a war with Iran, I agree.  But that's not what Biden is saying.  And Grinell of course just said that Gays should love President Toxic, because he wants to blow the shit out of Iran, where they kill Gays for being Gay.  (Have to mention.  They kills Gays for being Gay in Saudi Arabia, too.  Plus, they will peel you and slice you and dice you at no extra charge.  It might be part of that whole Q Anon thing.  How cool is that?)

But some of these 2016 "Bernie people" who maybe could not stomach Hillary (because she's a woman?  who is for Obamacare?  and talks about implicit racism?) but liked Bernie (because he's old and White and pro-union?) but voted for President Toxic are not exactly gifts to the Democratic Party, either.

My main point is that I decided that 2020 was previews of something yet to come.  Maybe it actually won't come until the 2030's.  If I had to bet, the Millennials and Gen Z will be like the New Deal Generation.  The Great Recession and Iraq and this unnamed shit show under President Toxic have formed their political identity for life.   So at some point they will take over.  And their formative experience of a top-down economy that left many if not most of them behind will likely push the US to be more like Canada or Europe.  That's my guess.  And by the time this gets sorted out, to be blunt about it, those older White working class voters will be dead voters.

I can live with all this.  Under President Biden, I'm hoping that some of the Millennial/Gen Z cohort that don't sound like they know the difference between "politics" and "The Revolution" will get a clearer picture of what it actually takes to govern in a way that gets shit done.  If they learned that all you do is disagree and throw shade (under Obama) and rant (under Trump), who can blame them?  Whoever "The Progressive One" is, it won't be Bernie.  So a different candidate with an older and larger and somewhat more mature cohort of progressives could actually crack the code that Bernie and Elizabeth failed to crack in 2020.  As a progressive wannabe, I'm at least hoping that this is what happens down the line.

For now, I don't think we have the progressive thing figured out.  @tassojunior himself has a fear of the suburbs, which other people say is exactly where we should go to find these latent progressives.  The honest answer is I just don't think we know.  And in the mean time, I think we can conclude that we don't need to become the Toxic Party.  Again, I think President Toxic is symptom, not cause.  It started when The Tea Party folks had a great year in 2010.  They fired Pelosi.  What's not to like?  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, now we know.  As does Stuart Stevens and Morning Joe and any Republican still dealing with reality.

I felt really good last week about the DNC.  I agree with Axelrod and Brownstein who I keep mentioning.  Maybe Biden should have presented a more pointed economic program that would sound good to those White working class folks, as well as the rest of the base.  But if he erred on the side of "progressive" messages like racial justice or gun control or climate change, I'm very good with that.  It implies an awareness of where the Democratic Party is going.  I think it's clear that in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Biden himself is less nails on the chalkboard to some people than Hillary.

Mostly, I'm increasingly convinced that while we need to offer more on policies and platform - and that will happen during the debates - what we most need to offer is as much rope as we can possibly find to give to the Republicans.  They are doing an amazing job of finding creative ways to hang themselves.  That policy works for me.

And if the Democrats are going to become the Toxic Party, Leftwing Edition, I don't think the real danger is the warmongers.  I think it's the progressives. 

@tassojunior himself started to paint the picture in his comments about cancel culture.  Add the picture of the shit show in the UK under Corbyn, where one of his own labor PM's said they lost because they'd acted like "the nasty party".  The claims of anti-Semitism were part of it.  But it was this broader picture of the mob, armed with their Twitter and venom and elitism, who employed purity standards no one could meet.  I'm not sure that was a fair characterization.  But it was used to blow Labor off the map.  And I'm not that worried that this will happen anytime soon.  We don't even have power yet.  But every revolution  goes too far, as what started as The Reagan Revolution now has.  When the progressive revolution happens, which I think it will, that will be one of part of it that may eventually help kill it. 

It's a problem for another day, I think.

You make a couple dozen very good points here.

(Sorry to have become suddenly a fanboy! We all have our weak points, I suppose.  )

[tassojunior]

@AdamSmith @stevenkesslar

(sorry if I don't quote, trying to save bandwidth and page scroll).

It's obvious only the pro-war John Bolton crowd is coming over to help their NeoLib brethren in the Democratic party. No decent people are welcome. And no, it's not just that you take your allies where you find them in an election; these NeoCons share the middle east pro-war, pro-genocide aspirations of their NeoLib buddies. The only good _____ is a dead ____. Where are the moderate or anti-war Republicans being welcomed in the Democratic Party? Anti-war Justin Amash isn't welcome. Anti-war Tulsi is practically expelled. Bernie's not jumping in the party (not that he'd be welcome). There isn't a single moderate welcome because they're not pro-war enough.

The Lincoln Project is led by Bill Kristol and Steve Schmit , servants of John Bolton, and Steven, you may want to google your guy Kasich on Syria and Iraq to find he was adamantly opposed to the Iraq deal and to the stopping of bombing of Syria.  Colin Powell lied under oath (forget this "misled" baloney) in order to get 1,000,000 people exterminated and Iraq destroyed. Thousands of 4 and 5 year olds were dragged out by American troops and bullets put in their heads while Powell, Biden, Bolton and Clinton cheered on. Kristol, Schmitt and Kasich had pom-poms waving too. To them genocide is a necessary military tactic. Along with new star Kamala, these Democrats and Republicans are toadies of the pro-invasion of Iran right-wing AIPAC, whatever banal qualifiers they may insert to appear "liberal". Conservative vs liberal doesn't mean anything anymore, and neither do Democratic or Republican on genocide. The Neo's are really one side and the anti-war/populist people are the other. Unfortunately the Neo's are all regrouped on the Democratic Party side of the oligarchy now. 

If the party really wanted Hillary or Biden elected they would embrace the anti-war half of their voters with Bernie (or a substitute like Tulsi or Yang) as a VP. Instead it was an immediate "Fuck you, get out of our party, we don't want you or your voters. Fuck you" from KHive , the good old Goldwater/Dukakis strategies. Jimmy Carter will probably be dead next election and he's the elder statesman of the party. Whatever failure he was in the economic collapse, he's respected and loved by the American people now. Bill Clinton, Jeffery Epstein's serial pedophile buddy, not so much. But AIPAC loves Clinton and hates Carter. So guess who's front and center as  nighttime speaker vs. who gets a 2-minute tape about Biden at 3pm? 

And the excuse that the reformers would be sliced and diced as socialists by the Republicans is comical.  Whoever the Democrats put up is always campaigned against as a socialist by the Republicans. It's just a silly script the two sides of the oligarchy play. 

What is clear is that Trumpism fits in with how the world has gone recently. Total rejection of the rich,  the establishment and the elite. Trump himself may be a comical figure to be leading that  movement, but somehow he does by default because there's no populist left on the November ballot. And I don't know of a single country that has voted to toss out the populist right to bring back in the establishment elite "liberals". (Italy's complicated). I do know that plenty of people I heard from in 2016 who are poor white were torn equally between Bernie and Trump (but didn't have to choose, thanks DNC). And I know that many of those people who vote for Trump hate Wall Street and the rich elite more than the New Democrats do. In other countries the populists (left or right) support what we call socialism and the poor. Boris Johnson in the UK had as a top advisor Steve Bannon and his home secretary is just as right wing as Johnson and Bannon are. But Johnson campaigned on vastly expanding money to the single-payer national health service and more free college (even though many suspect Johnson ultimately wants to privatize the NHS). Liberal elite Macron is hanging on in France by a thread while Marie LePen the racist right-winger supports more welfare programs. Putin is the hero of the poor in Russia. Establishment liberal capitalism is gone. 

Steven, I was in the 80's politics too and I know exactly what you mean about the consensus-building and the "friendliness" between "opponents". But it's a totally different world now in every aspect. It's a shark tank of dog-eat-dog among competitors for the favors of the same Wall Street and Silicon Valley powers, no matter what the party label. But it's the same elite running the country with either party, just some window dressing one way or the other. And 50% of our economy, our discretionary budget, is devoted to the war machine. Genocide is good business. Actually it's tremendous for business. 

  

 

[JKane]

 

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

Why Stuart Stevens Wants to Defeat Donald Trump

I'm adding this interview here to play off the OP's thread title.  At least Stuart Stevens is shocked and morally indignant about the amazing toxic waste Trump Presidency.

Stevens does not use the word "shocked".  But it is close enough to describe how he feels, alongside the whole Lincoln Project gang.  As well as God knows how many other Republican consultants, Republican politicians, Republican ex-Presidential candidates, and Republican ex-Presidents.  This is not a good omen for the Republican Party under President Toxic.

There's three different levels of shock that are worth noting.

The first level of shock is Stevens' own shock at what his beloved Republican Party has become.

Quote

I think I wanted to believe for a long time that when Donald Trump came along he was hijacking the Party. A lot of people were wrong about Trump in 2016, but it’s hard to find somebody more wrong than I was. I predicted he wouldn’t win the primary, and I predicted he wouldn’t win the general election. In retrospect, a lot of that was that I didn’t want to believe it. ... You look at what Trump is saying, and the degree to which the Party is comfortable with it, and I don’t know what conclusion to come to other than that Trump very well suits the Republican Party. 

I know part of why I am binge reading everything I can find about Stevens' epiphany is that I feel like I have been having these intense conversations with him for many years. Which is to say I actually have been having these intense discussions for years.  But with Republican friends and clients I decided I no longer respect, and don't want to have any more conversations with. 

This is helping me process my very mixed feelings about that.  I feel a little bit better about what I did.  And a little bit worse about what Republicans I was close to believed.  Stevens is saying it was all a lie, it was racist and rotten to the core, and it really just needs to be burned to the ground.  This is the Republican who worked for W. and Romney, among many others.  If he feels that way, he's way further out there than I am.

Whole chunks of what he writes are conversations, almost verbatim, I already had with a number of Republicans.  I remember the conversations about Trump hijacking the party.  Sometimes with the unstated implication that I should feel sorry for these Republicans, who were almost the victims of aggression.  It never quite made sense.  How do you hijack a major political party in the United States?  Why is Trump saying inflammatory things I've heard coming out of your mouth, with increasing intensity, for years?  And, after he was elected, why do you seem to be falling in line, rather than fighting him?  So I agree with Stevens.  President Toxic allowed the Republican Party, and these individuals I knew, to show their true face.  As President Toxic himself said to an opponent, it's not a pretty face.

There is also an element of willful denial, or willful ignorance, which Stevens talks a lot about.  Again, all of this is a trip down memory lane for me.  And not a fun one.  Stevens' biggest claim to fame is Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign.  He still believes Mitt would have been a great President.  One who would have tried to be one of the better angels of the party.  And who was the kind of guy who might have balanced the federal budget.  Maybe. 

I had a horrible conversation with a guy who I can describe as a Romney Republican in Fall 2012.  I kept arguing that in theory, cutting taxes without also cutting spending - like Romney/Ryan proposed - will just blow up the deficit again.  Which is of course what Republicans always bitch about.  And in reality, when Reagan and W. cut taxes, it blew up the deficit.  But when H.W. and Clinton raised taxes, it reduced the deficit.  I kept asking him to explain how the math worked different than in theory, or in reality under every President since I was born.  And the clearest answer I could get, which wasn't clear at all, is that either I wasn't very good at math, or he wasn't very good at explaining math.  I ended up deciding this is going nowhere.  And that Bill Clinton had the best one word answer for how he balanced the budget:  "arithmetic".  Sure as shit, when Ryan finally got to pass his tax cut law thanks to President Toxic, we were back to a $1 trillion annual deficit well before COVID-19 hit. 

Stevens still seems to believe that Romney would have figured out the math differently.  So at least part of the economic agenda was not a complete lie to him.  Maybe Rush Limbaugh is just more honest with himself.  He said that all that Republican carping about the deficit "has been bogus for as long as it's been around."

Quote

We used to talk a lot about a big tent. I go back to 2005, when Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Party, went before the N.A.A.C.P. and apologized for the Southern strategy.

This was the same Ken Mehlman who helped run the Bush reëlection campaign, which used anti-gay-marriage initiatives to turn out Republicans in key states.

What I say about this is that we were far from perfect in Bush world. We played too much to the dark side. But we had an aspiration to be better than we were. I think we played too much on the social-conservative side, particularly, with the same-sex-marriage referendum. I think that’s regrettable.

The second level of shock involved in reading what Stevens and other Lincoln Project leaders have to say is that I'm shocked they are shocked.  Which is to say, we all know they weren't really shocked at all.  At least with some of their lies and racism and bigotry.  They knew exactly what they were doing.

There's many ways to take what Mehlman said and did.  But as a Gay man who helped fight for same sex marriage, I think it's fair to take it the cynical way.  Mehlman was perhaps saying this to Blacks:  "We're sorry that we race-baited you for a generation to elect conservatives who thwarted your interests.  We're going to stop doing it.  Because it's less effective than it used to be.  It's now more effective to Gay-bait."   Those are not his words, of course.  But I think it's fair to say Stevens and Mehlman knew exactly what they were doing.

I think the third level of shock is the most important one for what happens in November.  Everything Stevens and the Lincoln Project are saying is going to come as a shock to almost all of the people who still approve of President Toxic, and see him as the rightful leader of their Republican Party.  And shocked isn't a strong enough word.  They'll be shocked and indignant.  How could these people like Stevens say these things?  They are the liars.  And they are obviously part of The Deep State.  Or maybe even Q Anon.

Reading Stevens helps me understand what's happening right now at the RNC.  Denial is a powerful thing.  I think the Republicans are working very hard right now to deny.

All conventions exaggerate, and try to make their party's leaders and policies look better than they are.  The over-the-top alternate reality of this RNC mostly feels desperate, to the point of being counterproductive.  

The best explanation of what's going on I heard was from a Morning Joe talking head this week, who like Scarborough is a lifelong Republican and now Never Trumper.  His key phrase is "permission structure".  Which is to say that the people actually paying attention to this show are pretty much the Republican base.  And the effort is designed to give the big chunks of the base that are fraying a permission structure to vote for President Toxic, anyway.  Even though they see all the things Stevens and The Lincoln Project is talking about and it troubles them.  This guy said that as a conservative, I have to tell you that they are doing it well.  They are getting my juices going.

That makes perfect sense to me.  I think the election is going to get uglier, stupider, and more racist. 

It's not good news for President Toxic that both Kasich at the DNC and the crazy rich White gun pointing couple at the RNC are trying to persuade the same group of Republicans.  Even as the Democrats consolidate and Independents keep saying they lean heavily to Biden.  If 2020 is like 2018 - start from the base and subtract - President Toxic will in fact lose in a landslide.  There's going to have to be a massive amount of denial and permission structures between now and November to keep this alternative reality of a perfectly perfect President afloat. Red meat (including lots more racist meat about Black Marxists abolishing your suburb and cancelling you, I'm guessing) will be tossed out everywhere.

I thought of this yesterday when an escort buddy told me about his most recent email from his sibling.  I mentioned in a different post that this friend has hit a wall with a sibling who he has always been close to, but who supports President Toxic.  His biggest gripe is how Trump is throwing LGBTQ folks under the bus.  So she sent him an email today, responding to his email.  His sibling basically invited him to look into the Log Cabin Republicans, with a hyperlink, who have some interesting things to say.  Which is of course Grenell saying President Toxic is the most pro-LGBTQ President ever.  My friend's reaction was this is complete bullshit.

Of course, if my buddy's sibling wanted to learn about what "LGBTQ issues" means, which I'm pretty sure they know very little about, it would take 30 seconds or so to Google HRC's list of "unprecedented steps" Trump has taken to attack the LGBTQ community. It would have taken 10 minutes to read.  To be fair-minded. the sibling could have emailed both the Log Cabin tweet from Grenell and the HRC list to my buddy and said, "One says Trump is doing really good.  But the one from HRC says he's attacking your community.  What do you make of this?"  That would be what a sibling might do if they wanted information, or understanding.  Or just to show empathy.

I think what the sibling really wants is a permission structure to feel like it's perfectly okay to vote for President Toxic.  After all, he's the most pro-LGBTQ President ever!

I think between now and November we're going to have a lot of shock and indignation on the part of ardent Trumpists.  They'll be shocked and indignant that Gay men like me and my buddy don't see that President Toxic is the most pro-LGBTQ President ever!  They'll be shocked that the Lincoln Project is so mean and dishonest.  They'll be shocked that President Toxic doesn't get more thanks for his remarkable leadership on COVID-19.  They'll be shocked that the mainstream media wants to cancel them, even as they speak on national TV about how the mainstream media sucks, and go to rallies in support of cancelling a woman's right to choose.  They'll be shocked and indignant about many things.  

The thing that will be most shocking, of course, is when President Toxic loses on election night.  And I think they will be shocked.  Stevens knows his former party way better than I do.  If he's saying that they are all heavily invested in believing and defending the lies, I believe him.

 

 

Edited August 27, 2020 by stevenkesslar