stevenkesslar

Yeah. Since late last week every time I sign I have to reset my password. What I tried today is just using my original password as the reset, which is a six character password. When I go through the reset process there's a little popup box that says 8 to 72 characters, use caps, special characters, etc. It does not indicate that you need to follow all these rules in order for the password to work, however. So the first reset I did several days ago I entered an 8 character password that did not include a special character, and it logged me in. But it clearly did not remember that password, because the next day the new password did not log me in. Today I just reset to my old six character password, and it logged me in. I assume after I log out I will have to reset again tomorrow. So for now I'll just plan that I have to reset my password every time I log in. And I'll just keep using the same old password and see if it works. At least the reset process itself id relatively simple. As Oz said it seems like the issue is the system does not automatically remember my password. Although the odd thing as I said above is that my old password does log me in to Boytoy itself, and I can see my user profile. But then when I click on the Forum I'm not logged in. And when I try to login again in the Forum it's not recognizing the password. It's just fucked up. Good luck, Oz.

I had the same thing happen a few days ago. Reset my password and could log in again. What was weird is I could log in to Boytoy and see profile and messages, but could not log into the forum. I kept trying, and it eventually locked me out for 15 minutes. My old passwords was six characters and when I set up a new one there are different requirements - like at least 8 characters, caps, etc. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I'm posting this as an addendum to what I posted directly above. Presumably Gottlieb knows as much about the 30,000 foot view as anyone. And I'm in sync with what he says here. It would be nice to think that past exposure to other Coronaviruses has built up some type of immunity in lots of people. But we don't know that, as he says. Month's ago on Daddy's I was setting my hair on fire whenever anyone spoke up about the idea that we could go for herd immunity and magically put the vulnerable - particularly people in nursing homes - in bubble wrap for a year or so. My argument was what Gottlieb is saying here. If you have broad community spread, it's only a matter of time until it seeps into places like nursing homes and jails. That certainly describes what happened in the real world - all across Europe and the US - this Spring. It's not quite working out that way in Europe now. Some part of it has to be that in the Spring it crept in before anyone knew what was happening, or was prepared to prevent it from creeping in. So now maybe Europe is better prepared. Or maybe there is more natural immunity. But Gottlieb could also be right that it just will take a few months, as opposed to a few weeks. That is sort of what happened in the Sunbelt. At one point everybody breathed a sigh of relief that caseloads weren't spiking in Georgia or Florida or Texas. And then they spiked. They spiked pretty much the same in California, which did have a more sober public health message and was more cautious about reopening.. My sense is that part of it is simply human nature. People don't take it seriously until it really hits home. Once it hit home in these Sun Belt states, it seems like a lot of people changed their tune and were just more cautious. If young people are being less cautious, it's obviously because they just aren't seeing the direct health consequences to them or their peers. If they go home for Thanksgiving and their Granny is dead by Christmas, that will be a game changer. Hopefully, we don't need to kill Granny to learn our lessons.

What's particularly interesting is that the second wave spreading across Europe is a lot less deadly. Nobody seems to know why, for sure. I've read articles that speculate about different strains of virus and virus mutations that may make it less fatal. My take away so far is it is mostly about the demographics of who gets sick. This CNN article sums up what appear to be the facts pretty well. Young people are driving a second, less-deadly surge of Covid-19 cases in Europe That article is about a month old. So we know more now about the fatality rates of this second wave. The contrast in Spain is particularly striking. The pattern is the same across Europe, but I picked Spain because their second wave looks a lot like their first in terms of case loads. They peaked at about 10,000 cases a day, with the two peaks roughly five months apart. When you look at the fatalities, there's no comparison. With the March caseload peak in Spain, fatalities peaked a few weeks later, as would be expected. Spain had just under 1000 deaths a day at the peak. The second wave in Spain appears to have peaked in late August. So the maximum deaths should be hitting right about now. The recent one week moving average in Spain is about 60 deaths a day. On the face of it, the virus appears to be about 90 % less deadly. You can look at France or Italy or Germany and the basic pattern - lower fatality - is the same. France already has blown past it's Spring peak on number of cases. In the Spring, they had up to 1500 deaths a day. Now it's more like 30. I'm assuming a big part of this is that they're catching a lot more of the asymptomatic or minor cases now than they were in the Spring, due to mass testing. And some of it may be due to knowing more about treatments. Even so, the contrast in fatalities is striking. This article is only a few days old and gives anecdotal pictures of what's causing the surge in various European countries: 'Not a game': Europe pleads with young people to halt Covid-19 spread While it's not a game, it's also obviously not really bad news for Europe. And for any country that can get its shit together on a national strategy for managing the risk. Part of what's surprising to me is that young Europeans who are getting COVID-19 don't appear to be spreading it to older Europeans - so far. Other than a few articles, I haven't bothered to try to learn what may be driving this. But I suspect mask wearing and social distancing protocols are probably a big part of it. Meaning the Spanish 20-somethings may be partying without masks in bars, or in college dorms now that they are going back to school. But older adults aren't going into those bars. And they are wearing masks when they are around the 20-somethings. Whatever is driving it, this has been going on for well over a month. And the fatality rates are not spiking like they did in the Spring. I think we know already that colleges that are open for in-person classes in the US are already seeing spikes. The thing that I keep reading that makes sense to me is that young adults on college campuses should stay there. If they bring COVID-19 home for Thanksgiving or Christmas it could be a huge national shit show. When a vaccine does appear, it's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. I'll leave politics out of this, other than to say that trust in the efficacy of any vaccine has already been compromised in the US. And we don't really know what natural immunity means for people who had COVID-19, or some exposure to COVID-19, or past exposure to some other type of Coronavirus. We certainly don't know what artificial immunity means for people once we get a vaccine. Nor do we know what herd immunity means due to some combination of the two. I'm with Fauci and his common sense approach. He keeps saying that the good news is that we know when we actually try to manage a spike by following certain protocols - like masks and social distancing - we can drive it down. So what Europe is showing, even if it is haphazardly, is that there is a way to manage this so that young adults can do what they want to do without killing thousands of older adults every day. I'm in no way encouraging it. Spain is obviously correct to be telling young adults this is not a game. But it is a fact that, at least so far, what's playing out in Spain and France right now is nowhere near as awful as what played out this Spring. The silver lining in the cloud of this pandemic is that it is not the Spanish flu. The second wave of that one was by far the deadliest. And it was particularly deadly to young adults. I think most people could really care less about the scientific nuances of this. Including me. They just want to know whether they are going to live or die. Or go broke from hospital bills, or losing their job. So the good news is that while this is not a game, we ought to be able to figure out better how to manage it so that it is also not a death sentence like it was for lots of older people in the Spring.

Democrats build big edge in early voting Far more Democrats than Republicans are requesting mail ballots in key battleground states, including voters who didn't participate in 2016. There's been several articles recently about how Republicans have done a better job than Democrats of registering new voters under President Toxic. In particular, a recent Politico article said in Pennsylvania it appears that Republicans may have registered something like 170,000 more new voters than Democrats. That said, Democrats still outnumber Republicans by 750,000 voters in Pennsylvania. So if Democrats turn out at the same rate as Republicans, Democrats will win. Another unknown is that Republicans have been doing door-to-door and face-to-face voter organizing in a way that Democrats have not, due to the different perceptions about COVID-19. I have to imagine that door to door contact is going to help Republicans at the margin. That said, the very fact that COVID-19 is running rampant may deliver two Democratic votes for every Republican who votes because a Trump volunteer spoke to her at her door. We just don't know. This is a good summary by 538 of Republican efforts to make it harder to vote. It sounds like states and counties are all over the map in terms of how and when mail-in or absentee ballots get counted. And this is an area of huge legal skirmishes right now. Republicans in at least some places are trying to prevent any vote counting from happening before Election Day. Including, for example, verification of signatures on the outside envelope of mail-in ballots, which is one of the most time-consuming and important steps to prevent fraud. My contempt for the Toxic Trump Republicans just deepens by the day. These people, including President Toxic himself, have used absentee ballots in Florida to increase GOP turnout and win elections for a long time. That's fair, because they have the right to vote. But now they are bitching and moaning that this is fraud. But only in states where it may help Democrats. And right now they are actively taking steps to make it harder to catch any possible fraud by making it harder to carefully verify the signatures on mail-in ballots. Regardless, in some of these states it appears likely that the "red mirage" everyone is worried about could be offset by a flood of mail-in ballots, many of them cast early by Democrats. I've been guessing, or at least hoping, that all the noise about fraud and mail-in voting is a great B'rer Rabbit strategy. By making a big deal about Republicans not allowing Democrats to vote by mail, we're just ensuring that more Democrats will insist on their right to vote by mail. Maybe that is what is happening. It's too early to tell. But this is very encouraging. So encouraging that I have to go take a shower. I had an orgasm when I read this article.

And now that I've advocated for more Black Governors, let me argue against one. To me, this is a Justice Rapist moment for the Democratic Party. Democrat Fairfax announces bid for Virginia governor Of course, I don't live and vote in Virginia, and I'll have nothing to do with this race. But I do think this is a good opportunity for Democrats to set a clearer standard for our own versions of Justice Rapist. As a clarification, I get that Kavanaugh was never accused of rape. Let alone convicted of it. My use of the word refers to two forms of rape. The rape of the FBI investigation process, which did not take multiple credible allegations about a pattern of sexual misconduct seriously. We can thank President Toxic, Don McGahn, and Rich Mitch for that. And rape of the legislative process, which pushed the confirmation through even as President Toxic focused on humiliating pretty much any woman who was ever raped. I'm happily sending $100 a month to Sara Gideon. If Senator Susan Coverup - who I used to respect - loses, I'll be sure to send her a "Goodbye And Good Riddance" note in appreciation. I think there was an obvious solution with Justice Rapist, which was employed multiple times by Reagan and W. Nominate somebody else. President Toxic thought it was better to attack the alleged victims. There's no evidence that strategy paid off. They filled a vacancy with a conservative Justice, which they were sure to get anyway. And the voters threw in House Speaker Pelosi as a bonus. Trump isn't a genius, is he? I haven't followed Virginia closely since the initial craziness of the racism/sexual assault trifecta. But in a lot of ways it is like Justice Rapist. On the one hand you have a man accused of sexual assault who is fiercely defensive of his innocence. On the other hand you have multiple women making allegations that appear to be credible. Even more credible, in that they're clearly not trying to tear a Black man down just because he's a Democrat. There's enough ambiguity that you can go either way and no one can prove you wrong. Unlike with Justice Rapist, all the parties were adults and agree that something happened. The conflict is whether what happened is consensual. It's that last part that goes to the heart of Me Too. Define "consensual". I regret being one of the ones who called for Al Franken's resignation. I regret it in part because Republicans like Senator Susan Coverup, who called for his resignation, ended up being a total hypocrite, I think. More importantly, Franken was accused of being a slightly gross man that did gross things in public. Being gross is forgivable. In retrospect, his unforgivable sin was being gross exactly when the questions Me Too raises were right in front of the nation. For a comedian, it ended up being the shittiest timing ever. That "boob" photo said it all. You don't pose for a camera when you're trying to cover up rape. Some Democratic Senators have as much as said that they now feel they overreacted. The happy outcome perhaps would have been that Senator Franken became the poster child for why it's good to take a time out and get some training. Putting your hand on a female constituent's butt during a photo at the State Fair is tacky and offensive. But not criminal. At Franken's expense, his forced resignation prior to any investigation did have the virtue of giving a lot of people who have political aspirations a warning they'll never forget. The problem with Fairfax is that, like with Justice Rapist, there is no middle ground. I think it's even worse with Fairfax. With Justice Rapist, the argument that made complete sense to me is that he had the most to gain by a thorough investigation. In theory, they could have cleared him of all the new allegations that were coming out of the woodwork. My guess is it would have gone the other way, and the FBI would have at least further documented a consistent pattern or sexual assault allegations. A Virginia legislative "hearing" that resulted in a police or private investigation perceived as credible was being debated at one point. I'm not sure that's an option anymore. I think the standard that Democrats proposed for Justice Rapist makes sense for Fairfax. It is in his interest to clear his name. And I don't have a problem with putting the obligation on him to do so - whatever that means. The alternative is telling two credible Black women that the burden is on them to prove what they allege is true. That seems like Anita Hill times two to me. That's not progress. Besides, they have been trying to prove it, by calling for a hearing. Anita Hill at least got that. Given the ambiguity of the situation, the standard I like is that guys like Fairfax just need to step aside. In this case, part of the context that matters is there are several Black women (not the alleged victims) who have already declared they are running for Governor, too. The story directly above did state that regardless of what President Biden may do in terms of Cabinet appointments involving Democratic White Governors and Black Lieutenant Governors in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New Jersey, he is very unlikely to touch Virginia with a ten foot poll. That makes sense to me. Northam and Fairfax both have lots of options for successful careers, other than politics. I wish they went that route. Since Fairfax apparently sees it differently, perhaps the best option is for Democrats in the Virginia primary to just choose somebody else. If he wins the primary, and two Black women say they are being ignored, that's not a good look for the post-President Toxic Democratic Party. Where would others draw the line in what is clearly an ambiguous situation like this?

If we're comparing to LBJ, I think Biden wins that over Kamala hands down. And I say that as a California boy who voted for Kamala for Senator, respects her, and thinks she'd make a good Prez. The precedent from both The New Deal and The Great Society is that is started out more moderate and then grew more liberal. It's true that FDR got a lot of legislation passed right out of the gate. But my read of history is that he gradually lost faith in corporate America as the New Deal went along. The more incendiary anti-business comments he made were from 1936, not 1932. The Great Society was similar. That was bubbling up for years before JFK was elected, in an election in which civil rights was more background than top issue. So to get to the point where LBJ cut the deals and signed the landmark laws took maybe a decade. If I had to bet, history will repeat itself somehow. What happens in 2021, even assuming a Democratic majority, will be a first step that sets the tone and focuses more on immediate relief. If there are going to be huge landmark bills, they'll come later. What the Republicans do when President Toxics loses will be a big driver in which way this goes. The easy guess would be that the Never Trumpers who helped elect Biden will be a force of moderation in whatever happens right out of the gate. Biden will triangulate. And if he does he'll probably have the majority support President Toxic never did. The Toxic Trump Republicans can claim success in one thing. They made Democrats a lot more like them when it comes to compromise. The last time I looked at Pew's poll findings on that issue was several years ago. And as the graph shows, back then an overwhelming majority of Democrats put compromise ahead of the idea of "sticking to your principles." So when I just Googled it for this post I hadn't seen the recent big change. But I'm not surprised. Now people who favor compromise are just less than a majority in both parties. This poll tracks the timing of my change. It was around 2018 that I hit my breaking point. And the Justice Rapist fiasco was my straw that broke the camel's back. So I'm okay with where Democrats are. But this is not necessarily good news for President Biden. He is at heart a deal maker. Now Democrats are cooler on that idea. So I'm with you, @TotallyOz. That's of course obvious from my tone. I'm certainly done with the idea that the Toxic Trump Republican Party is going to work with us. Or that it even makes sense to have a conversation with them. Since the feelings of contempt (or something approaching it) seem to be mutual, that probably will help determine the direction things go. When this has played out before, long periods of "time out" (I love that phrase, which is what newly activist Moms say the national/Trump Republicans need now) have actually resulted in moderation. It took 20 years to get from Hoover's defeat to Ike's election. It took 12 years, and multiple landslides, to get from Carter's defeat to Bill Clinton's election. So as much as it sounds mean, or maybe even undemocratic, I think the best thing to do for people who like the idea of compromise and moderation is to tell the Tea Party and Toxic Trump types to just go fuck themselves. If we have the votes, we can get away with it. But that means Biden managing a circus that includes some people who would really prefer President Bernie, and others who would really prefer President Kasich. I would not want to guess what that could mean for 2024. Will Biden run again? If not, will Harris be a shoo-in to replace him? Will Berniecrats revolt? All of those challenges can happily get in line and wait a long time for the immediate and urgent calamities to be addressed. i do think @lookin is right that all these Trumpians won't go away. If they double down and we have a Toxic Trump TV station for them to watch, then they'll decide for themselves that they'd rather go off and plot revenge for a while. The more important issue to me is what happens with what I'll call the Kasich Republicans, or what Rahm called the "Biden Republicans" . Some of these Obama-Obama-Trump voters are going to be Obama-Obama-Trump-Biden voters this year. And others will vote for President Toxic, but will notice if some of the jobs and Rust Belt decline issues Trump won on, and then pretty much ignored, are actually addressed by Democrats. That's how we can build a sustainable coalition that will allow us to ignore the remnants of the Toxic Trump Party. That's where I was going with my question. Emotionally, I can't wait to look many Trump voters in the face for the next several years and say, "You people lost because you completely deserved to lose. Go the hell away."

UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE Transcript: Kim Jong Un's letters to President Trump

It's not clear to me at this point that President Toxic needs yet another nail in his political coffin. But it's hard not to imagine this won't be a huge political nail in his coffin with this somewhat amorphous group of Independent/Undecided voters. People like me who despise President Toxic don't need more reasons. We're rabidly waiting to vote him out. And the true Trumpians will react to this by yawning. Or arguing it just goes to show what a good leader he is by not wanting to panic us. So this post is mostly about where the Independent/Undecided folks are now. And partly this is going to take a dive into polling, and prognosticating. Including whether the polls were wrong in 2016. This is from an article in Rasmussen about which voters are being quiet about their support for or opposition to President Toxic: I don't take this to mean that anyone is lying to pollsters about who they support. I take it to mean they are simply being quiet because they know they'll get push back. If 21 % of Independents aren't saying much, it's probably because they don't particularly care. About 1 in 5 Independents are truly undecided, or at least still open-minded, according to the mountain of poll data about Independents I've commented on. They're not very tuned in. And they don't much like either choice. In a close election, like 2016, these are the voters that can and did determine the outcome. I won't post the video again. But on Election Night 2016 Karl Rove argued, correctly I think, that Trump won because voters who disliked both candidates broke decisively for President Toxic, who represented change. Politico has had a series of articles going for the last year where they interview four Republican political hacks who ran the campaigns or Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, and Bush in 2016. On the big questions, their consensus has been on the money: 1) Biden would be the strongest nominee for Democrats to choose, and 2) Harris would be his best pick as VP. This final article in the series is an interesting read in its entirety. The consensus is that the outcome could range from a repeat of 2016 - a popular vote loss for President Toxic coupled with a narrow win in the electoral college - to a landslide for Biden. No one thinks President Toxic can actually win the popular vote. Of the four, the most optimistic case for Trump was made by Jeff Roe, who ran Ted Cruz's campaign. The single most interesting statement he made was this one: There's probably several ways to interpret what he means. Maybe he means negativity drives getting Trumpians out to vote. Maybe he means negativity could depress Black turnout, like in 2016. Most likely, he's probably saying that President Toxic could end up winning the "hold your nose and vote" crowd like he did in 2016 by a relentlessly negative attack that smears Biden with all the shit in creation. This is where all this toxic stuff hanging in the air comes in: like COVID-19, and President Toxic's "downplaying" or "misleading" statements about it, as well as his betrayals of the military. What Roe said is consistent with the polls I've seen. The group that handed the electoral college to Trump in 2016 is back again. Like in 2016, they don't like either President Toxic or Biden. Like in 2016, they are leaning toward change being better than more of the same. Unlike me, they are not particularly tuned in. Many of them won't know how they vote pretty much until they vote. In an environment like that, it seems like having all this toxic stuff hanging in the air is just fatal to President Toxic. I think Claire McCaskill is dead right about how politics works for this slice of Independent/Undecided voters. They're not watching MSNBC or listening to Rush Limbaugh. This stuff just hangs in the air, like COVID-19 will be all Fall. As it settles in, it will likely reinforce that change is better than more of the same. I think it's worth a paragraph to review how this translated into poll data in 2016, and then an update on what it could mean in 2020. In 2016, on this date, the RCP poll averages showed Hillary had a 3.1 % lead over President Toxic. In about a week, September 16th, she had a lead of exactly 0.9 % over Trump. In other words, Hillary outperformed her mid-September polling in the final November election result, when she won the popular vote by 2.1 %. So anyone who says she had it in the bag, or that the polling was wrong, is just plain wrong. And all along the way, there were of course undecided voters. So the final poll average on Election Day was Clinton 46.8 % and Trump 43.6 %. They both outperformed. Clinton ended up with 48.2 % of the votes, or 1.4 % above what the final poll averages showed. President Toxic ended up with 46.1 % of the vote, or 2.5 % above what the final poll averages showed. All of that was within the margins of error of the polls used to create the average, anyway. But there's two factors that obviously drove these numbers. First, Independent/Undecided voters had to decide. And they voted disproportionately for Trump. Second, the turnout assumptions were slightly off. President Toxic was able to grow the tent by a few millions voters compared to what Romney got in 2012. He still lost the popular vote by 3 million. But it was the 77,774 votes in the Rust Belt that counted. Compare the trend with Clinton/Trump in 2016 to the trend with Biden/Trump in 2020. Unlike in 2016, it's not close. And it's never been close. Let's assume President Toxic does exactly the same thing as 2016. He shaves 1.1 % more off his losing popular vote margin, compared to what the poll averages showed. Based on current polling, he'd cut a 7.5 % loss to a 6.4 % loss. Again, that's based on the people who are decided and willing to state their voter preference. A margin like that rules out a narrow electoral college win, as the current state polls clearly show. When you add in these undecided or "hold my nose and vote" voters, I think it just gets worse for President Toxic. That 7.5 % margin today is based on 50.5 % for Biden, and 43.0 % for President Toxic. So today there are 6.5 % of voters who are in the undecided/someone else/hold my nose bucket. In 2016 it was 9.5 % of all voters. Even if President Toxic won all 6.5 % of those voters, he would still be one point behind Biden today. But what the polls point to, as Roe understands, is that these undecided/someone else/hold my nose voters are already saying they lean toward Biden. There's another thing about this worth mentioning. If Biden can hold the lead he has today, and more undecideds break for Biden than Trump, Biden ends up with well over 50 % of the vote. If what we expect to happen happens, I like that number. Yeah, you can argue millions of the ballots are fake votes. But if Biden gets 52 % or 53 % of the vote, which seems possible, it's very hard to argue that the majority of America did not tell President Toxic he is fired. Like in 2016, the polls will be up and down until November. That said, it's not likely that the wide lead Biden has enjoyed since last year will just go away - unless something really huge changes things. Roe probably thinks that if a strong man like President Toxic just hammers the shit out of a weak guy like Biden every single day, he can turn the undecided/hold my nose crowd around. The only problem with this seemingly wishful thinking is there is no evidence in the real world to support it. The evidence in the real world is that President Toxic will be hammering the shit out of himself every day this Fall. And if he somehow forgets his hammer, Bob Woodward or some anonymous General or God knows who else will be kind enough to use their hammer to pound those nails in the coffin shut. President Toxic's contempt for the military and his willful misleading about a plague that killed 200,000 Americans are not small things. they are toxic. They will hang in the air every day. Especially given that the pace of COVID-19 deaths is more likely to pick up than slow down this Fall. There's a huge irony in how history will look back at these recordings. With 20/20 hindsight, I'd guess that historians will say President Toxic wasn't only talking about COVID-19 here: I'm pretty sure President Toxic was describing his own political demise. And why these people who haven't made up their mind or don't like either Biden or Trump will ultimately decide that change is better than more of this horror story.

Claire nailed several things. It's just stupidity. President Toxic was the one who gave Woodward access to his staff. The interesting question is not why some of the staff gave Woodward access to Trump. It's why they gave Woodward access to themselves. Most of them had to know better than their stupid boss. But it fills in the picture. These are not men and women of honor. They know what they have to do to be able to come to work the next day. Claire is a politician. So I think she nailed how the political reaction to this and the military betrayal works. It's not like a train wreck, in the sense of sudden and devastating impact. Although you can see that it already stopped and possibly reversed the modest recovery in Trump's approval ratings since the RNC. This is more like COVID-19. It blows around everywhere, and gradually settles in. So I think Claire is right. This will reinforce the way a lot of older voters who have been moving away from President Toxic feel. And the way a lot of active military, vets, and people who honor military service feel. It settles in and further cements the judgment people are gradually making. That said, it's more than just stupidity. Claire is not a psychiatrist. But one of the most interesting phrases in her rant was, "Who in their right mind ....?" That's a very good question. As a political hack, she was smart to leave it at stupidity. But you have to add either narcissism, or dementia, or both. Why you don't tell Woodward this stuff on tape right before an election is not difficult to figure out. So how could President Toxic have such a distorted view of reality? This would be the equivalent of Nixon never having secretly taped the conversations that destroyed him. It would be like Nixon instead calling up Woodward and Bernstein and saying, "Hey guys. Got a tape recorder? Let's talk for 18 hours." No sane President would do that. I won't drag all the stuff about authoritarianism into this thread. But I'll make one point. This gift President Toxic has given to the American political psyche is going to keep giving after he loses. The reaction already from Trumpians, and the reporters that know them best, is that this isn't really news. It's just more Deep State bullshit. We knew that this was dangerous. We're glad he didn't want us to panic. Yawn. Almost 200,000 dead Americans, and many more on the way. But, no. Their leader can do no wrong. All the TV I watched about this story focused, correctly, on what President Toxic said. But I'll end by reposting what President Toxic's enablers were saying at the time. And the impact it had on real people. Who suffered horribly. And died horribly. Claire's right. People did not know they were in a burning building. They were not protected, or told what to do to protect themselves. They were lied to and lulled into not caring. They were told it was a Democratic hoax. And being good authoritarian followers, many of them will choose not to remember that now.

Below are two articles that I view as two sides of the Make America Great Again coin. I agree with the prognosis of the first article, from The American Conservative. As I read it, it's the voice of pre-Tea Party Ronald Reagan/George Will "principled" conservatism. The article predicts that the MAGA effort is doomed to end in failure. The second article talks about the challenge facing Democrats and Biden if we win, as seems likely. If the Republicans couldn't make America great again, can Democrats? And is there any hope that some of the people who voted for President Toxic can be nudged into the Democratic Party - if not in 2020 then further down the line? Or will they view Democrats as a permanent existential threat, as the conservative author of the first article portrays them? After Trump Loss, ‘Deplorables’ Will Be The Democrats’ First Target Blame the president for leaving his core supporters at the mercy of the opposition's cultural and economic revolution. Two reactions before I cite the second article. First, I agree with the prognosis that triangulation could have saved President Toxic. That said, it is far easier said than done for President Toxic. Let's forget that he seems to completely lack Bill Clinton's skills in governing and political deal making .... ironically. Even if he was a master at the art of political deals, the kind of bipartisan immigration reform the Senate passed 2-1 in 2013, only to be killed by the House Freedom Caucus, surely would have been seen as a worse betrayal than H.W. Bush's "no new taxes" pledge. I always figured the reason President Toxic got away with trashing McCain's war heroism is that many Trumpians saw McCain as a RINO. And while it's true that lots of Trump supporters say they don't like the tweets, it's also true that President Toxic basically ran against everything that makes Washington work at its best. Like compromise on good public policy. The most flattering thing I can say about President Toxic is he does have reptilian survival instincts. He probably feels, not incorrectly, that if he betrayed his base they would eat him alive. Second, this article deeply resonates with what I've heard from "principled" conservatives for years and years. Like the author, they don't have much regard for the Tea Party/MAGA types. They view them as an unstable and potentially corrupting influence on the Grand Old Party they've been loyal members of for life. Yet going back to the W. years, as I listened to the "principled" conservatives' arguments, it sounded pretty much just like the Tea Party's arguments to me. This author seems to almost completely agree with the Tea Party/MAGA definition of the problem: Democrats who are out to destroy America. He just doesn't agree that President Toxic was the proper solution to the problem. Regardless, the dreaded Democratic "cultural and economic revolution" is proceeding apace. Like the plague, it's apparently coming soon to a bucolic rural hamlet near you. In light of Bob Woodward's hardly shocking tapes of President Toxic, there's mountains of tragic irony here. Trump played down an existential threat because he didn't want to create panic. Which resulted in a deep recession/depression that has killed 200,000 Americans so far. And yet the bigger existential threat is the Democrats? Huh? It's not exactly news that as far back as the 1980's, Reagan won by appealing to blue collar union families who were conservative on issues like guns and abortion and law and order. But how exactly is the so-called Democratic economic revolution worse than COVID-19 and a recession? Are unions more deadly than COVID-19? In fact, there's plenty of evidence that Democratic successes in the midterms and state races weren't simply driven by affluent suburbanites. Polls suggest that lots of working class voters abandoned President Toxic over bread and butter economic issues. Like the high cost of health insurance. Or unexpected medical expenses that are one of the leading contributors to poverty. Even with a recession and COVID-19, Trump's highest disapproval rating this year (56 % in July) hasn't reached his 58 % disapproval rating in 2017 when he tried to kill Obamacare, breaking his "repeal and replace" vow. ‘A tale of 2 recessions’: As rich Americans get richer, the bottom half struggles We've now had two election cycle in a row where income inequality, Bernie and democratic socialism, Medicare For All, and Elizabeth and wealth taxes on Jeff Bezos are a major driver. The fact that income inequality only got worse under President Toxic's government is hardly a surprise. What is a surprise is the pandemic made income inequality worse still. Those unemployment numbers really are surprising to me. Home values in parts of California and Portland are spiking, even as we read that Portland is ablaze. So somebody out there isn't poor. Meanwhile, what's not stated in the first article I posted is that a lot of President Toxic's supporters are feeling the pain. I get that many, maybe even most of them blame it on Democrats who want to close your Main Street, slap a mask on you, and take whatever livelihood you have left away. That's the Trumpian rant, at least. But the polls also suggest that the majority of Americans fear COVID-19 more than they fear the temporary damage to the economy of protecting the health of ourselves and our loved ones. I'm relatively confident that the people who judge the flow of history like Lichtman and Jon Meaham and now Bob Woodward are right. President Toxic was not the man for the job. The American people will agree and fire him, I think. He has not made America great again. So the question is: are Democrats, if empowered, up to the task? Is there any possibility of pulling some of these Trump supporters back our way - on these bread and butter issues like jobs and health care? Or are Democrats, as defined in the first article, simply going to be viewed as a permanent existential threat to the cultures and economic well being of those who voted for President Toxic? I'll add one other point that spoke to me about this question. Michael Moore has been loudly warning that 2016 could happen all over again, because the intensity of Trump supporters is through the roof. But he's also saying something very different than 2016. When reminded how he portrayed Biden in 2019, as an overly moderate political hack, Moore pointed out that it almost doesn't matter anymore. Maybe some of it was Moore having to find a way to spin Biden, now that he's the nominee. But his points made sense. Remember all those people opposed to Medicare For All because they liked their employer health insurance? They're unemployed and without health insurance now, Moore said. Remember all those people saying that Andrew Yang's $1000 freedom benefit was unaffordable and un-American? They survived COVID-19 because of Nancy Pelosi insisting on $600 a week unemployment payments. Of course, not everyone did. We don't have an accurate picture of who the losers in this recession are yet. But we know its tens of millions of Americans. And I'm pretty sure lots of those tens of millions who are hurting have been President Toxic supporters. My premise in posting this thread is that Biden and Democrats are going to take power. If we do, given how the entire deck has been reshuffled by the plague, is there a way to co-opt some of the Make America Great Again message and coalition? Or are they going to circle the wagons around their vanquished savior, and harden their minds around the idea that Democrats are now going to destroy America for good?

Biden as President May Mean More Black Governors An interesting story. On the good news side, there are 15,000 local Black elected officials today - a more than tenfold increase from 1970. On the good news/bad news side, the good news is that President Biden is in a position to "create" more Black Governors in one month than the US has had in a century. That's also the bad news. The US has had almost no Black Governors. In theory, appointing the Democratic Governors are four states - Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New Jersey - to Cabinet posts would result in the immediate elevation of four Black Lieutenant Governors. In theory, the 2020 election could also result in four new Black Senators, all Democrats. Jaime Harrison (South Carolina) and Rev. Warnock (Georgia) could win through election. Gov. Newsom could appoint someone like Rep. Karen Bass to replace VP Harris. And if Warren becomes Treasury Secretary, she could be replaced by Senator Pressley. Although that would require a special election, before which a Republican Governor would no doubt temporarily appoint a Republican placeholder. I like this scenario a lot. I also like the scenario that South Carolina would improbably have the honor of being the first US state to elect concurrent African American Senators of two different political parties. That right there makes a very positive statement. I tend to agree with Republican Sen. Tim Scott that more than anything else what enabled his election is, to quote him, "the evolution of the Southern heart". If he were not speaking at the RNC, my guess is he would agree that Obama's election counts, too. And it's really about the evolution of the American heart. So I don't discount the importance of gradual changes that can not be seen or measured in concrete results - until something big like Obama's or Scott's election happens. That said, so far the concrete achievements of Black Lives Matter have been minimal. That's okay. If we're talking about police reform, it's going to take years. And the incremental changes are probably the ones that will make the most significant difference in the long run. The swift elevation of four Black Governors and four Black Senators would make a very clear statement about something Blacks have made clear they feel strongly about. I'm all for this kind of racial justice math. 4 + 4 = GREAT.

Minnesota’s myth-making met stark reality. Where does Gov. Tim Walz go from here? This post is anecdotal, and pushes more around the margins of understanding what's driving authoritarian behavior in the US today. It's an interesting interview with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. I'll cite the parts I found most interesting and relevant. Translation: @lookin is speaking more like Gov. Walz, and I'm speaking more like Mrs. Walz. (Are we married? Who knew!) That said, I agree with what Walz said. As a Governor, he has to try to be publicly bipartisan. Even if he privately thinks his wife is right. I'll repeat what I said above. The Republicans Democrats can most fruitfully work with are the "Kasich Republicans" or "Hogan Republicans", I think. They are the ones turned off by President Toxic's ignorance and authoritarianism. That's a fascinating comment coming from a guy like Walz. The first paragraph acknowledges that at the core of what we're calling authoritarianism is real economic anxiety and, more important, real economic pain. That said, how do you get from that to what Walz describes in the second paragraph? Its definitely authoritarian thinking. And scapegoating. The most ardent members of Team Toxic will not be easily persuaded that The Socialists or The Deep State or whatever is not out to destroy them. If anyone can talk with people who feel this way, it's somebody like Walz. And implicit in his statement is an acknowledgement that he can't. I'd say Kasich has reached pretty much the same conclusions. I'll reiterate Dean's point. They do understand defeat? Is it possible there will be more receptivity to moderates like Walz or conservatives like Kasich after President Toxic is defeated? I at least hope so. That the public education divide is THAT stark in Minnesota surprises me. But it fills out the picture. It's a coin toss whether Trumpist authoritarianism is more about real economic anxiety and pain, or about racism and scapegoating. I've always felt it's both/and. A lot of MAGA conservatives seem to have reached the conclusion that there is no real point in conversations about racism. Let alone self examination about what could be their own racism. Rather, they now just want to throw the word "racist" back at Obama, or Blacks, or woke White liberals. President Toxic modeled how to do it, and legitimized it. That is why I single out Daddy. He doesn't need to endorse "Black Lives Matter". Arguably, in the position he's in running a social media website he should NOT take sides. But by taking sides and labeling Black Lives Matter as racist, he has revealed his own racism. It's a free country, so he has every right to. But he also made his website permanently into Daddy's "Racism Is Okay" website. It's not exactly a shocker to me that this is where President Toxic has moved many people who have always been conservatives. Trump just made them feel their racism is not only perfectly okay, because it's not racism. It's righteous. I'm not holding my breath for them to suddenly or even slowly move to some other more tolerant space. Bottom line: I applaud Gov. Walz and his open-hearted and tolerant impulses. I wish him luck. My prognosis is that his wife is wise. And he'll need all the luck he can get.

I'm going to post a few other things that push around the margins of this issue. First, just to prove I can tolerate ambiguity, here's a little something that pushes back against some of my own thinking: ‘What do we do?’: Trump gains rattle Miami Dems The president is running ahead of his 2016 pace in Florida’s most populous county. That article allows you to make the authoritarian argument either way. And both arguments would be correct. On the one hand, some of President Toxic's support in Florida is NOT because people want to be authoritarian followers. It's because they don't want to be. If they left Cuba or Venezuela, it was to get away from oppressive and authoritarian regimes. I don't have a hard time understanding why these voters would be attracted to Trump as a symbol of a self-made business success and American prosperity. Even if they cut him some slack because Daddy made everything good for Baby Donald, who cares? On the other hand, authoritarian followers are exactly the kind of people Dean is saying would buy this bullshit about socialism. Biden is so NOT SOCIALIST that I frankly find it hard to believe Team Toxic is stupid enough to make such arguments. I'm glad they are. Because if they weren't screaming "Socialist witch!" at people like Harris, they could be making arguments that actually gain traction. That said, it makes sense that if you left Cuba or Venezuela, this nightmare resonates in a way it just doesn't for White suburban women in Wisconsin. The good news in this is that the articles about Biden and Florida, and Biden and Hispanics, may be more a localized issue than a national one. There's probably multiple causes of whatever is happening in Florida. But it does not appear to be happening in Arizona, where there are also lots of Hispanics. I checked, and here is a comparison of the 538 polling average in four states from Aug. 28th to today. I arbitrarily picked Aug. 28th because that's when the polling gap in Florida noticeably started to close: Florida: Biden leads + 2.8 today versus + 5.6 lead on 8/28, net loss of - 2.8 to Biden Pennsylvania: Biden leads + 5.1 today versus + 5.8 lead on 8/28, net loss of -0.7 to Biden Wisconsin: Biden leads + 7.0 today versus + 6.2 lead 8/28, net gain of +0.8 to Biden (so much for racist ranting helping President Toxic) Arizona: Biden leads + 5.1 today versus + 4.3 lead 8/28, net gain of +0.8 to Biden I'm tempted to say that whatever is going on in Florida is more likely local factors than national ones. That said, he's got issues with Hispanics. That's no surprise. It's also noteworthy that he is doing as well in Arizona as in Pennsylvania.

I think we're both saying mostly the same things. But we're coming at it from different angles, and with different emphasis. My emphasis right now, and I believe Dean's, is they need to be defeated. And they will understand defeat. Even if I'm right, that is not permanent. As you say, they could be back for more. Possibly worse, and as early as 2024. That's when @tassojunior suspects we may get President Nikki, and fascism. To their credit, I think part of why authoritarian followers understand defeat is that they are not stupid. The reason to follow President Toxic is he promised they would "win". If they didn't win, and they were badly defeated, some of them will do a rethink. The easiest solution to many of the problems would be a well-paying factory job. Period. What that says to them is that your fear isn't crazy. It's actually quite sane. It's real. We know that support for President Toxic in 2016 and 2020 was tied to being worse off, or living in places like Scranton. The difference was in 2016 jobs was a promise. In 2020 the lack of said jobs is a failure. But that is clearly part of what is driving all the fears of immigrants, The Wall, China, etc. And this is not a new thing, of course. The fact that we mostly had vibrant industries that fueled middle class jobs after World War 2 is partly why we had more (mostly) positive conformity. I'd argue there is a similar (mostly) positive in California today, built around the fact that the Silicon Valley economy actually does work well enough for lots and lots of people. But it does require a different set of ingredients than the steel worker economy. Part of the immediate problem is that talk of a Green New Deal does not help, and may hurt. It just pushes the fear buttons. Talk of the government doing anything may hurt more than it helps with some of these people. The "Liberate Michigan!" protests were the logical and tragic conclusion of a mindset that the government trying to keep you alive means the government is trying to destroy your way of life. The "Liberate Michigan!" folks of course did not see it that way. The bottom line is that in China people agreed with the government told them to do. Arguably, Xi and COVID-19 are a good example of "good" authoritarianism. I've read articles about how most Chinese accepted masks and fever clinics and strong-armed protocols as a sort of patriotic duty. Regardless, you had no choice. And it worked. Fewer people died. And the Chinese economy is growing again. If President Toxic had produced something similar, he would be re-elected. I think where I differ with you the most is the idea that they are going to be persuaded about anything. At least by you and me. I'm more optimistic that they may persuade themselves. And that will take time, and results. It is possible to reverse engineer what got them to where they are today, I think. Possible, but not easy. I posted that 12 minute video a bunch of times already. Paul Lewis, the journalist, totally nailed it. This was published in September 2016, when the polls were a toss up. It was a true "Holy Shit" moment for me. Everything you needed to know about why President Toxic could win, and did win, is in that video, thoughtfully articulated. Krazy Racist Kathy is what got the headlines. And smug liberals decided that messages like her's could not win. Oops! My feeling at the time, and still today, is that people didn't buy Krazy Racist Kathy's racism. Which is not to say that there isn't racism in America just under the surface. But people were clearly not trying to make a statement about how racist they are. It was about the jobs. As one organizer said, people understand they used to have an $80,000 a year job in a factory. And now they understand they have two jobs that pay them $30,000. The true "Holy Shit" moment for me was at 3:30 in that video. This is about my biases as a former community organizer. When you get to the point that people are having picnics, and singing folks songs about Donald The Hero, and Krazy Racist Kathy is holding the lyrics page, you are 97 % of the way there. All this happened before President Toxic was elected. It was building for years. So he's the symptom. Not the cause. How do you reverse engineer this? it will have to happen organically - just like how they got to where they are. They're not going to listen to a journalist from The Guardian. Or California liberals. Bernie tried to do what you are suggesting: give them something else to fear. He gave them corporate greed, and a global capitalist oligarchy that puts profits over people. It looked in 2016 like he might have persuaded a bunch of people in Michigan. But that didn't hold up in 2020. I've read a bunch of articles that say, for whatever reason, class consciousness just does not cut it any more. So people agree that Jeff Bezos is a rich fat cat and he ought to pay wealth taxes. But they didn't vote for Bernie or Warren, who were the ones proposing such things. There's a theory that they were friendlier to Bernie than Elizabeth because he looked and sounded more like them. All of these are riddles yet to be solved, I think. None of this suggests to me that the core of President Toxic's base, the authoritarian followers, are going to be easily persuaded about anything. I think they're going to grow older, and more bitter, and keep fighting. If Trump loses, more likely than not ex-President Toxic will start a tv show and be a sort of resistance leader. On some alternative Earth, what would work is to bring back those 5 million factory jobs lost while W. was President. The picture that reverse engineers the images in the videos above is a Democratic picnic in 2024. Maybe even one where the old White people and the Black church people picnic together. And the folk song would go like this: They said no one can do it. But Joe Biden can. The factory pays me 80 grand. Joe Biden - he's my man! Very simple and black and white. But the hardest thing in the world to do.

I'm not sure I agree with you that authoritarian tendencies are Mother Nature at her finest. The fact that you had to go to War Of The Worlds - fiction - to argue how authoritarianism helps us kind of makes my point. And I'm not even sure that's a good example. The only version I've seen is Spielberg's. In the end, might made right, basically. The aliens were winning. The reason the human race was saved is science, and luck. Earth turned out to be a COVID-19 sort of world for the aliens. Hitler. Mussolini. Mao. President Toxic. I just named four authoritarian leaders that clearly put their countries through hell. Trump did not really belong on that list until 2020. But he does now. I suspect most of the 200,000 dead would agree with me - if they could. Can you name four authoritarian leaders who clearly made their countries much better places? Some of what I read about Dean suggests that education helps. There are, of course, highly educated people who are great authoritarian leaders or followers. But we agree on the mindset. An intolerance for ambiguity. I like Dean's simple language. Daddy will take care of it. And make it black and white and easy to understand. That's the antithesis of the critical thinking that colleges profess to instill in people. It fits that many true Trumpians think of liberal arts colleges as these places where they try to make you Gay - or, worse, a liberal. (Oh my God. I went to a liberal arts college. I'm Gay. And liberal. Eek!) (I went on a hike last year with one of my nieces and her husband. He's from a blue collar family in Nebraska, but they met in college. So he has a foot in both worlds. I went off the rails with statements like I just wrote, about how young Trump supporters see college as a conspiracy to make everyone Gay and liberal. He laughed. But he told me that he has friends from high school who didn't go to college. And I'm pretty much in the ballpark of how they really see it.) Dean also seems to think that young people can solve the problem for now by voting in droves. I'm not sure if he thinks that because they are younger, or better educated. Both may be factors. That said, we agree that authoritarian followers will always be with us. And you can make good abstract arguments that in some situations they benefit society. What could possibly go wrong now? I actually think President Toxic, The Sequel could land us in World War 3 with China. In some ways it's reassuring that he doesn't like the military. It's not reassuring that he thinks he's smarter than them. And he's happy to use them as props. Mostly, he's the kind of stupid asshole who would get us in a war even though he didn't intend to, I think. If Biden wins, I can only imagine what horrors the MAGA types fear. Given eight years, Biden will be fully senile - if he isn't already. The Deep State will have us all in chains by then. We'll be working in Chinese factories by day, and being re-educated in mind control camps by not. I'm sure Hunter Biden wanting to make a few extra billion has something to do with it. I think it's also probably a given that certain times and environments breed authoritarian followers and conformity. It's not a coincidence, as you said, that during the Cold War there was greater conformity. And, I think related, most people trusted their government. If there is an argument to be made for Daddy knows best, or Generals know best, Ike was it. It fits into the picture that instead of nominating a suspected drunk and sex assaulter like Justice Rapist, and then mocking the women who claimed to be assaulted, Ike chose to appoint William Brennan. That would fit into a picture of how a more benevolent Daddy/General breeds conformity and consensus, and does try to make things right. It's an interesting question whether the thing MAGA people fear most is China, or broken factory towns, or liberal cultural norms that are destroying America, or Blacks invading suburbs, or something else. President Toxic is clearly throwing all the fear and hate and racism he can muster at The Wall to see what sticks. If there is an objective driver, the data suggest it is not the suburbs. It is those factory towns in Pennsylvania where an old way of life doesn't work as well as it used to. If China is in the picture, it's because of those lost jobs. Biden visits Michigan amid effort to rebuild ‘blue wall’ I think that article relates to this discussion. When I read it, it was music to my ears. It fits precisely with what I think Biden needs to do, particularly during the debates, to close the deal. And to throw in Lichtman, he'd argue that whether or not Biden does a particularly good job, people do get it. They're not stupid. Or, they're not all lemmings looking to follow a leader off the cliff. This election will be a test. The most obedient sheep will buy the black and white idea that Daddy Toxic did the best job ever beating COVID-19. And but for that, it was the best economy in the universe, ever. Even those War Of The World aliens couldn't build an economy better than the one Daddy Toxic built. If you're open to facts, and ambiguity, even before COVID-19 the Biden/Obama record on factory jobs in the Rust Belt was just better. It depends on whether you blame Obama or Biden for The Great Recession. If Americans did, they probably would not have been re-elected in 2012. So if you start from Summer 2009, the bottom of the jobs free fall, Obama and Biden created about 1 million factory jobs. It didn't come close to restoring the 5 million lost under W. But blame that on W., not Biden. In 2019, factory job growth in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio was at best flat. Some of those states lost a few thousand factory jobs in 2019. The best economy ever? Bullshit. Daddy was in it for Daddy. THREAT PERCEPTION AND TECH POLICY How to Jump-Start America—and Why That's another great article I've posted several times on Daddy's "Racism Is OK" website that is relevant, I think. Note how the author says it marries "threat perception" to tech policy. Interesting. The article is a conservative response to the left-of-center book Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream. It argues such a thing is possible. I'd add it will be easier if people can get back to the idea that, just like in World War 2, government can be helpful in priming the pump of basic science. (Assuming you value basic science, of course.) The conservative author differs with the liberals in regards to how this could happen. The liberals say that America's "all for one and one for all" spirit is enough. The conservative argues there needs to be a serious threat - like Hitler, or the Soviet Union. The question I wonder is what a new conformity would look like. How would we get to it? And would it be a good thing? Does China need to be the perceived threat? Would a new Cold War with China be unifying? Or could the existential threat by climate change? Or COVID-19 and it's sure to follow successors? Or could it be some combination of all three? Part of what I'm saying, implicitly, is that one way to deal with authoritarian followers is to become more like them. I don't meaning we all become hateful little Toxettes. I mean we try to find unifying - and probably centrist - ideas and also threats we can unify around, like we did before. As you say, there is nothing wrong with conformity if the goal is to have jobs, and make the trains run on time, and to get a vaccine that works and that people trust the government to deliver. This is partly why I'm sending money to Democrats I pretty much like least, like Bullock and Hickenlooper. The immediate goal is to win the Senate. But the bigger goal is to win the center, and try to build unity around that. For that to happen, it will happen gradually. Authoritarian followers understand defeat. But they also understand results. I'll close with one more article. It is all pretty much boilerplate pro-union propaganda. My presumption is that factory workers who are proving to be good authoritarian followers are doing it partly because they want to be good factory workers. That's not a bad thing. At tis point, rhetoric won't do. There will need to be results, which will take time. But if there is a new center and unity to be built, I think this is part of the recipe. Joe Biden and Richard Trumka: Put power back in workers’ hands Amid struggles, the labor movement faces an additional burden: a union-busting president

Howdy @lookin. It's great to read your post. I was not even aware that you posted here. Post more! I of course realize that I am the liberal Bloviator In Chief. But it's clear that the social media silos are hardened so much right now that there is almost no possibility of thoughtful discussion with MAGA conservatives. Even the most thoughtful ones tend to use facts and logic to defend anything President Toxic says or does. We all do that, of course. But this is extreme. Perfect example: a story that's really about President Toxic's ever-worsening relationship with the military over three years is being reduced by the blowhards to one incident in France. And rather than actually reporting on that, they lie about Bolton denying it, and use the official record as their cover. As if the official record was going to say, "Trump thinks the military are suckers and losers." What's the point of debate? I include that because it's also a perfect example of authoritarian followers. It's understandable that any Republican would perhaps pop a chub when given the opportunity to throw a dart at Hillary. But taking aim at the military? Dismissing stories about President Toxic not caring about bounties on US soldiers? How do you call yourself a conservative and just dismiss that? So, yeah, that's authoritarianism for you. I will repeat what I said in my blovia-post. My knowledge of Dean's ideas is superficial. So he probably has a detailed list of how to deal with authoritarian followers. Like you, I could not find it in a review or interview. That said, I think he has a bottom line. He said it in his interview with Amy: "They understand defeat." I think the timing of his book may have something to do with that. I can't speak for him. But I suspect he feels the best thing we can possibly do right now is defeat them. I don't think he sees authoritarian followers as "let's meet in the middle" types. Let's go to the extreme. Perhaps they're more like those loyal German soldiers you cited, whose response to disloyalty after Hitler was dead and the war was essentially over was to blow the brains out of "disloyal" soldiers, anyway. By the way, that's a good reason not to be around MAGA diehards right after they lose. Which is not to say they will then just go away. Dean says emphatically they won't. Another thing he mentioned that factors in is that there has been a massive shift of authoritarians to the Republican Party. That right there could explain a lot of shift that has happened. Maybe the shift of some Democrats to President Toxic has elements of racism, or sexism, or just plain anger. But the idea that President Toxic makes them feel like Daddy will take care of it, to paraphrase Dean, makes sense to me. It goes without saying that they won't be overly critical about judging Daddy's success. If that's right, and Biden wins, it won't be a good time to be a Republican. If there is such a thing as a "Biden Republican", they are by definition people repulsed by the MAGA conservatives, who respond favorably to a dominating leader like President Toxic. So it's hard for me to imagine that a tent full of losing Trumpians are going to quickly rush over to the Democratic tent to join their ex-Republican Never Trumper friends. More likely, they'll double down on their feelings of anger and loss and conspiracy. Since they are a minority, it is arguably better to have them in somebody else's tent, anyway. For now, my read of the timing and summaries of Dean's book is that he thinks we just need to defeat them. If we use the examples of Hitler and Mussolini, we know that defeating an authoritarian does change things. So at least for now I think the main value of Dean's book is to help us understand what we're dealing with. And why a majority of Americans have to speak up, vote, and defeat President Toxic. I'll make one criticism of Dean's approach that is academic. I bring it up mainly because it speaks to your point about why more people aren't interested in this. I understand why he keeps referring to this field as "science". And he uses the "science" lingo like "authoritarian followers" and "social dominants" and "double highs". Some of the terms confused me. I think he wants to ground this in the idea that this is as solid as 2 + 2 = 4. It's not some cult theory. That said, I think it also limits the ability to connect with people about this. President Toxic's supporters can explain away 200,000 dead Americans and say their guy did a great job with COVID-19. If they can do that, dismissing another egghead is a piece of cake. They won't be reading Dean's book. Nor will President Toxic. Bill Clinton's language for this kind of threat was that some people are "strong and wrong". That language makes sense. It may be better than gambling that grounding this is science will legitimize it to people who happily ignore science, anyway. Dean leans fairly heavily on science. That implicitly tells me Dean is NOT really speaking to authoritarian followers. He almost certainly knows they'll just dismiss him as another egghead Deep Stater. I've got my script written for after President Toxic loses. The bumper sticker is this: "You lost. Trump is a loser. L.O.S.E.R." That may sound bitchy. But I'm serious. That clip above is from right before President Toxic won in 2016. It's my go-to clip on explaining a few things as I see them. First, President Toxic won more based on hope than fear in 2016. Second, he won on winning. The most interesting part of that video to me is watching the faces of the crowd. It is like an orgasm. They love it. Dean used the phrase in one interview, "Daddy will take of everything." It's not much of a stretch to say, "Daddy is going to win big. Daddy is going to win for you." So I think there is some value in undeniable reality. When President Toxic loses in November, that means he didn't win. It means he's a loser. A big loser. It means they didn't win their factories back. It means they didn't win their jobs back. It means they have a bigger mess than when he was elected. It means they lost. Oh, and let's throw COVID-19 in as a bonus. Again, I'm aware this sounds bitchy, or maybe mean. But to quote Dean, verbatim, one things they understand is defeat. It makes sense to me that the first thing that has to sink in is defeat. You lost. Your guy lost. He's a loser. Loser. Loser is spelled L.O.S.E.R. Loser. Do you get it? Loser." I'm of course going overboard. But your over the top example of the German soldiers makes my point, I think. These folks are not going to have a personal Enlightenment. Many of them will never feel they were wrong. I was shocked in the late 1970's when I lived in Bavaria for a Winter to learn there were older Germans who STILL worshiped Hitler. The loyal German soldiers shot the innocent ones because they needed to still believe they were right. Since I'm going to Hitler, I need to qualify that Trump is not Hitler. And his followers are not Nazis. But many of them are authoritarian followers. They will not lose easily. In their minds, they may always feel they were right. After Charlottesville, Schwarzenegger said that right winger MAGA types should not be glorifying Nazi flags. He said he knows better than most, since he grew up in Austria. The Nazis he experienced were old, broken, and bitter men, he said. I think that's going to be part of the picture here, as well. My other guess is that authoritarian followers will decide for themselves whether and how they become un-followers. The flip side of Dean's assertion that lots of authoritarian followers migrated to the Republican Party because of President Toxic is that some of them may choose to migrate back when he is defeated. That may be a mixed blessing for Democrats. But I agree with you that once the shock of defeat wears off, it makes sense to have a nuanced approach. "You lost, and you deserved to lose" is a valuable thing to say, I think. But we need a lot more than that.

That Harry Enten tweet about the Florida poll speaks to my worst fear. Which is that it's the economy, stupid. And President Toxic somehow manages to add to his zero sum older base by pulling in younger voters. There's not a whole lot of evidence in the real world that such a thing is happening. As Enten said, beware of margins of error on small samples. But he's also right that this is not the only poll that shows Biden's weaknesses with Hispanics and some younger voters. My theory, which I have no real data to support, is that a segment of younger voters are just more worried about their jobs and incomes than about COVID-19. I've seen at least one poll that suggests that may be true in the Hispanic bucket, as well. If you only look at Hispanics, it was working age Hispanics that were leaning somewhat more to Trump. There's still a lingering "health v. wealth" debate going back to when the plague started. It doesn't make much sense to me. China is growing again. Other Asian countries and European countries took a bigger hit than China. But most of them took much less of an economic hit than the US has. I don't think it will be hard for Biden to connect the dots in debates and commercials that the biggest driver to the economy being so weak is that President Toxic's leadership on COVID-19 was weak and ineffective. I'm not very worried about race and safety and crime tipping the election to President Toxic. And I don't think he can just bullshit his way out of his mistakes, and a shitty economy. But if there is an argument to be made for how he wins, this is the path it would follow. Even if President Toxic can solve his math problem by replacing older 2016 voters who are no longer with us with some younger 2016 Clinton voters, there's another factor. Arguably the biggest unknown is what the Millennials and Gen Z will do. It's not a good sign if President Toxic is pulling more younger voters in Florida than he did running against Hillary. But the math remains the same. If a million new young people vote, it would of course be better for Biden if he gets 60 % of them, as opposed to 55 % of them. Either way, whether it's 600,000 Biden to 400,000 Trump, or 550,000 to 450,000, it's a hell of a lot more votes for Biden than for President Toxic. If youth turnout spikes, it's just going to be bad news for Republicans, period. Even if concerns about reopening the economy more quickly lead a slice of young voters to vote for Trump. Biden Doesn’t Really Have A Young Voters Problem That 538 article is three months old. And it's national polling data, not Florida. At least at that point, Biden was in the same ballpark with Hillary. Of course, Biden has never been the poster child for young Democrats. Not was Hillary, for that matter. But that article cites polls saying Biden led Trump by as much as 20 points with voters under 30, and maybe 6-12 points with voters aged 30-44. That Florida poll puts the cutoff at 45 years old. I think the real question is voters under 30. They have the potential to make this a slam dunk for Biden. Whether or not they actually do that is a whole different matter.

That's a bridge too far. President Toxic is not, and never was, a liberal Democrat. I've never read any real comprehensive analysis of his political donations, going back decades. I know he gave lots of money, and I know a bunch of the names he gave it to. My guess is he gave to both parties to do what any developer would do: wield influence. The easy apples to apples on this is racism. You can say anything negative you want about Biden and the crime bill. But you have to add that the majority of the Congressional Black Cacus was for it, crime was at records highs, crime went way down from that point forward, and to this day older Blacks like Rep. Clyburn insist there is no distance between Biden and the Black community on that issue. Meanwhile, Trump called for the death penalty for the kids involved in the Central Park Five case, and said loudly that Whites should hate "those people". He's not a liberal. He's a racist. I'm going to post this article in a different thread and comment on it more extensively. It's an honest and sober article from a true principled conservative magazine. One of the points they make is relevant in this context. After Trump Loss, ‘Deplorables’ Will Be The Democrats’ First Target Blame the president for leaving his core supporters at the mercy of the opposition's cultural and economic revolution. I'll take issue with some of the points in another thread. Like whether the "revolution" MAGA conservatives supposedly fear is real. But I think the overall analysis is correct. Both that President Toxic is likely going to lose. And that he only has himself to blame. In the context of what you said, he may not have been a liberal Democrat. But he was, sort of, a Democrat. He's never been wedded to any ideology, other than perhaps the ideology of money and power. That could have been a plus if he had chosen to do what Clinton did in the 90's. I will always suspect that one impactful difference between Clinton and Obama was that Obama was just more ideological. Maybe it's noble that he put liberalism before cutting deals, at least more than Clinton did. But it ended up being good for the country and the economy that Clinton compromised some of his principles and cut some deals. Since President Toxic has more or less no principles, he should have been able to easily trump Bill Clinton on triangulating. Alas, it was not to be. My one sentence explanation for it is President Toxic just has really shitty political judgment. He was the right hateful racist in the right place at the right time. Which is not to say all MAGA types are racists, or haters. And I will repeat that in 2016 I saw Trump as more hope ("Make America Great Again") than fear ("Jobs Not Mobs"). Maybe he'll surprise me and pull a rabbit out of a hat in November. But this feels more like very desperate people doing desperate things. Mostly, I figure President Toxic figured out in his reptilian way that it made sense to play a MAGA President on Reality TV. He is not wedded to MAGA conservatism, or any type of conservatism. I think it was all about power, money, and ego. My reason for bringing it up in this context is that if The American Conservative is right, which I think they are, President Toxic will do the same thing with his base that he has already done to the military. They'll go right under the bus. The only difference is that the military is smart enough to figure it out. And the MAGA base is largely clueless. Maybe, as you said, it's that the military is full of people with college degrees. And integrity, too. The biggest reason I might be wrong about what I said in the last paragraph is that ex-President Toxic may choose to become a cult-like figure among his dying and diminishing base. He could be facing slammer time. So that might be one reason for him to hold on to as much political power as he can. The types that read George Will and The American Conservative will try to reconstitute a more decent Republican Party, I'm sure. So that will be interesting to watch. I'll add one other concession to your stream of thought, which I suspect we'll both be happy about. I'm hardly the military's # 1 fan. And it's not so much the military, per se, as warmongers like Cheney and Rumsfeld. So the good news in this is that President Toxic has slowed the military down, in two ways. First, he's made it clear that the Republican Party isn't the "pro-war" party it seemed to look like, at least to me, when we decided to go bomb the shit out of Iraq. Second, as AB Stoddard pointed out in a recent anti-Trump rant, it will take a very long time just to undo the damage President Toxic has done to our global position. So we're hardly in a position to start World Word III. Which is not to say that's what the military wants. I don't think they do, of course. Given all the challenges we have, one thing I hope we won't have to worry about for a while is the Cheneys and Rumsfelds of either party war mongering.

Good point. What I decided several months back is that I was tired of the mind-numbing experience of these yammering online back and forths with conservatives. As in this instance, no matter what President Toxic says, they will defend it. So there's no point. I like intellectual masturbation more than almost anyone. But the yammering is more like using a catheter to induce mild pain, rather than using a well-oiled hand to induce pleasure. You and I mostly see things similarly. And this one I just don't get. I'll go with "neanderthal NeoLibs" or "warmongers" and leave it at that. There is some thread of logic with you and Baby Glenn and Matt Taibbi, among others, that seems to say that if it's coming from the NeoLibs or warmonger class, it must be wrong. It's not the same as President Toxic's Deep State. And I certainly agree with you that warmongers and the military industrial complex and the corporate media are all powerful interest groups that are healthy to fear and keep a close eye on. To me, though, Baby Glenn and Taibbi have done a lot to discredit the particular forms of journalism they claim to represent. Their arguments don't hold together. And they are both sloppy with facts. Let's just agree to disagree on this one. We've both made our points. So I'll take it in another direction. The military itself seems to have already weighed in on this. You were the one who pointed out that for a very right-of-center group of people, support for Biden is off the charts. In theory, that could be because they love The Green New Deal. In fact, the logical explanation is that many, maybe most of them believe what we're hearing now. If you believe the story, they've been hearing and talking about this for years. Watergate itself was, as break-ins go, a relatively petty crime that Nixon was not personally involved in as a burglar. Not going to a cemetery is not even a crime. And if you isolate it to that one thing (either the cemetery in France, or the cemetery in the US where anonymous people think President Toxic dishonored his son to Gen. Kelly's face), this is arguably not a big deal. If you believe the anonymous sources, Gen. Kelly himself took President Toxic's words about his dead son to be an awkward comment about the volunteer nature of the military. Like Watergate, this seems to have become a big fucking deal because it speaks to something much bigger and seriously wrong with the President of the United States. And I say it's a big fucking deal because before The Atlantic broke the news, the attitudes described seem to have impacted the way members of the military and veterans are voting. If they saw President Toxic the way he sees himself, he'd probably be pulling as much support as any other Republican President - if not more. This article from 2004 does not give clear poll data on active military. But it does state that support for W. was strong among active troops. And that they viewed W. himself more favorably than his conduct of the Iraq War, which the military itself was starting to sour on. The closest I could get to seeing how the military voted is a CNN exit poll saying veterans favored W. 57/41, whereas people who hadn't served were a toss up: Kerry 50/W. 49. A Gallup poll from June 2008 shows McCain slaughtering Obama among people who served in the military, 56 to 34. That actually exceeded the partisan registration split among veterans, which was 47 % Republican/39 % Democrat at that time. So this data suggests that, not surprisingly, military voters and veterans probably tend to support one of their own, or leaders who they feel have their back like W. What's happening now strongly suggests the troops do not "love" President Toxic, as he seems to feel they do. Wonder why? Desperately Derailing Donald The effort to stop President Trump is growing comical. I find that article from Trumpian American Greatness comical. It's all well and good for Trump propagandists to hammer Biden, the corporate media, and various other segments of the vast left-wing conspiracy. But last time I checked, the military was not a part of the vast left-wing conspiracy. What's interesting as a liberal outsider looking into the so-called "conservative" tent is that the MAGA types really don't seem to give a shit about the military, or their sentiments, at all. Large chunks of the article above could have been written by Baby Glenn, who is certainly NOT a fan of the US military. There's similar shitty reporting. The article above, just like Baby Glenn, cites Bolton as a primary source who "denied" the story. He actually confirmed some elements of the story (mostly about McCain), said the President is not credible, said he did not hear Trump use the alleged words "losers" and "suckers" in the meeting he was in, and offered that if President Toxic did say those words, it was "despicable". That's not a denial. It's understandable to me that Baby Glenn's sympathies don't go out to the military. But what about MAGA conservatives? Isn't a strong military supposed to be what they are about? This military story is an octopus that covers the entire Toxic Trump Presidency in all kinds of facets. Including, for example, the allegation that President Toxic hasn't lifted a bone spur to object that Putin put bounties on American soldiers. So for American Greatness to dismiss all this as a desperate and comical lie seems to be a slap in the face to the military, which conservatives are supposed to respect - I thought, at least. Again, these people suck at facts and actual journalism. But if they want to talk about "Trump's current polling trajectory", they might want to note that he is deep in the shitter with the military. And that is unprecedented. Neither the tone nor content of this article will help. It goes along for the ride with the idea that all this concern about President Toxic's disregard for military lives and disrespect for military service is just comical. Try explaining that to the military, if the journalists and the polls are right. They may not see it as very funny at all. Again, I'm just a liberal looking into the conservative tent. It seems like there's a war going on in there. If they are this busy throwing bombs and barbs at each other, how do they plan to win?

First, I'll take that as a compliment. You don't really have a rebuttal. So our main strategy here seems to be to again change the subject to something else, like DC cops shooting another Black guy. The closest you get to the specific content of the claims is to dismiss them all as the sort of thing "totalitarian" countries do. I heard Bernstein say in an interview today that of the 200 or so stories Woodward and him wrote on Watergate, almost all of them involved anonymous sources. As the story played out, more and more of what had been sourced anonymously went on the record by some named person. We of course only learned the identity of the most famous anonymous source after his death. Since you won't address any of the content, other than call it totalitarianism, address the standard of using anonymous sources. As Bernstein said, it means in practice you confirm it at least twice, and often three or more times - all, of course, anonymously. We now have four different news outlets, including Fox, citing God knows how many anonymous sources. Are you saying that you are opposed to this? Should we go back and void Watergate from history? And if there's a difference, what is it?

Trump launches unprecedented attack on military leadership he appointed I'd say we've reached a tipping point. Not in the election itself. But in the theory that President Toxic is some kind of a political genius. He'll probably go down in history as a senile crook with horrible political instincts who may possible destroy the Republican Party. It will at least take the party a long time to rebuild, if it does survive. If you start the clock at January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day, it's actually hard to come up with a list of things he's done that involve politically sound judgment. Yeah, he has a pen. He was able to sign the tax bill Paul Ryan has had a hard on for ever since he was elected. He let Mitch nominate the best conservative judges the Federalist Society could find. He inherited an economy with the lowest Black and Hispanic poverty in US history from Obama, and managed not to screw that up until this year. But what did he actually do? What unique policies of his own - infrastructure, rebuilding broken factory towns, opiod epidemics, or even The Wall - has he won? Pretty much every election from 2017 to 2019 is just worse news for Republicans as this has played out. He sends right-of-center moderates and principled conservatives screaming into the night. And that was all before COVID-10 and a recession that wiped 9.5 % out of second quarter GDP. Is that supposed to make things better for President Toxic? So why am I not surprised that the vet with PTSD interviewed by Lemon in the video embedded in the CNN story above ends the interview by going off about how he just can't wait to vote. That's what America is feeling like. Whatever is happening in that diminishing intellectual and physical space called Toxic Trumpland, it's very clear that much of America can't wait to go vote this moral loser out of office. He'll learn about being a complete political loser soon enough. If there is a sort of genius here, it is President Toxic's ability to pack so many deep and hurtful insults to people whose votes he needs into only two paragraphs. One of the points the vet interviewed made is that people in the military can sniff out a good leader when they see one. So the troops didn't need The Atlantic to know what President Toxic has been saying for years, he argued. So it just adds insult to injury to say the soldiers are in love with him. The goods news: he'll always have Kim, and their tepid love affair. Now he's figured yet another way to insult the military leaders that he supposedly respects. And implicit in it is yet another insult to the troops: your leaders care more about the profits of weapon's manufacturers than your lives. Which will probably just make them feel their Commander In Chief cares more about money than their lives. I'm all for going after the military industrial complex. But this makes no fucking sense whatsoever. His defense for 24 or 48 hours was that this can't be true, because he's the guy who has showered money on the military. Now he's arguing that this is happening because the generals are pissed that he won't shower money on the military. Huh? And other than the war President Toxic almost started with Iran, in part because he ripped up a deal with Iran that some of those top generals told him not to, what war has it been that the generals have been itching to fight under President Toxic's command? This could be a bunch of lies. Or this could be dementia. It just makes no logical sense. A 2nd grader could come up with a better cover. It is consistent with what happened with Ukrainegate. When one outrageous lie doesn't work, move on to the next one. Which often contradicts the lie you told before it.

I keep reading stories like this one in conservative rags, thinking there might be something that signals a shift away from Biden. But this is a good example of a disease that seems easy to catch these days: right-wing logic that basically amounts to wishful thinking. The Inevitable Implosion of Biden’s Campaign It is doomed by a strategy based on a progressive myth about Trump’s base. I guess the idea is that even though Biden has led President Toxic by 5+ % in the horse race poll averages and favorability polls all year, at some future point - but before November - he is going to implode. Sounds like wishful thinking. The whole argument doesn't quite make sense. If we assume that President Toxic's base is "only" 25 % working class, that's actually a lot. So if 2.5 % of that base peels off, that's the end of President Toxic. I'm pretty sure that since 2016 some of the older White men in that 25 % are no longer with us. And based on 2018, we know some switched to Democrats. There's also a lot of young voters of every race that are now aged roughly 18 to 22. Meaning they can vote for President for the first time. I'm not sure there's a lot of new older White men who weren't around in 2016. Meanwhile, North Carolina is saying requests for absentee ballots are through the roof. I read it's something like a 5-fold increase for Republicans, and a 30-fold increase for Blacks. Nobody knows what it means. But it doesn't sound like good news for Republicans. So there may be an argument about how President Toxic's base is going to sneak out of nowhere and expand rapidly, much like COVID-19 has. But this is not that argument. Biden's positions on all the issues cited above have been the same all year. So I assume the people that prefer President Toxic's views have been the people that are with him all year. That's not an argument for the "collapse" in Biden's poll numbers, which have actually not collapsed. Take a look at 538's generic Congressional ballot poll averages. I suppose if poorly educated Trumpians want something to think wishfully about, they can say that the lead Democrats have over Republicans has "collapsed" from a little over 9 % in July to a little over 8 % today. Then again, the Democrats have had a solid lead over Republicans for the roughly year and a half those polls cover. Not good news for Trumpians. And the lead has actually been slowly but steadily widening for the last year and a half. Again, not good news for Trumpians. There may have been a progressive myth that imploded. But, if so, that was during the primary. I think I was right to think all last year it was a good thing the Democratic primary race would be settled in the Rust Belt. That isn't quite true, because it surprisingly got settled early in March on Super Tuesday. But Michigan and then Wisconsin confirmed that the progressive/democratic socialist dream was not to be in 2020. I think why that's so is a question for lots of analysis after the dust settles. I'm intrigued with the idea that Bernie beat Hillary among non-urban Whites without colleges degrees in 2016 mostly because they couldn't stomach Hillary. And man of them may have viewed Bernie as more conservative - not less. So in 2020 when they had the chance to vote for an old White guy that is definitely more conservative for Bernie, they jumped at it. What's yet to be seen is whether Biden can keep them in the general, or even peel off more. It's probably best to just bag the concept "working class" altogether, I think. The objective descriptor that seems to be more useful in understanding things is "Whites without college degrees". The label speaks to education, and the importance of education in driving employment and good incomes. These were the people at the core of Bill Clinton's two victories. And at the core of Hillary's loss. Mostly, all indications are that Biden will do significantly better with this group than Hillary did. So much for "implosions". Biden outlines post-Labor Day strategy to win White House That sums it up nicely for me. Until proven wrong, I will continue to think that the most important things Biden needs to do to close the deal is focus on the economy, stupid. I suspect the kernel of truth in that Spectator article is that Whites and Hispanics and a small number of Blacks without college degrees who are in the "working class" bucket do worry about jobs, guns, and Democrats going too far. November will tell us the parameters for how many of these folks want to be in the Democratic tent. And how many are now the core of the Donald Trump (Sr. or Jr.) Republican Party. I'm not sure it's not a good thing for many of them to populate the Toxic Trump Party. If they love guns and fear The Green New Deal, and will vote for any old White man like Bernie or Biden over Hillary or Elizabeth every time, Democrats are arguably better off without them. Until proven wrong, I thing Rahm's "metropolitan alliances" are the thing to focus on. And I actually think Democrats have a better chance of building a progressive party that can win majorities if we go that route. I read an interesting article recently I can't relocate by an academic who said that in 2020 Democrats are lucky, because President Toxic is alienating suburban "housewives" he doesn't understand. She argued soon enough the Democrats' luck will run out. And we'll have to face our own ignorance of the suburbs as they actually exist today. She focused on zoning and housing. Her point is Millennials are - who'd a thunk? - making the same housing choices as their parents. They want to live in single family homes that are safer, and have more space. To them, The Green New Deal apparently includes aspirations to own a home. So this multi-family housing/high density push is an argument Democrats can't win, she thinks. People who left cities and moved to suburbs simply can't be convinced it would be better for those suburbs to be like the cities they left. This makes sense to me. Every year or two there's some Big Lie the media persuades us is the truth. 2006: Home prices never go down. 2008: Frugality is in and the rich will stop flaunting their wealth. 2010: Home prices will never recover to 2006 levels. So this stuff about Millennials being into a "sharing culture" and not wanting to own things like homes has never been an idea I've believed. I figured growing older and having kids would straighten that out. So I agree this is, as the author describes, a "time bomb" for Democrats. But that's a battle (or bomb) for another day. Zoning is of course typically a local issue. But I'd be happy if the 20's is when we bring back Clinton's homeownership strategies from the 90's. And this time toughen the laws to make sure the predatory lenders and Wall Street derivatives peddlers can't fuck it up again the next time a Republican wins. Speaking of Big Business, two more tidbits that are good news, and related to all this at the margins. Pro-business Chamber of Commerce is backing 23 vulnerable House Democratic freshmen for reelection I usually don't agree with the Chamber of Commerce. This cycle, we're strange bedfellows. Most of the Democrats on that list were freshly minted in 2018, and won in districts President Toxic carried in 2016. I don't know about the American Spectator. But it seems like the Chamber of Commerce sees the handwriting on the wall. As do I, hopefully. The ones on that list in California are the ones I've been sending money to. And on the flip side, there's this: How New York City’s Democratic Socialists Swept the Competition All this suggests that after the dust settles, the Democratic tent is going to be bigger, and messier. Good for us Democrats! If there was a notion that there was a latent democratic socialist majority in the farms and broken factory towns of Michigan or Wisconsin, that's what imploded this Spring. One of the reasons I feel better about Biden is that governing a tent full of urban progressives on the left and Chamber types on the right will be difficult, and perhaps impossible. Biden's unique skill and reason for survival has always been that he is good at feeling and negotiating his way toward the center. And usually he has done that by coming from the left. (I know, I know. For some he is a right-wing fascist war monger.) The best case scenario is he does what Bill Clinton did. By making things better for most people, he could end up nudging the center to the left, like Clinton did. Like Clinton, that will mean that lots of his party is to his left. If we're going to have an implosion, that's the one I'm most worried about. An implosion of governing, not campaigning. But that's a worry for another year. After President Toxic is flushed back down into the sewer.

Probably very few, actually. At this point, I think most have been indicted, convicted, or sent to prison already. And with all due respect to Steve Bannon, I really don't need to see the pictures of that.

Could LeBron James Defeat Donald Trump? In securing major concessions and expanding voter participation, NBA players may have ended up changing the way 2020 plays out. This is probably one of the best developments since the Black Lives Matter movement rose to a whole different political and moral dimension this year. I've already said I think we have arrived at the new Moral Awakening I've been anticipating (or at least hoping for) for most of this decade. I think BLM, a movement for both racial and economic justice, existed mostly at the periphery of our political culture until 2020. The fact that it is now front and center, and driving the election debate, is one indicator that lots of people woke up about something. All the news with Black athletes (and White allies) and the NBA is another indicator. This is unprecedented. Athletes doing politics is not new. But the fact that James can call Obama, a former Black President, and Obama can advise James to double down and make this all about voting and access to voting? That's new. We have never been here before. Nobody, not even the people in the middle of it, have a clue where it's going. But it is all very, very, very good news I think. One of the things that I'm enjoying about 2020 is that my ignorance about all kinds of things relating to race is being exposed to me on an almost daily basis. So on this one, I feel ignorant. I don't have a clue whether, or how, this will impact the election. I don't think Biden can say or do anything that will be particularly compelling to the segment of the Black population that Charlemagne Tha God probably speaks for. I don't know whether Blacks, or anyone who follows basketball, will listen to basketball players about the urgency of voting. I guess we'll all learn together on Election Day. But the idea that American sports arenas may now be symbols to Black youth of a ladder up - both by way of athletic prowess, and the urgent need to vote? I just love it! With all due respect to Rev. Sharpton, when the violence started, I kept wondering: where are the Black pastors? So one piece of personal ignorance that was partly cleaned up is that I learned this is not Dr. King's movement. The women who founded Black Lives Matter are, in fact, women. The real wake up call to me was when Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told people to go home. She was the first voice I heard that gripped me in the way MLK does. She cited MLK, and everything she said was eloquent (and seemingly effective, in stopping the looting that was happening in Atlanta). But the moments that were most moving to me were when she looked at the camera as spoke as a Black Mom. Rev. Sharpton is himself a bit of an anachronism. I mostly hear him on Morning Joe. That's typically a good place to hear the voices of Never Trump Republicans. The fact that the Black guy who used to BE the cutting edge is now, in part, the one who explains it to White Americans like me is interesting. I did not need Rep. Clyburn to explain to me why there is no real distance between Joe Biden and the Black community on the crime bill. In fact, I'd like to see Clyburn and his fellow South Carolina native Charlemagne have it out. Because I do think Charlemagne probably speaks for lots of younger Blacks who do see distance between themselves and Biden on the legacy of the crime bill. Which leads to the next area where I feel ignorant. It's reasonable to think that White America would react to all this by voting for President Toxic as a "law and order" quasi-Nixon. And that may still happen. So far, though, there's little to no indication of that. In fact, it's the opposite. Majorities or pluralities see Biden as better able to deal with race relations and public safety. They believe President Toxic is the one who will lead to more violence, if re-elected. Who knew? Apart from race, I do think the fact that so many people see President Toxic as a poster child for chaos and corruption is a big part of his problem. But on race, it could be that America knows that since the 1980's Trump has basically been preaching about how Whites should hate "those people." His theme of "Jobs Not Mobs" in both 2018 and 2020 is the same hate and fear, different century. Why is it working less well today? The simplest explanation might have come from Republican Tim Scott, in his RNC speech. In explaining how he was elected to the US House and then Senate in a crowded field of Republicans, including a Thurmond, he credited it to "the evolution of the Southern heart". I can go with that. Were it not a partisan speech, Sen. Scott easily could have taken out the word "Southern", added President Obama, and spoken about the evolution of the "American heart". Or even the "White American heart". I think some of that is what's happening today. And if it is, we can thank Dr. King and fighters like John Lewis for that. President Toxic may be a fighter. But on race relations, I think he only makes matter worse. My reading of the polls is that most Americans agree. If the American heart evolved, President Toxic's heart has not appeared to evolve with it. Scott is a shining light in the Republican Party. If the GOP had chosen him as their leader in 2016, or if the collapse of the Toxic Trump Republican brand leads them to choose him in the future, I think both the Republican Party and the United States will be in a much better place. That said, some of his "radical socialist" rhetoric was just laughable. Since I'm praising him, I feel like I have to offset his rhetoric with reality. There's only two Presidencies under which Black poverty went down in my adult lifetime. It went from 33.4 % (1992) to 22.5 % (2000) under Clinton. W. ended up leaving Obama with a Black poverty rate of 24.7 % (2008). Obama and Biden brought Black poverty from a high of 27.6 % (2011) to a new all-time low of 22.0 % (2016). You can blame Obama and Biden for not doing better. But they got handed The Great Recession to start with. And they handed President Toxic the lowest Black poverty rate ever. President Toxic could take credit for continuing - not achieving - the lowest Black poverty rate in US history, which hit 20.8 % in 2018. By the time the 2020 poverty rate is measured, though, his legacy will probably not look very good. The gloomiest projection I've seen is that COVID-19 could force Black poverty back up to about 32 %. Meaning all the gains made since 1992 under 16 years of Democratic Presidents would be reversed. The flip side of the poverty equation is this. The HEROES Act passed by Pelosi's House and blocked by Republicans in the Senate could lower Black poverty to 10 % by one estimate. That would truly be a historic low. That would have involved continuing the $600 a week benefit through December, a second round of stimulus checks, and increases in the SNAP (food assistance) programs. If President Toxic's Republicans really wanted to brag about lowering Black (and Hispanic and White) poverty, they should have been supporting this - not killing it. My point is that I think part of the change in the American heart is that people understand the links between poverty, crime, and success more than ever before. Sen. Scott was never a criminal. But he talked about how his Grandfather never learned to read and write, and he himself was a failure in school at one point. I feel I was ignorant about this as well. Meaning I didn't know how open-minded and open-hearted Whites, especially college-educate Whites, would be. Black conservatives and ex-cops like the one I started this thread with describe many of the Black men and women killed by cops as "the criminal of the criminals". Or, in a word, "thugs". That gives any White who wants one a "get out racism free" card. And if we're talking about policing, it's baked into the cake that we won't be talking about the La David Johnsons of America - the Black Army Sgt. who was killed by Islamic militants in Niger in 2017. We'll be talking about Blacks who have likely had some association with criminals, and a police record. They are perfect candidates for the game of "Whack A Black". No matter what they do, there will always be a reason to justify why the use of deadly force was appropriate - after the fact. Black conservatives will say they just don't get why so many people want to wear t-shirts that, in their eyes, glorify "thugs". Last night, despite my better judgment, I looked at Daddy's "Racism is OK" website for the first time in months. There was a predictable argument from one of the predictable conservatives that goes like this: 1) If no one had called the cops because something bad was happening, they would not have arrived at the scene and shot Jacob Blake. 2) If Jacob Blake had obeyed them, they would not have shot him. That's all quite true, probably. It's also true that if all people were perfect, we could defund the police 100 %. Because there would be no crime, ever. Back on the Planet Earth, to me this is a recipe for empowering police to shoot and kill whoever they want. And it especially empowers Whack A Black thinking among aggressive and/or racist cops. By this standard, cops had complete justification to shoot and kill me several times in my life. Like when they responded to a call about a burglar in the house and I answered the door with a knife in my hand. It was actually a screwdriver, I owned the house, and I was preparing the floor for a handyman coming at 6 AM to lay carpet. But someone who thought I was a burglar called the cops. True, when they said "Put the knife down" I said, "Officer, it's a screwdriver, I'm working on a rental property, and I am bending over to put the screwdriver down." I did not seriously think the cops would shoot me. That right there may make me NOT BLACK. One way or the other, I don't buy the idea that any of this empowers a cop to shoot me, or Jacob Blake. The same predictable conservative on Daddy's "Racism Is OK" website argued exactly the opposite about the White vigilante who killed two protesters. By the same logic, if the vigilante hadn't driven to Wisconsin, he wouldn't have had to kill anyone. If he didn't have a gun, he wouldn't have to defend himself from people who who were upset that he had a gun. Or because he had already used the gun to shoot someone. But no. In a battle between a skateboard and an AR-15, obviously the White vigilante had no choice but to pull the trigger. The main difference between the two situations is that the cops actually do have to show up in situations like this. It's their job. And part of the job is that their lives are at risk, they are trained in the use of force, and it is expected that some people won't obey them. There is no similar justification for a 17 year old White vigilante carrying a gun around to defend whatever he thinks he is defending. It is not his job. So you have to feel really good about White vigilantes with guns to argue that he really needed to be doing what he was doing. Spending 30 minutes reading stuff like that reinforced that I have no need to get into such debates. What I need to do is send as much money as I can to Democrats, or volunteer, and definitely vote. Hopefully, we can throw President Toxic into the sewer he came from. And get serious about the huge problems facing us. Including income inequality and racial inequality, which are related to each other and to the violence.. The conservatives (especially the White ones) will always argue the cops and White vigilantes were right, the Black thugs were wrong, and that's that. In 1915, this thinking was immortalized in The Birth Of A Nation. The vigilantes were the KKK, and the thugs were any living Black, primarily in The South. This thinking worked fine in 1915. It does not appear to be working as well in 2020. So we're going to learn soon whether 2020 is a somewhat less racist remake, or something better and more just. If it's the latter, I think that's because most Americans know that racism is a real problem. And that dealing with it will necessitate serious initiatives about poverty, education, and economic empowerment. After I thought about it, it struck me that the Blacks who spoke at the RNC actually reinforced what Black Lives Matter and Democrats are saying about racism and the economy. This was not a gathering of Black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. One takeaway from several speakers is that success rests on being a good athlete, and being friends with Donald Trump. As Sen. Scott described, his is mostly a story of political empowerment, not economic empowerment. Understandably, he did not focus on how Republicans fought tooth and nail for decades against everything that made his political success possible. I thought it was very graceful and effective of him to simply speak about "the evolution of the Southern heart." But most of the Black cast of characters who spoke at the RNC, or who have defend President Toxic, are Black conservative athletes and entertainers. Jack Brewer. Herschel Walker. Diamond And Silk. Mike Tyson. Kanye West. (Is he a conservative? Or just a gadfly?) They represent a particular path to economic advancement for African Americans that starts with the phrase "exception to the rule". There is only one LeBron James. That brings us right back to where I started. I'm grateful Black athletic superstars like LeBron James are taking an unprecedented stand against racism. There's three specific things they add to this political debate, that I hope helps tip it toward success. First, they add a successful, powerful, and respected Black male voice. Again, with all due respect to the women who started Black Lives Matter and the women who run cities like Chicago and Atlanta, the outspoken Black athletes tend to be men. Many if not most of them came up from poor inner-city neighborhoods. So a small minority of Black conservatives or cops are saying these Black men being shot are "thugs". This activism puts the faces of Black men who are icons - not 'thugs" - in the front line of the effort. Second, if Sen. Scott is right and there has been "an evolution of the [American] heart", I think these athletes are speaking to that evolution. If all of them thought this was only about a small group of "thugs" who are "the criminal of the criminals" who get shot by cops, I just don't believe they'd be risking their jobs and reputations over it. Granted, if they lose some of their income over this they're still super rich. Just like when they started charities focused on issues like education and poverty, they were still super rich. What their actions say to me is they are bearing witness to the fact that, despite their success, systemic racism is a huge problem in America. To quote President Toxic, what have they got to lose? They actually have a lot of things to lose by speaking out. So I have to assume they are doing so because, unlike Trump, it's not just about money and power. They know what it was like to grow up around poverty and racism. It seems like the majority of America is on the same side as "thugs" like Jacob Blake, anyway. But it makes it easier when that means you are on the side of LeBron James, and very successful and respected Black men like him who have climbed the same ladder as Jack Brewer. Third, precisely because they are the exceptions to the rule who made it to the top, just like Sen. Scott they are excellent leaders to speak to what actually needs to be done. According to the NCAA, the odds of making it from high school athletics to the NCAA are under 10 % for almost all sports. For basketball, it's 3.5 %. The odds of going from NCAA to pro sports are about as low. For professional men's basketball, it's 1.2 % If I'm reading the NCAA numbers right, out of a pool of over 500,000 high school basketball players something like 50 of them ended up being drafted into major pro basketball every year. Meanwhile, that NCAA link says this: Black professional athletes probably have a particularly good idea of how challenging Black economic empowerment is precisely because they are among the success stories. I hope President Toxic loses, and Sen. Scott and Jaime Harrison make South Carolina the first US State to elect concurrent Black Senators, who happen to be members of different political parties. That would be a really good sign of progress and, to quote Scott again, "the evolution of the Southern heart". Then we can really start to get to work on moving forward. I'm grateful that LeBron James and his baskbetball buddies have put their heart into this. I think it is potentially going to make a big difference. And one final image, with all due respect to Sen. Scott. That's the image that I'll always remember from the 2020 Republican Convention. Not Tim Scott, not Jack Brewer, not even Ivanka or Melania. Right after President Toxic equated the Democratic push for "economic and racial justice" with tearing America down, the tv camera panned to some of the most powerful Cabinet members sitting in the front row. They are White, male, and very rich. So if you want to talk about who's got power in President Toxic's America, that's it. I don't see Jack Brewer in that crowd, or in the Cabinet. It did look at least somewhat different when President Toxic's favorite person to hate, Barack Obama, was in charge. We have a ways to go just to get back to where we were.