I was 19 years old in 1984 and Ronaldo Maximus was the first president I voted against. I admit that as a passionate young feminist, my vote was more for Gerri Ferraro than for Fritz Mondale, but there it is.
I live in Kansas and devoutly hope Laura Kelly will be retained as our governor, but if she's not it's a short trip to Missouri and legal weed. *sigh*
Roy’s take on the history is correct and I remember it all pretty much the same way, but I’ll be a modified Pollyanna and sound a slightly more hopeful note.
First, expect GOP whining to commence in 3...2…1 and I am SO here for it. Turns out, when you don’t offer any real solutions to the nation’s problems and your policy positions boil down to “I am going to fuck you over in every way imaginable, demand that you like it, and scream bloody murder if you don’t,” it is not the kind of winning message that leads to a wave victory.
I won’t make any grand pronouncements about What It All Means, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that nationwide, on balance, normies do not like election deniers, do not like that SCOTUS overturned Roe, and are put off by the rabid anti-trans obsession on the Right.
I also think it’s safe to say that conservatives have a FAR greater young voter problem than they realize, not just in sentiment but in the fact that these young people actually came out to vote in such large numbers, and in a *non-Presidential* election. Voting is a habit: you do it, you see you have an impact, and then you continue to do it. Obviously, in 2024 some of the people over 75 years old who voted R will either be gone or no longer able to vote, and they will be replaced by young people who were 16 or 17 years old on 11/8/22. A hopeful sign.
I sort of agree, especially about "normies." The Republican adoption of edgelord behavior has been a bad thing for them. Ironically Democrats have suffered from those voters' tendency toward the middle of the road many times, but now the shoe is on the other foot.
I agree it is on the other foot. Americans are addicted to entertainment, but just because many non-political people look at a rightwing edgelord and think "ha ha, he's kind of a funny guy" when it comes time to vote most of them don't actually want their elected representatives to be nutters.
The header on the New York Times email that they insist on sending me every day( forcing me to say" haha no fuck" you)was all about the "Red Wave that didn't materialize."
That was pretty satisfying. You know they had to pull that out of their ass at the last minute. I didn't read it( because haha no fuck you )
Yeah...I anticipated an outcome kinda like what has been got to us, and I've been wondering awhile now about the polling 'business'. Like, what do you have to say for yourselves? Why we pay you? We coulda bought a metric ton of Powerball tix for what we spent on you clowns...
Ah, polling... there's sketchiness at the core of the business to begin with and it's only gotten worse over time.
And then there was that Times poll that they used as a basis for a coming Dem disaster story -- except the referenced polls actually said the opposite. But they're great for lazy reporting, maybe scaring voters into, you know, voting and voting responsibly.
I feel obligated to speak up for the noble art of statistics, when you do a survey and it comes back 49-49, then the honest answer is "fuck if I know", and a lot of pollsters did actually say that, but reporters always want to turn "Johnson leads by 1 point" into "Johnson surges!". I get tired of explaining the concept of "Margin of Error" and I get paid to do it, I can imagine a lot of pollsters just give up and put the numbers out knowing they'll be misrepresented.
My dream is a statisticians strike, where every pollster takes any poll where the difference is within the margin of error and replaces it with the words, "We fail to reject the null hypothesis." Let's see some hack political reporter misrepresent THAT.
Oh, how I would LOVE to see the grifters decide that this particular grift isn't going to play and move on to something else. People like Kari Lake are like that, if you won't buy the aluminum siding they've got some acreage in Florida you might like, whatever.
Nothing's going to be done about the GOP SCOTUS junta.
The election of the GOP POTUS candidate in 2024 is essentially ensured.
Congress has been something of a ~50/50 split forever so who knows what happens in 2024 but given the White House and SCOTUS controlled by the GOP, specially if SCOTUS gifts the Republican POTUS with the powers of the unitary executive, Congress' control won't matter all that much.
Focusing on the shiny flakes of gold is a distraction. Ditto focusing on the federal state. It's the wrong battleground, focus has to move to the state and local levels.
BTW: A shit ton of election deniers got elected, so...? And odds are a shit ton of normies chose not to show their distaste of election deniers by just not voting.
I’m with you. At best the Red Tide of Fascism has been slowed, not stopped. It’s as if the Israelites, standing on the far shore of the Red Sea, said to Moses, “Well, Pharaoh’s army didn’t drown, but that mud will slow them down.”
As I’ve at least hinted, the federal level’s essentially lost, time to focus on state and local levels politically as well as just acting locally. Do good and, as a result, maybe change enough minds. A byproduct of that is the fascism of the federal state gets to matter less.
An interesting question, mostly hidden in the fog of propaganda and BS in reporting on Ukraine, is how much our decline is really harming foreign policy. Hard to see but I wonder.
I'm not giving up on anything. And you just reminded me of another reason to celebrate: the odds that we'll abandon the Ukrainian people just decreased dramatically.
As for Ukraine, I doubt abandonment was ever going to happen but let's say the road ahead will be bumpier if the GOP gets control of the House. Of course, the House is up in the air at the moment. If the Dems stay in control, there'll be no change.
Nope, I'm still bummed. Incidentally, which Founding Father is responsible for the patchwork of election laws that we are inexplicably proud of despite it ultimately undermining our actual democracy?
The only reason the destruction of our nation doesn't keep me awake at night is I figure it will stop mattering pretty quick because of global warming.
I'm not giving up because there are good deaths and bad deaths and the details are actual suffering people. But I'm not what you would call optimistic. How's that for Eeyore? Eeyore was a depressed donkey, just like the rest of us democrats.
Not at all saying to give up, just shift the battlegrounds. I'm getting bored going over how fucked the federal level and how worse SCOTUS will be making it.
But of course giving up is not an acceptable option.
The good news here in Michigan was that not only did the Democratic incumbents Whitmer, Nessel, and Benson retain their positions, but it looks like we may have flipped the state legislature to blue. This was unexpected. I am attributing this to Proposal 3 (abortion rights codified in the state Constitution) energizing independents as well as the base. Josh Marshall was right (as if it wasn't obvious enough) - the Dems should've emphasized abortion rights nationally.
"the federal level’s essentially lost, time to focus on state and local levels"
Sorry, but this seems exactly backwards for my state. State districts are so rigged that the Republicans were closing in on a super-majority in the legislature even without winning a majority of the votes (they didn't reach their goal, thank God.) I'm much more likely to see Dem majorities in the U.S. House and Senate than I am to ever see the Dems flip the Wisconsin legislature in my lifetime.
It might be fighting the last war, I dunno. But once they had the Supreme Court, I think it was over at the federal level, mostly because they have always--always--valued power more than anything else. I'm not sure where to turn right now, and it may end up being rafts of communities isolated by laws.
Or, it might just be an emotionally defensive reaction to losing so much and wanting to hold your family closest. Yes, I just say my shrink.
If the Dems could ever muster the votes to codify Roe, I wonder how the Supremes would respond? OK, you said there's no right to abortion in the constitution, here it is in law, that OK with you now? I don't want to assume it wouldn't work, because that lets Congress off the hook. Congress should codify Roe as a challenge to the court*, and then we fight on that ground.
*Yeah, I know we don't got the votes, but compared with "Retake the Wisconsin Legislature" this goal seems almost within reach.
Okay, we still have a lot of work to do. But let us enjoy our hard-won victories for just a little while. Please. And as for "The election of the GOP POTUS candidate in 2024 is essentially ensured": it's way too soon to lose hope, Eeyore.
Electing judges to lifetime positions by popular vote is not a solution. But strike "to lifetime positions " and we might be a little better off no matter how we anoint them.
Ha! You failed to keep up with my vast, infinitely variable mind. You know, the one that read POTUS as SCOTUS.
Anyway, agreed with your actual assessment. But I retain the right to ridicule vox populare for judges as well. Some states do that and unless you got really careful voters you outta luck.
I think a good rule of thumb is, "If you were going to be seriously depressed when X happened, then you should allow yourself to be happy when the opposite of X happens."
Democrats in Michigan flipped both houses in the state legislature.
But my example is this: If I was going to be profoundly depressed with Tim Michels as Governor of Wisconsin, then I should let myself be happy at not-Tim-Michels as Governor of Wisconsin.
Yeah for the whining. Losers Whine. That is why I've endeavored never to do so, even under the direst.
Thing is, everyone loses daily. Even Elon and his various&sundry ilk. No really. He is a loser as a human being (LAAHB).
Money can't buy him outta that.
As for the youngs, the fascisti got a solution fer them. Downfunding public education and upfunding private indoctrination. Been goin' on for years ('Carson v. Makin' is just the culmination), and I see no solution horizon-ward. Agnostic money now goes to fund the worst of the deliberately stupifying 'schools' in the nation...could be worse, yes, but damn...
Something they said on the livestream last night - Dems may be waking up to the fact that "the midterms aren't recess" and sitting them out is A Bad Thing.
I think sitting out the midterms if your party held the White House used to be a bothsides thing, but Dems have been more successful of late in winning the WH so it's probably hurt them more. Anyway, with the conversion of politics to "Warfare by Other Means" we're probably never again going to see the voters of either party treat any election as one they can afford to sit out.
I raged in the general direction of outside California until I (almost) passed out. My message was simple: We've lived thru this dude and took the hit so you don't have to. Did it work? Well, like almost all my political prognostificationisms...HAH!
I keep asking myself what I did to deserve this garbage, but then remember Clint Eastwood's line from Unforgiven: "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."
I was a freshman in college looking to get away from my Pennsyltucky upraising, and was shocked when my dorm-mates watching the 1980 election were cheering Reagan. Naively, I was told college would be full of liberals, and I would no longer feel so all alone. I was heartbreakingly disappointed.
Tony Evers won ("Boring wins" was a line from his electrifying victory speech) and Mandela Barnes is still in it, although he likely won't win (he's behind by about 30 thousand votes, and there are about that many votes in Milwaukee still to be counted but he won't get 'em all.)
I don't think I have ever in my life been so excited at the prospect of the preservation of the status quo.
Had just started Law School and joined the NLG in 1980 so I had a sort of support group to fall back into, but things just continue on the same path it seems to me. The slope to self destruction seems a little less steep when the Democrats are in charge, but it is all down hill no matter who controls it seems to me.
I've been reading a lot of Chris Hedges recently, he strikes me a lot like one of the more depressing Old Testament Prophets. Unfortunately they were right for the time I suspect he is to.
For me the funny thing about Hedges is that he's nearly always correct but the tone just bums me out too much to read him too often. But like Roy today, there's a need to take a long view and get some historic perspective and stuff. I mean, how we got here has been in play since the 1950s, maybe even the 1930s, pretty much in the open were one to look. And the response has been, well, insufficient.
At least, probably more. Not to be cryptic but I look at other people with issues and they seem far more normal than I and it bewilders, if that makes sense.
A good election night: I watched Dragula, almost finished my most recent at-home karaoke video, drank some cough syrup & was asleep by 11. Woke up without the slightest interest in perusing the results. I heard the good news about PA & that's enough for me for now.
I got extremely stoned and fell asleep. Woke up to Tiffany Smiley and Herschel Walker, and that's as far into this cold, cold surf as I am wading today.
I woke at 2am out of a deep sleep to see the full(ish) moon beaming thru...I felt really peaceful and happily fell back asleep. Would be nice to feel that way more often...
It matters, politics matters, and I have lost friends, family, and dates by insisting. It limits what you can do. It limits all your less involved moments and choices. But it's a modifier, not a definition, and I am happiest at those moments when I know that.
Which is to say, I have seen my shrink today, I am high, and you have just given me a tool to cope with my chronic pain, thank you.
We didn't win but neither did we get our ass beat. Considering the 8% inflation, a president with low approval ratings, a whole host of billionaires each spending the equivalent of the GDP of a small South American country on Team Toejam Degenerates - we did pretty good. We have put off the Apocalypse for another couple years.
I think Matty, Marge and Gym
are going to wear out there welcome real quick. And it's looking like a Florida Death Match for theRepublican presidential nomination. Think of all the great REBID we're going to get out of all this!
Two great wastes of energy and loses of focus: Freaking out over the odious candidates Republicans love to nominate and focusing on the silver lining.
We didn't make progress Tuesday, it was a cumulative defeat. Serious long term problems that have been insufficiently addressed will be yet more left to fester.
The margin is really gonna matter if Republicans win the house. The craziest shit - like using the debt limit to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare - might fail with just a handful of Republican defectors.
But Clowns can always be trusted to put on a Clown Show, which I will pay zero attention to. And it will probably help Biden to have a do-nothing Republican Congress to run against.
So much of my ingrained cynicism got released reading this... All I'd add, although Roy touched on it, is to emphasize the MSM's clear love of, which is to say support for, Ronnie. The MSM is the clear thumb on the scale.
And what I've been pondering the last few days is this: Let's say the average person wants to be informed. Not knowing better, where do they go and what are they exposed to there? I mean, my sense is that wherever they go, they'd end up not actually knowing much, or worse. Is that just old fart craziness or am I in the ballpark of being correct?
Oh, fine; can't keep it in: If we have to go with absolute terms, the election was bad with worse to come after all the Bush v Gore-style litigations and other subverting. Also not good: Too many races were too close.
I'm actually surprised at how few Republican losers seem to be following the Trump model. Tim Michels, now famous for claiming "Republicans will never lose another election if you elect me" conceded before midnight. The only one I saw making Trumpy noises about "fraud" was Kari Lake.
I think it's just really hard to stand up in front of a crowd, knowing you lost, and say, "They stole it, I won!". It takes a real pro - and a real psycho - to lie at that level. Republican candidates lie like normal people breathe, but this is next-level lying that most of them just aren't up for.
22 in 1980, newspaper/Time magazine addict/aspiring rock drummer in Nova Scotia. I was convinced the bombs were almost on the way when Reagan was elected. They never came. Later, when the Wall came down and the USSR fell apart and I was in Uni and the MBAs were ascendant, I thought maybe I was wrong about it all. Reagan defeated communism! (Honestly, the only hate I've ever had for Russians was that for a few years they were better at hockey, because they played a Commie style!). Dark days. In a Classics Dept. at Uni I got sucked in for a while by bullshit like Allan Bloom and the concept of a "free market" and all that fucking jazz. Not really sure how or when exactly I snapped out of it, but wanting women to like me probably played some role; and my actual studies: Classics and Philosophy. (I've actually got a bit of free time from the drudgery of work this evening and tomorrow morning (Aristotelian "free time"!), so I can reflect on how fucking utterly grateful I am that I got to read and translate Homer, Plato, and Aristotle; I got to read and study Shakespeare; I learned about Ancient and Medieval history; I can tell you in a sentence or two about any of the great philosophies and religions of the world. I KNOW this stuff because I had a fucking LIBERAL education, and I know that is what conservatives DON'T want anyone to have. Critical Race Theory? Fuck, the words "critical (anything)" freak them out. You're right, Roy, their culture war is a war on culture. Anyway, sorry for the rambling, hope you guys do ok in the elections
Another thought. We were at a high point in US domestic policies after LBJ. Nixon really didn't care so much about domestic stuff so that wasn't not as damaged as it might have been after two terms of Nixon and Ford. And the interregnum of Carter. So with the start of Reagan we had a lot further to fall then we have now, so it would have taken a little longer.
Well, the War On Druggies is a counter-fact. Putting a big-ass chunk of one's political opponents in the pokey for 10 years is a pretty significant domestic policy.
I’m normally as cranky as the next fellow, but we here in Illinois had a very good night. Our governor swept aside the nutjob opposing him, my Congressman and neighboring reps won by more than expected, and a worker’s right amendment passed. I’ll enjoy these few moments before returning to my regularly scheduled mood.
Wasn't Illinois one of the states where the Dems ran attack ads in the Republican primary with the intention of boosting the crazy guy? Seems like it paid off, anyway.
It worked here too, though arguably Murray was just gilding the lily a bit. I still don't like it, for reasons practical and ethical, but okay. I'll stop complaining.
About the ethics of it, I'd feel differently if they were positive ads, the fact that they were all "This guy's a nut and an extremist", exactly the same thing the Dems would be saying in the general election just a few months early makes a difference for me, but maybe I'm just excuse-making and splitting hairs.
Yes - Pritzker bankrolled ads bashing Richard Irvin, the preferred candidate of the evil Ken Griffin, in order to put Darren Miller over, who was easily dispatched. Griffin fled in a huff to Florida after the primary, so look out for him getting behind DeSantis.
I remember the Reagan Recession. So many of our patients lost their jobs and health insurance, we had to dissolve our little family practice and move away. The harm to me was minimal compared to my patients but I was appalled when Reagan win re-election. His senile dementia was already apparent, even to my rock-ribbed Republican dad, but people voted for him anyway, including said dad. Racism and antisemitism were strong back then, as they are now, strong enough to put a halfwit actor in the White House for four more years. We’ll see about Trump - his toxicity outweighs his popularity so the results will depend on MAGATs in the state legislatures and secs of state offices.
And the foreclosures on farms were part of the recruiting ground the far right exploited to give us the militias of the 90s and the idiot culture of the 21st Century.
Every farmer that didn't go out of business has a combine in the barn that was paid for by selling soybeans to China, and yet they can't get enough of the "Hate China" nonsense. But I'm sure racism has nothing to with that.
I was 19 years old in 1984 and Ronaldo Maximus was the first president I voted against. I admit that as a passionate young feminist, my vote was more for Gerri Ferraro than for Fritz Mondale, but there it is.
I live in Kansas and devoutly hope Laura Kelly will be retained as our governor, but if she's not it's a short trip to Missouri and legal weed. *sigh*
Roy’s take on the history is correct and I remember it all pretty much the same way, but I’ll be a modified Pollyanna and sound a slightly more hopeful note.
First, expect GOP whining to commence in 3...2…1 and I am SO here for it. Turns out, when you don’t offer any real solutions to the nation’s problems and your policy positions boil down to “I am going to fuck you over in every way imaginable, demand that you like it, and scream bloody murder if you don’t,” it is not the kind of winning message that leads to a wave victory.
I won’t make any grand pronouncements about What It All Means, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that nationwide, on balance, normies do not like election deniers, do not like that SCOTUS overturned Roe, and are put off by the rabid anti-trans obsession on the Right.
I also think it’s safe to say that conservatives have a FAR greater young voter problem than they realize, not just in sentiment but in the fact that these young people actually came out to vote in such large numbers, and in a *non-Presidential* election. Voting is a habit: you do it, you see you have an impact, and then you continue to do it. Obviously, in 2024 some of the people over 75 years old who voted R will either be gone or no longer able to vote, and they will be replaced by young people who were 16 or 17 years old on 11/8/22. A hopeful sign.
I sort of agree, especially about "normies." The Republican adoption of edgelord behavior has been a bad thing for them. Ironically Democrats have suffered from those voters' tendency toward the middle of the road many times, but now the shoe is on the other foot.
I agree it is on the other foot. Americans are addicted to entertainment, but just because many non-political people look at a rightwing edgelord and think "ha ha, he's kind of a funny guy" when it comes time to vote most of them don't actually want their elected representatives to be nutters.
Totally agree, with the understanding that "most" is roughly 50.1%.
except in MAGA-Mind.
The header on the New York Times email that they insist on sending me every day( forcing me to say" haha no fuck" you)was all about the "Red Wave that didn't materialize."
That was pretty satisfying. You know they had to pull that out of their ass at the last minute. I didn't read it( because haha no fuck you )
Oh, just think of all the "Woke Democrats lost us the election" nonsense we'll be spared!
Good news for you: There's failings I can find, but I'm not going blame wokeness.
You can get those at Balloon Juice when talking about New York. The centrists there hate the left more than the hate Republicans
Always sucks when their scenario, so lovingly fabricated, fails to come true.
Yeah...I anticipated an outcome kinda like what has been got to us, and I've been wondering awhile now about the polling 'business'. Like, what do you have to say for yourselves? Why we pay you? We coulda bought a metric ton of Powerball tix for what we spent on you clowns...
Ah, polling... there's sketchiness at the core of the business to begin with and it's only gotten worse over time.
And then there was that Times poll that they used as a basis for a coming Dem disaster story -- except the referenced polls actually said the opposite. But they're great for lazy reporting, maybe scaring voters into, you know, voting and voting responsibly.
I feel obligated to speak up for the noble art of statistics, when you do a survey and it comes back 49-49, then the honest answer is "fuck if I know", and a lot of pollsters did actually say that, but reporters always want to turn "Johnson leads by 1 point" into "Johnson surges!". I get tired of explaining the concept of "Margin of Error" and I get paid to do it, I can imagine a lot of pollsters just give up and put the numbers out knowing they'll be misrepresented.
My dream is a statisticians strike, where every pollster takes any poll where the difference is within the margin of error and replaces it with the words, "We fail to reject the null hypothesis." Let's see some hack political reporter misrepresent THAT.
"normies do not like election deniers"
Oh, how I would LOVE to see the grifters decide that this particular grift isn't going to play and move on to something else. People like Kari Lake are like that, if you won't buy the aluminum siding they've got some acreage in Florida you might like, whatever.
Nothing's going to be done about the GOP SCOTUS junta.
The election of the GOP POTUS candidate in 2024 is essentially ensured.
Congress has been something of a ~50/50 split forever so who knows what happens in 2024 but given the White House and SCOTUS controlled by the GOP, specially if SCOTUS gifts the Republican POTUS with the powers of the unitary executive, Congress' control won't matter all that much.
Focusing on the shiny flakes of gold is a distraction. Ditto focusing on the federal state. It's the wrong battleground, focus has to move to the state and local levels.
BTW: A shit ton of election deniers got elected, so...? And odds are a shit ton of normies chose not to show their distaste of election deniers by just not voting.
I’m with you. At best the Red Tide of Fascism has been slowed, not stopped. It’s as if the Israelites, standing on the far shore of the Red Sea, said to Moses, “Well, Pharaoh’s army didn’t drown, but that mud will slow them down.”
As I’ve at least hinted, the federal level’s essentially lost, time to focus on state and local levels politically as well as just acting locally. Do good and, as a result, maybe change enough minds. A byproduct of that is the fascism of the federal state gets to matter less.
An interesting question, mostly hidden in the fog of propaganda and BS in reporting on Ukraine, is how much our decline is really harming foreign policy. Hard to see but I wonder.
I'm not giving up on anything. And you just reminded me of another reason to celebrate: the odds that we'll abandon the Ukrainian people just decreased dramatically.
With time, I'm less bummed than I was.
As for Ukraine, I doubt abandonment was ever going to happen but let's say the road ahead will be bumpier if the GOP gets control of the House. Of course, the House is up in the air at the moment. If the Dems stay in control, there'll be no change.
Nope, I'm still bummed. Incidentally, which Founding Father is responsible for the patchwork of election laws that we are inexplicably proud of despite it ultimately undermining our actual democracy?
The only reason the destruction of our nation doesn't keep me awake at night is I figure it will stop mattering pretty quick because of global warming.
I'm not giving up because there are good deaths and bad deaths and the details are actual suffering people. But I'm not what you would call optimistic. How's that for Eeyore? Eeyore was a depressed donkey, just like the rest of us democrats.
Not at all saying to give up, just shift the battlegrounds. I'm getting bored going over how fucked the federal level and how worse SCOTUS will be making it.
But of course giving up is not an acceptable option.
The good news here in Michigan was that not only did the Democratic incumbents Whitmer, Nessel, and Benson retain their positions, but it looks like we may have flipped the state legislature to blue. This was unexpected. I am attributing this to Proposal 3 (abortion rights codified in the state Constitution) energizing independents as well as the base. Josh Marshall was right (as if it wasn't obvious enough) - the Dems should've emphasized abortion rights nationally.
"the federal level’s essentially lost, time to focus on state and local levels"
Sorry, but this seems exactly backwards for my state. State districts are so rigged that the Republicans were closing in on a super-majority in the legislature even without winning a majority of the votes (they didn't reach their goal, thank God.) I'm much more likely to see Dem majorities in the U.S. House and Senate than I am to ever see the Dems flip the Wisconsin legislature in my lifetime.
It might be fighting the last war, I dunno. But once they had the Supreme Court, I think it was over at the federal level, mostly because they have always--always--valued power more than anything else. I'm not sure where to turn right now, and it may end up being rafts of communities isolated by laws.
Or, it might just be an emotionally defensive reaction to losing so much and wanting to hold your family closest. Yes, I just say my shrink.
If the Dems could ever muster the votes to codify Roe, I wonder how the Supremes would respond? OK, you said there's no right to abortion in the constitution, here it is in law, that OK with you now? I don't want to assume it wouldn't work, because that lets Congress off the hook. Congress should codify Roe as a challenge to the court*, and then we fight on that ground.
*Yeah, I know we don't got the votes, but compared with "Retake the Wisconsin Legislature" this goal seems almost within reach.
Okay, we still have a lot of work to do. But let us enjoy our hard-won victories for just a little while. Please. And as for "The election of the GOP POTUS candidate in 2024 is essentially ensured": it's way too soon to lose hope, Eeyore.
The lock on 2024 is due to the lack of a popular vote for POTUS. The system has institutional headwinds.
Electing judges to lifetime positions by popular vote is not a solution. But strike "to lifetime positions " and we might be a little better off no matter how we anoint them.
Where did electing judges come from? You lost me.
Ha! You failed to keep up with my vast, infinitely variable mind. You know, the one that read POTUS as SCOTUS.
Anyway, agreed with your actual assessment. But I retain the right to ridicule vox populare for judges as well. Some states do that and unless you got really careful voters you outta luck.
And yet, Democrats keeps getting elected to the White House, despite the institutional headwinds.
Just for the record, the news is slightly better than what I woke up to.
I have no broad idea of what happened on the state level below governor races.
I might willing to agree that we did as well as possible. That said, got to hold off on it because there's still way too much undecided.
But yeah, maybe to a day to take a deep breath is needed and earned and then go gird our loins again.
I think a good rule of thumb is, "If you were going to be seriously depressed when X happened, then you should allow yourself to be happy when the opposite of X happens."
Doesn’t quite look like that happened.
Dems were supposed to take a huge hit and instead likely took a smaller one.
What I can’t manage to find is whether there were any pick ups on the state level.
Democrats in Michigan flipped both houses in the state legislature.
But my example is this: If I was going to be profoundly depressed with Tim Michels as Governor of Wisconsin, then I should let myself be happy at not-Tim-Michels as Governor of Wisconsin.
Eeyores when Democrats mostly lose: This sucks.
Eeyores when Democrats mostly win: This sucks slightly less.
Yeah for the whining. Losers Whine. That is why I've endeavored never to do so, even under the direst.
Thing is, everyone loses daily. Even Elon and his various&sundry ilk. No really. He is a loser as a human being (LAAHB).
Money can't buy him outta that.
As for the youngs, the fascisti got a solution fer them. Downfunding public education and upfunding private indoctrination. Been goin' on for years ('Carson v. Makin' is just the culmination), and I see no solution horizon-ward. Agnostic money now goes to fund the worst of the deliberately stupifying 'schools' in the nation...could be worse, yes, but damn...
Something they said on the livestream last night - Dems may be waking up to the fact that "the midterms aren't recess" and sitting them out is A Bad Thing.
Man, the things you see if you live long enough.
I think sitting out the midterms if your party held the White House used to be a bothsides thing, but Dems have been more successful of late in winning the WH so it's probably hurt them more. Anyway, with the conversion of politics to "Warfare by Other Means" we're probably never again going to see the voters of either party treat any election as one they can afford to sit out.
I moved from CA to MA in 1979 and told people there was no way Reagan could become president, he was way too extreme.
Sigh.
I raged in the general direction of outside California until I (almost) passed out. My message was simple: We've lived thru this dude and took the hit so you don't have to. Did it work? Well, like almost all my political prognostificationisms...HAH!
I dunno Roy, I think you’re absolutely a goddamn ray of sunshine!
IKR? Having survived Reagan definitely helped to put Trump in perspective, because "awful + popular" is SO much worse than "awful + unpopular"
I keep asking myself what I did to deserve this garbage, but then remember Clint Eastwood's line from Unforgiven: "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."
I'd forgotten that one, because I always remember the other side of that coin:
"We *all* have it coming, kid."
“The good ended happily, the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
I was a freshman in college looking to get away from my Pennsyltucky upraising, and was shocked when my dorm-mates watching the 1980 election were cheering Reagan. Naively, I was told college would be full of liberals, and I would no longer feel so all alone. I was heartbreakingly disappointed.
Tony Evers won ("Boring wins" was a line from his electrifying victory speech) and Mandela Barnes is still in it, although he likely won't win (he's behind by about 30 thousand votes, and there are about that many votes in Milwaukee still to be counted but he won't get 'em all.)
I don't think I have ever in my life been so excited at the prospect of the preservation of the status quo.
"What do we want?"
"Something pretty much like what we've got now would be OK, I guess!"
"And when do we want it?"
"By the end of the week would be fine, no hurry!"
Had just started Law School and joined the NLG in 1980 so I had a sort of support group to fall back into, but things just continue on the same path it seems to me. The slope to self destruction seems a little less steep when the Democrats are in charge, but it is all down hill no matter who controls it seems to me.
I've been reading a lot of Chris Hedges recently, he strikes me a lot like one of the more depressing Old Testament Prophets. Unfortunately they were right for the time I suspect he is to.
For me the funny thing about Hedges is that he's nearly always correct but the tone just bums me out too much to read him too often. But like Roy today, there's a need to take a long view and get some historic perspective and stuff. I mean, how we got here has been in play since the 1950s, maybe even the 1930s, pretty much in the open were one to look. And the response has been, well, insufficient.
You're capable of getting bummed out? Miracles do happen!
Being bummed out is my nature. Don't need to have it triggered.
I've gathered that. I seriously wonder if you might be clinically depressed. I wish you all the best.
I myself have been depressed all my adult life and I've decided that it isn't really me, it is just being aware of the world around you.
At least, probably more. Not to be cryptic but I look at other people with issues and they seem far more normal than I and it bewilders, if that makes sense.
A good election night: I watched Dragula, almost finished my most recent at-home karaoke video, drank some cough syrup & was asleep by 11. Woke up without the slightest interest in perusing the results. I heard the good news about PA & that's enough for me for now.
I got extremely stoned and fell asleep. Woke up to Tiffany Smiley and Herschel Walker, and that's as far into this cold, cold surf as I am wading today.
I woke at 2am out of a deep sleep to see the full(ish) moon beaming thru...I felt really peaceful and happily fell back asleep. Would be nice to feel that way more often...
Wistful. It's what I do.
It matters, politics matters, and I have lost friends, family, and dates by insisting. It limits what you can do. It limits all your less involved moments and choices. But it's a modifier, not a definition, and I am happiest at those moments when I know that.
Which is to say, I have seen my shrink today, I am high, and you have just given me a tool to cope with my chronic pain, thank you.
Glad to be of service.
Herschel--despite the gerrymandered ministrations of the SOS--is going to have to go to a runoff in December, which is no guarantee.
Yeah. Like I said, there was not a lot of money on Smiley, but shit this silver lining is cold.
We didn't win but neither did we get our ass beat. Considering the 8% inflation, a president with low approval ratings, a whole host of billionaires each spending the equivalent of the GDP of a small South American country on Team Toejam Degenerates - we did pretty good. We have put off the Apocalypse for another couple years.
I think Matty, Marge and Gym
are going to wear out there welcome real quick. And it's looking like a Florida Death Match for theRepublican presidential nomination. Think of all the great REBID we're going to get out of all this!
Two great wastes of energy and loses of focus: Freaking out over the odious candidates Republicans love to nominate and focusing on the silver lining.
We didn't make progress Tuesday, it was a cumulative defeat. Serious long term problems that have been insufficiently addressed will be yet more left to fester.
Which problems?
Climate change and the sub-issues that prevent meaningful action.
SCOTUS.
Preventing election rigging and subverting (although the Roberts Court has mostly blocked that).
Monopolies and the inflationary effects of that -- won't resolve all of inflation, obviously, and the administration is taking some actions.
Given time, more will come to mind but them's a start.
I'm really happy we got some climate-change legislation locked in before we lost the House.
It all goes back to campaign financing. And Jesus, I feel old. What a mess we've made of the place, Miss Ivins.
Please try not to confuse "pointing and laughing" with "freaking out."
The margin is really gonna matter if Republicans win the house. The craziest shit - like using the debt limit to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare - might fail with just a handful of Republican defectors.
But Clowns can always be trusted to put on a Clown Show, which I will pay zero attention to. And it will probably help Biden to have a do-nothing Republican Congress to run against.
And Marge's bestie Lauren won't be there when she returns!
No fair! There was won ton fraud!
So much of my ingrained cynicism got released reading this... All I'd add, although Roy touched on it, is to emphasize the MSM's clear love of, which is to say support for, Ronnie. The MSM is the clear thumb on the scale.
And what I've been pondering the last few days is this: Let's say the average person wants to be informed. Not knowing better, where do they go and what are they exposed to there? I mean, my sense is that wherever they go, they'd end up not actually knowing much, or worse. Is that just old fart craziness or am I in the ballpark of being correct?
Oh, fine; can't keep it in: If we have to go with absolute terms, the election was bad with worse to come after all the Bush v Gore-style litigations and other subverting. Also not good: Too many races were too close.
I'm actually surprised at how few Republican losers seem to be following the Trump model. Tim Michels, now famous for claiming "Republicans will never lose another election if you elect me" conceded before midnight. The only one I saw making Trumpy noises about "fraud" was Kari Lake.
Maybe they believe the MSM buzz that being too close to Donnie didn’t help in a general election. And then there’s Ron DeathSantis’ huge W.
Of course, looks like it’s still possible that the Rs get Congress…
I think it's just really hard to stand up in front of a crowd, knowing you lost, and say, "They stole it, I won!". It takes a real pro - and a real psycho - to lie at that level. Republican candidates lie like normal people breathe, but this is next-level lying that most of them just aren't up for.
22 in 1980, newspaper/Time magazine addict/aspiring rock drummer in Nova Scotia. I was convinced the bombs were almost on the way when Reagan was elected. They never came. Later, when the Wall came down and the USSR fell apart and I was in Uni and the MBAs were ascendant, I thought maybe I was wrong about it all. Reagan defeated communism! (Honestly, the only hate I've ever had for Russians was that for a few years they were better at hockey, because they played a Commie style!). Dark days. In a Classics Dept. at Uni I got sucked in for a while by bullshit like Allan Bloom and the concept of a "free market" and all that fucking jazz. Not really sure how or when exactly I snapped out of it, but wanting women to like me probably played some role; and my actual studies: Classics and Philosophy. (I've actually got a bit of free time from the drudgery of work this evening and tomorrow morning (Aristotelian "free time"!), so I can reflect on how fucking utterly grateful I am that I got to read and translate Homer, Plato, and Aristotle; I got to read and study Shakespeare; I learned about Ancient and Medieval history; I can tell you in a sentence or two about any of the great philosophies and religions of the world. I KNOW this stuff because I had a fucking LIBERAL education, and I know that is what conservatives DON'T want anyone to have. Critical Race Theory? Fuck, the words "critical (anything)" freak them out. You're right, Roy, their culture war is a war on culture. Anyway, sorry for the rambling, hope you guys do ok in the elections
Speaking as someone about Roy's age, this is correct to the last punctuation mark.
Period.
Another thought. We were at a high point in US domestic policies after LBJ. Nixon really didn't care so much about domestic stuff so that wasn't not as damaged as it might have been after two terms of Nixon and Ford. And the interregnum of Carter. So with the start of Reagan we had a lot further to fall then we have now, so it would have taken a little longer.
Well, the War On Druggies is a counter-fact. Putting a big-ass chunk of one's political opponents in the pokey for 10 years is a pretty significant domestic policy.
Yeah, but look at where all the Democrats were at that time too.
The DNC has paid for our own rope for a very long time.
I’m normally as cranky as the next fellow, but we here in Illinois had a very good night. Our governor swept aside the nutjob opposing him, my Congressman and neighboring reps won by more than expected, and a worker’s right amendment passed. I’ll enjoy these few moments before returning to my regularly scheduled mood.
Wasn't Illinois one of the states where the Dems ran attack ads in the Republican primary with the intention of boosting the crazy guy? Seems like it paid off, anyway.
It worked here too, though arguably Murray was just gilding the lily a bit. I still don't like it, for reasons practical and ethical, but okay. I'll stop complaining.
About the ethics of it, I'd feel differently if they were positive ads, the fact that they were all "This guy's a nut and an extremist", exactly the same thing the Dems would be saying in the general election just a few months early makes a difference for me, but maybe I'm just excuse-making and splitting hairs.
Yes - Pritzker bankrolled ads bashing Richard Irvin, the preferred candidate of the evil Ken Griffin, in order to put Darren Miller over, who was easily dispatched. Griffin fled in a huff to Florida after the primary, so look out for him getting behind DeSantis.
I remember the Reagan Recession. So many of our patients lost their jobs and health insurance, we had to dissolve our little family practice and move away. The harm to me was minimal compared to my patients but I was appalled when Reagan win re-election. His senile dementia was already apparent, even to my rock-ribbed Republican dad, but people voted for him anyway, including said dad. Racism and antisemitism were strong back then, as they are now, strong enough to put a halfwit actor in the White House for four more years. We’ll see about Trump - his toxicity outweighs his popularity so the results will depend on MAGATs in the state legislatures and secs of state offices.
“Save the farm; export Reagan!”
Wait. If we do that, where we gonna get all our fertilizer??!!
And the foreclosures on farms were part of the recruiting ground the far right exploited to give us the militias of the 90s and the idiot culture of the 21st Century.
Every farmer that didn't go out of business has a combine in the barn that was paid for by selling soybeans to China, and yet they can't get enough of the "Hate China" nonsense. But I'm sure racism has nothing to with that.