As has been pointed out elsewhere, breaking from Trump seems to involve choosing DeSantis, a cleaner version (but with less personality) of Trump who gives all the same policies of punching down and hurting the "other" groups. No one ever suggests someone like Larry Hogan (popular blue state Republican governor) or Glenn Youngkin (business leader who flipped the governor's residence from blue to red) as the future of the GOP. No, it's gotta be guys like DeSantis who waste tax payer money to fly immigrants to New England to own the libs/Mexicans/women/anyone.
Youngkin may look good in comparison, but his victory seemed to be assurred by going as whole-hog on the GOP's favored "anti-woke" nonsense. I guess he's been relatively quiet since tho...
His winning was partially because the Repubs decided not to hold a primary, so Glenn was a bit of a tabulah rasa. Also, McAuliffe made some mistakes that the press pushed to Youngkin's advantage
There's a fight on now for RNC chair, with Ronna McDaniels under attack because she hasn't been Trumpy enough, they say. Republican-style conservatism didn't fail in the midterms, it WAS failed (thanks a lot, Ronna!) so double down and full speed ahead with your new RNC chair, Mike Lindell!
Everyone, including the governors themselves, have taken Swerer's dictum that the cruelty is the point to heart as the way to pry the base away from Trump. This misses why the base is so attached to Trump. When they hear Trump, they hear themselves, they hear their resentment and fear validated by the guy on TV. The cruelty is nice, but not bonding. The media will never figure this out no matter how many Cletus Safaris they equip, because they can't get past the sheer irrationality of bonding with a dumpster fire like Trump. One of the nice guy Republicans might, but alpha males like DeSantis and Abbott (the women may have different pathologies, but the end is the same) are too high on the thrill of being rewarded for being a public bully.
Also, too (and imagine Trump's chortling incredulity when this happened): the god botherers jumped on his ark pretty early, 'cause their overlords told them El Retorno Segundo is upon us. This is actually really under-reported, because the press mostly doesn't believe the mooks, or they don't care about the weird religiosity. But for those truly believerers this IS their best interest. Sure they'd like more money, sure they'd like that money at the expense of All The Others, and maybe they care about the health and well being of their various kiths and sundry kins (altho maybe no, 'cause '"god's will").
But OH do they wanna shoot up in the sky by and indeed by.
Yeah, the core tenet of the base is "everything is going to hell and nobody is doing anything about it", and that fits like a dovetail joint into the End Times and Return of the King (the OG, not Aragon son of Arathorn). No wonder they see Trump as a prophet if not the Savior ("I alone can fix it", remember? I really think those 2 formal speeches of Trump are the Rosetta Stone of understanding his bond with the base).
While I’m a big fan of the Leopards Eating Faces joke, I’m going to go with a different feline analogy: with Trump and Trumpism, the GOP establishment tried to ride a tiger, and the results were predictable. I think J6 was the first inkling they had that the tiger had thrown them off its back, and the 2022 midterms were the first time they realized the tiger had rounded on them and was charging.
The fact that the few actual policies they do have are unpopular leaves them with the undesirable option of doubling and tripling down on the culture war lunacy to try to deflect attention away from those policies. I agree that in any sane country the GOP and the political philosophy of conservatism itself should be dead in the water. But I’m not ready to count the GOP out, like the ghouls they are they have a talent for rising from the dead.
And yet the base learned nothing from 1/6 considering the candidates they chose in primaries. May they never learn -- and (🤞🏻) I doubt they will. They've been revelling in bullshit for decades.
Absolutely. The base is enraged their time in the sun was so brief, that the Libs robbed them of their God King before he could wreak all the devastation on their enemies they had hoped for. Like Derelict points out in the comments to this post, the base votes in GOP primaries, picks the candidates THEY want, and will keep the three ring circus of hate and grievance going strong for the foreseeable future.
America, where you can be whatever you claim to be! Anyway, this explanation of modern Republicans is correct, as is every other explanation (remember epistemic closure?) and all boil down to: they’re assholes. A black hole of bigotry, anger and ignorance pulls them through the event horizon, never to re-enter the universe of normality the rest of us inhabit. Think Trump is bad? There’s worse coming - e.g., DeSantos - or already here - Alito, Thomas. Roberts. These are Republicans actively imposing that bigotry and ignorance on the rest of us, out of their anger that society insists on progressing, or did until they took charge.
Because all Republican candidates for any office have to go through a primary process, the only possible outcome is for candidates in the general elections to become ever more lunatic. The people who vote in the primaries are the most devoted and fanatical--the Republican base. And they demand candidates as demented as they themselves are. Thus Kari Lake and Blake Masters, Donald Trump and Ron Desantis.
Until there is some other candidate sorting mechanism, the GOP will continue to spiral into abject insanity. No candidate can lean toward any imagined center because all candidates can be successfully challenged from their Right.
I'd like to think that if DeSantis actually runs, once he gets on the national stage the vast majority of the country will recoil in disgust. "Owning the libs" barely worked for Trump in 2016 and that's basically all that DeSantis brings to the table (not to mention that he has all the charisma of a rotten potato). But then I look at a pathological liar like Santos and the ineptitude of the Democrats in running against him and, well...
I have wondered where the Democrats were, but also where the MSM was in that none of this stuff came out about Santos until after the election. In my (slightly) more paranoid moments I have my suspicions, but they can't be right, can they?
Read: "no one clicked enough for us to pay attention."
I can't wait to see the soul-searching introspection that this WaPo story will engender amongst the prestige media... Oh that's right! Who am I talking about here?
My dream (I have a dream!) is NOT that Roy gets a gig writing opinions for one of the Grandly Elegant, Tough, Serious, Truly Unassailable, Fact-Fungible Effete Deciders. No. My dream (even after that sentence!) is that Roy gets a lifetime hire as the EDITOR of the opinion page of same. Because I don't want just another voice opining in the slightly-elevated wilderness – I want to OWN the wilderness!
Which does take us back to my original question, where was the MSM? Actually, let's face it, if the guy had been a Democrat the MSM would have been all over it.
And I say that as someone who has nearly total contempt for the Democratic Party. It is still seen as sort of kind of icky and dangerously leftist for some reason as far as the MSM is concerned, so they must keep it on a short leash.
The WaPo story touches on this, but the bottom line is that the classic media ecosystem that once allowed stories sourced at the local level tho rise up to the appropriate level of prominence has been largely driven into extinction. Local rags like the North Shore Reader were once ubiquitous; now they are vanishingly rare. Heck,.the Reader only exists as basically a vanity project for its publisher, it doesn’t even pay enough for full time staff. Meanwhile the larger news industry has mostly been gutted, financialized and transformed into content mills. Missing the Santos thing until well after the polls closed was a failure, no doubt, but it’s also a bit like blaming the watchdog that’s been starved and left for dead for letting the burglar into the house.
Dec 30, 2022·edited Dec 30, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
You think you're disgusted now, imagine if it had all come out before the election and he had won anyway. Because he'd surely play the "Librul Media is attackin' me!" card, and that would be enough to get Republican voters to look no further into the matter.
That's the genius of making the media the enemy, when you do something wrong, how do people find out about it? Through the MEDIA, of course! So it CAN'T be true!
"If you had communicated these facts to me using some means other than the hated media, well, then I might have listened to you! But no, you just had to use the media, didn't you, so fuck off!"
"It was like we needed some kind of medium in between us to allow the passing of information... hmmm... maybe more than one medium... What's the plural of medium again?" <scratches head>
Me, I'm happy with the level of mainstream discourse re the rise of rabid insanity amongst the GOP. It's enough to alienate and repel enough independent voters, maybe even help get the Dem vote out. An interesting factoid, although I'm not sure how significant it is is that more independents now lean dem than GOP.
The Santos affair, at least at the moment, is supporting my claim re the importance of local offices. The only Republican action against Santos is Nassau County' Republican DA claim that they'll be investigating him.
And speak of waves and Santos, the Dems were supposed to keep the House majority in theory, but the DNC and DCCC worked to ensure it not happening:
I love of course the WA3 victory which, had the DCCC its way, wouldn't have happened but would have stayed red.
Add seats where no Democrat ran -- that is, conceded -- and here we are with a GOP House majority.
As for beloved Tulsi, not sure that there's any significance or importance to her reaming Santos. Reaming him when it's going to result in nothing more than making her and Fox look all mavericky is nothing.
Meanwhile, I must give all due praise to Greta Thunberg for making small dick energy a thing a thing and to Musk enabling Tate's bust by allowing him back on Twitter:
Don't want to come off as some kind of apologist for the DCCC, but about this business of "seats where no Democrat ran -- that is, conceded" it's HARD to get people to run for office when they stand almost no chance of winning. I believe the Dems ran candidates in every Congressional seat in Wisconsin, and the ones I heard from seemed like good matches to the district (local small-business owner, has kids in the public school, etc.) but none of these folks had a serious chance. You could say the DCCC should have poured more money into their races, and I won't disagree with that, but it's also the case that for most voters in rural Wisconsin the Dems are just "not for us" and "the party of Madison and Milwaukee", and what's the remedy for flat-out bigotry like that?
Dec 30, 2022·edited Dec 30, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
It’s hard to get people to run where there’s little chance of winning, but it’s impossible to win when you abandon the field. Plus, you demoralize the Democrats in that district and help bleed the party of members and support.
Who’s going to vote for a team who won’t bother to run a candidate? You take a fraction of the money wasted on shitbirds like Maloney, and you run a candidate in South Dakota, for example. No Dem ran, but the idiot nonentity Libertarian got 25% because people wanted *someone* to vote for other than the Republican.
But no, let the slot go vacant, mock the deplorable rubes in Flyover Country, and wonder why Dems continue to hemorrhage support in those districts. (Also, when people say that Repub House candidates got more votes than Dems, total, nationwide? Part of that is due to letting them run up the score by >250,000 votes *unopposed* in districts like SD.)
It's just that I've been in that position, trying to convince people to run for office when there's almost no hope of winning, and it all comes down to a personal decision by someone to upend their life for months, and for what? (And that's not even factoring in the death threats that seem to now just come with the territory.)
I don't know the situation well enough in all of these cases where the Dems didn't run candidates, but it might be the case that the local Dems did try to recruit, but couldn't find any takers.
Again, I don't want to be an apologist for the DCCC, and the national party could offer more support and money, but in the end it comes down to finding someone in the district who's willing to say "yes" when common sense (and maybe even a basic instinct for self-preservation) says "no."
And as campaigns -- even in small rural districts -- have become nastier and more personal, who wants to put their family through that? Your kids' normal adolescent foibles will be used to smear you.
Dec 30, 2022·edited Dec 30, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
I get it. I’m not cut out to run, though a college acquaintance ran for Governor, got smeared and lied about, and lost decisively (inexplicable, except that it was an off-year Primal Scream election for repubs whose team didn’t hold power nationally). SD regularly has statewide offices that the Dems don’t field a candidate for. I know it’s got to be incredibly difficult to recruit people to run. But what makes it literally impossible to find someone is when the national Dems give $0 support. Who’s willing to put in the time, take all that abuse, *and* bankrupt themselves in the process?
In 2016 the national Dems used the SD Democratic Party as a pass-through to funnel money to the presidential candidate, contributing nothing to the state Dems, and in fact leaving them with a $60k fine to pay because they did the paperwork improperly. They just write off areas like this and crap all over them while wasting ungodly amounts of cash elsewhere.
Absolutely, there should be a minimum amount given by the national party to the campaign of anyone willing to slap a "D" on their chest and run for state legislature, then we go up from there if they actually succeed in sparking some local interest.
And it's infuriating to hear national-level Dems saying, "Why should we spend a dollar there when we could spend it in a competitive race?" as if the phrase "diminishing returns" has never been heard before. Thanks to Act Blue, competitive candidates (and sometimes even non-competitive candidates) attract millions of dollars from all around the country and I can guarantee that million-and-first dollar spent isn't having that much effect when you've already saturated the airwaves with ads that the voters mostly ignore.
"But... but... with that dollar you want to waste on South Dakota, we could have sent ONE MORE POSTCARD to Steve's house, and sure, he's already in the database as donating to the campaign, but we can't be sure that means he'll actually vote, right? Better send him another postcard so he knows the candidate's name and what day the election is on!
Regarding the national party, Howard Dean had it right, and it was working, so of course they abandoned the 50 state strategy in favor of only supporting candidates in races they thought they could win. Then bigger elections roll around and Democrats lose counties 70-30 that if they had only lost 60-40 would have resulted in a presidential, senatorial or important statewide office victory. I live in a largely rural district and as far as I can see the Dems make zero effort to reach people they don't think will vote for them.
So yea, the national party deserves a lot for blame, but judging from my limited, local experience, I bet the county and district level Dems are pretty bad as well. Here in the heart of working class country, the Dem organization is more like a cross between a garden club and a country club and they have genuine and open contempt for the working class. It's little wonder that they get reamed every election by voters who based on their own interests should really be voting for them. Given a choice between better quality of life and sticking it to the snobs, human nature favors sticking it to the snobs.
Also, not insignificant here, local Dem party apparatus can become "party-boss" situations, i.e. nakedly corrupt, anti-labor, basically shit... Wouldn't what to step on those fellas' toes, would we?
And again: The DCCC should have done their job and bombed NY3 with a commercial about Santos’ lies. Start multiplying that and you have the Dems in the minority in the House of theDCCC’s failure to be minimally competent.
I had a commenter on LGM yesterday tell me that centrists don't vote for Republicans, which may be the single dumbest thing I have been told on the internet
There are some great commenters at LGM, followed by a huge swath of people who are desperate to prove they’re the Smartest Kid in Class, and then there’s the hardcore group where, if the world were literally ending, they’d use their dying strength to punch hippies.
That's weird, I'd think the argument would be "Centrists will DEFINITELY vote Republican if we don't meet their every policy wish and throw in a handjob besides!"
Haha, no. The current argument when people ask someone like the Transportation Secretary to do something about the airlines is “government can’t do anything about that, the Dems are powerless here, what do you want, a sparklepony?” Followed at election time by yelling at the voters to crawl across broken glass to vote for Team Powerless. Really inspiring stuff!
That’s what the piece I linked to said exactly. The post-DLC DNC’s primary goal is running centrists in it to enrich themselves and the DNC as part of that.
I knew #1 would be swell, and absolutely on target. I think one of Trump's biggest triumphs is that he continues to make the news, having done more than anyone to tabloidize all forms of trad media into willing and ravenous suckers for his ceaseless bunko ("I WILL HAVE A MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!"). Whether that continues who knows, but you need a German word to describe the next level Santos has taken moral Trumpitude. My favorite bit is Santos saying that it was only "a poor choice of words" that gave the impression that he graduated from Baruch College and once worked for Goldman Sachs, the poor choice of words being "I graduated from Baruch College" and "I worked for Goldman Sachs."
Embellishment is saying you got an MBA when you were one class shy of graduation. Claiming three different deaths for your mother is another thing entirely.
• "He was lying, of course" – "of course" needs highlighting, as it illuminates all the rest of it.
• "https://georgeforny.com/about/" is the web address for the screenshot at the top. So, does anyone know ANY truth about Forny/Santos? Because, when Roy says
• "Or look at George Santos. We normies see him as a buffoon, a pathological liar caught fatally overextending himself. But among MAGA people, he’s a guy who learned one of the big lessons of Donald Trump: That you not only don’t owe your enemies the truth — you don’t even owe them believability." – the only point I'd out is that Forny/Santos seems to think he does not even owe his SUPPORTERS the truth.
• "now they could have candidates who were proudly racist, openly contemptuous of their political opponents, and uninterested in such fancy-schmancy concepts as truth and statesmanship" –
Sure, my Congressional representative lied to me and I have no idea if he has the qualifications to do the job I voted for him to do, maybe he won't be able to do a thing to help me and the other folks in the district or to give us a voice on the federal level. But he OWNED the libs!
Dec 30, 2022·edited Dec 30, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Dunno about "it didn't have to happen", if the standard Republican formula of "low taxes, strong military, limited government, etc." was enough to win elections, wouldn't we now be in the sixth year of Prezdint Jeb?
MSNBC is full of NeverTrumpers, including the NeverTrumpiest of them all, Morning Joe, claiming all the Republicans need to do to win BIG is go back to the days of Reagan, like they don't really need all the Trumpy stuff to win. But they've lost big among women and among college-educated people generally (I'm waiting for "Jail the Docs!" to provoke a long-term shift of doctors away from the Republicans, just as creationism and climate denialism pushed the percentage of scientists who identify as Republican down into the low single digits.) What they gained in return were masses of low-propensity voters. White men who never went beyond high school had some of the lowest voter-turnout numbers in the country until Trump came along, and they could easily revert to apathy and disengagement if the Republicans don't keep Feeding the Beast.
I was thinking of how at least some Buddhists make a distinction between the Historical Buddha (an actual man whom archaeology might disprove or cause to disappoint) and the True Buddha who's exactly whom they need him to be. The Real Trump (as fictitious as The Real American) looks exactly like those superhero versions of him, and will the one be worshipped from now until Doomsday, whether that be any year now or several millennia hence. Ken Macleod, in "Newton's Wake", had an all-but–Space-Amish group living in the reaches of space called 'America Offline' who worship one 'Jesus Koresh'…well, I think if Red Ken wrote that one today, that name might be different.
Ultra-left, but sometimes has author sermons against smoking bans and gun control (born fighting?), and snarks on Greens in the earliest books. The "Fall Revolution" series contrasts right- and left-wing libertopias, and a moderate one in the final "The Sky Road".
His stuff is usually worth it. Save "The Execution Channel" for when you can take real unpleasantness, "Cosmonaut Keep" and the others in the "Engines of Light" series for when you need a much-smarter airport-novel family saga crossed with space-opera.The "Fall Revolution" books ("The Star Fraction" et seq.) are probably best for a start, though not as well-written. "Learning the World" is probably his sunniest book. (I know nothing about the "Corporation Wars" series save that he wrote them and "Dissidence" is in it.)
Gritted teeth warning: Macleod often has practical anti-aging/senescence treatments shewing-up c.2010; this felt hopeful in 1997….
Notion stolen from Cyril Kornbluth's Nazis-conquered-half-of-the-U.S. novella "Two Dooms" (1958?), speaker is talking in Year of the Party 200 or thereabouts: 'That tall, slim, blond man in the portrait? That's Hermann Göring, Founder of the Party!, of course—donʼt let The Stoppers hear you ask that!.'.
Not to Give Them Ideas, but I suppose by this point SOMEONE has done the inevitable "What are you woke libs upset about? Santos IDENTIFIES HIMSELF as [insert lie]!"
The Republican embrace of The Crazy is one of the mysteries of the Republican rosary, a foundational article of faith that can't be explained. It may simply be that 40 years of success based on gaming the system taught the Republican Party that There Is No Spoon. The power struggle between the Cheney and Trump wings of the party may be the last gasp/chance of sanity. The thing to watch will be the rules for Republican primaries. The wacky "plurality takes all" scheme was a big factor in Trump winning the nomination. If that doesn't change, Trump is a lock for the nomination. Any indictments will be a distraction more than a factor. Even without the nomination, Trump has the tools and experience to stall, delay, and threaten any legal process. Those wheels may grind exceedingly fine, but Trump learned from the best where and how to throw sand in the gears. Don't be fooled by those sad stories of Trump moping around his Xanadu. Like Henry Hill, he misses the action, and whether it's indictments or primary season, that's when the action starts.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, breaking from Trump seems to involve choosing DeSantis, a cleaner version (but with less personality) of Trump who gives all the same policies of punching down and hurting the "other" groups. No one ever suggests someone like Larry Hogan (popular blue state Republican governor) or Glenn Youngkin (business leader who flipped the governor's residence from blue to red) as the future of the GOP. No, it's gotta be guys like DeSantis who waste tax payer money to fly immigrants to New England to own the libs/Mexicans/women/anyone.
Youngkin may look good in comparison, but his victory seemed to be assurred by going as whole-hog on the GOP's favored "anti-woke" nonsense. I guess he's been relatively quiet since tho...
Hearted for the apparent quietude (or maybe the press just don't give a rat's patoot about the guy).
Youngkin did a lot of campaigning for Trump's candidates in the recent election. Particularly Kari Lake and Blake Masters, IIRC
His winning was partially because the Repubs decided not to hold a primary, so Glenn was a bit of a tabulah rasa. Also, McAuliffe made some mistakes that the press pushed to Youngkin's advantage
Now serving "Taboulleh Rasa"
There's a fight on now for RNC chair, with Ronna McDaniels under attack because she hasn't been Trumpy enough, they say. Republican-style conservatism didn't fail in the midterms, it WAS failed (thanks a lot, Ronna!) so double down and full speed ahead with your new RNC chair, Mike Lindell!
Wasn't it enough that changed her name so there was no "Romney" in it? Yeesh!
Everyone, including the governors themselves, have taken Swerer's dictum that the cruelty is the point to heart as the way to pry the base away from Trump. This misses why the base is so attached to Trump. When they hear Trump, they hear themselves, they hear their resentment and fear validated by the guy on TV. The cruelty is nice, but not bonding. The media will never figure this out no matter how many Cletus Safaris they equip, because they can't get past the sheer irrationality of bonding with a dumpster fire like Trump. One of the nice guy Republicans might, but alpha males like DeSantis and Abbott (the women may have different pathologies, but the end is the same) are too high on the thrill of being rewarded for being a public bully.
Also, too (and imagine Trump's chortling incredulity when this happened): the god botherers jumped on his ark pretty early, 'cause their overlords told them El Retorno Segundo is upon us. This is actually really under-reported, because the press mostly doesn't believe the mooks, or they don't care about the weird religiosity. But for those truly believerers this IS their best interest. Sure they'd like more money, sure they'd like that money at the expense of All The Others, and maybe they care about the health and well being of their various kiths and sundry kins (altho maybe no, 'cause '"god's will").
But OH do they wanna shoot up in the sky by and indeed by.
Tho first: Authority! Shall! Be! MINE!!!
Yeah, the core tenet of the base is "everything is going to hell and nobody is doing anything about it", and that fits like a dovetail joint into the End Times and Return of the King (the OG, not Aragon son of Arathorn). No wonder they see Trump as a prophet if not the Savior ("I alone can fix it", remember? I really think those 2 formal speeches of Trump are the Rosetta Stone of understanding his bond with the base).
"Return of the King"
Elvis is doing a show in Branson?
While I’m a big fan of the Leopards Eating Faces joke, I’m going to go with a different feline analogy: with Trump and Trumpism, the GOP establishment tried to ride a tiger, and the results were predictable. I think J6 was the first inkling they had that the tiger had thrown them off its back, and the 2022 midterms were the first time they realized the tiger had rounded on them and was charging.
The fact that the few actual policies they do have are unpopular leaves them with the undesirable option of doubling and tripling down on the culture war lunacy to try to deflect attention away from those policies. I agree that in any sane country the GOP and the political philosophy of conservatism itself should be dead in the water. But I’m not ready to count the GOP out, like the ghouls they are they have a talent for rising from the dead.
And yet the base learned nothing from 1/6 considering the candidates they chose in primaries. May they never learn -- and (🤞🏻) I doubt they will. They've been revelling in bullshit for decades.
Absolutely. The base is enraged their time in the sun was so brief, that the Libs robbed them of their God King before he could wreak all the devastation on their enemies they had hoped for. Like Derelict points out in the comments to this post, the base votes in GOP primaries, picks the candidates THEY want, and will keep the three ring circus of hate and grievance going strong for the foreseeable future.
America, where you can be whatever you claim to be! Anyway, this explanation of modern Republicans is correct, as is every other explanation (remember epistemic closure?) and all boil down to: they’re assholes. A black hole of bigotry, anger and ignorance pulls them through the event horizon, never to re-enter the universe of normality the rest of us inhabit. Think Trump is bad? There’s worse coming - e.g., DeSantos - or already here - Alito, Thomas. Roberts. These are Republicans actively imposing that bigotry and ignorance on the rest of us, out of their anger that society insists on progressing, or did until they took charge.
Clinton's mistake was saying it out loud and hurting their small dick energy fee-fees and upsetting the mainstream media who already didn't like her.
Because all Republican candidates for any office have to go through a primary process, the only possible outcome is for candidates in the general elections to become ever more lunatic. The people who vote in the primaries are the most devoted and fanatical--the Republican base. And they demand candidates as demented as they themselves are. Thus Kari Lake and Blake Masters, Donald Trump and Ron Desantis.
Until there is some other candidate sorting mechanism, the GOP will continue to spiral into abject insanity. No candidate can lean toward any imagined center because all candidates can be successfully challenged from their Right.
Exacto.
By now anyone challenging the far Right from the far, far Right will be in violation of the Constitution. Which is I suppose the point.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco '24!
He’s still dead!
I'd like to think that if DeSantis actually runs, once he gets on the national stage the vast majority of the country will recoil in disgust. "Owning the libs" barely worked for Trump in 2016 and that's basically all that DeSantis brings to the table (not to mention that he has all the charisma of a rotten potato). But then I look at a pathological liar like Santos and the ineptitude of the Democrats in running against him and, well...
I have wondered where the Democrats were, but also where the MSM was in that none of this stuff came out about Santos until after the election. In my (slightly) more paranoid moments I have my suspicions, but they can't be right, can they?
The local rag had it. No one listened. https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/29/north-shore-leader-santos-scoop/
Read: "no one clicked enough for us to pay attention."
I can't wait to see the soul-searching introspection that this WaPo story will engender amongst the prestige media... Oh that's right! Who am I talking about here?
Yeah...
My dream (I have a dream!) is NOT that Roy gets a gig writing opinions for one of the Grandly Elegant, Tough, Serious, Truly Unassailable, Fact-Fungible Effete Deciders. No. My dream (even after that sentence!) is that Roy gets a lifetime hire as the EDITOR of the opinion page of same. Because I don't want just another voice opining in the slightly-elevated wilderness – I want to OWN the wilderness!
Editors get to hire and fire? Because there's no way I'd want to sentence Roy to a lifetime of editing Russ Douthat.
Roy used to write for the Village Voice
Who needs it?
To all the above:
It's MY dream, dammit!
Roy, being in charge, would publish his own stuff whenever he wants. Also, in my dream Roy hires/fires at will.
And yes, I'm hip to the VV years – for all I care, Roy hires none but wimminz and reinvigorates the Vaginal Voice!
It didn't have an Expert Political Commentator like David Brooks or Bari Weiss amplifying it.
Which does take us back to my original question, where was the MSM? Actually, let's face it, if the guy had been a Democrat the MSM would have been all over it.
And I say that as someone who has nearly total contempt for the Democratic Party. It is still seen as sort of kind of icky and dangerously leftist for some reason as far as the MSM is concerned, so they must keep it on a short leash.
The WaPo story touches on this, but the bottom line is that the classic media ecosystem that once allowed stories sourced at the local level tho rise up to the appropriate level of prominence has been largely driven into extinction. Local rags like the North Shore Reader were once ubiquitous; now they are vanishingly rare. Heck,.the Reader only exists as basically a vanity project for its publisher, it doesn’t even pay enough for full time staff. Meanwhile the larger news industry has mostly been gutted, financialized and transformed into content mills. Missing the Santos thing until well after the polls closed was a failure, no doubt, but it’s also a bit like blaming the watchdog that’s been starved and left for dead for letting the burglar into the house.
Also, we may be entering the age of the virtual newspaper office firebombing. https://twitter.com/LEBassett/status/1608243559718592513
Ugh. That’s bad news.
You think you're disgusted now, imagine if it had all come out before the election and he had won anyway. Because he'd surely play the "Librul Media is attackin' me!" card, and that would be enough to get Republican voters to look no further into the matter.
That's the genius of making the media the enemy, when you do something wrong, how do people find out about it? Through the MEDIA, of course! So it CAN'T be true!
"If you had communicated these facts to me using some means other than the hated media, well, then I might have listened to you! But no, you just had to use the media, didn't you, so fuck off!"
"It was like we needed some kind of medium in between us to allow the passing of information... hmmm... maybe more than one medium... What's the plural of medium again?" <scratches head>
But those cute white boots!
Once seen...shiver...
Serious governor doing things up top. Sno-ball princess down below.
Me, I'm happy with the level of mainstream discourse re the rise of rabid insanity amongst the GOP. It's enough to alienate and repel enough independent voters, maybe even help get the Dem vote out. An interesting factoid, although I'm not sure how significant it is is that more independents now lean dem than GOP.
The Santos affair, at least at the moment, is supporting my claim re the importance of local offices. The only Republican action against Santos is Nassau County' Republican DA claim that they'll be investigating him.
And speak of waves and Santos, the Dems were supposed to keep the House majority in theory, but the DNC and DCCC worked to ensure it not happening:
https://www.downwithtyranny.com/post/could-the-democrats-have-kept-the-house-majority-with-a-little-extra-effort-and-competence
I love of course the WA3 victory which, had the DCCC its way, wouldn't have happened but would have stayed red.
Add seats where no Democrat ran -- that is, conceded -- and here we are with a GOP House majority.
As for beloved Tulsi, not sure that there's any significance or importance to her reaming Santos. Reaming him when it's going to result in nothing more than making her and Fox look all mavericky is nothing.
Meanwhile, I must give all due praise to Greta Thunberg for making small dick energy a thing a thing and to Musk enabling Tate's bust by allowing him back on Twitter:
https://mas.to/@hankgreen/109600202711492910
Dude, I'm sure, speaks for all of still on Twitter.
Don't want to come off as some kind of apologist for the DCCC, but about this business of "seats where no Democrat ran -- that is, conceded" it's HARD to get people to run for office when they stand almost no chance of winning. I believe the Dems ran candidates in every Congressional seat in Wisconsin, and the ones I heard from seemed like good matches to the district (local small-business owner, has kids in the public school, etc.) but none of these folks had a serious chance. You could say the DCCC should have poured more money into their races, and I won't disagree with that, but it's also the case that for most voters in rural Wisconsin the Dems are just "not for us" and "the party of Madison and Milwaukee", and what's the remedy for flat-out bigotry like that?
It’s hard to get people to run where there’s little chance of winning, but it’s impossible to win when you abandon the field. Plus, you demoralize the Democrats in that district and help bleed the party of members and support.
Who’s going to vote for a team who won’t bother to run a candidate? You take a fraction of the money wasted on shitbirds like Maloney, and you run a candidate in South Dakota, for example. No Dem ran, but the idiot nonentity Libertarian got 25% because people wanted *someone* to vote for other than the Republican.
But no, let the slot go vacant, mock the deplorable rubes in Flyover Country, and wonder why Dems continue to hemorrhage support in those districts. (Also, when people say that Repub House candidates got more votes than Dems, total, nationwide? Part of that is due to letting them run up the score by >250,000 votes *unopposed* in districts like SD.)
It's just that I've been in that position, trying to convince people to run for office when there's almost no hope of winning, and it all comes down to a personal decision by someone to upend their life for months, and for what? (And that's not even factoring in the death threats that seem to now just come with the territory.)
I don't know the situation well enough in all of these cases where the Dems didn't run candidates, but it might be the case that the local Dems did try to recruit, but couldn't find any takers.
Again, I don't want to be an apologist for the DCCC, and the national party could offer more support and money, but in the end it comes down to finding someone in the district who's willing to say "yes" when common sense (and maybe even a basic instinct for self-preservation) says "no."
And as campaigns -- even in small rural districts -- have become nastier and more personal, who wants to put their family through that? Your kids' normal adolescent foibles will be used to smear you.
Periodic reminder of how Marjorie Taylor Greene managed to run unopposed in 2020: https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/why-marjorie-taylor-greenes-opponent-quit-the-house-race/E3TYSMAAPRDUPPB6F3BBQAFCME/
But she sure had an opponent in 2022, didn't she? And I know that because he emailed me six times a day, and no, that is not an exaggeration.
I get it. I’m not cut out to run, though a college acquaintance ran for Governor, got smeared and lied about, and lost decisively (inexplicable, except that it was an off-year Primal Scream election for repubs whose team didn’t hold power nationally). SD regularly has statewide offices that the Dems don’t field a candidate for. I know it’s got to be incredibly difficult to recruit people to run. But what makes it literally impossible to find someone is when the national Dems give $0 support. Who’s willing to put in the time, take all that abuse, *and* bankrupt themselves in the process?
In 2016 the national Dems used the SD Democratic Party as a pass-through to funnel money to the presidential candidate, contributing nothing to the state Dems, and in fact leaving them with a $60k fine to pay because they did the paperwork improperly. They just write off areas like this and crap all over them while wasting ungodly amounts of cash elsewhere.
Absolutely, there should be a minimum amount given by the national party to the campaign of anyone willing to slap a "D" on their chest and run for state legislature, then we go up from there if they actually succeed in sparking some local interest.
And it's infuriating to hear national-level Dems saying, "Why should we spend a dollar there when we could spend it in a competitive race?" as if the phrase "diminishing returns" has never been heard before. Thanks to Act Blue, competitive candidates (and sometimes even non-competitive candidates) attract millions of dollars from all around the country and I can guarantee that million-and-first dollar spent isn't having that much effect when you've already saturated the airwaves with ads that the voters mostly ignore.
"But... but... with that dollar you want to waste on South Dakota, we could have sent ONE MORE POSTCARD to Steve's house, and sure, he's already in the database as donating to the campaign, but we can't be sure that means he'll actually vote, right? Better send him another postcard so he knows the candidate's name and what day the election is on!
Key words "death threats"
Regarding the national party, Howard Dean had it right, and it was working, so of course they abandoned the 50 state strategy in favor of only supporting candidates in races they thought they could win. Then bigger elections roll around and Democrats lose counties 70-30 that if they had only lost 60-40 would have resulted in a presidential, senatorial or important statewide office victory. I live in a largely rural district and as far as I can see the Dems make zero effort to reach people they don't think will vote for them.
So yea, the national party deserves a lot for blame, but judging from my limited, local experience, I bet the county and district level Dems are pretty bad as well. Here in the heart of working class country, the Dem organization is more like a cross between a garden club and a country club and they have genuine and open contempt for the working class. It's little wonder that they get reamed every election by voters who based on their own interests should really be voting for them. Given a choice between better quality of life and sticking it to the snobs, human nature favors sticking it to the snobs.
Also, not insignificant here, local Dem party apparatus can become "party-boss" situations, i.e. nakedly corrupt, anti-labor, basically shit... Wouldn't what to step on those fellas' toes, would we?
WA-3 says that when someone wants to run and is running, you support them. Perez was stiffed by the DCCC. Again:
https://www.downwithtyranny.com/post/could-the-democrats-have-kept-the-house-majority-with-a-little-extra-effort-and-competence
And again: The DCCC should have done their job and bombed NY3 with a commercial about Santos’ lies. Start multiplying that and you have the Dems in the minority in the House of theDCCC’s failure to be minimally competent.
It helps if you think that the DNC and DCCC are not there to elect Democrats, but to assure that no progressives get elected.
I had a commenter on LGM yesterday tell me that centrists don't vote for Republicans, which may be the single dumbest thing I have been told on the internet
There are some great commenters at LGM, followed by a huge swath of people who are desperate to prove they’re the Smartest Kid in Class, and then there’s the hardcore group where, if the world were literally ending, they’d use their dying strength to punch hippies.
That's weird, I'd think the argument would be "Centrists will DEFINITELY vote Republican if we don't meet their every policy wish and throw in a handjob besides!"
Haha, no. The current argument when people ask someone like the Transportation Secretary to do something about the airlines is “government can’t do anything about that, the Dems are powerless here, what do you want, a sparklepony?” Followed at election time by yelling at the voters to crawl across broken glass to vote for Team Powerless. Really inspiring stuff!
I hope they throw in something about Green Lantern Theory, certain Internet Traditions must be honored.
That’s what the piece I linked to said exactly. The post-DLC DNC’s primary goal is running centrists in it to enrich themselves and the DNC as part of that.
I started to read it and then I just got too damned depressed.
Sorry, bro.
I knew #1 would be swell, and absolutely on target. I think one of Trump's biggest triumphs is that he continues to make the news, having done more than anyone to tabloidize all forms of trad media into willing and ravenous suckers for his ceaseless bunko ("I WILL HAVE A MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT!"). Whether that continues who knows, but you need a German word to describe the next level Santos has taken moral Trumpitude. My favorite bit is Santos saying that it was only "a poor choice of words" that gave the impression that he graduated from Baruch College and once worked for Goldman Sachs, the poor choice of words being "I graduated from Baruch College" and "I worked for Goldman Sachs."
Embellishment is saying you got an MBA when you were one class shy of graduation. Claiming three different deaths for your mother is another thing entirely.
Mom is one better than Jesus, and don't you forget it
OK, should have been "didn't work" instead of "worked", but that's only like four letters different!
He should have blamed it on an intern.
He'll learn.
Hearted for "you need a German word"
2 Deutsch marks!
Looking at the photo, I'm thinking "Backpfeifengesicht."
Had to look it up; agreed.
Upvoted for "moral Trumpitude!"
3 points:
• "He was lying, of course" – "of course" needs highlighting, as it illuminates all the rest of it.
• "https://georgeforny.com/about/" is the web address for the screenshot at the top. So, does anyone know ANY truth about Forny/Santos? Because, when Roy says
• "Or look at George Santos. We normies see him as a buffoon, a pathological liar caught fatally overextending himself. But among MAGA people, he’s a guy who learned one of the big lessons of Donald Trump: That you not only don’t owe your enemies the truth — you don’t even owe them believability." – the only point I'd out is that Forny/Santos seems to think he does not even owe his SUPPORTERS the truth.
• "now they could have candidates who were proudly racist, openly contemptuous of their political opponents, and uninterested in such fancy-schmancy concepts as truth and statesmanship" –
It seems folks no longer romancy
Those old concepts fancy-schmancy
They've leapt from the trains
Landed smack on their brains
And converted to pure sycophancy
Sure, my Congressional representative lied to me and I have no idea if he has the qualifications to do the job I voted for him to do, maybe he won't be able to do a thing to help me and the other folks in the district or to give us a voice on the federal level. But he OWNED the libs!
Hearted for "romancy", which puts you in a class with Irving Berlin:
No strings and no connections
No ties to my affections
I'm fancy free and free for anything fancy
No dates that can't be broken
No words that can't be spoken
Especially when I am feeling romancy
"Alberto! Make him stop!"
"For ze woman, ze kiss! For ze man, ze SWORD!"
Thanks for lighting the way there Chief!
This place - your great writing, all the great comments - is therapeutic.
I wonder if I can charge my REBID*subscription to my HSA?
* Anybody else read that as - ribbit- like the sound a bullfrog makes?
Ribbit is more the sound of a chorus frog, or tree frog; bullfrogs go deep in the jug-o'-rum...
Yes, yes I do loves me some frogs!
A regional pronunciation of "rabid"
See, now that's why we need us a gun lobby! All'a them dogs! Out there in the lobby!
Dunno about "it didn't have to happen", if the standard Republican formula of "low taxes, strong military, limited government, etc." was enough to win elections, wouldn't we now be in the sixth year of Prezdint Jeb?
MSNBC is full of NeverTrumpers, including the NeverTrumpiest of them all, Morning Joe, claiming all the Republicans need to do to win BIG is go back to the days of Reagan, like they don't really need all the Trumpy stuff to win. But they've lost big among women and among college-educated people generally (I'm waiting for "Jail the Docs!" to provoke a long-term shift of doctors away from the Republicans, just as creationism and climate denialism pushed the percentage of scientists who identify as Republican down into the low single digits.) What they gained in return were masses of low-propensity voters. White men who never went beyond high school had some of the lowest voter-turnout numbers in the country until Trump came along, and they could easily revert to apathy and disengagement if the Republicans don't keep Feeding the Beast.
Bingo. Trump is the Angry Dipshit Whisperer. There is no other. (For now.)
He is the Fat White Duke.
EDIT: I meant Trump… eventually to be called 'The True Trump', as opposed to "The Historical Trump".
The return of the Fat White Duke
Throwing crap in voters' eyes
Hearted for The Historical Trump. Because the closer he is to ancient history, the better for everyone.
I was thinking of how at least some Buddhists make a distinction between the Historical Buddha (an actual man whom archaeology might disprove or cause to disappoint) and the True Buddha who's exactly whom they need him to be. The Real Trump (as fictitious as The Real American) looks exactly like those superhero versions of him, and will the one be worshipped from now until Doomsday, whether that be any year now or several millennia hence. Ken Macleod, in "Newton's Wake", had an all-but–Space-Amish group living in the reaches of space called 'America Offline' who worship one 'Jesus Koresh'…well, I think if Red Ken wrote that one today, that name might be different.
"A techno-utopianist, MacLeod's work makes frequent use of libertarian socialist themes"
Yoicks!
Ultra-left, but sometimes has author sermons against smoking bans and gun control (born fighting?), and snarks on Greens in the earliest books. The "Fall Revolution" series contrasts right- and left-wing libertopias, and a moderate one in the final "The Sky Road".
His stuff is usually worth it. Save "The Execution Channel" for when you can take real unpleasantness, "Cosmonaut Keep" and the others in the "Engines of Light" series for when you need a much-smarter airport-novel family saga crossed with space-opera.The "Fall Revolution" books ("The Star Fraction" et seq.) are probably best for a start, though not as well-written. "Learning the World" is probably his sunniest book. (I know nothing about the "Corporation Wars" series save that he wrote them and "Dissidence" is in it.)
Gritted teeth warning: Macleod often has practical anti-aging/senescence treatments shewing-up c.2010; this felt hopeful in 1997….
Notion stolen from Cyril Kornbluth's Nazis-conquered-half-of-the-U.S. novella "Two Dooms" (1958?), speaker is talking in Year of the Party 200 or thereabouts: 'That tall, slim, blond man in the portrait? That's Hermann Göring, Founder of the Party!, of course—donʼt let The Stoppers hear you ask that!.'.
Not to Give Them Ideas, but I suppose by this point SOMEONE has done the inevitable "What are you woke libs upset about? Santos IDENTIFIES HIMSELF as [insert lie]!"
Hey, it's the only joke they've got left, you can't blame them for beating it to death.
The Republican embrace of The Crazy is one of the mysteries of the Republican rosary, a foundational article of faith that can't be explained. It may simply be that 40 years of success based on gaming the system taught the Republican Party that There Is No Spoon. The power struggle between the Cheney and Trump wings of the party may be the last gasp/chance of sanity. The thing to watch will be the rules for Republican primaries. The wacky "plurality takes all" scheme was a big factor in Trump winning the nomination. If that doesn't change, Trump is a lock for the nomination. Any indictments will be a distraction more than a factor. Even without the nomination, Trump has the tools and experience to stall, delay, and threaten any legal process. Those wheels may grind exceedingly fine, but Trump learned from the best where and how to throw sand in the gears. Don't be fooled by those sad stories of Trump moping around his Xanadu. Like Henry Hill, he misses the action, and whether it's indictments or primary season, that's when the action starts.
Hey, weren't we just talking about this guy?
Andrew Tate Is Detained in Romania in Human Trafficking Investigation
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/world/europe/andrew-tate-romania-arrest.html
Mess with Greta and the Deep State (Romanian Style) is comin' for you, boys!
There's highlarity on the intertubes today. And the pizza box contains one big ol' wet chef's kiss!
Oh give me a home where the oligarchs roam
Where the dachas and rubles are at
Where seldom is found a discouraging sound
Except for occasional SPLAT!
Home, home is estranged
Where the life expectancy's changed
Where windows are high
Almost up to the sky
And any oligarch standing anywhere near a window above ground floor elevation
Is deranged
When I make my 100 trillionth ruble I'mo live in the basement, is all I'm sayin'...
I wish Robert Graves had lived to see Polly Jean on Leno, blowing minds just being herself.