Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, November 7, 2024
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87 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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BlueSky.
Off to finish cleaning up and clearing out the campaign HQ but someone sent me this link and I think he’s got a point worth discussing:
https://www.rawstory.com/election-2024-rightwing-insider-flaw/
I’m leaving on my trip today. Will it be fun to meet people who like reading my books? Stay tuned.
All the important things are packed. My laptop, my clothes, my medication, my kindle, a little bit of my strat-o-matic baseball and the necessary dice.
I will be staying in several Embassy Suites/Hiltons. They were good hotels (Are they still good today?) 25 years ago and have on site restaurants. and in room refrigerators which are important to me. My nephew is accompanying me to care for me in case I have medical issues. I really wish Dear Wife was coming with me but she is still working for the church.
While at two of my stops, I have planned meetings with either a friend or family. I haven’t seen my BIL Marty, my late sister’s husband, in over 25 years*. He’s a great guy and it should be fun seeing him again. I will also get to meet my LA in person for the first time. It has always been cellphone calls or Zoom meetings up to now.
Anyway I will be around here some and commenting when I have time.
*- When Patty died in 2014 my health wasn’t good enough to travel in order to attend her funeral.
Well the post partum blame game has started. All of them are preposterous. Especially that idea that Harris didn’t outline her proposals enough or didn’t focused on policy more which is flat out nonsense. Harris ran an almost flawless campaign by any standard. No all of this is bull hocky (in my opinion). The single difference between Harris and Biden is the Harris is a Black female and probably had a lot more to to with our issue with woman in this country.
Trump will now walk into an economy that is fixed.
Inflation has been beaten.
Immigration is down below what was when Trump left office
GDP is almost double that when Trump left office
Imports from China are way down
Violent crime is down
Oil and gas prediction is up 20%
No none of this turned on facts on the ground. None of it. The fact is the US is still not ready for a woman to be president. I said that even when people were talking about our governor here in Michigan Gretchen Whitmer. The excuses people made were more then weak (but I don’t know anything about her … Really did you go to her website?). They were transparently nonsense.
Also our electoral system that requires two years and billions of dollars is broken and it’s not just the EC. Don’t even get me started on ticket splitting. The idea so many people voted for statewide Democrats in three of the swing states but could not bare to pull the lever on Harris is kind of remarkable, but here we are.
So who made the effort to register but not to vote?
Texas voter turnout falls in 2024 election despite record registration numbers
We keep hearing that inflation was a huge driver in voting for Trump. But…
US bond yield spike sends warning to ‘king of debt’ Trump
@Scott: This is probably an important piece of information, but I have absolutely no idea what they are trying to get across.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Don’t disagree with Sheffield, four years ago I was saying that one or more Dem billionaire needed to begin investing in local media markets that could then cover then news with a progressive slant. The left needs the equivalent of a Salem or Sinclair media group.
When you watch a Sinclair owned station’s TV news, the conservative bias isn’t in your face, but is subtle and over time builds a bias among the consumer.
@Joe:
I think Scott’s saying by 2028 we’ll be pining for the good old days when the US national debt was merely $35 trillion or so.
@Sleeping Dog:
I agree that conservative media are a huge factor in building the post modern world of with everyone having their own truth. But I don’t think the FOX model works with liberals. Different psychology. Lakoff says conservatives are able to think through complex causation, but they default to simple morality. Extreme e.g., Tucker Carlson saying we’re having hurricanes because we allow abortion. We tend toward more complex views, like questioning why, then, do hurricanes hit states that ban abortion. Unlike conservatives, liberals don’t need to go to services every Sunday to be told what we believe.
@Rick DeMent: Since Hillary is too serious and too good to do it, I’ll be petty on her behalf: Harris’s loss throws a wrench in the whole narrative about Hillary being a uniquely bad candidate who lost not because of external factors like sexism, But Her Emails, Comey, and Russian interference — but because she didn’t wear a cheesehead in Wisconsin.
Harris was a fairly popular candidate who benefitted from a) not having to endure a divisive primary and b) knowing exactly where and how Trump was strong. Yet she couldn’t even win the popular vote. At least Hillary pulled that off.
Some random musings on the election:
* I lay a lot of blame on this debacle at the feet of Joe Biden. He never should have decided to run for a second term. Early in the first term he should have made it clear he would not be running again and allowed the Dems to have a proper primary. It’s the same sort of hubris we saw with RBG (and Trump), a belief that they are indispensable and no one else can do what they are doing.
Biden’s late decision meant Harris had a little over a hundred days to campaign and get her message out there, a massive hurdle. And despite all that, she ran a great campaign and deserves a lot of praise. I wouldn’t be surprised if she is personally furious with the President for putting her in such a spot in the first place.
* I’m finding it hard to care about abortion as an issue any longer given that that Trump has won the white woman vote for the third straight cycle. If women don’t care enough for their own bodily autonomy to vote overwhelmingly against the Your Womb Belongs to the State party why should I? And I saw a headline somewhere that indicated something like two million people voted for pro-choice state referenda *and* Donald Trump.
* I work with international students and scholars at a large university. We are already having potential international scholars asking us to fast track their H1B applications so they can get submitted before Trump takes over. On the student side, I’m preparing myself for another shit show for the next four years: airports jammed up, visa denials and revocations, enrollment falling as international students realize they aren’t welcome here, etc.
* I’m going to be stepping away from the blogs and podcasts for Trump 2.0. Life’s too short and I just don’t want to spend the next four years constantly angry due to daily exposure to Trump’s tweets and outrageous behavior. I’m going to find a hobby that will keep me occupied and offline (for example, I enrolled in a cookie decorating class tonight).
* Needless to say, my faith in the goodness in the American people has once again been shattered. Going into the election I figured voters had had enough of Trump’s antics and Harris would pull it off. I was wrong. I should have assumed the worst of the voters.
* The Democratic would be wise to not nominate any more women to the top of the ticket for the near future. Sorry to say it, but the sexism on display is pretty apparent.
Anyway, it’s going to be a tough four years.
@gVOR10:
The Fox cable model won’t work for liberals, but the local news model of Salem, Sinclair and Fox would. Those stations continually run stories and analysis that place government and progressive groups in a negative light. The target audience isn’t the committed partisan, but the low information voter that will assorb the information through mental osmosis and conclude Dems/government/immigrants/etc are evil. A liberal local press would focus on the positives of those groups.
I’d like to highlight Kevin Drum’s post detailing how easily Trump will be able to accomplish his goals:
– Inflation, Last quarter to previous quarter, annualized, 1.2%.
– Border encounters are down to pre-COVID levels.
– GDP grew at 2.8% last quarter. This won’t last as GDP is 2.6% above “potential”.
– China. Imports are at 1.28% of GDP, a 20year low.
– Oil and gas production are at record highs.
-Crime is “already down because it never went up” except for murder, which is down.
Way to go Brandon. And Kamala didn’t benefit from any of it. Le sigh.
ETA – site response time seems back to normal. Thanks, Matt?
I like to joke sometimes that my store of knowledge is as wide as the Pacific Ocean and as deep as a Street Puddle.
This is not entirely so (it’s probably wider by an order of magnitude), but I do just assume certain things and don’t think through others. For instance, when reading on early fission developments, there’s much talk of shooting neutrons. Ok, but how do you manipulate a particle that has no electric charge?
Well, you can by other means. Neutrons do respond to magnetic fields a bit, and there are materials that absorb or reflect them. Above all, though, you need a neutron source, which is most often a radioactive substance, or a particle accelerator, and there are a few other ways. But for years I just assumed it was so (and it was so, but that’s no excuse).
Lately I’ve found this trait even in my own ideas.
For example, suppose aliens come to Earth around 5,000 BCE and take away a few hundred humans, plus lots of animals and plants, all of which are placed in some kind of time stasis. they take them to a far away star where they terraform a planet, and transplant the humans there. Then they go away to see after other business elsewhere and are never heard from again*.
Why? Well, I wanted a human civilization that developed elsewhere. But I just assumed aliens would do this for some reason, which makes no sense at all.
So, I’m trying to come up with reasons why they did this. So far these may be 1) sentient life is rare and doesn’t last long, so they do this every time they encounter a sentient species to double its chances at longevity. 2) it’s a religious thing (bleh). They will return someday and judge their wards. 3) They are running a comparative study of sentient development, but they are so far ahead of us in capability that they have no interest in personal interactions (and hugely expensive studies like this are what you do when you’re superhypersmart and wealthy and immortal). 4) their civilization collapsed shortly after (I find that hard to believe). 5) superhypersmart wealthy immortal beings are just this benevolent to lower sentients. Much like how we may, not well and not often, set up wildlife reserves.
*Not entirely, as they leave a message on the Moon of the transplant planet. In it they reveal they left two more terraformed planets within ten light years, plus three that humans can terraform with relative ease (ie within a couple of centuries given the right tools), and have sufficient gravity, resources, and magnetic fields to sustain life for billions of years). Which of course makes finding a reasonable reason for their actions all the more important.
@Rick DeMent:
It’s politically incorrect to state that voters are not rational actors — motivated more by ignorance, bigotry, and perception. In 2020, the perception was that the economy sucked, and at the time it did. So the incumbent party paid the price.
In 2024, the incumbent party paid the price for economic perceptions + a healthy dose of culture war fearmongering, even as The Wall Street Journal was admitting Biden would be leaving his successor a historic economic recovery.
It rings hollow to see Bernie pontificating about Democrats abandoning the working class or centrists blaming wokeist excess. Biden and Harris walked picket lines. They passed bills that have manufacturing and infrastructure jobs booming. They canceled billions in student debt to bailout struggling households. They brought crime and unemployment to 50-year lows.
Democrats have not been passing bills to force transgenderism or wokeism on the nation. But to most Americans, perception matters more than reality. Not much Dems can do to combat that, no matter the post-mortem finger pointing. Consultant and pundit livelihoods depend on pretending voters are rational and political outcomes are under partisan control.
The truth is Dems can’t do much more than wait for Republicans to do what they always do: stymie economic growth or crash the economy outright with tax cuts for billionaires and safety net assaults.
Trumpers could follow through with inflationary mass deportations and tarrifs — with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and Social Security. That’s the only thing that will jolt Americans away from amnesiac culture grievances, sending us running back to Democrats for cleanup, yet again. Rinse, wash, repeat.
The mature, patriotic part of me wants Trump to just be content taking credit for Biden’s economy and stand pat besides performative immigration stunts (like the useless wall) or the usual round of corporate socialism.
My petty, privileged, spiteful lizard brain wants MAGA to give America the full Project 2025, so I can point and laugh.
Just heard a college student Harris supporter state that she was concerned that Trump would end the Department of Education and jeopardize her financial assistance. She said that she would have to trust in God.
If I could I would ask her if this is the same God that Trump claimed saved him from assassination so that he could be elected President again.
BTW, Boeing’s machinists timed their strike well, and ended it just in time. If they had rejected the last Boeing offer on Monday, I’m pretty sure by Wednesday Boeing would have offered a 25% pay cut effective immediately, a freeze on other benefits (if they felt generous), and to limit layoffs to no more than 10% at a time.
I saw this comment yesterday on Threads:
It intrigued me enough that I looked up the writer: Renee DiResta, author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality. I then ordered her book. I’ve just started the intro, in which she describes how, as a young mom, she became concerned about measles outbreaks and declining rates of vaccination in California. When she got involved in a public service campaign to educate about the importance of vaccination, she found herself attacked online and doxxed. That began her process of trying to understand the dynamics of online propaganda and how to combat it.
@Paine:
I’m convinced Harris benefited from the late switch. Her unfavorables inched higher the closer we got to Election Day. The less time the right and the far left have to attack the Dem candidate, the better for them. Two weeks more of campaigning, the Election would’ve been called for Trump early Tuesday night, not early Wednesday morning.
Divisions over Gaza would have made a long primary season a living hell for Democrats. I doubt any Democrat emerging from such a divisive slog would have been electable, nor do I believe that Democrat would have been Kamala Harris.
Biden dropping out after the Republican convention was a “God’s timing is always right” best case scenario for his black woman VP to have a decent crack at the prize, imho.
But we’ll never know. (I also think white male Scranton Joe would have held onto more working class and Rust Belt voters than Harris did.)
@Not the IT Dept.:
It wouldn’t work. Remember, we’re the educated people, we want facts not propaganda. I wouldn’t watch that kind of media, I’d reject it out of hand. I’m not a sheep.
Well, I plan on spending my time preparing to get the hell out of the South and somewhere near the Canadian border. Called a handyman to start sprucing. My daughter is already looking around for property. Not going to dwell on negativity. Not gonna do anything on line except evil sudokus, real estate and OTB. Not going to read any couldashouldawoulda comments, just going to get busy. And no political news for the foreseeable future.
Some random observations:
WRT the increase of Latino support for Trump and Republicans. All I’ll say is to repeat what my DIL (large extended family in the Rio Grande Valley) told me a couple of years ago: “Mexicans (meaning Mexican Americans in South Texas) are racist as hell”.
My local Facebook and other social media feeds indicate a lot of gloating (not celebrating) that Trump won. And a lot of continuing grievance banter.
I don’t expect the country to get better.
@gVOR10:
All true. Pity Democrats didn’t bother to say any of that – we can’t because we are addicted to victim narratives. If Kamala had said, ‘Hey, the economy is fukkin great,’ ten seconds later we’d hear bitching from inside the tent about this or that demo that isn’t profiting because of the unfairness of blah blah blah.
@Michael Reynolds: you’re not the audience for it, low-information voters would be. Check out my comment up a bit on this thread. I was struck by the writer’s use of “cinematic universe” to describe the narratives the right has created. She’s saying, I believe, that those of us more to the left need to create our own. So while you may not be the audience, you could be one of the authors.
@Scott:
Yep. We’ve been pushing the whole, ‘poor brown immigrants,’ line and guess who DGAF about immigrants. It’s the usual I got mine, screw you.
@Paine:
That’s a fact that boggles my mind. Here in Misery (h/t to the late, lamented OzarkHillbilly), Trump won the popular vote by almost 550,000 out of a little under 3 million votes cast, but our constitutional amendment referendum putting protection of the right to abortion in our state constitution passed by almost 100,000 votes. Somehow, 650,000 people wanted Trump but also wanted to protect choice. I don’t know what to make of that, other than to realize that, despite my tendency to think otherwise, Trump voters, like all of us contain multitudes.
@DK:
Yeglesias(sp) summed the reason for the Dems loss best, across the world classically liberal governments have been losing elections to populists because of the perception and sometimes reality of the economy. France abandoned the centrist for the populists on left and right. UK overthrew the entrenched Conservatives because they couldn’t meet the populist demands, though it is to be seen how Labor governs. Italy elected a fascist. Argentina a liberation populist.
The issue was incumbency in a time when incumbents were being thrown out.
@Michael Reynolds: Also, the national campaign didn’t attack Trump’s economic record which was strictly mediocre. They allowed him to control that narrative. As I says previously, I believe Karl Rove has been right. You attack their strengths. Negative partisanship works.
@Monala:
You make a good point about low info voters, and yes, I could be one of the author class. But Left propaganda would never work – Lefties are extremely restrictive in what you can say, they’d handcuff me.
We wrote a YA series that included a racist as one of the main characters. The purpose was to evolve the character, which we did. And took shit for it even 25 years ago because, ‘what if someone actually liked the racist?’ To which the answer is, ‘Of course they’ll like him, they have to like him for his eventual conversion to matter. Duh.’
I could not write that book and get it published today. Same with a WW2 series I wrote where a bigot is an excellent soldier, who, over time, grows beyond his racism. ‘But what if people don’t get the message?’ All messages must be delivered via sledgehammer, which makes for shitty writing, and I do try to avoid shitty writing.
This video is one I find myself re-watching every six months or so and I was drawn to rewatch it again yesterday:
Rules for Rulers
Its thesis is that there’s basically two types of human societies: ones where wealth is primarily created via resource extraction, which inevitably evolve into dictatorships, and ones where wealth is primarily created via labor productivity, which inevitably evolve into liberal democracies. In both cases, this isn’t because the leaders are more or less enlightened, but rather because it’s the best way for the powerful to create more wealth.
And to me, it seems that kind of explains the current state of the US. We have blue regions based primarily on labor (including intellectual labor) intensive services and red regions based on resource extraction (including agriculture).
Since WWII, automation has meant that a lot of formerly labor intensive industries (like manufacturing) have gradually started behaving more like resource extraction industries, causing a rightward shift in manufacturing based areas.
If true, the real solution to the MAGA movement is to focus on maximizing the percent of GDP produced by labor.
I should give fair warning I may overpost a lot today. I’ve little to do at work* (miracle of miracles). My other regular website I use to keep me occupied at work id The Guardian, and right now I don’t feel like reading news of any kind.
I will try to work on a story I want to finish this month, but that’s hard with so much noise and distractions at work (little doesn’t men none).
So maybe I’ll waste everyone’s time with overly generous aliens with miraculous technologies, or parallel universes, or sentient machines, or hybrid beings, or gravitational waves, or outrageous ides for dark matter, or even the limited creative uses of generative AI.
I’ve a couple of unused vacation days. I thought of using one tomorrow, but 9 times out of 10 when I do something like that, some urgent small project drops. So, instead I’m giving in to anxiety.
You’ve been warned.
Meantime, a curious note on Mexican history.
I said yesterday Obregon assassinated Carranza to take over the country. Yet he did not revoke the 1917 Constitution promulgated under Carranza. In fact, it’s the constitution, much amended, which remains in force today, 107 years later.
*Had I not fallen for a faux date a client used in a pre-publication (long tedious explanation on request), I’d be busy with preliminary price lists today.
@Roger: “Somehow, 650,000 people wanted Trump but also wanted to protect choice.”
That’s actually the one thing I can make sense of, assuming that voters are rational — let’s say you liked a lot of what Trump promised, but hated his abortion ban. Then you vote to keep his hands off abortion, and then you can have the president you want.
Don’t imagine it will end up working, but at least the thought process makes sense…
The two major things:
1. The Republicans convinced a large part of the country that the sky is falling
2. Kamala Harris is a woman, and if that wasn’t enough, she is biracial
On number 1, the Republicans realize that negativity works with the American public. My brother lives in new Jersy and watches a decent amount of sports. He mentioned a Republican anti-trans ad that indicated that men are taking over women’s sports. This ad was played constantly. The Republicans are geniuses at identifying the “other” that people can cent their hate on.
There is a reason that Trump called Harris dumb, low IQ, and lazy. It just feeds into much of their base’s feelings that any person of color who is in a position of importance is a DEI hire. That is one of the pillars of the modern Republican party.
Putin was pretty openly buying votes in the recent Moldova election. At least , his pet billionaire was on Pee’s behalf. It would be irresponsible to not speculate that Elmo did the same job here. Btw, Moldovan voters, knowing the dangers, rejected Pee.
Problem with that is many people are going to be very careful what they say online, much more so than before. I feel like I am living in an updated remake of Fahrenheit 451. It’s always been dangerous for public figures to speak out against trump and fascism, but now it’s dangerous for the rest of us.
A cold wind is blowing.
I’m with @Rick DeMent on this.
1. It really looks like lots of people, let me be specific, lots of white people – maybe 5 points worth or more told pollsters one thing and did something else in the voting booth.
2. It looks like lots of people, most of them white people, voted against Trump candidates down ticket, but not for the black woman at the top of the ticket.
3. It looks like lots of women, most of them white women, voted for abortion rights and not for Kamala.
I feel certain that most, if not all of these people have some other reason in their mind. Maybe they just aren’t talking about it. They might think “inflation”, but why vote against Kari Lake? They might think, “oh I don’t know who she is very well”, but really, did you not know who was good for abortion rights and who was bad for them? They might think, “I’m mad over Gaza”, but come on, we all know that Trump will take any restraints off of Israel that might be there.
I’m not here to scold people and make them feel guilty. I just think we have to recognize that factors like someone’s race and gender influence us in subtle ways. One can be a good person and still be affected by racism. I think it’s impossible for a white person to grow up in America and not have been exposed to a fair bit of racism. I know I was.
In my own personal arc, I find it more effective to observe it when it shows up, and apply a gentle corrective. Shaming kind of makes people dig in.
@Scott: There’s also a fair amount of machismo/denigration of women. A friend of mine married a Central American, and boy howdy does he have stories from home.
@Stormy Dragon:
Related point: out of a desire to do what’s “best for the country”, Democrats keep sending resources to their opponents key supporters that could be going to their own (how much of the Inflation Reduction Act’s infrastructure funding went to areas that voted against it?)
The voters reward transactionalism. The Democratic Party needs to become more transactional. They should focus on getting support to places that vote for them.
When congress comes back, one big thing is going to be disaster relief for hurricanes Helene and Milton. The dems should block it until the next congress and then vote against any relief that isn’t offset by tax increases.
@Jay L Gischer: I’ve long suspected there was a Trump-centered Overton window*. This election basically confirmed it. There are a lot of people who know, internally, that he’s awful so they won’t say they support him, but they do.
*ETA: I actually think I mean Bradley effect here, but I am a bit sleep-deprived today.
Five killed in small jet accident in Phoenix.
Awful.
Note this: “Aviation International News said data shows the HondaJet accelerated to more than 153 mph on a 5,100-foot runway before taxiing about 1,300 feet from the end of the runway. The jet then slowed to about 118 mph by the runway’s end.”
This seems awful fast for an aborted takeoff. Now, there’s no fixed takeoff speed, it varies by airplane, load, wind, weather, and even temperature. For a given model, though, there is a takeoff speed range. For the Honda jet it’s about 104 to 130 mph. If so (web info grain of salt), it was going way too fast.
Takeoff speed is governed, on the ground, by two speeds called V1 and VR. V1 is the point at which one is committed to takeoff. that is, it’s too late to abort and slow down safely given runway length and ambient conditions (this, too varies as noted before). VR is the speed at which the pilot rotates the aircraft (puts the nose up) and gets airborne.
So likely the jet was past V1 when the pilot(s) attempted to abort and stop. Why?
That’s what the accident investigation will try to determine.
Another thing is the airport itself. The link mentions the plane collided with a car after the runway overrun. Here it is on the map. Roads bordering airports are common. I know there are design constraints, and sometimes the airport predates the construction around it. But it’s a risk, even if a very low one (and that makes it acceptable, I suppose).
@Stormy Dragon:
Here and there maybe, but often not. Voters do not want abortion rights curtailed, but they rewarded the party that’s curtailing abortion rights, not the party protecting abortion rights.
Democrats bailed out Teamsters’ pensions. Most Teamsters preferred Trump. The Teamsters president spoke at Trump’s convention.
Progressives demanded student loan debt action. The Biden-Harris administration cut billions in student loans. Progressives still wouldn’t show up.
And so on and so on.
In the voting booth, perception is reality, not policy.
@DK:
Which is kind of my point. All the money spent on that bail out was wasted and could have gone to people who actually vote for Democratic candidates
Trump’s words [OK, specifically, Elon’s] on the campaign trail are the return of Andrew Mellon.
“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”
That’s not even conservative, that’s Opus Dei nonsense.
All this talk of misogyny reminds me of the movie McClintock with John Wayne. Maureen O’Hara stars as well. I remember seeing that movie as a kid and enjoying the movie until the end when Ms O’Hara is chased, stripped to bloomers and corset, down the muddy Main Street, with a striding Wayne, cheered on by the townfolk, coming after her. He catches her, publicly spanks her and gets himself into a buggy and proceeds to strand her there, muddy and half dressed. The final humiliation is when she chases the buggy and pulls herself onto the back and Wayne completely ignores her.
I was 10 and I still shudder when I think about it.
@Jen: I can understand the sleep deprivation, for sure.
If you will permit me an upbeat note, I would like to point out that Sarah McBride because the first open trans person to be elected to the House of Representatives. She’s from Delaware. She says, “Hate is much harder up close”.
I think things have got better on many fronts in my lifetime. This is in spite of a lot of lost elections, opposition, and suffering. I think this will continue to happen.
The US President may well be the most powerful person on the planet. But they can’t stop inflation. They passed all kinds of measures to stop same-sex marriage and here we are. We lost elections based on that, and here we are. I’m not going to give up on everything because of this one result, nor do I think any of you are.
We just re-elected the most unfit person to ever br president.
In my adult lifetime there have been four Democratic presidents: Carter, Clinton, Obama and Biden. Three won in reaction to major events, sometimes specifically brought on by Republicans.
Carter came after Nixon, Obama came after Bush 2 and the financial meltdown, and Biden came after Trump and Covid. Bush 1 was not supported by the Republicans after his term since the party had started to shift towards lunacy and he wasn’t a lunatic. Maybe Democrats only win national elections if there is a crisis with a Republican president.
Oh, and Kamala Harris is a black woman.
@Gavin: Well, after acting on Mellon’s advice, we had a Democrat hold the presidency for the next 5 terms. I mean, I don’t want to see that suffering. I’d rather not go there.
AND, it would be a very bad mistake to do it.
This seems a good time to indulge a bit of speculation. An old friend of mine, who uses the handle @zic (I bet @Kylopod, for instance remembers her), predicts that a year from now Vance will be president.
I can see some scenarios. They are mostly based on Trump seeming like he doesn’t want to do this any more and is saying goodbye to the rallies. There are also some interesting scenarios – such as Trump resigning, pleading nolo to a bunch of things and then getting pardoned by Vance, since he can’t pardon himself. This strikes me as a better solution (for Trump) than trying to shut down everything in the DoJ, since that would likely lead to mass resignations, if not outright mutiny in the DoJ.
But hey, my predictions are really kinda crap.
@Jay L Gischer: You do realize that Musk (probably unintentionally) is excusing the economic downturn to come by saying the country has to endure “economic hardship” to get on the right track. Whatever that may mean. They never take responsibility for anything.
@Michael Reynolds: As to your racist characters, many people read any mention of a thing as approval of that thing. That doesn’t make any sense, but I’ve been forced to realize people think in ways that don’t make sense.
An example is BLM. A lot of people who simply mentioned BLM, or noted while disapproving that BLM has a point, got criticized for supposedly supporting riots.Public health people saying they should wear masks, but there’s nothing we can do about it and at least it’s outdoors, got described as supporting BLM riots and lifting the rules for ideological reasons.
We are big AI’s. Sometimes we just babble.
@Jay L Gischer: I agree with that assessment. Trump’s entire raison d’être in running was to cash grab for his ongoing legal defense/stop it if possible (remember this was the argument to stall a bunch of his pending lawsuits). He doesn’t want to do this (he’d much rather be cheating at golf). Melania certainly doesn’t want to do this (I am assuming she’s in discussions with her lawyer right now to revise the prenup).
The easiest way out of this for him to get back to golfing is to get sworn in, dump whatever Putin wants in his lap, and then “retire” and have Vance pardon him.
@Jay L Gischer:
Yeah, we’re likely to remain just as stubborn and loud as usual. Especially MR lol
Democrats do pretty well in opposition tbh
@Jay L Gischer:
I’m very sorry to tell you word is Jack Smith has begun to wind down his pending cases. The sticking point is the documents case, as the DOJ needs to get a ruling on the crazy decision that a special prosecutor needs approval from the senate.
And it’s likely Merchan won’t sentence der fuhrer at all, since any kind of slap on the wrist, like community service or home confinement, would “interfere” with the transition or the pretense at being the president.
It makes me want to throw up.
I’m sure Maduro sucking up to der fuhrer has nothing to do with his ambitions to take over territory in Guyana.
Not that der fuhrer would be inclined to intervene in behalf of Guayana, even for oil, but seeing as the UK is on Guyana’s side (remember they sent a small warship to successfully frighten Maduro), and that a coridal relationship between a fascist and Starmer is unlikely, he may just tell the Brits to back of.
Come, el fuhrer loves outdated politics. Monroe Doctrine!
The way I see it is there are now 72,774,271 citizens who can be charged with aiding and abetting a felon.
@Jay L Gischer:
Quite likely is that now the MAGA is installed in the WH, it no longer needs trump and we can expect a 25th amendment solution not too far down the road.
@DK:
The people who think they make rational decisions are usually the ones who are the most emotional.
And I don’t want to single out politics, since this happens with pretty much everything. The “rational actors” are the people who don’t recognize their emotions and biases, and are unable to recognize when their emotions are steering them wrong.
Whhhhyyyyyyy??? Second time in a year someone hit my car with their vehicle. At least everyone is okay and my car is not totaled this time.
@Scott:
Musk can only be a tourist in any discussion of economic hardship.
If things weren’t bad enough, there’s a new Star Wars trilogy in the works (another one).
Since it mentions one person to write and produce the trilogy, I’m hoping it won’t be a repeat of no ending and no story thought up ahead of time, like the Rey and Fin and Poe trilogy was.
Mind, not that having one person in charge worked all that well in the first original trilogy. After all, by the second movie Vader was retconned into Luke’s father, and in the third Leia was retconned into his sister (and made for a retconned incestuous scene in the second movie).
I expect I’ll see it, and experience regulation disappointment.
@Jay L Gischer:
@Jen:
It feels like we’ve already gone through this in 2016. And again in Jan 7-20 2021.
Unless der fuhrer meets his untimely demise*, or Vance grows a spine and sticks a knife in his crotch**, he will leave the office he pretends to perform only feet first***
*Timely would have been before 2015
** He certainly has his brain, such as it is, down there, and probably what passes for his heart, too.
*** Yes, I know he can’t run a third time. I’d bet everything I own, plus all I can steal and borrow, that if he wants to run in 2028, the Leo court will find a way to say he can. Even if it means finding an amendment to be unconstitutional.
@Roger: Clearly for some the issue was not determinative. It appears Trump’s message ‘The nation is messed up and only I can fix it’ beat out Harris’s ‘More of the same’ in the rust belt areas.
@Sleeping Dog:
I don’t know about that. They adore Trump. He’s their hero/savior/God. Vance, they like. And they hope he would succeed Trump, eventually.
But as for 25th-Amendmenting Trump out of office and replacing him with Vance, no way. In such a case the “peasants with pitchforks,”as Pat Buchanan called them, really would descend on Washington, D.C.
@Kathy: He’s tired–that much was really clear at the low-energy “rallies” he was having towards the end of the campaign. I think he loves the adulation, and will probably stick around as long as Putin wants/needs him, but I really believe he doesn’t want to be there, so will be looking for the (literal) get out of jail free card. Either that or it’s going to be millions more in taxpayer dollars funneled to his garish properties to bolster their financials while he plays golf and JD Vance screws the country.
@Kathy:
I see MAX is going to air a Dune prequel series this month. Mixed emotions. Herbert’s Dune books, after the first few, left me nauseous. Couldn’t finish them. Nope. If Frank Herbert was still around I would not care to meet him.
On the other hand, perhaps something interesting can be salvaged from Herbert’s complex world-building. Not hopeful about that but ya never know.
@Jen:
It’s not in his nature. He’d look weak. He’d look bad. Yes, I know that’s his natural state, but he doesn’t.
He might try what Jr allegedly proposed to Kasich. Have someone else actually run things while he tosses words in rally after rally. And even that is dubious. What if it got out? he’d look, well you know.
Feet first. he’d still look bad, but he won’t know it.
@dazedandconfused:
I already don’t like Dune, so at least I know I won’t be disappointed.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’ve had characters in 4 of my books with unpleasant racial views.
* A man because he is being unemployed by another character, attacks her with a knife in a public restroom and refers to her as ‘N***** b***h’
* In my Yakuza story. the main character’s grandfather does not approve of his granddaughter’s gaijin boyfriend. These thoughts are only mentioned twice in a very long book and he never expresses them outloud and always treats his granddaughter’s future husband with courtesy.
* A women’s college basketball coach in another book considers most of the black players he coaches ‘dumb ugly b****es’.
These are VERY minor elements of the three separate stories they appear in. The next wasn’t.
I have a character in one book, set in the 1990’s, who is the CEO of a company in the deep south. He grew up when segregation was the norm and his race views aren’t pleasant.
His youngest son falls in love with a half Asian girl. Which he disapproves of and uses the N word in reference to her verbally on multiple occasions.
I won’t bore you with the details but that character undergoes a change of heart at least concerning the young lady who before the book ends becomes his daughter in law. Shortly after being presented with his second grandson (first child by her), he kisses her on the forehead and says. ‘He’s a handsome boy. Thank you.’
Have I taken any grief for these characters? Not at Amazon so far as I know. Goodreads comments can be a cesspool and I tend to avoid looking at what’s written there.
The world is full of unpleasant people. I have never failed to portray them in a book because of that
@Kathy:
There was this Philippine airlines crash in 1989 where a jet overran the Manila airport runway and ended up on a road. No one on the plane was killed but 8 people in cars were.
I was stationed in the Philippines at the time and it got lots of press coverage. According to my father, there was a photo of the accident in the Palm Beach Post.
@Kathy:
I have never watched Dune or any version of it. The same goes for Lord of the Rings.
Movies involving fantasy, magic, have never appealed to me. Which you’d probably consider odd because that is most of what I write.
@Bill Jempty:
Overrun on landing is far more common than on takeoff.
I was trying to think of other aborted takeoff overruns. There aren’t many. One involved a Russian plane, I think, that was trimmed nose down. When the pilot rotated, the nose didn’t come up.
But when something like that happens, I’ve no real idea what the correct procedure is. You can’t safely stop and will overrun the runway, but on the other hand the plane won’t rotate. All other things being equal,a slower collision seems better than a faster one.
Then there’s this one from 1958. Slush on the runway prevented the plane from reaching takeoff speed. Unfortunately they’d reached V1 before losing speed.
@Bill Jempty:
Kidlit is very, very sensitive and very, very politically correct. It’s a business run by young, mostly White women, often but certainly not always from families with money, who graduated two years ago from a Seven Sisters University with a degree in English.
@Kathy: It’s the nausea being refreshed that I fear.
@Bill Jempty:
I recall hearing a lot about Dune in the early 80s, then the movie came out in 1984. I saw it, had a hard time following it, thought it was cheesy and campy, and heard from a lot of people I should read the book.
I tried. I think I lost interest, and I had a BIG pile of Clarke, Asimov, and Niven books waiting. Eventually I loaned to someone and never got it back. I figured it was just as well.
I saw the latest movie when it came out. it was pretty ok, as were the characters. Too much magic for SF for my tastes, and far less interesting than Star Wars’ type of magic. I really don’t see what the fuss is about, other than maybe some people put world building over story.
I may see the sequels if they get produced and stream somewhere. The HBO Dune series sounds like something I’d watch if I felt like watching something and couldn’t find something else.
@Michael Reynolds: I just wanted to weigh in that I am with you (and Bill Jempty) on this:
I have seen this play out in many, many places, in so much literature and film. Also on a person level. It’s like these highly educated, bright people don’t understand the first thing about how literature works. They will go on about, for instance, “Michael Reynolds said X” when, no, one of Michael Reynolds’ characters said X, which is not the same thing at all.
Do you think Shakespeare believed in witchcraft?
If we want to gather people under our banner, we have to do two things at once: Be empathetic and compassionate, and also unflinching and resolute in our core beliefs. This is possible. I can cite people whom I think do it well. It is a skill one must develop, because it is anti-tribal. It doesn’t come naturally, tribalism does.
I think that for this kind of thing to work though, it probably needs to be fragmented. Different material works for different audiences. Trump has been always attentive to what gets his audience excited or not so excited. That’s a big advantage that live performance has over published stuff.
@Sleeping Dog:
Removing him against his will is unlikely and very difficult while he is ostensibly still coherent. And unnecessary as well – he can be played, manipulated. As a figurehead signing off on stuff that is all Thiel, Musk etc. need.
Just for fun, I looked up some speeches of Iago (the villain of Othello).
Wow, that’s some vile stuff: “A black ram is topping your white ewe” (This is Desdemona’s father) and “the devil will make a grandsire of you”. Yikes.
So, do we think this represents Shakespeare’s love of racism? Shakespeare said this so his work should be banned and never published?
Gallant claims the IDF has achieved all its objectives in Gaza. And that Bibi is as big an obstacle to peace and the return of the remaining living hostages as Hamas.
If this is so, then Biden can cut off the supply of weapons to Bibi’s government. They don’t need them. Assuming Gallant is not saying this now to embarrass or pressure Bibi into decency (a fool’s errand).
Not that I think forcing an election would help. Remember Israel has had like seventeen elections in the past four or five years, and managed to oust him only briefly, and with a coalition that barely could hold together.
I’d say running for the highest to stay out of prison is a rather good tactic.
@Kathy: You’re right, Kathy. The worst aviation accident in the United States since 2002, was a plane overrunning the runway on take off. The pilot’s took off from the wrong runway.
It is not related to this stuff but from 1989 to 2019 I lived very close to this airport. Sometimes* with walking distance. In 1996, a Carnival Airlines 727 lined up to land at that airport. They already had their gear down when a atc alerted them they were approaching the wrong airport. A landing there would have ended up in Lake Osborne. What a mess that would have been.
*- I lived at either one or two houses or an apartment in that area. From the apartment house, the airport property was on the other side of the street behind a fire house.
@Michael Reynolds:
I have never run into PC problems with my books. At least two commenters have about my politics. It was a book containing a very pro-life character. The book ranks 12th of 30 in royalties earned for me. My character’s views don’t look to have my sales.
My racist CEO story is YA oriented. The story’s main characters are 18 and 20 when the story begins. It wasn’t written for the YA audience,
@Bill Jempty:
Using the wrong runway is also a very dangerous thing to do.
on to other things, one of the housemates bought a new toaster oven (the old one broke). She’s very happy with it, and has urged me to try it. I think I last used one to do a lazy grilled cheese maybe ten years ago.
But I glanced at the instructions, and found it has a convection function. It specifically says convection and not air frying. I want to try that, and see if I can put to rest once and for all that an air fryer is perhaps not “just a small convection oven.”
Soon as I figure out how…
@Michael Reynolds: Not to mention that it’s already been tried, or have we all forgotten Air America?
@Kathy: I’ve never understood why what’s happening about the trials is surprising/disappointing anyone. The nation (I would say most nations, for that matter) was founded on the proposition that there are different rules for the leaders and for the followers.
That “all animals are created equal” evolved into “some animals are more equal than others” wasn’t brand new when Eric Blair wrote it. It’s been a feature of life forever.
@dazedandconfused:
I love (my possibly wildly inaccurate memories of) God Emperor of Dune, and hope the recent movies did well enough that they will feel compelled to make sequels and get to a giant sandworm emperor reigning for 10,000 years and then plotting his own assassination and resurrecting Duncan Idaho over and over again like a running joke.
Ideally the screenplay would be written by someone who hasn’t read the book in decades. To make sure it is a fresh take.
I just hope they get it good and hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngDJIjbAvz4
I record the price of gasoline when I buy it just for shits and grins. I have noticed that the price of Unleaded Regular has dropped to $2.999/gal with no discounts applied at several stations in town. This was earlier in the week before election day. In March of this year I paid $3.499/gal.
Who would fall for the trope that the price of gasoline has been going up and it is the fault of the Democrats?
@Mister Bluster: The same people who think the President can control gas prices.