Last night, I stopped paying attention to the news when I heard, early in the returns, that Doug Jones was far behind Roy Moore in the Alabama election.
The last thing I read about it was Charles Pierce’s despairing description of a Moore rally.
You grow exhausted from the effort it takes to keep mockery at bay long enough to explain that what Moore and Bannon are selling is a dangerous blend of religious extremism and McCarthyite bombast, Roy Cohn in Torquemada drag. You grow exhausted by the effort it takes, over and over again, to remind yourself that there are good people in the crowd cheering this river of sludge and nonsense.
Finally, you give up. Roy Moore is a vehicle for collecting suckers, for liberating them from their responsibility as citizens in a self-governing republic, and anybody who thinks this waterheaded theocrat belongs in the United States Senate is a dupe and a fool. Finally, you don’t care if the people behind Roy Moore, and the people in the crowd in front of him, believe you are a member of the coastal elite or an agent of Lucifer. Finally, you grow weary of the smug condescension of religious bigots. Finally, you decide to put down the twin burdens of excusing deliberate ignorance and respecting the opinions of people who want to light the world on fire to kill their imaginary enemies. And you give up and tell the truth.
These people deserve what they get.
Then I went to bed.
I woke up to howling winds rattling the house, and I peeked out the window to see a bleak cold landscape to match my soul. So I resignedly opened up the news to this, Rosie Gray’s post-election wrap up.
Everything had to break exactly right for Doug Jones to win the Senate election in deep-red Alabama, and it did. Jones ran a disciplined campaign that hinged on black turnout, and it delivered for him.
WTF? Jones won? How could that happen? Moore had Bannon and Clarke and Gohmert and Trump all backing him — he had all the racist/nationalist/dumbshit fuckwits pulling for him in Alabama. That isn’t a recipe for success anymore? And then I read how Jones won. He had the black vote. Black citizens turned out in spite of all the obstacles put in front of them, all the voter suppression, all the dirty tricks, like all the stories I read of Alabama cops pulling over black drivers on the way to the polls to make them late, the weird games with demanding that they re-register, that they were listed as ‘inactive voters’ and had to jump through extra hoops to get the ballot. The white vote strongly favored Moore. Heck, the college-educated white demographic voted for the kiddie-diddling theocratic incompetent whose wife argued that he couldn’t be a racist because one of his attorneys was a Jew. He totally won the Bubba vote. This guy.
The white people of Alabama voted for the worst candidate…because he was white. If you want to complain about “identity politics”, fine, just keep in mind that the worst perpetrators are those fine light-skinned people of European descent that the neo-Nazis want to build an “ethnostate” for — the great white fuckups of America.
Black Alabama saved us.
And then I read that the state of Texas might be in play in the near future — that Republicans are facing a lot of competition and a lot of state races are going to be contested. Why? Shifting demographics as the Hispanic vote in Texas rises.
Brown Texas is going to save us.
The Republicans are playing against time, and have gambled everything against an inevitability — the US is going to become a majority minority nation within a generation, an environment in which bigotry will no longer be a viable political position. Further, the one white demographic that opposes the Republican status quo are the young people. It’s a rising tide that’s going to destroy the current conservative dominance. The only question is whether the Republicans will succeed in wrecking the nation before we bury them.
If they go through with trying to remove $ 400 billion from Medicare one or two elderly longtime Republican voters may chamge their minds…..because suddenly the cuts strike close to home.
“…whether the Republicans will succeed in wrecking the nation before we bury them.”
Two words. Greenhouse warming.
A dem, a freaking DEM, wins in Alabama. Only the national environment cultivated by the GOP, Bannon and Trump, combined with and the stupidity of the ultra-conservative bloc here nominating a ridiculous candidate could have gifted us this environment. Doug, running with no democratic infrastructure to speak of, deserved it on effort alone. Maybe it’s undeserved, but I’m proud of my state tonight for not sending the ephebophile to DC.
So proud of the black community here, that who turned out in huge numbers to sweep Doug into office.
So proud of Doug, who worked his ass off. The stars had to align for him to pull this out, but the combination of conservatives that said no mo(o)re, Moore’s prior stupidity, the national environment and the recent strong allegations opened the door. He had to campaign like a madman to pull it out, but did so and won as a result.
And I’ll say I’m proud of the conservatives that held themselves to a higher standard. While there weren’t as many of them as I would have liked, those that said no mo(o)re did weigh heavily on this race.
I would love it if we could keep it going here and turn this state blue permanently.
So the stench from the GOP may be switching from the shit they spew to that of a rotting corpse. It’s a change in the right direction, but it will still be smelling up the place for some time yet.
Hopefully Dems seize on these recent wins as an example of “If it bleeds, we can kill it” and keep running campaigns that don’t suck.
One of the reasons I stopped watching MSNBC last year was because of its endless reporting of the loss of sanity in America. But I peeked in on it late last night and was flabbergasted to learn that Jones had won. I won’t start believing in a sane America again, but the Jones win was very badly needed.
How much the Republicans will succeed in wrecking the nation. birgerjohanssen picks the most notable of many examples that show whether is not in question.
One more argument for immigration!
Poor Roy Moore lost. Sad.
I’d even written him a little victory song to the tune of Pedro the Fisherman (https://youtu.be/EiE6iG3IYNk):
🎶🎵
Roy Moore the Senator was always wanking at the local mall.
Girls who were passing by would see him at it, hear his merry call
“How do you like a bit of this?
“Yes, you miss!
“Or a kiss?”……
No! No I can’t go on it’s too too sad.
Whatever this means, it’s hopefully more than catalyzing Republican legislative efforts in the short term.
I simply cannot wrap my head around the fact that half of the population of the most powerful country on earth are still casting their vote for fear, hate and bigotry. That if you put two USians in a sack and hit it with a stick, it’s pretty likely you’ll hit someone who deserves it. (btw kudos to that Lindsey Vonn for pointing that out to her countrypersons; not that I know anything about her which tells me that this isn’t an isolated incident)
Incidentally, Democrats clearly are the lesser evil, but still evil. That so few people care about, or care to learn about, their government’s exploitatory and imperialistic machinations, but are happily sedated by sports and religion and all that… I can’t… sorry. Must go to rid myself of that inner Chomsky.
Bottom line is, please, keep on doing what you’re doing all you bloggers and SJWs. I admire your tenacity in the face of so much apparent futility. I couldn’t do it.
p.s.: The topic is US politics, but of course, there’s plenty of fucked up people elsewhere. The relevance of any one’s idiocy just happens to be proportional to the damage they can do to the rest of the world.
This is not as a seismic shift. Jones won with roughly 670,000 votes. That would have put him in third in the 2016 senate race. Moore’s absolute and utter creepiness managed to keep the half-hearted racists home. If the republicans had even just a slightly less creepy creep running for office, their racist, misogynistic platform would probably have won.
holytape is right — elections in the USA cannot be understood without looking at all the numbers on what really happened and comparing them to the past. Who doesn’t vote has to be understood as thoroughly as who voted and for whom.
Last year I heard a lot of silliness from the mathematically illiterate blaming Trump on the small population of third-party voters, completely ignoring the vast, staggering numbers who didn’t vote.
#4
Yes, the worry is that they believe that they have everything locked up, and no longer need to try. Again.
birgerjohansson@1
@12
Well, that and hopefully they will try to run on issues and not on “We’re not republicans, what do you mean there’s more to this than just saying “We’re not republicans”?”
No! Not just no, HELL NO! If you’re at a campaign rally for a white supremacist pedophile slavery apologist, you are not “good people.” Please, journalists, stop bending over backwards to explain how the people cheering for racism, misogyny, homophobia, and theocracy simply mustn’t be named, blamed, or shamed for their actions. Stop enabling the GOP’s strategy of compartmentalization and dissociation.
@10 holytape — sadly, yes. Any random Orrin Hatch/Mitch McConnell asshole could have won this race 58-42. And the halfwit keyboard jockeys at places like Salon and HuffPo and Kos have been predicting this generational/demographic shift for 20 years, as they dredge up story after story about what Alex Jones said about bathrooms yesterday or what Breitbart said about Islam yesterday, but wouldn’t know genuine political economy if it bit them in the ass. Not only do they never talk about collective bargaining or encourage walk-outs or suggest anything remotely un-corporate (oh, nationalizing telecom, for example) — and so look like idiots for referring to Senator Sanders as a socialist — but they never even bother mentioning the Democrat opposition. You will read story after story about Steve King and Louis Gohmert and Pete King and Ted Cruz and Ken Buck and Gary Palmer and all the horrible bills they propose and all the horrible things they say…..but can you name a single Democrat who ran against them? Nope — the Dem Mainstream Media is a daily outrage factory, not so distinct from Rush or Beck, that generates its clicks based on what some jerk said yesterday, rather than embracing a coherent platform of economic opportunity, education, healthcare, etc. Meanwhile, every gas station or 7-11 you walk into across Dixie and the Heartland has FoxNews on the TV, 24-7, with under-employed 23-year-olds in Harley Davidson t-shirts nodding to the TeaParty talking points. They’re convinced that their lack of opportunity is due to Democrats giving all the country’s money away to lazy black hoodlums, and the best jobs are all stolen by Mexicans (when they’re not raping blonde women), and that unions and teachers are a cancer on Christianity, and that Jewish tort lawyers are aborting 8&1/2 month fetuses on behalf of Da Gayz….
….this isn’t going to change when the remaining WWII vets die, or just because Latinos will become more plentiful. Over 30 percent of Latinos voted for Trump, along with 57 percent of women. I got into an argument with a Mexican friend last month who was GOING OFF on Puerto Ricans for being stupid and lazy and deserving their fate after Irma. The Divide & Conquer successes of the GOP since Nixon’s Southern Strategy are alive and kicking. And Wyoming’s 450,000 ranch hands will always have as much clout in The Senate as California’s 50 million diverse citizens. We’re stuck with this shit for generations to come.
The white teenage girls of Alabama need to disown their parents. Both of them.
I am grateful for and appalled by the result in equal measure.
@16
God damn it. I really wish people would look into something that seems wrong prima facie before repeating it as Gospel. The number of Latinos who voted for Trump is not over 30%. That number comes from exit polls data that shouldn’t be used to support that sort of claim. (Yes I know it’s common). Exit polls are not interested in sampling the electorate as a whole but in allowing networks to predict races the night of the election. The precincts selected to be interviewed at concentrated in swing States and swing districts of states. I highly doubt the number of respondents of LA county numbered greater than 5.
Exit polls data is infamously unreliable at estimating minorities partisan splits.
In 2016 the exit polls data for Latinos had these fundamental flaws. First not a single precinct that was overwhelming Latino was selected to be used. The large swarth of southern Texas along the Mexican border that is strongly democratic and Mexican American didn’t have a single respondent in the exit polls. Second, not a single exit polls interview was conducted in Spanish. Third, Cuban Americans, given FL’s swing state status, were over sampled. Cuban electoral preferences are far more Republican (90+% Republican) than other Latin groups because of the GOP’s extreme anti-communism and anti-Castro positioning. However, Cubans only have significant numbers in FL and driving a sample larger from southern Fl. doesn’t form a representative picture.
I don’t for a second believe if you conducted exit polls with the idea to accurately reflect the Latino populations that the split would have back 70/30.
There’s also much to be said that the various Latino populations should be separated into distinct blocks. Cubans are not Puerto Ricans who are not Mexicans who are Brazilians.
I understand what Pierce was trying to say here, but this has to stop. Just because people aren’t going around murdering and setting stuff on fire does not make them good people. That just makes them like most everyone else. Somehow, people are going to have to find the spine to take the truth out: if people are cheering for a person who is sexually abusive, fanatically religious, embracing the subjugation of women, and finds slavery to be uniting and enchanting, they are not good people.
They are nasty people who are fully on board with grasping power, primarily the power to oppress all people they don’t approve of, and that’s a fucktonne of people when it comes to these immoral christian fanatics. These are the types of people who, if heresy or witch trials were brought back, would be lining up to be inquisitors, and would be denouncing people so fast they would trip over their tongues.
There were at least two (of five) barely-Trump states where Trump’s margin was smaller than Shill Swine’s vote total.
@Azkyroth
Shill Swine?
@Anbheal
And of the ones who did not vote they have admitted they would have voted third party if they did, but stayed home because there was no point. Its not just about the numbers, its about the propaganda. The third party pushers aided the Trump candidacy by acting as another branch of negative propaganda towards Hillary complete with bullshit fake news and conspiracy theories to boot. You’re part of this mess, own it. Twice it has happened where someone tied to the Clinton administration was denied the win because of third party bullshit leaving us with an imbecilic bigoted right wing idiot. Thanks. No one learns a lesson in politics.
Is no one reading past “remind myself there are good people”?
Because in the entirety of the quote he clearly moves away from that supposition. What else could “give up and tell the truth: these people are getting what they deserve.” ?
@18 Mike Smith — but of the seven states we stole from Mexico, plus Florida, only California votes dependably Democrat. You are right about the exit polls. In Arizona, for example, the “official” result of 31 percent Latino support for Trump has been de-bunked by various statistical methods. And of course a bigger problem is voter registration and eligibility standards. In Arizona only 45 percent or so of Latino adults were eligible to vote, while close to 90 percent of Anglos were.
But the crossing-the-moat-then-pulling-up-the-drawbridge phenomenon is just as relevant today as it was among Irish, Italians and Poles two generations ago. Once they hit the middle-class, they start voting against newcomers. Among middle-to-upper-middle class Latinos (and not just Cubans), there is significant antipathy toward more recent arrivals.
But I hope you’re right….if Texas and Florida turn blue, the country would be a better place, even if the Senate remains 51-49 for eternity.
@logicalcat:
Presumably, ‘Shill Swine’ means Jill Stein, head of the Green Party.
If I’d been there when he rode his horse away from the polling booth I would have shouted, “Run pedophile, run.”
What is this “good people” shit? From how I read the results, a majority of the white population of Alabama just stood up and demonstrated that their racism matters more to them than any other consideration. I.e: they are the exact opposite of good people.
Marcus @26, I refer you to Mike Smith @22, which is an answer to your (rhetorical) question.
@ 22:
That’s a weaselly cop-out, nothing more. It’s a refusal to come right out with the truth about these people. This isn’t a matter of them getting what they deserve, it’s a matter of what they are inflicting on society at large. They do not live in a vacuum, and this is simply more of the feeble attempt to somehow justify these people’s thinking and behaviour. There’s been one stupid “analysis” after another of Trumpholes; a constant reaching to paint such people as regular folk. Anything but simply saying “these are not good people” or “these are not the upright, moral people they say they are”.
Pandering to these people with constant attempts to paint them as nice, normal people is a fucking lie. Saying their actions is what they deserve elides their actions on society at large; it’s an omission and a denial of what they truly want: the power to oppress and subjugate.
I am so looking forward to next November’s elections here in Texas. I live in a massively gerrymandered district, a middle finger stuck up from the southern rural areas into the liberal south suburbs of DFW to pour our votes into the sewer of support for my dipshit GOP Congressman, Joe “what global warming?” Barton.
He’s not running for re-election, one of the folks caught up in this wonderful rising tide of opposition to misogynist assholery. So on the one hand, I’ll miss my biannual joy of voting against him. But I’m excited at the possibility that without his name recognition and regular endorsements from the Dallas Morning News, the GOP might find that they gerrymandered that district a bit too much, and North Texas will send up one more Democratic representative to the House next fall.
Normal, everyday people. Nice people. Yes they are and you’re right, that is important.
Good, though? “Nice is different than good”, as the poet says.
Hoping the nice normal people of our district find their consciences and help us flip that empty suit Devin Nunes out of office this coming year too…
Well I want to say thank you to those of you who realize that Latinos are not some super monolith. I was sick and tired of hearing white Caucasians refer to us as such. Thanks Mike Smith and Abnheal.
Cuban and Colombians voted for Trump. By what measure? I dont know, but these two tends to be the groups who are most likely middle class and lean right. Hell I’d say light skin Cubans and Colombians, which I am one, are basically the white people of South Florida. Complete with all the privilege that entails plus discrimination and racism towards blacks (American or otherwise), Mexicans, and Nicaraguans. And these things change. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that our Venezuelan populations shifted right thanks to whats happening in that country right now. Someone earlier mentioned that the right fosters paranoia regarding socialism, and that’s definitely true among Cubans. I could see it happening to Venezuelans and Colombians as well.
You cant rely on us to save things. Not at the moment anyways. I have seen around me an increasing number of Cubans who are waking up to Trumps bullshit. All of this is anecdotal I realize but it gives me hope at least.
Yes. I see this an awful lot. It even happens among lower to lower middle class latinos. Although I’ve only seen it with Cubans at that level.
Dear Racist Assholes,
We don’t CARE what color the person is. We don’t CARE what gender the person is, or if they are divorced or asexual. We don’t CARE if they just got here from another country. We don’t CARE!!
We need people who can DO THE JOB! If that person is purple with yellow stripes, WE DON”T CARE.
Our nation is falling apart. Literally. We need a HUGE effort to make it livable again, and if the expertise comes from a polyamorous female Sikh with a limp and only one arm, WE DON’T CARE!!!
Telling me I should hate someone because of their color or national origin, or even religion (assuming they aren’t F’ing with my laws, which rules out most Christians) is ludicrous, cause I’m not able to fix this crap. So someone better figure it out, cause i can only do what I can do. And that’s not gonna cure cancer. Or fix the ozone layer.
Besides, ethnic food is awesome. And Dog knows my pasty white hands can’t make an empanada, or stir-fried rice, or naan. So send me your tired, your poor, your huddles masses yearning to breathe free. And if some of them can make a kick-ass wat or som tab, even better.