The Washington Post claims that “Liberal hostility toward Trump aides could galvanize the GOP base”, and implies that we all ought to be more like Mr Rogers.
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican who is close with President Trump, was accosted by liberal activists on Friday night as she watched a documentary called “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Ironically the film highlights Fred Rogers’s teachings of love and kindness, but Bondi had to be escorted from the theater in Tampa by police as partisans screamed at her.
Fred Rogers was a wonderful guy, and I would be delighted if American society were as civil as The Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Unfortunately, our King Friday XIII is planning pogroms, Queen Sara Saturday is sneering at anyone who cares, and Princess Tuesday made $82 million last year off her crony capitalist connections. If any hint of our reality were expressed in his puppet village, I’d like to think that Mr Rogers would be slapping the fuck out of those rotten puppets and burning the whole neighborhood to the ground.
“Kind” and “weak” are not synonyms. These are times when kindness needs to get off its butt, stand in a line, and fight back.
Also, see previous post.
So, in the last election, I saw a lot of stuff I agreed with from the Hilary campaigm: Civil Rights, LGBTQ Rights, Women’s RIghts
And then she lost to a total jackass who told everyone he was going to bring jobs back to the US and give everyone a tax cut.
So, how much good did the Clinton campaign do for those rights? You only get to help with your issues if you get elected. And, surprisingly, an un-employed industrial worker in Arkansas isn’t very motivated to go to the polls to vote for Transgender equality. Even if he would otherwise support the issue.
I said it before the last election, there are a LOT of people that are hurting in this country, there are a lot of people struggling, The Trump campaign tapped into that, albeit unknowingly. The Clinton campaign didn’t And that’s why Trump won.
Now the only question is: What are Democrats going to do about it?
You’re right that being nice isn’t a good path to victory. But neither is waving the banner that says “Hey, We’re not Trump.”
erichoug, #1
So the hordes of rabid racists and other sorts of bigots who were seen at rallies didn’t have much to do with it? How much of his vote came from tapping into racism and bigotry versus economic anxiety?
Also, I might be misremembering here, but wasn’t there some data that showed that the amount of Trump votes that came from financially struggling white people wasn’t as huge as people think?
more like Clinton incompetently explained her “plan” for helping struggling workers, and that was easily leveraged by Trump to galvanize workers against her http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/may/10/context-hillary-clintons-comments-about-coal-jobs/
Now really, worker retraining and new industries should have been an easy sell and is objectively a good plan. Clinton just had no idea how to talk about it.
IMHO, the two main arguments in favor of unilateral civility are:
1) If you are uncivil, how will I distinguish you from Steve Bannon?
2) Using harsh language or shouting at Stephen Miller in public will convince non-bigoted people that black people don’t deserve equal suffrage, brown children belong in cages, and pregnant people must give birth. It’s not a non-sequitur at all. If we must convince people who smile when they see children in cages that that is not a nice thing to do, we must do it while being polite and courteous to the people who are putting children in cages while they say inexcusably demeaning things to their victims and to us.
In the immortal words of the Witch from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods:
You’re so nice
You’re not good
You’re not bad
You’re just nice
I’m not good
I’m not nice
I’m just right
The biggest problem for us is that being “nice” to others* is pretty-well the essence of liberalism.
___________________
* or at least trying.
Relevant post from The Rude Pundit here:
I personally see no reason to be civil in response to the extreme incivility that has been lobbed at us on the left since before I was even born. Being nice to bullies only encourages them to bully you even more.
For fuck’s sake. Clinton did address the kinds of class/economic issues that “an un-employed industrial worker in Arkansas” should care about, if they were fucking listening. But often, they fucking don’t know how to do that. It was not a platform that only catered to minorities and women, not by a long shot. It simply didn’t leave them out, and that’s enough to upset certain people (namely, assholes).
In contrast, Trump delivered a loud, clear, incessant message of hate, coupled with other random expressions of indiscriminate outrage. People eat that shit up. It does not matter what precisely he’s moaning about, as long as he thinks something is wrong — that is enough for some people, because they will read anything they like into it. However, he did not present any credible plan to address anyone’s legitimate economic concerns, except for upper-class assholes who didn’t fucking have anything to worry about.
Besides, I’ll point out again that Trump won because the electoral college is a load of garbage. There’s no point in even wondering what some unemployed people in Arkansas might have doing if you don’t understand that.
Saad @#2
If all you can come up with to explain his win is Racism, then you are going to lose more elections.
Not saying your wrong, but that is the lazy, easy answer and it is only part of the explanation.
erichoug, #9
Yet you seem to leave it out completely.
Two million more people voted for her anyway, so your point that she didn’t reach the financially struggling can’t possibly be right. Also, black people and people of color certainly must have higher percentages of financial struggle, yet strangely we didn’t see them running to vote for Trump in even close to the percentage we saw white men and women doing it.
The appeasement phase of the so-called “liberal” MSM is now in full effect;
https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/06/25/cnn-anchor-bristles-calling-white-house-adviser-stephen-miller-white-nationalist-citing-civility/220528
Saad @#2
Perfectly fair point. But again, I feel like you’re taking the easy explanation. Low voter turnout, an extremely unpopular candidate. An election that didn’t offer a clear alternative to the other guy all contributed to the win by Trump. Democrats should have utterly crushed him. But, they ended up running a very poor race and lost. Something they have been doing a LOT in the last few years.
What should the Democrats do about the racists who voted for Trump? Not a goddamned thing. They should worry about voter suppression policies, media consolodation, and run candidates everywhere that loudly, without apology, run on Democrat values. And that means we lose in a lot of districts because our values are opposed to their bigotries.
We also don’t win elections by pretending that it was “economic anxiety” when it wasn’t. And we shouldn’t pretend that Clinton didn’t have good policy plans for unemployed people when she goddamned did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#Summary
Why do so many voters in the USA think they are directly electing the POTUS?
come on now trump ran on a message of Arrogance, separateness, resentment, racism and fear conveyed with lies, exaggerations and bullshit. He had help from Republican voter law manipulation (gerrymandering and voter suppression) and Putin’s propagandists and news coverage manipulation.
Clinton won the popular vote she just did not win enough votes in the right places. She also suffered from having to be “a lady” in public and not being able to fight dirty or show very much “negative” feelings. In the debates when Trump was walking around behind her she could not have turned and tell him to stop and go stand by his podium and stop trying to intimidate her or some other cutting remark she had to politely continue.
it was primarily a contest of images and the con-man made the sale to enough of the right voters with help to win the election
uncle frogy
erichoug, #12
Ah, so you’re one of those people. You think there wasn’t/isn’t enough difference between Clinton and Trump to be able to make a decision.
So you’re going with that instead of Clinton was the much better candidate but America is full of fucking racist and xenophobic assholes who have been foaming at the mouth the past eight years and couldn’t wait to burn their own country down just to stick it to minorities.
Don’t forget the anti-Clinton rhetoric being spewed by the right for many years even while the dems were in power. Also blatant misogyny.
Let me mention here that the electoral college was established in order to allow the southern racists to appear to have a democracy, while the population demographics were heavily skewed by slavery. In other words, its sole raison d’etre was to protect and enshrine racism. The “in order to prevent more populous states from ruling over the less populous states” bit was “… to prevent them from legislating regarding slavery.”
It’s basically the southerners’ first big voter suppression scheme. That it remains in place tells you what you need to know about American democracy: there isn’t any.
If you thought there were no differences between the candidates you were snookered good by the Russian bots.
One had well thought out policies that (approved by experts) would improve the lives of people by helping those who needed some assistance. She also had experience in various branches of government.
The other candidate had no plans, other than “trust me, only I know to to fix things”, which is what a con man says. If you listened closely he only wanted to disrupt the system and erase Obama from history.
Obama’s still got Holder working for him and they are trying to work through the courts on voter suppression techniques and gerrymandering that the Republicans particularly prefer. I think it’s a great post-presidential hobby for him to pursue and it’s the kind of vengeance that’s served with a court order. I think it may be too late, though – the deck is too thoroughly stacked and the justice system has been captured. I wish Obama had worked on that more when he was president instead of expanding the police state and starting wars.
“Liberalism is a mental illness.”
“Liberalism is cancer.”
“Libtards.”
“Trigger a lib!”
“Want to go to your safe space, snowflake?”
And we’re the ones who keep getting lectured (especially by the “center”) to be nice.
Do conservatives worry that their side’s lack of civility will galvanize liberals? A lot of conservatives are very uncivil in their rhetoric, and some of the policies that they support go light years beyond being uncivil.
springa73, #22
It’s almost like it’s not about civility.
I really don’t think we can separate the economic anxiety and the racism. They’re both very real and the one compounds the other.
Economically anxious racists are far more likely to alight upon racist explanations for their reduced circumstances than complacent, economically content, racists. Americans haven’t got more racist since 2008 – the racism was still there when Obama was elected, and the Republican party had people just as racist as Trump in the running for their nomination.
What they have got is more desperate, and more disillusioned with the two-party system that failed to deliver the hope and the change that was Obama’s key promise in 2008. Racism provides a convenient and attractive narrative for why this is, and even third-rate demagogues like Trump can stir it up effectively after ten years of no economic recovery for the common people.
Saad @2–
If these are the two main arguments, then unilateral civility is a bust.
1. Uncivility is not the defining feature of Steve Bannon. Other famously uncivil people include George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Malcolm X, Mary Harris Jones, Emmeline Pankhurst… The way you tell them from Steve Bannon is that none of them fomented extreme right-wing nationalism.
2. Non-bigoted people are already convinced that black people deserve equal suffrage, etc.
I’d also add:
3. People get to define civility for themselves. To me, Colin Kaepernick is the model of civility. To his critics, he is so infuriatingly uncivil that he can’t be allowed to throw a football on TV. Conservative powers always define activism as uncivil.
Just a few months ago, a Republican Congressional candidate actually physically assaulted a reporter. This act of incivility (and criminality) didn’t even cost him his election, much less hurt Republicans nationwide. But I’m supposed to believe that some anger from Maxine Waters is going to bring down all Democratic candidates? I’m going to need to see some actual hard data on that, not self-serving anecdotes from conservatives who claim they were totally not gonna vote Trump until a liberal said something mean.
If anything, I suspect a case can be made that increased polarization ought to help Democrats. Republicans generally do a great job of turning out their voters — Republican voters show up in midterms, in off-year elections, in primaries for dogcatcher. Dems not so much — unless they’re really pissed off as in 2006. Some of that is due to demographic differences (Ds draw more support from young people and the poor, who move around more and encounter registration difficulties or trouble getting time off work), and some of that is Republican chicanery (creating those registration problems, selective funding of elections systems leading to long lines in D-leaning urban areas, etc.), and maybe there’s some inherent philosophical difference (conservatives coming out to vote because they’re rule-followers, liberals/lefties staying home because “like, the whole system is corrupt, man!”). But regardless of the reason, if politics were more salient in people’s lives, and more people felt like elections were really important, why wouldn’t that help out the party that currently is having a harder time converting support into votes?
When you say Democrats don’t have a plan outside of “not Trump,” that just tells me you’re not looking at what Democrats are saying. Democrats all over the country have been running on platforms that include healthcare for all, a liveable wage, clean energy, ending police brutality, and reducing corporate power. And, yes, often holding Trump to account.
But maybe the reason people think Democrats don’t have a plan is that the media isn’t covering it. I kept hearing that Clinton didn’t have plans – she did, and gave speeches about them, but the media was broadcasting Trump’s empty podium instead. Now I could get into the weeds of mild conspiracy theory as to why this is (follow the money) – but the two simplest explanations are pretty good – ratings and lazy reporting. It’s easier to talk about Trump and what Democrats said about Trump than to talk about what Democrats would do instead and why it would it would not work.
I am kind of furious today, so that may not be the most coherent rant… Democratic turnout is low because of decades of voter suppression and gerrymandering and cheating. Democrats “don’t have a message” because compassion and working policy is boring. And so we’re being ruled by a minority party of bigoted democracy destroying assholes that as of this week look like they have succeeded. Not one of those bigoted jerks should be able to show their have in public for what they are doing to these children, women, and minorities. Screw civility and bring on the old woman from the Princess Bride.
https://youtu.be/drKfbbBu05w
I think an effective wedge can be placed between the authoritarian leaders and their followers. Because the two are different and (sometimes) contradictory personality types.
I’ve been reading the book The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer. It’s going over these personality types, and talks about some differences.
One key difference is that the followers value loyalty to the group. But people like Trump only care about exploiting those followers.
So, picking at this point could be one way to fight back.
The problem is that the followers are largely gullible, delusional thinkers who will bend over backwards to deny such traits in their leaders…
Another tension between the two:
The followers are terribly afraid of the world becoming a chaotic uncivilized jungle.
Trump-like leaders believe the world is already this way, and just want to be the successful predators of the jungle.
This political “polarisation” in the US seems to consist of right-wingers going off the deep end while the mainstream left strives to be as uselessly “centrist” as possible.
Like, if these guys cared at all about promoting actual leftist policies, if they weren’t content with their party being the less-evil of two platforms for the enrichment of well-connected oligarchs, if their talk about tactically “compromising” on left-wing positions to appeal to centrist voters weren’t just a ploy to make the left give up their principles while they get exactly what they want…then they’d be shouting from the rooftops a Social Democratic solution for every problem Trump is pretending to address with his totalitarian bullshit. Preferably into a TV camera that’s pointed at them because they just called for large-scale wealth redistribution or threw a Nazi off said roof. If there was ever a time to “compromise” their self-serving centrism in favour of forthright left-wing political action, it’s now.
Instead they’re stuck reacting with impotently civilised outrage to every new atrocity, and occasionally tut-tut at fellow leftists for getting rude about it. The reactionaries offer bold, easily communicated (stupid, evil) plans. These guys offer “don’t do that”.
Oh, from this book that was apparently written 12 years ago, emphasis added to that last sentence:
@31, Zeppelin
I think one issue is people’s difficulty with conflation, turning many different variables into just one (or a few).
And this is tripping up both parts of the left (the appeasers, and the radicals).
Gary Younge of the Guardian nicely sums up the arguments why “Donald Trump’s enforcers have lost the right to civil courtesy.”
erichoug @ 12:
This is demonstrably false, seeing as more people voted for Clinton than did for tRump.
for example, I think radicals sometimes conflate ends and means (ends justify means), while excessive appeasers seem to conflate justified conflict (and methods of conflict) with unjustified.
This might not be “conflation”, really, just lack of imagination, thinking skills, problem solving skills, etc. something like that…?
By the way, those personality types might be harder labels for “reasonable moderates” to discard than accusations of “nazism”. Because people’s personality types seem obvious from their personality, and the categories are broad enough to fit different views. That broadness (and abstractness) could make it harder to play “no true nazi”.
We also need to keep in mind the other side lies, and repeats those lies ad nauseum.
For example, I stopped by the barber shop to get my few remaining hairs trimmed, and the client ahead of me was ranting about illegal aliens coming to the country, and immediately getting a Link Card. The Link Card is used by the state of IL for monies for general welfare, and SNAP funds. So they are used frequently at grocery stores by those of darker skin who may be speaking a language he doesn’t understand. And jumps to conclusions based on Faux News.
Needless to say, when I got home (I have a dumb cell phone) I checked the facts. Undocumented aliens are ineligible for Link Cards. Only aliens with certain documents (meaning LEGAL), not really specified by the web site, are eligible. Lies like that cause the Trumpian resentment toward immigrants.
Another lie told by that client was that all aliens without prior documents are illegal the minute they step across the border. Asylum seekers must step across the border and present themselves to the authorities. The US has both signed and ratified a number of treaties, which are now part of US law.
@jimb: She managed to barely scrape by in the popular vote, running against a grotesque caricature of a human being who had no qualifications or even public speaking skills, ran a campaign on the verge of collapse and bankruptcy, and was opposed by the Republican establishment. That election should have been a landslide.
But the “centrist” Democrat establishment, content with being the “less evil” party, miscalculated. They figured that since the opposing candidate was so awful, they could have their corporatist oligarch cake and eat it too. They underestimated how disillusioned and exhausted people were with their lesser-of-two-evils shtick. And they’ve learned fuck-all from it, either — they still refuse to make a clear, unashamedly leftist ideological commitment even though that’s the obvious path to countering Trump’s messaging. It’s almost as if, all their talk about compromise and calls to drop expectations of “ideological purity” to the contrary, they actually have a firm ideological commitment against real leftist policy.
#35
This does not refute his statement.
So, wait, PZ. Are you saying that the fool-proof plan of sulking and mumbling that the Republicans are big meanieheads that has been in operation since 2009 isn’t working!? Are you saying that when the press said that the Republicans would pay dearly in every election year wasn’t true?
Wow, I’ve really been living in a bubble here.
@ #1 erichoug “You’re right that being nice isn’t a good path to victory. But neither is waving the banner that says ‘Hey, We’re not Trump.'”
A respectful — and, despite its seemingly glib tone, deadly serious — question for you, please:
If the damages that Trump and his Publicans have already wrought on our country, citizenry, economy, security, democracy, standing in the world, military readiness, rule of law, planet, and founding and guiding principles — not to mention all those damages that are not yet manifest but are thoroughly predictable (indeed, inevitable) — are NOT yet enough for “Not Trump” to be a sufficient reason to vote for every Democrat in every election, every time, everywhere, at what point, exactly, will those damages become enough of a reason?
Or do you mean to imply that no amount or extent of harm would ever be sufficient?
(Mind you, this is NOT to suggest that I in any way buy into your apparent implicit assumption that today’s Democrats DON’T actually stand for anything beyond “Not Trump.” Do not fall for the corporate media’s coordinated campaign of stifling Democratic messages. In the last century, those Democratic principles and policies gave America the greatest expansion in opportunity, wealth, and a burgeoning middle class that the country had ever seen (and not incidentally gave the Dem’s a near-hegemony in federal office of well over 50 years).
They can, should, and will do so again — if (but only if) Democrats are elected in sufficient numbers and strength.)
Holms @ #40:
The fuck it doesn’t. She garnered the most votes of any candidate running for President. I.e. among all those that expressed a preference (voted), she was the *most* popular.
So, explain how that’s NOT a refutation of the statement “an extremely unpopular candidate”?
zardeenah @ # 27: …Democrats all over the country have been running on platforms that include healthcare for all, a liveable wage, clean energy, ending police brutality, and reducing corporate power.
All over which country? The Dems I’ve seen have run on Obamacare & Clintoncare (leaving insurance corporations in control of medicine and tens of millions of citizens out of any care), teeny increments to a grossly insufficient minimum wage, more fossil-fuel pipelines, “support your local police!”, and exactly zip point squat for campaign finance reform. Not to mention multiple futile brutal wars.
Meanwhile, they still line up obediently behind a House leader who blatantly refused to even consider her Constitutional responsibilities when faced with proven presidential high crimes & misdemeanors 11 years ago, and who shows every sign of repeating such mal-/non-feasance if returned to the Speakership next year.
@Saad, #2:
No, you’re not wrong at all. Not only is there research showing that privilege anxiety (and especially white privilege anxiety) was a central motivation of Trump’s base voters, but there was also a great analysis that I thought was by Coates, but I can’t find it now.
That one divided up voters by race and income and asked if support for Trump was more dependent on being low income or more dependent on race. White voters making over $100k/year voted trump more often than white voters making 50k-100k/year and almost as often as white voters making less than 50k/year. In every income category, a majority of white voters chose trump, though the majority was narrow in the 50k-100k range (and large but not equally large in each of the others). Meanwhile, latino/a voters and Black voters were consistently against Trump by large majorities in all income categories (I don’t remember stats for voters of indigenous, Asian, or Pacific island descent or whether they were even included).
The point of the article was that yes, whites appear to be voting their race to a greater degree than they were voting their wealth or poverty.
I’ll keep looking for that post here (on the article I thought was by Coates) for a bit, but I may not find it.
@erichoug:
Besides the complete bullshit about not offering “a clear alternative” – jeez, that’s something you can criticize the Dems for in many elections, but not Clinton v Trump – I think the language for which you were searching when you wrote the section that I bolded above is actually something more like this:
.
There ya go. Hope that helps.
“She garnered the most votes of any candidate running for President. I.e. among all those that expressed a preference (voted), she was the *most* popular.”
Barely. And that’s kinda the point. How many people who may have supported Democrats stayed home? How many voted Green or Libertarian? How many split their tickets for all Dems but her?
Sooner or later, Clintonistas have to accept that there are no excuses. It’s not Facebook Russkies. It’s not lack of coverage by the media. It’s because they just couldn’t trust Hillary. Or the Democrats as a whole, for that matter. Neither had demonstrated any willingness or ability to make a hard stand, to confront controversy directly or to not compromise on basic principles. Hillary and Co. felt the need to cheat the nomination process with Super-delegates even against a socialist crackpot and an utter non-entity – and still almost lost. And running on the “four more years of Obama” was kind of iffy since the one major legislative achievement was a watered-down healthcare reform bill which greatly benefited insurance companies and penalized the very people it alleged to help.
. That lie does in any credibility you want have. Almost 3 million votes barely? Stop false hyperbole. It would help your credibility.
I think 3 million out of 129 million total votes counts as “barely”.
@#13, antigone10
No, she really, really didn’t. I kept going to the website and listening to what she said, and she had a couple of “Trickle-down, but with ‘the rich’ crossed out and ‘multinational corporations owned by the rich’ written in” proposals like the TPP (which, after denying support in public, she insisted on putting into the platform — Republicans may be wrong about why, but they are 100% correct that she’s an utterly untrustworthy liar), and everything else was hand-wavy sketchy nonsense.
Like, for example, claiming that the rust belt economy can be fixed by “job training” — news flash: if there were jobs available in depressed areas like the rust belt which people could get by obtaining training, there would be people moving to those areas to take those jobs already because the cost of living is much lower. This is not happening, you can go look at the numbers; therefore there are no good jobs there and training won’t do a damned thing, and any politician who suggests that as a solution is clearly out of ideas and hoping nobody is paying close attention. If we want to fix an area with a long-term depressed economy, either we need to get people to leave (which would be a public relations disaster, so don’t think I’m recommending it) or we need to forcibly inject jobs into the area, which means we can’t rely on “the market” — which means that the right-of-center neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party won’t go for it.
As for what the Democrats could do, well, just for a start they could not campaign targeting Republican voters, which Hillary Clinton very definitely did as soon as she had the nomination tied up. (Chuck Schumer came out and bragged about how brilliant that strategy was, claiming that they would pick up twice as many votes among Republicans as they lost in the base — and specifically cited Pennsylvania as an example of where this would work, which of course was a state which Clinton lost. The Democrats really need to start campaigning to get the base out — the message “we’re just as good for the status quo as the Republicans, but less hateful” is something everybody dislikes.
Another thing they could do would be to worry less about loyalty than about coherent policy. A lot of the party was very down on Sanders because “he isn’t a Democrat”. Ever since the late 1990s, when polled about policy without mentioning party names, a majority of Americans want left-leaning policy — higher taxes on the rich, universal healthcare (and since about 2010 or so, a majority now wants single-payer healthcare), better and cheaper public transportation, you name it. But as soon as the Democratic Party is mentioned in conjunction with those policies, support drops back down to a minority. Running as a Democrat is a handicap; people hate the party; we need outsiders and Independents who are left-leaning, emphatically not people who are both party insiders and establishment insiders as well.
zardeenah @ 27
No, what we got was Hillary singing the praises of capitalism and telling us that national health care and free higher education wereimpossible. What we got was the lower classes being told by Tech-sector hipsters and upper class urban professionals (who think they get to call themselves “left wing” because they drive a Tesla and eat organic, free trade tofu) that our problems where unimportant when compared to other disenfranchised groups, so we should just shut up and do what the rich old lady from Illionis/Arkansas/New York told us to do.
You want to know exactly why there is really is no difference between Democrats and Republicans? Both parties are capitalists. Unlike other civilized nations, America has no viable socialist party and things in this shithole country won’t get any better until their is.
This may have been lost in the noise:
consciousness razor #8
@21 Tabby Lavalamp
““Liberalism is a mental illness.”
“Liberalism is cancer.”
“Libtards.”
“Trigger a lib!”
“Want to go to your safe space, snowflake?”
And we’re the ones who keep getting lectured (especially by the “center”) to be nice.”
This, this, and a thousand times this. In the UK, we’re constantly berated for not ‘being nice’ to the very people who have spent years denigrating us as the ‘Loony Left’, ‘Libtards’ and all the other insults, and I’m sodding sick of it.
jimb @35,
Hell, Hillary won the working class voters in the election. She didn’t win the *white* working class but the entire working class voted for her over the guy that the media says voted for him due to “economic anxiety.”
Susan Montgomery @ 49:
And? I don’t care if it was *1* vote. Getting more votes than any other candidate DOES NOT equal “extremely unpopular”, no matter how many different ways you try to slice it.
The only mistake Hillary made is in thinking that a lot of progressives were not stupid enough to abandon Democrats and allow a quasi-fascist into power. Also its annoying to see anti-Clintons talk shit about how unpopular she was, when you guys acted as another arm of dishonest propaganda against her. I remember full well all the bullshit conspiracy theorists about how Clinton rigged the primary. An idea that still remains to this day. I remember the fake studies on electionjusticeusa showing that she stole delegates. I remember the incredibly offensive misogyny hurled against her by those who I thought would be allies and “progressive”. I remember the laughable and facepalming “Clinton and the DNC totally assassinated that lawyer”. That last one Ive seen talked about over and over again online and in meatspace by so called “progressives” who should be ashamed for even believing in such nonsense.
Anti-Clintons criticizing Clinton for being unpopular is like Jeffrey Dahmer criticizing hitch-hiking as dangerous and unsafe. Even if you are correct…you don’t get to say shit.
You mean, like rural internet-ification or tax support for green jobs in those regions? Those kinds of ideas that inject jobs into a region? I guess she didn’t advocate for that.
And trade wars are clearly awesome for jobs. Trump’s proving it! What the hell do we need international trade agreements for? If you support international agreements, it must mean that you support specific versions of it, otherwise you’re just a liar.
For fuck’s sake.
You’re right. I’m just being little pessimistic ol’ me. I keep forgetting the insiprational mantra of the Democratic National Committee” “You can’t give up hope just because it is hopeless! You gotta hope even more, and cover your ears, and go: “Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah!””
I’ll add my two cents and say that the current GOP, and Trump, have flat out stated, if not as a whole party, then as individuals, with power in that party, that non-conservative, people who are not part of the evangelical movement, and other extremist religious groups, and who don’t believe everything they are told by the right, all the time, should be jailed, possibly shot, and definitely denied basic citizenship.
Being “civil” to these people is like inviting in for a beer the guy that just showed up on your lawn, with and empty gas can, a funny smell in the air, holding a lit match, and ranting, “You don’t belong in this neighborhood and I will burn you out of it!”
You are a bloody flipping fool to choose “civility” with such a person. Mind, there may be vastly better ways to deal with the asshole, like a fire extinguisher, than to use his own tactics against him, and grab an Elon Musk special (i.e., a flame thrower). And not just because picking that is likely to get your freaking house burned down anyway. But… being “civil” isn’t the solution. The problem, too often, is a lack of any bloody clue what this “proper response” actually is, beyond shouting at people. I mean, what exactly do you do “then”? Its like I told someone at work the other day, you teach a kid that there are consequences to ones actions, then hope they don’t disregard this. There are no consequences, and haven’t been, for a long bloody time, for any of these people. They are two year olds, bullying everyone else, and/or lying to them about what really happened, or who did it, and our side seems almost as bad at actually slapping their hand (I mean, how dare we!), as we are properly rewarding “good behavior”.
Mind, her come back was, “teach them the reward”.. Right, because you can’t turn, “If you do the right thing you can have that toy.”, into a negative, “If you do the wrong thing, you won’t get a toy.” But, we won’t do either of these bloody things. These are bloody adults, acting like children, who know that, no matter what the F they do, they will get the toy, and absolutely convinced that, if you do someone keep them from getting the toy, or worse, take one away from them, its unjust, unfair, unlawful, and a form of persecution, equal with bending them over the nearest state monument and using “their” tactic of torturing them to get the results we want (i.e. spanking them).
If there are no consequences, to any of them, politicians, corporate CEOs, banks, cops, etc., ad nausuam, how the heck are do we get these toddlers in business suits to bloody play nice with everyone else, at all?
Fact 1: a substantial swatch of the electorate is apolitical. They don’t care much or are misinformed about the issues, make up their minds close to the election, and are heavily influenced by sound bites and slogans.
Fact 2: Trump figured out how to speak the language of these people.
Fact 3: The PR war to influence these people will determine all the future elections, and thus the fate of our country and the world.
Fact 4: If you want to lose a PR war, the best way to do it is to allow your opponents to portray themselves as victims.
Absolutely, these Thugs deserve every bad thing that happens to them. But bullying them in restaurants and other public places is a bad idea — not because they don’t deserve it, but because it creates a bad image for the sound bite voters, and they’re unfortunately in the driver’s seat for this country right now.
Let me put it like this:
True: Being civil won’t win the election.
True: Being uncivil won’t win the election.
Neither will. You actually have to work for it.
And the primary target has to be the non-Republican voters, because getting those to actually vote will change things, and getting the Republican voters to not vote or vote for someone else looks to be a much more difficult proposition.
So, come up with a reasonable program, find a way to convert it to good sound bites (because most voters, sadly, don’t listen to full, more complicated, explanations – put those on your websites), and then trumpet those out as loudly as possible.
Ask yourself: if my actions are stripped entirely of all context and shown as a 10-second sound bite, do I look like a jerk? If I do, then maybe I should do something else.
Everything taken out of context can be used to make yourself look like a jerk. Your comment does nothing to help.