Tag: uspol

sload:

dr-archeville:

between-stars-and-waves:

Don’t let evil jackasses like this one decide your future. Vote.

What the absolute fuck?

friendly reminder that steve bannon used to own a world of warcraft gold farming company and realized that a lot of gamers are disenfranchised young white men who are absurdly easy to take political advantage of, and brought milo yiannopoulos on board to do it. which is a large reason why white supremacy and misogyny are so prevalent among the young white male age group right now. We can laugh at people like this all we want, but this is a phenomenon purposefully engineered by the current administration.

clatterbane:

wildcardarcana:

foxfairygender:

oppression isn’t generational and trying to frame politics as “the old people are wrong and the young people are right” erases the fact that there are old people who have been fighting the good fight for decades and the fact that there are young people who are literally nazis

Plus while there might be less old people fighting the good fight it’s usually because they were killed or were part of the minorities that have poor living conditions that kill you early

As came up recently, in fact: Seniors Are More Conservative Because the Poor Don’t Survive to Become Seniors

zenosanalytic:

anaisnein:

primarybufferpanel:

anaisnein:

naturallyselectedbyaccident:

anaisnein:

the blue wave story: reasons to celebrate

the NYT 2018 midterms morning-after narrative, with all the chin-stroking about mixed results and the bland end of the Dems driving the successes, seems really wrong to me and frankly kind of enraging. obviously there were disappointments but, net-net, this is not a morning for wailing and gnashing of teeth. I compulsively wasted hours and hours of my life following this shit last night, so I’m just going to lay out some of the story points supporting a more robust and optimistic narrative real quick

  • the objective was always to take the House; the Senate was always an almost hopeless moonshot
  • we did take the House, decisively
  • the things that follow from that are now going to be realized. it means not only more robust Trump oversight, the tax return subpoenas and protection for the Mueller investigation and so on, but also much needed brakes on the runaway GOP legislative agenda. the Republicans are not going to get to try to repeal ACA again, or kill Social Security, or defund Planned Parenthood, or have their way with the 2020 census or the budget. those things are all huge
  • the >9% popular-vote D advantage is comparable to or bigger than past midterm “wave” elections, including 1994’s Tea Party wave. that’s literally how we fucking took the House despite 1. the disastrous 2010 census gerrymandering and resulting structural 5- to 7-point GOP advantage and 2. the more recent horrifying surge of strongman fascism. excuse me but we 110% fucking deserve wave status
  • got a bunch of governorship wins that really fucking matter! Scott Walker, don’t let the door hit you on your way out of Wisconsin! welcome home, Michigan! fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Kris Kobach!
  • what’s not the matter with Kansas, multiple excellent results there with both Laura Kelly and Sharice Davids winning upsets. possibly they’ve finally put it together that austerity is terrible and are positioning themselves to start fixing the damage. good going, Kansas
  • this whole weird line that it was moderate Dems that drove all the key successes and dynamic progressives only ever have any chance in the very bluest coastalest elitest cityest races is bullshit. I can’t believe the NYT can say that with a straight face. Sharice Davids is NOT your bland straight white guy DINO, and Kansas is, um, not the Bronx? Pennsylvania is literally going to have a DSA caucus? Beto O’Rourke lost what was, come on, a moonshot race by a high-suspense hair, he clearly has cemented his rising-star status and generated real excitement and momentum
  • meanwhile DINO “moderate” poster children Heitkamp and Donnelly lost us two (2) Senate seats. wtf with this narrative?
  • several of the highest profile GOP wins were in states with especially flagrant and egregious voter suppression. we’re all looking at you, Georgia, North Dakota, TEXAS whose Senate race was still close as hell. this is one of the things a Democratic House is well positioned to make a goddamn fuss about.
  • also Michigan and uh I think another state passed anti-gerrymandering ballot initiatives and, may I goddamn repeat, official face of ‘voter suppression is actually good’ Kris Kobach is out on his ass. plus, granted Florida is a trainwreck by a hundred thousand or so people again, they’ve also just reenfranchised 1.4 million ex-felons, so that may be goddamn changing in future
  • Virginia is a blue state now btw
  • New York internal state shit here but the state senate has finally thrown off its shackles so maybe we can actually get some good goddamn legislation passed, seriously if you don’t live here you have no idea the bullshit that’s been going on in Albany thanks to so-called moderates

is everything in the garden lovely? hell to the fuck no, shit sucks in abundance out there, but we knew that! that’s not the surprising bit!

give hardworking blues the credit they deserve 2k18

On the progressive side, I would also note that Stacey Abrams (who hasn’t conceded yet but I’m not holding my breath on this) came the closest to flipping the Georgia’s governor’s mansion since the 90s when middle of the road democrats since 2002 have lost from between 5 to 20 percent. Good lefty Abrams got within 2 percent (and outperformed Clinton in total number of votes received in Georgia…IN A MIDTERM YEAR). The Southeast did tend to go less blue than might have been hoped, but the Midwest made up for that and the vote totals show the progressives can get out to vote.

This despite entire blue districts in GA getting allocated non-working voting machines and being no joke completely shafted for voting, BY THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE WHOSE LITERAL JOB WAS RUNNING GA STATE ELECTIONS. It’s not a disgrace, doing this well in the face of not only a legit mixed af Southeastern state constituency but also flagrant bald-faced cheating.

wait wait wait wait

How can running elections possibly be the job of somebody who has such an immediate and vested interest in the outcome?!

I think we would all know yet more on this point

Apparently both the Abrams election in Georgia and the Gillum one in Florida were called before most(maybe all? The stories I’ve read are unclear on this) of the absentee, provisional, and mail-in ballots were counted, and there’s a real possiblity those returns could push them into run-off territory, so:

  1. Not only did leftier Dems, even the ones who lost, drastically out-perform centrist Dems
  2. At least two of the lefties getting national recognition who did seem to lose(largely as a result of clear civil rights and election law violations) the night of, may not have actually lost.

So, as everyone above has been saying, all this stuff coming from status quo loving pundits about how Tuesday “proves” Dems should shrink away from ~extreme~ policy positions like “people should be able to afford to go to school”(when the US basically invented public universities), “people shouldn’t go bankrupt from seeing the doctor”(a problem no other post industrial country has), and “you should be able to leave your house without worrying you’ll be shot”(again, a problem unique to the US among post-industrial countries), are spewing hot-air.

broadlybrazen:

(Twitter thread from Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight. Transcribed below:

“Seems likely Democrats will eventually get up to about 60m total votes for the House once unprocessed ballots from CA are tallied. Maybe a bit more (~61M?) based on what’s left in other states. Those are similar numbers to what recent GOP *presidential* candidates have received.

Trump got 63m votes, Romney 61m, McCain 60m. Dem votes for the House this year should be very close to that range.

There’s not any precedent for an opposition party coming this close to matching the president’s vote total from 2 years earlier. The closest to an exception was when Democratic House candidates in 1970 got 92% of Nixon’s vote total from 1968.

Of course, this reflects 3 things we already knew: 1) Trump was elected despite losing the popular vote; 2) D’s won by a big margin this year and 3) Turnout was VERY high.

But Trump is a very unpopular president, and I don’t think that’s totally sunk in yet in how he’s covered.

About 60 million people turned out to vote for Democrats for the House this year. That is a **crazy** number. (Republicans got 45m votes in the 2010 wave.)

And this was sort of missed. Why so many stories about Trump voters in truck stops and not so many about “the resistance”?”

Four successful Republican scams that have changed American politics in the last 40 years:

gardnerhill:

wilwheaton:

politicalprof:

1. That income tax cuts are good for poor, working and middle class people. (Compared to property tax and sales tax cuts, income tax cuts affect poor, working and middle class very little.)

2. That “they” – racial and ethnic minorities – benefit from social programs like welfare, housing subsidies, public transportation, and higher education, but “we” – white people – don’t. (Since there are LOTS more white people in America, even now, than “not white” people, simple math suggests most beneficiaries of social programs are white. And they are.)

3. That the “free market” can lead to the least expensive, highest quality solution to social and political problems. (Many social and political problems, after all, involve situations where no one has any money, so the “free market” has no reason to touch them.)

4. That the “free market” means that government must not intervene in the market, and must allow whatever the market determines to actually take place.(The “free market” requires government to pass laws, create courts, and run a stable banking system to make the market work smoothly.)

These four ideas have convinced millions of Americans to smile and wave as rich people rob them blind.

SIGNAL BOOST THE HELL OUT OF THIS.

Just say “Ronald Reagan” – don’t soften it with “last 40 years.” Some of us were present when that horrible old man began his horrible work that has led directly to this day. We protested at the time – women, gays, POC. Don’t let racist old white men lie to you that we All Loved the Gipper.

becauseweknowthem:

feathersescapism:

Every time I see this quote I realize how poor even very smart people are at looking at the long game and at assessing these things in context.

One of my favourite illustrations of this was in a First Aid class. The instructor was a working paramedic. He asked, “Who here knows the stats on CPR? What percentage of people are saved by CPR outside a hospital?”

I happen to know but I’m trying not to be a TOTAL know it all in this class so I wait. And people guess 50% and he says, “Lower,” and 20% and so forth and eventually I sort of half put up my hand and I guess I had The Face because he eventually looked at me and said, “You know, don’t you.”

“My mom’s a doc,” I said. He gave me a “so say it” gesture and I said, “Four to ten percent depending on your sources.”

Everyone else looked surprised and horrified.

And the paramedic said, “We’re gonna talk a bit about some details of those figures* but first I want to talk about just this: when do you do CPR?”

The class dutifully replies: when someone is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse.

“What do we call someone who is unconscious, not breathing, and has no pulse?”

The class tries to figure out what the trick question is so I jump over the long pause and say, “A corpse.”

“Right,” says the paramedic. “Someone who isn’t breathing and has no heartbeat is dead. So what I’m telling you is that with this technique you have a 4-10% chance of raising the dead.”

So no, artists did not stop the Vietnam War from happening with the sheer Power of Art. The forces driving that military intervention were huge, had generations of momentum and are actually pretty damn complicated.

But if you think the mass rejection of the war was as meaningless as a soufflé – well.

Try sitting here for ten seconds and imagining where we’d be if the entire intellectual and artistic drive of the culture had been FOR the war. If everyone thought it was a GREAT IDEA.

What the whole world would look like.

Four-to-ten percent means that ninety to ninety-six percent of the time – more than nine times out of ten – CPR will do nothing, but that one time you’ll be in the company of someone worshipped as an incarnate god.

If you think the artists and performers attacking and showing up people like Donald Trump is meaningless try imagining a version of the world wherein they weren’t there.

(*if you’re curious: those stats count EVERY reported case of CPR, while the effectiveness of it is extremely time-related. With those who have had continuous CPR from the SECOND they went down, the number is actually above 80%. It drops hugely every 30 seconds from then on. When you count ALL cases you count cases where the person has already been down several minutes but a bystander still starts CPR, which affects the stats)

Looping back to politics.

You stand up and yell and fight back and mock and ridicule and insult because to do anything less is to be complicit.

You do CPR with a 4% chance because most of humanity can’t see someone in need and not help.

You protest and resist because you can’t see a nation in need and not help.

The odds are terrible. But at the end of the day, I would rather know that I at least attempted CPR.

wilwheaton:

“It turns out the 2018 midterm elections were pretty much a rout. Counting all the votes makes all the difference in the world. In the House, as of this writing, the Democratic gains are up to 30 with about five more races still to be called — in which Democrats are leading. A gain of 35 seats would be the largest House pickup for Democrats since the first post-Watergate midterm election in 1974. The Democrats picked up seven governorships, with Stacey Abrams, as of now, still fighting to make it to a runoff in Georgia, and Andrew Gillum trailing by 0.4 percentage points, enough to trigger a recount in Florida. In the Senate, Democrats may not quite have pulled off an inside straight, but they had two aces — in Nevada and Arizona. With 26 seats to defend, many in red states, it now looks as if their losses will be small. Democrats won in Nevada and are now poised to pick up a seat in Arizona.”

—

Three days later: Hey, Republicans really did get clobbered

Early on Election night, idiot relic James Carville told progressives that there was no Blue Wave. This set a narrative that idiot right wing dickheads were happy to run with, because it demoralizes progressives and our allies.

When this is all done, it looks like the “not a blue wave” will result in Democrats controlling the House after winning around THIRTY seats, and Republicans will continue to control the Senate after picking up a single seat.

It’s clear and undeniable that America is fed up with Trump and people like him, and it’s clear and undeniable that Americans are overwhelmingly good and decent people who reject Fascism and Authoritarianism.

Don’t let Trump and his lying allies trick you into thinking that America is the country they want it to be, because it’s very clear that it isn’t. To be sure, there are pockets of regressive, racist, revanchist trash in our country, but they are outnumbered by those of us who reject everything they stand for.

It’s heartbreaking to lose close races, but we must remember that the forces of evil have rigged the game against the forces of good, and they are still either losing or barely winning. 

Have faith in your fellow humans. We’re going to prevail, together.

systlin:

simonalkenmayer:

If you’re discouraged about the election results

Don’t be. You’re hearing media do what it does: harp on one person’s lack of enthusiasm and make it seem that that one opinion is held by thousands.

This race went precisely as I thought it would. Precisely.

And it was absolutely a massive success.

So let me tell you why, so that you feel better and can easily put down the annoying crowing that republicans are going to do, because they managed to cling to a few things.

If the votes fall as I believe they will, the democrats will have retaken the house by some 30 seats. This is impressive and somewhat unique in our country’s history. The GOP, upon taking the house originally, jerrimandered these districts in impressively screwball ways. Wherever that rigging has been overturned, the districts have gone blue. Which is, of course, why they did it. Democrats have the house now, 30ish flips in republican rugged districts. 15 of those being female candidates.

That is absolutely impressive.

A few key candidates to whom many people were paying close attention did not perform as people desired. Abrams, O’Rourke, Gillum. Well…I’m not surprised. Abrams faces absolute state wide fraud. Her opponent being the person also in charge of voter registration, withholding some 50k votes of which 70% were black. Voter intimidation. This is blatant corruption. And yet still…her race was very close. So too with Beto. Ted Crews was a presidential candidate! When he took Texas, he did so with a wide margin. Last night in Texas he was fighting tooth and nail. Gillum’s goobenatorial race for Florida was a figurative dead heat. 99% of the vote in—49% Gillum, 49.7% DeSantis. These are CLASSICALLY and FULLY republican regions in which Trump took the presidency by huge margins. That these races, with all those challenges, were as close as they were PROVES that something unprecedented happened.

3-400% voter turnout increases for a midterm election. Mostly with the youth.

But let’s talk about what it means to have the house.

Now I know you’re probably concerned about the federal judgeships that are about to pop up for consideration, and it’s true that the Senate was needed to stop approvals of those candidates, but…

Control of the house means that Democrats now take hold of some critical committees. These committees are the very ones that will be overseeing corruption allegations. Ways and Means, energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Intelligence, appropriations, foreign affairs, armed services, judiciary, transportation and infrastructure, and…government reform.

How do you feel now?

The worst political fallout of a GOP controlled government, the worst sound bites that weren’t Trump’s, the worst slaps across the face? All came from footage of those very same committees. Those committees now belong to Democrats.

Massive policy shifts also occurred in many classically conservative states—legalizing marijuana votes, Florida giving the vote back to former criminals who’ve served their time thus giving the vote back to a HUGE portion of the African-American Community that has been held in check by a racist and classicist policing method, then there were upsets in many small ways too.

I promise you…this is all excellent and it will have truly important and forceful impact. In 2020, if we can keep that same enthusiasm and rage, the entire government will shift. But that can only happen if we keep moving forward, if the candidates who won keep their noses to the grindstone and push back hard, if you and I and everyone on the ground continues to talk about this and force out bigots and greed.

Do not be discouraged. I promise you…this was an amazing election. Don’t focus on a few bright stars and think that all is lost because they fell. There is a great deal happening here, and one thing I know from being at sea—when a wave is building, there is first a terrifying shift, as the water level begins to build. The ship will begin to dip and then of a sudden, the swell will begin. The ship raises and passengers suddenly realize that the were much higher than before, with an incredible view. Then the wave crests and destroys what’s in its path.

We didn’t see a wave crest tonight. So what. That means it’s a much larger wave than we realized. It will crest in the future. But only if that fluid pressure is maintained.

This is good. It is. So long as everyone keeps working. This is good.

Calm down. Have a glass of champagne. A cup of tea. When they Trumpet all their noise…say nothing. Nothing needs to be said. You’re higher than you were with an excellent view of the ending. So relax. Don’t fret.

Listen to Simon, y’all. Simon is wise.