chasfh

I’m supposed to fly into West Palm tomorrow. And here I was crowing about the idea that there was no chance the plane would run into a military helicopter on descent, because Mar-a-lago.

Exactly. They’re trying to convince the rest of us. I’m wondering whether the warrior-Jesus evangelical base will sign onto that idea.

The only thing I‘m proving is that you said the Democrats lost the election and the government because Joe Biden was moving the party too far left, and then 24 hours later you said we need to elect more Democrats so they can push the party left.

You mean the Joe Biden you said, not 24 hours ago, lost the elections at every level for the Democrats because he was pulling the party too far left? That Joe Biden?

Then maybe it’s about more than just the money for the oligarchs. Maybe it’s also about the thrill of controlling people’s everyday lives at a granular level.

Maybe they see Canada as being the cute girl who needs to be rescued from the swarthy worldly people she’s starting to hang out with.

You mean like Joe Biden?

Trump has already stated in explicit language that the period during which America was great was the Gilded Age, not the 1950s.

Solid code word. Not criticizing you at all. I agree with this.

Probably closer to the truth ...

And speculative history is one of mine. You can’t fix the present without understanding how the past got us here. Recognizing the impact of the Reagan revolution on today’s Trump party, and by extension the country, is not equivalent to throwing up our hands and giving up. And I’m pretty sure that Trump is conclusively demonstrating that whatever economic message the Democrats could come up with that might appeal to the private sector middle class doesn’t matter all that much, because a distressingly high percentage of people did not vote for him because of economics—despite what they might politely tell mainstream media interviewers.

I agree that Democrats need to win back the white working class to win broad-based elections, but that’s not going to happen with even moderate policies that nevertheless get successfully, if unfairly, associated with Marxism or radical anarchism. Because remember: the heyday of D really dominating R among the white working class was during Jim Crow days, when the party simultaneously tolerated a progressive multiracial faction in the northeast and a fascist authoritarian wing dominating everyday life in the south. And once D leadership starting working in the 1960s to truly defang the latter’s power to influence national platforms, that’s when the white working class started to abandon the party in numbers. The unfortunate reality appears to be that at this moment, there’s only one effective way to get them back into the fold at this moment, and I promise you, you wouldn’t like that platform even one bit.

Reagan may not have been the architect of the 30 years succeeding his tenure, and he may have even been horrified by what transpired. But the right wing government-is-evil revolution he ushered in did give the more radical reactionary forces in his party permission and cover to take over the party and ultimately the country, and what any of us speculate Reagan would have done differently had he realized the long-term impact of the movement he championed is not enough to exonerate him.

Given the social history of America, two big reasons Kamala got six million fewer votes than Biden immediately leaps to mind.

Roughly one in 178 voters went for Jill Stein, which is 0.56%, and Kamala lapped Stein at the polls by 87x. And that doesn’t even take into account any votes Stein got that would otherwise have gone to Trump, an equally radical candidate, rather than Kamala, the relatively establishment choice. The far left fringe simply did not cost Kamala the election, nor are they the potent political force dragging down the entire Democratic Party that you and Bill Maher make them out to be.

I don’t necessarily agree with this, but I did see what you did there and I do appreciate the slyness.

Next up: EO allowing Trump and only Trump to serve more than two terms as president.

Trump’s intellect was never his strength.

Is it?

The big takeaway here is that empathy is becoming a dirty word.

Not in the first part, which is the part they like the best and quote the most.

I do like that Trump is experiencing buyer's remorse with ACB.

Not to worry. Farmers—by which I mean multinational agricultural corporations—are going to get their money, which is actually our money, because what else are they gonna do with all the savings from cutting all the so-called “entitlements”? They’re going to give it to their billionaire benefactors and buddies.

I’m pretty sure red hat voters were told they’d have both.

We’ve moved way way up the field away from socialist revolution. We should probably be thrilled just to get back to 2024.