#the last fucking thing we need is republicans gaining seats

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

want some positive world news? yesterday, in a truly historic moment, Colombia elected its first left-wing president. after 20 years of far-right rule, the traditionally conservative country has elected the remarkably progressive candidate Gustavo Petro (and his running mate Francia Márquez, who will be the first black woman to serve as the country's Vice President!)

for context, imagine if the U.S. had successfully elected Bernie Sanders (after 20 years of republican presidents). that's how big a deal this is. amidst a dangerous global rise in conservatism, this is an enormous win and a cause for hope.

#not a shitpost #also I love that Francia Marquez got elected on Juneteenth #THAT is how you celebrate Juneteenth #i've been watching this election closely and i almost cried when the results came in #and to my american followers: VOTE IN THE FUCKING MIDTERMS #hurry up and sign up to vote by mail i am glaring at you #the last fucking thing we need is republicans gaining seats #that will directly affect what legislation does and does not make it through #it's already difficult enough to pass anything borderline progressive in this hellforsaken country let's not make it WORSE ok #repeat after me: voting is damage control #it does not erase the extreme need for radical and systemic change but it is damage. control. #it is the FIRST STEP not the last

[batboyblog]

trans people are allowed to be frustrated with the state of the world what the fuck are you on. how are trans policies in michigan supposed to help trans kids in florida. do you see what im saying here. and bidens words arwnt worth shit if he doesnt actually do anything

Of course they should be frustrated I'm frustrated, who wouldn't be frustrated?

this is not about that, it's fine to say "the world really sucks right now" "this is shit" yes I totally fucking agree

it's when it goes off into "and there's nothing to be done" "no one else cares" "we are without friends and allies" "no one is doing anything" LIES! LIES! from the mouth of hell! lies that give aid and comfort to the enemy! PLAGUE! WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A PLAGUE AND YOU BEHAVE LIKE THIS!

this ask is full of so much horseshit that needs to get unpacked I almost didn't but fuck it someone might read what I say.

First off I brought up Michigan because it was claimed no straight allies were useful or doing "fuck all" clearly untrue if we look at Michigan (and else where but lets stay focused) and as Harvey Milk taught us, hopelessness is the ally of oppression, if people don't believe it can get better they stop fighting, gotta give 'em hope. So clearly right now at a time when trans rights are under attack, in some places they're also making gains and that can happen in your state too.

You see Michigan had a Republican governor till 2019, but in 2018 after years of organizing and working (and voting) progressive forces managed to elect Gretchen Whitmer. In 2022 She was up for re-election against a woman named Tudor Dixon who made attacking LGBT people, trans kids in sports, and drag show central parts of her platform, she was defeated. But what's more till the 2022 election Republicans had a majority in both the MI Senate and State House. Hard work lead to Democrats flipping a handful of seats to get a majority in both and now they can pass things like expanding trans civil rights.

My point is Michigan could EASILY be passing its own "Don't Say Gay" bill, could easily be banning trans health care for minors, easily EASILY, those are the policies Michigan Republicans ran on last year, and they were the majority before the election. Hard work, organizing, showing up, beat them and we get the reverse of all that hate.

flipping a whole state government is a lot, and in some Red States that might not be doable. But take Nebraska, where state Senator Machaela Cavanaugh's heroic filibuster looks like it's gonna derail anti-trans legislation, she's only able to do that filibuster because the Republican majority is one seat shy of a super majority. They need 33 votes to end her filibuster, there are 32 Republicans. Because all the Democrats have her back the Republicans can't shut her down and the bill will die because the Democrats can filibuster it to death.

In Kansas the Democratic governor has vetoed an anti-trans law, in Kentucky the Democratic governor is expected to veto their anti-trans laws. In Utah in March 2022 the Republican Governor Spencer Cox vetoed an anti-trans sports bill (he's since supported an anti-trans bill this year) Now I bring these up because in each state Republicans have a super majority that can override the veto, they over turned Cox's 2022 veto, and are expected to in Kentucky. So if you live in a red state and you think "oh we can't flip the whole state!" you can flip one or two or 3 state house seats and make ALL the difference.

Finally on trans kids in Florida right now not after some future election. Four organizations are suing the state of Florida to block its hateful anti-trans health care rule, Southern Legal Counsel, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and the Human Rights Campaign. Again the charge was "trans allies fucking suck at their job" well one of these orgs isn't even an LGBT organization at all (Southern Legal Counsel) the others are LGBT groups supported by thousands (millions in the case of HRC) of dollars from allies across the country. These are the groups leading the fight in Florida right now to block this shit in court right now, trans allies.

FINALLY FINALLY on Biden, you can't say "basically the only people who has gotten upset over this are trans people" and claim that no one else said anything when the President of the United States of America did a WHITE HOUSE interview and called transphobia evil and transphobic laws "close to a sin". Either you want people talking about this problem or talking about it is meaningless which is it?

besides which Joe Biden is the most aggressively pro-trans President America has ever ever had and is most likely the most pro-trans head of state on earth right now, he's head and shoulders ahead of most European left wing parties on this issue rn. Don't take my word for it, let's see what America's largest LGBTQ rights org has to say and they're careful to point out more can be done, always more can be done. But people telling you Biden does nothing or only does bad things are not your friend they are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Did you know Joe Biden is the first President to EVER appoint a trans person to a senate confirmed position? That he was an early endorser and supporter of the first openly trans person elected to state government Danica Roem? that the first trans state Senator, Sarah McBride got her start in politics working in the White House for Vice-President Biden? Biden is a historic friend and ally of trans people he's boosted trans people into office and supported trans polices. Change is possible progress is possible don't give in to defeatism and cynical both sides bullshit.

#trans #trans rights #politics #organize #run for office #vote #find allies #educate people

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

13 Keys to the White House

Since 1984, historian Allan Lichtman has successfully predicted the outcome of every single presidential election (with 2000 being the only hiccup). His methodology takes into account 13 true or false statements to judge the performance of the incumbent party as a whole, and retroactively accounts for every single presidential election since the current two-party system was established in 1860. When 8 or more of the statements are true, the incumbent party is predicted to win re-election, but if 6 or more are false then the challenging party is predicted to win. He was one of he few pundits who called it for Donald Trump in the summer of 2016, back when everybody assumed it was Hillary Clinton's election to lose.

For 2020, the keys fell like so:

Midterm gains: the incumbent party has more seats in the House following the midterms. FALSE

No primary contest: there's a clear frontrunner for the incumbent party nomination (>66% of delegates are the convention). TRUE

Incumbent seeking re-election: the incumbent nominee is the sitting president. TRUE

No third party: there is no significant (>5%) third party candidate. TRUE

Strong short-term economy: the economy is not in recession. FALSE

Strong long-term economy: real per capita growth for this term is greater than or equal to the average growth of the previous two terms. FALSE

Major policy change: the incumbent administration pushes through major (and unique) change to national policy. TRUE

No social unrest: there is no widespread and sustained social unrest during the term. FALSE

No scandal: the incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. FALSE

No foreign/military failure: the incumbent administration suffers no significant foreign/military failure. TRUE

Foreign/military success: the incumbent administration achieves a significant foreign/military success. FALSE

Charismatic incumbent: the incumbent candidate is charismatic or a national hero. FALSE

Uncharismatic challenger: the challenging candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. TRUE

6 true, 7 false, the incumbent party was predicted to lose: Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump and received more votes than any candidate in American history

But that doesn't mean Joe Biden is doing a good job as president. Looking forward to 2024, some of the keys are too close to call, but we can make assumptions for the rest that paint a daunting picture for the Democratic establishment moving forward.

Midterm gains: FALSE, The Democrats are going to lose the House, quite possibly by a wide margin due to partisan gerrymandering by Republican controlled state legislatures.

No primary contest: tentatively true, no major Democrats have come out to challenge Biden for the nomination, and it's likely none will

Incumbent seeking re-election: tentatively true, Joe Biden plans on running for re-election even though he'll be 82 at the time. If common sense prevails and he bows out, it'll almost certainly go to Kamala Harris, which would tip this false and threaten to tip number 2 as the race would technically be open to anyone (though the establishment would tank any campaigns they didn't approve of, as they did to Bernie in 2016 and 2020)

No third party: too soon to tell, over the last century it has happened about every 2 or 3 election cycles, most recently in 2016, so there's no telling what 2024 could be like

Strong short-term economy: too soon to tell, nobody could have predicted the COVID recession in 2019, so there's no way of knowing what horrors await us in 2024.

Strong long-term economy: tentatively true, Obama's second term was steady, Trump's term was abysmal, so they average out to zero net gain (actually, scratch that, it would be a net loss; Trump's put us deeper in the red than Obama put us in the green). The bar is so low, Biden would have to fail spectacularly to make things worse. I have little respect for the man, but I would hope he has more sense than George W. Bush and Donald Trump; since WWII, Democrats have consistently performed better than Republicans.

Major policy change: almost certainly FALSE, the Democrats' control over congress is eroding, they're barely getting anything done right now, and once the Republicans take back control they'll accomplish even less! Biden has achieved none of his campaign promises; no Supreme Court reform, no voting reform, no statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, no police reform, no immigration reform, JACK SHIT! This is a Democratic filler term in a long line of Democratic filler terms punctuated by Republican downward trends. The country is in shambles because Republicans fuck it up and Democrats stay the course.

No scandal: too soon to tell, though I'd say probably true because the pressure is so high. We've never had this much political engagement, gone are the days of the background presidency, all eyes are on the Oval Office. Trump made sure that all future president will be under constant scrutiny. Again, Democrats are consistently less corrupt than Republicans, though that doesn't mean they don't do anything wrong, just that they're better at hiding it and making the public think it's okay.

No social unrest: too soon to tell, though probably true because this key is very hard to flip. The George Floyd protests were once in a generation; Rodney King in 92 was too regional, only effecting Los Angeles, so this key hadn't truly flipped since 1968.

No foreign/military failure: too soon to tell, though looking false. As soon as we're out of Afghanistan, the Taliban will retake control and the last 20 years will have been a complete waste of time. This is our generations Vietnam, and it's going to fall any day now.

Foreign/military success: too soon to tell, depends on whether or not the media frames the withdrawal from Afghanistan as a success. I don't see Biden accomplishing much else overseas; Korea is a nonstarter, and China is kicking our asses economically (if they invade Taiwan, which they probably won't do, Biden wouldn't send troops to push them back out of fear of starting WWIII, so that would decidedly flip number 10 false)

Charismatic incumbent: FALSE, Biden is milquetoast, white bread, plain vanilla, BORING, and Kamala Harris is one of the least popular VPs since the 1970s, so neither are particularly thrilling candidates. He's an old and moderate, she's young and moderate, they both pretend to be progressive, nobody really likes them, they were just the lesser of two evils compared to Trump/Pence.

Uncharismatic challenger: TRUE, whether it's Trump again or Florida governor Ron DeSantis, neither are popular outside the Republican Party. None of the small fish Republicans make the cut either, so Biden/Harris can rest easy knowing they're not substantially less popular than the competition (major achievement?)

So that's 4 true, 2 on the fence true, 3 tossups, 1 on the fence false, and 3 false.

Democrats need 8 true to win, Republicans need 6 false to win, so the tossups will decide everything. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a repeat of 2000/2016 where the Democrats win the popular vote, but the Republicans win the electoral college. That's their new MO; they realize they don't need a majority to win, they just need to game the system, which is easy when they can strip voting rights in swing states. I would hope there'd be anarchy in then streets if this happened AGAIN, the third time in 25 years, only the sixth time in 250. But there won't be. Democrats won't riot or storm the capital or send pipe bombs to Republicans; they'll bitch and moan about it and do nothing to stop it and shift further to the right to try and appease the authoritarian party that wants them dead anyway.

Same shit as always.

We need better leaders.

#2024 #2024 prediction #2024 election #politics #political #united states presidential election #presidential election #election #elections #predictions #Democrats #Republicans #Joe Biden #Kamala Harris #Biden #Harris #13 keys to the white house #13 keys

[brotheralyosha]

Many in the party believe that the events of the last week are a clear consequence of the party ceding so many states to the GOP. And they’re loudly saying it should serve as a wake-up call to seriously rebuild their state-level power before it’s too late. One DLCC staffer, Christina Polizzi, tweeted after the Texas abortion ruling that she was “literally begging” for Democrats to finally care about state-level races. It racked up over 7,000 likes. The DLCC’s executive director, Jessica Post, told The Daily Beast that they need to “more than double our organizational budget” in order to make real gains on the state level in 2022. That would entail raising more than $100 million. “The reality is, a Democratic trifecta in Washington doesn’t mean we can hang a ‘mission accomplished’ banner across the country,” Post said in an interview. “One thing we know for sure as Democrats is that the federal government is not coming to save us—abortion rights, voting rights, are going to be decided in states.” A small cohort in the party has been banging that drum for years, shouting to anyone who’d listen that there’d be repercussions for Democrats’ hemorrhaging state legislative seats over the last decade. (Democrats lost nearly 1,000 state seats during Barack Obama’s two terms.) These voices have grimaced as Democrats failed, election after election, to heed those lessons. Every state-level operative who spoke to The Daily Beast invoked Amy McGrath, the Kentucky Democrat who has become something of a symbol for the party’s misguided priorities. Last year, McGrath raised $96 million—nearly twice what the entire DLCC brought in—on her way to a 20-point defeat at the hands of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). . . . Within the party, there’s a deep sense of anger that it’s come to this, and there’s frustration that chatter about eliminating the filibuster or expanding the U.S. Supreme Court in order to protect abortion rights is getting more airtime than calls for investing in state campaigns. “We wouldn’t have to give so much of a fuck about the Senate if we had won state legislatures… The bad laws start in these chambers,” said Amanda Litman, founder of Run For Something, a progressive group that supports candidates for local offices. “I sometimes feel like I’m going a little crazy, because I’ve been saying this for four years and counting.” All agree, however, that any effort is better late than never. “As Democrats, we just do not understand state power,” Post said. Texas, she added, has offered a “really tough way to learn a hard lesson about the importance of state-based power. I hope as Democrats, this is something we start to understand, invest in, focus on appropriately.” Depending on which Democrat you ask, the party is either a few election cycles or more than a decade behind the GOP when it comes to their ability to win state-level elections. Nearly all trace that to the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when Republicans—shut out of power at all levels in Washington—made a concerted, unprecedented investment in winning state-level races so that they could then draw more favorable congressional maps during the once-in-a-decade redistricting process. The plan worked. The GOP won a whopping 680 seats nationwide and flipped 19 state legislatures. And the gerrymandering Republicans executed in many states only solidified their 2010 gains, putting them on structurally advantageous turf for the next decade. Republicans now have archconservative majorities not only in places like Texas, but in a number of states Joe Biden carried, like Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. In some of them, the balance of power in legislatures is lopsided in the GOP’s favor: 60 of Wisconsin’s 99 state legislative seats, for example, are held by Republicans.

#this shit has been coming for D E C A D E S #and the democratic party simply didn't give enough of a shit to stop it #love to spend years and years and years talking about this only to be smugly brushed off by the very same liberals #who are now blaming this on bernie sanders because of course they are #lmao GOD #us politics #daily beast

[katefiction]

Cora, Chapter 6: Long Live

by katefiction (Maria) / 2013

March 2164

Ben is pacing the room, his feet burning a hole in the carpet.

‘What if they hate me?’, he asks.

‘They won’t’, I laugh, trying to catch his hand as he walks past the bed.

It was seldom that I saw him nervous.

‘Look’, I say, ‘Dad is bound to grill you, and Mum generally dislikes most people, but they will love you’

My parents were about to meet Ben for the first time. In an unusual response to the ‘crisis’ that was my relationship being exposed, they had joined forces for the first time in years. It was Mum’s idea, I knew. I rarely saw her, and firmly took Dad’s side after the divorce, but Mum had never stopped trying to get me to visit or to be involved in my life. Despite that, we still didn’t have the usual mother-daughter relationship, and I never told her anything that I wouldn’t tell Maggie.

Ben bites the nail on his little finger aggressively, ‘I suppose we should get down there’.

*

We enter the dining room at Dad’s apartment in Clarence House, where lunch is laid out on the table. He was yet to move into Buckingham Palace officially. Mum and Dad are already there, sitting on the top ends of the table and staring in opposite directions to avoid making eye contact with each other.

‘Afternoon’, I say overly cheerfully.

Maybe I’m a little nervous too.

Dad gets up immediately, followed by Mum, and exchanges kisses with me.

‘Your Majesty’, Ben says, giving him a short bow, like I’d taught him.

‘Nice to finally meet you’, Dad says, extending his hand.

I hoped he would’ve said ‘call me Arthur!’, but maybe that was asking for two much after I’d lied to him for six months.  

Mum glides up to Ben, her tall thin frame, and hair scraped into a bun, make her much more intimidating than Dad.

‘Good afternoon Ma’am’, Ben says, taking her hand.

‘Caroline, please’, she says surprising me. ‘Shall we eat?’

As we settle down to lunch, I am taken back with how well Ben gets on with Mum as they discuss the state of British sport. Dad on the other hand, is a different matter.

‘So, are you serious about my daughter?’ he says suddenly as Ben is tucking into a ploughman’s sandwich.

Ben coughs uncontrollably.

‘Dad!’

‘What’, he says holding his hands up, ‘you’ve been sneaking around for months, of course I’m going to ask that’

‘We haven’t been sneaking around’, I say indignantly, ‘we were just keeping it quiet until we we’re ready’

‘Why do you need to keep it quiet from me?!’ he blasts. I know underneath he is just hurt, but I can’t stop myself.

‘Because…because…’

Ben glances over to me, recovered from his choking fit and obviously waiting for an answer just as much as Dad is.

Why was I so reluctant to tell Dad about Ben?

‘I believe Cora’s reasoning was that yourself and the King…the late King, I mean, would want a formal meeting, and Cora believed a meeting like that would get out’, Ben says loyally.

‘Is that right Cora?’

‘Yes’

Dad shifts his gaze back to Ben, ‘and what did you think of this idea?’

It’s a test, and Ben knows it. Agree with me and be in Dad’s bad books, or agree with him and be in mine. I watch the cogs turning in his mind.

‘Honestly Sir, I care about your daughter very much…’

I feel myself turn red.

‘…and I would’ve liked to be more honest about it.’

It feels like the air has been sucked out of the room, with everyone waiting for Dad’s response. Even Mum, usually so unaffected, looks on the edge of her seat.  

Dad nods. That’s all, just a simple nod of approval.

Nice save.

‘There’s not much we can do about it now’, Mum says sharply, ‘no point in arguing’

I agree. I don’t want to argue with Dad about it anymore. He’d been frosty with me since he found out and now, two weeks later, he’d thawed a little.

Things between Ben and I had suffered too. He had seemingly forgiven me after I left his flat on that February day, and we’d even gone to the cinema and dinner in public. But I was still reluctant to do any more than that, and the holiday we’d discussed was still out of the question.

By the end of the lunch, Ben and my parents are making jokes about my stubbornness, which I take as a positive sign.

‘We were playing backgammon, and she just refused to believe she’d lost!’ Ben recalls as Dad and Mum walk us out.

‘I didn’t lose!’ I say, hitting Ben on the chest.

‘You did Cora’, he looks down at me in that way he does when he wants a reaction.

‘Stop trying to wind me up’

‘It doesn’t take much’, he strokes a hand down my back.

I see Mum watching us approvingly and as she kisses me goodbye, she mutters, ‘he’s lovely’.

***

June

Spring is in the air and Buckingham Palace is a wash of business. The staff bustles around the place like bees, speaking in low whispers and hurried tones.

‘Ow!’, I yelp as my seamstress pricks me with another needle.

‘Sorry Ma’am’, she says apologetically.

‘Don’t worry’, I say rubbing my hip where the pin got me.

Standing on a small platform, I try my best to stay still as she makes the final alterations to the dress I will be wearing at my father’s coronation in a couple of days.

Annie and Jenny watch as the seamstress fits the fabric around my waist. It’s the most extravagant dress I’ve ever worn. In gold fabric, with intricate beading all over the front, it cascades to the ground, making me look like a true princess.

‘You look so gorgeous’, Jenny says as if hypnotized by the sparkling beads.

‘Thank you’, I say, rather embarrassed.

‘It’s fucking amazing’, Annie says brashly, prompting a scowl from me.

She pokes her tongue out in retaliation.

‘Can you take a picture and send it to Ben?’ I ask.

Annie points her phone at me and I pose with my hand on my hip.

I want to keep Ben in the loop. What with the coronation preparations and him training for Wimbledon, we were having to catch every moment we could together. It wasn’t easy.

‘He says “you look beautiful”, urgh pass me the sick bucket’, Annie says throwing her phone on the couch.

The butterflies in my stomach threaten to escape.

‘You’re in love’, Jenny purrs as the seamstress leaves the room.

I blush fiercely, ‘shut up Jen, you wanted me to be with Nick, remember?!’

‘That was last year’

‘You said we were perfect together’, I remind her.

‘Well Nicholas doesn’t put that goonish look on your face, so I change my mind!’

‘Do you love him?’ Annie asks, not bothering with any tact.

I suddenly become very interested in a loose bead on my dress.

‘I think she’s ignoring us’, Jenny says to Annie.

‘I think she’s busy thinking about the dirty summer she’s gonna have with him when all of this is over’, she teases.

‘Stop it!’, I exclaim, giving in to their teasing.

It was true, I was looking forward to this summer. The coronation and Wimbledon would be over and Ben and I were going to celebrate our one year anniversary. We planned to make up for all this lost time, but that didn’t mean the whole world had to know about it.

*

The fitting over, I’m hurried into a rare meeting with Dad. It was the only time he had to spare with me before his big day in a couple of days.

I sit at his desk opposite him, feeling like I’m in a job interview of some sort.

‘Dress fitting go ok?’ he says, rifling through some papers.

‘Good, I’ll scrub up well for you on the day Daddy’, I smile, my mind still half on Ben.

‘Right, we need to talk about what happens next’

‘What happens next?’

Why do I feel like I’m not going to like this?

‘After the coronation Cora, keep up’

‘What’s happening after the coronation?’, I furrow my brow.

We hadn’t really discussed much about my future only that Dad told me to get back to normal.

‘This summer, I will be creating you as the Princess of Wales, you investiture will happen in the autumn sometime, and you will be undertaking a tour of Australia not long after’

The barrage of information hits me all at once.

‘I don’t want that’, I say, unable to think of how to protest. ‘I have plans this summer’, I add dumbly.

‘With Ben I suppose?’, Dad asks, clearly unimpressed.

‘Yes’, I say at almost a whisper.

‘You’ll have plenty of time to spend with him’, he says dismissively.

‘Not with work, and now this I won’t!’

‘You won’t need to worry about work’, he said it so plainly as if that will stop the volcano that’s about to erupt.

‘Daddy, don’t say it…’

‘Your work on the estates will be terminated this summer, I know you enjoy it, but you have bigger responsibilities now’, he looks at me, knowing how I’m going to react.

‘I’ve worked hard for that job! I won’t just give it up now’

‘You have to’, he says less patiently, ‘Princess of Wales is a full time job’

I see all my plans crashing down around me. I’d truly believed I’d have a year at least to enjoy my life before full time duties. Time to spend as a normal twenty-something. Time with Ben.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’, I try to hold back the tears.

‘Cora, I can’t pick up all of your grandfather’s work, and keep up with my own, you need to step up now’, he rubs his temples.

‘I don’t want to’

The room is silent for a split second, until Dad erupts, standing from his chair in anger.

‘AND YOU THINK I DO?! DO YOU THINK I THOUGHT I’D BE KING ALREADY!? I HAD PLANS TOO CORA, TEN YEARS OF THEM, ALL DASHED IN A DAY’

He begins to breathe heavily, clearly out of breath.

‘Im sor-’, I begin to say.

‘You need to grow up, you are not a child’, he points his shaking hand at me. ‘You want to gallivant around the world with this man, and you have no consideration of what your actions mean for the rest of the family’

‘Dadd-’

‘It’s time you put this family first, instead of yourself for once’

‘I’m sorry’, I manage to get the words out this time.

Dad softens at the sight of me becoming tearful. He walks around the table and sits on the edge.

‘It has been hard for all of us’, he says, calmer now, ‘I know you didn’t expect to be in this position at twenty-six, but it’s your duty’

I nod weakly. I wish it wasn’t.

‘Every time there is a new monarch, the Republicans’ cause gains support’, he explains. ‘Granddad was very popular, I need to make sure that I am taken seriously as King, and part of that is my daughter being taken seriously too’

He takes my face in his hand. I know he is trying to tell me that I need my reputation to be of a hard working princess, not a tabloid queen.

‘I don’t want to give Ben up’, I say, honest with him for the first time about my relationship.

‘You don’t have to sweetheart, just understand what kind of attention you are getting by being with him’

Dad had been there for me through everything. Despite the plentiful lectures over the years, he’d never given up on me. I couldn’t let him down now.

‘OK’, I say.

This summer will have to wait.

*

Coronation Day

Ben had been understanding about the situation. Disappointed, of course, but understanding. We hadn’t had a chance to meet after he’d got through to the Wimbledon final, which was to take place two days after the coronation, but we planned to meet that Sunday.

I chat to him over the phone as my dresser fixes the tiara to my head. It seems slightly ridiculous to be holding a mobile phone while dressed in this elaborate gown and tiara.

‘Are you nervous?’, he asks.

‘Terrified’, I admit.

‘You’ll be fine’

‘I hope so, I’ll just have to think about seeing you on Sunday to make me feel better, though that seems ages away right now’

‘Maybe next time I’ll get an invite’, he teases.

Next time you might be there with me.

‘Maybe, if you behave’

‘I can’t promise anything’

Maggie pops her head around the door, a sign that we need to get going.

‘Look, I’ve got to go; I’ll call you later if I get the chance’

‘Alright, good luck…oh and Cora’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t trip’.

*

The glory of the coronation of King Arthur is all you would expect it to be. In contrast to the darkness of the funeral, London is practically glowing in red, white, blue and gold. Flags and plastic crowns bob up and down in the sea of people.

The King’s guards line the street and trumpeters signal the grandeur of the occasion as our family arrives at Westminster Abbey.

I step out of my carriage to a wall of flashing lights. My dress is so heavy that it forces me to walk slowly and in time with the music. I keep my eyes focussed to the front. Don’t trip. Don’t trip.

My mantra does its job and I am seated up on the balcony with my grandmother and cousins as Dad takes centre stage. The huge robe engulfs him as he is walked towards the Coronation Chair, the cheers of thousands of people echoing through the abbey.

Down amongst the eight thousand guests packed inside the abbey, I see Nicholas, Jonathan and their parents seated in the middle of a section to the left of Dad. Nicholas is looking up at me. He catches my eye and I give him a little smile and nod in return. Also in the abbey is Mum. She stares straight ahead with a blank expression on her face and I wonder if she is thinking about what this moment would be like if she was still the Princess of Wales.

After three hours of prayers, hymns and pageantry, Dad is finally crowned. The Imperial State Crown is placed on his head, and he is handed the golden orb and sceptre. The traditional image of the crowned monarch is complete.

London is happier than I have ever seen as we process back to the palace and my arm begins to ache from the constant waving. It’s the least I can do for people who have slept on the streets overnight for this. I can’t help but think about my wedding one day. Will the country be as happy then? As much as I hate the thought of saying my vows in front of millions of people, I begin to realise how much it means to share it. As for Dad, he needn’t have worried, the people love him.

*

‘Did the crown nearly break your neck?’ I whisper to him as we tuck into the feast that evening.

Dad chuckles, ‘I thought it might not fit on my fat head’

I giggle under my breath. When I was younger, Dad always used to make me laugh on these big occasions to take the pressure off. Now I was doing the same for him.

‘Did they use washing up liquid to get it off?’ I tease.

‘Ye-’, he stops mid-sentence to greet the Ambassador of Japan.

Turning back to me, he says ‘I’m sorry none of your friends could be invited’

Sometimes Dad still thought I was a six year old that couldn’t sit still for an hour.

‘It’s fine Dad…and besides Nicholas is here if I need a break for ten minutes’

‘Ah yes, Nicholas’, he says cheekily.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Don’t think I can’t see him looking at you…he’s a nice boy…’, he whispers.

‘And I’m with Ben’, I mutter back.

Our conversation is interrupted by Maggie, who slips in subtly by my side, ‘Ma’am, may I borrow you’

I look to Dad for approval.

‘Go, go, but don’t be too long’

I scurry out of the room with her and travel along the long passages of the palace until we’re out of earshot.

‘What’s the problem?’, I ask.

‘No problem Ma’am’

She is looking particularly glamorous today, dolled up in a designer dress, but still holding a walkie talkie in her clutch.

‘This way…’, we round a corner, ending up in a dark, secluded area of the palace.

At the bottom a set of grand stairs stands Ben.

‘What are you doing here?!’, I squeal.

‘Shhh’, Ben and Maggie say together.

‘I’ll leave you to it’, Maggie adds.

As soon as she’s gone, I hurtle up to him and he pulls me in.

‘I thought I’d see how you’re doing’, he smiles.

‘But how did you get in’, I say, practically crushing his body with mine.

‘Connections’, he winks.

At this point, I don’t particularly care how he got here. I push my lips against his and he responds immediately, kissing me fiercely and making my knees wobble.

‘You look incredible’, he holds me by the waist and surveys me in my dress.

‘I look ridiculous’, I say.

‘Stop talking shit’, he buries his head in my neck and runs his hands down my back.

I swear if we were alone…

‘I’m so glad I don’t have to wait until Sunday to see you’

‘Don’t talk about Sunday’, he grumbles.

‘You’ll be amazing, I know it’, I say, running my fingers through his hair.

‘At least you’ll be there as my lucky charm’, he sighs.

‘From home I will…’

He backs away, ‘what do you mean? You are going to be on court aren’t you?’

I laugh uncertainly, ‘The royal box is fully booked, I’m sure’

‘You wouldn’t be in there; I’ve got a space for you in my player’s box’

I suddenly feel very hot. I had met Ben’s parents and had gotten on with them swimmingly, but this was practically a declaration of our relationship to the world.

‘Ben, you didn’t even ask me’, I try to say it softly.

‘I didn’t think I had to, how many times have we talked about me making the final and you being there?’

‘Things have changed, we need to keep a low profile’, I plead.

‘So you won’t even come and stay in the back out of sight?’, he pulls completely away from me.

‘I can’t, if anyone saw me…’, I try to hold his hand but he snatches it away.

‘This is fucking ridiculous, everyone knows anyway’, he growls.

‘We agreed that we’d see each other after the match’

He is being ridiculous.

‘Yes, after the match which you were supposed to be at’, he is struggling to keep his voice down. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you’re even serious about this’

‘Of course I am!’

‘So it’s ok for me to come here and support you, but you can’t do the same?’

‘I want to be there, please try and understand…’

‘I have tried. For months. I let it go when you ran out of the flat, I’ve let our holiday go, and now this’. He turns away from me. ‘How long is it going to be like this? Another year, two years?’

‘I don’t know’, my voice begins to shake.

His tone lowers once more, ‘if you’re not in a place where you’re happy to admit we’re together, then maybe we should stop this now’

‘It’s not easy for me! These things are complicated’

‘I’m not asking you to marry me Cora…I’m asking you acknowledge me!’

‘I do!’

‘Then come to the match’

We stand opposite each other like we’re in a stand-off. The silence is deafening.

Eventually, I have to speak, ‘I can’t, you know I can’t. Please don’t ask me to go against what my family needs right now’

‘You mean you won’t’

My anger starts to rise. If only he realised how much I really care for him.

‘Please don’t do this’. A chill in the air seems to tell me what’s coming.

‘I can’t do this anymore, I don’t want half a girlfriend. I should be preparing for the match right now, Rob would have my bollocks if he knew I was here, but I wanted to be – for you’

Tell him Cora, just tell him.

My anger takes over. ‘And I want to be there for you, stop making out like I don’t!’

Ben shakes his head, ‘I’ve tried to understand Cora, but I can’t. Keeping it to ourselves is one thing, denying my existence is another’

‘I just want to protect you, to protect us’

‘I don’t need protecting. I was willing to work around your life. But since your Granddad died, it’s like you want to push your life with me and your real life further apart. I want all of you Cora, but you don’t want to give it to me’

‘Don’t go’, I say pathetically.

‘Why not?’

The words don’t come out, they are lodged in my throat. 

He’s right. Things haven’t been the same.

He turns around and walks towards a back door without saying another word.

‘Because I love you’, I say as the door shuts behind him.

#royal fanfiction #katefiction

[cetospandiglia]

Ywsterday (sunday february 14th of 2021) there was an election in Catalonia and I feel like talking about it so I'm gonna explain it briefly (a brief explanation, a long post mayne 10 or 15 min read) for my American & international readers out there. (This will have a clear bias, I'm no journalist. That said, I don't belong to any of the parties discussed in this post.)

First, a bit of context for those completely unaware. Catalonia is a historical region of Spain with its own language (which has been marginalized and banned to various degrees during the last 3 centuries, which stirs controbersy to this day) and a separatist movement that has had moments of relevance and irrelevance along the last ~100 years.

Independence as a social movement has had its ups and downs, 25 years ago it wasn't very relevant but in the 2010s it started gainign traction ending in an unsuccessful unilateral declaration of independence in 2017 which resulted in the arrest or exile of most of the government (President Puigdemont is exiled in Waterloo, vice president Junqueras has spent years in prison now).

With that out of the way, to talk about the players in this election first we have to understand how does one get to be president of Catalunya.

Catalunya, as well as Spain as a whole and many other european countries and regions, doesn't have Presidential elections, they only vote for the parliament members: voters choose a party and once the Parliament is made up they vote for the president. In this particular case, the Parliament has 135 seats so if some party gets 68 seats they have an absolute majority and can govern by themselves in most cases (some things require 2/3 majority but to elect a president and to pass most laws it's just half+1).

The thing is, this election the winner didn't get anywhere near 68 seats, they got 33 so whoever ends up governing needs to pact. It's time to know the players:

To start, we're going to talk about the parties in the previous, independentist government:

THE INDEPENEDENTIST FORCES:

Junts per Catalunya (together for Catalunya) is a big, centrist coalition of organisations with left leaning and right leaning sectors. The left sees them as right wing and they're the only catalanist right wingers, so the rest of the right fucking hate their guts. They were in power for decades (under the name Convergència i Unió, the history of this party is convoluted) since the end of the fascist regime and did a lot of work to reestablish the place and institutions of the Catalan language (Franco was infamously against any languages in Spain that weren't Spanish). This is the party that the exiled president Puigdemont belongs to. Of the main 2 parties in power this was the bigger one until last night.

Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC, Republican Left of Catalunya, republican as in opposed to monarchy): Left wing, cataln nationalist run-of-the-mill european social democrats. They defend the catalan culture and language as JxC has done, they were in power as a part of the "tri partit" (three parties) with other left wing forces from 2003 to 2010 to avoid more years of JxC government. Then, independentist movement started to gain traction, the more conservative faction of JxC left and they (JxC & ERC) formed a government together with the complicit votes of CUP.

CUP (Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, Candidature of Popular Unity) is a far-left, socialist, quasi-anarchist organisation that used to have a few members of local councils but didn't even bother going to Catalan elections, then independence happened and have had a few MPs ever since. Not enough to pass any radical laws, but enough so that the JxC and ERC coalition needs their votes to govern: they vetoed Artur Mas, an infamously corrupt president and actually got what they wanted.

~

ELS COMUNS (the commons?) is neither independentist or unionist, they're a left wing party (less radical than CUP but also with less relevance and votes in the general Catalan panorama, although they have the Mayor of Barcelona). They try to pass progressive left leaning legislature and even though some of them want independence, they don't believe it's a pressing issue for the catalan people. Their Spanish Counterparts, Podemos, are in power as the 2nd, more "radical", left leaning force of a center-left coalition in the Spanish governent with PSOE.

~

THE UNIONISTS:

PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, Socialists' Party of Catalunya) is the Catalun branch of PSOE (socialists etc etc español), a center-left party that is currently in the Spanish government. PSC used to have catalanist sectors and when they were in power in Catalunya (as the 1st force of the Tripartit) they passed laws to defend catalan etc (to this day since the death of Franco no regional government of Catalonia has been against defending Catalan). Those positions towards the language and culture probably remain but now they're explicitly anti independence. They're not super left but if you don't count Comuns as unionists, PSC is the farthest left you can go in the unionist side.

PP: the strong Spanish right wing party since the 90s, where all the francoists ended up after the transition in the 70s, they held the Spanish governent '96-2004 and 2011-2018 and do not want to defend catalan. They won't usually say it out right though, they'll say things like "spanish speakers are oppresed in Catalunya", and that's the same for all anti-independentists. In Catalonia, though, they have very bad results.

Ciudadanos (citizens) is basically a split from PP that formed in 2006 in Catalonia to be explicitly anti-catalanist. For a hot second it seemed like they could be the new strong party of the Spanish right but now the party is crumbling and in Catalunya specifically they've gone from 1st force (they still didn't govern) with 36 seats to second to last with only 6. Rumours say that the party will dissolve before the next election.

Vox is a far right party that likes Donald Trump and fucking hates independence and Catalunya, they're a new party and rn the strongest of the spanish right wing forces in Catalunya in 4th place in the parliament.

Now you know all the players I can explain THE RESULTS:

(the big hemicircle is yesterday's results, the little one is last election's)

PSC has had a slight edge over ERC but they haven't been able to reflect that in more seats. Cs has crumbled from first place to 8th. Vox has appeared out of nowhere, but the rise in unionist seats (26) between PSC and Vox is still smaller than the 30 seats Cs has lost.

In the independentist side, ERC has gained 1 seat, JxC lost 2 and CUP gained 5 for a total gain of 4 seats for the independentists.

Even thoug an explicitly far right force has entered the parliament, this election shows a trend towards left wing forces: unionists towards PSC rather than Cs, and independentist towards ERC and CUP.

Even though the JxC+ERC coalition is a mess, all analysts and journalists agree that ERC's Pere Aragonès has the best chance to become the next President. All evidence points to the fact that CUP will have an easier time voting for a leftist President from ERC than a centrist/right winger from JxC, and some rumours say that ERC could be looking for Comuns' support. They don't want independence but maybe they can be brought in to strengthen the left wing stance of this new government.

The opinions of analysts and the rumours I mention come from last night's TV3 election special.

Election results:

If you've read the whole thing thank you and I hope this has been useful 😊❤️

#election #catalonia #europe

[myjadecoloredglasses]

Dec. 29th 2019

For the umpteenth time I’m starting a daily writing challenge.. I figure I’ll give myself a running start into 2020 and begin now. I just wanna write about my life and feelings and shit.. and by this time next year I want 365 of them.

Last night I was stood up for a date with a 6′4″ minor league football player. He’s a medic for his day job and we’ve been chatting for a few months. We met once for a juice by the water, and there was an ember but it would need to be stoked and tended to. I don’t believe either of us have the drive to make a fire.  He lives on the east side and I on the west. Which in the day of short attention spans, many options and immediate delivery, it’s apparently a deal breaker. I also don’t have the greatest instinct when it comes to those who attract me... or are attracted to me. So I’ll give him that out ;)

This lead me to reroute to a man I’ve been speaking with for a few days. Both of these boys found on Bumble. We met at a loud and busy bar. He was running late and got there about 20 mins after me. He called and apologized. While I was waiting for him these 3 men in their probably 60′s walked in and needed 3 seats and asked me to move down. I did, because there was plenty of room and they needed 3 chairs. One of them sits beside me and takes my common curtesy for an in to flirt.. or something lol 

He says: Well thank you, how decent you are, you must be a republican. 

To which I respond: Absolutely not. (laughing) And I definitely still know decency. 

He proceeds to boisterously tell a stupid Trump joke that I couldn’t tell was reality or not. 

When it doesn’t land he says: See that was a trump joke. I can be cool. 

In a very condescending let me lower myself for you sort of way. He then proceeds to tell the most racist sexist joke about a plane crash I’ve ever heard.

 To which I respond: That hit my threshold of acceptability. 

I turned away and Bumble boy arrived. He caught the end of the horrendous old white man joke and kind of swooped in. He’s tall too. He plays soccer and prefers to call it futball. Raised here. 

He told me he was pulled over on the way to the bar. He said he showed the police officer my picture, told him he was running late to meet me for this first time and the officer let him go. I feel like it’s a line but he swore it happened and it’s a cute story.. and he was now the wall between me and the scary elder trumpsmen. 

I had 3 whiskey gingers and he had two whisky doubles on the rocks. He reminded me of hunter s thompson. Wiggly energy. Like a kid trying to hide and be noticed. Every once in a while this more grounded authentic older energy would sweep over him and I found it extremely attractive. However at the moment I’d say he’s at a 70/30 split child/wiseman. I like him but there’s obvious problems and little flags. But are there ever not? And I have my things, of which soon I will be honest. It’s just always so hard to be so emotionally and physically vulnerable with someone you’ve just met.. not only that but someone who holds a sexual charge for you.. it’s like volatile vulnerability. And I’m strong but I got some crevices in the onion that is my emotional vibrational awareness and communion. 

I want to be in love and safe and sexual and protected and cared for so badly. I hate hunting for it.. I feel, thirsty and cheap and impatient. But nothing ventured nothing gained? I do know that sitting back waiting, seemingly complacent, certainly does not seem like the move. I’m also 31 and my biological clock is clacking loud as shit.. and I don’t know if I want to have kids but I do know I want to be in a union and nurture a little human’s perspective on life and love. 

I didn’t fuck him but we made out all night. We had great physical chemistry. He kissed strong and passionately and his hands knew exactly what strength to rub my body. It was like being mid tissue massaged. Rough but in a tender way, which is my favorite. Getting wild while knowing you care about me. 

I never sleep well when someone sleeps over. So I smoked some weed and wrote this. 

~ See you tomorrow 

#life #feelings #daily

[coffee-books-and-roses]

FAQ about American politics for those who do not live in America (and also Americans who don’t keep up with the news). This is a long fucking post heads up.

I’ll start by saying that if you want to keep up with American politics, listen to Pod Save America. It was created by former Obama officials.

One last thing, when I saved this as a draft, a lot of the words turned to emoji’s, So incase you see clapping hands, that means p a r t y. 

Ok, now to begin. Incase you didn’t know, America is more or less one shit show when it comes to our politics right now. Most Americans are struggling to keep up with the news, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like for those outside the US, who have no cultural context. 

(Some notes before we go: We go by a two party system (1) Democrat = liberal. The party of Obama. (2) Republican = conservative. The party of Trump. Also, GOP stands for “Grand Old Party.” It’s another name for Republicans)

For the last two years (2016-2018) Republicans have controlled all three branches of government. The three branches: Judicial, Executive, and Legislative. However, that turned a few days ago when Democrats took control of one of the two Chambers in the Legislative branch called “The House”. This is the first time in eight years that they have taken control of the house. 

This will now be conversation form, making it easy to follow along

“What are the midterms?” America holds presidential elections every four years. Meanwhile, every two years we have an election in the legislative branch, also known as congress. The mid terms are the elections between presidential elections. Every election, all 435 house seats are open. Mean while, the number of seats up in the senate range in the mid 30′s. This year in 2018, 35 seats were up and open. (It is the same during the presidential election. Again. all 435 seats in the house are open, and somewhere in the mid 30′s senate seats are open.)

“How are the 435 house seats distributed among the states?” It’s all proportional, based on state population. The more people in a state, the more house seats they get. For example, California with 39 million, get 53, while places like Alaska, with only 700,000, gets just one representative. Each state will, at a minimum have one representative. 

“Wait- how are the representatives divided up with in the state?” I’ll explain that when we get to gerrymandering. 

“How many seats do Democrats need to take in order to get control of the house and senate?” For the house: 23. For the senate: 2. 

“Wait- you only won 194 house seats in 2016. Wouldn’t you need 24?” Democrats won a special election in Pennsylvania in 2017 after the Republican guy who held the office quit. 

“Same with the senate, you only won 46 seats in 2016.” There are two independents  in congress, although they vote almost always with the Democrats. We had a special election in Alabama, which we won, making us need only two seats. 

“Let’s say that Democrats with 50 seats and Republicans with 50 seats. Being that they would vote along party lines, what will happen to the bills?” The vice president- aka Mike Pence, will get to cast a vote on any bill that is half and half. Being that he is republican, he will side with his party. This is the only time the vice president is allowed to vote on issues in congress. 

“Back to the 2 seats in the senate. 2 seats don’t seem that hard” We had to defend 26 of the 35 seats, and then gain two more. In 2018, Democrats had to win 80% of the seats to take control, which, of course, didn’t happen. 

“So, what were the results?” Well, they are still counting a few races. However, regardless of those outcomes, we know for a fact that Democrats have taken at least 225 seats, seven more than the 23 needed. As for the senate, Republicans have at least 51, so even if the rest come out democrat, it won’t matter.

“What will American politics be like for the next two year?” Democrats can put a pause on Trumps agenda. Without control of both houses, he won’t be able to get his bills passed. Also, we will have subpoena power, meaning that we will finally investigate corruption that Trump has ignored. 

“Why did it take so long to get back control of the House?” Voter ID laws and gerrymandering 

“Voter ID laws? Don’t those protect against people from illegally voting? Okay, I tried writing about it, although it got to long. I’ll give you a 3 minute video for the shortened version. Just a heads up, when there are voting fraud attempts, they are mainly done by mail, not in-person. More democrats vote in-person, which is why they are doing this. 

“Gerrymandering ?” I don’t know how to explain it, so just watch this 3 minute video , it will explain the next questions below. 

“How often do the gerrymandered districts get re-drawn?” Every 10 years. See, the republicans took control in 2010, a census year. The next time states get re-drawn is in 2020

“What the heck happened in 2010?” The TEA party was formed 

“What is the TEA party?” It stands for “Taxed Enough Already”. The name also is a reference to the “Boston Tea Party” in 1773, when the American colonies dumped a bunch of British Tea into the Boston Harbor. 

“So what were the political views of the tea party?” They were a far fringe in the Republican party. The tea party argued for lower taxes, and reducing the amount of debt America had to other countries 

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. Why is that a problem?” Because in reality, it had very little to do about taxes or debt. While certainly people did joined because of financial reasons, in reality, it was more about racism than anything else. A bunch of old white people lost their goddamn shit because Obama, an African American, was in office. To them, he was a communist-atheist-Muslim-socialist-gay-Kenyan who was here to take away your guns and It’s not just me saying that. There has been evidence to suggest that racial resentment played a part in the tea party. 

“Yeah, well, didn’t they make good on the promise of lower taxes? After all, they just passed the largest tax cut in decades.” Yes. For the rich. As for the middle class and poor, they get almost nothing. The over whelming majority- 83%- will go to the wealthiest 1% of Americans.  

“What about caring for the debt?” Their tax cut actually expands the deficit- exactly opposite of what they promised. 

"Where, then. are they going to get the money to pay for the debt?” Republicans now want to cut funding Social Security and Medicare, programs designed to help the poor.  

“What does the American public think about this?” 60% of Americans think the tax cuts help the rich, not the middle class. That would probably explain why Republicans really didn’t talk that much about their tax cut during the 2018 midterms

So what could they run on if they didn’t talk about the tax cuts? Two things, first “pre-existing conditions” regarding Obamacare, and, or course, racism 

“Wait- before we go any further- what’s this whole Obamacare thing?” Obamacare allows people to get health insurance. In America, health insurance is a for-profit business. Of course, there is Medicare and Medicaid, but those are for really old people or really poor people. 

“I thought that program was called ACA?” Obamacare goes by many names. The official title is “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” although people shortened it to “affordable care act” then shortened it even more and abbreviated it to “ACA”. People gave it the nickname “Obamacare” because it was passed by Obama. 

“So how does everyone else get health care?” Two ways: though their employer, or by a single plan. This means you can, on your own, shop around for the best price.

“What was the point of Obamacare then?” Prior to Obamacare, while you could get insurance through your employer, you couldn’t always get it on the single market. There are these things called “pre-existing conditions”, which means that you were sick before you bough their health care. This could mean anything from cancer to acne. If you had a pre-existing condition, the company could charge you more money since you have a history of medical problems, and might cost them more money in the future. In some cases, they would deny allowing you to buy their health care at all.

“Holy shit. Is it possible to buy health care while your sick?” Technically, yes. However, most insurance companies would not do that. If you had cancer, then went looking for health care, almost always it would be too expensive for people to get. In most cases, they would just deny you insurance. Of course, you could get it through work insurance, however, you have to work full time for a month before you can get the health care. 

“So what problems of the health care system were solved with Obamacare becoming law?” Now companies couldn’t charge you more or deny you coverage if you had a pre-existing condition. Also, it gave more money for medicaid and medicare, so more people could be covered. It did a lot of other things, like help fund rural hospitals, although I don’t have to go into all, but those were the main ones. 

“Why the fuck would the republicans want to repeal Obamacare? Why the fuck would anyone want it repealed!?” Because repealing it would give a major tax cut to the rich. Again, all about tax cuts. 

“How did the American people support this?” Fox news and the right wing nut jobs created fear. Pundits and Republican law makers were on tv (including CNN) telling people that this was a government take over of health care. (It wasn’t. We still have the private health care industry.) They told bullshit stories of “death panels”, that the government would line people us and decide who was most deserving of cancer treatment. 

Did the Republicans at least show their version of improving healthcare? Nope. For seven years, they ran on “repeal and replace”, yet never once showed what the “replace” part would be. They just kept telling people that once they got both chambers and the presidency, they would replace it with something better. 

“Why wouldn’t they get a plan together before the 2016 presidential election?” They wanted to push it off another four years, since all the polls were showing that Hilary Clinton would win

“So when Republicans held onto both chambers and won the presidency, what did they do?” They made two major attempts, both in 2017, and both ended up failing

“What was the first one?”  In late February of 2017, almost a month after Trump came into office, they tried to write a bill. Of course, the democrats wanted a copy, but the Republicans wouldn’t give them one. So on March 2nd, Democrats went on a legit scavenger hunt trying to track down a copy of the bill. They finally revealed it on March 6th. The bill ended up being too moderate for the right wingers, and to right wing form the moderates. Anyway, the bill got pulled before it could get a vote on March 24, just a few weeks later.

“The second one?” On June 22nd, 2017, they revealed another bill called “The Better Care Reconciliation Act.” They wanted to vote on it by the end of July. Just so you know, health care is 1/6 of the economy. In one moth, they wanted to recreate 1/6 of the fucking economy. Long story short, we got a few republicans to switch sides and vote with us. However, we needed just one more vote, In come John McCain, one of the few decent Republican left. On July 28, just after midnight around 12:30 AM, John McCain voted no, and you can watch it in this dramatic video 

“So why did they vote no?” Americans put a ton of pressure on their senators and representatives. 

“Wait- I heard that Republicans supported protecting people with pre-existing conditions this elections?” They lied. Most still wanted to get ride of protecting people with pre-existing conditions, but Obamacare has become too popular. For example, Republican Scott Walker, who just lost his seat to the  Democrat Tony Evers, told people he supported the pre-existing conditions part of Obama care, all while he was part of a lawsuit challenging it in court.  

“You mentioned them running on racism?” Yup. If you want a deeper dive in all the examples of racism in the 2018 midterms, read this Atlantic article 

“How did the Republican party get so full of racist people?” It started with the TEA party in 2010, but took off with Trump. It has gotten so bad that In the 2018 elections, they had a white nationalist run in North Carolina.  

“Are you saying that all republicans are racist?” No. Many republicans don’t hold these views. The republican base is shrinking, with those who just want tax cuts leaving.  For example: Ana Navarro,  a hispanic republican, decided to vote democrat in the Florida election. She was the hispanic chairwoman for the John McCain campaign in 2008.  

“How did Trump play into the racism for the 2018 election?” He lied about the migrant caravan in South America. Basically, they the caravan is made up of people fleeing government oppression and violence in South America. Once they reach the US boarder, they are going to request asylum. This, of course, is legal. Yet Trump lied, falsely calling them an “invasion”. saying they there all a bunch of gang members who were going to kill Americans the moment they arrived. He said democrats were “too dangerous” to govern falsely saying that they would have “open boarders”

"I don’t hear much about the caravan now.” That’s because it was a political stunt- he din’t care about the caravan. He just used them to stir up fear for the elections. Of course, he still doesn’t want them in America. Yet he’s not going to talk about it because the elections are over. 

“Obviously not all Americans fall for his lies, but why do I see Americans tweet and support his lies?” A lot, but certainly not all, are Russian bots trying to divide people 

“Speaking of Russia, how did this whole Trump-Russian thing start even?” TL;DR He was being investigated way back in July 2016, fired the FBI investigating him in March 2017, and then a special prosecution council was made in May of 2017, with Robbert Muller being the lead prosecutor. Supposedly Muller is going to write his final report soon, but it hasn’t been confirmed.

“Shouldn’t this whole Russia thing all over the news?” There is so much going on that it is hard to just focus on the Russia investigation. The midterms, tax cuts, health care, immigration....all the things I listed above. Now it is only reported on if something massive happens- like an arrest or if someone is called to testify before congress. 

“Wow, man, this shit show is really bad. The whole thing could have been avoided if Hilary got the majority of the votes.” She did. She won the popular vote by 2.5 million. If we were in any other democracy, be that Canada or Australia, she would be president right now. This also happened in the 2000 election, when George W Bush lost the popular vote yet became president 

“Wait” You say “How the fuck does something like that happen?” Welp, get ready for your head to explode in anger  [Part one]   [Part two]

So....the guy who is trying to take away health care and give tax cuts to the rich is also they guy who lost the popular vote and could be working with Russia? Yup. 

“Any good news?” We won the house, and for the next two years, we will make Trumps life a living hell.

Anyway, I’ll end here. This is about 2,700 words and I’m exhausted. 

[paoulkaye-blog]

A Mandering Gerry

                So this is a thing that’s been bothering me for a while, and apparently it’s been bothering a lot of people. Gerrymandering is a political tool to boost the effectiveness of your voter turnout while minimizing the impact of the people who vote for your opponent. It’s all about drawing district lines to separate your political opponents and grouping up your political supporters for maximum effect. Both sides do it, and that is a fact.

                First off, right up front, how the hell is that a thing? Questions of constitutionality aside, who was the first asshole who was like ‘Hey, my voters should all be grouped in the same district, but I’ll also shove in enough of the other guy’s voters that he can’t win anywhere at all!’ How was that guy not immediately kicked in the nethers for being an awful person? Seriously, public servants and elected officials should uphold the spirit and the word of the constitution and its amendments as equality and rights for all, without the need to put a fucking asterisk at the end of the sentence and four paragraphs of fine print at the bottom of the damn page.

                Gerrymandering seems to successfully score itself on Wasted voters and Lost voters. Wasted voters are the number of voters in a district over the amount needed to secure a victory for the desired side, while Lost voters are people who vote or the losing side and thus have no further impact on the election. Apparently the ideal is to minimize Wasted voters and maximized Lost voters for your side and your opponent, strictly speaking. It’s pretty much the most widespread use of the idea of reducing people down to numbers, as well as one of the most asshole-ish.

                It gets caught and struck down when there is an apparent racial component to it, like North Carolina is so fond of providing examples of. It is less of a big deal, presumably, when people of every stripe are getting screwed to prop up whoever is drawing the lines. Like I said, both sides do it, but in recent years, Republicans have become very adept at this particular part of the political game, and since most district re-drawings happen every ten years to coincide with the census, it’s harder to combat in the moment, since lines get drawn for at least two presidential elections and probably five congressional and senate races. That’s a long time and a lot of elections for gerrymandered influence to stack the deck in a party’s favor.

                Hell, we’re seeing the effect right now, and I can give you a prime example that isn’t even the best one. The last Presidential election saw 136,628,459 votes cast. That is a lot of damn votes. All for the popular part of the election. In the breakdown, the votes got cast as follows:

                65,844,610 votes for Hillary Clinton (D)

                62,979,636 votes for Donald Trump (R-ish)

                And 7,804,213 votes cast for 3rd party candidates like Jill Stein and the other guy whose name escapes me.

                In pure numbers and ignoring districts and the Electoral College, we have an obvious winner. With 2.1% more of the popular vote, Hillary Clinton wins, hands down, no matter what anyone says or how small their hands may be.

                But here’s the thing: There IS the Electoral College to consider. Out of 538 Electoral cast for the two major candidates in the classic ‘winner take all’ style, 232 EC votes went to Hillary Clinton and 306 EC votes went to Donald Trump.

                Fair warning, there is some math ahead. This is the part of the essay where my brain starts to smoke, but I’ll attempt to keep my rabid outbursts to a minimum.

                To break it down, in order to secure an electoral vote, Clinton required 283,813 votes from the public (Divide 65,844,610 by 232). On the flip side, Trump needed just 205,816 votes from the public to secure an electoral vote (Divide 62,979,636 by 306). Following the math, and with a bit of generous rounding UP, you can easily arrive at the conclusion that a vote for Hillary counted about as much as 3/4ths of a vote for Donald. The math is below.

                283,813 / 205,816 = 0.725, or 72.5%. With the generous rounding mentioned earlier to bring that up to 75%, we arrive at the 3/4ths conclusion.

                Now, please, do not get me wrong: I am not a stats major or even a mathematician of any stripe. This is all basic addition and division with some percentages thrown in. I will never claim to be an expert here, but in a way that is sort of the point. In like five or six steps I can demonstrate, via basic math, how 48.2% of the country was, for at least the election of 2016, valued at three quarters that their fellow Americans were valued at the ballot box. To say nothing of the 7.8 million votes that amounted to virtually nothing in all of this.

                And while some of this is an issue of the Electoral College and the method by which electoral votes are gained, there are strong signs of the aforementioned gerrymandering having a profound effect on this election. And it worked: Democratic voters were broken up and Lost, and a minimum of Republican voters were Wasted. And no matter what you believe politically, whether you won or lost in the last election, you have to live with the fact that we, collectively, just sort of accepted being counted as a percentage of a person.

                For Trump voters, I’m sure they were thrilled that they mattered 25% more in the end than all of those wishy-washy leftists. Hillary voters were justifiably upset at being valued at 3/4ths of a person politically opposed to them. For the last election, and doubtless for elections before and still to come, the values of the conservative right have been given, by default, a more powerful voice in our election system, and ergo a more powerful hold over the country at large.

                And were this situation reversed, I would still be pretty pissed off about it. I may not agree with the guy who drives the pick-up truck with the huge wheels and the confederate flag emblazoned on his back windshield and the AR-15 in his passenger seat, but at the end of the day he is still an American citizen the same as me, and our values and opinions and our vote should count the same as any other. That’s the ideal this country was built upon, and it’s the ideal men and women have fought for and died for, and given and given and given for, and our current unbalanced electoral system, at all levels of government, is an insult both to them and their memories, to say nothing of the rest of us.

                The Supreme Court is set to actually hear about gerrymandering in general to determine its constitutionality. I hope and pray they help outlaw this ridiculous practice and help reverse its effect on our system. No one may be innocent in this, but it is an evil and a subversion of the most idealistic of our principals that we could all certainly do without. Thank you for reading.

#politics

[fapangel]

So why are people still touting Hillary Clinton like she is still relevant and why she brings herself to the public spotlight? Is it because Trump supposedly doing awful? Is it because they are shilling for a 2020 election ? Or is it because she thinks she dindu nuffin and the electoral votes didn't matter but popular?

Because the Democrat’s bench is incredibly thin, and judging from Google, everyone knows it. Some put it in starker and more eloquently direct terms than others, but aside from a single demographics-based argument (that seems pretty thin to me) I can’t find any pontificating on the ‘net as to why the Democrat’s bench is still this thin. 

In that caffeine-fueled rant of mine a few posts down, I opined that the thin bench has much to do with how Democrats engage in idol-worship and form personality cults around their politicians, and that this, in turn, explains why they nurture multi-century political family dynasties, like the Kennedy’s (currently making another comeback,) and the Clintons. And apparently some Democrats see it, too. But even with that... why aren’t there any hungry up-and-comers at the low levels of state politics? State governors, and such?

A very interesting statistic I learned in my Campaigns and Elections class is, the average President wins office only seven years after their first significant electoral victory. That’s right - seven. George W. Bush is a typical example - he became Governor of Texas in 1994, and won the Presidency in 2000. There’s a reason for this - the ideal President is one who has some fire, who can put some Energy into the Executive, as Hamilton argued in Federalist Paper #70. In short, the American people do not like wishy-washy Presidents with lots of compromises and skeletons in the closet - which is exactly what long-serving senators collect, and why they very, very rarely win elections (note that Obama hand’t finished his first Senate term when he beat McCain like a drum.) The upshot of this is that Presidential candidates often come out of relative nowhere. My high school journalism teacher - a hard-core, old-school liberal and the person who instilled more journalistic ethics in me than anyone else - told me to keep my eye on Obama in 2005. And she wasn’t the only one watching him then... but by the same token, he was actually in the US Senate by then, having just won the Illinois election. He’d been a state senator in Illinois since 1994, but who pays attention to them? There’s so many, and they’re rarely noticeable till they start flexing towards gubernatorial aspirations. And just as often they’re beaten by a city mayor, or even a first-timer businessman, as many governors were before running. 

And yet despite this, the Republicans were able to stack up Ted Cruz (Texas Solicitor-General and still-first-term Senator,) Marco Rubio (state senator, then US Senator, much like Obama,) John Kasich (sitting Governor of Ohio and retired US Representative,) Ben Carson (neurosurgeon, no prior political experience,) Jeb Bush (former Governor of Florida, family history,) Rand Paul (another recent Tea Party senator, like Cruz,) Chris Christie (Governor of New Jersey, lawyer before that,) Mike Huckabee (former Lt. Governor, then Governor of Arkansas, Carly Fiorina (CEO of Hewlett-Packard, of all damn things,) Jim Gilmore, (Governor of Virginia, no political career before that,) and Rick Santorum, (US Senator from Pennsylvania.)

Compare this to the Democrat’s 2016 primary roster: Hillary Clinton versus Bernie Sanders, with only one dropout during the primaries (Martin O’Malley, former governor of Maryland - did you ever hear of him? I sure as hell didn’t.) Fuck just compare the Wikipedia pages; the long-shot candidates that announced for President, but withdrew before the primaries began: Republicans, and Democrats. Conservatives had Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki (all Governors,) and Lindsey Graham (Senator,) and Democrats had Lincoln Chafee (Governor,)  Jim Webb, (Senator,) and Lawrence Lessig (Harvard professor.) Five to three, and Lessig never had a snowball’s chance in hell, so make that five to two, just among the left-field hail-mary mixed-sports-metaphor candidates. 

Even if we can’t see them coming, they should still be showing up - so either they’re not out there to begin with, or they just can’t clear the hurdles. And my money’s on the latter. During the primaries we saw the same breathakingly elitist, high-handed hubris from both sides - even from (especially from) Ted Cruz, who was a neophyte and elected in the populist “Tea Party” surge... but Democrats, unlike Republicans, had actually rigged their party’s electoral apparatus so the establishment could enforce their clannish dictates. In Republican primaries, the votes are the votes, but Democrats use “superdelegates” in their party nominations - delegates that aren’t linked to any popular vote outcomes whatsoever. About 15% of the Democratic Convention’s delegates are “super-delegates,” which is a huge amount when you consider the usual margins in primary elections - to overcome them voting in lockstep against you, you’d need to defeat your opponent with huge landslides in a majority of states. And who do they give those seats to? The party’s old guard, of course, including such luminaries as Bill Clinton himself (naturally, he voted for Hillary.) And you have to understand that politics, like most things, function on the classic iceberg analogy; i.e. 90% of it is below the surface. Consider the culture amongst the Democratic party that’s required to support the creation and sustainment of this kind of system. 

And also recall how urbanized the Democratic power base is - and then remember that the leftists have been gaining power in the Democratic party since 1969, and in the last decade (or longer, depending on whom you ask) their power has become dominant. Major urban centers like Detroit, Flint, Saginaw (MI,) Yongstown, Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo, Cincinnati (Ohio,) Pittsburg, PA, Charleston, WA, and even Milwaukee, WI - are all rust belt cities that have seen their blue-collar, working-class union Democrats trickle away from the Democratic party as the left, rather than liberals, gain ascendancy. That results in fewer electoral “incubators” for Democrats - now it’s pretty much just Chicago. And Chicago (where “machine politics” was invented,) is an example of why cities are important for Democrats; even if you’re running for Governor, not Mayor, the city is where you build your network of supporters (remember, Obama started as a “community organizer,” which is just a polite term for a rabble-rousing hell-raising instigator in the fashion similar to union strikes and street demonstrations.) Historically, unions and leftist/communist ideology shared lots of common ground (which is why unions were always attacked by conservatives as DEM GOL ’DERN BOLSHEVIKS), but now the leftists are concerned with “social justice,” which often holds forth - stridently - on the evils of privilege enjoyed by those fucking white males, who happen to constitute the majority of former and current union members. We’ve seen a precipitous shift in the left wing’s support base from union support in the northern Rust Belt to more hip, educated, and wealthy college towns that support a new demographic, and especially cities with new money - Silicon Valley and Seattle being the goddamned defining examples, as well as Madison, WI and Ann Arbor, MI. And not only do these places tend to not produce or elect the kind of candidates with broader appeal to a more rural, redder America, but I very much doubt they produce the kind of support structures - the political machines - that old-school union politics did. Remember, unions did - and still do - fucking kill people. The Mob was balls-deep in the unions and vise-versa, which is why the FBI still digs up a field here and there in the Detroit suburb cities looking for Jimmy Hoffa. These people worked different kinds of jobs, faced different kinds of enemies, and lived in a different kind of culture - they, and their culture, evolved out of the 30s, when big companies often hired mercenaries (excuse me, “private detectives”) to fucking machine-gun striker’s camps. They meant business, and they worked at it - and nowadays, the last remnants of those structures are only seen in real, effective evidence in Chicago, Illinois, which might explain why Democrats keep talking about how weak their state-level campaign infrastructure and support networks are. 

Rural Democrats exist - hell, they used to define Democrats (”Dixiecrats”,) but that’s going back even further, to the 20s, the Dust Bowl, and Democratic patronage and defense of farmers, which culminated in FDR’s New Deal. You’ll still find those sentiments running strong in Iowa, but it’s more like “union politics for farmers.” And god knows they needed it - the railroad companies (which wined, dined and lobbied the fuck out of Congress) were often several miles of land on either side of their tracks, for free, when they built their lines across the sprawling West... and then the greedy bastards charged the farmers a fucking road toll to bring their grain to the fucking railhead to sell and ship it. You can still see the big community-crowdfunded silos built right at the edge of “railroad property” so people could “carpool” their grain shipments and split up the tolls a bit. But rural democrats are even rarer now, and it’s more of a lingering sentiment than a political reality, as anyone looking at the map can tell: 

So the old union-politics incubators are either dead, dying or just plain depopulated and the rural democrats are either extinct, or too moderate to vote for the kinds of Social Justice Warrior candidates the coastal hipster kingdoms tend to produce. 

“But planefag,” you say, “who says those hippie kingdoms can’t grassroots the fuck out of things? Just look at how much they’ve already done!” And that’s true - I could (and would) assay an argument that the nu-Democrats are more interested in virtue signalling and moralistic back-patting on Facebook than their gruff tuff blue-collar forbears were, but arguments that boil down to GIT OFFER MUH LAWN are pretty thin. The real problem is, the party old-guard is still ruled by the old guys with their roots in the union-era politics. There’s a reason the Democratic old-guard basically shut down Hillary’s primary challenge to Obama in 2008 - Obama came from Chicago, inside their system, whereas the Clintons had their own very strong power base they built a significant chunk of themselves... and besides, Bill was from Arkansas. They probably called him Farmer Bill the Centrist Shill. This violent culture clash was exemplified by the BernieBros - and Bernie himself, who’s a candidate that self-described Communist Michael Moore aptly labeled “an old socialist with neither a clue nor a comb.” He’s literally the Ron Paul of the left; a candidate that only dipshit millennials with more self-gratifying emotional zeal than common sense or practical concerns could love. 

Not all is lost for the Democrats - a few of my friends, the ones I look to as an example of the people who could save the Democrats from themselves - told me flat-out that Hillary didn’t deserve to win. There’s a real grassroots movement to finally clean house; kind of a Democratic tea-party surge... but a lot of the people gunning for those offices are not liberals, but leftists. Young, hot and hungry ones. 

Take note, liberals - your last, best chance to save your party is in front of you, and it’s about damn time you seized it with both hands. 

[valyrianczarina]

If people keep acting like this, we (Dems) will continue to lose elections.

Listen. I am a Mulatta Latina. My father is a white Cuban, my mother is a passingly “white” Panamanian - and her father is Black/Indigenous. I, however, came out with darker skin. As a kid, I have been taunted, ridiculed, and bullied for my skin tone and curly hair. With that being said, this is my totally non biased and objective opinion: If you really believe that the SOLE reason Donald Trump is our president right now is because of a race war - you are wrong, and you need to acknowledge it. Do I think Donald Trump is a racist? He might be. Does his message intersect with people who are racist? Yes. But that is not why he flipped 3 democratic states and won the election on November 8th. 

1. Obamacare pool was struggling due to high enrollment of low income and pre -diagnosed individuals. It’s how a market of that size works. Premiums more than doubled for many people, many of them being above the poverty threshold and having no pre existing conditions. This within itself was even raising the cost of health insurance for families OUTSIDE of the market. My law firm’s HMO Group was one of them. ACA Tax Penalty was PENALIZING people for not having coverage. A substantial amount! $695!!! And even so, many people took the penalty and went without coverage, because their income was too high for a cheap $40 a month plan. This was reported weeks before the election. This is where the SILENT MAJORITY comes in. 

2. WIKILEAKS. The DNC rigged the primary election to favor Hillary Clinton. We saw the emails. Donna Brazile leaked the debate questions to the Hillary campaign. We know this for a fact. It was reported, and people paid attention.

3. Politicization of FBI Director James Comey.  Hillary’s “investigation” was reopened 2 weeks before the election because of fucking Anthony Wiener, his wife, and their fucking desktop. They found nothing, this scandal lasted a whole week. It made a huge difference, as early voting was still happening all over the country.

4. 6 million people voted third party. 

5. HRC had no charisma. Donald Trump had a MOVEMENT. Yeah, he's fucking dumb, ridiculous, and unqualified - and anyone with an average level of intellectual curiosity can see this - but it didn’t matter. He had the message. America loves scandals. People have a very short attention span. The energy was with Bernie Sanders. Bernie was a 75 year old man who filled stadiums and rallies with hundreds, if not thousands, of 18-22 year old kids. He also won 23 states. A democratic socialist won 23 states. He also won all of the states that HRC was supposed to win. WHITE WORKING CLASS STATES. Are those same people who carried Obama to victory twice, racist? No.

6. Syria, Brexit, and an overall anti immigration hostility gaining ground in Europe. Various terrorist attacks happened in the EU, and Pulse Nightclub Shooting happened. The Democrats’ decision to refrain from using the term “islamic terrorism”. This small detail actually motivated a lot of easily manipulated dummies to vote for a reality tv star.

7. Republicans showed up to vote as usual, democrats stayed home. Like I said, there was no energy surrounding the Clinton Campaign. Yeah, sure, she was a woman - a highly qualified one. But that wasn’t enough. Barack Obama was a star. She is not a star. 

So, there. Election of Trump was a MISTAKE. Its disheartening, its horrible, its embarrassing. I feel the same pain everyone else feels. But we can’t keep calling our opponents racist at every disagreement on policy. John McCain was also endorsed by the KKK. The KKK endorses the GOP candidate in every election!!! WHY WAS THIS SUCH A BIG DEAL? 

Do you want to be prideful and politically correct, focus on the social/civil rights issues at every turn and make your adversary look like “the bad guy”? 

Or do you want to play the game the way it is meant to be played. Do you want to focus on the FISCAL AND EDUCATION POLICIES that will actually HELP the minorities who are stuck in a cycle of poverty, inequality, and oppression? That is my question. This race thing won’t work next election. Because his voters don’t give a shit. They voted for him because he promised to repeal Obamacare and bring back manufacturing jobs (which we know is not going to happen). They don’t give a shit about climate change, public school funding, federal school loans, Planned Parenthood...They just want better jobs! THEY DON’T CARE. YES, THEY’RE THAT FUCKING STUPID. 

SO WAKE UP! STOP CRYING! GET INVOLVED AND THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED. STOP ACTING LIKE A VICTIM AND ACT LIKE A SURVIVOR. TALK TO PEOPLE WHO THINK DIFFERENTLY THAN YOU. SHOW THEM WHAT YOU KNOW, CONVINCE THEM TO JOIN YOUR SIDE. DEBATE. Unless they attack you first with that “snowflake” bullshit, then go in guns flaring. But STFU about the race thing. Is it wrong that his campaign fueled racism and islamophobia? I personally think it is. But they don’t care, and guess what? Their vote is just as powerful as yours. Stop getting riled up by his BAIT. Part of his campaign slogan was CROOKED HILLARY. WHO IS MORE CROOKED THAN DONALD TRUMP? But no, they focused on his projectile vomit speeches and his predictable crassness. Everyone was so fucking consumed by the race war and the stupid wall, but not the fact that he is a horrible orator, a person of low emotional intelligence and impulse control, a sleezebag, a complete WACKJOB?! UNACCEPTABLE. 

LOOK AT HIS CABINET. ITS A FUCKING NIGHTMARE!!!!

YOU HAVE TWO YEARS UNTIL THE SENATE AND CONGRESS SEATS ARE UP, AND 4 YEARS TO KICK HIM THE FUCK OUT!!! ITS EITHER THAT OR TWO TERMS OF PRESIDENT TRUMP. THIS IS HOW IT WORKS. ITS NOT CHANGING. WORK WITH THE SYSTEM, NOT AGAINST IT. 

I’m done. Had to let it out.

#me #personal #politics #donald trump #hillary clinton #election 2016 #presidential election #usa #inauguration #notmypresident #fucktrump

[omginstantpaperbouquetblr]

By Andrew Levine / Counterpunch.

Photo by kellybdc | CC BY 2.0

It has looked for a while as if hardcore Trump supporters would, like the poor, always be with us  (Matthew 26:11) – some because they remain bamboozled by the huckster’s spiel and bluster, some because they think (not too unreasonably) that even Trump is better than a Clintonite Democrat (as if there is any other kind), and some because they still think (not unreasonably at all) that there is some percentage in it for them.

The latter group is comprised of members in good standing of “the donor class.” Trump’s donors are among the most venal in creation.

The Donald cares about the bamboozled ones and the ones who hate Hillary above all because they feed his vanity, but only the rich ones really matter.

Because rational deliberation and debate have come to count for almost nothing in the real world of American politics, it is their money that talks, and therefore their support that he cares about.

When they finally realize that the man they have been backing is more trouble than he is worth, Trump will be toast.  It was their money, more than his own, that put Trump in the White House; and it is their money now that keeps hardcore Trump supporters on board and that helps sustain support for the GOP, the party Trump nominally leads.

This is not to say that, when they start defecting in substantial numbers that Trump’s days in office will be over.  Because our electoral system is “exceptionally” undemocratic, even by the standards of other liberal democracies, it is extremely difficult to remove a president from office.  An utterly hobbled Donald Trump could still hang on by the skin of his teeth.

Neither is it to say that the Trump nightmare is likely soon to become less horrifying.    A more hobbled Trump could well constitute a clearer and more present danger than a less hobbled one.

My point is that if and when the donors go, the Age of Trump will enter a new phase – one that would have momentous consequences for the future, if any, of the Republican Party, and for the Democratic Party as well.  The effects on the GOP will be more dramatic and immediate, but, if all goes well, the consequences for Democrats could turn out to be at least as momentous.

Notwithstanding the cheerier impression its corporate media propagandists convey, the Democratic Party, and the duopolistic party system it helps to sustain, has long been an obstacle in the way not only of progressive social change, but also of efforts to maintain advances achieved under its aegis before the Clintons and others like them set the party on its present course.

Thanks to Trump, there is an opportunity now to begin to change that – by transforming the party beyond recognition or, better still, by abandoning it altogether.

Our semi-established duopoly party system gives the idea of abandoning it altogether a utopian flavor.  But times are changing.   In theory, though probably not in practice, the Greens could play a significant role welcoming progressive refugees fleeing the Democratic Party.  More likely, a real resistance, arising both from within and outside Democratic Party circles, could spawn new political departures.

Most likely, though, the best we can hope for, in the foreseeable future, are a few changes for the better from the base up.  Much more is desperately needed, but even small steps in a better direction are not to be despised.

Now is a time to double down on that — because December is shaping up to be a watershed month.

All the talk these days is about the Senate race in Alabama.  It is easy to see why.  If Roy Moore, the theocratic child molester, pedophile and all-around reactionary running on the GOP line, loses to Democrat Doug Jones December 12, flipping a seemingly impregnable Republican seat, it would be a major blow to the Republican Party and to Donald Trump.

But there are more momentous happenings afoot.  Unless the leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties in the House and Senate cut a deal by December 8, when money to run the federal government runs out, the government will shut down.  This will make Trump and the party he leads look bad.

With unified control of both the House and the Senate, the GOP surely ought to be able at least to keep the government running.  If it cannot, how pathetic is that!

Or if, after harping on about it for so long, Republicans cannot even get a tax cut for the rich through Congress, then what self-respecting donor would turn over a cent of ill-gotten gains to them?

To be sure, Year One of the Age of Trump has not left them completely high and dry.

Trump and his minions have been doing all kinds of harm to the judiciary.  Ironically, for that, they have mainstream Republicans, especially Mitch McConnell, a man Trump’s hardcore supporters despise almost as much as they loathe Hillary Clinton, to thank.

And, by appointing retrogrades to lead government agencies that benighted capitalists want gone, they have been severely damaging the material wellbeing of all but the stinking rich.

This is not nothing, but will it be enough to satisfy Republican donors?

The short answer is: probably not.  The reason is not just that that their greed exceeds anything that Trump can deliver.   A more important factor is that, even as he tries to give them what they want, Trump is exacerbating an intraparty civil war that has been raging for some time — and that slipped into full throttle mode the moment that he emerged as a serious candidate.

It is a war that pits benighted evangelicals and traditional reactions against that bizarre amalgam of white supremacists, nativists, and far right nihilists that we nowadays call “the altright.”

Trump himself is, and is perceived to be, on the altright side, unlike most of the donors.  But even if he were not, a Republican Party divided against itself is the last thing the donors want.

After all, the GOP was their “thing,” their Cosa Nostra.  Damaging, and perhaps even destroying it, would be a stiff price to pay for lowering taxes that most of them don’t pay anyway.

Some of them may also cavil at the harm Trump is doing to many of the socially useful things the government does – supporting higher education, for example, and keeping national parks and monuments more or less unspoiled.  Even with their limited insight and self-interested points of view, some of them must surely realize, at some level, that giving in to the capitalist impulse to privatize everything can sometimes be a bad idea.

Those wretched donors may care as little about the wellbeing of the public as they do about justice or equality, but when the demise of public goods diminishes their wellbeing along with everyone else’s, they become concerned.

The conventional wisdom has it that Trump needs at least one major legislative success to show for his first year in office.  Congressional Republicans seem on board with that.  But this is only because they don’t have the sense they were born with.   If they did, even if all they care about is themselves and their donors, they would realize that what they manage to legislate successfully matters more than the mere fact of having legislated something successfully.

And if they weren’t, “fucking morons” like Trump (according to his Secretary of State), they would also realize that tax reforms that are idiotic on their face, that will exacerbate poverty and inequality, harm workers and others in the so-called “middle class,” and that will damage the public sphere while leaving only the rich better off, are not likely to put them in good stead with the voting public.

But then, House and Senate Republicans are not, as they say this time of year, the brightest bulbs on the tree.

***

Hegel got it right: to make sense of the past, we need to assess it from suitable vantage points that become accessible only when the events in question are over, when the past truly is past. “The owl of Minerva takes flight only with the setting of the sun.”

Events in process can never be entirely clear; the situation is even murkier with events that seem likely but that have not happened yet.

Global warming is sure to wreak havoc in countless ways between now and the end of the Trump era — or the Trump-Pence era, if we somehow manage to rid ourselves of the Donald before Inauguration Day 2021.  But it is extremely unlikely that anything will happen by then that humankind will be unable to survive or that will throw the owl of Minerva seriously off course.

Therefore, if Trump does not unleash or stumble into a nuclear holocaust, it should be possible to look back upon his presidency in ways that make more sense of it than is possible while the nightmare is still unfolding.

It is impossible now to foresee what future, if any, the GOP will have.  It is very likely to remain the more odious of our two neoliberal parties, but it is impossible to say just how Republican odiousness will manifest itself in the years ahead.

What will happen to the Democratic Party is also unclear, though it is already plain that unless they break free from their Clintonite past – from servility to Wall Street the military-industrial-national security state complex, and the liberal imperialist cum neoconservative view of world affairs to which Democrats are wedded – their odiousness will continue to give the Republicans’ stiff competition.

Perhaps some day, unreconstructed Bernie Sanders supporters, and others involved with the so-called “resistance,” will succeed in setting in motion a process for rebuilding the party from the bottom up.  However, at best, that will be a protracted process, lasting well beyond the Trump or Trump-Pence era.

Mainstream Democrats cannot now even bring themselves to call unabashedly for a twenty-first century version of mid-twentieth century liberalism, the way that Bernie Sanders did.  They are even less disposed to break free from their party’s imperialist and war-mongering traditions – in order to deal in a constructive way with an empire in decline and a military that has grown far too big for its britches.

Unlike Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Sanders never even broached those concerns, and there are no prominent voices in the Democratic Party broaching them now.

The actually existing Democratic Party is feckless.  It is also inept.  In 2016, Clinton had the entire “power structure” on her side, corporate media especially; and she and her party had more willing and able “donors” than they knew what to do with.  Nevertheless, she managed to lose.  That took some doing.

Now Hillary is gone – let’s hope that she and Bill stay that way! – and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the hapless chair of the Democratic National Committee is out of the picture too.  Their spirit lives on however – in “the Chuck (Schumer) and Nancy (Pelosi) show” and in the hearts and minds of nearly every nationally prominent mainstream Democrat.

Could the Democrats therefore lose a sure thing again?  It is not impossible; they are that bad.

It is unlikely, however.  For one thing, Trump’s manifest unsuitability for the office he holds is more widely appreciated than it was a year ago.  It has become hard to remember a time when each new day’s batch of tweets didn’t make it harder for anyone who is neither certifiably deluded nor utterly loathsome to be fooled by Trump or to remain in denial about how awful he is.

For another, because some measure of Democratic support is necessary for getting a spending bill that would avert a government shutdown through, Trump needs to make deals with Chuck and Nancy.

The beauty is that unless those two blunder spectacularly, spurred on by their own ineptitude or by rightwing Democrats and shillyshallying liberals, Trump loses whether he makes a deal or not.

At least for now, many Democrats  — with Schumer and Pelosi in tow – seem to be holding out for three pieces of “bipartisan” legislation in exchange for cooperation in avoiding a government shutdown.  They are demanding a bill to “fix” Obamacare, a bill to restore the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, and a bill to extend the now expired health care program for children, SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program).

Public opinion and common decency are on their side, but there are Republicans in the House and Senate – and in the nether regions of the Trump base — who could care less about such niceties.  If Trump concedes anything to the Democrats, they will see to it that he will have a rebellion on his hands.  Therefore, deal or not, Trump loses.

He lost last May too; the deal he struck with Schumer and Pelosi then to fund the government, arguably the most important piece of legislation passed during Trump’s first year, included no funding for his border wall and enough “discretionary spending” to rattle a lot of Republican cages.

By any measure, that deal amounted to a defeat for Trump, one that he could hardly deny.  It set in motion a series of angry, mindless tweets that boiled down to the claim that a government shutdown might be just what the doctor ordered.  Even Trump could hardly believe that; and neither could he fail to notice that the stakes this time are even higher than they were back then.

If the Republican tax bill dies or is delayed, as it may well be, Trump will be under extreme pressure to strike a deal with his Democratic foes.

Of course, he wants to keep his base on board.  But, even more, he wants to avoid completing his first year in office with a reckoning that would warrant a grade of F for House and Senate Republicans, and F- for himself.  Even he understands that, no matter what he promises his class brothers and sisters, neither he nor his indispensable allies in Congress can raise money with grades like those.

To get his stalwarts to defect, all Chuck and Nancy have to do is stick to their guns.   Unlike liberals who are disposed to remain affixed to the Democratic Party come what may, Trump supporters are not shy about taking their own sides in arguments.  There is woefully little about them that is admirable, but credit where credit is due: their obduracy is sublime.

Nevertheless, Chuck and Nancy don’t need to play chess to win this one.  Lucky for them; that would probably be more than they could handle, even with Republicans for opponents.  But, for this, minimal competency in checkers should more than suffice.

And once Republican donors start deserting Trump’s sinking ship like the rats they are, the Age of Trump will enter its terminal stage.

How long that stage will last, and what will come of it, remains to be seen.

If December does indeed turn out to be the watershed moment it is shaping up to be, we will know better soon enough.

It will be a while before when the owl of Minerva is able to make sense of the Trump era as such.  But the sun is already setting on the most recent of its stages.

Anti-Trump resisters worthy of the name will therefore have plenty to deal with in the weeks and months ahead, as Democrats and Republicans, the duopoly’s lesser and greater evils, struggle to remain afloat in the Trumpian maelstrom.

ANDREW LEVINE is the author most recently of THE AMERICAN IDEOLOGY (Routledge) and POLITICAL KEY WORDS (Blackwell) as well as of many other books and articles in political philosophy. His most recent book is In Bad Faith: What’s Wrong With the Opium of the People. He was a Professor (philosophy) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Research Professor (philosophy) at the University of Maryland-College Park.  He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press).

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[somethingusefulfromflorida]

TLDR: the future of the country lies with the For The People Act, and Joe Manchin holds all the cards.

Whether or not Donald Trump runs for re-election in 2024 largely depends on whether the For The People Act passes in the Senate.

If it does, and elections are reformed with federal guidelines, AND if it survives the inevitable Supreme Court challenges (which is dubious given the 6-3 conservative majority), then no, Trump won't run again because he wouldn't want to risk losing a second time. He's humiliated, he has to pretend it was stolen from him so he doesn't have to acknowledge the fact that he lost like a little bitch. If the election reforms level the playing field, he wouldn't stand a chance of winning in 2024; he only won in 2016 because of voter apathy and suppression in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Turnout was WAY higher in 2020, and he got blown out of the water.

If the act fails in the Senate or is struck down by SCOTUS, then Trump will absolutely run again because Republican lawmakers will rig the elections in his favor in all the swing states he lost. If the reforms don't pass, all the states Biden flipped will flip right back because of even worse suppression and partisan interference. Republicans tried to overturn the results after he lost in 2020, but the courts prevented them from doing so; now they've had a taste for things, they know what they can and can't do, so they'll spend the next four years rewriting the rules in their favor so the courts will side with them in 2024. 2020 wasn't rigged, it was arguably the most transparent election in American history, and that has Republicans scared shitless; they know they can't win on policy, they're trying to win by technicality. They haven't legitimately won since Bush Sr in 1988; Democrats have won 7 of the last 8 elections, the only exception being 2004 at which point we were still reeling from 9/11 and were caught up in two new wars in the Middle East. Bush Jr had the incumbency advantage, and the wars made him more popular than he turned out to actually be (he left office with record low approval ratings in the 20s; in 2008 both parties ran candidates on the platform of "I am not George W. Bush"). Republicans know they can win without a majority, so that's what they plan on doing from now on. They don't need to care about popular opinion.

For The People is extremely popular, with majority support from Democratic, independent, and yes, even Republican voters, but their lawmakers are fighting tooth and nail to stop it. Not a single Republican will vote for it in the Senate, and Manchin and Sinema refuse to get rid of the filibuster, so it's as good as dead unless they change their minds or reform the legislative process. Back in the day, a filibuster was active, it required a senator to hold the floor and refuse to yield for as long as possible (the record is over 24 hours). Any member could filibuster a bill by taking the floor and delaying until they were exhausted, or until 60 senators voted to stop them. Starting in the 1970s, the filibuster became passive because the Senate decided that actually holding the floor was irrelevant so long as the other side couldn't get the 60 votes needed to stop it. Legislation has ground to a halt ever since, exacerbated by the election of Mitch McConnell as majority leader in 2015. He proudly became known as the Bill Killer, effectively vetoing every single one by simply refusing to let any of them go the floor at all; instead of opening up the chamber and letting members filibuster, he would simply let the bills die on his desk, even if they had enough support to pass. If he didn't personally want it to pass, then it didn't pass. End of story. There's a joke that if Congress were on fire, it couldn't even pass the Pour Water On Congress Act, and this is largely McConnell's fault.

If Manchin and Sinema agreed to change the rules to bring back the active filibuster it would allow more bills to move forward, but each one would almost certainly take DAYS or WEEKS to get passed. If we thought Republicans were obstructionist before, just imagine what they'd do if Democrats could simply wait them out. What will happen is that a handful of them will decide to filibuster, one after another, each one holding the floor for at least day, preventing anything from getting done. Because the other side doesn't have the 60 votes to stop them, they would keep talking until they got tired, then tag out for someone else. The thing is, once you stop talking, you can't start talking again, so they wouldn't be able to filibuster indefinitely, they couldn't recharge and give it another go, they'd have one shot each. Imagine dozens of Republicans holding the floor hostage for weeks, maybe months if they were dedicated enough; if every senator held the floor for a full day, that's 50 days, over a month and a half. Now, a lot of senators are old men who probably couldn't last that long, but others like Josh Hawley are quite young and would try for a publicity stunt by holding out for the longest filibuster ever (I could imagine him making it 2 or 3 days if he was dedicated enough, which would make him a Republican superstar and guarantee him the presidency).

Of course, such a prolonged filibuster would be torn to shreds by the media; just like a government shutdown, eventually popular opinion would turn against the obstructionists, and they'd eventually have to concede. The majority of Americans blamed the Republicans for the shutdowns under Obama AND Trump, so any prolonged filibuster would largely be seen as a waste of time (though it would score them big political points from their bases, it would unite the opposition against them, hurting their chances at re-election). It's all a game, and the outcome depends on the will of the players.

I could see some of the hardliners like Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Rick Scott, Josh Hawley, or Lindsey Graham filibustering until the cows come home and hoping to swing public opinion in their favor, but I think eventually even the other Republicans would grow tired of having to sit through days or weeks of meaningless noise and would vote to stop them and move the bill forward.

If by some miracle the Democrats manage to increase their majority in 2022, then Joe Manchin will almost certainly leave the party and start caucusing with the Republicans. He's in West Virginia, one of the most conservative states in the country; their own governor Jim Justice was elected as a Democrat in 2016 and became a Republican immediately after being sworn in. There's even precedent for Manchin to switch parties before the midterms; in 2001 the Senate was tied 50-50 for the first time, with Republicans having the majority because Dick Cheney was VP to break ties, but Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords became an independent and began caucusing with the Democrats instead, giving them the 51-49 majority until 2003 (fun fact: Jeffords was succeeded by none other than Bernie Sanders). I could see Manchin becoming an independent and caucusing with the Republicans to try and swing public opinion towards the conservatives. A slim majority of independents are left-leaning, with both independent senators caucusing with the Democrats (Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine). If Manchin became an independent and caucused with the Republicans, it would give the right-leaning independents someone to latch onto, allowing Republicans to make gains with centrists and moderates. Manchin has a snowball's chance in hell of winning re-election in 2024 as a Democrat; I don't think he's gonna go down like Doug Jones of Alabama and just let himself be voted out, he'll either decline to run at all or run as a conservative independent with Republican support (especially if Democrats keep the majority in 2022, then he'll see no point in staying on their side; they won't need him anymore)

2022 will be close, especially if For The People fails in the Senate. If it goes through, Democrats might be able to hold onto Georgia and Arizona, and could very possibly pick up Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. If it doesn't go through, then Georgia is gone, Arizona will be super close, and they'd stand to lose New Hampshire (it's been leaning further right in recent years; Republicans just flipped both houses of the state legislature).

Biden is already more popular than Trump, and Republican opposition isn't going to be nearly as united as it was against Obama for completely unknowable reasons *cough*cough*White*cough* That's not to say Republicans will cooperate with him, just that they won't be able to portray him as the super-liberal boogeyman they want him to be. He is a moderate centrist, he has been his entire career, Republicans offer him a modicum of respect because they've known him for decades, so I figure he'll stand a good chance at winning re-election in 2024, especially if the bill passes. If not, then he'll probably win the popular vote and lose the electoral college because of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

I don't see any one particular future as being the most plausible, I see a web of five or six possible futures with varying degrees of plausibility. If Democrats lose the senate in 2022, Biden won't get a single Supreme Court justice, paving way for a 7-2, 8-1, or God forbid a 9-0 conservative unanimity. SCOTUS will be the deciding factor going forward; Breyer needs to retire RIGHT FUCKING NOW so Biden can replace him with someone young, though Manchin will likely hold any appointments hostage, playing kingmaker, insisting that Biden only put forward nominees with bipartisan support. Remember, he voted for 2 of Trump's 3 justices, and only voted against the 3rd because it was too close to the election and he thought the Republicans were being hypocritical (they refused to let Obama seat anyone in 2016 citing the election, but railroaded through Asshole Conservative Barbie in 2020 without hesitation). It's not as though Biden's nominees would have been super-liberal either way, but Manchin will ensure they're as moderate as possible, turning a safe 6-3 into 6-2-1 or even 7-2. He also opposes expanding the Supreme Court, which Republicans will not hesitate to do if the filibuster is reformed. They would gladly wait out every single Democrat for months if need be just to turn 6-3 into 7-3, 8-3, 13-3, 435-3, whatever they want! Sky's the limit. Republicans have no morals, they only care about holding onto power by any means necessary.

If we don't change course as a country right now, things will only get worse going forward. We have never been this politically divided before; even during the Civil War both parties had conservative and liberal wings (like the copperheads and war democrats). Republicans never controlled the House under Ronald Reagan, but enough conservative Democrats sided with him to help him push his agenda anyway. Things are so polarized right now I can't imagine either side working together ever again. Nothing short of a constitutional convention or another civil war will make the parties come together, and even then the Democrats would end up compromising and appeasing much more then the Republicans. It's all going to boil over in the near future; it nearly boiled over in 2020, and if the state Republicans start rigging elections then it'll likely boil over in 2024 or 2025.

America as it exists today will not make it to 2030.

#for the people #for the people act #voting reform #reform #federal election #election #elections #2022 #midterms #2024 #midterm elections #2022 midterms #joe biden #joe manchin #congress #senate #the senate #us senate #senators #politics #political #rant #long post #long rant #fuck republicans #scotus #supreme court #tldr #tl:dr

[topsolarpanels]

My beef over Hillary Clinton’s loss is with liberal feminists, young and old

One picture, taken in the New York woods, restored presidential candidates to ordinary life. If Democrat had listened to ordinary Americans, she might have been president

The black mood of women feeling battered and bereft after Hillary Clintons loss was abruptly penetrated on Thursday by an image that brought the tears all over again.

It was a snap on Facebook taken on the hiking trails surrounding Chappaqua by Margot Gerster, a grieve Hillary supporter who was out strolling with her “girls “. Suddenly, she wrote, there was the audio of rustling. Then, seeming like a mirage in the clearing, was Hillary herself with Bill and their puppies, doing exactly the same thing as Gerster. The former president obliged Gerster by taking the photograph after she and Hillary had exchanged a few sweet pleasantries and hugged.

Nothing I have seen in the last 15 months of the campaign has resonated with me as much as the image that Gerster posted. It depicts Hillary wearing what looks like no make-up, her hair uncoiffed, garmented in a baggy black parka, brown leggings and boots, and holding the dog leash twisted in her hand as her poodle mixture snuffles among the carpet of foliages at her feet.

Only 24 hours after delivering the poised, dignified concession speech that masked her own sorrow and tried to mend ours, its as if she had finally been returned to the world as she really is: an approachable female in late middle age, hiking the roads with her dogs and her husband in the solitude of a beautiful fall morning, trying to cope with her ache. The sight of it, so comforting in the warmth of its ordinariness, was a visual rebuke to the aberration and the cruelty of the two attacks she has suffered.

She was my champion. I miss her, my 26 -year-old daughter grieved last night. Every disappointed Democratic supporter has her own target for anger, it seems. My daughters is her fellow millennials, who didnt come out in enough numbers to take Clinton to the White House. Clinton won this group by 54%, six points down from Obama in 2012. Always in a storm of umbrage about micro-aggressions, those crucial solipsistic stay-at-home millennials wound up enabling the macro-aggression of Donald Trump.

By contrast, Hillary has been the living personification of resistance to a torrent of intimidation that was not a construct, but horribly real. She faced an alt-right and Fox News smear campaign, followed by the coup de grace from the self-righteous FBI director who hasnt yet had the modesty to resign. She was called a robber, a offender, a liar who was too old, too past it , not cool enough , not authentic enough , not not not.

But there are iconic images of her heroism we should never forget: her cool accuracy through 11 hours of congressional assault in the Benghazi hearings, her victory in each presidential debate with crackling, well-prepared debates, even though in one she was watched by a peanut gallery of her husbands accusers disgracefully assembled by Trump to set her off her stride. The intent was to portray her as Bills enabler, which is the cruelest slander of all.

Hillary Clintons concession speech in full

Heres my own beef. Liberal feminists, young and old, need to question the role they played in Hillarys demise. The two weeks of media hyperventilation over grab-her-by-the-pussygate, when the airwaves were saturated with aghast liberal women equating Trumps gross remarks with sexual assault, had the opposite impact on multiple girls voters in the Heartland.

These are resilient girls, often working two or three chores, for whom boorish humen are an occasional occupational hazard , not an existential menace. They rolled their eyes over Trumps unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his patter that hed be the greatest undertaking producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bills.

Missing this pragmatic answer by so many females was another mistake of Robbie Mooks campaign data nerds. They calculated that Americas women would all be as outraged as the ones they came home to at night. But pink slip have reached entire neighborhoods, and townships. The angry white working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum. They are loved by white working class girls their wives, daughters, sisters and moms, who participate in their remaindered pain. It is everywhere in the interviews. My papa lost his business, My husband hasnt been the same since his undertaking at the factory went away.

Even though, in the digital age, there was no bigger Trump lie than feigning fabricating jobs will ever return, rust belt women and plenty of others find him as the rough, tough boss who would bring the business back, and with it the manhood of the sad guy they love.

Trumps reality show crassness was another blind spot with upper-class liberals encompassing the election and operating Hillarys campaign. At every moment when the Trump tribe streamed behind him on to the convention stage or the tarmac, America saw images of a Kardashian Camelot: a phalanx of GQ men and leggy, gorgeous girls following the heavyset guy who had a private 757 airplane and a gold tower with his name on it.

While commentators sniggered, millions ensure the all-American success they dreamed of. They rooted for the guy who had it but was hated by the elites for having it. There are more tired spouses who want to be Melania sitting by the pool in designer sunglasses than there are women who want to pursue a PhD in earnest self-improvement. And there are more young women who find the smartness and modernity of Ivanka as the ultimate polished specimen of blonde branded content they want to buy.

In the entertainment era, even political candidates must be able to entertain. Which show would you rather watch? The Clintons round a table debating the right approach to solar energy, or the show about the rivalries between the Trump women who vie for “members attention” of a capricious patriarch? Four years is a long time.

Even though she won the popular vote by exactly what he expected to be more than two million ballots, Hillary was not destined to shatter what she has called, with agonizing ruefulness, that highest and hardest glass ceiling. So what do we want, and what do we expect from a woman leader who can win?

The killer rap on Hillary was that she was never authentic. I would argue that, born into a generation that had to break down so many culture walls, and wounded by a wedding that always involved her to cover up pain, she had PTSD on behalf of us all by the time she operated for chairwoman. Yes, even the complacent young person, who believed until now that they were living in a post-gender world.

If you want to see authentic girls leaders who can really entertain, you have to go now to the generation in their 40 s who do not have the combat scars of the women who were firsts. Its no good bringing up Angela Merkel. Germany is not the US. After the trauma of Hitler, theirs is an anti-charisma culture that actively distrusts pizzazz.

Why America elected Trump

Some fabulous women won senatorial elections. They are the post-Hillary icons. Kamala Harris in California is a political knockout, as is Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who defeated an incumbent Republican senator. Shes a war veteran who lost both legs in Iraq. Watch for the rise of Ilhan Omar, the vibrant 34 -year-old former refugee and practising Muslim who became Americas first Somali-American female lawmaker. She beat out her Republican opponent to gain a seat in Minnesotas House of Representatives.

If you want to go global, cross the channel and look at the two wildly popular women at the top of politics in Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of the Scottish National Party, is as direct as she is fearless. After the US election result, she doubled down on her distaste for Trump and condemned diplomatic stillnes in the face of attitudes of racism, sexism misogyny or fanaticism of any kind.

In opposition to her is another winner: Ruth Davidson, the kickboxing, working-class former territorial army member and open lesbian who, with her salty humour and irreverent debate style, has single-handedly made the once irrelevant Scottish Tory party a rising force. Maybe being around men in the army made her impervious to misogynist trolls. Nice. Classy. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Bet shes really proud of you, she tweeted to one who told her that what she needed was a good fuck.

The new media narrative is that the Clinton era is now over and done. But perhaps this last chapter of Hillarys life can be the most rewarding. On the job, she was always the first up and the last to go to bed. Heaven for her is poring over a briefing volume with her hair tied back in a scrunchy, cracking down on the run. Imagine the agony she must have endured while being deprived of the thing she loves doing most for 15 long months. Instead, she was forced to take over the grandstanding and gladhanding that shes never been good at.

She still has an important role to play, and she began it in her concession speech by telling the young girls who, like my daughter, adore her, never to give up.

Hillary , now you can be the woman you really are, the woman in the timbers. More important to the rest of us, you can be the Queen Maker. A friend told me how, very late on election night, she snuck into her 10 -year-old daughters room as she always does, to tuck her in and remove her open laptop from the bed. She saw on the screen that her daughter had been in the middle of writing a letter before she fell asleep.

Dear Madame President, it began, I want to tell you the things that are important to daughters like me

The letter was unfinished.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post My beef over Hillary Clinton’s loss is with liberal feminists, young and old appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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[thefabulousfulcrum]

The Democrats Need a New Message

After another demoralizing loss to a monstrous candidate, Democrats need a reboot

via Rolling Stone

by Matt Taibbi

The story of Greg Gianforte, a fiend who just wiped out a Democrat in a congressional race about ten minutes after being charged with assaulting a reporter, is déjà vu all over again.

What to make of Republican Greg Gianforte winning despite beating up a reporter on the eve of his election

How low do you have to sink to lose an election in this country? Republicans have been trying to answer that question for years. But they've been unable to find out, because Democrats somehow keep failing to beat them.

There is now a sizable list of election results involving Republican candidates who survived seemingly unsurvivable scandals to win higher office.

The lesson in almost all of these instances seems to be that enormous numbers of voters would rather elect an openly corrupt or mentally deranged Republican than vote for a Democrat. But nobody in the Democratic Party seems terribly worried about this.

Gianforte is a loon with a questionable mustache who body-slammed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs for asking a question about the Republican health care bill. He's the villain du jour, but far from the worst exemplar of the genre.

New Yorkers might remember a similar congressional race from a few years ago involving a Staten Island nutjob named Michael Grimm. The aptly named Grimm won an election against a heavily funded Democrat despite being under a 20-count federal corruption indictment. Grimm had threatened on camera to throw a TV reporter "off a fucking balcony" and "break [him] in half … like a boy." He still beat the Democrat by 13 points.

The standard-bearer for unelectable candidates who were elected anyway will likely always be Donald Trump. Trump was caught admitting to sexual assault on tape and openly insulted almost every conceivable demographic, from Mexicans to menstruating women to POWs to the disabled; he even pulled out a half-baked open-mic-night version of a Chinese accent. And still won.

Gianforte, Trump and Grimm are not exceptions. They're the rule in modern America, which in recent years has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to vote for just about anybody not currently under indictment for serial murder, so long as that person is not a Democrat.

The list of winners includes Tennessee congressman Scott Desjarlais, a would-be "family values" advocate. Desjarlais, a self-styled pious abortion opponent, was busted sleeping with his patients and even urging a mistress to get an abortion. He still won his last race in Bible country by 30 points.

 The electoral results last November have been repeated enough that most people in politics know them by heart. Republicans now control 68 state legislative chambers, while Democrats only control 31. Republicans flipped three more governors' seats last year and now control an incredible 33 of those offices. Since 2008, when Barack Obama first took office, Republicans have gained somewhere around 900 to 1,000 seats overall.

There are a lot of reasons for this. But there's no way to spin some of these numbers in a way that doesn't speak to the awesome unpopularity of the blue party. A recent series of Gallup polls is the most frightening example.

Unsurprisingly, the disintegrating Trump bears a historically low approval rating. But polls also show that the Democratic Party has lost five percentage points in its own approval rating dating back to November, when it was at 45 percent.

The Democrats are now hovering around 40 percent, just a hair over the Trump-tarnished Republicans, at 39 percent. Similar surveys have shown that despite the near daily barrage of news stories pegging the president as a bumbling incompetent in the employ of a hostile foreign power, Trump, incredibly, would still beat Hillary Clinton in a rematch today, and perhaps even by a larger margin than before.

If you look in the press for explanations for news items like this, you will find a lot of them. Democrats may have some difficulty winning elections, but they've become quite adept at explaining their losses.

According to legend, Democrats lose because of media bias, because of racism, because of gerrymandering, because of James Comey and because of Russia (an amazing 59 percent of Democrats still believe Russians hacked vote totals).

Third-party candidates are said to be another implacable obstacle to Democratic success, as is unhelpful dissension within the Democrats' own ranks. There have even been whispers that last year's presidential loss was Obama's fault, because he didn't campaign hard enough for Clinton.

The early spin on the Gianforte election is that the Democrats never had a chance in Montana because of corporate cash, as outside groups are said to have "drowned" opponent Rob Quist in PAC money. There are corresponding complaints that national Democrats didn't do enough to back Quist.

 A lot of these things are true. America is obviously a deeply racist and paranoid country. Gerrymandering is a serious problem. Unscrupulous, truth-averse right-wing media has indeed spent decades bending the brains of huge pluralities of voters, particularly the elderly. And Republicans have often, but not always, had fundraising advantages in key races.

But the explanations themselves speak to a larger problem. The unspoken subtext of a lot of the Democrats' excuse-making is their growing belief that the situation is hopeless – and not just because of fixable institutional factors like gerrymandering, but because we simply have a bad/irredeemable electorate that can never be reached.

This is why the "basket of deplorables" comment last summer was so devastating. That the line would become a sarcastic rallying cry for Trumpites was inevitable. (Of course it birthed a political merchandising supernova.) To many Democrats, the reaction proved the truth of Clinton's statement. As in: we're not going to get the overwhelming majority of these yeehaw-ing "deplorable" votes anyway, so why not call them by their names?

But the "deplorables" comment didn't just further alienate already lost Republican votes. It spoke to an internal sickness within the Democratic Party, which had surrendered to a negativistic vision of a hopelessly divided country.

Things are so polarized now that, as Georgia State professor Jennifer McCoy put it on NPR this spring, each side views the other not as fellow citizens with whom they happen to disagree, but as a "threatening enemy to be vanquished."

The "deplorables" comment formalized this idea that Democrats had given up on a huge chunk of the population, and now sought only to defeat and subdue their enemies.

Many will want to point out here that the Republicans are far worse on this score. No politician has been more divisive than Trump, who explicitly campaigned on blaming basically everyone but middle American white people for the world's problems.

This is true. But just because the Republicans win using deeply cynical and divisive strategies doesn't mean it's the right or smart thing to do.

Barack Obama, for all his faults, never gave in to that mindset. He continually insisted that the Democrats needed to find a way to reach lost voters. Even in the infamous "guns and religion" episode, this was so. Obama then was talking about the challenge the Democrats faced in finding ways to reconnect with people who felt ignored and had fled to "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" as a consequence.

Even as he himself was the subject of vicious and racist rhetoric, Obama stumped in the reddest of red districts. In his post-mortem on the Trump-Clinton race, he made a point of mentioning this – that in Iowa he had gone to every small town and fish fry and VFW hall, and "there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points."

Most people took his comments to be a dig at Clinton's strategic shortcomings – she didn't campaign much in many of the key states she lost – but it was actually more profound than that. Obama was trying to point out that people respond when you demonstrate that you don't believe they're unredeemable.

You can't just dismiss people as lost, even bad or misguided people. Unless every great thinker from Christ to Tolstoy to Gandhi to Dr. King is wrong, it's especially those people you have to keep believing in, and trying to reach.

The Democrats have forgotten this. While it may not be the case with Quist, who seems to have run a decent campaign, the Democrats in general have lost the ability (and the inclination) to reach out to the entire population.

They're continuing, if not worsening, last year's mistake of running almost exclusively on Trump/Republican negatives. The Correct the Record types who police the Internet on the party's behalf are relentless on that score, seeming to spend most of their time denouncing people for their wrong opinions or party disloyalty. They don't seem to have anything to say to voters in flyover country, except to point out that they're (at best) dupes for falling for Republican rhetoric.

But "Republicans are bad" isn't a message or a plan, which is why the Democrats have managed the near impossible: losing ground overall during the singular catastrophe of the Trump presidency.

The party doesn't see that the largest group of potential swing voters out there doesn't need to be talked out of voting Republican. It needs to be talked out of not voting at all. The recent polls bear this out, showing that the people who have been turned off to the Democrats in recent months now say that in a do-over, they would vote for third parties or not at all.

People need a reason to be excited by politics, and not just disgusted with the other side. Until the Democrats figure that out, these improbable losses will keep piling up. 

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

13 Keys to the White House: 2024

Historian Allan Lichtman has produced an astonishingly accurate system for predicting presidential elections; although first implemented in 1984, going backwards it correctly accounts for every election since 1860, with the only hiccup coming from the hotly contested 2000 election. He predicted Gore would win, and he wasn’t entirely wrong, there was just some brotherly nepotism and Supreme Court fuckery. Anyway, his system posits 13 yes or no scenarios about the state of the union; if at least 8 are true then the incumbent party wins another term, less than 8 and the challenging party wins. Simple.

It’s pretty early in Biden’s term to tell for sure, but we can make some soft predictions that we can refine over the next few years before solidifying in 2023 or 2024.

Midterm gains: after the midterms, the incumbent party holds more seats in the House than they did in the previous midterms. Almost certainly false. 2022 will see new districts drawn by the predominantly Republican statehouses, giving them an immediate advantage. Democrats have a razor thin majority as is, it’s never been this close to tied before, I can’t see them holding on when you take into account new census data and partisan gerrymandering.

No primary contest: is there no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. Almost certainly true. Like him or hate him, Democrats are stuck with Biden. There hasn’t been a serious primary challenge in either major party since Reagan tried to take on Ford in 1976.

Incumbent seeking re-election: the incumbent candidate is the president. Again almost certainly true. There was an unspoken agreement that Biden would only run for one term, considering the fact that he’ll be 82 at the end of it, but o think he thinks he’s in for the long run now. If he does in office, Harris will become president and run for re-election herself, so the only way this would flip false would be if Biden just decides not to run again. In that case, the #2 might also flip false because I could see a weak senator like Joe Manchin running against Harris to get out of his own impending failure in West Virginia.

No third-party: no significant third party challenger. Too soon to tell, though I’m leaning towards true. The last nationally successful third party candidate was Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996. He didn’t win any states, but he split some states nearly in thirds; Clinton and Bush and Dole all won states with less than 50% of he vote because Perot split the ticket. In 2000 Ralph Nader lost New Hampshire for Al Gore, giving it and the presidency to George W. Bush, and the same thing happened with Jill Stein in 2016 in the Midwest. Spoilers don’t need to be major on the National scale to have significant effects in specific states. Lichtman only flips this one false when a third party candidate wins 10% of the vote, so I’m going with true.

Short-term economy: the economy is not in recession. Probably true, but still too early to tell. We are either in the middle or nearing the end of a covid recession, I can’t see it lasting three more years without recovering at least a little, especially with the $2 trillion stimulus package they just passed. The economy is random, but if you look at a plot of unemployment since the Great Depression you will see that it consistently trends up under Republicans and trends down under Democrats. Trump was the only president is recent history to actually destroy more jobs than he created, so Biden could. It have inherited an easier path to victory. He shouldn’t be able to fuck up when the bar is so low, but I’m not holding out hope.

Long-term economy: real pet capita growth equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. Probably true, too soon to be sure. We’re so deep in the hole after Trump that any even remotely upwards tick will count as growth. I can’t see us dipping deeper than 2020 anytime soon, but then again that’s what they said in 2008, so who even knows?

Major policy change: the incumbent administration effects major change in national policy. False, I can call it now with utmost confidence. With Manchin and Sinema protecting the filibuster, Biden will get absolutely nothing substantive done in his first two years. He’ll end up losing one or both houses in the midterms, accomplishing even less in his next two! If he loses the Senate, it’s all over. It’ll be 2016 2.0, no more appointments, no more nominees, complete and utter obstruction until the Republicans take back he presidency and fill all the vacancies themselves.

No social unrest: no sustained social unrest during the term. Too soon to tell, but maybe true. 2020 was an anomaly, a once in a generation thing like 1968, so many crises all compounded together; the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, the wild fires, the hurricanes, utter chaos. I don’t see 2024 being as bad, but don’t quote me on that.

No scandal: incumbent administration is not tainted by scandal. Who knows?!? Biden seems pretty white bread/plain vanilla/mayonnaise, but Republicans insist he’s the most corrupt politician since their own guys (Trump and Nixon; lowering the bar for all their successors). They milked Benghazi for years and found nothing, but still tanked Clinton’s integrity going forward, I’m sure they’ll try to milk whatever BS They can find on Hunter Biden, especially if they retake the House or Senate. Whether any accusations will stick is up in the air, but I could see Republicans impeaching Biden just because they can.

No foreign/military failure: incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign/military affairs. Who knows? Biden’s foreign policy isn’t significantly different than Trump’s, so there’s no telling what could go wrong. The Saudis will keep cutting people’s heads off, North Korea will never disarm itself, Iran will probably arm itself, Afghanistan will drag on forever, and I can smell war brewing in the Caucasus, Venezuela, and Bolivia. The future is as clear as milk.

Foreign policy/military success: incumbent administration achieves major success in foreign/military affairs. Probably not, but too soon to tell. Succeeding is very different from not failing, so 10 and 11 aren’t necessarily linked. You can not fail AND not succeed, they’re not mutually exclusive. I don’t see anything good happening overseas for a very long time. If we pull out of Afghanistan, the power vacuum will pave the way for ISIS 2.0, so our hands are tied there. Our best bet would be to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, but then we’ll just be back to status quo anteTrumpum, zero sum gain.

Charismatic incumbent: the incumbent party nominee is charismatic or a national hero. False, false, a million times false. Biden isn’t even beloved by his entire party, let alone the country; Republicans hate him even more than they ought to just because he wears a blue tie instead of a red one (his policies are so middle-of-the-road inoffensive to them that they shouldn’t have a problem with him, but Trump told them to, so they do). If Biden dies or refuses to run, Harris is even more divisive because she’s a woman and a disingenuous liar (she pretends to be super progressive, but she’s a cop, a Clintonesque moderate through and through). Obama in 2008 was a breath of fresh air which got very stale by 2012; 2008 was lightning in a bottle, and neither Biden nor Harris could ever dream of catching it again. They’re nowhere near as nationally beloved as the Roosevelts or Kennedy or Reagan.

Uncharismatic challenger: the challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. True, true, a million times true. It will almost certainly be Trump again in 2024, and he is even more despised than Biden. Sure, he’s beloved by his own party, but they make up less than half of he country. He never had majority approval and lost the popular vote twice, he’s a loser! If by some miracle he chooses not to run, the Republicans will be running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to appoint a successor. They’ll want one of his kids to run, maybe even his daughter in law who is looking to run for senate in 2022, but they’re tainted by affiliation to the Gonad Lump himself; they’re all the same. Ted Cruz sucks ass, Ron DeSantis might actually have an intellectual disability so I feel bad making fun of that piece of shit bastard, I pray that Rick Scott and Josh Hawley and Matt Gaetz suffer debilitating brain aneurysms on live TV, Nikki Haley is a nobody, and Lauren Boebert and Majorie Taylor Green are too regional to have national appeal (though Green will probably run against Raphael Warnock in 2022, so she will almost certainly be a senator by 2024). There are no nationally beloved politicians on either side of the aisle, so I would expect Republicans to cheat like they tried in 2020 to stop black people in swing states from voting.

So, the tally stands thus:

3 are certainly true

4 are probably true, leaning uncertain

2 are uncertain

1 is probably false, leaning uncertain

3 are certainly false

Democrats need 8 true to win, Republicans need 6 false to win. Right now, Biden had a slight edge because it is historically difficult to defeat an incumbent, Trump just sucked. I don’t see a rematch being significantly different, I suspect Biden would still win the popular vote, but Trump could eke by with the electoral college like he did in 2016, especially now that Republicans are taking over the judiciary in Pennsylvania (they’re changing the rules so that judges are elected in gerrymandered districts instead of statewide races). You saw how hard Republicans fought in 2020, they’re not going to change tactics in 2024, they’re gonna double down and try even harder next time. Fewer polling places, fewer drop boxes, shorter early voting, shorter hours, more stringent ID laws. Their MO is systemic voter suppression because their rhetoric has become too toxic to win on a national level. The majority of Americans vote against them in almost every election, general and midterm, but they continue to rule in the minority.

Something has got to give, this can’t go on forever, eventually the situation is going to boil over, be it in a civil war or a constitutional convention to overhaul the entire country; neither are probable, and either outcome would almost certainly hurt people of color in predominantly conservative states.

Biden thought he would be an arbiter president, he thought he would be able to unite the country, heal the divide, being both sides together under mutual compromise, but he failed to understand that Republicans hate him on principal. Doesn’t matter how much he tries to appease them, they still hate him because they have to hate him, even if they agree with him. It would be political suicide for any of them to side with Biden on anything, Trump has already vowed to support primary challengers, his presidency was the final nail in the coffin of bipartisanship. Bipartisanship is dead, it hasn’t been alive in decades, and the only people who call for it are the minority party.

Trump is hard liquor, unappealing to anyone but his alcoholic voters; Biden is diet ginger ale, inoffensive and boring, nobody really wanted him, he only ran to try and settle everyone’s stomachs, and he hasn’t been very successful yet. He honestly believed he would be a neutral alternative for the alcoholics; that level of optimism would be adorable if it weren’t so pathetic. It’s gonna take a lot more than 12 steps to break the country’s addiction.

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