TMC for ek hornbeck
Nov 07 2020
Cartnoon
Nov 07 2020
The Breakfast Club (Get To The Other Side)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Bolshevik Revolution takes place; America’s 2000 presidential vote faces limbo; Nixon loses Calif. governor’s race; Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses; Evangelist Billy Graham and singer Joni Mitchell born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Nov 06 2020
Pondering the Pundits
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: Is America Becoming a Failed State?
Mitch McConnell may make the nation ungovernable.
As I write this, it seems extremely likely that Joe Biden has won the presidency. And he clearly received millions more votes than his opponent. He can and should claim that he has been given a strong mandate to govern the nation.
But there are real questions about whether he will, in fact, be able to govern. At the moment, it seems likely that the Senate — which is wildly unrepresentative of the American people — will remain in the hands of an extremist party that will sabotage Biden in every way it can.
Before I get into the problems this confrontation is likely to cause, let’s talk about just how unrepresentative the Senate is.
Every state, of course, has two senators — which means that Wyoming’s 579,000 residents have as much weight as California’s 39 million. The overweighted states tend to be much less urbanized than the nation as a whole. And given the growing political divide between metropolitan and rural areas, this gives the Senate a strong rightward tilt. [..]
But, you may ask, why is divided control of government such a problem? After all, Republicans controlled one or both chambers of Congress for three-quarters of Barack Obama’s presidency, and we survived, didn’t we?
Yes, but.
Amanda Marcotte: Clown coup: Trump’s effort to overthrow democracy as well-run as his business (and presidency)
Trump had many tools at hand for a coup — SCOTUS, Bill Barr, the GOP Senate — but went with Twitter “declarations”
On Wednesday afternoon, word went out on social media: A group of MAGA yahoos were outside the Philadelphia Convention Center. They were there to offer backdrop to Rudy Giuliani, Eric Trump and other members of Trump’s reality-TV Oberkommando. The authoritarian Klown Korps had been flown in to give speeches echoing Trump’s demands that the vote-counting happening inside be halted — not for any vaguely legitimate legal reason, but simply because he likes the numbers where they are.
But the plan hit a snag: The good people of Philadelphia, who also know how to read a press release and were not interested in letting the second-born failson and a martini-soaked former Lifelock spokesman do a photo-op menacing the dutiful election officials who are just trying to count the votes. [..]
This isn’t over, to be sure. Trump still has a lot of powerful, intelligent and deeply evil people in his camp who have, at least until now, been shameless about saving this idiot from his own incompetence while running his corrupt schemes. (See: Trump, Donald, impeachment trial of.) But so far, Trump’s efforts to steal this election seem to be backfiring, in large part because he can’t hold it together well enough even to pretend he has a legitimate argument. His compulsive need to get in his own way and make everything worse for himself may end up saving our democracy.
George T. Conway III: A presidency fueled by lies finishes with the worst of them all
Trump is squandering his last and best chance to be truthful and, for once, do something right by the country instead of himself.
It’s somehow fitting. A presidency launched with lies, and fueled by them ever since, was destined to finish with the worst of them all.
Donald Trump’s presidency began on Jan. 20, 2017, with what he asserted was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period,” a claim whose absurdity was evident to anyone with eyes. From his first week in office, the president lied about an election that everyone agreed he had won. He claimed that “VOTER FRAUD,” by “millions” of noncitizens, cadavers and “people registered in two states,” had deprived him of a popular-vote majority in 2016.
But all that was just the beginning. Trump has told lies about virtually everything ever since, lies big and small, meaningful and meaningless, saying anything to put himself in the best position or the best light. He lied about paying off a porn star. He lied, despite photographic evidence, about having never met a woman who accused him of rape.
He lied about what he was impeached for, and about what he should have been impeached for, by claiming his phone call with the Ukrainian president was perfect, and by asserting that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had exonerated him. He lied about deceptively marking up a hurricane map with a Sharpie.
And on and on and on.
Jennifer Senior: Republicans, Now Is the Time to Step Up
It’s not too late to end up on the right side of history.
Speaking from the White House briefing room on Thursday night, President Trump tried to delegitimize the 2020 election. This attempt may have been shuddersome, disgraceful and dangerous. But there’s one thing it was not: a surprise.
On the contrary. It was tediously predictable, exactly what you’d expect of a man who has spent four years lumbering through Washington, crushing custom after custom and norm after norm. As Trump faltered on the brink of losing a presidential election — the first incumbent to do so in 28 years — he declared, baselessly, that absentee votes legitimately cast were fraudulent; that the diligent workers paid to count those votes were doing something nefarious; and that the “election apparatus” in the still-unresolved states were controlled by Democrats. (They are not. Georgia’s secretary of state, for one, is a Republican.)
“They are trying to steal an election,” Trump said, speaking (I think) of ballot counters in Detroit and Philadelphia. “They are trying to rig an election. We can’t let that happen.”
But here’s my question for Republicans: Are they going to let this happen? Allow the head of their party to challenge the integrity of an election with record-breaking participation rates — in the midst of a pandemic, no less — just because he despises the result?
Heather Digby Parton: Will Mitch McConnell back Trump’s delusional last-ditch battle? So far the signs are ominous
McConnell doesn’t actually believe Trump can win. But when it comes to maintaining power, he’ll try anything
Biden’s apparent or imminent victory — it was the blessed 36 hours in which we didn’t have to hear Donald Trump’s voice. After his obnoxious declaration of victory at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, he stuck to primal tweeting until Thursday evening when he emerged to make the worst speech of his career. He disconsolately rattled off a fantasy laundry list of voting irregularities and declared, “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” Reading haltingly from a script, he rambled about media conspiracies and lied about vote-rigging, saying, “Ultimately, I have a feeling judges are going to have to rule” which he has always believed was his failsafe. It set a new standard for awful, which is really saying something.
Once again, a majority of Americans were no doubt horrified, embarrassed and frightened that their so-called president was declaring the American system that elected him to be corrupt because he is now on track to lose. [..]
I don’t know if the Democrats can gain those two Senate seats in Georgia. But you can bet that Mitch McConnell will do everything he can to prevent it. If that means helping Donald Trump turn this country inside out over the next couple of months so that his people stay active and engaged, he will do it. And so will his troops. If the last four years have shown us anything, it’s that any niggling concerns Republicans might have about destroying our democracy are easily disregarded, when it’s a question of maintaining their own power.
Nov 06 2020
Cartnoon
We all knew Donald Trump would do this, that he would refuse to show dignity in defeat. But what we didn’t expect is how much it would hurt. Watch Stephen Colbert process his feelings in real time as he delivers a new monologue written in the wake of the President’s sad, frightening remarks in the White House briefing room
TMC for ek hornbeck
Nov 06 2020
The Breakfast Club (A Parting Glass)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Highlights of this day in history: Abraham Lincoln wins four-way race for President as American Civil War nears; March music ‘king’ John Phillip Sousa born; Composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky dies; Director Mike Nichols born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
Nov 05 2020
Penny for the Guy
Sadly, ek hornbeck passed away in the early morning hours of November 4. He was great friend. This article is reposted by TMC in his memory
When Daily Kos went to pot
Because they thought the Dems were all that
When really, they were not.
As a former (by compulsion) member it gives me great pleasure (in a schadenfreud way) to report that in the wake of last night’s debacle the Great Orange Satan is divided into roughly 4 camps.
The first, represented mostly by Mr. Moulitsas and those beholden to him by salary, contends that this is merely a bump in the road of inexorable demographic victory, only to be expected and predicted countless times by him and his “experts”. Work harder, contribute more, go 2016 and Hillary Clinton! Nothing to see here.
La, la, la, la, la.
The second group is the delusional suicidal types. Those nasty voters. How can they not recognize our vast accomplishments? Don’t they realize the Republicans are evil? Evil, evil, evil, evil, evil! Voters is teh stoopid and until we get them to think gooder we are Doomed! DOOMED!
This is my last post until the stoopid people think gooder.
The third group is the die hard Obots. You see those spineless cowardly Democrats ran away from this good President and his tanking poll numbers and insurance mandates and Lilly Ledbetter (did we mention Lilly Ledbetter?) and all the other wonderful things he’s done like the Catfood Commission (sorry about your Social Security, those T-Bills aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on because we have to pay off these other T-Bills that Billionaires own), Bailing Out the Banksters (with no prosecutions), a Jobless Recovery fueled by easy money (not that there’s anything wrong with easy money) and Speculative Bubbles in the great FIRE casino, and being tough on Foreign Policy by increasing domestic spying, deporting more immigrants, killing citizens without due process, continuing our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and starting 7 or 8 new ones (it’s just a co-incidence that they’re all against Muslims, we’re not the racists, you are), and covering up W‘s torture regime.
Ingrates.
And finally there are what remains (on Daily Kos) of the democratic wing of the Democratic Party and their argument goes something like this-
Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.
Needless to say I sympathize most with the last. As for “inexorable demographic victory”-
Obama Manages the Rare Triple Play of Bad Politics on Immigration
By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake
Friday October 31, 2014 10:26 am
Politics is fairly simple. There are actually only a few ways to disappoint a group that cares about a particular issue. The simplest is you can fail to adopt the policy they want.
Second, you can be caught lying to them. This raises hopes only to crush them. That can feel even worse than knowing a politician has always been opposed in a principled way to your idea.
Third, you can make them feel not valued or listened to. Voters can still respect politicians they disagree with, but being treated poorly is different.
With his recent decision on immigration Obama managed to do all three at the same time. He failed to take executive action on immigration reform like most Latino voters wanted. He lied about it by promising action by the end of the summer. Finally, Obama broke this promise for what seemed to be purely political reasons. This sends a message that Latino voters aren’t valued and Democrats think they can be taken for granted. It is a statement about where a group fits in the priorities of the party.
The final sin is that it was ultimately ineffective. It didn’t save a single seat. Cowardice never does.
The stoopid voters say things like this-
To Angry Voters, Washington Comes Out the Biggest Loser
By ADAM NAGOURNEY, The New York Times
NOV. 4, 2014
When asked if her vote would change anything, Ms. Dempsey glanced back at the empty sidewalk leading to the polling place. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know.”
…
“I feel like I’m in that class of people that’s kind of getting left behind in this whirlwind,” said Etrulia Byrd, 37, a waitress from Anchorage. “I’m in that economic class of people that works really, really hard and will probably never get too far ahead, barely makes it, and kind of gets punished for it.”
…
“There’s no such thing as a good politician, I’m sorry,” said Christi Miller, 43, an Obama supporter from Hot Springs, Ark. “They may start out that way, but I think once you get in and once you get painted with bribes, and you have to take care of the people who contributed to you. … ” Her voice trailed off. “They would care if they were actually running for office for the right reasons,” she said. “They’re running for office for money and power.”
…
“Since they’ve allowed all the money in politics, it’s gotten much worse,” said Scott Hasson, 40, a photographer who lives in Denver. “Everyone says our vote matters, but until we can check the system and start taking a lot of that money out, I feel like it’s just power, people with money have the power.”
The Democrats are spineless and cowardly-
A Victory for the Left
By William Saletan, Slate
Nov. 4 2014 11:25 PM
Republicans won big in the 2014 elections. They captured the Senate and gained seats in the House. But they didn’t do it by running to the right. They did it, to a surprising extent, by embracing ideas and standards that came from the left. I’m not talking about gay marriage, on which Republicans have caved, or birth control, on which they’ve made over-the-counter access a national talking point. I’m talking about the core of the liberal agenda: economic equality.
…
Republicans picked up other liberal themes, too. They harped on the injustice of cutting Medicare, the importance of educational opportunity as “the great equalizer,” and the folly of gambling pension money in the stock market. They endorsed health care as a fundamental right, ridiculed the description of wealthy people as “middle-class,” and championed midnight basketball.No, Republicans haven’t become liberals. They still hate taxes and blame everything bad on President Obama, Obamacare, and big government. But their focus on wage stagnation and class stratification reflects the economy and the political climate. And when you use egalitarian benchmarks to indict the opposition, those benchmarks endure. In the next election, Republicans, too, will be measured by median income, black unemployment, and what they pay women. They’ll have to account for the poverty rate, the tax burden on low-income people, and the widening gap between investors and laborers. It’s these underlying benchmarks, not the partisan composition of Congress, that signal the fundamental direction in which the country is heading.
Ahem-
No Scapegoats. Time to Face Facts.
by Dallasdoc, Daily Kos
Wed Nov 05, 2014 at 07:47 AM PST
So here we are once more. Another electoral drubbing at the hands of the most cartoonishly evil, corrupt, inept gang of thugs politics has served up since the days of Mark Hanna. And we’re all shocked. How could this have happened? How can we possibly have lost to these freakshow escapees yet again?
It must be the fault of the voters, for being stupid. Or the non-voters, for being too lazy and stupid to show up. Or the media, for always being in the tank for the Republicans. Or the purist progressives, because they said bad things about Obama. Or Ralph Nader, for who the fuck knows anymore. Yeah, those guys are to blame.
…
Progressives and liberals have long hitched their wagon to the Democratic party, maintaining the delusion that it’s still the party of the New Deal and the Great Society at heart. I’ve done this too. But the New Deal was eight decades ago. Our view of the party is almost as outdated as that of old African Americans in the 1960s, who stuck with the Republican party because it was the party of Lincoln. Actually, they had better contemporary justification than we do, at least until Nixon’s Southern Strategy. The New Deal Democratic party is as dead as the Whigs. Our latter-day version is one more vehicle of corporate influence: the Goldman Division of America, Inc. We are locked in phony battle with the Koch Division for spectacles of Potemkin democracy, which offer changes and choices that cost the owners of this country nothing and usually improve their quarterly numbers. Nothing can be done anymore that doesn’t pay off billionaire sponsors first and last.Our political system is comprehensively corrupt, and it is almost impossible to participate in it, certainly not as an officeholder, without wallowing in that corruption. In Washington those who have held themselves apart can be counted on your fingers. Both parties are creatures of this corruption, and their bases know it. Ask any average American if they think politics is corrupt, and you’ll get a resounding “No shit!” nine times out of ten. Conservatives know this as well as liberals. It’s only devout party followers who seem blind to the obvious.
Corrupt parties have to find ways to get their voters out, despite most of those voters knowing how corrupt they are. It is almost impossible to make a positive, affirmative case for oneself when everybody knows your pockets are stuffed with cash. Therefore, you have to point over there at how terrible the other guy is. Hence we have almost exclusively negative campaigning. Republicans are awfully good at this, and are bounded by neither truth, shame, nor basic human decency. Democrats suck at it, despite having a lot more material to work with. The problem for Democrats is that too many of the things they can truthfully say about the Republicans are just as true of them. Want to point out how beholden Republicans are to the Kochs? Yeah, just try it, when you’re getting so much “support” from Goldman Sachs or BP or Lockheed Martin. Voters aren’t as stupid as most professional pols think they are.
…
The Democratic party will not change until it has absolutely no other choice. The leadership has proven over and over again that it would rather lose to a Republican than permit a progressive Democratic insurgent to win a primary. Losing to a Republican doesn’t threaten the leadership’s perks and position, for some unfathomable reason. Seeing the Warren wing gain power within the party is a much more direct threat to most of their jobs, on the other hand. The chimera of fighting the battle in the primaries is a lost cause: they’ll make sure we lose. When was the last time we won one?
To Crash the Gates of government.
A big old blog of orange you know
To prove the DLC’s overthrow
But by his hubris he was catch’d
A sold out has-been and a site to match
Nov 05 2020
The Breakfast Club (This Is It)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
FDR wins unprecedented third term in the White House; Richard Nixon elected President; Former President Reagan says he has Alzheimer’s; George Foreman sets boxing record; Pianist Vladimir Horowitz dies.
Breakfast Tunes
Many people believe that this is a love song when in fact that isn’t true. I read on Kenny Loggins website that while this song did begin as a love song, after visiting his sick Father in the hospital, he transformed this record into an inspiration song to encourage his father.
His Father was gravely ill, & could ellect to undergo further treatment that could prolong his life, but could also lead to a painful recovery process. The inspiration worked! His father did undergo the treatment, & he lived for another four years.
This song has become an anthem of hope for me. I believe that there is a defining day in everyone life that could alter their destiny for the better.
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I comfort those in pain and inflict pain on the comfortable. ek hornbeck
Nov 04 2020
Some Good News
Despite all the angst over the main event of the 2020 election season, there is some good news.
Senator Martha McSally, Trump sycophant from Arizona, lost her appointed seat in a special election to former Astronaut and husband of former Representative Gabby Giffords, Mark Kelly by a 6.8 point with only 82% of the vote counted.
McSally, never popular in the state, struggled to shake her affiliation with President Trump, at times appearing visibly flustered by the association as Election Day approached. In October, she dodged a debate question about her support for the president, after which Trump belittled her at a rally.
The coronavirus pandemic hit Arizona particularly hard. While McSally tried to tout her work on emergency relief packages, voters continued to hang her star next to Trump’s.
As a result, McSally never sustained gains among suburban voters. This was especially true in the key Phoenix suburbs of Maricopa County, where local polls once showed her down 20 points after anti-Trump conservative super PAC the Lincoln Project ran attack ads this spring.
That county had been a Republican stronghold until 2018, when moderate Democrat Kyrsten Sinema beat McSally there among GOP voters. Despite the loss, McSally still became a U.S. senator after Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, appointed her to replace GOP Sen. Jon Kyl. The outgoing legislator had earlier been appointed to fill the seat left open by the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., upon his death in 2018.
McSally is the only senator in U.S. history to lose her election bid but still score a Senate seat.
McSally had a difficult time trying to distinguish herself from Kelly, who ran a campaign aimed at furthering Sinema’s inroads with moderate Republicans turned off by Trump’s incivility. Kelly embraced pragmatic versions of liberal platforms, such as a public healthcare option and climate change legislation geared at jumpstarting the renewable energy industry.
In Colorado, former Governor John Hickenlooper is going to the Senate replacing another Trump squish, Sen. Cory Gardner. The race was called by the Associated Press Hickenlooper’s lead became insurmoutable
From the beginning, the Colorado Senate race seemed one of the most likely opportunities for a Democratic win. Gardner was elected in 2014 by less than 2 percent of the popular vote — less than 40,000 votes in all, in a strong midterm year for Republicans. Colorado overall has trended blue in recent years and has supported the Democratic nominee in every presidential election since 2008.
Hickenlooper ran as a moderate, and focused on issues like fighting the pandemic and creating better health care reform. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 cycle, although he dropped out of the national race in August 2019 and announced his Senate campaign later that month. In an interview on Monday, Hickenlooper talked about uniting the progressive wing of the Democratic Party epitomized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., with the more moderate wing he represents.
As of noon today, the Senate is 47 – 47 with six races in Georgia (both races headed to a run off), Maine and North Carolina (too close to call).
It ain’t over yet. Patience.
Nov 04 2020
The Breakfast Club (Ship Of Fools)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Militants storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and seize its occupants; Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated; Soviet troops move in to crush the Hungarian Revolution in Eastern Europe; Baseball hall-of-famer Cy Young dies; Rapper and producer Sean “Diddy” Combs is born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
The ship of state is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
Nov 03 2020
Pondering the Pundits
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: The War on Truth Reaches Its Climax
Trump is telling two big lies, and a third will come soon.
I began writing a column for The Times way back in 2000. My beat was supposed to be economics and business. But I couldn’t help noticing that one of that year’s contenders for the presidency was systematically making false claims about his policy proposals. George W. Bush kept insisting that his one-percent-friendly tax cuts were targeted on the middle class, and his plan to privatize Social Security just wished away the system’s obligations to older Americans.
At the time, however, my editors told me that it wasn’t acceptable to use the word “lie” when writing about presidential candidates.
By now, though, most informed observers have, I think, finally decided that it’s OK to report the fact that Donald Trump lies constantly.
Many of the lies are trivial, often bizarrely so, like Trump’s repeated claims to have received an award that doesn’t even exist. But the president has closed out this year’s campaign with two huge, dangerous lies — and there’s every reason to fear that this week he will roll out a third big lie, perhaps even more dangerous than the first two.
Michelle Goldberg: Finally, a Chance for Women to Defeat Trump
How four traumatic years turned Georgia into a swing state.
After Donald Trump was elected, the first time I felt any hope was at the Women’s March. The second was when I went to Georgia to cover the 2017 special election to fill the House seat vacated by Tom Price, who’d just become Trump’s secretary of health and human services.
Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, an affluent area once represented by Newt Gingrich, was considered safely Republican, but Democrats saw a chance to use the special election to register their fury and disgust with the new president. They poured money and resources into the campaign of a first-time candidate, Jon Ossoff.
When I arrived in the district, though, it wasn’t Ossoff who caught my attention. It was the legions of women who’d never been particularly political before, but who were shocked into activism by Trump’s victory. Many of them had previously put their energy into PTAs and homeowners associations. They had a deep, granular knowledge of their community that couldn’t be bought, and they were using it to find every one of their neighbors who might be open to voting Democratic.
Eugen Robinson: Defeating Trump is only the first step in our national recovery
He awakened something ugly in America. Voting him out is the start of reckoning with it.
Boarding up storefronts in the days before an election isn’t something we do in this country. Supporters of one presidential candidate don’t use their vehicles to create havoc on major highways or to threaten a bus filled with supporters of the other candidate. We don’t go into Election Day wondering if all the votes will be counted — or if everyone will accept the outcome. We don’t turn a deadly pandemic into a political issue. None of this happens in the self-proclaimed greatest democracy on Earth.
Until now.
It is tempting to blame all the chaos and conflict we’re living through on President Trump — and to hope that if Trump is defeated, things will snap back to the old normal. But Trump is a mere symptom, not the disease itself.
As he campaigns for Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama has riffed on a memorable line from his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama: “Being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.” More than that, the Trump presidency has revealed who we are as a nation. [..]
Even if Trump gets the electoral drubbing he deserves, the cleavages he has so successfully and destructively exploited will still endanger us. Covid-19 will still plague the land. No election can erase the fact that we have more cases and deaths than any other nation. Whether or not Trump is defeated, his influence can linger: Too much of the country is refusing to regularly wear masks because the hated “other tribe” insists that everyone should, making a bare face the 2020 equivalent of a “Make America Great Again” hat.
Still, however, I remain a congenital optimist. One thing that gives me hope is the fact that so many of us — nearly 100 million, as of Monday — defied both the raging pandemic and widespread attempts at voter suppression to cast ballots before Election Day.
We can’t begin to solve our problems unless we talk to one another, and elections are the venue for that conversation. We may be yelling and screaming across the divide, but it’s a beginning — and you have a part to play. Vote.
Catherine Rampell: Russia can stand down. The GOP is interfering with election results all on its own.
The Republican Party has been singularly focused on preventing eligible voters from reaching the polls, and blocking already lawfully cast ballots from being counted.
Russia, Iran and other foreign adversaries tempted to interfere in U.S. elections can take it easy Tuesday. They needn’t waste precious resources tampering with vote tallies or degrading the perceived legitimacy of our election results.
Americans like to think of our country as a place with a shared set of democratic values. We’re a nation in which whoever receives the most votes, according to some predetermined set of rules, wins. But recent developments reveal the sharedness of these values to be a fantasy. In the months leading up to the presidential election, the Republican Party has been singularly focused on preventing eligible voters from reaching the polls and on blocking lawfully cast ballots from being counted.
One party, and one party alone, has abandoned the old-fashioned electoral strategy of appealing to a majority. Instead, it has fully, openly embraced voter suppression. [..]
At this point, the only way to avoid a protracted legal battle, and any doubts about the perceived legitimacy of the outcome, would be for Biden to win in an in-person-and-on-Election-Day-ballot-count landslide. That way the absentee, drive-through and provisional ballots that Republicans are trying to invalidate won’t end up mattering.
But even so, the broader issue still would.
Because let’s be honest. America can’t continue calling itself a democracy if it throws out tens or hundreds of thousands of ballots cast in good faith, for transparently anti-democratic reasons, simply because a political party asked for it. We can’t continue to pretend our judicial branch is made up of neutral, qualified individuals calling balls and strikes — at least not when the courts have been packed with appointees vetted for their inclination to cement a partisan agenda that Republican politicians openly expect voters to reject.
Nov 03 2020
Dystopia: The Movie
I wouldn’t leave you with nothing.
Long format Cody Johnston. You can watch it after you Vote!
I don’t think I’ll be posting any results tonight, if it’s at all close we won’t know anything until tomorrow.
Nov 03 2020
Vote!
I never tell you who or ask either because it’s your own damn business. I do think its important to encourage you to, you know, democracy. Unless you let them know exactly how pissed off you are by firing a few of them they’ll never get the message that everybody pretty much hates them.
There is one Party I hate more than the other and that’s because they’re Nazis, no kidding. Their candidate is running for Führer. I can’t wait to get back to pointing out the fecklessness of Democrats along with their policies of corruption and failure (Neo Liberalism is a garbage lie, Medicare for everyone!).
My prediction is a sweep. Won’t need Pennsylvania, Florida will do. I think it’s a 50 / 50 shot Texas goes down too, maybe even Ohio (though I doubt it and Iowa is not the only State that is 75% vowels). I’ll even venture we might pick up 10 or 11 Senate seats net including Lindsey and maybe Moscow Mitch (with a fair wind and a following tide).
I’m headed to North Lake to watch the results, for one thing it will be a break. But the other prediction I have is that the MAGA Deplorables are going Helter Skelter (you know who’s handwriting his resembles? Charles Manson, analysis from 1988). I am not worried about Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, or MS13 sacking a Mall, for one thing, they’re insured against that. Nah, I’m worried about Yahoos from the Naugatuck Valley fanning out and shooting all the people they think are “”Librul” on sight, they’re already ramped up for Hunting Season.
My other despair is that I think Joe Biden is the same Conservative DINO he’s always been and he’s setting up Kamala Harris (who, far from the most liberal, is a leading member of the Corporatist Caucus) to succeed him when he retires.
In short the Democratic Party will draw all the wrong lessons and nothing will happen at all until the next disaster, which is inevitable.
If nothing else I have my canoe and Tahiti.