We've beaten Trump before, we can beat him again--and we need to remember these things. Biden simply has to maintain his numbers since 2020 while Trump has to grow them beyond his 2020 vote share. Trump's anti-vaxx base has been dying of CV since 2020, so he may actually need to grow his numbers beyond what he had in 2020 to make up the …
We've beaten Trump before, we can beat him again--and we need to remember these things. Biden simply has to maintain his numbers since 2020 while Trump has to grow them beyond his 2020 vote share. Trump's anti-vaxx base has been dying of CV since 2020, so he may actually need to grow his numbers beyond what he had in 2020 to make up the difference. He will be consumed by a rolling series of trials that are going to bring out his worst emotional reactions. Economic sentiment of voters will improve between now and the election as the lag effect of consumer sentiment comes around. Don't get complacent about 2024, but there are more tailwinds than headwinds for Biden in the cumulative picture in my mind. Highlight the dangers a 2nd Trump presidency would bring, but don't lose sight of the strengths going for Biden--including incumbency--and the weaknesses that Trump has. Negative polarization runs modern politics and we have to make less than 100,000 voters in about 4-5 states dislike Trump enough to not vote for him. That's it. That's the whole mission.
If I were Biden and his team, I would make most of my campaigning be about the dangers of a 2nd Trump presidency. Remind voters that he tried to refuse leaving the WH in 2021 and would do so again if ever elected back to office--effectively ending democracy on the spot. Compare Trump to Elon--a decadently rich billionaire with serious mental health issues who refuses to listen to anybody and only wants things his way. Remind voters that Trump is a public opinion scam artist on abortion who flips--pretending to be unserious about it and then putting x3 SCOTUS justices on the bench who then take a 50+ year right away from women. Remind voters that Trump tried to start a war with Iran by publicly assassinating their top general who was a national hero. Remind voters that Trump wants to use the military against non-violent protests like he did at Lafayette Square and would do so again in a remake of Kent State. Remind voters that Trump is a 91-count-indicted criminal who cheats on his wife, cheats on his taxes, and cheats at elections. Just keep hammering home what a danger Trump is to the country and its body politic over and over and over again and use examples from Trump's first presidency and his own words against him. Do this, and the results will go our way.
For trump marriage is a contract, nothing more and, as he has shown a lifetime long propensity to ignore contracts he has signed, he can uphold his end of the bargain...or not. His choice. This is, of course, a one-way street. The other party is inevitably on the receiving end of a lawsuit regardless of whether he/she/they have upheld their half of the deal. The concept of "commitment" on his part is never a factor. Never has been, never will be. Trump was lucky his old man paid off a foot doctor to get him exempted from military duty. Had he been drafted and sent to Nam, he would have come home in a box. He is the embodiment of the type of martinet junior officer who was a greater danger to his troops than the enemy was, and the troops looked out for each other.
Had that dude gotten drafted into the officer corps rather than getting deferred and 4F'd-via-cash, guaranteed his guys in country would have fragged him. Boy that woulda saved us all a whole lot of trouble.
Elaine Godfrey fucking nails it in her opener in The Atlantic today on how dems should be warning voters about what Trump's base will do next to pressure Trump on outlawing abortion:
"The year 2022 was a triumphant one for the anti-abortion movement. After half a century, the Supreme Court did what had once seemed impossible when it overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping Americans of the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Now movement activists are feeling bolder than ever: Their next goal will be ending legal abortion in America once and for all. A federal ban, which would require 60 votes in the Senate, is unlikely. But some activists believe there’s a simpler way: the enforcement by a Trump Justice Department of a 150-year-old obscenity law.
The Comstock Act, originally passed in 1873 to combat vice and debauchery, prohibits the mailing of any “article or thing” that is “designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.” In the law’s first 100 years, a series of court cases narrowed its scope, and in 1971, Congress removed most of its restrictions on contraception. But the rest of the Comstock Act has remained on the books....If Donald Trump is reelected president, many prominent opponents of abortion rights will demand that his DOJ issue its own memo....that Comstock is a de facto ban on shipping medication that could end a pregnancy, regardless of its intended use (this would apply to the USPS and to private carriers like UPS and FedEx). “The language is black-and-white. It should be enforced,” Steven H. Aden, the general counsel at Americans United for Life, told me."
You are right. However, we need to know the why republicans want to own women's bodies. Because they have not been able to own their brains. Women have demonstrated that they have the brains to be independent, scientists, engineers, politicians, artists, writers, lawyers and have won Nobel prizes. And now there are more women in grad school than men. It does not go with their misogynistic views about women as just reproduction tools and servants to their wishes. So, they go for their bodies. They don't care about fetuses..
I think they feel threatened by the rise of women's economic power and that a lot of it comes from backlash to that. Men typically marry/date across or down in economic class while women tend to date across or up in economic class (comes back to evolutionary psychology and looking for providers). The more women that are out there who are post-college and making good money, the less men without degrees and good incomes feel like they have a shot in the dating pool (this is before we talk about the 85% of men under 6' feeling like they're unappealing via what dating apps have revealed about women's preferences there). The more these men feel insecure about their romantic prospects with women, the more they blame women for it and want to punish women by going after the social policies they care about in politics: abortion access, women's equality (part of DEI), and LGBTQ+ rights/normalization (also part of DEI).
That said, the anti-choice movement was already established prior to Title IX passage and women rising in the work force and at universities. The anti-choice coalition's backbone originally came from the religious groups who opposed abortion, but I think we're in the middle of a generational shift within the anti-choice movement where the religious folks are still there and are probably still a majority, but I think that the folks who are motivated by the backlash to the rise of women's economic power are growing in share size within that cohort. It's also important to note that those two groups (the uber-religious and the backlashers) can be overlapping and are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Just my take on their motivations.
I feel ya. Yet folks where warned back in 2016 and the MAGA have done a even better job at convincing many that Dems are evil crybabies out to steal your jobs, kids, soul, life and bone marrow so who is left to warn really?
At this point the only people who don't know what Trump are either dead, under 2 years old or comatose.
Virtually every industrialized country bans abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions of rape, incest, life of the mother. No reason to believe that the United States will be any different.
Hard disagree. Beyond what Travis mentions below there are big questions around how one interprets the implementation of "life of the mother." In Texas we're seeing stories of women with pregnancies that have zero viability being told to go home and wait until their life is at risk enough to clear the legal standard. Perhaps they exist, but I haven't heard stories out of Europe that boil down to 'go home and bleed more'.
Except that the opponents of abortion here think life starts at conception or a heartbeat. They want the national ban at 6 week--or even less--if they had their way. Every other industrial country doesn't go as far as the American anti-choice movement does in where they think the line should be. Probably because most other advanced countries aren't as religiously fever-pitched as our social conservative movement is. They ain't exactly building Ark Encounter exhibits in the UK or Germany or putting Ken Ham's lawyer in charge of parliament.
Lincoln Project has a couple of new ads out there now. More to come I'm sure. Some of my news feeds headlines are on TFF*G's physical and mental decline, and I'm starting to see a couple where TFF*G is fading even on shows like Hannity.
Oh that’s excellent, thank you! The accusations Trump is making, that AI is behind the real videos of his bizarre behavior, is the flip-side of the risks of AI actually making deceitful videos; it will get harder and harder to believe even truthful representations.
And hope like heck the upcoming year doesn’t hold anymore global upheavals, like Hamas invading Israel.
As far as pigeonholing Trump, I like to say he embodies everything we try to teach our children NOT to do, regardless of political party. Lie, cheat, brag, insult . . . On and on.
I’ve often seem MAGA parents discipline their children for doing what Trump does; cognitive dissonance.
Yeah, being rich and brash might appeal to some parental dreams. Me? I’m feeling very content just watching my children be good citizens and good parents. What limited vision!
"Negative polarization runs modern politics and we have to make less than 100,000 voters in about 4-5 states dislike Trump enough to not vote for him. That's it. That's the whole mission."
Totally agree, but man, WTF does that say about our democracy/republic of 320,000,000 in 50 states?
I didn't pass it yet. My idealism is still here and I live by it. The rest of my generation is a different story.
They did assortative mating at scale after college and divided the country's politics and social networks around degree holders versus non-degree holders, they abandoned economic populism for identity politics when they could have done both, they still aren't demanding that their politicians tax the rich a lot more (partly because they work for the rich), they do NIMBYism now as homeowners, and they mostly hate the police.
It's going to take a new generation of Gen Z dems growing up and entering politics to move the party's culture away from where it is now. Either that or they'll sell out to and follow the trend.
My own experience with Millennials has been more positive, but then I taught in the School of Arts and Sciences at the local community college, so maybe that Millennial population doesn't quite fit the profile you describe. As teachers and students, they seemed more politically astute, socially progressive, committed to education, and dedicated to their role in creating a better world.
I do think Gen Z has the torch now, too, however. It's mostly been thrust upon them by gun violence and climate change.
We've beaten Trump before, we can beat him again--and we need to remember these things. Biden simply has to maintain his numbers since 2020 while Trump has to grow them beyond his 2020 vote share. Trump's anti-vaxx base has been dying of CV since 2020, so he may actually need to grow his numbers beyond what he had in 2020 to make up the difference. He will be consumed by a rolling series of trials that are going to bring out his worst emotional reactions. Economic sentiment of voters will improve between now and the election as the lag effect of consumer sentiment comes around. Don't get complacent about 2024, but there are more tailwinds than headwinds for Biden in the cumulative picture in my mind. Highlight the dangers a 2nd Trump presidency would bring, but don't lose sight of the strengths going for Biden--including incumbency--and the weaknesses that Trump has. Negative polarization runs modern politics and we have to make less than 100,000 voters in about 4-5 states dislike Trump enough to not vote for him. That's it. That's the whole mission.
If I were Biden and his team, I would make most of my campaigning be about the dangers of a 2nd Trump presidency. Remind voters that he tried to refuse leaving the WH in 2021 and would do so again if ever elected back to office--effectively ending democracy on the spot. Compare Trump to Elon--a decadently rich billionaire with serious mental health issues who refuses to listen to anybody and only wants things his way. Remind voters that Trump is a public opinion scam artist on abortion who flips--pretending to be unserious about it and then putting x3 SCOTUS justices on the bench who then take a 50+ year right away from women. Remind voters that Trump tried to start a war with Iran by publicly assassinating their top general who was a national hero. Remind voters that Trump wants to use the military against non-violent protests like he did at Lafayette Square and would do so again in a remake of Kent State. Remind voters that Trump is a 91-count-indicted criminal who cheats on his wife, cheats on his taxes, and cheats at elections. Just keep hammering home what a danger Trump is to the country and its body politic over and over and over again and use examples from Trump's first presidency and his own words against him. Do this, and the results will go our way.
I like the three Cs - easy to remember! Cheats on wife, cheats on taxes, cheats on elections!
'wives'
For trump marriage is a contract, nothing more and, as he has shown a lifetime long propensity to ignore contracts he has signed, he can uphold his end of the bargain...or not. His choice. This is, of course, a one-way street. The other party is inevitably on the receiving end of a lawsuit regardless of whether he/she/they have upheld their half of the deal. The concept of "commitment" on his part is never a factor. Never has been, never will be. Trump was lucky his old man paid off a foot doctor to get him exempted from military duty. Had he been drafted and sent to Nam, he would have come home in a box. He is the embodiment of the type of martinet junior officer who was a greater danger to his troops than the enemy was, and the troops looked out for each other.
Had that dude gotten drafted into the officer corps rather than getting deferred and 4F'd-via-cash, guaranteed his guys in country would have fragged him. Boy that woulda saved us all a whole lot of trouble.
Add a fourth, he cheats at golf. Bigly.
Can another C be added for Choice? And, maybe, a RA, for repeal the ACA. Giving us
C+C+C+C+RA = TD (Trump Dumped)
Elaine Godfrey fucking nails it in her opener in The Atlantic today on how dems should be warning voters about what Trump's base will do next to pressure Trump on outlawing abortion:
"The year 2022 was a triumphant one for the anti-abortion movement. After half a century, the Supreme Court did what had once seemed impossible when it overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping Americans of the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Now movement activists are feeling bolder than ever: Their next goal will be ending legal abortion in America once and for all. A federal ban, which would require 60 votes in the Senate, is unlikely. But some activists believe there’s a simpler way: the enforcement by a Trump Justice Department of a 150-year-old obscenity law.
The Comstock Act, originally passed in 1873 to combat vice and debauchery, prohibits the mailing of any “article or thing” that is “designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.” In the law’s first 100 years, a series of court cases narrowed its scope, and in 1971, Congress removed most of its restrictions on contraception. But the rest of the Comstock Act has remained on the books....If Donald Trump is reelected president, many prominent opponents of abortion rights will demand that his DOJ issue its own memo....that Comstock is a de facto ban on shipping medication that could end a pregnancy, regardless of its intended use (this would apply to the USPS and to private carriers like UPS and FedEx). “The language is black-and-white. It should be enforced,” Steven H. Aden, the general counsel at Americans United for Life, told me."
You are right. However, we need to know the why republicans want to own women's bodies. Because they have not been able to own their brains. Women have demonstrated that they have the brains to be independent, scientists, engineers, politicians, artists, writers, lawyers and have won Nobel prizes. And now there are more women in grad school than men. It does not go with their misogynistic views about women as just reproduction tools and servants to their wishes. So, they go for their bodies. They don't care about fetuses..
I think they feel threatened by the rise of women's economic power and that a lot of it comes from backlash to that. Men typically marry/date across or down in economic class while women tend to date across or up in economic class (comes back to evolutionary psychology and looking for providers). The more women that are out there who are post-college and making good money, the less men without degrees and good incomes feel like they have a shot in the dating pool (this is before we talk about the 85% of men under 6' feeling like they're unappealing via what dating apps have revealed about women's preferences there). The more these men feel insecure about their romantic prospects with women, the more they blame women for it and want to punish women by going after the social policies they care about in politics: abortion access, women's equality (part of DEI), and LGBTQ+ rights/normalization (also part of DEI).
That said, the anti-choice movement was already established prior to Title IX passage and women rising in the work force and at universities. The anti-choice coalition's backbone originally came from the religious groups who opposed abortion, but I think we're in the middle of a generational shift within the anti-choice movement where the religious folks are still there and are probably still a majority, but I think that the folks who are motivated by the backlash to the rise of women's economic power are growing in share size within that cohort. It's also important to note that those two groups (the uber-religious and the backlashers) can be overlapping and are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Just my take on their motivations.
I feel ya. Yet folks where warned back in 2016 and the MAGA have done a even better job at convincing many that Dems are evil crybabies out to steal your jobs, kids, soul, life and bone marrow so who is left to warn really?
At this point the only people who don't know what Trump are either dead, under 2 years old or comatose.
Virtually every industrialized country bans abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions of rape, incest, life of the mother. No reason to believe that the United States will be any different.
Hard disagree. Beyond what Travis mentions below there are big questions around how one interprets the implementation of "life of the mother." In Texas we're seeing stories of women with pregnancies that have zero viability being told to go home and wait until their life is at risk enough to clear the legal standard. Perhaps they exist, but I haven't heard stories out of Europe that boil down to 'go home and bleed more'.
Except that the opponents of abortion here think life starts at conception or a heartbeat. They want the national ban at 6 week--or even less--if they had their way. Every other industrial country doesn't go as far as the American anti-choice movement does in where they think the line should be. Probably because most other advanced countries aren't as religiously fever-pitched as our social conservative movement is. They ain't exactly building Ark Encounter exhibits in the UK or Germany or putting Ken Ham's lawyer in charge of parliament.
Lincoln Project has a couple of new ads out there now. More to come I'm sure. Some of my news feeds headlines are on TFF*G's physical and mental decline, and I'm starting to see a couple where TFF*G is fading even on shows like Hannity.
Do Lincoln Project ads air on Fox and NewsMax? I wonder what their reach is.
Based on the google headlines I just saw they're on quit a bit on Fox. And the whiner-in-chief isn't happy. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-rages-republicans-campaigning-lincoln-project-1849509
Oh that’s excellent, thank you! The accusations Trump is making, that AI is behind the real videos of his bizarre behavior, is the flip-side of the risks of AI actually making deceitful videos; it will get harder and harder to believe even truthful representations.
Aw, poor baby!
According to Rick Wilson one of the most recent was aired on Fox News, specifically to provoke trump into another bleating
I like the action-oriented “let’s kick some ass” Travis! I hope he continues to post. 😉
And hope like heck the upcoming year doesn’t hold anymore global upheavals, like Hamas invading Israel.
As far as pigeonholing Trump, I like to say he embodies everything we try to teach our children NOT to do, regardless of political party. Lie, cheat, brag, insult . . . On and on.
That's an interesting thought. How many people would be happy to see their kids turn out like Trump?
Probably more than I would hope.
I’ve often seem MAGA parents discipline their children for doing what Trump does; cognitive dissonance.
Yeah, being rich and brash might appeal to some parental dreams. Me? I’m feeling very content just watching my children be good citizens and good parents. What limited vision!
"Negative polarization runs modern politics and we have to make less than 100,000 voters in about 4-5 states dislike Trump enough to not vote for him. That's it. That's the whole mission."
Totally agree, but man, WTF does that say about our democracy/republic of 320,000,000 in 50 states?
A lot, actually.
Yep, and my generation failed to correct it.
And in today's spirit of "hope" and not "despair," I'll add that I'm hoping your generation can do much better.
My generation (millennials) mostly sold out after they turned 30. We'll see how well Gen Z's idealism holds up over time.
Passing the torch of "hope" already?
I didn't pass it yet. My idealism is still here and I live by it. The rest of my generation is a different story.
They did assortative mating at scale after college and divided the country's politics and social networks around degree holders versus non-degree holders, they abandoned economic populism for identity politics when they could have done both, they still aren't demanding that their politicians tax the rich a lot more (partly because they work for the rich), they do NIMBYism now as homeowners, and they mostly hate the police.
It's going to take a new generation of Gen Z dems growing up and entering politics to move the party's culture away from where it is now. Either that or they'll sell out to and follow the trend.
My own experience with Millennials has been more positive, but then I taught in the School of Arts and Sciences at the local community college, so maybe that Millennial population doesn't quite fit the profile you describe. As teachers and students, they seemed more politically astute, socially progressive, committed to education, and dedicated to their role in creating a better world.
I do think Gen Z has the torch now, too, however. It's mostly been thrust upon them by gun violence and climate change.