Dem Post Mortem

[GenesisNemesis]

I Dems ever want to win another election, they and their supporters really need to acknowledge that the constant denigration and vilification of half the voting populace is a big part of the problem.

I don't think so. I do think, however they are going to have to counter the clearly emotional and irrational aspects of Orangemania. And that will be tough. Acting like a responsible adult using information and rational response clearly is not the right thing to do if winning a popular election based on theatrics is all that matters.

Nice to know that you think over 73 million people in the US fall into that category.

"Nice to know?" It isn't an appetizing observation at all. It is very much like what happened in Germany with Hitler. Einstein said it best when asked why he left and he replied "My country has gone mad."

It's nice to know there are so many complete morons who won't take the lessons of history.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Bunch of stupid fucktards.

 

[thebeave]

This is a good, well balanced article from Bret Stephens (New York Times columnist). I lot of what I see from some of the liberals on this forum is reflected in this article

Stephens: Do liberals lack the introspection to see what went wrong?

How did Democrats lose so badly to a twice-impeached former president and felon they considered a fascist, bigot and buffoon?​

A story in chess lore involves the great Danish-Jewish player Aron Nimzowitsch, who, at a tournament in the mid-1920s, found himself struggling against the German master Friedrich Sämisch. Infuriated at the thought of losing to an opponent he considered inferior, Nimzowitsch jumped on the table and shouted, “To this idiot I must lose?”

It’s a thought that must have crossed the minds of more than a few liberal pundits and Democratic eminences late Tuesday, as Kamala Harris’ hopes for winning the presidency began suddenly to fade.

How, indeed, did Democrats lose so badly, considering how they saw Donald Trump — a twice-impeached former president, a felon, a fascist, a bigot, a buffoon, a demented old man, an object of nonstop late-night mockery and incessant moral condemnation? The theory that many Democrats will be tempted to adopt is that a nation prone to racism, sexism, xenophobia and rank stupidity fell prey to the type of demagoguery that once beguiled Germany into electing Adolf Hitler.

Worldview mistakes​

But these mistakes of calculation lived within three larger mistakes of worldview. First, the conviction among many liberals that things were pretty much fine, if not downright great, in Biden’s America — and that anyone who didn’t think that way was either a right-wing misinformer or a dupe. Second, the refusal to see how profoundly distasteful so much of modern liberalism has become to so much of America. Third, the insistence that the only appropriate form of politics when it comes to Trump is the politics of Resistance — capital R.

Regarding the first, I’ve lost track of the number of times liberal pundits have attempted to steer readers to arcane data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve to explain why Americans should stop freaking out over sharply higher prices of consumer goods or the rising financing costs on their homes and cars. Or insisted there was no migration crisis at the southern border. Or averred that Biden was sharp as a tack and that anyone who suggested otherwise was a jerk.

I voted reluctantly for Harris because of my fears for what a second Trump term might bring — in Ukraine, our trade policy, civic life, the moral health of the conservative movement writ large. Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change.

 

[Tigers!]

My daughter and son-in-law came around for tea last Wed (AEDT) and we were looking at the election results on the telly with a mixture of bemusement, astonishment and "what is going on over there?"
A couple of months earlier I had asked the wife and daughter to pay some attention to this election as they had never done so much beforehand.

I asked my son-in-law what he thought. "They are all galahs over there". Short, sharp and concise.

Daughter: (D) If you are a non-white person who identified as female and wished to have an abortion at some time in your life and had a uni debt and you knew someone who identifies as trans then the Democrats would look after you. Everbody else can go and get stuffed.
(R) if you are angry at somebody else vote for me.

Wife: (R) Ran an more effective campaign with mininal content level. Being shot at really helped him. A self-centred, self-absorbed clown with seemingly lots of money.
(D): Ran a poorer campaign than Trump (not a high hill to get over but still impossible for the D's). She asked who that balding, grey haired smiling fool who stood beside Harris was ans what was he doing? She thought he must be ballast to stop the stage from floating away. He added nothing, good or bad, to Harris. I asked her to summarise Harris' campaign into a slogan. "I'm not him" she said. That will not likely win a presidental election*. (For those who are unsure 'him' is Trump, not Biden)
She listened to a couple of Harris speeches and watched the very few interviews she did. She is not a Star Wars fan but listening to Harris reminded her of this scene.

*(Though it must be said that the Labour party won the last Aust. Commonwealth election in 2022 with the slogan "We are not Morrison")

And what kind of human future are you and they trying to build? How is your plan coming along, if you have a plan? How does the rest of humanity and everything else of Earth figure into your plan?

Pardon?

Really? You don't think about those things? Those are the questions that drive all my decisions.

I just thought maybe you and your family could help me understand a bit more about how you and they came to those conclusions by weighing them against what they are trying to do with their lives generally. They're not rocket science questions. They are as simple as any question can get. They're just asking what kind of world you want and how you plan to get there.

But if my questions are Greek to you then I understand your responses and your family's responses well enough.

We are Australians so we do not get a vote.
Rather we looking at what was on offer from both R&D and seeing what we thought of it. Would what was on offer convince us to vote willingly for any of the alternatives? Or would we be forced to hold our noses, close our eyes, to vote for the best of a bad bunch?
None of us would vote for Trump but that does not mean that Harris was/is worth our precious votes (if we had them).
Iu know you think that anyone who voted for Trump, or abstained from voting for Harris did so becuase of sexism or racism. It seems to be a very binary world out there in some parts of yankland. You can not comprehend the notion that perhaps neither candidate is acceptable for what ever reason. And funnily enough we can find a candidate unsuitable for reasons other misogny or racism.

 

[pood]

This is a good, well balanced article from Bret Stephens (New York Times columnist). I lot of what I see from some of the liberals on this forum is reflected in this article

Stephens: Do liberals lack the introspection to see what went wrong?

How did Democrats lose so badly to a twice-impeached former president and felon they considered a fascist, bigot and buffoon?​

A story in chess lore involves the great Danish-Jewish player Aron Nimzowitsch, who, at a tournament in the mid-1920s, found himself struggling against the German master Friedrich Sämisch. Infuriated at the thought of losing to an opponent he considered inferior, Nimzowitsch jumped on the table and shouted, “To this idiot I must lose?”

It’s a thought that must have crossed the minds of more than a few liberal pundits and Democratic eminences late Tuesday, as Kamala Harris’ hopes for winning the presidency began suddenly to fade.

How, indeed, did Democrats lose so badly, considering how they saw Donald Trump — a twice-impeached former president, a felon, a fascist, a bigot, a buffoon, a demented old man, an object of nonstop late-night mockery and incessant moral condemnation? The theory that many Democrats will be tempted to adopt is that a nation prone to racism, sexism, xenophobia and rank stupidity fell prey to the type of demagoguery that once beguiled Germany into electing Adolf Hitler.

Worldview mistakes​

But these mistakes of calculation lived within three larger mistakes of worldview. First, the conviction among many liberals that things were pretty much fine, if not downright great, in Biden’s America — and that anyone who didn’t think that way was either a right-wing misinformer or a dupe. Second, the refusal to see how profoundly distasteful so much of modern liberalism has become to so much of America. Third, the insistence that the only appropriate form of politics when it comes to Trump is the politics of Resistance — capital R.

Regarding the first, I’ve lost track of the number of times liberal pundits have attempted to steer readers to arcane data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve to explain why Americans should stop freaking out over sharply higher prices of consumer goods or the rising financing costs on their homes and cars. Or insisted there was no migration crisis at the southern border. Or averred that Biden was sharp as a tack and that anyone who suggested otherwise was a jerk.

I voted reluctantly for Harris because of my fears for what a second Trump term might bring — in Ukraine, our trade policy, civic life, the moral health of the conservative movement writ large. Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change.

Brett Stephens is one of the idiots that The Times employs, along with horrific David Brooks and a couple of others, to give “balance” to its op-ed pages.

 

[bigfield]

Regarding the first, I’ve lost track of the number of times liberal pundits have attempted to steer readers to arcane data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve to explain why Americans should stop freaking out over sharply higher prices of consumer goods or the rising financing costs on their homes and cars.

When Stephens refers to liberalism I'm pretty sure he means social liberalism (what an American "liberal" believes in) but I think the Democrats are failing because they are attached to another type of liberalism: neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is the reason why a lot of American workers will spend their entire lives working hard without economic security while the rich keep getting richer. It had a good run in the 80s and 90s, when politicians could argue that it made everyone better off, but it has long since stopped improving the lives of workers. Yet it still enjoys bipartisan support in the US, as it does elsewhere. And it's for this reason that I think it's ridiculous to call the Democrats a left wing party. They are centre-right. Biden is centre-right. A left wing government would actually deliver significant material improvements for workers at the expense of the rich.

Democrats have put their focus on other aspects of social liberalism, such as gender and racial equality, but none of those conflicts are as important or as wide-ranging as class conflict.

 

[pood]

I think Bernie Sanders would have won in 2016, 2020 or 2024.

 

[pood]

The Democrats used to be the party of The New Deal. Then they became the party of Bill Clinton’s New Democrats, and have basically been a flop ever since.

 

[Jarhyn]

I Dems ever want to win another election, they and their supporters really need to acknowledge that the constant denigration and vilification of half the voting populace is a big part of the problem.

I don't think so. I do think, however they are going to have to counter the clearly emotional and irrational aspects of Orangemania. And that will be tough. Acting like a responsible adult using information and rational response clearly is not the right thing to do if winning a popular election based on theatrics is all that matters.

Nice to know that you think over 73 million people in the US fall into that category.

"Nice to know?" It isn't an appetizing observation at all. It is very much like what happened in Germany with Hitler. Einstein said it best when asked why he left and he replied "My country has gone mad."

It's nice to know there are so many complete morons who won't take the lessons of history.

The issue is that everyone always forgets what the lead-in to a fascist state looks like because they get distracted by the outcome.

They see how bad it ends up.. and then forget it doesn't look like that at first, any more than a cute rambunctious little leopard cub looks like it's going to eat your face.

They forget that fascism looks reasonable to many, perhaps even most, as it starts out. It says "let's get people back to what they're comfortable with, a 'simple' world for their 'simple' minds."

In the beginning it always starts with lies about the LGBT community and immigrants, and turns drastically towards any diaspora and unsupported sub-group. "Deportation" then evolves into camps (especially for those actually born in the country), and then to executions because as has been seen time and again, it's pretty apparent from looking at the lessons of history that everything leading up to the "final solution" is always destined to fail at its "goal" of removing the "undesirables".

I am so beyond worried that being gay will be criminalized, and that it will go to the supreme court and Lawrence will be overruled.

I think Bernie Sanders would have won in 2016, 2020 or 2024.

He would have. Which is why I am so beyond depressed/enraged about how the establishment of the party treated him like a joke and shut him out.

People wanted something to change, and the Republicans offered the only "different" candidate. Instead of having an outsider that wanted to help others, we ended up with the outsider seeking to help themselves.

 

[Elixir]

I am so beyond worried that being gay will be criminalized, and that it will go to the supreme court and Lawrence will be overruled.

What makes you think these guys are going to bother with formalities like overruling Lawrence?

 

[Jarhyn]

I am so beyond worried that being gay will be criminalized, and that it will go to the supreme court and Lawrence will be overruled.

What makes you think these guys are going to bother with formalities like overruling Lawrence?

Because they will want to reduce resistance in most places to enforcement. "It's the law; it was always the law" is much more convincing to a certain form of mindlessness than "do it because I said so, we made it the law right now."

By attacking LvT first, which is trivially easy at this point, they can instantly revive laws across the states in an initial push for "states rights".

From there, they take poll for a constitutional convention, and if you didn't notice most of the states are red.

I can see a constitutional amendment, but the politics of the thing would require a run-up.

This would be accelerated by "immune official acts".

Project 2025 is about a ready-made agenda that can get rubber stamped and judicially reviewed.

The first canary is the filibuster on omnibus.

Pay attention to the agenda, as I foresee a "definition of women act" that will be the foundation for all that is to come, as well as an enforcement in Florida against drag queens. Possibly a few such that have been banked up in the docket? I'm expecting LGBT rights to take a hit in the first few months.

 

[Shadowy Man]

My daughter and son-in-law came around for tea last Wed (AEDT) and we were looking at the election results on the telly with a mixture of bemusement, astonishment and "what is going on over there?"
A couple of months earlier I had asked the wife and daughter to pay some attention to this election as they had never done so much beforehand.

I asked my son-in-law what he thought. "They are all galahs over there". Short, sharp and concise.

Daughter: (D) If you are a non-white person who identified as female and wished to have an abortion at some time in your life and had a uni debt and you knew someone who identifies as trans then the Democrats would look after you. Everbody else can go and get stuffed.
(R) if you are angry at somebody else vote for me.

Wife: (R) Ran an more effective campaign with mininal content level. Being shot at really helped him. A self-centred, self-absorbed clown with seemingly lots of money.
(D): Ran a poorer campaign than Trump (not a high hill to get over but still impossible for the D's). She asked who that balding, grey haired smiling fool who stood beside Harris was ans what was he doing? She thought he must be ballast to stop the stage from floating away. He added nothing, good or bad, to Harris. I asked her to summarise Harris' campaign into a slogan. "I'm not him" she said. That will not likely win a presidental election*. (For those who are unsure 'him' is Trump, not Biden)
She listened to a couple of Harris speeches and watched the very few interviews she did. She is not a Star Wars fan but listening to Harris reminded her of this scene.

*(Though it must be said that the Labour party won the last Aust. Commonwealth election in 2022 with the slogan "We are not Morrison")

And what kind of human future are you and they trying to build? How is your plan coming along, if you have a plan? How does the rest of humanity and everything else of Earth figure into your plan?

Pardon?

Really? You don't think about those things? Those are the questions that drive all my decisions.

I just thought maybe you and your family could help me understand a bit more about how you and they came to those conclusions by weighing them against what they are trying to do with their lives generally. They're not rocket science questions. They are as simple as any question can get. They're just asking what kind of world you want and how you plan to get there.

But if my questions are Greek to you then I understand your responses and your family's responses well enough.

We are Australians so we do not get a vote.
Rather we looking at what was on offer from both R&D and seeing what we thought of it. Would what was on offer convince us to vote willingly for any of the alternatives? Or would we be forced to hold our noses, close our eyes, to vote for the best of a bad bunch?
None of us would vote for Trump but that does not mean that Harris was/is worth our precious votes (if we had them).
Iu know you think that anyone who voted for Trump, or abstained from voting for Harris did so becuase of sexism or racism. It seems to be a very binary world out there in some parts of yankland. You can not comprehend the notion that perhaps neither candidate is acceptable for what ever reason. And funnily enough we can find a candidate unsuitable for reasons other misogny or racism.

But one of those two people will be the President, so if you don’t vote for Harris it means you prefer Trump. One may not think that in their head but that is what is rwal
In practice. Millions of people who voted for Biden did not vote for Harris. And it wasn’t that they didn’t vote at all. Look at some of the raw numbers, where a state’s democratic senator got significantly higher vote totals than Harris did.

It may not be a system anybody likes but it’s the system we have. If you don’t vote for the lesser of evils then you’re acknowledging your satisfaction with the greater of evils. People can sit Back in the comfort of their own moral purity while Donald Trump runs this country.

 

[Elixir]

"It's the law; it was always the law" is much more convincing to a certain form of mindlessness than "do it because I said so, we made it the law right now."

You’re still crediting these trogs with a desire to be convincing. It’s all just emotionally retarded venting of suppressed sexuality and anger, and it’s going to come out if allowed. And license has just been given.

 

[Politesse]

How about let’s all us libtards, commies, freaks, childless cat ladies, enemies of the people, queers, fags, the N-word and so on, take our ball and go home by setting up our own nation, and leaving the red-state rednecks to wallow in their own white-trash depravity, hmm?

I thought that place was called California?

If only...

 

[Politesse]

This is a good, well balanced article from Bret Stephens (New York Times columnist). I lot of what I see from some of the liberals on this forum is reflected in this article

Stephens: Do liberals lack the introspection to see what went wrong?

How did Democrats lose so badly to a twice-impeached former president and felon they considered a fascist, bigot and buffoon?​

A story in chess lore involves the great Danish-Jewish player Aron Nimzowitsch, who, at a tournament in the mid-1920s, found himself struggling against the German master Friedrich Sämisch. Infuriated at the thought of losing to an opponent he considered inferior, Nimzowitsch jumped on the table and shouted, “To this idiot I must lose?”

It’s a thought that must have crossed the minds of more than a few liberal pundits and Democratic eminences late Tuesday, as Kamala Harris’ hopes for winning the presidency began suddenly to fade.

How, indeed, did Democrats lose so badly, considering how they saw Donald Trump — a twice-impeached former president, a felon, a fascist, a bigot, a buffoon, a demented old man, an object of nonstop late-night mockery and incessant moral condemnation? The theory that many Democrats will be tempted to adopt is that a nation prone to racism, sexism, xenophobia and rank stupidity fell prey to the type of demagoguery that once beguiled Germany into electing Adolf Hitler.

Worldview mistakes​

But these mistakes of calculation lived within three larger mistakes of worldview. First, the conviction among many liberals that things were pretty much fine, if not downright great, in Biden’s America — and that anyone who didn’t think that way was either a right-wing misinformer or a dupe. Second, the refusal to see how profoundly distasteful so much of modern liberalism has become to so much of America. Third, the insistence that the only appropriate form of politics when it comes to Trump is the politics of Resistance — capital R.

Regarding the first, I’ve lost track of the number of times liberal pundits have attempted to steer readers to arcane data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve to explain why Americans should stop freaking out over sharply higher prices of consumer goods or the rising financing costs on their homes and cars. Or insisted there was no migration crisis at the southern border. Or averred that Biden was sharp as a tack and that anyone who suggested otherwise was a jerk.

I voted reluctantly for Harris because of my fears for what a second Trump term might bring — in Ukraine, our trade policy, civic life, the moral health of the conservative movement writ large. Right now, my larger fear is that liberals lack the introspection to see where they went wrong, the discipline to do better next time and the humility to change.

It is not clear to me what Democrats "lack the humility" to change into, according to commentators? Full-blown Republicans, or what?

 

[pood]

People like Bret Stephens are always saying that the Democrats should change into Republicans and then they will win. It never occurs to them that maybe they should change into Bernie Sanders and become the New Deal Dems again that they once were, when they dominated politics for nearly two generations.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Not enough people cared about stopping trump.

There's a lot of morons out there who aren't taking Project 2025 seriously enough.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

I see a lot of rubbish in many places about why people voted for Trump. That they wanted change - if so, then why go from Trump being POTUS back to Trump being POTUS, that is not change, that's retrogression. Or that they didn't like the elites - but Trump and Musk are emblematic of the financial elite. Or they didn't like the Establishment - except the Republicans and their media toadies are the Establishment.
Or they felt powerless - yet they have much more power than any person who supports the left, as the right is the great power.
Then there are individual claims that people make, and these are totally disconnected from reality - Trump is a great businessman, he is honest, he will make things better, and so on.
In the past people often cast their votes out of self-interest, and whatever you may think about this, there is rationality to it. But Trumpists vote against their own self-interest (sure they think they are voting their own self-interest, but that's delusional).

Apparently they have a small amount of self-awareness, as apparently on specific issues there was more rational voting.
As regard the Democratic Party, there is competition with the GOP at moving to the right (this is a worldwide trend), where it would be smarter trying to move left towards the centre (and despite what some believe, the Democratic Party is not left leaning, but centre-right).
The people have to allow the Democratic Party to do this or hypocritically simultaneously want the Democrats to be "less establishment" whilst blocking this from happening by favouring right-wing policies. For example, complaining about high prices but opposing any means to slow high prices occurring.

 

[Elixir]

Brett Stephens is one of the idiots that The Times employs, along with horrific David Brooks and a couple of others, to give “balance” to its op-ed pages.

True enough. But that doesn’t make him wrong. He’s not telling the whole story, just parts he thinks “libs” are missing.

 

[pood]

Brett Stephens is one of the idiots that The Times employs, along with horrific David Brooks and a couple of others, to give “balance” to its op-ed pages.

True enough. But that doesn’t make him wrong. He’s not telling the whole story, just parts he thinks “libs” are missing.

No, being a token conservative for “balance” on the Times op-ed page doesn’t make him wrong. What makes him wrongs is being wrong.