Just came back from a road trip, else I’d have replied sooner…: I just now found Glenn Greenwald’s echo of what I’d said then, what I said at Brexit, and what I said now. Lifting the second paragraph from his screed:
The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy.
It’s worth the time to read the whole thing and to follow the links Mr. Greenwald always provides to support his points.
Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked”. What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew.
Thank you. Now please go to local party meetings and get people you like voted to leadership positions in the local parties, so that they can support people you like getting into positions at the state level; these are the people who help craft platform and choose superdelegates. This is how the DLC took power in the 80s, and how Sanders supporters can take back the party. It is also a way that people in very red states can still have influence on the national elections. (I stopped doing this for a while because I kept moving and then I was in safe blue states, but I’m properly angry at myself for it.)
Actually I’ve already looked into it but it’s a little opaque. There’s a county committee, elected or selected by someone(s), but nothing about meetings. Haven’t given up yet, though.
You could try contacting someone in the party and asking how you “can help.”
One of the advantages of the caucus system - I’ve experienced this in Iowa, Minnesota, and Hawaii - is that in presidential election years local party business is usually right at the caucus, either just before or just after the presidential caucus, so it is easy to get involved at the same time you are thinking about politics.
Perhaps Herr Drumpf will go apeshit at one of his pending trials and be found in contempt? Would that be enough for faithless electors to switch their Electoral College vote to the person that received the majority of votes?
Remember that pot is still illegal federally and that states making it legal doesn’t change that. Under Obama the policy was to let states have their way. Rudy Giuliani will be the next AG, so whether that policy will continue is in question.
Yeah, we’re supposed to be better than those guys. That’s the whole point. “But but but the other guys were bad too!” is exactly the kind of childish misdirection that we’ve lambasting the right for–and here you are doing exactly the same.
Your posts in this thread boil down to “it wasn’t our fault, we are blameless, there is nothing we could have done to escape this, we were helplessly stabbed in the back.” As long as we believe that, the same thing will keep happening. You need to grasp that being morally right does not relieve you of the responsibility to be competent. The left lost this election because the right, including Trump, were more competent than we were at rallying voters and getting out the vote.
The left is not the helpless victim tied to the tracks waiting for the hero to rescue us. We’re supposed to be the hero, and we failed.
This video sums it up well, especially the rant about “labels” and his explanation for why all the polls were wrong.
_when asked, people can’t admit what they think, they aren’t allowed to… _ …we have made people unable to articulate their position for fear of being shut down… Stop thinking that everybody who disagrees with you is evil, or racist, or sexist or stupid and talk to them, persuade them otherwise, because if you don’t I’ll tell you what you get, you get president Trump
Um… how is racist innuendo and extreme forms of misogyny the same as pointing out shit that Trump actually did over the course of his life?
No one is “blameless” but do you really think that some of the vitriol that came out of his campaign (especially by his supporters) is really the same as pointing out that Trump has (by his own words) assaulted women? Really? Is calling a racist as bad as calling someone a slur?
As I go back and re-read Michael Moore’s “Trump will win” doom and gloom letter from a few months ago, I’m simply astounded at just how on the nose the whole thing ended up being.
You’re missing my point entirely - which is that what random third parties were saying was irrelevant to what the candidates and their campaigns were saying. (Although what the third parties on each side weren’t even remotely comparable, either - one side was taking the high road, only “stooping” to pointing out how completely horrible and idiotic the rhetoric coming from Trump and his surrogates was. Which it was, and no one should have pretended otherwise.) And sure the Democrats failed - they failed to get people fired up to vote, they failed to counter the media’s obsession with the emails (to the exclusion of every other issue), they failed to overcome the baggage the Republicans had made up and saddled Clinton with. One thing the Democrats weren’t failing at was offering rational discourse and policy and avoiding being divisive. Or, rather, if anything, they failed by being rational and reasonable and not offering scapegoats, and ultimately not doing enough to manipulate idiots.
