Tag: Political Base

Dems Have A Plan (Sort Of)

AS the midterms approach and the country is plunged into chaos the Dems are gearing up for the battle coming with the 2026 midterms.

But will all my criticism of the Dems I like hearing that they may have a plan….truth be told I am not holding my breath as how successful this plan will be….

The first six months of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been a master class in what he truly excels at: wanton misrule. With an absence of adult minders and a determination to run roughshod over all of the democratic guardrails that have historically only been propped up by a fealty to norms and the waning spirit of fair play in Washington, Trump has moved fast and broken the government, put the economy into trauma with his constantly shifting tariff demands, perpetrated the deaths of HIV-infected children abroad, and cut the ribbon on a spanking new concentration camp in Florida.

These first six months have also featured a Democratic Party that has done what it does best: kept its stockpile of powder nice and dry. While some Democratic electeds have broken from the herd (often to the disdain of Democratic leadership) to confront Trump and his Republican minions, the party’s age-old theory of how political change happens—wait for the GOP to screw up—has remained in effect. Though now, with the passage of Trump’s big new “kick people off health care and funnel the money into an American Gestapo Act of 2025,” it looks like Democrats finally have their quarry right where they want them.

Or … almost? As it turns out, Democrats are planning to take on the GOP—in a few weeks, anyway. “House Democrats are plotting to turn the August recess into the opening salvo of the midterms, including through town halls and organizing programs,” reports Politico, as the party is experiencing “renewed bravado after months in the political wilderness.” And to think that all it took for Democrats to exit this self-imposed exile was Trump getting everything he wanted.

But come on, feel the bravado, folks. Maine’s centrist weirdo Representative Jared Golden, who is part of a group of Democrats who’ve lately decided that swearing more often makes them look edgy, shows up in the same Politico piece, bragging, “There’s almost nothing about this bill that I’m going [to] have a hard time explaining to the district. This is a giant tax giveaway to wealthy people. Everyone fucking knows it.” Can confirm! The New Republic has been covering this bill rather relentlessly over the past few months, which raises an uncomfortable question: What was stopping Golden from explaining this to his district at any point during the legislative meanderings of this bill? (Perhaps Golden, the most Trump-curious member of the Democratic caucus, was weighing whether to vote with the Republicans, as he has in the past.)

https://newrepublic.com/post/197816/trump-gop-bill-democrats-attack

Like I have said many times….the Dems have great ideas they just cannot seem to find a way to sell them to the American people.

So will this plan be more successful or just another fart in the political wind?

Any ideas?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Will Democrats Ever Learn?

My immediate answer is…..probably not.

Since the election of 2024 the Dems have been scratching their heads after having their asses handed to them…..I thought I would add more thoughts…..

I have been watching and participating in the American system for 50+ years and I have swings by the parties but then the Dems just rolled over and settled for the big donors to run the party.

After their loss in November I wrote about their quandary….

Still Scratching Their Heads

The ideas that they latched onto were not the ideas that the voter had in mind.

Why is that?

It appears that the voters were not buying the snake oil the Dems were selling.

The Dems failure ran across all generational voters….

Gen Z.
GOP: 80%
Dem: 48%
Other: 52%

Millennial
GOP: 83%
Dem: 57%
Other: 50%

Gen X
GOP: 90%
Dem: 73%
Other: 58%

Baby Boom
GOP: 90%
Dem: 78%
Other: 52%

Do you see the problem yet?

Apparently what the corruptible think we want to hear is not all that accurate….and now the Dems think they can change their tactics….I think it is a bit late….they should have thought along those lines in 1980.

What started the rapid decline of the Democrat Party was the election of Bubba Clinton in 1992…..he and his entourage decided that they would embrace high dollar donors….and ever since those days the Dems have had nothing in common with the people they pretend to speak for….the first thing they need to do (but will not happen in my lifetime because they worship the dollars thrown at them) is the rid the party of plutocratic politics.

Big money has always spoken with a loud voice in American politics, but the problem has gotten much worse in the neoliberal era that began in the 1970s. Abetted by the decline of labor unions and court decisions weakening restrictions on campaign spending, both political parties have become increasingly beholden to wealthy donors. The result has been particularly disastrous for the Democrats as they became a pale imitation of the Republicans—and suffered a steady erosion of support from working-class voters.

(thenation.com)

After many, many years working as an activist and labor organizer I saw stuff that the politicians and even the MSM have ignored.

These are a few things that the Dems should work into their ‘new’ approach….but will they attempt reform?

I do not foresee much success for the Dems….most are too addicted to the high dollars they get from the special interests….it will always be about the money…..not the people.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Which Political Animal Are You?

We all have formulated our political beliefs….but what political group do you fall into?

An expansive new Pew Research Center survey, mostly conducted in July, breaks the American electorate into nine distinct groups, which Pew calls “political typology.” It’s something it’s produced periodically since the 1980s, but the findings released this week are based on a much larger sample size.
Republicans, in this view, are a coalition of four subgroups:
  • Faith and Flag Conservatives.
  • Committed Conservatives.
  • Populist Right.
  • Ambivalent Right.
Democrats are also a coalition of four subgroups:
  • Progressive Left.
  • Establishment Liberals.
  • Democratic Mainstays.
  • Outsider Left.
A large portion of the public — 15% — makes up Pew’s ninth group: Stressed Sideliners. These are people who don’t have a clear partisan orientation, have a mix of conservative and liberal views and may not take part in elections.
 
Me?
 
I guess by the Pew standards I would be considered an Outsider Left.
 
Again I ask…..which are you?
 
Watch This Blog!
 
I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–19Jul21

From The ‘Can’t Fix Stupid’ Files

There is an old joke about a guy that in the mornings would stick his leg in the toilet and pee down his leg so he did not wake his wife up……well this yahoo falls into that category of wimpy….

Michael Bender, author of the Trump election expose bookFrankly, We Did Win This Election, regaled the story of a sick supporter of the former president who refused a COVID-19 test — because he thought it would make Trump look bad.

…

“I became very close with a man named Randall,” continued Bender. “Randall is a former Marine. He’s overweight, he’s a smoker, he’s in his late 60s. He understands the health risks of COVID. When he got very, very sick and thought he had COVID, he refused to go get tested because he didn’t want to ‘add to his president’s [coronavirus case] numbers. That’s how he described it to me. He didn’t want to come out positive. He also didn’t want to come up as even a test taken.”

(rawstory.com)

Seriously?

Just illustrates the commitment and adoration for Trump from mental midgets.

Again…you just ‘Can’t Fix Stupid”.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Is The Democratic Process Dead?

The basic right within this democratic process is the right to vote….and there seems to be an all out assault on that right.

A majority of states have tried to enact statues that would seriously limit the access to a voting location….even to make it illegal to give water to those standing in the long lines to vote….

So my thought is that this is an assault on the very foundation of this country….

How did it come to this?

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in April 2021 indicates that a majority of Republicans feel that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. On January 6, when Congress convened to count and certify the electoral votes, 147 Republican members of the House of Representative voted against certification even after a mob had taken over the U.S. Capitol. This is unprecedented. Never before has a major political party rejected the results of a presidential election. What caused this phenomenon? When and how did forces come together resulting in an attack on democracy by a major political party?

American history is replete with presidential elections that could have been justifiably challenged. Many times results have been less than clear-cut and controversial. Before the 12th Amendment each elector would cast two votes. The candidate with the most votes became president and the runner-up vice-president. In the 1800 election, Jefferson and Burr, the Democratic Republicans, tied for first. It was left to the House of Representatives controlled by the Federalists to decide whether Jefferson or Burr would be president. They chose Jefferson, who was then accepted by all sides as our third president. Today it would be inconceivable for a Republican Congress to decide which Democrat is elected president. But that happened in 1800 as the Federalists accepted the Electoral College system as prescribed by the Founding Fathers.

https://www.rawstory.com/voter-suppression-2653188180/

All this assault brings into question whether the foundational right of this country is in jeopardy….

Do not overlook the process known as gerrymandering…..which will begin soon….that is when politicians pick their voters and not the reverse.

Democracy may well be dead!

n the wake of the bloody insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, one question lingered along with the stench of tear gas and bear spray — was that abomination a one-off, or was it in fact the start of something new, something far more ominous? In the aftermath of the January 6 attack I gave my own guess in an article called “Trump’s Storm Troopers: First Blood.” “Stay tuned,” I advised. “This is just the beginning.” 

Now, five months out, we can see the larger pattern that is forming. The United States is being threatened from within as it has not been since the Civil War. We are once again becoming a nation divided, with family members pitted against each in bitter recrimination. The new Mason-Dixon Line can be almost anything — a MAGA hat, a Black Lives Matter sign, an absentee ballot. Suspicions over COVID-19, masking, and vaccinations simply followed the fault lines already laid bare by the last election, to the point where the pandemic itself became political. The country now seems in gridlock, with a third of the population determined to continue fighting the last election. 

Democracy Is Dead! Long Live Democracy!

You have taken your democratic rights for granted…..and now  you are witnessing the slow process of the loss of those rights.

https://www.rawstory.com/republican-gerrymandering/

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Sadly Americans are sitting by a waiting for all this silliness to pass…..and then it will be too late…..and YOU will be to blame!

Democracy is not dead….but it is walking with a limp.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Trump And His Base

This virus has shown the public who Trump really working to help…….https://lobotero.com/2020/03/25/congress-do-we-have-a-deal/

The MSM and its pundits tell us daily during this election season that the Trump base are those voters in the Rust Belt and Middle America……I disagree.

To me everything the president has done since entering into office has been designed for his real base……billionaires.

Don’t blame the Trump presidency on the white proletariat. The real responsibility for this epically transgressive administration—headed by an individual Noam Chomsky rightly describes as “the most dangerous criminal in human history”—lies with the billionaire class.

According to a mainstream media myth long believed by intellectuals who ought to know better, Donald Trump rode into the White House on a great upsurge of support from poor, white, working-class voters drawn to the Republican candidate’s populist anti-Wall Street pitch in key deindustrialized battleground states. This conventional Rust Belt rebellion wisdom was proclaimed on the front page of the nation’s newspaper of record, The New York Times, a day after the 2016 election. The Times called Trump’s victory “a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters.” That same day, Times political writer Nate Cohn wrote that “Donald J. Trump won the presidency by riding an enormous wave of support among working-class whites.”

This storyline — repeated ad nauseam and taken for granted in the mainstream media and even in much of the progressive left—is flatly contradicted by credible data. There was no mass white working-class outpouring for Trump in 2016. Slate writers Konstantin Kilibarda and Daria Roithmayr noted weeks after the election: “Donald Trump didn’t flip working-class white voters,” they wrote. “Hillary Clinton lost them. … Relative to the 2012 election, Democratic support in the key Rust Belt states [Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin] collapsed as a huge number of Democrats stayed home or (to a lesser extent) voted for a third party.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/06/trumps-real-base-ruling-class

The media owned by billionaires is telling a tale that they want the voter to believe and trust……as usual they are lying to us!

This election like most election is just a battle of corporations for control…..while the corporations get the gravy and the people get the skim at the bottom of the pie.

One last question……why does a cruise ship get cash…..they sail under foreign flags…..and they will get American cash……why?

Death total from this virus has hit 1,000…..how many more must die to protect stupid?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

And No One Cares!

It is about time for the MSM to define what “our shared values” means.  What are these mythical “values” by which we live?

Think about that as I flesh out this post.

Let us not pretend that what Pres. Trump is doing is important or not……after all the Constitution is just a piece of paper that means all things to all people and NO one has any idea what the document actually says…other than guns are allowed and I have free speech and can go to church….beyond that it is a political prop that means little.

Then there is the lie the fantasy of bi-partisanship from our past….not happening people….once in awhile a couple of politicians get together and agree on a single issue and we are told that a new age of bi-partisanship could be on the horizon.

We are told that this age of division of our society is not us….that we are better than the vitriol that is spewed by politicians, journalist and people alike…..I say we are not. This is the nation we have made and it will take too much work for the population to really care.

38% of the public will support Trump and his issues blindly….it has nothing to do with party affiliation…..it has everything to do with the simmering resentments that have been allowed to boil over and create a country that some of us are ashamed of…..that racism has always been there just they were held up in the past and that kept them simmering and then in the 1990s the simmering became a boil and with Trump it boiled over into mainstream.

That 38% will never conform to the ideals that this country was founded on…..founded on?…there is a term that means NOTHING as well in these days of tribalism.

Trump’s lies have been brought to light and the campaign of BS has started to obfuscate the facts……his economic message is a lie, his foreign policies are based on flattery, immigration policies are based on racism….all his lies are golden as along as he keeps brown people out of the supermarkets.

Pundits are surprised at this turn in our attitudes……why?  Those attitudes have been there from the beginning and hidden now they have become acceptable and they came out of the shadows to mainstream.

STOP using “better angels”……those days are gone we now operate on our “Bitter Angels”.

Do you think with the defeat of Trump in 2020 things will change?

The political cowards have illustrated how to deal with DC and the Congress…the precedent has been set….the worms are out of that damn can……

Go ahead and impeach Trump!  What will that accomplish?

Without the Senate he will remain and spin the impeachment as a good thing for him and his 38% of the country will nod incessantly and the crap will continue…..another waste.

Pundits go on and on about the Repubs that are secretly embarrassed by Trump and his antics…..I disagree……the GOP will NEVER be embarrassed by Trump because his policies are their policies…..words are cheap, actions speak volumes and the GOP is but a murmur barely audible of its former self.

Better Angels My Ass!

WE can say one thing for sure…this country is truly in the middle of a Constitutional crisis……

President Donald Trump and his administration will not participate in the Congressional impeachment inquiry, the White House announced Tuesday, setting up a constitutional crisis in the conflict between two ostensibly co-equal branches of government.

“There is no legal basis for Trump’s position,” tweeted NBC analyst Katie Phang. “Hard stop.”

“The Trump administration’s flat refusal to cooperate with congressional oversight is, itself, impeachable,” tweeted Vox‘s Ezra Klein.

The news sparked a call from Credo Action co-director Heidi Hess for immediate impeachment.

“It’s absolutely outrageous that Donald Trump sent a letter to Congress informing them that he is above the Constitution and every law in America,” said Hess. “House Democrats need to move immediately and use all the power at their disposal to compel testimony and delivery of documents, hold administration officials accountable for their contempt of Congress, and draft articles of impeachment that span all of Trump’s crimes.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/08/seriously-folks-actually-constitutional-crisis-trump-tells-congress-white-house-wont

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

That Southern Strategy

Us old farts will know what I mean by the “Southern Strategy”……..it was a Reagan idea to gain the support of the Democratic Southern states….by focusing on social issues and not reality…..

But for those that are too young to recall this political strategy……

In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans.   As the civil rights movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern United States, Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many white, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. It also helped to push the Republican Party much more to the right.

The “Southern Strategy” refers primarily to “top down” narratives of the political realignment of the South which suggest that Republican leaders consciously appealed to many white Southerners’ racial grievances in order to gain their support.   This top-down narrative of the Southern Strategy is generally believed to be the primary force that transformed Southern politics following the civil rights era.   This view has been questioned by historians such as Matthew Lassiter, Kevin M. Kruse and Joseph Crespino, who have presented an alternative, “bottom up” narrative, which Lassiter has called the “suburban strategy“. This narrative recognizes the centrality of racial backlash to the political realignment of the South, but suggests that this backlash took the form of a defense of de facto segregation in the suburbs rather than overt resistance to racial integration and that the story of this backlash is a national rather than a strictly Southern one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

There seems to be a bit of this political strategy being employed by the Trump machine, if we could call it that…….hyper-nationalism and racist undertones……

Contemporary Republican politicians like to invoke the legacy of Ronald Reagan to bolster their policies. However, the type of White nationalism being espoused by Donald Trump and his supporters more accurately traces back to two less appealing Republican personalities: Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, and to the backlash created by the Civil Rights Movement of the nineteen sixties.

It was the Civil Rights Movement that weakened the Democratic Party’s hold on the South, a hold that dated back to the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction. The Goldwater 1964 Presidential campaign took advantage of the opportunity by appealing to Southern White prejudice, and thus pioneered the “Southern Strategy” that was further developed by Nixon and has continued in effect to the present day. Goldwater’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act and his defense of “states’ rights” won him five Deep South states that had not gone Republican since Reconstruction. Donald Trump’s electoral “base” is of course not limited to the South, but it’s nevertheless true that Southern and border states constitute the bedrock of the GOP today.

The Southern Strategy and Donald Trump

Mr. Trump’s largest group are old white men in the South……so he will use the “Southern Strategy” to help vault him into the good graces of other like minded “people”…..

The new South is much like the old South…just with a few minor tweaks….

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Wrote and now You Know”

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

In The Age Of The “Idiotarian”

The 2018 Mid-Terms are just days away and the nation is focused on the election…..the media is drumming their particular political lean on its viewers and the country keeps sliding into the abyss of tribalism.

It has been a long time coming…..the way that Repubs have divided this country along tribal lines…..and yes I blame the GOP and their hit man Newt…..he started this country’s citizens along this avenue of self-destruction.

The truth is division has always been with us…..

Hate, blame, greed, bigotry and fear have always been part of our politics.  If you doubt that, consider these statements from our second Presidential campaign in 1800, which pitted Adams against Jefferson for the second time.

Jefferson’s camp accused President Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

In return, Adams’ men called Vice President Jefferson “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was “one of the most detestable of mankind.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/02/haters-and-partisans-have-always-been-us-different

First it was appearance of the “Ignorati”…..a person or group that is willfully ignorant, or woefully uninformed and forces their ignorant view on others regardless of fact.

This was fed by sites, thanx to social media, like Infowars and then fed by FOX News as a willing culprit to the misinformation (call it what it is Fake News)…..

As the “Ignorati” gained in prominence a new political ideology came into being…..the “Idiotarian”……political views are replaced by ignorant  name calling in absence of any real evidence based argument.

The GOP because of its silence on the antics of Our Dear Leader is becoming the party of the “Idiotarian”….now let a true conserv. ex-Congressman, Joe Scarborough explain the death of the GOP to the “Idiotarians”……

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is blasting the Republican Party over its support of President Trump, calling the GOP “a dying party I can no longer defend.”

Scarborough, a former GOP lawmaker from Florida who announced last week that he is leaving the party, said in a Washington Post op-ed published late Sunday that Republicans who are working with Trump are “making the majority of Americans regret” voting for the party.

“The political movement that once stood athwart history resisting bloated government and military adventurism has been reduced to an amalgam of talk-radio resentments,” Scarborough wrote. “President Trump’s Republicans have devolved into a party without a cause, dominated by a leader hopelessly ill-informed about the basics of conservatism, U.S. history and the Constitution.”

http://thehill.com/media/342296-scarborough-i-left-the-gop-because-trump-is-destroying-the-republican-party

As an old radical I can say that I would be happy to see the destruction of the GOP….but the truth is that would leave the Dems and they are not much better than the GOP…….for there is NO republic without political discourse and as it is now that is sadly missing….and destruction could be eminent if we do not pay attention.

By the way, this election will change little….the dramatics and theatrics will increase but the actual governing process will be lacking.

So I Have written!

Turn The Page!

Sweet Bird Of Youth

First a little advice from an old fart…..to the young…..go out and live life and make some memories for yourself…..for when you grow old memories are all you have….society will push you aside and you will be left with the memories that you have made…..

I recall my youth…….after my stint in Vietnam…..when I returned I became a steadfast supporter of the anti-war movement……and I watched the youth of the day go from protests to rolling over for conservatism……Nixon signed the 18 year old vote into law and the downhill plunge started and culminated with the election of Reagan….I bring this all up because the young seem to be a bit liberal for now……they have a strong pro-choice slide, pro same sex marriage, etc…..all this is great and I look for them to help this country get back on track…….that is until I read a report the other day and my heart sank…..again.

The Upshot blog of the New York Times has an analysis sure to cheer the hearts of today’s conservatives, and it’s all rooted in one simple fact: The voters of tomorrow are coming of age in a generally lousy time with Democrats in control of the White House, writes David Leonhardt. Forget the “largely useless cliche” that people are liberal when young and turn conservative as they grow older. Generally speaking, generations remain consistent in their politics from youth to old age, and what was happening when they first became aware politically is a big factor in determining whether they’ll lean left or right.

Leonhardt points out that the youngest voters in the next presidential election will have been born in 1998. Millennials might be old enough to remember that some of today’s problems are rooted in the Bush years, but not these younger voters. They’ve become politically conscious in an era when economic growth has been stagnant and the world’s problems ever-growing. “We’re in a period in which the federal government is simply not performing, and that can’t be good for Democrats,” says an analyst with the Pew Research Center. How Obama fares in the remainder of his term will affect more than the 2016 election, writes Leonhardt. The president’s performance will “cast a shadow” over the 2024 campaign and beyond. Click to read the full post.

I pray the study is  mistaken for I do not think that this country can recovery its place in the world on the back of conservative ideology…..