I hope nobody takes this wrong, but; they won!

43 thoughts on “I hope nobody takes this wrong, but; they won!”

1. 
   Published on Apr 20, 2017

   Behold Donald Trump’s vanity.

2. That pretty well says it all.  They cheated, lied, and took advantage of the lowest impulses that exist in American society.  Now how do we fix it?

   1.  Fight like hell to take back governorships by 2020.  Barring passing laws making gerrymander illegal, this is the only way to realign the balance in the House.

   2.  Take control of as many state offices as possible.  The only way a revision of the Electoral College will ever happen is if Democrats control State Houses.

   3.  Eliminate the Caucus system in favor of the Primary in states where they exist.  They pervert the one man one vote system and cripple politics in favor of some “star” rather than the useful politician.

   4.  Develop a farm team by electing people to low level offices on City Councils, School Boards, County commissioners etc.  It took the “Tea Party” almost 40 years to build the coalition that took over the Republican party and turn a once Conservative voice into a home for racists, yahoos,  and hate filled no nothings.

   5.  Fight back and learn to “name things” to rebut the nonsense.  Facts may not be attractive as appeals to emotion, but we need to learn how to do it.

    

3. Thank You DiVitale for your Post.

   Excellent points, Jamie.

   Face reality, don’t be afraid, don’t make excuses, learn & listen.

   Go bold, go big or step aside. Or be forced out by someone with a 21st century clue.

4. dv, thanks for telling it like it is.  to the victors go the spoiled spoils.  it’s harder to clean up a mess than make one.

5. I think Jack made the point yesterday    The Democrats are losing the messaging war.

   Bring back the 50 state strategy and include in that people who can represent to local media

6. “We need to resist, insist, persist and enlist and make sure our voices and our votes count,”  Hillary Clinton

   Clinton Knocks Trump on LGBT Rights

    

7. With “Friends” like these, who needs enemies?  Bernie Sanders throws shade at Ossoff
   The Democrats’ Existential Crisis Won’t Resolve Itself

8. DV, haven’t seen the challenge put any better. And Jamie, you nailed the solutions. Banning gerrymandering at the top. Florida end ran GOP legislature by putting it on the ballot a few years ago, voters jumped for it, and it’s beginning to make a difference, as courts use it to smack the legislature around.

9. right wing could be losing its TV engine — this piece on Murdoch’s son James gets into how he means to change Fox News:

   “If the expulsion of Ailes, and, even more dramatically, O’Reilly, mean anything, it means most of all that James is in charge. And, most immediately, this means that Fox News, that constant irritant in James’ view of himself as a progressive and visionary television executive, will begin to change. Virtually overnight.”

10. When they fired the idiot SteveDoocey I’ll believe it and get rid of the various judges

11. In California there is a possibility of someone outside of the Willie Brown/Burton Axis  Kimberly Ellis

    her election as party chair would go along way to bringing in new leadership.  While Brown and Burton are nationally progressive they are asshole of repute on the local level and greed is their guiding principle

    It’s easy to ask these questions in the abstract – but realistic strategies have to include actual facts – not the alternative realities of what people imagine are the problems.

12. DV…   yup…  they won.  Now the ball is in their court to actually govern and do something for ordinary people (voters).  Unfortunately, sometimes in order for people to see that the stove really is hot they have to touch it and get burned.  It looks like we’re learning this lesson now that they’ve won.  Just hope we don’t get third degree burns before we take our hand away.

13. Jamie…  agree that your solutions are right on….   but…

    As one who gets rubbed the wrong way by the Berniacs every time he spouts on Twitter, and the fact they won’t shut up with the Russian memes even after this second bruising campaign, I will try to keep the artillery aimed at the opposition. GRUMPHHH

    I guess you need to hear again what KGC said yesterday…..   MOVE ON!

14. Renee

    Oh I have except when a situation arises as with Ossoff who just wasn’t “perfect” enough for the Bernie believers.  It is that old situation 0f making the perfect the enemy of the good.  It happened with Hillary and it is happening with the Ossoffs of the party.  We need a big tent and that means fiscally progressive but socially conservatives.  Or conservative fiscally and socially progressive.  So yes the daily Bernie ego spiel rant of ideas that were older than Methuselah 80 years ago when gobbled up by some fuzz cheeked Sophomore with no historical context does irk me.
    As far as I’m concerned he’s a combo of Elmer Gantry, Dusty Rhodes, and a two bit Huey Long.

15. DV, an excellent post, and Jamie, an excellent five point list amplified by your hit on Bernie via the article you attached.

    Unless and until Bernie demands that he be accepted as a member of the Democratic Party,  I think the Party should shut its doors to him. No more caucusing. No more tete-a-tetes on the senate subway. No more being our progressive sage. No more…no more, not until he declares himself a Democratic team player–all for one, one for all.

16. I think Bernie is having trouble finding a good role for himself.  I think he should not participate in Democratic party decisions since he has said he is not a Democrat.  Keith Ellison should be out and about with Perez.

     

17. Check please!

     

18. just saying…if you are going to be a Democrat then be one.  Sanders keeps saying he isn’t one.

    but remember the Democrats have welcomed him and are holding him out as the symbol of what the party stands for.

19. 

    thanks, cagle. your picture’s worth a thousand words and a million alternative factoids

20. ny times via msn:

    Mr. Obama’s aides say he will also not criticize Mr. Trump in his private paid speeches. The aides would not say how much Mr. Obama will be paid per speech, but former President Bill Clinton averaged more than $200,000 per speech between 2001 and 2015; former President George W. Bush is reportedly paid $100,000 to $175,000 for each appearance.

    Aides have rejected the idea that Mr. Obama should actively wage a public feud against Mr. Trump, with whom he has not spoken since the inauguration. They believe that such a fight would give the current president the high-profile political foil he wants to further energize his conservative supporters.

    Mr. Obama has also concluded that his voice is not essential in the daily back-and-forth. His aides note that a new level of civic activism among Democrats eager to challenge Mr. Trump has emerged without much encouragement from the former leader of the Democratic Party. And many of Mr. Trump’s attacks on Obama-era policies — like the Affordable Care Act — have so far failed or stalled.

    Instead, Mr. Obama is preparing remarks that focus on broader themes he hopes will keep him above the cable-television combat and the Capitol Hill debates: civic engagement, the health of the planet, the need for diplomacy, civil rights and the development of a new generation of young American leaders.

21. Yep, KGC, and I’d say the biggest test of all is whether they renew Hannity whenever his contract is up.

22. I think there is a lot of evidence of new people considering running for office.

    RR mentioned one person in her town who even got elected.

    The party’s challenge as we have seen is how to incorporate all the new people and

    what to do when there are policy disputes.   We would all do well to remember the 11th commandment and not speak ill of the candidate from your own party unless they are a miscreant

23. In Florida, all municipal (county and below) elected positions were non-partisan. No party involvement at all. Simplified things while giving folks a chance to articulate their platform in concrete terms. I liked it.

24. any chance of half-gov returning to faux news?  there was a big boost this a.m. for gov and a half to land there:

    ‘Morning Joe’: Chris Christie Is ‘Built’ For Fox News — ‘Clearly He’s A Media Personality’

    The Morning Joe crew raised the possibility Friday that Chris Christie could land a job at Fox News.

    Host Joe Scarborough — after discussing Christie’s recent radio takedown of New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning — noted that the New Jersey governor is “going to be in media” after his term ends in 2018 and could very well be “a Fox guy.”

    and is chaffetz also sniffing around that honey pot. at least this daily beast quote sounded like that
     “I started poking around to see what I might be worth and what sort of possibilities are there,” Chaffetz said. “And I got a series of ‘Let us know when you’re serious.’ Well now I can say, ‘Can you tell I am serious?’… I’ll take a little bit of time to sort out. I’d be thrilled to have a television relationship. But there’s a number of things I’d like to do.”

25. and will the dress code apply to chris and Jason?

    https://youtu.be/bn6l0SWYh0o
    Published on Apr 4, 2017

    ‘I Wasn’t Given a Pants Option’: Jedediah Bila Tells All About Days As Fox News Contributor

    A longstanding rumor in media has been that on Fox News, the women aren’t allowed to wear pants. It might interfere with the infamous “leg cam,” right?

    Back in July, three Fox anchors told this Mediaite reporter that there was no rule against wearing pants and no leg cam, as other reporters had claimed to have found. Today on The View, Jedediah Bila told a very different story while talking about the allegations of sexual harassment against Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, Bill Shine, and Roger Ailes.

    “We get wardrobes, but it’s different than here. We used to go into a room and there were a bunch of dresses you could choose from. I was told at one point I wasn’t allowed to wear orange because Roger didn’t like the color orange, so I didn’t wear orange,” revealed the former Fox regular. “I didn’t see any pants. People always say, ‘Why didn’t you wear pants?’ You’ll notice I wear pants a lot here. I didn’t wear pants because I didn’t see a pants option. I wasn’t given a pants option so I had to wear skirts.”

    She moved on to discussing the allegations lobbed by Julie Roginsky against Ailes and Shine just yesterday.

    “I worked with Julie. She’s good people. I looked at that and I said, ‘Wow, they have a problem if they have good people with good reputations coming out now and saying these things. I’ve known her. I’ve worked with her,” defended Bila.

26. DV, spot on.

    So hard to figure out how to push out a “positive” message that will appeal to the 80 or so percent of the country (by area, not by population) that shows as red on the political maps.  I think the dems have tried to push out policy statements that benefit the middle class and those below it, but I may be hearing what I want to hear.  I also think that that broad swath of the country were taken in by an absolutely false  populist sounding America first rhetoric that was tempered with lies about Hillary that they took at face value rather than consider the source.  Not exactly shure how to get past that.  I listen to Poobah and to Mudcat’s critiques of the Dem party’s messaging and wait for the pivot to what Dems could do to attract the folks they say the party has ignored without resorting to spewing the false lines of the pugns and adoption of Republican Lite policies and essentially am greeted with silence.  Would a folksy sounding homespun candidate who could emulate the Bill Clinton “I feel your pain” message turn that around?  I rather doubt it – Bill was pretty unique in that respect, and I don’t see any Obama transformational candidates in the wings. Of course I won’t be making decisions about dem campaigning writ large, so I won’t be able to misjudge and fuck it up.  I agree with those who say that a 50 state strategy is necessary, but what is that strategy.  Selling doubled down progressive policies that aren’t derided as socialism ain’t no cakewalk.  Oh, what to do?

27. White House, House of rs, Senate, and SCOTUS. We’d damn well better follow the 11th Commandment, and extend it to the Bernians. YUUUUUUUJ TENT, folks.

28. XR

    The message of the Yuuuuj tent is fine.  Does it have to be Bernie and his basically White Male privilege delivering it?

29. For books about the campaign, the media is pushing “Shattered”.  The cure for the usual anti-Hillary spiel is “The Destruction of Hillary Clinton“.

     

30. Pogo….   great comment at 2:33!

    Jamie…   it’s not a matter of “does it have to be Bernie”….    it’s a matter of that it IS Bernie.  Whether you like that fact or not….   so what.  The Democratic party either finds a way to be united or they can continue to lose.  That thought scares the shit outta me.

31. wonkette:
    Georgia’s Runoff Election: Let The Voter Suppression Games Begin!
    Well, Jesus. H. Jumped-Up Christ Marching Across The Edmund Pettus Bridge Into Tear Gas, they’re at it again. Fine, not in Selma, but in Georgia, where the state is doing what it can to reduce the turnout for the June 20 runoff election for the 6th Congressional District seat formerly held by Secretary of Destroying Healthcare Tom Price. Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff may have been the top vote-getter in the primary Tuesday, with 48% of the vote, but that was just short of the 50% plus one to win outright, so Ossoff will face the next-highest candidate, Republican Karen Handel, in the runoff. Great! May the best candidate who can garner the support of the most voters win! Only there’s a little catch: If Georgians want to vote in this election, which has suddenly become one of the hottest political stories in the country, they had to have registered by March 20, a full three months before the runoff.

    Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office insists the runoff is simply an extension of the primary held Tuesday, so obviously the registration cutoff for that primary is the final cutoff. Letting new voters register for the runoff would taint the purity of the vote, don’t you know. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is suing in federal court to have registration available until May 22, 30 days before the runoff, citing the National Voter Registration Act (aka the “Motor Voter” Law), which requires voters be allowed to register to vote in any federal election 30 days beforehand. Ezra Rosenberg, the co-director of the Lawyers’ Committee voting rights project, says this is a no-brainer

    [….]

    Slam dunk, easy-peasy, get on with the registration and campaigning, and may the best candidate win, right? Oh, but there’s a catch, and it’s a beaut: A spokesperson for Kemp, Candice Broce, Georgiasplained in an email to Huffington Post that under Georgia law, voters must be registered for the primary election in order to vote in a runoff resulting from that primary. She also said the U.S. Constitution allows states to set restrictions on voter eligibility in federal elections as long as those same restrictions apply to state elections.

    Phooey to that, says Ira Feinberg, an attorney assisting with the Lawyers’ Committee lawsuit; on the conference call, he said the Motor Voter law “clearly pre-empts state law.”

    Phooey to your phooey, replied Broce at the Georgia AG’s office, because “integrity of the elections” and stuff…

    [….]

    ….Yr Wonkette is not an elections lawyer, but it seems to us that since the runoff is, in effect, the equivalent of a general election, and since federal law specifically defines runoffs as one form of election that can’t have a registration cutoff farther out than 30 days, it doesn’t make a bit of sense for registration for an election in June to have a cutoff date three months in advance.

    Oh, sorry. We were using logic that assumes “letting people vote” is a good thing. Georgia’s logic is clearly predicated on keeping too many people from voting, because what if the wrong kind of people decide they want to vote?

     

32. A very busy day and little time to snatch seconds online of whatever is going on with the low intelligence orange one with a dead orange rat on his head life.  PT is going well, but each visit means more stretch, more pain and as I know from many visits to PT, pain from all sorts of areas of the body. Resulting in not caring about a lot of other things.

    One of the greatest benefits of the Internet has been the “sharing” of music.  Although the initial technical improvements came about for porn, it also came about for music sharing.  Many nasty court cases have occurred, most causing technology to be some what delayed, but not really stopped.  What never stopped was the sharing on the Internet of music.

    The stations on the Internet are so common as to have A/V receivers built to use online service to play music.  My favorites are vtuner for Otto’s Baroque Music and Otto’s Classical music.  I have many, many more covering all my favorites.  It is important to know that not all Internet music is equal.  Some is lower quality, some is good quality and little is excellent.  The music is compressed (zeroes and same stuff removed), empty stuff removed and lots of other stuff electronically taken care of.

     

33. Polls show that Bernie is by far the most popular pol in the country. If keeping him close, and busy as a loudmouthpiece, brings votes to Dem candidates running for Senate and House seats, then he is doing great good. We also have to keep shouting that the perfect is the enemy of the merely excellent.

34. It’s not about Bernie.  Get over your Bernie-obsession/blame-game.

    Either embrace progressives or continue to lose.

     

35. Grab Your Pitchforks, America, Your 401(K) May Need Defending from Congress – The Wall Street Journal

    https://apple.news/ApGYV6d0QRZmHLB4cPY9UdA

    Maybe embrace ‘me sooner than later, too.

    “Instead of penalizing retirement saving, lawmakers should be making it easier, perhaps even mandatory — as it is for members of Congress.”

36. Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve all the blame for Democrats’ failure – CNN

    https://apple.news/A4Kv7izdfS5-k3YPU67ruvA

     

    “The Democratic Party is essentially a legal money-laundering entity for individual and corporate donors, especially in presidential years when the party’s nominee dictates the flow of money. Big donors don’t care about party-building at the local level; they care about being attached to national brands. Astonishingly, at a time when people abhor the buying of elections by the rich, the party at its recent national meeting approved taking in large corporate donations.”

37. Speaking of old movies, with Cagney, no less,

    “Never Steal Anything Small”

38. Thanks for the nice comments, and Jamie nailed it on her solution list.

    I would like to take a minute and expand on her #5.  We need to do more than rebut their bullshit,  but rather to develop some type of national campaign – maybe weekly – perhaps the weekly Progressives Resist commercial ran all over the internet and offered nationally.  We have party leaders – all of them – take turns every week calling total bullshit on what the Republicans are doing.  I’m willing to send in $100 if they put a real plan together.

    Olbermann’s stuff is brilliant – but it’s Olbermann.  A weekly address / commercial by THE Democratic party – official – calling out the lies and manipulations.  Oh well, I’m dreaming.

39. Agreed, DV, but the big issue is who delivers. Schumer? Pelosi? Stupid after stupid.

40. Face to face beats tv. However, in WY or AK face to face is reeeeaaally difficult. Fortunately, the Dems can make door to door face to face contact very easily in the states they need and ought to have won in 2016 : WI, MI, OH, PA, and NC.

41. They can rotate the person,giving time to Democrats who can use the exposure.

     

42. Blue, you are so disingenuous. You excoriate others here telling them it’s not about Bernie!, get over your Bernie! oBsession then linking a fucking article criticizing the DNC as a money laundering scheme written BY A FUCKING BERNIE! SUPPORTER and that does little beyond spew recycled Bernie! campaign talking points. Who’s got the Bernie! obsession?

43. Yes, KGC, get some new faces out there.

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