Hehehehehe. Unfortunately, he is probably gonna tell us that he is invading Chicago đ
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Hehehehehe. Unfortunately, he is probably gonna tell us that he is invading Chicago đ
An absolutely ridiculous comparison.
Yeah, I donât think a Black, woman, or queer Bond is still Bond. Especially when there have been different variations of the super spy (Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne) that could easily work with a minority actor.
Just as Democrats are switching focus from failed leaders in the House and Senate to vibrant, aggressive governors and mayors, we also need to shift our media consumption to non-profit outlets like ProPublica and non-profit partisan outlets like The Texas Observer.
Also, there is a difference between partisan and propaganda. Fox is state media and inherently dishonest. Unfortunately, too many Democrats like Buttigieg for instance treat Fox as if itâs merely partisan. A mistake
Make this morally bankrupt asshole famous.
He was treated for depression!
Even though he had some contrarian elements, I really think his stroke pulled a number on him. He changed drastically
We have an extraordinary example of someone who is a unifier beyond expectation right now, and it's Zohran Mamdani. He does not throw anyone under the bus. The most important thing he did? Listen to what has people most upset. Propose policy that met those needs.
Or that HIV doesnât cause AIDS
Michelle Obama was not head of HHS and I think âeat a vegetable and play outsideâ is a very different platform than âvaccines cause autism.â
đ¤Śđź Funny, just today I was re-reading about disturbing publishing decisions of The Atlantic in its past. About as bad as it gets.
GMTA
Anyway, Iâm glad to know the president is still technically alive so he can watch this tomorrow www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...
I think, like Manchin, she's hit her wall.
It would have made some sense to run as the Fox News friendly current Fetterman. He would have still likely beaten Lamb just on name recognition
You could say that Fetterman is just an opportunist â also a fair point â but Biden wasnât that popular in 2022. He was underwater â averaging 40% approval throughout the primary race. Fetterman was running during what many considered a Red Wave election.
True, though I think Fetterman gained a lot of media attention in 2020 for trash talking Trump and later running as the anti-Manchin/Sinema â Bidenâs guaranteed â51st vote.â Thatâs not a contrarian platform. Conor Lamb for instance had to distance himself from Manchin, who supported him.
It helps that the shine is off of her demeanor. It feels like maybe the last real opportunity to unseat her before she retires.
Iâve considered Susan Collins a political Road Runner but maybe Platner is the Acme candidate whoâll succeed.
When you see union issues depicted on US-filmed, scripted TV shows, it's a good time to remember that nearly every single person who made that show possible is a union member.
GOOD!!!!!
Platner: No one cares that you pretend to be remorseful as you sell out to lobbyists. Symbolic opposition does not reopen hospitals. Weak condemnations do not bring back Roe V Wade. Maine deserves better than Susan Collins.
Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy.bsky.social was curious; so he asked Ben Smith â co-founder of Semafor, and former media columnist at the New York Times â if Smith thought democracy is under threat in the U.S. Good question.
For one, the people making the threats assume that there are no segments of the Dem coalition who would also bail if the nominee adopted these preferred positions (esp re Israel/Gaza). I find that infuriating
I think if you want the party to support your particular position, you need to advocate for it and build broader support for it within the party. The threats donât actually work.
Also the whole sugar versus corn syrup thing with Coke, where most of the difference comes from glass versus plastic bottles
Sort of like with Coke, where itâs all about nostalgia and opposition to change www.playtyperguy.com/p/cracker-ba...
He cratered in 2015 when he refused to accept that Trump could win the primary, despite all data. He shifted in pundit/historian mode and argued that parties just didnât nominate people like Trump â though that is bad history, as well.
I have never seen a single news article about whether or not Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer or Kristen Gillibrand need to assure Muslim New Yorkers that they're against Islamophobia and anti-Arab / anti-Asian bigotry
Yep. Optics not great. He may have been sharp still (or sharper on a bad day than trump will ever be), but he couldnât sell his ideas. You could give him benefit only for so long. Letâs face it, Netanyahu f*cked him, and he refused to stand against him. Too many Dems still making same mistake.
Yeah, as I said, I've seen someone argue that his union-member son shouldn't have to belong to a union if he doesn't want to. Of course, if people can just abstain from union membership, eventually the union will cease to exist.
One can EASILY make the case that a lot of "working class" people by and large do NOT know what "right to work" laws are. Anti-union, anti-worker. Not that hard to reframe it. Why a desire by the Dem party to do so doesn't exist is a great question
If a president lost re-election because they botched the response to a terrorist attack but somehow won a second term later and then put an actual terrorist in charge of Homeland Security. That's RFK Jr as head of HHS
Yes, ironically, a coverup of Trump's decline is probably rooted in the sense that MAGA collapses without him. Vance is an unpopular weasel. Democrats, however, believed that Biden was a political anchor.
My hot take is that Biden wasnât talked out of running because he was in âmental declineâ but because his polls were in the toilet for years with no sign of improvement. Had he been ahead of Trump by 10 points theyâd have kept him in even if he drooled all over the podium.
I'm not. And I don't think his age alone was the problem, nor would I say he didn't make mistakes. Obviously, he did.
Why are we acting as if Biden wasn't diagnosed with cancer? Also, there is an emerging narrative that Biden's age alone was why his approval was so low (exit polls would argue otherwise).
Someone please kill me right now.
I think that's not entirely true. Learning loss is a real issue.
The problem is survivor's bias. It is very hard to prove that more people would have died. Thus, people focus on the real harm they experienced (fair or not).
I just think it's absurd to use right-wing rhetoric. It's like saying "As your Democratic governor, I am a proud groomer" to demonstrate you are pro-LGBTQ. That doesn't make sense.
I'm not sure he was "pandering." He fundamentally opposed those efforts himself. And the larger debate was over whether he should determine whether people should take risks of not. I think it's fair to acknowledge this wasn't just "right-wing whining." It was a growing issue.
Unions can only work if most people participate. (Imagine if every citizen could just sort of 'opt out' on taxes. "Nah, I'm good.") The Right realized this was an effective way to weaken them.
A friend is a cop whose father is a Republican and he went on about how "right to work" is only fair because his son shouldn't have to join the union if he doesn't want to. Conceding the "right to work" argument is a problem.
But also whatâs confusing about âanti-unionâ? It makes more sense to me than âright-to-workâ.
Republicans spent decades learning how to take their unpopular agenda and use language and messaging to make it more popular outside their base, and Democrats still have people arguing that itâs beneath us to do the same.
âIs portraying pretty people enjoying their beverage a winning strategy for Coke when this insults the viewer who should know this isnât the average Coke-drinking experience?â
The fallout certainly wasn't what liberals assumed would happen. People were calling DeSantis a mass murderer. And his popularity *within his state* swelled while Kate Brown's plummeted in Oregon.
I think Democratic-run states made tough choices they believed were in the best interests of the public. Unfortunately, Republicans gambled bit with reopening businesses and especially schools with limited negative fallout.
Trump was openly campaigning on ending most mitigation measures, etc, by the fall.
Trump openly opposed shutdowns by the summer. He was posting "Liberate Michigan!' etc. In fairness, it's like suggesting Biden supported the more extreme right-wing abortion bans in 2022 bc he was president when they happened.
Yeah, I think we need to be honest about some of the backlash here. In PDX, there were nightly protests but businesses sill had to shut down by 10 p.m. There were also limits to the size of outdoor gatherings. And there were limitations about religious observance, which was a big deal for many
Yes, but that is a source of backlash for the right, as they insist it was the case of Democrats "picking sides," etc.
I might disagree that it was all astroturf, though. I don't think the right was willing to accept longterm mitigation -- masks, shutdowns, etc.
Anyway...Dems need to break out of the impulse to see 200 white people protesting against Covid restrictions as "the voice of the people which we must heed" while seeing 10X as many people protesting racist police violence as "a niche special interest group that's out of step with real Americans."
The Right was never on board with any covid mitigation. I think there's a lot of mainstream Democratic revisionist history about 2020 -- perhaps influenced by how those first few weeks felt like decades. But there were marches against shut downs within a couple weeks.
Only the most annoying people in the world use the term "unserious person." Blocked.
At least once a month I come across some post or reply somewhere that claims WA state is a right to work state and it isn't. But by the comment they clearly also don't know what the phrase refers to in law.
It's more accurate to say that the decades of propaganda around "right to work", coupled with the lack of any serious political efforts to counter it, mean the average American doesn't have a solid understanding. The history of right to work is blatant, atrocious racism and greed!
You do comprehend that the right might've succeeded in passing union-busting legislation because of the banal term?
If anything, the mistake Democrats make is assuming voters are far smarter than they actually are.
Also, and I'm just spitballing here, but also, what if rhetoric was a thing, and how you phrase things has some effect, large or small, on whether ppl think something is good or bad? Is it possible, logically possible, that choosing our language carefully could help us win? Probably crazy, I know.
Also, if I'm a soda company and my competitor calls my product "Piss Water," I should probably not repeat that, even if someone could easily look up the actual name of my soda -- especially if my sales have declined steadily since my competitor started calling my product "piss water."
I wouldn't recommend repeating right-wing rhetoric in any case, but certainly not when unions have been getting their asses kicked for the past few decades.
It's not about "smart" or "stupid" it's about most people lacking context. Without context the phrase "right to work" is objectively good. Everyone wants the right to work. The fact that this phrase refers to laws that literally decrease our right to work is context most people do not have.
A reasonable person might assume "right to work" is positive -- like "right to health care" or "right to privacy." It's not as if we're fully in the Bizarro World, where everything that sounds good is actually bad.
Because most people don't know what that phrase really means and it's one of the many reasons we have such a weak labor movement in this country. Everyone who is politically educated knows, but that's like 20% of Americans.
I will just keep repeating this until it sticks: "Right to work," like "pro-life," "death tax," and "partial birth abortion," is right-wing propaganda terms. There is nothing clever or smart about using terms Republicans *deliberately* conceived to mask their true intent.
Trump wasn't seen yesterday by the White House press pool. He wasn't seen today. He has no public events scheduled this weekend. Trump hasn't been seen in public since Weds, and it's unclear if he'll be seen in public until Tues. That's pretty damn weird.
Oh, Stephen, you do say the sweetest things. đ
Dem criticism is likely why prominent Dems are fighting. Early this year, Dems were trying to work with Trump (e.g. Whitmer) and voting to confirm his nominees (including Noem and Rubio). Fetterman was overtly courting MAGA.
On the upside, it is apparently slow and perhaps painful
I called this segregationist way back in February: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
Rudy Giuliani was heading to a drunk driving emergency when he was attacked by a bear, but he saved the woman the bear was chasing, and the bear was an illegal immigrant.
I think it is absurdly obvious that something very dramatic needs to happen to get the US on a better track, and it would be insane to think that can happen without some large systemic change. But just changing in itself doesn't make me think it will improve, even if on paper the system is better.
Sure, GOP did an effective job driving down numbers of LGBTQ issues starting in 2021 (as Dems ignored it all as a distraction) but they also seized on the economy pretty early.
So it is easier to say that âBiden policies were great but we lost bc of bigotry alone.â
But there are mainstream Dems who really donât want to admit that the Biden admin failed.
That doesnât make sense to me considering that Bidenâs approval on the economy and immigration in particular were fatal. Harris could have run to the right of Trump on LGBTQ issues and she wouldâve still lost based on what exit polls made clear
I donât disagree but that is actually a debatable issue among many mainstream Democrats. They believe Harris lost bc of cultural backlash/overall bigotry.
âStaggeringly dishonestâ Tariffs are taxes on Americans, and Bessent (and Trump) know it
âAt Goodwill of North Georgia, the number of Black people who for the first time ask for help finding work is up 41% over the past three months, compared with a 23% increase in the number of new white job seekers.â www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...
This has always been the democrats problem, accepting the Republican frame.
Itâs the same way republicans own the narrative by calling their opinion about abortion âpro-lifeâ. Who isnât pro-life? Dems should start using the term anti-choice.
Hereâs the police statement. Marisa Kabas got it. Of course his spokesperson lied.
And itâs not even as if weâre asking them not to use a âfancyâ term. Just stop using the right-wing term!
I repeat: âRight to workâ is a right-wing term. If the GOP starts calling Democrats the âPedophile Party,â we shouldnât adopt that verbiage and then tell voters we dismiss as âsemi-literateâ to Google the correct term.
Yes. We are so immersed in Right Wing disinformation, even in mainstream media which hire a lot of Right Wingers to do the RWng side of their "both sides" coverage--that even Dems use RWng disinfo language without realizing they're doing so.
"Right To Work" means that your employer can fire you at any time, without cause. They don't even have to tell you why.
Democrats arenât âpandering or parsing languageâ if they donât say âpro-life,â âpartial birth abortion,â âschool choiceâ or âdeath tax,â either.
Liberal snottiness has not exactly helped us win many elections, but in this case, the smugness is especially misplaced because âright to workâ is not an objective term. It is right-wing framing deliberately intended to minimize its true intent.
There's only one way to stop the rumors about Donald Trump's health: a press conference. Why won't he talk to the press, and why isn't the media doggedly demanding it?
Thank you for this! (I think) Iâm a reasonably smart person but it took me 55 of my 58 years to learn what âright to workâ meant.
Democrats should be forced into reeducation camps so they can learn effective messaging and avoid traps set for them by the bad faith crowd.
I do think transparency is important and helps maintain credibility.
"Right to work" is so nakedly, chillingly Orwellian. Don't use it. Just say anti-union; or "right to fire". Because it's protecting the right of bosses to fire you, not workers to get paid. (Children as young as five have the right to work in the textile factory! Yippee!)
Its a bit like the Chomsky quote where some media person thinks Chomsky is accusing him of being a groomed liar in his position and Chomsky is like "obviously not... But you wouldn't have this job if they didn't know what you were going to say" See also: thomas, clearance: bribery accusations
I donât want my job to be propping up the Democratic Party.
Iâve worked for places in the past where any coverage of certain topics were shut down (e.g Israel/Gaza, Democratic Party issues with POC voters).