Most won’t, but some will.
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No, I can’t. And lest anyone think Cronkite was some Coastal Elite, he was from St. Joseph, Missouri. There’s a museum there with a reproduction of his father’s dental office.
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In telling them, we will be reminding ourselves.
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That’s really interesting - I had some vague notions of how the loss of unions had negatively impacted working class support for the Democrats (and vice versa), but hadn’t thought about that specific dynamic.
What’s disturbing is that I don’t know how you recreate that engagement and education, in the absence of unions (and all the other organizations people aren’t a part of anymore), especially since the Democrats’ response to current events (and in particular, the last election) seems to be, “Well, how can we manipulate the know-nothings into voting for us instead?”
What’s really struck me about working class voting patterns, post-Reagan, is people voting against their own economic self-interest. I always assumed that other interests (e.g. bigotry) were being put ahead of their economic self-interest, but the last 12 or 16 years, in particular the last couple, have me thinking that a lot of low(no)-information voters don’t actually know what their interests are. If unions did nothing else, it was make their members informed about their interests. That alone is a pretty powerful counter to a lot of the mis/disinformation coming out the Republican party right now.
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I think that’s an effective response, and given the number of videos I’ve seen in just the last few weeks, of Trump voters saying they were certain that Trump wouldn’t do specific things he had promised to do (that would hurt them), I suspect there’s going to be a lot of opportunities to use it. (Along with the rejoinder of “well, if you thought he definitely wouldn’t do these particular things that he promised, what made you believe he’d do anything that he promised?”)
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Local democratic parties should hold regular events where volunteers help people with various shit they have to deal with, such as fix broken tail lights, help with taxes, etc. They can talk to people about politics without making the event explicitly about politics. I don’t know how much it would help but they need to try something.
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Yeah, I’ve seen a number of people suggesting lately that the Democrats use their infrastructure to provide various forms of aid to people (especially what with the Trump administration threatening to cut so much). It seems like a big ask of the party, and the party infrastructure is weakest where it’s most needed, but yeah, it seems like it would be a lot more effective than taking out expensive tv ads, etc.
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Yeah, that shit would be superhelpful I think… plus, letting more people influence policy decisions within the party… like, doing the work to figure out what policies people actually want from the Democrats, rather than a more top-down, expert driven approach. You don’t need to freeze out expertise (poli-sci dudes, etc), just have them in conversation with rank and file members to actively craft policies…
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The Black Panther Party of the '60’s had a great model of this strategy. I kinda expect the fascists would have a similar response, which might play in our favor, maybe. Organizing stuff is not my strong suite, but I am up for participation. Already planning my garden with an eye to supplying our local food bank.
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Something I posted in a different forum last week:
There’s a business along my route to work that still has the typical Trump shrine out front. Among the iconography is one of a variety of signs I’ve seen in other yards, this one being “Kamala = Crime / Trump = Safety.”
Okay, so first of all, there’s the sexism in how the respective people are named, but that’s not even the part that really gets me. The essential message here, and in other similar signs, is “[Harris] = Bad / Trump = Good.” (Say, which one of those two people is a felon?)
This is why actual facts, policy positions, or any real substance in the Democrat platform simply falls flat: you’re literally trying to reach an audience that longs for the theater and kayfabe of television wrestling and intellectual debates bore them. They either can’t or won’t follow a reasoned discussion, but scream out some idiotic nonsense about immigrants eating pets and see them cheer.
It’s not that Joe Everyman there is stupid, although he is probably ignorant about a lot of things because they don’t affect him directly. Ignorance breeds fear, which is easy to prey upon, especially when those fears are launched in a shotgun barrage of misinformation. Yeah, it would be great if the Democratic Party did a better job of getting out their message, but they also need to stop trying to be wishy-washy middle of the road pablum and go back to being a party of progress. (Or at the very least, the closest we’re actually going to get right now.)
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A New York judge on Friday upheld President-elect Donald J. Trump’s felony conviction but signaled that he was inclined to spare him any punishment… Juan M. Merchan, indicated that he favored a so-called unconditional discharge of Mr. Trump’s sentence, a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation.
A New York Times review of the 30 felony false-records convictions in Manhattan since 2014 revealed that no other defendant received an unconditional discharge.
I wish I was surprised by this. Trump winning the election meant that there’s no actual punishment to his conviction at all, except being branded a “felon,” which he’ll probably wear with pride.
Some of the details are even dumber than I expected:
Justice Merchan declined on Friday to overturn the jury’s verdict, rebuffing Mr. Trump’s claim that his election victory should nullify his conviction.
And last month, the same judge rejected another argument Mr. Trump had mounted in hopes of getting the case dismissed: that his conviction had violated a recent Supreme Court ruling granting presidents broad immunity for their official actions.
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Hakeem Jeffries’ speech to House. Media-noted “zinger” at 7:00 mark, but the entire segment is very much worth experiencing.
‘It’s time for us to come together’: Jeffries pushes unity but vows to fight ‘MAGA extremism’
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The house democrats fucking better. They better stand up for trans people and not throw them under the bus…
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So he has to wear an ankle bracelet, serve White House arrest and a weekly check in with his parole officer?
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There’s not even probation here. It’s just… nothing. I never realized that one of the possible results of being convicted of a felony was the judge saying, “Okay, you’re a felon, we’re all done here, bye.” That is, indeed, a pretty “lenient” alternative to jail or probation…
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I see no reasonable rationale for “no jailtime”. If Merchan was concerned about upsetting a president-elect’s upcoming term in office and the logistics and momentum of the WH turnover, then why not sentence him to jail but with incarceration not to start until after the end of this second term? The numerous threats made to Merchan and his family for over a year now may have something to do with it. Slate magazine’s article hints at Merchan wanting to achieve something out of the mess, and that the timing is a factor. Excerpt: …no jail time or probation, but sentencing would still cement the former and future president as a convicted felon… The implication could be that Merchan is laying down a marker that he will go ahead with the sentencing at this late date to demonstrate that the judiciary will not be intimidated by the incoming president.
Not much of a marker, in my opinion.
One explanation for Justice Merchan’s last-second decision to sentence Trump.
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It sounds like jail time isn’t necessary always involved in such cases, but something is, and there’s a lot of options between “jail time” and “unconditional release.” I could understand, however, if the judge was seeing a lot of options in between as meaningless for someone sitting in the White House, and jail time wasn’t feasible for an elected president, even if he hadn’t taken office yet. But still… The stain of being a convicted felon isn’t much for a guy who is one big (orange) stain.
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Okay, dear Guardian, but I’m actually more worried about a more widespread, deeply entrenched, and newly emboldened form of domestic terrorism, as described here, in an example of the kind of reporting your writers could do:
Williams dropped an envelope with no return address in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox. He’d loaded it with a flash drive and a gold Oath Keepers medallion.
It was addressed to me.
The documents laid out a remarkable odyssey. Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah.
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