My only regret is that I didn’t have the balls to go as negative in my projections as my gut was telling me to go. I actually came close to making a projection even worse than what happened tonight. I seriously considered making a projection that we would lose basically everywhere, even in the governor’s races.
I talked myself out of it for two reasons. First, the polls didn’t support such a bleak outcome. And, second, I thought I was letting my emotions get the better of my reasoning. I wasn’t willing to subject my own black mood on all of you and so I held back and gave a more optimistic projection.
My Senate projections are actually looking pretty good other than Kansas (and maybe North Carolina) and being wrong about runoffs. But my gubernatorial projections were way off.
For a long time I had some hope that we’d outperform the polls, but I lost that hope in the last two weeks when I saw how the polls were breaking.
The momentum at the end was all against us. I sensed it but I didn’t fully embrace it.
In the end, my emotions did color my projections even though I thought I was bending over backwards to avoid that.
This country just became a much more unpleasant place.
I hope we’re all pleased with ourselves.
So it goes.
Don’t be hard on yourself. Other than predicting who the GOP nominee in 2012 would be, my forecasts have been pretty damn accurate.
I couldn’t shake the fact that polls would be inaccurate in certain states, based on history, and Dems efforts to GOTV. We just can’t do it, man. And it depresses me. 38% turnout (according to Frum).
I meant my forecasts except this election had been pretty accurate*
http://web.archive.org/web/20061014004523/http:/billmon.org/archives/000805.html
Interesting. From 2003.
Yo can fight the media, you can fight money, you can fight vote suppression. Idiocy is damned near invincible, though.
One question is whether they’ll overplay their hand.
(They will.)
The second is will they get the proper blame for it.
(See above.)
We need to get mean.
Yes we do need to get mean, but it won’t happen. You say idiocy is damned near invincible, and you are right. However, the idiocy is well distributed across party lines. As far as I am concerned anyone supporting just about any mainstream candidate in either party is an idiot. The whole game is fixed. Root for Tweedledum or Tweedledee to win?
Idiotic on the face of it.
AG
And so the lesson I learned in Lamont/Lieberman bears out: the polls are going to be right and if you feel different you are going to be wrong.
I think the worst part is I just don’t have a clue how to move forward. Oh I can suggest things but national Dems are about as likely to listen and implement as they are to defend and tout Dem policies. So basically I’m at a loss.
Get ready for two things:
Good.
Democrats should have let the Republicans shut it down and default, as it would have been hung around the neck of Republicans.
Yes, it would have been bad, and yada yada. But you don’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, or whichever “toughen up and take it” quip you want to use.
Shutdown, fine. But default, I don’t know.
The more chaos there is, the more people tend towards the more fascist party.
Look at what’s happening right now. People are discontent. Why? Well, in part, because incomes haven’t risen in 15 years. What do they do in response? Vote en masse for the party that has done everything possible to keep their incomes down.
In some ways, I’m glad that the political story will now be Republican Congress against Democratic President. That clarifies things. But I have no confidence at all that people will blame the Rs instead of the Ds for the ensuing chaos.
We may need a reprise of Bush/Hastert for people to come to their senses. But I don’t think there will be much of a country to save after that.
The problem is an knowledge issue. If you look at votes on ballot issues, voters want the right things. All the marijuana initiatives and all the minimum wage initiatives had strong majorities; Florida’s wasn’t enacted only because there’s a 60% threshold for Constitutional Amendments (which I wish my home state of California had)
The problem is that people don’t understand what the Democrats and the Republicans stand for. Based on the Pew poll of voting types, nonpartisans have no idea who runs what in Congress. If we can just get voters to understand what Republicans are for and what Democrats are for, we’ll win strong majorities even with the voters that came out today.
If “nonpartisans” still don’t know which party has controlled the House since 2010 (now till 2016), and that there are actually two houses of Congress, I don’t think they ever will. And let’s just say the corrupt corporate media isn’t here to help.
It’s not a knowledge issue when one is actually braindead.
No, they don’t. I was listening to SXM Progressive radio last week when a caller said, “Look, the President can fire Senators and judges, right?” He was astounded that the answer was “no”.
Poll tests have a very bad past and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know how to keep them fair, but I sure wish there was some way to ensure that voters had some grasp of how the government works.
it’s the public school education system – civics classes, in contrast to charter school and vocational school specialization – training workers with no knowledge base for participating in civil society.
I agree with your observation. Voters saw reasonable points – a few I talked with weren’t going to vote because they are upset with the situation. I told them the only way to change that is to elect better candidates (they knew who the “better candidates were in this case). I met voters who didn’t know that Mitch had vowed to block all of Obama’s endeavors – other issues we discuss here often voters had never seen discussed but understood immediately when it was presented to them . that’s because we propose a way out for real issues for most people. The lies don’t alter the underlying hardships that people know that they are facing.
Isn’t that Grimes’ fault?
I was in MT and SD
Did the Dem candidates address local issues and concerns? Or did they just run on control of the Senate?
All politics is local.
they ran on issues of importance to each state: a rough list: top priority was take back the political process from big money/ corporations, also increase minimum wage, public control of public lands (vs corporations exploitation thereof), Obamacare/ expand and/or improve, preserve medicare, pro-hunting but background checks, no gov shutdown, reduce cost of student loans for students [all kinds of education], science!!!. the Republican opponents ran against Obama. very little mention of control of the Senate though it was implied in corporations/ big $ interests in controlling political process
“take back the political process from big money/ corporations” How do you do that — with your own $20,000 a plate dinners? Democrats take almost as much as Republicans and that’s just because the Koch’s only back the crazies.
dems take the same amount? Sherman Adelson and the Koch bros? I don’t think so. but, whatever, campaign finance reform, to use the old phrase.
It’s from general obscuring of info in the media – 24 hr coverage that amounts to white noise
I hate to say it, but I think voters understand the differences perfectly well.
There are always going to be bullies, or bad guys, of one sort or another. What changes over time is the strength and effectiveness of the opposition. And sometimes, that opposition isn’t merely inept, but also corrupt (Cuomo, e.g.).
With HRC at the top of our ticket and becoming the embodiment of the brand, Team D is in for a shellacking.
We on the left always think salvation, redemption, is just around the corner. If only we worked harder to overturn CU! If only Charlie Christ had a better organization in certain counties! But HRC will bring us unlimited votes from women!
This is just plain old magical thinking. It’s a day for dark views, but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the game is up. With the country on an inexorable march to WIng-Nuttery, with the GOP having just tried its level best to alienate voters, it may be time to conclude that the forces of darkness have achieved a lasting and durable victory that will extend for many (more) decades.
The President does not want us to give in to cynicism. Wise advice from a wise man. But it is not cynical to see the GOP as the people-oppressing, lying sack of weasels that they are. If the left keeps telling the voters that we can work with the GOP because ‘we’re determined to Get Things Done,’ we will keep losing. Only when Dems tell the voters that the other side wants their savings, their homes, their kids’ educations — everything but whatever labor the rich need for their comfort — will voters care.
And if you think this is bad, imagine being under the rule of a Western-backed dictator who, no matter what, always wins in the end, giving you and your fellow citizens yet another harsh break. Alienation leads no place good, and sadly, our elected officials (both parties) are doling it out like Halloween candy. These foolish choices will end up leading to catastrophic outcomes.
This is already baked in the cake. Not “if we don’t Do Something.” No “But Hillary…” No “once we reform campaign finance, we’ll start to get somewhere.’ No. The game is up. We’ve lost.
And of course “we’ve lost” gets us all off the hook from actually trying.
Good lord, we’ve made huge progress on issues. The gap is with connecting the winning issues to the candidates. People literally voted against personhood and then for a guy who loves personhood in colorado.
Hell, incomes haven’t risen with productivity or with GDP since the 1980s.
I don’t want default, just like I don’t want civil war. That said, we can’t always get what we want. Sometimes it’s just not in the cards.
And what did Democrats do to change it? Absolutely nothing! Trillions for Wall Street Banks, chump change $1000 rebate for the rest of us. Doesn’t go far when you’ve already lost your job. Oh yeah, those jobs. Instead of just playing with the numbers, pretending that people don’t really want jobs and are “voluntarily” leaving the workforce, they could have proposed real 1932 type solutions. But then the big contributions would stop coming from the corporations.
Point in fact, EFCA, making it easier to start a union without intimidation. In 2008 Democrats held House, Senate, and had a new President elected to turn the country around. They could have passed EFCA and other worker friendly legislation. Instead they ran from it like a dead skunk and touted passing the lawyer friendly Lily Ledbetter Act.
Default would have destroyed millions of lives in this country. At the end of the day, I’m glad my preferred political party wasn’t willing to do that.
It’s the disadvantage we will always have.
We weren’t going to default, never, ever. It was used as a cudgel to get a Grand Bargain.
Watch for it again come 2015-2016. I doubt the president will throw his baby overboard — the ACA, though maybe Medicaid will see some cuts — but SS and Medicare will be on the chopping block.
Sorry, but people have been telling me that on the internet for 6 years. It hasn’t happened.
Just because parts of the House caucus saved him from himself doesn’t mean anything. Food stamps and Medicare have already taken cuts, Medicare taking cuts as a result of debt ceiling deal, and food stamps takes a beating with each new funding round.
Obama either gets his pen out, or strikes a grand bargain. Or Ted Cruz rears his head and stops Obama from himself once more.
I don’t think it would have ruined millions of lives, and ultimately, this Empire is in permanent decline, which many liberals will use cognitive dissonance to deny, but there it is.
Sometimes there has to be drastic change or no change occurs.
Fox News broadcasts 24/7.
The “libruul” media is owned and operated by defense contractors and plays the BothSidesTM do it game, ensuring that enough people stay at home to give the fascists a chance.
As a far-left radical, I’m willing to accept bad things if it can lead to better things sooner than letting shit hit the nadir over a long period of time.
If you had a batch of money in T-bonds. Like the Mexican devaluation, it would hit the upper middle class but had little effect on the rich (diversified international investments) and poor (no savings anyway).
I lose debates with myself on a regular basis.
OTOH, I win all those same debates!
This is the win-win/lose-lose of debating with oneself.
I’ll be honest, if Nate Silver or Wang say it’s going to be a bad day, I’m going with their projections until they’ve been wrong enough to be annoyed.
I was always concerned that everyone was trying to unskew the polls. It’s not even worth it.
Every since he started taking corporate pay, Nate Silver’s writings have had a distinct rightward bias.
No, they haven’t.
I did GOTV going door to door in MT and SD, both Weiland and Curtis are remarkable candidates and remarkable individuals, so smart and compassionate, great positions, thoughtful, and so inspiring to voters. Weiland just gave a great concession speech- it’s not over, it’s just beginning, we’re taking our country back from the big $. as Booman has said before, talking to voters, citizens, is the key, the only way to break through the barrage of lies. it’s a long process. I feel really bad about the results tonight, but good about the candidates that are stepping forward. the problems of the non 1% aren’t going anywhere, and other problems, e.g., climate change, are going to get worse. lies can only get them so far
“We’re” taking the country back from the big money?
Who “we?”
Oh.
You mean the Democrats?
Give me a break!!!
Big money owns both parties and the media that propagandize the whole fix.
Get real.
Step away from the media with your brains in the air at least long enough to clear your fucking head. The fix is in when Republicans win and it’s also in when Democrats win. The fix is always in here, and only a revolutionary turn of events is going to change that. I don’t see it happening, myself, but one way or another this rotted-out system is going to have to break and fail just as did the U.S.S.R. Too much profit-taking will run this ship of state aground eventually.
Watch.
AG
Rand and Ron Paul are the epitome of “Fuck you, I’ve got mine”.
I’m quite happy here in MN. Dems are overperforming expectations. An island of sanity here. Al Franken for another 6; Dayton for another 4. most statewide offices look good. Even if the GOP squeaks in the house (not looking likely at this point, but could change) they won’t hang on for more than two years.
I’m also pleased at how the west coast and a number of other areas that were much more swingy 20 years ago are playing out.
Another interesting note: Johnson, challenger to Dem Mark Dayton for Gov, went with ebola for his last few ads. In a state with a lot of African immigrants, he thought he could whip up some hatred, implied Dayton was weak on ebola (wait…what?). Yet it didn’t work. Perhaps it even backfired. No ebola here, after all. He went down in flames.
Feel depressed if you want – 2016 favors the dems as much as this year favored the Republicans, and the GOP’s incompetence may not be noted everywhere, but it’s solidifying a base of states that may act as the democrats’ version of the deep south in elections for decades to come – long after Texas and Mississippi flip in the next decade.
I live in MN too but I’m not happy. We’re doing well but how long can we survive as an island of sanity?
As long as it takes. Diversity and strength of economy, and an educated workforce, will continue to drive us forward as others rot.
we’ll shoot, I may have to move to Minnesota.
The big cavaet is that we have absolutely horrible – and I mean horrible – sports teams (except the Wild).
Draconian ID laws will prevent Texas and Mississippi from flipping. How many did Texas disenfranchise this election? 600,000? 700,000?
Those states will remain plantations — well forever!
I did put my forecast out 10 years. TX is already majority minority. It’s an obstacle, but not insurmountable.
ugh…jus ugh. So how soon before Impeachment proceedings, or am I being too cynical?
Impeachment hearings would be a good thing. The kind of overreach that would strengthen the Democrats immensely in 2016. We’re fighting a lot of fights. It’s hard to win when the corporate media and corporate money are against you. Our system is corrupt and broken.
That said, demographics remain on our side. We may not live to see the day the crazy wave breaks. But break it will.
Yeah, bring that on. Sadly, they may be slightly too clever for that these days. But you never know.
Are you really sure that ten or so Democrats won’t cross to vote for conviction?
People like Durbin would impeach their grandmother for a buck.
Well, a stupendous historic massacre on par with the catastrophic election of 2010, even without considering illegitimate elections in vote suppressing states like TX and NC. Voters brains have clearly rotted in their heads, but you hold elections with the citizens you have, I guess.
Leaving aside the bigger question of how ill this bodes for 2016, the more immediate question is how the hapless Dems will be responding to the new improved Repub Congress. Will they now follow McConnnell’s blueprint of total obstruction in their turn? When Repubs had their backs to the wall they never wavered in their total opposition. Of what use are senate Dems if they quail at the prospect?
How many vetoes will Obama be willing to issue? Hundreds? Or will he play Clinton and find ways to cooperate in disastrous Repub legislation? Congress controls the purse, and he will immediately be presented with budget and spending bills sporting dozens of poison pills, many involving the environment and fossil fuels. Will he keep shutting down the gub’mint in the face of Repub refusals to strip their poison? Repubs know there is no price to be paid for shutting down the hated gub’mint. And wait till the next debt ceiling crisis. There will have to be non-payment of something, some default.
It’s hard to imagine this doesn’t end in another impeachment show trial, especially since there is again no price to be paid by Repubs for indulging in it. It’s what our corrupt corporate media has been angling for as a grand climax of the Obama years.
He’ll finally be part of the bi-partisanship he craves.
C’mon…he’s a compromiser. He will talk a good game but play to tie, and playing to tie against a team and is playing to win is playing to lose. Obama won’t lose…he’s taken care of for the rest of his life by the big money that bought him unless he rocks the boat, and he’s just not the boat-rocking type…but the rest of us?
Fucked again.
Bet on it.
Oh, I seriously doubt that. It’d be bad politics, seeing as how they are really all on the same side now. The more radical right-wingers will kick up some dust, but Obama’s been a good little preznit and the mainstreamers will let him retire to the rubber chicken /revolving door circuit unharmed.
Watch.
AG
Obviously this is what the American electorate wants. It would be enough to make me leave the country, except I already did.
I see your tail wagging.
It’s not going to be easy to get the same sort of GOTV effort that was expended in states like NC and GA to come up this dramatically short.
And you look at the maps. What you see is intense red counties in rural areas that taken together outbalance anything that urban areas can muster. And against a background of mildly red counties. Democrats are not primarily only in cities about 150,000, black majority counties, reservations, and a few academic towns.
That is problem that underlies the ability of Republicans to gerrymander secure districts.
And losing Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, and effectively New York is a huge loss for Democrats (although New York Democrats don’t realize how huge yet).
Billmon tweeted 18 sensible reasons that taken together created this situation.
I guess Harry Reid won’t have to keep his powder dry anymore and Nancy Pelosi can rest assured that impeachment now is not off the table.
The betrayal of public trust that is about to occur is immense. Can the Republicans restrain themselves until Janauary? Will establishment Democrats on their way to their lucrative post-political careers going to have the will to fight anything?
And then there’s the inevitability of Hillary and the now-fantastic assumption that rank-and-file will gather up yet another time to be sold out by the politicians that they worked hard to elect. Will there indeed be a backlash against the GOP this time? Or will people just roll over and lose hope altogether? The Beltway Democrats have a lot to answer for. And one question is whether the Democratic Party is more than a regional party that can win in only a few extreme coastal states. The infrastructure has now so gone to seed that even the outside efforts of groups like the Moral Monday Movement cannot turn the situation around for them. I know blacks who are already registering as Republicans to be able to affect candidates and policies in effectively one-party states. This is likely to accelerate, even if these people turn around and vote for a Democrat or another party’s candidate in the general election.
Progressives are in big trouble because they have succeeded in keeping themselves outnumbered. We need to think through how to turn that around. In a lot of places the liberal and Democratic “brands” obscure the action progressive, liberal, and democratic content of principles and policy proposals. People vote against what Republicans say we are instead of what we actually present and they use cult-like peer-pressure techniques to block out all other conversation. It has the effect of isolating people and convincing them that everyone else thinks like Republican-speak and that cross that line will result in personal and family excommunication.
The media succeeded in pushing Democratic politicians’ head under water again. Maybe to the point of drowning. And it is difficult to figure out exactly how to deal with that sort of political bullying. The sort that David Gregory and now Chuck Todd engage in.
Illinois was a referendum on Quinn. Democrats, except in the suburbs, did quite well.
Quinn never made his case. He never put forward a platform. It was just “the other guy is worse”. In the weeks leading up to the election, the Sun-Times reported that many black voters were favoring Rauner because of his charter schools proposals. This is anathema to orthodox Democratic thought, but people are getting desperate. How many kids can read their Chicago Public school diplomas. Democratic politicians are content to have a sea of black welfare clients reliably voting (D) to keep their checks, but black people want more than that. They want their kids to have good educations, good jobs, and most of all to not be blown away by gangs on the weekend. The Democratic Party is failing them and all it can say is “the other guys are worse”.
Quinn shit on his own voters. There is no other way around it. Why should people vote for him? If you pee on someone and try to tell them it’s raining, what do you think they’re going to do?
I dunno.
Did they have the will to really fight when they were congresscritters? I didn’t see it. All I saw was just empty crosstalk while the real business was being taken care of in the back rooms.
I feel badly for sincere people like you and Booman, people who actually tried to get something done inside of this system. It’s not going to happen, Tarheel. There will have to be a break with this UniParty system as it now stands for any substantive change to happen.
Bet on it.
How?
When?
Who?
What?
Where?
Damned if I know, but I do know this…this country cannot sustain itself under current conditions. Something is going to happen…some cop is going to shoot a black man at the wrong place and time and we will have another riot summer; some violent nut will do something really effective, something other than killing a few schoolkids or going postal after being fired; some part of the infrastructure will break so badly that millions of people will be without food or shelter or the controllers will so surrender to their greed that the economy will collapse, 1928 style. Only then will there be “change,” and I am not at all sure that it won’t be the military law kind of change.
We shall see.
Sooner or later, we shall see how broken the will of the population has really become.
Watch.
AG
From AP via ABC News:
Yet they voted to elect as Governor the guy who is against all three of those issues. That tells me they have no confidence in the Democratic Party to deliver. There was no excuse in Illinois. We had a Democratic Governor who was an experienced politician. We had both houses of the legislature tightly controlled and disciplined by Democrats who have been in office longer than most voters have been alive. They could have done whatever they wanted. But all they stand for is filling their own pockets.
“…they have no confidence in the Democratic Party to deliver.”
Precisely.
AG
Here’s a thought. Stand up and be counted. The democrats don’t stand for anything except to get reelected. They need to leave the Third Way thinking behind and embrace progressive agendas. They need to stop selling out. They need to embrace larger government and deficits if that is what’s needed. And they can be assured the government will NOT go bankrupt. They need to say it loud and over and over… And forget HRC. She is further to the right than Obama.
The only question I have now is will Obama complete the sell out by initiating or agreeing to a Grand Bargain to cut SS and medicare? If that happens, let the Republicans own it all. Not. One. Vote, from the democrats.
And losing Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, and effectively New York is a huge loss for Democrats (although New York Democrats don’t realize how huge yet).
I don’t know what happened in Maryland. A candidate coasting and taking things for granted? In those other states, the Democratic elite stabbed their voters in the back and had shitty candidates.
I’ll always vote Democratic for the well being of the People. Have done so ever since the 1960 election. This hurts, a bitter shame of a low voter turnout. A lot of soulsearching to be done, and hopefully a more united Democratic party in two years’ time. A win for the obstructionist party, can you believe it?
Hope died tonight. The Democrats lost because they lost the argument. They lost the argument because they had no argument. I keep thinking if things get bad enough, and they certainly will now, a progressive movement will take hold and turn things around. I doubt Hillary or the Democrats will embrace this let alone lead it. I’m done thinking about this for a while.
Yup. Almost none of the Dems actually believe what they stand for. Or maybe they’ve just been in Washington too long.
do you mean the candidates?
I believe he means the Democrats, not the democrats.
Time to let the team sports attitudes go. When winning does not result in a different policy, the team has taken a dive for cash. And there was a lot of cash being thrown around on both sides.
The Democratic caucus next year would do good to throw out the entire leadership team and start over. House and Senate. But they won’t. Because rules of the club.
The organizational forms of the national Democratic Party are no longer earning their keep. What reason now would any candidate want to brand themselves with the organizations run by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Steve Israel, and whoever it is that allowed the Senate candidates to put up contentless campaigns. Also, it seems that the Obama campaign GOTV methodology never got spread to other candidates.
Finally, for the past eight years, the Democrats have seen the democrats and the enemy and maneuvered and campaigned to cut them off while conceding more and more geography to the Republicans. That has allowed ideological bludgeoning by personal networks to force silence on many progressives in red states, even as DC-selected or incumbent Democrats fell one after the other.
And then there was the violent suppression of Occupy Wall Street on the Democrats’ watch. On economic policy and government tyranny, the Democrats get hammered for this and not the bankers or the Republicans. The 1%-99% point got across but did not get translated into policy because the policies were never allowed to be organically developed.
Finally there is the constituent experience of dealing with elected officials in which the elected officials never hear what the constituents are saying and in which the elected officials create forums that push the politician’s message instead of soliciting policy options and forcing citizens to get beyond talking points. As a result, those forums have become shouting matches in which politicians are intimidated by unruly Tea Partiers but always have a polite putdown for more well-behaved progressive protesters. That rewards Tea Party behavior.
But then I’ve dealt with state and local politicians and have tried to talk sense to members of Congress, I also remember the relationships that I had as an essentially unknown constituent with members of Congress in the 1960s and 1970s. The current bunch are over-manipulative and over-controlled. If pointing that out makes me seem cynical, so be it. But I still have the irrational and magical hope that the situation changes before catastrophe strikes.
thanks. interesting that SD did pass a minimum wage increase. Canvassing, I met a number of citizens who knew the candidates personally. The culture of teevee appearances (simulacra, Epicurus would call them) is toxic.
No, the entire Democratic party with Obama included. The fight was never left versus right but top versus bottom. When Obama took Wall Street money instead of letting the people elect him then gave Wall Street everything and left the people with nothing, he lost the people. His Grand Bargain attempts along with abandonment of executive action on immigration reform sealed the deal. He knew all the right words to say but was never even close to being a progressive. Hillary would be even worse if she could win but she won’t. Now the top can finish the job unless the Democrats can take progressive positions that will resonate. I wonder if Elizabeth Warren still thinks she can do anything meaningful from her Senate seat instead of making it a real fight against the top. If she does decide to make it a real fight and loses then at least we will have had a choice. We had no choice tonight and the results showed it.
You folks realize that it was always going to be a crappy night, right?
All of the Dems wayward supporters will magically show up in 2016.
Perhaps they could have a national platform by then?
The old power structure isn’t going away without a fight. We’re in the midst of that fight now.
Dems easily won in California btw……. coming soon to a theater near you
yes, agree.
yes,
comments here that blame “the american ppl” aren’t thinking it through. a small % makes billions of $$ off the current situation. are they sitting idly by while we put in place a progressive agenda? no, indeed, they’re spending a small % of their billions to obfuscate, confuse , demoralize, distract, run spoiler candidates and suppress voter turnout. My point is that their strategies don’t alter the underlying reality and progressives offer a way forward that will improve ppl’s lives. the .1% want to turn us into Mexico. Have you ever taken a look at how the Mexican .1% live? Carlos Slim, the richest guy in the world? that’s what [most of] our .1% want for themselves. I’m as upset and discouraged as anyone else here, but it’s important not to blame the victims here.
What have you won?
And I thought 1972, 1980, 1994, and 2000 were disasters. This one is several magnitudes worse. Because now the GOP is significantly further to the right, the institutions that propped up the New Deal are effectively defunct, and the so-called middle class is broke. Bill Clinton and Barack Hoover Obama destroyed the Democratic Party as much as the GOP did.
Why is it that every time this country does a little bit of the right thing, the lunatics roar back and wipe it out. 13th and 14th amendments followed by decades of Jim Crow. Women got the vote and wtf did they do with it? Elected Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. Team FDR gave working people a chance for some economic security and they turned around chose Nixon, Reagan, GWB and some faux Democrats.
The Roberts Court is just itching to overturn Brown v. Bd of Ed and Roe. Not that practically either of those decisions are more than minimally operational. For such a brief moment in time, it was so wonderful that young and poor women I knew were able to get an abortion instead of being forced to endure a pregnancy they weren’t emotionally or financially able to handle. But none of us wanted to spend the next four decades having to defend our rights as they were whittled away. No more than African-Americans have had to do the same for the past hundred and fifty years.
The people in this country fall time and again for symbols and then fail to notice as they are hollowed out as new shiny objects come along to distract us.
I would place the emphasis, rather, on the tremendous amount of $ and effort expended by media et al – those who benefit frm the current situation- to distract and obfuscate with shiny objects and lies . Most ppl are overworked and underpaid; it’s important to identify the problems and lead the way towards constructive solutions. I’d say most ppl are badly off economically and have no idea how to get out of the box they’re in.
That’s not going to change. Those in a position to buy our elections are now so rich and getting richer everyday that it would take a hundred years of buying elections to put a big dent in their wealth.
Well sure — because there is no way out of that box.
Quite stunning that CO all mail-in ballot election didn’t change the voter participation rate from the 2010 election. And was approx seven hundred thousand fewer than in the 2012 presidential election.
It’s the leadership and the philosophy of the democratic party. These guys think they need to privatize everything and they are absolutely in fear of deficits. That is stupid. They need to stand for the public purpose and do the things necessary and forget the deficit. It is an utter impossibility for the government to go bankrupt. Can’t happen, ever. So someone tell the democrats to stop hyperventilating over it. Unfortunately, I fear they and HRC will double down on the conservative thinking that caused this mess.
Actually, governments can and do go bankrupt. Borrow enough to squander on non-constructive and non-collective investments, the interest become unmanageable. Like Greece.
Deficits — the annual government shortfall between spending and revenues — may or may not reflect a long-term problem. The better measure is national debt. But that’s also too isolated from time and the structural economy. For example (and don’t hold me to these numbers), the US now carries two trillion dollars in debt for the GWB/Obama wars in the ME and Afghanistan. Is or will there be any payback on that “investment?” The interest on that debt means less to spend or invest in other things that could have some payback.
This country moved from just under a trillion dollars in national debt in 1980 to sixteen or seventeen trillion dollars of debt in thirty years. And what did we the people get for all that new debt?
Greece is like you and me and any state in the U.S. They do not issue their own currency. they use the euro. The US owns its currency. It cannot be forced into bankruptcy since it creates its currency. Countries like Canada, UK, Japan and Australia also issue their own currency. The Eurozone countries do not and could be forced into bankruptcy. If the US lost its productive capacity through destruction in a war, or if we borrowed in a foreign currency (we do not) it could spell trouble. The deficit does not matter except in circumstances of full employment and full capacity which we are no where near.
The magnitude of the debt does not matter. Japan has a larger debt to GDP ratio than us and pays lower interest. And the debt, as I said, does not matter. It matters for states, you and me and the Eurozone and any country that borrows in another currency or pegs its currency to another currency.
Sorry to get carried away but this is important if we are ever to defeat the conservatives who throw it up repeatedly. It is a generally held misconception and the reason the dems formed the DLC. And the reason Obama screwed himself. It may have been important when we were on the gold standard, but even then it was arguable. Forget the debt. Peace.
The Japanese economic structure and culture is so different from the US that comparisons are difficult, but not even economists argue that its national debt isn’t a problem. How long have they been living in recession or near recession? What they have going for them is 1) low income inequality 2) low population growth (less than 40% since 1960 compared with over 100% in the US) 3) UHC at a cost of less than the US as a fraction of GDP. They got to a reasonably sustainable level of personal income and employment and industrialization quickly in part because they didn’t squander their wealth on a military and dumb wars. Yet, they have a huge public sector that for a time facilitated the delivery of the basics to the population, but since the beginning of its recession, there has been less in the public coffers and the relative (and possibly absolute) poverty rates have been increasing.
If national debt truly didn’t matter as you assert, simply turning on the “printing machines” and distributing it to the population would solve all economic problems. Neither “debt doesn’t matter” and “debt is the root of all problems” is correct. All debt is simply not create equal. For example, if beginning in 1980 the US had retained a progressive income tax policy and racked up nine billion in debt modernizing and upgrading our infrastructure, improving land use policies, including smart housing not based heavy reliance on automobiles, etc., that debt would have improved the average standard of living, decreased poverty and un/underemployment, etc. What we have instead is a weak economy and crumbling infrastructure.
So your preferred candidate over Obama is…Putin?
Your response to my comment is as irrationally stupid as the stuff teabaggers say.
Tonight’s winner:
Rand Paul.
Articulate. Reasoned. Humble.
As a Young Buck, learned from the Rachael Maddow-induced butt-whoopin’ regarding the Civil Rights Act.
Gay Marriage–IN
Pot Smoking–IN
REASONABLE restrictions on late term abortions while respecting Women’s right to abort fertilized ovums–IN
Opposition to American Empire–IN
Support for American Power to resist evil–IN
Libertarianism is the hard road, but the right one. See y’all there!
WTF?
VA Liberal is a Libertarian. Okay….
Sadly…I have to disagree with you, VA. Tonight’s winner was the dead center of the Republican party. And really…the dead center of the Democratic Party as well. (And I do mean “dead.” Zombie politics on both sides of the aisle.) The fix has shifted parties, but since it shifts back and forth with great regularity, being in the middle of either party means that with patience what’s out will in due time become in again.
Unless Rand Paul mounts a Hail Mary third party effort…something about which his father spoke only yesterday (A coincidence? I don’t think so.)…he’s going to continue to get the “He’s a flake” treatment from the media, and as long as that happens he doesn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning.
Sorry, but there it is.
Deal wid it.
Later…
AG
For all our political differences, I have always considered the USA a close economic and cultural ally of Europe and have tended to regard at least some of those political differences as epiphenomena of a rather curiously partisan and corporately dominated political system.
These results make me wonder whether that view is still tenable, especially if we take them to be a genuine representation of the popular will. If that is the case, then Russia – which has always been an authoritarian political anathema to me – is now closer to Europe than the USA.
I’d say that the USA is closer to Russia, with criminal oligarchs running the country.
The american people don’t want what progressives are selling. They have told us several times now to go fuck ourselves by electing lunatics and fanatics to congress. As far as I’m concerned, the american people will get what they deserve. I’ll be fine either way, but I will not be bothered by what happens to them.
They can go to hell.
We are not listening to what the American people want.
I’m seeing massive white vote for the GOP. Why? I can’t answer for the South, TarHeelDem does that quite eloquently, but in the (formerly) industrial MidWest, the Democratic Party is seen as a party of minorities with no place for white people, particularly white working men. Affirmative Action, understandably designed to counterbalance centuries of discrimination, fell onto young white workers who suffered because of the sins of the fathers, sort of an attainder of the blood. They are anti-immigration because they fear the competition for jobs not because of inherent hate. People hate what they fear. The Democratic party could address this by having a program to advance everyone, not just minorities. But what do we see? Chortling that whites will soon be a minority so Dems won’t have to address them. And then are surprised that they lashed back. Analyzing the Quinn-Rauner vote in Illinois, it appears to me that 60% of white Illinosans voted for Rauner pretty much uniformly. I beleive, as an article of faith more than any analysis, that fewer white women fell for this bum, Those nursing home abuses must have had some effect. So even more white male Illinoisans voted for Rauner. My guess is about 75% and the other 25% held their noses and voted, not for Quinn, but against Rauner.
One last item. White working men believe Obama is actively against them. Don’t tell me that they are wrong. I’m not saying it’s true that Obama is racist. I’m saying that is what is believed. Personally, I think they are looking in the mirror. Nevertheless, Obama should have been conscious of that and made a special effort to allay fears.
Looking at the map not only in the South but in South Dakota and Michigan, the only blue counties are those with sizeable minority turnout and some white crossover voting. The whiter the county, the stronger the Republican vote.
It’s the resentment that someone would question the privilege of discrimination not just of minorities but of gays as well.
They want to keep the discrimination and avoid the racist label. So the new darling of Southern conservatives is Dr. Ben Carson. Expect him and Ted Cruz to be the major sideshows of the Republican Presidential primaries and debates. And expect them to lecture libruls about racism.
The same here. But I think you are wrong. They don’t feel that they are privileged. They feel that they are discriminated against. I don’t think it’s the same as Southern institutional racism.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong. It matters what they think. If you want to write off their votes, go ahead. But don’t wonder why they didn’t vote the way you wanted them too. The republicans are courting them. The Democrats revile them, then wonder why they vote Republican.
I’m just reporting here what I see and hear from the belly of the beast, a suburban blue collar cafeteria.
I live in Michele bachmann’s former district, full of the white men you describe. You can minimize it if you want, but a whole lot of it is just lazy hatred of both minorities and women. Many of these guys thought that if they skipped college and went into the trades they’d have decent pay, and that didn’t work out for them. So they have to blame someone. The unions used to educate these guys on the issues, but the unions are weaker now. So they thrash around blaming dems and especially blacks for all their personal failures.
They don’t feel discriminated against. They feel entitled, and are outraged when their entitlement is questioned or doesn’t work out as they had assumed.
Who killed the unions? Ronald Reagan, aided and abetted by the Democrats.
Reagan only hammered another nail in the coffin of blue collar workers’ unions. But it was those blue collar, Reagan Democrats that wanted him to do that.
Taft-Hartley was the first big blow. And after taking back Congress and with the guy that had vetoed Taft-Hartley still in the WH, the Democratic Congress didn’t repeal that POS. Walter Reuther was the last blue collar labor union guy that tried to rescue those workers from their own folly.
Then public employees began to get on the union bandwagon. And while not making some of the bigger mistakes unions in the private sector did, they made plenty of their own. Enough so that the electorate continues to vote for guys that will kill off those unions as well.
A whole lot of racism and sexism was also thrown into the mix. It’s what happens when one group gains a disproportionate share of the whole of new wealth too quickly. Their sense of entitlement increases and the enemy becomes those that were left out in the first round.
Yes, the seeds were planted in the ’50s. Each expansion sows the seeds of its own destruction and each collapse kindles the fire of the next expansion.
It’s a classic relaxation oscillator.
A wonderful comment, Voice. Precisely that.
You write:
Yet another of way too many blunders by Obama. And you know what I think? I think he made those blunders…the botched rollout of ObamaCare being the most serious in terms of the way people saw him, with the whole Snowden/NSA/drone warfare a close second and his handling of immigration problems bringing up the rear…I think he made those blunders because he was too busy admiring himself in the mirror.
Obama as narcissist.
His fatal flaw.
Bet on it.
AG
The only thing I wonder about now is how is Obama planning to save his own ass. It’s all he cares about now. Maybe you’re right. maybe that’s all he ever cared about. Doesn’t matter. Time to hunker down and ride out the storm until we get Caesar Augustus.
Actually, I have recently been wondering whether Caesar Augustus isn’t already with us elsewhere.
We shall see how the whole Ukraine thing eventually plays out. I think that he has old-fashioned empire in mind, myself. As far as he can take it.
AG
Oh yeah! Maybe we lost the Cold war after all.
We lost it the same way Obama lost his mandate. We got lazy and we got sloppy. We thought too much of ourselves. We believed the “We are exceptional!!!” myth. We took too goddamned many vacations and okey-doked too goddamned many important jobs. “We’re so good…why it’ll all just fall into our hands!!!” we said. Meanwhile, the Russians were scuffling!!! I was there during the post-U.S.S.R. Gorbachev/Yeltsin years. It was terrible. Worse than the U.S. during the Depression. No joie de vivre, just cold-hearted hardscrabbling for a piece of life. They paid their dues and now they are on the warpath. Meanwhile, we have become so besotted with our own so-called “successes” that every move we make looks from the outside like a fat, overweight boxer in his declining years. Whiffed punches, bad footwork…the whole tomato can deal.
Meanwhile all the leftnesses are bemoaning their fate and blaming the media. Had they stood up and roared at any juncture of time from the JFK assassination right on through the establishment of the Obama security state, things would have been different. But they didn’t, and now here we jolly well are, aren’t we. We got dues of our own to pay, now.
Soon enough. Watch. back in the U.S.S.R.
Watch.
AG
Ohio is now bloody red and Republicans took every race here. What pisses me off is that when questioned, voters cried that they were sick of gridlock and partisanship.
Well, you idiots just voted in the Party of Obstruction. Nothing gets done now, and anything of value that’s been accomplished over the last six years is under siege. It makes me want to throw up.
So now we wait to see what these Republican monsters do with the country. Ohio is going to be a bigger disaster than ever.
Donnah, I saw this is Republican ads here in Illinois too. Democrats never countered it. They allowed themselves to be swiftboated. They concentrated on abortion in their ads. That’s yesterday’s issue. Democrats are believing their own propaganda about the economy being recovered. It’s recovered only for the 1% donors that rule the party. Our Senators are all millionaires. Obama is a millionaire. They just don’t get it.
I see Ohio as Illinois but in even worse shape. Chicago hasn’t started bulldozing neighborhoods like Akron but I expect it to come. The tire plants have gone to Asia and the Democrats talk about more trade deals. In Kentucky millions depend on coal mining but the Democrats stress getting rid of carbon. No talk of how to alleviate the personal destruction that results from liberal policies. Some, the DINOs, try to run from liberal policies, but that’s wrong too. We DO need to get off coal, but we have to offer the Appalachian people something more than a modern Trail of Tears.
Yes, but like the fisheries that are closed in an effort to restore the ecosystem, it’s screw the workers dependent on the coal economy.
I don’t have the answers to the coal and fishing jobs, but SOMEBODY with an economics Phd or Nobel must have one.
No — for the most part those people are into macro-economics with complex mathematical models. During the early to middle stages of industrial development and the later early stage of increased financialization, those models work very well at the macro-level and good enough at the micro-level not to bother with the latter. Particularly with the vast majority of people have little to no wealth and being a wage slave is a step up for them. Income and wealth inequality increases, but that too is okay as long as almost all boats are lifted or most people perceive their well being as improving. And the numbers of those dislocated by tech and economic changes is small enough and/or slow enough that they can be absorbed into the new without huge personal losses.
If all fisheries were closed at once, the change/dislocation would be too large for most economies/communities to handle collectively and constructively. But in a country as large as ours, local closings need not be a problem. If we ask the right questions and form the best answers. How long for the desired rebound? How robust and sustainable will the rebound be? How many fishermen can it support when re-opened? If fewer than the existing number, buy out those willing to sell. If still too many, offer other alternatives. Support those that want to stay so that they can maintain their skills and their equipment during the closure. The alternative for all those fishermen is that the sea will die and none of them will end up with anything. Same with coal except the corporate overlords can move when the coal is exhausted or they can mine coal more cheaply elsewhere.
Well, I’ll bet Krugman has an answer.
Re fishery collapse, the books on chaos and catastrophe theory that I referenced a while ago have excellent models of overfishing that show how shockingly fast collapse can occur.
Neither is ever going to vote to utterly impoverish themselves and their families.
Hey I know guys lets fix some infrastructure and hire some more people. I know where to get the money too. We’ll call it a Grand Bargain. Those old folks over there are just too expensive so let’s make a few cuts to social security and medicare. That way we can get the money we need. I bet the Republicans will go for that.
Yeah, that’s the kind of dead thinking that caused this disaster. When will these Third Way guys wake up. The deficit is virtually meaningless. So if you want to build a bridge, build a bridge. Last I heard the government still owns the printing presses so we got all the money we need. Not gonna run out. And please, please STOP talking about how wonderful it is to reduce the deficit. Stupid is as stupid does.
Yeah, that’s the kind of dead thinking that caused this disaster. When will these Third Way guys wake up. The deficit is virtually meaningless.
They won’t get it. They run the party. They have the money.
Yeah well, then a lot of the progressive agenda will face an uncertain future. I don’t know how you can win an argument when the other guy holds big government inefficiency and fear of deficits over you. But you are right. Money counts.
You know, and I know the length of the utter crazy of the GOP. But, now, they will have to vote on their crazy.
when I say that Harry Reid kept a lid on the crazy, I mean it.
there comes a time when you actually have to explain the insanity. a feritlized egg and taking away women’s birth control – there’s no glossing over that.
taking away the ability to have healthcare for your family – there’s no glossing over that.
and, I can’t wait for them to bring up the ‘ charges’ for Impeachment – what they will come up with, and force them to vote on it.
I’m happy with the progress dems made here in MN – we got a lot done. Our dem gov can defend that for a couple of years while the GOP embarrasses themselves. The cycle will repeat until we eventually go the way of the west coast and the GOP fades away.
Painful to watch, though.
Had I not witnessed through livestreaming the Wisconsin legislature after 2010, I would agree with you.
Had I not witnessed in person the fracking debate and the racial sentencing debate in the North Carolina legislature, I would agree with you.
I’m not sure that Harry Reid keep a lid on anything but calling the crazy crazy.
To take away Americans’ healthcare, Medicare, and Social Security and not get backlash, the Republicans must get Barack Obama (or Joe Biden) to sign the repeal bills. Remember Clinton and his triangulation on welfare reform. The same dynamics are at play in Congress. And bomb-throwers like Ted Cruz, the putative Senate majority leader as well as de facto Speaker of the House, will shut down the government to extort the signature of a Democratic President on the repeal of the New Deal, Great Society, and Obamacare and then run in 2016 as if Obama delivered on his “grand bargain”. And the Wall Street media will complicitly spin this as reality. Which makes Obama the scapegoat for their action just like they successfully made Obama the scapegoat for their obstruction of the economy.
And the remaining white Democratic Senators will not come to his defense no more than they supported his agenda for recovery and health care reform.
Except for the 40% of voters who turned out for Democrats, the President in DC is now quite alone. He is now both a lame duck and the scapegoat for the sins of Joe Lieberman, Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and down the line.
Scapegoat? No. He’s their enabler. Durbin was his mentor and I’ve already written what he should have done to Lieberman, what either Daley surely would have done? I know wonder if Durbin counseled for Lieberman’s pardon?
Typing too fast.
Scapegoat? No. He’s their enabler. Durbin was his mentor and I’ve already written what he should have done to Lieberman, which is what either Daley surely would have done. I wonder if Durbin counseled for Lieberman’s pardon?
You forgot Evan Bayh.
I agree with you for the most part. But he becomes the scapegoat when he signs those bills. Then he goes down as the New Deal/Great Society repealer in chief. He has to loudly reject them to pull anything out of his two terms. Unfortunately he brought much of this on himself with the ACA and the Simpson Bowles commission. I know he had that cast of characters in congress. But better to blame it on them than to allow it to happen. Perhaps he could have passed parts of the ACA to relieve some of the pressure. But let’s face it. He has been a disappointment.
it’s OK, BooMan.
As long as you don’t stop writing this blog and giving us a place for informed thought, it’ll be ok.