I started canvassing in 2017 in sheer terror of what TFG's presidency would bring. Followed my canvass organizer on Twitter. She left the local org to go work on the Biden campaign and I immediately dropped her. We didn't need another old white man! If I had known then what I know now about Black support and Black votes, I would have known to jump on that Dark Brandon train a lot earlier. Now I'm riding it all the way. And I listen to Black voters.
While Dems are arguing over who’s to blame for the mess we are in (& having doubts about the current candidate), Rethugs are organized and working to dismantle our whole system! Wake up everyone! Our work is to accept that no one is perfect, but our only chance now is to elect anyone everywhere willing to be a Dem. We need a full sweep to save democracy in the US, and demeaning any Dem only plays into the hands of the enemy.
We should have had Al Franken running for President, but Dems hounded him out of office themselves.
The only proper response to Ralph Nader and his ilk (assuming he even HAS an ilk--I hope he is sui generis) is 'fuck you and everybody who looks like you'. Because this dude who is so full of himself that he can't admit he's done anything wrong, like, ever, is the world's biggest misogynist. If it wasn't Hillary, he would have blamed someone else. Why not Jill Stein? She has all the requisite lady parts.
Hey, Ralph. Go piss up a rope. It would be the most productive thing you've done in, like, ever.
What a baffling, sad, infuriating situation we find ourselves in. The candidate who lost 2 popular votes by more than 10 million combined, turned the office of potus into his personal piggy bank and ignored all other duties, then denied the results of an election, tried to stay in power with a coup, then spent 4 years being charged and convicted of dozens of felonies and held accountable…twice…for sexual assault is threatening to return to the highest office in the land. It’s enough to make you lose hope or at least lose all faith in our system of government. In no sane version of reality could Donald Trump be given a second term. What happens in the next 4 months could be the democrats biggest challenge and the greatest test of our democracy since Trump refused to leave office.
yup. i really don't know where i am with the biden campaign and what the next steps are. (though honestly i'd vote for liz truss' lettuce - the same head of 2022 lettuce - over trump).
Against my better judgement, and without resorting to cheap invective (evidently a valued commodity here) , I'll offer two pieces of evidence to back up my post:
":On the ground, Democratic politicians in Michigan like Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) were furiously relaying the message that union voters were turning on Clinton, that she needed to put field organizers on the ground as fast as possible, and that she hadn’t come out strongly enough against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But back in Brooklyn, Clinton’s team was cautiously confident that Michigan would be hers."
"As Donald Trump honed his message on the Rust Belt, Clinton herself barely visited the region, and her staff withheld resources from its field operations in the Midwest — a choice that was denounced as “political malpractice” in many of the postmortems that followed the election."
"With hindsight, the decision looks like an inexplicable and unforced error. Aides told Allen and Parnes that they sent Clinton to Michigan only once (and not at all to Wisconsin) because they believed “to make the election a bigger deal was not good for our prospects.” When I shared this anecdote from the book on Twitter, a chorus of critics attacked Mook, with the National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar calling it a “mind-blowing” blunder.
But was it really? Allen and Parnes write that Clinton frequently acknowledged to her aides that she didn’t have the pulse of the electorate or understand the political currents. When she did campaign in Michigan, Clinton resisted condemning global free trade deals, and then drew criticism in the local press for her tepid answers. As easy as it is to mock Mook, he appeared to be in a real dilemma: Why go all out trying to talk to voters and persuade them if you yourself don’t believe your message can win them over?
“[Clinton] had complained to her communications team that her economic messaging sucked, and they’d told her to keep repeating it,” Allen and Parnes write. “But the problem wasn’t the way she was selling her economic plan; it was that the voters didn’t like her stance on the issue [free trade] that mattered most to them.”
"“It’s is nothing short of malpractice that her campaign didn’t look at the electoral college and put substantial resources in states like Michigan and Wisconsin,” says Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. Neither President Barack Obama nor the first lady was dispatched to Wisconsin, either."
"In Wisconsin, where Clinton didn’t make a single stop during the general election campaign, she won voters under 30 by just 4 points. Obama won them by 23 points four years ago. The state voted Republican for the first time since 1984."
"“The vote among younger voters dropped off appreciably” for Clinton, said Tom Holbrook, political scientist for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee."
"Clinton’s margin in the ultra-blue city of Milwaukee was 27,000 votes smaller than Obama’s. That was roughly the size of her statewide defeat."
Republican propaganda? These were Democratic political operatives and political scientists saying this. I don't care what Republicans say.
As far as going to hell, thanks but I've been there. From 2017 to 2021. HRC lost an election she should have romped through, in part because she couldn't make a case for herself in the Rust Belt, and in part because her handlers couldn't figure out what she should tell the working middle class there. Full stop.
And as far as her "deplorables" remark, if it really was nothing, why did she apologize for it ? First rule of politics, you DO NOT insult the electorate, and that includes even the people you know aren't going to vote for you.
I mean, that's all cool, but if you feel the need to blame ONLY Hillary Clinton and just simply can't bear to acknowledge that there was a whole bunch of other fucked up shit that happened during that election -- stuff that is irrefutable and well-documented -- then that's a you problem.
I can acknowledge easily and readily that HRC got shivved by Comey, embarrassed by wikileaks and trolled by Putin. Ain't my problem. Would you also acknowledge that she got cast as an ethically-questionable, big-money compromised corporatist by Bernie Sanders, many of whose supporters would not campaign or vote for her, and to this day many of whom defend sitting out her campaign?
Yeah, she got handed some unfair and underhanded disadvantages. Which is why managing ground game, campaign cohesion, electoral map strategy and stump speech messaging - the fundamentals of a successful campaign - should have been top priority, and it wasn't.
You're welcome to the last word. BTW, I admire your writing here, even if I don't always agree. Keep up the good work. Peace out.
Naw he wasn't. He's fucking terrible outside of Vermont. Remember the time his cult sent death and rape threats to a woman's family and business, Pepperidge Farms remembers. Remember when St Bernie was confronted with this on live TV, and he ran away like a coward? Pepperidge Farms also remembers
No I don’t remember that, but he couldn’t really be blamed for random shit his legitimately fucked up rabid supporters do. I supported Warren, but she wasn’t responsible for my actions.
It was the Russians, the right wing billionaires, the New York office of the FBI, and the New York Times (and pretty much all media). It was not the DNC.
And Mr. Nader didn't have as much to do with their demise as he likes to think- it was mostly because of all its unique parts. To GM, the meager sales didn't justify the tooling expense.
Hunh. I could have sworn he was dead.
I love Elie Mystal. That's all I got.
Plus, I honestly thought Ralph Nader had passed away years ago. But I guess he's always around to blame Dems for something republicans did.
anything to stay in the news
Elie Mystal is correct.
I started canvassing in 2017 in sheer terror of what TFG's presidency would bring. Followed my canvass organizer on Twitter. She left the local org to go work on the Biden campaign and I immediately dropped her. We didn't need another old white man! If I had known then what I know now about Black support and Black votes, I would have known to jump on that Dark Brandon train a lot earlier. Now I'm riding it all the way. And I listen to Black voters.
I thought he was dead.
Ralph is the poster boy of "my ideology is more important than your rights"
While Dems are arguing over who’s to blame for the mess we are in (& having doubts about the current candidate), Rethugs are organized and working to dismantle our whole system! Wake up everyone! Our work is to accept that no one is perfect, but our only chance now is to elect anyone everywhere willing to be a Dem. We need a full sweep to save democracy in the US, and demeaning any Dem only plays into the hands of the enemy.
We should have had Al Franken running for President, but Dems hounded him out of office themselves.
Ralph Nader outlived his usefulness when GM discontinued the Corvair. He has just been a waste of oxygen ever since.
The only proper response to Ralph Nader and his ilk (assuming he even HAS an ilk--I hope he is sui generis) is 'fuck you and everybody who looks like you'. Because this dude who is so full of himself that he can't admit he's done anything wrong, like, ever, is the world's biggest misogynist. If it wasn't Hillary, he would have blamed someone else. Why not Jill Stein? She has all the requisite lady parts.
Hey, Ralph. Go piss up a rope. It would be the most productive thing you've done in, like, ever.
What a baffling, sad, infuriating situation we find ourselves in. The candidate who lost 2 popular votes by more than 10 million combined, turned the office of potus into his personal piggy bank and ignored all other duties, then denied the results of an election, tried to stay in power with a coup, then spent 4 years being charged and convicted of dozens of felonies and held accountable…twice…for sexual assault is threatening to return to the highest office in the land. It’s enough to make you lose hope or at least lose all faith in our system of government. In no sane version of reality could Donald Trump be given a second term. What happens in the next 4 months could be the democrats biggest challenge and the greatest test of our democracy since Trump refused to leave office.
yup. i really don't know where i am with the biden campaign and what the next steps are. (though honestly i'd vote for liz truss' lettuce - the same head of 2022 lettuce - over trump).
i'm waiting til monday to get freaked.
If everyone is asking 80 year old Biden to go away forever why do I have to listen to a 90 year old Ralph Nader?
Against my better judgement, and without resorting to cheap invective (evidently a valued commodity here) , I'll offer two pieces of evidence to back up my post:
https://www.vox.com/2017/4/24/15369452/clinton-shattered-campaign
Michigan
":On the ground, Democratic politicians in Michigan like Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) were furiously relaying the message that union voters were turning on Clinton, that she needed to put field organizers on the ground as fast as possible, and that she hadn’t come out strongly enough against the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But back in Brooklyn, Clinton’s team was cautiously confident that Michigan would be hers."
"As Donald Trump honed his message on the Rust Belt, Clinton herself barely visited the region, and her staff withheld resources from its field operations in the Midwest — a choice that was denounced as “political malpractice” in many of the postmortems that followed the election."
"With hindsight, the decision looks like an inexplicable and unforced error. Aides told Allen and Parnes that they sent Clinton to Michigan only once (and not at all to Wisconsin) because they believed “to make the election a bigger deal was not good for our prospects.” When I shared this anecdote from the book on Twitter, a chorus of critics attacked Mook, with the National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar calling it a “mind-blowing” blunder.
But was it really? Allen and Parnes write that Clinton frequently acknowledged to her aides that she didn’t have the pulse of the electorate or understand the political currents. When she did campaign in Michigan, Clinton resisted condemning global free trade deals, and then drew criticism in the local press for her tepid answers. As easy as it is to mock Mook, he appeared to be in a real dilemma: Why go all out trying to talk to voters and persuade them if you yourself don’t believe your message can win them over?
“[Clinton] had complained to her communications team that her economic messaging sucked, and they’d told her to keep repeating it,” Allen and Parnes write. “But the problem wasn’t the way she was selling her economic plan; it was that the voters didn’t like her stance on the issue [free trade] that mattered most to them.”
Wisconsin
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2016/11/09/how-clinton-lost-blue-wall-states-michigan-pennsylvania-wisconsin/93572020/
"“It’s is nothing short of malpractice that her campaign didn’t look at the electoral college and put substantial resources in states like Michigan and Wisconsin,” says Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. Neither President Barack Obama nor the first lady was dispatched to Wisconsin, either."
"In Wisconsin, where Clinton didn’t make a single stop during the general election campaign, she won voters under 30 by just 4 points. Obama won them by 23 points four years ago. The state voted Republican for the first time since 1984."
"“The vote among younger voters dropped off appreciably” for Clinton, said Tom Holbrook, political scientist for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee."
"Clinton’s margin in the ultra-blue city of Milwaukee was 27,000 votes smaller than Obama’s. That was roughly the size of her statewide defeat."
Republican propaganda? These were Democratic political operatives and political scientists saying this. I don't care what Republicans say.
As far as going to hell, thanks but I've been there. From 2017 to 2021. HRC lost an election she should have romped through, in part because she couldn't make a case for herself in the Rust Belt, and in part because her handlers couldn't figure out what she should tell the working middle class there. Full stop.
And as far as her "deplorables" remark, if it really was nothing, why did she apologize for it ? First rule of politics, you DO NOT insult the electorate, and that includes even the people you know aren't going to vote for you.
Thanks for playing.
I mean, that's all cool, but if you feel the need to blame ONLY Hillary Clinton and just simply can't bear to acknowledge that there was a whole bunch of other fucked up shit that happened during that election -- stuff that is irrefutable and well-documented -- then that's a you problem.
I can acknowledge easily and readily that HRC got shivved by Comey, embarrassed by wikileaks and trolled by Putin. Ain't my problem. Would you also acknowledge that she got cast as an ethically-questionable, big-money compromised corporatist by Bernie Sanders, many of whose supporters would not campaign or vote for her, and to this day many of whom defend sitting out her campaign?
Yeah, she got handed some unfair and underhanded disadvantages. Which is why managing ground game, campaign cohesion, electoral map strategy and stump speech messaging - the fundamentals of a successful campaign - should have been top priority, and it wasn't.
You're welcome to the last word. BTW, I admire your writing here, even if I don't always agree. Keep up the good work. Peace out.
Lol, fuck Bernie, and him intentionally drawing blood in the primary is his fault, on top of having a sexist cult behind him in 2016
Bernie was cool, but the Bernie Bros were fucking awful
Naw he wasn't. He's fucking terrible outside of Vermont. Remember the time his cult sent death and rape threats to a woman's family and business, Pepperidge Farms remembers. Remember when St Bernie was confronted with this on live TV, and he ran away like a coward? Pepperidge Farms also remembers
No I don’t remember that, but he couldn’t really be blamed for random shit his legitimately fucked up rabid supporters do. I supported Warren, but she wasn’t responsible for my actions.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Hillary won the vote in 2016. You can thank our racist Southern forbears for the Electoral College that prevented her from becoming Presudent
In 2016 it was the DNC that fucked us.
Oh, hey. Found the Bernie Bro. Grow up, child.
"Bernie Bro" jesus, who needs to grow up.
It was the Russians, the right wing billionaires, the New York office of the FBI, and the New York Times (and pretty much all media). It was not the DNC.
The DNC is own by most of those so yes. The DNC
Thank you! The same assholes that are fucking us now!~
That was my point. Thank you.
Lest we forget, Nader also ran in 2004. Dubya, the incumbent won and went on to appoint Alito in 2005.
My first two cars were Corvairs. Good cars, and he can eat them for dessert, as soon as he finishes all that ass.
And Mr. Nader didn't have as much to do with their demise as he likes to think- it was mostly because of all its unique parts. To GM, the meager sales didn't justify the tooling expense.