One Answer to Why

From TPM commenter Maximus:

Scoundrels and Hypocrites

Hate is what drives them.  Always has been, always will be.

vacuumslayer at LGM:

Trump won because Russia and Comey interfered in our election, yes. But the fact is that there were just enough supporters of Trump to give him that plausible “win.” People saw in Trump a chance to exact revenge on all the people they dislike–feminists, liberals, and people of color.

For Trump voters the chance to punish women for being sexual is dream come true; it’s their raison d’être. It’s why they get “teary-eyed” when they talk about abortion. They’re so excited about having a chance to exert control over women they dislike.

 

The evangelicals, meanwhile, are in a death cult. They would genuinely rather the world end than have to share the it with people who aren’t exactly like them.

The Trump coalition is  fine group of scoundrels and hypocrites.

Novermber 6: VOTE, goddammit!  Take your family, take your friends, take your neighbors, take your dogs.

"But Her Emails" Explained

Yeah, motherfucking Comey shivved her, but she was vulnerable for another reason.

Scott Lemieux at LGM:

The fact that the several of the news organizations that decided that a bunch of inane bullshit they have never thought was important before or since pertaining to Hillary Clinton was as or more scandalous than Donald Trump literally boasting about serial sexual assault were rife with sexual harassment and exploitation isn’t a coincidence. It would be extraordinary if these assumptions didn’t shape coverage.

Keep Blaming the Trump Voters; Everything Bad Really Is Their Fault

They are traitors.  And not just in the neo-confederate wasn't-slavery-great sense.  Their hatred of everything that America stands for, everything that, yes, makes America great, has brought us to the precipice of catastrophe.

D.R. Tucker at Political Animal:

The 62 million people who decided to turn the United States into a shithole country by electing Donald Trump fourteen months ago deserve the blame for the disorder and chaos in the District of Columbia. There is no logic or basis to the nonsense that officially began at midnight on January 20, 2018…but there was no logic or basis to the nonsense that was the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

SNIP

Those who claimed to have voted for Trump because he would “shake things up” actually did so because they wanted him to prevent the government from providing any assistance or fair treatment whatsoever to people they consider “undesirables.” 

They’re loving this shutdown, because they figure that a profoundly dysfunctional federal government is preferable to a federal government that’s providing “handouts,” “welfare,” “food stamps,” “Obamaphones,” etc.

Their hatred–their fear and loathing for anyone not like them–is responsible for this government shutdown. If they had their way, armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would smash into the homes of every DACA beneficiary and force those beneficiaries to get on the first plane back to their countries of origin. If they had their way, every woman who marched this weekend would be denied equal pay for equal work, the right to control their own bodies and possibly even the right to vote. If they had their way, the bill that made Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday would have been repealed long ago–even though their previous hero, Ronald Reagan, signed that bill into law.

SNIP

...  the 45th president is “a massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac.” Those who voted for him knew that, but they didn’t care. They’re responsible for the madness we have now. Like an arms dealer who eagerly sells weapons to a tyrant, those voters gave Trump the ammunition he needed to shoot down our democracy.

Myth of the Obama-Trump Voter Exploded

I've been saying it since November: There is no such thing as a person who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 but voted for Trump in 2016.

No. Such. Thing.

Digby:

I know there are no more interesting or important people in the world than the vaunted Trump Voter, but I have long thought that the idea that there exists a substantial subset of Obama-Trump voters. My theory has always been that to the extent they existed, they were basically Republicans who may have voted for Obama because the world was going to hell in a hand-basket and they didn't like Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney for personal reasons.
Ed Kilgore catches up with the latest on this alleged phenomenon:

The defection of West Virginia Governor Jim Justice yesterday from the Democratic to the Republican Party will inevitably fuel tired rhetoric about Reagan Democrats, or white-working-class Americans, or “heartland voters,” leaving the Donkey Party in hordes in protest against its radical bicoastal liberalism. Democrats obviously need to pay attention to voters they’ve recently lost or failed to energize, all over the place, and in various demographic categories.
But the “Trump Democrat” phenomenon may have been a bit oversold. Justice obviously was never much of a Democrat to begin with. And the broader category of “Obama-Trump voters”—those who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012, and then for the mogul in 2016—may have been misunderstood as well. Or so reports the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank:
[N]ew data, and an analysis by AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer that he shared with me, puts all this into question. The number of Obama-to-Trump voters turns out to be smaller than thought. And those Obama voters who did switch to Trump were largely Republican voters to start with. The aberration wasn’t their votes for Trump but their votes for Obama. 

One problem with the much-discussed idea that Obama-Trump voters swung the election is that voters notoriously over-report votes for the election winner after the election. So some Obama-Trump voter didn’t actually vote for Obama, and others didn’t actually vote for Trump. (Some may have even voted for everyone other than Obama and Trump). That reduces the magnitude of the “flip.”
To the extent that Obama-Trump voters were identified as those who voted for the 44th president in either 2008 or 2012, it is important to remember that Obama won pretty big the first time around: according to exit polls, he won 9 percent of self-identified Republicans and 20 percent of self-identified conservatives. He also won independents—a category that includes a lot of people who usually vote Republican—52/44.
But there’s more than incidental evidence that apparent Obama-Trump voters aren’t loyal Democrats who suddenly flipped because Trump was appealing to their material or cultural interests: they supported Republicans down-ballot, too:
The AFL-CIO’s Podhorzer analyzed raw data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, out in the spring, and found that Obama-Trump voters voted for Republican congressional candidates by a 31-point margin, Republican Senate candidates by a 15-point margin and Republican gubernatorial candidates by a 27-point margin. Their views on immigration and Obamacare also put them solidly in the GOP camp. 

If these voters have been “lost” by the Democratic Party, many of them are probably lost for good.
Milbank concludes: “The party would do better to go after disaffected Democrats who didn’t vote in 2016 or who voted for third parties.” A vote’s a vote, and in a competitive environment it makes no sense for Democrats to write anyone off. But the obsession with “Obama-Trump voters” may be myopic.

There are good philosophical and ideological reasons for figuring out how to address the economic woes of this group of voters. Even if you don't care much for the way they think, they have kids who need a decent chance at a better life. But the idea that they are the electoral holy grail has always seemed to me to be a convenient way to prove some prior assumptions about the 2016 election.

In any case, it's worth wondering if Democrats should be so focused on this group of voters to the exclusion of some others who are at least equally important to mobilize for a 2018 victory. It's not a zero sum game, but it does require that these Trump voters not be elevated to the level of all-important "super-voters." Until the economy is completely falling apart as it was after the last GOP administration, they may not be gettable.

 All Democrats need to do is remove the barriers preventing their natural voters from voting: voter suppression, voter ID laws,  restrictive voting times and places, fiery hoops to jump through to register to vote and felon disenfranchisement.

Do that, dems, and every white voter in the country could go repug and Democrats would still win.

When everybody votes, Democrats win.

Not Denying Reality, Just Their Own Racism

This is why they won't care when he takes away their health insurance.  They won't care when he fails to create jobs.  They won't care when he doesn't build a wall.  They won't care when he unleashes Wall Street to steal their last dimes.  They won't care when he ushers in a permanent recession.  They won't care when he starts a nuclear war.

As long as he frees police to shoot ni**ers and spics in the streets, rounds up muslins and messicans and makes liberals cry, he's the greatest president ever to them.

Nancy LeTourneau at Political Animal:

In the weeks following the election, the supporters of the candidate who lost the election (but won the popular vote) were treated to a whole series of lectures about their need to empathize with the supporters of the candidate who won. That always struck me as the opposite of what happened after the 2008 election. But that’s simply a casual observation.

Today, Daniel Dale (the Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star) is on the streets of DC interviewing Americans who support the president-elect enough to travel to his inauguration. Specifically, he’s asking them what they like about Trump. I have to admit, I’m frankly blown away by their answers.

Michelle Arnett, of Tennessee, thinks Trump will bring back jobs. She was laid off in a clothing-plant closure she attributes to NAFTA. pic.twitter.com/55KVTAJ5m2

Rick Gardner, a Christian minister in Arizona, says he most likes Trump's honesty - "truly a man of his word" - and his selflessness. pic.twitter.com/ca2vETlWLG

Dennis Poer, painter in Illinois, says tomorrow is the "greatest event in American history." He loves Trump's honesty. pic.twitter.com/kpdwEFYl0D

Rhonda Pearce, homemaker in North Carolina, most admires that Trump is always willing to admit he was wrong after he misspeaks. pic.twitter.com/Mdg8FOFZ0Y

Tyrus and Ashley Cobb, of Indiana, like that Trump is a man of faith who will bring Godliness back. They wish he'd stop tweeting.

You can see more examples on Dale’s Twitter feed.

These look like really nice people. But I seem to live in a completely different reality than the the one they inhabit, and have no idea how they reached these conclusions about Donald Trump that are the opposite of what I believe to be true. This goes way beyond political differences on policy issues to something much more fundamental about how we perceive the world. I’m not sure that even empathy can bridge that divide.

Nothing can bridge the divide, Nancy, but the divide is not about perception of reality.  The divide is racism.  Every single one of them voted for the guy who fed their rage against that ni**er in the white house.  Everything they say is cover to hide the racism.

From Frances Langum at Crooks and Liars:

Illegitimate and Racist Aren't the Half of It

Scott Lemieux at LGM:

So an institutional mechanism designed to overrepresent slaveholders, with a major assist from the FBI, installed an overt racist as president. I’d say American constitutionalism seems very robust right now.

The crucial question is not why John Lewis isn’t treating Trump as legitimate, but why other prominent Democrats are.

Comey's Treasonous Sabotage

Yeah, he's under investigation. For seven days until AG Jeff Sessions cancels the investigation and promotes Comey to Deputy AG.

Kevin Drum has the proof, and it's overwhelming:

If it weren't for Comey, Hillary Clinton would have won the popular vote by about 6 points and the Electoral College by 70 or more. And that might have turned into control of the Senate as well, though that's a little more speculative.

Democrats clearly need to focus attention on state and local races, where they have done steadily worse throughout the Obama years. But at the national level, they should resolutely avoid the circular firing squad. They didn't lose because their message was unpopular or because they're out of touch or because they're insufficiently centrist or insufficiently leftist. That just wasn't the problem. The Democratic message was fine; Democrats are perfectly well in touch with their constituencies; and they weren't perceived as too unwilling to shake things up. Even with eight years of Democratic rule acting as a headwind, Hillary Clinton's default performance was a substantial win.

The only reason it didn't happen is because James Comey basically decided to call her a liar and a crook—based on absolutely no new evidence and with everyone in the world advising him not to—with 12 days left in the election. That was something she couldn't overcome, and it has nothing to do with the basic Democratic message.

And it gets worse:

From Digby:

All we can say for sure right now is that this is a perfect illustration of the way Comey improperly inserted himself into the election. These scandalous rumors connecting Trump to the Russian government information are unproven and unverified, and the FBI director was right not to reveal this material prior to the election. He completely ignored that principle when it came to Clinton, and there can be no doubt that it made a difference in the outcome. The fact that Comey clearly knew at the time it was at least possible that Trump had been compromised by a foreign government makes his decision even more shameful.

No, Democrats Do Not Need These Racist Motherfuckers. Ever.

Seriously, this desperate move by national DINOs to seek the votes of trumpies just because they are white and rural is just about the most racist move by a national party since the GOP invited KKK Democrats to join them back in 1964.

 

And it's going to fucking kill us. 

 

Meanwhile, repugs across the country are illegally and unconstitutionally preventing millions of loyal Democratic voters from voting because they are too poor or too black/brown or too college student or just too obviously Democratic.  Those are the voters who gave Hillary Clinton a historic landslide ... in a world where the Democratic Party cared about them.

 

Zandar:

I've talked about Elkhart, Indiana and its unemployment issues several times on the blog over the years as President Obama made one of his first visits as President to the city's hard-hit RV manufacturing industry in order to assure the American people that he was going to help the country. 

SNIP

To recap: the RV industry is doing better than it ever has.  It's doing better than it did under Bush.  Unemployment has gone from 22% to under 4%.  And that doesn't matter because Obama is black and these racist assholes hate him for it and will never, ever give a black man credit for helping them.

SNIP

These assholes will tell themselves anything to believe that their town wasn't saved by the ni-CLANG! and when Trump wrecks the economy once again, they'll blame Obama for it and re-elect Trump just so they can be right.

But remember, Democrats have to win these guys back.  We have to look the other way on racism or we'll never win in places like Indiana or Ohio or Kentucky again. Democrats have to compromise and change, not them.

Let me know how that works out.  I'm not doing it.

Me either, Zandar.  And fuck every DINO who does.

GOP Won By Stripping Democracy from American States

When everybody votes, Democrats win.  When Democrats allow repugs to prevent millions of people from voting, the GOP takes power.

We're not going to restore democracy by pandering to racist motherfucking trump voters.  We're going to restore democracy by reversing voter suppression and making sure everyone votes.  Because when everyone votes, Democrats win.

Zandar:

Remember when I said that GOP gerrymandering made election districts so ridiculously unfair that North Carolina no longer qualified as a democracy? 

 

SNIP

Well, it turns out plenty of other Republican-controlled states are just as dismal as NC in the voting district boundaries department, and actually worse overall in election integrity as a Pennsylvania newspaper points out.

SNIP

The states as bad or worse than NC overall include Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin (the Badger State under Scott Walker would be dead last except for Arizona.)  Wisconsin rated 8/100 on voting district boundaries, and Ohio a dismal 10.  Please note that these are all states that have passed GOP "voter ID laws" and were gerrymandered by Republican legislatures after 2010.  They are also all states that Trump won.

The fact of the matter is that this is what cost Clinton the election: states that are no longer free democracies and instead weighted heavily towards the GOP.  More so than Trump's cult of personality, more so than race, more so than Russian interference, this is why Clinton lost.

We're no longer a collection of democratic states.

The FBI Committed Treason to Get Trump Close Enough to Steal the Election

Hillary won, by three million votes.  The Electoral College is an inexcusable remnant of the Slave Power, which 150 years after being outlawed is still undermining Democracy.

A rogue FBI is the consequence of Democrats letting repugs get away with treason for the past 42 years: pardoning Nixon, letting Ronnie Raygun and Bush Sr. skate on Iran-Contra, Pelosi and Obama refusing to prosecute Smirky-Darth for war crimes.  All in the name of "moving forward."

The result is we are sprinting backward toward the feudal brutality the Kochs and Exxon-Mobil have finally achieved.

Kevin Drum:

Here's a quick review:

• Goaded by rabid congressional Republicans, the FBI spent prodigious resources on Hillary Clinton's email server, even though there was never a shred of evidence that national security had been compromised in any way.
   
• In July, Comey broke precedent by calling a press conference and delivering a self-righteous speech about Clinton's "carelessness." Why did he do this, when FBI protocol is to decline comment on cases after investigations are finished? The answer is almost certainly that he wanted to insulate himself from Republican criticism for not recommending charges against Clinton.
   
• Weeks later, Comey finally released the investigation's interview notes. Only the most devoted reader of bureaucratic prose was likely to suss out their real meaning: there had never been much of a case in the first place, and contrary to Comey's accusation, Clinton had never been careless with classified material. Like everyone else, she and her staff worked hard to exchange only unclassified material on unclassified networks (state.gov, gmail, private servers, etc.). There was a difference of opinion between State and CIA about what counted as classified, but this squabbling had been going on forever, and had driven previous Secretaries of State nuts too.
   
• As Podesta notes, the FBI took a preposterously lackadaisical attitude toward Russia's hacking of the DNC server. Outside of a badly-written novel, it's hard to believe that any law enforcement organization would do as little as the FBI did against a major assault from a hostile foreign power aimed at one of America's main political parties.
   
• Even when plenty of evidence was amassed about Russia's actions, Comey downplayed it in private briefings. This gave Republicans the cover they needed to insist that Obama not mention anything about it during the campaign.
   
• Two weeks before Election Day, Comey authorized a search of Anthony Weiner's laptop, even though there was no reason to think any of the emails it contained were new, or that any of them posed a threat to national security. Then he issued a public letter making sure that everyone knew about the new evidence, and carefully phrased the letter in the most damaging possible way.

Any one of these things could be just an accident. Put them all together, and you need to be pretty obtuse not to see the partisan pattern. In every single case, Comey and the FBI did what was best for Republicans and worst for Democrats. In. Every. Single. Case.

If you want to believe this is just a coincidence, go ahead. But nobody with a room temperature IQ credits that. The FBI has spent the entire past year doing everything it could to favor one party over the other in a presidential campaign. Democrats ought to be in a seething fury about this. Instead, they're arguing about a few thousand white rural voters in Wisconsin and whether Hillary Clinton should have visited Michigan a few more times in October.

Repugs Care Only About the Economic Issues of Straight, Xian White Men

And their allies are the Blue Dog, surrendering "Democrats" who think the way to the White House goes through those same racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic piece-of-shit white men.

 

Via Political Animal:

* Rebecca Traister writes, “Identity Issues Don’t Distract From Economic Issues — They Are Economic Issues.”

The postelection period has seen an enormous amount of pushback against so-called identity politics — specifically the campaigns for social justice and representation for women and people of color — as a frustrating distraction from the serious economic concerns that affect a broad swath of Americans. If only we could get away from divisive “social issues,” goes this line of thinking, Democrats could win elections and be able to enact progressive economic policies that would help far more people. But the idea that fights over reproductive freedom, sexual assault and harassment, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, criminal-justice reform, and gender and racial bias can be somehow separated from larger progressive economic stances is a fiction. As most people engaged in this argument know perfectly well, economic inequality is deeply wrapped up with gender and racial bias. The impending rollback of social progress in a Trump administration will have a staggering economic impact on this country’s women, especially women of color, and regressive economic policies will take a disproportionate toll on those same populations.

Not How It Works

I wish I were confident that future historians will treat this with the horror and contempt that it deserves, but I'm still waiting for historians to do that with Ronnie Raygun.

Digby on ill presidente's announcement that he will not throw Hillary Clinton in jail for not being corrupt.

So our dictator-elect is benevolent after all.

The government didn't used to work this way, of course.  BT (before Trump) presidents didn't "decide" whether to prosecute their former rivals. But apparently they do now. And when they decide not to do it, those who followed the former rivals are to be grateful and worshipful that he decided to heal the nation rather than doing what he promised to do. Thank you oh benevolent President Trump!

At least that's what they're saying. Rudy Giuliani smirked through an interview in the lobby of Trump tower this morning, saying that he thinks Clinton voters should take another look at Trump now that he's shown his generosity --- by saying he's not going to do something that he never had the authority to do and which law enforcement said wasn't criminal in the first place. 

KellyAnne Conway went further and said Trump wasn't just trying to heal the nation, he was trying to help Hillary Clinton heal:

She is the worst person in the world. And so are all the people who chanted "lock her up" like a bunch of slavering, witch-hunting monsters. It was one of the most sickening displays of a sickening campaign. Trump said he'd put her in jail --- to her face --- in the presidential debate. He gets no moral credit for saying he won't pursue it now.

As someone said to me on twitter, this is classic abuser behavior: "why do you make me hurt you, baby? But hey, I didn't kill you so it's all good, amirite? Now go make me dinner."

I don't think I have ever loathed these people more than I do right now.  And, buhlee me, that's saying something.

When They Suffer and Die, I Will Laugh

No sympathy for the greedy morons who voted for a fascist tangelo who's going to destroy everything good Obama gave the ungrateful shits.

Rude Pundit:

And I'm gonna bet a fuckload of people who got insurance through the Affordable Care Act, either through the exchanges or through the Medicaid expansion, voted for Donald Trump and Republicans, who have vowed to make repealing the law one of their first tasks.

And when they lose their health insurance, when they get sick, and when they die and when their children die, I will laugh at them.

Does that seem harsh? I mean, I know, I know, we're all supposed to pretend the ugly months that preceded Tuesday never happened. I wish Hillary Clinton had walked up to the microphone yesterday and said, "Burn shit down. Burn down everything the misogynists built. Bring the country to its filthy knees." But, alas, both she and President Obama went with the conciliatory, healing approach, as if somehow those who have broken the country want it to heal. They don't. They want it to scar.

But, no, no, "Stop Shaming Trump Supporters," liberal rabbi Michael Lerner tells us. "The left needs to stop ignoring people’s inner pain and fear. The racism, sexism and xenophobia used by Mr. Trump to advance his candidacy does not reveal an inherent malice in the majority of Americans," he writes. This presupposes that the racism, etc. isn't intrinsic to the fear, that those who have learned and expressed and exulted in hate of others for the crime of not being white and Christian and male are somehow able to be convinced by telling them we understand their class anxiety and poverty. God, how that would be amazing. It would be even more amazing if the left hadn't just been told to take the health insurance we just got most of them and go fuck ourselves with it. And you know what sucks about being a liberal? When we get a chance, we'll be right back at it, trying to make sure these same short-sighted twat fleas can have access to medical care.

This conflagration of anger at the coalition of dumb fucks, assholes, and shitheads who voted for Trump is going to take a long time to calm down to the usual dull roar of blind rage at the fuckery of the ignorant. The idiot hordes have overrun the joint, like barbarians have ever since they evolved enough to wield clubs. Shit, most Trump voters don't have an idea of what the fuck he's gonna do, which makes them that much more pathetic.

SNIP

No, I'm not playing nice. I'm not gonna fuckin' pretend, as the country falls apart, as attacks on Muslims and others increase, as the world distances itself from us, that there was something wrong with me, that I didn't understand Trump voters' concerns, that I didn't try to elect people whose policies attempted to make their lives better. I get it. They don't.

I don't need to reach out to arsonists to understand fire.

No More News, Just More New Lies

Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog is you go-to for the low-down on how the mainstream media is normalizing trump, swallowing all the right-wing lies and bending over for a four-year ass-fuck.

Headline at Politico right now:

Poll: Trump's popularity soars after election

"Soars"?

Donald Trump’s popularity is rising in the days since his election, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll of registered voters.

Forty-six percent of voters now have a very favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of the president-elect. Twelve percent have a somewhat unfavorable opinion and 34 percent have a very unfavorable opinion of him.

It’s a dramatic uptick since the election. Trump’s favorability has grown 9 points, 37 percent to 46 percent, compared to a Morning Consult poll right before the election -- while his unfavorability has dropped 15 points, from 61 percent to 46 percent.

So in "a dramatic uptick," Trump's favorability "soars" to mere parity, 46%-46%.

How does this compare? The implication is that it's right in line with what happened to previous presidents:

"Trump’s favorability among voters has reached new highs since he became president-elect,” said Morning Consult cofounder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp. "This honeymoon phase in common for new presidents. For example, Obama saw about a 20 point swing in his favor following the 2008 election."

Let's check Polling Report. What were Barack Obama's favorable/unfavorable numbers in polls taken in the five weeks after Election Day 2008?

CNN : 75%-22%
Fox: 68%-24%
Quinnipiac: 67%-19%
CBS: 55%-12%
NBC: 45%-22%

No parity here.

But the Politico headline is right-wing clickbait -- and will probably become mainstream-media conventional wisdom.

Although if we're lucky, this, from Pew, will influence the narrative:



But the Politico headline is probably the story the media likes, so I'm not optimistic.

Empty Land Handed Election to the Orange Menace

This is what the Electoral College does: gives more power to millions of acres of dry land empty of people than to cities full of millions of people.

 

Via Digby:

Fuck the White Working Class

Let's concentrate on uniting the coalition of people who share our values and stop chasing after racist motherfuckers who don't.

Rude Pundit:

My friend Duke from West Virginia said something that had crossed my mind but had shoved aside as bitterness: "Fuck the white working class. Obama gave them health insurance and a chance to get new jobs and they hated him. Fuck them."

Without thinking, I immediately agreed, and as soon as I did, it made total sense. "You're right. Democrats need to abandon the white working class." By "abandon," I mean not trying to desperately court the votes of people who always vote against their best interests and against those who are trying to help them. See, Democrats don't have a working class white people problem. Working class white people have the problem. When you vote against those who are trying to help you for the very people who have harmed you, then you are not dealing with rational thought.

Yeah, that's patronizing and elitist. But nearly half of the voters in a presidential election chose the man who regularly lied to them. So you'll have to forget it if you want me to romanticize and normalize their ignorance.

By the way, that ignorance is a product of years of Republican fuckery at the local level to assure them that they do not get educated. That long game has finally paid off big time.

This is my solution, fantasy though it may be.  Devote even more resources to making sure a coalition of non-whites is united. Devote less to the hurt feelings of angry whites. Let's have this fuckin' fight for what the country is. They won this battle. Let's win the war.

Searching for an Affirming Flame

Here's mine:  We're right, they're wrong, and any compromise is collaboration and anathema.

 

Via digby:

Neal Gabler:

America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.

Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it. As I surveyed the ruin of that country this gray Wednesday morning, I found weary consolation in W.H. Auden’s poem, September 1, 1939, which concludes:

“Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”

I hunt for that affirming flame.

To the Veterans Who Voted for the tiny dictator

You know damn fucking well that gutting the VA is high on his list, you selfish motherfuckers.

 

Crooks and Liars:

Donald Trump always says how much he loves Veterans.

Yet, his record shows he fires them for serving, fought to have them not be able to earn a living as street vendors, ridiculed a decorated war hero by saying "I like people who weren't captured", ridiculed a Gold Star family repeatedly and mercilessly, gloated when a man gave him his Purple Heart saying "it was much easier" to get it handed to him and minimized the damage IED's cause by calling them a "little ride upward."

Yeah, he loves the Vets.

Anyways, 3 days after Trump won the Presidential election it would seem fitting for him to honor the veterans in some way, right? Visit Arlington Cemetery while he was in DC meeting President Obama, go to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial or at the very least make some sort of donation or acknowledgement at a VA or Veterans center, right?

Guess how much he did.

Zero. That's right, our president elect loves veterans so much that he completely ignored the one day of the year designated as a day to honor current, past and future members of the military.

At least he sent a tweet written by a staffer that read:

"Today we express our deepest gratitude to all those who have served in our armed forces. #ThankAVet"

Just a tweet. Can you imagine the rage if President Obama did that?