Two Elections: “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check”
I want to elaborate on something I said on Nicole Sandler’s show on Friday. There were really two elections last Tuesday.
In one, politics worked.
In the other, propaganda worked far better. Trump didn’t even hide that he was running on propaganda. JD Vance said it plainly during his debate: their campaign wasn’t willing to participate in any venue that would fact check. They did not contest this election on true claims about policy. Indeed, hours after Trump’s win became clear, one after another influencer announced that, yes, Donald Trump really does plan on implementing Project 2025, even though he falsely disavowed it as a core tenet of his campaign over and over.
Trump won with about the same number of votes he got in 2020. Trump will get millions more votes than he did in 2020 (though possibly not more than Biden did in 2020.) [Thanks to Nate Silver for the correction.] But they were different votes: more Hispanics, fewer white people. He will win the popular vote, too, but it’s not yet clear by how much.
Harris lost. But she lost differently in contested states and uncontested states. In uncontested states, the country moved upwards of 6% towards Trump. In contested states, Harris halved that movement by 3%. That is, where she followed the old rules of campaigning, persuasion, and GOTV, it worked, some, to counter the larger propaganda wave.
Meanwhile, a lot of people only voted for Trump. That’s why Democratic Senators are on pace to win four swing states that Trump won.
And Democrats had resilience down ballot in other places, too. A number of democrats in districts Trump won by double digits kept their seats. In several states, less conservative judges were kept. In Montana, the legislature moved left. In addition to most of the abortion referenda, right wingers lost referenda on school vouchers in ruby red states.
There is no getting around the devastation of Trump’s win. But the down ballot resilience will end up being very important — and also suggests some areas of vulnerability for Republicans.
Democrats are already at each others’ throat over whether politics could have worked better — who is to blame. Some idiots are arguing that Democrats lost because they’re too “woke,” as if they don’t know that “wokeness” was a propaganda creation the entire time, propaganda created by men waging cultural war on behalf of aggrieved men. We can come back to the two issues — Harris’ silence on Gaza and her cultivation of Republicans — that might plausibly have led Democrats to stay home.
But given the larger dynamic of the race — that politics worked where it was done, but propaganda worked far better — Democrats would be far better to use the two months they’ve got to inventory their tools (one of which is that down ballot resilience), breathe, and think about how to counter the propaganda, because Trump will be in a position to keep doing what he just did unless Democrats find a way to counter the propaganda.
I’m not the only one making that observation. Michael Tomasky noted that Trump won on inaccurate perceptions about the economy. Amanda Marcotte wrote about this dissonance at Salon, pointing to a bunch of studies showing that people who get information from non-news sites prefer Harris’ policies but nevertheless voted for Trump.
The problem wasn’t Democratic policy or messaging. It’s ignorance. As Heather “Digby” Parton wrote at Salon Wednesday, people backed Trump’s “aesthetics and attitudes” but knew nothing about his policies. Before the election, Catherine Rampell and Youyou Zhou at the Washington Post polled voters about policies without revealing which candidate proposed them. Harris’ were far more popular — even Trump voters generally liked her ideas more, as long as they knew they weren’t hers.
When voters have factual information about the candidates, they prefer Democrats. Polls from earlier this year show that people who consume news from journalistic outlets — newspapers, network news programs, and news websites — overwhelmingly planned to vote for the Democratic candidate. Newspaper readers clocked in at 70% Democratic support, and network news viewers were 55% Democratic. News website readers were only less so because the survey didn’t distinguish between legitimate sites like Salon and bunk outlets like Breitbart, but still: merely being a person who reads stuff makes you more liberal. In states where heavy ad spending helped educate voters a little more on Harris’ plans, she lost less ground than in places where that money wasn’t spent.
The problem is most people simply do not absorb quality information. Instead, increasing numbers of Americans have a media diet that is mostly a bunch of lies, conspiracy theories, irrelevant diatribes and other such bunkum that right-wing propagandists use to deceive people. A study released by Pew Research in September showed people were exponentially more likely to get “news” from social media detritus than legitimate news outlets. And those results almost certainly downplay the ratio of nonsense-to-real news, since most people taking the poll won’t want to admit that they mostly scroll TikTok all day and haven’t read an actual article in eons. Looking at newspaper sales and news site traffic, we can see that the consumption of reality-based news is plummeting.
WSJ has a piece describing the collapse of both legacy media and cable news. Of particular note: the referrals to legacy media started collapsing in 2023; but we know that was an intentional choice made by some of the richest men in the world to change their algorithms.
There’s one other aspect of this dynamic for which I’d like to offer a hypothesis.
Propaganda didn’t just win the election. It created the malaise that Trump promised he would solve.
A number of people are blaming this exclusively on an anti-incumbent wave that has taken out ruling parties since COVID (there are exceptions to this, likely to include Ireland when we vote later this month). But that anti-incumbent wave includes legislative elections. And in 2022, Democrats did far better than expected, even though Biden’s approval ratings were as bad as they currently are during the summer of 2022 (his approvals narrowed somewhat by the election).
There are three differences.
First, Trump was on the ballot. A great many people — often disaffected and less educated — are buying the con that Trump is selling, and they’re buying it because Trump and his allies first made them more disaffected and then offered to provide an antidote. He plans to do more of the same in his second term.
Second, as the WSJ points out, legacy media has cratered in the last two years. But importantly, as I’ll show, Republicans have already started putting a lot of the fascist crackdown we fear in place, both in individual states like Florida, but also in the way the GOP used their majority in the House starting in 2023. Republicans took out social media moderation in advance, and that played a significant part in the success of GOP propaganda efforts. They started laying the foundation to win on propaganda when they got a majority in the House.
Finally, a word about Biden’s unpopularity, which is what the wave was against. We’re looking at the election and no doubt the propaganda made the difference there. It didn’t help that legacy media misrepresented Biden’s economic successes.
But one reason Biden is so unpopular is the same reason Hillary was in 2016: Republicans had led a sustained garbage investigation designed to do nothing but raise her negatives. Republicans tried to impeach Biden for, literally, nothing, and it captured the attention of both real and fake media for two years. And the effort to smear Biden was, as these campaigns always are, about projection. Republicans in Congress spent taxpayer dollars to create the illusion that Biden was the corrupt one, not Trump. (Trump’s unprecedented corruption, which will be one of several organizing principles of his Administration, got almost no attention during the campaign.)
Which is to say, it’s not just the election. It’s broader than that. It’s that a permanent propaganda campaign has been supercharged in the last two years, in ways that weren’t even true when Fox News relentlessly tried to take down Hillary and her spouse in the 1990s. And that propaganda campaign has played a key role in leading people to distrust and eschew “reality,” including the reality that Joe Biden was better for the economy and Trump is unashamedly corrupt.
Update: Another piece on the correlation between media use and Trump vote.
And Timothy Snyder ends a piece on Trump and fascism this way:
He bears responsibility for what comes next, as do his allies and supporters.
Yet some, and probably more, of the blame rests with our actions and analysis. Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.
Public domain
Thank you Dr. Marcy excellent points. Agree propaganda played a major roll.
Insightful and informative interview with Heather Cox Richardson about the election.
Jon Stewart on Trump’s Win and What’s Next w/ Heather Cox Richardson | The Weekly Show
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7cKOaBdFWo)
Marcy, thank you for your insightful and level-headed analysis. Once I felt ready to read *something* post-election, Emptywheel is where I began. Thanks also to the regulars here in the comments, you are equally important.
And thank you MsJennyMD for the link. Heather Cox Richardson’s November 8 note (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-8-2024) spoke to me, especially as it illuminated the gap between the propaganda/”feels” the GOP has employed for a generation and the political and economic reality about to unfold.
That Nov 8 note also brought to mind one of Rayne’s themes, the steady degradation of (public) education. HCR quoted a political strategist who said “When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, ‘What is an authoritarian?’”
You’re welcome. Yes, the interview spoke volumes with me.
Just yesterday, I shared the story about “what is an authoritarian” with my 95 year old wise father. He said, “Ignorant people.” I thanked him for an expanded education. Not only schooling, also for the opportunity to live in Europe for 13 years embracing, exploring and experiencing different cultures. Diversity expanded my consciousness.
Excellent linked item. The Democrats should not learn the wrong lessons.
What are the correct lessons? There will be dispute about that.
The media shouldn’t learn the wrong lesson either but you can bet that once again they will refuse to examine their major, decades-long role in creating this disaster.
Also it wasn’t Fox News that played the biggest role in the smearing of the Clintons, it was the mainstream “liberal” media, lead by the NY Times that did that. It was the Times that printed false accusations shopped to them by the right wing groups like Arkansas Project about Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Chinagate, etc. Because of the prestige of the Times the rest of the mainstream media jumped on the bandwagon. And when Republicans spent millions of our tax dollars on multiple investigations of the vicious, cruel, completely bonkers claim that the Clintons had murdered their close friend Vince Foster the media treated that as almost normal.
The Clinton Foundation “scandal” was started by Steve Bannon’s Breitbart henchman Peter Schweitzer with his book “Clinton Cash”. In 2015 the Times and WaPo both signed exclusive deals with Schweitzer so they could publish excerpts from the book before publication. The most damaging claim — that Hillary had gotten government approval of the sale of a US Uranium mine to Russia was quickly debunked but the damage was done because the Times and WaPo had put their imprimatur on the story.
That was when Hillary’s popularity tanked and the Crooked Hillary meme was born just as Steve Bannon had intended. Bannon openly admitted to that a major goal is the “hack” the mainstream media so they will report on damaging smears of Democrats ginned up by his operations. (“Devil’s Bargain” by Joshua Green gives the gory details).
It was another book by Peter Schweitzer, “Secret Empires”,that started the Biden Ukraine “scandal”. That time instead of going directly to the Times and WaPo Schweitzer got his pal John Solomon to publish his slander in The Hill. From there the mainstream media picked up the story. Solomon lost his job when the lies were exposed and he is now happily ensconced in right wing media world.
Funny how the media ignored that admission just like they downplayed Vance admitting he lied to get the media to cover his claims. The media never admits its culpability.
Kind of like how Chris LaCivita orchestrated the Swift Boat attack on John Kerry, then returned to the same playbook as a Trump campaign manager this cycle.
Thanks, MsJenny. I put a posted a small transcript here:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/11/10/two-elections-the-rules-were-that-you-guys-werent-going-to-fact-check/#comment-1078545
I also highly recommend that discussion with Heather Cox Richardson.
For the last 50 years the core of the slow-building assault against democracy has been the undermining of truth by Republicans who realized that the only way to sell their agenda was to keep the public misinformed about it. This effort has been assisted by well-intentioned people’s belief that “the best remedy against misinformation is more information.” This idea has turned out to be wrong. The propogandists have won, and democracy has lost. If we every somehow return to democratic governance, the only way we’re going to keep it is by rejecting “free speech absolutism” and marginalizing fascist liars. Doing so is not inconsistent with the principles of an open society, as Germany’s experience has demostrated. I wrote about this two years ago in New York magazine: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/academics-are-reconsidering-the-meaning-of-free-speech.html
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Real information indeed. I think it would be easier to fight now for our democracy, then to allow the fascists to control election processes (tabulations) that they will repeat, if they permit more elections, in 2026 and 2028, without our questioning anything at all now or then.
https://www.x.com/Spoonamore/status/1854912281865552027
The 2024 Election was hacked at the tabulation level. I have a 25 year career, finding and/or conducting such hacks. It’s easy-ish to do. GOP/Trump-Putin/Musk all have the resources, motivation and access to do it. Hand recount the 2 oddest precincts in each county. Solved.
……………
https://spoutible.com/thread/37794003
DUTY TO WARN
Gov. of Pennsylvania J. Shapiro, et. al.
Nov. 7th 2024
This is a formal Duty to Warn Letter. Per DNI Dir. Clapper’s 2015 directive to all agencies and contractors associated with intelligence and financial agency technologies. I have a Duty to Warn of suspicions of hacking, and have done so for my customers including Govt. Agencies, Dept. of Defense, F100 firms and numerous banks. I do so here as a directly affected voter.
Nearly all my investigations begin for one of two reasons. The hackers make a mistake triggering a system issue and/or the aggregate effects of the hacking creates results outside nominal expectations. There is a third and less common flag: an unrelated distraction to draw attention away from the hacking.
All three of these indicators are present in the election of Nov. 5th 2024. Element three, distraction via bomb-threats, is confirmed coming from Russian agencies. Element one is the inexplicable mismatch of reported votes vs. voter turnout. Here in Centre County initial tabulation was an absurdly how 67K votes when over 80K voters participated. Element two is also present. Our local scanner systems worked in testing, but were unable to communicate properly with tabulation systems after the bomb-scare. I note from experience – the failure of a scanning systems to properly load a database is an extremely common development when a system is changed without notice to the users. I have personally worked on similar issues where sudden scanner configuration failures were the first symptoms of system hacking.
With these three elements present, I suggest immediately doing a relatively simple set of preliminary checks. First, randomly selected precincts require manual comparisons of the number of voters who took ballots vs the scanned output of vote totals. Those did not match here in Centre County by apx 13K votes. Once added, those votes substantially changed outcomes and led to the outright reversals in multiple Centre County races.
Centre County BOE now shows vote totals over 80K votes. Apx. 6% above 2020 turnout. In my professional opinion every county in PA as well as many in WI, MI and GA currently reporting lower vote totals vs 2020 and/or also experienced a distraction bomb threat should undertake the same process. My professional opinion is: many thousands of voters are being disenfranchised, likely by a malicious actor via errors in tabulation software. My concern has been proven correct and warranted here in Centre County PA.
ESignature – Stephen R. Spoonamore
……………
https://x.com/Spoonamore
It is Our Duty to Warn.
Here’s a thread of the details from Spoonamore…
https://www.threads.net/@billt801/post/DCIIRcrRhmD
My wife, who works in Corp Security said this is exactly what would happen.
I was worried immediately when he said they have the votes and not to worry. Trump always projects his crimes.
I don’t know if this tabulation is real, or another point to undermine our trust in the system. The thing that has me leaning into this theory, are Trump’s words. Scary thought.
I think this is valid. We need a recount. #Recount2024
x.com/jimstewartson/status/1856090161034953126
If the @TheDemocrats want to go down swinging they MUST INSIST that every single county that got a Russian bomb threat be hand recounted. That is foreign election interference. Period. Full top. You don’t need to prove a hack or Starlink or any of that.
#Recount2024
To add to the Republican’s trickery of preventing Democratic voters and votes from counting.
Trump and company with the Supreme Court’s help, purged millions of legitimate (mainly Democratic) votes in front of our eyes and behind our backs.
#Recount2024
https://www.gregpalast.com/heres-what-we-do-now/
Here’s What We Do Now
by Greg Palast
“Could disqualifying literally millions of ballots affect an election’s outcome? What do you think, Sherlock?
“Same with mass purges: 400,000 in Georgia, 1.2 million in Texas — way over 10 million removed from the voter rolls — no other advanced nation does this, erasing voters’ rights to cast a ballot.
“Some weeks ago, Rev. Jackson told President Biden and VP Kamala Harris to watch our film Vigilantes Inc., and then take action. But still, the Justice Department hit the snooze button. What that tells us is that no government agency, no political party, is going to save our democracy. That’s completely on us. And that’s my commitment.
“Today, I’ll be on calls with voting rights attorneys and frontline activist groups preparing for the fierce fight to protect our votes. They are, as you can imagine, requesting our factual reports and findings — about the two-million-plus vigilante challenges, about purges, mail-in ballot rejections and more. And they need our film and print stories of the voters whose ballots were challenged, discarded, blocked. Our films and short PSA have now been seen by more than 8 million — but that’s not enough.
“Too much has been spent on selling candidates and not enough on simple civic education. Education is our work.”
Free Documentary: VIGILANTES INC.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen
http://www.watchvigilantesinc.com
#Recount2024
As a judge of elections for my precinct in Montco, PA, our precinct had unprecedented turnout (~90% with mail-in and in person combined) and we ended the day on a ~2:1 ratio of Harris to Trump. The other precinct in our school with us was similar. We had an issue with poll watchers who wanted to record us (video and pictures) while we opened the polls and scanners but we turned them down (after much broo-ha-ha). This is illegal in our state. I had a lot of unregistered voters who showed up and wanted to vote, which is also illegal. I know the dems are doing post-mortems, asking why did we fail? I would also ask – why did our two precincts work/not fail? Our county was blue as well as the neighboring one.
Just curious. Did you experience a Russian bomb threat causing you to evacuate precinct?
Every word of this article is exactly correct, although it minimizes the mainstream media’s own hand in its diminishment. I wish it had some discussion of how this propaganda could ever possibly be defeated. Knowing the problem, what is the next step?
Excellent analysis, Ms. Wheeler. American’s incredibly short historical memory is to blame as well.
Trump came into office in 2016, promising to restore American manufacturing, make healthcare more affordable and rebuild American infrastructure. He did none of those things. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris made substantial progress in all of those areas. Trump promised to cut the deficit and exploded it instead. He promised to bring unity to America and instead divided it more deeply than any president since the Civil War. The only thing he accomplished was to ram through a massive tax cut for the wealthy and corporations, much of it written on napkins at Trump’s steak house in Washington by lobbyists. The American middle class saw little or no benefit. Yet, he somehow he won the presidency back in 2024 on a campaign of “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Shame on us.
And, of course all that was reported, instead of nonsense about cats and dogs and Haitians. Media seeing their responsibilities that way.
Ben Davis had a good article over at The Guardian that kind of addresses the “better off” issue. It made a lot of sense to me.
Basically, he argues that “the massive, overnight expansion of the social safety net [under Trump] and its rapid, almost overnight rollback” under Biden are the origin of people feeling they were better off under Trump, despite the lack of facts to support their feelings.
I agree with Davis that Biden and the Dems should have publicly fought to keep the protections instead of shrugging and moving on because they didn’t think they could get it to pass legislatively. At least they would have looked like they were fighting for the working people, even if they failed.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/trump-victory-explanation-scrutiny
Biden’s policies have and will bring huge benefits to working people but he gets no credit. I made a point of looking at media reports about new manufacturing projects in red states that were started because of funding in bills like the Inflation Reduction Act. The reports all gave credit to governors (because states also have to pony up funds) but not to Biden. For example WVa got major steel rolling plant because the Biden’s legislation provided the funding for the infrastructure upgrades NUCOR rightly demanded. The media gave Mike DeWine, but not Biden, credit for his multi-million dollar grant program for towns in the Appalachian region of Ohio even though it was spurred by Biden’s infrastructure program and half the funds come from the federal government.
It drove me crazy that the media repeatedly blamed Biden for not selling his programs. They knew he was frequently visiting sites of new projects and giving speeches but only in a handful of cases was there much national media coverage. The most coverage was for his visit to the site of the new Ohio River bridge at Cincinnati but it was clear the only reason was that Mitch McConnell was also there.
I agree with your summary of Trump’s “accomplishments”, if you’ll add putting three votes on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade …
It’s a failure to imagine the worst of people, and an assuption that good people will recognize good actions and attribute those actions to the right people.
Americans needs to be led by their noses.
My most frustrating complaint about the Ds is that they think people will just notice that the Ds are doing right by them. All their efforts and good will, will magically be recognized. Heck the Rs take credit for everything good even when it’s not theirs to take credit for, even when they voted against it.
Twenty years ago Bill Moyers described the RW media as an effort to turn Americans into “agitated amnesiacs”. They have succeeded. Now SM has a stranglehold on their information intake. Neil Postman’s ‘Amusing Our Selves to Death’ gives reasons to believe our future is more likely Orbanism than Putinism.
Moyers’ program “Buying the War” is an eye opening examination of how the media got the WMD story so wrong. Moyers interviewed the two Knight Ridder journalists, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, who reported about the serious doubts that experts at the CIA had about Saddam having WMD. When asked how they got the story Landay and Strobel said they had simply talked to the CIA experts instead of the political appointees running the CIA. When Moyers asked that icon of tough journalism Tim Russert how he has missed the story Russert’s excuse was that no one had called to tell him.
Watch and weep:
https://youtu.be/0KzYL6e3sV0?si=8AZOeF9gSiSy27_8
Back in the 2000s I was arguing with my coworker–a Republican on his borough’s council–about the fact that inspector Hans Blix found no WMD. My coworker shrugged it off and said Blix didn’t find them because they were well-hidden.
Note the similar “reasoning” to Trump’s claims of election rigging.
We may or may not have Susie Wiles for most of the term. Trump dumps people so it is unclear. Marcy, do you see her as mainly a propagandist, or as an administrative and campaign discipline force, keeping Trump on message even in lying, or both? How do readers feel. Appointing her was a surprise to me, given Trump’s attitude toward women not in his family band.
Trump has also said that he employs women because they work harder. The implication is that they have something to prove in a way that benefits him.
Trump also considers women disposable and not a threat. His ideas are a bit…dated.
Yes, Susie Wiles will be lucky to last a year. Trump is easily bored, often needs scapegoats, and regards a single contradiction from a direct report as a threat to his existence. His first administration, he ran through four COS and eight Attorneys General, though several of the latter were acting AG’s. The two longest serving were Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr.
There are men Trump sees as a threat, but I posit that he sees all humans as disposable. I can’t wait to see the day when a future federal DOJ explains to him that he’s immune, but his kids aren’t, so he can’t plead the 5th in their trials …
I’d say it depends on if the groups sponsoring Wiles (Koch? The CNP? Russia?) have more clout than the tech bro group.
I’m hearing pundits and journalists say that it’s inevitable that Musk and Trump will clash, but I think this is extremely unlikely. After all, who has all the power now? It’s Trump. And Musk is now under Trump’s tiny thumb if he wants to keep his contracts or gain control over policies.
I have heard former GOP political operatives like Rick Wilson and Michael Steele describe Wiles as a professional. They felt she could not control Trump but that she tried.
One of the things on the economy, Trump in 2016 did say a lot about infrastructure and I did not see any MN groundbreaking. Biden passed spending and I see local major road bottlenecks being worked on. Didn’t that happen nationwide, and didn’t people see the difference? It was clear locally, here in north Twin Cities metro. Did Trump push any infrastructure anywhere? The economy is more than the investment markets and the super markets, but there was a lot of stuff fed out about food and gas pump prices. People perceive too narrow a view of the economy in terms of “how much I have to pay for stuff.” IMO that was a factor.
Guess you forgot all about “Infrastructure Week.” s/nark
Infrastructure spending was virtually deadlocked during the first Trump administration to the point that it became a punchline. The Biden administration worked successfully with Congress to pass sorely needed investment plans, including, IRA, BIL, and CHIPS. The modernizations and investments facilitated by those laws will produce economic rewards for decades. Ask contractors, DOTs, ASCE, and everyone that’s been working at full capacity since those laws were passed.
But there were a lot of Infrastructure Weeks!
I would imagine that the next administration will do a combination of (1) taking credit for any benefits that accrue from work started under these Biden-passed projects, and/or (2) figure out a way to divert the dollars allotted to their priorities or to their cronies (or stop them all together). And who will stop them?
Good times!
Those misguided male construction workers who voted for Trump because “immigrants are taking our jobs!” will find out that the Trump “solution” results in the overall elimination of jobs due to the economy crashing. In other words, it’s not that an immigrant took your job, it’s that there will be no job to be taken by anyone.
I wonder how the other industrialized democracies educate their young about social responsibility, about developing critical thinking skills, and about the way their governments work—what their governments even DO.
I don’t mean that as an idle musing, either; I take some comfort in how well (comparatively) some Democrats did locally, and at repetitive studies showing the popularity of Dem policies over RW policies when party origin isn’t referenced. We’re all newly horrified (sadly, a regular occurrence!) at the depth of civic ignorance Americans have, and the blithe entitlement with which they cast a vote without even momentary thought to the consequences of their vote on others’ lives. I’m hoping that renewed Democratic local power in some places could be a jumping off point for re-introducing some semblance of critical thinking and social responsibility back into the community.
Haven’t yet read Digby’s piece, or caught HCR on Stewart, but I’ve been reading Rayne here on the lack of public education—and I remember from my own formative years the residual community-focused (communitarian?) assumptions about government and how we care for each other that were frankly left over from the New Deal, and were a part, even if a fleeting one, of public education.
This is one area among SO many, in which there is ground that desperately needs to be regained. It’s also kind of a conversation-stopper, because the inevitable response would be, “Given the social transformations of the past 50 years, how the F do we even DO that?” I think we have to start someplace. I just, yet, don’t see where.
The billionaires, led most obnoxiously by Bill Gates, have led the charge for the past quarter century to undo America’s best idea, free universal public schooling. They set out to simply profit from it via tech and testing regimes and have now moved on to vouchers schemes that take public education funds and send them to private and religious schools.
When teachers have pointed out the dangers to democracy inherent in an uneducated populace, we have been mocked and told we are self-interested radical unionists. It’s not just the GOP; Obama put his basketball buddy Arne Duncan in charge of the nation’s schools.
Fortunately, in this election, vouchers were roundly rejected by voters in Colorado, Nebraska and Kentucky.
One thing to note about the constitutional amendment failing in Kentucky is not only did the effort lose, it lost in every single Kentucky county, all 120 of ’em. As I noted in another comment on another thread, it is really remarkable that in such a so-called red state a Republican initiative was so thoroughly defeated, and not just in the cities that usually and overwhelmingly vote for Democratic Party officials. The effort to defeat Amendment 2 did even better than the also-successful effort to defeat a constitutional amendment that would have outlawed abortion — which didn’t stop the Kentucky General Assembly from both enacting a “trigger law” post-Dobbs and from being completely unwilling to pass legislation for abortion exceptions to rape and incest, something I am pretty sure the vast majority of Kentuckians are for, no matter their party affiliations.
There is a huge disconnect going on in the voting public between policies and personalities. The rise of social media at the expense of traditional text-based “mainstream” media certainly plays a part, but I think there is also something much more broad-based going on, and definitely educational opportunities (or lack thereof, in a place like Kentucky) play a role. It’s a multi-variable problem, and I am really despairing to even think of any sort of appropriate multi-pronged solutions. Essentially, we’re all going to suffer consequences due to the majority’s willingness to “fuck around and find out,” as opposed to figuring out how to vote for their interests to begin with.
Vouchers are contrary to every sound need for an educated populace. They would lead to an educated part of the people and inadequate funding for public education. That is a path to worse ruin than now. Vouchers should be strongly opposed each and every time somebody suggests the idea. Standardized testing also has cultural reasons to be opposed. If it were really predictive, even then care would be needed. It becomes an excuse for good sense because it gives a number, numbers can get compared, a process which some trust more than people. Trust in teachers, who are experienced and well-intentioned will have occasional problems, but is the best thing going. Trusting anything else is a dead end option.
It goes way beyond Bill Gates -he’s new money. The ultra wealthy and invisible old money pull the puppet strings. They create the division of left and right but it’s really top versus bottom. They will gut the middle class and blame the poor, and half the country will fall for it.
Bill Gates’ dad was one of the most prominent lawyers in Seattle, his mom was on the board of directors of First Interstate and United Way. His great granddad was president of National City Bank and director of the Seattle branch of the San Francisco Federal Reserve.
From everything I have seen the Gateses were sincerely trying to improve public education and have not supported vouchers for private. They have supported smaller public schools and the development of charter schools (which are supposed to be under public control but in red states they are pretty much unregulated in practice). Their reform efforts were based on research, not crackpot religious ideology. They also have openly admitted that they have not been successful and that reform is a lot more difficult than they thought.
https://wapo.st/48IKjFw
In my opinion a lot of the handwringing about public schools is based on false information, the result of decades of a right wing war aimed at privatizing/profitizing schools and turning them into Christofascist indoctrination factories. I rarely see an apples-to-apples comparison of private or charter schools to public schools. The rare ones that are conducted, matching kids on the financial or educational background of their parents, show that in general public schools do as well or better than private or charter schools. The media ignores those studies.
In education circles, it’s widely recognized that Gates funded and controlled both the research and the discourse – an echo chamber of his own ideas. He did the same in the field of public health.
Maybe…
Ignorance takes very little or no effort. If it sounds good (propaganda) I’ll vote for it and enough of them did.
Becoming informed takes effort on several fronts. Being a little open minded – or at least listen. And be subject to the same repetition that those on the left use so well. Repeat a lie or truth enough times and it becomes “truth” to the ignorant. I’m not really sure that works for telling the truth because the lies told also tap into visceral fears.
But the messengers paths have to be broad, deep, and as repetitive as the liars. And a possible challenge that I have no idea how to pull off is to tap into positive visceral – vibes? Ugh.
On the other hand, if things really get ugly economically and Hispanic families (that voted for Trump) get impacted by deportation (and they will) and women’s health care autonomy worsens – and it might – maybe the truth can leverage newer ugly vibes.
I am not ignorant, didn’t vote for Trump (or other righties), am willing to help, just don’t exactly know how to other than “sign up” for the “resistance” movements forming now.
I’ve left Xitter as I promised myself I would do whichever way this went. Unsure if active “resistance” on Xitter is possible, but if it is I’d rejoin even though it might make me nauseous.
Don’t rejoin Xitter. You’d be giving up even more of your personal data than you’ve already shared, and you’ll make it easier to track you down.
Reinforced by this 8 Nov post from Risks Digest:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/34/48#subj4
“X is the latest social media site letting 3rd parties use your data to train AI models (CBC)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/x-third-parties-user-data-1.7356152
Elon Musk’s X was already using your data to train its own artificial intelligence. Soon, it’ll let other companies do the same.
Starting Nov. 15, the social media site formerly known as Twitter will share user data—including posts, likes, bookmarks and reposts—with third-party platforms that may use the information to train AI models.
The company updated its privacy policy on Wednesday to detail the changes. When the policy takes effect, users are automatically opted in until they opt out.
‘Depending on your settings, or if you decide to share your data, we may share or disclose your information with third parties,’ the updated policy reads.”
Rayne,
No account on Xitter. (Yes, I’m no account) Just perusing the site is not risky, is it?
datnotdat
Use a VPN. Your ability to browse Xitter while not logged into a Xitter account is limited anyhow by the site’s own restrictions intended to encourage readers to join Xitter.
On a personal note, I feel terrible for my 98 year-old mother. She’s got lived experiences that make this election result both exhasperating and scary. She was traumitized in 2016 and it’s now sinking in that she probably won’t outlive another term of harmful rhetoric and real harm.
I can relate — my mother was stunned by the 2016 election. “Why are people so stupid and gullable?” was a frequent refrain. She is not here to see the 2024 outcome; I can’t imagine how she would have coped.
She knows many are not stupid or gullible. She knows, given the means, that many will “drop a dime” on people who oppose or resist. If you could see the expression on her face when she talks about where we could be headed. She’ll then get quiet and we’ll just sit in silence for a bit.
Her odds may be better than she thinks, depending on her current condition. My old man lived to 102. In his 90s, when he got to thinking about his demise, I’d use an actuarial table, which people don’t typically peruse. He’d feel much better, again and again, over years, when the subject came up. For example, according to the SSA, your mother has a life expectancy of 2.66 years at age 98. However, once she reaches 100, her life expectancy is 2.35 years. I tend to think insurance actuarial tables are a little more accurate.
It is true very few people reach the age of 100. However, at age 98, nearly all the people who comprise the total set used to determine life expectancy are all ready gone. The new set is predicated on those people who have reached the age of 98. When your mother is 100, the new set is predicated on those people who have actually reached the age of 100.
This is the first time I have ever felt glad that I am not likely to live for too many more years but it’s not much comfort because my I have kids and grandkids. My grandson had several classmates tell their friends that they will probably be deported. It’s terrifying and heartbreaking.
A related point that Heather Digby Parton has made about our general malaise: Group A follows Trump and believes the country is a hellhole. Group B sees this clearly and despairs. Either way, Americans end up scared and miserable.
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I’m waiting for analysis of the full vote on the state level, but I began to suspect as soon as the results started coming in that there were a lot of people who registered only to vote for Trump.
Perhaps to benefit from the Elon Musk $1M giveaways? Odds were better than Powerball.
When half the country (or more) lives in a made-up world where 2+2=3, no significant improvement is going to happen until this changes.
As you quote “The problem is most people simply do not absorb quality information. Instead, increasing numbers of Americans have a media diet that is mostly a bunch of lies, conspiracy theories, irrelevant diatribes and other such bunkum that right-wing propagandists use to deceive people.”
Most of the analysis published in the classic news outlets (NYT, WP, etc) misses the point and focuses on tiny missteps by Harris, but for many years they just ignored the corruption and obvious mental degradation of Trump. They are part of the problem, but they refuse to see it.
“…for many years they just ignored the corruption and obvious mental degradation of Trump.” Especially the mental degradation. The sanewashing of the media is really something. They employ a two-step process:
Step 1) simply repeat what he said
Step 2) then say what he meant
People often suggest show his words and don’t interpret them, i.e. stop at Step 1). But I think the problem with sanewashing is they don’t go to a third step.
Step 3) the difference between what he said and what he meant are signs of a man whose mind is going.
“If Kamala is elected, you won’t have cows”. Saying that he is referring to global warming advocates criticizing the cattle industry for CO2 emissions, is sanewashing. I think they should add that if this is the best he can do to explain it, it shows that his mind is Swiss cheese. I think that would’ve been more effective.
O/T JD Vance indicates US may leave NATO if the EU censors X. Corporate ownership of the government is now more overt. Next step, tell Bezos he can see Amazon in the anti-trust sights of the DOJ, or he can sell WaPo to one of Trump’s friends.
On happier notes, Nikki Haley has been kicked to the curb as has Pompeo. I’m especially tickled about Haley—she could’ve been a patriot, but sold her soul for nothing. Her career was over long ago and she is the only one that can’t see it. And, in other news, Kari Lake lost and Emerald Robinson can’t figure out how Trump won since the machines used were designed to flip votes :)
Those are the only silver linings I see. Otherwise, I feel like my abdomen has been slit I’m having my intestines pulled out.
JD Vance pretends there are reasons Trump will not abandon NATO. There aren’t any. He and Donny are playing cat and mouse, taunting NATO to see how far they can push it. NATO and the American public are Charlie Brown. Trump is Lucy with the football.
Your point, Marcy, about reading news vs other media is good. What are alternatives to the ones we have quit? What are suggestions for where to put subscription money now?
Everyone I know is devastated, especially women. Almost everyone has stopped listening to and watching news. I cannot tolerate the finger pointing and recrimination, the drumbeat against Democrats. People ranting on about the duopoly and Gaza, single issues that drove them into bad choices.
I appreciate those who are taking a look, like here, at the underlying information that can be gleaned about the voters, the ones who stayed home, and why. We could not bring ourselves to vote for a woman, it seems, much less one not white.
I do believe we will have strategic opportunities, and I hope Biden can make a few happen. I hope he pardons Hunter. I think there are some Republicans who might want to see some guardrails. I can hope.
This election will have terrible consequences for Ukranians and Palestinians. It will have consequences in many countries, the success of propaganda will be supported by zealots like Musk who has little to lose. Climate change cares not for women’s healthcare, immigrants, or the price of eggs and gasoline. Extinction, already on the fast track will only increase. Three species going extinct every hour.
We are not a smart species, no matter how much we tell ourselves. We are doing it to ourselves and we know it. We will not save ourselves.
Solidarity to all of us. Love your people, find common purpose. I send love to all of you.
I take issue with the use of the word, ‘we’…as in “we are doing it…”
There are entities that “are doing it” ….but, with respect, it isn’t ‘we’…..
ownership of media is an enormously consequential factor….abetted by industry, and an unaccountable infusion of container ships of cash into the information ecosystem that tilt news.
In addition I take issue with: “We will not save ourselves.”
After fascism does too much damage to be supported, it gets thrown over.
Sometimes by popular uprising, sometimes by defeat in war.
Generally, authoritarian governments willing to use violence against their people to stay in power can last a very long time, e.g., China (2,200 years) and Russia (1,100+ years). Scandinavian ideals that have spread to Germany, Benelux, France, and the UK, and, to a lesser extent, the bordering countries —and from there to some of their former colonies (e.g., not India)—are the exception rather than the rule.
Well WE may not be the corporations and greedy others who are not doing a thing to change the outcome, who are profiting their way to endless more of the resources, resulting in failure to save life on the planet. Humans are doing this, no others. You and I can’t change it, AFAIK, and so WE are doomed.
I believe some are gullible, some uneducated, some apathetic. Also believe a great many actually want a fascist, an authoritarian, and they know Trump et al are lying. Whether any of them know the meaning of the words fascist, authoritarian or not, it’s what they want. There’s a dark side in all of us, and while it may exist, the difference is whether we act on it that reveals who we really are. If I hear or read another line about “this isn’t us” – really, it is you. Thankfully we see that tens of millions of people are educated, or take the time to investigate what they hear/read, are not apathetic, or gullible, and possess some critical thinking skills.
They are people who are also struggling post pandemic, just like MAGA voters – but they aren’t fooled by easy answers or scapegoating, and they have a heart (naturally reject the Cruelty that is an afront to them). Love is indeed the answer. That’s very encouraging.
“What are suggestions for where to put subscription money now?”
I am not Dr. Wheeler but I would suggest any locally owned, non-corporate news option as long as you can figure out who actually owns it. Not any Gannett papers, even though surprisingly their national political coverage was, this past election, better than NYT and WaPo in my opinion, at the corporate level they are decimating their own local political coverage. Here in Louisville, the largest city in Kentucky, there is nary any coverage of what’s happening in Frankfort just down the road — for that I have to look to the Lexington Herald-Leader which is a McClatchy newspaper. And increasingly they’re just not even covering city politics in any coherent way, despite recently winning a Pulitzer for such coverage!
Additionally, if there’s a local non-profit option, that might be the best way to go. For general national and international news, you could do worse than the Associated Press, which is also a non-profit. The AP tends to both sides things when it comes to American national political coverage but at least they don’t employ Maggie Haberman or Devlin Barrett or any number of other nincompoops.
In Vermont, as an example, I’d recommend VTDigger.com for local news and regional/national opinions. Also the weekly SevenDaysVT.com is excellent.
I’m looking for something in my new home territory of western Mass.
That wouldn’t be the Boston Globe which is owned by John Henry, billionaire owner of the Red Sox. They outsource their education coverage to other billionaires, namely Amos Hofstetter, former Continental Cablevision CEO.
Excellent points. Your headline says it all. I thought that line by JD was a gift for the Harris campaign. That all of her ads should have ended with that couple second clip. Just to remind people (and show those who follow no news, but still see ads) about the utter falsehood of the Trump campaign. There’s no way to know if it may have helped. We can’t go to the past. Even if Mr Trump says he is bringing us there.
Thanks, Dr. Wheeler. About a month ago, I commented in response to a WaPo article the Trump was campaigning on “Imaginary solutions to imaginary problems.” It sounds like you agree.
The keys to countering the damage his administration will do would seem to be to focus on the real problems caused by the imaginary solutions (I.e., the added costs at the state level for delivering healthcare when federal Medicaid subsidies are reduced to help “ balance the budget”, and to continue to identify the grift Trump breeds, like Bannon’s Build the Wall fraud in the last administration.
I am glad to be able to follow your Bluesky account. It helps me stay informed.
2 main reasons we lost, both alluded to:
1. Allowing social media to go unmoderated; once Musk bought Twitter I was very very worried. If there ever is another small d democratic government, we must address the limits of the first amendment when it comes to information fraud. Fraud need not only concern monetary or property domains. Without some sort of commitment to truth, I fear our future is the same as what O’Brien predicted it would be in 1984, a boot forever stamping on our face.
2. The Supreme Court. Not sure what can be done about that since Dems will pretty much be powerless to stop whatever judges Trump puts on. This worries me the most honestly.
Does anyone think there is a chance the Rs will try to expand the Court to 13 once they are in the driver’s seat in the Senate?
No. They already have a super-majority. And why create a precedent for court reform?
Totally agree. There must be fraud exceptions to free speech – especially when it comes to political free speech. Opinions, fine. But, when presenting lies as facts, no. There are only one set of facts, but millions of ways to lie about them and present them. There also needs to be a reckoning about the lie generator, the lie promoters and amplifiers and recognition about how this works on people. The coordination and proliferation of these lies significantly contributed to Trump’s win. “Prove it,” should be a response to every assertion made by political entities. I wish the lies had taken center stage in the campaign, as in, calling them out for what they are at the debate, on shows, during interviews. “You have been misinformed,” is a phrase I’ve used in the past with people and then directing them where they can find the facts. I will continue to use going forward. Not to be repetitive, but deceit is the greatest threat to democracy because it is an action that is designed to take people’s free choice away from them.
Someone in the Bush Administration (maybe Rove) declared that as an Empire we create our own facts and reality. Kelly Anne Conway inelegantly said that there are alternate facts. JD Vance acknowledged that the “Haitians eating cats” story wasn’t true but defended the use of a false story to get the media to pay attention to real problems that they ignored, which, in itself, was a false narrative.
Since Reagan’s voo doo economics theory, Republicans have recognized that they can only succeed pushing unpopular policies by deceiving the people. They have perfected their propaganda machine and correctly recognized the new media’s importance and how to use it.
The opposition needs to find ways to counter the machine. I thought Harris had made a good start by recognizing the importance of influencers in podcasts and YouTube. And she got the newer voters energized.
Eventually, the house of cards constructed by propaganda falls, usually as a result of a catastrophe, like 9/11, the Great Recession and the Pandemic. I can’t help but think of the ending scene of “On the Beach” – with the American submariners returning to track down a telegraph signal only to find that the wind was blowing through an open window on a a shade pull which was striking the teletypewriter. How much will be destroyed before people realize they’ve been had?
The movie ending that comes to my mind is that of Planet of the Apes.
“Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
I’m hoping the public will demand that the media adopt a zero-tolerance policy for Trump’s garbage in the second term. Make him own his lies and failures. End the both-sides crap.
When Trump starts pardoning Jan 6th criminals, which he certainly will, the media should show outrage rather than dismissing it as Trump following through on a campaign pledge. These people hurt cops and wanted to kill elected officials to please Trump. If America is to remain a nation of laws and have a functioning justice system, we must not allow Trump to keep perverting the process and get away with it.
When he stabs Ukraine in the back, the media needs to highlight Putin’s atrocities and America’s tradition to protect weaker nations from aggressors.
When the economy essentially stays on the same track it’s on now, don’t allow Trump to claim credit for something he didn’t do.
When SCOTUS continues to repeal rights of women, minorities, and LGBTQ, the media needs treat it as an attack on freedom, not the ridiculous “standing up to wokeism” narrative the right created.
When Trump starts handing health and science over to that lunatic, RFK Jr, the media should sound an alarm.
When Trump immediately hires Project 2025 creators, the media must call him out for lying about Project 2025 during the election.
In short, the media should treat Trump the way they treated Biden/Harris. They should not give Trump the kid glove treatment he’s been given in the past.
Unfortunately the mainstream news media learned no lessons from 2016, and there’s certainly not going to be any large public demand for any change going forward. Indeed, all any big msm publisher will claim now is that this past election was some sort of mandate, meaning, why bother challenging Trump if the voters approved of him? Look at Dubya’s second term for an example.
One thing that I find unsettling is that there is this assumption that a second Trump term will somehow be less benign than the first time around. There aren’t any guardrails this time, weak and barely functioning as they were then. The media is not going to, nor really is in a position to, demand jack shit. And neither the rule of law, nor Congress, nor whatever you can think of is gonna help — and acknowledging as such is not a surrender either, thank you. I think people really need to start realizing that we are not anywhere near the bottom. Be prepared for the worst, and be prepared to help your family, your friends, and your neighbors.
Are you drinking a warm glass of milk with that fairytale ? If “the media” were capable of all of that, we wouldn’t be in the position we are in.
The media is quite capable, but they have a different self-interest.
The media can do it if they are pushed hard enough. Trump has no mandate. He may not exceed 50% after the last votes are recorded. I currently see major outrage directed at the media. That is encouraging. It’s up to us to keep the pressure on them if Trump installs criminals in his administration, puts Project 2025 in place, begins foreign deals to enrich his family, and starts his retribution push. All of that is more likely to happen than not. We can reveal the media as complicit if they allow the same old gaslighting.
We need to admit that MSM has failed us. And we should find some alternative. Lord knows what that could be.
This is another example of “Great idea, wrong species”, along with Communism and choosing Electors who, in their selfless wisdom, will make the best choice for President.
The economy will not stay on the track it is on if TFG starts implementing half of what he he says he will. Deportations, tariffs, Musk’s economic efficiency will all have a devastating effect.
Yep and to the contrary of seemingly what a lot of New York Times readers/commenters believe, the economic pain will come for everyone no matter how you voted. It is not going to be pretty.
@ Upisdown, I wish Dems would fund a massive new media org to do all of that, while it’s still possible to have a voice
Dems = everyone who has an interest in issues and policies left of center.
Yes
Now available for hire. Will take any cabinet position. No experience but very willing to take orders. Ask for Kari Lake.
Arizona is the only Senate race not yet called. Gallego is only ahead by 45,000 votes with 86% of the vote counted, that’s a 1.5% margin. Owing to current circumstances, crying election fraud this time around isn’t in vogue, so Kari will be available for some just-following-orders job as you say…
Other tidbits lost in the national shuffle: Scott Perry just won re-election by a super-narrow margin of 6,000 votes in PA-10 and Lauren Bobert will be back, having won her new district of CO-4, and that one wasn’t even close.
And we get to listen to another two years of Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Body’s wisdom and expertise.
The trick is to ignore the performative bullshit – here, as always, the outrage is part of the con.
I often wonder how Bush’s decision to start a 20 year war could be at least partly responsible for the success of the GOP. I work some with the homeless community and a huge percentage of them are veterans with a wide spectrum of physical and mental problems – and frequently with a burning hatred of our government. And those same homeless communities are centers of petty crime that are so problematic. Iraq/Afghanistan veterans were heavily represented in the events of January 6th. Iraq/Afghanistan veterans seem (not sure any stats are available) overly represented in mass shooting incidents. Brown University estimates that we spent $8T, or 25% of our total federal debt, on those wars – which is yet again another reason people speculate drive votes to the GOP.
Homeless encampments, crime, mass shootings, government hatred, government debt – all seem to be at least partially driven by the Iraq/Afghanistan war and also seem to be drivers of GOP votes.
I appreciate your observations. Personally I have had a long-standing belief that those wars were planned in order to bring us to where we now find ourselves. My heart was broken when GWB was chosen by SCOTUS.
agree with your observation about GWB’s war, (also magnet48’s below — that is the way i assessed it, too).
however, in my long view take, it stretches back to Vietnam. So many dead, so many maimed (psychically & physically). no effort at national reconciliation or apology. (and that is not taking into account The Assassinations.)
no real explanation forthcoming, ever, for what we were doing there, apart from the “containing communism,”and bankrupt “domino theory,” one which does not wash when the horrific costs are tallied. And how strategically it then played out in American loss of influence, in Asia and globally.
a lot of grievance was created, especially in red states with lower education standards, high rates of enlistment, and heavy burdens of ill health, which were and remain bankable stances and issues, politically. the gifts that keep giving, to cynical powerbrokers.
socially, these become generational wounds, it seems to me.
I recall my father speculating toward the end of the Viet Nam war that it might have been orchestrated by the U.S. and Soviet Russia to train a fresh cadre of military officers and to test new weapons and tactics, without endangering the U.S. or Russia directly.
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New weapons and tactics including the Phoenix program, counterinsurgency techniques, targeted assassination, psychology warfare, applications for the use of Civil Affairs and Special Forces.
Yeah, those all worked really well. Not.
50,000 or so dead didn’t “threaten the U.S. directly”?!? What are you smoking?
I think Republicans understand and accept the ‘Republican brain.’ The research is out there… It reflects the ‘make them afraid then tell them you can protect them’ strategy. Personally, I think the Dems should use this too. Harris started to good effect with the ‘weird’ label but then let it fizzle out. (This is my first time posting a link. I hope I’m doing it right.)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3572122/#:~:text=Although%20the%20risk%2Dtaking%20behavior,activity%20in%20the%20right%20amygdala.
This might be a better link to that…[a study from 2013?]
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3572122/
From the study:
So, take a look at education: rote learning in a punitive environment vs. learning through exploration.
Scanning some media this AM and jeez it’s all about the Dems need to do this or that, and what went wrong?
None addressed the lies, the propaganda, the gaslighting, Trump campaign. The GOP complicity. None mentioned that in his previous term as President, he did nothing to address all the grievances, real or otherwise, that they pushed.
The opposition conservative party here in Canada figured it out, and have been pushing “Canada is broken” for the past couple of years, a horrible place apparantely. PM Trudeau is – ‘dictator, tyrant, treasonous’ – take your pick. ‘Axe the tax’ slogan – the carbon tax, in which people get a rebate every year, usually above what they’ve paid (they never mention that). No replacement ever mentioned to deal with climate change.
On and on about the mysterious “woke”.
Their record when in power was dismal, same old same old, while cutting services, attacking media, all the usual. Now they’re playing the ‘champions of working people’ nonsense. As if.
I’m old enough to have witnessed them in power, I suspect a whole lot of people here were too young or just not here at all to see them in action.
When they lost in 2015 they had ran an ugly divisive campaign.
They’ll likely win the election sometime next year. sigh
I’m seeing so man posts at Kos, for example, about What The Dems Should Have Done.
And I’m seeing people blaming Harris for “moving to the right”, mostly by saying she was open to an R in her cabinet and a bipartisan group of advisers.
There’s complaints about the lack of voters in large cities in Ohio – but no one seems to notice the voter suppression of long lines and fewer places to vote.
People do this because it gives them a feeling of control, as in, “We could have won if…” implying that it was actually “us” who controlled the outcome of the election. Sometimes, you lose because of circumstances and what the other side did that you couldn’t counter.
Working to be closer to Republicans, when the party that goes by that name is owned by Donald Trump, might have depressed the vote. It’s one thing to accept and welcome Liz Cheney’s support. It’s another to actively campaign with her for what might have been a handful of cross-over votes.
It makes low-information voters wonder what your message of unity really stands for. That’s true, in part, because of Trump-Vance’s counter-message of unity, except that theirs made no room for diversity. They demanded, instead, conformity and submission, or face the wrath of their mob.
Most of these explanations come from writers determined to find the one true explanation. There isn’t one. The ones that are valid are cumulative. And most of them fail to explain what Harris//Walz faced in Trump’s propaganda machine, which Marcy does here.
Social media, social media, social media. There is no “reforming” social media: by its very nature, it inherently liquifies already squishy brains, and idiocy is well-known to have a right-wing bias.
Trouble is, the social media cat has been out of the bag for many years now, and I see no going back. As I said a couple of days ago, welcome to Hungary.
I stand ready to absorb ritual beatings for this hopeless comment.
A thing to analyze is the apathy in the major cities in rust belt states. Places that Trump excoriates as cheaters refuse to vote in proportion to other areas. Look at the turnout in Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Ohio lost Sheron Brown, a stalwart for the poor and dispossessed because of the abysmal turnout in Cleveland and Cincinnati. Higher turnouts in those cities would given a Harris victory.
Fewer polling places, longer lines: that’s part of voter suppression, and people give up and go home, or pass by and don’t have time to wait four or five hours.
PJ – That is part of the problem for sure. Fewer polling spots, laws that say you can’t hand a person water in the line, etc are real.
Apathy and ignorance of the alternative to actually voting has come true. Fewer turned out in 2024 than 2020.
The lawyers for the oligarchs are better funded, more willing to corrupt the legal process and to be honest, more successful. $787 Million dollar fines did not stop Oligarchs from voter interference thru propaganda.
We have a corrupt SCOTUS owned by Leo’s Federalist society and it has had a major impact. Citizen’s United has done what they paid for, Bought the Presidency.
I know it is unpopular to post bad things here about Merrick Garland, the fact is DOJ and court system failed us, The media failed us and more than 50% of the USA failed to comprehend what is at stake..freedom.
WE have a convicted criminal as President elect. That is a fact.The DOJ and lawyers proved useless against Fascism. My compliments to those who tried – I am not whining. The facts speak for themselves.Trump is President elect.
The guard rails are gone. Racism, misogyny and cruelty has won.
Stalin’s plucked chicken anecdote may not be real, but his cruelty and Mao’s and Hitler’s is very real. The Holomodor is real. History does not repeat – but is is very good at rhyming.
George Orwell — ‘The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.’
We are not as free as my parents were. My 21 y/o daughter’s future is sadly less free. She is stockpiling birth control and afraid.
The plucked Chickens will toe the line. Lawyers were ineffective in 2024. They will be less so in the near future.
Even Rayne (whom I believe to be very brave) knows and advises to stay off twitter – to make the complainers less able to be found on Xitter. It is as easy as plucking a chicken.
Fear is all Stalin needed… and they have it.
I’m not on Xitter because it’s a Nazi bar. I don’t hang out at Nazi bars because I’m not a Nazi.
For starters.
In hindsight we should have made a massive stink when Musk made an offer for Twitter, and we should have pushed hard for regulation of social media platforms — not because of free speech but regulation of commerce. We should demand licensing of social media and refuse licenses to Nazi bars.
In Germany, being a Nazi, selling Nazi memorabilia, advocating Nazi propaganda are illegal. They have some experience with what happens when you don’t.
Merrick Garland didn’t fail anyone, unless you were counting on Trump being convicted would make a difference. Clearly it doesn’t.
America lost whatever norms it had in 2016.
In 2024 it lost it’s guardrails, and quite likely the rule of law is heading the same way.
This is how it goes, is going and gone in places like Hungary. Bit by bit as people sleepwalk into accepting it all.
Slowly boiled frogs.
But not everyone, and not tens of millions.
The fight changes, adapts – but it never ends.
Yep. In Texas you can have a mail-in vote if you’re 65 or older. Four years ago, I was 66 on Election Day but my wife was a week short of turning 65 so she had to vote in person. I chose to vote with her but I had an option unavailable to her. Paxton has fought efforts to allow Mail-in voting.
Also, each county in Texas gets one drop box. Harris county has a population of 4.75 million, larger than half of the states, but it gets one drop box—faux concern over “election integrity”. They don’t want democracy.
Texas is a really good bad example, and I know that they didn’t used to be that way.
The TX GOP sold its soul for power, got it, and is well on its way to its final destination, though they don’t know it yet. (Most of the people I knew when I lived there are already dead.)
Those things you mention do work to suppress voting in some states, but Michigan has mail-in plus 9 (consecutive) days of early voting.
Snyder is wrong in one detail. Harris did, over and over, “name the consequences”. It was the “he’s a fascist” half of her appeal to our better angels campaign. One problem is many of those voters don’t think there will be “consequences” as Snyder (and I) sees them. You can argue she did it wrong, and that may be part of the tortued analysis we are being bombarded with, but (suprise) Marcy is right. It is the effectiveness of propaganda that is close to the core problem to confront. If there is a single reason, perceptions of the economy and the absurd trans woman athelites menance are why Trump won. And where do those come from, you may ask.
It is also the effectiveness on social media of one line propaganda statements that can be absorbed by a mind with a short attention span without even slowing down the scrolling. Like video games SM trains short attention spans. To read Marcy and the essays of Heather Cox Richardson takes a little time and discipline to pay attention.
There is much finger pointing about who is to blame for this political catastrophy. I blame the voters that voted for Trump or didn’t for Kamala. That may seem obvious and it reminds me of the propaganda that blames NATO and Ukraine for Pukin’s invasion of Ukraine. Too many Trump voters don’t, or won’t see the repercussions of their inability to see that the consequences of politics are not abstract until it comes around and bites them in the ass. Then they will change their minds, but they still will not have learned to have an attention span longer than that of a lizard.
Frank Luntz played a big role in nurturing propaganda mills through his work with focus groups, testing how different words or phrases evoked positive or negative reactions.
Hence Harris and Walz were called communist, socialist, fascist in roughly equal parts.
George Lakoff has offered countermeasures in the past, though his advice may not have been followed.
http://andrelevy.net/lakoff_framing101.pdf
As an example of how long this has been going on, here’s Harry Truman from 1952:
https://pastdaily.com/2018/03/30/march-29-1952-president-truman/
“The real Republican campaign is not going to be fought on the issues. The Republicans are going to wage a campaign of phony propaganda. They are going to try what we might call the ‘white is black’ and the ‘black is white’ strategy. The reasoning behind it is this: The Republicans know that the Nation is strong and prosperous, that we are building up defenses against communism, that the Democratic administration has worked for the good of the people. The only chance for the Republicans, therefore, is to make the people think the facts aren’t so. The job for the Republicans is to make people believe that white is black and black is white. . . . “
I would like people to stop blaming the Harris campaign for losing because of ‘missteps’. They put together a remarkable campaign in 100+ days.
The problem is that the United States is a racist, misogynistic country with a huge percentage of willfully ignorant voters. Given the subterfuge of foreign governments at many levels, and an opposing party without a shred of decency, she was never going to win. She took a bullet for Biden, who would have had an even greater defeat.
Trump has a fourth grade vocabulary, he is uncouth and has a sociopathic lizard brain genius for playing to the undereducated on their level. He makes simplistic statements over and over and over to drive into their tiny brains, things that make them feel less bad about themselves and validated. Democrats make them feel stupid.
We now have to concentrate on minimizing the damage to democracy, and how we are going to extricate ourselves from the coming regime. It won’t be with the help of media that makes lots of money when there is bad news and people are frightened. We no longer have a free press. The legacy news outlets are suffering from ownership of the many by a few, and the few have a very specific agenda.
The problem is that Democrats actually care about people. But we do it to the detriment of the whole. We are engaging in a street fight with a butter knife. Every Democratic candidate needed to be endlessly repeating that a tariff is a tax that the customer pays, and call out Trump’s lies as LIES, not some gentle euphemism. Democratic messaging sucks.
The majority of voters know nothing about the Chips Act or the Infrastructure Act or any of the remarkable improvements to their lives that the Biden administration brought about. There is no one to blame for that other than the Democrats.
The rules of the game were changed and we have been playing with the old, genteel version. If we are to survive, we are going to have to punch back.
Agree with your comment “democratic messaging sucks”.
Being based in the Antipodes and seeing this unravel from afar it appears to be similar in alot of these countries. Good work gets done, isn’t messaged well/correctly, RW complain/propaganda, and then electors vote against their interests.
How to “solve” this issue. I can’t remember where I read this a few weeks ago, but the left needs to stop playing to the norms forced by the right.
I read Marcy’s analysis to mean not that Democrats’ messaging sucked, but that it was incomplete. Tell their story, as Kamala Harris did so well in a short of time, yes. But they also need an entirely new communications strategy to deal with the relentless wall of propaganda that Republicans vomit forth.
You are correct. And you have made the point repeatedly. As have others. But the point requires further repetition, because it needs to be recognised, accepted, absorbed and acted upon
The essential tool in the armoury of Trump MAGA fascism is the propaganda machine which has been at work 24 hours a day 7 days a week for nearly 10 years on their behalf, longer if you count the activities on behalf of proto-MAGA groups, the principal purpose of the propaganda machine is to wage war on truth.
Orbán had to create the machine for himself by State capture of the mass media.
In the USA however this propaganda machine was formed by a coalescence of corporate interests.
The US fascist propaganda machine is in many ways more dangerous, not just because of its vast size scope and reach, but it is more adaptable and has the superficial appearance of comprising entities seemingly competing in the marketplace place of ideas.
The Pro-MAGA propaganda machine is an armada comprising of an array of entities — at one end of the scale behemoths such as Fox, and Xitter and at the other YouTubers and Tick-Tockers.
So IMHO, discussing the problem of this war machine of propaganda in terms of “The Democrats suck at messaging”, is wholly inadequate; it means misses the scale, quantity and nature of the forces that the pro-democracy movement led by the Democratic Party faced and faces.
And the war on truth is not simply about getting people to believe any particular lie in preference to a particular truth. It is about getting people to be cynical about there being any truth at all.
So while calling out lies for what they are is a necessary component of pro-democracy’s resistance to fascism, it is very very far from being sufficient.
The example of the volte face on whether “Project 2025” represents the programme for Trump MAGA government is a case in point. MAGAs now cheerfully accept it was true all along, despite vehemently denying it when it appeared to be politically convenient to do so. And the MAGAs expect that such cynicism will be taken for superior tactical acumen, applauds the selves for it and have every reason to think that their supporters and media machine will toe that line.
I think we should start calling these vermin MAGAsites.
I agree with you completely about the width and breadth and depth of the MAGA propaganda machine. But I am sticking to my guns about the inadequate Democratic messaging. This is the butter knife reference in the fight.
We look like we are too afraid to stand up for ourselves and that what we are promoting isn’t worth fighting for.
I have seen endless interviews of Trump voters who are stunned when the truth is presented to them at their level. Our campaign speeches are lovely and thoughtful and make the listeners feel stupid and talked down to. We need more JB Pritzker on the stump, and less Jamie Raskin. [I ADORE Jamie Raskin, but the majority of voters have no idea what he is talking about. He is too erudite for the average voter].
I just read “Sowing Hate and Chaos: How Propaganda Is Used to Destroy Democracy” by Mary Wald.
From what Wald writes, I believe she is saying that in the US we have gone through “Phase 1: Indoctrination and Recruitment,” and “Phase 2: The Propaganda of Agitation.” With the election of Trump, we may be moving into what she calls “Phase 3: the Propaganda of Integration.”
It was very scary, but I highly recommend reading it. Maybe we can pull back from the brink?
Here’s a little excerpt of the description from Good Reads:
“Mary Wald’s meticulously researched book, Sowing Hate and Chaos, pulls the curtain back to show how what is happening in our country isn’t a natural evolution of events or “pendulum swing,” but a carefully planned and executed campaign that uses experimental and behavioral psychology to manipulate the American people toward hatred and violence — without their even realizing it’s happening.”
Negativity sells better than positivity. Doom and gloom over joy and hope. Bad news over good news. Pessimism over Optimism.
Trump is a bully feeding followers a false sense of superiority. Spewing America is the “garbage can of the world,” insulting, denigrating and devaluing others to make themselves feel better, boosting them up. Add in inferiority from a man who lacks emotional intelligence. An inflated sense of self-worth and feelings of inadequacy creates the Bully Club in order to belong.
Did Nate Silver contact you directly? It takes me back to what’s-his-face who came out to tell us that Trump had the biggest inauguration crowd in history. Always wants what he doesn’t have.
So, given Trump’s pathology, getting a bigger turnout is (as we all know) very important to him. If he can run up totals in populous states – CA, TX, FL, NY, IL – he can get the supply denied to him in 2016 & 2020. Also, it seems pretty clear, that, frankly and sadly, too many voters in the U.S. need the attention of a campaign to get them to the polls.
Based on official 2020 returns vs. incomplete 2024 data from wikipedia (I am not a pro in this) here are red states where Trump/Vance did not increase their total votes by more than roughly 2%: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Wyoming. Similarly in these blue states: Hawaii and Minnesota. Sometime soon (once the data is all in) let’s compare the demographics of well-being in these locales.
The current totals in CA are here: https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/returns/president
(He got less than 40% of the votes. Harris got well over than 50%..)
Oh, there is no doubt Kamala will win CA, but DJT/his backers’ psychology, and the math being what it is, he could “over-perform” by 700K votes there vs. 2020, an increase of nearly 12%. (I’m not going to do the math tonight to see how many low-population red states it take to match that increase, but he got 50K more votes in Idaho, for example.)
Conversely, Harris is going to have a hard time topping Biden’s total of over 11 million votes in CA in 2020, which was itself an increase of over 25% from Hilary’s record number in 2016.
My comment overall is directed at the “crowd size” propaganda. But I also think it is worth pushing back on any statistics that result from our electoral college/gerrymandered/third-party-spoiler system.
“Propaganda didn’t just win the election. It created the malaise that Trump promised he would solve.”
One analogy for the propaganda at work here are the mismatched sides in the sugar debate. On one side, a handful of writers, analysts, and nutritionists document the ill-effects of sugar, sugar substitutes, and ultra-processed foods, including the ease with which they cause metabolic syndrome and its constituent, highly profitable, diseases.
On the other, are billions in annual advertising-propaganda dollars from Big Ag and big sugar, supplemented by the work of a host of pro-industry researchers, consultants, advisers, and bankers, dependent on those industries for the systemic wealth they produce.
Add to that a medical community addicted to the profits from treating the symptoms of metabolic disease, and that same community’s inability to adjust its research protocols, to deal with the cumulative adverse effects of such “foods,” which are considered benign, but only when consumed in infinitely smaller doses than they are in the American diet.
The latter’s propaganda creates habits and an emotional attachment that overwhelm rational arguments, the way a 100′ wall of water obscures a few surfing waves.
Excellent.
Let’s not forget soon to be VP JD Vance’s observation (among many and before he consumed the $ugar):
“There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria,” Vance, whose mother struggled with opioid addiction, wrote. “Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
Indeed they will.
Meantime – ‘the needle and the damage done’. (Neil Young)
Actually, the song I had in mind was CS&N’s, Ohio.
The photos that accompany the most popular youtube version of it are reminders of what taking it to the streets really means.
I was the one in my household who mapped out an escape path for my roommates and me so we wouldn’t get tear gassed. And it worked. We got away unharmed.
Ohio was written by Neil Young, and it is and will be a part of American history.
Thanks for the correction.
This part of the thread points to Kent State shooting.
Half the country (maybe) saw it as horrific then but at least half saw the killing as justified or worse— those protestors got what they deserved.
I believe this still is the zeitgeist.
Going loudly into the streets may be very dangerous now.
I don’t think this is over-reacting.
But not sure that I won’t if need be.
Some kind of Gray Panther Geezer Brigade wearing pink pussy hats waving rainbow freak flags.
Somehow sticking it to the Man.
Turning despair into scorn.
Mocking the fascist buffoons.
Defend the vulnerable.
Free the whales!
Howl mighty like a hunted witch.
If you ask the Joe Rogan crowd about Kent State they will not connect to the four dead in Ohio…they will know it is the alma mater of Nick Sabin.
Thanks for the analysis, Marcy. The only thing I would add is the removal of income supports, child payment/gig worker unemployment benefits, to name two, and the rollback of the pandemic Medicaid expansion affected poor citizens disproportionately and in a very material way. While I don’t think it was the only reason for the fall in Harris’ vote relative to Biden’s 2020 vote, I suspect it was an important cause.
Here is an article about Finland teaching critical thinking to students and how they can negotiate the internet morass. https://www.printmag.com/culturally-related-design/media-literacy-a-to-z-how-finland-is-arming-students-against-misinformation/
They’ve been doing that nigh on 8 years and long before that. Yes, they’ve created a “reality” and positioned themselves as the solution to that reality.
Of course it’s not reality at all.
“We are both scientists, Eilish, we belong to a tradition but tradition is nothing more than what everyone can agree on – the scientists, the teachers, the institutions, if you change ownership of the institutions then you can change ownership of the facts, you can alter the structure of belief, what is agreed upon, that is what they are doing, Eilish, it is really quite simple, the NAP is trying to change what you and I call reality, they want to muddy it like water, if you say one thing is another thing and you say it enough times, then it must be so, and if you keep saying it over and over people accept it as true – this is an old idea, of course, it really is nothing new, but you’re watching it happen in your own time and not in a book”.
Paul Lynch, Prophet Song
Just had a short discussion with my 42 y.o. son and it is blowing my mind and hard to accept. (1) He said the Harris-Walz campaign is $20 million in debt having blown through that $1 billion. (2) He said that most, if not all, their celebrity endorsers were paid. (3) He said that both campaigns were buying subscriptions to social media influencers to alter the algorithm, with one example being David Pakman who, he said, lost 5,000 subscribers right after the election.
I don’t know from where this information originates so I’m not taking it at face value unless I get valid confirmation, but WTF??
20 million vs. 1 billion is not much money. Do you vote based on the algorithm? Who the celebrity endorsers are?
I sure don’t.
I find it difficult to believe Kamala’s endorsers were paid. They all seem of impeccable reputations. Show me one that is not.
To use the correct legal termination, those assertions are crap, ginned up by Trump’s propaganda machine, projecting onto Democrats much of their own behavior.
I agree. Yet this projection mechanism is so hard if not impossible to break. And when the explanation with projection is countered with the reproach of projection (as Trump once did, if I remember correctuly), then facts and fact-based arguments become worthless.
Or, in short How to overcome demagogues? I’m at my wit’s end.
Your son is seriously misinformed.
Financial reports aren’t complete, and won’t be for a while, but it wasn’t Harris who was having problems with stiffing venues. (As of October 16, her campaign had ,ore than $100 million on hand per FEC reports.)
Considering that some of those who endorsed Harris are very wealthy, she had no need to pay them at all.
And, just how many cities did Convict-1 stiff even from the 2016 campaign? El Paso comes to mind (they’re in for over half a million) and they are by no means alone.
I was in Albuquerque New Mexico during election week which has a very good newspaper and the City of Albuquerque refused to host him due unpaid bills from 2019.
Marcy, I agree with your hypothesis that:
“Propaganda didn’t just win the election. It created the malaise that Trump promised he would solve.”
And I’d like to add to it by saying that his senior campaign advisor and future chief of staff appears to have the same operational mindset.
From Michael Kruse’s article in April:
“Information was power. Power to help. Or power to hurt. With information, she could solve problems, and she could cause problems, and she even, people who watched and worked with Wiles began to suspect, could try to cause problems she could then solve — little fires she could start and then let burn or put out.”
“She leaked, they thought, in an effort to be both of singular value to the principal and also to the press. It’s tempting to cite specific examples, but they couldn’t prove it was her with absolute certainty then, and they still can’t now, and so neither can I — but something popped up in the pages of the press, and who but her could have known?”
“What is definite, though, is that people thought she was doing this — first a few people, then more people, and across administrations….”
…
“Her engine, people who worked with her closely came to believe, wasn’t ideology. It wasn’t even necessarily strategy. It was psychology.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/26/susie-wiles-trump-desantis-profile-00149654
“Helping Verbs Song – “Shoulda Woulda Coulda!” – Ben Leddy”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-1NWeEECDA&t=1s&pp=2AEBkAIB
I have been watching the 60 Minutes election piece and they’re not asking pertinent questions like “exactly how is the economy Biden’s fault?” and “why do you think Convict-1 will keep his promises?” because he kept only one. He cut taxes and blew up the deficit (of course the GOP said deficits didn’t matter then) but even with that only the rich keep their tax cuts past 2025.
We had promises in 2016 for the restoration of auto jobs (the Lordstown OH plant closed and Foxconn in WI never went anywhere among many other examples), the wall was only 2% built with taxpayer ripoff contracts, Convict-1’s campaign is well into the millions of dollars owed to stiffed cities for protection and infrastructure for campaign events, and let’s all remember the running joke of ”infrastructure week’. The attempted killing of ACA and the Dobbs decision were part of the legacy of 45’s maladministration.
CBS needed to ask those questions and run through the list here to see what the voters actually knew instead of letting them bleat on about how prices are too high and ‘everyone I talked to’ didn’t see their wages go up. These folks do not realize what they are asking for since I would suspect the vast majority never have gone to the Third World (like I have) where dictators are the norm and the people are kept as wage slaves without real electoral power. In short, these voters do not understand that democracy is a necessary component of prosperity and that must come first.
Of course, the courtier press run by Convict-1’s ilk will never acknowledge how they sold themselves to the highest bidder to make as much money as they can despite the destruction of America (which will include them as well).
Agreed. That was a terrible piece. (Sorry for the long post below. I couldn’t help it.)
There was no follow up question for the Trump voter that claimed she knew no one, not a single person, that received a raise during the Biden administration. That’s simply not reasonable considering the number of retailers that had signs up hiring cashiers, hosts, servers, cooks, etc. at $12, $15, and more to start in 2022 and 2023, which was not the case pre-COVID. Wages have generally escalated across the board in PA. She must know very few people and not go out to eat or buy food if she missed this over the past few years.
Also, the idea that the Democratic Party “takes for granted” large groups of voters was repeatedly used as an unsupported trope. Even if it were generally true (I don’t agree), this cycle saw dedicated outreach to each of the groups that was presented as “taken for granted.” And there was relentless messaging that the race in PA would be close and that the Dems needed to turn out every voter to win. I don’t know how that comports with taking any voter for granted. I just think its an embedded idea (lazy, and largely established by the GOP), which CBS chose to repeat several times in the story.
My impression is that it will be nearly impossible to reach these voters by enacting good policy, implementing that policy, and then delivering the hard-fought benefits of that work. That cycle is simply too long and complicated for many voters to appreciate. They don’t understand what government does, and they don’t want to understand. They simply want jobs, low prices, a booming economy, no taxes, wars won, and jets flying over the stadiums. Anyone that tells voters that they can’t have all of those things at once will have a hard time beating the current paradigm.
Average gas prices have been around $3 per gallon for the past year. I have paid under $3 for most of my recent fill ups. With no adjustment for inflation, that’s lower than the 2012 peak of $3.62/gallon and approaching Newt Gingrich’s invented target price of $2.50 per gallon from that year. Of course, the Gingrich target was dramatically beaten during the Obama presidency when the average price fell to $2.14 per gallon before spiking, dipping, and spiking dramatically during the Trump presidency. Prices fell again prior to the election, but the current administration did not appear to receive any credit for it (I’m not sure presidential administrations should be credited for gas prices anyway, but what’s good for the goose.)
My initial conclusion from this cycle is that voters were blind to the improvements in their lives, even when they experienced those improvements. The Biden administration successfully navigated its way into a post-pandemic world and gave the economy the soft landing it needed while producing jobs, economic prosperity, and wage increases. The people voted the bums out anyway.
Democracy won’t die in darkness. It will be executed in broad daylight in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
I’m still hopeful, but I have to figure out the details as to why.
I was in a discussion with some hungover University of Wyoming students outside Born in a Barn the Saturday before the election and I was really connecting with them about the highs and lows of the party life as it was an even mix of unknown males and females…..then out of the corner of my eye I saw the Oath Keeper Jeep flying a Trump 2020 flag. I had not seen it in a while and I exercised my 1st Amendment Right by yelling he supported an Insurrectionist.
Now that changed the vibe and I suddenly flash back to the scene in Josie Wales where Clint tells Chief Dan George about who was the most dangerous in the group. To their credit one of the gentlemen asked why I supported Harris. Before I could answer that question another much leaner gentleman that was opening and closing a pocket knife asked if I cared about gas prices.
I asked this young man if he could recall the prices of gas under Bush/Cheney and when that stalled the conversation I asked him how old he was and 19 was the answer. When I stated I got a degree in Geological Sciences he granted some respect to my 62 years of history which they could not believe. Just as this wisdom was settling in my partner came walking up with our to go order and she immediately detected the vibe. While she and I gave our low key goodbyes I knew that I had made a point about life because I had talked about finding love long before she arrived.
I told my partner a version of the vibe she felt as we sauntered off to enjoy the Laramie Day of the Dead.
To make a long story short I know about oil prices and what they provide so I found it no surprise when the Department of Interior released its revenue report concerning the amount of oil extracted on public lands during the Biden Administration. What I see from this report is that we are draining oil at a rapid rate and no amount of renewable energy will be enough to keep up business as usual. Our future is decided no matter the President.
From the report released on November 8th.
“This year’s overall disbursement is the fourth largest since 1982, with three of the four highest years occurring in the past four years.”
https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-announces-1645-billion-fiscal-year-2024-energy-revenue
Why is nobody asking, much less answering, the question why it’s only white people and a small percentage of black and Latino men (of specific misogynistic type) that believes the propaganda?
The propaganda is targeted, and it’s much more than Fox News at this point. It also acts as levers to motivate or suppress turnout. And, of course, voter participation is already suppressed or encouraged by various mechanisms depending on the state.
I have a teen-aged son, not yet old enough to vote, who was getting texts from the Trump campaign daily. I also did some research on donors in my area (which has a fair number senior living facilities) and found examples of Republican donors who, over the course of the past year, were giving multiple times per day to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.
In October, CNN published an investigation into campaign donations by vulnerable older Americans that were in the $100s of thousands range. (It’s easy to find.)
“I have a teen-aged son, not yet old enough to vote, who was getting texts from the Trump campaign daily.”
Yikes. Are you closely monitoring his cellphone use? Because that indicates… well, nothing good that’s for sure.
I wouldn’t monitor his cellphone as much as I would monitor the *phone number*. How did Trump’s campaign get the number? Was the number owned by a MAGA sympathizer before his son received it?
Now his son’s name, address, other personal info has been hoovered by the entire right-wing ecosphere, because they sell mailing/phone lists between entities. I’d kill the phone number, get a different phone RTFN and start marking all unrequested text messages Spam+Block.
Furthermore, if the son is a minor 17 or younger, they should be told they can’t give the number to any business entity without discussing it with parents first. Any platform which requires a phone number for validation and activation should be reviewed first , ex. Xitter which has likely sold/liberated personal account info without disclosing to users. Minors can’t legally enter contracts which all platform account applications constitute.
Smart teens who are desperate to get out from under parental control will figure a way around this, but it’s critical they understand any exchange of information online provides a resource for identifying and tracking them. And not just them but their friends and family as well by association.
They were targeted spam. I don’t monitor and have no theory as to which app would be the data source (for the phone number) for the campaign. Maybe he set up a twitter account at some point.
There’s also the Do Not Call list. His number should be put on that ASAP.
What a revoltin development this turned out to be. ( I tend to think there WERE hacks )
“In several states, less conservative judges were kept.”
Judges who were not as conservative as other judges—I.e. were “less conservative”—were kept, or not as many—I.e. fewer—conservative judges were kept?
Less-conservative.
From Jon Stewart’s discussion with Heather Cox Richardson [posted by MsJenny at 1st comment]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7cKOaBdFWo
From the SNYDER piece Marcy quotes and links to at the end:
What Does It Mean That Donald Trump Is a Fascist? Trump takes the tools of dictators and adapts them for the Internet. We should expect him to try to cling to power until death, and create a cult of January 6th martyrs. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/dispatches/what-does-it-mean-that-donald-trump-is-a-fascist Timothy Snyder November 8, 2024
HCR: [I think what we have seen here is the use of] political technology, which is you can get people to vote away their democracy, or to vote for the people that they are told to vote for so long as you create a false world for them to believe in.
TS: “A fascist just has to be a storyteller.”
TRUMP: “I do the weave.”
https://x.com/AccountableGOP/status/1829629611782574537
5:17 PM · Aug 30, 2024
More commonly known as the Gish gallop and as lying.
Donald Trump uses so much gaslighting, he must be half-blind by now.
I quit listening to the news (NPR) and quit looking at CNN on my computer, don’t watch TV. I have seen and listened on line to interviews that have not pointed fingers at her campaign and Democrats in general. People have been made to believe that Democrats are all corrupt and stupid, hate the people and on and on. I can’t bear it.
This was interesting yesterday,”This American Life.” on bridging the gap: https://kunm.net/listen/archive/player.php Maybe someone can find a better link, but I thought worth the listen.
We have to keep fighting. We have to do better for people.
https://bsky.app/profile/jonathancohn.bsky.social/post/3lal2exruzk26
November 10, 2024 at 12:16 AM
That. Every bloody time I read about resistance to elites I want to ask the asshat writing about it to define “the elites.”
And then explain their relationship to those same “elites.”
And CASEY in PA:
https://bsky.app/profile/polgreen.bsky.social/post/3lamrgdtrvk2j
November 10, 2024 at 4:41 PM
The New Yorker covered these developments in the October 7 issue:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley-the-new-lobbying-monster
would federal election commission be checking any of the charges made here by bevbuddysays:
November 10, 2024 at 5:07 pm?
NC election makes no sense. the Harris/Walz undervote, despite manifest enthusiasm everywhere, makes no sense.
commenters throughout EW’s recent posts have brought up these points, but who actually investigates?
Finland consistently tops the European survey of resistance to misinformation and by a large margin because they have an in-depth media literacy program aimed at people of all ages. It is integrated throughout their curriculum, in classs in health, science, literature, etc. and starts with the youngest kids. Folk tales about tricksters are a great way to introduce the subject.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fiction-finlands-new-lessons-in-combating-fake-news
https://osis.bg/?p=3356&lang=en
https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/03/01/finland-media-literacy/
That being said Finland recently elected the most rightwing government in years.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/04/finland-progressive-rightwing-government
PUTIN OWNS TRUMP [< Not breaking news, I know]
11/8/24
5:36 AM [I believe this is ET] https://x.com/realskoebiedoe/status/1854835441167446453
5:36 AM · Nov 8, 2024
[Before] 11:36 AM Julia Davis on Xitter:
[See: https://bsky.app/profile/helenkennedy.bsky.social/post/3laihvn3fbx2z ]
[Full quote here: Russian State TV Airs Melania Trump’s Nudes on Prime Time https[:]//www[.]newsweek[.]com/russian-state-tv-airs-melania-trumps-nudes-primetime-1982683 Updated Nov 08, 2024 at 11:36 AM EST]
10:45 AM ET Julia Davis: https://bsky.app/profile/juliadavisnews.bsky.social/post/3lah4l73e4u2l
November 8, 2024 at 10:45 AM
Probably a reminder to the Don that these are among the least interesting pictures it has of the Trump family. Carrots always taste better when the stick is close at hand.
Russian TV sharing “Best Best” photos with you, Russian citizens and the world. Congratulations Donald.
From Russia with love.
Oops – correction.
Russian TV sharing “Be Best” photos with you, Russian citizens and the world. Congratulations Donald.
From Russia with love.
Marcy with more/better here:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/11/12/russia-attempts-to-collect-its-winnings/
Happy Suckers and Losers Day!
–King Bonespurs
Emotional expression about the election. He is spot on about the division in my book.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1212893983117355
This was reposted by Cheryl Rofer:
[I don’t know who or what entity wrote the article in the screenshot.
Is it the London Times? There is no link]
https://bsky.app/profile/maks23.bsky.social/post/3lanyxotlak2i
November 11, 2024 at 4:29 AM
It is the Times (London) 8 hours ago according to a search for the paragraph. I haven’t linked because it’s pay walled.
The Nik Vesti (Ukrainian) English language version of the piece relying on the Times is here
https://nikvesti.com/en/amp/news/politics/297200-poland-alliance-britain-protect-ukraine-trump-victory-times
Thank you very much, Steve!
there are things about this election that do not compute. I.e., weird undervote for Harris/Walz despite demonstrated levels of enthusiasm; contradictory down-ballot results in numerous states.
who looks into this forensically before election is certified?
who makes sure no ballots are destroyed?
“politics worked where it was done, but propaganda worked far better…the referrals to legacy media started collapsing in 2023…people who get information from non-news sites prefer Harris’ policies but nevertheless voted for Trump”
The propaganda is free while the truth is behind a paywall
“…fully expect many, many undocumented peoples living in this country to self-deport before the second djt inauguration. It will be proof of our beautiful scare tactics and those left behind will be ordered to complete the wall on our southern border.”
Sardonic Transcript of Project2025, footnote #66.
While thinking of ways to undo the fear mongering and propaganda of the current rightwing ecosphere, I wonder how the research by the child psychology lab at Yale could help when organizing counter-programming.
The Yale lab studied moral reasoning in 3-month to 6-month old babies and found sense of fairness as well as bias appers to be innate.
The babies watched versions of a live puppet show in which a puppet was trying unsuccessfully to open a box. Two other puppets stood on either side of the box. One of those puppets either helped or actively interfered with the first puppet trying to open the box. At the end of the demonstration, when the babies were offered both puppets that were on either side of the box, the babies overwhelmingly picked (or in the case of the 3 month olds, looked at longest) the helpful puppet and rejected the puppet who interfered.
Another experiment changed the condition in which the first puppet was a ball thief. One of the two puppets on either side of the box slammed the box shut to stop the thief. This time the babies overwhelmingly preferred the puppet that slammed the box shut on the ball thief puppet.
However, a different experiment introduced bias before the puppet show. The researchers placed a bowl of graham crackers and a bowl of Cheerios in front of the baby and learned which it preferred. A puppet was associated with each choice, and the baby picked the puppet associated with its preferred snack. Then the baby picked that puppet again after a puppet show—even when that puppet was subsequently the ‘evil’ puppet interfering with another puppet trying to open a box. It was as if being bad was okay as long as they were on the same team.
Here’s a 2012 60 Minutes overview of the research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU
The generative AI-driven interactive “DebunkBot” (you can search for the website) offers some hope for deprogramming conspiracy believers.
According to a study in Science, the DebunkBot can, in 3 written exchanges with a human, reduce that human’s certainty in their belief about a chosen conspiracy by 20%. (Until now, I had heard trying to introduce facts in a conversation with a conspiracy theorist can potentially backfire and make that person more resistant to changing their mind.)
The DebunkBot exchanges averaged about 20 minutes, and the effect persisted undiminished for 2 months after the interaction.
Another benefit: “The debunking also spilled over to reduce beliefs in unrelated conspiracies, indicating a general decrease in conspiratorial worldview, and increased intentions to rebut other conspiracy believers.”
While I can see the upside if the AI is trained on true data, I can also imagine an Evil DebunkBot could be programmed to instill conspiracy theories at scale.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq1814
Your last sentence was exactly what I was thinking as I was reading…ackkk!
Hoping the evil bot version is not fully operational. In the meantime, perhaps dropping the DebunkBot link into Xitter, Facebook, Reddit, Fox et al and Truth Social now can start a cascade of true believers doubting themselves and their fellow believers before the Jan 20 presidential transition?