Funniest thing is that if that dude had just said, “Cuba,” this would have been a non-issue. The joke structure would have been exactly the same, and it would have still been a dog whistle for racists, but Cuban Americans are largely anti-communist ex-pats. They probably wouldn’t have been thrilled to hear Cuba described as garbage, but if they got angry, it probably would have blown over by saying, “the joke was a reference to what communism has done to cuba.” Instead, he picked an island full of people that can easily move to the US mainland and vote. Absolutely spectacular.

Thank you. Something about me was rubbing me the wrong way, but I couldn’t articulate it.

They were very amateurish. They were a fake set of emails that were clearly put together in a text editor. The formatting of the dates was inconsistent between emails, and in one screenshot, you could even see the text cursor, indicating the email had just been typed on the user’s screen. Apparently, even some Qanon promoters were stepping forward to debunk them. They were covered in the latest QAA podcast.

Every headline about this man is either, “Trump unveils proposal for concentration camps,” or, “Trump claims he invented waffles, poops pants at PA rally.” There’s no in between.

No, this is literally where the U.S. falls on a global political spectrum. The Democrats would be considered center-right in most other nations. Even by their own historical standards, they’re center right; if you took a Democrat from 1975 and transported them to 1995, they’d ask you why the party had adopted the Republicans’ fiscal policies.

You think that media moguls are secretly supporting Trump, even though he has spent 8 years attacking their outlets and even recently threatened to revoke CBS’ license, so they would ostensibly be acting against their self interest, while also leaving no evidence or paper trail to prove this support exists. Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me, dude! Anyway, it’s been fun watching how far you’ll go to avoid admitting you fell for a fake meme, but it seems like we’re hitting a wall here, so…bye!

Hey, if you’re ever wondering what people mean when they say, “Blue MAGA,” it’s this; 8 rambling paragraphs of conspiracy theories about media companies’ CEOs, with no evidence or sources, to justify a debunked infographic. It’s long-winded, “Fake News.”

By saying the infographic is “debunked”, the implication is that media owners are not supporting trump. And I say again - they could very well be giving millions, as Elmo Musk does, without being directly identified in an FEC filing. So, the “debunking” is itself “debunked” by simply pointing out political donations can be unknown.

OK, but by the logic you’re using, you could accuse anyone of anything. I could make an infographic that says, “Kamala Harris was caught killing small animals as a child,” and when someone says that never happened, I could just say, “Well, juvenile records are almost always sealed and expunged, and people who seek power are often have sociopathic tendencies, so this debunking is debunked, since it’s an unknown.” It’s just using the adage, “yhe absence of proof isn’t the proof of absence,” as a justification to continue spreading a lie.

There aren’t any PAC donation records because SCROTUS legalized dark money. Of course we could argue about it, OR just look at the editorial slants and take this obvious fact at face value.

Maybe you should clarify what the, “obvious fact,” was that we should take at face value. Because based on the context, it really sounds like you wanted us to accept your debunked infographic as fact.

Well, A) I didn’t say the Democrats had lost the working class. I said that their policies were not targeting the working class. Even this election, Kamala Harris’ stump speeches repeatedly focus on the middle class but make no mention of the working class.

And B) those overall numbers don’t factor in race or geography. The Democrats still do very strongly amongst black Americans because of the legacy of Civil Rights Act and the Republicans’ Southern Strategy, and they are much more likely to live below the poverty line, but the black population is also unevenly distributed throughout the south and in northern urban population centers. Because of the Senate’s structure and the Electoral College, winning white working class voters can be a successful path to power in the Midwest and most of the South, where blue-collar whites can deliver GOP victories. In fact, the Republicans have won white working class voters in 8 of the last 11 elections, and that support handed them the presidency in 6 of them.

That’s why the Republicans have the reputation of being for the working class, and the Democrats don’t. The Republicans are actively working to win working-class whites (and there’s some evidence that Trump is gaining ground with working class black and Latino men), while the Democrats are actively trying to win moderate white-collar voters and assuming their base of working class minority voters will turn out

OK, so what you’re saying is that you know there’s no evidence to back up your claims, but you’re assuming they’re true based on your opinion of these outlets editorial decisions, and you’d like your opinion to be treated as a fact. Did I get that right?

Most elected Democrats had abandoned a working class message by the 90s. Jimmy Carter seems like a socialist by today’s standards, but its important to remember that at the time, he was running on a pivot towards the center and an attempt to distance the party from the New Deal. Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge was a campaign to return to their New Deal principles. Mondale and Dukakis were both moving to center as well, as the party had convinced themselves that Regan’s success meant New Deal politics seemed fiscally irresponsible.

By the time Clinton was in power, the party was essentially a center-right party by their own historical standards. Clinton and the 1993 Congress passed legislation that actively hurt the middle class while helping the managerial and financial class. His deregulation of Wall Street was a gift to investors, while his work requirements for Welfare basically killed the program. Worst of all was NAFTA, which created the largest outsourcing of manufacturing jobs in American history.

Obama at least ran on a progressive platform (which should have proved to Democrats that centrism was not a winning strategy), but he governed like another moderate. He even attempted to pass another NAFTA like trade agreement, the TPP, and Trump successfully won over blue-collar workers by promising to kill that deal. Granted, he also won them over by blaming their economic woes on immigrants, and his opposition to the deal probably had more to do with his racist desire to undermine as many achievements of the first black President as he possibly could, but the TPP would have been another nail in the coffin of American manufacturing jobs.

Anyway, point is, aside from a few progressive hold-outs, the Democrats by-and-large pivoted away from their New Deal roots towards being technocratic centrists whose policies benefit investors and white-collar workers and often hurt the working class. Meanwhile, the Republicans, whose policies are even worse for the working class, are able to create the illusion of being on their side through scapegoating and dog whistles that appeal to blue-collar workers (particularly white blue-collar workers, although not exclusively).

Because the Democrats abandoned working class voters in the 80s and 90s to court the professional-managerial class in a pivot towards the center, and the Republicans were able to win over these disaffected blue-collar voters with resentment politics.

OK, but these two things aren’t the same. This indictment came out in August or 2023, then was thrown out almost a year later due to the immunity ruling, but the prosecutor immediately vowed to refile, which he did in late August, and now he’s released a bunch of Grand Jury documents that flesh out the case he’s been working on for 14 months.

It’s damning stuff, but not shocking, given that this story has been developing for over a year. It’s certainly not as shocking as the FBI director announcing that in investigation into a presidential candidate, which everyone thought had been concluded 2 months prior, has been reopened 11 days before an election.

The news media chases clicks. It’s bullshit, but that’s what happens when advertising revenue dictates the media’s interests. Knowing that, it makes a lot of sense that the story, “Documents released regarding last months refiled Trump indictment,” got less coverage than, “FBI director suddenly announced Clinton probe reopened! What are in the mysterious new emails?”

Interesting. A while ago, I read that zebra stripes were meant to confuse predators. Basically, the idea was that when they ran as a herd, their stripes made it difficult to tell where one zebra ended and the other began. I wonder if that’s considered bunk now or if this is supposed to be an additional benefit.

Yeah, considering how bad their campaign did with abortion, cat ladies, and misogynistic bullshit, my gut says this moment did some damage.

I thought Vance won the debate (mostly through Gish galloping), but I’m not sure it’s going to matter. The big moment of the evening was him being muted for aggressively talking over two women, and it wasn’t a great look. I’m sure it played well to Trump’s base of incels who hate journalists, but I doubt anyone else found it very appealing.

Uh-huh. I’ll be honest, it doesn’t sound like you have any more influence or sway over your representatives than I do. I also get replies for telling them that they will lose my support over an issue, and Ed Markey’s office was never more responsive than when he was being primaried by Joe Kennedy. So if it’s all the same to you, I’m gonna keep voting third-party and making sure my representatives know they are replaceable, since it seems to be working at least as well as your strategy of unconditional support.

It didn’t actually have any effect on 2016. Even if every single Jill Stien voter had gone to Clinton, she still would have needed to win over 50% of Gary Johnson’s voters to win.. Since it’s pretty unlikely that half of the Libertarian party’s votes were from disaffected leftists, no, the protest vote did not cost Hillary the election.

Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, and Ayanna Pressley. What representatives do you have at your beck and call with your amazing volunteering skills?