The Four Stages of Post-election Cruelty

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has been the Managing Editor of Ordinary Times since 2018, is a widely published opinion writer, and appears in media, radio, and occasionally as a talking head on TV. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter@four4thefire. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew'sHeard Tell Substack for free here:

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85 Responses

  1. Jaybird
    Ignored
    says:

    Yes. Excellent.

    Here’s the #1 tell:

    “Could we have done better if we did something different?”
    “WHY IN THE HELL SHOULD WE HAVE DONE SOMETHING DIFFERENT?!?!?”

    There are a lot of ways that the response can be worded… “Oh, who do you think we should have abandoned? Who do you think we should have denied were human? Whose human rights do you think we should have trampled?” is a light paraphrase of one I’ve seen in the wild.

    It’s not really a question, is it? It’s pretty much an attack that attempts to get the person trying to figure out, specifically, *WHICH* mistakes were made/avoidable to shut the hell up and get back in line.

    “Let’s talk about this.”
    “Let’s *NOT*!”

    We just had yet another election where the people who weren’t allowed to talk about stuff in public decided to vote in private.

    Maybe it’s time to talk about stuff in public.Report

    • Chris in reply to Jaybird
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      says:

      I think the most amazing thing about liberal election post-mortems is that you hear the same thing every time they lose, and have as far back as I can remember (OK, at least since 2000): The Democrats have a messaging problem. Everyone likes what the Democrats are selling, but the Democrats aren’t selling at well. Many articles and books have been written selling various messaging fixes. The writers of these articles and books have then served on Democratic campaigns. It’s a great racket, and allows the Democrats to never, ever make a change to what they’re selling no matter how often they lose.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Chris
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        says:

        First you have to admit you have a problem.

        My suggestion would be something like what Jonathan Pie yells about in his 2016 Election Rant about the importance of persuasion over cancellation.

        But I work at the persuasion store and so of course I would argue that.Report

        • Chris in reply to Jaybird
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          says:

          I just don’t think wokeness and cancelling people is a salient part of mainstream Democratic discourse. Yeah, it’s big on Twitter, and maybe in some universities, but I don’t recall any wokeness or cancellation talk from Harris, or from Biden before her, or from Bernie ever. You might say the “basket of deplorables” remark is a cancel not persuade remark, but other than that, I don’t even remember much from Clinton, and I doubt there’s anyone here who thinks less of Clinton than I do.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Chris
            Ignored
            says:

            HR training, man. HR training.

            And if it was big on twitter, it also made its way to Facebook. (Let’s not even talk about Reddit.)

            So I think it was enough on the radar.

            There’s also a problem with… I don’t know what the right frame is. Okay, last month, actor Simu Liu was a judge on a panel of one of those Shark Tank shows where he was asked about some kind of boba tea drink product and he shot it down because of “cultural appropriation”.

            THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HARRIS, BIDEN, OR CLINTON.

            But there seems to be an undercurrent out there that hints that you can’t do anything to push back against this except vote for Trump.

            If you want to tell me that that’s not fair, I’ll agree with you.Report

            • Philip H in reply to Jaybird
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              says:

              Why would it need pushing back against?Report

            • Chris in reply to Jaybird
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              says:

              If we’re going by Facebook, then I don’t think the problem is cancel rhetoric, because what I see from conservatives is closer to eliminationist rhetoric.

              Twitter might be an issue, but what % of voters pay attention to Twitter?

              HR is something else. I don’t know how that relates to the Democrats, though.Report

              • Burt Likko in reply to Chris
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                says:

                Democrats cancel, in furtherance of their crazed woke agenda. Republicans, on the other hand, know right from wrong, and act accordingly, the way all good honest Americans do.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chris
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                says:

                Get more pinko friends. My god, my feed is nothing but “self-care in these troubled times” advice posts.

                I don’t know how that relates to the Democrats, though.

                Do you disagree that it does reflect on them or are you asking about the mechanism of it doing so?Report

              • Chris in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                Do you disagree that it does reflect on them or are you asking about the mechanism of it doing so?

                I don’t see why it should reflect on them.

                Get more pinko friends. My god, my feed is nothing but “self-care in these troubled times” advice posts.

                My Facebook consists of three groups of people: people I went to primary/secondary school with, people I went to undergrad/grad school with, and people I have known since grad school. The last group is pretty much entirely pinko, not a liberal, much less a conservative in the group. The middle group is liberals, leftists, and (American-style) libertarians. The first group, though, is almost all MAGA with a few moderate liberals here and there. And from the MAGAs, I get to see a bunch of the extended MAGA ecosystem (from replies, shares, memes, etc.).Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chris
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                says:

                I don’t see why it should reflect on them.

                Fair enough.

                Do you see that it does?

                If so, we can move straight to you telling me that that isn’t fair and me agreeing with you.Report

            • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird
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              says:

              So I think it was enough on the radar.

              Jaybird, something like 50% of stuff that was ‘on the radar’ about Democrats was utterly made up, and 50% of the stuff that was ‘on the radar’ about how Republicans would solve problems was made up, also.

              The actual failure of this election is, oddly, the entity that the media is not talking about: The media.

              The media normalized literally everything. And, yes, I’m aware that a huge segment of the population has warned off into insane media sources, but there is a certain point where the media should just have refused, bluntly, to repeat anything Trump was saying.

              The problem is that Republicans understood how to work the media, so keep feeding stories that were often utter nonsense, and Democrats just…didn’t. But the problem isn’t Democrats, it is the media.

              At a certain point it just has to become ‘This man is utterly unacceptable as president’ as sorta the lead to literally any story about him.Report

        • Burt Likko in reply to Jaybird
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          says:

          Sure, we can admit we have a problem. If “we” are American Democrats, we probably have a lot of problems. But what you see as the Democrats’ problem is almost certainly not what I see as the Democrats’ problem and Chris and Saul and everyone else here will see other problems.

          The Democrats were not progressive enough.

          No, the Democrats were too progressive.

          The Democrats didn’t bring enough to the table to relieve middle-class economic anxiety in an age of inflation.

          No, the Democrats brought all kinds of things to the table to relieve middle-class economic anxiety in an age of inflation, but did a bad job explaining why those things would help. The problem is Democrats just aren’t good explainers, see.

          Democrats thought that Americans would be able to rise above sexism, and their problem is they just haven’t taken the measure of the American people.

          No, the problem is that Democrats didn’t have the kind of ground game they needed. Sure there were lots of volunteers but knocking on doors and leaving pamphlets doesn’t convince anyone.

          No, the problem is that Democrats couldn’t penetrate to the small number of undecided voters who the election turned on. You can’t give a wonky argument to someone who goes through life on vibes!

          No, the problem is those voters were hungry for policy solutions to their problems, and all they ever got from the Democrats was vibes!

          And on and on it goes.

          Admitting there is a problem is not the issue. Choosing the correct problem to admit is. And that’s compounded when everyone is diagnosing problems based on their own unexamined priors. I’m probably guilty of that myself, and so are you, good reader.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Burt Likko
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            says:

            Admitting there is a problem is not the issue. Choosing the correct problem to admit is.

            I agree with this.

            So long as it’s not the deep breath one takes before pointing out “subjectivity exists, therefore nobody knows anything, therefore the status quo. Q.E.D.”Report

          • Greg in Ak in reply to Burt Likko
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            says:

            Part of the meta problem is that most if not all of the various reasons have for the Harris loss are at least partially true. What are the most important ones that can be changed? Where is the change energy to be spent?
            Where is the crux of the problem?

            It also comes back to us( politics knowers and followers) to figure out what people who are disconnected from and dont’ follow politics think. Which is incredibly hard to do and also hard to figure out how to fix.Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Chris
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        says:

        that, and also “the problem with Democrats is that they’re just too darn nice, they don’t attack so viciously as Republicans do”.Report

        • Philip H in reply to DensityDuck
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          says:

          something something bringing charts and graphs to bazooka fights something something.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck
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          says:

          The take that is currently wandering around is that the whole “BernieBro” thing is where everything started to go awry.

          Bernie was more attractive to a handful of people in 2016 than Clinton was. How to turn this around? Just accuse anybody who liked Bernie more of sexism! #MeToo wasn’t *THAT* far away and so you could just imply that someone preferred Bernie over Hillary of being a broski who wanted a white dude.

          At the same times, there was a BLM thing going on… remember when the Bernie rally was interrupted by protesters who demanded equal time on the mic?

          People who disliked this were racist and sexist.
          Prove that you’re not. Vote for Hillary.

          It wasn’t about socialism vs. a more realistic liberalism. It was about Identity.

          Remember MTVnews’s 2017 New Years Resolutions for White Guys?

          Good times.

          Anyway, James Carville is nobody’s idea of a guy who won’t attack viciously… and his argument was that they needed better targets than HALF OF FREAKING EVERYBODY.

          Ah, well. Luckily Trump is surely so bad that he’ll only get one term again.Report

      • Derek S in reply to Chris
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        says:

        I agree. Democrats do have a messaging problem.

        The message:
        – If you are white, you are racist
        – If you are a man, you are sexist
        – If you are heterosexual, you are homophobic
        – If you are rich, you did it on the backs of everyone else and need to be punished

        Why should anyone vote for the party that thinks you are a piece of garbage that needs the government to make them a better person?Report

    • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird
      Ignored
      says:

      There are a lot of ways that the response can be wordedâ€Ĥ “Oh, who do you think we should have abandoned? Who do you think we should have denied were human? Whose human rights do you think we should have trampled?” is a light paraphrase of one I’ve seen in the wild.

      It’s not really a question, is it? It’s pretty much an attack that attempts to get the person trying to figure out, specifically, *WHICH* mistakes were made/avoidable to shut the hell up and get back in line.

      No, it’s making people explicitly state what they are merely trying to imply. It sure weird how you think the discussion the Democrats are having should not involve people actually being honest about what they want changed.

      And this is everyone’s reminder that Democrats will never, ever, ever, stop being attacked on LGBTQ issues, which we know because Republicans literally just make things up about those issues. Republicans attacks are not based in the real world.

      Because the major attack _I_ heard was ‘The VP candidate required tampons in boy’s bathrooms in school’, which, it should be pointed out, is a lie.

      Jaybird, why don’t _you_ explain what bad positions drove away voters that changing positions on could be described as ‘abandoning someone’ that the Democrats took this time? Not ‘What bad things exist in some abstract sense’, but literally anything Harris or Walz said or did? It doesn’t have to be limited to LGBTQ, although the demographics most suggested to be thrown under the bus.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC
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        says:

        Can I mention the whole commercial where Harris was talking about gender reassignment for prisoners that relied quite heavily on footage of her?

        I mean, we’re not talking “I respect the right of all snickerdoodles to live with respect and dignity” in response to a question like that.

        But I suppose another might be the whole failure to craft a Sista Soulja about any position that got embarrassing between 2022 and 2024. You know how AOC removed her pronouns from her bio quietly last year? Maybe something condemning that whole thing. You know the “LatinX” thing that everybody quietly walked away from? Maybe *CONDEMNING* it as being stupid (maybe even “colonist”).

        Because the game we’re playing is the whole “lose 1% here to gain 2% there” game, right?

        If you refuse to play, you get Donald Trump.

        Are you refusing to play?Report

        • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird
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          says:

          Then there’s the commercial with her dancing and chanting “no more deportations” with the protesters.Report

        • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird
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          says:

          So what is your theory, there, Jaybird? That prisoners should not get medical care?

          This has been policy for healthcare while in Federal detention since 2016. Trump didn’t do a single thing to alter it. It was the policy his entire administration.

          This is exactly an example of what I’m talking about. Harris did not actually do _anything_. Gender-affirming care was added to various healthcare provided in prison in 2016, and that was it. She just said she wasn’t changing it.

          The right just _lied_ about what was going on.Report

          • DavidTC in reply to DavidTC
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            says:

            Oh, and to be clear, the lie was literally just based in bigotry, hoping people would have horrified reaction to the idea of trans people existing. It wasn’t crouched in ‘This is government spending out of control’, or at least not just that.

            It was ‘Harris is for they/them’, aka, explicitly anti-trans. It was part of the Trump campaign general attack that ‘Harris does not loathe trans people’, which is not, in fact, a policy complaint, but just outright fascism.

            But again, none of this is actually ‘changing positions’ whatsoever. This is not some sort of new policy position where the Democrats have gone too far. Providing medical care to trans people is…like, a normal thing. A thing that has been around for decades. And when the government controls all medical care, like when someone is detained, the government provides that.

            Trump did not attack actual policy positions that Democrats hold, he attacked the mere concept of ‘not being bigotted against trans people’.This is _exactly why_, when some Democrats say ‘We should have taken positions that we wouldn’t get attacked on’, others ask the very questions you think is unacceptable ‘Whose human rights do you think we should have trampled?’

            Because you’re there saying ‘Maybe the Democrats should have demanded trans people aren’t allowed to have healthcare, that would make the Republicans like them.’

            Fun fact: It wouldn’t. They’d just make up something else to attack. ‘Harris supports laws allowing trans people to drive cars to schools to kidnap your children!” because she didn’t oppose a law allowing them to change sex markers on their driver’s license.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC
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            says:

            Worse than that. They just quoted her and made it a commercial.Report

            • DavidTC in reply to Jaybird
              Ignored
              says:

              Yes, Jaybird, organized persecution of trans people has progressed far enough that they can merely associate her mentioning a normal thing the government provides (medical care to prisoners, a thing the government has a legal, constitutional, and _moral_ requirement to provide) but involving icky trans people, and that fact causes a negative impact.

              I repeat what I said: This is _exactly why_, when some Democrats say ‘We should have taken positions that we wouldn’t get attacked on’, others ask the very questions you think is unacceptable ‘Whose human rights do you think we should have trampled?’

              The right, or at least Trumpism, has moved into actual, literal, fascism. And I will defend that statement at this point, I’m being not hyperbolic. One of the targets, one of the outgroups that fascism requires, have been decided to be trans people, and queer people in general, and a good chunk of people here will be forever damned that they keep ‘asking questions’ about trans issues, or demanding compromise.

              There is no compromise, because you cannot compromise with fascists trying to eradicate people they don’t like. They will never accept anything sort of totality, and they will just _lie_ about whatever position their opposition holds.

              And the people who say things like ‘Maybe trans people should stop asking for health care’ (Like healthcare isn’t a perfectly normal thing people need.) or ‘Maybe trans people should stay out of sports’ (Like sports are even vaguely the business of the government or important at all)…you’re the Germans in 1934 who are saying ‘Look, I don’t agree with the Na.zis, and I don’t agree with any violence, but there are a lot of Jews in the government, and a communist did burn down the Reichstag, and I’m just asking questions. Maybe a few restrictions on people are in order…not what the Na.zi want, but, like, _reasonable_ restrictions.”

              And maybe some of you need to f*cking stop and think about what you’re doing. The results you are helping accomplish by being ‘reasonable’. Because you are talking about things under a system that you know damn well will not be ‘reasonable’.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to DavidTC
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                says:

                AOC is fundraising on fighting against Fascism.

                You can help by sending her $5.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to DavidTC
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                says:

                Na.zi/death-camp accusations are the “go to” argument if you don’t have a case, and it’s not convincing. Nor does it win elections.

                Your prison hc argument would be stronger without them.

                David: ‘Maybe trans people should stay out of sports’ â€Ĥyou’re the Germans in 1934

                It’s a bad idea to insist that females-by-identity should be setting sports records that born-females can’t hope to match. Attempting to make this argument shatters creditability.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter
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                says:

                It’s a bad idea to insist that females-by-identity should be setting sports records that born-females can’t hope to match. Attempting to make this argument shatters creditability.

                And those records would be found where exactly? Because they are not infiltrating the popular press.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H
                Ignored
                says:

                Because they are not infiltrating the popular press.

                https://nypost.com/2023/03/30/male-powerlifter-enters-womens-event-breaks-record/

                The trans athlete setting records wasn’t high end before they converted. We’ve seen multiple other examples of vast improvement.

                Of course the “female during the contest” coach who is trolling is another problem.

                We separate the genders in sports for good reason.

                Serena Williams, the best female tennis player in history, wouldn’t be in the top 200 if she were a man (we tested this and it wasn’t pretty). So if any of the top 10 male tennis players transition they’re going to be invincible.Report

  2. Saul Degraw
    Ignored
    says:

    The election was basically “It’s inflation, stupid” and now it appears to be dawning on people that perhaps they should have taken Trump seriously and literally and they have buyer’s remorse.Report

  3. Slade the Leveller
    Ignored
    says:

    I really don’t feel like this election needs a post-mortem. The latest vote totals I could find were Trump 50.2% and Harris 48.2%. The popular vote in the so-called swing states was with 2-3 percentage votes, with the biggest one being NC which probably wasn’t all that swingy to begin with. The electoral college was more of a bloodbath, but that’s a peculiarity of that mechanism.

    The popular vote hardly indicates a national mandate.

    I, of course, could be terribly wrong. To my dying day, I will never understand what on earth could lead someone to consider Donald Trump fit for the office of president.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Slade the Leveller
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      says:

      I will never understand what on earth could lead someone to consider Donald Trump fit for the office of president.

      One take I’ve seen, over and over and over again: “Trump didn’t deserve to win but, by God, Harris deserved to lose.”

      Explore “even more unfit” and see if it has explanatory power.Report

      • Slade the Leveller in reply to Jaybird
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        says:

        “No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there’s nothing to be afraid of.“Report

      • Philip H in reply to Jaybird
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        says:

        Sure a lot of people thought she was unfit. Mostly on vibes, and gender and race. Because when her name wasn’t on her proposals her stuff way outpolled his stuff.

        She and he were not and are not equivalent in terms of fitness.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Philip H
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          says:

          Did you hear the theory that Pelosi wanted an open primary?Report

          • Philip H in reply to Jaybird
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            says:

            Even if I had – and you are the only person I have ever read mentioning it – it would be laughable. The sitting VP was and still is more fit to be president then the convicted felon who is about to retake office. He was unfit last time and there’s no evidence of improvement.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Philip H
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              says:

              Here’s the New York Times:

              Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, suggested this week that it would have been better for the Democratic Party if President Biden had abandoned his re-election campaign sooner and the party had then held a competitive primary process to replace him.

              In an interview on Thursday with The New York Times, Ms. Pelosi said what was widely reported around the time Mr. Biden dropped out: that she believed it was implicitly understood that his exit would be followed by an internal party competition for a new nominee, instead of an anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris.

              “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Ms. Pelosi said during an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of “The Interview,” a Times podcast. She added during the interview, which will be published in full on Saturday, “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.”

              Report

              • Glyph in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                That’s a very different thing than what Philip appears to be contending (and what I contend): there may well have been a more-electable candidate than Harris, and in that case, the Democrats screwed the pooch.

                But in NO WAY is Harris actually less-fit to serve than the traitorous convicted felon in obvious mental decline (and I’ll stop the list of his deficiencies there for the sake of space and time and not making everyone wish I’d go away again), whose prior Admin was largely a disaster (a couple stopped-clock moments aside), and this should be obvious to anyone with eyes and ears.

                And in that case, the American public screwed the pooch.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Glyph
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                says:

                And yet half the country voted for him and about… what? 4% of the country switched from Biden to Trump or not-voting to Trump.

                And you can’t imagine why unless it involves the voters being bad.

                That’s a severe limitation. You should overcome it. You’ll be better off for overcoming it.Report

              • Glyph in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                At the risk of Godwinning myself, explanations of why a voting public would choose something vile are not excuses for that choice. And I won’t conflate the two, don’t worry.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Glyph
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                says:

                If the only explanations that make sense to you are ones that make you feel morally superior, this will happen again and you’ll be given another chance to pick and choose which explanations are acceptable.

                Well, assuming we ever have another election.Report

              • Glyph in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                Again, to repeat: I understand that people felt economically-insecure. I fully understand that because I did and do too.

                I also understand at least some of the other voter-shifting culture-war bits – I myself, as you may recall from my prior tenure here, often felt uncomfortable with the “Left” (broadly, to generalize into a bloc)’s seemingly frequent eagerness to either criminalize or compel Speech, for example; amongst other issues where I sometimes felt somewhat-to-very out of step with them.

                I am not arguing that the Left did not fail here, politically, in their primary duty to counteract the worst of that which needed counteracting.

                Your comments about me feeling morally-superior are themselves a form of moral superiority; if I can distance myself emotionally-enough to view the problem clear-eyed, only then will I achieve true Enlightenment.

                I will continue to try to understand the political failures (=explanations) here, so that they can hopefully be corrected and avoided in future.

                Nevertheless, the selection of a poor (to put it extremely mildly) choice is a selection of a poor choice and while it can be (at least somewhat, in our limited capacity as limited humans) explained, it can’t be excused (the sense in which we are rhetorically using “understand” here), and I remain steadfast in believing the two things are different.

                Do you contend explanations and excuses are the same thing? That anything anyone ever does, individually or collectively, can be sufficiently-handled with a “well, but you have to understand…”? That EVERYTHING is an aesthetics-masquerading-as-morals question, and aesthetics are all we have?Report

              • CJColucci in reply to Glyph
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                says:

                You don’t get it. Jaybird, and only Jaybird, gets to be a moral scold here.Report

              • Glyph in reply to CJColucci
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                says:

                I love Jaybird like a brother and part of why that is that in some ways I know his mind and my mind work somewhat in the same way, on some things. If people here sometimes get frustrated with JB, they probably got frustrated with me sometimes, and for some of the same reasons. And JB gave me a platform to write about music and stuff here, for which I will be forever grateful. So I am not interested in sparking or joining a JB pile-on; but I do admit to a certain amount of frustration here, which is probably on display.

                I do get that to some degree we are talking about different things – “understand” is carrying (at least) two meanings here, in these discussions.

                I do try, as best I can, to always say what I mean clearly. That much I will always try to do.

                So if we all want to sit around and Monday-morning-quarterback jaw about the explanations, so that they can hopefully be addressed by next time assuming there is one, I’ll try to confine my commentary to that – though, as I’ve said, I do not find Trump to be mentally-fit for the job even leaving aside his many moral failings; and I feel that should be a pretty morally-neutral statement in a nation that saw Biden’s debate performance and rightly said whew, Joe’s clearly on the slide at this point, as is the human way of aging – in other words, explanations to have voted for DJT can be flimsy too, to the point where they sure resemble excuses.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Glyph
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                says:

                Nevertheless, the selection of a poor (to put it extremely mildly) choice is a selection of a poor choice and while it can be (at least somewhat, in our limited capacity as limited humans) explained, it can’t be excused (the sense in which we are rhetorically using “understand” here), and I remain steadfast in believing the two things are different.

                Bingo.

                Do you contend explanations and excuses are the same thing? That anything anyone ever does, individually or collectively, can be sufficiently-handled with a “well, but you have to understandâ€Ĥ”? That EVERYTHING is an aesthetics-masquerading-as-morals question, and aesthetics are all we have?

                Yes, he does. because it gives him an intellectual out to avoid being held accountable for his beliefs – nevermind a shield that he uses to try and mask those beliefs as long as possible.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Glyph
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                says:

                My morality is alien to whatever state we currently find ourselves in. Some variant of classical liberalism mixed with some vulgar utilitarianism and a measurable feeling of disgust for visible disorder.

                As such, I can completely understand how someone would look at the Blue Cities and conclude that the Democrats deserve to lose. The bums deserve to be thrown out.

                After the worst excesses during covid, the worst excesses during the Mostly Peaceful Summer, the worst excesses of “cancellation”, I can absolutely understand why someone would prefer to not vote in 2024 to voting for Team Good. I can understand why they would prefer to vote Trump to Team Good. And I can *CERTAINLY* understand why they’d prefer to vote Third Party to Team Good.

                And, get this, I don’t think that they’re necessarily any worse than me for doing so.

                They’re not necessarily nazis, or racists, or sexists, or phobic.

                They’re just sick of it.

                And I think that if the Democrats don’t figure out what people were sick of, we’ll get an even harsher backlash.

                And I would like to avoid that.Report

              • Slade the Leveller in reply to Jaybird
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                says:

                Every time I see a video online where people say “I’m sick of it.” there is nothing articulated. It’s always what “they” are doing.

                Truly, the party of unspecified grievance.Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to Philip H
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              says:

              First of all, you’re correct.

              Having said that, for a “sitting VP” she’s remarkably inept, uninformed(?), and bad at this. She was selected by Biden to unify his identity politics base. She wasn’t ready to be at the head of the ticket.

              There are a number of VPs who haven’t been ready for prime time. Lincoln’s VP was selected to bring ideological balance to the ticket, which is another way of saying he disagreed with Lincoln on basically everything.

              More recently we have Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. Cheney at least was selected for his experience in governing, but if he had to head the ticket his total lack of charisma would have worked against him.Report

              • InMD in reply to Dark Matter
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                says:

                It’s an office that suffers from an odd combination of prominence and lack of official duties or authority, other than breaking ties in the Senate.Report

              • Slade the Leveller in reply to Dark Matter
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                says:

                “Having said that, for a “sitting VP” she’s remarkably inept, uninformed(?), and bad at this.”

                I’ve seen statements like this posted by the right, usually without explanation as you’ve done here, as if it’s axiomatic.

                Are you able to make a case with evidence that statements like this are valid?Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Slade the Leveller
                Ignored
                says:

                …Are you able to make a case with evidence

                She just lost to a demented 78 year old after we proved the electorate cares about age. Trump had a truck load of other baggage to the point where I couldn’t vote for him. So he was a very weak candidate and she still lost.

                As VP she… “had less experience than any modern vice president since Spiro Agnew.” She was an AG for 6 years and a Senator for 4.

                Harris engaging in word salad during a CNN interview: https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/word-salad-kamala-harris-roasted-over-garbled-answers-at-town-hall-event/news-story/d63e706d48e37831524c67378d921520

                There was a reason why she didn’t do much interviewing.

                Asked what she’d do on day one she said she’d “prioritize the middle class”. Asked what she’d change from Biden she had no answer (she was running on “change”). Asked what she’d do about inflation she said she’d “punish price-gougers”.

                Her political position on Immigration is she’s running as tougher than Trump (from her wiki)… however we also have her on video chanting “end deportation” with Protesters and as border czar she never visited the border.

                A lot of her basic views are unclear to the point of creating problems.

                She’s pro-trans… but also filed to block gender-affirming medical care for inmates as AG.

                She has been against free trade multiple times but wasn’t running for Prez on protectionism.

                That link I put up went over some of her lack of coherence over her middle Eastern stances.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Dark Matter
                Ignored
                says:

                Having said that, for a “sitting VP” she’s remarkably inept, uninformed(?), and bad at this. She was selected by Biden to unify his identity politics base. She wasn’t ready to be at the head of the ticket.

                come January 20th we will find out how much better she was at this then most people think.Report

        • Brandon Berg in reply to Philip H
          Ignored
          says:

          Because when her name wasn’t on her proposals her stuff way outpolled his stuff.

          Again, weird flex. If people aren’t smart or well-informed enough to figure out which candidate supports which policies, how can they possibly be smart or well-informed enough to know which policies will produce results they will like? The latter is much, much harder than the former.

          You take pride in the fact that people who are completely clueless support the same policies you do. And I have no desire to challenge you on that point.Report

          • Dark Matter in reply to Brandon Berg
            Ignored
            says:

            Reading her wiki I can’t figure out her actual stance on all sorts of things.

            If you’re going to run as an empty suit with undefined policies then we’re not going to be able to figure out what you support.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Jaybird
        Ignored
        says:

        Explore “even more unfit” and see if it has explanatory power.

        It doesn’t.Report

  4. Joe
    Ignored
    says:

    Anyway, more on Pete Hegseth:

    “Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement, though he maintained that their encounter was consensual, according to a statement from his lawyer Saturday and other documents obtained by The Washington Post.

    Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said that Hegseth was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the incident, and maintained that police who were contacted a few days after the encounter by the woman concluded “the Complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.” Police have not confirmed that assertion.

    Hegseth agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the woman because he feared that revelation of the matter “would result in his immediate termination from Fox,” where he works as a host, the statement said.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/16/pete-hegseth-sexual-assault-accuser-paid/Report

  5. Ken S.
    Ignored
    says:

    There are lots of things to argue about, but can we at least have done with the nonsense about Trump’s “landslide.” Yes, on his third try he finally won a majority of the total vote — a whopping majority of 50.1%. And yes, 312 electoral sounds like a lot. In fact, it’s 53 fewer than Obama’s 365 in 2008, and 20 fewer than Obama’s 332 in 2012. Some landslide. The last time a Republican won a majority of the total vote, W in 2004, members of this party boasted that the Democrats would never win another election. They didn’t — until the very next election in 2006, when they gained 6 seats in the Senate and 31 seats in the House, enough for a majority in both houses. But sure, this time the Dems are all but dead.Report

    • Bonkers in reply to Ken S.
      Ignored
      says:

      Thank you, Ken.

      But believing this would mean I can’t enjoy Jaybirds “the pendulum’s gonna stop this time” schtick.

      For guy who’s poked a lot of fun at “the most important election of our lifetime” he’s really into the “the most important post-mortem of our lifetime”Report

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