It’s truly terrifying that the Democratic Party and it’s candidates are still so utterly pathetically poor at messaging - as though nothing has been learned over the past five years. According to polls. looks like that Republicans haven’t lost much ground and the sleepy Democrats, well they remain sleepy as their leaders struggle so much to lead, and the best they seem to be able to muster, so far a communicating with constituents, is rerunning boiler plate donation pitches, that pretend we are living in the yesteryears of our dreams.
UK Turmoil May Forecast The Fate Of A GOP-Led Congress—Only Worse
Chris Hayes: If you think what’s happening with the UK’s conservative party is a dangerous carnival, wait until you see Kevin McCarthy’s House of Representatives, if that’s what it comes to this November.
Elections have consequences:
October 18, 2022
When Donald Trump was president, Democrats were willing to pass the CARES Act and send out stimulus checks with Trump’s name on them ahead of an election. “Does anyone really believe if the tables were turned Republicans would do the same?” .
As counterproductive, short-sighted and often cruel as much of Gingrich’s policy agenda was, it was at least an actual, actionable agenda. Contrast that to most of what McCarthy and his inner circle offered last week.
McCarthy’s plan would strengthen the economy by curbing “wasteful government spending” (like what?) and passing “pro-growth” tax policies. Meaning, more tax cuts for the rich? It doesn’t say.
Its crime-fighting plan is to hire 200,000 more cops, with no word on how that would be paid for or other details. The plan’s similarly non-specific vow to “save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare” is especially insulting coming from a party that routinely threatens the stability of both.
It finished with:
… McCarthy’s game here is obvious: With Republicans no longer looking at a cakewalk to the majority in the midterms thanks to widespread fury over the party’s threat to abortion rights and its continued fealty to an increasingly unhinged ex-president, he’s looking for a way to rally the base while pretending to have a specific agenda to present to the rest of the country.
A party that won’t say, in detail, what it will do with power either doesn’t know, or doesn’t want the country to know. Either possibility should be viewed by the voters as disqualifying.
d) Considering our dysfunctional public dialogue in 14 verses.
(Dec 30, 2018)
Yeah, yeah, I know that’s in serious need of some rewriting, but that would have required someone else’s input, feedback, participation, alas, that was too much for me to hope for. Though on the bright side I’m officially in the aging stage of life so why GAF (eh?), and life goes on. Besides our ballots are on the table and this morning my wife and I vote, and later we’ll drop it off at the County’s Ballot Drop Box.
Bless Colorado and may its wingnut Republican candidates lose and may we remain a proud democracy loving and practicing state of the Union!
To know all about the Dems and Repubs, how they operate, watch the opening scene of Idiocracy. Perfect example of what the problem is. Just substitute “progress” for “babies”. Watch, you’ll know what I mean.
More truth in that than I care to admit.
Still gotta keep on keeping on.
**Although there is something super duper important that way too many seem to keep missing, and that is that ** ONLY ONE of the two parties EMBRACES LIES & FANTASY THINKING as a national policy and that’s Idiocracy to the max.
For the record that is the Republican that believe they have the right to lie and hate with abandon. Not to mention their hate-on for woman’s possessing full legal autonomy.
Democrats are at least still trying to deal with todays actual factual situation.
“Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost its Mind” | Amanpour and Company
A majority of Republican candidates in the upcoming midterm elections have either expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, or rejected the result outright. What is the future of the GOP? Author and journalist Robert Draper examines Republican election denial as a challenge to American democracy itself, as laid out in his new book, “Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind.” Draper speaks with Michel Martin about what lies ahead.
Our own refusal to critique ourselves is part of the problem. There are liars in the party, elected ones. I knew we were in trouble when I first saw people like Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower gaining popularity. They had a core of decency, and the occasional reasonable comment on policy, but they spent the vast majority of their time going after the emotional buttons.
You could trace it back further to the counter culture movements after WWII. We celebrate the success of the gains in civil rights now, as we should, but at the time, there was a lot of self-serving abuse of the freedoms that had been gained.
True, true, all too true - I’m about as frustrated a Democrat you can find.
I know, I’ve always considered myself sort of a regular boilerplate liberal - but then I hear some of these people today and I agree plenty of lefties have become as deluded as righties and just as impossible to constructively engage without offending.
But even through this fog of self-fabricated wars we have going on - Only One Party has fully embraces lies and intimidation and hate mongering and a totalitarian vision of what their leaders should look like, as their ‘game plan’.
In this election there are ONLY TWO options get Democrats in power and we have a fighting chance to save vestiges of our democracy OR the Republican who have guaranteed us, their power base will serve their Oligarchs and democracy is the last thing on their mind.
The Republican has an all out hate-on against liberal types and literally want nothing so much as destruction - just look at the types of people who have become heavy weights within that organization.
Look at their number one guiding principle, even more powerful than their imagined god’s, it’s: ME, ME, ME first and f the rest!!!. Nothing good can ever come from such a leadership!
I’m not claiming that authoritarianism is a valid strategy, I’m saying it isn’t chosen in the way you would choose a certain chemical in a laboratory if you were trying to attain a certain result. It’s more likely that Ted Cruz is aware of his evil choices than someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is just riding a wave of power that she doesn’t understand, BUT, you can’t get inside either one of those minds and show their machinations or alter them in any direct manner.
The tools of change remain the same, regardless of the values. Trust has to be built through relationships. It might be easier to get someone angry about something and follow your lead, but it’s the same relationship building step as getting someone to care. In my experience, anger wears off, it takes energy to maintain it. The caring and compassionate stuff is more self perpetuating.
I don’t disagree with you, though there are a couple points worth making.
Isn’t opportunism a hallmark of Facism and how it gets into power, that seems to gain a power of its own from shear momentum and human shortsightedness and vacillation - usually because the deep pocket in the smoke filled rooms have their own motives for supporting certain despots as opposed to others.
Too True. Too rare. Heck just trying to connect with some of “those relationships” is next to impossible these days.
Looks at us around here. It’s as depressing as walking through an empty school.
Yes, but, that statement is another expression of the evil scientist in the lab, mixing up the Strange Brew. That’s an analogy, good for stories, but in the end, it’s a conspiracy theory. Rich people do go off on islands and have secret meetings, and sometimes we can even get reports of them “deciding” who will be the next President. But we went from Obama to Trump in 8 years, so whatever it is they are doing, it’s not that effectual.
Take the “cancel culture” example. That used to be called the “Establishment” by the hippies. Then hippies got organized and started protesting, hitting them in their pocketbooks. Corporations changed, media changed, but there is a speed limit on cultural change and when girls kissed on TV, that got cancelled. So the next rebel generation started cancelling pseudo-intellectual crap on campuses. The new Establishment had to give that a label, to make it look like something different than having power and controlling the strings. But it’s the same techniques, just layers of confusion and misdirection to make them work.
The problem is, it’s not a fantasy - it’s the very history of climate science (et al) denial.
Doubt is Their Product - their resources are limitless and scruples/honor/honest didn’t exist,
the ruthless justify anything.
Disparity anyone?
That brings us to ultimate power corrupts ultimately
That’s naive - They went from Gingrich to Tea Party to Trump - driven by Limbaugh, BreitBart and Bannon, types Stone’s dirty tricks a GOP staple. It was a progression that the limp D liberal slept through, just like the 70 switch to that evangelical thing - turned political bludgeon.
My brief history was showing that what is called the “Establishment” keeps changing. The dominant culture of the 40s and 50s is pretty easy to identify. It was challenged for a while, but Reagan consolidated conservative power again and Evangelicals helped “establish” it.
I think you misunderstood what I say happened in those 8 years. The Tea Party type minority has always existed in some form or another. It’s always done well in the Deep South, even changing party affiliation in the face of something momentous like a civil rights bill. At the genetic, intrinsic, animal level, humans haven’t changed that much. 500 years of science are not enough to undo 3 million years of biology.
We’re not “inherently racist” like some say, but we are emotional beings with the ability to reason. I believe we’ll need the reasoning skills to survive at all, and we’ll definitely need them to maintain a civilized world. But, some people think competition and brute force will win out and think they have reason to believe that.
What I’m saying about the constant flipping from liberal to conservative Presidents, is that demonstrates that no cabal is in control.
It’s a shame society don’t do more to encourage those reasoning skills.
Although it feels a little like it’s getting to be too late to seriously hope for that.
When times get tough, people get even more irrational.
