TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2024
Still, how did we lose to him? How in the world could Kamala Harris have lost to Donald J. Trump?
It's a perfectly reasonable question. On the one hand, we'd have to say this:
On the one hand, it can seem pretty amazing that she came as close as she did!
She didn't even get into the race until late July of this year. This followed a long, drawn-out, embarrassing meltdown by her party's sitting president—by the unpopular person she served as vice presidential nominee and then as vice president over the prior four year.
Mixed with other global patterns, those circumstances can make it seem pretty amazing that she came as close as she did! On the other hand, we'd also have to say this:
On the other hand, she lost an election to Donald J. Trump! How in the world did we superior beings in Blue America ever get defeated by him?
How did we ever lose to that guy? For denizens of our own Blue America, it's the most natural question in the world.
Unfortunately, our vastly self-impressed tribe is routinely gripped with tribal denial and tribal delusions—with a tribal blindness which leaves us offering the sorts of delusional explanations we've cited in recent days.
Why did Candidate Harris lose to Candidate Trump? Full disclosure follows:
The possible reasons go on and on, and many of the reasons track straight back to Us! Again and again, we Blues have managed to earn our way out—and like tribal groups since the dawn of time, we're often unable to see this.
We lost a lot of time on this alternate Tuesday—much more than we'd expected. We'll return to this exploration tomorrow, and to our basic question:
In what ways did those of us in Blue America actually earn our way out? It may be too late for it to matter, but we'll start listing answers tomorrow.
Some of the answers date back many years, perhaps to the 1960s.
Some of the answers are quite recent. They feature varieties of self-defeating behavior which continue this very day.
I think it is fully appropriate to speculate about Trump's health, given that he has released no health info (in recognizable form). Somerby himself has wondered whether or not Trump is mentally ill. Drug abuse is one reason why a sane person might appear to be having symptoms. Dean has supplied a series of symptoms besides the sniffling and Trump himself has described his lifestyle. I do not believe anyone attended Studio 54 in its heyday without using something. I am willing to believe he has avoided alcohol because of his brother, but cocaine is something else. I do not believe he has made all drugs off limits (as recovering addicts do) and I have no trouble believing he may be using cocaine (or some similar drug).
ReplyDeleteI want to see convincing evidence from a doctor that he is in appropriate health to take on the stressful duties of the presidency.
Trump is nearing the age where any health problems will become obvious to all. I think that was already true of his campaign rallies, but now he seems to be hiding whatever issues he is having. How long can his partners in crime keep him hidden?
DeleteI wouldn't vote for a candidate who didn't release his records (at his age especially). Somerby has not explained why so many Republicans were willing to do so.
4:22,
DeleteIt's a known "secret" in DC that Trump is an Adderall addict.
No it isn't. Everyone knows Trump doesn't partake in alcohol and drugs. He's getting up there in years though, so it's a good thing someone like JD Vance is in the wings.
DeleteNo, everyone doesn't know anything about Trump's health. It is obvious he has been talking mind-altering substances, given his dramatic differences in appearance and cognition across public appearances at his rallies, just before the election. Why would Trump surround himself with Ronny Johnson (aka Dr. Feelgood) who dispensed drugs to Trump's white house, if Trump were opposed to drugs. I doubt his claim about alcohol too, since he didn't like his brother and it makes no sense that he would have abstained given his lifestyle across the decades. He has no self-discipline or impulse control in any aspect of his life, so why would he gorge on McDonald's (which is very bad for anyone) and yet not drink? This is just another lie among so many.
DeleteThink of that video of Trump dancing his stupid dance on stage without answering any questions for 40 minutes. He looked drunk (or stoned) then and couldn't get himself together to give his usual rally speech. That was bizarre for a sane person but totally what a drunk Trump would have looked like. And he reportedly crashes Mar-a-lago weddings and plays DJ in the same way, at receptions full of alcohol and partying. Of course he drinks and takes drugs.
DeleteBiden is getting accolades from historians and presidential scholars for his performance as president. He had no long meltdown. He had a bad debate (so did Obama) and he was pilloried by the press and elbowed out of the nomination by big money donors among Democrats. Nancy Pelosi helped push him out. That doesn't mean he was failing as president, nor does it mean he is failing now, as he tries to protect his accomplishments from an incoming Trump.
ReplyDeleteSomerby thought Biden was too old, and he joined the chorus of people trying to push him off the ticket. He was aided by deep fakes supposedly showing Biden looking confused. These were edited video created as propaganda to show Biden doddering, when the original video showed nothing like that. In other words, deception was involved in making Biden seem incompetent, and Somerby bought it hook, line and sinker. He still doesn't seem to realize that he made a mistake.
Harris's numbers were improving but she couldn't quite make up the deficits of being unknown and being slandered by the Republicans, coupled with inevitable racism and sexism, much like that which pulled Hillary down. Harris lost to Trump because too many men cannot imagine a woman being more competent than the worst criminal reprobate (Trump). Women hoped but didn't expect Harris to win. Men thought sexism was over, racism was over, and thought she had a chance when she clearly had none.
This is the fault of all of the blue voters who stayed home instead of supporting Harris. That includes Somerby, who could find nothing good to say about her candidacy and now is sliming Biden too. But our party was perhaps lulled into thinking Harris would win without their effort, just as some voters thought in 2016 when it was predicted Hillary would win. A sexist person doesn't want to reveal themselves as bigoted to pollsters, but they won't do the right thing and vote for a woman either, so we get a disconnect between Harris's polling and her results.
Meanwhile, Somerby has still not listed any of the reasons why Trump won. He has said there are a lot of them, and that they track back to "us" (no, Somerby is not one of us blue voters and tribe members). But that list he keeps promising never materializes. He talks vaguely about "self-defeating behavior." He is the last person on this planet who deserves to lecture any blue tribe member on their behavior, after his own unwillingness to support our party's candidate, or even our current sitting president, who deserves to be treated better than ungrateful slugs like George Clooney did.
If there were a heaven and a hell, Biden would go to heaven and Trump would go to hell, dragging his crew with him. Imagine the South Park full length feature (with the song Blame Canada) but picture Trump in place of Saddam. Saddam was never as bad as Trump has been already, and will certainly be in office (assuming he doesn't have a heart attack first). In that case, we can only hope that JD Vance might overturn Trump's worst efforts, in order to preserve his own place in history. He at least can perhaps see what is really going on, since he had the smarts to call Trump "America's Hitler" back before he decided to join the dark side.
You should get a life and stop blaming Somerby.
DeleteI have a life, but that doesn't make Somerby any less blameworthy. Do you seriously believe it doesn't matter what Trump does or how we resist the coming disruption? And it matters what Somerby says, because look how his lack of support for Harris cost us the election! Somerby has a lot to apologize for.
DeleteThe least Somerby can do is mention Biden is the best President this country has had since at least LBJ, if not FDR.
DeleteIf you're worried about disruption you shouldn't have celebrated open borders, the appointment of men in high heels to the federal government, populating public school teachers' lounges with blue haired weirdos, and the castration of children. It signals dangerous insanity. Normies had to step in and do something.
DeleteMore lies about what Democrats are for. And what is a "blue-haired weirdo"? The only children being castrated are those suffering from circumcision accidents, a rare event that is not done on purpose.
DeleteThe right wing is not normal. Look at the things they are concerned about! I don't want Trump deciding what color my hair is allowed to be colored.
Trump isn't going to close the border this time, just as he didn't last time.
DeleteThe corporate elites were promised cheap labor, and Trump is in no place to deny them what they feel they are entitled to.
Ho-hum. Republican voters are played by Trump as suckers, yet again.
11:06: You are right about this. There will be alot of Sturm und Drang to keep the rubes and the media excited and more importantly to keep the quiet undocumented workers even more quiet and compliant and cheap.
DeletePerhaps I’m ignorant, sitting on a conservative silo. But it seems to me that the level of media bias was off the chart. Not only did they predominantly report positive stories about Harris and negative ones about Trump, they flat-out lied. They intentionally misinterpreted reasonable comments by Trump to make them sound racist or dangerous.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that few if any here will agree with me. I think most liberals take the media bias for granted. But if they ever lose that advantage, they will gobsmacked.
Agree with you DiC. So many hoaxes, so much hysteria, so much willful skewing. Remember that Biden said he decided to run in 2020 after swallowing the Fine People on Both Sides hoax.
DeleteDavid, were you absent on the days when I listed the imbalance of stories about Trump compared to those about Harris (far more stories about Trump of all types, positive and negative). It is incorrect that Harris got mostly positive press, when they were the ones pushing the idea that she couldn't do interviews well and wasn't answering questions fully (or specifically) -- Somerby said that too.
DeleteI don't think most liberals take the media for granted, and most of us think the bias is against Harris, not for her.
Today, the media is busily sane-washing Trump's batshit crazy appointees, trying to make them seem reasonable instead of extreme.
David, it is hard for you to make Trump seem like a victim now that he has won the election.
The media was so busy trying to bump Biden off the ticket for being old, they "forgot" to mention the guy who was ranting about a non-existent epidemic of post-birth abortions might not be mentally stable enough for the job of President of the United States.
DeleteWhy does the media slant to the Right?
My guess is they realize corporate tax breaks aren't going to pass themselves.
Probably the worst media bias was that awful coverage of the January 6 insurrection. Although Trump seemed to like it.. Alyssa Farah Griffin was at the White House when he watched it for hours without lifting a finger while over 140 Capitol police were injured protecting the vice president and others. As an eye witness to this, she said recently that it was from that point on she could no longer consider him a legitimate candidate for president. Guess you had to be there DIC. Instead you would now like to argue that the media calling him a threat to democracy is biased.
DeleteYesterday, I mentioned that newborns are prescribed 72-doses of vaccines. That was not phrased properly. Sorry. The correct way to say that is: a baby born today, by the time he or she turns 18, may receive up to 72 vaccine shots.
ReplyDeleteHere's the list from CDC website:
Hep B - 3
Dtap - 5
Hib - 4
IPV - 4
PCV - 4
Rotavirus - 3
ChickenPox - 2
Hep A - 2
MMR - 2
HPV - 2
MenACWY - 2
Tdap booster - 1
Men B - 2
Men ABCWY - 2
Flu: 18
Covid - 18
Yearly Covid booster has been removed recently, so there is progress, I suppose.
Did you receive this many shots growing up? Is it unreasonable to ask, may be, just may be, this list is over done?
How many of those serious illnesses can that 18 year old expect to contract?
DeleteI received most of them. I did not receive the Chicken Pox vaccine, so I had to worry about shingles when I hit middle age. Kids who get the vaccine won't have the virus resident in their system to flare up later on. Boosters are not additional vaccines, a repetition that inflates your list. I never missed my flu shot and thus never caught the flu despite 18 years of teaching in the classroom. HPV hadn't been developed back when I had an active sex life, but I wouldn't date without it now. Meningitis is ugly, so I would definitely have gotten that one, had it existed when I was not yet retirement age.
My late husband got mumps as a child and was unable to have children. Today's young men are spared that source of infertility. My sister and I had measles but were lucky not to develop heart, hearing or vision problems, just some scars.
I have never had a side effect from a vaccination. I would consider this entire list important given the down side of actually getting these preventable diseases. I have had several tetanus shots and boosters. People die from tetanus.
You should be looking up the symptoms of these illnesses, both while active and later on (lasting effects of being sick with them). Compare that to the incidence of side effects for the shots and the death rates for children and adults who suffer from these preventable illnesses.
I notice no one is suggesting we let typhus or tuberculosis or cholera run loose, but why should our kids be subjected to diptheria? It is just as bad. I see the ads for people with hepatitus and am glad I don't have any of the variants (A, B, C) because the treatment regimen looks unpleasant.
I notice a syphillis test is not on your list. That one should be happening regularly, especially in pregnant women, to prevent an illness that has been making a resurgence, with devastating consequences. Have people become squeamish about STDs and stopped using condoms or getting tested for them? Babies born with them have a hard time.
Do you also have a list of what foods you don't think people need, based on how necessary you think they are? Do you want to gamble by not eating? Why would anyone risk a child's life and subsequent health by skipping a shot in this day of preventative medicine? That just strikes me as incredibly stupid and unfair to any young children you might make decisiions for.
Removing a vaccine from a list is not progress because the diseases those vaccines prevent are the focus of concern, not the shots that prevent them. It will be progress when these diseases disappear and are no longer a threat to children and adults. We had measles almost gone but it has reappeared because people stopped vaccinating kids. Smallpox has been eradicated via vaccination.
DeleteSmallpox used to kill people, but if you survived, you were often disfigured for life by facial and body scars. Measles does that too. Not chickenpox unless you scratch the lesions, which itch ferociously. Both smallpox and measles could cause blindness. Smallpox wiped out indigenous populations around the world, as European explorers brought the disease to people with no immunity.
I told my son's pediatrician that we would forego the hep B vaccine as an infant since you can only get that from bad needles or bad sex. He agreed. I see no reason to avoid the others. The American people are likely about to embark on an experiment that will not end well, fueled by a nutcase and a distrust for science that Fox and other right wing propaganda outlets have been nurturing for years, but accelerated during COVID for political reasons. Maybe the nutcase won't be confirmed.
DeleteIt seems to be a Somerby delusion that blues have delusions, when we do not.
ReplyDelete"In what ways did those of us in Blue America actually earn our way out?"
ReplyDeleteGo fuck yourself with this nonsense.
What does "earn our way out" even mean?
DeleteQuite honestly, I wouldn't worry myself about that.
DeleteShe didn't come "amazingly close," she almost won. That "amazingly close" descriptor sounds like it requires more, such as "amazingly close for a black woman" or "amazingly close considering her liabilities" or "amazingly close for someone who got such a later start" or "amazingly close without giving good interviews" or "amazingly close against such a bad candidate as Trump". Where is the amazement? She is well qualified, competent, and ran an excellent campaign. Why would coming in close be "amazing" and not "disappointingly close without winning" or the kinds of things you would say if you thought of her as a fine candidate -- "she got robbed," "her party deserted her after pushing Biden aside" or "it is a wonder she didn't win, given how strong an effort she put in."
ReplyDeleteSomerby betrays his own attitude with his choice of words. He thinks a black woman doing well is "amazing," not to be expected, routine, a shame she didn't win, or a mystery why Trump did so well himself given what an ass clown Trump is. It was a crime she didn't win and it is certainly not her fault that she lost.
It is time for Somerby to explain why so many idiots voted for Trump, but I doubt he has any reasonable explanation for a race that was not "amazingly close" but a failure by Democrats to support their best hope for keeping "America's Hitler" out of office. Future generations will weep because assholes like Somerby didn't support Harris with more enthusiasm. Too much was at stake for Somerby to complain about her laugh, or whatever his vacuous complaints were about her. He and his bros let us all down and a lot of people are going to suffer because Somerby is amazed that a black woman can get any votes.
No amount of enthusiasm was going to elect that awful candidate. If her opponent were anyone but Trump she would have lost 49 states.
DeleteObjectively, she was not awful but well-qualified, likeable and competent, unlike Trump. She improved her favorability ratings from the 30s to the high 40s, more than 15 points on some measures. She did her job of running an excellent campaign. It was the Dem voters (like Somerby) who didn't support her, after pushing Biden off the nomination. That all looks like a way to keep the Dems out of office, not any kind of response to Harris. Calling her "awful" is not exactly an argument, especially when there was widespread recognition that she ran an excellent campaign. If it were a fair election, she would have won.
DeleteNow we have a Russia-controlled cognitively impaired moron who has recruited white supremacists and misogynists to remake our government to suit billionaires. That isn't how a democracy should function, and it is only possible because Trump is a criminal (tried and convicted, not just accused). I do not understand how Republicans could have let this happen, but I felt the same way about Nazi Germany.
"She didn't come 'amazingly close,' she almost won."
DeleteOh? Well. That's very different.
I guess you missed the point about the adjective “amazingly” being demeaning.
DeleteDemocrats actually put this out. They’re done with Comma La and they want anonymices to know it. Onward Marxist soldiers.
Deletehttps://x.com/thedemocrats/status/1861550359161745529?s=42&t=oYvKLjVc8YzJIvwKoQTYBQ
Cecelia,
DeleteDid you find that when you were fruitlessly searching for a Republican voter who isn't a bigot?
Anonymouse flying monkey 7:51am, that’s easier to do than you thinking up with new material.
Delete8:59,
DeleteYour failure to find a Republican voter who isn't a bigot is adorable to watch.
It's what keeps me coming back to TDH.
Cecelia,
DeleteThe next argument you make in good faith will be the first.
Harris comes across terribly in that video. Democrats need to fire each and every person associated with their campaigns and messaging. How could they have released that?!
DeleteWas that video a call for voters to "tour" the Capitol building on January 6th?
DeleteAnonymouse Flying Monkeys, perhaps you could hire a writer. I hear Tim Walz is available.
DeleteCecelia,
DeleteMaybe Tim Waltz can find you that Republican voter who isn't a bigot, you misplaced. It couldn't hurt to ask.
Somerby used to complain because he thought Rachel Maddow was being paid too much. Not a word from Somerby about Trump's enormous graft, as described by Heather Cox Richardson:
ReplyDelete"It is becoming clear what Trump’s economic policy will look like at the national level. Super wealthy donors funded Trump’s 2024 campaign, and in a departure from every previous incoming president, Trump is refusing to sign the documents required as part of a presidential transition at least in part because those documents mandate that he disclose who is funding his transition and limit those donations to $5,000 per donor. Without that disclosure, it is impossible to see who is funding him. For all we know, that list could include foreign governments.
As activist Melanie D’Arrigo put it on Bluesky: “‘Secret donations’ are bribes. The hundreds of millions he received from Elon Musk and other billionaires are also bribes. There’s a reason Donald Trump isn’t signing ethics pledges.” Indeed, after his first term, the watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington concluded that “there is absolutely no doubt that Trump tried at every turn to use the presidency to benefit his bottom line,” and noted that those who spent money at Trump’s properties often received favorable policy decisions from the administration.
During the campaign, Trump promised to fight for ordinary Americans, but many of Trump’s picks to fill offices in his administration are notable for their extreme wealth. His pick for treasury secretary is billionaire Scott Bessent, a hedge fund executive who invested money for philanthropist George Soros for more than ten years. To head the Commerce Department, Trump has tapped billionaire Howard Lutnick, the chief executive officer of financial giant Cantor Fitzgerald.
Trump’s choice for education secretary, Linda McMahon, and his choice for Interior Secretary, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, are both billionaires. And then there are the two men Trump tapped for his Department of Government Efficiency. Former pharmaceutical executive Vivek Ramaswamy is worth around a billion dollars, but Elon Musk is usually at the top of the list of the richest people in the world. He’s worth about $332.6 billion. Trump is expected to tap donor Kelly Loeffler, who is married to billionaire Jeff Sprecher, the chair of the New York Stock Exchange, as Secretary of Agriculture.
Laura Mannweiler of U.S. News and World Report today estimated the worth of Trump’s current roster of appointees to be at least $344.4 billion, more than the gross domestic product of 169 countries. That number does not include Bessent, whose net worth is hard to find. In comparison, Mannweiler notes, the total net worth of the officials in Biden’s Cabinet was about $118 million.
Economist Robert Reich noted yesterday that the wealth of America’s 815 billionaires grew by nearly $280 billion after Trump’s reelection, and the president-elect is promising to extend the 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire in 2025. Now, after all their complaints about the budget deficits under Biden as he invested in the country, Republicans are, according to Andrew Duehren of the New York Times, considering rejiggering the government’s accounting so that extending the tax cuts, which will create about $4 trillion in deficits, shows up as not costing anything.
Deregulation, too, is on the agenda. It’s a cause close to the heart of Elon Musk, who frequently complains that unnecessary regulations are making it impossible for visionary entrepreneurs to develop the technological sector as quickly and efficiently as they could otherwise.
Cont.
Delete"In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Susan Pulliam, Emily Glazer, and Becky Peterson noted that although Musk says his goal is to “protect life on Earth,” his companies “show a pattern of breaking environmental rules again and again.” The authors report that Tesla’s facility in Fremont, California, has received “more warnings for violations of air pollution rules over the past five years than almost any other company’s plant in California,” 112 of them. Federal regulators recently fined SpaceX for dumping about 262,000 gallons of wastewater into protected wetlands in Texas. Tesla, too, has dumped contaminated water into public sewer systems.
One staffer for environmental compliance told the Environmental Protection Agency that ““Tesla repeatedly asked me to lie to the government so that they could operate without paying for proper environmental controls.”
People who have worked with Musk “for years” told Pulliam, Glazer, and Peterson that they expect Musk will try to cut environmental regulations, especially the ones that affect his companies. After Trump announced that he was creating DOGE and putting Musk in charge of it, Musk posted: “We finally have a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good.”
Musk’s companies have brought in at least $15.4 billion in federal contracts over the past decade, and his companies have been targeted in at least 20 government investigations recently. Eric Lipton, David A. Fahrenthold, Aaron Krolik, and Kristen Grind of the New York Times note that Trump’s victory and his appointment of Musk to an oversight role in the government “essentially give[s] the world’s richest man and a major government contractor the power to regulate the regulators who hold sway over his companies, amounting to a potentially enormous conflict of interest.”
Today, Sara Murray, Kristen Holmes, and Kate Sullivan of CNN reported that Trump’s lawyers have conducted an investigation into whether top Trump advisor Boris Epshteyn has been selling access to Trump. Payments for his promotion of candidates for administration positions or access to administration officials were as much as $100,000 a month. The lawyers recommended that the Trump team should jettison Epshteyn, but it has apparently decided not to.
“I am honored to work for President Trump and with his team,” Epshteyn said in a statement to CNN. “These fake claims are false and defamatory and will not distract us from Making America Great Again.”
There is more...
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-25-2024
TL;DR
DeleteSaying that something is too long to read is like announcing that you are a moron, to an audience that really doesn't care.
DeleteAnd what does copying and pasting several hundred words of someone else's work say?
DeleteIt says “this is important and others should read it” but not everyone cares about politics. I don’t know why PP is here.
DeleteI don’t care if no one reads what Cox Richardson said. Why did PP feel he needed to tell everyone that he comes to a blog in order to not read. Why would anyone care what he does and doesn’t read?
I like reading what others find interesting or relevant. Not everyone is curious, but why does PP announce it? Next he’ll tell us he has flu or eats eggs for breakfast.
Billionaires meddling in elections seems more important to address than whatever list of reasons Somerby comes up with. PP pooh-poohs it and Quaker thinks reading is a bore too. And Somerby wonders why Trump won!
DeletePosting 1,000 words of someone else's blog post in the comments of another blog is passive aggressive sealioning.
Delete"...but we'll start listing answers tomorrow."
ReplyDeleteThat has a familiar ring to it.
ReplyDelete"How in the world could Kamala Harris have lost to Donald J. Trump?"
That's because the people love him and hate you and your Kamala.
Of Trump's many, many bankruptcies, which is your favorite, and why?
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