Dick Cheney is not Liz. Yes she lost based on several factors- people are motivated differently- but Lucas’s point is well taken in ohio, MT, MO where dem senators have been elected and they send their sons to war mote than blue states- they are pissed Bush got us into Iraq which they didn’t see as a win. They are pissed Obama - while getting Bin Laden - stayed in Afghanistan. And they didn’t blame trump for his god awful retreat agreement with the Taliban - they blamed Joe and by extension Kamala for the pullout.
This is multi level. These people are complicated too.
Me, i’m pissed about Un investing in America - chips, climate, education, research, healthcare - all of which made us great. But i’m also pissed about losing freedoms to project 2025 authoritarians and dropping the ball on supporting Ukraine, our power in the world. Voters reflect a mixed bag.
Then there is the point made well in comments - its not just policy, its “message, messenger, and medium to get message across. (Sen Booker paraphrased). Trump is a corrupt idiot on economics and world order and cares nothing for anything other than maintaining his adoring base. But he us a genius at messaging and mediums. For every one podcaster dem’s were on, he had 14. Its a game of attracting ears snd eyeballs niw.
Yes, and how does that actually work? The Democratic party does not seem to grasp the fact that we are out performed in messaging, on a huge scale. Sinclair news, Fox and other right wing media dominate especially in rural areas. Not only do they dominate in getting information out on a daily basis, but they have convinced many that mainstream media is fake news. So in swing states, many never got information on Biden's significant achievements which benefitted ordinary people... they got news from the right wing media that Kamala had no economic agenda and didn't care about people. That was on top of a decade of hearing "Qanon theory", that Democrat's are pedophiles who torture, sexually abuse and kill children.
The DNC messaging problem isn’t their fault exclusively. We’re only outperformed because MSM has been complicit in picking out and covering Pres. Biden unfairly while keeping Trump relevant.
But I stand on my original point… VP Harris lost on ⚪️ voters choosing to think Trump wasn’t going to be that bad over voting for the Black South Asian candidate.
Here’s an example of why I find that explanation too facile. In Virginia’s gubernatorial election Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger is running against current Republican Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. Spanberger is white. Earle-Sears is Black. If she won, I believe she would be the first Black female governor in U.S. history. Her politics are also somewhat to the right of current Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran a very MAGA campaign. Like many of the races in 2024, we have two women running against each other, which means you can’t blame it on misogyny when one of them loses. Also, a new phenomenon is some Blacks running as Republicans. In my city’s recent mayoral race we had two Black women opposing each other. So if Earle-Sears loses, is it racism? Should I, a Democrat, vote for a Black MAGA female, even though I oppose her politics? Obama won two terms as our first Black president by large margins. If the pundits are to be believed, Clinton lost some of the Obama voters in places like western Pennsylvania to Trump. Oh boy. Where do we go with that one?
Wrong. Harris lost because she's an opportunist who only dies what her DNC handlers tell her to. You claiming racism and misogyny is intellectually lazy and shows me you've learned nothing about the political party that takes advantage of your willful ignorance.
I’ve got a tip for you that is practical and efficient: good billboards. Everywhere TV isn’t, billboards are there. Inescapable. Capable of casting doubt and breeding trust. They remember that name. Have your team reserve them now. Cover the state. Make them non partisan. But cast doubt on the crazy republicans. Just doubt. Just a bit of reality about you is enough.
One of the great disappointments of our politics is how "establishment" Republicans have stuck with Trump. Here in Missouri, John Danforth could never bring himself to align with Democrats despite his head and heart. I don't put a lot of stock in Dick Cheney -- his evil brightness pales with the Sun of Trump. Your essential point, that Democrats have suffered because of guilt by association with failed policies and failed politicians in the past, is well taken.
No, Cheney is as evil if not more than Trump and once you get to a certain level of evil, its foolish to weigh one over the other. That also applies to voting the lesser evil (which is our only real option anymore due to $$$ and corrupt political parties).
Josh Hawley was a terrible human being and a terrible government official before the election- and he remains terrible. I donated to Kunce, though I live in PA. I really wanted Hawley out- after that fist pump on January 6 😒
I'm one of those old-timey Democrats who just wanted things to be "normal" again, but this is a great explanation of why most other people did not. Also, why aren't you on Bluesky? Your voice is needed there.
The Democrats need to get rid of whoever is advising them ( think tanks etc) we need to think for ourselves and listen better! And be present in ALL 50 states not just the Battlegrounds. We have so much to offer , we just need to get out of our own way!
One thing I worry about is that the Republicans tank so badly that the Democratic establishment think they can win without making big changes which means that even if the Democrats win the middle class and the poor will get shafted again.
One problem is that both party establishments and pacs put the money behind candidates they want to win in the primaries which usually mean these candidates do not represent the people who vote for them but rather represent the people who have supplied then with the money to run a campaign.
To say you need to take money from the rich to reduce their influence is equivalent to, "We had to bomb the village to save it!" Yes, I am that old.
Another problem is a party establishment that will not yield control to succeeding generations. I note that three Democratic representatives elected in 2024 have since died. In 2016 and 2020 did the Democrats really have an open primary process for president or was the hand of the establishment heavy on the scales.
If I were campaigning I would ask the voter if their representatives actually represent them Democrat or Republican. I would ask them to ask if a rich representative (how many representatives senators have used their political influence to become wealthy) can really represent their needs.
In preparation for another run I would ask that you read then following two books by Mike Lofgren (Lofgren's deep state has nothing to do with the Republican fantasy deep state) -
The thing about the gerontocrats refusing to yield power is something where there's pretty wide agreement from the neo-Brandeisian left, across to centrist / moderate / abundance folks.
At a time when we had a president who claimed to be all about the working man, corporate profits and wealth inequality grew by a lot. Every bill that was intended to bail out people in the post-Covid world ran through corporations, which only raised prises and helped stockholders.
Regardless of what Democrats said, their actions were felt by the middle class and their inaction was magnified (climate change, gun control, police reform, protecting voting rights... All those things directly benefitting people and not wealthy donors or corporations were all just talk). Democrats, in general (not all), chose corporations over their base during the Biden years and Harris' campaign.
The way establishment Democrats are still behaving only shows that they still don't get it.
Absolutely, they should have been aware enough to reject the Cheney love. But they need to do so much more than that now. The party may have betrayed its base one too many times.
Agreed, though the reason Dems embraced the Cheneys and scumbucket never-Trumper Republican drifting such as the Lincoln Project and Max Cleland swift boaters like Rick Wilson is because these Dems are disconnected from the left and are more closely aligned in social circles to 80s Reagan Republicans than to the rest of us.
Absolutely. Harris was essentially a pro-choice Romney, Biden spent most of his time building bridges for fascists, and the rest of us assumed they had data that showed something that justified their actions. They did not and have lost the faith of those who have supported them
I have my issues w/Bernie, but truth be told, he was our best choice in that he lifted the veil on the corporate duopoly and they fully exposed themselves in fighting him for doing so.
You are on target. It is past time for the Dems to lose their “legacy” leadership! I wrote a scathing review of the book “Abundance” - if I can find it I will send it to you. I really think it’s time to morph the Dems into a new Party: the Party of integrity. That’s what is missing and what people crave. They can’t find it anywhere, to your point. Things have taken a dangerous turn today. We need informed, intelligent leadership now. We need to remain peaceful, but come out in record numbers to reject turning our country into another failure by self imposed autocracy. We were the leader in science, art, democracy, economics. We will go from role model to joining the dust bin of history if we lose this moment.
Yes, Democrats at the top still don't get it. Unless you stop alienating less-than-college-educated males, you're not going to win in the Electoral College. I agree with the prescription of focusing on the shafting of the low and middle wage earners. to the benefit of the very wealthy by the Republicans. No one likes losing medical care; hang it around their necks. And no one likes having their taxes being funneled to a wannabe monarch. No one wants to lose access to the public lands they hike, fish, and hunt on. But you're going to have to balance this with a positive easy-to-understand visionary slogan. Please someone give me a nice catchy alternative to MAGA! Thanks, Lucas, I always enjoy your insight.
A Square Deal for Every Man -- from Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 Bull Moose Party run for President when he defected from the Republican Party. A more modern version would be...
Fair Deal. Real Work. No Bull.
Let the People Rule (also from Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 campaign)
There is, of course, another explanation for how the election went the way it went...even in Missouri. All the noise about a stolen election in 2020 by president Meme Coin etal. has been a perfect cover for stealing an election this time around. In thanking the Duke of DOGE for his campaign help in 2024 president Coin said, "All those computers, those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide".
Not any kind of evidence, right. However, there is a group of statisticians (Election Truth Alliance) that have been doing heavy digging into raw election data in all the swing states. Their report on Pennsylvania--one of the first states they have analyzed--suggests that the votes taking Mr. Coin over the top were much too perfect. Further, there is reason to believe that this wasn't isolated to just swing states or to just the Presidential election. So, maybe your loss and Kamala's performance had nothing to do with any policy or endorsement. Maybe it was just an algorithm.
All of which brings me to a recommendation. The St. Charles county grassroots GOP members just prevented (I think) the normal destruction of the ballots from the 2020 Presidential race for their county. They did this believing that Mr. Coin should have won by more in their county in 2020. Further, they are inclined to believe that a recount of the hand-marked paper ballots (which I believe they are calling for) for that race would prove it.
It seems to me that it would be a good thing for all of us to find out if there was any manipulation of the vote in right-leaning St. Charles county. If a recount found none, then good, one less rumor in the mill. If it finds out that he would have won by more, then I'd be delighted to find that out because it would alert us to the reality of the risk that electronic election fraud poses. Finally, if it shows that Mr. Coin's count was higher than the count on the ballots, then not only would we--the public--learn about electronic fraud, but it would point us to a culprit.
If a visible Democrat joined a call for a recount, at a minimum it would make a failure to do the recount an indication that there was a nefarious reason. And, if a recount resulted, then no matter the outcome it's win-win.
I'm glad someone else noticed the brag about Elon and the vote-counting computers! If there was any manipulation, it sounds like it was done very well ( "perfect votes" doesn't sound like it could be evidence...) That comment by the Orange One made chills go up my spine...
Barbara, the "perfect" here refers to a statistical analysis that doesn't show normal human variation. It's like having a theoretical election, for example, where every county in a state voted the same percentage for the winning candidate. That set of statistics isn't proof of electronic election fraud, but those stats certainly do raise the question. Here's the link to Election Truth Alliance's Pennsylvania Report: https://electiontruthalliance.org/pennsylvania . The "perfectness" they describe isn't as straightforward as the example above, but it's still statistically significant.
Great observations. And the reason we have a big regulatory state is precisely because of the failures of laissez faire trickle-down economics. Left to the market, the rich become richer, the poor poorer, and the environment gets worse. When regulations fail, it is because of regulatory capture by the industries. When regulations work, then all you hear are complaints about "those burdensome regulations," prompting calls for "reform".
We definitely have to do better going forward there are too many corrupt folks in both parties as well as politicians stay in office too long getting rich. Hell your constituents would love to live better greed is a sin being a civil servant doesn’t mean being a pauper but being a citizen doesn’t either! We got people like theil in the background arranging the hunger games for America this shit is outrageous and the American people don’t deserve it and won’t stand for it! There will be literal war in the street b4 that happens trust!
I think we need people who are more in touch with the average voter to come up with better ways to _talk_ about the abundance idea. But the idea itself is sound. We need places where Dems are in charge to demonstrate that they can deliver the basics of a good life, starting with enough housing that the market price for a home is within reach for a normal family. We can't just blame corporations or oligarchs for the high price of housing in California or New York. Because are we really supposed to believe that Texas has done more to fight corporate oligarchy than CA or NY?
The flaw of populism is that it demands an _enemy_.
Right-wing populists say that all of our problems are caused by Those People, the immigrants and woke leftist activists orchestrating an invasion.
Left-wing populists say that all our problems are caused by Those People, the 1%, the corporate oligarchs.
Neither flavor of populism is a good fit for problems that are complicated and systemic, when the problem is that we, collectively, are getting in our own way. The biggest cause of the housing shortage in the superstar-city job markets is that the people who already live there have voted to ban missing-middle housing and apartments in most places.
Left wing climate activists refuse to admit how little the average voter is willing to sacrifice, and how badly policies like carbon pricing have fared over time (completely trashed the left party in Australia for a generation, couldn't pass at the ballot box in WA). They continue to imagine that there's some silent majority of pro-climate youth who will turn out to vote if we just go EVEN FURTHER to the left. And they refuse to do the math on how, at the margin, American natural gas shipped to India actually reduces CO2 and particulate emissions (because it's displacing coal), and that will continue to be true for at least the next decade. (And that's leaving aside the geopolitical implications for maintaining positive ties with India and having them help act as a counter-weight to the rising power of China.)
Right wing populists have retreated even deeper into a fantasy land, where they imagine that somehow tariffs will simultaneously generate billions in revenue (because we're still importing things that have tariffs paid on them?) but also lead to a manufacturing boom in the US (because we're NOT importing things, so we have to make them here?) but also serve as bargaining chips to extract concessions from foreign governments (how does that work unless we're REMOVING the tariffs?). It all makes no sense at all, but I guess as long as Libs are getting Owned, they're happy.
We need centrist to center-left candidates who can speak to the concerns of average voters, but who also recognize that there are difficult trade-offs to be made, and we need to make the choices that lead to making life better in concrete ways.
You can't crack the duopoly without changing the election system itself. Saint Louis' embrace of Approval Voting is a good start, but we really need Proportional Representation, so that a small party that can build up 10-15% support can win a serious slice of seats.
The answer to this was invented by Thomas Jefferson -- the system he used for assigning House seats to the states based on population also works as a proportional way of assigning seats in an election using Approval ballots, which treat each candidate like a ballot proposition. Each voter gets to answer a series of:
Do you like Bob Smith? y/n
Do you like Jane Doe? y/n
etc.
A system somewhat like this is used in a number of European countries, though they mostly use the "party list" variant (where you vote for the party, and it's basically assumed you're approving all candidates that party has put forwards), and they refer to it as the D'Hondt method, because it was independently re-invented by Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt, almost a century after Jefferson had applied it to House apportionment. In the context of apportionment, basically you're imagining that each state would like to "win" all of the seats in the House, and the number of "votes" for that state's "party" is the population of the state. The math for then working out how many seats each state actually gets works out exactly like the D'Hondt party list system. But you can do the same kind of math on a purely candidate-centric approval ballot system:
The reason VP Harris lost was racism, misogyny, and misinformation. Not because of Liz Cheney's endorsement.
Dick Cheney is not Liz. Yes she lost based on several factors- people are motivated differently- but Lucas’s point is well taken in ohio, MT, MO where dem senators have been elected and they send their sons to war mote than blue states- they are pissed Bush got us into Iraq which they didn’t see as a win. They are pissed Obama - while getting Bin Laden - stayed in Afghanistan. And they didn’t blame trump for his god awful retreat agreement with the Taliban - they blamed Joe and by extension Kamala for the pullout.
This is multi level. These people are complicated too.
Me, i’m pissed about Un investing in America - chips, climate, education, research, healthcare - all of which made us great. But i’m also pissed about losing freedoms to project 2025 authoritarians and dropping the ball on supporting Ukraine, our power in the world. Voters reflect a mixed bag.
Then there is the point made well in comments - its not just policy, its “message, messenger, and medium to get message across. (Sen Booker paraphrased). Trump is a corrupt idiot on economics and world order and cares nothing for anything other than maintaining his adoring base. But he us a genius at messaging and mediums. For every one podcaster dem’s were on, he had 14. Its a game of attracting ears snd eyeballs niw.
Yes, and how does that actually work? The Democratic party does not seem to grasp the fact that we are out performed in messaging, on a huge scale. Sinclair news, Fox and other right wing media dominate especially in rural areas. Not only do they dominate in getting information out on a daily basis, but they have convinced many that mainstream media is fake news. So in swing states, many never got information on Biden's significant achievements which benefitted ordinary people... they got news from the right wing media that Kamala had no economic agenda and didn't care about people. That was on top of a decade of hearing "Qanon theory", that Democrat's are pedophiles who torture, sexually abuse and kill children.
The DNC messaging problem isn’t their fault exclusively. We’re only outperformed because MSM has been complicit in picking out and covering Pres. Biden unfairly while keeping Trump relevant.
But I stand on my original point… VP Harris lost on ⚪️ voters choosing to think Trump wasn’t going to be that bad over voting for the Black South Asian candidate.
Terrance, I came here to say that! *Dick Cheney
Absolutely agreed!!
She lost because she ran as a conservative candidate who "wouldn't change a thing" despite the pain and suffering people live with.
Wrong. Keep living in your leftist delusion.
Please continue saying and believing this. It is important that you not learn your lesson and do better next time.
Black voters don't need any lessons. We were on the right side of history in November 2024. I'm tired of WM blaming everything except what happened.
Sincerely, the 85%.
Here’s an example of why I find that explanation too facile. In Virginia’s gubernatorial election Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger is running against current Republican Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. Spanberger is white. Earle-Sears is Black. If she won, I believe she would be the first Black female governor in U.S. history. Her politics are also somewhat to the right of current Governor Glenn Youngkin, who ran a very MAGA campaign. Like many of the races in 2024, we have two women running against each other, which means you can’t blame it on misogyny when one of them loses. Also, a new phenomenon is some Blacks running as Republicans. In my city’s recent mayoral race we had two Black women opposing each other. So if Earle-Sears loses, is it racism? Should I, a Democrat, vote for a Black MAGA female, even though I oppose her politics? Obama won two terms as our first Black president by large margins. If the pundits are to be believed, Clinton lost some of the Obama voters in places like western Pennsylvania to Trump. Oh boy. Where do we go with that one?
Oh ok.
Wrong. Harris lost because she's an opportunist who only dies what her DNC handlers tell her to. You claiming racism and misogyny is intellectually lazy and shows me you've learned nothing about the political party that takes advantage of your willful ignorance.
You sound bitter. Seek therapy.
It's shitlib morons like you that got us here, so you should pay for my therapy.
You just sound like a fucking fool.
Fuck all the way off, jagoff.
*does
I’ve got a tip for you that is practical and efficient: good billboards. Everywhere TV isn’t, billboards are there. Inescapable. Capable of casting doubt and breeding trust. They remember that name. Have your team reserve them now. Cover the state. Make them non partisan. But cast doubt on the crazy republicans. Just doubt. Just a bit of reality about you is enough.
One of the great disappointments of our politics is how "establishment" Republicans have stuck with Trump. Here in Missouri, John Danforth could never bring himself to align with Democrats despite his head and heart. I don't put a lot of stock in Dick Cheney -- his evil brightness pales with the Sun of Trump. Your essential point, that Democrats have suffered because of guilt by association with failed policies and failed politicians in the past, is well taken.
No, Cheney is as evil if not more than Trump and once you get to a certain level of evil, its foolish to weigh one over the other. That also applies to voting the lesser evil (which is our only real option anymore due to $$$ and corrupt political parties).
Stop playing their rigged game.
Big tents win, perfectionism disappoints. In a country of over 300 million people, no two choices will ever satisfy everybody.
Wrong and we've seen the milquetoast Dem policies "big tents" aka cop out excuses provide us.
Trump.
Josh Hawley was a terrible human being and a terrible government official before the election- and he remains terrible. I donated to Kunce, though I live in PA. I really wanted Hawley out- after that fist pump on January 6 😒
Now, Hawley is playing the populist card by defending Medicaid. Give me a break. I see right through him.
Same here, from another person who lives in PA
I'm one of those old-timey Democrats who just wanted things to be "normal" again, but this is a great explanation of why most other people did not. Also, why aren't you on Bluesky? Your voice is needed there.
The Democrats need to get rid of whoever is advising them ( think tanks etc) we need to think for ourselves and listen better! And be present in ALL 50 states not just the Battlegrounds. We have so much to offer , we just need to get out of our own way!
One thing I worry about is that the Republicans tank so badly that the Democratic establishment think they can win without making big changes which means that even if the Democrats win the middle class and the poor will get shafted again.
One problem is that both party establishments and pacs put the money behind candidates they want to win in the primaries which usually mean these candidates do not represent the people who vote for them but rather represent the people who have supplied then with the money to run a campaign.
To say you need to take money from the rich to reduce their influence is equivalent to, "We had to bomb the village to save it!" Yes, I am that old.
Another problem is a party establishment that will not yield control to succeeding generations. I note that three Democratic representatives elected in 2024 have since died. In 2016 and 2020 did the Democrats really have an open primary process for president or was the hand of the establishment heavy on the scales.
If I were campaigning I would ask the voter if their representatives actually represent them Democrat or Republican. I would ask them to ask if a rich representative (how many representatives senators have used their political influence to become wealthy) can really represent their needs.
In preparation for another run I would ask that you read then following two books by Mike Lofgren (Lofgren's deep state has nothing to do with the Republican fantasy deep state) -
https://www.mikelofgren.net/introduction-to-the-party-is-over-book/
https://www.mikelofgren.net/introduction-to-the-party-is-over-book/
The thing about the gerontocrats refusing to yield power is something where there's pretty wide agreement from the neo-Brandeisian left, across to centrist / moderate / abundance folks.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/aoc-deserved-the-oversight-job
Finally a reply from someone who understands wtf we're up against.
Thank MIke Lofgren's books for that. Here is a link to his Devil's Dictionary of political terms -
https://truthout.org/articles/mike-lofgren-a-devils-dictionary/
Remember this is from before Trump.
At a time when we had a president who claimed to be all about the working man, corporate profits and wealth inequality grew by a lot. Every bill that was intended to bail out people in the post-Covid world ran through corporations, which only raised prises and helped stockholders.
Regardless of what Democrats said, their actions were felt by the middle class and their inaction was magnified (climate change, gun control, police reform, protecting voting rights... All those things directly benefitting people and not wealthy donors or corporations were all just talk). Democrats, in general (not all), chose corporations over their base during the Biden years and Harris' campaign.
The way establishment Democrats are still behaving only shows that they still don't get it.
Absolutely, they should have been aware enough to reject the Cheney love. But they need to do so much more than that now. The party may have betrayed its base one too many times.
Agreed, though the reason Dems embraced the Cheneys and scumbucket never-Trumper Republican drifting such as the Lincoln Project and Max Cleland swift boaters like Rick Wilson is because these Dems are disconnected from the left and are more closely aligned in social circles to 80s Reagan Republicans than to the rest of us.
Stop playing their rigged game.
Absolutely. Harris was essentially a pro-choice Romney, Biden spent most of his time building bridges for fascists, and the rest of us assumed they had data that showed something that justified their actions. They did not and have lost the faith of those who have supported them
I have my issues w/Bernie, but truth be told, he was our best choice in that he lifted the veil on the corporate duopoly and they fully exposed themselves in fighting him for doing so.
*grifters (not drifting)
You are on target. It is past time for the Dems to lose their “legacy” leadership! I wrote a scathing review of the book “Abundance” - if I can find it I will send it to you. I really think it’s time to morph the Dems into a new Party: the Party of integrity. That’s what is missing and what people crave. They can’t find it anywhere, to your point. Things have taken a dangerous turn today. We need informed, intelligent leadership now. We need to remain peaceful, but come out in record numbers to reject turning our country into another failure by self imposed autocracy. We were the leader in science, art, democracy, economics. We will go from role model to joining the dust bin of history if we lose this moment.
“
Yes, Democrats at the top still don't get it. Unless you stop alienating less-than-college-educated males, you're not going to win in the Electoral College. I agree with the prescription of focusing on the shafting of the low and middle wage earners. to the benefit of the very wealthy by the Republicans. No one likes losing medical care; hang it around their necks. And no one likes having their taxes being funneled to a wannabe monarch. No one wants to lose access to the public lands they hike, fish, and hunt on. But you're going to have to balance this with a positive easy-to-understand visionary slogan. Please someone give me a nice catchy alternative to MAGA! Thanks, Lucas, I always enjoy your insight.
Here are some slogans.
America Deserves a Raise
Country First. Billionaires Last.
Freedom Isn't for Sale.
Build America for All
This Land Works Because We Do
Freedom, Fair Wages, Full Fridge
They Get Rich. You Get Screwed.
The System's Rigged. Time to Un-Rig It.
No More Kings. No More Crooks.
A Square Deal for Every Man -- from Teddy Roosevelt’s 1912 Bull Moose Party run for President when he defected from the Republican Party. A more modern version would be...
Fair Deal. Real Work. No Bull.
Let the People Rule (also from Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 campaign)
There is, of course, another explanation for how the election went the way it went...even in Missouri. All the noise about a stolen election in 2020 by president Meme Coin etal. has been a perfect cover for stealing an election this time around. In thanking the Duke of DOGE for his campaign help in 2024 president Coin said, "All those computers, those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide".
Not any kind of evidence, right. However, there is a group of statisticians (Election Truth Alliance) that have been doing heavy digging into raw election data in all the swing states. Their report on Pennsylvania--one of the first states they have analyzed--suggests that the votes taking Mr. Coin over the top were much too perfect. Further, there is reason to believe that this wasn't isolated to just swing states or to just the Presidential election. So, maybe your loss and Kamala's performance had nothing to do with any policy or endorsement. Maybe it was just an algorithm.
All of which brings me to a recommendation. The St. Charles county grassroots GOP members just prevented (I think) the normal destruction of the ballots from the 2020 Presidential race for their county. They did this believing that Mr. Coin should have won by more in their county in 2020. Further, they are inclined to believe that a recount of the hand-marked paper ballots (which I believe they are calling for) for that race would prove it.
It seems to me that it would be a good thing for all of us to find out if there was any manipulation of the vote in right-leaning St. Charles county. If a recount found none, then good, one less rumor in the mill. If it finds out that he would have won by more, then I'd be delighted to find that out because it would alert us to the reality of the risk that electronic election fraud poses. Finally, if it shows that Mr. Coin's count was higher than the count on the ballots, then not only would we--the public--learn about electronic fraud, but it would point us to a culprit.
If a visible Democrat joined a call for a recount, at a minimum it would make a failure to do the recount an indication that there was a nefarious reason. And, if a recount resulted, then no matter the outcome it's win-win.
I'm glad someone else noticed the brag about Elon and the vote-counting computers! If there was any manipulation, it sounds like it was done very well ( "perfect votes" doesn't sound like it could be evidence...) That comment by the Orange One made chills go up my spine...
Barbara, the "perfect" here refers to a statistical analysis that doesn't show normal human variation. It's like having a theoretical election, for example, where every county in a state voted the same percentage for the winning candidate. That set of statistics isn't proof of electronic election fraud, but those stats certainly do raise the question. Here's the link to Election Truth Alliance's Pennsylvania Report: https://electiontruthalliance.org/pennsylvania . The "perfectness" they describe isn't as straightforward as the example above, but it's still statistically significant.
Great observations. And the reason we have a big regulatory state is precisely because of the failures of laissez faire trickle-down economics. Left to the market, the rich become richer, the poor poorer, and the environment gets worse. When regulations fail, it is because of regulatory capture by the industries. When regulations work, then all you hear are complaints about "those burdensome regulations," prompting calls for "reform".
Citizen's United, Corruption, Cruelty, Conspiracy, Craziness
We definitely have to do better going forward there are too many corrupt folks in both parties as well as politicians stay in office too long getting rich. Hell your constituents would love to live better greed is a sin being a civil servant doesn’t mean being a pauper but being a citizen doesn’t either! We got people like theil in the background arranging the hunger games for America this shit is outrageous and the American people don’t deserve it and won’t stand for it! There will be literal war in the street b4 that happens trust!
I think we need people who are more in touch with the average voter to come up with better ways to _talk_ about the abundance idea. But the idea itself is sound. We need places where Dems are in charge to demonstrate that they can deliver the basics of a good life, starting with enough housing that the market price for a home is within reach for a normal family. We can't just blame corporations or oligarchs for the high price of housing in California or New York. Because are we really supposed to believe that Texas has done more to fight corporate oligarchy than CA or NY?
The flaw of populism is that it demands an _enemy_.
Right-wing populists say that all of our problems are caused by Those People, the immigrants and woke leftist activists orchestrating an invasion.
Left-wing populists say that all our problems are caused by Those People, the 1%, the corporate oligarchs.
Neither flavor of populism is a good fit for problems that are complicated and systemic, when the problem is that we, collectively, are getting in our own way. The biggest cause of the housing shortage in the superstar-city job markets is that the people who already live there have voted to ban missing-middle housing and apartments in most places.
Left wing climate activists refuse to admit how little the average voter is willing to sacrifice, and how badly policies like carbon pricing have fared over time (completely trashed the left party in Australia for a generation, couldn't pass at the ballot box in WA). They continue to imagine that there's some silent majority of pro-climate youth who will turn out to vote if we just go EVEN FURTHER to the left. And they refuse to do the math on how, at the margin, American natural gas shipped to India actually reduces CO2 and particulate emissions (because it's displacing coal), and that will continue to be true for at least the next decade. (And that's leaving aside the geopolitical implications for maintaining positive ties with India and having them help act as a counter-weight to the rising power of China.)
Right wing populists have retreated even deeper into a fantasy land, where they imagine that somehow tariffs will simultaneously generate billions in revenue (because we're still importing things that have tariffs paid on them?) but also lead to a manufacturing boom in the US (because we're NOT importing things, so we have to make them here?) but also serve as bargaining chips to extract concessions from foreign governments (how does that work unless we're REMOVING the tariffs?). It all makes no sense at all, but I guess as long as Libs are getting Owned, they're happy.
We need centrist to center-left candidates who can speak to the concerns of average voters, but who also recognize that there are difficult trade-offs to be made, and we need to make the choices that lead to making life better in concrete ways.
3rd parties are the future and maybe the savior of humanity. The duopoly is not.
You can't crack the duopoly without changing the election system itself. Saint Louis' embrace of Approval Voting is a good start, but we really need Proportional Representation, so that a small party that can build up 10-15% support can win a serious slice of seats.
https://electionscience.org/
I agree we need small slices of 10 to 15% of third party representation to add diversity of thought and action in Congress.
The answer to this was invented by Thomas Jefferson -- the system he used for assigning House seats to the states based on population also works as a proportional way of assigning seats in an election using Approval ballots, which treat each candidate like a ballot proposition. Each voter gets to answer a series of:
Do you like Bob Smith? y/n
Do you like Jane Doe? y/n
etc.
A system somewhat like this is used in a number of European countries, though they mostly use the "party list" variant (where you vote for the party, and it's basically assumed you're approving all candidates that party has put forwards), and they refer to it as the D'Hondt method, because it was independently re-invented by Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt, almost a century after Jefferson had applied it to House apportionment. In the context of apportionment, basically you're imagining that each state would like to "win" all of the seats in the House, and the number of "votes" for that state's "party" is the population of the state. The math for then working out how many seats each state actually gets works out exactly like the D'Hondt party list system. But you can do the same kind of math on a purely candidate-centric approval ballot system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_approval_voting