#1988 Presidential Campaign

[thenewdemocratus]

CBS Evening News: Dan Rather-George H.W. Bush Tiff The Day After

\ Source:The New Democrat  I haven’t seen this video in about three years and I saw it then on YouTube. And if I heard anything about it as a kid in 1987 when this interview was conducted when I was 11-12 when, I don’t remember. So I don’t remember this interview very well to say the least, but a post about that interview and the interview itself will be on this blog in the future. What I can…

[smbhax]

America Daitouryou Senkyo: United State Presidential Race (Famicom)

“It is loosely based on the 1988 election campaign for the president of the United States and features characters based on actual candidates and other politicians. The game was conceived and directed by Japanese politician Shintaro Ito and a newscaster for CNN Daywatch.” -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_Dait%C5%8Dry%C5%8D_Senkyo

Playable candidates include "Push," "Thutcher," "Dakakis," etc.

Box art from https://gamesdb.launchbox-app.com/games/images/26658-america-daitouryou-senkyo-united-state-presidential-race

[deadpresidents]

Is it true that Joe Biden planned on running for president in 1976?

No, that is incorrect.

On Election Day in 1976, then-Senator Biden was only 33 years old, so he was still Constitutionally ineligible to serve as President until he turned 35 in late-November 1977.

During the '76 campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Biden was actually the very first elected official outside of Jimmy Carter's home state of Georgia to endorse Carter, who was still the darkest of dark horses and longest of long shots at that point.

From early on in Biden's political career on a national level, he was pretty open about the fact that he had aspirations for the Presidency. He couldn't have run in 1976, but he did consider challenging President Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980 (which Ted Kennedy did end up doing). Biden also put some thought into running against Ronald Reagan in 1984, but he was savvy enough to know that President Reagan appeared likely to cruise to reelection. It was a smart move not to be on the wrong end of the 525-13 Electoral College blowout that Walter Mondale was in '84.

Biden's first full-fledged campaign for the Presidency was in 1988, and he should have been able to perform better than the eventual Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, against then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, but Biden was his own worst enemy during that campaign and it torpedoed his chances that year. Of course, he also made a bid for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but couldn't gain any traction against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton from the very beginning of that campaign.

[reasonsforhope]

"Palestinian plaintiffs and their legal representatives on Friday [January 26, 2024] presented a powerful case in federal court accusing President Joe Biden and other top US officials of complicity in Israel's genocide in Gaza.

People around the world tuned in for the long-awaited hearing in Oakland, with plaintiffs appearing in person and over Zoom in an unprecedented effort to hold the Biden administration accountable for its actions in Gaza.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the lawsuit in November 2023 on behalf of Defense for Children International–Palestine, Al-Haq, and eight Palestinians in the US and Palestine. The complaint accuses President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin of failing to live up to their legal responsibilities under the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1988 Genocide Convention Implementation Act.

The United Nations convention classifies complicity in genocide, or the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part, as a crime under international law and requires that states take measures to prevent such atrocities.

[Note: This is a big reason why politicians almost never call it a genocide, btw. Because if a country recognizes that it's a genocide, then they actually are legally required to do a bunch of things to stop it, under international law.]

The historic lawsuit contends that the Biden administration has failed to uphold its obligations by continuing to provide diplomatic and military support for Israel's brutal campaign in Gaza. Plaintiffs are asking the court to stop Biden from sending more weapons and munitions to Israel that are being used to kill Palestinians en masse.

The hearing before the US District Court for the Northern District of California took place just hours after the International Court of Justice issued provisional measures against Israel in a landmark case brought by South Africa.

-via TAG24, January 26, 2024. Article continues below.

Court contends with questions of jurisdiction and responsibility

In evaluating the allegations, questioning in Friday's hearing revolved around the so-called political question doctrine, by which federal courts regularly refrain from ruling on political matters seen as best resolved by the president and Congress.

The Department of Justice argued that according to the doctrine, the court has no jurisdiction to rule in the case.

"If the court condemns United States foreign policy toward Israel, it could cause international embarrassment and undermine foreign policy decisions in the sensitive context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," defense counsel Jean Lin told Senior District Judge Jeffrey S. White.

Katherine Gallagher of the CCR countered that the court does, indeed, have a responsibility to step in: "Here, the question is a legal one, whether the actions undertaken by the United States failed to uphold the obligation to prevent genocide, and that is an active obligation that requires that the United States not provide the means by which a genocide is being furthered."

"There is no discretion for any state to evade its obligations, its legal obligations. These are not policy decisions," she said.

Palestinian plaintiffs share powerful testimonies before the court

After legal arguments in the case, Judge White heard two hours of gut-wrenching testimony from Palestinian plaintiffs and a renowned Holocaust and genocide expert.

Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest University Dr. Barry Trachtenberg shared his remarks before the court in spite of vehement US government opposition.

"To have an event fall under the 1948 Convention on Genocide requires both action and intent, and here we see that very, very clearly in a way that seems really quite unique in history," he stated, noting that there is now an opportunity to stop Israel's unfolding genocide in real time to prevent further loss of lives...

Judge White said he would take the testimonies to heart as he evaluates his constitutional responsibilities, describing the case as "the most difficult judicial decision" he has ever had to make."

-via TAG24, January 26, 2024

-

Note: I know a lot of people are really not gonna appreciate that last line. I'm not thrilled with it either. But it is worth noting that having a federal court overrule the US president's huge foreign policy and military decisions would be an absolutely massive deal/precedent

This is a case that deserves to be ruled on with an incredible amount of seriousness, if only because if you're a federal judge who's going to make that call, your written decision/legal justification needs to be unimpeachable

That said, if the judge uses jurisdiction to pass the buck here and avoid his legal and human responsibility to do what he can to stop a genocide, I'm gonna be pissed

[obsessedbyneon]

Decor for the presidential campaign of François Mitterrand, 1988.

Scan

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Charlotte Clymer at Charlotte's Web Thoughts:

Over the years, I’ve occasionally seen the argument pop up from some conservatives that men’s bodies are controlled through the military draft system. They use this bad faith response to women’s bodies being controlled by anti-choice lawmakers. In recent months, this argument has been more prevalent, particularly online, as abortion has become arguably the single most potent issue in the presidential campaign. So, let's quickly discuss this ridiculous talking point given that some conservative men have betrayed their complete ignorance on the Selective Service System.

Arguing the draft is to men like abortion is to women is ludicrous for three big reasons. First, the draft in the United States hasn't been in effect since December 27th, 1972. That was the last day young men were inducted in our Armed Forces. And yes, that means young men in the U.S. have been free of being drafted longer than young women have had abortion access. Second, the consequences for young men failing to register for the draft are not even close to being similar for young women who don't have abortion access. It's like comparing a scratch on your car to a catastrophic wreck. Young men who don't register for the draft essentially cannot be hired by the federal government and some state governments. And in some states, they cannot get a driver's license without registering for the draft.

That's completely unjust, I agree, but it ain't close to being the same. Conservative men will then come back and claim young men can be prosecuted for failing to register, but this is basically false. The Justice Department decided to suspend prosecutions for draft registration back in 1988 because they realized it's pointless and helps no one. Then they’ll claim that young men who don’t register for the draft can't receive federal student aid for college, but this isn't true, either. That law is no longer on the books. A young man's federal aid for college will NOT be impacted by their draft registration. Meanwhile, young women who don't have abortion access can literally die and many have. Women have died at hospitals because doctors were too afraid to offer abortion care for fear of breaking cruel laws implemented after the Dobbs ruling.

[...] For more than five decades, feminist leaders have argued that: 1) young men should have autonomy over their bodies and a military draft is the complete opposite of that and 2) exempting young women from the draft is a sexist double standard. But when efforts come up to either eliminate the military draft entirely OR require young women to register for it just like young men, it's Republicans in Congress who have led the way, every time, in killing those efforts. So, if you're a conservative young man who is angry about this double standard, I agree with you. It's not fair that you're required to register for the military draft and women aren't.

You have every right to be angry about that, but you should be angry at Republicans. Because it's feminist leaders who have been fighting for your equality all this time. It's the feminist movement who was first making the argument that young men shouldn't be coerced into military service. It's an issue of autonomy. And Republicans have consistently opposed that. So, please, don't compare draft registration to abortion access because it makes you look ridiculous, but moreover, you should hold Republican elected officials accountable for stripping away your autonomy in service to a sexist double standard. While you’re at it, thank feminist leaders who were calling this out long before you were born.

Charlotte Clymer wrote an excellent column on how males that were once being drafted to serve in the military is NOTHING like lots of American women losing abortion access as a result of Dobbs.

[mariacallous]

Presidential debates have impact when they address questions and concerns about the candidates that are top of mind for voters. As the crucial presidential debate began, in a race that was statistically dead even, both candidates had work to do.

Kamala Harris faced three key challenges. First, 37% to 42% of voters in some swing states knew virtually nothing about her except that she serves as Joe Biden’s vice president. Filling in this gap, or at least beginning to, was job one. From the very first minutes of the debate, it was clear that she knew she had to define herself and that she did—as a child of the middle class who, in contrast to Trump, was not given $400 million to start a business. In addition, she repeatedly came back to her experience as a prosecutor.

Second, Harris has shifted her position on many important issues—health care (Medicare for All), climate change (fracking), and immigration (decriminalizing border crossings), among others—since she ran for the nomination in 2020. This left people wondering, what kind of Democrat is she—a classic California progressive or the next generation of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden-style center-left? She had to persuade voters that the new version of Kamala Harris is the one they will get if she is elected.

Here her performance was more mixed. She explained her shift on fracking but didn’t give as clean and crisp an answer as she could have on other issues where Trump has accused her of flip-flopping. However, she defended the Biden administration and her participation in the bipartisan immigration legislation that Trump killed, she let the audience know that both she and Tim Walz are gun owners who have no intention of taking away people’s guns, and she pushed back against the charge that she was weak on crime by emphasizing her experience and record as a prosecutor who put criminals behind bars.    

Third, as is the case with every candidate who hasn’t previously occupied the presidency, Harris had to convince swing voters that she has what it takes to serve effectively as the nation’s chief executive and commander-in-chief. Simply put, they needed to be able to see her as big enough to be president, a barrier that some previous candidates, such as Michael Dukakis in 1988, failed to cross.

Harris passed this test easily. She never got flustered, she made her points concisely and quickly, and she spoke with confidence about traditionally “male” issues like war, defense, crime, and foreign policy.

What did Trump have to do in this debate? Two things.

First of all, he had to come across as someone who is not mean and angry, obsessed with the past and prone to conspiracy theorizing. His campaign aides have urged him to fight Kamala on the issues. Yet, on the stump, Trump can’t seem to stick to the script. He reads the policy portions of his speeches with an obvious lack of enthusiasm and returns often to complaining about alleged ballot fraud in 2020, insulting Harris, and unearthing conspiracy theories that make little sense.

Trump began the debate with the advice from his advisors ringing in his head. His first answer on the economy took aim at the Biden record, one of the issues on which he has held a consistent lead throughout the campaign. But as time went on, his debate performance took the same course as the Trump rallies. He turned nearly every question into an answer about the threats from illegal immigration. Like the economy, this has been a good issue for him, but he did begin to sound like a Johnny One Note on the topic, and it is not clear that this issue is as powerful in swing states like Pennsylvania as it is in border or more Republican states.

Also, as the debate wore on, Trump simply could not stay away from weird stuff. He insisted that Democrats favored killing babies after they were born and allowing abortion in the ninth month. And he repeated a story about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio killing and eating people’s cats and dogs. One of the moderators, David Muir, had to step in to point out that reporters had called Springfield city officials who had investigated the story and found it simply wasn’t true.

The second thing Trump needed to do was differentiate himself from the most extreme stances of his party—many of which are described by his former aides in Project 2025. As he has done in the past, he distanced himself from this document during the debate, claiming “I have nothing to do with Project 2025. I haven’t even read it.” 

Although there are many questionable policies being considered by Trump and the right wing of the Republican Party, such as slapping huge tariffs on U.S. imports and deporting millions of immigrants—by far the most dangerous one for him politically is abortion. On that issue, his answer was, as it has always been, that everything is okay because now the states are deciding it. Not surprisingly, Harris’ attack on abortion was exceptionally strong. She pointed out the many states that have passed highly restrictive abortion policies and, in some cases, have criminalized the behavior of doctors who are providing reproductive services. Abortion rights is the single most helpful issue for the Democrats in 2024.

Republican strategists keep hoping the abortion issue can be buried, but recent steps by Trump allies in Florida and Texas have kept it alive. In the debate, Trump tried to distance himself from the extremes, arguing that he would approve of abortions for rape and incest and even going so far as to say the Florida six-week ban is too short. Nonetheless, the coalition he leads isn’t happy with his nods to moderation, and it is likely many Americans will continue to believe that he would sign a national abortion ban if a Republican Congress sent it to his desk.

In conclusion, there are three kinds of presidential debates. The first is when one candidate lands a knockout blow against the other, as Ronald Reagan did with Jimmy Carter in 1980. The second is when the debate does little if anything to change the flow of the race; the Clinton/Dole debates in 1996 are a good example. The third, intermediate outcome occurs when a debate yields an advantage to one candidate without ending the other’s chance to win, as happened when Mitt Romney bested President Obama in their first debate in 2012.

The first (and perhaps only) debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris falls into this last category. After a month-long Harris surge that erased the advantage Trump had developed over President Biden, the race had stabilized during the past two weeks. This debate seems likely to put new wind in Harris’ sails. Whether it will be enough to propel her to victory in the Electoral College remains to be seen. But her campaign and supporters leave the debate with renewed energy and hope. By contrast, the Trump campaign must reckon with the likelihood that their candidate’s performance pleased his base without rallying many new supporters to his side.

Throughout the race, Trump has enjoyed a solid lead on the question of strong leadership. While he may still hold an advantage, most Americans who watched the debate probably saw in Kamala Harris an adversary who held her ground, went on the attack whenever possible, and refused to be intimidated. This matters.

On the face of it, the Trump campaign has an incentive to seek a rematch. If it does, the Harris campaign will probably insist on rules more to its liking. If not, this debate will stand as the last high-profile event before the November 5 election and as the race devolves into trench warfare—a battle of communications and organization in the states that will decide the outcome.

Finally—in the minutes after the debate closed—the galactically famous singer Taylor Swift announced she would be voting for Kamala Harris. In today’s world, this may be worth as much or even more than Harris’ solid debate performance.

[allhailthe70shousewife]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/12/southern-strategy-kevin-phillips-republican-party-trump/

Opinion The GOP’s ‘southern strategy’ mastermind just died. Here’s his legacy.

Greg Sargent

“The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who.”

That insight was the brainchild of Kevin Phillips, the longtime political analyst who passed away this week at 82 years old. Phillips’s 1969 book, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” provided the blueprint for the “southern strategy” that the Republican Party adopted for decades to win over White voters who were alienated by the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights in the 1960s.

Phillips advised Republicans to exploit the racial anxieties of White voters, linking them directly to issues such as crime, federal spending and voting rights. The strategy, beginning with Richard M. Nixon’s landslide victory in the 1972 presidential race, helped produce GOP majorities for decades.

Though Phillips later reconsidered his fealty to the GOP, updated versions of the “southern strategy” live on in today’s Republican Party, shaping the political world we inhabit today. So I asked historians and political theorists to weigh in on Phillips’s legacy. Their responses have been edited for style and brevity.

Kevin Kruse, historian at Princeton University and co-editor of “Myth America”: Kevin Phillips was a prophet of today’s polarization. He drew a blueprint for a major realignment of American politics that is still with us. For much of the 20th century, Democrats dominated the national scene, because of the reliable support of the “Solid South.”

But the “Negro problem” of the 1960s, Phillips argued, presented Republicans an opportunity to take the South and Southwest, too, a new region he anointed “the Sun Belt.” All they had to do was appeal to the hatreds of White voters there, through racially coded “law and order” appeals.

Phillips, of course, proved correct about the regional realignment. Republicans won every single state in the South in the 1972, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Today, Republicans dominate the region partly because they still employ Phillips’s polarizing politics of resentment and reaction, from complaints about Black Lives Matter to panics about “woke” education. Donald Trump’s continued dominance of the GOP shows that the underlying instinct to exploit division and inflame hatred remains.

Nicole Hemmer, author of “Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries who Remade American Politics in the 1990s”: Phillips helped shape how the Republican Party navigated the last 50 years of U.S. politics. His big contribution was the idea that White southerners could be potential voters for the GOP, because the solid Democratic South had become newly fractured after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Phillips argued that the Republican Party needed to change the way it conducted politics to reach out to disaffected White southerners. For Nixon, that was “law and order,” something Ronald Reagan used to great effect along with stories about “welfare queens.” George H.W. Bush’s campaign ran the “Willie Horton” ad, which played up fears of Black criminality.

Trump picked up this rhetoric. He launched his campaign on the ideas of Mexican migrant and Muslim criminality — that all these minority populations needed to be under much stricter surveillance.

The strategy that Phillips helped popularize worked just as well with some northern White voters as it did with southern White voters. It helped solidify the Republican Party’s base as almost exclusively White even as the nation has grown more diverse.

Bill Kristol, a former Republican turned Never Trump conservative: It was happening already in 1968, but Phillips’s book and his subsequent promotion of the southern strategy did have the effect of making that reaction to the civil rights movement more coherent. It gave politicians a way to think about shaping that reaction politically.

Newt Gingrich, who defeated lots of Democrats in southern House seats in the 1994 midterms, was in spirit a Phillips protégé. That culminated in 2010, when Democrats got obliterated, and in the red state-blue state divide today.

From Phillips to Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, there is a through line. DeSantis, Abbott and others are operating in a world anticipated and partly created by Phillips. The reaction of much of the White working class and Republican politicians to Black Lives Matter and “cosmopolitan elites” is a close cousin of what Phillips predicted and helped shape.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner: I think Phillips was noticing what was happening rather than causing it to happen. Dwight D. Eisenhower got 49 to 50 percent of the popular vote in the South in 1952 and 1956; Nixon got nearly that much in 1960. When the national Democratic Party became more dovish, circa 1967, reacting against the Vietnam escalations of its own presidents, Southern Whites — always the most hawkish voters — turned away from national Democrats not so much because of civil rights but because of dovishness. It’s what Tom Eagleton later told Robert Novak: “acid, amnesty, and abortion.”

Corey Robin, political theorist and author of “The Reactionary Mind”: Phillips understood that the old Republican Party establishment could not begin to take on the New Deal and Great Society until it developed a mass popular base. He saw that the White working class — not just in the South, but in the North — was growing disaffected with the New Deal on economic and racist grounds, and that Republicans could turn that dissatisfaction into governing majorities.

Beginning in 1972 with the reelection of Nixon, Republicans built this majority in the spirit of what Phillips imagined. George W. Bush, the last Republican president to get a popular majority, was the last spasm of that vision. The irony is that, under Phillips, the idea was to expand the Republican Party into a permanent governing majority.

But once the White working class diminished, the electoral return of that resentment dramatically dwindled. As a result, instead of relying on robust electoral majorities, the Republican Party, to win power, relies on the electoral college and the malapportioned Senate. Phillips’s blueprint made the heyday of Republican power — and ultimately unmade it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

NEXT WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

#15yrsago D&D-style map of C++ https://alenacpp.blogspot.com/2009/06/c.html

#15yrsago Passive-aggressive umbrella-cops foil Tiananmen reportage https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8082604.stm

#15yrsago Heartbroken cereal litigant loses suit over non-existence of “Crunchberries” https://www.loweringthebar.net/2009/06/reasonable-consumer-would-know-crunchberries-are-not-real-judge-rules.html

#15yrsago DC’s buried, secret government wires patrolled by rapid-response goon-squad https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/30/AR2009053002114.html

#15yrsago Visualizing how a dirty Congresscritter turned campaign contributions into earmarks https://web.archive.org/web/20090606211116/http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/2009/06/04/vis-a-visclosky-or-how-i-learned-to-take-campaign-contributions-and-turn-them-into-earmarks/

#15yrsago TOSBack: EFF’s real-time tracker for changes in terms of service on popular Internet sites https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/06/03-0

#10yrsago Colbert viewers learned more about super PACs than news-junkies https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/stephen-colberts-civics-lesson-or-how-a-tv-humorist-taught-america-about-campaign-finance/

#10yrsago FCC’s website crashes, John Oliver’s army of Cable Company Fuckery trolls blamed https://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/06/03/2259240/fcc-website-hobbled-by-comment-trolls-incited-by-comedian-john-oliver

#10yrsago Secret service developing a sarcasm detector. Oh great. https://web.archive.org/web/20140604004533/https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=8aaf9a50dd4558899b0df22abc31d30e&tab=core&_cview=0 #10yrsago Five dumb things that NSA apologists should really stop saying https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/top-5-claims-defenders-nsa-have-stop-making-remain-credible

#5yrsago Empirical analysis of behavioral advertising finds that surveillance makes ads only 4% more profitable for media companies https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/04/empirical-analysis-of-behavioral-advertising-finds-that-surveillance-makes-ads-only-4-more-profitable-for-media-companies/

#5yrsago European legal official OKs orders that force Facebook to globally remove insults to politicians like “oaf” and “fascist” (as well as synonyms) https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/04/european-legal-official-oks-orders-that-force-facebook-to-globally-remove-insults-to-politicians-like-oaf-and-fascist-as-well-as-synonyms/

#5yrsago The New York Privacy Act goes even farther than California’s privacy legislation https://www.wired.com/story/new-york-privacy-act-bolder/

#5yrsago Joe Biden repeatedly claimed to have marched for civil rights. He didn’t. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/us/politics/biden-1988-presidential-campaign.html

#5yrsago Why is there so much antitrust energy for Big Tech but not for Big Telco? https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/04/why-is-there-so-much-antitrust-energy-for-big-tech-but-not-for-big-telco/

#5yrsago Magic for Liars: Sarah Gailey’s debut is a brilliant whodunnit in the vein of The Magicians https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/04/magic-for-liars-sarah-gaileys-debut-is-a-brilliant-whodunnit-in-the-vein-of-the-magicians/

#1yrago Ayyyyyy Eyeeeee https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/ayyyyyy-eyeeeee/

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

I'm old enough to remember when:

Senator Hillary Clinton campaigned against Senator Barack Obama for the DNC nomination & Hillary demanded that Obama produce his birth certificate (Obama refused). When DJT requested he produce the birth certificate, Michelle labeled him a dangerous "birther."

Michelle Obama introduced the newly elected Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, as "...my baby's daddy." When a talking head repeated Michelle's own words, she was labeled "racist."

Michelle Obama was disbarred from practicing law in the state of Illinois and yet was offered a 6 figure HR job at The University of Chicago Hospitals in a field (health care) for which she had previously ZERO experience. #escalators

Elites, thy real name is Hypocrisy!

8/24 MO accidentally said the quiet part outloud: The only way for her "elitist class" to thrive is when the other classes are drowning.

MO: We couldn't thrive "... if everyone around us WASN'T drowning" 🧐🤔

So true Michelle, without a permanent underclass, you elites cannot RULE the world.

Despite Biden & Kamala currently running the executive branch, Michelle and Barack Obama want HOPE to make a comeback. What does that even mean when your own party is robbing our country and its citizens of hope!?

The Obama's no longer reside in Chicago. They blew into the Windy City, nicely tanned from vacations on their private, prestine beaches at one of their many US oceanside mansions: Martha's Vineyard, California or Hawaii.

After all these years, their anger and bitterness towards any and everyone who chooses to ignore and oppose their wishes & commands remains palpable.

They cannot understand why Americans insist on thinking for ourselves. When Hillary was defeated, Michelle scolded female non-Hillary voters with this elitist message: "...you're the kind of woman that doesn't like the sound of your own voice."

They have amassed multiple millions of dollars, much of it laundered through book deals and Netflix, but they are not about to share that wealth. Instead, they prefer to purchase land and other big ticket luxury items, while citizens in Democrat run cities (Chicago, San Francisco, LA, Lansing, D.C., Baltimore, Minnesota, NYC, etc) are robbed and burned out of their neighborhoods.

Several news outlets preferred to advertise a salt and pepper looking Barack as opposed to the 2024 fully gray haired former POTUS. Why?

In 1988 Oprah told Donald Trump that his opinions sounded "Presidential" and asked if he’d ever run. He said, "Probably not" but that he’d likely win if he did because "Americans [were] tired of getting ripped off."

The Obama's lying bff NOprah had to join the party for the sake of "decency." Oprah who pimped out girls to Harvey Weinstein and covered up the Hollyweird casting coach culture is now advocating for a return to DNC level of "decency."

"Donald - I received the book excerpt. I have to tell you, your comments made me a little weepy. It's one thing to try and live a life of integrity - Still another to have people like yourself notice... Too bad we're not running for office; WHAT A TEAM!" -Oprah Winfrey Jan 11th 2000

[thenewdemocratus]

Firing Line With William F. Buckley: The 1988 Republican Presidential Candidates

. Source:The New Democrat  The Bob Dole intro was the most impressive to me because of how real it was and how real he is. Talking about his parents and family and his background and where he came from. Coming from such modest roots and serving in World War II and being able to go to college on the GI Bill. And having the opportunity he needed to be successful in life and taking full advantage of…

[politicalrpf]

Various George H. W. Bush mailers from his 1988 Presidential campaign.

[deadpresidents]

It wasn't just the tank photo that tanked (sorry) the Dukakis campaign. There was also the death penalty question/answer in the debate.

Yeah. there were a lot of issues with Dukakis's 1988 campaign. I think his strategists failed him, but the 1988 campaign also was one of the dirtiest in years at that point (thanks largely to George H.W. Bush's campaign manager in '88, Lee Atwater), and Dukakis was not the type of candidate willing to jump into the mud or even aggressively fight back. Dukakis wasn't a good fit for what that year's election turned into, and that was apparent on numerous occasions. As the negative campaign progressed, it became clear to the Bush team that Dukakis probably wasn't going to punch back, and they just steamrolled him.

[kylekozmikdeluxo]

Some scattered thoughts, fellas... Not looking to debate anything, just some raw thoughts born out of initial despair, anger, and determination...

To say the least, life looks to get harder for me now for the forseable future. As a queer autistic enby. For a multitude of reasons, in and around the election of Orange Nightmare and his brigade of evil. As the hours roll by, it all starts to make a little more sense to me at least. Now that the shock of Election Day night is over and the day after defeat has eased... In that, the Democratic Party as it is seems unfit at the moment against the massive misinformation apparatus of the right, and the utterly wide reach that it has across the country AND across several age groups... At least in this very moment... We could very well rebound in the next midterms and put some roadblocks up, and NO, I am not here for your "no more elections ever again". I'm not a "lay down and take it"-type person. I did that once many years ago when I had a severe mental health crisis as a teenager, and yeah... NEVER again. I try to be resilient.

And yeah, we have to do more than just vote in order to keep our rights and some sense of stability. I do know that there has to be more effort building communities and backup systems for all of us out there, and how we as a people can make things right when our leaders can't or refuse to. Hopefully this accelerates more of that, and hopefully I find IRL community I can feel safe with in case something were to go wrong for me.

We're right now hearing about how despite their "best" efforts, the Kamala Harris campaign just could not compete with that ecosystem of grievance, hate, and complete detached-ness. In addition to other issues with which the Harris campaign and incumbent Biden administration were failing on. The way I see it, the way they try to get people enthusiastic... it's old-fashioned and kinda hokey, while the right courts Gen Z with podcasts and Joe Rogan-type shit, and gets everyone else through the ever-reliable Fox News and Sinclair-owned media. Plus a legacy media collection that has shifted right for many years, publications and networks that coddle the right and take plenty of time to constantly fry the Dems over the littlest things. The New York Times a CHIEF offender among them. The late great Frank Zappa - one of my favorite musicians and often spot on in his indictment of the right - accurately pointed that out in an interview in 1988, that the media back then even was "turning right". That tells you a lot, doesn't it? And that's a base that's been mobilized since the '70s, told to diligently vote in every single election from presidential to midterms to local. And they did, and continue to do so, and it's why so many institutions are gummed up with these clowns and why they hold all this power. Any of us who aren't subscribing to that unified authoritarian ideology are still at the base of a massive mountain, it seems.

I also think that too many Americans of many stripes just "relate" to that guy.

A lot of my family is MAGA, and thus I know other MAGA/conservative-types as well, and the sentiment with Orange Turdgoblin is ALWAYS stuff like "he's NOT a politician!", "he's NOT like all those OTHER politicians!", "he came in and rocked the boat!", "he ran America like a BUSINESS"... It's vibes. That's mostly what it is amongst the population that isn't necessarily conservative or right-wing. A bumbling buffoon who you can have a beer with, I guess. He has that, Kamala doesn't, and certainly not our soon-to-be VP, and several other actual politicians. Yes, our politicians and leaders are deeply flawed, even on side blue. Biden's administration hasn't always been great for me, as I've often felt the effects of late-stage capitalism and the aftermath of COVID's first two years. But I'm also not stupid or uninformed enough to just throw everything to a guy who literally said he wanted generals not dissimilar to the ones Hitler had, in addition to all the other heinous stuff he has said and done over the course of... Well, forget his presidency for a second, his whole goddamn career stretching back to the '70s.

That there is a huge problem. That after his disastrous first term, he somehow got 12M MORE votes than he did in 2016. And that's WITH COVID-19's first months factored in... And only lost about 1M this election, despite everything he had done after losing in 2020. Americans just seem to have collective amnesia, don't they? Some hardships during the Biden administration? Yeah sure, let's bring that even worse guy back! It boggles me, and yet it doesn't. And the kids won't save us, again, the right got them. They know how to do this shit, and it's the rest of us who need to not only catch up, but best it.

These past couple of years have been pretty big for me. I came out as queer and non-binary by mid-2022, I conquered A LOT of my driving fears and I get around more, I started committing to a webcomic after years of trying to find a simpler idea to turn into something that would put me out there, and I finally moved out of my home at the age of 30 in early 2023. Massive developments for me, in addition to being more who I want to be and feeling generally happier than ever. Feeling like I can really do this adult thing on my own, and go on lots of adventures. There were hardships, financially, and I'm not fully out of the closet yet. I had big plans for later this year and into next year, but because of what has happened, that may have to be put aside for a bit as I reroute and figure out ways to protect myself should something go completely wrong for me.

And that first day, I was scrambling, frantic, like it was going to be over the minute he's inaugurated. I have little to fall back on, no safety net whatsoever... But I'm here and still functioning... And there's a lot at play between now and the midterms, and even at the end of his first year of his second term. This is not dissimilar to how COVID-19 knocked the wind out of the sails I was putting up by early 2020, and that this will just be another setback that I have to get around. After all this personal progress that I made. But because it happened once, I know what it feels like. I'm still not entirely sure about the situation, but there has to be a way. And it's helped by slowly abandoning what was once Twitter... Or at least, locking what used to be my main account. No longer participating in endless misery there, nor having to hear a barrage of shit.

On Bluesky, it's not as bad. I joined Bluesky a year or so ago, and while it's imperfect in many ways, the vibe is different and there's way less of twitter's usual "lay down and take it" bullshit. All these wild even-worse-future scenarios that get laid out in these multi-tweet essays, with NO solution or way to even stop it. I've had it with that. That was a thing on there since 2016, and it only got worse and worse with each election and cataclysmic world event. Algorithms love to shovel shit in your face, and it's nice to get away or slowly start disengaging. Tumblr's also deeply imperfect and has more or less become its own kinda shitty, but it's great for me to use as a diary for longer-form posts.

I don't know where the road goes from here, but I have to keep going. At least I have somewhat surveyed the situation, as have many others, and it doesn't seem like all is completely over... Like people on that other app often say it is.

[viewwrangler]

You know (part 2) ...

One thing about this genuinely will shock and surprise me if it continues to play out as it seems it will:

He's projected to be only the second Rethugnican presidential nominee since 1988 (G.W. Bush) to win an outright majority of voters in the presidential contest. In a contest with some of the highest turnout in recent elections.

For a while, it seemed that even if Harris lost, that it would be like when Clinton lost, and that there would be a solid majority of people voting for her. But even that doesn't seem to be the case.

It's just ... a lot to realize that the man who ran the most sexist, fear-mongering, anti-minority, anti-everything (but conservative rich white men) campaign, who is visibly failing mentally, who picked possibly the worst vice president in modern history, who has been found liable for sexual assault, who effectively led a coup attempt ... that a majority of people looked at all of that, and said, "Yeah ... YEAH! We want HIM!" That given the choice between a very competent nonwhite woman and ... all of THAT, a majority of voters said, "YES! WE WANT THAT!"

There's still a nominal chance that it won't quite work out that way. California's slow vote counting means that the most populous state has some chance of preventing that. But given that he seems to have gained votes across the board, including some wildly unlikely places ... kind of doubt it.

Oh, and one other lesson learned (again): ignore polls. People now lie to pollsters on the regular, as well as polls having MASSIVE difficulty getting anyone to talk to them who isn't lying. Social desirability bias is making them useless. After all, for the polls to have been as badly off as they were this time, many many MANY people have to have straight up lied to pollsters, because they knew that saying that they were voting for Trump just wasn't a good look. Even though the pollsters were, in all likelihood, nobody that they knew.

That's the only explanation for something like the Iowa poll from just before the election, indicating that Harris had a 4-point lead. While everyone knew that was thoroughly unlikely, it did indicate that the contest there would be much closer than previously expected ... except that she lost Iowa by a full 12 percentage points -- two percentage points lower than Biden, in fact. And all of that happened even though pollsters flat out knew the numbers they were getting were unlikely, weighted the numbers in favor of Republicans, and still WILDLY underestimated how well he did. You only get that sort of consistent error everywhere when people are lying to the pollsters.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ed Mazza at HuffPost:

Critics are taking Donald Trump back to Sunday school after he made a bizarre claim about Jesus during his latest interview with Phil McGraw, aka TV’s “Dr. Phil.” The former president attacked California for its extensive vote-by-mail program, which he falsely claimed leads to voter fraud, and insisted without evidence that he’d win the state if not for that supposed fraud. “I guarantee you, if Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California,” he said. “In other words, if we had an honest vote counter, a really honest vote counter, I do great with the Hispanics, great, I mean I had a level that no other Republican’s ever done, but if we had an honest vote counter, I would win California.” No Republican presidential candidate has won deep blue California since President George H.W. Bush in 1988. Trump lost California by about 30 percentage points in both 2016 and 2020. The Kamala Harris campaign released a statement saying Trump “reached a level of delusion difficult for even Dr. Phil to diagnose.”

Speaking to Dr. Phil McGraw on Merit Street’s Dr. Phil Primetime last night, Donald Trump told a brazen lie insinuating the he would win California. Trump lost in California to Democrats handily both times he run, and will do so again.

From the 08.27.2024 edition of Merit Street's Dr. Phil Primetime: