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Posted
5 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

This is the part I wanted to write more because it seems overlooked from the left-leaning media and it's something I'd raise with Kendall Scudder if ever got face time with him.  

@pyrohornIII just curious, how hard is it to get face time with Kendall Scudder?

Posted (edited)
15 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

I actually deleted a call-out to you and wrote that you'd say something similar (I think what I wrote was that your position is the party would re-orient itself around the candidate and not the other way around).  

 

Unfortunately, quoting my own post...

This is the part I wanted to write more because it seems overlooked from the left-leaning media and it's something I'd raise with Kendall Scudder if ever got face time with him.  

Pundits keep complaining about the relative lack of a lefty media ecosystem comparable to what's been touted on the right (e.g., Klein wondering why there isn't a lefty Charlie Kirk going to Liberty University and debating students on secular versus religious government efficacy at delivering happiness to citizens).  I also don't see anyone talking about a strategy to crack the information bubble that a lot of Trump voters put themselves in.

The relatively low hanging fruit tactic is having Dem communicators that are able to talk about more than politics in an interesting way and have them guest on podcasts that aren't already full of other Dems (i.e., if it's had Chris Murphy on in the last three months then it needs to be speaking to a broader audience).  

I'll use two terrible examples because neither are Americans--Melissa Barrera and Dua Lipa are pretty smart, media savvy, and unlike Michael Jordan, willing to make political statements on issues that aren't obviously popular.  I'm sure someone who knows celebrities better can suggest someone besides McConaughey or one of the boomers.  Most of these younger voters that Harris lost are the kind that listen to Rogan and "came for the jokes, stayed for the anti-vax talk".  

The thing that Klein points out repeatedly (and we've debated here) is that these voters aren't "deplorables" who are "irredeemable" (quoting HRC) unless you want them to be, and the party is losing elections because it's made too many voters feel unwelcome.  

 

Did you hear McConaughey on Rogan? Zero chance that I would listen to the full episode but he was very close to espousing far right ideals. But instead of discussing the problem and solution that you would hear from the right, he stuck to the problem only, following it up with "but I don't know how to solve it."  As an example, McConaughey mentioned that he was worried about the destruction of marriage and it's too easy to get out of a marriage but he just doesn't know how to solve it. Don't worry Matt, the far right has solved it for you: don't let women leave marriage except in cases of extreme and provable abuse perhaps by a criminal court. He also was in favor of posted 10 commandments in Texas schools.

Like I said, I didn't listen to the full episode but McConaughey came across as leaning into red pill territory.

Edited by Nice Guy Eddie
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Posted
3 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

@pyrohornIII just curious, how hard is it to get face time with Kendall Scudder?

He's willing to do a virtual AMA with you guys.   In person it's a bit harder, unless you go to an event he is scheduled to speak at. The last Zoom we tried we just had one person show up.  But that was ok, since we were in a long running finance committee meeting, which some of you are hearing the fallout about the past couple of weeks.  So we had to cancel that night.   

 

But yeah, he's willing to do that.  So is Talarico.   Or I can give you a schedule of where he will be in the future.  

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Posted
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Forget about the strategy. Graham Platner is a great example of what I mean about music over words. He hears the music. 

People decide who they are voting for and then retroactively apply reasoning to that choice.  It seems sophomoric to boil it down to this, but we really just need candidates with better "vibes" and mass appeal.

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Posted
8 minutes ago, cmontexas said:

Why the fuck are people obsessed with having the government regulate personal relationships?

Well, I think the sense that we have lost community, and along with it family, values is real, and to the extent that it isn't it's a very real perception.

Where the notion goes wrong is that cis-het couples in traditional marriages, and traditional institutions like churches or non-woke Boy/Girl Scouts are the only solutions to those problems.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

People decide who they are voting for and then retroactively apply reasoning to that choice.  It seems sophomoric to boil it down to this, but we really just need candidates with better "vibes" and mass appeal.

Yep. The perfect candidate is one who can appeal to someone's heart and mind. But you probably can get by with heart alone. Mind alone should be someone who works within an administration or on a team.

 

Posted
25 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Why should he? He's a democrat candidate, without much political experience, in a crowded primary. I would think that staying away from partisan politics might be a decent strategy. Attack the policy or strategy, not the person.

I guess what I should have said was attack the policies of the right that have for so long sold out the middle and lower class to the financial benefit of the upper tier of wealth.  That little example of when you show that a million seconds is 11.5 days vs a billion seconds is 31.7 years should be a pretty good start to get their attention to explain who the real robber barons are.  

 

Posted
20 minutes ago, cmontexas said:

Why the fuck are people obsessed with having the government regulate personal relationships?

The government regulates marriage because stripped of religion, marriage is a contract, and contracts are enforceable by the state.

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Posted
1 hour ago, pyrohornIII said:

I would love to see him add in who exactly is robbing them, how, and how long it's been going on.  He comes close.  

I would love for that to matter, but I think LBJ had it exactly right when he said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket.”

Posted
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

The central problem with Ezra Klein’s approach is that policy isn’t all that important to getting elected, and only even matters afterwards to the extent that people think they feel something. 

It's fucking mind boggling that he thinks the/an answer might be to run pro-life candidates. As if there's a lot of abortion-only voters who only vote Republican because Democrats are pro-choice. Not only does the outcome from 2024 clearly reject his hypothesis (a lot of states passed laws and constitutional amendments protecting abortion rights while also electing Republicans), it completely misunderstands how people think about politics. Most Republicans voters today aren't Republicans because they oppose abortion as a first principle and that's the anti-abortion party, they're anti-abortion because they're Republicans as a first principle and that's the Republican stance on abortion.

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Posted
37 minutes ago, cmontexas said:

Why the fuck are people obsessed with having the government regulate personal relationships?

The only theory that makes any sense to me is that it is all Linus' thumb sucking blanket.  People see government control as a way to keep them safe.  They value safety over liberty.  

If you keep brown people and heathens away from me, why do I need liberty anyway?

Posted
6 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

If you keep brown people and heathens away from me, why do I need liberty anyway?

To them, that is freedom.

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Posted
7 minutes ago, The Original Greaser Bob said:

The only theory that makes any sense to me is that it is all Linus' thumb sucking blanket.  People see government control as a way to keep them safe.  They value safety over liberty.  

If you keep brown people and heathens away from me, why do I need liberty anyway?

Also, please tell my wife she can't leave me and has to do what I say

Posted
2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Forget about the strategy. Graham Platner is a great example of what I mean about music over words. He hears the music. 

Yeah, I'm liking his style so far.

Posted
12 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

It's fucking mind boggling that he thinks the/an answer might be to run pro-life candidates. As if there's a lot of abortion-only voters who only vote Republican because Democrats are pro-choice.

It’s a little hard to tell what he’s saying there because I don’t think he actually believes that. I think he’s using that idea as a device to demonstrate the decline of diversity within the Democratic Party as it wrote off so much of its traditional base.

It’s part of a pair- he’ll talk about how there were 40 pro-life or adjacent democrats when ACA was passed, and then he talks about pro-life Dems being something worth trying in red states. But it sounds like he’s saying it’s something Democrats should tolerate, as opposed to something they should seek out with intention.

I hope he’s trying to make a good point about what a big tent party looks like, but he struggles to do it because he’s such a dork.  

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Posted
11 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Not only does the outcome from 2024 clearly reject his hypothesis (a lot of states passed laws and constitutional amendments protecting abortion rights while also electing Republicans), it completely misunderstands how people think about politics

You should listen to the podcast because Ta-Nahesi makes this same point.  

 

12 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

 Most Republicans voters today aren't Republicans because they oppose abortion as a first principle and that's the anti-abortion party, they're anti-abortion because they're Republicans as a first principle and that's the Republican stance on abortion.

I think you're underestimating the fervor of some pro-life voters that more of less consider themselves single-issue voters.  Anyway, Klein's point wasn't about abortion, per se, it was about running heterodox candidates in places in which a true blue Democrat isn't electable.  

 

52 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Did you hear McConaughey on Rogan? Zero chance that I would listen to the full episode but he was very close to espousing far right ideals. But instead of discussing the problem and solution that you would hear from the right, he stuck to the problem only, following it up with "but I don't know how to solve it."  As an example, McConaughey mentioned that he was worried about the destruction of marriage and it's too easy to get out of a marriage but he just doesn't know how to solve it. Don't worry Matt, the far right has solved it for you: don't let women leave marriage except in cases of extreme and provable abuse perhaps by a criminal court. He also was in favor of posted 10 commandments in Texas schools.

Like I said, I didn't listen to the full episode but McConaughey came across as leaning into red pill territory.

No, I'm not listening to three hours of anyone except Dan Carlin.  I wasn't trying to put him forward as a good messenger for us, just that he gets mentioned around these parts with the same wistful longing as "once the Tex-Mex population gets high enough the GOP is doomed 4eva!!!!"  Obviously both are fantasies.  Anyway, sounds like it was one of those "I'm just asking questions" interviews that serve as a good reminder that most celebrities are shallow and vapid.  

 

54 minutes ago, pyrohornIII said:

But that was ok, since we were in a long running finance committee meeting, which some of you are hearing the fallout about the past couple of weeks.

I haven't heard about this!  Tell us more....

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Posted
1 hour ago, pyrohornIII said:

I would love to see him add in who exactly is robbing them, how, and how long it's been going on.  He comes close.  

Yeah that's how I felt about this clip, and I would hope that the full video with context includes him providing the answer. His website says:

Quote

I will support a path to citizenship and an end to the mass deportation machine.

It also says:

Quote

It is long past time for serious immigration reform. Unfortunately, many multi-national corporations have no interest in this. They want illegal workers with no rights who they can pay slave wages and abuse at will

So, if he stayed on message, he would have pointed the finger at multi-national corporations.

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Posted
1 minute ago, LCHorn said:

I think you're underestimating the fervor of some pro-life voters that more of less consider themselves single-issue voters.  Anyway, Klein's point wasn't about abortion, per se, it was about running heterodox candidates in places in which a true blue Democrat isn't electable.  

 

I'm not. I'm very aware of that fervor. But that didn't come from nowhere and it didn't actually come from churches (except for the minority of Republicans who are conservative Catholics). They developed that fervor around abortion because abortion became the stand in for segregation for the Republican party once they felt they could no longer openly support segregation on moral grounds. In other words, Republican voters embraced anti-abortion politics as a moral excuse to justify their hatred of Democrats. Being a Republican (and hating Democrats) came first and still comes first for the overwhelming majority of Republicans.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

But that didn't come from nowhere and it didn't actually come from churches (except for the minority of Republicans who are conservative Catholics).

There's been ample scholarship connecting abortion rights to white supremacist rhetoric when the latter became verboten in church, specifically in Southern Baptist congregations.  

I'm drawing a blank on the supposed architect, but after or during Carter's presidency it became the preferred way to target the white supremacist sympathizers and really got fired into orbit under Reagan.  Maybe it was generated by politics but the it's very much platformed by conservative churches and I don't know it matters anymore where it came from.  

Regardless, we're not going to win by getting back voters who hate Democrats, that's just bad business.  We need purchase with the ones who are politically ambivalent but want cheap eggs and economic security and if removing abortion or any other issues opens them up to considering issues on which Democrats have more advantage then it'd folly not to do it.  

Posted
2 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

Regardless, we're not going to win by getting back voters who hate Democrats, that's just bad business.  We need purchase with the ones who are politically ambivalent but want cheap eggs and economic security and if removing abortion or any other issues opens them up to considering issues on which Democrats have more advantage then it'd folly not to do it.  

I think the number of voters you're talking about, who don't already hate Democrats but for whom a pro-choice candidate is a deal breaker, is literally in the single thousands nationwide.

For issues where it would make electoral sense to run candidates who deviate from the more-established party standard, guns and tariffs/trade are much richer veins to tap, and easier to run on. It's entirely possible to run a pro-gun and pro-gun regulation campaign that embraces the responsibility that should come with gun ownership, just as it's possible to run as generally pro trade, but supportive of specific protections for important industries.  The first could help secure a lot of the type of voter you're thinking of, who I think are mostly conservative-raised young men in red states who are educated and have drifted away from the GOP on other cultural issues (I don't know if there are actually electorally significant numbers of people like this, but anecdotally I feel like I know a lot). The second is more of a rearguard action protecting against the likeliest defectors. Unions praising Trump's tariffs are a problem for us and to get some of the unionized work force back on side we're going to have to do some "guys we can actually do effective protectionism for you without blowing up the fucking economy" messaging.   

But Bozo is right, policies are not nearly as important in elections as guys like Klein want to think they are. Candidate charisma matters far and away more than anything else. And 956 was right in that it helps if the candidate comes across as if they like the people whose votes they're asking for. That's why Beto came close in 2018, it's why Beshear wins, and it's why AOC and Zohran are so popular. Clinton never seemed like she liked anybody at all and Kamala felt too reserved and guided by polling in the typical Democrat politician ways. Those were bigger problems than ideological purity tests. 

 

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Posted (edited)
41 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

I'm not. I'm very aware of that fervor. But that didn't come from nowhere and it didn't actually come from churches (except for the minority of Republicans who are conservative Catholics). They developed that fervor around abortion because abortion became the stand in for segregation for the Republican party once they felt they could no longer openly support segregation on moral grounds. In other words, Republican voters embraced anti-abortion politics as a moral excuse to justify their hatred of Democrats. Being a Republican (and hating Democrats) came first and still comes first for the overwhelming majority of Republicans.

Absolutely this. Abortion became a reinforcement mechanism for a lot of Blue Dog Democrats who weren’t already happy about their party embracing the Civil Rights agenda, and played an enormous role in the party realignment that occurred from 1965 to the early 1990s. And, obviously, a significant part of that realignment was the infusion of Evangelical Christianity into Republican doctrine, so much so that one could argue that this infusion made Republicanism akin to an actual religion; hence, the religious zeal so many hold for the party as they’ve accepted Trump as their savior messiah and rejection of science, logic, etc. These folks see themselves on an actual crusade.

For example, I know this one Hispanic, The Cure-loving chick who was part of my close-knit group made up of the geeks and the freaks of my high school. She was full-on Goth back in the '80s: wore all black clothes and black lipstick, had a partially shaved head with other parts spiky, dabbled in witchcraft, etc. But her dad was an Evangelical minister, so she was kind of messed up with a weird mixture of religious beliefs. Until FB came around, I'd lost all contact with her, and come to find out that she's now full-on Religious Reich and married to an ex-military guy.

Anyway, those of us from that same group have maintained a group text chain since the beginning of the pandemic that we put together to keep us all sane. Well, within a few days of Kirk's murder, which we very carefully avoided any discussion of to placate her (I mean, none, as in, not a word), she abruptly left the group without comment. No one noticed at first, and very few of us are active on FB, but I got curious about whether she's okay (she hadn't responded to direct texts from any of us) because she's had some serious health concerns over the last few years.

She had posted the flag of the Knights Templar and spouted off about it being time to restart the Crusades with multiple posts about Charlie Fuckin' Kirk. What we seem to realize is that many of these people see themselves as called on a religious quest to fundamentally (pun intended) change this country. Their party *is* their religion now, and they are entirely unreachable by any rational argument.

Of course, this doesn't describe every single GOP voter, but I think we downplay how far gone many are. There is no policy, nor any charismatic personality from outside their fucking flock, that will convince them otherwise. They are the impervious core festering inside the Reich.

Edited to add: The abortion issue was the single cause for her embracing the GOP, which I failed to mention above.

Edited by bolverk
Posted
35 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

I wasn't trying to put him [McConaughey] forward as a good messenger for us, just that he gets mentioned around these parts with the same wistful longing as "once the Tex-Mex population gets high enough the GOP is doomed 4eva!!!!"  Obviously both are fantasies.  Anyway, sounds like it was one of those "I'm just asking questions" interviews that serve as a good reminder that most celebrities are shallow and vapid.  

After the Uvalde shooting, McConaughey called for common sense gun control or background checks. Vague goals without specific changes but that's not the end of the world from a celebrity. I have to wonder what backlash he received and how that has shaped his public statements. But he also most likely had some positive reactions as well.

From what I understand, gun control or shootings did not come up in the Rogan interview at least to a point where McConaughey could be expected to offer a gun control opinion. Wouldn't surprise me if Rogan was asked to avoid certain questions.

Posted
1 hour ago, cmontexas said:

Why the fuck are people obsessed with having the government regulate personal relationships?

Because regulating things like inheritance, child custody and responsibility, and property division (and modern similar concerns like social security, military benefits, insurance coverage, immigration benefits, medical decisions, etc) is one of the most ancient concerns of social authorities; and having every single person create sets of customizable personal contracts that lawyers and courts must then try to untangle and that will likely be grotesquely inequitable is not at all a tenable solution. 

Posted
7 minutes ago, bolverk said:

For example, I know this one Hispanic, The Cure-loving chick who was part of my close-knit group made up of the geeks and the freaks of my high school. She was full-on Goth back in the '80s: wore all black clothes and black lipstick, had a partially shaved head with other parts spiky, dabbled in witchcraft, etc. But her dad was an Evangelical minister, so she was kind of messed up with a weird mixture of religious beliefs. Until FB came around, I'd lost all contact with her, and come to find out that she's now full-on Religious Reich and married to an ex-military guy.

This happens a lot. I know a handful of "chill vibes" stoner women who were very sexually active, anti-authoritarian, and even opposed the Iraq war. Eventually they settled down with some chud, usually a cop but sometimes a used car dealer or pool supply shopowner (always an asshole cut from that "small business owner" cloth). Fast forward a few years, and they're typical facebook MAGAt tradwives who likely feel a deep sense of shame over all the premarital sex they had and all the drugs they did (and in some cases helped their boyfriends sell). Like all the other MAGA zealots, they're broken beyond repair.

Posted (edited)

Oh, boy. Here we go. What a dumbass. Posted this here because apparently (or afaik) the party is still backing him, and the Rs & Turnip are making as much political hay of that as they can.

Virginia’s Democratic nominee for attorney general facing pressure over resurfaced text messages

Quote

Virginia’s Democratic candidate for attorney general Jay Jones is facing widespread criticism for text messages he sent in 2022 suggesting a colleague should be shot.

In a private exchange between Jones and Republican Virginia Delegate Carrie Coyner, Jones griped about how the then Republican speaker of the House of Delegates Todd Gilbert was paying tribute to a former moderate Democratic lawmaker who died, according to screenshots of text messages obtained by CNN.

“Three people, two bullets. Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot. Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” the text reads in part, referring to Gilbert and the two dictators.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/04/politics/virginia-democratic-nominee-attorney-general-facing-pressure

Edited by wood
Posted
3 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

This happens a lot. I know a handful of "chill vibes" stoner women who were very sexually active, anti-authoritarian, and even opposed the Iraq war. Eventually they settled down with some chud, usually a cop but sometimes a used car dealer or pool supply shopowner (always an asshole cut from that "small business owner" cloth). Fast forward a few years, and they're typical facebook MAGAt tradwives who likely feel a deep sense of shame over all the premarital sex they had and all the drugs they did (and in some cases helped their boyfriends sell). Like all the other MAGA zealots, they're broken beyond repair.

Pretty much nails it. She's the one with whom I'm the closest to having made that radical transition. To fill in more details, she moved out to El Paso, became a hairdresser (i.e., no education beyond high school), and met this guy who was stationed at Fort Bliss. Got back in touch again, and she's ranting about the liberals killing all the babies. I still love her because she was integral to our tight-knit group of outcasts in a rural West Texas high school, but my gawd, she is lost.

Posted
5 minutes ago, wood said:

Posted this here because apparently the party is still backing him, and the Rs & Turnip are making as much political hay of that as they can.

I saw that, I don’t know, let them?  I didn’t know who Jay Jones was before yesterday and now I do.  
 

“I want to make absolutely clear that I don’t condone any kind of violence and a private text message between two colleagues shouldn’t be construed as a threat.  That said, I hate that son of a bitch Todd Gilbert and I hope his BBQ is always over done.”

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Posted (edited)
29 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

This happens a lot. I know a handful of "chill vibes" stoner women who were very sexually active, anti-authoritarian, and even opposed the Iraq war. Eventually they settled down with some chud, usually a cop but sometimes a used car dealer or pool supply shopowner (always an asshole cut from that "small business owner" cloth). Fast forward a few years, and they're typical facebook MAGAt tradwives who likely feel a deep sense of shame over all the premarital sex they had and all the drugs they did (and in some cases helped their boyfriends sell). Like all the other MAGA zealots, they're broken beyond repair.

LOL, wow. This is the couple nextdoor, or at least the guy, to a tee. Really wild in college and afterward, lots of drugs and partying, etc. Now he's Mr. Christian Low-key MAGA. She's not so much, but she won't say anything against him unless she goes out with my wife & her friends & they get her drinking.

Edited by wood
Posted
15 minutes ago, cmontexas said:

Them making sourdough is an indicator 

Hey now let’s not get ridiculous!  Seriously though, I’m done with empathy, rules and norms.  If your 80 year old mom is slowing me down in the parking lot, I’m gonna shove her ass into the pavement, take her groceries and tell you to fuck off, let the supreme court sort it out.  That’s what America voted for, that’s what they’re gonna fucking get. No mercy.  

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, bolverk said:

Pretty much nails it. She's the one with whom I'm the closest to having made that radical transition. To fill in more details, she moved out to El Paso, became a hairdresser (i.e., no education beyond high school), and met this guy who was stationed at Fort Bliss. Got back in touch again, and she's ranting about the liberals killing all the babies. I still love her because she was integral to our tight-knit group of outcasts in a rural West Texas high school, but my gawd, she is lost.

It's sad because they all had so much potential. Casualties of a microscopic dating pool and the lower standards that creates. How much better would their lives have been if they'd made it to a real city or even a college town? Now, they're prisoners in their own homes, and in many respects prisoners of their own restrictive beliefs, tormented by all kinds of paranoid fears like demonic possession, vaccination, and roving Venezuelan gangs.

Edited by chainsaw
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Posted
2 hours ago, wood said:

Oh, boy. Here we go. What a dumbass. Posted this here because apparently (or afaik) the party is still backing him, and the Rs & Turnip are making as much political hay of that as they can.

Virginia’s Democratic nominee for attorney general facing pressure over resurfaced text messages

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/04/politics/virginia-democratic-nominee-attorney-general-facing-pressure

This actually popped up last week. I doubt it moves the needle here.

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