Yesterday, in Time magazine, Eric Cortellessa explained that the electoral strategy of the Trump campaign was to get men who don’t usually vote, particularly young ones, to turn out for Trump.
I am now feeling that the tide has turned and Kamala Harris will be our next president. Trump keeps showing his incredible pazzo crazy loco side and enough of our independent minded voters have shifted to Harris.
I can’t wait for the inauguration. I might even travel to Washington to be witness of this historic event.
I think the ‘tide turning’ impact of this new polling is so crucial in its own right. It counters the rights’ flood of bogus poll results before Tuesday’s election and will help counter the post tally narrative that a Harris/Walz win is somehow anomalous. It will also further unhinge Trump in his last two days of campaigning.
In my comment above, I was feeling more optimistic about a Harris victory. I still believe that she will potentially win the most electors. Now I’m less optimistic. If the MAGAs make enough false complaints enough to slow down the process, the House can make the call and they have a majority in case anyone has thought it through. This is the secret between Trump and a speaker Johnson is that they will make Trump president. I’m going to predict that if the Joint Chiefs of Staff don’t step forward and temporarily suspend the constitution, then Trump will be our next president. In this case, I’m in favor of a military coup. Just remember my prediction. Unfortunately, I believe I will be correct. I would take a military leadership any day over Trump. His is evil personified.
A Y, I’m laughing really hard and with utter joy re your response to Heather’s super letter today. What a treat for me
particularly since my darling adolescent pup Gabriel woke me up an hour early as I imagined the rest of the world slept an extra hour. (He’s supposed to know better as a standard Poodle!)
Counterpoint, the garbage truck failed to stop him. That's how this election feels like. Imagine if he still stumbles but rams his way into the presidency.
He won't, Shaf. I have no seeress powers, but I do have faith in women and followers of LeBron James, Schwarzenegger, JLo, Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, etc. Also in lawyers like Mark Elias who are prepped and ready to fight off legal shenanigans.
saw a comment somewhere else about his difficulties getting into the garbage truck. They said it was to be expected because he is wearing a girdle, diapers, lifts on his shoes, some hairy creature on his head, and is greased up on all exposed skin with orange goo.
No one needs to hate the felon - we just need not to vote for him and be ready to fight off post-election fakery. He's dangerous, vulgar, and deeply unwell, but we only have to stop him.
There may not be ONE poll untouched by Putin and his bots!
Didn’t any reader so far stay up for KH on SNL last night? Much harder dialogue than Trump’s “test” of intelligence. Wonderful that she could take to SNL to prove both her intelligence and stamina. Confess to having never laughed so long, hard, or so surprised. (The surprise was that my recently healed rib muscles were up to the test)
Then there’s Tim at the end of Heather today. Dear ones, we are going to have some fun for a change! (I would NEVER predict the results of an election.)
Lisa! At last I found you. By now you know everything. I want to add for everyone that you also want to see Rachel Maddow with Ali Velshi, the serious side of “Keep calmala and carry onala.” And VOTE.
The SNL cold open last night was funny and wonderful... Gaffigan's Walz, Carvey's Biden, and Rudolph's Harris are spot on. I don't know who played the orange menace, but he was also very good. There's no point in making predictions at this late date, Virginia. The cake's pretty much in the oven.
Why do you say "bogus" poll results? There are certainly some polls conducted by GOP- leaning pollsters but there are an equal number of left/Dem leaning polls which pretty much balance out the GOP polls. If anything, the Dem polls have been MORE confirming of the potential for a Trump victory which would tend to suggest that the GOP polls are not bogus at all. This is also confirmed to a lesser degree by the major non- board polls like Times/Sienna.
I am glad to see that the latest polls are tending more towards Harris but I find it offensive when we write comments which make unsubstantiated claims of bias against us. It is just doing the same crap that Trump does and it is wrong.
Jon Rosen, I am hoping the whole country can eventually move away from this "us vs them" mentality that so many have been lured into. Not long ago, I learned that George Washington was totally against political parties. He predicted if we went down that road, it would tear the country apart. I am a tiny, blue dot in a red state. I can testify that there are good people who have been fooled and brainwashed. We need to stop thinking of our fellow humans as enemies.
Heather rarely says something she cannot document. Perhaps you might do some of your own work to see if what YOU say is true.
Some weeks ago a letter referred to the 60 new "polling" groups set up by heritage foundation affiliated groups to do exactly what she claims, twist the polling to make people think resistance is futile.
While it may be true that the Democrats are doing the same thing, they're usually not as quick to the shenanigans as the rethugs and the maggots.
Do the work before you accuse Dr Richardson of making bogus claims
Jay Kuo, in his research and reporting, confirmed Dr. Richardson's reporting of fake polls set up by The Heritage Foundation. They were designed favor Trump and distort the averages, which were beginning to show Kamala gaining the advantage.
There has been a flood of right-leaning polls released that tilt 3-4 points different from the independents, according to Simon Rosenberg whose Substack is worth following. These polls shift the averages and support Trump claims that he must be winning. That said, every one of them seems to be used in Democratic fund raising.
“The red wave 2024 campaign is far bigger this time, and has started far earlier. Here’s what we know:
They’ve released 70+ polls into the averages, with 31 r-aligned groups having released polls since August. These polls are consistently 1-5 points more Republican than the independent polls, as was the case in 2022
A majority of recent polls in NC and PA are right-aligned. A majority
While their focus has been on the states, last week they really leaned into the national polling average and moved it and other forecasts this weekend
There are new actors this year - offshore crypto company Polymarket, Elon and X, and a slew of very aggressive right-wing amplifiers and influencers
The launching of a new daily national tracking poll by TIPP, a far right institution, is an escalation that will be putting downward pressure on the national average every day until the election
The emergence of TIPP as the pointy edge of the red wave spear is notable given how outrageously right wing it is. It’s corporate slogan is “talent loaned from God” - Rush Limbaugh’s catchphrase. It offers a steady stream of commentary that would be at home at Fox News or the RNC site. Some recent examples:
Harris’s Fiery Campaign of Rage Exposes Her Unpresidential Temperament
The Left Is Still Obsessed With 2020 Election Deniers
U.S. Government Pushing Climate Lies On Schoolchildren
Night And Day: Trump’s Command Of Economy Exposes Harris’s Novice Approach.”
Joan, the way I see it is that polls these days are enerally poor indicators of anything -- they are used as cudgels of influence: "Give me money, because we are losing", or "Our candidate is so far ahead, don't believe the news", etc. MAGA is including garbage polls in their releases, and when you average garbage, then garbage is the result.
However, the latest polling is showing a trend toward Harris, with the apparently highly-respected Selzer poll in Iowa leading the way. These polls are easily explainable by the messaging of each candidate -- Harris offers hope, the felon offers personal grievances (even against a bad mic used in disgusting fashion) and promises of chaos and retribution. There is a clear wave that seems to be sweeping across the country, with Harris riding it like a surfer girl (sorry for that analogy) while an exhausted trompy is caught in the undertow.
Assuming a Harris/Walz victory, using respected polls as proof of her legitimate election will help to deflate MAGA complaints of a stolen race.
Also, I just read a post from Amy Siskind on Threads who has been doing a lot of door knocking in PA. She says that the reason a lot of polls aren't picking up what the Selzer poll did is because women are afraid to reveal their choice in the presence of their husbands. She notes that many doors would be opened by the man, and the woman standing behind him would silently mouth the name "Harris".
The felon's mime-with-the-mic was in extremely bad taste, especially in context of a political event, but disgusting? Let's not be prudes when there are so many better reasons to oppose MAGA.
Well if THAT is the result, we should all be pretty happy that those so-called bogus polls are released because anything that helps Democratic fundraising in my opinion is good for the GOOD GUYS!
"There are certainly some polls conducted by GOP- leaning pollsters ..."
A flurry of red wave polls pushed the polling averages down in the past few weeks and tipped them to Trump - illegitimately in my view. Since late August 32 right-affiliated organizations have released over 125 polls into the averages In the last few days we’ve seen a huge escalation of these efforts, with 58 polls released since Sunday, a majority of all polls released this week.
Read more about this illicit effort in this recent New Republic article, a new NYT piece, my recent post and catch Trump admitting that some of these red wave polls showing him ahead are fraudulent. Our daily reminder:
Rs would only be working so hard to shape the national narrative to make it look like Trump is winning if they believed he wasn’t. These red wave polls are a sign of desperation, weakness and a campaign that knows it’s losing.
For a deeper dive on all this data catch my Hopium presentation from Wednesday night with special guest Tom Bonier. Tom and I also joined the MeidasTouch crew on Thursday for a very indepth conversation.
The fundamental problem with this argument is that it is COUNTERINTUITIVE.
A wave of polls showing Trump ahead is NOT likely to INCREASE the vote for Trump but is actually likely to DECREASE it, because people who see their candidate winning are likely to say "well my vote isn't that critical after all because my candidate is going to win easily". I honestly don't know who is really releasing these Pro Trump polls but I expect it will increase the vote for Harris. In that case I'm pretty happy for that.
All to be negated by a roomful of elector/selectors within whose minds even the pollsters have no clue as to what may exist. Who sold us that bridge anyway? Don't bother me with some "poll".
Jon, doing the same crap Trump does is wrong, but define "wrong." The following is my definition.
MAGA for Dummies: How to understand Project 2025 in 4 easy steps.
Step 1: Recognize that we don’t just observe because we also assume, and our assumptions interpret our observations. Then we draw a conclusion. And then we choose one of the following options. Option 1 (aka the moral option) involves subjecting our assumptions to rigorous skepticism. Option 2 (aka the MAGA/immoral option) involves allowing our assumptions to distort how we interpret what we observe. And Option 3 is that there is no Option 3.
Step 2: Rank your superiority relative to other people. Assumption 1 (aka the moral assumption) is that you are tied for first place with roughly eight billion other human beings. Assumption 2 (aka the immoral/MAGA assumption) is that not everyone is tied for first place. And Assumption 3 is that there is no Assumption 3.
Step 3: Acknowledge that when left untested, and below the level of conscious awareness, unconscious cognitive assumptions distort how observations are interpreted.
Step 4: Recognize that Project 2025 is the at end of a march of a thousand miles that began with a single step in an immoral direction, and then go fast, slow, or anywhere in between, but always in the opposite direction (see Luke 10:25-37).
It’s okay for an individual to feel superior to others if doing so doesn’t have a negative influence on other people's lives, except that doing so will have a negative impact on other people's lives, especially if the individual is the richest man on the planet, or the most powerful human on the planet, aka POTUS.
That's a long way around to the point that the MAGA agenda, while seeming to favor the rich, is bad for everyone, whether you look at it from a logical, moral, or financial perspective.
Take a listen to Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us, who writes precisely and convincingly about how racism hurts all of us. Any situation in which the privileged people oppress the other people, ends up hurting absolutely everyone with the zero-sum thinking. Even wealthy powerful people lose in that system, even though the poor and powerless lose even more.
I agree with your description of the MAGA agenda's effect, and I would agree that I took a long way around to get to that point, but that was not my intent. My intent was to describe the actionable "root cause" of the MAGA agenda.
"I have labored carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions." —Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
So then, in my summation, I have made the case against a dictator. For the record, a benevolent dictator is an oxymoron. Greg, IMHO, your assumptions are distorting your interpretation of what you observed in my summation.
And, to make way for such "A benevolent dictator" we have 350 million people accepting the decisions (personal agendas) of a room full of elector/selectors deciding the outcome for us. That's what we gots.. aren't it? Ayuhh! huh.
Go ahead and stick your head in the sand if you want to but polls are a highly reflective way of understanding which way the electorate is heading. You can ignore polls, but those of us who understand why they are used and how to understand them find them highly enlightening. Personally I prefer light, not darkness and if properly understood, polls present a LOT of light during an election. But if you want to stumble around in the darkness, be my guest.
Hmmm. Red tsunami 2022. Clinton 2016. Highly reflective?
You might try coming off the high and mighty tone. It would be a lot more pleasant talking with you and people might actually agree with you on something.
I don't think polls are intentionally bogus--professional pollsters try their very vest for accuracy, because their livelihood depends on it. That said, the deck is stacked against accurate polling by several things: First, people will lie about who they're voting for, because there is a lot of social downside to voting for Trump or Harris, depending on what tribe your family and friends are in. Two, most of America doesn't answer the phone to strange numbers any more. Three, the only published phone numbers are on landlines, and relatively few people younger than 60 have landlines any more--we all switched to cellphones only. Cellphones don't have White Pages, so pollsters have no way of calling us except by accident.
All of which makes polling not bogus, but certainly not hyper-accurate.
I do not disagree with you although i might argue some of your points. If you notice my argument was VERY SPECIFICALLY about the user of the word bogus which was quite prominent in the OP. Polls are NOT "hyper accurate". That's why they are polls, not electing results. But historically they are PRETTY accurate especially when looked at as a group, not as individual polls. Absolutely accurate? Of course not, that is why (a) they are given with margins of error and (b) why we have actual elections rather than just using the polls as our final results. But those two factors do not in any way discount the validity of the poll results as important trends to understand. This has been proven over and over again.
Have they been wrong? Of course. (See 2016 when the polls predicted Clinton's victory).
Have they GENERALLY been wrong? Not at all. Generally they have been highly pedicure of the final results.
Thanks for this view, Jon, much appreciated. If they are highly predictive of final results for the most part, are the legitimate polls predicting Harris or Trump to win? You may have said this already, but the comment strings get so long and/or jumbled I can't recall.
Some polls ARE bogus, Jon, like the one that had TFG up by 17 points in WI. I may be wrong about the state and point spread, but there was definitely a poll that was faked to make him look like he's doing better than he is. As a predictive tool, polls are completely unreliable in any case. We are constantly being reminded that they're a "snapshot in time." We absolutely know that R's are early voting in greater numbers than before, but we don't know who they're voting for... the outsized female lead in voter numbers may indicate a landslide for Harris. Or may not. We'll find out soon enough.
I didn't say there weren't ANY bogus polls. The OP suggested that virtually all the polls showing Trump ahead were bogus which is obviously patent nonsense. To defend that OP by saying "well look here, THIS poll was bogus" is just as nonsensical. Either defend the original characterization lthat virtually all right wing polls showing Trump ahead are/were bogus" or say something else. Pointing to one outlier as evidence of proof of the whole statement is a nonsensical debate strategy. It makes your statement, which is probably true, into a weak argument for a false supposition.
I'm not defending the OP, only responding to your question "Why do you say 'bogus' polls?" I don't want to argue for the sake of argument, Jon. I think what skews national averages is that SOME polls show unusually high results, although I have no idea whether there are more right-wing or left-wing polls that are in this outlier category. My primary point was that polls are unreliable per se, and especially as predictors of election results.
Ok, Simon Rosenberg has been stressing the wave of red polls of late. He NEVER mentions the same of blue polls, you're saying he's throwing the narrative?
I'm not saying it but I wouldn't consider it a surprise. Simon is not exactly an unbiased reporter. He is a very active Democratic pollster and strategist and his goal is clearly to elect Harris. So I wouldn't point to him as a neutral source of information any more than I would consider Alex Jones neutral. I would CERTAINLY consider Simon to be a more HONEST conveyor of information than Alex Jones but unbiased? Absolutely NOT!
Because polls show the trends of voting and are generally HIGHLY predictive of the final results especially when conducted close to the election. Are they always right? Depends on what you mean. Since polls always come with a margin of error, then in fact they are typically almost always right. I.e. if the final result is within the margin of error that the poll was right. That means that even if they predict candidate B will win plus or minus 3 pts, then if A wins by less than three points the poll was right. Unfortunately people are incredibly ignorant about the way polls should be used. They see the polls saying B Is ahead and think that means B is the winner. So if you misunderstand polls that suggests you should learn more about what they mean, not stick your head in the sand and act like they are meaningless.
OK the fact that they just wont influence WHO I vote for makes me one of the incredibly ignorant voters. They are meaningless to me - so hanging on their predictions - as far as I myself am concerned - they're a waste of time.
Thats my personal opinion - I think I'm still entitled to one.
The NYT magazine has a cover about the wing nut takeover of election boards, so it may be a while before we know the outcome. I will do the crossword and the acrostic and not read the article. We both voted for Harris a while ago and our election office reported to us that our ballots have been received and ready for counting. Voting could be easy and simple, but that wouldn't favor Rs.
Yep get prepared for the swamp apocalypse. I gather the volume of republican law suits over electoral issues as the vote is in progress resembles a tsunami, a litany of accusations in search of so little to find....
And his campaign staff has him stumping heavily in North Carolina--something like 10+ stops for speeches (?)--which I think will be VERY trying for a stressed, mentally unstable, physically unwell, befuddled old guy. Wonder what the NEXT Trump startlement will be. I've had to add some new (and rather unusual) squares to my bingo card!
Because Don the Con spent the first week of his presidency denying the fact that the inaugural crowd was NOT huuugest ever. Remember his inaugural address that Bush said was some crazy shit? 🤡💩🎃🤢🤮
"Crazy shit" is a perfect description of all things Trump. And Kamala is sanity, community and empathy. That's why she will be the next President of the United States.
My husband and I also voted blue all the way down the ballot. IIt's been a long couple of years watching him gain traction again. I predicted he would win in 2016 and I've thought he would again in 2024, until about late Sept. Now, I am sure that we will win this. 💙
Hasn't God's autonomy been compromised enough by mere mortals who cannot, by definition, have a clue what's in God's mind? Besides, God is notoriously agnostic about religion and politics.
Thanks for sharing that very informative link that analyzes the current polling, and comparing it to historical patterns. So interesting, & encouraging! Definitely worth listening to the whole thing!
The last time I was in DC was for the Women’s March in 2017 protesting the grotesque horror of the orange nightmare. There were SO many more of us than there were of the MAGAts. While it was an historic event, it felt…so defeating. But if Harris wins, I might just have to be there in DC for that. Exciting and uplifting and a much needed breath of fresh air for our beloved country. 💙💙💙🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Phone Conversation Between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto
Jan. 27, 2017
A phone call comes in to the White House and is sent to the president’s office.
Trump: “President Niento, Donald Trump here.”
Niento: “Bueno. Presidente Trump, que dia es convenience para mi visita a Washington?”
Trump: “Cut the shit, Enrique. I know you speak English. We are meeting next month. How much is Mexico kicking in for the wall? We need border control.”
Nieto: “Senior Pendejo, I am not giving one peso for that wall. Shouldn’t we talk about NAFTA instead?”
Trump: “Nieto, I’m planning on building a big wall – a really big wall. I will charge 20 percent tariffs on all Mexican imports until the wall is finished. As for NAFTA, you can send that agreement down the shithole Rio Grande. And I know what pendejo means. It means a president that uses his pen to sign executive orders.”
Niento: “Presidente Pendejo, I’ve got better things to do with my time besides listening to a half-baked potato like you. Our meeting is cancelled. Say hola to the family.”
We live just outside of DC, and our North Carolina daughter booked her plane tickets for the inauguration a month ago. It's going to be one hell of a party.
Quick -- turn around 3 times, spit, and throw salt over your shoulder. Don't invite a jinx
The media hype of the Selzer Poll showing Harris ahead of Trump may spur Trump voters to the polls on Tuesdays in droves. We're not across the finish line yet.
And I will need to sell off the remainder of my books. I am getting over bronchitis and couldn’t make it for her speech. I have 150 — 200 books to sell, lol, before inauguration.
This husband and wife voted blue top to bottom. Bill, while a part of me wants to share your positivity, the jinx factor preys on my mind. This morning the Asshole is talking about shooting reporters. His mental decline is so obvious, making who to vote for on November 5th obvious.
Donable Lector simulating giving his bum-fuck buddy Putin a blow job on stage........an
d spittting out the Russian load......if that turns on the Maggat rapists and porn freaks........ What are these deviants going to do if Moses Mike gets the chance to ban porn and take away a womenst right to vote??? God help the women of the nation.......it will be open hunting season on them with no protections!!!
If porn sites are banned and Republicans are blamed, that might flip the bro vote. You know - hit them in the only place where they might have empathy.
Greg Palast is investigating the right wing plans to break up the voting. There may be physical violence. There have been purges of voters preventing them from voting. The US Supreme court just reversed a lower court decision to prevent 1600 voters.
The women of this country, the larger segment of the electorate, are voting not only with self-interest and self-protection (screw the rapists promise to be their "protector"), but also to save the country.
And this senior-aged male is loving every bit of it. Let's bring it home -- vote BLUE up and down the ballot, if you haven't already. 💙🇱🇷🩵🇱🇷💙🇱🇷🩵🇱🇷💙
I remember singing that song karaoke style from my mom’s lp as a preteen…unfortunately my mother made it clear to me ‘kept’..rather shot.. my dreams of being a professional singer ‘down.’ Tough but accurate love. 🙃
Thanks for the Helen Reddy reminder Doug. Was one of my favorite songs back when she first recorded it. I am woman, hear me roar! My response to DJT, I don’t need or want your protection. Proud Blue Voter.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s approach, which respects women’s autonomy and right to choose, is set to win. The Dobbs decision has energized women and seniors, especially in battleground states, creating a powerful coalition. With strong support from independent voters and increased turnout from women, Harris and Walz have effectively widened the gender gap in their favor. Trump’s reliance on outdated gender tropes and divisive tactics only strengthens this shift. All signs point to a Harris-Walz victory as these motivated groups deliver a decisive message on Election Day.
I am also grateful for the female vote, Frank, but I'd rather not demonize testosterone. Ovarians can be equally cruel and vicious, after all. Females have our physical superiority, like interactive brain hemispheres, longevity, and the ability to build muscle all our lives; males have their physical superiority, as in greater length of bone, strength of muscle, and better spacial perception. That just gives gender a situational edge. I'd say women have the edge in this election because we always turn out to vote in greater numbers than men, and we have a greater stake in the outcome.
Good for you, Beth. "Tim Walz told a crowd: 'I kind of have a feeling that women all across this country, from every walk of life, from either party, are going to send a loud and clear message to Donald Trump next Tuesday, November 5, whether he likes it or not.'” President Harris by three-to-five percentage points in the popular vote with well over three hundred votes in the Electoral College. 😇
Thank you Professor. It’s interesting how often society relies on women, yet wants to refuse them equality bodily, economically and politically. We VOTE! And when we vote, we win.
Be careful, women of America! Lest the Blue wave is stopped by a Red Moses… The Convicted Orange Felon, and most importantly, his cronies like Musk, Bannon, et al, will try to have Mike Johnson throw the election to Rump. And if that dosn’t work, they will appeal to the Extreme Court: if a black woman wins the election, it MUST be fraudelent, right? They will rule 6:3 in favour and decide that Rump becomes president. That is when the real fight for liberty begins…
By Jan 6, Hakeem Jeffries will be Speaker of the House. Mike Johnson will be irrelevant.
The corrupt court is more worrisome.
However: our lawyers are better at this than theirs. The orange menace is not head of the federal government this time. The consequences of accepting Supreme Court interference are a lot clearer now than they were at the time of Bush v Gore, and there has been more time for Biden to plan.
That said, a landslide is a lot harder to manipulate than a close call.
That is why, regardless of the schemes of the Rich Right, America needs a massive voter turnout for Kamala. Vote like your life depends on it! We here in Europe depend on it, too...
MadRussian, the video is of Mark Elias and Jamie Raskin, moderated by Brian Tyler Cohen, talking about all the measures already in place to forestall MAGA attempts to reverse the popular and EC votes. Our protections are the amended Electoral College Vote Count Act, that the new house will be sworn in 3 days before the official EC certification, which will put Jeffries in the speaker's chair, not Mike Johnson. The EC cert will be presided over by Harris regardless of the new Senate, and Biden will still be president on Jan 6, so the felon's ability to manipulate or intimidate the count is negligible. The biggest threat comes from failure of states to certify, which jiggers the number of electoral college votes needed to win. By the new rules, if secretaries of state can't certify, governors can, and only one swing state has a republican governor. There's more, but those are the highlights.
VP Harris and her team are well aware of the dangers. Yes the felon/rapist will try to steal the election, we must be ready and not fall into despair. It may be several days or a couple of weeks, but stay strong, she will prevail!
Somebody has to do it. Sorry, but I'm not getting on the garbage truck, I'm warning you. Yes, you need strength through fun, but keep your eye on the enemy. Be positive but vigilant. As Carla said: your job is to vote! Never underestimate your enemy, don't give a victory party before the real battle. Those are very important principles from the Art of War.
Dutch Mike, even though I agree with you, the elation I felt at the SNL proof of intelligence and humor of KH, after all the insults to her and women, after all the polluted polls, a moment to celebrate for the work ahead is appropriate.
Pick up that momentum of that elation and work with it! It's important to break the sphere of hate, dark and gloom that the MAGAts have been preaching. But don't underestimate their vileness...
Your point is valid, Dutch, but it's a choice, not an obligation, to make it. Let's just agree to have fun and not be complacent at the same time. Dems can walk and chew gum, remember?
Indeed, and they are well established as expressed by the words "history repeats itself". Seems like 'ten years' is enough to soften our brain, maybe 15 for events like the holocaust. Out of sight.., out of mind. Unless some 'thing' actualy touches (smacks us) our lives, we tend to move on. Then, all of a sudden... whammmo! Human-nature(?) - Keep yer guard up.
The imminent abortion ban and termination of social security and medicare are things that actually touch most of us right now, MadRussian. And turn out is higher than usual among women and seniors, who are reliable voters in any election. I'm not saying it's in the bag, just that there's no cause for high-end pessimism.
I think you are way underestimating the popular vote this year! The orange blight has never won the popular vote. To quote Shakespeare "Hell hath no fury, like a woman scorned." Protect ME and my precious granddaughters and grand nieces, whether we like it or not. Think again, Kamala Harris will be president!
The only champion we have in that instance, Reader/Writer, is better lawyering. It won't sway Alito or Thomas, but Coney-Barret and Roberts are persuadable. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are wild cards, but with Roberts and Coney-Barret we have a 5:4 decision to do the right thing, and it could be a 7:2 decision if Gorsuch and Kavanaugh decide to re-read the constitution.
I wish I knew. I hope Joe and Kamala have some ideas up their sleeve; up to now, Moscow Mitch and the Heritage Foundation played the long game very well.
Love your support, Dutch, but I'd also love to see more men pushing other men to vote ,La. Men are not the enemy; bros, incels, patriarchs, and preditors are.
Thanks so much for stressing that point. I don't come into contact with many American men because I live in Europe and don't visit social media, but I'll do what I can!
That indeed is "interesting"... with centuries of effective male dominance, treating women as too emotional, less intelligent, response for triggering "original sin", on and on. Not that there wasn't pushback. Then, Roe v Wade, which has let out a lot of related reactionary sentiment turning into government policy. As Heather has remarked, women statistically have become a Democrat Party mainstay. Women may also pack the churches relative to men, but in evangelical world patriarchy reigns. It's a messy world. Agreed, nowhere but forward.
Which makes this election so important. It’s more than that. It’s a cultural shift. Those are HARD. We shouldn’t take that for granted. It’s what pushes back when we push forward and @CarrieNewcomer wrote an excellent substack about exactly that.
Don't forget that Western science values "primary" qualities over "secundary" qualities since the 15-16th century (Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Isaac Newton et al). Primary: everything that can be quantified: weight, speed, acceleration, etc. Secondary: everything that cannot be quantified: smell, taste, sensations, feelings, emotions, etc. Primary: logic, analytic, male. Secondary: organic, intuitive, female. Judging by the words, one need not ask which category has been deemed more important for the last 500 years...
Heather took longer today to do her Letter than she has in a long time.
It shows in the careful history she recounts from how the mythology of the rugged cowboy matches in parallel myth for obedient, docile, stay-at-home women.
Heather also narrates much more good history for how American women have gradually been bucking this mythology -- now anxious to defend personal freedoms as well as basic family integrity and medical choices. A groundswell may be unfolding, uplifting -- as in the poll from red, red Iowa now indicating women and other demographics there may also be finally fed up with the orange vulgarian, and with obviously corrupt elites such as the Clarence court's medievalists and their immunity-from-crime fantasists for their favorite vulgar tyrant, or monarch.
Good to see Heather so well at it. Working long, long into her night to get it correct, dot the i's and cross the t's of our ongoing history.
And no break for Heather, either, in a long time.
We're all anxious for respite from the orang felon and his reign of criminality, rape, vulgarity, and repeated calls for his cult mob to inflict for him insult, terror, and violence.
it's worth noting that the last successful liberal movement in this country, legalizing same-sex marriage, was based on expanding individual rights. The pro-choice (anti Dobbs) movement grew legs and now wings, by promoting the preservation/return of women's rights to choose individual bodily autonomy. Even the Women's movement itself is based on increasing women's individual rights (I can remember when women could not have a credit cart in their own name).
This pursuit of individual rights has been consistently opposed by the 'cowboy-culture' right, supposedly the party of the rugged individualism. Really, it's based on the control and domination of the many by the few - not about individual rights at all. So toxic has it become that they have had to field as their presidential candidate a superannuated mentally ill performer (yes, at his core DJT is a performer - hence the focus on crowd size) whom I will from now on refer to as Donvict - as it is my 1st amendment right to do so :)
Protect our rights, our laws, our pocketbooks, and our sanity. Vote on Tuesday, November 5th, if you haven't already done so by early balloting. Thanks for giving me a ranting platform Phil!
Steve, as I have mentioned here once before, I think if “we” gave TFFFG a White House “set” and (actors) “cabinet” & staff and film crew, maybe to be shown on YouTube, or whatever his media platform is, or X (since Musk is such a fan-boy) and let him be the “pretendident” he’d be happy as a orange clam! It could be the epitome of an “unreality” show!!!
But when you recall, correctly, how the orange felon has long been primarily a performer, you also bring to the fore two things:
1) We all need artists, performances, humanities that speak to our many-complicated feelings;
and 2) our schools dumped humanities so the tyranny of standardized testing might tyrannize all the more for its abstracted categories, its fit of all life to group logic only, and its further conceits of all life as units only in linear marching.
These conceits serve not only to float the dark money packagers (and accompanying medievalists, or cowboy fantasists), but more necessarily to kill any who cherish the individual, the nuanced personal, and any communities respectful of that.
I humbly suggest that schools devote as much time to history and civics as they do to math and science. And I mean true history as opposed to the "white washed" versions. Kids need to know what the wars were all about. The necessary ones and the foolish ones. They need to know about "Tulsa" and the "Shirtwaist Factory" Fire.
YES!, Phil, education in the Humanities is an important part of civilizing the human experience, embracing history, literature, philosophy, culture, and the arts, to create a more thoughtful, empathetic civilization. Authoritarians don't like the teaching of the Humanities.
Phil, as I remember it, standardized testing was touted as a way to document substandard schooling in inadequately funded schools. It then grew the additional head of first determining which teachers got merit pay and then of which teachers got to keep their jobs in inadequately funded schools. Once the underperforming schools (due, in large part, to lack of resources) were identified, in Houston, Texas their governance was taken over by a person who had just four years experience teaching and a failed charter school (closed for dwindling enrollment), but plenty of chutzpah. In his vision, teaching is disrupted by “observers” and libraries are closed.
I met a woman last year who had retired from a Texas teaching job despite never trained for her job. She told me that the principal was very glad to have her, because she knew how to discipline her students.
Steve, you’re right about individual rights. As far as I’m concerned, Clarence Thomas is going after all of the rights granted since the 1960’s (except, of course, the right to interracial marriage). Many writers predicted that, as soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned, the anti-abortion forces would take aim at contraception—and now they are doing just that. I’ve known of women who made the mistake of giving birth in a Catholic hospital and denied the right to a tubal ligation when they had a C-section.
I call him the orange blight. I am sickened by the division he has sown among our family, neighbors and communities. The effects of hatred, ignorance and lies that he spreads will sadly last longer than the impact that COVID-19 has had on our society and the world. He is a malignant tumor in our nation.
The old actual cowboy mythology has been replaced by newer version of a ‘cowboy’ the white male computer coder/tech wunder boy. If the country wants to stop fighting that mythology it needs to replace it. There need to be viable heroic models of other ways to be ‘a man’ made popular and enticing.
That's s why I loved Harris's choice of Walz as a vice presidential candidate. The guy talks like someone who cares about people. He coached and he taught social studies, which is a great role model.
Debbie has run an amazing campaign in my opinion. Hopefully, having the pro-birth question on the ballot will help her and the fact that DeSantis is such an awful governor. Rick Scott is just another rich billionaire who keeps buying his political seats with the Medicare/Medicaid funds he stole from us. And it keeps working for him.
May the good people of Florida finally through him out for good.
Rick Scott should have been fined every dollar he was paid while overseeing the largest Medicare fraud in history. Debbie Mucarsell-Powell COULD pull this off.
Not only is reproductive choice on the ballot - but also marijuana legalization.
In Scott's 2018 election to the Senate, he won by only 10,000 votes of 8 million cast.
And let's see.... he wants to sunset the laws creating Social Security and Medicare?
I got a feeling....that he has alienated the young AND the old!
Phil- Heather has been going strong during the run-up to the election for sure. On many days she has kept this old guy sane by putting the election into perspective.
Even though every day all we hear is how the race is tied in every state and across the country, her words which have often echoed the same thing are somehow reassuring.
"Medievalists" is the perfect descriptor for the Medievalist Majority. If the Extreme Court isn't checked, I expect they will soon decide it's time to start burning uppity women for being witches. Their misogynist rulings are legally killing women. This has to stop.
The Supreme Court is actually violating the law. 1) that stupid presidential immunity decision 2)letting VA purge voter rolls 90 days before an election. How can we stop the highest court from violating the law?
SCOTUS ruled on the Virginia issue in keeping with Movement Conservatism, i.e. suppress the vote. I’m seething. Immunity? Again, SCOTUS backed the dream of the Unitary executive, (sorry) wet dream of movement conservatives. SCOTUS is ruling based on ideology, not law. Biden has been somewhat loathe to address the elephant in the room, not having the political power to do so. I have hope that should the Blue Wave occur a Harris administration will make it a focus.
Uh, I happen to be a medievalist by profession and I can tell you that medieval history and culture is not what you seem to think it is. The narrative of the past, especially medieval and ancient history, has been upended in recent years and has moved far away from the 19th-century white imperialist discourse that, alas, still is dominant in popular culture. If you want to blame an era, blame the so-called Scientific Revolution (the 17th century into the 18th century) which coincided with witchcraft trials that condemned women to death for being single and financially independent, and which provided "scientific" proof of the superiority of white men over everyone else. It was also the era of expansion of white European imperialism, of bigotry and oppression based on skin color and regional origin, of legal categorizations of women as not quite human. You think the laws of the Middle Ages were oppressive? Try the late 18th-century Napoleonic Code--in the era known as the Enlightenment (hah!!)--which western civilization textbooks still describe as "rational" and which completely removed all rights of citizenship from women including the right to inherit, to own land, to conduct business as a single person, to have an existence independent of fathers or husbands. It's the reason why French women did not get the vote UNTIL 1945. So stop vilifying the medievalists in the room: the era we study is not to blame for the mess we are in now. Yes: were the seeds of a lot of it there? indeed they were. But the real horrors happened after 1500. Blame white men. They really are the culprits here in their unending lust for power and dominance.
I appreciate your understanding of the eras. My reference to the misogyny of Medieval times (500 ME - 1500 ME) was particular to a reference by the benighted Alito in the Dobbs decision to a ruling from the 13th Century, a concerning a foetus being a human before quickening. I should have taken the time to do even a casual citation. Misogyny reaches back to the dawn of history in the earliest "western" poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh scorns the Great Goddess Ishtar (Inanna). It is the closest reference to the rise of the Great Sky God over the Great Earth Mother, when humans "officially" began to revere male gods over the power of women in the form of goddesses.
Alito actually completely misinterpreted the medieval canon law reference to quickening. And the fact that he cited a RELIGIOUS legal interpretation in his ruling against the constitutionality of Roe tells you a lot. Moreover, he also misinterpreted the obscure 17th-century English common law (yep: back to the 17th century) ruling about the use of abortifacients, as well as deliberately changing the number of weeks in which "quickening" was believed to be felt (about 20 weeks) to earlier in pregnancy. Because. y'know, Alito knows ALL ABOUT BEING PREGNANT.
Sara M. Butler is certainly more versed in the law than Alito whose clerks most likely cherry picked for him, so he could write a manipulated opinion about abortion to agree with his “religious” beliefs.
The lone cowboy protecting his family was a myth, a lie. Cowboys were usually unmarried, without a wife or family to protect. They lived in a bunkhouse with other male workers on the ranch and worked on a team to look after the ranch and livestock. The cowboys moved around a lot and owned little but what they could carry. A total lie. Reagan could sell a lie so well.
Reagan played cowboys in some of his films. It was his personal mythology. When a reporter asked Paul Newman, “What do you think about an actor becoming President” he replied, “Who said he could act?”
I remember early in her chats that in Little House on the Prairie “Pa” generally got himself into “fixes” that the women had to resolve. He was a bit of a blundering idiot.
And then the cowboys became white male computer software coders and what did they do but make money collecting data and making software to make money, very little to actually help anyone. No innovations to make life easier. Or heal or cure anything. Thiel, Zuckerberg, Musk etc.
The shame is that Musk, gotta admit Starlink is a positive, is fulfilling the previous role of government. He’s then using his riches to overturn the government that got him where he is. The dog caught the car, “conservatives”.
Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.
He wants to overhaul the government to be more efficient - like a business. But business is profit-driven. Government's goal is (or should be) achieving the best outcomes for its citizens; a profit motive would change all that.
As a fan of deregulation and 'efficiency', how safe would Musks cars and rockets be if they were deregulated?
I hope she is right about the outcome. But I find her logic flawed in one major respect. Yes, Trump sees an opening with men. But why does that opening exist? Trump didn’t create that. Heather consistently fails to recognize the ECONOMIC distress lower income males feel.
They do not see how to support their families or get married or save enough to retire. Heather often cites unemployment and stock market indexes as signs of economic status. Those indicators can seem meaningless to an EMPLOYED man who is carrying loads of credit card debt and is worried about finding the money to fix that sound in his car. He figures he will NEVER own stock or be able to retire with dignity. And he is right.
He sees the economy RIGGED for the rich. And is correct.
Interests of low income people and rural areas were AND ARE consistently given low priority by two parties almost totally focused on raising campaign finance money from special interests, the rich and the upper 20% (the kind of people who can spend $5 a month to comment on Heather’s Substack).
Yes, things got worse under Reagan. But Trump is riding a wave of POPULIST revolt. People, lots of people, are genuinely angry and it doesn’t help to encourage people to “eat cake” in the form of democracy when they cannot afford “bread”.
When will we hear the Democrats make a serious, loud and realistic push to pass a system to replace this disastrous campaign finance system? There was a little effort inside 2022’s filibustered HR1 to demonstrate a “voucher” system to allow voters to designate tax money be sent to candidates WITHOUT REQUIRING the voter to contribute any matching money. But it was NEVER loudly pushed by the politicians and NEVER got wide press coverage; instead the press and politicians ONLY talked about the parts of the law that addressed voting.
Our government was supposed to be run BY THE PEOPLE via the House. Instead, the House has been neutered by campaign money. And the unrepresentative Senate (a compromise Madison reluctantly accepted) is a gun pointed at popular will. We are, instead, praying for a “good king” to be anointed to rule over the prostrate body of our “democracy”.
This need not be. Please take action. Maryland Rep. John Sarbanes, the author of HR1, is retiring. WRITE TO HIM at his official Congress site or john@johnsarbanes.com and urge him to LOUDLY pick up the banner of vouchers and bring along all those who co-signed and are still in Congress.
You voted. Not enough. Now do something that can make a bigger difference. We must fix the source of this popular anger: our broken campaign finance system.
Michael, I trust you will be first in line to support it when Harris or the Democrats in Congress propose the expanding of the SCOTUS to 13 justices. It is only then that the disastrous Citizens United decision will be overturned and we might finally be able to address the control of the rich on our politics. But I don't necessarily think that fixes the plight of young men that you describe. There is much more that needs to be done to address that issue, but one thing is for sure, like so many many other things, IT WON'T BE FIXED BY REPUBLICANS.
Sadly even assuming a Harris victory and a return of a thin Democratic House margin, changes like increasing the number of SCOTUS judges are almost certainly at least 2 years away due to the very low likelihood of holding a Democratic Senate in this election. Sigh...
Getting rid of Citizens United is unnecessary. There are good reasons to bounce off one or two of the justices, but CU is hardly the most important one. The rich are getting their way on the cheap. $20 Billion in a $27 trillion economy? Come on! The fossil fuel companies are hardly making a serious effort because influencing legislators is such a bargain! Mostly effective because 80% of the electorate has contributed essentially nothing! We need to stop pointing to bans and turn our attention to investing in giving the voters real power to influence legislators.
HR1's campaign finance vouchers provision was simply a law with tax money attached. A law for which a precedent already exists: the Supreme Court has already approved a similar law for Seattle (not that this rouge court cares about precedent).
BTW, nothing in the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to overturn a law passed by Congress. John Marshall has been dead a long time; it is time to throw some dirt on his grave. Pass a law that stops (or clarifies, constrains or limits our Supreme Court from exercising) that capability. For instance, a law that says the court must be unanimous to strike one down. Or a law that removes from office any judge that enforces such a Supreme Court "reversal". Judicial review is a "habit" (a bad habit?) that has never been subjected to careful legislative attention.
Less dramatic, I have read that laws can be written to indicate that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to address certain provisions of a law.
Publicly funded federal elections would end this, but both parties are too addicted to lobbyists' bribery and emptying the pockets of grassroots donors to ever let such a proposal see the light of day.
The Groper-in-Chief is riding a wave of WHITE RESENTMENT that began with the dismantling of Jim Crow (Brown v Board and President Johnson's civil rights legislation) and then exploded following the election of THAT BLACK PRESIDENT.
Yes, but who "let loose the hounds of hell" on race? Not Trump. Not by himself. Trump merely turned the key that was already in the lock, oiled and polished by the two preceding decades of frequent use.
No, both parties lost track of their obligation to care for people as votes became secondary to money. It was well underway in the 1990s as we (the Democrats) reeled from Reagan's lies about "Welfare Queens" and abandoned cash welfare (AFDC) for a pitiful replacement. As we forgot that low-income workers also grow old and need to stop work and receive care while pouring money onto the minority who were lucky enough to have access to realistic 401(k) plans.
But I would insist that while the "bacteria" to cause this illness is always there, the virulence of this outbreak needs to be laid at the door of 30-40 years of neglect of the ECONOMIC well-being of the lower income 80%
Yes to Reform! During the last 24-hours I have over 40 campaign request for (more) money. Reform is past due. Begging for money to hold office is time taken away from productive work in the interest of the people. Yes to Reform. Vote Blue.
“… fails to recognize the ECONOMIC distress lower income males feel.”
Maybe those sad men need to talk with women around them for advise on how to make their future fruitful. We are no longer under the finger of the men in this country.
The non college educated working class of PEOPLE have been cut adrift by both parties over the years. We've begun to reappropriate this idea of patriotism. Progressive minded must make an effort to re appropriate this once well spring for the democratic party. People are 1 flat or set of 2 tires away from the poor house! That's the real real of it right there now
Michael - You are right that many young men are in a tough spot supporting families. So are many young women - both as one of two parents working full time while raising young children and as single mothers. The system is deliberately rigged against the people at the bottom of the economy. The entire tax system in which the poor and middle class pays taxes and billionaires pay little or nothing. This has resulted in a transfer of money from the middle and low income people to the billionaires. That is one of the reasons I can't understand why low income people support Trump. He wants to give billionaires (like himself) even lower taxes and has promised to kill the Affordable Care Act - the Medicare medical insurance that enables ordinary people to have medical insurance. Why would a low income person support that when Harris wants to tax the rich and use the money to give to people raising kids and give a $25,000 tax break to people trying to buy a house?
Thank you for pointing out this about Mr Sarbanes who is my Representative in the House. I did not know about the Hr bill but now I'm on it. I'm extremely upset he decided to retire and his district was bombarded with support for that Capitol Hill policeman and our in district favorite lost to a recent arrival to Maryland. The power of the money machines again. Thank you
More than any other person Heather has helped us all stand firm in our resolve that we must win this time. For me it's not the women's reproductive freedom but for my daughter and granddaughter (to young to vote yet) a decision that would bring all that matters for women back into our own hands and our doctors is paramount. The other parts of Project 2025 must be ground into the sands of history as the total aberration of democracy that they are. Further my anger wants to bring Trump and his cronies to a harsh legal judgment to show our young men there are consequences in life.
I am so very grateful to Dr. Heather Cox Richardson! Her research and perspective has helped make the past year or two bearable. And, I agree this is among her best Letters ever.
Alito's words: “women are not without electoral or political power,” will go down in infamy. That was his insincere consolation to the women he gutted, literally and figuratively. He will rue the day he and the other right wing extremists on the bench got high on their supply of unchecked power and dominance to serve their billionaire benefactors.
I think he’s smart enough to see just how fucked up his logic is, especially when it slaps him in the face, he’ll know that he blew it. We are going to reverse everything that he has had a hand in, judges hate to be reversed, get used to it Sammy. It may take a while but the institution of the SC is going to be changed by we the people who are fed up with such biased jurisprudence, justice should be blind not have an agenda. The Roberts court has become a laughing stock when it comes to evenhanded justice, they have no clue what that means. Hopefully they live long enough to see just how much we loathe everything they have done.
Stacey, reading your comment I have a vision of Alito served up by women a sumptuous gourmet meal of “his words” to gag on….swallow and, finally, hopefully digest.
Lol….Dave…my brain read “watch at your own digestion”!!! Ultimately true I guess!!! Thanks for the link…haven’t watched it yet, but “saved” it to do so later.
Thank you not only for today’s letter, but for every letter that you’ve written to chronical history not just for your faithful readers but for future generations to read and understand this unique and frightening time in history where one man backed by the wealthy and powerful have attempted to return America to the 1860’s! With your help hopefully November 5th will be a day for women and democracy and not a day that ends the American dream.
Mary Kay, if we still had encyclopedias his “reign” (drain? stain? feign?) would be a very thick chapter indeed—and should come with a packet of sanitizing wipes to use after reading.
Seems that manhood itself in this culture and country is acquiring a new and healthier image, and one with actual content, actual substance. I see this every day at least where I live among young men that I go out of my way to speak to. So the definition of a real man might now include his ability to honor respect and support women in his life in whatever their own choices are. And this in a new and fresher way gives all men a better and fuller chance at a meaningful life in this fast-changing world.
I want to give a “hat-tip” to my little brother, now aged 71, who was WAY ahead of this curve and is a living example of a wholly involved father, husband, son, sibling & community member…all without any fanfare—indeed, the concept of being lauded, which he is—for his way of being is puzzling to him…to him it’s just “the way to be”.
Robin Birdfeather, your comment about manhood holds the core of my belief that we are part of a mysterious universe continually bending toward the light. As all that we humans think we “know” expands, what we know about our inner-most selves expands as well. Gender is as deep as that understanding goes.
My favorite novel that has influenced me about gender is Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is. At the end of the novel the experience of the Mom (a medical doctor) and her son who is contemplating transgendering spend time in Thailand. The story about their experience within the Thai culture opened my eyes like never before to view gender as incidental to human nature.
I find the support of evangelicals for Trump as the most confounding cohort of his base. My mind just cannot fathom Trump, among all good people in our great country, being the one evangelicals would choose to be our President. Is there one of the Ten Commandments that Trump does NOT shatter??????????(10?!)
AND to think who Trump would choose to fill crucial roles in his administration…a nightmare!
The prayer I will keep sending up from the GODness within me in whose image I was made, is…please, God, deliver all of us from 4 more years of this nightmare! May it be so.
Among new sources speaking up are ex-evangelicals who for their own spiritual health have discovered hugely disturbing patterns within those old ranks. YouTube has some of them. It appears that when humans begin to cede power to an invisible being who is identified as male, some people will reinterpret that as a form of deserved power on earth. And when you put money into the mix it's a real mess, ensnaring those who for many reasons do not have a wider view of possibilities. So they themselves cede unbelievable power to other actual humans. Does that make sense to you?
Yes, Robin, it does make sense…power follows money. Money as the root of all evil continues to challenge humankind to win the final judgement. To all the rich human “camels” who hope to slip through the eye of the needle, beware!
I love your verb choice, “ensnaring”. Wealth/Power is like a swirling vortex that ensnares human beings into the trap that insulates them from the wider body of humanity where we all exist as one…in my Unitarian view anyway!
What makes sense to me is that there needs to be balance between the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine. Archeology shows that humans first venerated the Goddess Mother for her mysterious ability to universally generate new life. As humans came to understand that males also contribute to creating new life, they began to discovered the Divine Masculine and realized life requires a balance of both. In the last 4,000 years, we have lost that balance.
What stands out to me from the Trump cult is the total lack of respect for women and the stated aim of taking away the agency of women to make their own choices. Trump wants to "protect" women whether we want it or not. This has really creepy sexual overtones that articulates the lack of respect for woman making their own decisions. Women have always known how to control their fertility by using herbs. The birth control pill is the modern equivalent. Taking away a woman's ability to control her fertility through birth control pills and abortion is taking away a woman's ability to make her own decisions about her life. It is an expression of utter contempt for and lack of respect for women and it is the fundamental tenant of the Trump cult and all who espouse it.
Women understand this on a deep level. That understanding is uniting women and the men who love and respect them to work together to defeat this darkness.
Interestingly many/most cultural mythologies about a deity originated with androgynous deities. Over time they became twins and over more time, just a male.
It seems to me that a man worth respecting does not lie and does not cheat. Does not perpetrate or ignore injustice. Trump????
Nobody is perfect, but some own up to bad judgement and make repairs. Decency is not a luxury, it sustains freedom, as does a 'pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." Democracy is not a war of conquest, It is an awareness of effort for, and sometimes a battle for human rights.
"the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings." - Lincoln
Important, presumably as in ultimately most elemental source of legitimate power, as well as the most elemental role of responsibility. Ultimately, the buck stops with us.
Brandeis was was an exceptional prophet for placing justice for the many ahead of profits and unaccountable power for the privileged few.
I hope so, too! In literal words, I agree with Rump and the Evangelicals: men should protect women. But before I’m taken for a misogynistic patriarchy supporter, let me explain:
Last summer, I attended a midsummer ritual ceremony, a blessing for the Earth. At one point, the women kneeled in the center of the ritual circle, singing praise for the Earth. The men were asked to form a standing circle around them, to protect them from negative influences so they could to their “job”, blessing Mother Earth, because they were mothers themselves. Then, the men were asked to sing praise not only to Mother Earth, but also to the women, for all the things they are and do. Then, in return, the women were asked to sing praise to the men, thanking them for protecting them with their strength. At that point, none, literally _none_ of the men could hold back his tears when the women sang for them. In fact, I’m tearing up again as I write this….
Afterwards, as the men spoke about the ritual, we all felt intuitively, maybe even instinctively, that this is the natural order of things. We are there to protect women from harm, to support them, so they can do what they need to do.
The difference between the protection in the ritual and the protection that the Evangelicals and Rump mean? The concept of _property_. In their view, women are their property and should be protected lest ‘no other man touch them’, or they get ‘stolen’. In the ritual, it was an uplifting protection, men not as owners of women, but in respectful service of women, to support and uplift them. Same word, but a completely different world…
Dutch Mike, I know your intentions are good, but it still rubs me the wrong way. Let me relate a story to you.
Years ago, I was dating a man who was not at all intimidating in his looks. We went to a theatre that was near dying out, to see the revival of an old film. We went into the venue, and there couldn't have been more than perhaps 6-7 other people, well spread out.
The movie hadn't run more than 15 minutes, when a man, probably about 5 years older than my 20 years, came and sat down on the other side of me. My date glanced over as this dude sat down and looked right back at the screen. Any woman reading here will probably know what comes next.
The strange guy is slowly leaning against me as his hands go into his lap. I admit, I was really really young and naïve--and raised to be polite. I kept leaning away and he kept leaning in. I was disturbed by this jerk but (again, I think the women here will "get" this) being cat-called, groped, even assaulted was just part of being a woman. You learned to, most times, avoid or get out of these situations.)
I finally shoved my shoulder back as I stood up and announced to my date "WE'RE MOVING SEATS". He was utterly confused but followed as I got up and walked past him. Thankfully, strange dude didn't follow. I fumed for the rest of the film, as why didn't my date NOTICE and "protect me"?--and I concluded I needed to protect myself.
Afterwards, when we left, he did ask me what that was all about, and when I told him, he found the situation amusing. There were other issues with him as well, but that made it pretty clear that he wasn't "the one" for me.
I'm sure that your ritual was moving, I am fond of rituals as well. Perhaps other females here will have the same thoughts that I had--vulnerable people need to be protected, for whatever reason they are vulnerable, but to assume protection is needed because of our sex, that I don't agree with.
Miselle, you’ve just described an event which illustrates, as nothing else can, the presumption of <insert obligatory “not all” here> men that what they do/want/assume to do to (not “with”) women is all that matters to them.
Ally, I have no doubt there are some men reading this who would doubt that any guy would do such a think with a man on the other side. They probably wouldn't believe the behavior of some on public transportation. I know of several women who had the unfortunate experience of men choose the seat next to them on a public transportation, and then start pleasuring themselves.
Or that it just "amusing". It one thing to be inattentive, and another to be willingly indifferent to abuse of another's rights/feelings/personal safety. As we speak, my Australian Shepard is having a fit because there is a coyote in the back yard. Freedom worthy of the name works when we all watch out and protect one another, in the ways in which we are able. Hearing a lark, Juliet gets it that dawn is rising. Romeo is slow on the uptake. Ultimately, violence spoiled everything.
Hi Miselle, I'm sorry you had to go through this. I'm not saying women can't protect themselves when there is no man around. But what your date could (and should) have done, if he didn't notice what was happening, is ask you afterwards: "I'm sorry this happened. Can I do anything for you now? Is there something you need?" instead of just finding it "amusing" (though I'd say there's nothing "amusing" about it...).
I hope that I didn't upset you with my comment, as obviously this was a meaningful ceremony for you. I commented because of the old "walk a mile in my shoes" to explain my reaction.
I hope that Trump doesn't win, and while plenty of MAGA seem brainwashed cultists to me, it is worthy to understand what about Trump appeals to them. Knowing what in their lives draws them to him would help us to change their minds. Hilary's comment of deplorables did so much damage.
No harm done, Misele. Thanks for being so considerate :)
And yes, I hope, too, that Trump doesn't win. But even if he doesn't, he has spewn so much hatred across your land, it will take lifetime to clean that sh*t up...
Looking ahead to the reshaping, restructuring and re-engaging of our civic selves no matter what the election results and how long they take, I love it that this subject has sparked so much interest because it is very much a huge factor at the heart of what has gone wrong in this country. And has done disservice to just about everybody, including if you will the disservers themselves, who may in time perhaps understand better where they could do better. Chins up everybody.
There is a long, strong history of women warriors from Epole of Carystus (13th Century BCE) to women who dressed as men and went to war down through history into the 20th century in many cultures. But women in late pregnant and as mothers of nursing babies need protection if the children are to survive. I can't imagine battling for my life with sword and shield while caring for an 18-month-old, perfectly mobile toddler. I love the summer solstice ritual told by Dutch Mike. We need more such rituals to enact the healing we all long for after the bruising that happens in a society that has lost touch with expressing basic respect for life and love.
I'm glad you like the ritual :) And you are right about the women warriors, NLTownie. And don't forget about the warrior women of the samurai either, with Tomoe Gozen as the most famous example.
There are women warriors everywhere and have been all through history, all around the world. We all need a warrior's heart sometimes, as well as the understanding of being a healer and nurturer... men and women of all genders. We need each other. This is one of the many marvellous and wonderful things that has come from the Kamala Harris campaign... hope. The wings of hope and love will bring us through.
Dutch Mike, I appreciate your story, but I have a question for you: as a gold star lesbian who had a 30 year career in law enforcement and never was or desired to be a mother, where would I have stood in this ceremony? I am a protector, not a mother, and a woman.
I would say you could stand wherever you wanted. I completely agree with you. I am a lesbian of decades and more warrior like than earth mother type. I would have stood in the circle of protectors, or in a circle of the wise older women. If there was such a circle, and which of course there should be
It seems to me that there are many ways of being nurturing, contributing and protecting, and that all are likely to be needed. The bane of civilization, and of the dream of "peace on earth" is dependent on self, as well as societal, restraint of abuse of power; of deliberately exploiting others' vulnerabilities. Seems to me that the ultimate contest between what democrats and what has become of Republicans, however imperfect, is a contest between cooperative negotiation of power and self-serving, predatory abuse of it. Could it be any clearer than what this contest presents to the public day by day?
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." - Lincoln
Hi Tina, there were no elderly women present at the time, but I love the idea of a circle of wise older women! That would be a great addition. Maybe next time...
That's easy, Ally :) It would have been your choice. You could stand with the men, or join the women, whatever would feel like best for you in that moment. Personally, I would have been honoured to stand side by side with a woman like you in that ritual.
There is a plausible narrative that women in hunter gatherer societies had an equal status role with men because the tasks could be done equally by men and women. But when the change came to being agriculturists attached to land, they began to "own" the land. That necessitated protecting "your" land from others which also entailed wanting to pass it down to "your" son. The only way to know for certain that a child was "your" son was for your wife not to have sex with any other man. This meant you had to make sure your wife didn't have the occasion to have sex with someone else and thus, not only the land became your "possession, so did your wife. We're still trying to get over that inequities of that concept, particularly in a hyper-capitalist culture.
And don't forget the aspect of sexually transmitted diseases. That also contributed to the 'value' of virgins: as a man, if the girl's a virgin, you know you're not going to get infected with an STD. Nobody ever asked how the woman could be sure SHE wouldn't get infected by the man, though...
I can see the tendency to tear up in any act that validates rejecting the politically and socially sanctioned attempts to divide genders against one another by truly maleficent beings. What an affirming relief to reject maleficence!
Robin, I’ve always railed at the moniker “real man”. It felt insulting to suggest a hierarchy of traits that separated “the tough guy image” from the more “humane” ones. Aggression, dominance, and misogyny don’t make anything real
Yep, the moniker "real man" is mostly misused by men who are not real men, in my view. Especially Russian culture is rife with misogyny and this toxic "hard, strong man" image. Some of my patients are Russian women and they are quite sick of it.
"Conservatives" in the hubristic sense want everyone to be like them, or perhaps, just like them, but lower than them. Yet, from a functional biological standpoint, sexually evolved in plants and animals, to shuffle the genetic deck. Some plants produce seeds that will germinate and thrive under different conditions. Diverse genetics, propensities, and abilities naturally makes species more adaptable, more resilient, and more creative than "perfect" copies of any one iteration. A kit of tools is going to give one (or in this case, the species) more success, in more situations, that any one of them alone.
Think of all the different interests and talents we humans display. Inevitably some try strategies that are unacceptable in a material way, and that we naturally discourage and stop, but it's in our interests, individually and socially, to promote optimum diversity. Seems to me that "real" in any sense other than existing is a pretty subjective categorize. The constellation of personalities and abilities of the amalgam of humans is mostly a source of delight and key to the wondrous things (though not always good) things we are able to think, feel, and do.
I agree! My son is a fine father of an almost 2 month old. He cares for his son and wife so tenderly that it opens a new well of love for him in me. What a wonderful feeling it is, to see your children grow to be the people you hope they will be!
lol, I have to laugh at the FB trolls who think denigrating other men by calling them “soy boy” has any power other than in their insecure little brains.
Exactly. ‘What makes a man’ needs to be a definition reformed. A constellation of values that a man can feel heroic embodying. The cowboy myth cannot just be destroyed, it has to be replaced with viable alternatives
Even as I contemplate a more and more likely electoral win for the Harris/Walz team, my enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge that when they win, it is also equally likely that, while the electoral battle may be over, the prospect of other battles, both legal and, possibly, violent, remains. There may be even harder work ahead to protect and sustain our democracy after Harris' inauguration than there has been during the campaign. We need to be prepared to continue to defend our democracy if we intend to keep it.
Absolutely agree, Betsy Smith. My hope is that on Jan 19, 2025, Biden for his last formal act of his great presidency, signs the ERA Amendment. It just waiting for a presidential signature. And it would acknowledge that obvious Right in law finally. Finally, finally, finally have one American President “Remember the Ladies”! ERA is the way forward!
Oh yes yes yes…been waiting a heck of a long time…..way TOO long….for the ERA to be ratified. Tis way overdue & I hope to see it happen in my lifetime. Tic Tok the clock is ticking!!!
There is no requirement or option for a President to sign a Constitutional amendment. The only requirements are 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress and ratification by 3/4 of the states. The first requirement for the ERA happened already way back in the 1970s. The latter requirement didn't occur within the time limit established in the original drafting of the amendment but had since occurred (in 2020). The ultimate question is whether the time limit established in the preamble of the ERA amendment was valid or not. If it was valid then the ERA as passed in back in the 70s is no longer eligible to be ratified. If the time limit is determined to not be valid, then there are a variety of opinions in whether the amendment is NOW already in effect, or could be put into effect.
The problem of course is that the decision is going to be made by the current Supreme Court which isn't likely to support the ERA .
Yesterday, I accompanied our 18 year old granddaughter and her 19 year old beau to our local voting precinct. When they enter and started their sign in, it was noted they were first time voters. All the poll workers and people nearby applauded them!! I was so proud and touched, gave me butterflies in my tummy!!! We will not go back!! They are appalled by the idea that the “man” should tell his mate how to vote ( of course this is added to the long list of why they did NOT vote for trump.)!! Yea America!!
My granddaughter who will be able to vote in the next general election canvassed for Kamala/Waltz yesterday with me and her mother, I told her that long after I’m gone, she will remember doing it as her first proactive involvement with voting. It was work, but it was good work especially at my age and health state.
Wow. After trying to feel hope in the Iowa tea leaves this historical context..a context that I lived as a 59 year old female growing into voting age in the US..makes it so visceral. I had not thought about Janet Reno for years and years but remember now my reaction then. I know it is hubris but when I read the full story in the Des Moines Register article it dawned on me that of course these women over 65 have lived the same history but from a slightly longer arc and from a different cultural background. I have more faith in this ‘voting bloc’ than in the young men bros amused by Trump’s tear-it-all-down venom.
You can only imagine how visceral it is for an 89-year-old like me. Been through the Depression, WW II on... Started protesting in the McCarthy era of the mid '50s. We actually have come a long way in a fairly short time. So glad to be part of all this now. 🙏
Robin, Vis-a-vis basic bodily autonomy and political participation, as with so many aspects of the key progressive achievements of the postwar period, my generation benefited from the hard work and bravery of our foremothers. Too many of us have been complacent. Now we are relying on those younger and older to bail the country out. I am very contrite.
Thank you..for your past and present warrior determination, on behalf of myself, my 35 year old daughter, my 8 year old granddaughter and 9 month old niece. But also on behalf of my husband, my sons and my grandsons. Any family, community, country can only thrive when the patriarchal myth is rejected. The future of this planet and all its creatures depends on defeating this kind of misogynistic power grab.
My 77yr old husband brings this up ALOT the same $hit! I refuse to stand down anywhere in my life because of his and many others previous efforts for equal rights. I’m under no illusion - he married a fighter - on purpose. I so want him to finally see the ERA signed followed by a woman behind the Resolute.
Trump a on trick phony who whose only strategy is to become increasingly cruel, vile, and dishonest. I noticed today that someone removed a number of Democratic candidate signs in my neighborhood but left the Republican ones. Indifferent to merit, that's the only sort of way they know how to win.
Ya, the poor creature’s legs would buckle under the weight. Hmmm, tho’ now I’m picturing a bucking bronco….with a fat turd being flung off its back!!!!!
As an older white man, financially conservative, but socially a full on freedom loving, I want to thank you, HCR, for your beautiful, critical writing. You have provided important, targeted, historical context to current events. These have helped fill in the blanks for me of why our politics have regressed to this point. But you communicate with such calm, consistent, accurate, warm perfection. And your source notations take me back to the high school and college papers I wrote, where this was an understandable requirement. You have helped me personally weather the political storms since you began this effort. It has helped me maintain efforts for discourse, and given me the fortitude to carry on. No doubt many of us are exhausted. But the alternative universe where Donald Trump and MAGA warp and kill democracy is just plain unacceptable. HCR- you are a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT. I just plain love you for it.
To add to what Jon says above, I want to thank you for creating and encouraging this community to support each other, this country and the act of taking it back from MAGA. Years ago, when this group was much smaller, I somewhat seriously proposed we have a “convention.” We already “know” each other!
Very well said. HCR has been my lighthouse through these turbulent Trump nightmare. Honestly, without her, I'm sure I'd be anxious with an ulcer. She gives me hope in humanity. No words can really express my gratitude for her Letters. I hope she puts them in books, they should be a part of history classes, so future generations can understand how we almost lost democracy. Come on Kamala 2024
Live in a blue state. I voted early and it seems that early voting has been high. Still very nervous about the results of the election and the shenanigans that the Republicans might pull to upend a Harris/Walz win. Will not relax until Kamala is sworn in.
While we may be able to breathe a little easier (hopefully) after Tuesday, we all need to stand up to the Republican shenanigans that will take place and hold them accountable.
I don't trust the Republicans justices 3 of whom are ready to retire. They are all so partisan and theocratic that nothing they try will be a surprise.
Gary, tho’ I expect/hope for a Harris/Walz shut-down victory, if anything this has taught us NOT to rest on our laurels and relax. No, not ever. Maybe not be at such fever’s pitch anxious mode, but never, ever, taking our eyes off the prize and what it takes to keep it in place & evolving “forward” with our society.
Barbara, I have thought the same thing. The momentum that has built in support of Harris must be sustained to roll back the regressive policies and laws that limit our freedom. We have to support voting rights, eliminate the electoral college, rescind the cap on the number of House representatives. Democracy demands a fairer balance to hear the voice of the people.
There's already an electoral college solution in place. That is, who every wins the majority of votes in the entire country ALL of the electoral college votes are awarded to the victor. Once a plurality of electoral college votes passes 270 then then law goes into affect. CA and NY have already passed this and they account for 82 electoral college votes. Several other states have signed on to this as well.
"As the nonprofit group National Popular Vote reports, the jurisdictions that have enacted Proposition 113 into law account for 196 electoral votes. The proposition would go into effect when states that have a total number of 270 electoral votes pass such a measure."
Gary, I’ve been watching their progress, now stalled unfortunately. My state, CA, has already signed on. I worry however, should this “process” be actually implemented by the signed-on states, that it would be litigated and perhaps even end up before SCOTUS…..and, even tho’ state’s are supposed to “control” such things, I worry that this particular court might dictate otherwise. Voting rights for all citizens has been, and continues to be, a long hard-to-achieve effort, with some of our history being ruthlessly deadly to many in this regard. 🗽
Among other sources you could check out Joyce Vance's interview with a security expert who has been working with thorough national support to prepare every single police and sheriff etc institution for many months now.
Stephen, I saw reported that Washington state Gov Inslee has alerted the National Guard to be ready should the need arise to deploy them due to any shenanigans….such as the two ballot drop box fires/vandalisms already—they are searching for the perp & feel that s/he may strike again—they are on high alert.
No spring chicken and one who has questioned every President since Franklin Roosevelt, but I'm beginning to think that thanks to women we the people are finally regaining our sense.
🤞Been waiting a long long long time to see it finally ratified. I’ve posted this song link here several times, but never sure who all gets to see it, so will post yet again. Keb’ Mo’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FciQeRGYFlw
This election has been like a steep hike up a rocky mountain. On the way I’ve learned things and done things I never imagined I would, and now we’re almost to the top. This last mile is the hardest and each step feels like it costs every ounce of effort we can manage. But what a glorious view from the summit!! We’re almost there.
One of the things I'VE learned is that a candidate for President of the USA could simulate oral sex on stage - and people would still vote for him. . .
Not to mention ALL THE OTHER STUFF he’s done that would normally pull the plug on any candidacy. It’s like folks egg him on to see what outrageous thing he’ll do next, like some kind of twisted TV reality show. ‘Cept this IS real.
I fixed Trump's quote for him: "They say the suburban women. Well, the suburbs are under attack right now. When you're home in your house alone and you have this monster, this adjudicated rapist that keeps evading prison and he's got, you know, over a dozen more rape accusations — I think you'd rather have Kamala Harris and Tim Walz."
I’m an English major. I hate inarticulation, and tfg is the poster boy. “They [they? who?] say the suburban women.” What about them? The ephemeral “they” had driven me nuts since 2015.
Yep, this woman (and her husband) voted all blue.
Every woman i know who's voting, is voting the same.
But don't be complacent, VOTE and make sure everyone you know does the same.
I am now feeling that the tide has turned and Kamala Harris will be our next president. Trump keeps showing his incredible pazzo crazy loco side and enough of our independent minded voters have shifted to Harris.
I can’t wait for the inauguration. I might even travel to Washington to be witness of this historic event.
Let’s go vote if you haven’t already.
Harris/Walz 2024
I think the ‘tide turning’ impact of this new polling is so crucial in its own right. It counters the rights’ flood of bogus poll results before Tuesday’s election and will help counter the post tally narrative that a Harris/Walz win is somehow anomalous. It will also further unhinge Trump in his last two days of campaigning.
As is clear from his weird, rude mic pantomime. Also, why did it take 3 times before he successfully grabbed that garbage truck door?
Even the garbage truck resisted him!
AY27517
Says the truck, “we don’t accept your kind of garbage”
When you're an American, you can do it. Just push him to the curb and hope the sweeper comes by soon to pick him up and deposit him in...jail?
In my comment above, I was feeling more optimistic about a Harris victory. I still believe that she will potentially win the most electors. Now I’m less optimistic. If the MAGAs make enough false complaints enough to slow down the process, the House can make the call and they have a majority in case anyone has thought it through. This is the secret between Trump and a speaker Johnson is that they will make Trump president. I’m going to predict that if the Joint Chiefs of Staff don’t step forward and temporarily suspend the constitution, then Trump will be our next president. In this case, I’m in favor of a military coup. Just remember my prediction. Unfortunately, I believe I will be correct. I would take a military leadership any day over Trump. His is evil personified.
A Y, I’m laughing really hard and with utter joy re your response to Heather’s super letter today. What a treat for me
particularly since my darling adolescent pup Gabriel woke me up an hour early as I imagined the rest of the world slept an extra hour. (He’s supposed to know better as a standard Poodle!)
This! Just had a much needed laugh.
THAT was funny!
Lol.... Now there's a brilliant takeaway !
Counterpoint, the garbage truck failed to stop him. That's how this election feels like. Imagine if he still stumbles but rams his way into the presidency.
He won't, Shaf. I have no seeress powers, but I do have faith in women and followers of LeBron James, Schwarzenegger, JLo, Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, etc. Also in lawyers like Mark Elias who are prepped and ready to fight off legal shenanigans.
Maybe he needs to visit his opthalmologyst.....wait...wait....I meant neurologist 🫣
Proctologist! To get his head out of…..!
He needs to visit reality. Not the most hospitable climate for him.
"ole slow" after all he's 79 and overweight and under exercised. It shows
saw a comment somewhere else about his difficulties getting into the garbage truck. They said it was to be expected because he is wearing a girdle, diapers, lifts on his shoes, some hairy creature on his head, and is greased up on all exposed skin with orange goo.
lol some senior incontinence issues eh? Stacked high in the local Costco store, must say.
Much as I want to for so many reasons, I DO NOT hate candidate Trump.😳
G-D permits us to hate only one person in life.😇
I will be damned if I waste my get-out-of-hell-free card on a schlub like that fat, stupid, liar.😊
No one needs to hate the felon - we just need not to vote for him and be ready to fight off post-election fakery. He's dangerous, vulgar, and deeply unwell, but we only have to stop him.
Excellent point Ned!
Weird, Obscene pantomime. Had his adderal or whatever it is worn off?
"And I will protect the women whether they like it or not."
........... "Weird.. creepy weird"
There may not be ONE poll untouched by Putin and his bots!
Didn’t any reader so far stay up for KH on SNL last night? Much harder dialogue than Trump’s “test” of intelligence. Wonderful that she could take to SNL to prove both her intelligence and stamina. Confess to having never laughed so long, hard, or so surprised. (The surprise was that my recently healed rib muscles were up to the test)
Then there’s Tim at the end of Heather today. Dear ones, we are going to have some fun for a change! (I would NEVER predict the results of an election.)
Yes. I saw her on Saturday Night Live. I jumped up out of my chair with joy thinking, "What is so bad about feeling good?"
Thank you for mentioning this as I didn’t even know that it happened. Thankfully Google led me to a couple of the skits.
Watched it this morning on YouTube. It was hilarious and wonderful. great way to start the morning for us!
Lisa! At last I found you. By now you know everything. I want to add for everyone that you also want to see Rachel Maddow with Ali Velshi, the serious side of “Keep calmala and carry onala.” And VOTE.
The SNL cold open last night was funny and wonderful... Gaffigan's Walz, Carvey's Biden, and Rudolph's Harris are spot on. I don't know who played the orange menace, but he was also very good. There's no point in making predictions at this late date, Virginia. The cake's pretty much in the oven.
SNL was priceless!
Who is KH? I would love to watch this; wondering how I could find it, since I don't have cable.
This is the time Google is your friend. Just watched 2 clips from last night’s show and it was worth the effort!🤣
Kamala Harris. It's on YouTube
Duh! Thanks! I will look for it.
I watched it on this very telephone
Kamala Harris
I very much enjoyed watching both fangirl on each other. I found it fun and authentic.
If the Iowa poll turns out to be accurate (a big if), Selzer's already premier polling reputation will become legend.
And the flood of polls is helping set up the “But I Won “ narrative so Trump can create chaos
Why do you say "bogus" poll results? There are certainly some polls conducted by GOP- leaning pollsters but there are an equal number of left/Dem leaning polls which pretty much balance out the GOP polls. If anything, the Dem polls have been MORE confirming of the potential for a Trump victory which would tend to suggest that the GOP polls are not bogus at all. This is also confirmed to a lesser degree by the major non- board polls like Times/Sienna.
I am glad to see that the latest polls are tending more towards Harris but I find it offensive when we write comments which make unsubstantiated claims of bias against us. It is just doing the same crap that Trump does and it is wrong.
Jon Rosen, I am hoping the whole country can eventually move away from this "us vs them" mentality that so many have been lured into. Not long ago, I learned that George Washington was totally against political parties. He predicted if we went down that road, it would tear the country apart. I am a tiny, blue dot in a red state. I can testify that there are good people who have been fooled and brainwashed. We need to stop thinking of our fellow humans as enemies.
Heather rarely says something she cannot document. Perhaps you might do some of your own work to see if what YOU say is true.
Some weeks ago a letter referred to the 60 new "polling" groups set up by heritage foundation affiliated groups to do exactly what she claims, twist the polling to make people think resistance is futile.
While it may be true that the Democrats are doing the same thing, they're usually not as quick to the shenanigans as the rethugs and the maggots.
Do the work before you accuse Dr Richardson of making bogus claims
Jay Kuo, in his research and reporting, confirmed Dr. Richardson's reporting of fake polls set up by The Heritage Foundation. They were designed favor Trump and distort the averages, which were beginning to show Kamala gaining the advantage.
Are you forgetting Putin’s thumb on our polls, and the assistance of his bots?
There has been a flood of right-leaning polls released that tilt 3-4 points different from the independents, according to Simon Rosenberg whose Substack is worth following. These polls shift the averages and support Trump claims that he must be winning. That said, every one of them seems to be used in Democratic fund raising.
“The red wave 2024 campaign is far bigger this time, and has started far earlier. Here’s what we know:
They’ve released 70+ polls into the averages, with 31 r-aligned groups having released polls since August. These polls are consistently 1-5 points more Republican than the independent polls, as was the case in 2022
A majority of recent polls in NC and PA are right-aligned. A majority
While their focus has been on the states, last week they really leaned into the national polling average and moved it and other forecasts this weekend
There are new actors this year - offshore crypto company Polymarket, Elon and X, and a slew of very aggressive right-wing amplifiers and influencers
The launching of a new daily national tracking poll by TIPP, a far right institution, is an escalation that will be putting downward pressure on the national average every day until the election
The emergence of TIPP as the pointy edge of the red wave spear is notable given how outrageously right wing it is. It’s corporate slogan is “talent loaned from God” - Rush Limbaugh’s catchphrase. It offers a steady stream of commentary that would be at home at Fox News or the RNC site. Some recent examples:
Harris’s Fiery Campaign of Rage Exposes Her Unpresidential Temperament
The Left Is Still Obsessed With 2020 Election Deniers
U.S. Government Pushing Climate Lies On Schoolchildren
Night And Day: Trump’s Command Of Economy Exposes Harris’s Novice Approach.”
https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/new-wapo-polls-show-harris-leading
Thanks Kathy.
🤬🤬🤬 TIPP is an abomination. Fake news.
Joan, the way I see it is that polls these days are enerally poor indicators of anything -- they are used as cudgels of influence: "Give me money, because we are losing", or "Our candidate is so far ahead, don't believe the news", etc. MAGA is including garbage polls in their releases, and when you average garbage, then garbage is the result.
However, the latest polling is showing a trend toward Harris, with the apparently highly-respected Selzer poll in Iowa leading the way. These polls are easily explainable by the messaging of each candidate -- Harris offers hope, the felon offers personal grievances (even against a bad mic used in disgusting fashion) and promises of chaos and retribution. There is a clear wave that seems to be sweeping across the country, with Harris riding it like a surfer girl (sorry for that analogy) while an exhausted trompy is caught in the undertow.
Assuming a Harris/Walz victory, using respected polls as proof of her legitimate election will help to deflate MAGA complaints of a stolen race.
Also, I just read a post from Amy Siskind on Threads who has been doing a lot of door knocking in PA. She says that the reason a lot of polls aren't picking up what the Selzer poll did is because women are afraid to reveal their choice in the presence of their husbands. She notes that many doors would be opened by the man, and the woman standing behind him would silently mouth the name "Harris".
The felon's mime-with-the-mic was in extremely bad taste, especially in context of a political event, but disgusting? Let's not be prudes when there are so many better reasons to oppose MAGA.
Well i
Well if THAT is the result, we should all be pretty happy that those so-called bogus polls are released because anything that helps Democratic fundraising in my opinion is good for the GOOD GUYS!
"There are certainly some polls conducted by GOP- leaning pollsters ..."
A flurry of red wave polls pushed the polling averages down in the past few weeks and tipped them to Trump - illegitimately in my view. Since late August 32 right-affiliated organizations have released over 125 polls into the averages In the last few days we’ve seen a huge escalation of these efforts, with 58 polls released since Sunday, a majority of all polls released this week.
Read more about this illicit effort in this recent New Republic article, a new NYT piece, my recent post and catch Trump admitting that some of these red wave polls showing him ahead are fraudulent. Our daily reminder:
Rs would only be working so hard to shape the national narrative to make it look like Trump is winning if they believed he wasn’t. These red wave polls are a sign of desperation, weakness and a campaign that knows it’s losing.
For a deeper dive on all this data catch my Hopium presentation from Wednesday night with special guest Tom Bonier. Tom and I also joined the MeidasTouch crew on Thursday for a very indepth conversation.
Simon Rosenberg Hopium
The fundamental problem with this argument is that it is COUNTERINTUITIVE.
A wave of polls showing Trump ahead is NOT likely to INCREASE the vote for Trump but is actually likely to DECREASE it, because people who see their candidate winning are likely to say "well my vote isn't that critical after all because my candidate is going to win easily". I honestly don't know who is really releasing these Pro Trump polls but I expect it will increase the vote for Harris. In that case I'm pretty happy for that.
All to be negated by a roomful of elector/selectors within whose minds even the pollsters have no clue as to what may exist. Who sold us that bridge anyway? Don't bother me with some "poll".
Ditto 12A: "Lies, damn lies, statistics, and polls" The 'four' types of lies.
@ Jon Rosen. Virtually none of the pollsters consider Gen Z new voters as LV, "likely". Therefore, most polls are crap.
In some states, like MI, WI, NV, new voters are still registering. FT 6 sent 800,000 texts to those states yesterday.
Jon, doing the same crap Trump does is wrong, but define "wrong." The following is my definition.
MAGA for Dummies: How to understand Project 2025 in 4 easy steps.
Step 1: Recognize that we don’t just observe because we also assume, and our assumptions interpret our observations. Then we draw a conclusion. And then we choose one of the following options. Option 1 (aka the moral option) involves subjecting our assumptions to rigorous skepticism. Option 2 (aka the MAGA/immoral option) involves allowing our assumptions to distort how we interpret what we observe. And Option 3 is that there is no Option 3.
Step 2: Rank your superiority relative to other people. Assumption 1 (aka the moral assumption) is that you are tied for first place with roughly eight billion other human beings. Assumption 2 (aka the immoral/MAGA assumption) is that not everyone is tied for first place. And Assumption 3 is that there is no Assumption 3.
Step 3: Acknowledge that when left untested, and below the level of conscious awareness, unconscious cognitive assumptions distort how observations are interpreted.
Step 4: Recognize that Project 2025 is the at end of a march of a thousand miles that began with a single step in an immoral direction, and then go fast, slow, or anywhere in between, but always in the opposite direction (see Luke 10:25-37).
It’s okay for an individual to feel superior to others if doing so doesn’t have a negative influence on other people's lives, except that doing so will have a negative impact on other people's lives, especially if the individual is the richest man on the planet, or the most powerful human on the planet, aka POTUS.
That's a long way around to the point that the MAGA agenda, while seeming to favor the rich, is bad for everyone, whether you look at it from a logical, moral, or financial perspective.
Take a listen to Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us, who writes precisely and convincingly about how racism hurts all of us. Any situation in which the privileged people oppress the other people, ends up hurting absolutely everyone with the zero-sum thinking. Even wealthy powerful people lose in that system, even though the poor and powerless lose even more.
I agree with your description of the MAGA agenda's effect, and I would agree that I took a long way around to get to that point, but that was not my intent. My intent was to describe the actionable "root cause" of the MAGA agenda.
"I have labored carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions." —Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
So then, in your summation, you have made the case for a benevolent dictator?
So then, in my summation, I have made the case against a dictator. For the record, a benevolent dictator is an oxymoron. Greg, IMHO, your assumptions are distorting your interpretation of what you observed in my summation.
And, to make way for such "A benevolent dictator" we have 350 million people accepting the decisions (personal agendas) of a room full of elector/selectors deciding the outcome for us. That's what we gots.. aren't it? Ayuhh! huh.
Ah the pollsters? Another scam to fleece money from suckers! Who pays for them? The questions are so insipid!
Early voting, mail in votes and Election Day are the only polls that count, the pretenders are simply crystal ball gazing!
Go ahead and stick your head in the sand if you want to but polls are a highly reflective way of understanding which way the electorate is heading. You can ignore polls, but those of us who understand why they are used and how to understand them find them highly enlightening. Personally I prefer light, not darkness and if properly understood, polls present a LOT of light during an election. But if you want to stumble around in the darkness, be my guest.
Hmmm. Red tsunami 2022. Clinton 2016. Highly reflective?
You might try coming off the high and mighty tone. It would be a lot more pleasant talking with you and people might actually agree with you on something.
Well said.
I don't think polls are intentionally bogus--professional pollsters try their very vest for accuracy, because their livelihood depends on it. That said, the deck is stacked against accurate polling by several things: First, people will lie about who they're voting for, because there is a lot of social downside to voting for Trump or Harris, depending on what tribe your family and friends are in. Two, most of America doesn't answer the phone to strange numbers any more. Three, the only published phone numbers are on landlines, and relatively few people younger than 60 have landlines any more--we all switched to cellphones only. Cellphones don't have White Pages, so pollsters have no way of calling us except by accident.
All of which makes polling not bogus, but certainly not hyper-accurate.
I do not disagree with you although i might argue some of your points. If you notice my argument was VERY SPECIFICALLY about the user of the word bogus which was quite prominent in the OP. Polls are NOT "hyper accurate". That's why they are polls, not electing results. But historically they are PRETTY accurate especially when looked at as a group, not as individual polls. Absolutely accurate? Of course not, that is why (a) they are given with margins of error and (b) why we have actual elections rather than just using the polls as our final results. But those two factors do not in any way discount the validity of the poll results as important trends to understand. This has been proven over and over again.
Have they been wrong? Of course. (See 2016 when the polls predicted Clinton's victory).
Have they GENERALLY been wrong? Not at all. Generally they have been highly pedicure of the final results.
Thanks for this view, Jon, much appreciated. If they are highly predictive of final results for the most part, are the legitimate polls predicting Harris or Trump to win? You may have said this already, but the comment strings get so long and/or jumbled I can't recall.
Some polls ARE bogus, Jon, like the one that had TFG up by 17 points in WI. I may be wrong about the state and point spread, but there was definitely a poll that was faked to make him look like he's doing better than he is. As a predictive tool, polls are completely unreliable in any case. We are constantly being reminded that they're a "snapshot in time." We absolutely know that R's are early voting in greater numbers than before, but we don't know who they're voting for... the outsized female lead in voter numbers may indicate a landslide for Harris. Or may not. We'll find out soon enough.
I didn't say there weren't ANY bogus polls. The OP suggested that virtually all the polls showing Trump ahead were bogus which is obviously patent nonsense. To defend that OP by saying "well look here, THIS poll was bogus" is just as nonsensical. Either defend the original characterization lthat virtually all right wing polls showing Trump ahead are/were bogus" or say something else. Pointing to one outlier as evidence of proof of the whole statement is a nonsensical debate strategy. It makes your statement, which is probably true, into a weak argument for a false supposition.
I'm not defending the OP, only responding to your question "Why do you say 'bogus' polls?" I don't want to argue for the sake of argument, Jon. I think what skews national averages is that SOME polls show unusually high results, although I have no idea whether there are more right-wing or left-wing polls that are in this outlier category. My primary point was that polls are unreliable per se, and especially as predictors of election results.
We need more people like you 👍
Ok, Simon Rosenberg has been stressing the wave of red polls of late. He NEVER mentions the same of blue polls, you're saying he's throwing the narrative?
I'm not saying it but I wouldn't consider it a surprise. Simon is not exactly an unbiased reporter. He is a very active Democratic pollster and strategist and his goal is clearly to elect Harris. So I wouldn't point to him as a neutral source of information any more than I would consider Alex Jones neutral. I would CERTAINLY consider Simon to be a more HONEST conveyor of information than Alex Jones but unbiased? Absolutely NOT!
Jon, polls are only made up of a few - very few - individuals - the questions asked of course will cause the answers to skew one way or another.
The tally of votes will answer any questions AFTER the election.
What is the point of watching polls? It wont educate or enlighten anyone as to whether they should vote or at least it shouldnt.
Because polls show the trends of voting and are generally HIGHLY predictive of the final results especially when conducted close to the election. Are they always right? Depends on what you mean. Since polls always come with a margin of error, then in fact they are typically almost always right. I.e. if the final result is within the margin of error that the poll was right. That means that even if they predict candidate B will win plus or minus 3 pts, then if A wins by less than three points the poll was right. Unfortunately people are incredibly ignorant about the way polls should be used. They see the polls saying B Is ahead and think that means B is the winner. So if you misunderstand polls that suggests you should learn more about what they mean, not stick your head in the sand and act like they are meaningless.
OK the fact that they just wont influence WHO I vote for makes me one of the incredibly ignorant voters. They are meaningless to me - so hanging on their predictions - as far as I myself am concerned - they're a waste of time.
Thats my personal opinion - I think I'm still entitled to one.
The NYT magazine has a cover about the wing nut takeover of election boards, so it may be a while before we know the outcome. I will do the crossword and the acrostic and not read the article. We both voted for Harris a while ago and our election office reported to us that our ballots have been received and ready for counting. Voting could be easy and simple, but that wouldn't favor Rs.
Yep get prepared for the swamp apocalypse. I gather the volume of republican law suits over electoral issues as the vote is in progress resembles a tsunami, a litany of accusations in search of so little to find....
And his campaign staff has him stumping heavily in North Carolina--something like 10+ stops for speeches (?)--which I think will be VERY trying for a stressed, mentally unstable, physically unwell, befuddled old guy. Wonder what the NEXT Trump startlement will be. I've had to add some new (and rather unusual) squares to my bingo card!
Yes Bill, go to the inauguration - because as we all know, crowd size matters :)
🤣
Why are you laughing?
Because Don the Con spent the first week of his presidency denying the fact that the inaugural crowd was NOT huuugest ever. Remember his inaugural address that Bush said was some crazy shit? 🤡💩🎃🤢🤮
"Crazy shit" is a perfect description of all things Trump. And Kamala is sanity, community and empathy. That's why she will be the next President of the United States.
Sir, I believe it's the reference to size.
😜😂🤣
Sanity, community, and empathy. Beautiful
Toooooooo funny!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I’ll go visit a neighbors a BIG TV SCREEN to watch Kamala’s inauguration 🤗🎉
My husband and I also voted blue all the way down the ballot. IIt's been a long couple of years watching him gain traction again. I predicted he would win in 2016 and I've thought he would again in 2024, until about late Sept. Now, I am sure that we will win this. 💙
From your mouth to more than half the voters ears 👂.
Sorry God, you been taken already by the other less than a half...
Hasn't God's autonomy been compromised enough by mere mortals who cannot, by definition, have a clue what's in God's mind? Besides, God is notoriously agnostic about religion and politics.
💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
Here is a discussion of Trump's Turnout Troubles in the early voting. https://youtu.be/EZvQCIsu8Zs?si=NMM2KMBzYmJb98Xi
It reinforces what you are saying.
Thank you for that link Linda; the final collapse of the "Lil' House of Misogyny" is imminent.🔥
Reminded of something I read about the Little House books. The real Laura Ingalls Wilder was careful to avoid her Pa’s temper.
Yes, circa 1933 & following years.
Thanks for sharing that very informative link that analyzes the current polling, and comparing it to historical patterns. So interesting, & encouraging! Definitely worth listening to the whole thing!
set up a link to take in a little later today. House chores and non related stuff next in the order of the day!
Frank, whether you're in "Tuscon, Arizona" or many other places -- you gotta extra 1 hour. "Get Back Jojo" or is that Fall Back.
The last time I was in DC was for the Women’s March in 2017 protesting the grotesque horror of the orange nightmare. There were SO many more of us than there were of the MAGAts. While it was an historic event, it felt…so defeating. But if Harris wins, I might just have to be there in DC for that. Exciting and uplifting and a much needed breath of fresh air for our beloved country. 💙💙💙🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Inauguration day for Harris and Walz should be one sight to behold.
(Here is a little story from my collection.)
Phone Conversation Between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto
Jan. 27, 2017
A phone call comes in to the White House and is sent to the president’s office.
Trump: “President Niento, Donald Trump here.”
Niento: “Bueno. Presidente Trump, que dia es convenience para mi visita a Washington?”
Trump: “Cut the shit, Enrique. I know you speak English. We are meeting next month. How much is Mexico kicking in for the wall? We need border control.”
Nieto: “Senior Pendejo, I am not giving one peso for that wall. Shouldn’t we talk about NAFTA instead?”
Trump: “Nieto, I’m planning on building a big wall – a really big wall. I will charge 20 percent tariffs on all Mexican imports until the wall is finished. As for NAFTA, you can send that agreement down the shithole Rio Grande. And I know what pendejo means. It means a president that uses his pen to sign executive orders.”
Niento: “Presidente Pendejo, I’ve got better things to do with my time besides listening to a half-baked potato like you. Our meeting is cancelled. Say hola to the family.”
So, Bill, how would the conversation go today, between Emperor Tang and Claudia Scheinbaum (a woman, a Jew, AND an environmentalist?
Bill Katz, from your mouth to God's ears. I don't think I've ever prayed for something this hard before. Kamala MUST WIN!
We live just outside of DC, and our North Carolina daughter booked her plane tickets for the inauguration a month ago. It's going to be one hell of a party.
Quick -- turn around 3 times, spit, and throw salt over your shoulder. Don't invite a jinx
The media hype of the Selzer Poll showing Harris ahead of Trump may spur Trump voters to the polls on Tuesdays in droves. We're not across the finish line yet.
Should we get a LFAA Substack section at the inauguration?
Abso freakin lutely Jerry !!! All of us in here, know a lady with 'connections' !
I pray you are right Bill. If Harris wins, I am definitely going to DC for this historic event.
And I will need to sell off the remainder of my books. I am getting over bronchitis and couldn’t make it for her speech. I have 150 — 200 books to sell, lol, before inauguration.
This husband and wife voted blue top to bottom. Bill, while a part of me wants to share your positivity, the jinx factor preys on my mind. This morning the Asshole is talking about shooting reporters. His mental decline is so obvious, making who to vote for on November 5th obvious.
Yes, I too want to go to Washington!
Donable Lector simulating giving his bum-fuck buddy Putin a blow job on stage........an
d spittting out the Russian load......if that turns on the Maggat rapists and porn freaks........ What are these deviants going to do if Moses Mike gets the chance to ban porn and take away a womenst right to vote??? God help the women of the nation.......it will be open hunting season on them with no protections!!!
If porn sites are banned and Republicans are blamed, that might flip the bro vote. You know - hit them in the only place where they might have empathy.
Greg Palast is investigating the right wing plans to break up the voting. There may be physical violence. There have been purges of voters preventing them from voting. The US Supreme court just reversed a lower court decision to prevent 1600 voters.
Be prepared for a lot of illegal obstruction. https://www.gregpalast.com/
Beth, Helen Reddy's song comes to mind:
"I am woman, hear me roar
In numbers too big to ignore
And I know too much to go back an' pretend
'Cause I've heard it all before
And I've been down there on the floor
And no one's ever gonna keep me down again..."
The women of this country, the larger segment of the electorate, are voting not only with self-interest and self-protection (screw the rapists promise to be their "protector"), but also to save the country.
And this senior-aged male is loving every bit of it. Let's bring it home -- vote BLUE up and down the ballot, if you haven't already. 💙🇱🇷🩵🇱🇷💙🇱🇷🩵🇱🇷💙
Thank you, Doug Gagne, for letting this old ‘un know where “I am woman, hear me roar” came from. That line has put starch in my spine more than once.
A friend's son sang that at a middle school talent show years ago, winning his mom's pride and mine as well.
I remember singing that song karaoke style from my mom’s lp as a preteen…unfortunately my mother made it clear to me ‘kept’..rather shot.. my dreams of being a professional singer ‘down.’ Tough but accurate love. 🙃
Yay!!!!
Thanks for the Helen Reddy reminder Doug. Was one of my favorite songs back when she first recorded it. I am woman, hear me roar! My response to DJT, I don’t need or want your protection. Proud Blue Voter.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s approach, which respects women’s autonomy and right to choose, is set to win. The Dobbs decision has energized women and seniors, especially in battleground states, creating a powerful coalition. With strong support from independent voters and increased turnout from women, Harris and Walz have effectively widened the gender gap in their favor. Trump’s reliance on outdated gender tropes and divisive tactics only strengthens this shift. All signs point to a Harris-Walz victory as these motivated groups deliver a decisive message on Election Day.
Uncle Sam needs you! https://www.mobilize.us/events/phone-bank-volunteer-opportunities/
Thank God for women with good sense who do not, due to gender, have testosterone poisoning!
I am also grateful for the female vote, Frank, but I'd rather not demonize testosterone. Ovarians can be equally cruel and vicious, after all. Females have our physical superiority, like interactive brain hemispheres, longevity, and the ability to build muscle all our lives; males have their physical superiority, as in greater length of bone, strength of muscle, and better spacial perception. That just gives gender a situational edge. I'd say women have the edge in this election because we always turn out to vote in greater numbers than men, and we have a greater stake in the outcome.
Bravo Frank !
Good for you, Beth. "Tim Walz told a crowd: 'I kind of have a feeling that women all across this country, from every walk of life, from either party, are going to send a loud and clear message to Donald Trump next Tuesday, November 5, whether he likes it or not.'” President Harris by three-to-five percentage points in the popular vote with well over three hundred votes in the Electoral College. 😇
Vote Blue through and through! (Not original with me.)
💙🙌🇺🇸☮️🫶
Most women I know are voting for Trump or not at all. I really think the media are majorly responsible for this.
Thank you Professor. It’s interesting how often society relies on women, yet wants to refuse them equality bodily, economically and politically. We VOTE! And when we vote, we win.
Be careful, women of America! Lest the Blue wave is stopped by a Red Moses… The Convicted Orange Felon, and most importantly, his cronies like Musk, Bannon, et al, will try to have Mike Johnson throw the election to Rump. And if that dosn’t work, they will appeal to the Extreme Court: if a black woman wins the election, it MUST be fraudelent, right? They will rule 6:3 in favour and decide that Rump becomes president. That is when the real fight for liberty begins…
By Jan 6, Hakeem Jeffries will be Speaker of the House. Mike Johnson will be irrelevant.
The corrupt court is more worrisome.
However: our lawyers are better at this than theirs. The orange menace is not head of the federal government this time. The consequences of accepting Supreme Court interference are a lot clearer now than they were at the time of Bush v Gore, and there has been more time for Biden to plan.
That said, a landslide is a lot harder to manipulate than a close call.
That is why, regardless of the schemes of the Rich Right, America needs a massive voter turnout for Kamala. Vote like your life depends on it! We here in Europe depend on it, too...
I think you meant to say , 'a lot more time for Trump to plan,' not Biden.
They've had the same amount of plan time, CC, but Biden and Harris are better at it. Just look at the economy, if you want evidence.
THIS is what I fear. THIS.
Maybe this will help us feel more confident. Our job is to VOTE. There are people working on the after. https://youtu.be/4h01V_d3b8g?si=T4bl8_Sx5fJ1_LPp
My "browser" couldn't / wouldn't show the video. So I just read the comments. Good enough.
MadRussian, the video is of Mark Elias and Jamie Raskin, moderated by Brian Tyler Cohen, talking about all the measures already in place to forestall MAGA attempts to reverse the popular and EC votes. Our protections are the amended Electoral College Vote Count Act, that the new house will be sworn in 3 days before the official EC certification, which will put Jeffries in the speaker's chair, not Mike Johnson. The EC cert will be presided over by Harris regardless of the new Senate, and Biden will still be president on Jan 6, so the felon's ability to manipulate or intimidate the count is negligible. The biggest threat comes from failure of states to certify, which jiggers the number of electoral college votes needed to win. By the new rules, if secretaries of state can't certify, governors can, and only one swing state has a republican governor. There's more, but those are the highlights.
NOT going to happen.
I sincerely hope so.
VP Harris and her team are well aware of the dangers. Yes the felon/rapist will try to steal the election, we must be ready and not fall into despair. It may be several days or a couple of weeks, but stay strong, she will prevail!
Did you have to throw **** into the celebration? Onto the garbage truck with you. We need to have strength through fun on standard time today.
Somebody has to do it. Sorry, but I'm not getting on the garbage truck, I'm warning you. Yes, you need strength through fun, but keep your eye on the enemy. Be positive but vigilant. As Carla said: your job is to vote! Never underestimate your enemy, don't give a victory party before the real battle. Those are very important principles from the Art of War.
Dutch Mike, even though I agree with you, the elation I felt at the SNL proof of intelligence and humor of KH, after all the insults to her and women, after all the polluted polls, a moment to celebrate for the work ahead is appropriate.
Pick up that momentum of that elation and work with it! It's important to break the sphere of hate, dark and gloom that the MAGAts have been preaching. But don't underestimate their vileness...
Your point is valid, Dutch, but it's a choice, not an obligation, to make it. Let's just agree to have fun and not be complacent at the same time. Dems can walk and chew gum, remember?
Let's agree on that :)
Indeed, and they are well established as expressed by the words "history repeats itself". Seems like 'ten years' is enough to soften our brain, maybe 15 for events like the holocaust. Out of sight.., out of mind. Unless some 'thing' actualy touches (smacks us) our lives, we tend to move on. Then, all of a sudden... whammmo! Human-nature(?) - Keep yer guard up.
The imminent abortion ban and termination of social security and medicare are things that actually touch most of us right now, MadRussian. And turn out is higher than usual among women and seniors, who are reliable voters in any election. I'm not saying it's in the bag, just that there's no cause for high-end pessimism.
We are well aware of the dangers but will not succumb to negative thinking!
Why does everyone leave Clausewitz out of the party here? I mean, Prussians can throw a good party too!
I think you are way underestimating the popular vote this year! The orange blight has never won the popular vote. To quote Shakespeare "Hell hath no fury, like a woman scorned." Protect ME and my precious granddaughters and grand nieces, whether we like it or not. Think again, Kamala Harris will be president!
But how to fight the extreme court should it get to that point? They seem to have a monopoly on bad and unappealable decisions.
The only champion we have in that instance, Reader/Writer, is better lawyering. It won't sway Alito or Thomas, but Coney-Barret and Roberts are persuadable. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are wild cards, but with Roberts and Coney-Barret we have a 5:4 decision to do the right thing, and it could be a 7:2 decision if Gorsuch and Kavanaugh decide to re-read the constitution.
I wish I knew. I hope Joe and Kamala have some ideas up their sleeve; up to now, Moscow Mitch and the Heritage Foundation played the long game very well.
Yes. Enough is Enough , sisters. It our time…Shine 💙🫶
Go, girls! Vote, vote, vote!
Many of us already have including me!
Love your support, Dutch, but I'd also love to see more men pushing other men to vote ,La. Men are not the enemy; bros, incels, patriarchs, and preditors are.
Thanks so much for stressing that point. I don't come into contact with many American men because I live in Europe and don't visit social media, but I'll do what I can!
That indeed is "interesting"... with centuries of effective male dominance, treating women as too emotional, less intelligent, response for triggering "original sin", on and on. Not that there wasn't pushback. Then, Roe v Wade, which has let out a lot of related reactionary sentiment turning into government policy. As Heather has remarked, women statistically have become a Democrat Party mainstay. Women may also pack the churches relative to men, but in evangelical world patriarchy reigns. It's a messy world. Agreed, nowhere but forward.
Which makes this election so important. It’s more than that. It’s a cultural shift. Those are HARD. We shouldn’t take that for granted. It’s what pushes back when we push forward and @CarrieNewcomer wrote an excellent substack about exactly that.
Don't forget that Western science values "primary" qualities over "secundary" qualities since the 15-16th century (Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Isaac Newton et al). Primary: everything that can be quantified: weight, speed, acceleration, etc. Secondary: everything that cannot be quantified: smell, taste, sensations, feelings, emotions, etc. Primary: logic, analytic, male. Secondary: organic, intuitive, female. Judging by the words, one need not ask which category has been deemed more important for the last 500 years...
Heather took longer today to do her Letter than she has in a long time.
It shows in the careful history she recounts from how the mythology of the rugged cowboy matches in parallel myth for obedient, docile, stay-at-home women.
Heather also narrates much more good history for how American women have gradually been bucking this mythology -- now anxious to defend personal freedoms as well as basic family integrity and medical choices. A groundswell may be unfolding, uplifting -- as in the poll from red, red Iowa now indicating women and other demographics there may also be finally fed up with the orange vulgarian, and with obviously corrupt elites such as the Clarence court's medievalists and their immunity-from-crime fantasists for their favorite vulgar tyrant, or monarch.
Good to see Heather so well at it. Working long, long into her night to get it correct, dot the i's and cross the t's of our ongoing history.
And no break for Heather, either, in a long time.
We're all anxious for respite from the orang felon and his reign of criminality, rape, vulgarity, and repeated calls for his cult mob to inflict for him insult, terror, and violence.
it's worth noting that the last successful liberal movement in this country, legalizing same-sex marriage, was based on expanding individual rights. The pro-choice (anti Dobbs) movement grew legs and now wings, by promoting the preservation/return of women's rights to choose individual bodily autonomy. Even the Women's movement itself is based on increasing women's individual rights (I can remember when women could not have a credit cart in their own name).
This pursuit of individual rights has been consistently opposed by the 'cowboy-culture' right, supposedly the party of the rugged individualism. Really, it's based on the control and domination of the many by the few - not about individual rights at all. So toxic has it become that they have had to field as their presidential candidate a superannuated mentally ill performer (yes, at his core DJT is a performer - hence the focus on crowd size) whom I will from now on refer to as Donvict - as it is my 1st amendment right to do so :)
Protect our rights, our laws, our pocketbooks, and our sanity. Vote on Tuesday, November 5th, if you haven't already done so by early balloting. Thanks for giving me a ranting platform Phil!
Steve, as I have mentioned here once before, I think if “we” gave TFFFG a White House “set” and (actors) “cabinet” & staff and film crew, maybe to be shown on YouTube, or whatever his media platform is, or X (since Musk is such a fan-boy) and let him be the “pretendident” he’d be happy as a orange clam! It could be the epitome of an “unreality” show!!!
Sort of like 'The Truman Show', but way less interesting :)
Thanks for extra F, I know exactly what you mean
And pretendident is perfect. They'll applaud him at the memory care center.
What a creative idea, Barbara! Perfect set up to go with his growing dementia. He might be a little calmer in his play yard.
Rant on, dear Steve.
But when you recall, correctly, how the orange felon has long been primarily a performer, you also bring to the fore two things:
1) We all need artists, performances, humanities that speak to our many-complicated feelings;
and 2) our schools dumped humanities so the tyranny of standardized testing might tyrannize all the more for its abstracted categories, its fit of all life to group logic only, and its further conceits of all life as units only in linear marching.
These conceits serve not only to float the dark money packagers (and accompanying medievalists, or cowboy fantasists), but more necessarily to kill any who cherish the individual, the nuanced personal, and any communities respectful of that.
I humbly suggest that schools devote as much time to history and civics as they do to math and science. And I mean true history as opposed to the "white washed" versions. Kids need to know what the wars were all about. The necessary ones and the foolish ones. They need to know about "Tulsa" and the "Shirtwaist Factory" Fire.
Learn history so you don't repeat it
YES!, Phil, education in the Humanities is an important part of civilizing the human experience, embracing history, literature, philosophy, culture, and the arts, to create a more thoughtful, empathetic civilization. Authoritarians don't like the teaching of the Humanities.
Phil, as I remember it, standardized testing was touted as a way to document substandard schooling in inadequately funded schools. It then grew the additional head of first determining which teachers got merit pay and then of which teachers got to keep their jobs in inadequately funded schools. Once the underperforming schools (due, in large part, to lack of resources) were identified, in Houston, Texas their governance was taken over by a person who had just four years experience teaching and a failed charter school (closed for dwindling enrollment), but plenty of chutzpah. In his vision, teaching is disrupted by “observers” and libraries are closed.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/21/mike-miles-houston-isd-dallas-tea-takeover/
The result is that the certified teachers are quitting in record numbers so that 20% of the teachers are now non certified.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2024/10/29/more-than-800-uncertified-teachers-started-the-school-year-in-houston-isd/
That statistic is scary as hell, Mary.
I met a woman last year who had retired from a Texas teaching job despite never trained for her job. She told me that the principal was very glad to have her, because she knew how to discipline her students.
Steve, you’re right about individual rights. As far as I’m concerned, Clarence Thomas is going after all of the rights granted since the 1960’s (except, of course, the right to interracial marriage). Many writers predicted that, as soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned, the anti-abortion forces would take aim at contraception—and now they are doing just that. I’ve known of women who made the mistake of giving birth in a Catholic hospital and denied the right to a tubal ligation when they had a C-section.
Thank you for the name "Donvict"
I call him the orange blight. I am sickened by the division he has sown among our family, neighbors and communities. The effects of hatred, ignorance and lies that he spreads will sadly last longer than the impact that COVID-19 has had on our society and the world. He is a malignant tumor in our nation.
The old actual cowboy mythology has been replaced by newer version of a ‘cowboy’ the white male computer coder/tech wunder boy. If the country wants to stop fighting that mythology it needs to replace it. There need to be viable heroic models of other ways to be ‘a man’ made popular and enticing.
That's s why I loved Harris's choice of Walz as a vice presidential candidate. The guy talks like someone who cares about people. He coached and he taught social studies, which is a great role model.
🤣 "Donvict" ... Brilliant Steve !
Heather was in Orlando for a huge rally.
Thanks, Daniel.
How I'd love Debbie Mucarsel-Powell to win her run for the U. S. Senate there -- and that Heather's presence in that state may help.
Debbie has run an amazing campaign in my opinion. Hopefully, having the pro-birth question on the ballot will help her and the fact that DeSantis is such an awful governor. Rick Scott is just another rich billionaire who keeps buying his political seats with the Medicare/Medicaid funds he stole from us. And it keeps working for him.
May the good people of Florida finally through him out for good.
Exactly.
Rick Scott should have been fined every dollar he was paid while overseeing the largest Medicare fraud in history. Debbie Mucarsell-Powell COULD pull this off.
Not only is reproductive choice on the ballot - but also marijuana legalization.
In Scott's 2018 election to the Senate, he won by only 10,000 votes of 8 million cast.
And let's see.... he wants to sunset the laws creating Social Security and Medicare?
I got a feeling....that he has alienated the young AND the old!
We the old have been trying to get rid of Scott for a very long time. Let it be the end of his career
She was also on a couple of voting shows like Red, Wine and Blue. Women Unite for Florida. https://www.youtube.com/live/sfl3wjzHibA?si=gYyX4O7RyqnxnTCz
In Pennsylvania. https://youtu.be/dhXICo_vUGc?si=stBxJN1gdjwa8xem
The Suburban Women Problem. https://youtu.be/4XYEK0J-ziA?si=f9ysslti70CSALOk
What's Going to Happen. https://youtu.be/auEIJMNjYuA?si=uu4TDnddB_NJmz9_
How to Protect Democracy. https://youtu.be/a7MWxEamH_s?si=3yt_JBYePCu5P2Xh
An Evening with HCR and Tom Nichols https://youtu.be/UbVB8OFpXhg?si=aA3sJ3lL-C4fvnzY
Yes, and the rally was a Red Wine and Blue event. About 59000 tuned in to the panel with Heather online! You can catch it on FB.
Thank you, Linda.
Following up on Daniel Solomon's note, I was about to put Heather's name and Florida together in my search engine -- when I saw your good link here.
For those interested: "We will, we will rock you" and Heather occur in tandem at the 6:41 mark.
Linda, thank you so much for the links!
Thanks for the links, Linda. Hope I can find them again after I finish my comments perusal!
Here is another one which is an analysis of the Swing state votes called Trump's Turnout Troubles.
https://youtu.be/EZvQCIsu8Zs?si=PkMng4T0rMo3rsnL
Then the ones from above are:
Women Unite for Florida. https://www.youtube.com/live/sfl3wjzHibA?si=gYyX4O7RyqnxnTCz
In Pennsylvania. https://youtu.be/dhXICo_vUGc?si=stBxJN1gdjwa8xem
The Suburban Women Problem. https://youtu.be/4XYEK0J-ziA?si=f9ysslti70CSALOk
What's Going to Happen. https://youtu.be/auEIJMNjYuA?si=uu4TDnddB_NJmz9_
How to Protect Democracy. https://youtu.be/a7MWxEamH_s?si=3yt_JBYePCu5P2Xh
An Evening with HCR and Tom Nichols https://youtu.be/UbVB8OFpXhg?si=aA3sJ3lL-C4fvnzY
Phil- Heather has been going strong during the run-up to the election for sure. On many days she has kept this old guy sane by putting the election into perspective.
Even though every day all we hear is how the race is tied in every state and across the country, her words which have often echoed the same thing are somehow reassuring.
"Medievalists" is the perfect descriptor for the Medievalist Majority. If the Extreme Court isn't checked, I expect they will soon decide it's time to start burning uppity women for being witches. Their misogynist rulings are legally killing women. This has to stop.
The Supreme Court is actually violating the law. 1) that stupid presidential immunity decision 2)letting VA purge voter rolls 90 days before an election. How can we stop the highest court from violating the law?
Jen, exactly! I have the same question.
Also, the t & co violent threats to assassinate specific people. What?!? If I announced that, the police would cuff me & asap into the slammer.
SCOTUS ruled on the Virginia issue in keeping with Movement Conservatism, i.e. suppress the vote. I’m seething. Immunity? Again, SCOTUS backed the dream of the Unitary executive, (sorry) wet dream of movement conservatives. SCOTUS is ruling based on ideology, not law. Biden has been somewhat loathe to address the elephant in the room, not having the political power to do so. I have hope that should the Blue Wave occur a Harris administration will make it a focus.
Vote Blue!
The Extreme Court members can be impeached or forced to resign.
Only if we can elect a majority BLUE congress and senate, correct?
Uh, I happen to be a medievalist by profession and I can tell you that medieval history and culture is not what you seem to think it is. The narrative of the past, especially medieval and ancient history, has been upended in recent years and has moved far away from the 19th-century white imperialist discourse that, alas, still is dominant in popular culture. If you want to blame an era, blame the so-called Scientific Revolution (the 17th century into the 18th century) which coincided with witchcraft trials that condemned women to death for being single and financially independent, and which provided "scientific" proof of the superiority of white men over everyone else. It was also the era of expansion of white European imperialism, of bigotry and oppression based on skin color and regional origin, of legal categorizations of women as not quite human. You think the laws of the Middle Ages were oppressive? Try the late 18th-century Napoleonic Code--in the era known as the Enlightenment (hah!!)--which western civilization textbooks still describe as "rational" and which completely removed all rights of citizenship from women including the right to inherit, to own land, to conduct business as a single person, to have an existence independent of fathers or husbands. It's the reason why French women did not get the vote UNTIL 1945. So stop vilifying the medievalists in the room: the era we study is not to blame for the mess we are in now. Yes: were the seeds of a lot of it there? indeed they were. But the real horrors happened after 1500. Blame white men. They really are the culprits here in their unending lust for power and dominance.
I appreciate your understanding of the eras. My reference to the misogyny of Medieval times (500 ME - 1500 ME) was particular to a reference by the benighted Alito in the Dobbs decision to a ruling from the 13th Century, a concerning a foetus being a human before quickening. I should have taken the time to do even a casual citation. Misogyny reaches back to the dawn of history in the earliest "western" poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which Gilgamesh scorns the Great Goddess Ishtar (Inanna). It is the closest reference to the rise of the Great Sky God over the Great Earth Mother, when humans "officially" began to revere male gods over the power of women in the form of goddesses.
Alito actually completely misinterpreted the medieval canon law reference to quickening. And the fact that he cited a RELIGIOUS legal interpretation in his ruling against the constitutionality of Roe tells you a lot. Moreover, he also misinterpreted the obscure 17th-century English common law (yep: back to the 17th century) ruling about the use of abortifacients, as well as deliberately changing the number of weeks in which "quickening" was believed to be felt (about 20 weeks) to earlier in pregnancy. Because. y'know, Alito knows ALL ABOUT BEING PREGNANT.
https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2022/05/13/alitos-leaked-draft-majority-opinion-and-the-medieval-history-of-abortion/
Sara M. Butler is certainly more versed in the law than Alito whose clerks most likely cherry picked for him, so he could write a manipulated opinion about abortion to agree with his “religious” beliefs.
Sara’s a friend of mine
Yuval Noah Harari is also, apparently, "a medievalist by profession," Linda.
Respectfully, I'll take counsel from you and seek another descriptor of those on the Clarence court.
Thx Linda for the history lesson
The lone cowboy protecting his family was a myth, a lie. Cowboys were usually unmarried, without a wife or family to protect. They lived in a bunkhouse with other male workers on the ranch and worked on a team to look after the ranch and livestock. The cowboys moved around a lot and owned little but what they could carry. A total lie. Reagan could sell a lie so well.
Reagan played cowboys in some of his films. It was his personal mythology. When a reporter asked Paul Newman, “What do you think about an actor becoming President” he replied, “Who said he could act?”
I remember early in her chats that in Little House on the Prairie “Pa” generally got himself into “fixes” that the women had to resolve. He was a bit of a blundering idiot.
Thats white male baseline right there.
And then the cowboys became white male computer software coders and what did they do but make money collecting data and making software to make money, very little to actually help anyone. No innovations to make life easier. Or heal or cure anything. Thiel, Zuckerberg, Musk etc.
And I think Heather mentioned "cowboy" referred to black stockmen.
White ones liked "ranch hand"
The shame is that Musk, gotta admit Starlink is a positive, is fulfilling the previous role of government. He’s then using his riches to overturn the government that got him where he is. The dog caught the car, “conservatives”.
And even now NASA can't give him up. Yesterday I read that his input is essential to our remaining "competitive."
Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, effectively dictates NASA’s rocket launch schedule. The Defense Department relies on him to get most of its satellites to orbit. His companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies.
He wants to overhaul the government to be more efficient - like a business. But business is profit-driven. Government's goal is (or should be) achieving the best outcomes for its citizens; a profit motive would change all that.
As a fan of deregulation and 'efficiency', how safe would Musks cars and rockets be if they were deregulated?
I wish he would stay in his lane.
I hope she is right about the outcome. But I find her logic flawed in one major respect. Yes, Trump sees an opening with men. But why does that opening exist? Trump didn’t create that. Heather consistently fails to recognize the ECONOMIC distress lower income males feel.
They do not see how to support their families or get married or save enough to retire. Heather often cites unemployment and stock market indexes as signs of economic status. Those indicators can seem meaningless to an EMPLOYED man who is carrying loads of credit card debt and is worried about finding the money to fix that sound in his car. He figures he will NEVER own stock or be able to retire with dignity. And he is right.
He sees the economy RIGGED for the rich. And is correct.
Interests of low income people and rural areas were AND ARE consistently given low priority by two parties almost totally focused on raising campaign finance money from special interests, the rich and the upper 20% (the kind of people who can spend $5 a month to comment on Heather’s Substack).
Yes, things got worse under Reagan. But Trump is riding a wave of POPULIST revolt. People, lots of people, are genuinely angry and it doesn’t help to encourage people to “eat cake” in the form of democracy when they cannot afford “bread”.
When will we hear the Democrats make a serious, loud and realistic push to pass a system to replace this disastrous campaign finance system? There was a little effort inside 2022’s filibustered HR1 to demonstrate a “voucher” system to allow voters to designate tax money be sent to candidates WITHOUT REQUIRING the voter to contribute any matching money. But it was NEVER loudly pushed by the politicians and NEVER got wide press coverage; instead the press and politicians ONLY talked about the parts of the law that addressed voting.
Our government was supposed to be run BY THE PEOPLE via the House. Instead, the House has been neutered by campaign money. And the unrepresentative Senate (a compromise Madison reluctantly accepted) is a gun pointed at popular will. We are, instead, praying for a “good king” to be anointed to rule over the prostrate body of our “democracy”.
This need not be. Please take action. Maryland Rep. John Sarbanes, the author of HR1, is retiring. WRITE TO HIM at his official Congress site or john@johnsarbanes.com and urge him to LOUDLY pick up the banner of vouchers and bring along all those who co-signed and are still in Congress.
You voted. Not enough. Now do something that can make a bigger difference. We must fix the source of this popular anger: our broken campaign finance system.
Michael, I trust you will be first in line to support it when Harris or the Democrats in Congress propose the expanding of the SCOTUS to 13 justices. It is only then that the disastrous Citizens United decision will be overturned and we might finally be able to address the control of the rich on our politics. But I don't necessarily think that fixes the plight of young men that you describe. There is much more that needs to be done to address that issue, but one thing is for sure, like so many many other things, IT WON'T BE FIXED BY REPUBLICANS.
Sadly even assuming a Harris victory and a return of a thin Democratic House margin, changes like increasing the number of SCOTUS judges are almost certainly at least 2 years away due to the very low likelihood of holding a Democratic Senate in this election. Sigh...
There are lots of ways to fail. As we stare into the pit and hope it does not pull us in, will any of us sleep on Tuesday evening?
Getting rid of Citizens United is unnecessary. There are good reasons to bounce off one or two of the justices, but CU is hardly the most important one. The rich are getting their way on the cheap. $20 Billion in a $27 trillion economy? Come on! The fossil fuel companies are hardly making a serious effort because influencing legislators is such a bargain! Mostly effective because 80% of the electorate has contributed essentially nothing! We need to stop pointing to bans and turn our attention to investing in giving the voters real power to influence legislators.
HR1's campaign finance vouchers provision was simply a law with tax money attached. A law for which a precedent already exists: the Supreme Court has already approved a similar law for Seattle (not that this rouge court cares about precedent).
BTW, nothing in the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to overturn a law passed by Congress. John Marshall has been dead a long time; it is time to throw some dirt on his grave. Pass a law that stops (or clarifies, constrains or limits our Supreme Court from exercising) that capability. For instance, a law that says the court must be unanimous to strike one down. Or a law that removes from office any judge that enforces such a Supreme Court "reversal". Judicial review is a "habit" (a bad habit?) that has never been subjected to careful legislative attention.
Less dramatic, I have read that laws can be written to indicate that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to address certain provisions of a law.
Thanks to Citizens United, we now have Billion dollar presidential campaigns.
Publicly funded federal elections would end this, but both parties are too addicted to lobbyists' bribery and emptying the pockets of grassroots donors to ever let such a proposal see the light of day.
"Trump is riding a wave of POPULIST revolt"
The Groper-in-Chief is riding a wave of WHITE RESENTMENT that began with the dismantling of Jim Crow (Brown v Board and President Johnson's civil rights legislation) and then exploded following the election of THAT BLACK PRESIDENT.
Yes, but who "let loose the hounds of hell" on race? Not Trump. Not by himself. Trump merely turned the key that was already in the lock, oiled and polished by the two preceding decades of frequent use.
No, both parties lost track of their obligation to care for people as votes became secondary to money. It was well underway in the 1990s as we (the Democrats) reeled from Reagan's lies about "Welfare Queens" and abandoned cash welfare (AFDC) for a pitiful replacement. As we forgot that low-income workers also grow old and need to stop work and receive care while pouring money onto the minority who were lucky enough to have access to realistic 401(k) plans.
In this post on The Conversation https://theconversation.com/race-is-already-a-theme-of-the-2024-presidential-election-continuing-an-american-tradition-220528, Prof. Marjorie Hershey makes your point about the fundamental role of racism in motivating much of the support for Trump.
But I would insist that while the "bacteria" to cause this illness is always there, the virulence of this outbreak needs to be laid at the door of 30-40 years of neglect of the ECONOMIC well-being of the lower income 80%
Yes to Reform! During the last 24-hours I have over 40 campaign request for (more) money. Reform is past due. Begging for money to hold office is time taken away from productive work in the interest of the people. Yes to Reform. Vote Blue.
“… fails to recognize the ECONOMIC distress lower income males feel.”
Maybe those sad men need to talk with women around them for advise on how to make their future fruitful. We are no longer under the finger of the men in this country.
👏👏👏👏^^^^^^
The non college educated working class of PEOPLE have been cut adrift by both parties over the years. We've begun to reappropriate this idea of patriotism. Progressive minded must make an effort to re appropriate this once well spring for the democratic party. People are 1 flat or set of 2 tires away from the poor house! That's the real real of it right there now
Michael - You are right that many young men are in a tough spot supporting families. So are many young women - both as one of two parents working full time while raising young children and as single mothers. The system is deliberately rigged against the people at the bottom of the economy. The entire tax system in which the poor and middle class pays taxes and billionaires pay little or nothing. This has resulted in a transfer of money from the middle and low income people to the billionaires. That is one of the reasons I can't understand why low income people support Trump. He wants to give billionaires (like himself) even lower taxes and has promised to kill the Affordable Care Act - the Medicare medical insurance that enables ordinary people to have medical insurance. Why would a low income person support that when Harris wants to tax the rich and use the money to give to people raising kids and give a $25,000 tax break to people trying to buy a house?
Thank you for pointing out this about Mr Sarbanes who is my Representative in the House. I did not know about the Hr bill but now I'm on it. I'm extremely upset he decided to retire and his district was bombarded with support for that Capitol Hill policeman and our in district favorite lost to a recent arrival to Maryland. The power of the money machines again. Thank you
More than any other person Heather has helped us all stand firm in our resolve that we must win this time. For me it's not the women's reproductive freedom but for my daughter and granddaughter (to young to vote yet) a decision that would bring all that matters for women back into our own hands and our doctors is paramount. The other parts of Project 2025 must be ground into the sands of history as the total aberration of democracy that they are. Further my anger wants to bring Trump and his cronies to a harsh legal judgment to show our young men there are consequences in life.
We love you, Heather.
I am so very grateful to Dr. Heather Cox Richardson! Her research and perspective has helped make the past year or two bearable. And, I agree this is among her best Letters ever.
Yes and yes—fantastic review!!
Alito's words: “women are not without electoral or political power,” will go down in infamy. That was his insincere consolation to the women he gutted, literally and figuratively. He will rue the day he and the other right wing extremists on the bench got high on their supply of unchecked power and dominance to serve their billionaire benefactors.
I think he’s smart enough to see just how fucked up his logic is, especially when it slaps him in the face, he’ll know that he blew it. We are going to reverse everything that he has had a hand in, judges hate to be reversed, get used to it Sammy. It may take a while but the institution of the SC is going to be changed by we the people who are fed up with such biased jurisprudence, justice should be blind not have an agenda. The Roberts court has become a laughing stock when it comes to evenhanded justice, they have no clue what that means. Hopefully they live long enough to see just how much we loathe everything they have done.
Well, I would start with Leonard Leo and his federalist kingdom to begin with. Now that may send a cooling message of no mean order.
Hopefully, they’ll die soon of natural causes so a re-formed SCOTUS can start undoing their work that was against the people of the US.
Well said, Dick. I'm looking forward to this day!
Stacey, reading your comment I have a vision of Alito served up by women a sumptuous gourmet meal of “his words” to gag on….swallow and, finally, hopefully digest.
Barbara, I recently watched a video of a Gila Monster swallowing a young antelope whole; one of those odd weird things in nature posts
The imagery to Alito comes to mind
Opps, sorry, it was a Komodo Dragon
Very graphic. Watch at your own digression
https://youtu.be/bvIqv4f-HQo?si=TwBRblhCBSVMPpUY
Lol….Dave…my brain read “watch at your own digestion”!!! Ultimately true I guess!!! Thanks for the link…haven’t watched it yet, but “saved” it to do so later.
Another good reason for campaign Reform.
Add to that legislation that prevents convicted felons from running for any office.
Thank you not only for today’s letter, but for every letter that you’ve written to chronical history not just for your faithful readers but for future generations to read and understand this unique and frightening time in history where one man backed by the wealthy and powerful have attempted to return America to the 1860’s! With your help hopefully November 5th will be a day for women and democracy and not a day that ends the American dream.
Mary Kay, if we still had encyclopedias his “reign” (drain? stain? feign?) would be a very thick chapter indeed—and should come with a packet of sanitizing wipes to use after reading.
Seems that manhood itself in this culture and country is acquiring a new and healthier image, and one with actual content, actual substance. I see this every day at least where I live among young men that I go out of my way to speak to. So the definition of a real man might now include his ability to honor respect and support women in his life in whatever their own choices are. And this in a new and fresher way gives all men a better and fuller chance at a meaningful life in this fast-changing world.
I want to give a “hat-tip” to my little brother, now aged 71, who was WAY ahead of this curve and is a living example of a wholly involved father, husband, son, sibling & community member…all without any fanfare—indeed, the concept of being lauded, which he is—for his way of being is puzzling to him…to him it’s just “the way to be”.
“Just the way to be”. Bravo to your baby bro!!!
Robin Birdfeather, your comment about manhood holds the core of my belief that we are part of a mysterious universe continually bending toward the light. As all that we humans think we “know” expands, what we know about our inner-most selves expands as well. Gender is as deep as that understanding goes.
My favorite novel that has influenced me about gender is Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is. At the end of the novel the experience of the Mom (a medical doctor) and her son who is contemplating transgendering spend time in Thailand. The story about their experience within the Thai culture opened my eyes like never before to view gender as incidental to human nature.
I find the support of evangelicals for Trump as the most confounding cohort of his base. My mind just cannot fathom Trump, among all good people in our great country, being the one evangelicals would choose to be our President. Is there one of the Ten Commandments that Trump does NOT shatter??????????(10?!)
AND to think who Trump would choose to fill crucial roles in his administration…a nightmare!
The prayer I will keep sending up from the GODness within me in whose image I was made, is…please, God, deliver all of us from 4 more years of this nightmare! May it be so.
Among new sources speaking up are ex-evangelicals who for their own spiritual health have discovered hugely disturbing patterns within those old ranks. YouTube has some of them. It appears that when humans begin to cede power to an invisible being who is identified as male, some people will reinterpret that as a form of deserved power on earth. And when you put money into the mix it's a real mess, ensnaring those who for many reasons do not have a wider view of possibilities. So they themselves cede unbelievable power to other actual humans. Does that make sense to you?
Yes, Robin, it does make sense…power follows money. Money as the root of all evil continues to challenge humankind to win the final judgement. To all the rich human “camels” who hope to slip through the eye of the needle, beware!
I love your verb choice, “ensnaring”. Wealth/Power is like a swirling vortex that ensnares human beings into the trap that insulates them from the wider body of humanity where we all exist as one…in my Unitarian view anyway!
And most definitely in my Reconstructionist
Jewish way too...
The "love" of money is the root of all evil, said the Apostle Paul.
But you're spot on, Jane!
What makes sense to me is that there needs to be balance between the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine. Archeology shows that humans first venerated the Goddess Mother for her mysterious ability to universally generate new life. As humans came to understand that males also contribute to creating new life, they began to discovered the Divine Masculine and realized life requires a balance of both. In the last 4,000 years, we have lost that balance.
What stands out to me from the Trump cult is the total lack of respect for women and the stated aim of taking away the agency of women to make their own choices. Trump wants to "protect" women whether we want it or not. This has really creepy sexual overtones that articulates the lack of respect for woman making their own decisions. Women have always known how to control their fertility by using herbs. The birth control pill is the modern equivalent. Taking away a woman's ability to control her fertility through birth control pills and abortion is taking away a woman's ability to make her own decisions about her life. It is an expression of utter contempt for and lack of respect for women and it is the fundamental tenant of the Trump cult and all who espouse it.
Women understand this on a deep level. That understanding is uniting women and the men who love and respect them to work together to defeat this darkness.
Tucker's comments about beating the misbehaving girl (not boy) with such fervency was really, really creepy.
So completely disgusting! My psychologist wife about lost it at the tv.
Interestingly many/most cultural mythologies about a deity originated with androgynous deities. Over time they became twins and over more time, just a male.
It seems to me that a man worth respecting does not lie and does not cheat. Does not perpetrate or ignore injustice. Trump????
Nobody is perfect, but some own up to bad judgement and make repairs. Decency is not a luxury, it sustains freedom, as does a 'pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." Democracy is not a war of conquest, It is an awareness of effort for, and sometimes a battle for human rights.
"the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings." - Lincoln
The most important political office is that of private citizen. Louis D. Brandeis
Important, presumably as in ultimately most elemental source of legitimate power, as well as the most elemental role of responsibility. Ultimately, the buck stops with us.
Brandeis was was an exceptional prophet for placing justice for the many ahead of profits and unaccountable power for the privileged few.
I hope so, too! In literal words, I agree with Rump and the Evangelicals: men should protect women. But before I’m taken for a misogynistic patriarchy supporter, let me explain:
Last summer, I attended a midsummer ritual ceremony, a blessing for the Earth. At one point, the women kneeled in the center of the ritual circle, singing praise for the Earth. The men were asked to form a standing circle around them, to protect them from negative influences so they could to their “job”, blessing Mother Earth, because they were mothers themselves. Then, the men were asked to sing praise not only to Mother Earth, but also to the women, for all the things they are and do. Then, in return, the women were asked to sing praise to the men, thanking them for protecting them with their strength. At that point, none, literally _none_ of the men could hold back his tears when the women sang for them. In fact, I’m tearing up again as I write this….
Afterwards, as the men spoke about the ritual, we all felt intuitively, maybe even instinctively, that this is the natural order of things. We are there to protect women from harm, to support them, so they can do what they need to do.
The difference between the protection in the ritual and the protection that the Evangelicals and Rump mean? The concept of _property_. In their view, women are their property and should be protected lest ‘no other man touch them’, or they get ‘stolen’. In the ritual, it was an uplifting protection, men not as owners of women, but in respectful service of women, to support and uplift them. Same word, but a completely different world…
Dutch Mike, I know your intentions are good, but it still rubs me the wrong way. Let me relate a story to you.
Years ago, I was dating a man who was not at all intimidating in his looks. We went to a theatre that was near dying out, to see the revival of an old film. We went into the venue, and there couldn't have been more than perhaps 6-7 other people, well spread out.
The movie hadn't run more than 15 minutes, when a man, probably about 5 years older than my 20 years, came and sat down on the other side of me. My date glanced over as this dude sat down and looked right back at the screen. Any woman reading here will probably know what comes next.
The strange guy is slowly leaning against me as his hands go into his lap. I admit, I was really really young and naïve--and raised to be polite. I kept leaning away and he kept leaning in. I was disturbed by this jerk but (again, I think the women here will "get" this) being cat-called, groped, even assaulted was just part of being a woman. You learned to, most times, avoid or get out of these situations.)
I finally shoved my shoulder back as I stood up and announced to my date "WE'RE MOVING SEATS". He was utterly confused but followed as I got up and walked past him. Thankfully, strange dude didn't follow. I fumed for the rest of the film, as why didn't my date NOTICE and "protect me"?--and I concluded I needed to protect myself.
Afterwards, when we left, he did ask me what that was all about, and when I told him, he found the situation amusing. There were other issues with him as well, but that made it pretty clear that he wasn't "the one" for me.
I'm sure that your ritual was moving, I am fond of rituals as well. Perhaps other females here will have the same thoughts that I had--vulnerable people need to be protected, for whatever reason they are vulnerable, but to assume protection is needed because of our sex, that I don't agree with.
Miselle, you’ve just described an event which illustrates, as nothing else can, the presumption of <insert obligatory “not all” here> men that what they do/want/assume to do to (not “with”) women is all that matters to them.
Ally, I have no doubt there are some men reading this who would doubt that any guy would do such a think with a man on the other side. They probably wouldn't believe the behavior of some on public transportation. I know of several women who had the unfortunate experience of men choose the seat next to them on a public transportation, and then start pleasuring themselves.
I'm always curious how these men got into this kind of behaviour... At what point in their lives did they decide it's ok to do this to a woman? SMH...
Or that it just "amusing". It one thing to be inattentive, and another to be willingly indifferent to abuse of another's rights/feelings/personal safety. As we speak, my Australian Shepard is having a fit because there is a coyote in the back yard. Freedom worthy of the name works when we all watch out and protect one another, in the ways in which we are able. Hearing a lark, Juliet gets it that dawn is rising. Romeo is slow on the uptake. Ultimately, violence spoiled everything.
Hi Miselle, I'm sorry you had to go through this. I'm not saying women can't protect themselves when there is no man around. But what your date could (and should) have done, if he didn't notice what was happening, is ask you afterwards: "I'm sorry this happened. Can I do anything for you now? Is there something you need?" instead of just finding it "amusing" (though I'd say there's nothing "amusing" about it...).
I hope that I didn't upset you with my comment, as obviously this was a meaningful ceremony for you. I commented because of the old "walk a mile in my shoes" to explain my reaction.
I hope that Trump doesn't win, and while plenty of MAGA seem brainwashed cultists to me, it is worthy to understand what about Trump appeals to them. Knowing what in their lives draws them to him would help us to change their minds. Hilary's comment of deplorables did so much damage.
No harm done, Misele. Thanks for being so considerate :)
And yes, I hope, too, that Trump doesn't win. But even if he doesn't, he has spewn so much hatred across your land, it will take lifetime to clean that sh*t up...
Looking ahead to the reshaping, restructuring and re-engaging of our civic selves no matter what the election results and how long they take, I love it that this subject has sparked so much interest because it is very much a huge factor at the heart of what has gone wrong in this country. And has done disservice to just about everybody, including if you will the disservers themselves, who may in time perhaps understand better where they could do better. Chins up everybody.
There is a long, strong history of women warriors from Epole of Carystus (13th Century BCE) to women who dressed as men and went to war down through history into the 20th century in many cultures. But women in late pregnant and as mothers of nursing babies need protection if the children are to survive. I can't imagine battling for my life with sword and shield while caring for an 18-month-old, perfectly mobile toddler. I love the summer solstice ritual told by Dutch Mike. We need more such rituals to enact the healing we all long for after the bruising that happens in a society that has lost touch with expressing basic respect for life and love.
I'm glad you like the ritual :) And you are right about the women warriors, NLTownie. And don't forget about the warrior women of the samurai either, with Tomoe Gozen as the most famous example.
There are women warriors everywhere and have been all through history, all around the world. We all need a warrior's heart sometimes, as well as the understanding of being a healer and nurturer... men and women of all genders. We need each other. This is one of the many marvellous and wonderful things that has come from the Kamala Harris campaign... hope. The wings of hope and love will bring us through.
Dutch Mike, I appreciate your story, but I have a question for you: as a gold star lesbian who had a 30 year career in law enforcement and never was or desired to be a mother, where would I have stood in this ceremony? I am a protector, not a mother, and a woman.
I would say you could stand wherever you wanted. I completely agree with you. I am a lesbian of decades and more warrior like than earth mother type. I would have stood in the circle of protectors, or in a circle of the wise older women. If there was such a circle, and which of course there should be
It seems to me that there are many ways of being nurturing, contributing and protecting, and that all are likely to be needed. The bane of civilization, and of the dream of "peace on earth" is dependent on self, as well as societal, restraint of abuse of power; of deliberately exploiting others' vulnerabilities. Seems to me that the ultimate contest between what democrats and what has become of Republicans, however imperfect, is a contest between cooperative negotiation of power and self-serving, predatory abuse of it. Could it be any clearer than what this contest presents to the public day by day?
"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." - Lincoln
Hi Tina, there were no elderly women present at the time, but I love the idea of a circle of wise older women! That would be a great addition. Maybe next time...
That's easy, Ally :) It would have been your choice. You could stand with the men, or join the women, whatever would feel like best for you in that moment. Personally, I would have been honoured to stand side by side with a woman like you in that ritual.
Thank you, DM!
Excellent question!✨🙌🏾
And excellent answers.
Yes it is. See my answer below (though it's pretty much the same as your answer, Tina)
There is a plausible narrative that women in hunter gatherer societies had an equal status role with men because the tasks could be done equally by men and women. But when the change came to being agriculturists attached to land, they began to "own" the land. That necessitated protecting "your" land from others which also entailed wanting to pass it down to "your" son. The only way to know for certain that a child was "your" son was for your wife not to have sex with any other man. This meant you had to make sure your wife didn't have the occasion to have sex with someone else and thus, not only the land became your "possession, so did your wife. We're still trying to get over that inequities of that concept, particularly in a hyper-capitalist culture.
Nailed it, NLTownie.
And don't forget the aspect of sexually transmitted diseases. That also contributed to the 'value' of virgins: as a man, if the girl's a virgin, you know you're not going to get infected with an STD. Nobody ever asked how the woman could be sure SHE wouldn't get infected by the man, though...
I can see the tendency to tear up in any act that validates rejecting the politically and socially sanctioned attempts to divide genders against one another by truly maleficent beings. What an affirming relief to reject maleficence!
Agreed Dutch...this is also my understanding of what it means to be a man.
Robin, I’ve always railed at the moniker “real man”. It felt insulting to suggest a hierarchy of traits that separated “the tough guy image” from the more “humane” ones. Aggression, dominance, and misogyny don’t make anything real
Yep, the moniker "real man" is mostly misused by men who are not real men, in my view. Especially Russian culture is rife with misogyny and this toxic "hard, strong man" image. Some of my patients are Russian women and they are quite sick of it.
"Conservatives" in the hubristic sense want everyone to be like them, or perhaps, just like them, but lower than them. Yet, from a functional biological standpoint, sexually evolved in plants and animals, to shuffle the genetic deck. Some plants produce seeds that will germinate and thrive under different conditions. Diverse genetics, propensities, and abilities naturally makes species more adaptable, more resilient, and more creative than "perfect" copies of any one iteration. A kit of tools is going to give one (or in this case, the species) more success, in more situations, that any one of them alone.
Think of all the different interests and talents we humans display. Inevitably some try strategies that are unacceptable in a material way, and that we naturally discourage and stop, but it's in our interests, individually and socially, to promote optimum diversity. Seems to me that "real" in any sense other than existing is a pretty subjective categorize. The constellation of personalities and abilities of the amalgam of humans is mostly a source of delight and key to the wondrous things (though not always good) things we are able to think, feel, and do.
I agree! My son is a fine father of an almost 2 month old. He cares for his son and wife so tenderly that it opens a new well of love for him in me. What a wonderful feeling it is, to see your children grow to be the people you hope they will be!
Yes it is! A good and fine thing, to behold!
lol, I have to laugh at the FB trolls who think denigrating other men by calling them “soy boy” has any power other than in their insecure little brains.
Exactly. ‘What makes a man’ needs to be a definition reformed. A constellation of values that a man can feel heroic embodying. The cowboy myth cannot just be destroyed, it has to be replaced with viable alternatives
Even as I contemplate a more and more likely electoral win for the Harris/Walz team, my enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge that when they win, it is also equally likely that, while the electoral battle may be over, the prospect of other battles, both legal and, possibly, violent, remains. There may be even harder work ahead to protect and sustain our democracy after Harris' inauguration than there has been during the campaign. We need to be prepared to continue to defend our democracy if we intend to keep it.
Absolutely agree, Betsy Smith. My hope is that on Jan 19, 2025, Biden for his last formal act of his great presidency, signs the ERA Amendment. It just waiting for a presidential signature. And it would acknowledge that obvious Right in law finally. Finally, finally, finally have one American President “Remember the Ladies”! ERA is the way forward!
Oh yes yes yes…been waiting a heck of a long time…..way TOO long….for the ERA to be ratified. Tis way overdue & I hope to see it happen in my lifetime. Tic Tok the clock is ticking!!!
There is no requirement or option for a President to sign a Constitutional amendment. The only requirements are 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress and ratification by 3/4 of the states. The first requirement for the ERA happened already way back in the 1970s. The latter requirement didn't occur within the time limit established in the original drafting of the amendment but had since occurred (in 2020). The ultimate question is whether the time limit established in the preamble of the ERA amendment was valid or not. If it was valid then the ERA as passed in back in the 70s is no longer eligible to be ratified. If the time limit is determined to not be valid, then there are a variety of opinions in whether the amendment is NOW already in effect, or could be put into effect.
The problem of course is that the decision is going to be made by the current Supreme Court which isn't likely to support the ERA .
We shall see.
But Biden has nothing to do with it.
Yesterday, I accompanied our 18 year old granddaughter and her 19 year old beau to our local voting precinct. When they enter and started their sign in, it was noted they were first time voters. All the poll workers and people nearby applauded them!! I was so proud and touched, gave me butterflies in my tummy!!! We will not go back!! They are appalled by the idea that the “man” should tell his mate how to vote ( of course this is added to the long list of why they did NOT vote for trump.)!! Yea America!!
Sharon, thank your 18 year old granddaughter and her beau! May this be the first of lifelong, thoughtful voting. 👏🏻👏🏻
My granddaughter who will be able to vote in the next general election canvassed for Kamala/Waltz yesterday with me and her mother, I told her that long after I’m gone, she will remember doing it as her first proactive involvement with voting. It was work, but it was good work especially at my age and health state.
Wow. After trying to feel hope in the Iowa tea leaves this historical context..a context that I lived as a 59 year old female growing into voting age in the US..makes it so visceral. I had not thought about Janet Reno for years and years but remember now my reaction then. I know it is hubris but when I read the full story in the Des Moines Register article it dawned on me that of course these women over 65 have lived the same history but from a slightly longer arc and from a different cultural background. I have more faith in this ‘voting bloc’ than in the young men bros amused by Trump’s tear-it-all-down venom.
You can only imagine how visceral it is for an 89-year-old like me. Been through the Depression, WW II on... Started protesting in the McCarthy era of the mid '50s. We actually have come a long way in a fairly short time. So glad to be part of all this now. 🙏
Robin, Vis-a-vis basic bodily autonomy and political participation, as with so many aspects of the key progressive achievements of the postwar period, my generation benefited from the hard work and bravery of our foremothers. Too many of us have been complacent. Now we are relying on those younger and older to bail the country out. I am very contrite.
Got to use all your energy including the contrite part to move forward for your own health and good as well as everyone else's. I know you will.
I appreciate your perspective.
🙏🙏
KSC, I’m 75 and I’m pissed as hell to be fighting this same sh*t yet again!!! Just makes all the more determined…..into the fray once again!!!!🗽
Thank you..for your past and present warrior determination, on behalf of myself, my 35 year old daughter, my 8 year old granddaughter and 9 month old niece. But also on behalf of my husband, my sons and my grandsons. Any family, community, country can only thrive when the patriarchal myth is rejected. The future of this planet and all its creatures depends on defeating this kind of misogynistic power grab.
My 77yr old husband brings this up ALOT the same $hit! I refuse to stand down anywhere in my life because of his and many others previous efforts for equal rights. I’m under no illusion - he married a fighter - on purpose. I so want him to finally see the ERA signed followed by a woman behind the Resolute.
Wouldn’t that be grand….and most perfectly fitting!!!!
One of the other “anthems” I listen to to gather strength and resolve is Jackson Browne….. “Til I Go Down” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmzimxfqgfw
Yeah baby!!
👍👍👍👍👍
Trump a on trick phony who whose only strategy is to become increasingly cruel, vile, and dishonest. I noticed today that someone removed a number of Democratic candidate signs in my neighborhood but left the Republican ones. Indifferent to merit, that's the only sort of way they know how to win.
We've had "sign wars" in our county as well. The local weekly paper has called them and some of the dumber ones have been caught on camera.
The value system of most Republicans continues to head in the wrong direction.
OMG, JL, my brain just about keeled over laughing at the image of TFFFG riding a pony!🐎 The guffaw heard ‘round the world!!!!
No pony would let that fat ____ anywhere near her/him…animals KNOW
Ya, the poor creature’s legs would buckle under the weight. Hmmm, tho’ now I’m picturing a bucking bronco….with a fat turd being flung off its back!!!!!
More the profound moral weight that physical weight. As VermontGirl57 said, animals know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7_OWYrLVOU
🎼 the bird bird bird…the bird is the word: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gc4QTqslN4
😂😂😂
I’m going to be seeing that image ALL DAY‼️
As an older white man, financially conservative, but socially a full on freedom loving, I want to thank you, HCR, for your beautiful, critical writing. You have provided important, targeted, historical context to current events. These have helped fill in the blanks for me of why our politics have regressed to this point. But you communicate with such calm, consistent, accurate, warm perfection. And your source notations take me back to the high school and college papers I wrote, where this was an understandable requirement. You have helped me personally weather the political storms since you began this effort. It has helped me maintain efforts for discourse, and given me the fortitude to carry on. No doubt many of us are exhausted. But the alternative universe where Donald Trump and MAGA warp and kill democracy is just plain unacceptable. HCR- you are a TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT. I just plain love you for it.
How do you promote somebody for receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom? I promote Heather Cox Richardson.
To add to what Jon says above, I want to thank you for creating and encouraging this community to support each other, this country and the act of taking it back from MAGA. Years ago, when this group was much smaller, I somewhat seriously proposed we have a “convention.” We already “know” each other!
Very well said. HCR has been my lighthouse through these turbulent Trump nightmare. Honestly, without her, I'm sure I'd be anxious with an ulcer. She gives me hope in humanity. No words can really express my gratitude for her Letters. I hope she puts them in books, they should be a part of history classes, so future generations can understand how we almost lost democracy. Come on Kamala 2024
Live in a blue state. I voted early and it seems that early voting has been high. Still very nervous about the results of the election and the shenanigans that the Republicans might pull to upend a Harris/Walz win. Will not relax until Kamala is sworn in.
While we may be able to breathe a little easier (hopefully) after Tuesday, we all need to stand up to the Republican shenanigans that will take place and hold them accountable.
I don't trust the Republicans justices 3 of whom are ready to retire. They are all so partisan and theocratic that nothing they try will be a surprise.
Gary, tho’ I expect/hope for a Harris/Walz shut-down victory, if anything this has taught us NOT to rest on our laurels and relax. No, not ever. Maybe not be at such fever’s pitch anxious mode, but never, ever, taking our eyes off the prize and what it takes to keep it in place & evolving “forward” with our society.
Barbara, I have thought the same thing. The momentum that has built in support of Harris must be sustained to roll back the regressive policies and laws that limit our freedom. We have to support voting rights, eliminate the electoral college, rescind the cap on the number of House representatives. Democracy demands a fairer balance to hear the voice of the people.
#1, outlaw Citizens United.
There's already an electoral college solution in place. That is, who every wins the majority of votes in the entire country ALL of the electoral college votes are awarded to the victor. Once a plurality of electoral college votes passes 270 then then law goes into affect. CA and NY have already passed this and they account for 82 electoral college votes. Several other states have signed on to this as well.
"As the nonprofit group National Popular Vote reports, the jurisdictions that have enacted Proposition 113 into law account for 196 electoral votes. The proposition would go into effect when states that have a total number of 270 electoral votes pass such a measure."
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/524576-colorado-passes-resolution-to-award-electoral-votes-to-whoever-wins-the/
Gary, I’ve been watching their progress, now stalled unfortunately. My state, CA, has already signed on. I worry however, should this “process” be actually implemented by the signed-on states, that it would be litigated and perhaps even end up before SCOTUS…..and, even tho’ state’s are supposed to “control” such things, I worry that this particular court might dictate otherwise. Voting rights for all citizens has been, and continues to be, a long hard-to-achieve effort, with some of our history being ruthlessly deadly to many in this regard. 🗽
I don't see the Republican Party ever being so weak the electoral college will be eliminated. I applaud CA for signing on to this solution.
Some of them, old enough to retire, are therefore also old enough to die of natural causes.
The 'shenanigans' are likely to be ugly. Hopefully preparations are in place and then we face, again hopefully, long term mitigation.
Among other sources you could check out Joyce Vance's interview with a security expert who has been working with thorough national support to prepare every single police and sheriff etc institution for many months now.
Stephen, I saw reported that Washington state Gov Inslee has alerted the National Guard to be ready should the need arise to deploy them due to any shenanigans….such as the two ballot drop box fires/vandalisms already—they are searching for the perp & feel that s/he may strike again—they are on high alert.
Some states have already activated their National Guard in readiness.
No spring chicken and one who has questioned every President since Franklin Roosevelt, but I'm beginning to think that thanks to women we the people are finally regaining our sense.
Next is the Equal Rights Amendment.
🤞Been waiting a long long long time to see it finally ratified. I’ve posted this song link here several times, but never sure who all gets to see it, so will post yet again. Keb’ Mo’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FciQeRGYFlw
I've listened to it several times going back to the summer when Harris was launching. I love it and it's great to dance to...
I listen to this song on repeat during my gym workouts. Love it!!!
Thank you I loved it
Thank you
I've listened to it several times going back to the summer when Harris was launching. I love it and it's great to dance to...
Thanks Barbara. Joyful and inspiring
This election has been like a steep hike up a rocky mountain. On the way I’ve learned things and done things I never imagined I would, and now we’re almost to the top. This last mile is the hardest and each step feels like it costs every ounce of effort we can manage. But what a glorious view from the summit!! We’re almost there.
One of the things I'VE learned is that a candidate for President of the USA could simulate oral sex on stage - and people would still vote for him. . .
Not to mention ALL THE OTHER STUFF he’s done that would normally pull the plug on any candidacy. It’s like folks egg him on to see what outrageous thing he’ll do next, like some kind of twisted TV reality show. ‘Cept this IS real.
Nice one, Governor Walz!
That line at the end got an audible chuckle out of me.
73% of evangelicals vote Trump, the antithesis of everything Jesus taught. Don't post the 10 Commandments. Post the Beatitudes.
I fixed Trump's quote for him: "They say the suburban women. Well, the suburbs are under attack right now. When you're home in your house alone and you have this monster, this adjudicated rapist that keeps evading prison and he's got, you know, over a dozen more rape accusations — I think you'd rather have Kamala Harris and Tim Walz."
The only suburbs where women need protection are those that Trump visits.
May I steal this, please?
Pax, please do! Everything counts right now.
Yes!
Thanks!
I’m an English major. I hate inarticulation, and tfg is the poster boy. “They [they? who?] say the suburban women.” What about them? The ephemeral “they” had driven me nuts since 2015.
👍👍👍