domain:moultano.wordpress.com
It doesn't seem baffling to me. The message from Klein, Thomas and Dunkleman is that an entire branch of left-wing progressivism ( the side whose instinct to devolve responsibility and attack concentrations of power like corporations as opposed to the equally progressive tendency to make them partners in regulation and social engineering) didn't just fail, it won and then failed and is costing Democrats.
Their general argument is that systems in place that, for example, allow left-wing advocacy groups to sue and stop nearly all infrastructure or home building, are bad. Obviously some people like those systems and consider them a triumph of leftism (cynically: since they know how to use them better than the people who don't have houses or aren't educated enough to use environmental protection law to their advantage)
It's a clear broadside against an entire set of Democratic anti-monopoly, anti-government, pro-lawsuit activists.
Finally, all wordcels have is how many people value what they say. Klein is the Drake of the Democratic party: a whole bunch of people believe "They" made him successful because he's a capitalist bootlicker because it's easier than admitting that people simply prefer him. There seems to be a clear element of professional envy here. If the Zephyr Teachout's of the world were actually indigent, they'd have an incentive to listen to a criticism of their policies. But they aren't so it's all status games. It's just rappers jumping on a more successful rapper in the hopes of getting their name out/taking their place.
It was not. I encourage you to watch the video. At the point Field's car goes down the street passed the camera man he could simply have stopped, put it in reverse, and backed away from the crowd. You can tell this is possible because it's exactly what he does seconds later, after he has driven into the crowd.
Some of these are amazing, thanks!
Religious movies just never capture reverence or awe well.
I truly wonder if this is it. My thinking is that the Jesus story is just...difficult in its totality if you don't already believe. Individual story beats can make great stories but the totality of the god-man and what he has to do is just...odd (the closer we get to suicide by cop the less interested I was in The Chosen). It is, after all, consciously a subversion of expectations
I guess I'll have to find some Old Testament films to compare.
Tanista
15hr ago
The answer is as simple as it is impossible for the current left to even fake.
Stop using the term "white dudes" -> 50 state sweep.
I'm only half-joking. Why is it always "white dudes"?
Tanista
15hr ago
The gays that won't just go along with the ideology are themselves being pushed out/see no reason to participate anymore?
Some Democrats have explicitly said they don't want black faces that don't want to toe the line. Why would gay men be any different?
Botond173
16hr ago
I'd guess he feels Dems are more comfortable supporting Pol Pot rather than Bin Laden.
...indeed; which is precisely the reason for my question.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
16hr ago
In what way are the multiple interpretations of Obama different than the multiple interpretations of Trump? It was a pretty similar phenomenon.
Obama said Gay Marriage couldn't work because when a man and a woman get married "God is in the mix." Dan Savage told me, a faithful reader of his column in the back of The Onion, that Obama didn't really mean it, he was just saying that to get elected. We should vote for Obama to advance Gay Rights. Trump waves a pride flag and has famous trans friends. Evangelicals tell me he doesn't really mean it, he was just saying that to get elected. We should vote for Trump to roll back the Gay Agenda.
Obama said he was going to end wars. He didn't really mean it. Trump said he was going to end wars. He didn't really mean it.
Obama talked a lot of trash about corporations. He didn't really mean it, unless they broke woke taboos. Trump talks a lot of trash about corporations. He didn't really mean it, unless they annoy him personally.
Obama and Trump both had cults of personality in which what they said was what their fans believed, regardless of any past statements.
Rosencrantz2
16hr ago
I suppose they were just hail marying their last and only hope of stopping Trump 2 though. You can easily see she wasn't regarded as a great candidate before she was anointed.
JTarrou
17hr ago
The answer is as simple as it is impossible for the current left to even fake.
They have to value real, actual masculinity.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
17hr ago
Only until the time comes to denounce the whites.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17hr ago
Jews are white.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17hr ago
Even if Harris was a bad candidate, the blunder wasn't choosing her - it was allowing Biden to stay in the race for so long that there wasn't time to run a primary campaign and unite the party around a better candidate. At the point where Biden drops out, Harris is the least bad option.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
17hr ago
I think "good" or "great" is asking the wrong question. The emotions Democrats and friends were feeling in summer 2024 was driven by "Much better than 2024-vintage Biden" and, to a lesser extent "Much better than Hilary Clinton". Also the campaign was basically competent (as demonstrated by the Dems doing better in swing states where there was a lot of campaigning than they did in deep red or blue states where there wasn't), which was a pleasant surprise.
There are basically two Kamala-sympathetic stories about 2024:
- The Democrats lost the election on the state of the economy, and Harris did surprisingly well to keep the election close. People who support this view like to compare the Democrats' performance in 2024 to other incumbent parties in rich democracies, who mostly lost by landslides.
- 2024-vintage Kamala was an okay (not great - nobody ever thought she was great as far as I can see) candidate but the 2020 primary campaign had been so crazy that she had "had" to say a bunch of discrediting stuff that she didn't manage to run away from, with free sex changes for trans illegal immigrant criminals the headliner.
The result of a close election is almost always multi-causal, but I think the economic competence story holds together best. 2024 wasn't a base mobilisation election - both campaigns got their respective bases out and were always going to. The election was decided by swing voters. And when people spoke to swing voters what they heard was "The prices are too #!@# high and the Democrats don't seem to care." There were some obvious-in-hindsight unforced errors by the Biden administration which made the prices higher than they needed to be - the too-big stimulus in 2021 and the big infrastructure bill which spent a lot of money without building any infrastructure.
I also don't think that column is likely to be motivating outside a small, highly atypical tribe of politics-obsessed weirdos.
I always wonder about that kind of thing. It's certainly why I decided to kick the bastard out of my life. I've heard the same from others. But I'd never risk talking about it.
Who can know? Preference is adversarial, I suppose.
quiet_NaN
17hr ago
I do believe that Joe earnestly tried to subvert and destroy the country.
The same thing we do every night, Kamala: trying to destroy America.
I think it highly implausible that Biden was trying to destroy the USA. If his goal was to turn the US into a failed state, he did a rather terrible job. And why would he want that?
Different people have different visions for their country. Some want a capitalist heaven, or a commie utopia. Some want to support Israel, some want to support Israel a lot. Some want universal healthcare, some want Roe overturned. Some want do get rid of background checks, some want the 2A reinterpreted so it does not apply to any firearm innovations made after it came into force. Some want to turn a blind eye to illegal migration, some want to deport every last illegal (except for the ones which keep the economy running). Some want to bomb country A, others want to bomb country B.
From where I stand, the general course of US politics has been pretty consistent from Clinton to Biden. There were always big donors whose interests got special consideration beyond the interests of the American people, mud-slinging during campaign season, use of office to get a political advantage over the opposition, from photo ops to politically motivated investigations, bombing of random places. Both Trump 1 and Biden were particularly uninspired, but for the most part it was just business as usual.
quiet_NaN
18hr ago
The peaceful transfer of power is one of the greatest selling points of democracy. Trump trying to mess with that was by far the worst thing he did in his first term.
Crucially, he did not get convicted because the court system (the SC in particular) stopped it, despite the wishes of the Biden administration. Trump getting convicted would in my mind not conclusively prove a kangaroo court, but him getting immunity proves reasonably well that the courts (or at least the SC) are independent of the political Zeitgeist.
aaa
18hr ago
The Democrats lost young men to the party of, “hold still for your mugshot before you watch Riley Reid take her clothes off.”
Defending porn would actually be a good issue for Democrats to take up if they had any hope to be credible about it. The problem is that there's too much history of feminists attacking porn (don't bring up sex positive feminists, the difference between them is that sex negatives are against making porn and sex positives are against men watching porn), too much history (10 years plus) of left wingers agitating against busty women in videogames and too much history of democrats loving heavy handed content moderation.
Pornhub lost mastercard and visa in 2020 due to an article written by a journalist who wanted to use that as a springboard for his gubernatorial run, as a democrat.
2rafa
19hr ago
Even if Obama could run for a third term he would just end up becomming as insufferable as Harris.
I am absolutely convinced that Obama would win a third term if he was able to run. Polling reflects that as far as I know, by a substantial margin. Not only is he uniquely good for black turnout but he could run on a unity message to appeal to enough suburban whites, and he wouldn’t need that many, to win.
Obama’s almost unique strength was that he could be a lot of things to a lot of people in a different way than a ‘classical’ superstar politician - like Margaret Thatcher or Donald Trump - can. The latter have different audiences who interpret their personalities and political identities in different ways, but their actual brands were relatively consistent.
Obama actually didn’t have a consistent brand. He meticulously (perhaps as a consequence of his own unusual and fractured identity) cultivated multiple distinct personalities. Obama the hero for millennials, the reformer, the “change” candidate against tired old Hillary and McCain, the candidates of the financial crisis and the Iraq war. Obama the devout Black Christian initially skeptical of gay marriage who, unlike so many other successful black men, married a (dark skin) black woman, had a beautiful family, put on that slight southern accent with more than a hint of AAVE when speaking to black churches in Georgia and Alabama. Obama the technocrat, the Yale lawyer, the internationalist, the son of a diplomat, who hired all the bright young things out of Harvard and Georgetown and governed a cabinet of experts, the European Obama.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
19hr ago
Fine, let's say I overstated. How many pro-Democrat posters can you find that called her a "blunder"?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
19hr ago
I think you're presenting a fringe opinion (on the motte, not in the States as a whole) as a consensus, or at least a major fraction.
Ok, hold on, this is likely poor communication on my part. I didn't mean to say or imply that, because the majority of people here rooted for the other side. I mean of the people who rooted for the Democrats, the majority thought Kamala was pretty good. Maybe "great" was an overstatent, but even that is a far better portrayal of the sentiment than "blunder".
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
19hr ago
The whole point of the article, weak as it is, is that
conservativesreformers are also alienating young men…but not via idpol. Their leadership is every bit as geriatric and their flagship policy is more interesting to blue-collar boomers than to 20-somethings. And, of course, there’s the economy, which just sort of shambles along.
Which is logical, because geriatric blue-collar boomers currently hold the balance of power in the US.
If you fail to get them on side or otherwise demoralize them (perhaps if an external threat is trumped up), reform just straight up loses- that's what happened in 2020 in the US. A similar dynamic contributed significantly to (if not the main reason for) a reform defeat in Canada a few months ago- just appealing to future generations' interests is not sufficient.
Trump manages to thread this needle in a way other politicians are unable; of course, being associated with blue-collar workers and the way they function and think, and having been embedded into their consciousness in the early '00s, is a massive advantage in this regard.
TowardsPanna
19hr ago
Meaning...? They secretly support the violent fringe?
It becomes hard when people begin to worry that your kindness is really about giving yourself license to attack the people you claim are stopping you from being kind.
I think part of the problem is that the pro-illegal lean of the party leads to them treating all citizens the way they treated Republicans who complained about being kind and nobody much liked it. The stories of Chicago and NY spending on migrants and the general "deal with it" attitude seemed to trigger black Democrats just as welfare queen stories triggered others.
More options
Context Copy link