More Dem Concern Trolling From The "Paper Of Record"

I honestly have tried to avoid dwelling on too much corporate media nonsense about what the Democratic Party supposedly must do in order to remain competitive because I get tired of the idiocy almost breaking my brain, but this recent post mortem on the 2024 election from the editorial board of “the old gray lady” caught my eye and deserves a response IMO (from here).

In particular, that applies to the following excerpts...

Last year’s election was close, despite President Trump’s hyperbolic claims about his margin of victory. Still, the Democratic Party clearly lost — and not only the presidential race. It also lost control of the Senate and failed to recapture the House of Representatives. Of the 11 governor’s races held last year, Democrats won three. In state legislature races, they won fewer than 45 percent of the seats.

I don’t have an issue with these facts since, as far as I can tell, they’re not in dispute. However, I would add the following from here...

The Republicans, led by incumbent Speaker Mike Johnson, narrowly maintained control of the House with a small majority of 220 seats (the narrowest since 1930), despite winning the House popular vote by 4 million votes and a margin of 2.6%.[5][6] Democrats made a net gain of 1 seat from the Republicans, which represents the smallest net change in US history in the House of Representatives. The majority was decided by just over 7,000 votes across three congressional districts (Iowa's 1st, Colorado's 8th, and Pennsylvania's 7th) out of nearly 148 million cast in this election;[7] this was a roughly 2-point bias in favor of Democrats, resulting from Democratic outperformance in swing districts. Despite the Democratic overperformance, the results gave Republicans a government trifecta for the first time since the 2018 midterms.

Am I arguing that Dems don’t have work to do? Of course not. In my beloved commonwealth of PA, Repugs out-registered new voters by a sizeable margin. I’m not exactly sure what the answer is to that since we can’t outspend the other side. However, there’s more work for sure that we can do when it comes to organizing and keeping the issues that matter front and center to drive turnout (and we’re going to be helped indirectly by all of the Trumpist insanity raging out of control, but we can’t rely on that without doing our own homework, you might say).

With that in mind, I’d like to present this item once more (I know I pointed this out already - sorry to be a bit repetitive, but I think it matters). Dem James Andrew Malone ran on issues that his constituents cared about, Repug Josh Parsons ran on the typical Trumpist playbook, and as a result, Malone won the state senate seat, which hadn’t gone to a Dem in 42 years, which is the length of time that that seat has even existed. So as far as I’m concerned, this doesn’t indicate that MAGA has some magical hold on the voters of this country regardless of their party affiliation.

Oh, and as far as the U.S. Senate is concerned, that indeed will be a tougher nut to crack, you might say, for Dems. A factor in losing the Senate last year was the ridiculous over-spend by the crypto industry to take out primarily Dem Sherrod Brown in Ohio ($40 million in that race alone as noted here), as well as Bob Casey in PA and Jon Tester in Montana as noted here (once more, love and kisses to the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR for Citizens United).

Returning to the Times Op-Ed, I give you this...

A key part of this argument involves voter turnout. Party leaders claim that most Americans still prefer Democrats but that voter apathy allowed Mr. Trump to win. According to this logic, Democrats do not need to worry about winning back Trump voters and should instead try to animate the country’s natural liberal majority. “I don’t think we’re going to win over those 77 million that voted for Donald Trump,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the party’s 2024 vice-presidential nominee, said this month. “I’m concerned with the 90 million who stayed home.” It was an unfortunate echo of Hillary Clinton saying that millions of Trump voters were “deplorables” and “irredeemable.”

Did you catch that? According to the Times, Tim Walz’s acknowledgement of numerical political reality smacks of “elitism” somehow. It should be noted from here, however, that the popular vote margin of victory for Generalissimo Trump was about 2.5 million nationwide, so I don’t see where Walz’s comment was off the mark (if, say, two-thirds of those 90 million turn out between both candidates, I have a felling we’d be in a very different – and much better - circumstance with President Harris and Vice President Walz). Oh, and failing to acknowledge those who didn’t vote absolves the Times of its role in DOING EVERYTHING IN ITS POWER TO DUMP ON BIDEN AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY, WHICH DEFINITELY PLAYED A ROLE IN DEPRESSING TURNOUT LAST YEAR ALSO.

And with that in mind, given last year’s results, guess what the number one takeaway is for the Dems according to the Times?

To regain voters’ trust, Democrats should take at least three steps. ... First, they should admit that their party mishandled Mr. Biden’s age.

Oh, go f*ck all the way off!

This is an absolutely typical response from the Times, which, as noted here, fixated on Biden’s age versus Trump’s even though only 3 years separated the two of them (and call me crazy, but I don’t recall any stories about #47’s age after Kamala Harris took over for Biden). I’ve read that the Times went out of its way to pick fights with Biden on this because his administration didn’t give them the “access” they wanted to people in Biden’s administration, which is a typically jaded and shortsighted attitude (here).

Were the optics terrible for Biden in that debate last year? Yes. Did he need to drop out? Probably.

However, what do you think would have happened if the roles were reversed (Biden came out firing on all cylinders and Trump had stumbled around looking confused)? I’ll tell you – Trump and his lackeys would have screamed about “liberal bias” for-freaking-ever and defended their guy, that’s what! And the Times would have acted like it was another day with a “y” in it.

The editorial also chides the Democrats on the issue of “gender-affirming care for prisoners.” What a shame that the editorial board didn’t follow reporting of their own newspaper; if they had, they would have learned that such care took place under Trump’s first term as noted here. There’s also some noise in today’s Op-Ed about Dems “(remaining) too focused on personal identity and on Americans’ differences — by race, gender, sexuality and religion — rather than our shared values.” If that’s indeed true, it’s only to defend individuals who are under attack from the “party of Lincoln” on the basis of those characteristics (and God only knows what the paper means by the Dems not recognizing “shared values,” though I’m sure the Times will have no trouble getting a quote from Jared Golden or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez complaining about “coastal elites” again to buttress such an idiotic claim).

Again, do the Dems have a lot of work to do with policy and messaging? Yes (and based on some quotes I’m hearing from new DNC head Ken Martin, I think he realizes that – I hope so anyway). But paying heed to the opining from a bunch of well-heeled media types as opposed to gathering the data on key issues and crafting messaging and policy to drive turnout is definitely not the way forward.

Basically, with “friends” like the New York Times editorial board, the Democrats definitely don’t need enemies.

Friday Stuff

Chris Hayes brings us the sorry tale of the “flatly authoritarian” detention of Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk (and the way Hayes describes this is spot-on, sadly...the latest fresh outrage from our ruling cabal of human miseries - another important development on this is here)...call me a pointy-headed lib I guess, but I seem to recall reading about “innocent until proven guilty” as a principle of jurisprudence, not binding someone in zip ties and sending them off to detention about two thousand miles away without being formally charged...of course, leave it to our ruling Trumpist thugs to pretty much take that principle and wipe their metaphorical butts with it I know...



...and Farron Cousins lets us know that DHS head Kristi (“Unsafe At Any Speed”) Noem sez her agency will eliminate FEMA as ordered by her boss...yes, this indeed will disproportionately hurt red states, though it will impact all of us to one degree or another...great point by Cousins that any non-FEMA federal dollars for disaster relief will now be left in the hands of Repugs in states who just might end up saying “Oh, our bad...that money is suddenly gone, used for budget shortfalls because we passed MORE STINKING TAX CUTS!”...sorry to hear about Cousins’s plight on the flood insurance issue...



Update: And I definitely would also say that Noem's sense of entitlement is on display here.

...and David Shuster of Rebel HQ tells us about prices soaring and markets plunging under the Gropenfuhrer...yep, these immigration purges along with Elmo’s workforce firings and those beyond-awful tariffs are pretty much beating the hell out of our economy under Yambo, with plummeting consumer confidence...and we know Project 2025 ridiculously called for firing 50K federal workers, though apparently the number may be closer ultimately to 200K...and I can tell how effective Jasmine Crockett is at speaking truth to stoo-pid because she keeps getting under the skin of the wingnuts...this is a good report from Shuster IMO, but I wish he would get rid of that ridiculous clip of Jonah Goldberg saying that USAID doesn’t “touch” people, or whatever that idiocy is (one response is here)...



...and David Pakman asks who the hell is running the White House, given the very latest pratfall with this bunch, and that would be #47 blaming “the Signal app” for the stupefying, dangerous incompetence of Pete Hegseth including Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic on the thread revealing the plans of the Houthi air strike...and yeah, it does indeed get worse, with Our Treasonous Orange Pustule somehow not knowing about 4 American servicemen who died in Lithuania (typical for the *preznit who was also responsible for this)...



...and as long as we’re talking about our SecDef and former Fix Noise talking head, Jesse Dollemore lets us know about Dem U.S. Senator (and former Iraq War helicopter pilot, who pretty much lost the use of her legs in a crash) Tammy Duckworth going on Fix Noise and explaining calmly and logically why Pete Hegseth is indeed a “f*cking liar”...



...and I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” (more or less) from 3/29/13...with Elmo doing his best to wreck Social Security (laying off staff, making those claiming benefits do so online or in person), it should be noted that the wingnuts have been going after this entitlement for decades (and once again, it’s an “entitlement” that people are entitled to BECAUSE WE’VE BEEN PAYING INTO IT FOR ALL OF OUR WORKING LIVES!), and in this clip with the late, great Ed Schultz, Bernie Sanders discusses “chained CPI,” which was an idea floated by Repugs and entertained by former President Obama as a way to measure and potentially adjust Social Security benefits as opposed to doing so based on inflation...ultimately, this was another trick to reduce the deficit at the expense of everyone except the rich (and yes, it involved cuts to Medicare/Social Security ultimately), since, as we know, deficit reduction is only talked about when a Democrat is in the White House and/or it involves reduced funding for an entitlement...



...and turning to something that I’ll admit is “low-hanging fruit” by comparison, Sam and Emma of The Majority Report inform us of Trump “Jesus Grifter” Paula White offering a $1K “deal with God,” with Sam giving this nonsense the treatment it deserves, trying to launch a “bidding war” of sorts (totally tongue-in-cheek, of course)...and this is a minor gripe I realize, but why the $#@! do I have to see the guy playing the piano in the White clip??...



...and happy belated 75th birthday to Tony Banks of Genesis.

Wednesday Stuff

With the unrelenting stream of garbage stories in the news from our ruling cabal of grifters and lowlifes, I thought it would be a good idea to present some items that are actually good news, and the first is this (from Mike Figueredo)...a Wisconsin bill banning gender affirming care is making its way through the state assembly, though, fortunately, it would be vetoed by Dem guv Tony Evers if it ends up on his desk, though the bill shouldn’t have been introduced in the first place...the good news in this is that Wisconsin resident Larry Jones waited to testify in favor of this nonsense, but after hearing the stories of those who would be singled out, he commendably changed his mind; kudos to him for coming around on this issue as he did...and more that 500 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced so far this year? Yep, I would also say that this is focusing on “the wrong one percent”...terrific point about waging the class war versus the culture war (NSFW/H)...



...and Farron Cousins lets us know that Bronzer Beelzebub recently claimed that he never signed the order to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, assuming he can even do that of course without congressional approval (though it’s not as if he actually cares about legality, as we should all well know by now)..funny thing, though – his scrawl does indeed appear on that executive order, so yeah, he’s lying yet again and also may not even be competent at this point to do the job he was elected to do if he’s admitting that he’s delegating tasks all over the place...



...and Thom Hartmann gives us some utter horror stories when it comes to Combover Caligula and his minions detaining people coming to this country from overseas, especially in the case of a green card holder returning from Germany, who was imprisoned and treated like a violent criminal...”a naked attack on free speech” indeed...with this gaggle of idiots in charge, NO ONE will want to come to this country before too much longer (and more on the case of New York Times v. Sullivan is here)...

...and Chris Hayes gives us the story of an Idaho teacher (Sarah Inama) who was told to take down her “Everyone is Welcome Here” sign in her classroom, apparently because the sign committed the unpardonable sin of including hands of a non-white skin color (with a report from local TV station KTVB...God almighty, what the #@$! Is going on in the West Ada School District??!!)...and yeah, idiots in the state legislature passed a law against “critical race theory” (and once more, CRT is a college-level field of study looking at systemic prejudice in particular laws, institutions and social structures...what’s going on in this classroom has NOT ONE DAMN THING TO DO WITH THAT!!!)...and is this Marcus Myers ever a racist nitwit!...segment also includes clips of residents protesting at town halls and the beyond-clueless response from Republicans (and a still-more-ridiculous response from the troglodytes of the West Ada School District is here)...



...and as a follow-up to the Hayes clip, I think this is a terrific response from Shawn Wright, owner of Brigade Screen Printing in Boise...since the Everyone Is Welcome Here sign was taken down in Inama’s classroom, orders for T-shirts with the sign have apparently flooded Wright’s shop, which is pretty cool I must say (and orders from all over the world, it should be noted)...this is another bit of good news I wanted to include here...

...and by the way, don’t look now, but PA Dems just flipped a state senate seat in a special election that had been held by a Repug for 46 years (and in a district Trump won by 15 points last year - more here); additionally, Dems won a seat in the state house, which now gives them control of that body (before, the seat totals were tied at 101 between both parties...more good news)...clip also gives us an important update on the Wisconsin Supreme Court election between Susan Crawford and Trump sycophant Brad Schimel, with Elmo trying to purchase the seat for Schimel – also important in this race to make sure the Repugs and their ridiculously gerrymandered maps don’t get reinstituted in that state...Brian Tyler Cohen gives us the details (mildly NSFW/H)...



...and drummer Paul Hester of Crowded House died tragically 20 years ago today (reach out and get help if you think you need it – life is too important, and too short).

Tuesday Stuff

Rachel Maddow reports on the whole mess with Trumpers Mike Waltz and Pete Hegseth revealing the Houthi air strike to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, using the unsecured Signal messaging app, to say nothing of the fact that Goldberg wasn’t cleared either (though he was circumspect with the info he got, to his credit)...yep, a truly astonishing blunder to not check to see who else was in the group chat, but why should we be surprised with this bunch? And I absolutely share Maddow’s sense of disgust/astonishment at about 5:20...”A crowd that’s not ready for prime time”; I have some issues with Mark Warner periodically, but he’s absolutely right here...many problems revealed here, including compromising the lives of our service people, which this regime of utter frauds and hangers-on apparently doesn’t care about (in a timeline that was actually sane, people in this garbage presidential administration would be gone by now and congressional hearings would be taking place to figure out potential legal liability for those still taking up space in An Oval Office, though it does sound like hearings may be forthcoming, which should happen at a minimum)...



Update: Looks like Hegseth fails his own standard here.

Update 1 3/26/25: I also think we need to follow the "Gabbard precedent," as noted here.

Update 2 3/26/25: In the immortal words of Casey Stengel, can anybody here play this game? (here)

...and John and Brett Erlich of The Damage Report let us know that boycotts against companies that are “bending the knee” to the Gropenfuhrer (when it comes to DEI policies in the case of Target) are having a financial impact...and I would be tempted to cheer on a decline in the stock price such as what Target experienced, but the problem is that the brunt of that will likely be borne by workers who get laid off...and as far as Tesla is concerned, Elmo’s company can’t do the “big swirl in the hopper” fast enough to suit yours truly...I think Brett was trying to point out the inherent illogic of pursuing a purposefully non-DEI policy when what drives your business decisions is trying to obtain a product to sell for the lowest possible cost...



...and Farron Cousins of Ring of Fire tells us about business leaders trying to come up with a plan to deal with the beyond-ridiculous tariffs from Cantaloupe Capone, and for the Repug-friendly types in charge of these outfits, apparently they’re hoping the “D” team comes riding to the rescue in four years...boy, would I like to tell these idiots what they can do (and is Cousins ever right about the ridiculous ebb and flow of electing a Repug who breaks stuff, then electing a Dem who fixes the mess, then electing a Repug to break it worse, then electing a Dem who has a harder time fixing everything, etc. etc...mildly NSFW/H)...



...and Brian Tyler Cohen tells us about Bernie Sanders getting up and almost leaving an interview with Jonathan Karl when Sanders is asked about AOC running for the Senate, which (as Sanders and BTC both point out) is indeed “inside the Beltway” BS (and “the ESPN-ification of politics”...how apt)...yep, our supposedly august fourth estate is indeed focused on horserace nonsense (and “bending the knee” to the Gropenfuhrer) and showing a typical allergic reaction to actual policy, aa Cohen correctly notes...



...and Kyle Kulinski tells us about Texas AG Ken Paxton arresting a midwife and her assistant for performing an abortion (practicing medicine without a license is the charge, though I would guess that midwives have been performing abortions for centuries)...Kyle is apparently inaccurately claiming that a doctor is getting locked up, though the whole mess from Paxton is putrid on its own I’ll admit (and Kyle is about 150 percent right on Paxton’s corruption)...I have to admit that I didn’t know about Paxton’s claim that Biden would have won Texas in ’20 if it weren’t for Paxton throwing out mail-in ballots...the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR is scummy mainly for Citizens United, but gutting the pre-clearance provision of the Voting Rights Act is another big stain on its awful record, enabling Paxton to pull garbage like this with elections...and “maternal deaths in Texas have surged since it enacted its abortion ban”...surprised? And more on TRAP laws is here (and Joe Rogan is truly an idiot...”'freedom' is how they virtue signal” indeed...NSFW/H)...



...and RIP Brian James of The Damned.

Monday Stuff

Richard Ojeda of Rebel HQ brings us a clip of Rachel Maddow discussing polling indicating how far out of step #47 is with public opinion on the Russia/Ukraine war...yep, we understand that Our Ochre Abomination is dancing to the tune of Vlad The Butcher on this; ”this isn’t just reckless, it’s strategic surrender” indeed (and apparently, having someone wait an hour is one of the moves by the "Moscow munchkin" to try and show dominance)...Ojeda does a great job of laying out all of the utter military madness proposed by Our Treasonous Orange Pustule, which is of course is about an unpopular as you can imagine, but Ojeda is also correct unfortunately that those supporting Our Whining Orange Man-Baby will truly be the last ones to admit that they got utterly played...



...and Jesse Dollemore discusses the wingnuts supporting the death penalty for anybody hurting a Tesla vehicle (and we’re talking about Harris Faulkner of Fix Noise, who is conversing with #47 spokes-liar Karoline Leavitt...big surprise I know), but if that vehicle kills somebody, then that’s just capitalism...huh? And yes, these individuals are just SO FULL OF FAITH, aren’t they (full of something I suppose, but I’ll leave that up to you, dear reader)...



...and Faiz Shakir of More Perfect Union lets us know that Combover Caligula fired an administration lawyer for doing his job, and that person would be Alvaro Bedoya of the FTC, who was fighting against corporations trying to ransack our economy...Bedoya gives important background on the Robinson-Patman Act, one of the most enforced laws at the FTC, aimed at protecting independent retailers (and why does it not surprise me in any way to hear about this Act getting attacked by the administration of The Sainted Ronnie R?)...and we lost 100K independent retailers since 1980 when R-P stopped bring enforced, huh? Doesn’t sound like “morning in America” to me...



Also, on an unrelated note, I just want to mention that some environmental outfit called Earth Justice recently ran ads on sites such as Daily Kos and Crooks and Liars thanking Brian Fitzpatrick for his supposed good legislative record in support of environmental issues. I wonder if the idiots in this group know that Bri-Fi voted for HR 4394, about which we know the following from here...

“This legislation, along with the many harmful proposed amendments to it, includes countless provisions that would lock in fossil fuel infrastructure, increase our dependence on foreign energy, and cede leadership in clean energy innovation to our competitors – all while raising energy costs for everyday Americans,” according to the League of Conservation Voters and 24 other environmental groups.

Want to know a big reason why Bri-Fi manages to get sent back to Washington every two years? It’s because of nonsense like this, that’s why.

Fortunately, we can indeed fight back against our utterly rigged political institutions (which give us milquetoast individuals like Bri-Fi), and one way is to involve ourselves in the process as much as our money and our means allows (writing to newspapers, talking with family and friends, canvassing, making calls, sending out postcards, peacefully protesting, etc., to say nothing of running campaigns ourselves if we’re able), and that’s a message also from Bernie Sanders and AOC, who recently drew big crowds at rallies in Arizona and Colorado, telling those to do what they can (and that goes for all of us) to fight the “pay no price, bear no burden” one percent bastards who would take everything from us if they could...oh, and by the way, this should also be a kick in the ass to Dem “leaders” Schumer and Jeffries on Capitol Hill...and speaking only for myself, I would like to add that some of the most uplifting feelings of accomplishment I’ve ever experienced have come from doing the “nuts and bolts” political organizing stuff I mentioned above, so I think this is a great strategy by Bernie and AOC to try and spur that along (David Doel tells us more – additional info is here)...



Update 3/26/25: And speaking of Bri-Fi, apparently he had yet another “tele-town hall” recently so he wouldn’t have to come out of his hidey hole and actually face voters. The only way to put a stop to this nonsense is by voting him out once and for all next year.

...and Robert Reich lets us know that the fight against Mango Mussolini isn’t over – far from it...video is a great reminder of all of the regular contests and special elections coming up this year, including Susan Crawford vs. Trumpist Brad Schimel for the Wisconsin Supreme Court...and Florida will hold two contests for the U.S. House with the vote on 4/1...click here to support Gay Valimont in FL-01 and click here to support Josh Weil in FL-06...



...and here's a bit of an uplifting newer number for a rainy day in these parts - hope it spurs on all of us to keep up the fight.