ZenMode
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No, but I also don't allow unknown males into my house to use the restroom with my daughter.
Where do we go from here?
- Thread starter rodoheel
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superrific
Inconcievable Member
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Well, you could say the same thing about Germans in 1933. It doesn't change reality.
Trump is appointing toadies to lead the military and justice departments in order to rule like a tyrant, and you're still worried about bathrooms.
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Come on man, this has been discussed so many times, it's ridiculous.
The whole fear of man in the restroom is overblown. And, AND, it's already illegal to assault some, in or out of a bathroom.
All this bullshit did was get women who are a little feminine looking harrased.
Bunch of fucking idiots think there's an epidemic of pervs dressing as women so they can see someone pee. Just fucking stupid.
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I don't think a civil war will happen or even violence. Democracy will just slip away like in Hungary and the people will let it happen. They pretty much already dd. there are enough "other groups" to pick off one by one before the majority population realizes "oh shit, we're fucked"
Mulberry Heel
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Where do we go from here? Downhill, apparently, just straight downhill at an ever-increasing speed.
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Maybe just still Mid Terms Maybe it won't be too late.............
ole howard1
Member
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Here's what I kind of don't get about the bathrooms thing:
If some guy wanted to dress up as a woman to go into a ladies' restroom.....then why wouldn't he just dress up as a woman and go into the ladies' restroom? Not sure a discussion about transgender rights prevents or promotes that...
If some guy wanted to dress up as a woman to go into a ladies' restroom.....then why wouldn't he just dress up as a woman and go into the ladies' restroom? Not sure a discussion about transgender rights prevents or promotes that...
ZenMode
Honored Member
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It may be over blown. At the very least there isn't a truly good solution. But, again, the point isn't to debate bathroom usage, it's about the perception of priorities by the Biden admin.
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Exactly.
Plus, if he touches a woman in the lady's room, that's assault, it's already illegal.
If he sexually touches a woman in the lady's room, that's sexual assault, it's already illegal.
If he exposes himself, that's already illegal.
Basically, most anything that he could do that would cause issue, is already illegal. Well, except be a man thinking about transitioning and needing to pee. But the pubs have to cover that too.
lawtig02
Iconic Member
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Lot of good there, but I have to admit, whenever I see someone say we have to get prices down, I immediately knock them down a few pegs on the credibility list.
CFordUNC
Inconcievable Member
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Yeah, that’s totally fair. I probably do too.
ZenMode
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I normally wouldn't post entire articles from behind a paywall, but Mika Brzezinski read the entire thing on-air...
Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics
Nov. 9, 2024
Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.
Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.
Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn’t like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.
I have often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited. And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working-class voters over the decades, and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base.
Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).
This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.
“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”
There were a lot of Democrats “barking,” people who “don’t represent anybody,” he said, and “the leadership of the party was intimidated.”
Donald Trump played to the irritation of many Americans disgusted at being regarded as insensitive for talking the way they’d always talked. At rallies, he referred to women as “beautiful” and then pretended to admonish himself, saying he’d get in trouble for using that word. He’d also call women “darling” and joke that he had to be careful because his political career could be at risk.
One thing that makes Democrats great is that they unabashedly support groups that have suffered from inequality. But they have to begin avoiding extreme policies that alienate many Americans who would otherwise be drawn to the party.
Democrats learned the hard way in this election that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field.
A revealing chart that ran in The Financial Times showed that white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that “racism is built into our society.” Many more Black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that “America is the greatest country in the world.”
Gobsmacked Democrats have reacted to the wipeout in different ways. Some think Kamala did not court the left enough, touting trans rights and repudiating Israel.
Other Democrats feel the opposite, calling on the party to reimagine itself.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a vulnerable Democrat in a red congressional district in Washington, narrowly held her seat. The 36-year-old mother of a toddler and owner of an auto shop told The Times’s Annie Karni that Democratic condescension has to go. “There’s not one weird trick that’s going to fix the Democratic Party,” she said. “It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.”
Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the party needs rebranding. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone,” he said. “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
On CNN, the Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said that Democrats did not know how to talk to normal Americans.
Addressing Latinos as “Latinx” to be politically correct “makes them think that we don’t even live on the same planet as they do,” she said. “When we are too afraid to say that ‘Hey, college kids, if you’re trashing a campus of Columbia University because you aren’t happy about some sort of policy and you’re taking over a university and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that that is unacceptable.’ But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don’t know what to say.”
Kamala, a Democratic lawmaker told me, made the “colossal mistake” of running a billion-dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyoncé when many of the struggling working-class voters she wanted couldn’t even afford a ticket to a Beyoncé concert, much less a down payment on a home.
“I don’t think the average person said, ‘Kamala Harris gets what I’m going through,’” this Democrat said.
Kamala, who sprinted to the left in her 2020 Democratic primary campaign, tried to move toward the center for this election, making sure to say she’d shoot an intruder with her Glock. But it sounded tinny.
The Trump campaign’s most successful ad showed Kamala favoring tax-funded gender surgery for prisoners. Bill Clinton warned in vain that she should rebut it.
James Carville gave Kamala credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity. But he said the party had become enamored of “identitarianism” — a word he uses because he won’t say “woke” — radiating the repellent idea that “identity is more important than humanity.”
“We could never wash off the stench of it,” he said, calling “defund the police” “the three stupidest words in the English language.”
“It’s like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water.”
www.nytimes.com
Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics
Nov. 9, 2024
Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke.
Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and young men.
Democratic insiders thought people would vote for Kamala Harris, even if they didn’t like her, to get rid of Trump. But more people ended up voting for Trump, even though many didn’t like him, because they liked the Democratic Party less.
I have often talked about how my dad stayed up all night on the night Harry Truman was elected because he was so excited. And my brother stayed up all night the first time Trump was elected because he was so excited. And I felt that Democrats would never recover that kind of excitement until they could figure out why they had turned off so many working-class voters over the decades, and why they had developed such disdain toward their once loyal base.
Democratic candidates have often been avatars of elitism — Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and second-term Barack Obama. The party embraced a worldview of hyper-political correctness, condescension and cancellation, and it supported diversity statements for job applicants and faculty lounge terminology like “Latinx,” and “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).
This alienated half the country, or more. And the chaos and antisemitism at many college campuses certainly didn’t help.
“When the woke police come at you,” Rahm Emanuel told me, “you don’t even get your Miranda rights read to you.”
There were a lot of Democrats “barking,” people who “don’t represent anybody,” he said, and “the leadership of the party was intimidated.”
Donald Trump played to the irritation of many Americans disgusted at being regarded as insensitive for talking the way they’d always talked. At rallies, he referred to women as “beautiful” and then pretended to admonish himself, saying he’d get in trouble for using that word. He’d also call women “darling” and joke that he had to be careful because his political career could be at risk.
One thing that makes Democrats great is that they unabashedly support groups that have suffered from inequality. But they have to begin avoiding extreme policies that alienate many Americans who would otherwise be drawn to the party.
Democrats learned the hard way in this election that mothers care both about abortion rights and having their daughters compete fairly and safely on the playing field.
A revealing chart that ran in The Financial Times showed that white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that “racism is built into our society.” Many more Black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that “America is the greatest country in the world.”
Gobsmacked Democrats have reacted to the wipeout in different ways. Some think Kamala did not court the left enough, touting trans rights and repudiating Israel.
Other Democrats feel the opposite, calling on the party to reimagine itself.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a vulnerable Democrat in a red congressional district in Washington, narrowly held her seat. The 36-year-old mother of a toddler and owner of an auto shop told The Times’s Annie Karni that Democratic condescension has to go. “There’s not one weird trick that’s going to fix the Democratic Party,” she said. “It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.”
Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the party needs rebranding. “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone,” he said. “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
On CNN, the Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky said that Democrats did not know how to talk to normal Americans.
Addressing Latinos as “Latinx” to be politically correct “makes them think that we don’t even live on the same planet as they do,” she said. “When we are too afraid to say that ‘Hey, college kids, if you’re trashing a campus of Columbia University because you aren’t happy about some sort of policy and you’re taking over a university and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that that is unacceptable.’ But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don’t know what to say.”
Kamala, a Democratic lawmaker told me, made the “colossal mistake” of running a billion-dollar campaign with celebrities like Beyoncé when many of the struggling working-class voters she wanted couldn’t even afford a ticket to a Beyoncé concert, much less a down payment on a home.
“I don’t think the average person said, ‘Kamala Harris gets what I’m going through,’” this Democrat said.
Kamala, who sprinted to the left in her 2020 Democratic primary campaign, tried to move toward the center for this election, making sure to say she’d shoot an intruder with her Glock. But it sounded tinny.
The Trump campaign’s most successful ad showed Kamala favoring tax-funded gender surgery for prisoners. Bill Clinton warned in vain that she should rebut it.
James Carville gave Kamala credit for not leaning into her gender and ethnicity. But he said the party had become enamored of “identitarianism” — a word he uses because he won’t say “woke” — radiating the repellent idea that “identity is more important than humanity.”
“We could never wash off the stench of it,” he said, calling “defund the police” “the three stupidest words in the English language.”
“It’s like when you get smoke on your clothes and you have to wash them again and again. Now people are running away from it like the devil runs away from holy water.”
Opinion | Democrats and the Case of Mistaken Identity Politics
The post mortem is a wake for woke.
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All things considered, do you believe the average voter considers executive orders?
I think the party has to look at how they present their ideas better, but it's hard to overcome low information and single issue voters.
ZenMode
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I doubt most voters take note of EOs, but things like that are brought up during election season. I think people are more likely to notice that Biden took 2+ years to take any action on the border because stand-alone EOs are likely to make the news.
I can make a pretty decent guess on why he took so long.
rodoheel
Iconic Member
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As depressing as it is, this short paragraph probably the most important:Thought this was a really good and really important read and wanted to share it here.
There Are No Permanent Defeats
"A loss, however painful, is not the end of the world. Every election result is provisional. There are multiple examples in recent memory of the American electorate delivering victories to a party and then swiftly reversing course.
This is not to minimize the seriousness of the mistake voters have made this year, just to keep some perspective. There are many turns of the wheel.
The Democrats will do themselves some good if this loss causes them to reconsider their boutique views on immigration, public safety, trans athletes, and other matters. But the thumping rightward shift in the electorate between 2020 and 2024 suggests to me that this election really came down (mostly) to inflation, with a side of immigration, rather than an embrace of Trump or Trumpism.
Most voters decide based upon their own financial condition. This year, 68 percent of voters rated the economy as “not so good” or “poor.” Yes, the other economic indicators were great, but 75 percent said inflation had inflicted moderate or severe hardship on them. All of the stock market gains, employment, and economic growth in the world cannot compensate for that. Compared with Joe Biden in 2020, Kamala Harris lost ground with nearly every demographic—urban, suburban, rural, you name it. Even among women voters, Harris did worse than Biden, with the exceptions of urban women, senior women, and those with a college degree.
It’s impossible to gauge how big a part racism and sexism played in Harris’s performance—few will admit such motivations. Harris performed a bit worse with Hispanic women than Biden did. Was that closet sexism? Doubtful. Nor does it seem plausible that so many young women who voted for Biden switched to Trump out of misogyny. Fully 45 percent of the electorate said they were financially worse off today than four years ago, which is a greater percentage than any year since the 2008 Great Recession. Only 26 percent of voters were satisfied or enthusiastic about how things are going in the country, whereas 43 percent were dissatisfied and 29 percent were angry.
For all the attention paid to white voters’ affection for Trump, their approval of Trump has declined from 57 percent in 2020 to 49 percent in 2024. And while much is being made, justifiably, about the big swing toward Trump among Hispanics, he remains unpopular among them. Only 42 percent of Latinos have a favorable view of Trump.
This underscores the importance of people’s personal financial condition. They will hire a creep if they think he’ll improve their personal prospects. Most voters neither understand nor particularly care about the rule of law or foreign policy (beyond war and peace).
Much will change before the next election—and yes, there will be more elections. The winning party will nearly always over-interpret its mandate and go too far, prompting a backlash at the polls. The president’s party typically loses seats in off year elections, so expect a rebuke in 2026. (One of the most dangerous depredations of Trump 1.0 was undermining faith in elections and attempting to subvert the 2020 outcome, so Democrats must be prepared to fight tooth and nail over interference with any election going forward.)
Democrats cannot just wait for the election cycle to solve their problems. There are a number of lessons they should take to heart from this year’s results: 1) the abortion issue has likely run its course as a motivator in national elections (though it remains potent statewide); 2) Hispanic voters cannot be taken for granted as part of the Democratic coalition; 3) woke postures like taxpayer-funded sex change operations for incarcerated immigrants are toxic; and 4) big federal spending programs don’t deliver immediate political dividends.
Much has been said and written about matters 1 through 3, so let me address 4. Of all people, Joe Biden should have understood that passing big bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act would not be noticed by voters in time for 2024. He was vice president when the Affordable Care Act passed and witnessed that not only was Obama not rewarded for it, Democrats lost the House in 2010.
Only much later, after it had been fully implemented and people began to enjoy the benefits (and Republicans failed to come up with an alternative), did the program become popular. Both the IRA and the infrastructure bill, ironically, contain lavish spending for rural and Trump-friendly parts of the country that will begin to come online just in time for Trump to take credit for them. The legislation may or may not have been good policy, but it’s important for Democrats to recognize that passing big bills doesn’t translate into votes—at least not right away.
The Democratic party has suffered a setback, not a wipeout. The country remains closely divided. Democrats still hold nearly half the seats in the Senate and (depending on the races still outstanding) nearly half of the House. Twenty-three states have Democratic governors. Democratic office holders need to gird their loins for the avalanche of lies, scandals, outrages, and betrayals that a second Trump term is sure to deliver. They must prepare to educate voters about the consequences of Trump’s tariffs (which are taxes), deportations, tax cuts, vaccine misinformation, and whatever other insane policies emanate from MAGA Washington.
There’s a place for autopsies and wound licking, but it’s soon time to move forward."
'This underscores the importance of people’s personal financial condition. They will hire a creep if they think he’ll improve their personal prospects. Most voters neither understand nor particularly care about the rule of law or foreign policy (beyond war and peace)."
The "danger to Democracy" argument fell flat because most Americans wouldn't recognize a tyrant even if he yelled "Sieg Heil" in their faces. And there was no way to make a real case that the economy had been managed well because most voters don't have any comprehension of "the economy" beyond how much money is in their own bank account. Educated voters mostly saw through the BS, which is why Republicans will now work very hard in the next four years to dismantle public education and higher education. And whether or not voters reject their policies and program will probably depend on what their economic policies happen to do to the price of eggs and milk in the coming years.
rodoheel
Iconic Member
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Do you allow unknown females into your house to use the restroom with your daughter?
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I am mad at how much the steaks cost, so I will vote for the guy who is going to round up the workers who make them and put up tariffs on the machines that slice them. That'll bring prices down. Very hard to get me out of FAFO mode right now.
tallheel95
Exceptional Member
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- 193
Not going to derail the thread for a debate about bathrooms, but just saying that when I studied abroad in Australia in 1994, I lived in a dorm where all of the bathrooms were co-ed. Including showers. At first it was weird for all the American students, but then we all got over it.
ETA: not that I'm arguing for co-ed showers or the like, just an observation about my experience
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