Tuesday, March 05, 2024
Bye Sinema
Not running for re-election.
Would like the full scoop on how she got so high on her own farts that she thought being an asshole would put her on path to be president.
You Go To Politics With The Journalists You Have
Obviously I spent much of my life criticizing our glorious news media and I still think those criticisms are valid, necessary, and even occasionally helpful. But the New York Times (etc.) is not going to listen to your well-reasoned argument about why they suck shit. They are not going to change. The criticisms mostly are not aimed at them, but instead the wider audience who foolishly trust them. Dem politicians and their campaign people need to understand that this is a rigged game they have to play. They cannot appeal to the referees who have let the other guys put 18 men on the field for the past 174 games.
What Happened To America's Greatest Governor, Ron DeSantis
That character was just killed off suddenly, never to be spoken of again. Odd.
Mods! Mods!
Republicans spent decades demonizing the Courts, even as they were packing them. That led to reporters giving credence to the view that the courts - and some in particular, like the 9th Circuit - were somehow inappropriately "biased." Those reporters would then go do the propaganda work for them. I'm not even blaming the reporters here (sometimes valid, sometimes not). If "one side" says something, they're going to report it.
Every time some shit goes down, a bunch of elected Democrats, who are half way to enlightenment, say something like, "if this was a Democrat, the media outrage..." And, yes, that's true. But a big reason it's true is because Republicans would be throwing hissy fits to any reporter who would listen, instead of complaining about the lack of outrage. The outrage has to come from you! Be outraged! They might even report it!
Every time some shit goes down, a bunch of elected Democrats, who are half way to enlightenment, say something like, "if this was a Democrat, the media outrage..." And, yes, that's true. But a big reason it's true is because Republicans would be throwing hissy fits to any reporter who would listen, instead of complaining about the lack of outrage. The outrage has to come from you! Be outraged! They might even report it!
Fighting In Enemy Territory
I know how this works. They run dumb focus groups (focus groups are almost always dumb in politics), from which they learn if they patiently explain to voters, in that closed environment, that TRUMP sabotaged the BIPARTISAN BORDER DEAL, which was TOUGHER THAN ANY BORDER DEAL IN DECADES, then those voters nod their heads and say "wow, bad Trump." They conclude they have a winning issue.
Then those voters leave their containment field and go home and turn on Fox. The focus group itself is made up of a group of people who have expressed concerns about "the border," providing this feedback loop for all involved.
More broadly, focus groups can tell you if a particular advertising pitch might work. Bring a group of soda lovers together in a room and ask them if this particular pitch will get them to buy Pepsi instead of Coke. It does not tell you that The Soda Question is the burning question on everybody's mind. If you go on the campaign trail talking about nothing but The Soda Question, you alienate the people who never drink that shit. Also Coke has better brand appeal (as a soda, not everything), and 20x the advertising budget, and you can't get everyone into the focus group room to pitch this one on one. There is no effective retort to "Pepsi Shmepsi."
Also, this isn't polling, it's push polling. Would you like the Democrats more, once we explain the Democrats are good, y/n?
Then those voters leave their containment field and go home and turn on Fox. The focus group itself is made up of a group of people who have expressed concerns about "the border," providing this feedback loop for all involved.
More broadly, focus groups can tell you if a particular advertising pitch might work. Bring a group of soda lovers together in a room and ask them if this particular pitch will get them to buy Pepsi instead of Coke. It does not tell you that The Soda Question is the burning question on everybody's mind. If you go on the campaign trail talking about nothing but The Soda Question, you alienate the people who never drink that shit. Also Coke has better brand appeal (as a soda, not everything), and 20x the advertising budget, and you can't get everyone into the focus group room to pitch this one on one. There is no effective retort to "Pepsi Shmepsi."
New polling showing that when Democrats explain how Republicans killed the toughest border bill in decades, Republicans' 15 point advantage on the border DISAPPEARS.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 29, 2024
Time to go on the offense, team.https://t.co/mw7YjuoTzQ
Monday, March 04, 2024
Do We Think These People Are Humanitarians?
On a bit of a tangent - though not entirely divorced from current events - but after over 20 years do we think any of the "liberal humanitarian interventionists" are either liberal or humanitarian? Do we think any of these people would lift a finger to stop a massacre unless they could indulge their favorite hobby of yelling at hippies?
The happy place is supporting an ongoing massacre AND yelling at hippies! You might notice that all of their "stopping massacres" are actually "supporting massacres."
Well Then
I'll just shut up now.
Unsurprisingly, Biden’s aides reject the idea that the White House is insular or dismissive of reality. Zients, who succeeded Ron Klain as chief of staff last year, pointed to Biden’s reputation for soliciting opinions from critics. “Just the other day, he picked up the phone and called Larry Summers,” Zients said. As outreach goes, it was relatively safe; Summers, despite his critical comments, is a longtime adviser to Presidents. Biden’s other occasional calls range from the columnist Thomas Friedman to the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. “That’s how you pressure-test decisions,” Zients said.
I Had Forgotten About This
I hadn't thought about it for awhile, anyway.
Steve Jobs's final gift to mankind was a monument to suburban office park dystopia.
Steve Jobs's final gift to mankind was a monument to suburban office park dystopia.
Supremos
Unsurprisingly said Trump can't be kicked off the ballot by states. I'm not going to waste my beautiful mind on the reasoning because it's best we stop pretending it's ever anything other than "because we said so, and we can contradict ourselves tomorrow."
Nothing A Little War Can't Solve
I was hunting for something else and I came across this a paragraph from Jon Chait's "Iraq war mea culpa." Those were fashionable, briefly, as all the big brained boys wrote pieces about themselves and their big brains and why they were WRONG but still not as wrong as the stupid hippies, who are always wrong even when they are right.
Libya was like Iraq on cocaine and meth - one more chance to prove the hippies wrong with glorious humanitarian intervention, which was predictably a disaster, in part, but not just, because of course there was no plan other than "bomb" and then we just never talked about it again. Bygones.
Not a perfect success!!! My god.
I do agree it's bad when tens of thousands of people are massacred.
I do agree it's bad when tens of thousands of people are massacred.
Chait's mea culpa wasn't quite as bad as Saletan's, whose big takeaway was that supporting Iraq was stupid because it made it harder to go to war with Iran, which was vitally important at that moment oh look squirrel.
Sunday, March 03, 2024
Progress
I suspect she is on her own here which is interesting!
...sorry, I watched the whole clip, and realized she isn't saying anything new, aside from the particular emphasis on 'immediate.'Vice President Kamala Harris calls for "an immediate ceasefire" in the Israel-Hamas war during a speech in Selma, Alabama. pic.twitter.com/z0a2TG5TsF
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 3, 2024
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