Re: Fighting for our meals, out here in the fields.
 

So the one thing we actually learned on Nov. 9 is that Trump is actually a fairly effective campaigner.

It sounds like garbage to us, but a significant segment of voters actually likes him (because he hammers away on Fox News-style talking points).

Re: Fighting for our meals, out here in the fields.
 

You and I think those are gaffes. The Trump voter does not.

Re: Fighting for our meals, out here in the fields.
 

Perhaps there's an ebb and flow. The economy runs unrestricted for a time, goes too far and is adjusted (for good or ill) by policy initiatives.

Or maybe we're defining economics and policy too narrowly, and viewing them too much as discrete rather than inextricably intertwined things. Policy is of course an element of economics. And economic considerations inform policy (above almost everything else).

This is excellent, by the way:

"If the previous era was a debtor’s paradise, where inflation made it cheaper to pay back debts, Blyth and Matthjis identify the current order as a creditor’s paradise where the real value of debt is maintained (on the struggle between creditors and debtors, see also James Buchan’s wonderful and neglected book on money, Frozen Desire). Thus, the current regime is pursuing a “policy of price stability in an environment of wage stagnation and rising debt levels driven by the [regime] itself” (p. 22). Stagnant wages and low job security led people to borrow money to retain their ability to consume, helping lead to the financial crisis. The policy responses to this crisis – which have boosted returns to asset holders, while imposing austerity on others – have not eased the systemic problems of the new regime, but rather worsened them."

This is status quo preservation defined. It's also a neat little explanation of why it won't work. I mean, sure -- it'll work for now. It may work for the next decade. But those forces cited above, moving in exactly the fashion described, are fixing nothing.

This selective asset reflation, a Potemkin recovery, is like watching the housing run-up in the early 2000s. You knew it couldn't hold. You knew the economy could not replace lost wages with dollars mined from HELOCs on rapidly appreciating residential properties. In that instance, we saw a financial collapse. Now, this time, perhaps we see the political collapse.

Don't you think that it'd be smarter, if instead of Jimmy Carter ....
 

I agree with you about Clinton (and Gore in 1988), but the Democratic establishment hated Jimmy Carter in 1975-76. I don't think his southerness won him the nomination and election; it was that he was seen as the anti-Nixon (a lay Baptist minister! "I'll never lie to the American people!" etc.) and was as progressive as a Southern governor could be.

But the DLC had a point. George McGovern and Walter Mondale (and maybe even Michael "Michael" Dukakis, the worst Democratic candidate in my voting life*) were probably "better" Democrats than Clinton and Gore were. But you gotta get elected to do anything.

*I'm not even thinking about the tank picture. To enrage my inner undergrad, just whisper two words: "Bernie Shaw." Asshole.

Re: Fighting for our meals, out here in the fields.
 

Right. Or they don't care. Trump is sui generis, as the lawyers say. I'm too tired to list the million things he's said or done ("grab them!" Trump Univeristy, etc) that would have ended the career of anyone other than Trump.

Doesn't mean that Biden couldn't have beat him. But his gaffes would matter. And you can be sure that Trump would have been ranting about "Cheatin' Joe" - who maybe had an issue at Syracuse and definitely stole Neil Kinnock's speech.

Re: Fighting for our meals, out here in the fields.
 

Did we switch subjects? Isn't this my point?

TM

Re: Fighting for our meals, out here in the fields.
 

YMMV, but I've concluded it's a lot easier for a dumb guy to play smart than for a smart cat to dumb it down. Trump and Biden are just sophisticated enough to impress Joe Sixpack without seeming "elite."

If you tried to dumb it down, they'd see right through you and become suspicious. I think it has a lot to do with vocabulary.

(One brilliant exception is Austin Goolsbee. He can expound on complex economic theory while sounding like a trucker talking traffic. It's fucking genius.)

Re: Fighting for our meals, out here in the fields.
 

Joe would've held and turned out more of the union and union members' families' votes. That's all you needed to beat Trump.

Re: Fighting for our meals, out here in the fields.
 

They care about the "civil war maybe didn't need to happen" thing. They like it.

They like that too. Damn uppity women are all sluts anyway. Why shouldn't he be able to joke about it? Heck yeah I'd grab 'em too if I could get away with it!

We'll never know, but I guess I don't think of Biden as being all that strong of a candidate, given that he never was during his previous runs.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

The message this sends to people of color:

https://theestablishment.co/the-far-...s-90194cfddba6

TM

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Have we seen any person of color or woman, other than Liz Warren, attack Obama for this?

I know, I know, women and people of color are all "establishment"* folks so they don't count.



* For Republicans, replace "establishment" with "pussies and goat-humpers". See, the Berners are much more civil in their bigotry. Progress!

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This. And somehow it's her fault.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Yup. 100x.

One of my favorites from yesterday was Glenn Thrush's reaction to a speech in which Hillary said point blank that she accepted responsibility for the loss and discussed the many causes. He tweets four points, one of which was along the lines of "it's everyone's fault but hers", the exact opposite of what she said (but, of course, it's the Thrush's NYT's position, its everyone's fault but theirs).

Misogyny was the most looked up word in Webster's yesterday.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

That's disheartening, as "automation" should hold that title by many multiples of its closest challenger.

I'm not downplaying the seriousness of misogyny. But we're engaged in conversation regarding asteroids at the cost of neglecting a planet sized pile of economic problems and environmental concerns barreling toward us.

Maybe it's time we wake up and stop allowing the tail (real, but still secondary social issues) to stop wagging the dog in terms of policy debate? Maybe use Maslow's Hierarchy as a start:

First we talk economics, which controls everything (and we stop dithering around tired talking-point solutions like 'education,' and directly address automation);
Then we get to civil rights - most notably the emergence of a police state within our borders;
Next on to the environmental crisis (anyone else notice summer came two months early this year?);
Then on to privacy rights, as in the right not to be spied on by domestic agencies, and a woman's absolute right to make all decisions regarding her body AND any fetus within it.

After we tear through all of those, I think it's time to debate the crisis of flyover state misogynists. I'm not saying it isn't problem. I'm saying it appears to me, that if I wanted to divide and conquer people, and keep them from the discussing the more immediate and dire issues, it's the kind of subject I'd encourage the masses to argue.

We need to prioritize a bit better in this country. We allow ourselves to be divided and conquered on so many secondary matters and rarely discuss the really serious shit. Seeing so much ink spilled on the issues lower down the ladder of importance reminds me of listening to gold bugs. One can't help thinking, "If the possible events of which you're so concerned occur, gold won't be worth shit... the currency will be seeds and bullets." If we don't address automation and the environment, in the not too distant future, debating whether a head of state acquired that position via sexism or unfairness of the media will be the most decadent of parlor conversations.