QOTD -- Opting For Audience Share, Not America

 

"...With Trump and DeSantis as candidates, journalists will face constant decisions about whether to describe their comments and policy ideas in the clearest, most direct ways possible — or instead find ways to minimize tension with Republican candidates and viewers by being less honest. Journalists should always choose the first path." -- Perry Bacon, Jr., in the Washington Post, in his conclusion on "How the media can cover Trump better this time," a piece written before CNN's disastrous airing of the Malignant Liar's freak show- cum- "town hall" last night.  You could say from that performance alone that the media is already off to a very bad start.

QOTD -- Cobb-ling Together Victory In Georgia

 

"In the 2004 election, Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry lost Georgia by 17 percentage points, including a 25-point defeat in Cobb. Two years ago, Joe Biden very narrowly won Georgia, in part because of his 14-point victory in Cobb. Sen. Raphael G. Warnock carried Cobb by 16 points in this month’s election and will need a similar margin to defeat Republican challenger Herschel Walker in their Dec. 6 runoff.

"The electoral transformation of Cobb County is part of a broader shift happening in U.S. politics. Over the past decade, Americans who live in rural areas, a group that already leaned toward the Republicans, has become even more conservative. Urban areas are increasingly Democratic, but cities such as Detroit and Philadelphia were already so left-leaning that there wasn’t much room for Democratic growth. What’s been the saving grace for the Democrats in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections has been voters in suburban areas backing the party, particularly around Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia and Phoenix." -- Perry Bacon, Jr., Washington Post, on how suburbanites are saving the Democratic Party, especially in battleground states like Georgia.  This despite on-going, anti-democratic efforts by the Christofascist Republican cult to suppress voting turnout (see "Tweets...", below).

QOTD -- Many Mini-Trumps

"Republicans are eroding American democracy day by day. It’s not a fully coordinated effort directed by former president Donald Trump or national party leaders. Instead, GOP officials, particularly at the state and local levels, are regularly taking actions that add up to an antidemocratic movement. They are reducing news media access, making it harder to vote, aggressively gerrymandering legislative districts and using government power to threaten their political enemies. We are not seeing democracy die in darkness but rather democratic decline in the light.  [snip]

"The biggest danger for American democracy is that Trump or a figure like him succeeds at something bold and extreme like Jan 6. But an almost equally important danger is that a bunch of mini-Trumps, some of whom you have never heard of, take several hundred actions, most of which you will never learn of, that gradually create either a national government or 25 to 30 state governments where elections are rigged by gerrymandering and voting restrictions, where news coverage and other forms of public accountability are nonexistent, and where people worry about retribution if they disagree with their political leaders.

"America stopped Trump on Jan. 6. But we are not yet stopping Trumpism." -- Perry Bacon, Jr., in the Washington Post today.  With Republican/ Seditionist Party voters in Arizona, Michigan and elsewhere selecting mini- Trump, mouth- foaming election deniers to run in state and national elections, Bacon's point comes closer to reality.  Democrats are fighting to protect your personal freedoms, the voting franchise, for a prosperous and inclusive economy, and to mitigate climate change, with the Republican/ Seditionist Party fighting them all the way.  Stopping "Trumpism" (a.k.a., the Republican ethos) means nothing short of voting Democratic at every election for every office. 

 

QOTD -- Performative Centrism

 

"In basically every major institution in America, there are powerful figures who I doubt voted for Donald Trump but nonetheless play down the radicalism of the Republican Party, belittle those who speak honestly about it or otherwise act in ways that make it harder to combat that radicalism. That needs to change. Americans desperately need leaders and institutions that are fully grappling with Republicans’ dangerous antidemocratic drift. [snip]

"Here’s the big problem with all this performative centrism: Real harm is being done. It’s harder to push for changes to the Supreme Court when one of the liberal justices is playing down the danger. It’s harder to get political journalists to adapt to the radicalism of the GOP when some of the most prominent figures in the field suggest that covering Republicans honestly amounts to left-wing activism. It’s harder to prevent false information from reaching millions of Americans when the leaders of the biggest social media companies aren’t fully committed to that cause.

"Throughout the Trump era, a pattern has played out over and over: Those in the center or on the left, often women and people of color, warn that Republicans are about to take a radical step. They are cast as alarmist by institutionalists. Republicans take that radical step. The pattern repeats." -- Perry Bacon, Jr., writing in the Washington Post on "The Problem with Performative Centrism."

 

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.

Perry Bacon, Jr., starts us off with why he's disappointed with Democratic governance thus far:

On Jan. 7, I did not expect the Democrats to get rid of the filibuster, pass new voting rights laws or pursue judicial reforms such as adding new justices to the Supreme Court; after all, the Democrats would have only very narrow majorities in the House and Senate. But I also did not think such steps would be absolutely essential. Now, I do. Republican radicalization needs to be met with a proportionate Democratic response.

And we just aren’t seeing that response. One reason, of course, is that the slim Democratic majority is big enough to address the world I foresaw on Jan. 7, with a less extreme GOP, but not with this even more extreme Republican Party. But I’m convinced the issue runs deeper. There are a lot of signs that Democrats don’t fully grasp the extent of the GOP’s radicalization or accept that it must be addressed aggressively.

Many in the party remain cautious, incrementalist and obsessed with bipartisanship. It’s one thing for West Virginia’s Sen. Joe Manchin III, in a state that Trump won by 39 percentage points in 2020, to defend the filibuster, but Sen. Christopher A. Coons in Delaware, where Biden won by 19 points, is also bristling at the idea of changing the rules.

Bacon concludes his piece with a call to arms for Democrats to fight the anti-democratic, increasingly Christofascist Republican Party -- a message that needs amplifying and repeating.

His WaPo colleague E.J. Dionne, Jr., reviews the Biden agenda landscape and comes to a similar conclusion:

At least with battles over spending and taxes there are many paths to compromise. What cannot be compromised is democracy itself.

Yes, the stakes are that high. The horror of what so many Republican-dominated state governments have done — most recently in Texas — to restrict access to the ballot and undercut the honest and nonpartisan counting of ballots presents Democrats with only two options: Act uncompromisingly at the national level to ensure democracy everywhere, or accept that many states in our union will, in important ways, cease to be democratic.

Killing a strong voting rights bill means accepting, to evoke Abraham Lincoln’s declaration on slavery, a nation half-democratic and half undemocratic.

The next 30-60 days will be make- or- break time.  We'll see if Democrats have democracy's back soon enough.

Floriduh boys:

Two Florida middle-schoolers are being held at a juvenile detention center after being accused of planning a mass school shooting inspired by Columbine.

The 14-year-old and 13-year-old boys, whom The Washington Post is not naming because they are minors, are eighth-graders at Harns Marsh Middle School in Lee County, about two hours away from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where a gunman killed 17 people in 2018. They were charged with conspiracy to commit a mass shooting and have been ordered to be held at a juvenile detention center for three weeks, reported WINK, a CBS affiliate in Fort Myers, Fla.

Police investigations suggest the boys had looked for guns on the black market, studied ways to build pipe bombs and researched the 1999 school shooting that occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado, County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said. [snip]

Police officials who executed search warrants of the boys’ homes found a gun and several knives, Marceno said.

Both boys “are well known to deputies, as we have responded to their homes for almost 80 times combined,” Marceno said.

The two underwent assessment at a mental health facility, then were transferred to the Lee County Jail.

If the police have responded to their homes that many times, they should've received professional help well before now.  Another broken system.

Tweeter Incunabula has a thread on ham and cheese (mmm, ham 'n' cheese sammiches) and European civilization that's worth a look.  Here's how it begins:

European civilization is built on ham and cheese, which allowed protein to be stored throughout the icy winters. Without this, urban societies in most of central Europe would simply not have been possible. This is also why we have hardback books. Here's why.

Another week, another fabulous link round-up from Infidel 753.  While you're there, take time to read his thoughtful essay from the past week on religious rigidity and cultural evolution.

 

QOTD -- Watching Democracy Die

 

"By far the biggest problem is the Republican Party. Presented with a clear chance to move on from Trumpism after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the GOP has instead continued its drift toward anti-democratic action and white grievance. The future looks scary. A Republican-controlled House could attempt to impeach Biden in 2023 and 2024 on basically any pretext, as payback for Trump’s two impeachments. If Republicans win the governorships of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin next year, taking total control in those key swing states, they could impose all kinds of electoral barriers for the next presidential election. The Republicans are laying the groundwork to refuse to certify a 2024 Democratic presidential victory should the GOP hold a House majority.  [snip]

"...[M]oderate Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans either don’t appreciate the direness of the situation or don’t care. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) seem to value their reputations as being bipartisan more than protecting the voting rights of people who look like me. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney’s (Utah) response to a law clearly designed to make it harder for liberal-leaning people in Georgia to cast ballots was to criticize … the media for covering the law too harshly.

"I hope I am overly alarmed about all of this. But I don’t think I am. Perhaps democracy dies faster in darkness. But it could also die slowly in the light, as all of us watched but didn’t do enough to save it." -- Perry Bacon, Jr., on reasons why "American democracy is in even worse shape than you think."  No surprises here, but he touches all the bases.