Bozo_Casanova

I love her. She’s smart, beautiful, witty, a huge history buff and has beautiful tatas.

Um, I’m not talking about the “white working class,” yall are. Again, I’m saying: Democrats have not represented the interests of the middle and lower middle class effectively for 30 years. Over and over, when the interests of the lower middle-middle class and the top decile came into conflict, the Democratic leadership chose the latter. When they had the opportunity to protect or expand the tools available to the lower middle and middle to protect their own interests or build equity, they opted not to take them. With the rare exception of people like Sherrod Brown, the Democratic Party mostly represents the cultural and social agenda of well educated knowledge workers in urban centers mixed with Clinton-era corporatism. To the extent that labor Democrats exist at all anymore, they are an anachronism. It seems silly to pretend otherwise.

Oooweee! I don’t carry generally but I’ll be wearing a shoulder holster and my Harris/Walz shirt for a few days Because Sherrod Brown is the kind of Democrat that held the house for decades and has credibility with the middle class in a way that the rest of the Democratic Party doesn’t.

You seem very committed to missing the point.

The Dixie chicks were wrong about Bush. He’s from Connecticut. Michael Bolton is the one who should be embarrassed.

No offense, but I can only assume you’re being willfully obtuse here.

Not bourbon, but bourbon adjacent: I’m not drinking Sunday-Thursday anymore, so I really don’t have a place for mixers. For example, the picture below is a Manhattan I made with Barrel Seagrass, and it’s over-the-top delicious. A lot of people would only drink that whiskey neat or maybe with an ice cube, but I figure if you own good whiskey you should drink good whiskey.

I love this so hard

Disagree Honestly this is the best argument flippable Haley/Bush/normie Republicans who plan to hold their nose for Donald Trump: presidents come and go until they decide they don’t want to leave office. We can be reasonably certain if President Harris is voted out she’ll leave. Trump has already proven he won’t.

Much like my response on "the American Gentry" above, that's not who I'm talking about.

If their choice is between Leopards eating their face and the rats chewing off fingers and toes, you are right that the rats are better. That said, I can't blame them for hating the rats.

Mine too, except all in on Harris. Strange, since we both presumably live in neighborhoods full of millionaires.

We should go back to the subject of this, but the question is easily answered - the only thing on my list that was not an active policy objective by Democratic leadership was making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent. That was capitulation, by a president who was elected to deliver change and had promised to let them expire. I'm not sure that's any better.

There's a former special operator I know who lives here in town and he practically starts salivating thinking about what he would do if the people who want violence start acting on it.

There aren't enough American gentry. They are among his financial supporters, but a relatively small fraction of his voting coalition. His core supporters are lower middle and middle class people who feel the system is rigged against them, because the system is rigged against them. Prior to the 1990s Democrats recognized that and worked to give those people the tools to fight back. In the 1990s Democrats shifted focus, as parties do, which left those people without much representation outside of certain inidividual members of congress. They were up for grabs and Trump found them when he went looking for an audience.

You should go door to door and tell them that. And you do, consider, who signed the repeal of Glass Steagal? Who implemented NAFTA? Who implemented TARP? Who made the decision not to break anybody up or prosecute the leadership of firms that created the financial crisis? Who signed the bill that made the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent? Who declined to sever the connection between healthcare and employment insurance? Hey, who was married to the guy who signed the repeal of Glass Steagal? Oh, right. The 2016 Democratic Nominee. Who authored and co-sponsored the 2005 bankruptcy bill that stripped protections from millions and unleashed a wash of private student loans? The 2020 Democratic Nominee. Here's a famous chart - did the trendline change when Democrats were in power? I'm all in on defeating Trump and Trumpism, but the idea that Democrats have been champions of the American middle class over the last 30 years is utter horseshit.

WHAT? They may not know how they benefitted but they benefitted among the highest levels. They're just too ignorant to understand how. Well I'm reasonably good on econ and I disagree, but that doesn't matter. What's important is that they disagree. And if you think that's because they're too stupid evaluate their own lived experience, you should move to Washington DC and join a Democrat-aligned messaging firm, because you will fit right in.

I know this is hard for progressives to accept, but the problem is that Trump's real core supports do not benefit from any of the positive consequences of a Harris presidency, in the same way they didn't benefit from the economic recovery under Biden or really any of the prosperity of the last 30 years. They are mad about it, and rightfully so. They don't think Trump will make it better and they don't give a fuck. Trump is revenge on the winners.

Trump's weather machine. It works though. He's done the same thing the last two campaigns and closed very strong each time because it gives the press the impression of momentum.

that's good move. And if the Harris campaign hasn't been there, it's political malpractice.

I guess. I mean, she's an exceptional state pollster and I wish every state had one that good, but to extent that it's directionally predictive of the rest of the midwest is limited to the parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, illinois and michigan that are demographically and economically similar to Iowa. In other words, if Trump is up by 5 or less, that's a good sign for Harris in Wisconsid and Michigan, but if it's more than that I'm not going to get the sweats. Biden lost by 8.2 and she had him down 7.

go on

I'm not going to defend John McLaughlin (well, maybe if it came to a head to head between him and Mark Penn), but he was right about 2016 and deep inside the campaign so I figure he's good for a vibe check.

I think they think they are winning, and in the same way that you wouldn't evaluate Texas chances in a tie game against Bama based on the sideline behavior of Kalen DeBoer, I don't take we can take anything from how the Trump campaign acts or where they go, other than that it's a combination of shoring up their support in the places they need and making the weather they want Harris to contend with. John McLaughlin went on Tara Palmeri's podcast and wasn't chest beating, but talked through their theory of winning and said he was cautiously optimistic. The Tony Fabrizio memos are more bombastic, but all of them contain some version of saying that their projections depend on various assumptions that were baked into their strategy from the beginning, which essentially means "we will win unless we are wrong about us winning." Unlike 2016 and to a greater degree than 2020, Trump's campaign has a strategy to win and is applying it in a somewhat professional manner. They are acting in support of their strategy, and they think it's working. The Harris team is doing the same things.