Post AiOMlbBECUQRe89d1k by pluralistic@mamot.fr
(DIR) More posts by pluralistic@mamot.fr
(DIR) Post #AiOMkrnavVmatnkcRU by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:10:35Z
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The corporate wing of the Democrats has objectively terrible political instincts, because the corporate wing of the Dems wants things that are very unpopular with the electorate (this is a trait they share with the Republican establishment). --If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/29/sub-bushel-comms-strategy/#nothing-would-fundamentally-change1/
(DIR) Post #AiOMktHPQ9E3UYhwYK by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:11:56Z
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Remember Hillary Clinton's *unimaginably* terrible campaign slogan, "America is already great?" In other words, "Vote for me if you believe that nothing needs to change":https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/758501814945869824Biden picked up the "This is fine" messaging where Clinton left off, promising that "nothing would fundamentally change" if he became president:https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/2/
(DIR) Post #AiOMkuN7MPO0sYO15c by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:12:10Z
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Biden didn't so much win that election as Trump lost it, by doing *extremely unpopular* things, including badly bungling the American covid response and killing about a million people.Biden's 2020 election victory was a squeaker, and it was absolutely dependent on compromising with the party's left wing, embodied by the Warren and Sanders campaigns. 3/
(DIR) Post #AiOMkvQLRtYu8qu6l6 by 6G@mastodon.social
2024-05-29T18:30:35Z
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@pluralistic Right, US voters and folks better get youself registered, especially in your swing State, because the RACE is an #electoralcollege horror show#Biden only won by 43k votes in 2020 (from 3 States)#Trump only won by 77k votes in 2016 (from 3 States)
(DIR) Post #AiOMkwNtsTCV7YlfaS by vic@seal.cafe
2024-05-29T18:43:13.401940Z
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@6G @pluralistic The fix is already in. All four "critical swing states" use Dominion Voting Systems machines.The "winner" has already been decided.
(DIR) Post #AiOMl2HjwHq1QBvpom by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:12:27Z
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The Unity Task Force promised - and delivered - key appointments and policies that represented serious and powerful change for the better:https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulationDespite these excellent appointments and policies, the Biden administration has remained unpopular and is heading into the 2024 election with worryingly poor numbers. There is a lot of debate about why this might be. 4/
(DIR) Post #AiOMl4uSBJzfYq3mRE by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:13:31Z
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It''s undeniable that every leader who has presided over a period of inflation, irrespective of political tendency, is facing extreme defenstration, from Rishi Sunak, the far-right prime minister of the UK, to the relentlessly centrist Justin Trudeau in Canada:https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-three-barriers-biden-reelection/It's also true that Biden has presided over a genocide, which he has been proudly and significantly complicit in. That Trump would have done the same or worse is beside the point. 5/
(DIR) Post #AiOMl75s3qJaKpPvVo by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:13:39Z
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A political leader who does things that the voters deplore can't expect to become more popular, though perhaps they can pull off *less unpopular*:https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-left-is-not-joe-bidens-problemBiden may be attracting unfair blame for inflation, and totally fair blame for genocide, but in addition to those problems, there's this: Biden hasn't gotten credit for the actual good things he's done:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoflHnGrCpM6/
(DIR) Post #AiOMl9FA4Gw10DmNGq by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:13:56Z
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Writing in his newsletter, Matt Stoller offers an explanation for this lack of credit: the Biden White House almost never talks about any of these triumphs, even the bold, generational ones that will significantly alter the political landscape no matter who wins the next election:https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-does-the-biden-white-house-hateBiden's antitrust enforcers have gone after price-fixing in oil, food and rent - the three largest sources of voter cost-of-living concern. 7/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlBI4SQRzLp9j5E by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:14:10Z
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They've done more on these three kinds of crime than all of their predecessors over the past forty years, *combined*. And yet, Stoller finds example after example of White House press secretaries being lobbed softballs by the press and refusing to even try to swing at them. When asked about any of this stuff, the White House demurs, refusing to comment. The reasons they give for this is that they don't want to mess up an active case while it's before the courts. 8/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlDZVyXamQVKgYC by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:14:33Z
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But that's not how this works. Yes, misstatements about active cases can do serious damage, but *not talking about cases* extinguishes the political will needed to carry them out. That's why a competent press secretary excellent briefings and training, because they *must* talk about these cases. 9/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlGt7e63iiBWt1s by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:14:44Z
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Think for a moment about the fact that the US government is - at this very moment - trying to break up Google, the largest tech company in the history of the world, and there has been virtually *no* press about it. This is a gigantic story. It's literally the biggest business story *ever*. It's practically a *secret*.Why doesn't the Biden admin want to talk about this very small number of very good things it's doing? 10/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlKGz3pvdD3iU8e by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:14:54Z
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To understand that, you have to understand the hollowness of "centrist" politics as practiced in the Democratic Party.The Democrats, like all political parties, are a coalition. Now, there are lots of ways to keep a coalition together. Parties who detest one another can stay in coalition provided that each partner is getting something they want out of it - even if one partner is bitterly unhappy about *everything else* happening in the coalition. 11/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlNGNwWESU4SY7c by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:15:07Z
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That's the present-day Democratic approach: arrest students, bomb Gaza, but promise to do something about abortion and a few other issues while gesturing with real and justified alarm at Trump's open fascism, and hope that the party's left turns out at the polls this fall.Leaders who play this game can't announce that they are deliberately making a vital coalition partner miserable and furious. 12/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlPEKd7mIaHVwCO by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:15:33Z
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Instead, they insist they are "compromising" and point to the fact that "everyone is equally unhappy" with how things are going. This school of politics - "Everyone is angry at me, therefore I am right" - has a name, courtesy of Anat Shenker-Osorio: "Pizzaburger politics." Say half your family wants burgers for dinner and the other half wants pizza: make a pizzaburger and disappoint all of them, and declare yourself to be a politics genius:https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/13/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlRBZMMkyeIElAe by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:15:48Z
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But Biden's Pizzaburger Presidency doesn't disappoint everyone equally. Sure, Biden appointed some *brilliant* antitrust enforcers to begin the long project of smashing the corporate juggernauts built through forty years of Reaganomics (including the Reganomics of Bill Clinton *and* Obama). 14/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlUf6R1ABQl4t7Y by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:15:58Z
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But his lifetime federal judicial appointments are drawn heavily from the corporate wing of the party's darlings, and those judges will spend *the rest of their lives* ruling against the kinds of enforcers Biden put in charge of the FTC and DoJ antitrust division:https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergersSo that's one reason that Biden's comms team won't talk about his most successful and popular policies. But there's another reason: *schismogenesis*.15/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlYPIVith2tiK2a by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:16:13Z
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"Schismogenesis" is a anthropological concept describing how groups define themselves in opposition to opponents (if *they're* for it, *we're* against it). Think of the liberals who became cheerleaders for the "intelligence community" (you know the CIA spies who organized murderous coups against *a dozen* Latin American democracies, and the FBI agents who tried to get MLK to kill himself) as soon as Trump and his allies began to rail against them:https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/16/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlbBECUQRe89d1k by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:16:31Z
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Part of Trump's takeover of conservativism is a revival of "the paranoid style" of the American right - the conspiratorial, unhinged apocalyptic rhetoric that the movement's leaders are no longer capable of keeping a lid on:https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos17/
(DIR) Post #AiOMliIZjZShiwe5x2 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:16:42Z
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This stuff - the lizard-people/Bilderberg/blood libel/antisemitic/Great Replacement/race realist/gender critical whackadoodlery - was always in conservative rhetoric, but it was reserved for internal communications, a way to talk to low-information voters in private forums. It wasn't supposed to make it into your campaign ads:https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/27/texas-republicans-adopts-conservative-wish-list-for-the-2024-platform/73858798007/18/
(DIR) Post #AiOMllnWix0EZo9M6y by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:16:55Z
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Today's conservative vibe is all about saying the quiet part aloud. Historian Rick Perlstein calls this the "authoritarian ratchet": conservativism promises a return to a "prelapsarian" state, before the country lost its way:https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-my-political-depression-problem/This is presented as *imperative*: unless we restore that mythical order, the country is doomed. We might just be the last generation of free Americans!19/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlp16kueIYnWkCG by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:17:05Z
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But that state never existed, and can never be recovered, but it doesn't matter. When conservatives lose a fight they declare to be existential (say, trans bathroom bans), they just pretend they never cared about it and move on to the next panic. It's actually worse for them when they *win*. When the GOP repeals Roe, or takes the Presidency, the Senate and Congress, and still fails to restore that lost glory, then they have to find someone or something to blame. 20/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlrn2RgB3A1y3BQ by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:17:12Z
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They turn on themselves, purging their ranks, promise ever-more-unhinged policies that will *finally* restore the state that never existed.This is where schismogenesis comes in. If the GOP is making big, bold promises, then a shismogenesis-poisoned liberal will insist that the Dems must be "the party of normal." If the GOP's radical wing is taking the upper hand, then the Dems must be the party whose radical wing is marginalized (see also: UK Labour).21/
(DIR) Post #AiOMluPkgiKhIg5zns by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:17:24Z
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This is the trap of schismogenesis. It's possible for the things your opponents do to be wrong, but *tactically* sound (like promising the big changes that voters want). The difference you should seek to establish between yourself and your enemies isn't in promising to maintaining the status quo - it's in promising to make *better*, big muscular changes, *and keeping those promises*.22/
(DIR) Post #AiOMlxFa8yyq60MPrs by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:17:36Z
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It's possible to acknowledge that an odious institution to do something good - like the CIA and FBI trying to wrongfoot Trump's most unhinged policies - without becoming a stan for that institution, and without abandoning your stance that the institution should either be root-and-branch reformed or abolished altogether.The mere fact that your enemy uses a sound tactic to do something bad doesn't make that tactic invalid. 23/
(DIR) Post #AiOMm0y0KHIRceAR1c by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:17:47Z
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As Naomi Klein writes in her magnificent *Doppelganger*, the right's genius is in co-opting progressive rhetoric and making it mean the opposite: think of their ownership of "fake news" or the equivalence of transphobia with feminism, of opposition to genocide with antisemitism:https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine24/
(DIR) Post #AiOMm3rjY33yc4FyAS by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:17:57Z
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Promising bold policies and then talking about them in plain language at every opportunity is something demagogues do, but having bold policies and talking about them doesn't make you a demagogue.The *reason* demagogues talk that way is that it works. It captures the interest of potential followers, and keeps existing followers excited about the project.25/
(DIR) Post #AiOMm6piW0ETogKtwO by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:18:10Z
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Choosing *not* to do these things is political suicide. Good politics aren't boring. They're *exciting*. The fact that Republicans use eschatological rhetoric to motivate crazed insurrectionists who think they're the last hope for a good future doesn't change the fact that we *are* at a critical juncture for a survivable future.26/
(DIR) Post #AiOMm9TqflWS1j7yls by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:18:23Z
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If the GOP wins this coming election - or when Pierre Poilievre's petro-tories win the next Canadian election - they will do everything they can to set the planet on fire and render it permanently uninhabitable by humans and other animals. We *are* running out of time.We can't afford to cede this ground to the right. 27/
(DIR) Post #AiOMmBzpJqI3pU6XtQ by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:18:35Z
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Remember the clickbait wars? Low-quality websites and Facebook accounts got *really* good at ginning up misleading, compelling headlines that attracted a lot of monetizable clicks.For a certain kind of online scolding centrist, the lesson from this era was that headlines should a) be boring and b) not leave out any salient fact. This is *very* bad headline-writing advice. 28/
(DIR) Post #AiOMmFtEqHOfuD3LBA by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:18:54Z
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While it claims to be in service to thoughtfulness and nuance, it misses out on the most important nuance of all: there's a difference between a misleading headline and a headline that calls out the most salient element of the story and then fleshes that out with more detail in the body of the article. If a headline completely summarizes the article, it's not a headline, it's an *abstract*.29/
(DIR) Post #AiOMmI3Eo4aGbnkM2i by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:19:07Z
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Biden's comms team isn't bragging about the administration's accomplishments, because the senior partners in this coalition *oppose* those accomplishments. They don't want to win an election based on the promise to prosecute and anti-corporate revolution, because they are counter-revolutionaries.30/
(DIR) Post #AiOMmLZbiBG7X3ukPg by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:19:17Z
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The Democratic coalition has some irredeemably terrible elements. It also has elements that I would march into the sun for. The party itself is a very weak institution that's bad at resolving the tension between both groups:https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/Pizzaburgers don't make anyone happy and they're not supposed to. They're a convenient cover for the winners of intraparty struggles to keep the losers from staying home on election day.31/
(DIR) Post #AiOMmP3qkCEULj5RT6 by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:19:24Z
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I don't know how Biden can win this coming election, but I know how he can lose it: keep on reminding us that all the good things about his administration were undertaken reluctantly and could be jettisoned in a second Biden administration. 32/
(DIR) Post #AiOMmSkr0lPlnyEKPo by pluralistic@mamot.fr
2024-05-29T18:19:29Z
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For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel *The Lost Cause* (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-lost-cause-4eof/
(DIR) Post #AigtAIGR3ACfDlwrQW by jeffcliff@shitposter.world
2024-06-07T17:11:13.755913Z
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@vic @pluralistic @6G decided for who, though?
(DIR) Post #AigtM0NzLXcbFR48zg by jeffcliff@shitposter.world
2024-06-07T17:13:20.718148Z
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@6G @pluralistic things to watch thenNorth CarolinaMartin* v. North Carolina State Board of ElectionsCastro* v. Bell et al.PennsylvaniaCastro* v. Schmidt et al.WisconsinCastro* v. Wisconsin Elections Commission et alBangstad et al. v. Trump et al.MichiganLaBrant et al v. BensonDavis* v. WayneNevadaCastro* v. Aguilar et al.ArizonaCastro* v. Fontes et al.
(DIR) Post #AigtWactSbKOXd5JIm by vic@seal.cafe
2024-06-07T17:15:15.458094Z
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@jeffcliff @pluralistic @6G I'm not one of the people rigging the election, so I don't know.