Regarding the 2026 midterms, in order for FL Democrats to get traction, I think the Florida Democratic Party needs to come to terms with what their real stance should be on Cuba and U.S. relations with it.
Currently, as a result of President Biden's decision to undo the sanctions on Cuba and delist the country as a terrorism sponsor, FL Democrats such as Rep. Jared Moskowitz, FL Democratic Party Chair Nikki Freed and Former State Senator Annette Taddeo are ripping Biden a new one over this decision.
However, Biden was faced with a difficult situation with the Catholic church over releasing prisoners had this decision not been made. He may have also handed Trump a liability should he as POTUS reverse Biden's executive order. This would present a major headache for Marco Rubio if he serves as Secretary of State, especially given he's Cuban-American.
I don't see what's socialist about the U.S. trading with Cuba with making necessary trade-offs for the government to change so that the country doesn't become another Venezuela. One of the trade-offs could include Cuba having a market economy and the government moving away from Communist rule. That of course would take a lot of time.
Yes, because being “tough on Cuba” has worked so well for Florida Democrats. It’s wrong on policy and unsuccessful politically. And has allowed a small group primarily in Florida to hold U.S.-Cuban foreign policy hostage.
I agree; the Florida Dem party imploded when the Cuba stance was status quo; IMO with the Batista generation increasingly moving on demographically speaking I don't think we have much to lose by forging a new path here, especially since it's good policy (IMO to treat Cuba like North Korea while we play footsie with Saudia Arabia is the height of inconsistent and hypocritical foreign policy; especially given Cuba no longer poses practically any threat to the U.S. militarily).
Some of Florida’s Cuban-Americans would love to bring back Fulgencio Batista or his equivalent. I very much doubt many members of the other Hispanic communities in Florida share their view.
I lived in the Keys when Obama announced the talks with Cuba in January of 15 and even then the freakout of the local GOP Reps. over this seemed detached from the population. i'd also just say Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade by 30 some points 20 months later. Outside of the base Rs I don't think it matters as much as people seem to think in S FLA but Its been about nine 1/2 years since I last lived there.
Agreed. Seems like a niche issue where the people that care REALLY care while everyone doesn’t care at all. Most voters care about taxes, education, inflation, etc.
Two Iranian supreme court judges shot dead in Tehran
Judges Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghiseh were killed after an armed man entered the court, in the capital Tehran, on Saturday morning. The attacker killed himself while fleeing the scene.
Both judges are said to have played a role in the persecution and killing of opponents of the Islamic regime throughout the 1980s and 1990s. One of the judges, Ali Razini, had survived an assassination attempt in 1998. The other, Mohammad Moghiseh, was sanctioned by the US in 2019, [accused] of having "overseen countless unfair trials, during which charges went unsubstantiated and evidence was disregarded". Moghiseh was also among seven Iranian judges sanctioned by Canada in 2023 for what the country described as "their role in gross and systematic human rights violations".
Trump and his allied political action committees [are expected] to pull in as much as $250 million for Trump’s inauguration. However, much of the cost of the inauguration is actually covered by taxpayer dollars.
NOTE: While laws require Trump’s Inaugural Committee to disclose its donors, there is no requirement to say where the money goes.
BREAKING: After Donald Trump announced he was giving his Inauguration Speech indoors on account of the cold weather, the chancellor of Greenland taunted him on social media saying, "If Trump can’t handle one polar vortex, he can't handle Greenland."
. Bernie Blasts Trump For Moving Inauguration Inside: “Wear Some Fucking Mittens”
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) — Blasting Donald J. Trump’s decision to move the Inauguration indoors, Senator Bernie Sanders issued a post on Friday declaring, “Wear some fucking mittens.”
Sanders offered to lend Trump a crocheted pair from his extensive mitten collection, but added, “Won’t you keep warm with all those oligarchs hugging your ass?”
The Vermonter, who seemed incredulous at Trump’s low tolerance for cold, ended his tirade by asking, “What do you think the temperatures are like in Greenland, moron?”
Do you have a rundown of the open Congressional seats? I know they are all in heavy Republican districts, but are any of the Dems running likely to do well? Are any of the candidates at least moderate Republicans?
While I probably agree with this assessment, can we all pause for a minute and take a second to realize the thing that Americans care most about, that Americans are really politically motivated on, that Americans are becoming outraged about... is the banning of Tiktok. Not school shootings and gun violence, not inflation, not housing prices, not lack of health insurance, not abortion, not fires in LA or climate change's havoc, not a tyrannical president... I mean I can go on and on and on. I mean I'm sure there are merits to arguments in favor and against banning Tiktok...but is this really the issue of our time?
I haven't really shared my thoughts on 2024 yet, but I think one of the most salient points I have learned is how disconnected American politics are from actual policy (...and how disconnected we (the elite lol) are from what most Americans care about). It is now a fully formed reality TV show, devoid of substance and intelligence, full of petty Real Housewives-esque arguments, Survivor-based political strategy, and fake conflict. The issues that matter are now buying Denmark, which the NYT tries to legitimize as some rational national security concern, instead of slapping it down as the pathetic cry of a desperate narcissistic baby.
I mean I'm at a loss for how Democrats who, for the most part, are a serious political party compete with Republicans and an electorate that is largely unserious. Do we just need to nominate a buffoon who jumps to claim victory on made-up controversies? I'm so exasperated.
This is kind of my thought process, too. All the policy arguments in the world, even on hot button issues like immigration where our policy stances do provide a weakness or abortion where we have an advantage, seem to be utterly divorced from what and why people follow politics for
The double edged sword is that we have to both have to be a serious political party because governance - we are actually expected to be adults - but at the same time we can't be serious because people want entertainment. It's a major reason why until his scandal I wanted Al Franken for President in 2020. He was popular with both Clinton AND Sanders types and he actually had experience governing. Plus he was and is an entertainer. I felt then - and to an extent I still feel now - if the American people want an entertainer for President, at least give them one who cares about governing and knows how to govern.
Hear, hear! Republican power players enjoyed a lot of celebratory drinks and cigars when over-hurried Democrats forced Al Franken to resign. Huge political mistake that we did them the favor of crucifying one of our most effective senators!
I think the optics helped us a lot at the time, and there's a real chance that Doug Jones would have lost the Alabama special election.
Franken announced he would resign on Dec 7, 2017. The special election was held Dec 12, 2017. Jones won by ~1.5 points.
If democrats were not able to separate themselves out as having higher standards on sexual misconduct than republicans, I do not believe we would have succeeded in making Moore's crimes stick to him in the mind of the electorate.
We can have effective presidential candidates without giving up our standards on basic human decency.
Plus, I will maintain my first post-election argument: 2024 was not an election decided by policy. Tying that into this conversation, I think it was equally not an election about our candidate. Considering Harris' performance in battleground states versus elsewhere, I will maintain that she ran a good campaign. It was an election enormously tilted against us due to the political environment and in particular the media environment. I don't see any one candidate out there that could have turned this around for us.
Media environment will remain our biggest obstacle and it's something we need to figure out how to solve, or at least work around.
In some ways I think we're also looking at a problem like republicans were in ~2012ish. Where their base was too fractured and couldn't truly agree on anything, leading to large portions of their base being perpetually displeased. We've struggled with that in the post-Obama era.
Yep. The USA is hardly the only country where the incumbent party was voted out. Expect the trend to continue this year. And Democratic voters and politicians need to accept that life is NOT a damn Disney movie and thus we shouldn't automatically expect things to work out.
this is silly, the vote was bipartisan. If voters blame democrats it's because there's nothing we can do to compete in the information environment. If that's true, legislative actions themselves don't matter. Tik Tok running a trump ad is also unrelated to what Democrats do.
#1. Democratic Party politicians have to accept that political theatre is here to stay and #2. Democratic Party voters have to LET them engage in political theatre. "High brow" is for suckers. Always has been. Always will be.
Despite where it's coming from, I pretty much agree with the philosophy of Ingrid Lewis-Martin here: “I’m not Michelle Obama. When they go low? We drill for oil. I’ll meet you down in the subbasement."
We need to be a more outwardly aggressive party. Leaning back and saying "Well, our norms and institutions won't allow us to do X, Y, Z" is plainly not working.
The thing is that this isn't low brow, Trump is being overtly corrupt and building an oligarchical government. If you want Democrats to do that fine, but the delineation here is not between ruthlessness and Pollyanna, it's between blatant violation of core constitutional responsibilities and a modicum of respect for them. Trump doesn't have the power to just not enforce the Tik Tok law, but he called the CEO and told him if he ran an ad for him he'd do that. It's plainly both unconstitutional and illegal, and that sort of quid pro quo in the WH is the kind of things that cause democracies to collapse in on themselves quickly. If we have to play by the same rules oh well, but we're trading a conservative oligarchy for a liberal one.
Honestly . . .my position on this one is fuck 'em. If the electorate is going to go crazy from losing just one venue for Chinese propaganda and bullshit brand prostitutuon . . sorry I meant "influencing" . . and videos of people falling on their ass/cats, then we deserve the ensuing apocalypse that befalls us.
Social media addiction IMO is a big reason why Trump won and the developed world is falling one by one to right wing paranoia and conspiracy theories. Getting TikTok banned is maybe losing the battle but moving forward in the larger war.
Trump really values his TV ratings and crowd sizes. This is why he went apoplectic when even the National Park Service documented that Obama’s crowd was bigger.
Well, this year Trump’s crowd will be tiny. Due to a forecast of moderate Greenland-like weather, the inauguration is being moved inside the Capitol. (Rather than being a coward, Bernie would just have put on mittens and a hat.)
How are ratings determined? They count the number of TVs on and what they are tuned to.
Here is how to tank Trump’s TV ratings: Leave your TV on, just switch it to any channel that is NOT broadcasting his inauguration. National Geographic or even the Food Channel will do. Go for a walk, wash your hair, take a nap, do your daily commute and go to work if you have to, make love to your partner if you want – but just leave your TV on.
*) Unfortunately, I will not be able to heed my own advice. My wife and I got rid of our TV more than a decade ago. We may, however, stream a good movie or re-watch Nixon’s and Agnew’s resignation speeches, or perhaps re-watch the debate in which Kamala Harris demolished Trump.
**) Credit to the Borowitz Report and top commenter Debra Poneman.
The special election for Minnesota state representative, scheduled for 28 January, has been canceled by Friday’s order from the Minnesota State Supreme Court.
Overall, just 33% of all Americans express a favorable view of the Democratic Party, an all-time low in CNN’s polling dating back to 1992. The GOP clocks in a tick higher, with a 36% favorability rating. Four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the Democrats’ rating stood at 49%, and the Republicans’ at 32%.
I'm not particularly surprised. The party is in full self-flagellation mode right now. Different wings of the party/base are taking our loss to insist that we need to immediately abandon the [opposite end of the party compared to the person speaking] if we ever hope to win an election again.
"Normies" are being bombarded with messages that democrats too far right, too far left; that we are too nice to immigrants, too hostile to immigrants; that we only engage in social issues, that we ignore the socially vulnerable; that we're warmongers, that we're peaceniks; that we do not care about the poor, that we only care about the poor...
Is it any surprise that we've lost so much favorability? All this BS pushes people out from the party, making it sound like there's no home here for anyone left of republicans regardless of their exact ideological tilt. Hopefully the public infighting dies down as people get pissed off by all the inevitable horrors we are about to face and we refocus our efforts on ending those horrors.
It's not going to last forever, but I don't think I can recall a "wind out of the sails" moment for a political party like what the Democrats experienced from October-November 2024. From people fired up to just . . . utter retreat and fatigue. And it's understandable' the fatalism has struck me too. But we've got to dust ourselves off and pretty soon.
1988? 2000? 2004? 2016? This is nothing new for the modern day Democratic Party. Even with our winners like Bill Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in 2008, and Joe Biden in 2020 there were very much doubts at times.
I mean aggregated polling is showing Dems at their lowest place in modern times; it's definitely worse. 2016 seemed like a fluke. In 88 we still had the House.
It seemed like Trump had made himself completely toxic to voters at the end of his 1st term, he runs a campaign basically being a terrible person, and still wins. That's a much bigger gut punch than simply Generic R aka W Bush winning a second term as an incumbent post 9/11. Plus the educational realignment crossing racial lines that's occurred ensures both winning the Senate and Presidency is significantly harder than it was in the aughts. And that cohort of the population is in a social media-driven news bubble environment completely detached from any respect of fact or integrity.
In 1988 we lost the White House in a landslide for a third straight year and five out of the last six Presidential Elections. The US House Democratic majority was still well to the right ideology wise of the US House Democratic minority of today. We had the majority of the US House seats in states like Alabama and Oklahoma back then, for crying out loud. And those Democrats for the most part were anything BUT liberal, let alone "progressive." In 2004, the "conventional wisdom" was that the Democratic Party was "permanently doomed" to exist on the coasts......and little elsewhere.
In short, let's not write the obituary of the Democratic Party. Especially since there isn't another up and coming left wing party coming up to supplant them. This isn't the USA Whig Party of 1854 or the UK Liberal Party of 1918.
That the party is ideologically divided on a lot of issues is a big problem. The Republicans don’t have that problem, even before Trump. And now it’s whatever Trump wants. That makes it easier for them to present a united, clear message. Unlike the muddled message and weak presentation usually coming from the Democrats.
Regarding the 2026 midterms, in order for FL Democrats to get traction, I think the Florida Democratic Party needs to come to terms with what their real stance should be on Cuba and U.S. relations with it.
Currently, as a result of President Biden's decision to undo the sanctions on Cuba and delist the country as a terrorism sponsor, FL Democrats such as Rep. Jared Moskowitz, FL Democratic Party Chair Nikki Freed and Former State Senator Annette Taddeo are ripping Biden a new one over this decision.
However, Biden was faced with a difficult situation with the Catholic church over releasing prisoners had this decision not been made. He may have also handed Trump a liability should he as POTUS reverse Biden's executive order. This would present a major headache for Marco Rubio if he serves as Secretary of State, especially given he's Cuban-American.
I don't see what's socialist about the U.S. trading with Cuba with making necessary trade-offs for the government to change so that the country doesn't become another Venezuela. One of the trade-offs could include Cuba having a market economy and the government moving away from Communist rule. That of course would take a lot of time.
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/15/biden-cuba-terrorism-florida-democrats-trump
Yes, because being “tough on Cuba” has worked so well for Florida Democrats. It’s wrong on policy and unsuccessful politically. And has allowed a small group primarily in Florida to hold U.S.-Cuban foreign policy hostage.
I agree; the Florida Dem party imploded when the Cuba stance was status quo; IMO with the Batista generation increasingly moving on demographically speaking I don't think we have much to lose by forging a new path here, especially since it's good policy (IMO to treat Cuba like North Korea while we play footsie with Saudia Arabia is the height of inconsistent and hypocritical foreign policy; especially given Cuba no longer poses practically any threat to the U.S. militarily).
Some of Florida’s Cuban-Americans would love to bring back Fulgencio Batista or his equivalent. I very much doubt many members of the other Hispanic communities in Florida share their view.
I lived in the Keys when Obama announced the talks with Cuba in January of 15 and even then the freakout of the local GOP Reps. over this seemed detached from the population. i'd also just say Hillary Clinton won Miami-Dade by 30 some points 20 months later. Outside of the base Rs I don't think it matters as much as people seem to think in S FLA but Its been about nine 1/2 years since I last lived there.
Agreed. Seems like a niche issue where the people that care REALLY care while everyone doesn’t care at all. Most voters care about taxes, education, inflation, etc.
it's not a major issue here
The Florida Democratic party should never have a foreign policy that's not compatible with national interests
The 'average' Floridian has much more important local issues that they care about(especially if Trump actually carries through with his agenda)
Two Iranian supreme court judges shot dead in Tehran
Judges Ali Razini and Mohammad Moghiseh were killed after an armed man entered the court, in the capital Tehran, on Saturday morning. The attacker killed himself while fleeing the scene.
Both judges are said to have played a role in the persecution and killing of opponents of the Islamic regime throughout the 1980s and 1990s. One of the judges, Ali Razini, had survived an assassination attempt in 1998. The other, Mohammad Moghiseh, was sanctioned by the US in 2019, [accused] of having "overseen countless unfair trials, during which charges went unsubstantiated and evidence was disregarded". Moghiseh was also among seven Iranian judges sanctioned by Canada in 2023 for what the country described as "their role in gross and systematic human rights violations".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4mvllgd1mo
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/18/two-iranian-supreme-court-justices-killed-in-shooting-attack-in-tehran
Boy the hits just keep coming for the mullahs in the last twelve months, eh?
just can't seem to feel sorry about this; I don't know why
Quarter-billion dollar Trump slush fund
Trump and his allied political action committees [are expected] to pull in as much as $250 million for Trump’s inauguration. However, much of the cost of the inauguration is actually covered by taxpayer dollars.
NOTE: While laws require Trump’s Inaugural Committee to disclose its donors, there is no requirement to say where the money goes.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-17-202
BREAKING: After Donald Trump announced he was giving his Inauguration Speech indoors on account of the cold weather, the chancellor of Greenland taunted him on social media saying, "If Trump can’t handle one polar vortex, he can't handle Greenland."
. Bernie Blasts Trump For Moving Inauguration Inside: “Wear Some Fucking Mittens”
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) — Blasting Donald J. Trump’s decision to move the Inauguration indoors, Senator Bernie Sanders issued a post on Friday declaring, “Wear some fucking mittens.”
Sanders offered to lend Trump a crocheted pair from his extensive mitten collection, but added, “Won’t you keep warm with all those oligarchs hugging your ass?”
The Vermonter, who seemed incredulous at Trump’s low tolerance for cold, ended his tirade by asking, “What do you think the temperatures are like in Greenland, moron?”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/bernie-blasts-trump-for-moving-inauguration
Do you have a rundown of the open Congressional seats? I know they are all in heavy Republican districts, but are any of the Dems running likely to do well? Are any of the candidates at least moderate Republicans?
Highly unlikely to win any of those
TikTok ban has officially come to the USA (temporarily).
Anybody acting like TikTok going offline isn’t a political disaster for Democrats is deeply unserious.
Most political issues never touch people’s daily lives—but 170 million Americans just had their favorite social media platform taken away from them.
And Trump is going to position himself as the savior. JFC.
https://x.com/TheTNHoller/status/1880846296568717513
While I probably agree with this assessment, can we all pause for a minute and take a second to realize the thing that Americans care most about, that Americans are really politically motivated on, that Americans are becoming outraged about... is the banning of Tiktok. Not school shootings and gun violence, not inflation, not housing prices, not lack of health insurance, not abortion, not fires in LA or climate change's havoc, not a tyrannical president... I mean I can go on and on and on. I mean I'm sure there are merits to arguments in favor and against banning Tiktok...but is this really the issue of our time?
I haven't really shared my thoughts on 2024 yet, but I think one of the most salient points I have learned is how disconnected American politics are from actual policy (...and how disconnected we (the elite lol) are from what most Americans care about). It is now a fully formed reality TV show, devoid of substance and intelligence, full of petty Real Housewives-esque arguments, Survivor-based political strategy, and fake conflict. The issues that matter are now buying Denmark, which the NYT tries to legitimize as some rational national security concern, instead of slapping it down as the pathetic cry of a desperate narcissistic baby.
I mean I'm at a loss for how Democrats who, for the most part, are a serious political party compete with Republicans and an electorate that is largely unserious. Do we just need to nominate a buffoon who jumps to claim victory on made-up controversies? I'm so exasperated.
This is kind of my thought process, too. All the policy arguments in the world, even on hot button issues like immigration where our policy stances do provide a weakness or abortion where we have an advantage, seem to be utterly divorced from what and why people follow politics for
The American people have NEVER voted strictly on policy. If they did, Walter Mondale would have won the 1984 Presidential Election.
The double edged sword is that we have to both have to be a serious political party because governance - we are actually expected to be adults - but at the same time we can't be serious because people want entertainment. It's a major reason why until his scandal I wanted Al Franken for President in 2020. He was popular with both Clinton AND Sanders types and he actually had experience governing. Plus he was and is an entertainer. I felt then - and to an extent I still feel now - if the American people want an entertainer for President, at least give them one who cares about governing and knows how to govern.
Hear, hear! Republican power players enjoyed a lot of celebratory drinks and cigars when over-hurried Democrats forced Al Franken to resign. Huge political mistake that we did them the favor of crucifying one of our most effective senators!
I think the optics helped us a lot at the time, and there's a real chance that Doug Jones would have lost the Alabama special election.
Franken announced he would resign on Dec 7, 2017. The special election was held Dec 12, 2017. Jones won by ~1.5 points.
If democrats were not able to separate themselves out as having higher standards on sexual misconduct than republicans, I do not believe we would have succeeded in making Moore's crimes stick to him in the mind of the electorate.
We can have effective presidential candidates without giving up our standards on basic human decency.
Plus, I will maintain my first post-election argument: 2024 was not an election decided by policy. Tying that into this conversation, I think it was equally not an election about our candidate. Considering Harris' performance in battleground states versus elsewhere, I will maintain that she ran a good campaign. It was an election enormously tilted against us due to the political environment and in particular the media environment. I don't see any one candidate out there that could have turned this around for us.
Media environment will remain our biggest obstacle and it's something we need to figure out how to solve, or at least work around.
In some ways I think we're also looking at a problem like republicans were in ~2012ish. Where their base was too fractured and couldn't truly agree on anything, leading to large portions of their base being perpetually displeased. We've struggled with that in the post-Obama era.
Yep. The USA is hardly the only country where the incumbent party was voted out. Expect the trend to continue this year. And Democratic voters and politicians need to accept that life is NOT a damn Disney movie and thus we shouldn't automatically expect things to work out.
this is silly, the vote was bipartisan. If voters blame democrats it's because there's nothing we can do to compete in the information environment. If that's true, legislative actions themselves don't matter. Tik Tok running a trump ad is also unrelated to what Democrats do.
#1. Democratic Party politicians have to accept that political theatre is here to stay and #2. Democratic Party voters have to LET them engage in political theatre. "High brow" is for suckers. Always has been. Always will be.
We have to reinterpret Michelle Obama’s often-quoted words, "When they go low, we go high."
My take: "When they go for the gut punch, we need to go for the jugular!"
Someone once said on DailyKos, “When they go low, kick ‘em in the balls.” It’s been my political philosophy since.
Despite where it's coming from, I pretty much agree with the philosophy of Ingrid Lewis-Martin here: “I’m not Michelle Obama. When they go low? We drill for oil. I’ll meet you down in the subbasement."
We need to be a more outwardly aggressive party. Leaning back and saying "Well, our norms and institutions won't allow us to do X, Y, Z" is plainly not working.
The thing is that this isn't low brow, Trump is being overtly corrupt and building an oligarchical government. If you want Democrats to do that fine, but the delineation here is not between ruthlessness and Pollyanna, it's between blatant violation of core constitutional responsibilities and a modicum of respect for them. Trump doesn't have the power to just not enforce the Tik Tok law, but he called the CEO and told him if he ran an ad for him he'd do that. It's plainly both unconstitutional and illegal, and that sort of quid pro quo in the WH is the kind of things that cause democracies to collapse in on themselves quickly. If we have to play by the same rules oh well, but we're trading a conservative oligarchy for a liberal one.
For a guy who shits on Mexico rhetorically so much he sure seems to want to cosplay as the PRI at their worst
Honestly . . .my position on this one is fuck 'em. If the electorate is going to go crazy from losing just one venue for Chinese propaganda and bullshit brand prostitutuon . . sorry I meant "influencing" . . and videos of people falling on their ass/cats, then we deserve the ensuing apocalypse that befalls us.
Social media addiction IMO is a big reason why Trump won and the developed world is falling one by one to right wing paranoia and conspiracy theories. Getting TikTok banned is maybe losing the battle but moving forward in the larger war.
My bet is on everyone forgetting this in six months, especially if TikTok comes back this week.
Also, that
HELP TANK TRUMP’s Inauguration Ratings
Trump really values his TV ratings and crowd sizes. This is why he went apoplectic when even the National Park Service documented that Obama’s crowd was bigger.
Well, this year Trump’s crowd will be tiny. Due to a forecast of moderate Greenland-like weather, the inauguration is being moved inside the Capitol. (Rather than being a coward, Bernie would just have put on mittens and a hat.)
How are ratings determined? They count the number of TVs on and what they are tuned to.
Here is how to tank Trump’s TV ratings: Leave your TV on, just switch it to any channel that is NOT broadcasting his inauguration. National Geographic or even the Food Channel will do. Go for a walk, wash your hair, take a nap, do your daily commute and go to work if you have to, make love to your partner if you want – but just leave your TV on.
*) Unfortunately, I will not be able to heed my own advice. My wife and I got rid of our TV more than a decade ago. We may, however, stream a good movie or re-watch Nixon’s and Agnew’s resignation speeches, or perhaps re-watch the debate in which Kamala Harris demolished Trump.
**) Credit to the Borowitz Report and top commenter Debra Poneman.
The special election for Minnesota state representative, scheduled for 28 January, has been canceled by Friday’s order from the Minnesota State Supreme Court.
https://www.sos.state.mn.us/media/6367/a25-0017.pdf
Well that's not great *sigh.
TikTok is firing back up again.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/trump-save-tiktok-truth-social-shutdown/
Overall, just 33% of all Americans express a favorable view of the Democratic Party, an all-time low in CNN’s polling dating back to 1992. The GOP clocks in a tick higher, with a 36% favorability rating. Four years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the Democrats’ rating stood at 49%, and the Republicans’ at 32%.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/19/politics/democrats-party-change-cnn-poll/index.html
I'm not particularly surprised. The party is in full self-flagellation mode right now. Different wings of the party/base are taking our loss to insist that we need to immediately abandon the [opposite end of the party compared to the person speaking] if we ever hope to win an election again.
"Normies" are being bombarded with messages that democrats too far right, too far left; that we are too nice to immigrants, too hostile to immigrants; that we only engage in social issues, that we ignore the socially vulnerable; that we're warmongers, that we're peaceniks; that we do not care about the poor, that we only care about the poor...
Is it any surprise that we've lost so much favorability? All this BS pushes people out from the party, making it sound like there's no home here for anyone left of republicans regardless of their exact ideological tilt. Hopefully the public infighting dies down as people get pissed off by all the inevitable horrors we are about to face and we refocus our efforts on ending those horrors.
Defeat brought out the worst in us.
It's not going to last forever, but I don't think I can recall a "wind out of the sails" moment for a political party like what the Democrats experienced from October-November 2024. From people fired up to just . . . utter retreat and fatigue. And it's understandable' the fatalism has struck me too. But we've got to dust ourselves off and pretty soon.
1988? 2000? 2004? 2016? This is nothing new for the modern day Democratic Party. Even with our winners like Bill Clinton in 1992, Barack Obama in 2008, and Joe Biden in 2020 there were very much doubts at times.
I mean aggregated polling is showing Dems at their lowest place in modern times; it's definitely worse. 2016 seemed like a fluke. In 88 we still had the House.
It seemed like Trump had made himself completely toxic to voters at the end of his 1st term, he runs a campaign basically being a terrible person, and still wins. That's a much bigger gut punch than simply Generic R aka W Bush winning a second term as an incumbent post 9/11. Plus the educational realignment crossing racial lines that's occurred ensures both winning the Senate and Presidency is significantly harder than it was in the aughts. And that cohort of the population is in a social media-driven news bubble environment completely detached from any respect of fact or integrity.
In 1988 we lost the White House in a landslide for a third straight year and five out of the last six Presidential Elections. The US House Democratic majority was still well to the right ideology wise of the US House Democratic minority of today. We had the majority of the US House seats in states like Alabama and Oklahoma back then, for crying out loud. And those Democrats for the most part were anything BUT liberal, let alone "progressive." In 2004, the "conventional wisdom" was that the Democratic Party was "permanently doomed" to exist on the coasts......and little elsewhere.
In short, let's not write the obituary of the Democratic Party. Especially since there isn't another up and coming left wing party coming up to supplant them. This isn't the USA Whig Party of 1854 or the UK Liberal Party of 1918.
I mean, I'm not writing any obituaries and think a lot can turn around, particularly with a recession, but we are mostly a coastal party again.
That the party is ideologically divided on a lot of issues is a big problem. The Republicans don’t have that problem, even before Trump. And now it’s whatever Trump wants. That makes it easier for them to present a united, clear message. Unlike the muddled message and weak presentation usually coming from the Democrats.
The Purge is on, starting with the State Department.
https://wapo.st/3PH82gx