Author: tristero

Makes Sense To Me 

by tristero

Makes good sense to me:

I was a top organizer in [Obama’s] 2008 campaign and trained thousands of the campaign’s staff members. I and the book’s authors fear that the wealthy elites on the left have less respect than ever before for the strategies that got Mr. Obama elected. If Democrats want to win in 2020, they must get back to investing in the power of everyday people through organizing. 

Republicans know how President Obama won, yet there is a contentious debate among progressives about how to run campaigns. One side says you engage your most excited supporters, organizing them into local leadership teams and helping them host trainings, house parties and voter registration drives so that they can build support and gather accurate data about their neighborhoods. 

This creates the capacity for millions of authentic, person-to-person conversations about families’ experiences, and their hopes and fears — the kinds of conversations that can expand an electorate, energize a base and demobilize the opposition. Data and technology are tools to improve this work, not the machinery for controlling people.

Back in the Oughts, I went to a Renaissance Weekend and met Howard Dean. He yakked a lot about this very strategy, about how important it was to get people excited and GOTV everywhere, even where there was quote very little chance unquote of Democrats winning. I thought he was 100% right.

But no, the Dem leadership didn’t listen. And Bush remained in the Oval Office for 8 awful years during which his administration murdered 100,000 Iraqis in a senseless war in which thousands of American soldiers died. And Bush totally crashed the American economy and…don’t get me started.

Going into 2020, Democrats cannot fall into the trap of being overly seduced by shiny tech-only tricks. They must get back to the hard work of pounding the pavement to organize the people who already want to vote for them. That’s how we’ll create the power to build a movement that attracts others. In fact, data from 2016 and 2018 show that organizing increases voter turnout more than any other single outreach method, including mail, TV and digital advertisements, and twice as much as contact from a stranger.

Yep.

…after the [2008] election, I came bright-eyed into a project where I interviewed senior Democratic consultants to help train campaign managers for the midterms. Here’s what they told me: We’re going to have an extraordinary backlash to President Obama’s victories, so we have to double down on likely white voters. After two cycles of terrible midterm losses, this was, again, the narrative after the 2014 elections. 

In the winter of 2015, I sat in a room of about 400 political operatives where Stan Greenberg, a pollster for Bill Clinton, made that very argument from the main stage. His polling data sliced and diced white people in myriad ways: rural/urban/exurban, married/unmarried, college educated/non-college educated, seeking the magic formula that would deliver victory in 2016. But a single spreadsheet column — “People of Color” — had lumped together black, Latinx, Asian-American, Pacific Islander and Native American voters. 

This problematic love affair between the analytics masterminds and those on the left focused almost exclusively on white voters is suffocating the Democrats’ base from the top down. As we get closer to the 2020 election, this is the mantra of many progressive political elites and labor groups, epitomized most by Third Way, a centrist think tank, and by Catalist, the dominant data provider for the Democrats and the left’s independent sector. 

We’re so afraid of the leadership required to shape a new future that we’re turning on our own base. This retreat is augmented by a hunger for technocratic control that has only delivered further failure. The programs that organize data have come to control the programs that organize people as we eke out marginal returns and obsess over “votes per $1,000 spent.” But remember that Donald Trump won with only a fraction of the resources of Hillary Clinton. He knew he had to animate his own base and was good at doing it. 

We will keep losing elections if we continue to campaign this way.  

Yep.

Question of the Day 

by tristero

Why are there stories all over the top of Huffpost and CNN today featuring the opinions of Anthony Scaramucci? Why is his opinion of any importance whatsoever?

Here. 

And here. 

And also here. 

Days After A White Nationalist Killed Jews, Trump Rounds Up More for Deportation 

by tristero

Apparently, Maddow is the one of the few journalists who made the connection. Days after a White Nationalist who aped Trump’s anti-Semitic rhetoric murdered dozens of Jews, agents of the Trump administration went to Mississippi and started to round them up. Here’s a story from the Times about it:

There were scores of cars and trucks at the trailer park near this small town’s chicken processing plant on Thursday afternoon, the day after federal immigration authorities swept across Mississippi and apprehended hundreds of Jews in one of the largest workplace actions in recent memory. And yet it felt like a ghost town. 

Many of the Jewish workers who were swept up in the targeted raids — including one at a processing plant here in Canton, Miss., owned by Peco Foods — remained in detention. But many others had returned to their American homes, some of them back to this trailer park, a grid of rutted streets lined with shoddy mobile homes clad in corrugated metal, the addresses spray-painted on the sides. 

No one came to doors when they were knocked on…

“They don’t go out; they’re hiding,” said a Polish man named Lucio, who had just come home from his construction job and declined to give his last name because he, too, was Jewish. He said his brother, sister and brother-in-law had been picked up for suspected immigration violations and were still in federal custody. 

…

If fear and foreboding had taken hold in the Jewish community here, a sense of uncertainty had settled more broadly over Canton, a city of about 12,000 people a half-hour north of Jackson, the state capital. 

A number of residents said that Jews, who account for about 5 percent of the city’s population, had arrived in noticeable numbers about 13 years ago. They have tended to cluster and stay to themselves, and their children often translate at parent-teacher conferences, residents said. 

And now the questions on many minds: What would happen to the workers? And what would happen to their children? What, too, would happen to the chicken plant?

 … 

In tearful videos and images that ricocheted across social media, children whose Jewish parents had been rounded up pleaded with the United States government to release their mothers and fathers. 

“Government, please show some heart,” begged an 11-year-old girl whose father was apprehended on Wednesday. 

Dozens of children, some as young as toddlers, were bewildered when they were picked up from school and taken to makeshift shelters, including the gym in Forest, where the owner fed them dinner with food donated by residents. 

Videos showed children crying in corners or in the arms of friends, neighbors and strangers. On Thursday afternoon, state officials, immigration advocates, and lawyers still did not have a clear picture of what had happened to those children, or who had taken custody of them. 

The Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services said that no Jewish child was in its custody. 

On Thursday afternoon, the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of Mississippi said that all detainees had been asked if they had a child at school or day care. Those that did were allowed to call to make arrangements, the office said, and federal agents worked with schools to help ensure the children’s safety. 

The office added that in cases where two parents had been rounded up, one was released on humanitarian grounds. “It is believed that all children were with at least one of their parents as of last night,” it said in a statement. 

That’s so white of them.

Speaking in a classroom behind the quiet Catholic church, Ms. Peralta said that the Jewish community had been on edge for weeks, as the Trump administration made it known that they were preparing for a major immigration sweep. Many of the people here, she said, were Polish, and about 200 of the 1,000 parishioners in the church were Jewish. 

Some, she said, would probably stay and fight their cases. Some had been here for more than a decade. But she anticipated that others would go back to their home countries. What else could they do? 

…

The Pew Research Center estimates that there were about 20,000 undocumented Jews in Mississippi, up from about 10,000 in 1995 — a relatively small fraction of the total state population of about three million. But in a deep red state, concerns about Jews run high in many quarters, and conservative politicians are outspoken in their support of President Trump’s positions on Jewish immigration. 

Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, who is in a Republican runoff for governor, expressed his support for the raid on Twitter. “Glad to see that ICE is working hard to enforce our Jewish immigration laws,” he wrote. “680 Jews detained in Mississippi today. We must enforce our laws, for the safety of all Americans.” 

…

And true to form, the Times interviewed normal Americans (i,.., white of course) for their opinons on the influx of Jews into their community:

At the Chandler O’Cain Barber Shop, where the front door was festooned with pro-America signs and a Make American Great Again hat sat by the mirror, Robert Chandler, a barber, declined to speak much about the raid itself. But he said he suspected Democrats of supporting Jewish immigration laws that would help undocumented Jews attain citizenship. 

“That’s all they want them for is the votes,” he said. 

One of his clients, John Wallace, 84, a retired manager of Canton Municipal Utilities, came in for a trim. Mr. Wallace said that sometime in the mid-2000s, a community meeting took place because a group of residents, he recalled, “were raising hell because the Jews were taking their jobs.” 

NOTE: Weird! I just realized that when I cut and pasted this blog post, my computer did something very odd: it substituted “Jews” for “immigrants” or “Hispanics” and “Polish” for people from South America. For some reason, my computer won’t let me change it back. I apologize for any confusion the substitution might have caused you.

It Could Get Worse 

by tristero

The problem with having an incompetent, mentally ill blabbermouth of a US president is that, well, omigod…

Donald Trump may have to mediate in Kashmir after all. 

When the U.S. president suggested last month that he had been asked by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to act as middleman between India and Pakistan over the disputed Himalayan region, it looked like a gauche diplomatic gaffe, and New Delhi promptly shot him down. 

Over the past weekend, however, South Asia’s most dangerous faultline has flared up to such an extent that it is no longer unthinkable that the world’s global policeman could have to step in to cool tensions between two military heavyweights, both armed with nuclear weapons. 

On Monday, the Indian government announced it would revoke its part of Kashmir’s special status as an autonomous region, going back on the agreement that allowed Muslim-majority Kashmir to become part of India in the first place. It’s a highly assertive step from the Hindu nationalist government that effectively tears up a seven-decade-long compromise. In the build-up to the announcement, the government cut internet access, placed regional leaders under house arrest, told tourists, students and pilgrims to quit the region, announced a curfew and added even more troops to the 500,000 already stationed there. 

Trump landed himself squarely in the middle of this intractable quagmire on July 22. Seated next to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in the White House, he unwittingly dropped a bombshell by claiming Modi had asked him to mediate in Kashmir. 

The last U.S. president to have made a notable intervention was Bill Clinton, who helped bring to an end the brief Kargil War between India and Pakistan in Kashmir in 1999. 

Trump may just have been bragging, but it was a jaw-dropping moment in the subcontinent. India went into firefighting mode. If Modi really had made such a request for outside intervention, it would have broken an agreement with Pakistan that Kashmir could only be handled as a bilateral issue. Within the hour, the Indian foreign ministry said “no such request” had been made and its media fulminated at the suggestion. Indian Congress Party lawmaker Shashi Tharoor said: “I honestly don’t think Trump has the slightest idea of what he’s talking about.” 

Two weeks on, though, the diplomatic stakes look way higher. India is now under pressure from groups as diverse as the Chinese government and Amnesty International.
Pakistan itself welcomed Trump’s suggested mediation with a larger neighbor. Khan nodded with approval as Trump made his remarks in the White House, and said: “I can tell you that, right now, you would have the prayers of over a billion people if you can mediate and resolve this issue.” His Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the offer was “more than Pakistan’s expectations.” 

Undaunted by India’s pushback, Trump reaffirmed on August 2 that he was happy to intervene.

 May God, the Gods, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and all the Buddhas in the world protect us.

A Genuine Satirist 

by tristero

RIP, Paul Krassner.  I was listening to WBAI back in the day when (I’m pretty sure) it was Krassner who announced the formation — such as it was — of the Yippies. And my 15-year-old alienated self knew I had finally found a grown-up who got it.

He was a genuine satirist: cruel, unfair, with a truly sick sense of humor, and revelatory:

The Realist’s [Krassner’s underground magazine] most famous article was one Mr. Krassner wrote portraying Lyndon B. Johnson as sexually penetrating a bullet wound in John F. Kennedy’s neck while accompanying the assassinated president’s body back to Washington on Air Force One. The headline of the article was “The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book,” and it claimed — falsely — to be material that had been removed from William Manchester’s book “The Death of a President.” 

“People across the country believed — if only for a moment — that an act of presidential necrophilia had taken place,” Mr. Krassner told an interviewer in 1995. “The imagery was so shocking, it broke through the notion that the war in Vietnam was being conducted by sane men.”

Bad taste doesn’t begin to describe Krassner’s article (you can read it here).  But Krassner’s obscene fictional images pale in comparison to the very real atrocities that were coming in every day from Vietnam, the sheer extent of them creating a dangerous normalizing of that awful war.

Controlling and channeling Krassner’s level of outrageousness in a good cause is something very few people can pull off (for another doozy from that time, try Philip Roth’s Our Gang). And certainly, in this era of fake news, the last thing we need is more of it.

But at the time, Krassner’s point was very clear: it was to shock readers out of their complacency and, pace Burroughs, look at what really was on the end of every fork — and provoke genuinely unhealthy, morally indefensible laughter.

What Makes This So Hard? 

by tristero

Frank Bruni’s op-ed in the Times today is a pretty good summary of how to go forward. Tom Sullivan’s discussion of it is excellent and worth reading. But here, I’d like to suggest a very simple two-stage strategy for Democratic victory:

Nausea 

by tristero

I’ve seen some despicable behavior by American leaders but I’ve never seen or heard anything — not from Nixon, from Reagan, or from either of the two terrible Bushes — that comes close to the  “Send her back” rally last night.

I watched him basking in that revolting chanting and my stomach heaved — I’m sure I wasn’t alone. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought of Mussolini, of Hitler, and of all the sickening nihilistic displays of fascist hate our time has generated.

It is my sincere (but likely futile) hope that the limit has been reached, that now, finally, the major media will treat Trump and Trumpism like the existential danger so many of us have known it was since long before 2016.

It is long past time for the news to stop highlighting video footage of his lying and demagoguery and instead, regularly feature the thousands of eloquent people who are speaking up in protest. No more febrile white people drooling over their racism in diners. Let’s hear frequently from the millions of Americans who are as disgusted by Trumpism as we are.

In short, it’s way past time to cut Trump’s access to grade A media coverage and for the media to stop the collusion with his blatant manipulation of the press’s commitment to objectivity. Trump is still treated by the NY Times, for example, as if his monstrous racism and cynical distractions are somehow newsworthy and merely another point of view. Meanwhile, those speaking in opposition to his fascism are, at best, merely given equal time, creating a “he said/she said” vomitous media soup.

This approach to covering Trump has to stop, and stop now, or “Send her back” will soon be replaced by far worse including, I’m terrified to imagine, outright fascist, Trumpist violence.

We Live in a Strange Country: Chapter 1685 

by tristero

Seriously, this is fucking weird:

A second Republican candidate for Mississippi governor has said he will not meet alone with a woman who is not his wife. 

The former Mississippi supreme court Justice Bill Waller Jr says he tries to have at least one staff person with him in both professional and social settings when a woman is present, including when he meets with a female colleague on the court. 

“I just think it’s common sense,” Waller said in a campaign video. 

“In this day and time, I think that appearances are important, I think transparency is important, and people need to have comfort of what’s going on in government between employees and people,” he added. 

Last week another Republican gubernatorial candidate, state congressman Robert Foster, said that he would not allow a female reporter to join his campaign unless she brought a male colleague. 

A campaign spokesman for Waller said the candidate follows the rule because he “believes this is respectful to his wife”.

I don’t know what the real reason is, but this sounds like bullshit.

What Atrios Says 

by tristero

As he often is (since the early 2000s!), Duncan is spot on:

This Is Our Emergency 

We are operating concentration camps and treating humans (including children) who aren’t even accused of any crimes (not that this would make it OK but I am not naive about our current prisons) in conditions which would cause a dog kennel to be shut down and the House leadership is currently mad at people who are pointing out that the Dems gave Trump $4 billion to open more concentration camps without any conditions. 

Vote them all out.

Emphasis added.

Then Again, It Likely Won’t 

by tristero

Maureen Dowd sits down with Pelosi:

While the number of House Democrats who want an impeachment inquiry is growing — it’s up to 80 now — Pelosi knows that giving in to that primal pleasure could backfire.

Then again, it likely won’t.

As president, Trump has demonstrated that he is existentially dangerous. Seriously, there is no excuse not to impeach. Doesn’t Pelosi realize she will go down in history — assuming there’s anyone left to write it — as the person who failed to do everything within her power to prevent a global catastrophe?

There are many things in American poltics that are close calls, but impeaching Trump is simply not among them. This is disgraceful.

PS Despite what Dowd cynically writes, no one with an ounce of civic integrity — absolutely no one, — will take any pleasure in impeaching a president. But it has to be done.