Mirrored:

No, I took it

We need never be afraid of the vote of informed Americans. It is only the ignorant voter we have to fear, ignorant politically, no matter how fine his house or how expensive his schooling. Such people have never experienced democracy; they have merely enjoyed its benefits. It is hard to explain what democracy is; it is necessary to participate in it to understand it.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

Unfortunately, there seems to be an awful lot of ignorance out there today.

I wish 10 Republicans would eat racist for lunch, because then we’d be down to 9 Republicans!

Which indicates that policy is secondary to messaging. On every substantive policy metric, Democrats are better than Republicans. People even say they prefer Democratic policies over Republicans’ when polled, by wide margins. So it must be the messenger and the way the message is being conveyed that is losing elections. That’s not to say that policies don’t matter, they absolutely do, but if you’ve got great policies and shit messaging, then you’re not going to win voters over, no matter how much better you are.

I don’t actually think it’s productive to debate whether Bernie would have won or not. I can think one thing and another person can think another, and we can argue forever and it’ll achieve virtually nothing. What I will absolutely assert is that, on paper, there’s no reason why Bernie Sanders, a socialist Jew from the second least-populous state in the nation, should be so successful, so he must be doing something that resonates with a lot of people! He’s acknowledging that people feel abandoned by the system and he’s demanding that something be done about that. Demanding change has been the source of all the biggest political success stories since Barack Obama. If the DNC can’t recognize the power in that, then they’re never going to get anywhere.

Plata o plomo.

Kamala Harris voters, 2024: 70,356,521

People who claim to have been Kamala Harris voters, 2030: 100,000,000+

I heard an interview with a woman who said she voted Republican because, on the one hand, abortion “isn’t that big of a deal” and ought to be left up to the states, but on the other, “doctors shouldn’t be allowed to abort babies after they’re born.”

So this person thinks that doctors are murdering babies… and that should be allowed on a state by state basis. Which… boy oh boy, I’m not sure what to even do with a mind that works that way.

There’s still a lot of analysis still to be done, but the Pod Save America guys pointed out that the Harris campaign saw less slippage in states where they were actively competing on the ground than in solidly red states where they didn’t fight as hard. This indicates that the campaign did make a positive difference, just not enough to overcome the negatives.

The American electorate:

“There’s a horse. In the hospital.”

No I don’t! I tell the truth!

I’m just having a hard time imagining a scenario in which it would be offensive…

Plenty where it would be a little confusing. Sandra Dude O’Connor, or Susan Bro Anthony would take some explaining, at the least.

I loved swordfish steak the one time I had it, so I’d bet that Scylla, Charybdis, or the Kraken would be quite good.

Oh, also The Kraken is quite tasty.

It’s a little more expensive, but not dramatically so

Buying boxes of full-sized candy isn’t even that much more expensive than the fun-sized, and the psychological impact is immediate and dramatic. Every year I hear kids go “Woah, big candy bars!”

Better for what? I only listen to mp3s I’ve got stored on my phone; I use BlackPlayer for that, and I love it. For streaming music purposes… I dunno, I never got into that racket.

If there are two parties, and one says it’s raining, and the other says it isn’t, it’s not the news media’s job to give an unbiased report on the debate, it’s their job to look out the fucking window and say whether or not it’s raining.

That transparency has lots of uses!