With clear eyes, hard facts, critical thinking, new political strategy, empathy, and a soupçon of Schadenfreude
Category: Situational Awareness
Posts about the situation we are in–the good facts, the bad facts, and the terrible facts. Facts that, if taken on board, will let us “know ourselves, know the other side” and go on to win those hundred battles.
Carville reaches the conclusion that so many others have reached, namely, that Democrats utterly failed to understand the level of economic anguish—and economic resentment—among the working class; that Democrats need a new program, a new message, and a new messenger; and that said new messenger had bloody well be someone who is comfortable speaking to podcasters.
All true. But Carville omits one key point. (I suspect the omission is conscious and deliberate, because of the delicacy of the subject. But no matter. For whatever reason, he left it out.)
What Carville leaves out if that, if a majority of us are now living in a siloed, curated reality based on selected YouTube videos and TikTok messages served by algorithms, then the good guys have got to find a way to burrow into those information silos and get the attention of the inattentive and the careless thinkers.
In other words, if the democratic accountability feedback loop is in trouble, as is surely the case, then the good guys need to restore it to a healthy state.
I am an old man, and I don’t personally know how to do TikTok and Instagram, but it surely can’t be all that hard for skilled, dedicated people to invade those information silos and begin to spread the message.
Instagram I don’t know, but here are a couple of things I do know. One is that when you put on your advocate’s hat—when your aim is to lead your audience in to see reality in a particular way—it is one hell of a lot easier to accomplish your goal if the picture you’re trying to paint is essentially an accurate view of that reality, as distinguished from a fairy tale and a tissue of lies.
I also know, to a high degree of confidence, that Trump will act in such a way as to immiserate his working class supporters.
Frank Bruni thinks that said working class supporters can be served a diet of shit sandwiches and be made to think they are eating filet mignon.
Maybe that will turn out to be the case. We’ll just have to see.
But if I were Mr. Bruni, I would not bet the ranch on it.
A good friend has called my attention to a recent post by Prof. Sheila Kennedy. In the post, Prof. Kennedy muses on the question “Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?” and reposts this message that she received from a friend:
THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:
That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/donald-trumps…/)
That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to which Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting, and I turned away. I couldn’t—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, “That’s cool!” (https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-howard-stern-story)
That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, “That makes sense.” (https://www.usatoday.com/…/what-trump-has…/1501321001/)
That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, “Thumbs up!” (https://www.theatlantic.com/…/why-cant-trump…/567320/)
That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.” (https://www.huffpost.com/…/trump-insult-foreign…)
That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating and you have said, “What a genius!” (https://www.politico.com/…/138-trump-policy-changes…)
That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, “That’s smart!” (https://www.usnews.com/…/how-is-donald-trump-profiting…)
That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, “falling in love” with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, “That’s statesmanship!” (https://www.cnn.com/…/donald-trump-dictators…/index.html)
That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas – he explains that they’re just “animals” – and you say, “Well, OK then.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/…/more-5-400-children-split…)
That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise. (https://www.americanprogress.org/…/confronting-cost…/)
What you don’t get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it’s also…hear me…charitable.
Because if you’re NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.
Nothing revs up MAGA like the chance to dunk on DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion. DEI-bashing is the core of the “anti-woke” theology. MAGA warriors want a true color/gender-blind meritocracy, they say. Why it matters: MAGA’s DEI unity has hit a big snag. Elon Musk — a MAGA fanboy and fav until this past week — and others on X are arguing forcefully that in a true meritocracy, you’d pick harder-working foreigners for high-skilled gigs over less-qualified Americans. Steve Bannon and many MAGA originals consider this apostasy —basically another high-end, rich-guy way to screw the working-class voters behind the Donald Trump movement. Welcome to the new frontier of the DEI. Musk tweeted last evening: “The point was not to replace DEI, which is one form of racism/sexism, with a different form of racism/sexism, but rather to be a meritocratic society!”🖼️ The big picture: N.Y. Times columnist David Brooks points out this isn’t a “discrete one-off dispute.”“This is the kind of core tension you get in your party when you do as Trump has done: taken a dynamic, free-market capitalist party and infused it with protective, backward-looking, reactionary philosophy,” Brooks writes.“We’re going to see this kind of dispute also when it comes to economic regulation, trade, technology policy, labor policy, housing policy and so on.”Lead story of today’s N.Y. Times, front-page story of today’s Washington Post💣 The latest: Musk vowed last night to “go to war” to defend the H-1B visa program for foreign tech workers, branding some Republican opponents as “hateful, unrepentant racists,” Axios’ Ben Berkowitz writes.Why it matters: The MAGA-DOGE civil war that erupted over the last 48 hours has hit a tipping point, with President-elect Trump’s new techno-libertarian coalition of billionaires taking full aim at his base.Trump faces a deepening conflict between rich, powerful advisers — and the people who swept him to office.Steve Bannon, one of the longest-tenured voices in Trump’s orbit, had multiple guests on his show this week to talk about his hardline anti-H-1B views. Bannon tells Axios he helped kick off the debate with a now-viral Gettr post calling out a lack of support for the Black and Hispanic communities in Big Tech.
A lot of the voters motivated by that particular grievance were family members or friends of the earlier undocumented community—the very people that Steven Miller and his ilk long to deport.
Surprisingly, it turns out that putting together a plurality of the inconsistently aggrieved was a winning strategy. Unsurprisingly, trying to govern based on a coalition of people with diametrically opposed views is going to be a big, big problem.
The video linked above—based on events of the last few days—illustrates the point very well.
A Note on the Midas Touch Network
During the election season, I watched them from time to time. As far as I can tell, they were earning viewers by continually making the case that the good guys were beating the bad guys—right up until the point when the bad guys won the election. Now, they may be trying to earn viewers by exaggerating the problems that Trump will have governing.
Be that as it may, I can tell you what I am, and am not, trying to do in these posts. I am not intentionally selecting facts just to make our side feel good. I am trying to be objective.
So go ahead and reach for that shaker of salt. Take a little. And then enjoy watching the video.
Recently, I have called attention to some scathing criticisms of Kamala Harris—and of the Democratic political class in general.
But, lest we forget, they damn near pulled it off.
Of those who voted, the latest data show that 50.2 percent voted for someone other than Trump. Specifically, Harris got 48.3 percent while 1.9 percent voted for Jill Stein or RFK Jr. or someone else.
And no, ladies and germs, I am not saying our side should be complacent because our margin of defeat could have been a lot worse.
I am saying: by all means, go on with the political autopsies, but keep a grip on.
This follows up on my Dec. 10 post on immigration. On Dec. 11, the New York Times published the analysis I have just cited. It’s long and it’s meaty. If you want to know what’s actually going on, I highly recommend it.
Two things stood out for me.
Thing One: The Immense Scope of the Immigration Surge Under Biden
The Times writes,
Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people. That’s a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record, including the peak years of Ellis Island traffic, when millions of Europeans came to the United States. Even after taking into account today’s larger U.S. population, the recent surge is the most rapid since at least 1850.
And, by the way,
About 60 percent of immigrants who have entered the country since 2021 have done so without legal authorization, according to a Goldman Sachs report based on government data.
The combined increases of legal and illegal immigration have caused the share of the U.S. population born in another country to reach a new high, 15.2 percent in 2023, up from 13.6 percent in 2020. The previous high was 14.8 percent, in 1890.
Thing Two: The Effect on Working Class Wages
According to the article,
The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that wage growth for Americans who did not attend college will be lower than it otherwise would have been for the next few years because of the recent surge. On the flip side, higher immigration can reduce the cost of services and help Americans, many with higher incomes, who do not compete for jobs with immigrants.
Bernard Yaros Jr., a lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, a research firm, described the recent increases as “something that we really haven’t seen in recent memory.” Mr. Yaros said that they had “helped cool wage growth.”
If we really want to get our country back, an essential first step is to face up to why so many people are so mad at the Democratic Party in general, and at the Biden-Harris administration in particular.
And, even as we acknowledge that some of these perceived grievances are legitimate, let’s also remember that none of them would justify choosing someone of Trump’s low character as president. We can grieve, we can be nauseous, we can be amazed at the credulity of a plurality of the American voters.
But we must face up to facts. Anger against Democrats arises from a smorgasbord of factors that various Trump voters (and Democrats who skipped voting in 2024) were concerned about:
Their live in miserable economic circumstances, and Democratic elites don’t even recognize or understand their pain, let alone feel it. Anecdotal and survey evidence indicates the widespread concern over high inflation—a concern that transcends identity groups
They live in an information environment dominated by lies, propaganda, and misdirected anger, and Democrats have ceded that information space to fascists and plutocrats—in consequence of which many are losing the capacity to tell the truth from a lie, to grasp the link between actions and consequences, to choose right over wrong, and to favor science over witchcraft as a problem solving tool
It makes them angry that Democrats have no coherent, politically workable policy on who should be allowed to immigrate to the United States
It makes them angry that Democrats have no coherent, politically workable policy on how to address the 11 million plus undocumented people living among us
It makes them angry when Democrats demand their support on identity grounds, disregarding their actual views and their perceived interests
It makes them angry that Democrats, like Republicans, have embraced neoliberalism and globalism
Some favor Christianist nationalism over freedom of religion
Some have extreme anti-abortion views
Some are stone cold racists, who remain butt hurt that the South lost the Civil War
Some boisterously embrace their toxic masculinity
Some are addicted to conspiracy theories
Some fault Democrats for denying that forest fires are caused by Jewish lasers from outer space
Some are plutocrats gleefully exploiting all of the above
If you actually want to know what just happened in the election, then take the time to watch this video.
OK … lots to digest here.
But may I just say this about that?
The biggest issue for you is high inflation? So you vote for Trump, whose signature policies—rounding up the undocumented, high tariffs and trade wars, and lowering taxes—will (if they are actually implemented) increase inflation and sink your economic prospects even further?
For some time now, we have been about a 50-50 nation, with relatively small movements among voters determining the outcome of presidential elections. (Determining the outcome, that is, in light of the vagaries of the Electoral College system.)
In 2016, when 62,985,106 voters cast their votes for Trump, he only earned 45.9% of those who voted, and decisively lost the popular vote to Clinton, though he got more votes in the Electoral College.
Between 2016 and 2024, Trump’s raw vote total increased by a whopping 13 million votes. But due to higher overall voter turnout in 2024, the percentage of voters opting for the Orange Godking increased by only about 4 percentage points. (Of course, the percentage increase is even lower than that if you look, not to actual voters, but to all registered voters, or all eligible voters.)
Four years ago, in 2020, despite the country’s horrible experience with Covid, Trump’s raw popular vote increased from about 63 million in 2016 to about 74.2 million in 2020. But voter turnout had increased, Trump’s percentage only rose from 45.9% to 46.9%, and Biden easily trumped Trump with 81,282,916 popular votes, or 51.3% of those who voted, and an Electoral College victory of 306 to 232.
This year, Democratic voters declined from 81,282,916 to 74,406,331. That’s a difference of 8,876,585. Some of these folks switched back to Trump—he got around 2.7 million more votes in 2024 than in 2020. Some probably decided to vote for a third party candidate. And a whole bunch of them just stayed home.
For the sake of the discussion, let’s do this mental exercise and this back-of-the-envelope calculation. Let’s assume that all of Trump’s extra 2024 voters were people who had voted for Biden in 2020, but decided to switch sides in 2024. Let’s deduct these 2.7 assumed side-switchers from the missing 2024 Democratic voters. And let’s assume, for the sake of the discussion, that the rest of the missing Democratic voters were people who decided to sit out the 2024 election. That’s about 6.2 million voters.
If all those Democratic couch sitters had showed up for Harris, then she would have won the election handily—even taking into account all the people who switched from Biden back to Trump.
Lead story of today’s 
Facing MAGA 