Wanted us to "feel Trump" in this wretched administration. Well, we did. And it sucks. And now we're rejecting him and his whole useless party. Fuck the Heritage Foundation.

It isn't enough just to win the next two elections with slim majorities. We must commit to wiping the Heritage Foundation off the political map. We must commit to a wholesale reform of the Supreme Court because we can't wait for Mother Nature or Karma to do their thing. We must commit to a plan that will put US health care costs on par with the rest of the world -- that will not be easy because we will have to gore a bunch of oxen. We must commit to hold all media (not just the legacy OTA broadcasters) accountable for what they put into the public space. For example, what Twitter just did in disclosing the home base of prominent accounts, should be mandatory on all major social media.

And so on. In other words, I think we can now see a path out of this long national nightmare. But we must not be complacent and return to the status quo that got us here. We must view this moment as the beginning of USA 2.0.

Conservatives always play the long game, and liberals must do the same. VOTE. EVERY. ELECTION. Local, State, National -- EVERY ELECTION YOU CAN. American democracy is a perpetual tug of war where you can never let go of the rope. You must keep pulling, and support anyone and everyone who's pulling in the same general direction as you, even if they don't pull as hard as you'd like. All hands on deck.

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Last edited Sat Nov 29, 2025, 07:50 PM - Edit history (1)

I think one of the fundamental problems with our party apparatus is that the old-time establishment types truly believe that US politics is like a pendulum. We get swings to the right and they are always followed by swings to the left. Accepting this theory means that we lose half the elections, but the Republicans always overreach so we win the next one and everybody is good. And this problem is further exacerbated by the fact that political consultants are actually more valuable when "the pendulum" has us out of power. People are always willing to spend money to get back into power, because the power is worth billions of dollars.

There are several problems with the pendulum theory:

1) It does not swing back through the middle and then to the left. Instead, what we see is a long-term movement toward the far right. Today, the Dem establishment is far away from the grassroots progressives that they assume should be part of the Dem base. This is a big reason why registered Dems were 50% a couple of decades ago, but now are only 25% of the electorate.

2) The pendulum theory suggests the smartest place to be is in the center because the pendulum passes through the center twice as often as it gets to the extremes. (That is a fallacy -- see #1) The party apparatus tries to field candidates who will fit into that center position. And what that means is that when we do win elections, we cannot accomplish any big changes because whatever "mandate" we have is to do nothing. The public hates that. They know this country has serious problems. The last thing we need is status quo. The public has shown that they are willing to support a full-fledged fascist who is promising change over a party that isn't committed to any particular changes.

The pendulum theory is 100% wrong and it has been killing us. We need to introduce new ideas into the conversation, and to do that, we have to replace the leadership that is committed to the imaginary "center".

It had to reach nuclear catastrophic WTAF levels for them to finally wake up? SMDH.

only when it affects THEM do they give a tiny fuck

I really think it will hit alot of people after New Years.

I don't expect we will have any solution to the ACA subsidies. This is affecting about 20 million people.

People on Social Security and Medicare are only now learning that the cost-of-living increase in the monthly Social Security is MORE than offset by the continuing runaway health care costs. In my father's case, his Medicare premium increase is about $40 more per month than the increase in his Social Security check. That's probably going to get people's attention in January.

What else are you thinking about?

A lot of people have been kidding themselves that things aren't that bad, cuz day to day it's easier to tell yourself that that bag of groceries wasn't that much more. But when you plan a big meal or a party or are out buying presents for your kids, there's no denying just how expensive everything has gotten. And it will come up in holiday discussions, too, as will things like his stupid ballroom. And a lot of families have someone unemployed due to Trump policies. Economically, I think the next six weeks will hit hard & open some eyes.

Or he could die.

"the stock market". They have never been the same thing, even when the stock market was a mostly sane., rational place as envisioned by Adam Smith.

And in today's world, the stock market is highly irrational. That is to say, most stocks are still valued based on performance expectations. But the "Mag 7" are all phantasmagorical story stocks loaded with hype, sleaze, insider trading and outright theft. The Mag 7 (just 7 companies out of 500) represent almost 40% of the S&P 500 capitalization, but only 20% of the actual profits made by S&P 500 companies. This is a gross distortion of the markets beyond anything ever seen.

Moreover, 40% of Americans have no contact with the stock markets, and the 60% who do include many with relatively small positions. For them, "the economy" is all about good jobs and low prices for the things they have to buy.

The shit is really going to hit the fan.

This will be one.

Akin to the Kerensky offensive of 1917.

Sure lots of them are bots, but there’s plenty of flesh and blood ignoramuses still spewing crap and disinformation. There’s a diehard 30% of the electorate that lives in a world of perpetual grievance, racism, and stupidity. They’ll never change.

without the castigation of Schumer and national party ... (who we refer to as 'empty suits' )
(which is also incidentally against the rules of the site)

is that some of my very politically noncommittal Facebook friends who've stayed out of the fray completely all these years - never posting political stuff or commenting on others' one way or the other - have begun to post anti-Trump stuff. And I'm very surprised to find that most of them have been moved by the ICE raids, the active hunting and disappearing of brown people. I guess that all this time they've held to the belief that nooo, it wouldn't really happen. And they've finally been moved to speak out now that it is. I would've hoped they'd have heeded our warnings all these years, but I'll take this late awakening as second-best alternative. No MAGA's minds have been changed, but it seems the fence-sitters have finally said "Enough".

I am seeing exactly the same thing. There is no doubt that the ICE thing is terrible. and I am glad that has shaken the country out of its coma. But what about all the other atrocities and corruption? They don't seem to care about that. I guess there is a lesson in this, but I'm not sure what it is.

I was stunned at how misinformed/uninformed a few repubs I know are. I don't think they're maga, just old time repubs who are in denial about their party. They watch Fox & maybe their nightly news, which are owned by just a few big companies. They had not heard of Project 2025 until I mentioned it. College-educated, retired professionals who have been repubs forever. Willfully ignorant is worse than ignorant, IMO.

Last edited Sat Nov 29, 2025, 05:38 PM - Edit history (2)

We tend to treat Trump's ~ 70 million votes as if they are mostly the MAGA morons we see attending those rallies. The MAGA morons are more like 10 million. There are lots of people who just know that Democrats are socialists who want to give your kids sex change operations etc. etc.

It is easy for Republicans to define us when Democrats don't define themselves. The Dem view is that each candidate has to be a free agent because "my district is different". That is bullshit. Every district has plenty of voters who want affordable health care. Every district has plenty of voters who want common sense gun laws. Every district has plenty of voters who want affordable education for their kids. Every district has plenty of voters who want clean air and water (not to mention what we are learning about the impact of microplastics). And so on. Certainly there are districts where one needs to be careful about how they frame the discussion about choice, but we can win that almost everywhere by framing it as keeping Big Government out of EVERYBODY's bedrooms, and making health care a decision made by the patient, their doctor, and their clergy if they so choose -- but not their Governor, state Representative, Mayor, Councilman, or random ICE agent in a mask.

Every district has plenty of voters who want billionaires to pay their fair share. Every district has plenty of voters who are concerned about the corrosive impact of the media, especially social media and the advent of AI and robotics. Every district has plenty of voters who are concerned about the cost of feeding their family and the lack of job security we have when the fascists have all the power.

In my view, all of these things are what should define every Democrat, whether they are in Chicago or Tupelo. The person running in Tupelo probably has to frame things different from what sells in Chicago, but the issues just aren't that much different.

as I understand the totality of polling I have seen on that issue---


It is only Republican officeholders who want to protect their millionaire-billionaire FUNDERS
who want to starve and kill off people to give those funders another tax cut....

(This is a form of money laundering--- from the taxpayers into the GQP 'party' coffers....
because when they vote for those tax cuts, they expect to get some of that money BACK
into THEIR OWN candidate fundraising!)

Tax & spend dems. Soft on foreign policy dems. Porous border dems. Nanny state dems. Baby killer dems. It's exasperating. Where is our marketing department? There's a ton of good talent out there to craft & broadcast our message, & others are doing it, but the party itself just isn't effective. How come Indivisable came up with & promoted No Kings Day & not the Democratic Party? Bernie & AOC did the No Oligarchs Tour, which was well received, even in red areas. Where is the Democratic Party equivalent? Maybe I missed it between Ken Martin's pleas for money.

Have you read George Lakoff? He wrote "Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate," back in the Bush years. He talks a lot about framing. He could have been a counter voice to the right-wing's Frank Luntz, but the dems never listened. Fools.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

Every Dem insists on the right to brand themselves without respect to anybody else in the party. It is the proverbial "United we stand, divided we fail" scenario.

The ideals most Dems believe in are VERY popular. But without concrete proposals of things we actually commit to do TOGETHER to achieve some of those ideals, we have nothing but a bunch of free agents, each doing their own thing.

As you said, where is our marketing department? Can you imagine Starbucks having a different decor, a different logo, a different menu and no consistent quality control throughout their 18,000 US stores? Branding is important. That is how consumers make decisions.

There are still the sick responses that support T and his tactics. Taking a minute to look at the poster it seems that the bulk of the maga are possibly fake identities. The foreign actors are getting easier to spot. Locally people are standing up to R policies and their hateful tactics. Progress is slow but not hopeless.

I don't know how Schumer could have stopped them. Please keep the blame for what happened with those who were responsible. The DNC doesn't get involved in primaries.

We have to move past all of that. And it wasn't just 8. I wish it were. They just selected those particular 8 because they are not standing for election in 2026. There are at least 20 who would have sold us out, IMHO. I don't question their sincerity. I believe they thought they were doing the right thing. And a series of 100 such decisions over the years is how we got where we are today. We have the opportunity to escape the Trump nightmare. We must not settle back into the same kind of thinking that allowed Trump to take over, or else it will happen to us once again, sooner than anybody thinks.

And think for where you act like you want us to get to the best approach is attacking the GOP rather than Democrats. Especially when you have no evidence to back you up. After all, you imply you expected those who caved to show loyalty. Where is yours?

to today, which is the lowest point since the Civil War.

The old way does not work. It has never worked. When you look at the totality of power nationally since post-watergate (POTUS, SCOTUS, Senate, House, Governors, and state legislatures), we have an almost linear decline from 1980 onward. We win elections here and there, but in the big picture we have steadily been losing power to the point that we now have NO NATIONAL POWER, and still cling to power in an important set of states. I don't know what more evidence you need to see.

Tell me what kind of evidence you expect to see. To me it is pretty damned obvious. But I have the advantage of having lived through all of this period. I hope to live long enough to see that trend lines reversed on a sustainable basis. None of the "centerists" have ever presented any ideas for how to do that.

And until recently we've kept a strong foundation for people. When we lost it would not have happened were those from the base turning on us. We can get it back if those who doubt give us another chance.

They are answerable to us - We the People. They have screwed up plenty, while some of us watching were jumping and down...and turned out to be right.

They are the representatives of We the People. They need to act like it.

While we're at it - let's talk about getting big money out of politics. I think Citizens United played a large part in getting us here.

And their constituents are people from their district and states .

☎️☎️☎️Protests are great, but a better act of sustained resistance is to call our members of congress regularly! We should be lighting up the phone lines to our MOCs, even if they're republican. Maybe more if they're republican! They actually DO pay attention to the number of calls they get. I'm guilty, too, of not calling consistently, & it's so frickin' easy we have zero excuses!! It takes ten minutes or less to make three calls. No joke. Do it in your car before your go home. Not sure what to say? 5 CALLS makes it easy! They have a phone app, too.

https://5calls.org

They keep track of issues & bills & have sample text for messages on all the issues. You don't even have to take time to write something. You just go to the app, pick your issue, & make your calls. What you say isn't as important as that you MAKE THE CALLS!!The last time We the People lit up the Capitol switchboard was the financial crisis of 2008. Is our country worth doing it again?☎️☎️☎️

I completely agree with you about taking the calls to individual politicians. But we also have a Party problem. We need to push the Party apparatus to have clear, consistent messaging, to seek candidates who will actually fight for progress, and make sure that the Party apparatus is not protecting the weakest players from legitimate primary challenges.

as much as ever. I see a lot of them on Facebook too. The responses depend on the account posting the story. If it's Occupy Democrats or something like that, obviously there aren't many of them. Some other accounts have a lot. MN AG Keith Ellison's posts attract lots of MAGA comments. I'm not sure why you aren't seeing them, but they seem as loyal to Trump as ever. Even if they are only 36% of the population, it's a vocal 36%.

At least that is how it appears from my little vantage point on the world.

And from bots.

However, in my case, of the dozen or so that used to stalk me, I knew most of them personally. I would engage with them as long as they were halfway civil, but I would always ask for evidence from reliable sources. I know they didn't like that, but still they came.

It really seems like they left rather suddenly. We had 3 shocks in fairly rapid succession:
* The worst of the ICE raids
* Trump reneging on his pledge to release the Epstein files
* Tearing down the White House

It seems that the combination shook MAGA foundations.

The Epstein thing is the strangest one to me. It has been obvious for a long time that Trump was up to his eyeballs in the underage sex money laundering, and extortion with Epstein. But somehow the MAGA people really believed this was all going to fall on Bill & Hillary, the Obamas and Biden. Dems were smart to take the strong position os "We want EVERYTHING out, Let the cards fall where they may. If Dems were involved in this, we want them in prison." There was no MAGA response to that, and when Trump tried to stonewall the release, I think a lot of the MAGA people finally realized Trump was in deep shit.

if they don't like something but don't want to go against Trump himself.

They want Trump in office and doing all the racist things but want their health care, social security , welfare and other things to continue for them. So they might decide to either not vote at all or not vote for the Republican .

I love it when I open a thread, and the author actually posts a long, well-thought-out point of view.
I agree with you, Bluetus. And I'm glad you included a bit of criticism for Schumer, too. We have a big task ahead of us, and if we are going to turn the tide, we need to correct our mistakes and continue moving forward.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I was glad your post was NOT a linked video with no commentary.

He is just from another era and he has shown us that he cannot understand this 2025 world.

It became very political quite suddenly. And exclusively anti-Trump. Been there almost a dozen years and haven't seen anything like that before. Rather jarring.

I'm not a fan of polls, but that's the number we have. Fox news viewership is down a bit, allegedly. I'll take that as a bit of a bright point. I was unfortunate enough to have been subject to Fox propagandist verbal diarrhea during the holiday. It's literally a WWE-esque caricature of "bad guy news" with their vapid anti-left bullshit. A constant march of Trump dick sucking nazi assclowns wiping their feet in the blood of the slain national guardsmen.

It's a fucking cult and Trump is fucking Satan.

Just a rung above Rasmussen

People are tired of him. Despite the obvious physical failings, his ENERGY is a constant on Twitterhe can’t stop though. Lack of attention is weakness, the hint of weakness is failure.

Thus nailed it
They are talking about ICE. They are talking about tearing down the White House. They are talking about the guy's mental state. They are talking about his grifting and other corruption.

And thank you for your cogent follow up in the discussion.

we start getting into the presidential election, assuming it happens. They always come together and coalesce in their programmed hatred of a singular D.

I will never forget during Trump's first term, the journalist who was interviewing farmers in the midwest who were upset with Trump's tariffs & he asked if they'd vote dem & pointed out the dems passed a good ag bill when Obama was president, & they all agreed it was a good bill, but they also agreed that they'd never vote for a dem.

right below the US flag for many months. A few days ago, I drove by and it was gone. Of the six houses that for months displayed Trump signs/flags on the roads I frequent, only 2 are left. Obviosuly anecdotal, but that pretty much tracks with Gallup's 36% most recent Trump approval rating.

There are very clear signs of things chifting, after a period of 10 years with very little shifting. Things are definitely much less static now. Just a couple of days ago, a Republican committee chair is vowing to investigate Hegseth's war crimes. They couldn't happen 6 weeks ago.

I can't guarantee this will end up where we hope it does, but you should not ignore the fact that things are in motion now.