I wrote
this shortly after the Democratic Convention:
This recent
convention solidified five deficiencies of the Democratic Party. Rather than
addressing these well-known criticisms, the liberal elite, the party owned them
with a nice helping of Jingo.
One is their
use of the term middle class. Looking down from the upper I suppose what they
see is the middle class. I wrote about class in my book, Another Data
Processing Book. In US land we have nine classes, a tic tac toe board,
upper, middle and lower both ways:
|
Upper upper
|
Middle upper
|
Lower upper
|
|
Upper middle
|
Middle middle
|
Lower middle
|
|
Upper lower
|
Middle lower
|
Lower lower
|
Most of us are middle-lower and lower-lower.
There is a big bulb at the bottom with a long tail stretching out into the
distance. Somewhere on that tail you can parse out a small segment that contains
the population middle-middle. We aren’t in it, and we know that. I haven’t
found the middle class all that amenable to my company and I’m okay with that.
Democrats use the term middle class as aspiration. Perhaps they are squeamish,
if there is a middle, then there must be an upper and lower, but those terms
are too offensive. It is disorienting to use the word middle without lower and
upper. The disposition of wealth does not fall into a bell curve and that
should be an advantage to Democrats. The middle-class votes for Orange Jesus.
Second is
the use of the term workers. When we think of workers, we think of unions. For
most of us, unions mean we can’t get jobs. We aren’t in the 11%. To raise wages, you must reduce hiring. Occasionally
we get sucked into organizing efforts that end disastrously. Boycotts, wildcats
and new trade unions are illegal. Companies are fined and unions imprisoned. Again,
Democrats aspire; we live here. Union people are often middle class.
Third is the
argument that we should do it for mom. MAGA base hates its mom. I’m not saying
they are wrong. Mom didn’t think much of them. When mom doesn’t make you
special, you find other justification.
Fourth is
the subsidies. I’m not talking about services but subsidies. If everyone got
something, no one got it. Mortgage interest deduction is a good example. The
deduction means banks charge homeowners more interest. As Adam Smith explained,
if ministers get free tuition, there will be too many ministers for churches to
hire. Subsidizing home buying makes housing more expensive. If tips were tax
free, we would tip our lawyers. If everyone has a college degree, it is not a
distinction. We all know this.
Fifth, we
need to end our empire. It’s too great a sacrifice and too expensive. Take
Gaza, please. US and Qatar interest in Gaza is preventing the development of
Gaza Marine, Thirteen something trillion something cubic something times
whatever. Qatar is now our junior partner selling natural gas to Europe and neither
of us want a large gas field selling to our market. Texas is giving natural gas
away and Europe is buying. That is why the US is recovering so well. That is
why we blew up the pipeline. US and
Qatar favor any policy that delays development. Stooge is a subset of chump. It
is cunning, it is also dumb. US produces the most oil, we won, we’re the OPEC. Why
should it be US ruining the world to make a buck? All empires fall. Let’s go
out with more style. If you don’t share, no one will play with you.
This doesn’t
mean we should hire an idiot to run the country. The first time the babbling
baboon ran they didn’t bother with a platform. Since there were no stated
objectives and who would want to work for him, they just made a mess. The Project
2025 document begins by acknowledging the mess. This time Republicans created a
ridiculous and defensive platform, they hate immigrants, trans and poor people.
Republicans hire the undocumented. They put on a big show, but they hate the documented
immigrants who will someday vote. Abortion is only illegal for poor people in
stupid states. Republicans know that they are so hateful that people become
trans to avoid being gay. Hateful and rich doesn’t make it legitimate.
Republicans don’t understand they are giving away the game. You can’t govern
without legitimacy.
Bobs court
is an embarrassment. Each decision is worse, with no pretense of sense or
justification. Cleaning up this mess will require constitutional amendments.
Most idiotic in the history of courts is giving the president free reign. Mealy
mouthed as it was, the court did not write an opinion to restrain the president.
The decision provides a silly framework to justify any executive decision. In
principle, our president could order Bobs killed. Bobs is corrupt, it’s in the
national interest and it’s an official act.
There was a
US citizen running around Yemen running his mouth. The president ordered him
killed. Then we killed his sixteen-year-old son. The first two were killed with
missiles. Then the next president ordered a ground operation to kill his five-year-old
daughter and the family taking care of her. Presidents have little fear of
prosecution. There is no reason to make that official.
Government
is all in the wrist. It almost doesn’t matter what the policy is if it is
executed well and conversely how good it is if executed poorly. Democrats mean
well, or at least profess good intentions. A president must come in with about
four thousand people or at least 400 who can each bring ten. Even if fat and
furious made sense, he doesn’t have the people. Would you work for him? Look
what happened to the ones that did. Six months doesn’t give much pension. Do
you want Island of Misfit Toys on your resume?
Obama
handled three epidemics. El Pompadour couldn’t get an appropriation for the
vaccines. Instead, they drained the government research budget. Government
research is where the future comes from. That set us back at least ten years.
Troll in
chief privatized government intelligence. Our government intelligence is temps.
When someone
announces they are an idiot, they are a one issue voter, or undecided they give
away the argument and they can’t state their true reasons. Hope they are not
registered. There is nothing wrong with being either liberal or elite if you
deliver. If only more poor people voted. If only more poor people voted in the
primaries. The harder it is to vote, the more it matters.
Voting for
the gibbering gibbon won’t keep black people out of your neighborhood. You know
that. Persecuting poor women in stupid states doesn’t stop abortion. This is a
democracy. Eventually abortion will be unequivocally legal; we’re sick of your
shit. Ending abortion doesn’t stop women working. No one wants to marry your
stupid ugly kid. You know that too. You are not going to bring down the
American empire. The American empire will end when it’s good and ready and it
won’t be because of losers like you. All you have done is make another mess
that everyone else will have to clean up, just like every time before.
Rock is
dead.
Kind of
fun. But then I wonder if I was telling you anything. Would this have any effect?
Would it be positive?
It is yet
another vestige of slavery that such a small plurality, less than 2,500,000 votes,
produces so dramatic an advantage. There were only about 6 million registered
voters that didn’t vote.
When
training a police officer or prison guard someone has the responsibility of
explaining to them that if they are taken hostage, it is possible that they
will be the first target of the police sniper. This policy became obvious at
the Attica Prison uprising. This minimizes casualties. Porky’s 47 cracks about
Hannibal Lecter are a juvenile reference to the Isreal Hannibal directive that
informed the Israeli people that they are all prison guards. Juvenile slyness
targets a demographic.
Incels
affect a depraved exploitative homosexuality. Orange Julius fellatio references
was for their benefit.
There is no
reasoning with MAGA. Biden cut bait in Afghanistan, not Don John. Big Greasy
jailing children and sending their parents back to die insulted the Mexican
undocumented and they quit coming. The fruit rotted, stores closed on Mondays
and there are more jobs. That combined with Double O zero raising oil prices
and Covid supply shocks without the undocumented to cushion them, brought
inflation. Admittedly Mexico doesn’t seem to have street gutters, and they use
adobe not brick, wait till they are arguing in front of the Supreme Court. It
is wrong to let Cubans run Catholic charities. East Orthodox handled their
federal money. We haven’t quite made it, but if we can survive the Irish, we
can survive anything. Except for 9/11 Muslims are Irish lite.
MAGA likes
undocumented. The undocumented work for MAGA. MAGA is not going to round up and
deport its own undocumented. It is the people in the system, paying taxes,
workmen’s comp, social security, that will someday vote who MAGA targets. Whatever
rationalization MAGA offers, it ends with voting for His Hugeness.
MAGA doesn’t
care about any of this. They don’t care about the price of eggs. They hate
women, blacks, and themselves. Whatever talking point they throw, there is no
way that Rumbo will deliver, except for keeping a woman out of the White House.
You can’t
change people’s minds. What you can do is bring in new constituencies. My mom
helped win an aldermanic by registering students in 1959. Big Cheeto’s success
in 2016 was bringing his audience into the Republican party. Kind of like
converting the King of the Khazars. Jews
quit proselytizing after that. Bidens victory was due to the Democratic snap
back, more new Democrats registered than Republicans. Each election registered
more voters. This election the Republicans found incels and enough women want
their pussy grabbed. Besides running a woman, the Democratic mistake was concentrating
all that resource on the existing voting base rather than registering more
voters. Taylor Swift and Beyonce can’t overwhelm the incels by themselves. Someday
we may run out of unregistered, but for now even Democrats should have found
constituencies amongst the more than 80 million. Showing voter registration
should be obligatory at concerts, events, demonstrations and family gatherings.
The Business
School at University of Chicago just made the argument that we vote for
Democrats when times are bad and Republicans when we feel prosperous. This is
in line with Adam Smith’s view of the constant cycle between ruination and
salvation in democracies. It was said that Democrats must be bought, and
Republicans are already there. Everybody is bought. The difference is that
Democrats seek consensus, and Republicans think they are right.
It is almost
impossible to believe that “can you get me 11,000 votes” and electric Musk
didn’t steal the election. There is the Adamowski argument. Adamowski was the
Cook County States Attorney in 1959. Daley got Republicans to trade him away
for Nixon votes. Since the States Attorney is supposed to police elections, if
he can’t do his job he doesn’t get to keep it. If the election is stolen from
incumbents, they are incompetent. Again, Democrat incumbents want an obvious
plurality. Democrats are hurt that misogyny beats ability.
As to
registered voters. I am going to state the obvious. During an election voters
have power. The voters are deciding who to hire. We used to go door to door
canvassing precincts to determine how people are going to vote. There is a
quantum problem. Someone might say:
-I was going
to vote for your candidate.
Canvassers
should be short, elderly, and like your pet. One tactic is to ask people if
they want to volunteer. They don’t, but
if they looked guilty, they were probably a plus. Once we contacted you and
determined your preference, we did not contact you until election day. If you
hadn’t voted we would helpfully remind you. If you were a minus or a zero, we
didn’t want to remind you to vote. If you were a plus any further contact might
change your mind.
Once we had
experience in the precinct, we didn’t have to canvass everybody. There was the
legendary Mrs. Isenberg of East Hyde Park who had five precincts. Voters knew
when she was available to ask her how to vote if they weren’t sure. She may
have occasionally canvassed if it was expected.
As I explained
in an earlier post, I vote against anyone who robocalls me. Once you know I am
voting for Harris and I am not donating money, any further contact may
discourage me, even texts. The message Harris gave is that her campaign did not
know who I am and has too much money. Just because I am voting for you doesn’t
mean I should be pestered. Harris is the first candidate who wanted my donation
more than my vote. Would you solicit money on a job interview? I would like to
see a list of donors who did not vote.
The
Democratic Party did fine out of this, everybody made money. Now they can stand
back, and watch Republicans make another stinking mess. Grifter in Chief is
already shaking the tariff money tree, looking for his taste, just as before
with a wider scope. Please don’t ever say managed trade again. We need the free
trade amendment. Put that on the list with ending the presidential pardon,
abortion is legal amendment, dropping the second amendment, ERA, making federal
election law an amendment, ending the Department of Labor, legalize drugs… The
Democrats expect to come roaring back. After Big Bill Thompson Chicago is a
Democratic city. Assuming there is another election. Mr. Microphone and the
right wing Yippees denying legitimacy while owning the oil market invites a
coup.