Now what?

In the wake of losing an election, some consideration of why your side lost, that is, doing a postmortem, is an entirely reasonable idea.¹

Assuming, that is, the desire is actual analysis and it's done right.

Neither of which we got. No actual analysis and what was done wasn't even done right. So let me start this by laying out my own bias, my own analysis of the "why," admittedly a limited one.

I think the Harris campaign made three significant mistakes. First, she didn't separate herself from Biden on Gaza.² Doing so would surely have cost her some votes but just as surely gained her a good number more.

Second, she began with a message of what could be summarized as "hope and the future" only to turn her back on her base, preferring to vainly seek votes among those all but mythical "moderate" GOPpers and the all too real 1% by campaigning with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban instead of with UAW President Shawn Fain or other labor and progressive leaders.

Third, the last weeks of the campaign revolved almost entirely around "I'm not Trump." (Which was, interestingly, the same mistake made in 2016.) A legitimate stand, particularly in the face of the genuine threat to democracy, but nowhere near adequate standing alone, because people are almost always going to vote on immediate concerns as opposed to future hypotheticals, even likely ones.

None of that, of course, was raised in postmortems from the corporate media, political big heads, or consultant coterie. Except, that is, to brush by them in their haste to get to the REAL problem.

Oh, no, they cried almost in unison, the result was all because Kamala Harris was way, way too much into "identity politics," in particular in support of transgender folks who, to hear them say it (but not openly) really are kinda weird and who everybody hates and who we should not only throw under the bus, we should back over the corpse a couple of times to be sure.

Dan Moynihan at Can We Still Govern brings us a New York Times tetrarchy:

- There is Bari Weiss, denouncing "running on extraordinarily niche issues that you find on college campuses and in gender studies departments." Forgetting that, as a married lesbian, just a generation ago she and her rights would have been such a "niche issue."

- There is Bret Stephens, insisting that "today’s left increasingly stands for the forcible imposition of bizarre cultural norms." Because regarding basic human rights as worthy of respect is "bizarre."

- And there's Nicholas Kristof, assuring us that Democrats can only compete if they “focus more on minimum wages and child care than pronouns and purity." As if dwelling on "pronouns and purity" described her practice rather than his paranoia.

- And of course, there is Maureen Dowd, smirking the right-wig mantra "woke is broke" and charging

progressives failed to realize that women can be worried both about reproductive rights and their "daughters compet[ing] fairly on the playing field."³

As if loss of reproductive health care was an equal worry to the hypothetical possibility of facing a trans girl on the other school's team.

In the course of this, she approvingly quoted James Carville and Rahm Emanuel and actually called Michael Dukakis an "avatar of elitism," a title that fits her far better.

On top of that, Dowd got extra exposure from Mika Brzezinski of Joe Scarborough's MSNBC morning program, who read the entire thing on-air the day after it was published. Scarborough, for his part,

went on a wildly transphobic rant on [the day after the election] against “men who transition after puberty competing against young girls,” saying that opposing trans-inclusive athletic policies is “not a hard call.”

In other words, it was a buncha damn, comfortable, secure, rich, white people saying that the rights of vulnerable people which are of no benefit to them are therefore unworthy of consideration.

But of course it wasn't just the media elite, the sneering also came from inside the Democratic Party itself.

As I think folks have heard, there was New York Rep. Tom Suozzi declaring the party must “stop pandering to the far left” on trans rights. “I don’t want to discriminate, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports," he said, adding "Democrats should be saying that.” Which means, of course, that he does want to discriminate.

More surprising to some, there was Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, offering "I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” rather unsubtly patting himself on the back for his supposedly courageous expression of transphobia.

Fortunately, there has been pushback from other Congressional Democrats against these and other trimmers⁴ who are dipping their toe in the waters to see how far they can distance themselves from trans rights without political cost (or better yet, with political praise).

Related to which we now have Jonathan Larsen of The Fucking News reporting that the DNC's search for a new party chair is being defined by people screeching that the party has become too "woke"⁵ and demanding it must "return" to the "center" because they "don’t want to be the freak show party" and do want a party chair "who’s going to be for the guy who drives a truck back home at the end of the day” and I guess women and people of color need not apply for inclusion - unless, I suppose, if they drive trucks (The image of the "guy" "truck driver" came up more than once.⁶)

It appears that's truer than not, since one DNC member described the field of potential chairs as “White Guy Winter,” with the list essentially empty of women or non-white people but including, deity help us, Rahm Emanuel.

All of which goes to raise the point I really wanted to get to. This sort of "we've gone too far" tut-tutting and hand-wringing is neither new nor actually about tans folks except as they serve as the target du jour.

It is, rather, part of an overall effort by the hierarchy of the Democratic Party, the I suppose you could call it legacy party, to find someone, something, some force, to blame for election losses that does not involve, that actively avoids, looking at the campaign itself, looking at the idea that maybe it was the party apparatus that screwed up.

Indeed, it's hard to find any analysis from any such quarter that does not praise the Harris-Walz campaign with terms like "great job" and "no mistakes" while dismissing critiques out it of hand as unproductive or even destructive finger-pointing - while busily pointing destructive fingers at anyone convenient, particularly the vulnerable population of trans folks still struggling for basic recognition of their rights, indeed of their existence. (I say that knowing much the same could be said of a good number of other vulnerable populations; it's just that this time it's trans folks.)

Same as it ever was: After 2016, the same "blame anybody else" game got played. There, the blamed included third party voters, sexism, Russian interference, James Comey re-opening the email-investigation, millennials, and even Bernie Sanders - but not, oh no of course not, the party or the Clinton campaign.

This time it's "wokeness" and trans people, but the real point is the same in each case: to protect the power and position of a party hierarchy more dedicated to their prestige and perks than public benefit and committed to "winning" as a concept rather than as a program of progress.

It other words, it was intended then and is again now to smack down the influence of the actually progressive wing of the party by reasserting the control of the institutional party apparatus.

Which means - coming to the blunt bottom line - that it's time to realize, we have to realize, that the Democrats are not on our side, not on the side of doing what is right and just, not on the side of progress rather than stasis.

Some individual Democrats, yes. The party itself, no, and all the talk about "moving to the center" is about just that: stasis. It's about not advocating anything that does not already have wide support, about following, never leading, about, bluntly, being damn cowards. And doing it even as both public polling and election results on ballot questions says that on a number of those untouchable "too left" issues (including trans rights) the public is already there.

Okay. After all that, you'd think I'm chock full of idea about what to do now.

I'm not.

I'm just sure the one thing we need to do is not give up. To keep going. To seek comfort and find strength in community and, as others have noted, that community is out there and may even be next door.

So we have to, each of us in whatever way we can, just keep going. Just persist. Just be stubborn. If that's too much, then just survive. But like the man in the movie said, "Never give up! Never surrender!" Or, if you prefer a musical reference, "Rejoice, rejoice/We have no choice/But to carry on."

Because it can get better. And comparing ourselves to the 1900 that George Will said the conservatives' goal is to recreate, we have come so far as to astonish the most stoic among us. Even within our own lifetimes we have seen changes to be celebrated and worth building on. And, romantic that I am, I still believe in the line about the moral arc of the universe.

However - and I know it's hard to hear but yes, it's true - it will undoubtedly get worse before it gets better. Which brings me to something else. But that's for another post.

¹Chess grandmaster and one-time world champion Jose Raul Capablanca once said "I have learned more from each of my defeats than I have from all of my victories.”

²Early in her campaign, I thought Harris, who expressions on the need for humanitarian aid was more intense than Biden's, was trying to distance herself from him without openly breaking from the administration of which she was still part. The same issue faced Hubert Humphrey in 1968 over the Indochina War. He finally, "tight-lipped and grim," made the break. She never did, which raises the very real possibility that she didn't separate from him because she never wanted to. However, that doesn't change the judgment that not doing so cost her a good number of votes.

³Recent studies challenge that "concern." One, from 2021 from the Center for American Progress, shows no impact on girls' participation in sports from allowing trans girls to join those teams. Another, published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2024, found that "physical performance of nonathletic trans people who have undergone GAHT for at least 2 years approaches that of cisgender controls." Finally, in October the British Journal of Sports Medicine published a study saying that at least by some measures, transwomen athletes may be at a disadvantage as compared to ciswomen.

⁴"Trimmer" (referring to trimming the sails of a ship) was a term used in labor struggles to refer to those whose support for worker rights shrank as soon as things got tough.

⁵The next time anyone complains about anything being "woke," tell them the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)" and ask them why they think that's a bad thing.

⁶You know the saying about generals always planning to fight the previous war? It appears the Dems will go after the "bros," planning to fight the previous election.

Ukraine - Past is Preamble?

At the ever valuable Substack The Fucking News last week, host Jonathan Larsen noted some Trump advisors "spilled the beans" about some of the Great Orange One's concepts of proposals for plans to end the war against Ukraine.¹

I was struck by the fact that those spilled beans ideas from the Tweetie-pie crowd bear some resemblance to ideas that had been presented to avoid the war in the first place. I wrote a fair amount² about these ideas in the weeks before the Russian invasion, and I even made my own suggestion for a settlement based on based on two points:

1. In 2015, Ukraine agreed to hold a vote on self-rule in the Russian-speaking breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. It was never held, likely because Kyiv knew what the result of the vote would be: self-rule leading to secession leading to becoming part of Russia.

2. The chances of Ukraine joining NATO in the foreseeable future were all but nil, as Germany and France were (and, I believe, are) both against it (unanimity is required for admission) and even Zelensky had accepted it was a "dream" to be achieved someday.

So my proposal was simple: an agreement to hold the vote as promised and finesse the issue of NATO by declaring an indefinite moratorium on new admissions.

In addition, quietly give up on Crimea (under Russian control since March 2014) by just not raising it in negotiations and offer Ukraine some compensation via membership in the European Union (which should not be a problem, as Russian raised no objection to the idea).

No, I don't know if that or something on similar lines would have worked; I am sure it wasn't tried.

Some would argue it doesn't matter because it would be a form of surrender because of Ukraine's loss of territory, but my answer is that an agreement of some similar form - which again yes, was a possibility - would have spared Ukraine the ravages of war without giving up anything over which it actually had control.

But the real reason I posted this is that I wanted to point up the bitter, sad, truth of how often wars end with agreements on terms that were available before they started, marking all the blood and suffering as a horrific waste, sacrifices on the altar of national egos that with depressing regularity prefer the horrors of war to the disgrace of humiliation.

At the same time, I raise it knowing full well that some here would (will?) accuse me of "pro-Trump" or "pro-Putin" bias. Go ahead; I don't care. I am saying what I said before the war started; I was trying to think of ways that both sides could back off without appearing to back down, stand down without appearing to kneel down, because the failure to do that is what turns confrontations into conflagrations.

And we have seen more than enough of that.

 ¹ All of which are undermined by DJT Jr. saying to Zelensky via social media (according to the ever-truthful Washington "Examiner") “You’re 38 days from losing your allowance.” Which is much more inline with what I’d actually expect. But stay with me, I do have a point to make.

² If you want to see the "fair amount" I wrote, check these; I won't claim every thought has stood up to time, but I think enough of it has to make it worthwhile and I never deny the things I've said, even if they turn out to be dumb.
March 1, 2022
March 19, 2022
March 20, 2022
October 20, 2022

No reconciliation. No forgiveness.

"'Back to 1900' is a serviceable summation of the conservatives' goal." - George Will, January 2 1995, syndicated column

I swear to myself that I will throw that quote in the face of every Trumper I come across any time they express any even minor disagreement with anything he does. And I will not let them forget and I will not forgive.

Every time a woman dies from lack of access to abortion care.
"You wanted this to happen. You voted for it."

Every time a trans child commits suicide.
"You wanted this to happen. You voted for it."

Every time someone you are acquainted with gets deported.
"You wanted this to happen."

Every time you are shown the horrible and inhumane conditions at the required detention camps.
"You wanted this to happen."

As the government adopts Steven Miller's openly fascist slogan "America is for Americans and Americans only" as official policy.
"You wanted this to happen."

.As the slaughter, the literal genocide, of Palestinians intensifies.
"You wanted this to happen."

As Ukrainians (and perhaps Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians) are abandoned.
"You wanted this to happen."

As tariffs drive inflation, costing families thousands of dollars a year.
"You wanted this to happen."

As measles, mumps, and other diseases re-emerge and new pandemics arise because Secretary of HHS RFK Jr. disparages vaccines and blocks funding on research.
"You wanted this."

As the cost of insulin multiplies because the limits are removed, the cost of health care soars, “pre-existing conditions” again become a bar to health insurance, and tens of millions more than now lack even basic coverage as ACA is “repealed” but not “replaced.”
“You wanted this.”

As social services shrivel, protections for consumers and workers are repealed, and pollution controls are dismantled after Director of OMB Elon Musk slashes $2 trillion in social spending.
"You wanted this."

As climate change worsens amid "drill, baby, drill" and renewable energy programs being shut down even as there is no disaster relief because FEMA was on the chopping block.
"You wanted this."

As strikes are declared illegal.
"You wanted this."

As infrastructure funding for roads, bridges, railroads, and all the rest vanishes as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is repealed.
"You wanted this."

As Secretary of Education Ryan Walters mandates Bibles and bible instruction in all public schools.
"You wanted this."

As media outlets are threatened with or even experience loss of licenses for airing/ publishing "false" information, i.e., unfavorable to the reactionaries in the administration.
"You wanted this."

As government surveillance becomes more intrusive and widespread, privacy ever rarer, and people get investigated and charged as part of "the enemy within."
"You wanted this."

As people you know, even members of your family, get labeled as part of "the enemy within."
"You wanted this."

As you see the US military attacking, even shooting, protestors.
"YOU WANTED THIS."

As.... The list could and as events develop will go on. But the point remains. No excuses, no "I didn't mean that," no "but"s.

You knew. You had to know or you damn well should have. You are responsible. Because -

"You.
"Wanted.
"This."

Another comment worth repeating

On July 23, the estimable Erin Reed posted a piece about a recent column by NYT columnist David Leonhardt in which he proposed that Kamala Harris should be a trimmer on gender rights in order to appear more "moderate."

I replied in a comment which I thought was worth repeating; this is (a very slightly edited and expanded version of) it:

Two points need to be noted about Leonhardt's political, uh, "advice."

One is that it is not driven by either real conviction or the merits of the case but by an underlying attitude of "Well, this doesn't matter to ME, therefore it shouldn't matter to anyone else other than a few flakes who don't count."

Perhaps more to the point, though, is that it presents a line of argument that's been used at some point or another against every liberal, every Democrat, every progressive, every radical, every individual anywhere on the entire left half of the US political spectrum, one that says your arguments must not be couched in the words of conviction or conscience, the words of justice or moral necessity, but rather must be framed by fear, fear of what "they" might say about it, what nasty name "they" might call you.

In fact, unless what you propose is overwhelmingly popular (and even if it is), if "they" can say something nasty, it's likely best not only to not mention it at all, but to openly attack it.

It's a far too common practice that at times has been called "duck and cover" (and if you know what that means without checking, you are older than you look), of politically curling into a defensive position. But I prefer my own name for it: "preemptive capitulation," surrendering before the battle has even been joined.

That is exactly what Leonhardt has proposed Harris do on gender rights: don't mention it and when asked, hold it as far away from you as you can get away with. And I guarantee you there will be a good number of "old hands" among the political jibber-jabberers and the consultant coterie who will regard that as wise counsel.

At moments like this I can't help but draw a comparison to the right-wingers, who, when they are called on their latest lizard-brain inanity will double- and triple-down and after a round or three the media gets bored with asking and the issue fades from the headlines and then from memory. It's sitzfleisch as political strategy¹ while we, when pressed, usually act like we're playing rapid transit², rushing from one mumbled evasion and backtrack to another. I still have memories from a few decades ago of pollsters telling people that their problem with Democrats was less what they stood for than that they didn't seem to stand for anything.

Personally, I'm tired of it. This doesn't mean we don't pay attention to how we say things; in fact, one of my all-time favorite compliments was when after a debate I learned that someone in the audience said I had the ability "to make the most radical positions sound like a voice of sweet moderation." So yeah, I paid attention to how I said things, but there was never any doubt about what it was I was saying. What it does mean is that we should speak the truth as we understand it and when challenged on what we have said, Don't. Back. Down.

That's the message for Kamala Harris and for all of us: If you've changed your mind about something, say so, say "I was wrong about that." Own it. But if you haven't, own that, too. Don't. Back. Down.

¹"Sitzfleisch" is German for "sitting flesh." See my "Rules for Right-wingers," specifically #20.
²Rapid transit is a form of chess where each player has five seconds per move.

A comment I thought deserved repeating

Chris Geidner at Law Dork, whose writings at Substack and his own site I heartily recommend, just wrote about two recent Circuit Court decisions.

One was out of the 6th Circuit that dismissed a challenge to a Tennessee anti-drag law; in the other the 5th Circuit upheld Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting imposed on people with felony convictions for any of a variety of crimes.

I was moved to make a comment that I thought worthy of repeating here. To fully get the first couple of paragraphs you should read the relevant piece since they refer to the decisions he was analyzing, but I don’t think that’s truly necessary to grasp the point I was really trying to get to.

Any way, this is what I wrote:

"Mathis’s dissenting opinion ... made a strong argument on the merits."

Unfortunately, that's just not good enough these days, not when we have fanatic judges ruling in effect that you can't challenge a law unless you prove you are breaking it and if you do, that just proves you're guilty because the law is valid - a ruling better expressed as "heads I win, tails you lose."

Not when we have judges with hang-ups about sex and sexuality deep enough to rule that, among other things, even drag shows and go-go dancers ("Go-go dancers?" Really??) are inherently "harmful to minors."

Not when we have judges finding the phrase "could be" seen by a minor - not "would be" or "would likely be" or "could reasonably be expected to be," but merely "could be"- is NOT unconstitutionally vague and does NOT positively invite discriminatory enforcement.

Not when we have judges who employ the sneering, condescending dismissal of (paraphrasing slightly) "go and do the hard work of convincing state legislatures" literally at the same time as you tell them that the main method of bringing political pressure - the vote - is denied them.

What we are seeing, especially in that last example, is the emergence of what Viktor Orban dubbed "illiberal democracy," otherwise known as "the tyranny of the majority" - meaning "We are the majority so we'll do whatever we flipping well want. You don't like it? TS. You may think you have rights, but remember that we interpret what they mean."

They are not, in fact, the majority, but enough of us are sufficiently disengaged or discouraged or disinformed that they have positions of power that enable them to act as if they are and use those positions to further entrench themselves and their warped ideology.

We face hard times and I confess I have a combination of short-term despair and long-term hope. But I also think we have to be prepared to be aggressive with more than words and frankly with more than voting. I don't mean violence, I don't mean rioting, acting like we were a bunch of right-wingers - but I do mean being in the streets, being visible, including mass civil disobedience.

But I'll end this screed on a moment of hope. The reason the right wing is trying so hard, pulling every trick, grabbing and pulling on every lever of power they can find, is because they know that in the long run of history they are going to lose and like King Canute in the popular version of the story, they are trying to hold back the tide. Like him, they will fail. It's up to us to determine how long that will take.

Reactions, as always, are welcome.

Consider it just a question

Consider this to be just a question, one directed toward every red-cap-wearing MAGA muppet out there. No, seriously.

In the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Republicans and right-wingers of various sorts immediately blamed the shooting on Joe Biden, Democrats in general, DEI programs, and - of course - the "liberal" media.

Oh, and they're immediately starting to fundraise off it.

So here's the question:

What the hell happened to "not politicizing a tragedy?"

What happened to "thoughts and prayers" for the family of Corey Compreatore or the others still in the hospital? What happened to the "lone wacko" talk or any of the rest of the vapid homilies you always spew to evade your own moral responsibility for a climate of threat and violence?

You generation of vipers! You liars! You hypocrites! You are like whited sepulchers, prettified outwardly but inside you are corruption and death.

And no, I will not moderate my tone in pursuit of "unity." Paraphrasing William Lloyd Garrison, I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this topic, the topic of your denial of democracy, your rejection of reason, your jettisoning of justice, your dismissal of decency and all in service of protecting your power by projecting your packaged paranoia - on this topic I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation, nor will I.

One truth I will speak now is that I confess that I'm not sure that in the short run we can stop you. But ultimately we will and at some point your descendants will be ashamed to admit to being related to someone who thought as you do. We will because, one last paraphrased quote, the arc of the moral universe is long and my eye reaches only a little ways. But I do know that moral arc bends towards justice - and so away from you.

Remember this - always!

I wrote about this more than a year ago. In fact, I first wrote about it more than 29 years ago. But events of late have pushed this back to the forefront of my political thoughts, pushing hard enough to get through a wall of struggles with burnout and depression to get me to write this, even if it's the only thing I manage to get out this summer.

Because I want the following quote burned into the consciousness of every single leftist, every single progressive, every single liberal, every single person on the entire left half of the American political spectrum and even those to the right of that line who are not yet beyond the reach of reality. And it is this: and yes it is deliberately in a great big bold font to emphasize its importance:

“‘Back to 1900’ is a serviceable summation of the conservatives’ goal."
- George Will, syndicated column, January 2, 1995

Yes. That's what he wrote. "Back to 1900." And every single thing conservatives say and do, every single thing they promote, every single proposal they make, every single emotional button they go to push, should be seen through that lens. They want to reproduce the social and economic relations that existed 125 years ago. They want to, in their own words, go "Back to 1900." And that is exactly what they have been trying, are trying, and will continue to try to do. Go back.

Back, that is, to a time before legal labor unions or effective anti-monopoly laws, a time of widespread child labor and twelve- or fifteen-hour work days and six- or even seven-day work weeks. Before regulations requiring safe working conditions, a time when being killed at work was a major cause of death.

Back to a time before environmental protection laws or consumer protection laws, a time when patent "medicines" were common and government "regulation" was more about promoting corporate interests than regulating them because caveat emptor was the rule of the day.

Back to before Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment or disability insurance, before any kid of public insurance, including for health, was even under discussion and decades before it was taken seriously..

“Back to 1900.” Back to when poor people were considered genetic defectives who deserved their condition and the way to deal with poverty was to shove it out of sight.

Back to a time when education was largely a perk of privilege, only half of children went to school, only 6.4 percent graduated high school, and the majority of adults had no more than eight years of schooling.

Back before civil or voting rights laws, back when women couldn’t vote, wives were chattel, blacks were either “good n*****s” who got called “boy” or “uppity n*****s” who got lynched, racism (against Irish, Italians, Chinese, and others as well as blacks) was institutionalized, sexism the norm, and gays and lesbians were sick or perverted while as far as “polite society” was concerned, bi, trans, or other flavors of the queer community simply didn’t exist.

Back to a time when valuing Protestant Christians over other religions and other people's rights was unremarkably ordinary and some, including atheists, were subject not only to social discrimination but also legal barriers to participation in society.

Back, in short, to a time when the elite and powerful were in their mansions and the rest of us were expected to know our places, live lives of servitude without complaint, and then die without making a fuss.

“Back to 1900” is indeed “a serviceable summation” of the right wing’s goal, which is to undo a century of progress toward economic and social justice in order to benefit their selfish, warped, morally warped lives.

Maya Angelou wisely said "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

We should have been paying attention when the fanatics were openly declaring what they wanted, who they were and are, and we either ignored it or dismissed it as hyperbole.

We shouldn’t have. Because they showed us, they told us directly - and we didn’t listen.

We can at least listen now. And then do more.

And we, each of us, can start by burning that quote into our minds.

Footnotes: For those who may not know, George Will is what passes for an intellectual among the right. And if anyone doubts the quote, I still have the column that I clipped out of my local paper. And it is a quote, not a paraphrase.