I know repubs who did go with them since reagan. If we all vote in November, we will be building on a progressive awakening that happened at other times in our country. I can feel it and I hope folks vote in November.

Lying, cheating, voter suppression and control the media.. plus a dash of Russian election manipulation.

WE, THE PEOPLE will not allow it to happen again.

VOTE DEMOCRATIC!

And might I add: make voting for Democrats infectious and throw vote parties to promote local Democrats leading up to the election. Make it fun and raucous. The spirit that dances is the spirit that prevails.

No discord. No discontent.

That's for losers.

On the subject of discontent consider the following:

Job (St. James Bible)
The Ocean of Milk (Upanishads)
Shakespeare (every play!)
Nirvana (the band)
Rolling Stones (Can't Get No Satisfaction)
Ghandi, MLK and Patti Smith!

....then invite your community to a party to work out the feelings (it's therapeutic and builds community simultaneously)

All of the above is inherently human and beautiful and it WILL multiply the VOTE! (While strengthening Democrats' network and resolve for 2020!)

But we do need to be aware of the enemy we are up against. They are willing to do almost anything to win.

Last edited Wed Apr 18, 2018, 09:35 AM - Edit history (2)

Nixon and Watergate, Iran Contra, Florida 2000/ bush v Gore, 9-11 (8/6/2001 PDB),
that unneeded war in Iraq which brought about ISIS, HAVA (help America vote act),
blocked the Constitutionally directed power that the POTUS gets to pick a supreme
court nominee, and worked with Russia and Fox News to rig the 2016 elections to
put a mentally ill con man into the White House and yet they keep going on and on.


* They even built a monument to one of the architects of the depression in
"The Hubert Hoover Institute" @ Stanford.

.... in under 6 months and be seen as "the good guys" but Rummy and W let bin Laden
walk at Tora Bora so they could have "the scary guy" still out there and have their war
in Iraq. And now 17 years later our troops are still in that shit hole w/zero chance of
a positive outcome.

And bin Laden was staying in Waziristan, a no man's land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But we chose to invade Afghanistan, one of the ten poorest countries in the world and the only one outside Sub Saharan Africa.

And the 911 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Can't go after them.

The mission should have been bin Laden dead or alive and do what we could to destroy the Taliban.

Looking back to 1980 Afghanistan would have been better off had we chosen not to help the Taliban against the Russians. This "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"
often has disastrous consequences.

Before the Taliban Afghanistan was a secular society.
Women were not covered from head to toe and went to school, were doctors and lawyers. They certainly weren't having acid thrown in their faces.

Maybe the Taliban would have won anyway but being supplied with arms by us certainly made it more probable.

I guess we changed our minds after he invaded Kuwait, so we invaded Iraq in 1991.

plus the one they really wanted, Iran.

Afghanistan was just the beginning of the "plan" to dominate the entire region. This is a quote from Gen. Wes Clark, regarding a conversation he had w/a friend in the Pentagon, just after 9/11:
"...And he said, 'I just got this down from upstairs' — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — 'today.' And he said, 'This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.' "

That 5-year plan worked about as well as other authoritarian regimes' ever did, don't you think?

That list of Republican malfeasance over the years is a FANTASTIC eye-opener! There's several generations of Americans that are working two-three jobs who are too exhausted to absorb the details of such a list and its back stories (including folks from both major parties).

So we must dedicate (in my opinion) forums like the DU to paring down, and rendering memetic, such mini histories. Some of that was news to me too.... yikes.... streamline it and spread it far and wide...

Last edited Wed Apr 18, 2018, 10:09 AM - Edit history (1)

Nixon's "southern strategy" aka splitting the nation over civil rights for blacks.

And they kept the Vietnam war going another 4.5 years and then signing the
exact same deal that LBJ had on the table in 1968. Nixon went to both South
and North Vietnam and told them they would get a better deal after he was
President.

for which they still blame Obama

😔

Herbert Hoover.

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
it is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
the hands acquire shaking,
the shaking becomes a warning;
it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

fascism in that it makes fascism acceptable to tens of millions of people. Fascism. Yep. The political and economic system that murdered millions is back in vogue, and Trumpy is their shadow-leader.

GOPers LOVE them some unregulated capitalism. AND... what political scientists will most commonly agree, is that unregulated capitalism inevitably leads to an oligopoly (concentration of power and wealth by an elite group of extremely wealthy people), which then leads to fascism (the takeover of government by corporate power).

We've gotten here in fits and starts, but Trumpy is the logical culmination of the rise of fascist power. He hired corporation heads to run the federal government. He's ripping the "administrative state" to pieces. He has no respect for democratic institutions, and will run roughshod over them whenever it suits his whims. Further, he has no respect for the civil rights of those who do not kiss his ass. He bullied Congressional GOPers into submission. They're now afraid to speak up. It's the fascist's way to bully people into cowardice. We all should know this, including GOPers. But it doesn't matter, because fear overrules rationality. And we have a fear-based government right now.

TV stations, Fox, talk radio, etc. are consumed by older demographic groups. While fake news is a problem online, the millennials that I know have a strong bullshit meter.

And let's not forget their courting of the right-wing crazy 'christians,' neo-nazis, nazis, KKK and other white nationalists. We saw those maggots crawl out from under their hate-filled psychotic rocks in Charlottesville.

They are sick of their Leaders doing nothing. They are especially fed up with Mitch McConnell. Both sides.

I look for him to retire,too.

The dark secret is how many American right wingers saw Hitler as a bulwark against communism and a supporter of traditional values.

is an embarrassment to the Stanford campus.

They're running from this party in droves, like the people that's older can see they want to destroy all health care, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. The middle class is running away after this tax scam they passed hurt them to pay the wealthy more. Then the younger people are aligned to defeat them for a long while on gun legislation not being done. All the different groups are lining up against the GOP , and trump, and the American people will show them in Nov. how badly they've served us, and how much they've served trump and the wealthy instead. Their in-actions will have huge consequences, and their corruption is driving everyone away from them now, with all the lying and tweeting from trump too. Great article ! Thanks.

that being stuck with $$$$$$$$ student loans, poor job prospects, guns everywhere, and a blighted environment is not "just the way things are" or an act of god, but rather the logical outcome of deliberate policy decisions pukes (largely) have imposed on the country over the last few decades, while too many people were tuned out of politics.

These policies can be changed. People voting = change will occur. They get it.

As bad as it is now, the economic consequences haven't fully hit, the foreign policy hasn't hit bottom, and he's still got time to start a war or three. It's only going to get worse, and these kids are going to spend the next three years learning how low he can go and associating it with the GOP.

whackadoodle states are going to fight to their last breath to keep positive change and progress from happening. Inclusion is their poison pill - exclusion their magic elixir. That and unlimited amounts of billionaire boys club money to spend.

Trumpy has his fascist doormats in the Congressional GOP. Republicans who have an ounce of patriotism have left the GOP. Rubin is one of them. Comey is now another. What's left are opportunists and power-hungry yes-men who have NO allegiance to the Constitution. People like Susan Collins had better take heed. She's playing with people who will slit her throat when she's not looking.

...with bribes and televised propaganda.

God help us if that ever happens for the past forty years.

the stats I've seen (by Kevin Drum) show white males are still majority repub.

They will be a solidly democratic voter-constituency for the next 20 years.

This sour, wet blanket we-are-doomed shtick isn't terribly helpful. But then again, it seems that is the post of these sorts of posts.

anyway, I'm glad millenials are trending left but my point is the time is now. we can't wait for this generation to get around to voting (historically young ppl don't turn out). nor can we assume the trend will stay the same. gotv.

They already find ways to discourage young people from participating in the political process. Just see their relentless attacks on the Stoneman-Douglas kids. And they have ways to screw over college students and people who move to a different state, which happens more when people are younger.

I lived in 8 states in 5 years. Life moves faster when people are younger and less able to have stable income or afford home ownership.

Haven't seen that for a very long time and I do think a lot of it is because they don't seem to be as materialistic as some generations that came before them.

It appears we can't get rid of the GOP until we outnumber them so greatly that their dirty tricks to win can no longer succeed.

She has hit the nail on the head. If only Democrats nationally would subscribe to her analysis we would see the end of the conservative/republican scourge.

They - as individuals making personal choices and an organized, political party, one of only two (realistically) - colluded with an enemy foreign country to act against the interests of the American people and our nation.

They know with fair elections they would not be where they are today & that they don't have much of a future. The dems need to sharpen their game cuz they're going to need bigger & bigger turnout & margins to win.

.....and unfortunately along with the whole demographic shifting subject, we've leaned too hard on those things as an excuse to just kind of sit back and let the GOP implode while demographics shift our way. And we've seen where that gets us.

Letting the GOP hang itself with it's own rope may work fine as a short term strategy but it's not going to rescue Dems long term, nor is it going to permanently damage the Republican party.

We need to get better media strategies going or any short term gains are simply going to be lost and pummelled in a maelstrom of shitty media coverage.

Well done.

It should be every focus of every day. I really don't care about 2018 GOTV in comparison.

Yes, the white males will still be Republican. But not to the degree of the white males who are going out the door of mortality, the ones from the so-called Silent Generation.

It is all about swinging a half point here and a half point there. And there was indeed an ideological shift in 2016. Don't allow the conventional wisdom of that cycle or the electoral result distract from the truth. The gap between self-identified conservatives and liberals dropped below 10% for the first time in memory. A state like Arizona reported 27% liberals, which is an amazing number.

The shift is happening. We can't be stupid enough to pretend it is like an overturned box. It drip steady and devastating. The other side wouldn't be so desperate and reliant on fake news and lies if they didn't understand the bottom line reality ahead.

I think a party like that, which wants so badly to take us so far backwards, should be relegated to history’s dustbin. Won’t miss it!