How much did jill Biden influence Joe to stay in the race until it was too late? I see nothing but hubris. And then there's the idiot son of whom we will not speak ...
Trump ran on the most inflationary platform of any candidate in modern history. How did the Democrats fail to nail him on this and thereby flip the inflation against Trump?
And where was the media during all this? Their job is to cover the news, explain the world to the public. Instead all we got is coverage of the horse race and of gibberish. Trump was not subjected to the basic questions any other candidate would get while every sentence Harris uttered on policy was heavily parsed.
Thanks Mike! I listened to the podcast with David Axelrod religiously. We all have an off day. This election proves that tens of millions of us can have an off day on the exact same issue on the exact same day.
Rahm Emmanuel should be hanged, not rewarded with something like the DNC. He's the goddamned moron who aborted the Obama Administration a month after inauguration in 2009 when he fired Howard Dean, author of the 50-state strategy that had just delivered the Democrats sufficient majorities in House and Senate to enact the ACA. He followed that genius move by dismantling Obama For America, the most effective grass-roots presidential political campaign I ever saw in 50 years of political involvement. That happened just as the Republicans were setting up their astroturf "Tea Party." Then in 2010, that goddamned worthless piece of political shit declared they would only support "winnable" campaigns. Without the enthusiasm of OFA - which really did win the 2008 election - and letting Republicans pick their fights, this braindead scumball proceeded to lose the decennial election, leading to the Great Republican Gerrymander, and throwing Democrats into the hole they have been in ever since.
If Democrats want to do something effective, they should take every over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable low achieving upper middle class white boy in every DC "Democatic Consultant" office and throw them off of the 14th Street Bridge with a cannonball chained to their feet. These fucking morons have been the responsible party for every Democratic fuckup of the past 50 years.
Ex-fuckin-zactly. Thank you for stopping the identity politics bullshit. I wouldn’t let the current DNC people-in-charge run a drive-through lemonade stand on my cul de sac!!
I still hold Biden primarily responsible for this sh*t show. He said he was a one term transition president and he should have held himself to that promise. Period! Full stop!
But right behind him I hold the Democratic Presidential want-to-bes just as culpable. You've got a President that is sucking air with a 40% and less approval rating. He shuffles along like an old man. I don't care he can still ride a bicycle, he's still over 80. And from what I have now read, his mental capabilities while still strong, were noticeably failing since at least 2022.
What the Hell were you people waiting for? A personally addressed invitation to take on Biden? Only Dean Phillips seemed to understand the situation.
What the Hell Shapiro? What the Hell Newsome? What the ever loving Hell were all of you doing? You people supposedly want the job so damn bad, where the Hell were you? Oh, sitting on your hands like good people! And don't hide behind the "Biden sucked up all of the donors" excuse. That is total BS, a cop out and you all know it. If you are all such great politicians, you could have convinced some big donors to back you to get you started! That first primary debate would have made it clear to people that Biden was not up to another campaign and that would have ended his run.
For whatever lame reason, we couldn't have that route, so here we are with Trump.
The only good news is that it is highly likely that Trump will totally screw the pooch with tariffs and the other stupid sh*t from Project 2025. I am betting that by the mid-terms, Trump will have so totally pissed people off that you could run a Cat or a Dog as a Democrat and get them elected because people will be so desperate for change.
So Mike is correct. Now is the time to get organized so that you can retake the Senate and House in 2026 and put Trump in a box for his last two years.
Of course, that is all predicated that he doesn't get the Supremes to somehow agree that the Constitution doesn't apply to him and he declares himself President for life.
Indeed, those people were cowards, looking ahead to their runs in 2028, which were apparently of greater importance than putting the Dems (and their country) in a stronger position here and now—in 2024—against Trump. There’d be a certain poetic justice in Trump actually installing himself as president for life, shattering their cynical political calculations; unfortunately everyone but China and Russia would be the worse for it too.
This doesn’t say much for the Party establishment either: they could have afforded cover to those candidates, or been more forceful with Biden. They lacked the necessary appetite for what was plainly necessary. We needed strength and bloodlust, not dithering and deference. Disappointing stuff all around.
I know ads are not as key as they once were. BUT running a 60/30 telling voters who she was and a 60/30 telling voters what she would do might have helped. And then run them over and over and over. That would have been better than celebs singing and prancing. Cheaper too apparently
The molten lava wall in part was the spineless, orgasm-for-click-bait corporate media who failed abjectly to challenge every molecule of carbon dioxide - LIES - that came out of every Republican mouth. Yes, disdain for incumbents is the knee jerk response of stupidity here in ‘Murica. But there were way too many other enablers for 60-70 million room temperature (Celsius) IQ’s to prevail.
Listened to the live “Hacks” at U Chicago. Your point as related to Rahm—“This is f’g war”—IMHO is spot on. Personally—and I believe my coterie of lifelong and terminally frustrated Dem friends and family would agree—I feel it’s long overdue for the Left to grow a pair and fight like this is the life or death struggle that it is. Because for many Americans, those are the stakes. Also on EV politics: I'm a car-selling ad man from metal-bending northern OH. I, too, want a thriving auto industry. I've seen factories leave and opioids (literal and mental (Trump)) take root. Sad. EVs provide jobs for Rust Belt working classers with kids.
What doomed the Biden and the Harris campaigns was inflation, homelessness & street crime however minor. Middle class people felt like their ways of life were under attack. They also had managed to forget how disgusted they were with Trump & company after the insurrection. The Biden administration probably overreached with the Inflation Reduction Act and particularly with its stimulus component. Whether or not it added to inflation (it may have) in the mind of the public it meant that Biden & company owned the issue. Last, the administration lacked a salesperson in chief who was out talking up the administration’s achievements.
Re:”Among the media, mostly well educated, secular, modern and center-left, there is a strong temptation to view the Presidential contest primarily through a simplifying lens of identity issues around race and gender.”
This is total bullshit. These glorified-typist cowards are afraid of losing their jobs and march like possessed pigs into the Sea of Galilee as led by their corporate masters. They are not well educated (we’re talking about journalism majors not biomedical engineers) and they lean as far right as their corporate masters. Consider the New York Times, where the publisher (Salzman) and Editor-in-Chief (Khan), both of Israelite descent, propelled a Fascist back into the Oval Office. For Christ’s sake, call a shovel a shovel.
You are living in a different world than I am Or at the least looking through a lens that is highly distorted. And what is the anti -Semite comment at the close of your comment to be Athens.
The good part is that you can only fool some of the people all of the time. Although the Republican Party is reprehensible - and arguably non-existent some (many ?) people think poorly of the democrats who have been consistently untrustworthy for decades (LBJ, Clinton - if he had been impeached as he should have we would perhaps not be in this mess), ran an absolutely terrible candidate who put on a miserable campaign in 2016 and lied to the near end about the 2024 campaign. Do not blame Biden - innocent by reason of dementia (see PFC/frontal lobe dysfunction in dementia) or Harris. Consider Timothy Snyder’s comment on Putin who lies frequently and openly - not hypocritically like the Democrats.
How much did jill Biden influence Joe to stay in the race until it was too late? I see nothing but hubris. And then there's the idiot son of whom we will not speak ...
Trump ran on the most inflationary platform of any candidate in modern history. How did the Democrats fail to nail him on this and thereby flip the inflation against Trump?
And where was the media during all this? Their job is to cover the news, explain the world to the public. Instead all we got is coverage of the horse race and of gibberish. Trump was not subjected to the basic questions any other candidate would get while every sentence Harris uttered on policy was heavily parsed.
Thanks Mike! I listened to the podcast with David Axelrod religiously. We all have an off day. This election proves that tens of millions of us can have an off day on the exact same issue on the exact same day.
Rahm Emmanuel should be hanged, not rewarded with something like the DNC. He's the goddamned moron who aborted the Obama Administration a month after inauguration in 2009 when he fired Howard Dean, author of the 50-state strategy that had just delivered the Democrats sufficient majorities in House and Senate to enact the ACA. He followed that genius move by dismantling Obama For America, the most effective grass-roots presidential political campaign I ever saw in 50 years of political involvement. That happened just as the Republicans were setting up their astroturf "Tea Party." Then in 2010, that goddamned worthless piece of political shit declared they would only support "winnable" campaigns. Without the enthusiasm of OFA - which really did win the 2008 election - and letting Republicans pick their fights, this braindead scumball proceeded to lose the decennial election, leading to the Great Republican Gerrymander, and throwing Democrats into the hole they have been in ever since.
If Democrats want to do something effective, they should take every over-educated, under-intelligent, otherwise-unemployable low achieving upper middle class white boy in every DC "Democatic Consultant" office and throw them off of the 14th Street Bridge with a cannonball chained to their feet. These fucking morons have been the responsible party for every Democratic fuckup of the past 50 years.
Ex-fuckin-zactly. Thank you for stopping the identity politics bullshit. I wouldn’t let the current DNC people-in-charge run a drive-through lemonade stand on my cul de sac!!
you can tell Michael Murphy that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
Their? They? why these plural pronouns for the singular Michael?
Otherwise, love your work Michael and agree wholeheartedly, as a lifelong old-fashioned liberal!
Fewer hyphens, a-men.
Great read Mike.
I still hold Biden primarily responsible for this sh*t show. He said he was a one term transition president and he should have held himself to that promise. Period! Full stop!
But right behind him I hold the Democratic Presidential want-to-bes just as culpable. You've got a President that is sucking air with a 40% and less approval rating. He shuffles along like an old man. I don't care he can still ride a bicycle, he's still over 80. And from what I have now read, his mental capabilities while still strong, were noticeably failing since at least 2022.
What the Hell were you people waiting for? A personally addressed invitation to take on Biden? Only Dean Phillips seemed to understand the situation.
What the Hell Shapiro? What the Hell Newsome? What the ever loving Hell were all of you doing? You people supposedly want the job so damn bad, where the Hell were you? Oh, sitting on your hands like good people! And don't hide behind the "Biden sucked up all of the donors" excuse. That is total BS, a cop out and you all know it. If you are all such great politicians, you could have convinced some big donors to back you to get you started! That first primary debate would have made it clear to people that Biden was not up to another campaign and that would have ended his run.
For whatever lame reason, we couldn't have that route, so here we are with Trump.
The only good news is that it is highly likely that Trump will totally screw the pooch with tariffs and the other stupid sh*t from Project 2025. I am betting that by the mid-terms, Trump will have so totally pissed people off that you could run a Cat or a Dog as a Democrat and get them elected because people will be so desperate for change.
So Mike is correct. Now is the time to get organized so that you can retake the Senate and House in 2026 and put Trump in a box for his last two years.
Of course, that is all predicated that he doesn't get the Supremes to somehow agree that the Constitution doesn't apply to him and he declares himself President for life.
Indeed, those people were cowards, looking ahead to their runs in 2028, which were apparently of greater importance than putting the Dems (and their country) in a stronger position here and now—in 2024—against Trump. There’d be a certain poetic justice in Trump actually installing himself as president for life, shattering their cynical political calculations; unfortunately everyone but China and Russia would be the worse for it too.
This doesn’t say much for the Party establishment either: they could have afforded cover to those candidates, or been more forceful with Biden. They lacked the necessary appetite for what was plainly necessary. We needed strength and bloodlust, not dithering and deference. Disappointing stuff all around.
I know ads are not as key as they once were. BUT running a 60/30 telling voters who she was and a 60/30 telling voters what she would do might have helped. And then run them over and over and over. That would have been better than celebs singing and prancing. Cheaper too apparently
The molten lava wall in part was the spineless, orgasm-for-click-bait corporate media who failed abjectly to challenge every molecule of carbon dioxide - LIES - that came out of every Republican mouth. Yes, disdain for incumbents is the knee jerk response of stupidity here in ‘Murica. But there were way too many other enablers for 60-70 million room temperature (Celsius) IQ’s to prevail.
This article provides an up-to-date listing of the spineless loyalists and second-rate sycophants that Trump is now racing to pack his cabinet with.
•• Trump’s Second Act: The Circus Doubles Down on Clowns ••
Grievance, Incompetence, and the Inevitable Collapse of a One-Man Movement
https://open.substack.com/pub/patricemersault/p/trumps-second-act-the-circus-doubles?r=4d7sow&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Listened to the live “Hacks” at U Chicago. Your point as related to Rahm—“This is f’g war”—IMHO is spot on. Personally—and I believe my coterie of lifelong and terminally frustrated Dem friends and family would agree—I feel it’s long overdue for the Left to grow a pair and fight like this is the life or death struggle that it is. Because for many Americans, those are the stakes. Also on EV politics: I'm a car-selling ad man from metal-bending northern OH. I, too, want a thriving auto industry. I've seen factories leave and opioids (literal and mental (Trump)) take root. Sad. EVs provide jobs for Rust Belt working classers with kids.
Murphy, this is the first thing I’ve read since the election that actually made me feel good. Thank you.
What doomed the Biden and the Harris campaigns was inflation, homelessness & street crime however minor. Middle class people felt like their ways of life were under attack. They also had managed to forget how disgusted they were with Trump & company after the insurrection. The Biden administration probably overreached with the Inflation Reduction Act and particularly with its stimulus component. Whether or not it added to inflation (it may have) in the mind of the public it meant that Biden & company owned the issue. Last, the administration lacked a salesperson in chief who was out talking up the administration’s achievements.
Sounds like a reasonable plan. I don't always agree, but your analysis here and on the podcast is always insightful and thought provoking.
Re:”Among the media, mostly well educated, secular, modern and center-left, there is a strong temptation to view the Presidential contest primarily through a simplifying lens of identity issues around race and gender.”
This is total bullshit. These glorified-typist cowards are afraid of losing their jobs and march like possessed pigs into the Sea of Galilee as led by their corporate masters. They are not well educated (we’re talking about journalism majors not biomedical engineers) and they lean as far right as their corporate masters. Consider the New York Times, where the publisher (Salzman) and Editor-in-Chief (Khan), both of Israelite descent, propelled a Fascist back into the Oval Office. For Christ’s sake, call a shovel a shovel.
You are living in a different world than I am Or at the least looking through a lens that is highly distorted. And what is the anti -Semite comment at the close of your comment to be Athens.
The good part is that you can only fool some of the people all of the time. Although the Republican Party is reprehensible - and arguably non-existent some (many ?) people think poorly of the democrats who have been consistently untrustworthy for decades (LBJ, Clinton - if he had been impeached as he should have we would perhaps not be in this mess), ran an absolutely terrible candidate who put on a miserable campaign in 2016 and lied to the near end about the 2024 campaign. Do not blame Biden - innocent by reason of dementia (see PFC/frontal lobe dysfunction in dementia) or Harris. Consider Timothy Snyder’s comment on Putin who lies frequently and openly - not hypocritically like the Democrats.