***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[uncalled4boy]

My President is Orange and Black. As a Black Man President Trump was the blackest person in that picture

Dont Disrespect Ray J Like That....Also Why Is Ray J There

 

[wavycrocket]

The Jerry Falwell Vanity Fair article is insane . Could’ve Literally been written as an Episode of Righteous Gemstones. Worth the read

Inside Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall at Liberty University

Jerry Falwell Jr. was the Trump-anointing dark prince of the Christian right. Then a sex scandal rocked his marriage and ended his lucrative stewardship of the evangelical education empire founded by his father. In a series of exclusive interviews, Falwell—accompanied by his wife...

www.vanityfair.com

Son and Father some **** . Senior came from a line of bootleggers, drunks, and dope heads .

 

[wavycrocket]

 

[gry60]

The Jerry Falwell Vanity Fair article is insane . Could’ve Literally been written as an Episode of Righteous Gemstones. Worth the read

Inside Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall at Liberty University

Jerry Falwell Jr. was the Trump-anointing dark prince of the Christian right. Then a sex scandal rocked his marriage and ended his lucrative stewardship of the evangelical education empire founded by his father. In a series of exclusive interviews, Falwell—accompanied by his wife...

www.vanityfair.com

Son and Father some **** . Senior came from a line of bootleggers, drunks, and dope heads .

The latest episode of Fresh Air is covering the wife of Clarence Thomas.

Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court?

Behind closed doors, Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife is working with many groups directly involved in controversial cases before the Court.

www.newyorker.com

 

[noskey]

Nice.

 

[Beruseruku Desu]

 

[IATT]

 

[Zainjal26]

This fool won’t name Tesla

I wonder how much GM and Ford paid him

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[Nike Jordan]

 

[dreamer23]

The Jerry Falwell Vanity Fair article is insane . Could’ve Literally been written as an Episode of Righteous Gemstones. Worth the read

Inside Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall at Liberty University

Jerry Falwell Jr. was the Trump-anointing dark prince of the Christian right. Then a sex scandal rocked his marriage and ended his lucrative stewardship of the evangelical education empire founded by his father. In a series of exclusive interviews, Falwell—accompanied by his wife...

www.vanityfair.com

Son and Father some **** . Senior came from a line of bootleggers, drunks, and dope heads .

yo this story is crazy as hell...

 

[RustyShackleford]

I read this interview with James Carville and I was yelling at the screen while reading it.

He is so stuck in criticizing progressives that he doesn't grapple with any other political reality that doesn't lead him to a talk other than claiming Dems can simply fix their problems with messaging...

"Just win some goddamn elections." James Carville’s blunt advice to Democrats

James Carville on why Manchin is actually good, Sinema less so, and why 2022 isn’t quite hopeless yet.

www.vox.com

Sean Illing​

Before we get into the big-picture stuff for the Dems, I want to go back to Manchin for a second. I get the strategic argument you’re making, but honestly, do you have any substantive criticisms of Manchin? Do you think his opposition to something like expanding the child tax credit is defensible? Or his position on the filibuster?

James Carville​

Look, the child tax credit is extraordinary. We’ve reduced child poverty in this country by 40 percent. It’s unbelievable. And I just keep trying and trying to win elections because this thing is enormously successful. But I’ll just keep saying it: If we don’t have Sen. Manchin, we’re going to have somebody really, really, really extreme in his seat.

“SOME OF THESE PEOPLE *****ING ABOUT MANCHIN CAN’T SEE POLITICAL REALITY STRAIGHT”
Look, I’m a liberal Democrat. Always have been. But some of these people *****ing about Manchin can’t see political reality straight. Six percent of adults in this country identify as “progressive.” Only 11 or 12 percent of Democrats identify as progressive. So let’s just meet in the middle and say something like 7 or 8 percent of the country agrees with the progressive left. This ain’t a goddamn debate anymore. Someone like Manchin is closer to the mainstream than a lot of these people think, and pretending like he isn’t won’t help the cause.

Sean Illing​

The issue with Manchin (well, one of the issues) is that we’re not even talking about ultra-progressive policies. Manchin is blocking widely popular, mostly centrist policies and that’s what pisses people off —

James Carville​

Okay, fine, but I’ll go back to my earlier point: If we want to pass more liberal policies, we need to elect more Democrats. Period. End of story.

Sean Illing​

What makes you think most Democrats don’t understand that?

James Carville​

Just look at how Democrats organize and spend money. For Christ’s sake, [South Carolina Democrat] Jaime Harrison raised over $100 million only to lose his Senate race to Lindsey Graham by 10 points. Amy McGrath runs for Senate in Kentucky and raises over $90 million only to get crushed by Mitch McConnell.


They were always going to lose those races, but Democrats keep doing this stupid ****. They’re too damn emotional. Democrats obsess over high-profile races they can’t win because that’s where all the attention is. We’re addicted to hopeless causes.

What about the secretary of state in Wisconsin? Or the attorney general race in Michigan? How much money are Democrats and progressives around the country sending to those candidates? I’m telling you, if Democrats are worried about voting rights and election integrity, then these are the sorts of races they should support and volunteer for, because this is where the action is and this is where things will be decided.

You know who is paying attention to these races? The Republican Party. Last I checked, Republicans raised $33 million for secretary of state races around the country. The Democrats had until recently raised $1 million. I think it’s now up to $4 million. That’s the story, right there. That’s the difference, right there. *****ing about a Democratic senator in West Virginia is missing the damn plot.

This is wild, he was complaining about progressives and it was pointed out to him that Manchin is sabotaging popular programs centrist support he got no answer for that. So instead he goes into a rant about if you got a problem with Manchin Dems to need to focus on electing more Democrats to office. And his examples of Dem ******* up were two Senate races in a year every Senate candidate got a **** ton of money.

And not focusing on state-level races (which I agree is important) but he flips the subject to voting right. So now it he seems to think that winning those elections is a substitute for voting rights legislation.

Sean Illing​

Okay, I’ll take the bait here because you’re hitting on a huge complaint of mine and I don’t think a lot of people — you included — are really grappling with it. You’re talking about perceptions and narratives and how the party is “defined.” And you want Democrats to speak plainly and not say and do things most voters don’t like so that they can salvage their national brand. Fair enough.

But I’m not at all convinced that Democrats can message their way out of this problem. Republicans have built a self-contained media ecosystem that delivers their version of reality straight to their voters, whereas the Dems still rely on traditional media to communicate their message. That’s the whole damn game, James. In the end, what voters hear is more important than what Democrats say, and they’re not hearing what Democrats want them to hear.

James Carville​

It’s a difficult situation, you’re right. And most of the appeal for the Republican Party is cultural. And it goes deep. I mean, if you look at who’s dying of Covid, it’s a lot of pro-Trump anti-vaxxers. These people are willing to place their own lives in jeopardy. We can’t do anything about that. We can’t change that.

The good news is, as we showed in 2018, and President Biden showed in 2020, if you’re smart and you talk about things people care about, you can win elections. It’s not like it used to be, where you can move massive numbers of people with good messaging. But I still believe that 2018 and 2020 showed that if you engage in the fundamentals of politics, you can win elections in the United States.

Sean Illing​

Okay, but between what Democrats say and what the voters hear is a layer of conservative media that exists solely to scramble Democratic messaging. A messaging campaign only works if it allows you to dictate issue salience, and I don’t think Democrats can reliably do that anymore.

James Carville​

Look, there are also real problems. We have 7 percent inflation, right? We’ve had rising crime. The pandemic just won’t go away. The Russians are threatening to invade Ukraine. What people have is a sense of disorder, and that will kill you every time in politics.

Now, most people don’t think we’re going to have 7 percent inflation by November. A lot of people think that we’ll turn a corner with the pandemic after this latest burst. And if we’re still looking at high Covid rates and high inflation in November, Democrats are going to lose anyway.

But yes, right now what the general public is reacting to, more than Democratic messaging, is a sense of disorder in the country. It’s just hard to break through [with] a message in that kind of environment.

He completely dismisses direct questions about conservative media.

Instead of grappling with the fact that there is a massive elephant in the room, the right-wing political machine makes it harder for Dems to message their way out of their problems. This is something even Obama brings up when people claim that candidates can just replicate his strategy.

dudes like him ignore, he is acting like he is conceding the point about it being hard for Dems by bringing up Covid and Inflation. Coward

Final answer is a banger...

Sean Illing​

You were also saying last year that Biden needs to focus on material issues and help people in concrete ways. It hasn’t been perfect, but he’s done this, and he’s followed a pretty universalist path. Despite all the legislative failures, he did pass a $1.9 trillion rescue package and basically sent $1,400 checks to every American — and it barely moved the needle. Party preference has flipped overwhelmingly against the Democrats.

Again, I feel like everything goes back to this messaging problem. Take the January 6 insurrection. Last time we spoke, you said Democrats “have to make the Republicans own that insurrection every day. They have to pound it.” They’ve done this. They’re holding hearings. They’re sounding the alarm about democracy. It’s not working. It’s not landing.

James Carville​

I agree that it’s not landing now. And yeah, the media playing field isn’t favorable. No way around that. But the only thing to do here is to fight for more power in the smartest ways possible. And keep pounding the most powerful message you have to the most people you can. Over and over again.

I’ll tell you a quick story. Andrew Young and Martin Luther King Jr. were flying back from Oslo just after King had won the Nobel Prize. And King says, “Let’s stop at the White House and see President Johnson.” So of course LBJ keeps them waiting for eight hours or something like that. And finally they come in, tell the president they appreciate his help with civil rights legislation, but they say they also got to have voting rights. LBJ says he’s out of gas and that he just doesn’t have the political power to do it.

So Young and King travel back to Atlanta and King says, “The president needs more power. Let’s go out and get him some.” They started the marches. They started the sit-ins. They started organizing the churches and the unions. They completely understood the need for political power and they fought like hell for it.

Part of Biden’s lack of power is because the Republicans see that the Democrats are whiny. They can feel that weakness in the Democratic coalition. And I’ve been dealing with it since the ’80s. There’s a significant part of the Democratic Party that doesn’t mind losing if it allows them to be pure. We’re obsessed with purity. That has got to stop.

We’ve got to do whatever it takes to get more political power and that means we’ve got to win some elections. Just win some goddamn elections. This is not a time to complain. It’s a time to act. So let’s talk about real things, in real language, to real people. And if we do that, we can still save the country.

Mans uses MLK to take shots at progressives.

It is completely lost on him that when than tons of peaceful protesting in the summer of 2020, but the right was able to paint it as a violent uprising because of a small minority.

I just can't with **** like this. James Carville has a lot of good insight on a lot of topics, but sometimes he sounds really full of ****, and this is one of those times.

Not because his takes don't have some truth to them, but because while complaining about people not grappling with one political reality, and completely dismisses another because it gets in the way of him taking shots at a group that annoys him.

gry60 I thought of you when I was reading this. Especially with the points about conservative media

 

[RustyShackleford]

Jordan Peterson dropped an all-time banger on his show...

 

[dinyc3st]

My co worker said Joe Rogan's podcast is the whyte people version of two ex-cons having a debate. They both talk a lot of nonsense.


First thing I thought of was Hassan Campbell LOOOL

 

[RustyShackleford]

My co worker said Joe Rogan's podcast is the whyte people version of two ex-cons having a debate. They both talk a lot of nonsense

My girl started a new job and she said one of the girls she made friends with was telling her about her Bumble dates.

She said she stopped seeing one of the guys she liked because he told her he is a Joe Rogan fan

Her coworker said she is not taking the risk, that ole boy was a domestic violence incident waiting to happen

Another older woman that was having lunch with them said that it is harder to weed them out now because at least back in the day they wore their uniform all the time.

When they asked what uniform. Her response...

 

[IATT]

 

[TooOlfForThisIsh]

I read this interview with James Carville and I was yelling at the screen while reading it.

It's a shame to see Carville's mind ossify like this. He doesn't even want to replay '08, he's looking to replay '92. Back then, I think he can be forgiven for the "ignore the lost cause states" strategy. It was short-term greedy, but clever. Having watched the regional polarization of the last 30 years, I can't see how he wants to double down on that strategy.

 

[osh kosh bosh]

I think I've become convinced the Democrats are mostly doomed.

- Fox News propaganda machine
- the internal dynamics of progressivism,
- the modern media landscape,
- education polarization

too many factors arrayed against them


the level of message discipline you would need to fix the democratic party brand
is basically impossible to achieve today

they need a miracle in 2022,
or some massive republican party **** ups.

 

[RustyShackleford]

 

[Wargames]

Jordan Peterson dropped an all-time banger on his show...

So he finally got clean and got back on the drugs…. His fan base is going to love this.

 

[Zainjal26]

This is ridiculous
Both are equally killing people. Both have to be eradicated

 

[Wargames]

The only problem with this is Gaetz is going to argue that the witnesses are either criminals or women he formerly dated who he’ll likely overtly imply or just directly say have a grudge against him. The state needs to have evidence to show he knew what was going on. Maybe texts or emails. As a sitting Congress member, they got to tie this case with a bow.

 

[frank 7he t4nk]

Never listened to a Rogan podcast outside of a few clips I've seen posted.

So, in essence, the Joe Rogan podcast is Soma for the lay person to make them feel smart mixed in with other bizarre crap?

 

[brendasdeadbaby]

Already hate Eric Adams now he wants to use facial recognition and doing “spot checks” on random people in “specific neighborhoods”. 1 step away from bringing stop and frisk back.

 

[IATT]