So after the dust settles from Election Day, it seems that the lasting impact of the protests was to shift Portland politics and government in the most conservative way possible

Honestly I think that was a huge success for Republican realignment:

1. The Nixon-Gingrich realignment is complete, white workers are a Republican constituency now and the party realizes it needs to serve them as such
2. This is completely compatible with the Dubya dream of drawing minorities into the party, maintaining competitiveness by cutting into Dem margins
3. Donald J Trump, Republican standardbearer, no longer has to execute the duties of President, for whom his party bore the taint of his halfassedness
4. Donald J Trump, guy who pump-primed the realignment, no longer has to serve as Republican standardbearer, with the party having to accommodate whatever he’s currently doing
5. They retain a strong Senate position under a senatorial President who signals a Clinton-post-94 interest in meeting the legislature where it is
6. None of the competing Dem factions were validated, all were frustrated, in a way that makes the party’s path forward unclear, with multiple power centers capable of undermining but not establishing unity

So Oregon just legalized shrooms and decriminalized basically all other Schedule I drugs

cop-disliker69:

paxamericana:

hundreds of things you could (rightfully!) criticize biden for but “he loves his son” is the absolute most bizarre line of attack i’ve ever seen

Like I can understand being uncomfortable seeing photos of Biden being a little too affectionate with women but what is even the accusation here? Biden has an incestuous gay relationship with his fucking son?

honestly I think after beating both the Bush Dynasty and the Clinton Dynasty in 2016 and proposing instead a new-founded Trump Dynasty he’s trying to pose the Biden Dynasty as unworthy

Taylor Swift responding to the 2020 election by calmly running through a “Best Practices For Celebrity Endorsements” checklist is charmingly on-brand

I was thinking for a while the early Trump-era “let’s channel memer energy into bonehead punching-minorities-in-the-street” didn’t actually make sense but the right couldn’t fully demobilize its street-fighting wing in case they needed to repel general or rent strikes. I suppose the Proud Boys becoming the face and being told to “stand back and stand by” fits there, I don’t think they’re up to mattering in a national election yet

birlinterrupted:

Dems are really losing it w the psychosexual metaphors

I mean as far as I’m concerned caring about the culture war we won, there was a strong first-mover disadvantage and Trump finally baited them into moving first, now it’s just who do we want in charge of mopping-up

kontextmaschine:

Makes sense as a successor to Clinton/Gore and kinda reveals how aesthetic the Obama adminstration was, there’s not enough substance there to be a successor to

I mean I guess what the Obama administration had (and what Hillary aimed for) was minority representation. And that’s not nothing, and it works in subtle ways.

Remember Obama taking guff for some “pull up your damn pants” speech? But black conservatives are (were?) a Democratic constituency, and even more than “first black president” Bill Clinton, Obama could make them feel seen.

A VP whatever but they can tell stories. Remember how white people told the Onion “Diamond Joe” Biden story about how “classic rock” white scumbags were still part of the Democratic coalition? (Remember how McDonalds-loving poonhound “Bubba” Clinton made them feel seen too?)

Makes sense as a successor to Clinton/Gore and kinda reveals how aesthetic the Obama adminstration was, there’s not enough substance there to be a successor to

gothicprep:

So if you understand the challenge facing the Democratic Party as holding together their national, state, and local urban/suburban coalitions based on a straddle between comfortable gentry that scrabbled to the 85th percentile and want to stay there and poor a/o minorities who think after all their scrabbling they deserve at least say 45, elevating Kamala Harris as a prominent figure makes sense, in line with Biden’s vibe that’s really less about repeating Obama’s term than “back to the (pre-Obama) Clinton 90s”, the evolution of the “cabinet that looks like America”

(among other things, this choice frees a statewide slot in California the Dems can fill in thaf talent-overrich, term-limited state)

She’s being more explicitly elevated as a successor than most VPs though, it’s unclear that she has the same theory of party change, and the things that position her for a Prez run might have conflict with what Biden wants to get done.

It makes the Biden proposition from “vote for him an get an old white back-to-the-90s guy” to that, “and later, an increased chance of ???”. I think at the margins, the ??? of a prosecutor they’ll have a chance to judge at the ballot anyway won’t feel like a threat to the gentry, and a black woman is something that dem-aligned civil society, which the 90s Dems cultivated as intermediaries to identitarian voting blocs, can work with.

Democrats, 2016: Donald Trump?!? Well, if we stake the entire tradition of postwar American policy and self-perception on Hillary Clinton, there’s no way we can lose!
Democrats, 2017: Oh, darn. We’re gonna miss that.
Republicans: Well, you do still have a pretty hegemonic apparatus of cultural legitimation.
Democrats: oh right lol
Democrats, 2020: Donald Trump?!? Well, if we stake our entire apparatus of cultural legitimation on Joe Biden…

birlinterrupted:

Manyvids: Misogyny Kink - Twitter Feminist HUMILIATED and FORCED to Campaign for Joe BIDEN

tried so hard not to nominate Walter Mondale you nominate Hubert Humphrey, admittedly that would be a fitting capstone to the DLC era

The Republicans with Bob Dole ‘96, nominating the most senior figure of an obsolete generation kinda made sense – his Senate experience bridged the pre-Reagan, Reagan, and post-Reagan periods, no one was better positioned to appreciate what the Republican Revolution of '94 meant going forwards. Most importantly, who else was there, so they didn’t run.

(If she could peel her own fundraisers – this was the pre-McCain-Feingold “hard money/soft money” era where Dole’s party establishmentarian record counted for a lot – Christine Todd Whitman might’ve had a shot but she held off for more seasoning not appreciating it was last call for her kinda Republican)

But seeing Joe Biden putting effort into reaching for that same tarnished brass ring, knocking actual competitors off along the way – well if I was invested in some Biden “up from the tragic wreckage” narrative it might be inspiring to see him finally win a state in his third primary run, but as is it’s just a little farcical

Bernie Sanders: ::is a Democratic candidate eschewing avant-garde cultural issues in favor of a focus on nationalized healthcare and worker-focused economic issues::

“center-left” pundits: ugh, but then the Republicans can position themselves as the low-tax party that thumps on about communism!

“center-left” pundits: what we really need is a second coming of Bill “it’s the economy, stupid” Clinton!

well, all the results except Bernie nom/general loss or Warren nom/general win (lol) put us on track to rest the culture war

Pete Buttigieg… more than anything he seems unseasoned. Which is the criticism! He’s a 38-year-old who mayored a third-tier city, there are more steps on the cursus honorum yet to go. An intermediate elected position would broaden his horizons – the types and scale of constituencies to service, the allies to articulate with, his donor and support base…

But is there any intermediate position open to him? Mid-century the best out-party talent in Indiana would have a shot at governor or senate but partisanship is too firm now and it’s a red state. Should he use his run as an “audition” for cabinet or VP? If he’d spent 4 years building up chits he could maybe get Veterans Affairs. Julian Castro made sense as a ticket-balancer but who would Pete balance, a coastal minority straight woman? Stacey Abrams isn’t even running, and he’d have to be more established labor-y to balance Harris.

People like “why didn’t Cory Booker get a look this cycle” and it’s cause people know who Cory Booker is, he’s been in the mix a while, nothing new, and they know national level that’s not enough. But that’s cause Cory Booker is close to the limits of how crossover you can get as an elected official in a blue state - he’s cool with urban neoliberalism! He’d be a good committee head someday but the Gingrich reforms weakened the impact of that.

But maybe it’s not a Dem thing but a post-Boomer thing. JFK was elected youngest at 43, but that was with a dynastic machine behind him, blood a more direct form of inheritance than neo-establishmentarians Humphrey and Nixon, who still had to devote energy to holding things together.

Oldest elected was Donald Trump. In California, with one governor, two senators, and a term-limited “up or out” legislature for 40 million people, it’s a traffic jam at the top and increasingly the middle as the Boomers just refuse to relinquish power.

Maybe that’s the thing, not so much that Pete’s a red state Dem as a post-Boomer, experiencing the same thing as us all in bumping up against an entrenched leadership that petulantly refuses to die like proper olds.

Maybe we’re experiencing a shift from a 3-simultaneous-generation to a 4-simultaneous world. Maybe that will require either patience or parricidical initiative or both.

Anyway to repeat, this is part of why I endorse Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination