Blue eyes cryin'
Well, it's been as disastrous an Election Night as I could have imagined. The big news, of course, is that America wants four more years of the Orange Caligula Horror Show. Anything's better than a Black woman, I guess. It's impossible to put into words just how bad this is. Maybe in a week or two I'll try.
Meanwhile, here in Portland, I'm 0 for 12 on the City Council, 0 for 2 on the Multnomah County commission, and the guy I wanted for the contested circuit court judgeship was beaten badly. His opponent with the $120,000 war chest won, what a surprise.
The new City Council will likely include Candace Avalos, Loretta Smith, Steve Novick, and assorted other bobbleheads. And the county commission chair, Dear Leader, will have three, if not four, votes for her nonstop blunders.
Any way you look at it, this city, this county, this country, and alas, this planet are hopelessly screwed. Young people are in tears tonight, and I don't blame them. Some of us tried, kids. So did you.
Maybe the saddest part is how many will now stop trying and just let it slip away. That's always the most grievous damage when the bad guys win big.
But at least tonight has prompted me to lance a painful boil that's been festering on my rear end for a while now:
I don’t understand what happened locally. So many inept candidates got elected. It looks as though our local young voters want a city/county government run by dreamers and not pragmatic managers.
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
DeleteNational, I think the people in “flyover country” finally got fed up.
ReplyDeleteFed up with what exactly?
DeleteAmerica just reflected a lying, stealing President who helped place 3 justices on the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade and whose most known line at the presidential debate was that migrants were eating cats and dogs. He claims tariffs will magically solve everything and will implement Project 2025.
Oh and I left off felon in my description. A felon…..
DeleteFed up with what? We've all got jobs. We've got homes. Our bellies are full. Our 401k accounts are flush. What are we fed up with?
DeleteDiversity? Equality? Inclusion?
I can't think of anything else.
So let's go ahead and set fire to the first four so we don't have to live with the other three.
Inflation, proxy wars?
DeleteI find it hard to believe young black and Latino men voted for Caligula. Shows how bad our education system is.
ReplyDeletePutting this on the brown people is about the whitest thing we can possibly do today. Two out of three white people went for this. If you wanna lay some blame this morning, start there.
DeleteA national rebuke of wokism. Trump improved his vote in OR by 2%. No swing state house seats flipped from Rs despite the registration advantages. The Ds ran on pro public safety messages, not wokeness. Further south, CA rejected most leftist ballot measures, LA shitcanned their DA, Oakland recalled their DA and Mayor, SF elected a relative moderate. Oregon Ds should take a lesson. Portland though is a mess; the new system did what it was designed to do - put Candace Avalos in office. That was its entire purpose. Massively corrupt. Big day for the local non profit grift network.
DeleteDemocracy can be a cruel mirror.
ReplyDeleteI notice that some DNC sycophants believe a different candidate would have won. Continuing to believe that will prevent them from returning to power.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that Trump won is (from my perspective) an indication that many centrist voters have gotten increasingly fed-up with the uncontrolled immigration, total gender wackiness, riots, decriminalization of certain crimes, and what many people feel is gaslightining by the media. When the major news outlets were telling us everything was fine with Biden, they lost all credibility. When that became apparent in the debate with Trump, the Democrats had to go into scramble mode and replace him with a second-tier candidate who never would have been the nominee had there been a primary. The Democratic leadership needs to take a hard look at themselves for this loss. Simply blaming it on the gullibility of the electorate is lazy. I've a lot of reservations about Trump, but there was no way I was going to vote for her.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
DeleteYou pinheads have a VERY comfortable life. You've got everything you could POSSIBLY want right now. Fat, dumb, and happy. But the very IDEA that someone else would want to live their lives authentically is so abhorrent that you'd light everything you have on fire to make sure they don't get anything is mindboggling.
DeleteShow us the better path, dummies. Show us how America ought to be.
Bean you can hear yourself, right?
DeleteWhat’s being lit on fire? The hyperbole is over the top!
DeleteYou're right. I do have a reasonably comfortable life. That was built through decades of hard work and making good choices so I could take advantage of any good luck that came my way. I remember busting my ass in college (while working) to understand calculus so I could get a decent job when I graduated. I hear so much whining nowadays, but the fact is if you're making $40K per year (about $20 per hour) you're in the top 1% worldwide. If you're not making enough (or whatever you perceive to be be your issue) work harder. The opportunities to be successful are abundant. Don't buy into what the grievanc-mongers are selling. Just by getting up in the morning, being responsible and staying away from the bad stuff, you'll have a better life than 75% of the population. It's pretty simple. Difficult sometimes, but simple. I wish you the best.
DeleteIronic that Portland went with idealiots and the rest of the country said NOPE
ReplyDeleteThat's what happens when you let uninformed morons vote. Portland, where young people go to retire. The fact that so many unaccomplished people can get elected to positions of responsibility speaks volumes about the make-up of the electorate. Seems like those with talent and ability are either non-existent in Portland, or they're too busy trying to make a good life for themselves and their families. I feel your pain, Jack. Slightly hopeful about Wilson, though.
DeleteNo one with a functioning brain would ever get elected in this town. That’s why no good candidate tries.
DeleteThe progressive machine rules. Live with it.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, I enjoy my progressive friends. The people that follow the manifesto annoy me.
DeleteTrump’s brain is mush. He’ll be gone by springtime and JD will be the titular POTUS. Thiel and Musk will be fighting it out to see who really rules their world.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of us…we will be the ones who pay the price for N Korean, Russian and Chinese aggression. And it won’t be nice.
The billionaire's triumph. Supreme Court, congress, the presidency, the media. Well played. It's their world, and we'll just have to put up with whatever dispensations they allow us. It's a crying shame.
ReplyDeleteBillionaires'
ReplyDeleteHow many state houses & governorships away are the GOP from just re-writing the whole constitution to:
ReplyDelete-women as chattel
-child labor/slavery pretty ok
-requiring a property deed over X amount to vote (if the ritual is to persist?)?
Gotta be pretty close these days?
And they call conservatives conspiracy nuts. Man, listen to yourself.
DeleteCan’t be that many state houses & governorships at this point?
DeleteNot saying it *will* happen, but it doesn’t seem so remote is all?
The sunset / rug pull on social security etc. has to be coming soon for people ~age 40 & under?
Privatize it, carve it up, keep it as a pyramid scheme and tax on wages instead of also liter to productivity/ tenologicsl and demographic / capital gains dividend &/or hand it to Wall Street?
Idk, don’t follow the national stuff a ton or focus on it, I come here for the longer local memory & posts on tax stuff I didn’t know more than anything?
& the comments?
Always read the comments…
All doom, no gloom?
DeleteNobody gets out alive.
Whoever wins, we lose?
I’m just in essence asking ‘what’s the score here, dude?’
ReplyDelete‘It’s down there somewhere, let me take another look!?’ -Little Lebowski
The blog author knows what’s up…
The swirls are getting faster and tighter w/each passing year it feels like (not saying it for sure is?), regardless?
ReplyDeletehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honestly-with-bari-weiss/id1570872415?i=1000676042358
ReplyDeleteListening to NPR this morning, they had an interesting take on younger voters going for Trump. Many of them get their information via social media, including Tik Tok and podcasts, and the dumpster team absolutely filled those spots. Plus, a lot of men (including the youngsters) follow not only sports but betting websites, which featured copious dumpster ads. If the Democrats want to survive, they need to find high level campaign staff under the age of 50.
ReplyDeleteGood for you!
ReplyDeleteThe strategy of grouping people into categories based on physical characteristics then applying supposed issues to each of those groups doesn't work any more. Or at least led to overlooking some things that could have been better tailored to voters. Who's not impacted by inflation? People with money. Are they they only ones who vote? The economic markers alone across multiple elections could have told the Dems what the big danger was this time. Who does abortion matter most to? All women - or certain categories of women? Well, apparently married women didn't care that much - they went for Trump this time. Who's impacted by illegal immigration more - people in Lake Oswego, or people who live at 126th and Mill? You get the picture.
ReplyDeleteI voted for Obama. I waited to see him do the things he claimed he was going to do, and instead what he did was mostly Republican stuff with D-wrapping on it. If the Democratic party wants to remain nationally relevant, they need to look inward and examine some hard truths. Stop screaming about "convicted Felon", etc - all these politicians are criminals one way or another and it doesn't shock voters any more. Obama killed a U.S. citizen without due process. Hillary wanted to kill journalists.
ReplyDeleteLook past the semantics of Trump and realize the policy packages include things that used to be core to the Democratic party - such as U.S. jobs for U.S. workers in industries like manufacturing, steel, mining, timber, autos. Anti-interventionist foreign policy - that's Dennis Kucinich just a few years ago. Free speech - that used to be a core "liberal" principle. Trade protectionism, tariffs, etc. The combination of these policies have never been available in a Republican candidate before. That's part of why establishment Republicans fought so hard against him.
The mandarins of the Democratic party forget these things or instinctively took opposite positions because Trump staked this stuff out. Hatred for Trump is not a policy platform that matters to most voters. Trans-rights doesn't resonate as much as "no new wars." Abortion doesn't matter as much as keeping people with penises out of female intimate spaces. The Democratic party took net-losing positions, and tried to convince everyone else those are winning positions. In the national picture, they're not. Cozying up to Liz Cheyney might have been the final straw. The Democratic Party moved away from their own voters, and it started in 2015 when they sidelined Bernie Sanders in the primary. Look at a donation map sometime and see where his donation support came from.
You can't stake out this many positions that are this contrary to voter values, then try to talk everyone else into it. That doesn't work any more. It's time to learn from mistakes rather than denying them.
This is a smart and helpful comment. Thank you.
DeleteBut Jack, doncha know all Rethuglicans are racist and Hitler? You said yourself that (now revered John McCain was Hitler, Mittens was Hitler, Trump was Hitler and JD is worse than Hitler. All Rethuglicans are always Hitler. The Democratic oath is: All R’s are Hitler. Can’t stop it now, don’t stop.
ReplyDelete