Cancel Culture

Agree or disagree, Greenfield at least offers a constructive idea on a way forward. 

All Bouie does is recap and lament the past, whinge, and point fingers. 

"They sowed their seeds; now it’s time for them to reap the results." Crikey. Defeatist and spiteful much?

Horrible dancing has consequences.

URL:  https://giphy.com/gifs/news-dance-virginia-terry-mcauliffe-w0bgtkrPucnnklRjGj

Smedley said:

Agree or disagree, Greenfield at least offers a constructive idea on a way forward. 

All Bouie does is recap and lament the past, whinge, and point fingers. 

"They sowed their seeds; now it’s time for them to reap the results." Crikey. Defeatist and spiteful much?

but if Greenfield's analysis is wrong, his way forward with better "messaging" isn't all that helpful.

and anyone who reads Bouie's column can infer what his opinion on the way forward for Democrats would be.  It would be to regroup on some of Biden's legislative initiatives and pass them.  

I'm skeptical that the Democrats don't need to do anything more than talk a better game to overcome the right wing noise machine.

RealityForAll said:

Terry McAuliffe Allegedly Dancing

Horrible dancing has consequences.

URL:  https://giphy.com/gifs/news-dance-virginia-terry-mcauliffe-w0bgtkrPucnnklRjGj

ml1 said:

Smedley said:

Agree or disagree, Greenfield at least offers a constructive idea on a way forward. 

All Bouie does is recap and lament the past, whinge, and point fingers. 

"They sowed their seeds; now it’s time for them to reap the results." Crikey. Defeatist and spiteful much?

but if Greenfield's analysis is wrong, his way forward with better "messaging" isn't all that helpful.

and anyone who reads Bouie's column can infer what his opinion on the way forward for Democrats would be.  It would be to regroup on some of Biden's legislative initiatives and pass them.  

I'm skeptical that the Democrats don't need to do anything more than talk a better game to overcome the right wing noise machine.

Well the way Bouie flames moderate and conservative Democrats, my inference is that if he had his druthers his way forward would be to revive BBB and this time make it $6 tln, not the milquetoast $3 tln it started out last time or the $1.75 tln that couldn't get across the line. Go big or go home --that'll show Manchin and Sinema.  

The column doesn't strike me as especially pragmatic.  

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

Smedley said:

Agree or disagree, Greenfield at least offers a constructive idea on a way forward. 

All Bouie does is recap and lament the past, whinge, and point fingers. 

"They sowed their seeds; now it’s time for them to reap the results." Crikey. Defeatist and spiteful much?

but if Greenfield's analysis is wrong, his way forward with better "messaging" isn't all that helpful.

and anyone who reads Bouie's column can infer what his opinion on the way forward for Democrats would be.  It would be to regroup on some of Biden's legislative initiatives and pass them.  

I'm skeptical that the Democrats don't need to do anything more than talk a better game to overcome the right wing noise machine.

Well the way Bouie flames moderate and conservative Democrats, my inference is that if he had his druthers his way forward would be to revive BBB and this time make it $6 tln, not the milquetoast $3 tln it started out last time or the $1.75 tln that couldn't get across the line. Go big or go home --that'll show Manchin and Sinema.  

The column doesn't strike me as especially pragmatic.  

of course it doesn't if you interpret to mean something outlandish like $6 trillion in spending.  It would be just as easy to interpret it as saying restoring the child tax credit would be a positive step.  Which it almost certainly would be.  

Smedley said:

I'm hardly the arbiter of wokeness but I know "too woke" when I see it. Kinda like what Larry Flynt said about pornography. 

It's what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about obscenity, speaking of which I believe he was a dissenter in Griswold v. Connecticut .

I agree that it would be a good idea to revisit BBB and take up one or more pieces that can possibly get passed.

But that would require progressive and moderate Dems making nice, and it's a big stretch to infer that Bouie's op-ed suggests that. The guy essentially closes with "suck failure, maggots!" 

Smedley said:

And, this: 

"Last week’s recall of three San Francisco Board of Education members, who had kept schools closed for months and spent hours trying to remove the names of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln from schools, was a singular event: a landslide vote that was at least in part against “hyper-wokeness” in the most liberal city in America, with the full support of London Breed, the liberal Black woman mayor.

I do not think the Chinese-Americans who came out to vote were motivated by their love of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/san-francisco-school-board-parents.html

Smedley said:

I agree that it would be a good idea to revisit BBB and take up one or more pieces that can possibly get passed.

Any part of that will be attacked by the Right as "socialism", but so what?

You said somewhere that Democratic candidates have to decide whether to run in support of Biden or distance themselves. What are Republicans running on? They have no platform except opposition to Biden and the Dems. McConnell, McCarthy and even Trump can't say what Republicans will actually do if they take the majority. Trumps supporters will push any Republican candidate to say whether they support Trump or not, and if a Republican candidate equivocates their Dem opponent will be able to attack them on that.

So while I can see why voters wouldn't support a Democratic candidate why would they support a Republican? Maybe it's a question of who comes out to vote and who stays home. And in that regard it's the Dem base, which is mostly "Left" that will ring door bells and make phone calls.

We will see how the 2022 midterms turn out, but again if the Republicans take the majority and spend two years doing nothing but complaining and obstructing what result in 2024?

The Founders had a point in making the term of a House member only two years.

Smedley said:

I agree that it would be a good idea to revisit BBB and take up one or more pieces that can possibly get passed.

But that would require progressive and moderate Dems making nice, and it's a big stretch to infer that Bouie's op-ed suggests that. The guy essentially closes with "suck failure, maggots!" 

I didn't read it that way.  I think he's pessimistic that would happen.  But if the moderates tried to pass some of the legislation, I can't imagine his advice to progressives would be to tell them to pound salt. That would just be stupid, and I don't see anything in his column that suggests it.

in another thread we discuss framing of issues.  BBB is a perfect example of how the narrative frame helped to doom the bill.  The cost was always reported in total, and rarely explained that it would be spent over a decade.  Over the next decade the country is likely to spend $10 Trillion on the military.  And no one blinks an eye.  BBB was roughly 1% of GDP over a decade.  And how many voters knew that?  And how many news outlets framed the story that way?  Very few, and those that did don't have the audience of a Fox News, CNN or MSNBC.  Even the so-called "liberal" outlets accepted the framing that the bill was big and costly (even though in context it wasn't).

And I don't have a solution to that.  The narrative frames almost alway disadvantage progressive priorities.

Sometimes a story leaks through.  But how many people know that the failure to pass BBB was seen by some forecasters as a drag on economic growth?

Goldman cuts GDP forecast after Sen. Manchin says he won’t support Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ plan

drummerboy said:

DaveSchmidt said:

drummerboy said:

boy are you going to be surprised when they overturn Griswold.

It was the connection between your statement and that clip that threw me.

it starts with baby steps...

more steps

I don't have a clip yet, but apparently Blackburn (R-Idiot) raised the issue during the confirmation hearing today too.

that's not all they're after

getting back to cancel culture, here's a good take on the recent NY Times editorial disaster on the subject.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-shame-and?s=r

drummerboy said:

getting back to cancel culture, here's a good take on the recent NY Times editorial disaster on the subject.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-shame-and?s=r

Who amongst us has never self-censored in the presence of others?  I typically don't express my opinions about religion among people I don't know.  I don't want to potentially offend or get in an argument.  That's only one example.  I'm surprised 100% of the NYT survey respondents didn't indicate that they keep some of their views to themselves to avoid disapproval from others.

ml1 said:

I'm surprised 100% of the NYT survey respondents didn't indicate that they keep some of their views to themselves to avoid disapproval from others.

If I had taken the poll, I would have considered “retaliation or harsh criticism” as conditions that were more severe than disapproval or argument.

DaveSchmidt said:

If I had taken the poll, I would have considered “retaliation or harsh criticism” as conditions that were more severe than disapproval or argument.

another reason some of the survey questions are flawed.  A good question wouldn't have two alternatives as outcomes.  And especially not one like "harsh criticism" that you and I might interpret differently.  

ml1 said:

DaveSchmidt said:

If I had taken the poll, I would have considered “retaliation or harsh criticism” as conditions that were more severe than disapproval or argument.

another reason some of the survey questions are flawed.  A good question wouldn't have two alternatives as outcomes.  And especially not one like "harsh criticism" that you and I might interpret differently.  

If there's reasonable disagreement on the meaning of a question, it's not a good survey question.

nohero said:

If there's reasonable disagreement on the meaning of a question, it's not a good survey question.

IMHO as someone who has written surveys and analyzed survey results written by others, the NYT free speech survey appears to have been constructed to arrive at a predetermined conclusion.  

Michael Hobbes is a smart guy. This is worth 20 minutes

can we finally put the notion that "cancel culture" is primarily a problem caused by "the left" to rest?

Let's leave aside for a moment whether Disney should ever have been given the special status granted to them when they started building Disney World.  But its revocation is clear retaliation for its CEO and employees speaking out against a FL law (and withholding campaign contributions, which per the SCOTUS are also "free speech").  This is about as egregious a "cancellation" as you're ever going to see.

Florida Votes to Revoke Disney’s Special Tax Status

and of course the GOP in FL doesn't care that they screwed over their own resident to make a stupid culture war gesture. (Reedy Creek is the special district in which Disney resides).

Disney’s debt is about to be Central Florida taxpayers’ problem

On Wednesday, the Florida Senate voted 23 to 16 to eliminate the Reedy Creek Improvement District, dealing a major blow to Disney and by extension, taxpayers in Central Florida.

The district has about a billion dollars in outstanding bonds that need to be dealt with. That burden, as state lawmakers admitted, will fall on local taxpayers.