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Why we lost?: Corporate Media that never held trump or republicans accountable, right wing media that lies and is in a constant loop of propaganda, and a successful 40 year project of billionaires who own every aspect of the airwaves. Then we can talk about how the dems can definitely improve. Yet, I fear for true change we will need massive destruction in order to rebuild. Beyond sad.

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An opinion column caught my eye on a news aggregator this morning. It is posted in today's edition of the Murdoch owned tabloid, The New York Post. The title of this column: "Trump Won by uniting those who think liberal rulers have gone too far". No need to read beyond the header. (It's the usual tripe about Hollywood, academia and the liberal media). In fact, in reality-land, Trump won by convincing voters there's such a thing as "liberal rulers". We know who "rules" and it ain't liberals.

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"Rulers" is a word that I don't believe is very democratic. If we have rulers then where are "the people?"

What paved the way for the Taliban to be congratulating the Orange guy on his win? In my opinion it was the constant anti-abortion drumbeat since the 1980s; women are murderers.

I am guessing this is true but not quite sure.Which Taliban ruler posted a congratulations?

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/taliban-congratulate-americans-for-not-handing-leadership-of-their-great-country-to-a-woman-385406/

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Trump won by convincing voters there's such a thing as "liberal rulers". We know who "rules" and it ain't liberals.

Gar, an astute observation! Succinct and accurate.

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Why we lost?

Belief in and worship of a male god should let all of us who are exposed to religious teachings of any sort know they are no more than political tools used to maintain men's social control, but rather than live in freedom the majority of our citizenry succumb to the reality of death by following the divisive and wholly invented teachings used to maintain man's grip on society.

My sense is women are realists who, contrary to male teachings, know and accept mortality which is the reason they are denied leadership positions in our's or other male dominant societies. Until we reject the fictions of otherworldly belief I hold no hope that we or any people will live in peace.

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I agree, religion is all about control of the masses, but especially about control of women & our sex lives & our fertility. If you are on TikTok I highly recommend the young atheist Franktata. He does some great explainers about why a “god” doesn’t exist & has one where he answers a commenter about why abortion is not a “necessary evil”

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I’m not convinced it is worth saving. On his way to losing the race for Governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson received 2,226,047 votes.

Yes, that’s correct. Black Nazi Robinson, a man of bankruptcies, bad checks, and hatred of women, still had the support of over 2 million Americans.

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Well, four months ago, you were pretty sure he was going to win. So it could be worse. Except he lost on purely racial grounds. He was exiled by the Repbublicans for merely fantasizing about the same behavior that is regularly commited by the likes of Trump, Gaetz, et al. And you gotta figure that's only because some 20% of North Carolina Republicans and Independents find that to be unacceptable for a black candidate. Otherwise, maybe he would have won, who knows. When he was just a Nazi, they had no problem making him Lt Gov.

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Before that CNN piece, the polling had him about even with Stein. I did sense he would win, but thankfully it did not happen. You’re right — when he was just a Nazi who denied The Holocaust and referred to women as skanks, he was perfectly acceptable to North Carolina Republicans. Thom Tillis said he was a good guy.

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It’s disgusting isn’t it??

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On the Economy argument. I have real expertise in consumer finance I'd like to offer. Specifically, subprime auto loans/financing. Basically, my customer and my (500) employees are the sub-$100K (sub $50K tbh) Trump voter. SO...if you would indulge me (I hope you find it worth your while), I'd like to explain this economy issue and why these fancy folk who say "but but but real wages" and "best economy in the world" and all that crap are WRONG and DON'T get it.

First off, understand that for this group, call them "under-incomed working people," the vast majority of their income is spent on these things: Rent, Vehicle (actual maintenance be damned), Gas, Insurance (first thing to go in a crunch), CHILD CARE, Food, Utilities, sometimes clothing. If you're making $12-$20/hr, half of what you make may go to child care. You are working for a net of $7-$10 per hour.

When the pandemic hit, initially the price of all these things plummeted. Oil reached negative-$ per barrel. For my employees, we sent all of them home with PCs. Sure, they spent more money on internet, coffee, and HVAC at home. On the other hand, they stopped driving, gas went to essentially $0, car insurance dropped, and, the biggest expense--child care--went to $0 (anxiety of having the kids at home went up 100x, but no $ value assigned to that). This alone meant a 20-100% increase of spendable income for my customers and employees. On top of this, the Democratic government started sending relatively huge stimulus checks to these same people, ironically signed by Trump.

The unemployment benefits (and benefits for employers to keep paying workers with nothing to do) combined with the stimulus (and if you recall these checks had no tax witholdings), amounted to the biggest windfall of spendable income for low-mid income working people in US history, by far. Folks were making A LOT more money "unemployed" than they were making before. But there's still even more. It was effen chaos in the workplace. The more enterprising folks were able to take the unemployment benefits (or the employer pay with no work), and the stimulus, and work the gig economy, as the demand for local delivery shot up far beyond what could be accounted or vetted. Or the Ebay/Facebook Marketplace ecomomy, etc. The "college educated" more tech-savvy people got a lot more. I personally know people who held down multiple $150K+ jobs basically pretending to be working from home and rigging their office connections to look like they were working, when they weren't.

My 500 employees were never more flush with cash. Yes, they were stressed with everything else, but money was no longer an issue. Think about that a moment. Their whole lives spent making decisions and stressing about getting by....and this stress stopped. I know this from them. I also know this from my customers. Suddenly, they started paying their bills quite regularly. SInce they also weren't driving their cars as much, they had fewer accidents and mechanical issues. Credit losses dropped by 60%, and profits skyrocketed with the Fed dropping their rate to near-nothing again. We ended up selling the company in 2021 for triple its valuation in 2019.

And how do I know about spendable income? Go look at the sales at Louis Vuitton during this period. Off the charts. People were lining up there with their stimulus checks. Sports cards, collectibles, $30 jigsaw puzzles, effen sourdough bread makers, all skyrocketed. And inflation on those basics I mentioned was still low.

So, for these people, THIS is the economy they were experiencing at the end of the Trump era and beginning of the Biden era. These MSNBC idiots who say Biden inherited an economy tanked by Trump have no clue what I'm explaining now.

And then...the vaccine. And during the summer of 2021, this tidalwave of cash began to ebb. Employers started making employees come back to the office, at least to some extent. This means CHILDCARE, gas, car, insurance. For my office, we started "hybrid" employees, and newhires were 100% in office at least until they got the hang of things. By September, most of the basic stimulus had stopped. And by October 2021, it was becoming very clear that my customers were returning to their old payment patterns. By the end of 2021, direct stimulus and unemployment from the Feds was over.

And then, after the government money stopped, we saw very high inflation on the basics. Electricity, eggs, insurance, all these items doubled or worse. Not only were the Good Times over, but things were most definitely worse than before the pandemic, FOR THIS GROUP. This is important to understand. For the degreed professionals, wage inflation came pretty quickly. They were flush enough to actually hold out for money, or leave the workplace altogether (the "Great Resignation"), driving up wages for this group. When you look at the credit industry, loan payments from higher credit tiers and incomes were not effected by the end of stimulus. But the lower credit tiers and incomes, without the luxury to reconsider the meaning of life, were hugely effected and many subprime lenders went out of business, burdened by 20-year highs in credit losses and interest rates. This effect, limited to these < $100K Trump voters to be, was not well-reported in the MSM.

And it's not even noticed by the MSM at all until these long-term, way-back looking government reports come out, which started mid-2022. And, just for fun, that lack of tax withholdings on all that stimulus---that bill came due.

Ironically, the first and most public winners of the Biden fiscal bills were....the degreed professionals who were the least effected by the end of stimulus; i.e., the paying off of student loans. Maybe if they had paid off the student loans of public schoolteachers only (who got totally hosed the whole time), it might have not stung so much, but this had to be seen as just an elitist government run by and for the elite.

So, for my employees and customers, we come through 2024 and ask them about the economy now vs Trump. And they say---HELL YES, it was better with Trump. And you can make all your damn arguments about lower inflation, unemployment, "real" wages, and all that, but real wages are not even a drop in the ocean of wealth that these folks were sailing on in 2020-21. And they were still better off unemployed in 2021 than they are now employed with a higher wage. That is real world truth. And maybe that stimulus was unsutainable, and sure it was temporary, BUT when you take away an entitlement, that's not popular. And that is the economy they voted on.

Thanks for letting me get this out.

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The stimulus checks were not taxed although there was a great deal of anxiety that they would be.

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Thank you for that clarification. I also meant in general, i.e., the federal extra unemployment as well because I remember some complaining about taxes. I was not eligible for any of it, but, for example, the kids of my boss, who previously had made a couple bucks fixing sandwiches or something at the 60k/yr university he was paying for, DID get the stimulus and extra unemployment (he had them put it in an investment account). Which gets us to another part of all this, which is that things like groceries, insurance, the crazy rise in the price of cars, all that--economically these things hit underincomed working people much harder. I mean if you start off with enough and also a trip to Disneyland, and then the price of the basics rises, you just don't go to Disneyland. If you start off already with no Disneyland, then you're screwed.

I'm also not saying this is the only cause. I do think when we're going through this, to try to separate these areas so they can be explored thoroughly. This area, I think the Democrats and their supporters (i.e., MSNBC, media) just missed completely. Kamala would talk about our economic successes and then say something like "And I know the rent is still too damn high," but wasn't convincing that she understood this whole thing in her gut. $30K for a house isn't going to do much if you can't qualify for a mortgage and you can't afford the remaining down, and it's absolutely nothing in urban areas like New Jersey, a deep blue state which she barely carried (it's also kind of a stupid idea---there are more core reasons for this housing problem). I think in general, when it came to the economy, she got the vote of the people with a robust 401k and she probably got the vote of the indigent---at least the few who were allowed to vote by the Republicans.

For another example, note how over the past 20-30 years, the endorsement gap between the union leaders and the union membership keeps growing. The Democrats keep thinking the membership will do what the leaders say. I think the leaders and the members are not living the same lives.

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Michael Duke - That was an excellent & enlightening essay & I know you’re correct. Many, not all, of our elected representatives live mostly inside the DC bubble; especially the ones who’ve been in office for a long time & have built up political power & sit on important committees that get big money lobbyists chasing them around.

We need to demand of the Democratic Party that they stop giving the leadership positions just automatically to the person who’s been there the longest, & instead give it to the person who has the personality & talent to lead. Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin are useless!! Stop giving them top spots on committees fcs. Durbin does nothing on the Judiciary Committee other than write sternly worded letters.

To Steve Schmidt - I think you get it that we regular voters are fed up with power brokers & ineffectual leaders, we want people like Moskowitz, Crockett, Booker, AOC, et al who will stand up to Republicans with fire.

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I didn't think of this and I hate it but I have to think about it, and thank you.

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It always comforting to look for responsibility everywhere but where it primarily belongs. It’s only natural.

However, it misses the point. Primary responsibility for a second Trump presidency cannot be slouched off onto an assortment of secondary characters.

We live, regrettably, in a nation where 2 political parties control the process , the debate, and the result. Thus, when one emerges victorious, the blame invariably falls on the losing party.

If the Democrats wallow in the blame game and fail to own this unmitigated disaster, they will contribute to the death of democracy in this nation.

Don’t wallow. Swallow it and do the adult thing. Learn from your mistakes and roll up your sleeves and get to work.

There’s a nation and a planet to save!

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What went wrong: racism, misogyny and a MSM, including podcasters, failed us. End of story.

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First make sure the election wasn’t hacked start by counting ballots by hand in swing states.

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In the spirit of Janes Carville, the king of what went wrong terminology, I say: It’s education, stupid. Become educated about our education system at WhiteChalkCrime.com where you’ll hear from whistleblowing teachers or expect wheel spinning and loss.

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Our education system has become a disaster. Kids still graduate functionally illiterate, no civics & govt edu, they have no clue how our govt functions or how the economy functions; just like the “Dear Leader”

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My book A Graver Danger not only explains how this happened, it has a plan for real schools that uphold democracy. Taking back our schools may be the only power democracy lovers can win back. School boards hold the power. They’ve been in the pockets of Trump like leaders. We can change that by getting people to read my book - a dedicated teacher’s blueprint for schools that uphold democracy - and run for school boards on a bring back democrat platform. That’s what we must do asap.

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Thanks, I’ll get it & perhaps buy it for my NIL a SPED teacher in OK

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Nov 12·edited Nov 12

I HAVE NEVER SEEN such an abuse of SALESMANSHIP in 40+ years in NJ local & county government. (Small time Pol, elected a bunch of times too) All we got were FEATURES & BENEFITS, when any Successful Sales person knows. You Probe for WANTS & NEEDS. (Infrastructure bill, low UnEmp, Student Loan forgiveness, Voter suppression fears - ARE NICE). But why do we NEVER ASK (Hillary didn't either) What are YOUR IDEAS, Nope, just Chip In Chip In Chip In.

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I keep going in circles with this invite acceptance. I click to accept, then I’m taken to your notes page. I open note and accept again, only to be taken to notes page once more. Not sure how to sign up.

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Because you already have the app and are already subscribed to The Warning, you are set. The invite is meant for those who have neither. You will get a notification when we go live.

Thanks for joining us, Mary Ann.

Steve

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I know exactly what went wrong - it is clear and it was predictable. 45% of the population live within the MAGA misinformation silo. 45% are on the Democratic Party side. 10% live in the middle. MAGA produced a highly misleading ad about Trans people and ran it over 30,000 times aimed at men. The Lincoln Project created an ad dispelling the claim that the bill was created and advocated by Kamala. The Democrats made the active decision not to respond in any way. They lost the election because the ad was able to disgust enough people. 7% of the 10% swung towards Trump. GAME OVER. The Democrats - once again - chose not to address misinformation.

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I heard a lot of mentions of "Middle class Americans and "Working class Americans." Are these two groups the same? If not, do they overlap?

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We are in serious trouble. Trump is the Mad Hatter and his henchman are ready to help in him in pursuit of "the enemy within."

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Is there a necessity for a special counsel since Jim Jordan looks like he’s going to be on it, a special prosecutor and if so, would you be available to assist them, sir?

RUDY GIULIANI: Well, the answer is yes to all of those, there’s certainly is a need for a special prosecutor and I certainly would be available to help, I probably know it better than anyone from the very beginning. And you have to do this, Steve. https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-floats-rudy-giuliani-assist-special-prosecutor-trump-administration

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Now that’s a joke!! Bannon is evil incarnate & is licking his chops ready to burn the whole govt down, & Rudy is a washed up old man, 90, who doesn’t even have a law license anymore

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Actually, Rudy is 80; his history of alcoholism has taken its toll and he looks much older.

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