Hope.

Tuesday is November 7. For the rest of my life, I expect I’ll remember another November 7, the one in 2020, three years ago.

It was a beautiful day, soft and warm and sunny, a perfect Indian summer morning that only improved as it went on. Before noon, the AP, CNN and other national media outlets reported that the counts and recounts were over in Pennsylvania, and it was official: The state belonged to Biden, and so did the presidency. Immediately, and I do mean immediately, the celebration started. Within a couple minutes, a friend in D.C. posted a video of the celebrations spreading through town. I recall the sound of cowbells and banging pans from balconies on high-rise buildings, the way we greet the new year, which it was. And it only went on from there.

My friend Dustin called and suggested we play some miniature golf, the exact sort of activity such a day called for. The course at our local park was closed for the season, so we ended up in Clinton Township, Trump country for sure. (“Metro Detroit’s Donbas region,” another friend calls it.) There was no open sobbing, so we played two or three rounds, checking our phones for reaction as the news settled in. One friend kept texting the highlights, mostly video snippets from Twitter. One showed people dancing in the street in New York City, singing “Heeeeyy, Donald Tru-ump! I want to knooo-ow why you’re such a cunt!” Laughter and hugging was the order of the day.

In 2016, I walked the dog early the day after the election, still shell-shocked by the result. I passed a man on the street who beamed at me with a note of smugness on his face, and I decided to pay it back four years later. But either the Detroit Donbas hadn’t heard the news yet or no one would let it ruin a perfect day, so I didn’t get to smug-smile at anyone, but still, I couldn’t stop smiling. Our long national nightmare was over. We’d be getting back to normal. The fever had broken. It’d be OK again.

Three years later, it’s useful to remember these feelings, and curse my naiveté, and remember another beautiful November day that didn’t turn out the way it promised to. That was November 4, 2008, the day Barack Obama was elected president, in an election with results no one contested. I watched from my couch in Michigan; I was working nights, from home, as an editor, and often kept the TV on to keep from falling asleep. All the channels were carrying Obama’s speech in Grant Park that night, the cameras panning the faces of ecstatic people, black and white but mostly black, tears running down their faces. Neil Steinberg was there, with his son, then 13, and wrote movingly about the mood that night:

All the vantage points were taken, so I went up to a group crowding around a gap in the fencing, pushed Ross ahead, and said, to no one in particular, “Could this boy take a look, just for a moment?” A large black woman turned, regarded him, and then commanded those in front of her, “Let the baby through!” and they parted, affording Ross and me a momentary glimpse of the future president, a tiny figure, far away. I thought of that famous photo of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, a distant, barely recognizable speck in a multitude.

But that wasn’t the moment that lodged in my heart. That came afterward, when a quarter of a million people flowed from the park to Michigan Avenue, buoyant with victory, intoxicated with promise and possibility and hope, filling the street from curb to curb, from Roosevelt Road to the Wrigley Building. They were in their new Obama t-shirts and in church clothes, whole families, including wide-eyed toddlers, some cheering, some walking in quiet, careful formality.

Promise and possibility and hope – that’s what I was feeling that night, too. We’d dealt a serious blow to racism; it wouldn’t die, because no evil that entrenched can die with one election, but the United States, a country with racism as its original sin, had turned its back on it, decisively. It felt like a curse had been lifted.

Within days, we started hearing about the grumbling in the Republican Party about Obama’s election, which you’d expect, but the nature of it was disturbing. Memes showing the White House lawn turned into a watermelon patch. Obama in Tarzan-movie tribal gear, a bone through his nose. And these didn’t come from some sewer on the far right. These were memes forwarded with LOLs from county chairs and other party officials, who when confronted protested with hey-it’s-funny-can’t-you-take-a-joke? Soon we’d learn about the election-night meeting of congressional Republicans, where they vowed they’d simply dig in their heels and make Obama a one-term president. Michelle Obama made some comment about living in a house built by slaves, and Republicans roared in protest, even though she was right. Soon, another of these charmers would call her an “ape in heels.” And upon that they’d build the he’s-gay-and-she’s-a-man libel, and go on from there.

You guys were all there. You know.

I’m remembering all this…not sure why. The calendar, yes, but maybe because these are exceptionally grim times, and it’s easy now to see the bad that was waiting just behind the good. As Steinberg also wrote a while back, Trump is the whistle on the tea kettle; you can take the whistle off, but the water is still boiling. I recall another story I heard about election night in 2008, how as John McCain prepared to make his gracious concession speech, his staff had to practically put his running mate, Sarah Palin, in a straitjacket, as she too wanted to speak, to “her people.” Her people would eventually gain critical mass and be the MAGA base. She was the wicked fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, with another curse, one that wouldn’t be felt for a few more years.

I spend a little time, many days, googling the realities of expatriation. I doubt we’d ever do it, but if these recent years have taught me anything, it’s that we don’t know yet how bad things can get. Who’d have ever thought the Senate majority leader could flat-out steal a Supreme Court seat? And yet it happened.

But today and tomorrow, I’ll think about November 7, 2020, the jubilance, the literal dancing in the streets, the perfect weather. We don’t have to fret all the time.

Here’s a picture I took that day, of Dustin with his spirit animal on the giraffe hole. The dead leaves and yellowing plants reveal the time of year, leading into winter. But if winter comes, as the poet asked, can spring be far behind? Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Posted at 12:11 pm in Current events |
 

36 responses to “Hope.”

  1. Jeff said on November 5, 2023 at 1:17 pm

    Looking ahead to 2024 I just keep thinking about 1968. History doesn’t repeat, but it has a rhyming tendency. A friend who wrote a biography of John Bartlow Martin posted today about Humphrey’s loss on this date 55 years ago:

    “On this day in 1968, Republican Richard Nixon (43.4%) eked out a victory over Democratic challenger Hubert Humphrey (42.7%) and independent George Wallace (13.5%) to capture the presidency.

    Humphrey speechwriter John Bartlow Martin recalled that on election night there was early hope of a victory when they won Pennsylvania. “But then it hung. And hung,” Martin said. “I think I went to bed around 3 or 4 a.m. with California, Illinois, and Ohio still out.”

    “I was awakened around 10 by a phone call saying that HHH was making a statement at 10. I turned on TV. In a minute he made his concession statement,” Martin recalled.

    A few days earlier, while still campaigning, Martin, who started the political year working for Robert Kennedy, told Humphrey: “I want to say this before the election. Win lose or draw you’ve run a good campaign, an honorable campaign. You’ve said nothing you’ll ever regret, and this is important for you and the country. And you’ve kept the liberal cause alive.”

    Martin disagreed with those who said that if the Humphrey campaign had one more week the senator might have won. “We hit our peak election day,” Martin said. “We’d lost votes in another week.” Where Humphrey’s campaign needed time was on the other end, said Martin, at the start.:”[Chicago mayor Richard] Daley spent September angrily explaining the Chicago convention and quarreling with TV instead of working on the organization.”

    “LBJ [Lyndon Johnson] had spent the last three years destroying the Democratic party because it represented a rival power center and hence potential threat to his own power,” Martin said.

    “There was no organization, nationally or in the states. There was no campaign, except HHH’s,” said Martin. “We had no money. $10 million in September would have won the election.”

    “Republican suburban WASPs vote, rain or shine or snow. But our voters we have to get to the polls: they are poor . . . they need baby sitters, they haven’t got cars, they don’t bother to vote,” Martin wrote in his journal of the 1968 campaign.

    “If we had had an organization that had got out the vote, far more than half the non-voters would have voted Democratic; and we would have won back more than enough to overcome that tiny 499,000 margin.” (Actually 511,944.)

    “It wasn’t Larry O’Brien’s [HHH’s campaign manger] fault that we threw it away,” Martin continued. “It was done by Labor Day. It might have been recouped if the money had come rolling in big in September. But how could it? It [Humphrey’s campaign] looked like a sure loser. So no money,” wrote Martin. “And the polls killed the money too.”

    Martin, however, was not sorry that he had worked so hard for both Robert F. Kennedy’s and Humphrey’s presidential efforts. “If I hadn’t I’d never have forgiven myself,” he said. “The HHH campaign *did* keep the liberal faith alive. It did tend to pull the party together, finally,” said Martin. “The party looked in terrible shape Labor Day. By election day it was very much alive and came within an inch of keeping the presidency.”

    “The effort was worth making,” Martin said, and it changed his opinion that campaigns don’t make any difference. He once suspected the results would be the same if, after the conventions, both candidates just sat at home. “That may be true some years,” wrote Martin. “Probably was in 1956. Not 1968. The HHH campaign changed the outcome, made it far closer than anybody would have thought possible Labor Day.””

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  2. Jakash said on November 5, 2023 at 1:24 pm

    I recall both those wonderful days fondly, 2008 and 2020. Looking at the 2020 post on the nn.c Wayback Machine, I see that, while I was indeed happy, it was not unfettered joy.

    “I can’t say that our long, national nightmare is over, but this will do for now. Quite a relief.” But that followed an earlier comment, which described a problem that nothing in the 3 years since — the batshittery, the election denial, January 6, the prosecutions, the lies, the accomplices falling like dominoes — has seemed to change very much at all:

    “You know, there’s been a lot of wild-eyed talk about the similarities between America during Trump’s reign and Germany under the Nazis. But, c’mon, there are huge differences. For instance, in the last free election in Germany, in 1932, the Nazis only got 33% of the vote. Then Germans never really had another chance to vote Hitler out.

    Meanwhile, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, where ‘antifascist’ is now supposed to be a bad word, our rickety system survives. Voters had a chance to see what our Fuhrer-wannabe was up to and take action! After 4 years of watching him embarrass the nation on an almost-daily basis, seeing his racism, corruption, and incompetence in a crisis, they knew what they had to do. And the patriotic burghers across the land took their second opportunity to reject this divisive regime and … gave their cult leader 7 million more votes than last time. Ain’t that America.”

    I apologize for this comment not being in the hopeful spirit of today’s post. My fingers are seemingly always crossed, but I also remember another glorious fall week after the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. It came to an unexpected, unwelcome and unbelievably brutal end on election day that year. “We don’t have to fret all the time,” and a respite recalling 11/7/20 is indeed a fine idea, but “the fever” has never really broken.

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  3. Icarus said on November 5, 2023 at 2:30 pm

    I was at Grant Park for Obama’s speech in 2008, when I was very politically oblivious. Friend had tickets and her husband didn’t want to deal with the crowds so I got to go. It was an unusually warm November evening. Then the temperature seemed to cool down. Looking back, that would definitely portend the things to come.

    I’m worried that 3rd party votes and people staying home because they unhappy with Biden’s response to Israel/Palestine will siphon votes and allow Trump to win. And then it’s all over.

    we got lucky the first time because he didn’t understand how it all worked.
    We won’t get a second chance.

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  4. Mark P said on November 5, 2023 at 2:54 pm

    I watched Obama’s speech on TV and thought it could only happen in a movie. It was just too good.

    Now, I’m not sure the US should survive. There are a lot of good people here, but I’m afraid the cancer has spread too far to save the patient. I wish we could split the country and let the Republicans have part and the decent, sane people have part.

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  5. tajalli said on November 5, 2023 at 4:40 pm

    Just received this freebie for the article:
    Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term.

    https://wapo.st/49mZXWU

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  6. brian stouder said on November 5, 2023 at 6:01 pm

    Icarus, I respectfully beg to differ. When crunch time comes, voting for elderly Joe (and relatively youthful Kamala) versus wannabe-tyrant Trump will be a cake-walk. Event the dumbshits and simpletons will move past the vanity/shallow/used-car-salesman shyster from Moron-Loggerhead. Betcha an icy-cold Diet Pepsi!

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  7. FDChief said on November 5, 2023 at 6:14 pm

    Either we destroy the MAGAts or they will destroy us. That’s not me saying that; they say it themselves. It’s really just that simple.

    Unfortunately the press and the “independent” and “undecided “ voters refuse to believe that.

    So we’re likely to see the end of the American Experiment in our lifetime .

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  8. brian stouder said on November 5, 2023 at 6:25 pm

    I’ll grant you that, indeed, we elected that guy once, but I really do think that the Republicans – which used to include me (until Barack came along!) – will not fall for that used-car salesmen/sheister again. Let me hasten to add that some NEW sheister may appear on the horizon, but Trumpy-McTrumperson is extremely yesterday; he’s a loser, and a whiner, and indeed a backstabber in his own right. Go Kamala, I say!

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  9. Suzanne said on November 5, 2023 at 8:59 pm

    This is terrifying but, I believe, accurate.
    https://religiondispatches.org/mike-johnson-isnt-just-your-average-christian-right-avatar-hes-influenced-by-fringe-movements-unfamiliar-to-most-political-analysts/

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  10. Sherri said on November 5, 2023 at 10:00 pm

    The work doesn’t end when the election is over. The outcome of the election just determines whether you’re playing defense or offense for the next term. Are you pushing the status quo to improve things for everyone, or are you fighting to defend the status quo from being torn down to harm people?

    Joe Biden has never been my first choice for president, and sure, I’d prefer if he were younger. I’d also prefer if he were more progressive, and not a white guy. But would I rather be pushing Joe Biden to do something about the courts and reproductive rights and criminal justice and immigration reform etc etc, or fighting any Republican, whether it’s Trump or any of the other options, to stop them from shredding the social safety net and removing more of our rights? That’s a no-brainer.

    But even if Joe Biden were to win a landslide, the work wouldn’t be done.

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  11. Jeff said on November 5, 2023 at 10:08 pm

    As a reassuring balance, Ipsos/ABC has polling from Nov. 3-4 that shows a Donald Trump Favorable Rating at:

    Favorable 29%
    Unfavorable 60%

    [That’s with a 3.3% margin of error]

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-country-headed-wrong-direction-poll/story

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  12. Deborah said on November 6, 2023 at 4:07 am

    Thanks for the memory of that night in Chicago, we were there, the walk back home from Grant Park on Michigan Ave, was glorious. When Biden won we were walking up Michigan Ave again after completing an errand, it was the middle of the day, cars honking, people smiling and shouting. What will happen this year? I wish I knew.

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  13. Dexter Friend said on November 6, 2023 at 5:18 am

    My nephew’s wife was president of Illinois Women for Obama. She got VIP tickets for my brother and his wife. My brother stood beside Jesse Jackson and shared a few words with Jesse. Jonathan Alter came over to interview Jesse. My brother didn’t know who he was but I did, from my brother’s photograph of the scene. I watched with pride from home, no tickets for me, and I would have Amtrak’d there. Grant Park is a easy walk from Union Station…well, then it would have been for me.
    The young women protesting Biden’s support for Netanyahu’s aggressive defense by genocide, shown all day on TV saying they voted for Biden but never will next year, must not realize that Trump would unconditionally give Netanyahu a key to the US Treasury vault; Trump has basically said this. Trump would be worse than Biden. We all know that Biden is a lifelong Israel supporter, no matter what kind of murderous thug attains power there as Prime Minister. All attempts towards a 2-state solution make Israeli politicians’ blood boil. They want to keep their apartheid colony going.
    Oh…Trump has already stated on the stump that he, on day one, part 2, will create a Muslin ban and also begin rounding up illegals and shipping them away somewhere. Also, he has plans to isolate himself from any legal actions against himself. And his lead over Biden in the polls grows.
    “Well they blew up the chicken man in Philly last night
    They blew up his house too.
    …Well, I’m tired of gettin’ caught out on the losin’ end
    But I talked to a man last night
    Gonna do a little favor for him…” —Bruce Springsteen

    A little favor for America…your vote, please?

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  14. FDChief said on November 6, 2023 at 9:44 am

    I disliked the early Obama branding simply because I’d been paying attention to US politics since Reagan, and knew that very little “Change” was going to come from that Hope. And that that would in turn breed cynicism and disaffection when Obama turned out to be the centerist conventional politician he is. Better than the “best” Republican? Ohhellyes. All hopey-changey lefty? Nope.

    But he did one thing; he brought the Republican racist C.H.U.D.s up out of the sewers and into the light, out and proud, and revealed how much of the country had NOT gotten past the rotten racial past.

    The crackers joined the ammosexuals and God-botherers and sex pests in forming the GQP base we loathe today.

    As such, they – not Trump, not DeSantis, not Johnson – are the true enemies of the Republic promised in the founding documents.

    And that makes defeating them so difficult. Because they’re everywhere, they’re Uncle Louie and cousin Nick and the nice man at the hardware store, and, like the Red Army taking Berlin, the only way to rid the political landscape of these fascist rats is to blast them out of their holes block by block, street by street, until they fear to spew their poison in public again.

    And I don’t think the defenders of democracy have the steel to do that. Better to hunker down and hope that when they finish with the gays and the Muslims and the “illegals” that they’ll ignore you if you stay quiet and still.

    Nope. I think that autumn of 2008 was just a cruel illusion.

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  15. Jeff Borden said on November 6, 2023 at 9:52 am

    I hate to admit that sometimes I wonder if the election of Barack Obama wasn’t precisely the accelerant the vicious vipers living among us needed to slither out from under the rocks. I’ll never forgive this country for the hideous racism directed at him, his wife and his children. Bull Connors would’ve been proud.

    My stomach is kind of in a state of perpetual agitation these days. I’m so fucking sick of that bloated orange fool and the circus monkeys who surround him, but they are everywhere and they are loud, loud, loud. And christ on a popsicle stick, that mentally deranged, ignorant slob is absolutely within spitting distance of reelection. I barely got through the 2020 election. Next year will be so much worse.

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  16. alex said on November 6, 2023 at 11:13 am

    I’m not sure why the lamestream media keep up this stupid horse race narrative except that it makes everyone hysterical and generates clicks. They’ve got Trump dead to rights in Georgia, New York and DC. In Florida too, even though the judge there has a mouthful of toadstool. Even if he wins the electoral college, I don’t see how he assumes office if he’s convicted in any or all of the suits against him. Besides, nothing generates Dem turnout more than the clear and present danger of Trump becoming president again. We all held our noses and voted for Biden in 2020 and we’ll do it again. Polls, especially this far out, are meaningless. And when people are asked if the country is going in the wrong direction, it doesn’t necessarily mean they hate Biden. It could very well mean they hate the creeping neo-fascism of the GOP that continues despite having a Dem president.

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  17. Scout said on November 6, 2023 at 11:57 am

    Thank you alex, for your calming words of reason in the midst of all the hand wringing and teeth gnashing. We need to remember the media needs a horse race and will flog anything that helps give them one. I get it, the fact that someone as horrific as trump managed to get elected once is extremely anxiety producing and it’s no wonder we experience dread and maybe even some fatalism when we contemplate it ever happening again, but I believe a year from now we will have thwarted him once again. And, as Sherri reminds us, the work doesn’t end when the election is over.

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  18. Deborah said on November 6, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    One thing I hope from the bad polling coming out is that it will invigorate the Democrats to get busy. We all need to show some enthusiasm and excitement even though we’re dog tired and despairing. We need to open our wallets, make calls and talk, talk, talk to everyone how important it is to vote, as we all know it has never been more important. I’m speaking to the choir I know, mostly I’m speaking to myself, to get off of my butt and do something.

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  19. jcburns said on November 6, 2023 at 2:22 pm

    Well, it’ll be especially important next year, right?

    (Yes, I early voted here in Georgia last week.)

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  20. Deborah said on November 6, 2023 at 3:27 pm

    While the presidential election is scheduled for Nov 5th 2024, it is within a year from today Nov 6.

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  21. jcburns said on November 6, 2023 at 4:13 pm

    True, but. this whole “get our energy up now” thing bothers me because there’s a whole lot of road we have to get down between tomorrow’s election and the national event for the presidency on November 5th. 2024.

    So I’m saying: yes, vote eagerly tomorrow. But don’t make tomorrow’s event into the big super-hyped event a year down the road.

    It’s exhausting.

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  22. jcburns said on November 6, 2023 at 4:33 pm

    We cannot (nor should we) change how Trump is being prosecuted in Georgia, DC, or Florida. We cannot (nor should we) manipulate the political games of deSantis or any other Republican candidate. Besides, none of them (including Trump) are the GOP nominee yet.

    I’m really happy with all the hard work Biden and Harris are doing on our behalf.

    We gotta let them do it, without crap about age or putting them in charge of the struggles in Ukraine and Gaza …or whatever.

    And then…when the party nominees are picked (August of next year?), we might be able to help some. Some.

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  23. Julie Robinson said on November 6, 2023 at 4:43 pm

    Not too much to get exhausted about here. The mayor will handily win a seventh term, swearing it will be his last. Our church isn’t needed as a venue, so no 14 hour day for us.

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  24. Icarus said on November 6, 2023 at 5:11 pm

    brian stouder @6:

    “Betcha an icy-cold Diet Pepsi!”

    it would be make my year to lose that bet.

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  25. alex said on November 6, 2023 at 7:36 pm

    I just watched a final interview with the mayoral candidates of Fort Wayne. For the first time in a long time the Republican challenger was a highly qualified and credible person and not a freak, but even so I think the incumbent Dem will easily coast to a fifth term.

    I’m not a city resident and there’s absolutely nothing for me to vote for this year.

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  26. Julie Robinson said on November 6, 2023 at 8:05 pm

    Is that Didier? Nice guy, talented musician, passable actor. Not too bright though.

    Anyone here familiar with CS Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia? If so, when you read about Trump’s courtroom antics, did you also think about Rabadash the Ridiculous in The Horse and His Boy?

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  27. Deborah said on November 7, 2023 at 12:10 am

    Did any of you watch the Eastman interview on 60 Minutes? If not here you go https://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-eastman-georgia-election-conspiracy-case-60-minutes-transcript/ I thought they did a good job of showing how Eastman is super sure he’s right even though he’s utterly wrong. As I’ve said here before, Eastman lives in Santa Fe, I saw him at Target once. He’s not well liked there, the turn off to his neighborhood had protestors for months until he got indicted.

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  28. David C said on November 7, 2023 at 2:39 am

    One year befote his reelection, Obama was polling as bad as Biden is now. Then as now, the Rs are campaigning while Obama and Biden have/had jobs to do. There is a season for everything and incumbent campaign season doesn’t start a year out from election day.

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  29. FDChief said on November 7, 2023 at 8:32 am

    The polling suggests that:
    1) Many Americans are no more fit to govern themselves than a capuchin monkey, and
    2) a significant number would have fit right in to any of history’s notorious scum-sewers, ranging from Mussolini’s Blackshirts to Mao’s Red Guards.

    How does a functioning Republic work with that?

    More to the point, what on Earth could a Biden Administration do to change these people’s “minds”? The monkeys clearly lack the mental hardware; if you’re stupid enough to look at Trump and the MAGAts and not see them for what they are now? You’re not going to get it, period, unless every TV news show and paper and every piece of their social media starts shrieking like a air raid siren about the scummy business the MAGAts are doing…and they won’t. The ones who aren’t owned by GOP-adjacent scum themselves are unwilling to “offend” the scum.

    And the goons LIKE being goons! They chose to be scum! They don’t want to change!

    If you even consider voting for ANY Republican, now?

    There’s no hope for you.

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  30. Jeff Borden said on November 7, 2023 at 9:39 am

    The QOP needs to be shattered and rebuilt from the ground up. The nation needs a conservative political party just as it needs a progressive party, but there is nothing conservative about these people. They are radicals hellbent on neutering democracy.

    Not one vote for anyone with an R next to their name until this collective insanity dies.

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  31. Julie Robinson said on November 7, 2023 at 9:46 am

    JeffB, I just told D the same thing. He forgot who was in this election, and I told him there was just the one race. He asked who else was running, and I said it didn’t matter to me because they had the R next to their name.

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  32. Mark P said on November 7, 2023 at 11:24 am

    We in Rome (Ga) have an organization posing as a business and community improvement group. They are actually a front for a political consulting company run by a couple of MAGAts who supported Trump, Herschel Walker, and Marjory Taylor Greene. They, or course, don’t live in Rome. They are archetypal outside agitators who want to turn an already conservative town into their vision of a MAGAt-run neofascist hell.

    On the Microsoft data center front, MS has said once they complete their property purchase they will spend a year on design and planning, before spending another year on site preparation. They figure to be complete by 2027-2028. So it looks like money won’t start raining down on us any time soon. I hope to be long gone by then.

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  33. jcburns said on November 7, 2023 at 11:44 am

    Long gone to…Young Harris? Athens? Milledgeville? Midtown Atlanta? Oh, wait, you said before: Colorado. Yikes.

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  34. alex said on November 7, 2023 at 12:09 pm

    Funny, the Fort Wayne news media are reporting that an unnamed Fortune 500 company wants to build a data center on a 722-acre site and that nearby residents are up in arms about it.

    Julie, yes, it’s Tom Didier running against Tom Henry. And yes he doesn’t come across as exceptionally bright, but unlike the last guy he’s smart enough to recognize that you don’t bring your GOP culture-war baggage to a municipal election in a diverse city unless you only want 37 percent of the votes.

    I’m reeling this morning from the news that a former colleague, only 52 years old and a nonsmoker and nondrinker, just died of a massive stroke.

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  35. Mark P said on November 7, 2023 at 12:10 pm

    Yeah, Colorado. We are socially isolated here, but I have friends and a nephew there. Unfortunately we could really use some of that MS money, because we would be moving from a low-cost real estate market to a high-cost market. It may just be not doable.

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  36. Jeff said on November 7, 2023 at 12:27 pm

    Julie — there’s a name I hadn’t thought about for a long while. If only Aslan could turn Trump into a donkey.

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