Thread by @frodofied

This is one wreck I am going to have to turn away from.

I won't watch @BetoORourke lose to that man in real time.

I don't understand the world I live in anymore.

The echoes of 2016 abound. It's why I would not shut up about it and won't.

We've fixed nothing.

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https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1059997435320254464

In fact, many of the problems have gotten or been purposely made worse.

Do you see what they have done?

They've thrown the resistance, otherwise known as the majority, a bone.

The House, which will be taken with a period and not an exclamation point.

But the rest?

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There are fair odds they will increase their majority in the Ssnate.

State offices are likely to see modest gains for Dems.

This is what political coups often look like until the big reveal when it's too late to do anythng to stop them.

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There is really not a way I can see to actively combat this reality within the traditional framework of democracy as we know it.

We are either facing off against systemic, unmoving white supremacy or foreign/domestic electoral interference or, more probably, both.

So, we are faced with a pretty stark reality here. We either proceed to the use of methods outside of the traditional framework or we wait it out.

Which could be decades.

We are at the wall folks.
We keep fighting these battles the same way as we always have.

And look.

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I am already being inundated with tweets, DMs, and emails saying "so now we move on to 2020."

What kind of tonedeaf, blind to reality nonsense is this?

What makes you possibly think that 2020 is a thing we have a chance at winning?

How can you believe they will let us?

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I said at the beginning of this that once Trump invited white supremacy in and gave it a seat at the table that immediate action had to be taken or we were done as a nation.

I stand by that.

They will not go peacefully now. They have the power to keep the power.

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And when we talk about white supremacy please erase the image of confederate flags, pointy hats, & bad hygene.

I'm talking the ultra wealthy, behind the scenes, let them eat cake sort: Trump, Miller, Bannon, Kavanaugh, Coulter, Ingraham...

These are not uneducated inbreds.

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I think that many underestimate the strength and resources of this movement. They also underestimate the amount of planning that has taken the movement from the fringes and into the White House.

Since the 1960s white supremacy has waited in the wings for its moment.

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That moment is now. They must do everything to keep their foot in the door, because they understand their opportunity will likely not come again.

So ask yourself, given what you know about the movement, what are the chances they are going to peacefully hand power back over?

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And if you think finding ways to change votes, to suppress voting, to unfairly shrink rolls, and other sketchiness is beyond their thinking or ability then you have no idea what we're up against.

They would do much, much more to maintain power.

And much worse.

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I want to sidebar this thread to offer the loudest, most furious, and sincere fuck you to every vain, ridiculous, insane, self-centered asshole who ran 3rd party during this pivotal election cycle.

And to every one of you ego-centric, puritncal asses who voted for them too.

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If Walker actually pulls it off in Wisconskn, for example, well,

-a pox on all your houses!

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I don't understand how after seeing everything that's gone on from Garland to Benghazi, from the tax scam to the deep, open corruption and Kavanaugh that we're debating.

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This is not a debate. Its some people recognizing the grim reality and others still holding onto faith in a system that's failed in many inconceivable ways since 2015.

The Republican Party, from the top down is working, has worked, and will be working to steal elections.

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They will take as their partners in this treason anyone with resources and willingness.

That is probably a long list.

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There are myriad ways both "legal" and not that could be employed to alter an election in their own favor.

And they've, I bet, tried them all.

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But right now we in the resistance are failing in some pretty glaring ways, which makes some of these other facts largely irrelevant. Examining yesterday's results without also casting a critical eye toward ourselves and the movement could spell the end of everything.

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First, we need to reexamine many of our assumptions. While it is largely true that the racial makeup of Trump's base is overwhrlmingly white, yesterday 30% of Latinos supported the Republican party. In Texas, they helped carry @tedcruz to victory.

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Asians & Muslims supported the Republican Party in similar percentages. Even Black support for Trump and the Republican Party is, while low, not nonexistent. In fact, it's higher than it was in '16.

Yesterday, three in ten Latino voters gave a thumbs up to ICE and the wall.

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We must recalibrate.

There needs to be targeted outreach into minority communities to examine why these communities believe Republicans will protect them and their interests better than Democrats.

Clearly our assumptions about who supports Trump have limited our reach.

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Next, our rhetoric and tone must change, our arrogance is killing us.

The obvious moral superiority of anti- Trump movements, that forms tbe basis of so many of our assumptions, is, well, not exactly obvious to everyone.

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This basic assumption, that our side's view is more moral, and obviously so, is almost certainly alienating more voters than attracting them. Our approach to issues like immigration has suffered greatly because of these assumptions.

And needlessly so.

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Anti-immigration proponents work by appealing to people's fear of the "other," otherwise known as racism, anti-semitisn, and Islamoohobia. They exploit people's fears by also appealing to three different "objective" datasets.

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Economic arguments against immigration are the most common and the most insidious. Insidious because the economic "facts" most often used by proponents, are just plain wrong.

Security concerns surrounding immigration, are also fear based and widespread.

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The fact is that more Americans still believe Muslims represent a greater public safety threat than RW Christianity does when the data shows the exact opposite. The same is true regarding crime, both violent and not. Immigrants are actually less likeky to commit crime.

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The final objective metric used is actually the strongest tool in their toolbox, yet it's also often the most troubling.

The "law is the law side" of the debate uses current legal definitions, regulations, and standards to maximize the criminality of individuals.

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This presumptive criminality is used to then further criminalize even the most mundane of behaviors.

These people, however, almost always fail to acknowledge that much of our current immigration policy was written by Republicans and is often racially and culturally biased.

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For decades Republicans have incresingly tried to tweak immigration policy to limit the entry of brown peoples. Trump is merely parroting the racially biased practices of nearly three decades of Republican lawmakers and tossing in Muslims to satisfy RW evangelicals & Jews.

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Our approach to the issues we talk about most often in relation to Donald Trump and his supporters must be closely examined & must reflect a more methodical & evidence heavy approach.

Facts still matter to some who still identify as Republicans.

We need to use them.

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Next, we need to clearly define our objectives. Calling ourselves the resistance without fully defining the parameters of that resistance has hurt the movement.

It has also both limited recruiting efforts and become an identifier many embrace or reject as social currency.

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Resist: v (transitive)
to oppose or fight against
someone or something

Stated objectives with specific action items individuals can regularly engage seems the most obvious way to maintain interest and ensure continuity for a movement trying to accomplish big things.

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We must also strategize and plan. We have too often been caught scrambling to react after the fact. The time lapses, difficulty in communicating actions, and misinfornation spread by bots and trolls has mitigated our success and made our movenent appear less effective.

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Next, our greatest enemy and most successful adversary has been our own arrogance and presumptuousness.

They limit the ways we interact with one another and worse w/ the ways we interact with Trump supporters or those who might be sympathetic to specific policy objectuves.

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Worse, it has opened us up to criticism & ridicule.

Months ago I wrote a thread that was critical of the #BlueWave2018 hashtags. I felt they were creating false hope on our side, false expectations everywhere, & reeked of political naivete & bravado.

I was soundly spanked.

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I wish I had been more forceful. At the time, the resistance was stronger and Trump weaker. Poll numbers were clear. But I knew that the months between represented political lifetimes.

And here we are.

Since I began this thread last night the reactions have been varied.

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Varied, but critical.

Much of it highly critical, but I stand by it. I began as results were still coming in and some tweets were reactions to those results or follower comnentary.

Many wanted to defend our performance. I understand that desire and I respect those views.

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But I also reject them.

The cockiness that came from some elements of the more powerful / popular social media personalities as the day began was nsuseating. You would have thought that the votes had already been counted and a tsunami was about to wipe Trump out.

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Everyone mistook the great polling numbers, long lines, and early voting numbers as clear signs that the wave was here.

We learned nothing from 2016.

You know, that time we had great polling numbers, a day filled with images of long lines, good early voting numbers?

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That turned out great.

Listen, Republicans had far more successful midterm results in 1994 and 2010.

Understatement from hell.

Republicans had 13 Senate seats on the line yesterday.

They lost only one of those. Thank you Nevada.

We had 26 and lost three.

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Come on.

Something is clearly wrong.

Either voter suppression won the day and our voting machines and systems are so compromised that we are irretrievably, forever fucked.

Or, support for Trump where it matters is stronger than we believe.

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Only 41% of those who voted yesterday believe Trump should be impeached.

Which is clearly now irrelevant.

Impeachment might have been a possibility had the Republican not been rewarded for their support of Trump with two additional seats.

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They have no reason to vote for conviction and removal should the House vote for impeachment. They have been told by us that there will be no consequences for anything they've done.

Mitch McConnell is stronger tonigbt than he was yesterday morning.

Fun, right?

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So, unless the universal trends that have guided everything since 2015 suddenly reverse and things start to fall apart for Trump and Mueller brings the big guns in his report, then we are stuck with Trump through 2020.

My hopes for that Mueller eventuality have waned.

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Trump has been systemically supported by every mechanism or institution that we've been taught was necessary for the functioning of society and democracy.

The Church - Evangelical Christians, the most reliable voting block in America, are literally Donald Trump's base.

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The Media / The Press - In 2016, after being angered by a report he had seen on Fox News, Trump boycotted the network and threatened never to appear on it again unless he recieved a personal apology from Roger Ailes. Ailes quickly acquiesced after a private meeting.

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While editorial boards across the county refused to fall in line, News Editors & Producers from nearly every major network & publication gave Trump almost unlimited exposure for free, with few, if any, offering a critical challenge as to why a reality TV star was running.

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Meanwhile, Trump's Democratic opponent, @HillaryClinton, received by far the most negative reporting of the campaign.

No one seemed to question the insanity of a news network president bowing to the demands of a Presidential candidate, nor of another...

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network president staffing GOP political commentator positions with former Trump employees or partners such as Roger Stone or Corey Lewandowski.

Republican Party - Not even Ronald Reagan enjoyed this kind of influence over its day to day functioning or policy direction.

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No modern political candidate has exerted as much control, nor recieved as much internal support from its functionaries and elected officials as Trump. Senate Majority Leader McConnell & House Speaker Ryan have allowed Trump free reign over legislative agendas & priorities.

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The Republican Party is now the party of Trump.

IC Community: Donald Trump received an unprecedented level of internal support from the FBI, particularly from it's New York City field office as detailed in Inspector General Michael Horowitz's scathing 500 page report.

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Rudolph Guiliani acted as the middle man between the office & the campaign. FBI Director James Comey twice publicly attempted to hobble Trump's opponent while maintaining complete silence about far more serious FBI investigations pertaining to Trump's business dealings...

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and possible collusion between the Trump campaign, the Russian government and its President Vladimir Putin.

The Electoral College - The EC existence is predicated on its ability to ensure that candidate like Donald Trump is never allowed to take office. They failed.

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The truth is as ugly as it is undeniable.

At every stage of this circus we've been forced to watch as every fail safe failed, every system collapsed, every protocol was rejected, & every institution bowed before Trump.

It has been unprecedented and yet it has happened.

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While I had faith in Mueller at some point in all of this I find it too improbable to conceive that he will be the system level force that does not concede to Donald Trump.

And I think his report will fall short of implicating Trump in any activity deemed prosecutable.

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This will be due in no small part to the nature of this beast and how deep it all goes.

It is more than likely, in fact, going to be deemed to large to tackle. The global money laundering scheme, Russian collusion, electoral interference & vote tampering...

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To scratch the surface undoubtedly means that other parts become visible.

A revelation of such a magnitude would trigger a global financial collapse. US elections would lose all credibility, and every law, appointment, executive order, and trade deal could be questioned.

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Not to mention if high ranking congressional figures are implicated it might appear to be and would undoubtedly be painted as a political witchhunt.

There is no doubt such an eventuality would lead great violence ftom the far right.

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When you write this down or say these things out loud it all sounds absurd, fictional, beyond unlikely even, and yet all of this is merely the pasting together of individual parts of the story that we know exist in reality

Maybe they built the absurdity in...

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Maybe the absurdity is its one sure defense against it ever being dragged into the light.

No one would believe it and no one could do anything about it anyway is actually a powerful deterrent.

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