"Middle American" here.

Your fake, paternalistic outrage whenever anyone criticizes someone for doing something racist is a lot more condescending towards middle America than anything "the left" has ever said about it.
Frankly, it's ridiculous to watch @HawleyMO, the son of a wealthy banker who clerked for the most powerful judge in Washington, D.C., act like some kind of crusader for middle America. Especially since he plays to the most one-dimensional stereotypes of what middle America wants.
What has this fucknut ever actually done for rural and working-class people, exactly?

Has he done anything to expand rural broadband? No. Secure factory and mining pensions? No. Keep rural hospitals open? He supported the Texas ACA lawsuit, which would destroy them.
Pretty much all he does ever is stand on a soapbox and saber-rattle about liberals.

He's the quintessential politician LBJ warned about: giving white people someone to look down on so they'll empty their pockets for him.
And you know what? Obviously every state has a diversity of people and beliefs, but it'll forever be an embarrassment to the state of Missouri that a voting majority fell for this cosplay hack's act. He truly makes his state look like every dumb and backwards insult in the book.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Matthew Chapman

Matthew Chapman Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @fawfulfan

13 Sep
The true evil of the Electoral College is that makes the vast majority of people's vote not matter, and by extension it makes their lives not matter to politicians.

Trump has no reason to care that California is on fire. Literally none. Because he can't get votes from it.
The crazy thing is, most of the towns burning in California are Republican parts of the state! It's Trump-supporting farmers and loggers losing their livelihoods. And he has no political incentive to give a fuck because California's a blue state and their votes don't matter.
Every state has Democrats and Republicans. Every state has regions of voters with different needs and interests.

If we had a national popular vote, politicians would be forced to listen to all of these disparate groups. Under the Electoral College, most of it doesn't matter.
Read 5 tweets
29 Aug
Okay, fine, let's talk about Trump's repeated claim that urban riots are happening in "Democrat-run cities."

Yes, because the vast majority of large cities have Democratic mayors. So through random chance alone, you'd see mostly Democrats dealing with the problem.
Here are the top 100 largest cities in the United States.

64 of them have Democratic mayors. Just 29 have Republican mayors. ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliat…
However, Republican-led cities do exist. And they're having exactly the same problems.

Like San Diego, where cops are trying to disperse protesters with chemical irritants. sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-sa…
Read 8 tweets
28 Aug
There are basically two types of ways that a democracy can try to keep power in the hands of the people: a parliamentary system, and a divided powers system.

Both have advantages and disadvantages — but the modern GOP lays bare critical flaws in the latter.
Here's the basic difference:

In a parliamentary system, the executive has power to make laws, but can be fired at any time.

In a divided powers system, the executive can't be fired except at fixed elections, but must follow the laws of an independent legislature and judiciary.
The problem with that second system is that it only works if the officials who hold the divided powers are independent.

If political parties start capturing multiple branches and coordinating their actions across them, everything breaks down.
Read 4 tweets
25 Aug
What makes the claim by right-wing politicians that Black voters are like slaves on a Democratic "plantation" so insulting is that it erases the decades of political activism by the Black community that goes into *why* Black voters vote for Democrats in such large numbers.
It completely ignores that Black voters spent decades marching, getting beaten and jailed, to vote, and once they could, went to party meetings, debated the issues affecting their community, got elected to local office, and all of that is what CREATED the modern Democratic Party.
To listen to the Republican narrative, the Democratic Party is controlled by some tightly-knit group of white people who have somehow tricked hordes of low-info Black voters into following orders with promises of free stuff, without ever actually solving their real problems.
Read 11 tweets
12 Aug
Harris' truancy program was structured similarly to Back on Track. It identified low-level offenses and, whenever possible, tried to connect offenders to city services rather than prosecution.

And it worked. Crime went down, truancy went down, AND no one needed to be locked up.
If your sole argument that all of this was bad was, "well, Harris theoretically COULD HAVE jailed people under this policy," that's an absurd reach.

The bottom line is, she didnt, because the policy worked.
I mean, if the standard is there shouldn't even BE a prosecutorial recourse if civil interventions don't work, you're basically saying nothing short of total prison abolition will do.

Which I recognize might really be the position of some left activists, but, sorry, isn't mine.
Read 4 tweets
12 Aug
ADOS is to race what TERFs are to sex.
FYI, to my white followers who may not know what I'm talking about:

ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) is a movement that basically seeks to exclude the "wrong" Black people from civil rights spaces — ie anyone who can't trace their lineage directly to a Southern plantation.
Activists with this movement are the source of these nonsense claims you're seeing on FB and Twitter that @KamalaHarris "isn't Black" or "isn't African American" because her parents came from Jamaica and India (never mind that Jamaicans are Africans from the same slave trade).
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!