This is a permission structure for cons to spend the next four years denying the legitimacy of Biden's presidency. (They would find some reason regardless, but this will do.) politico.com/news/2020/11/0…
Oh, and also -- as always, always, always -- it's a giant grift. thedailybeast.com/all-the-ways-t…
The grifters are closing in like pirahnas.

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More from @drvox

11 Nov
Cities produce the vast majority of economic & intellectual activity in this country, but whatever you do, don't repeat that, much less show any pride in it, lest you be accused of insufficiently venerating America's furiously mythologized ruralites.
Countdown to one of the aforementioned ruralites telling me that rural areas "feed the cities" ...
Read 8 tweets
10 Nov
The party of "tough guys" is filled top to bottom with cringing, boot-licking cowards.
Unbelievably irresponsible, craven cowards, right to the very last.
Liars & cowards that should be shunned by decent people.
Read 4 tweets
9 Nov
All day today I have been having the vertiginously weird experience of trying to convince Democrats that the fact that the RW has a giant, coordinated messaging machine & they don't *matters*. To no effect! I can't even get people to acknowledge & discuss it.
And yet every single Dem, from center to left, is eager AF to discuss "messaging" & "framing." They'll all spend hours lingering over various word combinations, poring over focus group results, convince that just the right phrase is the key to the kingdom. Argh.
Politics is about money & power. Messaging is part of politics & therefore ALSO about money & power. The cleverness or stickiness or virality or whatever TF of individual phrases is not what wins messaging battles. Money & power win them.
Read 12 tweets
8 Nov
I'm a huge NKJ fan & like all of this. But I feel like it makes a common left mistake in focusing too much on the content of messaging & too little on the mechanisms. Right narratives stick not because they're more clever but because the right has a giant media machine!
The right's narratives are echoed throughout a vast apparatus from Fox to Breitbart to radio to Facebook to, now, local newspapers that have been bought by RW billionaires. The left simply has nothing like that! It mostly tries to jam its messages through the distorting filter...
... of mainstream journalism (which doesn't work). This is such a ubiquitous fact about US politics I feel we almost forget it, the way fish don't notice water. So much discussion of what Dems say, or should say, & so little attention ...
Read 7 tweets
7 Nov
Instead of "reaching out," why don't we take this opportunity to make very clear that racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism are repugnant to a decent society. Let's reject them, loudly & publicly, & extend social disapprobation to those who support them.
When someone expresses racism, xenophobia, or authoritarianism in public, they SHOULD face backlash. We do not need sympathy for those facing such backlash -- that's things working as they should! Reserve your sympathy for racism's millions & millions of victims.
Oh, wait, what's that, your motivations for discrimination & hatred are "religious"? Yeah I don't care.
Read 5 tweets
6 Nov
Not sure I can articulate this well, but it seems to me that the features of Trump's personality/psyche that enabled him to capture & hold the allegiance of the RW base are *incommensurate with competence*. His malignant narcissism makes him genuinely unaware ...
... of the norms & conventions he's violating. He just bulls through them with zero hesitation or self-awareness. That thrills the baying mob. But he things that make people smart & competent -- self-awareness, self-discipline, the ability to delay gratification -- are ...
... impossible to completely conceal. When a Hawley or Cotton violates the same conventions, they are *aware* of it. There's a purposefulness, an artifice, a wink that just doesn't sell as well. Much of what Trump "accomplished" he did so by simply not realizing ...
Read 7 tweets

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