This was very much the first post-wokeness Democratic campaign. It was run by a party whose top people read Matt Yglesias and gave $700 million to a PAC heavily influenced by David Shor. For this wing to act like Cassandras is beyond absurd.
Scathing statement from Bernie Sanders on the election results
āIt should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned themā¦ā
Hello America! Your āIsrael has the right to defend itselfā has divided north Gaza into three parts and I lost communication with my whole family now.
We will not forget that.
Israeli media reporting that the IDF is declaring northern Gaza effectively ethnically cleansed, not event a hint of pretense now that its election day
MeidasTouch has identified 15 of the 16 ārandom black votersā in a Trump campaign ad, who supposedly just decided to support him, as longtime GOP operatives, candidates, and paid influencers. The ad was featured in an NBC news story. https://t.co/tF0dJ5VFSw
Intentionally blocking aid, targeting humanitarian workers, and now banning UNRWA. All of Gaza is on the brink of famine.
The Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of war. How much more evidence does the Biden-Harris administration need to stop these war crimes?
The joke rightly bombed, but the reason is much more interesting than āyou canāt call Puerto Rico an island of garbage because itās amazing.ā The joke bombed because the audience doesnāt have a secure enough relationship with Puerto Rico to joke about it like that.
There���s a certain sort of edgy humor you could call the āolder brotherā joke. You know the sort: you call your brother a moron, but if anyone else does, they can meet you behind the schoolhouse. Call it negging, call it mean-funny, call it what you likeāthe key is that itās rooted both in genuine affection and not in any real insecurity. How does that saying go? Women socialize by complimenting each other and not meaning it, men by insulting each other and not meaning it. Every healthy male friend group Iām in is peppered with both a constant stream of joking insults and with sincere mutual affection.
Thereās a great moment in Succession when one of the characters, invited to talk degradingly to her husband in pillow talk, tells him āIām too good for you. Thatās why you love me, even though I donāt love you. But you want me anyway.ā And she tries to pass it off as a joke and she tries to recover from it, but on some level both of them know she actually feels that way and it ruins them.
Puerto Rico and other US territories are sort of niggling awkward questions for the US. People from the Northern Mariana Islands are citizens and can vote, but how many Americans think of Saipan on a regular basis? How many of them feel in their bones that itās The Same As Them?
I havenāt been to Puerto Rico, but I did stop over in Saipan for a few days. And it was beautiful and it was fun and it was great and Iād love to go back sometime, and it was also clearly and palpably at a different stage of development to that of US states.
The richest US territory, per capita, has a lower GDP than the poorest state. People in the territories are US citizens, but they live far away from the empire heartland and nobody quite has a serious plan for their incorporation as states, nobodyās quite sure what to do with themāremnants, as they are, of a different era.
That can and should change. We should be thrilled to have the territories as part of America, and we should not flinch at incorporating more territories as appropriate, if more areas want to be incorporated. But it creates a hint of status insecurityāof uncertainty. You can say Puerto Ricans are amazing, and itās true! If Puerto Rico and the USāand in particular, the Republican Partyāhad a secure, fully mutually confident and healthy understanding of their relationship, you could rib them on the political stage and everyone could have a good time.
But they donāt, and so instead the joke landed a bit more like the accidentally honest moment in Succession:
That was a joke, right? You didnāt mean that, right? You donāt actually think theyāre a garbage patch, when you think about them at all? You like and respect and care about them, not only as a throwaway line when you want their voteā¦
right?