25 Comments

Amen to that Anand. Lick our wounds and get back on the line. It’s what we do. Neofascists be damned, full speed ahead.

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I am trying to process that the people in the country in which I live hate me more than they love their Constitution and the Democracy under which we have lived fully only from the mid-20th century until now, the first quarter of the 21st century. Only a short 70 years since women and people of color were fully emancipated.

And in that time, only about 45 percent of America's citizens have actually been in accord with that emancipation. It's hard to have to acknowledge that heavy truth.

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We begin but examining the what they did right, not by pointing fingers on what Dems did wrong.

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The Harris campaign did phenomenal work in pulling off a nearly flawless campaign in 108 days. Consider that Donald Trump and his allies had four years, or thirteen times more time to pull off theirs.

There is a lot to be learned about the effort and how it did well in areas normally untouched by the Democratic party.

Kudos to Kamala and her crew. I hope they will go on and include many of us in their future plans. Our ardor is not extinguished.

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Thanks for framing the work ahead. Mourning is a good way to put it, though I finished mourning for the promise of this country decades ago. Let’s begin anew.

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Or not so much examining what appealed (so bizarrely?!) to so many voters in 2024, but thinking about who can run in 2026 and in 2028 in support of actual, genuine democracy. Democrats have to think seriously about this and do the work, keep on with the work.

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You sound like a marketing consultant after a product launch fails. This is not about stitching together a bunch of ill-informed constituencies, like packaging advertising to target audiences. This is about dealing with a much larger problem that has festered and grown for far too long, a complete collapse of civic education that stretches back to at least the 80s. I am reminded of that opening scene from Space Oddesey 2020 where the apes are clubbing a high-tech monolith with the bones of their vanquished brothers. In this case, the tragically unaware are banging away at the foundations of the most advanced democratic republic in the history of the world with no clue what they are doing to their own futures. It's pathetic. I'm not saying they are bad people. I'm saying that we, as a society, have failed for generations to instill an understanding of the value, the treasure that we have in a Constitutional republic, and the need to safeguard it constantly. We need to start rebuilding by freeing public education from nativist local school boards, and setting minimum requirements for voting that include some basic understanding of why and how government works, and what democracy actually requires.

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Amen to civic education! While canvassing I have to admit how many woefully ill-informed and ignorant people I found there to be. It's not necessarily their fault. Without protecting and improving public education, we as a nation will be doomed to the fickle whims of an electorate whose memory is as long as that of a flea.

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I've long felt that a unifying movement needs to address the concentration of wealth and the consolidation of all business into a few huge corporations, and how this affects all of us negatively. We need to create a whole new language to use. Maybe we have to promote ambitious social change (i.e. trans rights) with empathy and understanding and patience, and take shame out of the equation. We have to create some kind of framework for establishing trust in truthful information. Trusting huge corporations with our journalism, whether it's twitter, Fox, or MSNBC, needs to be recognized as something that's inadvisable and I think we can actually attach immorality to it. It's one thing to buy food and goods from Walmart. That may be necessary. But to take our ideas from there? To trust them as a source of information? I feel like there are things we can agree on, and we need to start with those things

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Stop the ‘blame-game’ in its tracks and begin the ‘responsibility’ game. No more talk of ‘the patriarchy’, ‘toxic masculinity’, no more DEI, no Gen Z/Gen X let us downisms, no blaming Biden/Harris/the Democratic establishment, no racial animus, etc.. Go out to the Breton Woods and find the centre as the Republicans, Trump and MAGA will implode as they explode the economy, judiciary, nepotism and grift, debt, financial markets, international treaties, health care, immigration and on and on. It’s all theirs’ now. Don’t watch and weep. Look, see and adapt. or, die again. And by the way, let’s agree to not trust the mainstream media but to consider them as a periodically useful tool.

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As a retired Minister I’m thankful and heartened by your words of compassion, challenge, rebuilding and restoration. You would almost think our mourning could become new life.

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Will my words matter? Can we re-tool? Will we be able to make the important changes? A more perfect Union requires trust and equal justice. We must check lies, share truth, filter the noise. Education must require learning how to think critically and communicate effectively. We need to be able to connect abstractions and applications. Literacy for all is essential for information flow and access. We must find shared goals and experiences in communities. Fear comes from ignorance and perceived powerlessness. We have to demonstrate strengths. I appreciate your pre-vita questions, thank you. You have made a difference.

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You gave some order to the messy, inchoate questing that's been churning since before the election and has me lashing out stupidly on social media since we lost. This is a revolutionary mindshift if it took hold. Tolerant, curious, educable, bleeding heart liberals, unassuming poets and grass-roots sociologists is at the core of my identity as a Democrat.

To make people feel invited rather than shamed requires doing away with shame-based behavior modification techniques. Public shaming will never put our ideological opponents on the right path, but that doesn't stop barking dogmatists from using it as their go-to tactic, at least on social media. No one is obligated to care about what you want, behave as you want or listen to you or me. We need to persuade people to care about what we care about, or as you say, widen their appetite for future progress. We can't make them care about what we want without knowing what holds them back, so we can meaningfully address their resistance with big, aspirational campaigns by our beautiful leftist visionaries. xoxox

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What they did right was put the old dog and pony show grievance circus performer

out there in hate rallies and promised to return them to the Obama economy pre covid. The message was the same in 2016 and 2020. What has changed is that Trump is in advanced dementia and that cannot be covered for long or changed. Trump is not capable of any type of governance. The country will be frog marched into Project 2025. If we lose the House it is all over.

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Trying to take comfort and understanding from whatever words you have to offer us during these days of mourning. Thank you.

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The fact that the stock market did really well today suggests that Wall Street is excitedly anticipating pull back of government oversight, greater profits, and lower taxes for the the big players, Major corporations, not average people, stand to gain from Trump, his wealthy cronies and their agenda. Trump may be the most visible, loud and heinous example of the larger, deeper cancer of greed exemplified by the monied elites, but he is definitely NOT the only enemy of the common people. That Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and other prominent Silicon Valley tech players put their money behind him says volumes! Despite appearances to the contrary, The NY Times, the WSJ and other outlets, helped get him elected because they know which side their bread is buttered on. It is the wealth divide which is the biggest threat to democracy. Check out "Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)" by Olufemi O. Taiwo, and "Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country in the World" by Sarah Smarsh, Vance's progressive counterpart.

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Last night when I realized that Trump would return to the White House, I was so upset. I wanted to go to the brow of Lookout Mountain and scream. I realize that some men don't love and respect women. I was not ready to accept that thousands of women feel the same, This morning I got up, made breakfast and put on lipstick. I then did a FB video to encourage my friends. I stand ready to join any group or effort to make certain we monitor and respond to any misdeeds the Trump administration plans. Sandra Padgett

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