The Red Shift
The image comes from the New York Times, and I was looking to find this but for the 2020 election but cannot find it. This election highlights the illusion that was 2020 due to Covid, the decrease in voter turnout is also extremely telling.
The next four years are going to be harrowing.
Added Later
Just found this image online and this is very interesting to see as another visualization of the shift in this election. Fascinating that the only two states to shift more Blue were Washington and Utah.
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I am not going to say today is a good day. But I did just snag the 9 cd set of the dramatization of the Lord of the Rings book trilogy off the free table at work.
Do I have a working CD player? Not at the moment.
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"Forget 'Why?', it's time to get to work."
I remember reading this from Anil eight years ago. He reshared it today and it's still a good read.
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Bernie shares his thoughts on the democratic loss
Bernie tweeted the following:
It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.
And they're right.
Along with it, there is the following statement.
NEWS: Sanders Statement on the Results of the 2024 Presidential Election
November 6, 2024
BURLINGTON, Vt. Sen. Bernie Sanders (1-Vt.) today released the following statement in response to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election:
It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right.
Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.
Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents. And many of them worry that Artificial Intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse.
Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave.
Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government's all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children.
Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not.
In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions.
Stay tuned.
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From Nov. 2021 - "Democrats’ Betrayals Are Jeopardizing American Democracy"
Go read the full article, I implore you. The following is the opening paragraphs and then an excerpt of Franklin Roosevelt. But the entire article is excellent and it was written in 2021.
American democracy is in the midst of a meltdown — the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and Republicans' intensifying crusade to limit voting rights and deny election results make that abundantly clear. Conflict-averse Democrats in Washington, D.C., are on the verge of letting this turn into a full-fledged nightmare. Torn between their corporate donors and the electorate, they are studiously avoiding the two key questions: What is really fueling this crisis? And how can it be stopped?
The answer to the first question can be seen in headlines this week about billionaires growing their fortunes by $2 trillion during the pandemic, and now creating an overheated market for luxury yachts, all while one in five households just lost their entire life savings. Americans keep voting to change this crushing dystopia and yet they continue being force-fed more of the same — most recently with Democrats threatening to side with their financiers and abandon their whole economic agenda. Such betrayals from both parties have been telling more and more of the country that democracy is a farce.
It was the following insight about Roosevelt's observations that made me want to capture it here:
Once elected, Roosevelt championed a then-radical program of government investments and interventions in the economy, directly employing millions of the jobless, investing in public infrastructure, and subjecting powerful financial institutions to tough regulations. Though the New Deal was hardly perfect, the agenda was an unprecedented investment in America's working class, helping restore some faith in democratic government as a force for good.
The year before a fulminating Nazi rally in a packed Madison Square Garden in New York, FDR warned that the global rise of fascism was the result of democratic governments doing the opposite of the New Deal and protecting an economic status quo enriching a tiny handful at the expense of everyone else.
"Democracy has disappeared in several other great nations, not because the people of those nations disliked democracy, but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity, of seeing their children hungry while they sat helpless in the face of government confusion and government weakness through lack of leadership," he said in a 1938 radio address. "Finally, in desperation, they chose to sacrifice liberty in the hope of getting something to eat."
To know Roosevelt's analysis was correct is to look at how his investments ultimately rescued the economy, beat back fascists, got him re-elected in landslide elections, and created a 40-year epoch we now call the New Deal era. His prescience was also confirmed by what concurrently happened in Germany, where leaders imposed spending cuts.
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Automated Archives for November, 6th 2024
This post was automatically generated.
Chess For the Day
Record: 0-0-1
Net Elo Change: -6
Games Played
Blog Posts On This Day
- November 6, 2023 (1 post)
- November 6, 2022 (1 post)
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