RSVP to the Party
What do I have in common with a surbanite?
The Supreme Court, which is a fancy way to say Justice Sonia Sotomayor (good) and eight cold-blooded reptiles (bad), ruled in Citizens United (2010) that money was speech, actually.
You might be shocked to learn what followed was a golden age of corruption. In Ohio, we saw how this played out when a two-bit energy company wasn’t satisfied with selling the Earth’s resources back to people who lived there. They decided to buy every level of Ohio’s state government and couldn’t help but keep the receipts for the bangers the executives threw while doing federal crimes:
Ohio Democrats rightfully raise a lot of ruckus about “dark money,” which is a phrase that not even a lot of politically poisoned people can explain. And if they can, they sound insane explaining the concept to normal brained people who simply say yeah no shit sherlock, money runs everything in politics.
Esoteric dark money messaging loses juice when those same people get behind a Congressional candidate who was only viable thanks to millions of dollars spent by special interest groups, including Trump donors and billionaire Bob Kraft.
I would never vote for a candidate backed by a plunderbund. However in America you get something called the '“Democratic Majority for Israel” spending millions of dollars to smear a woman who had the audacity to claim Palestinians were human:
When I talk about “The Establishment,” this is what I’m talking about. It will never be as effective at defeating Republicans as it will be leftist candidates.
I didn’t make any bold predictions about Nina Turner winning because I’ve seen this porno before. A Democrat comes along and says they believe a trip to the hospital shouldn’t bankrupt Americans or that they should at least make $15 per hour of labor. Next thing you know Super PACs are dumping millions of dollars on their head and painting them as the Anti-Christ.
The tragic thing is electing Turner to Congress wouldn’t have changed anything in a macro sense. Yet, I admit, it would have been funny to watch establishment flunkies have to hold their nose and pull the lever for somebody they find repugnant. I wonder what that’s like?
I’m with My Friend Camilo every step of the way, except not even I could be bothered to vote for that fink Ed Fitzgerald.
I didn’t understand how voters in OH-11 could elect somebody to Congress who oversaw the debacle that was Cleveland’s voter turnout in the 2020 election. But then I saw how the suburbs put Brown over the top:
Powerful centrists love to say that, “Twitter isn’t real life,” as if it’s an astounding revelation. I’m well aware that this democracy is operating as our founders intended: With the landed gentry having the most sway in our political process. Normally they pretend it’s because America by large wouldn’t vote for a socialist president. But as we saw in OH-11, leftist candidates can’t even be allowed to prosper in impenetrable Blue districts.
The Democratic Party, both nationally and in Ohio, obviously welcomes becoming the party of wealthy suburbanites. Look at how the Democratic machine runs Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus if you don’t believe me.
It’s much easier attending cocktail parties and tsk-tsking about the latest Republican hobgoblinery than it is to actually organize the poor working class and improve their material conditions. Working-class voters abandoning the Democratic Party isn’t a coincidence; it’s by design.
I feel just as alienated talking to somebody who feels inspired by Shontel Brown as I do to somebody who flies a Trump flag on the back of their pickup truck. But only one of them wants to burn the system to the ground, and that’s a lot more relatable to me than reinforcing the status quo simply because we evicted The Bad Orange Man from the White House and now it’s all about letting the good times roll.
THOSE WMDs. Andrew Cuomo’s Big Gross Book of Touching… This is what happens to your body when you drink enough water… Chris Farley: The wild ride and the sad end… The rise of never-ending job interviews… Why did America give up on mass transit?