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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of May 11
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https://www.thebulwark.com/p/heres-what-i-told-the-dnc-autopsy-biden-harris-2024-lessons-democrats-2028
Rob Flaherty was the deputy campaign manager of the Harris and Biden campaigns for 2024, and gave his own autopsy of the 2024 election, writing for the Bulwark.
AOC maybe, I'm also okay with Pritzker. He's another white billionaire though, but at least his track record is good.
I'm realistic about Pritzker being a more "marketable" or "realistic" choice than any woman sigh and certainly any young brown women. I don't think the racism and sexism of this country can be underestimated. Pritzker being Jewish and fat are pretty much all they could target him with and even in rural IL it's "only" the "fat" that surfaces.
But he's done good IMO, and his parents seem to have "raised him right" by taking him to protests in his youth and making him work as a teen and in office he's supported BLM and protected queer rights and idk, he's still a billionaire but I'll take this kind of billionaire over tech bros any day. (His wealth is like gerrymandering, it shouldn't happen but if it does might as well appreciate when it works in our favor). And I'll take him over Newsom in a heartbeat.
Sadly this is a strong point to bring up. Dems tried twice with a woman and while I don't think it's entirely the fact that they were women which reduced their chances at winning, it certainly played an outsized role in their defeat.
I would happily vote AOC. I can't speak to others.
I genuinely think it's mostly the misogyny. Hillary Clinton would be praised by Republican colleagues as a Senator and ripped into anytime it was campaign season. I read an article years ago now about the tone shift every couple of years and it's incredibly obvious. Claiming it's not because she's a woman it's because she's "this woman" is the Hallmark of "I'm not sexist but ..." commentary and I think a lot of what makes her "unlikeable" is that she's a woman behaving the way men do/did. (Not invalidating anyone's individual feelings about any candidate this is just my societal read and a revisit of my own opinions)
I'd also vote for AOC depending on her competition, though personally I'd like her to have more experience leading before she tries for presidency.
Sadly I think there’s a lot of Americans from all different backgrounds who simply won’t vote for a woman. There’s a million small things that probably added up to Harris’ loss but the margin was narrow so any one of them may have been enough. And the fact that Trump won about 46% of the Latino vote should scare dems from running a woman again.
I would guess that the first woman president will be a conservative republican. This combination would take advantage of the built in advantage of republicans (electoral college, gerrymandering, media empire) and also negate the anti-woman campaigning because democrats can’t get away with that.
In the TV show “For All Mankind”, which is a fictional alt-history where Russia landed people on the moon first and there ends up being colonies on the moon, the first woman president is a republican former astronaut and it feels pretty plausible.
Doubly so for the secrets she's forced to keep in order to achieve that. That show is so good, gonna have to rewatch it soon.
There's a website I discovered from a bluesky post today, which is apparently an SNES-style adventure that mocks Trump and his admin in a creative way.
https://www.epicfurious.com/
After a little research, I found this very clickbaity DailyBeast article about it. Apparently this is done by some artists called "The Secret Handshake" who also made physical arcade machines with the game.
I haven't played much of the browser game, but my experience doesn't completely match the description given by The Daily Beast so I'm not sure if it's identical.