Blame the Chick!

Have you asked yourself lately:

“Have Democrats exhibited any kind of a learning curve from last year’s Bernie vs Hillary debacle which–even though it was mostly fueled by trolls from Russia or, alternatively, from Koch headquarters in Kansas–dominated the dialogue for weeks on end and weakened the Democrats just when they needed to be strong?”

Check out the noise on the Twitterverse and you’ll get your answer. Jon Ossoff was supposed to win 300% of the vote in the heavily Republican (R+20!) 6th District of Georgia, but instead of that, asshole Republican Karen Handel and Republican super PACs said Ossoff was a San Francisco Values Nancy Lesbian Pelosi, and because they wouldn’t stop saying her name, Ossoff lost like a regular Hillary Clinton, and this means the Democratic brand is DEAD, just like Republican pollster Frank Luntz said.

This is the truth if you listen to an extremely annoying contingent of snowflake Democrats and non-Democrats who apparently don’t know how to read election data, and who seem to literally think that because Democrats lost this year’s special elections, Nancy Pelosi should crawl under a rock and die because A) IT’S HER FAULT and B) Those were totally winnable races, as long as you don’t study them too closely and apply math.

Let’s run through some quotes from Pelosi haters real quick, so that we may learn from their combined centuries of experience in Democratic politics:

“We need leadership change,” New York Democratic Rep. Kathleen Rice told CNN outside the House chamber. “It’s time for Nancy Pelosi to go, and the entire leadership team.” […] MA Dem Rep. Seth ASSHOLE Moulton: “This is certainly something that we have to discuss because it’s clear that, I think, across the board in the Democratic Party we need new leadership. It’s time for a new generation of leadership in the party.” [Ohio Rep. Tim] Ryan told reporters Wednesday “there’s a level of depression” among members and said bluntly, “Our brand is toxic.”

Also:

“I think you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top,” said Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas), who supported Pelosi in her last leadership race. “Nancy Pelosi is not the only reason that Ossoff lost. But she certainly is one of the reasons.”

Those I will call The Dumb Democrats (sometimes not even Democrats at all, but third party usurpers), themselves are now regurgitating Republican attack lines. Harken back to many of the criticisms of Hillary Clinton uttered during the Democratic primary campaign by Bernie Sanders and others traced their lineage to Republican condemnations against her and her husband that had been first trotted out in the 1990s. Now, with Pelosi, “progressives” are integrating GOP attacks against her — that she is “out of touch with white working-class voters” and that she personifies far-left social values because she’s from San Francisco. Simply by being Nancy Pelosi and living in a place that has become a symbolic battering ram for attacking liberals, she’s suddenly a liability.

Did you know that there was a House Democratic caucus meeting last week, and Nancy Pelosi had the utter audacity to say that, even though they lost this year’s special elections, Democrats are lookin’ good in a lot of other districts currently held by Republicans? What the fuck, Nancy, with your “facts” and shit? What good are they even? “Facts” are for the “establishment,” a convenient label we use for whomever we feel like attacking that day!

In each of the four races — all of which were in districts NEVER seriously contested by Democrats, because they are BLOOD RED — the Democratic candidates all made historically good showings. In the Kansas race to replace Republican Mike Pompeo, now Trump’s CIA director, the Democrat only lost by 7 points. In November, Pompeo won re-election by THIRTY FUCKING GODDAMN POINTS.

Quist and Ossoff were candidates lacking experience and gravitas who outperformed. And look at the time horizon for Ossoff and Quist. How long did they have to campaign? We have 18 months until the 2018 elections. We are going to organize the fuck out of ourselves by then. We made double digit gains over 2016 results in every one of the special elections- an average 8% gain over Cook PVI. Extrapolate that to 50 states, rather than 4 deep red districts and it could be an 80 seat flip. As long as the Bernie/Nation Magazine loser set doesn’t fuck us up, if we’re not too busy worrying about the spacing of the circular firing sqaud.

Shouldn’t we ignore Pelosi’s years of experience as an incredibly effective leader — hey you know that Obamacare you’re fighting to save right now? Nancy built that — and choose a new leader, so the GOP can start branding that person as a Hippiesexual Abortionista Muslim? Don’t we need a fucking FRESH START???????

(History sidenote: In 2009, when the shoe was on the other foot, there were special elections in the House to replace Obama appointees, and the GOP didn’t pick up any of those seats either. Yet in 2010, the GOP cleaned fucking house in the Teabagger midterms, so we guess those special elections weren’t an indication that the GOP brand was completely dead in 2009. But this is DIFFERENT! Because REASONS! And those reasons definitely do not have anything to do with SEXISM).

The Bros and ne-liberals say that we need to start listening to our Republican friends and take their suggestions to heart because they want what’s best for us, you know!

The Brogressive Problem is here and it is real. We can not stand by and ignore it any longer or wish it away. I don’t care if you supported Bernie Sanders last year. This shit is real and is happening now and is a huge threat to our collective standing as women of consequence in this country,

Look at the people Republicans attack the most, and there you find our most effective leaders. That’s why they attack them. DUH! The idea that Dems should ditch someone because Republicans don’t like them is so illogical. And the Bros take the bait every. single. time.

Republicans have a convenient foil in Nancy Pelosi, but if she’s removed, they’ll just find a new foil. They’re horrible nasty people and their base voters are idiots.

Democrats do not need to change faces, because the Republicans’ billion-dollar round-the-clock smear machine will just shoot Republican shitwads all over the new face, whoever it may belong to. They shush Kamala Harris and call Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” and Fox News is never more than one rage fit away from calling Maxine Waters the N-word.

Now remember when the “Liberal” “Young Turks” reporter had his microphone-holding hand tapped by 78-year-old African American Congress Lady Maxine Waters, and then acted as if it were a violent assault on the press?

Perhaps no one in the Bernout squad is worse than Jimmy Dore. Stupid, sexist, smug, unfunny, vicious, he spends a to of his free time targeting whichever women happens to be draining attention away from Bernie.

Right. Maybe don’t tell us who gives a fuck about us, shitferbrains.

There’s an actual reason they hate Nancy Pelosi, which is that she’s good at her job. The woman who never lost a vote when she had the gavel-not ONE!- is now toxic? Gee, kind of like the most experienced, intelligent and best candidate to ever run for POTUS. One would think that Democrats despise strong women as much as the GOP does…nah….

Do you really believe Republicans would be terrified of a new Democratic leader without Pelosi’s decades of experience in keeping a caucus together? If so, READ A BOOK. READ A FUCKING BOOK.

Nancy Pelosi held a presser the other day and specifically responded to Trump’s tweet about her, saying “Usually they go after the most effective leaders because they want to diminish the opportunity that we have.” AYUP! She added:

“I am proud of the unity that we have had and, frankly, my leadership in terms of keeping everybody together,” she said. “I think I’m worth the trouble.”

If I didn’t love her already, “I think I’m worth the trouble” would’ve sold me. More women need to say that. And we need to hear it, too. This narrative of “women leaders/women’s repro rights/women generally are just too damn much trouble, so let’s ditch/downplay/ignore them” has been ongoing, and it’s so damn disheartening. We ARE worth the trouble, all of us.

Nancy Pelosi has been an unapologetic liberal who has repeatedly shown her willingness to hold the house dem base together behind her. The reason Obamacare isn’t as awesome as it could have been had nothing to do with Nancy Pelosi.

BUT, it is always the woman’s fault, right? Hillary’s fault, now it’s Pelosi’s fault. They will just go down the line and go after women. They are already going after Liz Warren and Kamala Harris. It is always the uppity women and that damn black man, it comes down to that every time. Blaming the scary vagetarian in potential power is going to be 100% of the gameplan going into 2018. That’s all they will be running on. Any respectable liberal should be embarrassed to be falling for this shit.

Misogyny is a virus, has the capacity to mutate, and is infectious, which is why public life is so toxic for women today. It sometimes becomes dormant – usually when the economy is humming along ok – but it never really goes away. The New Misogyny has spread fast this past year, I have never known a time when woman-hating has been so seething or so widespread.

The New Misogyny is particularly vicious, almost gleefully cruel to a point that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, aided by the Internet, a cauldron of cruelty and vitriol.. There is plenty of evidence of misogyny from Roman poetry in the first century BC to last week’s NY Times Sunday Styles section. But it always seemed somewhat tenable because equality legislation was zooming in and job opportunities were opening up. I counted myself lucky to have missed out on witch trials, the selling of women into slavery, and the goddamn 1950’s. I never imagined that it would be commonplace to see photographs of bearded men in Syria, crammed into the back of trucks under a sinister black flag, Yazidi girls being sold in slave markets in the Isis stronghold of Raqqa. Or Boko Haram, a terrorist organisation so implacably opposed to girls’ education that it kidnaps schoolgirls and forces them into sexual slavery. I never thought I’d see Bill Cosby, the country’s biggest serial rapist, walking free.

Tragically and inexplicably, the presence of women in powerful positions seems to unleash misogyny rather than curb it. Hillary Clinton’s attempt to win the presidential election was accompanied by a campaign of breathtaking cruelty. Republican conventioneers ramped up the misogyny with witch-hu nting chants of “Lock her up!” Woman-hating has come roaring back, borne on a tide of Donald Trump, Twitter, Reddit, Bernie Bros, The Young Turks, “economic anxiety”, and religious extremism.

IF ONLY Nancy Pelosi didn’t exist, and Kathy Griffin wouldn’t have done that thing, and that psycho wouldn’t have shot up that ballpark in Virginia, and there hadn’t been torrential storms in Georgia on election day, and The South wasn’t a hotbed of white identity politics and people actually understood political policy and basic civics, and critical thinking was still a thing, and the most reliable portion of the electorate hadn’t seceded from reality 30-years ago, and politically correct suburban ninnies weren’t so easily dismayed by their perception of what sort of pagan rituals happen in the streets of San Francisco, then everyone would realize that my own personal political preferences are the most popular and winningest ideas ever and would solve every single problem immediately. It’s obvious, but goddamn it if corporatist neoliberals just can’t get out of the way so that I can finally shine effortlessly like the flawless jewel I was born to be. I mean if REAL progressives like Rob Quist and Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn can lose their elections then there’s nothing that will stop me if only everything went exactly as I demanded. Why doesn’t anyone listen to real progressives?

If the Democratic party would just give in to sexism and racism, throw women and LBGT people and non-Christians all under the bus, and only allow straight white men to run for office, then surely all the poor white people would suddenly start voting for Democrats because they’re all secret socialists who are just turned away by “identity politics.” By the way, of course I voted for Bernie in the primary and then stayed home out of pique in the general rather than vote for that bitch neoliberal Hillary who dared to steal the election from The Messiah just by getting more votes when she didn’t even have a penis like him.

Yes, I have a LOT of contempt for opportunistic, sexist, ageist jerks who would weaken effective Democratic leadership in the House. The old lady jokes, the pantsuit and facelift jokes, from the same dipshits who think the white-haired 73-yr-old socialist got screwed outta being the preznink. For years, Hillary Clinton hit number one on the most admired woman in the world. Every time she ran for office, she dropped out of the list. And women in the Democratic Party seem to draw this hatred more than men (Harry Reid did receive his share of claims he was incompetent when he was not).

Fucking liberals always with this shit. Republicans demonize a politician. Their attacks are often horrendous and untrue; but GOP voters believe them and develop an instinctual hatred of said politician. The Dumb Democrats become convinced that they must react to these often irrational beliefs, party infighting ensues, with said party leader disparaged and dismissed. Remember when Obamacare passed and so many of the Dem reps in the House were skittish and nervous cuz of all the bullshit Tea Party rage rallies and oh hey – we fucking got our asses handed to us anyways in the mid terms? Because we didn’t stick together and line up behind our President Bamz and defend the ACA come hell or high water. Remember 2012 when all the squeamish Dems ran away from Obama like the craven cowards that they are? How’d that work out? Bamz comfortably won reelection and most of the ones not willing to stand up for their party, their platform, their leader, their accomplishments – got sent home. Remember how the GOP got rid of Boner and McTurtleface in 2009 after getting their asses handed to them by Bamz? Remember how they kicked Newt and Huckster and all the rest to the curb? Remember how the GOP moved to the left to try to woo Dem voters? Me neither… Why? Because they’re not neurotic, self destructive morons (technically, they are Morans), constantly looking for ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Let’s learn ONE thing from Republicans, OK? They close ranks and support each other when IT MATTERS. And result? Donald fucking Trump is president. Ok? They ALL hate the fucker but they ALL voted for him. But us? Oh no. We have to have that one guy and if not him, we will protest vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson – literal MORONS – and effectively split our motherfucking base and then yell at each other forever cuz Hillary lost, blaming all the other women in the party and never the motherfucking guy who ran against the party while running IN the party. Can we please get a fucking grip? Kicking out Pelosi – the one who got Obama’s agenda enacted so effectively – would be epic stepping on our own lady dicks. Can we not do that please? How about all the bills she shepherded through hostile territory. How about the fact that despite being minority leader she has consistently outmaneuvered the GOP over the years? You blame her for the 2010 midterm losses, based upon what? Yet you don’t give her credit for taking over the House in 2006- funny how that works. She’s a fundraising juggernaut. And here you are parroting the Bernie Bro bullshit about “corporatist” while at the same time whining about the PR problem of her being too liberal- WHICH ONE IS IT? If you need any more convincing that letting Pelosi go would be a disaster – fucking Trump and Gingrich and Huckabee egging us on. We’re being trolled by the trolls. Gives new meaning to “Russian Drones.” The first thing that will happen will be immense pressure on the new leader to compromise and give in to the GOP to demonstrate bipartisanship. And this will be abetted and enabled by the bothsider MSM villagers. By the time it’s over, you’ll either have another feisty version of Pelosi who will be demonized just like she is and become the new poster child for “libtards” or you’ll get a squishy, ineffective quisling to lead us. Pelosi has been doing what she can in an INSANE political environment. I ask you to tell us who would have been better? What should have been differently? And, as always, your faction of the party ignores gerrymandering, voter suppression, and every other underhanded trick. This is real simple folks- know why Handel won and Gianforte won and Estes won? BECAUSE THEY ARE REPUBLICANS RUNNING IN DEEP RED AREAS. This isn’t a messaging failure, it’s not the DNC’s fault, it’s not Pelosi’s fault, it’s not even the candidates’ fault. The only thing they could have done to possibly win would have been to run as Republicans.______-R will beat _____-D in those places EVERY FUCKING TIME. Republicans vote for Republicans. They are so tribal that their party has become the world’s biggest cult. They would literally vote for Satan-R over Jeebus-D because they are that brainwashed. But instead of recognizing the huge gains we made in those places and the enormous closing of the partisan gaps that got everyone excited about a suddenly competitive race in the first place, Dems are doing their usual circular firing squad bullshit, running around with their hair on fire, looking for some knee jerk solution to “fix” something, anything, no matter how much collateral damage they cause in the process WHAT THIS IS is a blatant power play by the Berniecrat contingent to clear the deck for one of their own, with all the ugliness and misogyny it invokes. I mean, seriously? Pelosi lost the elections? Seriously? the GOP wouldn’t find another convenient foil to run against if she didn’t exist? Seriously? the party that turned a mild mannered centrist Dem into a Kenyan socialist monster in cahoots with the Muslim Brotherhood to take away your guns and force you to ghey marry your dog wouldn’t be able to invent another boogeyman? This sums up everything that is wrong with today’s politics. The Right blunders forward, right or wrong, they DGAF because they are winning. Meanwhile The Left actually manages to accomplish a few things, then fucks it all up by questioning everything they’ve done, going full blown purity pony because it’s never “good enough” and wallowing in self doubt. The MSM runs with the cherished meme of “Dems in disarray” like a cat on meth with a 5 gallon bucket of catnip. And the stupid people don’t digest 90% of this but decide to vote for the snake oil salesman because he shows confidence and never apologizes or admits he’s wrong…

Dems have been told endlessly that “we” don’t want “experience” because they are “entrenched in the corrupt power structure” or something. The fuck? Dems HAVE been trying new techniques and strategies and candidates. They HAVE been doing something other than “talk about Trump” and tried to steer the conversation back to “the issues.” But they’re not “the issues” that Republicans or Faux-Bro-Progressives use to build their strawmen on so no one pays attention (notice that in these self-righteous scoldings, none of them actually expounds on any “issues” with any significance either?) Just to add for people who (supposedly) hate focus on “the horse race” they certainly are participating in itto the exclusion of all else (I guess they just found one high enouh to ride on.)