DCUM Weblog

For the third day running, one of the most active threads was about a cabinet nomination by President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. This one was titled, "RFKjr Tapped to Head HHS" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. As noted in the title, Trump announced that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was his choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services. I consider this choice a little unusual for Trump. His previous cabinet choices emphasized loyalty. Kennedy is a bit of a loose cannon whose loyalty might be in question. Putting Kennedy in charge of HHS is not just putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, it is more like putting someone who denies the moon landing at the head of NASA. The chances of Kennedy completely destroying the department are fairly high. At first glance, I can see several categories of damage that Kennedy might do. One is messaging. MAGAs especially tend to believe Trump and his top people rather than experts. The more that Kennedy deemphasizes important health measures and, instead, highlights unproven quackery, the more that public health is likely to suffer. Second is interference with important research projects that he simply doesn't understand. It is common practice to track down some esoteric research project that, at first glance, sounds ridiculous and highlight it as a waste of money. The problem is that you never really know where these projects might lead. For instance, the popular weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy had their origin in research into lizard venom. The flip side of this coin is that Kennedy might direct research into areas that aren't productive. A poster in this thread suggests that Kennedy might put significant funds into stem cell research which the poster believes would be a waste of time and money. I don't have the knowledge to comment on that in any way, but Kennedy has plenty of off-the-wall ideas that I could easily see him prioritizing that either lead nowhere or make things worse. Additional damage could be by simple neglect. HHS is huge, encompassing the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and much, much more. It is going to take a while for Kennedy to simply learn all this is under his purview. If he gets lost trying to reform the FDA, for instance, what will happen to the rest of the Department? One specific threat that Kennedy presents is his attitude toward vaccines. Kennedy has falsely linked vaccines to autism and has equated the use of vaccines to the Holocaust. Any steps Kennedy takes to discourage the use of vaccines could have a profound negative impact on health, especially of children. Kennedy also promotes discredited theories such as his claims about the benefits of raw milk. This is particularly concerning because the United States is currently experiencing an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus in dairy cattle. The H5N1 virus can be spread through unpasteurized milk from infected cows. If the H5N1 bird flu continues to spread during the Trump administration, having at the head of HHS a man who promotes a mechanism for spreading it and who will likely interfere with vaccines meant to combat it will be, to say the least, problematic. Kennedy even supports some of the leading MAGA theories from Trump's first term, such as believing that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are effective COVID treatments. It is hard to pin down exactly which of Trump's cabinet picks presents the most threat to our well-being, but a very strong argument can be made for Kennedy.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Matt Gaetz tapped for AG" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Yesterday, I wrote about the nomination of Pete Hegseth and said that, "Trump's cabinet is quickly shaping up to be the MAGA version of the Star Wars bar, with every type of right-wing freak imaginable." But even with my expectations set accordingly, I was taken completely by surprise by this pick. So much so that I actually deleted the first thread about Matt Gaetz being chosen for Attorney General because I assumed that it was a troll. There appear to be several layers to this particular onion, and I am not sure that we have uncovered them all yet. I suspect that there are more surprises to come. With that in mind, here is what we know. Gaetz was previously investigated by federal authorities for his role in a sex trafficking ring. Gaetz, who will now oversee a significant amount of highly confidential information, left his Venmo transactions publicly viewable. His Venmo history showed payments to a woman who was linked to the sex trafficking ring. Gaetz was alleged to have paid the woman for sex at a time when she was underage. The Federal investigation of Gaetz was dropped without his being charged, but a close associate of his pled guilty and is currently serving an 11-year sentence. The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics has been investigating Gaetz and his involvement in sex trafficking for some time. Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has said that Gaetz offered to drop his effort to remove McCarthy as Speaker if McCarthy quashed the Ethics investigation. McCarthy declined and subsequently lost a vote to remain as Speaker. The Ethics Committee was scheduled to release a report about Gaetz that has been described as "damaging" on Friday. He reportedly met with President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump earlier this week and convinced Trump to make the AG appointment. After Trump announced the decision yesterday, Gaetz resigned from Congress. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is not allowed to appoint a successor for Gaetz. Instead, a special election must be scheduled. It could be that Gaetz' early resignation was meant to allow time for that election and decrease the period during which an empty seat would further decrease the Republicans' slim House majority. However, it is more likely that Gaetz was trying to get out before the report was released. What will happen with that report remains to be seen. In this thread, there was immediate doubt about whether Gaetz could be confirmed. However, many Republican Senators rushed to offer support for Gaetz, and others expressed a lack of interest in having a fight with Trump over the nomination. While Maine Senator Susan Collins announced her opposition, the Republicans only need 50 votes to allow Vice President-elect J. D. Vance to break the tie. Therefore, it will take more than Collins alone to block Gaetz. Even then, Trump has expressed interest in making recess appointments, which would avoid the necessity of Senate confirmation. The upshot is that the next U.S. Attorney General is very likely to be someone who was involved in sex trafficking a minor and whose only qualification is loyalty to Trump. Just one more freak in the Star Wars bar.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "What are the ways you'll resist?", and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster asks how others will "resist the current administration". I assume that the original poster is actually referring to the incoming administration of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump, which won't begin until early next year. The current administration is still that of President Joe Biden, and I don't think anyone would be making plans to resist Biden at this late date. When Trump was elected the first time, he was immediately met by the giant women's march. Protests soon became a feature of the early days of his administration. The later years of Trump's first term were characterized by Black Lives Matter protests, especially following the killing of George Floyd and ANTIFA-led protests in places like Seattle and Portland. The protests became a sort of wedge issue, with many who might otherwise support the causes growing tired of the disruption the protests caused and Trump using them as an excuse for increased militarization of the police. Add to this the slew of protests against Israel's war in Gaza, and mainstream Democrats are sick and tired of protests. As such, there is little interest in what many now see as an ineffectual tactic. In fact, while Democrats have been told, and many believe, that Trump is a unique threat to democracy, very little has been done to prepare to resist him. More common is a sense of resignation, often coupled with an expectation that Trump's administration will be a series of failures that often harm his supporters the most. MAGA posters are taking great pleasure in trash-talking Trump opponents and gloating over their victory. They search for any signs of "liberal tears" and make wild claims over what they expect to happen to the vanquished Democrats. The lack of any notable resistance actually is a disappointment to them. MAGAs want to point and laugh at the futile struggles of Democrats, but can't find anything worth the effort. As one poster wrote, referring to MAGA posters, "This board has been four years of them [MAGAs] whining about everything. And when they don't get the big freakout they've been waiting for, they whine about that." Some posters actually accused the original poster of being a MAGA troll trying to stir up drama that hasn't developed organically. As for the Democrats, they seem more interested in participating in a circular firing squad than resisting Trump. Centrist Democrats don't appear likely to be satisfied until every progressive has publicly renounced any use of pronouns and agreed that the subject of gender will henceforth never be mentioned again. As for progressives, they are too busy resisting other Democrats to worry about Trump. There actually seems to be more interest in resisting First Lady Elon Musk than there is in resisting Trump. People are cancelling X accounts left and right and refusing to allow Teslas to merge in front of them. Unrelated to the thread, but the saddest people on Earth right now must be liberal Tesla owners who bought the cars in order to help the environment and are now being tagged as Trump supporters.

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Psyched! He's closing the Department of Education in Washignton (sic) DC", and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster, who managed to misspell the name of our country's capital city, very excitedly posted a video of President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump saying that he would "close down" the U.S. Department of Education. Trump's plan is to send the Department's functions back to the states. While my predictive powers have been shown wanting recently, I am fairly confident in suggesting that the next several years will feature a torrent of complaints about leopards eating faces from those who voted for the leopards eating faces party. In fact, I expect that this cliché will be used so often in coming years that, if you are not sick of hearing it already, you will be soon. Nowhere is that more likely than in the event that Trump is actually successful in shuttering the Department of Education. It is pretty clear from the get-go that most MAGAs have no idea what the department actually does. Nor do they understand the right-wing motives for getting rid of it. What they know is that their cult leader supports it and, therefore, it must be good. That's enough to provoke this moment of near ecstasy from the original poster. As several posters point out, Trump doesn't actually have the power to shut down the department. That would require Congressional legislation. With a Republican majority in the Senate and a probable majority in the House, such legislation might be possible. However, given the Senate's filibuster and the very slight majority House Republicans are likely to have, passing any controversial legislation could be a struggle. As a result, MAGAs may be saved from themselves. But, in the case that they are not, they will likely be surprised by the results. Some of the MAGA posters in this thread believe that there is a national school curriculum that the Department of Education oversees. Of course, no such curriculum exists. Similarly, many of the MAGAs are convinced that it is this national curriculum that has resulted in "woke" education such as teaching about LGBTQ issues. They believe that with authority over education returned to the states, curriculums will return to emphasizing the fundamentals of reading, writing, and arithmetic. What is more likely, however, is that there will be fragmentation as states take different paths. Based on what we have seen so far, Republican states, far from returning to the basics, will focus on putting religion, specifically Christianity, into the classroom. Oklahoma, for instance, has already decreed that every classroom must have a Bible. By sheer coincidence, the only Bible that meets the state's requirements is the one sold by Trump. Many of the liberal posters warn that another result will be to weaken, if not destroy completely, public education. They suggest that some states will favor vouchers and charter schools — including those run by for-profit organizations — instead of traditional public schools. The biggest fear cited by posters is the impact on special education. Currently, funding for special education programs comes from the Department of Education. If that funding goes away, states will need to fund such programs themselves. Poor states, which tend to be Republican states, will likely be hit harder than states with more money. This highlights why liberals should be cautious about taking pleasure in seeing MAGAs "finding out". As in this case, where the impact would likely fall on kids with special needs in red states, the victims of MAGA policies will tend to be powerless innocents.

Over the weekend, the most active threads were, once again, all related to the election. The most active of the bunch was the one about Democrats engaging in self-reflection that I discussed last week. After that was a thread titled, "Did you really think Kamala would win? Deep down inside, did you?", and, of course, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster says that she had doubts about whether Vice President Kamala Harris would win the election. I think we should stipulate that, by nature, nearly every Democrat is predisposed to pessimism. Harris could have had a poll lead of 40 points, and the majority of Democrats would still be having sleepless nights and imagining scenarios for an upset. In this case, the polls always showed a very tight race that was never anything more than a toss-up. Therefore, a certain amount of doubt was justified. But now with the benefit of hindsight, you would get the impression that nobody thought that she could win. Some posters say that they always feared that what they believe to be the innate sexism and racism of American society would be too strong for a Black woman to overcome. Others claimed that race and gender were not issues but rather Harris' own shortcomings. The same criticisms that were made during the campaign — such as complaints about her media interviews — were repeated. I often felt during the campaign that many people were looking for an excuse not to support Harris instead of reasons to support her. Votes for President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump would be justified by the smallest fault that could be found in the Vice President. This impression is strengthened by responses in this thread. There is a general feeling of, "Well, Harris has this or that flaw, so I had no choice other than to vote for Trump". Never mind Trump's innumerable more and worse flaws. For my part, I believed that Harris would win the election, but I also had reasons for concern. One, that I voiced here repeatedly, was the impact of her position regarding Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon. This did turn out to hurt her in Michigan and likely had a negative impact elsewhere. My other worry also appears to have turned out to be true. Harris clearly predicated her campaign on the assumption that moderate Republicans, particularly women, could be persuaded to vote for her. My belief is that these Republicans may not like Trump, but were prepared to vote for him minus a compelling enough alternative. Late in the campaign, I became convinced that Harris was not successfully providing that alternative and, therefore, moderate Republicans would return to form and vote Republican. I still thought, or perhaps hoped, that Harris could pull out a victory, so I am not retroactively claiming that I didn't think Harris would win. The other thing happening in this thread — and I know I am paddling upstream trying to change anyone's mind about this — is that Harris' defeat is being exaggerated. With the exception of Arizona, her losses in swing states were by less than 2%. All the geniuses in this thread who claim that it has been obvious all along that Harris would lose should realize that it wouldn't have taken much to swing 2% of the voters in those states a different direction.

The most active threads yesterday continued to be related to the election. The most active thread of the day was titled, "Time for reflection as a dem?" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The original poster asks whether, as a result of the resounding Republican victory in the election, Democrats should have a moment of reflection and stop pushing so hard to the left. This thread is 37 pages long, and I don't have time to read much of it, so I am just going to give my own thoughts on this topic. From what I've seen in DCUM discussions, "The Left" normally refers to those who have certain views on social issues rather than economic policies. Those on the left are identified by a commitment to "woke" issues and, especially, support for the rights of trans people. From what I've read in this thread, this is how the term is used in the discussion. In this thread, as well as many other recent threads, posters are eager to attack support for transgender people and blame "the left's" support of trans rights for the election loss. Let me be as clear as possible with regard to this point. For me, trans rights is a moral issue and, as such, not something that I will abandon for political expediency. Moreover, I have no plans to open DCUM to additional anti-trans discussion. If not being able to attack trans rights is a deal-breaker for you, my only response is, "see you". I am sure you will find a website more accommodating to your views elsewhere. The millions of dollars that President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump spent demonizing trans people during the campaign is really the epitome of bullying. He went after a small, marginalized community that is basically harmless. Let's accept the anti-trans narrative for a second and assume that occasionally a trans girl or woman competing in sports deprives a non-trans woman of an award or maybe a scholarship. That is concerning, true, but do you know what is worse? Trump's party's support for anti-abortion laws that are literally killing women. If you are withholding your support for the Democratic Party because your opposition to trans rights is stronger than your concern about women dying, I am skeptical that your true concern is women's rights. Beyond social issues of this sort, Democrats may want to reflect, but could logically come to the opposite conclusion of the original poster. Almost all analysis of voting behavior in this election suggests that inflation was the number one concern. If that is true, Vice President Kamala Harris should have spent more time addressing that issue rather than campaigning with Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban. Harris clearly moved her campaign to the right and ran as a centrist. Perhaps she would have been better served by running on a message closer to what Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders might propose? Imagine that she had spent the bulk of the campaign criticizing the high price of groceries and promising to punish corporate price gouging? Imagine her standing in front of the headquarters of State Farm and demanding that they get car insurance rates under control? Maybe she could have said that one issue on which she differed from President Joe Biden was his deference to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who kept interest rates too high and waited too long to lower them? Wouldn't this have appealed more to the blue-collar workers who abandoned her for Trump than the billionaire Cuban criticizing Harris' own proposal to tax unrealized capital gains? Yes, Democrats should have some self-reflection. Do they want to be nothing more than a warmed-over version of the Republican Party, or do they want to fight for the votes of those they lost in this election? Or, do they simply want to scapegoat transgender people and call it a day?

Yesterday the most active threads were again all related to the election, but at least there was enough differentiation that I can write about them separately. The most active of the bunch was titled, "Why did Kamala lose ?" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Ultimately, Vice President Kamala Harris lost because she did not get as many votes as her opponent, President-elect, cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. That may sound trite, but Harris saw support drop from the level received by President Joe Biden in 2020 almost across the board. As a result, there are surely multiple reasons for her defeat. I don't think this was a case of one major failure, but rather more like a death of a thousand cuts. Certainly, as I wrote yesterday, her association with Biden's support of Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon cost her votes among important constituencies. Voters upset about inflation also turned to Trump in great numbers. As this 58-page thread demonstrates, there are a host of reasons voters had for not supporting Harris. There are the traditional Republican complaints about immigration, crime, and the economy, but there are a slew of other issues as well. There is a tendency in threads like this for posters to highlight their own pet issue. For instance, there is a longtime DCUM poster who is absolutely obsessed with H1B visas. There is no topic for which the poster will not find an H1B connection, and no surprise, this poster blamed Harris' loss on the Biden administration's support for H1B visas. Another poster blamed Harris' selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for her defeat. For others, the issue was not really Harris herself, but more a reflection of their disenchantment with Democrats in general. These posters tended to blame an alleged leftward tilt of the party, particularly when it comes to so-called "woke" issues and specifically support for transgender rights. This highlights one other factor in Harris' loss. She explicitly ran to the right, campaigning with Liz Cheney and hoping to appeal to moderate Republicans who were believed to be reluctant to support Trump. That strategy failed, not only with Republicans, but with some centrist Democrats as well who remained convinced that she would fill high school locker rooms with trans girls. Many simply did not believe that Harris deserved to be President. They tended to describe her as a "DEI candidate" who had only been selected as Vice President due to her race and gender and then "selected" as the Presidential nominee rather than winning the position in a primary. I am sure that there are some interesting Ph.D. theses on the topic of voter motivation, but the DCUM political forum has been a sort of laboratory that I've observed for nearly 20 years. My conclusion is that, for many, the decision between two candidates is emotional rather than rational. For reasons that they probably can't explain, posters prefer one candidate over the other. They then simply fill in the blanks to come up with a rationale. This used to be described as choosing the candidate with whom you would rather have a beer. Because of this, I think that there may be more to the accusations that racism and misogyny played a significant role in Harris' defeat. It has been well-established that women are held to higher standards concerning what is acceptable behavior than men. A disconcertingly high number of people didn't like Harris because of her laugh, and it is hard to argue that those opposing her because of "DEI" are not motivated by race. I'm no expert, and with my track record of being wrong about this election, you should probably ignore anything I have to say. But if I had to pick one reason for Harris' loss, it would probably be her inability to escape blame for inflation. Also, as much as I hate to say it, some credit must be given to the Trump campaign for effective campaigning. Sometimes you lose, and sometimes you just get beaten. I think this election was a bit of both.

All of the most active threads yesterday were about the election and, while they might have started out discussing different aspects of the topic, they eventually ended up talking about the same things. Therefore, rather than writing about four threads that are essentially the same, I'll just write one entry today. For the record, the most active thread yesterday was titled "2024 Election Results" and was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The thread, which was only started around 6:30 p.m. yesterday, is currently 174 pages long. That is almost 2,000 posts. As everyone surely knows by now, the outcome of the election was not what I either expected or hoped it would be. The morning after an election, everyone is suddenly an expert and, in this regard, I guess I am no different. However, it is with quite a bit of humility that I write this today. MAGA posters seem to have a strong desire to hear folks like me admit that we were wrong. So, let's get that out of the way. I was wrong. Right up until about 9:00 p.m. last night, I was expecting Vice President Kamala Harris to win. In the daylight of a morning after what was, for me anyway, an electoral disaster, I am not even sure where to start when trying to make sense of things. As such, here are a few random, early thoughts.

The most active thread yesterday was one that was started on Sunday, but gained traction yesterday. It was titled, "Anxiety level going uppppp.." and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. I suspect that many DCUM users can relate to the original poster who says that her anxiety level has gone up, resulting in her eating a bunch of her kids' Halloween candy and increasing her anti-anxiety medication. She asks if anyone else is getting anxious about Tuesday and suggests that she should probably start watching less news. Whenever someone brings up anxiety surrounding politics, there are posters who react almost with scorn, suggesting that the outcome will have little impact. For instance, one poster wrote, "The world will still keep turning no matter who is elected. It’s only 4 yrs. All the doom and gloom talk on both sides is just theatrics." Such posters don't seem to understand the real effect that politics can have on people's lives. I can only assume that such posters live privileged lives because for a great many people, the outcome of an election does have a direct impact on them. It is popular to suggest that both parties are guilty of exaggerating the threat posed by the other side. There is an important difference, however. The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz bases its warnings on the actual statements and actions of former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump. When they warn that Trump is a threat to abortion rights, it is based upon Trump's bragging that he is responsible for Roe v. Wade being overturned. When they warn about Project 2025, they know that, despite his distancing himself, Trump has praised the project and several of his closest associates were responsible for the effort. When they warn about a national sales tax on imported goods, it is based on Trump's repeatedly expressed plan for tariffs on all imports. The naysayers either think Trump is lying or won't be successful in imposing his plans. Trump, on the other hand, simply lies in his warnings about Harris. He says the country will be destroyed. He claims that we will be involved in World War III. He says that the doors will be opened to millions of immigrants who will be granted citizenship. There is no basis to believe any of these things. The result is that while MAGAs could legitimately be advised to calm down and maybe take a Xanax, liberals are justified in being anxious. Imagine being a transgender person — or the friend or relative of one — and being told that, after millions of dollars of anti-trans advertising by the Trump campaign, the outcome of the election doesn't matter? The threat posed by having Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — a nutcase anti-vaxer who would be a threat to food safety — responsible for food and medicine or Elon Musk made responsible for government efficiency is huge. We should feel anxious about those possibilities. But another question is now to control that anxiety. At this point, there is little that the average person can do about the election once they have voted. Being able to accept that something is outside your control and that all you can do is wait is an important skill and one that many people will need to exercise today.

The most active thread over the weekend was titled, "Harris beating Trump in Iowa" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. For years, the Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll has been referred to as the "gold standard" for polls of Iowa politics. Pollster J. Ann Selzer has not been afraid to deviate from conventional wisdom and other pollsters and has often announced findings that are surprising at the time but later prove prescient. In 2016, Selzer spotted a trend toward former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump that other pollsters had missed. Her polling predicted that Trump would win Iowa by 7 points. He ended up winning by 9. Four years later, the DMR poll showed that Trump would win Iowa by 7. The actual result was Trump winning by 8 points. Selzer's final poll of this cycle showing Vice President Harris leading Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters was easily the most surprising news over the weekend. For Democrats, this was an invigorating shot of adrenaline. Democrats are by nature a pessimistic bunch, likely to see black clouds regardless of the amount of sunshine. For once, they began showing a hint of optimism as a result of the poll findings. Selzer found that the impetus for Harris' lead was support from older women. For many DCUM posters, this was not surprising because, they argued, many of these women had lived in a world where abortion was prohibited and were well aware of the dangers such a state of affairs can bring. They are furious about rights being stripped away. Moreover, this is one of the most dependable voting blocks in existence. As such, the Iowa findings might also translate to other states. The general attitude among DCUM liberal posters was that even if Trump were to pull out a slim victory in Iowa — something that is within the DMR poll's margin of error — he would be in terrible circumstances nationwide. The conservative response was one of disbelief and anger. Ignoring Selzer's history of accurately predicting Trump victories, Republican posters accused the poll of being a "Democratic poll," something that is obviously not true. Some suggested that Selzer had been bribed by the Democrats. Others argued that she is retiring and that the poll was her parting gift to Democrats. Others pointed to poll results by Emerson that were released the same day. That poll showed Trump leading by 10%. However, the DMR poll has a much better record than Emerson. Many of the conservative posters mocked liberals for taking the DMR results seriously, saying that there is no way that Iowa would vote for Harris. There is no doubt that if this poll turns out to be a big miss, it will be reputation-ending for Selzer. On the other hand, if the results are correct, it is likely that Trump has no hope of winning the election. As one pundit in my social media feeds said, this poll will either be the end of Selzer or Trump. They both can't survive these poll results.