“Wokeness:” Biggest threat for Democrats?

Omg, I don’t even have the time or energy for this nonsense today. Have fun with it.

Two days ago the President of the United States gave a speech on protecting voters rights.  Yesterday it became known in the final days of the trump administration the top generals in the military were concerned that trump would actually attempt a coup to keep power.  Neither of these things you would expect to see in this country.  But yet it happened.

Those farthest on the right have have been pushing the idea that if the Republicans can take control of the House and the Senate they can make trump Speaker of the House, impeach both President Biden and VP Harris, remove them from office and the Speaker of the House becomes president and that would be trump.  Apparently some believe that the House can vote anyone they want as Speaker of the House and not just a sitting member in the House.

Can this happen?  Who knows but if you would have told me there would be such an assault on our voting right, enough so the President of The United States felt the need to give a speech on it and that top military generals were trying to decide what to do if a sitting president who lost re-election staged a coup I would have told you that you have been smoking those funny cigarettes again.  But yet here we are.

In order not to find out if trump can become president via the Speaker of the House route, the Democrats must not only keep the majority in the House and the Senate, they have to increase it in both chambers.

In order to do it  they have to be smart in how they do it.  The question is can they do it?

Here is the full Point Newsletter.









In the article is a link to an article by Chris Drum.  “If you hate the culture wars, blame liberals”

From the article.

“I've made this point many times before, and I want to make it again more loudly and more plainly today. It is not conservatives who have turned American politics into a culture war battle. It is liberals. And this shouldn't come as a surprise: Almost by definition, liberals are the ones pushing for change while conservatives are merely responding to whatever liberals do. More specifically, progressives have been bragging publicly about pushing the Democratic Party leftward since at least 2004—and they've succeeded.

Now, I'm personally happy about most of this. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that "personally happy" means nothing in politics. What matters is what the median voter feels, and Democrats have been moving further and further away from the median voter for years:”

One of my biggest grips about the progressives of the Democratic Party is their belief that everyone is instantly going to fall in love with their policies and that they don’t need the other half of the country to achieve their goals.  And heaven forbid if a moderate Democrat should dare question any part of their agenda.  That’s not allowed.

The other day I think it was the Secretary of HUD made the comment, in support of forgiving student loans,  the biggest obstacle to black home ownership was the debt from student loans.  My question to her, if I had been allowed to ask it, what about the thousands and thousands of black families who can’t afford to buy homes that don’t have student debt, what about them?  How can you justify forgiving the debt of individuals, many of them by the virtue of have a college education will have a higher earning potential then thousands and thousands of other Americans that are being crushed by debt, many of them are people of color?  I get “the doing something is better then doing nothing” but talk about an elitist move to pick college education folks many with high earning potential while all but ignoring struggling families with no student debt.

To discuss this is not nonsense.  I mean if you want to find out if that hair brain idea those on the right are pushing to make trump President again can happen I guess the Democrats can continue not to care about what the other half of the country thinks.

The Democrats need to get these people to vote for the Democrats in order to achieve our goals and more importantly bring some sort of sanity back to this country.  We, as Democrats, can’t ignore these guys.  

From The Washington Post…

“The stimulus helped these Trump voters pay rent and bills. But they blame it for a range of economic ills.”


“WOODSFIELD, Ohio — Dennis Beckett wasn't even sure he wanted to cash his stimulus check, especially after he received a letter from President Biden announcing its arrival. Beckett, a retired pipe fitter, owns 25 firearms and staunchly opposes the president's call for restrictions on high-capacity magazines.

After thinking about it for a few days, Beckett finally decided to use the money to fix up his century-old home, recently purchased for $30,000.
But even as the stimulus makes his renovation possible, Beckett also blames it for the rising cost of the construction materials he needs. “Ever since January 20th, everything has shot up,” Beckett said, referring to the day Biden was inaugurated. “Just look at gas — it’s $3 a gallon, when it had been $1.79.”
Beckett’s ambivalence is echoed across Monroe County, made up of small towns and family farms tucked in the Appalachian region of southeastern Ohio.

In this impoverished pocket of the United States, the most recent round of stimulus payments — $1,400 for Americans who earn up to $75,000 — was the difference between getting a medical treatment and not, enrolling a child in college and not. But political divisions are deep here, and Trump voters, who make up the great majority of residents, are blaming the payments for a range of ills.

Some here say the Biden stimulus checks are keeping people from work, fueling a sense that the undeserving are exploiting the system. As the price of basic goods climbs, others worry that the stimulus will lead to runaway inflation on wood, cars, even milk.

“My God-honest opinion was at first that it was nice that the government was helping people,” said Brad Jeffries, 50, a truck driver who was laid off for most of last year and used the stimulus to pay off bills. “But since we got that, everything has went up, so how is that helping people out?”

This former Democratic stronghold has shifted right recently, and many residents now refer to the area as “Trump country.” In 2020, President Donald Trump received an average of 72 percent of the vote in the 420 counties covered by the Appalachian Regional Commission, a joint federal-state agency that steers resources to a 13-state region.

Biden has promised to win some of those voters back with economic incentives like the stimulus and the expanded child tax credit program, which will begin monthly payments to parents in mid-July of $350 for each child younger than 6, and $250 for each child between ages 6 and 17.

A Washington Post analysis estimates that more than 90 percent of Trump voters in Monroe County received stimulus checks, one of the highest rates in the region.

“The president understands when we raise the quality of life and achievement of rural America, we improve the quality of life for all Americans,” said Gayle Manchin, whom Biden appointed co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission this spring.

But many of Monroe County’s Trump supporters don’t see it that way. Danny Long, a 41-year-old truck driver, was unemployed for much of last year and was behind on rent and utility bills.

The stimulus helped him catch up. But he credits Republicans for the checks, noting that Americans also received two stimulus payments during the last year of Trump’s presidency. “Biden didn’t do this,” Long said. “Trump did.”

It definitely helped me out'

Monroe County was once home to plentiful jobs in the coal, plastics and metals industries. But in recent years, the area has been battered by high unemployment. Today, 1 in 7 residents live below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In a county where home buyers can find properties for $25,000 and the top shopping destination is the Dollar Store, residents said their stimulus checks were put to good use.

Some bought lawn mowers or tractors. Many paid down debt, or used the money to finally make the hour-long trip to the doctor or dentist, a drive that takes them past hayfields and barns emblazoned with giant “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco” ads.

One man in Sardis, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Edward, has been surviving on Social Security disability payments for 34 years. He suffered a brain injury and a collapsed eardrum when a former hunting buddy beat him in the head with brass knuckles during an alcohol-fueled dispute.
About half of Edward’s $500-a-month disability check goes to utility bills and rent for his ­government-subsidized one-bedroom apartment.

To get by, Edward, 59, mows his neighbors’ lawns in exchange “for free beer, a carton of cigarettes or a few dollars.” Last month, Edward used his stimulus check to buy new work boots, a bicycle, gasoline for his lawn mower and a weed eater in hopes of broadening his business.

“So, it definitely helped me out,” said Edward, who did not vote in the last election but generally liked Trump’s policies.

Biden stimulus showers money on Americans, sharply cutting poverty and favoring individuals over businesses

But like others, Edward also blames the stimulus for the rising price of essentials.

“Everyone keeps telling me we are going to pay this money back somehow, and I am already starting to see it with the price of gas, and the price of tomatoes,” he said. “I wonder if we are going to end up even worse off than before we got it.”

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices nationwide rose by 5 percent in May compared with a year earlier, the largest increase since 2008. Prices for household furnishings and services increased 1.3 percent in May, their largest monthly increase since January 1976.

Many residents here also say the payments have led to a labor shortage. Although Monroe County has a 7 percent unemployment rate, many store owners and managers here and across the Ohio River in West Virginia say they have been struggling to find workers.

Jeffries, for example, said his daughter and her husband quit their jobs in the spring “when they got IRS [tax refunds] and then their stimulus on top of that.”
“They haven’t worked in two months,” said Jeffries, who works in the natural gas extraction industry. “I love her to death, but she is living off the system as bad as anyone else.”

At Marv’s Place diner in Sardis, where residents gather for hearty meals including deep-fried green beans and $12.25 pot roast dinners, Carmella Ivey said the stimulus payment arrived at just the right time.

Ivey, a manager at Marv’s, used her check to help pay her daughter’s entry fees at West Virginia University, where she will become one of the first members of her family to go to college.

But Ivey also now finds herself having to work longer hours because the diner is having trouble finding staff. “People are extremely thankful [for the stimulus] and they needed it,” Ivey said. “But people do need to get back to work.”

We are just trying to burn money'

The stimulus boosted Americans’ household wealth to a record $136.9 trillion in the spring, according to the Federal Reserve.And Biden argues that the most recent jobs report — the U.S. economy added 850,000 jobs in June — is a sign that his strategy of “growing the economy from the bottom up” is working.
But local business owners are divided over whether the payments have helped the local economy.

 At Monroe Carpet and Flooring in Woodsfield, co-owner ­Robin Langsdorf said there has been an uptick in business, though it has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

“These women are coming in and getting their kitchens done or new carpets, and I know that is probably from their stimulus,” said Langsdorf, 61, who used her most recent check to buy some household items.

But Unlimited Autos, which sells used cars, hasn’t seen the same bump, according to manager Carl Harper.

Harper said sales plummeted by more than 70 percent at the height of the pandemic and still haven’t fully rebounded. Instead of buying cars, many Monroe residents used their stimulus to purchase all-terrain vehicles, he said.
“A lot of them just blew it on foolishness,” Harper said. “A lot of people on welfare just took the stimulus and blew it on motorbikes.”

Monroe County Commissioner Mick Schumacher, a Republican, is also skeptical that the federal stimulus will have a lasting impact.

“I think we are just trying to burn money, and raise inflation, and I think the whole thing is crazy,” Schumacher said. “Give the guy who is working a break rather than the guy who is sitting on his hind end a handout.”
Retail workers are quitting at record rates for higher-paying work: ‘My life isn’t worth a dead-end job’

But Schumacher is pushing for federal dollars to flow into his county in other ways, highlighting how limited fiscal conservatism actually remains in this region.

Biden’s stimulus measure provided direct aid to local governments, including $5.3 billion to the Appalachian region. Monroe County is slated to get $2.6 million over the next two years.

Schumacher said his county needs even more federal assistance, including help financing a new $34 million sewage treatment project so waste no longer seeps into the Ohio River. He argues that grant money provides more accountability and that officials can make sure it goes to a good cause.

“That is not the case with free money” from stimulus checks, Schumacher said.

A little bit of credit'

Monroe County has strong historical ties both to labor unions and the Democratic Party. Voters here supported Democratic presidential candidates in all but two elections from 1960 to 2008, when Barack Obama carried the county with 53 percent of the vote.

But like many rural counties in recent years, the area has surged right.
In the Trump era, amid a steady decline in union jobs and a booming natural gas industry, that trend accelerated. Trump received 76 percent of the vote here last year.

During the campaign, Biden argued that his populist policies would appeal to the White ­working-class voters who’ve fled the party.

But in Monroe County, the wounds of the 2020 election remain visible, as Trump flags and “Do you miss me yet” banners featuring the former president’s face continue to line highways.

Manchin, who is married to Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), said the Biden administration’s efforts to boost the Appalachian region will pay off with residents in the long term. She noted that Biden’s proposed budget includes a record $235 million for economic and community programs implemented by the Appalachian Regional Commission. Biden’s proposed American Jobs Plan to fund infrastructure repairs also includes $1 billion to help distressed coal communities, she noted.

“There is certainly going to be an influx of money coming into areas where there hasn’t been that before,” she said. “And I think people will begin to see proof of that as these communities and families begin to see these improvements in their quality of life. . . . This is not a sprint. It’s a marathon.”

Using data from L2, a national voter file vendor, The Post estimates that nearly 6.5 million out of the 7.5 million Trump voters in the Appalachia region were eligible to receive a stimulus check.

The proportion of Trump voters who received the money was especially high in western Kentucky and central Mississippi.

But the flow of money into Appalachia doesn’t seem to have changed many hearts and minds. When Long, the Monroe County truck driver, received his $1,400 stimulus check in the spring, he started thinking of all the things he would spend it on, even before he cashed it.

He could catch up on the rent for the three-bedroom house he shares with his girlfriend, and his three children needed new clothes and shoes.

And Long, who has diabetes, can always use some extra cash to help pay prescription and medical bills that can reach several hundred dollars a month.
“It was nice that the government did something to help us,” Long said.

But he stressed that the stimulus didn’t change his negative impression of Biden. “The only thing Biden should get credit for is hundreds of dead people voting for his a--,” he said, repeating a false claim that fraudulent votes played a role in Biden’s victory last year.

Jean Young, 76, shares Long’s antipathy toward Biden.

Young is a retiree who lives on a $530-a-month Social Security check and is the matriarch of an extended family of “die-hard” Trump supporters. Still angered over the election result, Young said she will probably never fully trust Biden.
But Young is willing to give Biden credit for helping real people out of difficult times.

“You are not hearing about all the people who it helps,” said Young, who plans to use the money for a family vacation to Florida. “You often hear about the people who are homeless and living in their cars. But what you don’t hear is all the stories of people who have paid their rent because of” the stimulus checks.
“And if you have to give Joe Biden credit for that, I guess he gets a little bit of credit for that,” said Young. “Begrudgingly.”

I am in Ohio. We have a lot of Trumpers around here. I don’t engage them either. What would be the point?

This exactly.  The supporters of former hear his nonsense, Fox News echoes it and they see it on social media.  All of it just reinforces the beliefs they already had and it’s nearly impossible to convince them otherwise.  And anyone that might ask questions has been indoctrinated that every other news outlet is fake news or the radical left media.

On thinking about this in the tub, I wanted to add that I believe that we got saddled with Trump, not because of issues regarding Gay Marriage and Transgender Bathrooms, but because we had a Black man as President for 8 years and the white GOP voters who were/are afraid of losing their superior social status to changing demographics came out and voted for the person who promised to restore their white supremacy and encouraged doing it by violence.

Trump always was and continues to be about White Supremacy in the USA and the GOP has decided to follow that path to power.

The Democratic Party’s big error in 2016 was not getting the vote out in places in the country where it really mattered - in the swing states. It wasn’t that they championed social issues. Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million in 2016. The majority of voters in our country preferred the Democratic candidate/agenda and didn’t find LGBTQ rights a turn-off.

I agree with this. I suppose it didn’t *help* that Obama was in office when gay marriage was finally made law or transgender bathrooms became another GOP performative issue, but I don’t think they are the reason for Trump.

I'm sorry but as someone solidly in the middle I see a lot of social policies the left is pushing and I absolutely cringe. Things gotta start dialing back and let some things settle instead of trying to sweep complete social "change" all at once. All of the examples here are this thread so far are extreme examples. What about the normal every day stuff that's happening?

I saw the viral video of the AA woman at the Korean family day spa in LA where she was outraged that a male parts person id'ing as a woman went full Monty in the women's spa. I know these spas in K-town in downtown LA. Entire families spend the day there. Literally stay all day, eat lunch and socialize there as a family. Women and children in one section, men on the other. Strictly segregated as their culture dictates for generations.

The right predicted this would happen and now it has. I'm not here to argue the point, the Spa has their hands tied because of the law and meanwhile the women and children who were exposed to this are beyond upset. If it were me and my daughter there, hell yeah would I be pissed! Do they have to make it more specific like "no male $#@ organs allowed"? IDK but its stuff like this that I think 'great, more ammo for the extreme right". My feelings as a WOC have nothing to do with being pissed off Obama was the President. A dick is a dick and I don't want some stranger's d swinging free in my presence. UGh disgusting.

The homeless situation, the absolute brazen theft, random violence and general lawlessness, those issues are what many of us worry about. How many LEO killed in the line of duty this year so far?

Lets stop making EXCUSES for this shit. Shit is what it is. Defunding the police, excusing this disgusting lawless behavior. Calling white people 'Colonizer" and using it in a derrogatory tone as if that's supposed to be okay somehow. There are plenty of threads here daily calling out the misdeeds of the religious right, etc. What about the rest?


How is it that I don't watch Fox News but I know about all of this? I'm seeing this on every news/social outlet regardless of slant. Stop blaming Fox, its not solely on Fox.

There are a whoooole lot of us who are in the middle and hate what's happening on both sides. I'm not going to continue to argue here, I'm far outnumbered. But that's what I'm seeing and I think that article is scarily accurate, even if people don't want to believe it, I believe that's exactly what's going to happen.

Preach!!!!!!!!

Yes!  And that's why many Republicans (myself and some relatives and friends) have left the party and done something we never thought we would do - join the Democrats!  I have always loved Pres. Biden, and feel that my values are similar to his.

You asked for numbers, so here are a few

Number of law enforcement officers killed in 2021 - 150

I'm truly sorry for these officers and their family and friends.  I think it's important to note that many of them were traffic fatalities.  That doesn't make it any less devastating for the families, but it is different than a police officer being shot.

www.npr.org/2021/06/22/1008975458/more-police-officers-have-died-on-the-job-so-far-this-year-than-in-2020-why


Number of people fatally shot by the police - 951

www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

I'm sure that some of these shootings were justified if a police officer or civilian's life was in imminent danger.  However, it's important to note that black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate.  Many of the fatalities involve young men between the ages of 20-40.

I'm with you. There are far more peas that are so far left I just can't debate. I just read and cringe. While I think "wokeness" is a derogatory term used to desribe liberal leaning people, I don't disagree that the more Democrats push for such a far left agenda, the better chance Trump has to become president again.

It boggles the mind that people can’t see a connection between growing income disparity/economic injustice and things like homelessness, crime, and violence. I guess they’d prefer that people who end up homeless or in poverty should just quietly sit out of sight and hope that someone remembers to toss them some scraps.

(If you’re worried about crime, make sure your public schools are funded better than your prisons and actively work to dismantle the barriers that keep so many from success. I love how folks are quick to say that progressive policies are responsible for Trump votes, but no one is able to see how conservative policies contribute to crime, lawlessness, and homelessness.)

❤️❤️❤️