Instead of just shrugging it off as a fabrication, Terry McAuliffe could have used that as an opportunity to decode it as racism and directly defend African Americans. (i.e., "Do you folks see what CRT is a euphemism for and what is actually under attack here...?" )

That is a great lesson that we cannot just dismiss the culture wars but we need to explain what they really are and dismantle them at the core, and use them as an opportunity to fight for the minority interest under attack.

"If they see you fighting for them, they will fight for you (at the voting booth)" is the point this person was making. Black Americans in WV didn't' feel like McAuliffe used that opportunity to really fight for them.

This is why the often-cited fact that "we are the majority" (which I hear every day on Progressive radio) isn't as comforting today as it used to be. Wasn't only 15% (?) of Italy Fascist when Mussolini took over? It doesn't take that many people to overthrow a system of government.

I was happy that she confronted the media talking points, but she knows better (we all do or at least should).

It used to be no big deal if a state switched Republican and Dem governors once in a while (California did that a lot) because there were certain acceptable parameters you could expect them to govern within. It used to be a governor was restricted to some degree by conventions, norms and standards.

Right now, though, its self-evident that the consequences of such a change are entirely more severe. There's a playbook that Republican governors share, follow and test with the Courts, that is intentionally designed to rapidly de-democractize the state. You roll back any new laws that make it easier to vote then impose new laws that make it more difficult to vote. He'll probably try to restrict women's reproductive freedoms. If he can do so, I guess he'll relax gun restrictions. Since it seems like he has the legislature, he can begin to sabotage the election boards and districts so that it's increasingly unlikely Democrats will win. He's already expressed his desire to remake education, which is really a shame because Virginia had come so far compared to what it was years ago. What used to be ebb and flow is actually veering towards generational changes where red states share playbooks on how to unmake democracy. Expect to see more culture wars, of course. Another test I expect him to fail is the next COVID variant spike, which will also have dire consequences. It will be interesting to see which governors he emulates.

I'm kind of disappointed, reading the comments, how even people here just swallowed that up without much critical thinking or taking into account the vast difference between fifteen years ago and today.

The certified votes of states in dispute (battleground states) would not be counted, throwing the vote to the Congress, with each state getting one vote and the number of Trump states outnumbering the Dem states by one, leading to a Trump 'victory'. The idea is that their validity would be contested on Jan 6 in a formal setting.

And then:

Democrats justifiably raise hell, and the states in dispute are told to "go back to the drawing board" and, based on illegitimate claims of election fraud, come up with an alternate slate of electors, also throwing the election to Trump.

It's insanely evil and maybe ridiculous, but I believe that was the thinking.

radically altered my views about how we can win more elections.

I wish we could get rid of this stereotype of Democratic families sitting around the dinner table carefully going through proposed legislation, discussing how each provision in a bill might save us a few dollars a month. I no longer believe policy is what gets us out to the polls in droves.

Like you are saying, we are emotional beings just like Republicans. We like to be motivated by aspirational ideas and visionary goals. And just like Republicans, we are sometimes more reliably brought out to vote by anger or even rage than by agreement with our own side.

person I heard raise this as a causative factor.

One of the political strategists said the quiet part out loud when he said, to paraphrase, "We always want the problem to be something simple so we can fix it, so we hope it's a messaging issue."

That really sums it up. They don't want the problem to be the ongoing effort to overthrow our form of government because that's really hard to solve. They also don't want it to be the 400+ voter suppression laws at the state level, because that's also really hard to solve.

He's liked and trusted. The real reason Trump hated Fauci is because his approval ratings were so much higher. But in a larger sense, destroying a figure of endearment and trust is right out of the Russia/Authoritarian playbook, where you want to destroy the ability of citizens to trust any one or anything. It's the flip side of the "fire hose of falsehood" strategy, where you inundate people with alternate explanations for an event (except for the honest one) and try to burn people out so they stop believing it's possible to know the truth. But in the case of destroying a trusted figure, they are trying to destroy trust in anything. They've also done this with government institutions as well.

gun but there wasn't supposed to be. I don't know the correct terminology, but the prop master thought he had cleared the chambers and replaced them with the blanks, but a projectile was stuck somewhere in the gun and discharged because there is still a small amount of gunpowder in the primer (?) to set off the effects.

It's almost unheard of for live ammunition to be purposefully discharged on a movie set. It is so rare that the few known instances are pretty notorious:

Twilight Zone The Movie in the John Landis segment (very recklessly)
Manhunter directed by Michael Mann (very recklessly)

I've seen the possibility floated that live ammo was used during Full Metal Jacket (that was in the UK and they may have different rules) but only under extreme caution and I've never seen that verified by a good source. I rather doubt it. One reason why it hasn't been an issue is that well-done squibs actually look a whole lot better than live ammo.

One of the eyewitnesses to the Twilight Zone incident said he had been in the film industry for two decades and never seen or even heard of live ammunition being used on set.

I ordered a Women's World Cup replica soccer ball signed by several members of the USWNT. I was nervous about that order but it came with a certificate of authenticity and a photograph of the balls being signed, so I guess it was okay. I DID NOT have contact with customer service so I cannot speak to that, sorry.

Sorry you had issues with them. Sometimes places can go down hill rapidly, or maybe I just got lucky.

I had to check this thread out because Thom Hartmann mentioned in on his program yesterday.

I'm just relaying what is in several of the books (most likely "Peril" and "I Alone Can Fix It," but possibly "Frankly We Did Win This Election".

The story in those books (for whatever they are worth) is that the Secret Service was in the process of trying to move Pence as well as members of Congress to locations away from the Capitol. Many refused to go, including Pelosi and Pence, stating that they wanted to certify the election that night. It's not that Pence did not leave the Capitol that day "because he didn't trust the driver." He was dead set on not leaving the Capitol period and finishing the certification to show the Insurrectionists that they hadn't won. (So were Pelosi, McConnell and I can't remember who all else).

Both Pelosi and Pence were opposed to following Secret Service orders to get into vehicles because they both knew that if they were put inside a car that the car would leave the Capitol. Pence was told, "Just sit in the car for your own safety" but he knew if he got inside the car would usher him away to the undisclosed location (which are disclosed in the books).

The way it's presented in the books, it wasn't like Pence suddenly distrusted the Secret Service in the sense they might be up to nefarious deeds. He just knew the protocol, he was aware they wanted him away from the Capitol and he didn't want to leave. Nowhere in those books is it suggested there was a plot to remove him or anyone else from the Capitol for the purpose of delaying certification or overturning the election. But something new is coming out every day so as Rachel Maddow always says, "Watch this space."