Vee

Sheryl Lee was on Rosewood this past spring-summer and I missed it. She looked great, though. She apparently also pops up in Woody Allen's Cafe Society, which I need to watch...

Christopher Gerse, the last tween Will Horton on DAYS of the 2000s, was on Westworld a few weeks back playing a nerdy lab scientist who fücks the deactivated robots. I didn't recognize him at all until I saw his name in the credits.

You know what, if Obama wants to work him and keep him from blowing up the world, I say do it. As I said a few days ago, Trump can be manipulated.

From the WSJ, which I am not linking to:

Biden is a very different guy. America sees him as "Uncle Joe" and a champion of the working class.

I think Bill could've sold it. Hillary less so. I do wonder about Biden running, though he was in no shape to do so early on.

Ethan Coen tears into everyone with "thanks", especially the media.

Yeah, I heard about that a few days ago. I always felt it was a mistake to completely disconnect Bill. Keep him in check, yes, but the man is a political genius. Problem is I don't know how much appetite the public will have for him in days to come. Hillary will become a martyr to women, as she should, and people will fight and win in her name. But the Clintons may need a break.

Hardcore Sanders nut turned Trump/alt right enabler Michael Tracey got fired from Vice for doxxing Lena Dunham's home address to 'prove' she could not have voted. So there's that.

Full skit.

He's on top of the world.

The meager good news so far is: As we know, Trump never wanted to be President. He only wanted the adulation and rallies. Having the job shocks him, and he will be miserable. If he isn't already.

Sad! And disturbing, from this NYT profile:

And now... Like I said: He can be worked.

Pence is very dangerous. But he and others can potentially be neutralized by pitting Trump against them. He already doesn't like Pence and Ryan and the others will begin failing him soon enough. Jared Kushner is soft and comes from a liberal family. He latched onto Trump as a new daddy figure to avenge his own. He may be clever and cunning but he is not a right wing ideologue and he is not ready to knife-fight the old GOP.

Trump doesn't like Pence. Or Ryan. Or Reince Priebus. Or most of the GOP. And he has no policy or politics of his own. He was espousing liberal policies five, ten years ago. He is a sociopath and goes with what is popular and gets him attention. If a Democrat in the Congress can begin cozying up to him, talking about how the party deserted him in the election (which he is already steamed about) and how they don't want him to be his own man with his own mind, he can be manipulated. He will not turn into our man, but it can be done. It is distasteful but it is one of their only prayers of beginning to contain the damage - play Iago to Trump, pit him against the GOP. It's already beginning to happen without us.

The problem is that while I agree with all of that, the fact is that someone with Sanders' populist fire - while such a thing may be an easy crutch - would likely have gotten at least some of the rest of our vote out. As distasteful as I presently find it to reach out to that bloc of lapsed or spooked voters in the midwest, and to the unenthused (and spoiled) younger millennials who have only known Obama and Bernie, we didn't get them, and we will need all of them to find our way out of this. That's me taking a hard, sober look at things. We can blame the media, and I absolutely do, for normalizing Trump and framing Hillary's emails as some major issue while not focusing on policy or issues or her long record of service. I think she is an exceptional leader and would be an exceptional president. But it's impossible for me to come away from this year after the last few days and still say she was the right choice at the right time. She was the right choice at the wrong time, and we didn't see it or didn't want to deal with the problems that are systemic that we now have to face: The quietly ignorant, racist or just afraid bloc of white votes in the base that turned on us either because they were scared of the changing (re: less white) world, or because they didn't like Hillary, or because they didn't like a woman, or because the economy has not recovered fast enough for them. These are all key reasons but the existential anxiety over a changing non-white/male world is, IMO, the central one that ties all the others together. And we (the royal we, that is - I wouldn't blame any voter of color for walking away) have to find a way to swallow our anger and disgust, and instead educate and eventually embrace them. We also now have to face up to the lackadaisical millennial voters who don't realize not every election is transformational, and we have to educate them and offer up an at least superficially more transformational candidate. But it's not just window dressing, because honestly we do have to reform the party platform and machinery to account more for the issues Sanders did bring up, even when they were frankly his only issues. And we have to directly address the things we didn't get done soon enough, even when we had IMO very valid reasons that were not all under our control. We have to have honest conversations with the younger people and the far left about that that isn't just dismissng each other even when we really want to (and oh God how I do). We also have to re-address racism and bigotry with the middle American vote, as opposed to just dismissing them and sectioning them off, because that's how we got here. We have to help them understand they're not losing their country. That's the only way we get these votes back. We have to fight harder for things we thought weren't feasible and we have to make at least some of them our primary platforms, and we have to push more for candidates who are further to the left, or push more centrist candidates back there. Not all the way, but we're going to have to find a way to wed the populist streak that is the primary concern of the white affluent progressive or the white anxious Middle American with the actual, real social concerns of the voters of color, the queer voters, and so forth. And that means we're going to have to talk to people a lot of us really don't feel like talking to this week. Including Bernie kids. Because they and others will be looking to him for the driving spirit forward, and they will be at least partly right, because whatever any of us think of him and I certainly think less than I used to, many of his principles and goals are things I can agree with. But we don't have to do all of that today. On a slightly brighter note, Trump has just discovered the presidency will leave him muzzled. Following that earlier tweet, here's a later one, diametrically opposed:

Navarro I'm cool with until she becomes a Trump booster. Megyn Kelly has never been our friend, she was only the enemy of our enemy. Megyn Kelly will adjust to this situation accordingly with no adverse effect on her life.

I'll just let others answer that.

He's still tweeting:

Like I said: Team Trump vs. Washington will be extremely enjoyable. It's just going to keep coming and it will be far, far worse for the alt right than the early progressive backlash against Obama that began pre-inauguration. Consider the idea of Bannon or Lewandowski lasting in DC opposite the Republican Congress longer than six months. Not gonna happen.

No, we all suck on some level right now to the non-white voters Trump will disenfranchise. We have to own that. This is a stain on our conscience like some of the past ones in white American history. And we have to reeducate the voters who did go for him.

Oh, the Republicans are a shitshow and it will start with their president who is not a Republican. Let's see him and his crew try to take Washington.