He might have had more appeal in a general election than I imagine. I suspect the Republicans would have successfully depicted him as a Communist and that he would have been perceived as "too radical" for many. But I suppose none of that really matters now. I assume he has more sense than to try to run again in 2020.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Warren. I thought she would have made a great VP candidate last time. I agree that she has a role to play in getting the party back on message even if she doesn't end up running.

When I think about appealing to White working class voters, I think primarily about having a coherent economic message that would be more populist than what we've been hearing from the establishment wing of the party. I don't see that as identity politics. It is sort of like let's stop calling everybody "racist" long enough to re-connect with the people who wanted change so desperately they were willing to gamble on Trump. And no, I don't confuse civility and respect for human dignity with political correctness.

I thought Sanders started off strong but ended up going too far down the identity politics rabbit hole. He was far from my ideal candidate, and I think he would have lost to Trump too (though for different reasons). Still, I would have preferred to see him win the primary.

Thanks. I've been fairly good at the dedicated writing time part and awful at the idea mine part. This is a clear area for improvement, and I think I might have an unused journal around here somewhere.

I do read his blog, though I am selective about which posts I read. It is usually clear from the title whether I'll find it worthwhile or not. I skip all the cat stuff.

I can sure relate to the anger vs. worry thing. Maybe I need to work on being less reasonable and find a way to reconnect with the anger. It does seem easier to write from that place.

You are right, of course. I have a feeling that would mean doing it much less often, and maybe that's okay.

Yes, they don't seem to apply the context argument to themselves very often. Maybe this is where the "bible is magic" stuff comes in and its true meaning is only revealed to those who believe in it.

Work in the sense that they generate traffic, typically lots more than text-oriented blog posts. If I stopped writing and just created anti-Trump memes, I bet I could increase my traffic at least tenfold.

I don't think the meme thing is about people being stupid as much as it is about people being lazy and preferring images over text. Lots of people would prefer not to read. I've been doing some experimentation with Facebook and have found that posting a meme with no next will produce roughly 10x more "likes" than posting a link to a blog post even if the same meme is included alongside the link. I figured there would be a difference, but I had no idea it would be this big a difference. Love them or hate them, it is hard to deny that memes work.

Maybe Mexico will pay for it.