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Sanders wins after a long election night in New Hampshire: Well, at least this time the votes actually got reported, but while the New Hampshire primary went more smoothly than its Iowa caucuses predecessor, the results were close enough that it was nearly time for the late-night talk-show jokes when it became possible to announce thatBernie Sanders was projected to win. However, because he was splitting the vote with several other candidates, he didnt win a blowout victory the way he did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton: the second-place finisher,Pete Buttigieg, will wind up with the same number of pledged delegates under New Hampshires system, making the night effectively a tie despite Sanders popular-vote victory. The only other candidate to win delegates or get double-digit support was Amy Klobuchar, whose campaign has recently moved up to the major leagues.

Not such a big night for Biden and Warren: Two candidates who didnt do well enough to receive any delegates were two people who were, at various points, regarded as frontrunners: Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren spent the evening battling it out for a distant fourth. Anticipating another bad night, Biden had already moved onto South Carolina, and delivered a video message telling his supporters that he would win once the campaign moved on to less-white states like the Southern states and Nevada.

Warren gives a shout-out to Klobuchar: In her speech after the New Hampshire results started to come in, Warren allowed that Sanders and Buttigieg had had strong nights, but was effusive about another Senate colleague: I also want to congratulate my friend and colleague Amy Klobuchar for showing just how wrong the pundits can be when they count a woman out. Depending on where Warrens campaign goes from here, the comment might be pointed to as the start of her comeback, or the moment when she started throwing support to a different candidate.

The end of the Yang Gang: One of the casualties of New Hampshire was the candidacy of Andrew Yang, who suspended his campaign after it became clear that he didnt do well. You know I am the math guy, and it is clear tonight from the numbers that we are not going to win this race. Yangs run, in which he stressed the need to prepare for a future of massive job loss due to automation, and didnt shy away from occasional politically-incorrect jokes about his Asian-American identity, attracted supporters who didnt identify with the Trump right or the liberal Democratsbut, it seems, not enough supporters. Last year, Michael Fraiman profiled the candidate for Macleans and explained his appeal:

Hes soaking up support from an unlikely coalition of socialists, libertarians, alt-right trolls, independents, disaffected Trump supporters and tech-savvy millennials who vote based on which candidate generates the dankest memes. They call themselves the Yang Gang. Elon Musk is a member, as are Tommy Chong, Nicolas Cage, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and YouTube star Casey Neistat.

Im Spartacus, vote Bloomberg: Did Michael Bloomberg get the ultimate late-breaking endorsement from Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas? Douglass son Michael Douglas, a major Bloomberg supporter, told the candidates supporters that shortly before his father died last week at age 103, among his last words were: Mike can get it done.

The rest is here:
New Hampshire avoids Iowas disaster, and produces a similar result - Maclean's

A new study of popular mens rights forums and subreddits has found that men on the internet have become more toxic and espouse nihilistic and extreme anti-women ideologies.

The study, by a team of researchers from University College London, Birmingham University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and others, looked at 38.4 million posts from seven message boards and 57 subreddits collectively described as the manosphere.

According to the team, the manosphere is a conglomerate of predominantly Web-based misogynist movements roughly focused on mens issues.

Some of these sites include The Attraction, Rooshv, SlutHate, and Incel.is, as well as Reddit subgroups for Pick Up Artists (PUA), Mens Rights Activists (MRA), and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and Involuntary Celibates (Incels).

Many of these groups have existed for years, but the team found that the newer variations tended to produce much more radical and violent rhetoric, according to a Newsweek report on the study.

They found forums for specific sites tended to have the most extreme rhetoric, featuring more explicit hate speech than Reddit.

The team also found that many people participated in multiple forums and subreddits, giving the impression that the 'manosphere' as a whole might be larger than it actually is.

They also suggest that many posters had been on a pathway toward more radical beliefs.

Many of the individuals involved with the PUA community went onto more extreme anti-feminist communities such as [The Red Pill], which in turn strongly migrated to MGTOW, the team argue.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has noted a substantial overlap between the general tenets of the manosphere and white supremacy.

Both the alt-right and the manosphere agree that feminism is the cause of Western civilizational decline, the group argues.

In fact, the misogyny intrinsic to the 'alt-right' might very well be one of its distinctive features.

Mens rights jargon has played a role in a number of mass shootings in recent years.

In 2019, a 24 year-old who killed nine students at a Dayton, Ohio high school after having previously kept a rape list of women that had rejected his romantic or sexual advances.

In 2018, a 26 year-old Toronto man killed 10 people in downtown Toronto after writing a Facebook post in which he declared allegiance to the Incel Rebellion.'

Most famously, in 2014 Elliot Rodger killed seven people near the campus of UC Santa Barbara after writing a manifesto blaming women for the fact that he was a 22-year-old virgin who had never even kissed a girl.

This article has been adapted from its original source.

See more here:
Men on The Net Become More Toxic, Anti-Women Ideologues - Al-Bawaba

Alena Petitt, a well-known author and lifestyle blogger, has become the British face of the Tradwife movement, closely associated with the hashtag #TradWife. The movement harks back to an earlier era, encouraging women to take pleasure in traditional domestic duties while promoting feminine submissiveness, domesticity, and wifehood.

In a BBC clip, Petitt explains that her role is to submit to, serve, and spoil her husband like its 1959.

Writing on her website, The Darling Academy, she adds that many women crave a sense of belonging and home and quaintness, and therefore choose to become homemakers where husbands must always come first.

Given its glorification of traditional femininity, the Tradwife movement is often framed in the media as a backlash against feminism. This can been seen in news stories featuring bitter disagreements between feminist critics and women who embrace a tradwife identity.

This emphasis on tradwives vs feminists is sadly predictable. It fits the all-too-familiar trope of catfighting so often characterising conversations about feminist politics in the media. This framing, wittingly or unwittingly, identifies feminism as the problem, ignoring the larger structural issues at stake.

Rather than simply a backlash against feminism, the tradwife phenomenon needs to be understood as a symptom of as well as a reaction to the increasing insecurity of our times.

Tradwives often use the language of choice. They describe their decision to step off the treadmill of work as a true calling to be homemakers, mothers and wives. But even the most private of choices like deciding to leave a career and become a full-time housewife are always made within structural constraints. As one of us (Shani) shows in the book Heading Home, these choices are always shaped by social, cultural, economic and political conditions.

Many of the women in tradwife groups discuss the strain of working in demanding jobs and the difficulty of coming home to, what the American writer Arlie Hochschild has famously called, the second shift. This includes tending to children and household chores, as well as looking after elderly family members.

Petitt herself talks about how in her early twenties she was a driven career woman. Another self-identifying tradwife, Jenny Smith (pseudonym), recounts working long days as a finance administrator before dramatically changing course.

The current toxic always-on work culture must be understood as a key factor facilitating the rise of this retro-movement. As overload work culture has become common in many developed countries, governments have also been cutting vital resources that help support families and communities. Combined with entrenched gendered social norms, the burden of care disproportionately falls on women. Even relatively privileged women therefore find it difficult to live up to the popular feminist ideal of work-life balance.

So although at first blush the Tradwife movement may seem profoundly at odds with our times particularly in the wake of movements likes MeToo and TimesUp it is very much a product of the contemporary moment. The choices made by women who identify as tradwives may be presented as entirely personal. However, they are inseparable from the profound crisis of both work and care under neoliberal capitalism.

We live in a time when normative gender roles and dominant notions of sexuality have not only been challenged but are in flux. As such, reasserting a narrowly defined version of femininity may be a way for some women to gain a sense of control over their lives.

Being a tradwife is empowering and has enabled me to take back control of my life, explains Stacey McCall. A 33-year old tradwife, she quit her job due to the pressures of her and her husband both working in demanding full-time jobs.

Unsurprisingly, the movement is aligned with notions of traditional Britishness in the UK, and, as some have suggested, with the alt-right in the US. Despite their nominal differences, however, both movements are united by a similar nostalgia for an imagined harmonious national past, which has a form of gender traditionalism at its heart.

Tradwife blogs and videos are filled with serene settings outside the world of neoliberal capitalist work. Retro 1950s images of women as happy housewives abound. Yet paradoxically, this nostalgic return to a simpler and better past is dependent on the very values that it seemingly rejects.

Tradwives like Alena Petitt in the UK and US blogger Dixie Andelin Forsyth have become successful entrepreneurs who monetize their trad-wifehood. The movement, more generally, depends on savvy entrepreneurial women like these, who, through their social media activities, classes, courses, advice books, and products, advocate and popularise trad-wifehood as a desirable choice and identity.

Far from refusing neoliberal capitalism, the world of paid full-time labour or even what some consider feminist success, the Tradwife movement is deeply embedded in and indebted to all of them.

Catherine Rottenberg, Associate Professor, University of Nottingham and Shani Orgad, Professor in Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Go here to read the rest:
Tradwives: Meet the women looking for a simpler past grounded in the neoliberal present - AlterNet

Selecting a presidential candidate is not an easy time, and calls to lessen hostility arent constructive.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, addresses supporters at his rally at the Coralville Marriott Hotel and Conference Center on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019. Sen. Sanders and Rep. Osasio-Cortez spoke on climate change and womens rights.

Katie Goodale

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, addresses supporters at his rally at the Coralville Marriott Hotel and Conference Center on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019. Sen. Sanders and Rep. Osasio-Cortez spoke on climate change and womens rights.

Katie Goodale

Katie Goodale

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, addresses supporters at his rally at the Coralville Marriott Hotel and Conference Center on Saturday, Nov. 9, 2019. Sen. Sanders and Rep. Osasio-Cortez spoke on climate change and womens rights.

Peyton Downing, Columnist February 10, 2020

With the Iowa caucuses come and gone, the end of the Democratic presidential-nomination race is in sight. With Democrats finally deciding who they actually support in the primary, the online sphere has become rather vicious and will get worse before it gets better.

Thats a good thing.

This coming election is going to be an absolute nightmare. President Trumps cabal of alt-right and nationalist followers will produce the most vile, vitriolic attacks imaginable against whomever the opposition puts forward. The eventual nominee needs to be battle-tested.

Anything a Democrat throws at another Democrat will pale in comparison to the attacks that will come for them in November.

A lot of the political discussion is happening online, with supporters of different Democrats going after each other. Its not as though this online bashing is unsubstantiated. There are real criticisms beyond petty quarreling.

Pete Buttigiegs current nickname is a quintessential example of this. Due to the former South Bend, Indiana mayors lack of black support and milquetoast policies, Buttigieg has earned the moniker Mayo Pete. Its become so widespread that even Saturday Night Live used it in its most recent cold open segment. While it may seem a bit childish to use the nickname, its definitely more mild than whatever Trump may throw his way should Buttigieg obtain the nomination.

As the race continues, Buttigiegs response to Mayo Pete will show whether or not he has the ability to fight back against such tactics.

Anything a Democrat throws at another Democrat will pale in comparison to the attacks that will come for them in November.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has also had his fair share of pushback, from being called religiously unaffiliated after talking about his Jewish background to havingSNL talk about Bernie Bros that spring from 4chan boards. Perhaps the most direct accusation is the idea that nobody likes Bernie, as stated by his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

There are a myriad of other accusations and easily spread criticisms of Sanders that are going about the internet. Even having won the popular vote in the Iowa caucuses, the Sanders campaign will have to direct serious effort to addressing everything being thrown their way.

This is what the primary needs to be.

While the debates are a useful tool for discussing policy, it has recently become more and more about addressing the most recent drama online and giving the candidates an opportunity to respond to it. This isnt surprising, given that about two-thirds of Americans get at least some of its news from social media. If there is something online that is of interest to the electorate, it must be addressed publicly.

It has become necessary to address nearly everything that pops up online due to the fact that, if left unaddressed, the silence can be interpreted as weakness. If there is no comeback, then the accused is clearly guilty in the public eye. When November comes, there must be no silence.

While there will inevitably come a time for Democrats to stand united and vote blue no matter who, civility has its time and place, but that time is not now.

In order to get a candidate who can go toe-to-toe with not only Trump, but his cadre of internet-wielding supporters, we need to put the candidates through the wringer. If a campaign cannot address its candidate being likened to a condiment, it is hard to imagine the operation winning a presidency.

Link:
Opinion: A contentious primary is a good thing for the eventual Democratic nominee - UI The Daily Iowan

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Posted: Feb 14, 2020 12:01 AM

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Nobody really wants to be honest these days. If they were honest, they would have to admit a few inconvenient truths. First and foremost, they would have to acknowledge that had a Democrat done what President Donald Trump did on that Ukraine phone call, Republicans would be outraged, and Democrats would be excusing it.

Second, Democrats would have to acknowledge that their side is capable of wrongdoing. That may be the most difficult thing for the left to acknowledge, as they are invested in the idea that Trump is uniquely bad. Don't look now, but Barack Obama's IRS targeted conservative groups, and his Department of Justice sold guns to Mexico that got an American border patrol agent killed. But ask your average reporter or progressive activist, and they'll claim with a straight face that the Obama Administration was scandal-free.

The left will tell you that Trump and his supporters are uniquely violent in their tone and rhetoric. They will ignore that Obama told Hispanic voters that the GOP was their enemy, Joe Biden said Mitt Romney would put black people back in chains, and Obama urged his supporters to rat out their neighbors for spreading misinformation during the 2012 election. At a campaign event in 2008, he urged them to take guns to knife fights.

The reality is that neither side is pure, but much of the journalism and punditry of the present age is designed to cover one side in a way that absolves the other of their sins.

Recently, McKay Coppins in The Atlantic wrote a piece titled "The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President." It's a great read and covers the extent to which Trump's reelection will feature "coordinated bot attacks, Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fear-mongering, and anonymous mass texting."

The story was circulated widely by progressives who smugly denounced the president and his campaign. But the truth is that the Democrats do this, too. In fact, every politician in every presidential campaign has done this. No politician is fully honest. They lie, distort and obfuscate.

Obama upended the American health care system by lying that if you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor. He used the presidency and all the tools available at the time to sell that lie. While lying about it, he created a White House office that encouraged people to rat out "lies" about the Affordable Care Act. Many of those lies were actually true.

Obama's 2012 data-targeting campaign made careers for people covering the rise of digital politics. But in 2016, Trump won using the very techniques online pioneered by the Obama team. The fact that a Republican could outdo Team Obama on Facebook made Facebook bad, after being heralded as a force for good when Obama won. Remember Obama's war on Fox News? Go further back; remember Bill Clinton and the mainstream media blaming Rush Limbaugh for the Oklahoma City Bombing or The New York Times writers blaming Sarah Palin for the Arizona shooting?

A week ago, a man in a van ran through a Republican voter registration tent in Florida. Had it been an "alt-right" person doing it to a Democratic voter registration tent, it'd be national news for days. Consider how quickly the James Hodgkinson shooting spree disappeared from the news coverage.

Democrats are convinced Trump is different. The reality is most of his policy positions are pretty mainstream. Even Trump's behavior is not unique. It is the logical extension of the liberal media turning a blind eye to a supposedly scandal-free administration that used the power of the state to harass nuns, conservative groups and other opponents. But the left will never acknowledge it because to do so, they would have to admit Trump is not the unique boogeyman they have claimed him to be, and they have to take some ownership of the situation.

The reality is that both sides are behaving badly in politics, but they only care to cast aspersions on the other. Our tribalism has become morally relative, and the sins of one side have become virtues to the other.

To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.

Read the original:
The Moral Relativism of My Tribe - Townhall