When Kamala Harris lost the election, a lot of centrist Democrats blamed progressives (as they did when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016), and it’s been a constant drumbeat of recrimination ever since. I’m talking about folks like Quentin Fulks, who blamed Harris’ loss on activists forcing politicians to apologize and “men don’t like people who apologize.”
Personally, I blame Trump’s election first and foremost on Trump voters. Wacky of me, I know.
A lot of people (including me) have blamed 2024 for being a terrible year for incumbent parties worldwide – but I just read an argument that the popular wisdom is wrong about that one.
A lot of people blame stay at home voters – but the problem with that is, stay at home voters would probably have voted for Trump.
(I’d definitely blame the press’ determination to sanewash Donald Trump, but that’s a subject for another cartoon).
But if I had to blame Democrats, I would blame the people who actually ran the Harris campaign. People like Quentin “men don’t like people who apologize” Fulks, who was Harris’s deputy campaign manager.
Progressives didn’t select Clinton, Biden, or Harris (all of them centrists). Progressives didn’t decide to have Biden run for a second term – or for Biden to drop out less than four months before the election. Progressives didn’t select the very centrist Harris, didn’t decide on her campaign strategy, didn’t write her speeches or choose her issues.
I don’t really blame the centrists for Harris’ loss. Maybe there was no way for Harris to win. She had less than four months to go, and swing voters seemed really down on the Biden administration.
But the self-serving pretense by centrists that progressives are to blame – when they themselves made every decision in the Harris campaign – is ridiculous.
Man, the dude’s office in panel three was a pain to draw. But it gave me a lot of opportunity to put in chicken fat.
The most fun bit? Probably the woman’s tattoos. Frank Young did a bang-up job coloring them, too. (One reason I enjoy drawing fat characters: More room for tattoos.)
What’s the origin of the idiom “bang up job”? I wasn’t able to find it. But it’s been in use since the early 1800s.
I don’t have a cartoon syndicate and I’m not in newspapers. But I get to do this for a living because lots of readers support my Patreon with mostly small pledges! I also have prints and books for sale.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This cartoon has four regular panels, plus a tiny “kicker” panel under the bottom.
PANEL 1
A large caption says “PRE-ELECTION.”
Two people, a casually dressed woman and a more business-dressed man, are talking in an office. The man makes a dismissive gesture.
WOMAN: Progressives have some ideas for this election…
MAN: Here’s my idea. Step one: donate to our campaign. Step two: you get lost.
PANEL 2
The man pushes the woman out of the office.
WOMAN: Hey!
MAN: No insult, but you woke special interest social justice freaks repel normie voters. Leave us in charge of this election so we can win!
PANEL 3
The man sits behind his desk, looking very pleased.
MAN: Good riddance! Now we can run a winning campaign – a centrist campaign with a centrist candidate and centrist strategies!
PANEL 4
A large caption says “POST-ELECTION”.
The same man and woman are in a hallway. She glares at him, while he yells at her, jumping with fury.
MAN: WE LOST AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT!
KICKER PANEL
The man smiles as he talks to Barry the cartoonist.
MAN: Centrist Democrats can’t fail! We can only be failed.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
“Chicken fat” is archaic cartoonist-speak for fun little details that don’t matter.
PANEL 1: On the shelves in the background: A book called “Really Big Book.” A framed picture of Tintin. There’s a framed picture of Amy from “Futurama” on the wall. The woman’s shirt says “Woop Woop.”
Her arms are covered with, well, random doodles, including a Rubik’s cube flying on angel wings, a cloud that says “meh,” a sake, and a explosion with a “BOOM” sound effect.
PANEL 2: The snake tattoo has moved to her other arm, which also features a hand hatching from an egg and a paper saying “8675309.” Her shirt now ways “Hi Mom!” There’s a framed picture of Groucho Marx on the wall.
PANEL 3: There are framed photos on the wall of Kermit the Frong, Marcie, Peppermint Patty, the Mayor from “Nightmare Before Christmas,” and Mayor Quimby from The Simpsons.
On the shelves are: A globe with a goldfish-shaped continent; a stack of three books: Really Big Book, RBB Strikes Back, and Return of the RBB. The photo of Tintin has been replaced with Tintin’s dead, decapitated head. A photo of a seagull with a fish in its beak. A mouse with a bow and arrow, taking aim at an apple on the head of another mouse. A mouse painting a picture of cheese. A napping cat.
On the desk: The book says “Scary” on the spine and “Boo” on the front cover. The icon on the back of the laptop is a cracking egg.
Finally, a mouse or rat is clinging to the arm of the chair in the foreground.
PANEL 4: The snake tattoo is back! Now looking at a tattoo of a mug of steaming liquid. There are framed pictures of Popeye and Olive Oil.
Corso, now that Ampersand has handled your lies about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, I’ll handle the rest of them:
Except for the goddamn President of the United States, who pardoned Giuliani last year.
And I’m curious how you’re defining “most right-leaning people…” Is it people who voted for Trump? If the majority of those people agree that Freeman and Moss got a raw deal, why did they vote for a man who gleefully repeated Giuliani’s lies about them, and never apologized or retracted?
The much more likely conclusion is that most right-leaning people either don’t know who Freeman and Moss are, believe the lies that Trump and Giuliani told, or simply don’t care that Trump and Giuliani told lies about them.
You can say the exact same thing about the current president, and that did not stop the majority of right-leaning voters.
Even if this were an accurate recounting of the events that led to her death, and she were not wrongly targeted by the officer who shot her (she was), it would still ignore what happened after her death. Within hours, Good was smeared as a terrorist who had the intention of murdering cops–a claim for which there was no evidence, and significant evidence against. No action was taken against the officer, who was able to leave with his gun against procedure (after having broken multiple procedures leading to the shooting). And then the DOJ ordered an investigation into Good’s widow. That is obviously an example of the right targeting an individual unfairly.
“He was actively fighting with police” is a very weird way to spell “He was defending a woman who was wrongly pushed to the ground by placing himself between her and the officer committing police brutality, then was pushed to the ground and kicked repeatedly, then shot while he was on the ground in broad daylight, and all of this is on tape.”
Seriously–if you think he deserved to be arrested for that, you are not against the state targeting individuals. You are objectively pro-targeting of peaceful protesters.
There was no legitimate police action happening in either Good or Pretti’s situation. Aside from the very well-documented violations of procedure and police brutality described above, deploying ICE en masse to patrol the streets of Minneapolis was fundamentally illegitimate and designed to intimidate not only undocumented immigrants, but American citizens like the ones they murdered. Those murders were 100% foreseeable and were features of the Trump administration’s policy, not bugs of it; they just expected to get away with it, and were shocked when their attempted cover-ups did not work.
I can find no source for this number, probably because it’s as made up as everything else you’ve said here.
No, I actually do not have to agree that the state sending people just going about their lives to foreign torture prisons without due process, or murdering Americans protesting such actions, proves the same thing as the state failing to secure convictions against some people that were given due process. Why on earth would you think that’s a valid comparison at all?
Corso, now that Ampersand has handled your lies about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, I’ll handle the rest of them:
Except for the goddamn President of the United States, who pardoned Giuliani last year.
And I’m curious how you’re defining “most right-leaning people…” Is it people who voted for Trump? If the majority of those people agree that Freeman and Moss got a raw deal, why did they vote for a man who gleefully repeated Giuliani’s lies about them, and never apologized or retracted?
The much more likely conclusion is that most right-leaning people either don’t know who Freeman and Moss are, believe the lies that Trump and Giuliani told about them, or simply don’t care that Trump and Giuliani told lies about them.
You can say the exact same thing about the current president, and that did not stop the majority of right-leaning voters.
Even if this were an accurate recounting of the events that led to her death, and she were not wrongly targeted by the officer who shot her (she was), it would still ignore what happened after her death. Within hours, Good was smeared as a terrorist who had the intention of murdering cops–a claim for which there was no evidence, and significant evidence against. No action was taken against the officer, who was able to leave with his gun against procedure (after having broken multiple procedures leading to the shooting). And then the DOJ ordered an investigation into Good’s widow. That is obviously an example of the right targeting an individual unfairly.
“He was actively fighting with police” is a very weird way to spell “He was defending a woman who was wrongly pushed to the ground by placing himself between her and the officer committing police brutality, then was pushed to the ground and kicked repeatedly, then shot while he was on the ground in broad daylight, and all of this is on tape.”
Seriously–if you think he deserved to be arrested for that, you are not against the state targeting individuals. You are objectively pro-targeting of peaceful protesters.
There was no legitimate police action happening in either Good or Pretti’s situation. Aside from the very well-documented violations of procedure and police brutality described above, deploying ICE en masse to patrol the streets of Minneapolis was fundamentally illegitimate and designed to intimidate not only undocumented immigrants, but American citizens like the ones they murdered. Those murders were 100% foreseeable and were features of the Trump administration’s policy, not bugs of it; they just expected to get away with it, and were shocked when their attempted cover-ups did not work.
I can find no source for this number, probably because it’s as made up as everything else you’ve said here.
No, I actually do not have to agree that the state sending people just going about their lives to foreign torture prisons without due process, or murdering Americans protesting such actions, proves the same thing as the state failing to secure convictions against some people that were given due process. Why on earth would you think that’s a valid comparison at all?
Kilmer Garcia is literally just some guy ICE picked up by mistake. They even admitted, initially, that his kidnapping was an error. Every accusation since then is just the Trumpists trying to cover their butts and malign an innocent man. Because Trump thinks he’s a king and the king can’t be wrong.
From another thread:
Chris:
Rejecting the obvious phrasing problems, not really. I think the defense of Garcia is what cemented for me that we’re too far apart to have a good conversation. If you wanted to make the argument that he wasn’t given a fair shake at the system, that even scumbags have rights and his were trampled, and that maybe Americans have to put up with a couple of really bad people in their midst to send a message to police that they have to do things right because the stakes are high: Sure. Make that argument. I’d respect it. Amp went so far as to say the evidence was “incredibly slight”, and you said that he wasn’t “high profile” enough to warrant the attention he was given. I don’t know what to do with that. No to the former, the evidence was pretty damning, and to the latter, Garcia is exactly the kind of person ICE should be focusing on.
He was in a group of four, sure. But two were known members of MS-13 with records, and the other two (including Garcia) were suspected. The four saw police approaching, and ran. Someone (the police thought Garcia, and it makes sense seeing as he had the cash) threw drugs under a car. Garcia was carrying $1000 cash, was wearing known gang clothing, had gang tattoos (including, but not limited to, the letters “M” and “S” and the numbers “1” and “3”), and he was positively identified by a CI as both having a gang name “Chele” and holding the rank of “Chequeo” (a low rank recruiter) in the ranks of MS13. He had a history of offenses and accusations, not limited to some pretty gruesome domestic violence accusations from a previous partner. Even if he was not actually an MS-13 gang member, the things he’s actually done coupled with his lack of legal status are more than enough to warrant deportation.
Like I said: If you want to make the argument that he wasn’t given a fair shake at the system, that even scumbags have rights and his were trampled, and that maybe Americans have to put up with a couple of really bad people in their midst to send a message to police that they have to do things right because the stakes are high: Right there with you. But I don’t think that’s what you’re saying (Unless I’m wrong, and if so, by all means, correct me), I legitimately believe that the cognitive dissonance of Trump and ICE have put you in this atrocious position of trying to argue that as opposed to this being a process violation of a very bad person, that the guy was good, actually, or that shucks… we just don’t know, and maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time… And I have no idea how to interact with that.
Diane and Chris, would you mind also indulging me, and reposting your replies to Corso about Kilmer Garcia in the other thread? Once y9u’ve done that, I’ll edit your comments on this thread (leaving in the non-Garcia part of your co0mment, Chris), and then everything will be neat and tidy. :-)
Chris
It’s both felt longer and shorter than that.
Regardless… You’d originally questioned my assertion that the 2025 immigration numbers were basically in line with previous years. We can at least deal with that. There were 1.32 million green cards issued in 2025, which is a 2.7% decrease from 2024. I don’t think anyone is going to seriously argue that a 30,000 person difference in immigration is going to represent a sweeping policy change.
Do I think he had those tattoos? I think so. I’ve seen the pictures of them, and they were mentioned in the arrest report. It would have been a hell of a thing to make up. Is it possible the photos were altered, the cops lied, and someone high up ran with it? I guess. But it’s also not impossible for tattoos to be covered by makeup or removed, and the people providing the pictures with them absent all have an interest in them not being there.
But what you left out, I think, speaks volumes. No one on your side seems to want to talk about how the guys he was hanging out with were MS-13 members. No one argues that the hat and hoodie weren’t gang colors, no one argues that he didn’t have a wad of cash on him, or that drugs were recovered from the scene. No one has much to say about the CI testimony, or his previous record of domestic assault. You’ll say that the tattoos were photoshopped, or that we don’t know which of the four dumped the drugs, or that a lot of guys wear Bull’s hats (which… sure, but the hoodie was really the more obvious thing, and it was custom.)… But what I think you whistle past the graveyard on is the totality of the circumstances:
Even if you think you think that some of this is overblown or incorrect, how much of it would have to be true before you admitted the conclusion I’ve come to: Which is that Garcia is a bad guy? Suspend disbelief for a second: Just assume, rhetorically, that everything I said is the unmitigated truth: If Garcia was an MS-13 gang member, should he have been deported?
Because I have the feeling you can’t even say that.
We disagree here. With the exception of “without due process” I actually lean towards yes. I don’t necessarily like the idea of sending people home to a torture prison, but there is an element of personal responsibility here. “My home is shitty” isn’t carte blanche to do awful things abroad. I have genuine sympathy for the argument from the left that deporting abuelas who have lived here for longer than I’ve been alive without getting so much as a parking ticket is petty and cruel, but guys like Garcia are running head-first into the “Find Out” vector of their “Fuck Around” line.
Like I said, I think we’re too far apart to have this conversation.
Since you’ve made unambiguously false claims about Garcia in this thread, from now on you must back up any factual claims with links. “I’ve seen pictures” is not a citation. Neither, without a link, is just saying “the arrest report.”
[Comment deleted by Amp for not providing links to support a factual claim about Garcia. I’ve emailed Corso the text of the comment, to make it easy for him to edit and repost if he wants. –Amp]
I hate to say it Barry but I think with this cartoon you have fallen into the trap that I know you’ve said in the past you try to avoid, where the character who agrees with you is calm and detached while the character who disagrees is ranting and raving.
Fair!
For me – at least, as I’m thinking about it now – the trap isn’t EVER showing people I disagree with ranting or raving. The trap I want to avoid is exclusively showing them ranting and raving while characters I agree with are always calm and collected.
Amp, can you clarify your request? Where would you like the Garcia convo to continue, here or on the other thread?
Since Corso has already responded to what I wrote there, for now I will link to my comment there.
Corso:
The claim that he specifically had tattoos of an M, an S, a 1, and a 3 was obviously made up, and this was extensively covered. You can clearly tell in the picture shared by Trump that these were typed out letters superimposed above the actual tattoos he had on his hand in an attempt to prove those tattoos stand for MS13. Experts say they do not. This was covered in the fact check I linked for you. Here it is again:
https://www.wuft.org/politifact-florida/2025-05-01/kilmar-abrego-garcia-ms-13-knuckles
MS-13 gang members should be deported, if their gang affiliation is proven in court through a fair process, where they are allowed to defend themselves. This never happened. In fact, Garcia had a court ruling in place barring his deportation precisely to *protect* him from gang threats.
Yes, although that could be because you don’t seem to have any understanding of what actually happened here. He was not merely “sent home” and then put into a foreign torture prison by his government. The United States government directly paid for him to be held in CECOT, a notorious torture prison. There was absolutely no reason and no justification to do this; even if Garcia is a “bad guy,” I don’t believe even bad guys should be tortured. Do you?
If you want to talk about “personal responsibility,” why are you leaving out the responsibility of the U.S. government to follow its laws and Constitution instead of paying other governments to exert cruel and unusual punishment against people for offenses they (allegedly) commit in our country?
The government is no longer currently sending deportees to CECOT, by the way. So your position, if I’m understanding it correctly, would put you to the right of the Trump administration currently. I’d agree that puts us very far apart.
I would like to keep the conversation about Garcia here, on this thread, as much as possible.