Harsh Your Mellow Monday: The Easy Way, The Hard Way, and That Other Way
“Metropolis”, directed by Fritz Lang, 1927. F.W. Murnau Foundation
[HM1] Those that with haste will make a mighty fire, begin it with weak straws
Way back in the long, long ago of January the very first Harsh Your Mellow Monday declared “Bernie Sanders is not going to win the Democratic Nomination for president.”
…if Biden takes three or four of the top 5 on March 3rd, the hill to climb to unseat Biden from frontrunner becomes a sheer cliff in a hurry.
All that is to say: we’ve seen this movie before. Bernie Sanders might have a better plan and ground game than last time. But he also has a fuller field that isn’t going to bow out just to do him a favor. And the party powers that be are not exactly thrilled to have him as standard bearer. Most of all, he is still Bernie Sanders. Add it all up and smart odds are that we will see a replay of 2016: Bernie in second place as protest vote against the more establishment candidate; and returning to being an Independent Senator from Vermont in due course. Again.
Anything could happen. We will be reminded of that ad nauseum for the next two months. But it won’t.
Such prognostications that Bernie Sanders’ revolution might not hold up to the wider Democratic primary was held by more than a few folks because all the previous data suggested it. The informed, educated guess was that the premise the purveyors of the revolution had to sell was faulty: there wasn’t going to be enough “new” voters for Sanders to make up for the traditional Democratic coalition voters turned off by Bernie-style Democratic Socialism.
Now we have the data showing that is exactly what happened.
While young voters were part of the coalition that propelled Sanders to victory in California, those under age 30 made up just 11% of the electorate, according to exit polls. Another 35% were between the ages of 45 and 64, and 30% were 65 or older.
In Texas, a state that Biden won though the demographics were supposed to favor Sanders, just 16% of voters were younger than 30, while 38% were between the ages of 45 and 64, and 24% were 65 and older.
Even in Sanders’ home state of Vermont, voters younger than 30 made up just 11% of Super Tuesday voters, according to exit polls. Roughly 70% of voters were over age 45.
Of the 14 states that held primary contests on Tuesday, participation by voters younger than 30 didn’t exceed 20% in any state, according to an analysis of exit polls.
Given the huge turnout, including youth turnout, in the 2018 midterms, many had predicted, or at least hoped, that the trend would continue during the 2020 Democratic primaries. But so far, at least, there is no clear evidence of greater participation by the young people that Sanders has said he can motivate to get out to the polls.
But the revolution cannot fail, only be failed, so who ya gonna blame…oh, wait, I know:
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday results: “One of the things I was kind of not surprised by was the power of the establishment to force Amy Klobuchar, who had worked so hard, Pete Buttigieg who had really worked extremely hard as well out of the race.” https://t.co/FMsEFyFDY3 pic.twitter.com/9C5lLFJCR5
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 8, 2020
This particular line of defense is ridiculous. You can be the vanguard of a revolutionary movement, or you can be the victim of those meanie pants in-crowd cool kids who just won’t give you a fair shake. But you cannot be both, and you really cannot switch back and forth depending on the situation, especially if you want to convince the neutrals to come over to your cause.
Bernie Sanders ran in 2016, and we have plenty of evidence that the Democratic Party cleared the field for Hillary Clinton to be the nominee. Sanders then became the protest candidate, and did rather well for himself considering. Then, he and his supporters had a hand in re-writing the DNC rules for 2020. While Team Bernie didn’t get everything they wanted, Sanders’ team was the only campaign that had a direct say in the 2020 rules making process. Many, myself included, felt the ridiculous spectacle of baseball team-sized debates was the DNC trying too hard to look impartial as overcompensation.
What he did with all that was to, frankly, underperform. Yes he won New Hampshire & Nevada, and second/tied/maybe first in the train wreck that was Iowa’s caucus. But he didn’t win anywhere he wasn’t supposed to, and in many cases did lower numbers even in victory than he pulled in 2016. There are many variables to why that is but there is one constant: Bernie Sanders. So we can hash out all the other reasons and how much each of them played a role as the revolution dies its slow 2020 death delegate by delegate over the next few weeks. But somewhere in there as the gnashing of teeth and renting of garments gets to be a bit much make sure you focus most of it on the place most deserving. Not the DNC, not the “establishment”, not “low information voters” that has been used as a thinly veiled accusation against anyone not feeling the Bern, and certainly not the media and other candidates who hardly laid a finger of rough political play on the Vermont Senator this entire campaign. Blame the guy who sold folks on the forging fire of revolution only to get hot blowout and smoldering embers of what might have been after.
Blame Bernie Sanders, who didn’t deliver on what he promised, again and again.
[HM2] Talking Like Grown Folks About Growing Old
There has been plenty of speculation surrounding Joe Biden’s age & abilities in this campaign. Let’s take a moment and try to have a big people chat about it.
The interwebs are awash in the clips and videos of every gaffe, stutter, misspoken phrase, and oral miscue Joe Biden makes. Some are more legitimate than others, as this clipped video that made the rounds demonstrates:
No one can tell me that Biden is more electable than @SenSanders.
No one
— RoseAnn DeMoro (@RoseAnnDeMoro) March 8, 2020
That clip isn’t particularly fair, but this isn’t a fair business. It was trimmed down from a bigger chunk where the miscue makes more sense in the larger 3 minute riff that Biden was on about Trump’s re-election campaign, but also cuts out things like the audience laughing. Depending on your priors, the edited clip might actually look better, or worse. The problem for this poster is that, yes, the Democratic primary voters are in the process of declaring that “Biden is more electable than Bernie Sanders” but I somehow doubt there will be reflection on why that is. Instead, their will be vitriol. Combined, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are the same age as the surrender of the Confederate Army at Appomattox Court House. Their surrogates and supporters are touchy on this point, except to hurl it at each other.
The problem with Biden is this isn’t the first, or the last, clip like this. Folks can say whatever they want on social media but videos of him this campaign is a “believe your lying eyes” type of things. We can see it. If you’ve seen Joe Biden on TV for the last 10, 20, 30 years or more you can tell. It’s obvious. Joe Biden has declined. We have 40 years of video on the man available at a moment’s touch. The Joe Biden who ran circles around Paul Ryan, a man who prided himself on data points and specific knowledge, in style if not substance at their debate in 2012 is not who we have seen in 2020. To ignore or explain it away is just nonsense.
Joe Biden has a well known stutter; that you can, and should, overlook. But the rest of it? It’s fair to question for someone wanting to be the President of the United States of America. Now, having said all that, jumping straight to “he’s got dementia” isn’t fair either. The spectrum from 77 year old man forgetting things to full blown diagnosed dementia is far, and certainly not for lay folks bloviating online about it. Mental health is not a clean cut thing under the best of circumstances, and in a presidential campaign probably impossible.
I’m sympathetic. I’ve spent the last few years learning to function with documented, diagnosed, on-paper reality of real life cognitive function decline. The magic of the internet is you don’t get to see any of that. You don’t see the rough drafts with sometimes garbled word salad Em and others who help edit sometimes notice. You don’t see me running tweets through Google Docs for spelling and grammar because I can’t remember how to spell things sometimes. I don’t complain because there is no point to it. Adapt and overcome. No one cares, work harder.
Joe Biden and his 77 years don’t get that kind of cover, nor should he. Private citizen Joe Biden has every right to manage the natural aging processes, and the changes both physical and mental that come with it for everyone, as he sees fit. In private. With his family. But Presidential Candidate Joe Biden does not get that. He volunteered for this, and the questions of his fitness are central to the nation deciding on a president. His campaign no doubt protects him as best they can, but we are not even to the halfway point of the primary schedule, let alone the year long slog to November. Bernie, for all his bluster and rage curmudgeon persona, hasn’t really hit Joe with any of it. Part of it is because Bernie is even older, so it would highlight a shared weakness more than emphasize a strength. But there is more to it than that. The Democratic Primary has punished the likes of Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, and Bill De Blasio who they felt were being unfair or overly mean to ‘Ol Uncle Joe. That’s all fine and dandy, but counterproductive. Trump 2020 is going to have no qualms about going low and right where it hurts with the nominee, and no cries of hypocrisy about the president’s own history of withholding information is going to blunt the accusations. If Joe Biden finishes this primary season off with the nomination, the vanity of Donald Trump and his pride in a vigorous and strength-projecting persona is going to hone in on it and beat on it mercilessly.
It’s fair game, it is a liability, and there will be no tsk-tsking it away in the coming general election if Joe Biden is the name on top. Team Biden better develop a strategy, and quickly, of how to handle the age and ability question, ‘cause it’s coming to every screen near you for the duration of the summer.
Leave the diagnosis to the doctors. But carefully consider the fitness of the candidate, and — maybe even more importantly — how they handle such questions and issues.
[HM3] Corona Don’t Care
Crisis, both real and imagined, are useful in revealing character.
You can be poetic about pressure and talk about it turning coal into a diamond, or you can be realistic and talk about pressure crushing something like Schrödinger’s discarded beer can.
If you’re ate up with yourself and your politics, you use it to confirm all your priors.
So over the next few however-long-it-lasts period of time that we will all be dealing with the COVID-19/Coronavirus outbreak, it’s good to remember that folks will be more than happy to not let the crisis go to waste for their own ends.
The Coronavirus is not a RAWR Deep State plot. If the president doesn’t handle the response well, either in practicum or optics, that’s on him.
The Coronavirus does not care which healthcare system your country currently has. Italy, with its SSN a common and well regarded European-style universal system, is having all sorts of problems. China with its top-down everything obviously was the origin point. We will see how America’s system holds up. You want to debate best systems of healthcare fine, but no system is perfect nor immune.
The Coronavirus does not care about your economic theory. The toilet paper at Costco is getting all the viral attention, but it’s the effects on things like supply chain, travel, and international business that lag behind in the headlines but are the real indicators of the economic impact this will have. The machinery of international global business is more analogous to an ocean than a river, and the waves this is creating will take a while to reach the shores of the average person. Those waves will be more noticeable once workers can’t go to work, start missing pay, and the service-type industry folks feel the bite of people staying home. One talking heads self-quarantine is another’s personal financial disaster, something that get’s lost too quickly.
As Kristin so ably pointed out the “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” folks will be happy to not let the crisis go to waste. Already congress has chunked off $8.3 billion in funding, and others are using the headlines to push their various plans that now are super urgent so as to strike while the iron is hot. U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) took a break from his relentless campaigning to become preside…er, I mean, take over the internet to introduce legislation giving the FDA wide-ranging powers “to request information from manufacturers of essential drugs or devices regarding all aspects of their manufacturing capacity, including sourcing of component parts, sourcing of active pharmaceutical ingredients, use of any scarce raw materials, and any other details the FDA deems relevant to assess the security of the U.S. medical product supply chain.” A cynical person would whisper “means of production” but hush, now, there is a crisis at hand and we must do something.
As in all things, maintain your bearing, whether it’s with bombarding news coverage, panic at the big box store, hysteria on your Facebook page, or politicians promising X, Y, and Z because of that scary Chinese Superflu thingy. Stay informed and take care of each other. And wash your hands.
[HM4] Pound That Send Button
A short poem on media, both news and social:
“It’s a race, it’s a chase, hurry up and feed their face!
Who will win? No one knows!…”
I’m just joking, that’s actually the old jingle from the Hungry, Hungry Hippos commercials back in the day.
Look, don’t judge…the 80s were a magical time that, when you understand in retrospect the rampant cocaine usage on Madison Ave at the time, the commercials suddenly make more sense.
Anyhoo…
Our friend Michael’s piece on the eponymous-hippopotamus game of slapping a lever as hard and fast as you can to grab a bunch of marbles you really don’t care about other than to deny them to your opponent and win is pretty much how folks are using media today. Firstest with the mostest is sound military strategy, and is how you win Hungry, Hungry Hippos, but doesn’t work that well in the cosplay real life of the interwebs. Some folks ascribe Machiavellian plans and biases to “the media” but for the most part it’s folks under pressure just banging their hippo hard and fast so that their outlet gets the marble before the three competitors on equal footing get it first. Some folks ascribe everything from opposing political parties, to Russia, to Soros, to the Koch bothers for everything they see on social media, but mostly its just folks pounding that “send” button as hard as the focus-group tested kids in that commercial were.
Don’t get too wrapped up in it. Play a board game with the folks you care about, have some mindless fun, and don’t chase internet ghosts and goblins. Especially if you are quarantined. Board games are just the thing for that.
In other blame deflection games, David Calhoun, the new CEO of Boeing, threw the former CEO under the bus and said that Muilenberg was the guy who was all about chasing the stock price, as if the Board has no hand in shaping the financial policies of the company.Report
The people who build all sorts of planes have been harshing my mellow. It’s been over 40 years now since I was the poor systems schmuck that had to tell Bell Labs project managers that it was a software world and their projects would be late and over budget in the future because the software was a mess, not the hardware. The Boeing MAX and Starliner problems are basically software and systems problems. The Air Force has had to cancel an upgrade of the B-2 bomber because Northrup (the original builder) says it lacks the software expertise to do the job. I’m still waiting for any of the CEOs/boards to put systems or software people in charge of the overall developments.Report
As I’ve said before, Boeing refuses to acknowledge it is also a software company, even though it produces more lines of code every year than it does engineering data.Report
This brings up a tangent — unrelated to Boeing, but related to the airlines. It is something that fascinates me.
A modern airline is really two businesses glued together. One business operates airplanes. They schedule flights and crew, they order fuel and food. This is what most people think an airline is.
The other business is called “revenue management,” but that name is misleading. Really their other business is a weird price forecasting game that tracks public sentiment to adjust fares in realtime to keep planes full. They want to figure out the most they can charge for a fare, at time T, that will lead to a 1) a full plane at departure time and 2) that doesn’t leave any potential profit on the table by undercharging.
The technology to achieve this second goal is the part of the airlines I deal with. It’s at least as important to them as the first.Report
I mean it makes sense. An empty seat is a really big loss yes?Report
It’s largely an opportunity cost. Meaning, flying a half empty plane costs nearly as much as a full plane. There will be a difference in food and administrative expenses, but those are peanuts. (Sometimes literally, ha!) There is a measurable difference in fuel costs. But it still takes a lot of fuel to put an empty plane into the air, plus pilot salary, asset deprecation, etcetera.
Filling the plane matters a lot.
When I was young, I would often be on a plane with quite a few empty seats, not anymore though. Virtually every flight I’m on these days is full.
(Except very recently, of course. Covid-19 is a nightmare for the travel industry.)Report
I found the conclusion to this article amusing. TL;DR – European airlines pay a lot of money for specific runway time slots, and if they fail to utilize those slots enough, they can lose them, so they are flying mostly, or completely empty planes in order to keep those slots.
And the author blames it on greed.Report
Yeesh.
This seems like a good time to suspend the policy so that airlines don’t have to waste that fuel. They’re going to be struggling enough, as will the airports. There is no reason to make it this terrible.Report
The Dow halted trading this morning after nearly crashing 2000 points. Many of the big tech companies have announced work from home until the end of March and I suspect it will continue into April.Report
This morning both VA hospitals here instituted checks at the gates screening people in their cars before they even get into parking lots. This also meant employees coming early through single point of entry with assigned passes. Initially this will go for 30 days they said. Report
A lot of that crash was, me thinks, due to Russia and the Saudis starting an oil war with each other last week at OPEC. Seems the Ruskies didn’t want to cut production to keep prices high during the wild coronavirus ride, so the Saudis are flooding the market and driving the prices down to make they point hat they can. if it lasts more then a couple of weeks then US oil companies are suspect, as both their profits could tank and their loan based leveraging will get called in.
But hey, we don’t need to move to alternative energy sources because they are too economically disruptive.Report
Many of the dance organizers in the Bay Area are cancelling their dances and classes for the rest of March because they violate Coronavirus recommendations. My usual standing room only BART ride into SF had a lot of seats available because people are working from home.Report
What I find amusing is that the fix for the stock exchange was to…turn it off, and turn it back on again.Report
I needed this laugh this morning!Report
Here are my basic thoughts on Sanders who is fairly well liked by Democrats but is probably not going to be the nominee:
1. Young people don’t vote. Politicians do not respond to the People, they respond to voters and for the most part, young people do not vote and then get petulant when you point out that they do not vote and that is why politicians do not address their concerns. To be fair, there are a fair number of structural issues that seem designed to make it hard for young people to vote and even at nearly 40, I feel like the gerontocracy is too much and I am still at the political version of the kids’ table.
2. Sanders never learned how to communicate with African-American voters who are the real base of the Democratic Party and probably suspicious of the atheistic, self-described socialist Jew who spent his childhood in Brooklyn and most of his adult life in Vermont. His supporters probably were also dismissive with how central religion and church is to many African-Americans. HRC for all her faults can speak fluent Methodist and Biden and Obama know how to cultivate religious voters. Warren also probably had a problem with African-American voters for the same reason.
3. Sanders is not a Democrat. He causes with the Democratic Party but seems to take pride in not joining the party. His most hardcore supporters are also into pissing and shitting on people who declare themselves to be Democrats. Surprise surprise that the Democratic Primary voters take pride in being Democrats (something that probably also shocks most of OT) an want a Democratic politician to be the Democratic nominee. Do the wonders never cease?
4. The “establishment” (as they are) apparently were able to learn from the 2016 Republican primary (eventually) and got in line under Biden. I know Sanders supporters think this is destined to be a disaster but that seems more like an emotive wah wah rather than actual analysis. Democrats are capable of falling in line and were mobilized 2017, 2018, 2019. Super Tuesday primaries had record turnout. I don’t see any evidence or facts as to why 2020 will be different than 2017-2019 except among people with an anti-Democratic Party bias.Report
I think you are right on nearly all of that.Report
I look forward to reading comments about why we need to vote for Biden.Report
well as usual the polling is ambivalent – 538 shows Biden up on Trump Nationally on CNN, but down to trump in WI, PA and MI at the moment in regionally based polling. Until that clear sup there’s no real There there to the notion that Biden is the better choice.Report
Biden is going to be Romney. When half the arguments about voting for him involve how awful his opponent are (and make assumptions that everybody shares opinions about what “awful” consists of) and the other half of the arguments for him involve appealing to principles that aren’t fully shared by the listener (“We need Romney/Ryan to balance the budget!”), we’re going to have a situation where he polls well but nowhere near enough vote for him.Report
Are there any good arguments to vote for Trump?Report
Yes, there are. They appeal to principles that you may not share, but they exist.Report
Thus the reason to vote for Biden.Report
But arguments like “Vote Blue! No matter who!” apply equally to Bernie as they do to Biden.
If I’m looking for arguments about why I’d vote for Biden, I’d like ones that don’t apply equally to Bernie.
I mean, I can think of some arguments for why someone would vote for Trump but not vote for Jeb! or Ted Cruz.
Can you think of any arguments that someone would vote for Biden but not Bernie?Report
Huh? What? Are you serious? Lots of D’s are moderate to liberal. They dont’ want Bernies old school leftie rhetoric and talk of revolution. They want more/better health care reform w/o ending private insurance, strong enviro protections, more RBG’s less Kavanaughs, etc etc. Lots of D’s want the general liberal policies a Biden admin will likely push.Report
I understand why the ones who are conservative to moderate would vote Biden… but wouldn’t the ones who were moderate to liberal prefer Bernie?Report
Some do, some don’t. Bernie isn’t a liberal. He goes a lot farther then many liberals and most moderates. His messaging and policies are very much not aimed at mods. His supporters often seem to work at pushing away moderates and even some liberals. Lots of liberals preferred Warren. There are also strong, and getting stronger, electability concerns about bernie. He has done poorly with AfAm voters which is a major issue.Report
I submit to you: They’re not really liberals. They’re moderates who say they’re liberals because saying “I’m moderate!” might as well be saying “I think people should choose between rent and insulin”.
Even if that’s what they believe, deep down, it’s still unfashionable to come out and actually say.Report
Meh. Political labels aren’t as precise as the ingredients on the can of corned beef hash. Moderate and liberal can overlap.
Bernie was running to the left of the majority of the D’s however you label them. Biden is closer to the median D on many things for better or worse.Report
Bingo.
I personally can’t fathom an argument for preferring Biden over Warren, but obviously tens of millions of Democrats disagree with me.
The argument for preferring Biden over Trump may be incomprehensible to some, but it exists.Report
The argument for preferring Biden over Trump may be incomprehensible to some, but it exists.
As someone raised Evangelical, the whole “learn how to witness to others about your faith!” thing was drilled into me. Different cultures need to have different aspects of the faith appealed to.
I could put together arguments for why Biden is preferable to Bernie.
But they play up how conservative Biden is… and they’d be easily modified to contain barbs against the self-professed Progressives. (“Why would you even consider voting for the administration associated with putting children in cages?” and “Biden will appoint Jamie Dimon to Treasury!” that sort of thing.)
Chip said it himself: “I personally can’t fathom an argument for preferring Biden over Warren”.
My question would be something like this:
Do you see this as a warning sign?Report
Given how un-representative of how Chip’s views are, no, it doesn’t seem like much of a warning sign at all.
My argument for preferring Biden over Bernie is that Biden is much better at assembling a diverse coalition and actually getting stuff done.
Bernie is fine ideologically, just demonstrably unable to actually get people together on the same page.Report
I wasn’t saying that a statement like “I prefer Warren to Biden” was a warning sign.
I was saying that a statement like “I personally can’t fathom an argument for preferring Biden over Warren” was a warning sign.Report
A warning sign of…what exactly?Report
Biden’s viability in general and whether 2020 is likely to be a replay of 2016.
I mean, if we were saying “hell, I totally see why Biden is attractive, even if he’s not to my own personal taste, I can totally see why he’d be exceptionally popular to people outside of my circle”, that would *NOT* be a warning sign.Report
The idea here is that since Biden is unfathomable to a guy who thought Liz Warren would catch fire and run away with the election is a warning sign?
I guess, in the same way that Nixon being unfathomable to Pauline Kael was a warning sign.Report
Yes, it’s a warning sign.
In a way that “I understand why Biden won” would not be.Report
Is the fact that Trump is unfathomable to me also a warning sign?Report
Would have been in 2016, I imagine.
Though I imagine that it’s a potential source of comfort in 2020. “I don’t understand how either one of these guys is attractive! Therefore, the one I find less personally offensive probably has a leg up.”Report
And you fathom how this seems like it’s entering Mark Halperin territory, right?
“I don’t understand how anyone can prefer Biden over Warren”.
“Yeah, that’s a warning sign for Democrats!”
“I also don’t understand how anyone can prefer Trump over Biden.”
“Yeah, that’s a warning sign for Democrats!”
“And I really don’t understand how anyone can prefer skinny jeans over straight leg.”
“Yeah, that’s a warning sign for Democrats!”Report
You misunderstand: *I* understand how someone could prefer Trump to Biden. I even understand how someone could prefer Biden to Warren/Bernie.
But I’m a Vermin Supreme kinda guy.
When “Vote Blue! No Matter Who!” people don’t understand these things, it strikes me as a warning sign.
Not because of the “would be willing to crawl across broken glass!” vote. But because of the “eh, probably wouldn’t be willing to go too far out of my way” vote.Report
If Jim Hoft is unable to fathom how someone could vote Democrat ,is that a warning sign for Republicans?Report
… I don’t know who that is.
Let’s check the Wikipedia.
He strikes you as the most appropriate analogy?
Suit yourself.
Okay, I’d say that it’d be a warning sign for Trump if Gateway Pundit said something like “I don’t understand how someone could vote for Trump instead of Joe Walsh!”
It’d strike me as obvious that that’d be a warning sign.Report
So, me not understanding how someone could vote Trump is a warning sign, but him not understanding how someone could vote Biden is not?
Am I getting this right?Report
Chip, you not understanding how someone could prefer Biden is a warning sign.
In the same way that I said that you not understanding how someone would prefer Trump would be a warning sign in 2016.
Hey, maybe the Trumpivirus will be so bad that Biden will win in a walk.
Nothing to worry about.Report
If biden can win the PV by 3 million or so more then trump then he is likely to win the EV. People seem to like him more then other demon she beasts baby eaters of recent memory.Report
If we’re going to run with the idea that 2020 is going to be different because we’re confident that Biden can win the popular vote, I guess I have nothing to worry about.Report
2020 will be different from 2016.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.Report
What is the reason for people who did not vote for Trump already? Wanting to watch the world burn? We are likely going to get a supply side recession because of Corona virusReport
What is the reason for people who did not vote for Trump already?
Off the top of my head there are two categories for this:
“I thought that Trump would be worse than he has been and I didn’t vote for him out of an abundance of caution but now my fears are more or less settled.”
“I thought that Trump wouldn’t be as good as he has been and now I’m willing to hope that his second term would rise up to the first one.”
And that’s not counting the “better red than dead!” voters.
(NOTE: This is not saying that people who voted Clinton are likely to jump to Republicans. It’s instead talking about 3rd Party voters, which 2016 had a *LOT* of, and people who didn’t bother voting, which it had a handful of.)Report
Biden might also be like Bob Dole, with his nomination being the equivalent of a gold retirement watch. Trump will point out that when that 2 PM phone call comes in, Biden will be taking his afternoon nap. Folks have to wonder whether Jill Biden should be deciding on curtains for the Oval Office or on a nice assisted living facility where he’ll be happy.Report
Watching Trump attempt to put together a string of words which demonstrate that he is the sharper and more alert candidate would be hilarious.Report
Just hoping to establish that we can make fun of people who can’t put strings of words together.
Personally, I think it’d be a better play to appeal to the morality of *NOT* engaging in this sort of mockery given the coming eight months… but I borrow trouble a lot.
(Compare/contrast with Clinton’s running making Trump’s infidelity something we couldn’t argue about, I suppose.)Report
The glaring weakness in that argument is that Trump has, for his entire presidency, filled giant stadiums with people listening to hours long off-the-cuff speeches. Not even Reagan, the Great Communicator, could give speeches that long and that often. You might not like Trump’s style of speaking, but you might as well claim that Billy Graham was horrible speaker because he didn’t stick to the Queen’s English.
I’m sure many Country Club Republicans were entirely dismissive of Obama’s intellect and speaking skills, but if it came to handicapping his Presidential prospects, the problem would be their own tiny little worldview where they think any respectable politician should talk like Thurston Howelll the Third.
In 2008 Hillary was wildly dismissive of Obama’s rhetorical style, too, and we saw how that worked out.Report
Hard to say whether taking a nap or tweeting about going long on pineapples is going to be the better attack ad.Report
At this point, I think we should all go long on Corn Pop.Report
Aww Jay, I love ya man. Thank you for this line of argument. You’re kind of like an inverted weather vane; as long as you were talking the “Well Biden is probably a stronger candidate and I can see how he would win in the Midwest over Trump whereas Bernie likely can’t” line I could keep telling myself that it was possible that Biden, the sole remaining moderate candidate, was in danger of losing the nomination. Now that you’ve flipped directions and are saying “Well I can’t see any positive argument for nominating Biden whereas people would be happy to pull for Bernie” I can rest easy the numbers are right and Biden is most likely going to be the nominee.
I would also like to point out that Hillary came within a fraction of a fingernails’ breadth of winning the nomination. So, when you say that Biden’s scenario is assured to be a near replay of 2016, then we can see multiple avenues where Biden is unlikely to replay HRC’s failures. For instance, the ability of the GOP to manufacture the Burisima non-scandal into an event that’ll produce an (at the time) respected relatively non-partisan FBI director dropping a bombshell about Biden weeks before voting is very much in doubt. Similarly, Biden is a guy, not a gal, so that’s an awkward political liability off the table. Biden is a highly personable retail politician whereas Hillary’s strength lay primarily in party logistics. 2020 will be a choice election with an incumbent GOP President, so the typical 8-year Democratic purity bug will likely be much weaker. I could go on and on and the thing is, if 2016’s results are likely, Biden needs only one fishing thing to put him over the top against Trump. And this is all if we start out accepting your very daring assertion that Biden in 2020 will be like Hillary in 2016 even though the two candidates and the circumstances of their nominations are, quite literally, opposite from each other.
I mean, hell, a positive argument for Biden is laughably easy to make. Biden is a warm and personable political figure who is liked both within his party and without. He charms and invokes warm feelings from many people he’s worked with and the people he encounters while campaigning. Biden’s got a fine personal history of service to the country including a stint as vice president in an administration that oversaw a long and steady recovery from an inherited recession that was the worst in a century and also accomplished significant (now) popular reforms in healthcare and financial regulation. Biden promises not to upend the political table but rather to return to steady competent governance with a genuine offer of defusing the current political tensions and allowing a return to normalcy. His political positions are both in alignment with the overwhelming majority of both his own party and the sane voters who occupy the center of the voting populace.
I could write them all day. It’s easy. The man’s got plenty to work with.Report
Today’s headlines:
“Joe Biden holds 24-point lead vs. Bernie Sanders in Michigan primary” Detroit Free Press;
“Wow, this is a really ominous sign for Democrats!’
“Biden Holds Primary Lead; Dems Have Edge in General ” Monmouth University Polling;
“Wow, the Democrats haven’t learned anything since 2016!”
“BREAKING: Trump Loses Ground Against Democratic Challengers in Battleground States” Firehouse Strategies;
“Yep, Democrats just can’t put together an argument for Biden.”
“We Are Watching the Probable Demise of Trump’s Reelection in Real Time” Jon Chait;
“The coronavirus is Trump’s Chernobyl ” Washington Post;
“Trump Campaign Postpones Bus Tour as He Plays Down Risks of Coronavirus” New York Times;
“Deepening Rout in U.S. Stock Futures Triggers Limit Down Rules” Bloomberg
“Bullock’s Last Minute Entry Moves Montana Senate to Lean Republican” The Cook Political Report
“Really, these are all warning signs for the Democrats!”Report
Democrats win Senate, widen House Majority, Biden elected to White House.
“Well now the Democrats have really screwed themselves over.”Report
North, I am seeing Biden and I’m remembering who Biden used to be. The big ol’ gregarious guy who would have been the life of the party at the State Fair, or the Friday Night Fish Fry, or the garage poker game. The ultimate “have a beer with” candidate.
As it stands, he’s showing signs of… well, I hope I’m wrong. But he’s 77 now. I’m remembering him when he was ~65. He’s showing signs of weakness that, honestly, didn’t used to be there.
I’m seeing some bad signs.
On top of that, I’m seeing more emphasis on how Biden ain’t Trump and how Biden ain’t Bernie than on how Biden is good.
Now I’m not going to say that everything is doomed… there are, indeed, a handful of things that need to happen for Biden to win and the stock market is doing one of them (and it wasn’t doing it a couple of weeks ago).
But Biden qua Biden is making we think “holy cow, this will fail”.
And I’m getting a *LOT* of weird denial variants from people that I remember getting weird denial variants from back in 2016.Report
People have said that we need to understand why Hills lost in 16 to understand how to move forward. This is correct. There were lots of issues and everybody seems to pick a couple key things to ignore.Report
SHE WON THE POPULAR VOTEReport
Really? You should ignore that completely. It means nothing at all.Report
Dude, I certainly ain’t saying he’s risk free. I’m on record bemoaning his age. But he was 77 a few months ago when you were bullish on Biden or was he 76 and then suddenly he turned 77 and you suddenly said “77? Well that’s crazy old”.
And of course you’re getting denials when you bring this up. Biden doesn’t speak as well as he used to? Biden is elderly? I mean they’re coming up because the incumbent is in his 70’s too and literally is incapable of stringing sentences together. It’s not like Biden is running against a normal President. And with Bernie as the alternate? The man is ALSO in his 70’s and also is odd in his conversation manner AND had a literal fishing heart attack for AND has refused to release his medical records.
Tell me, seriously. If super Tuesday had gone Bernie’s way and he was the presumed Democratic front runner would you still be talking this way about Biden? Really?Report
I was bullish on Biden because I was certain that he could win WI/MI/PA.
Stuff I’ve seen in the last, oh, month or so has got me wondering whether he’s likely to do that.
I’m not saying he won’t! But I am more bearish than I used to be.Report
It’s odd, because I feel like he’s perked up more in the last month or so as compared to his performance earlier. Lord(Lady?) knows I’m far from sanguine about Biden though. He’s a riskier bet than I’d like, but a hell of a lot less risky than Bernie.Report
What’s interesting about all this barstool sports predictions is that for any of the remaining candidates, a perfectly logical and well documented argument could be put forward for why this candidate cannot possibly win.
Yet, the fact remains, that one of them will most certainly win.
Which is why I have so much scorn for the crystal ball gazers; they are like the weatherman whose greatest skill is in explaining how last week’s prediction was wrong, but this week’s is right on the money.Report
Eh.. yes.. but some of the arguments are a bit more… grounded… in reality shall we say than others?
I mean I agree one of them is going to win but surely some are more likely to win than others?Report
“Arguments grounded in reality” and “likely to win” are wildly different things.Report
One of them will most certainly win, and that’s why Republicans are so serene. Their candidate is essentially running unopposed.
Really the only risk we see is that Trump might catch Covid-19 and not even be in the race. That’s also a risk for Bernie and Biden, both of whom are extremely old, too.
And earlier today Gavin Newsom was full of praise for Trump and Pence. How often does that happen? It pretty much destroys the “Trump is incompetent on corona!” narrative, which Democrats were seizing on in desperation.Report
Hmm, the last time I saw Republicans this complacent was in 2008.
People keep saying it’s not like 2008.
But that’s what they said in 2008.
Seems like a warning sign.Report
Did the GOP even run a candidate in 2008? Let me think… No, I’m pretty sure we didn’t contest that election or I’d have voted GOP.Report
His name was Senator John McCain. He picked Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. So while yeah, you are being a bit snarky (I assume anyway since you are always a bit snarky), the GOP very much contested the election.Report
I am watching Washington and Idaho. Bernie is four-for-four in the West so far. Back in 2016 he beat Clinton in both states with >70% of the votes. He was out-polling Biden by 20 percentage points in Washington until this past week — but Washington is a vote-by-mail state and the last minute Biden surge in the polls there may not matter.
I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a big-picture thing in the West, and what it might be.Report
Anti-Politics as Usual?
I’m not going to argue that the Mountain West is “Libertarian” because it ain’t. But it does have a bit of a “leave me alone” bias.Report
[HM1] One of the things I’ve been wondering about the Bernie/Socialist movement in the Democratic party is what happens after Bernie? Is there really a Social Democratic faction? Is it just Bernie? On the one hand, he’s getting more votes than I thought he’d get, since I thought he was more of a Rick Santorum figure… a way to show displeasure with Hilary rather than a positive endorsement… the fact that he’s still pulling a solid plurality says, something.
Who picks up the banner when Bernie’s off the stage? Is Bernie creating/growing a movement, or does it die once he does (metaphorically or other)?
If the idea is that it continues and grows after he’s gone, then an interesting thing to consider is the institutional weakness of his support (esp. compared to his popular support) as measured by endorsements. Here’s the 538 endorsement race for context.
Institutionally Bernie is a total outlier… which could mean several things; most of those things are what I’m sure most of us expect: once he’s gone everyone drifts back to some standard democrat who will modulate their tone to scoop up that faction.
What if the lack of institutional support (proportionally) is a harbinger of a larger collapse?
Simultaneously, what if Bernie’s failure isn’t to win the presidency, but really to build a successor movement?Report
I suspect Bernie is just who folks of that inclination grabbed onto. He’s more avatar than builder, they gather around him as best option available. Explains why the movement doesn’t really grow, and why I don’t think it will go away after Bernie, it’ll just migrate to the next Avatar.Report
Plausible, maybe even probable.
My observation would be that it’s potentially “dangerous” to have a solid 20%-30% of the party bouncing from Avatar to Avatar without proportional institutional support/co-option. That is, either a new Avatar catches fire, or the disconnect between the party and the plurality gets exposed in unexpected ways. Maybe both.Report
I lay pretty good odds that without Sanders to rally around, in the absence of an obvious successor the movement will indulge their favourite pass time, leftist infighting over objectively minor differences in opinion.Report
So I see the answer to that in the same vein I see the answers to the “Why don’t we have third parties” in the US question. Most of the time the wok is done at the highest level, because modern political science seems to think you can create a movement from the top down by winning the white house as opposed to form the bottom up. Republicans seem to have grasped this concept a generation ago which is why you saw them packing school boards in the 1990’s and early aughts – it created bench depth that could be moved up the chain to county/parish and then state level offices. Democrats ceded most of those races in the push to go after the WH, and the Greens and the like never figured it out either. Until that changes I fear we will be stuck where we are.Report
This is a good point.
Of course, the conservatives say the same thing about liberals working in the opposite direction, by capturing academia and the popular culture. In their telling of things, this gives liberals an unfair advantage since pop culture is like 24/7 liberal propaganda piped into every home in America.
I’m not sure if this works out to a push or not but my takeaway is that power in America can be operated by many different levers, and fixating on the Presidency is short sighted.Report
This is a good pointReport
Sure, I’m a proponent of political movements that build top-down-bottom-up cohesion. But I also understand why they aren’t necessary, or not necessary if one defines success as grabbing the brass ring and not as changing political direction.
But that’s also what I’m asking. Our parties and electoral regime are very brittle… they work exceedingly well with broad consensus, but not very well at all the further we diverge.
That’s why I’d point to Reagan and Clinton 1 as examples where the avatars represented a movement and were able to navigate the changes, whereas Trump/Sanders represent disjunction and the absence of movements. Such that even “success” will bring failure.Report
There are obvious parallels that could be made between Bernie’s movement and Ross Perot’s, or perhaps some political version of the ShamWow guy, where people sit mesmerized by the rapid-fire, emotion-laden, factoid-filled sales pitch. You could probably substitute an entirely different set of words and most people wouldn’t even notice. It’s a rapid fire delivery of really important “facts”, followed by grand solutions to fix either dire problems, social injustice, or spilled orange juice.
They will make you care about whatever they want you to care about, because their delivery is so good at convincing you that what they care about is vitally important to you. Tent revivals works the same way, and the best preachers are wildly successful at selling a 2,000 year old product like it’s brand new. Bernie is selling a 150-year old product that’s been a consistent and miserable failure, but people walk out of his rallies with their eyes all aglow like they’d been to their first Amway sales convention.Report
“ShamWow guy”
Now George, that’s Mr. President to you and me. Where’s your respect for the office?
But sure… that’s sort of what I’m wondering… is it just Bernie? Is it the ideas? Is it just growing dissatisfaction with the Dem mainline? Is Bernie doing things to make his movement enduring? Is it just about him and when he’s gone, who cares?Report
I would have to say it’s mostly Bernie’s rhetorical style and delivery. Academia is chock full of everything from British Labour style socialists to hard-core Maoists, yet you don’t see a socialist movement with any legs aside from Bernie’s. Sure, there’s the odd AOC or Ilhan Omar who run as much on anti-Americanism as socialism, but they look to Bernie to provide the inspiration and get out the votes. If there was really a strong movement, AOC wouldn’t have something like 25 primary challengers looking to replace her.
Part of the movement’s weakness is probably that socialism doesn’t really offer anything at the level of cities or House districts. Bernie’s pitch is a social revolution that turns everything upside down at the national and global level. That simply can’t be done by the city council because they don’t really have any big levers to pull, and if they try their failures become immediately apparent.
Social revolutionaries may get themselves elected to the city council because they want to change the world, but the only city-level issues that will land on their desk are the sidewalk costs for the new Oakville Mall (or handing out free needles to all the homeless people who are destroying downtown). At the local level, they have to implement the dirty reality instead of selling the pipe dream.
Even Sanders won office as mayor by attacking the incumbent as being too close to a shopping center development, not communist revolution. In his several terms as mayor he never won more than 55% of the vote. So did Burlington become a Swedish style socialist utopia, or did they just get a slightly different shopping center? If local politics is really about sewers, roads, and schools, the socialist party really doesn’t have a unique position to carve out, and thus has no real constituency who live under socialist local governments. They do, however, have lots of young folks who want free stuff.
I would put Bernie’s support down to two main groups: The perpetually disaffected or edgy young people who go to ______ concerts (insert Grateful Dead, Nirvana, Fish, or whoever) , and people who are dead-set against the Democratic party establishment for a variety of deal-breaking reasons, but who are even more dead-set against the GOP. But it’s trivially easy for the Democrats to run a candidate who says they’re not part of the establishment, which would fairly describe almost every candidate who isn’t named Bernie, and they don’t really have trouble appealing to all the young people who go to Fish concerts.
So I see the bulk of Bernie folks drifting back to slightly more centrist radical who has a ‘D’ after their name, and the remainder going for anyone preaches some kind of revolution, because there will always be a fringe segment that wants to burn it all down, if for no other reason than they’d like to watch it all burn, kind of like all the people that look forward to the Zombie apocalypse or pine for a return to the middle ages because everything seems more interesting than the here and now of their humdrum lives.Report
I would say it depends. The typical model for America, as I understand it, is that when a third party insurgency arises the party that is situated closest to it shamelessly steals the most feasible policy elements and answers that fuelled that insurgency in the first place and thus future insurgencies of that nature are defused. Perot, for instance, rampaged on the right about fiscal discipline and taxation. The GOP stole his ideas and internalized them (eventually to a ridiculous degree) and Perot’s third way dissolved.
So Bernie? To the extent he reflects a genuine policy gap then it’s quite possible that a victorious Biden administration might enact enough leftward movement in public policy that Bernie’s appeal simply dissipates. If Bernie, instead, reflects general dissatisfaction from the damage of the great recession then, similarly, the passage of time and the easing of those wounds will dissipate his appeal.
If Biden loses, of course, all bets are off. The whole “heighten the contradictions” thing is based on a real reading of political reality. Bernie and his left wing supporters ideal outcome is for Bernie to win the nod and usher in his revolution. His next best outcome is for Biden to be nominated and fail to win the election against Trump. There’s real danger there for the Dems in that political reality.
Fortunately most of Bernie’s supporters aren’t true believing socialist revolutionaries.Report
What part of fiscal discipline does the current GOP model?Report
All that is left, now, is the core goal that fiscal discipline was wrapped around, like a flag around Trump. The GOP’s wealthy leadership and donor class wants tax cuts. Tax cuts on them, tax cuts for any reason. Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts.
That is all that is truly left of it but if you listen to their zombie like croaking they still repeat all the Perot lines.Report
I assume they still want spending cuts as well. The problem is that the base doesn’t. Tax cuts are the only thing that can get broad enough support to pass. They shouldn’t cut taxes without cutting spending, but this is what universal adult suffrage has wrought. All candy, no spinach.Report
I was at the Denver Zoo yesterday with the granddaughters. It was a lovely sunny teaser-that-spring-is-here afternoon, the crowds were big and cheerful. The only sort-of downer was that granddaughter #1 was navigating us all around by the map and doing a good job of it. How did she get this big all of a sudden?Report
Jaybird: “I look forward to reading comments about why we need to vote for Biden.”
1. What part of “vote blue no matter who” do you think is not literally “vote blue no matter who”?
2. About six or so weeks ago, there was a poll that asked Democrats if they would vote blue if their preferred candidate did not get the nomination. 90 percent of Warren supporters said yes. 89 percent of Biden supporters said yes. Klobuchar and Buttgieg supporters were also north of 85 percent in yes. Only Bernie supporters were at 53 percent yes with about 30 percent declaring that “it depends on the candidate.” Bernie’s supporters also spent a good deal of time throwing snake emojis at Warren on twitter. How is this effective and/or endearing behavior?
3. People are not dumb and think there is something odd about going on how the Democratic “establishment” is the enemy but also wanting to get the Democratic nomination for President. Despite what a lot of people want to believe, Democrats are not the mirror image of Republicans.
4. Politics is not about special pleadings and feelings. It requires compromise with a diverse number of factions. Biden is not my first choice and my first choice appears to be only the choice for a small bit of the party (but a loyal bit). But Biden is a loyal Democrat and served as Obama’s VP for 8 years without ever trying to upstage or undercut his boss. He was a loyal aide-de-camp to the President. And since Biden is an older white guy, that is a big fucking deal to the African-American community. Only Berniestans and internet politicos waanabe pundits with too much vested interest and identity in trolling and “iconoclasm” seem not to get this.Report
Yeah, this was the kind of thing that I’m looking for. (Chef’s kiss.)
If I threw together a comment about why we should vote for Bernie, it wouldn’t be angry at all.
It would be happy.Report
Here’s a Common Dreams article: How Bernie Could Destroy Biden in 120 Minutes Or Less.
Sure, it’s a fevered dream from a true believer, filled with bits where he thinks Biden will collapse behind the podium from the withering barrage and old union folks in Ohio will realize that Bernie is simply a return to the norm, but the author does lay out some pretty devastating line of attack against Biden, even if Bernie will probably never deliver them.
Along with your desire to see good arguments for Biden is the need to see examples of strong arguments against Biden, which should have been provided by other candidates because if such arguments exist (which they do), they’re going to be front and center in the general election. The easiest way to judge if those arguments might sway voters is to read the arguments and see if you feel a bit swayed, in the usual way we judge whether a candidate has a prayer of making it through the final stretch.Report
You should work for Bernie then because his default arguments and those of his followers are indignant and quite angry when they’re not merely rambling and querulous.Report
I do what I can, but I can only do but so much for free.Report
these are all great arguments for why we should vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016
and instead everyone stayed home
it’s fascinating to me that your takeaway from 2016 is that everything worked fine and you don’t need to change a thingReport
“everyone stayed home”
facepalmsReport
45% did indeed stay home. its not too much of an exageration.Report
What did the Republicans do wrong in 2018, and what are they doing differently this time?Report
I mean, it is uninspiring but true. If team blue somehow reruns 2016 but without Comey dropping a bombshell? Biden wins.
If they prevent their voters from assuming Biden will win (pretty easy with Trump instead of Obama in the White House)? Biden wins.
Name any single element of 2016. The race was so flipping close any one of them could tip it to Biden.
I don’t think 2020 will be remotely a rerun of 2016, it’s pretty close to the opposite of 2016 really, but if it is- you only need to change one thing and ya win.Report
In other Bernie news, someone decided to unfurl a Nazi flag at one of his rallies: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/sanders-never-expected-swastika-major-political-rally.html
I don’t think this would have happened but for Trump. Trump unleashed something very deep and ugly and it is not going back in the bottle when he is gone. But lots of people still want to blame anyone but Trump for this kind of shit.Report
Trump said the quiets part out loud. The quit parts were getting louder for a long time, the process started with 9/11 really. Trump took this to the logical conclusion and easily ran the most bigoted campaign in American history since Hoover’s very anti-Catholic campaign against Al Smith in 1928. This signaled to all the bigots that they can let their freak flag fly.Report
Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist with some nationalist tendencies. Presumably the guy just put one and one to together.Report
Yeah the OG Nazi’s just love killing self described socialists and other groups that bernie is part of.Report
Catholics and Protestants loved killing each other, as do Sunnis and Shiites. Bolsheviks loved killing Mensheviks.Report
Why yes that is an off the point comment that ignores the history of Nazi’s killing all the german socialists since they weren’t all simpatico.Report
Indian Wells tennis tournament canceled because of COVID-19. Meanwhile:
“Stories about Trump’s coronavirus fears have spread through the White House. Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. “He’s definitely melting down over this,” the source said.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/trump-germaphobe-in-chief-struggles-to-control-the-covid-19-storyReport
Having a psychological unstable goon in a leadership position is a bad idea? — who’d’a thunk it?Report
I’m envisioning a modern take on Masque of the Red Death that takes place in a resort suspiciously like Mar-a-Lago or at an Evangelical bible retreat. Maybe both.Report
I’m thinking more about Camus:
Report
I don’t know. Trump is a Duke Prospero like figure.Report
Vox has a good essay on how the Dirtbag Left’s tactics make it hard for Bernie to grow his coalition while also pushing back against the Bernie Bro stereotype: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/3/9/21168312/bernie-bros-bernie-sanders-chapo-trap-house-dirtbag-left
“In the interview, it’s clear that Sanders’s disavowals of online harassment ring a little hollow in Warren’s ears. Given that the candidate and his staff have appeared on Chapo, you can understand her thinking. It might seem like Sanders is speaking out of both sides of his mouth: vaguely disavowing online anger in public statements while his campaign reaches out and appeals directly to the people purveying it.
The purported aim of all the pro-Sanders trolling, the snake emojis directed at Warren on Twitter, and the vitriolic attacks on the Nevada Culinary Union is to shame or bully the targets into getting behind Sanders. Judging by this interview, it seems to have had the opposite effect on Warren.”
Unless you believe in the politics of being a perpetual miscreant of course.Report
An argument you’d best prepare yourself for:
Report
Jaybird, those argument are from the mean hater loser BernieBros! Do you want us to dignify that trash by giving it the time of day?Report
Here’s a pretty powerful pro-Biden argument but it’s not one that ever would have occurred to me.
(If we’re in a place where I’m going to be the one posting most of the pro-Biden arguments that don’t rely on Trump being bad, I’d say that we’re in a weird place.)Report
Joe Biden’s record on issues important to African-Americans is a lot longer than his tenure as VP to Obama. During the 1980s he was a fierce critic of the Apartheid Regime and frequently criticized Reagan’s coziness to the regime. He also fought for fair housing as a local pol in Delaware despite representing a lily white district.Report
I thought Michael Harriot’s extended Twitter thread was enlightening, where he talked about how for Southern black Democrats, the “Democratic Party Establishment” was the people themselves;
Like how the Democratic Party officials were the barbers and grandmothers and school bus drivers, i.e., people who were known and trusted by the community.
So when the Berners went around talking about how corrupt it all was, he was insulting these very people, and worse, was a white outsider insulting the very fiber of the community.Report
There are many people on the Left that believe destroying the Democratic Party is the best way to create a true left party in the United States. They tend to all be white.Report
I gotta say, it’s interesting to see that the narrative for the Democratic Party vote is settling down to:
1) black men are in charge
2) they like it when you make it clear that you understand they are in charge
3) the only thing they care about is whether you look like a winner
4) this is the key to the Democratic Party achieving its goals of intersectional feminism and intellectual engagement with politicsReport
I’ve seen this meme. This is the kind of stuff that is not doing Bernie any favors. Fucking hell are you capable of not trolling? Or are you just someone who wants to be a middle school class clown forever?Report
Saul, in this case, I’m saying “you’d better figure out a way to deal with the argument”.
Because if your best response to someone using this meme because they actually mean it is to accuse them of bad action, you’re going to fail.
The people who are telling you that you’re fine the way you are and you don’t need to change?
They’re not your friends.Report
“you’d better figure out a way to deal with the argument”.
Or else…what?
I mean, prior to South Carolina, the Bernie crowd was riding high. They had all the good arguments, the great memes, and all the savvy People In The Know were writing Biden off.
But as it turned out, the election isn’t being decided by clever people on Twitter with memes.
The tens of millons of people who are causing Biden to surge don’t really give a crap about the guy churning out crisp arguments or clever memes.
The election is more likely to revolve around people like Saul than people who you see on Twitter.Report
Or else… what?
(Out of curiosity, Would I have been right to see that sort of thing as a warning sign?)Report
Jaybird,
Where are your positive based arguments? Oh right, you don’t have any. You are basically being a nihilist. I don’t even think you want Bernie to win. You are upset that no one agrees with your own kooky brand of libertarianism and have decided to burn the world insteadReport
Let me throw something together. Give me five minutes.Report
Biden allegedly told his staff not to make any friends on Twitter and focus on the real world. This turned out to be the most intelligent campaign choice made by any Democratic politician.Report
I don’t think dank memes won the election for Trump in 2020Report
They most assuredly did not.
But they were one hell of an indicator of energy and support.Report
Umm.. Jay… Warren dropped out.Report
She did indeed.
And now her supporters get to figure out who they want to support on Super Tuesday II.Report
Yup. And Bernie needs , like, 450% of them to switch to him.Report
Bernie. Now more than ever.
Bernie Sanders is the only candidate running on a positive vision for the future:
Medicare for all will make sure that people no longer have to worry about staying handcuffed to a job or a region in order to take care of themselves and their families. They won’t have to put up with domestic abuse because they fear what will happen if they’re not on an insurance plan.
The Green New Deal will protect our children, our children’s children, and on and on forever. Sustainable lifestyles and sustainable energy will lead to a sustainable world.
Women’s Rights. All womens’ rights.
Expand Social Security for some of society’s most vulnerable.
Tax on Extreme Wealth to not only pay for these programs, but address inequality. This won’t make the obscenely rich disappear, it’ll just make them less obscenely rich.
LGBTQ+ Equality: The ideas promised in the Constitution were laughably hypocritical. They didn’t apply to more than half the country! Only now are we beginning to realize and apply these self-evident truths to everyone.
Real Wall Street Reform: How many more bailouts of banks should the American people be on the hook for? Modern Capitalism has become where the profits are privatized and the losses are socialized. We need to put a stop to that. That is part of Bernie’s platform.
College for All will let people get the degrees that will help them get ahead in life without being saddled until retirement age by insurmountable debt.
It’s past time the Puerto Rico and Washington DC be welcomed into the United States proper. Statehood will finally allow them to move past taxation without representation.
Racial Justice: Criminal Justice is Injustice. From everything from Stop and Frisk to police committing capital punishment on untried people without possibility of review. On top of that, the racial discrimination that still happens on every level in society, from redlining to allowing employers to plausibly deny obvious discrimination needs to end and Bernie has been at the forefront of that for decades. He endorsed Jesse Jackson in the 80’s Jesse Jackson has endorsed Bernie Sanders now.
Housing for All: We have a homeless problem in this country and the overwhelming majority of homeless problems could be remedied by something as simple as low-income housing. It’s time to build again.
Legalize Marijuana! HELLS YES. It’s past time for this. I remember aging hippies in the 90’s explaining to me that they couldn’t believe that it was *STILL* illegal. Well, Bernie can’t believe that it’s still illegal 30 years after that. It’s time to legalize it.
High-speed Internet For All: President Kennedy wanted every house in America to get indoor plumbing. As part of the war against poverty, now that desire has been realized for almost every homed person in the country. It’s time for everyone to have access to a *NEW* pipeline.
Reinvest in Public Education: For too long, our teachers have been underpaid, denied staffing support, and effectively unable to do their jobs. With Bernie, we can make sure that, our future, the children will be taken care of.
2020 is our opportunity to see clearly. Bernie is the best choice for those of us who are looking forward into the future.Report
Uh… huh…?Report
Saul made a request.Report
Ah OK, I was about to start baiting my doppelganger traps with adorable cats and pizza pockets.Report
Last I looked, Joe also had a long platform full of positive goodies too. His is marginally more likely than Bernie’s to pass, and only if someone assassinates Mitch McConnell. The differences aren’t likely to make a difference as far as messaging goes. Either the Bernie supporters will swallow their disappointment and vote blue, no matter who, or they won’t. Exercises in Don Draper-ism aren’t likely to make a difference.Report
Well yeah, but, all that goes double for Biden, so, there it is! What else do you need?Report
What is the actual reason you keep caucusing for him?Report
Well, I registered Democrat in 1990 because that’s how I was raised.
I’ve never unregistered.
So he is pretty much the main choice for me when it comes to caucus/primaries by the time the stuff gets to me.
I would have preferred voting for Yang in the Primary, for example.
As it is, I am faced with the choice “woke but not left” and “left but not woke” and I would pick the latter every day and twice on Sunday.Report
Re: HM3, Just saw a clip of a Biden interview from yesterday and I’m beginning to think he won’t make it to November.Report
Biden has his issues, but given that the remaining alternatives are Trump and Sanders, he’s the only acceptable choice. I would vote for his propped-up corpse at this point. Better Weekend at Bernie’s than four years of Bernie.Report
I will just leave this here:
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Eh, I could see this one going either way.
This could, in fact, appeal to swings.Report
I would be more impressed if Joe had gone all Antifa on that dude.Report
Yes, it seems he wants to bring Ted Kennedys dignity to the office.Report
Now that is a topical reference.Report
You know Biden, always on top of things with his Corn Pop and pool chains.Report
Umm yeah Corn Pop. I remember when that name came up and some dopes couldn’t imagine that was actually someones nickname so they dragged Biden. You’re making fun of those dopes right?Report
Or it could drive even more of the union voters to Trump.
One of the reasons the Democrats dropped gun control as an issue was it was electoral poison for them because their blue-collar base had gun racks in their pickup trucks.
Biden is no longer sharp enough to nuance his way through this, and it’s bringing out his anger, showing the ugly Biden that turns most people off. “You’re a dog-faced pony soldier!” etc.
This could kill Democrats’ chances of retaking the rust belt, and will likely only help them in places where they don’t need any help, like Massachusetts and Connecticut.Report
Out of morbid curiosity, what is the Republican position on labor unions?Report
We love them, because they’re proud Americans. One day they’ll all be independent business owners.Report
I thought of an idea for better isolating those exposed to the Wuhan virus, though I doubt it will get implemented.
Rep. Matt Gaetz spent the night camping in a Walmart parking lot off I-85 instead of going to a hotel. I don’t know if he slept in his car or had a camper, but it strikes me that it might make a lot of sense to have people self-quarantine in trailers and RVs in KOA camps, or in cabins in state parks. It could be set up on the government’s dime, with local government’s leasing campers from anyone in town who has one (most RV’s sit empty most of the year). FEMA could buy new campers and RV’s off the lot, stocking them with food and blankets, and stick them in the KOA camps where there are existing hook ups.
They could skip every other parking space to provide extra distance between trailers and still be able to hold far more cases than even Washington State currently has. Each cabin or camper becomes a nice place to be isolated, yet folks can step outside to grill, commune with nature, and enjoy the sunshine. Such parks have only one road in or out (so people pay up), and that front office can be used to make sure there isn’t frequent or egregious violations of the quarantine.
It sounds far better than hotels, where every new person who comes and goes might be infecting the entire hallway, and where none of the rooms will have a kitchen (so somebody has to deliver meals several times per day per patient), and where the HVAC systems might turn an entire building into a Petri dish, just like the infected cruise ships. And if a person does come down with a bad case, an ambulance can pull right up to their cabin or camper without affecting the rest of the folks, unlike wheeling a contagious patient down hallways, through elevators, and out through the lobby.
But alas, unless someone already wrote that into pandemic plans years ago, nobody is going to think to try it now.Report