[HM1] Once More, With Feeling, Or Something
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders met up in what is the eleventh and, thankfully, last of the scheduled Democratic Primary debates.
It wasn’t a triumph.
In the moment Joe Biden clearly “won” the debate, but it is an open question how much that is worth. The one gear, one note Bernie Sanders mostly stuck to his standard routine and didn’t really press the former VP other than an exchange on Social Security, which we will get to in a moment. By not falling over and managing to talk for his half of the two hour debate the talking heads and chattering class will be able to extol how well Joe Biden did.
They aren’t entirely wrong. Part of the problem with folks — both on the right and Sanders supporters on the left — flooding social media with “Joe has dementia” hot takes is setting expectations so low that not drooling on himself comes off as a win. Biden still goes through E to get from A to B on his answers but he is a far cry from that. The even-older Bernie Sanders spending an entire answer talking about Ebola when he means Coronavirus, only to laugh it off at the end as having “Ebola on the brain” just further blunts such criticisms.
At the same time, Joe still hasn’t been pushed like he will be on a stage with Donald Trump. Bernie refused to hit the former VP hard on anything other than votes from 20 years ago that nobody but the hardest of hardcore politicos care about. All through this primary, there was no appetite for attacking Ol’ Uncle Joe, and candidates like Kamala Harris and Julian Castro who did saw it hurt themselves more than dent Joe. Bernie’s inability to have any speed outside of rage curmudgeon doesn’t help, letting Joe Biden “C’mon man” and “Give me a break” his way out of the very slight discomfort of Bernie’s half-hearted attacks.
But that should be worrisome for Team Blue. Bernie was going out of his way to go easy on Joe, pitching not even softballs but more like teed-up opportunities — such as giving him a policy out on some of his controversial Senate votes — and time and time again steering the conversation into policy discussions instead of any frontal assaults against the soon-to-be nominee.
Trump will have no such qualms. The man who made the quip “you’d be in jail” while standing beside Hillary Clinton on a stage is not going to try to get into deep policy discussions, or old voting records, or big sweeping ideas. He will get nasty, and personal, and be unrelenting. The question is no longer who the nominee will be, but there are plenty of questions as to how that nominee will hold up on stage when pushed, really pushed, by someone who has zero cares to give, and will do whatever it takes rhetorically to maintain their office. Biden’s reaction if Trump really digs into gaffes, mistakes, and other issues from Biden’s nearly 50 years of public service will go a long way in determining his success as a candidate. How he handles the president, and his supporters, personally attacking him and his family is something he better practice.
The policy parts of the social security portion of the debate will make the rounds on social media and campaign ads, but the issue at hand isn’t lying about past positions. Joe Biden not being honest is not a revelation to anyone with the ability to read. What is concerning is when Bernie hit him with it, you could see Joe Biden trying to reset his mental computer to avoid saying something he knew he couldn’t say out loud, failing to find an answer, and went with a lie followed by his laugh-it-off routine. Bernie let it go once the subject got changed to votes he himself isn’t particularly proud of, but the moment is telling. Joe the dyed-in-the-wool politician has habits on a debate stage, habits where his prep work of current positions clash with his half a century of record. There will be moments when those things cannot be reconciled in real time at game speed by the current Biden 3.0 system. Thus, you get what happened last night, and you can bet that clip will make it into the Trump Team’s pre-gaming for the general election debates. Thinking you are going to out lie Donald Trump is not sound strategery.
Might want to work on that, Team Blue. Democrats would be foolish to count on coronavirus, the economy, and a past-his-prime Joe Biden just winning the presidency by default ’cause he showed up. You have a few months to prepare. Use them.
[HM2] Governmental Stress Test
Earlier last week, while doing my own planning ahead for the realities of how the coronavirus was changing things around us, my father made a comment that proved accurate:
“Once they close one, they have to close everything. Nobody want’s to be the one that didn’t close and wind up on the news with their picture on the graphic and statistics underneath.”
We were talking about schools specifically — something his 35+ years of being an educator serving as teacher, coach, principal, and other roles is well-versed in — but it applies elsewhere. Now as governors in a growing list of states close schools, ban large gatherings, and otherwise take steps to enforce the “social distancing” health officials are pleading for, the decision making at all levels of government from local to federal is being highlighted for all to see.
We should pay careful attention to it.
President Trump and his response is garnering most of the attention from cable news and social media sources, which is to be expected. Polarizing as ever and in the midst of a presidential election campaign, the man who became president in no small part by dominating all media and bending it to center around him is even more under the microscope than usual. Presidential politics is the spectator sport of choice for a vast swath of folks, even though they point to the importance of the issues at hand as a denial to the accusation that is what they are doing. The issues are important, but yelling at Washington from your phone or keyboard does little to affect it.
Local government, however, should be a focus for all of us in such times as these because they should be, and often are, more responsive to immediate pressure. Responsible citizens should pay very close attention to how their local and state elected officials handle this real life stress test to our systems of government and functions of public institutions, and when the crisis is passed, adjust accordingly. Many will be following the herd, but the how and why and the ways they do things ought to be marked for the next time those same folks run for office, or insist on tax increases or bond levies, or advocate for this or that policy.
Representative democracy is a participation-required system. Especially in a crisis, we should be watching carefully how those representatives, from school boards to the presidency, handle themselves in our stead. There should be plenty to discuss when the current storm passes on who weathered it best.
[HM3] Honestly, how can you screw up fried cheese?
I love me some fried cheese. Cheese sticks are for me culinarily what Prometheus bringing fire to humanity was to the Greeks. Except with ranch.
Anyhoo…
So this happened:
I roll into my local Hardee’s (That’s Carl Jr.’s East Coast for you left coast folks) while getting the youngins’ their “I don’t feel like cooking” breakfast. On the menu was advertised “Big Fried Cheese” both in a burger format and, since this was breakfast, the BFC modulation on the breakfast Frisco sandwich seemed promising, so I went with it.
I’m expecting gooey-cheesey-goodness along with the toasted sourdough, egg, and bacon.
What I got was over-processed rubber, a testing of my surgically modified gag reflex, and a strong inclination to reconsider all my life choices involving fried food.
It was that bad. It tasted of the government issued cheese of my Appalachian youth, but over fried, over processed, and just all kinds of wrong. The concept of a disc of cheese could have been brilliant, but the execution was a disaster of epicurean proportion. Much like the Greek tragedies, the real action happened off stage, in some factory where the wrong mix of cheese and breading was assembled for mass distribution, and what played out in my local drive-through was simply the punishment of the culinary gods for half-assed execution of what should have been a great product.
Shame on you Carl the Younger. Shame on you.
Maybe just bring back the fried chicken next time you want to get all edgy.
[HM4] Please Don’t Kill Grandma For Giggles
We can have a discuss as to where the line between prudence and panic is, but don’t be the person who learns the hard lesson Rudy Gobert learned.
It doesn’t cost you anything to wash your hands, practice a bit of decorum, and not lose all personal bearing over a virus. The folks most vulnerable, the elderly and those with underlying conditions, don’t get what NBA players have: medical teams that are instantly available with unlimited resources.
We should accept his apology, but more importantly learn the lesson. The time for jokes is after something passes and over-preparedness mitigated the crisis. We make Y2K jokes now, but that is because the problem was fixed so we get to laugh about it later. Save the jokes for later. The elderly person you love who doesn’t get sick will laugh with you about it then. In the meantime, wash your hands and don’t be a jerk about it.
Here’s one of the problems with Biden: it’s the twenty minutes that “*TRUMP* put *CHILDREN* in *CAGES*” was seen as a meaningful argument. “Abolish ICE! It’s monstrous to put *CHILDREN* in *CAGES*.”
Then pictures of 2014 and 2015 will come out when the Obama administration put children in cages.
Would you vote for a man who put *CHILDREN* in *CAGES*?
Well… you have to understand…
And it comes across like the problem with Trump isn’t a moral one. It’s an aesthetic one.
Which is fine! It’s okay to not like things! But the moral position ends up looking like a moral posture and it’ll be hard to hit Trump on *CHILDREN* in *CAGES* when he runs against Biden for the same reason that Trump’s treatment of women couldn’t be attacked to the fullest when he was running against Clinton.Report
Who are these people who are seeing things this way?
Can we speak to them?Report
Well, Jaybird is one. You can speak to him if you want to.Report
I’m afraid I need more precision in your question.
Are you asking me to find people who find (or found) it unacceptable to put *CHILDREN* in *CAGES* a few short months ago?
Because I am pretty sure that I can find one of those in the comments to this very website.
Do you want me to find someone who waxes philosophically about the difficulties of enforcing a border after having the pictures from 2014/2015 shown to him after complaining about *CHILDREN* in *CAGES*?
I suppose I’d need to find the right comment first.
Do you want me to find someone who will argue about the importance of voting for Biden anyway?
What are you asking?Report
You are telling us what Biden’s position “comes across” as, what it “looks like”.
It “looks like” this, to whom?
You personally? Or American voters in significant numbers?
The reason I ask, is that the underlying premise of your assertion seems unfounded.
Your assertion is that there is a logical disconnect between Biden criticizing Trump for putting children in cages while he did the same thing, and voters will notice this and logically conclude he is being insincere.
But all the evidence we have of voter behavior suggests the opposite, that voters don’t care about logical inconsistencies one bit.
If they did, Trump would be losing West Virginia by 20 points because his position on putting coal miners back to work will be contrasted with employment figures showing no such thing is happening.
And it will “come across” as Trump being a liar, and it will “look like” he is just another politician who says whatever he needs to to buy a vote.
But the empirical evidence is that the people of West Virginia don’t see it this way.
So I don’t know why the people of America will see Biden the way you think they should.Report
You are telling us what Biden’s position “comes across” as, what it “looks like”.
No. I’m not.
Your assertion is that there is a logical disconnect between Biden criticizing Trump for putting children in cages while he did the same thing, and voters will notice this and logically conclude he is being insincere.
No. It’s not.
But all the evidence we have of voter behavior suggests the opposite, that voters don’t care about logical inconsistencies one bit.
This is certainly true. Change “But” to “And” and we’ve got a sentence that, with some light reworking, I could put next to my statement about how it comes across like the problem with Trump isn’t a moral one. It’s an aesthetic one.Report
Jay just own your statements. You think objections to trump are just aesthetic. Right?Report
You think objections to trump are just aesthetic. Right?
By saying “objections”, it seems to imply an “all” in there.
I certainly do *NOT* think that *ALL* objections to Trump are aesthetic.
But I certainly *DO* think that there are a number of objections that are aesthetic.
And some of those aesthetic objections wear the sheep’s clothing of moral objection.Report
I think Jaybird is making a point about what constitutes good politics, eg., not opening up yourself to easy attacks. That’s it.
Not sure why this is hard to figure out.
Remember when Jaybird mentioned that Hillary cheerfully saying “we’re gonna put a lot of miners outa work” was bad politics?
Of course you do. You argued that he was wrong then too. 🙂Report
Umm huh. Jay is saying a shallow argument will be made against Biden. Undeniably true. I replied with how he can and likely will respond. Pols make crappy or disingenuous arguments all the time and they are responded to. It seems like Jay is making the “trumps attacks are all powerful, bow before them” argument. That has never been true and it won’t be. He will go full shit cannon on Biden but he was going to do that on any candidate.
So Biden lines up Castro, et al to go out to speak to Latino communities for months. Will that blunt the “gah cages” argument. I think it willj, but we’ll see. Trump seems preternaturally unpopular with POC in general which won’t help him with this line of attack. How about if Obama is out their stumping for Biden. Who will D’s listen to more?
Biden also can’t undo what was done as opposed to Hills making some less then completely well crafted arguments on the stump.Report
Jay is saying a shallow argument will be made against Biden.
No.
I’m saying that an attack will be made against Trump. Specifically: “His administration put children in cages! You shouldn’t vote for someone who would do that!”
And then I’m gaming out what will happen in response.
Greg, out of curiosity, would you have a problem voting for a man who put children in cages?Report
If you’re not telling us what Biden’s position “comes across” as, then why did you say “it comes across like the problem with Trump isn’t a moral one…”
I mean, seriously, these are your very own words.Report
“the problem with Trump” doesn’t refer to the problem that Biden has with Trump.
It refers to the people who understand how important it is to enforce the laws that are on the books and, yes, sometimes this results in people being detained under circumstances that are less than ideal in this fallen world.
It’s not a criticism of Biden’s position. Who knows what his position is? Other than, you know, being part of the previous administration.Report
Again, you’re not offering us Jaybird’s opinion of Trump or Biden, but Jaybird’s opinion of how other people will see this.
And this becomes unfalsifiable since we don’t have any way of letting these people speak for themselves.
It could be that the “babies in cages” is a terrible message which will backfire;
Or it could also be that it is a brilliant attack that propels Biden to the White House.
Neither position can be supported by empirical evidence at this point.Report
My opinions are uninteresting: Both Trump and Biden are boobs. I will be voting for Vermin Supreme.
“Neither position can be supported by empirical evidence at this point.”
The only empirical evidence I have are whether I can get you to answer the question I asked Greg: would you have a problem voting for a man who put children in cages?Report
I thought i was clear that the “gah cages” was a shallow argument for people who didn’t know the diff between Obama’s and Trumps policies.Report
You’ve certainly made it clear that you don’t want to answer the question.
Mind if I re-ask it?
“Would you have a problem voting for a man who put children in cages?”Report
Biden yeah sure. Obama, yup vote for him again. The thing you are missing is i know how you are disingenuously framing the issue and what the big differences are between what Obama did and what trump did. So save the bull shit for others. Biden will be far far far better then trump. Much more humane and treat immigrants well. That seems like a good thing to me.Report
So many memories.
I think we should seriously consider whether people are really voting about immigration policy at all but merely voting about how they want the media to cover immigration policy.Report
Enthusiastically yes!Report
I would too.
That’s why I’m voting for Vermin Supreme.Report
The fact that you see these as equivalent, is how we get President Biden.Report
Darn it, I forgot a more clever response:
“Would you vote for a man who wants the federal government to take command of private businesses?”
“Me too, that’s why I’m voting for Biden.”Report
Adding: The degree of cleverness in the exchange is proportionate to the stupidity of the interlocutor.Report
They don’t have to be equivalent. They merely have to be equivalent enough for people to switch from “THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!” to “well, you have to understand” when they realize that the pictures were taken under Obama’s administration.
Here’s a link from Snopes for you to enjoyReport
Well…once again…
Who are these people?
Why should I think they exist in any significant numbers?Report
As I said below:
Peter Daou famously argued that Berniebros cost Clinton the election.
I don’t know whether he’s right. I will, however, say that I’m experiencing hella major déjà vu.Report
So, “NO” then.
Because if you are saying that a handful of Berniebros are going to refuse to vote for Biden because of Obama’s immigration stance, then the empirical evidence of the primary season is that no, these guys don’t exist or vote in any significant numbers.
Oh, they exist alright, but like Jews 4 Jesus or Blackkklansmen, their sum total electoral weight is less than the polling margin of error.
And its also not even clear that the Berniebros even disagree with either Obama or Trump’s immigration policy.Report
Virtue successfully signaled.Report
Would you say that someone who opposed putting children in cages but then advocates for voting for Biden would be successfully signalling virtue?Report
It depends if they had a frickin clue what they were talking about or were just doing some recreational arguing.Report
Jaybird either knows a lot of Trumpists who would never vote Democratic and/or Dirtbag Lefties who would rather watch the world burn instead of voting for Joe Biden. For all we know, Jaybird could be in either category himself.
But the stock market is tanking and we are likely heading to a recession if not depression.Report
Saul, I have friends who are Trumpists.
I have friends who are pretty hardcore lefties who would never vote for Biden.
And I’m defining “friends” here as “I’ve invited them to my house and I have made meals for them” and not “I ask how their day is as I purchase a pack of gum” or “I have retweeted them”.
And, get this, I’m not ashamed of this.Report
There are D’s and indy’s who would never have voted for bernie. Sort of works that way with any canidate. You aren’t really proving anything.Report
Saul was trying to insinuate that I was friends with people with certain opinions.
I wasn’t trying to “prove” anything as much as confirm that, yes, I did indeed have friends with those certain opinions.
(I also have friends who voted for Clinton and friends who, I imagine, will vote for Biden and explain to me that, seriously, I have to understand…)Report
Wow you have a wide variety of friends. Okay then. The point still is the point.Report
I think the point is that Jay needs to isolate himself from his wide variety of friends until this WuFlu pandemic is over.
And he needs to block Tom Hanks on Twitter. That guy definitely has it.Report
It only matters when Jaybird knows people who are that way.Report
Simpletons with simpleton. So? Biden will start talking about DACA and the endorsement of prominent latinos pols and leaders. He can talk about refugees let in versus shut out, etc, etc. He’ll talk about all the legal immigration during the O years. It’s not aesthetic and those that only see that won’t listen to much anyway.Report
“So?”
Well, do you remember when Clinton was running against Trump and how it wasn’t really possible to truly and effectively attack Trump for his treatment of women?
If you do, then that’s why.Report
So no attacks work against anybody ever? He was attacked plenty for his treatment of women and his behavior appalled many people leading to some women ditching the R’s. By your logic there is no attack that could ever work against trump as long as he can throw something back suggesting that someone is sort of the same as him.Report
So no attacks work against anybody ever?
Some of them do.Report
And some don’t. Well we have covered a lot of ground here. You haven’t stated why this attack will be golden and the responses won’t work.Report
It’s because I’m making an analogy to when Clinton was running against Trump and how it wasn’t really possible to truly and effectively attack Trump for his treatment of women.
If what you remember is that the attacks against Trump on that front worked just fine, the problem was racism, I suppose you will have no idea why I see a handful of problems coming on the horizon.Report
Which isn’t really responding to the counters Biden can make, how Biden is different from Clinton and that the attacks on trumps treatment did work. I, nor you, can say exactly how well those attacks worked, but i remember many women being disgusted with Trump and R women saying they were ditching the party over him. Will people believe Obama, Castro and other Latino pols stumping for Biden? Are there any attacks which will work on trump for which there may not be some framing to turn it into bsdi.Report
i remember many women being disgusted with Trump and R women saying they were ditching the party over him.
And then what happened?
Will people believe Obama, Castro and other Latino pols stumping for Biden?
I don’t know. Did they stump for Clinton?
Are there any attacks which will work on trump for which there may not be some framing to turn it into bsdi.
I believe that Bernie, for example, could argue against Trump putting children in cages.
In the same way that he could have hit Trump’s sexism in a different way than Clinton was able to hit him on.Report
They’ll be stumping for Biden which seems like the issue. What are the poll digits for latinos and trump now?
Yeah bernie could have made some attacks and been susceptible to whole lot of other attacks. Strengths and weaknesses to everybody.Report
“What are the poll digits for latinos and trump now?”
According to the Atlantic, they’re good/bad enough (according to your point of view) that the Democrats need be concerned.
Here are the first couple of paragraphs:
That’s from about a month ago.Report
yeah about 30% of Latino vote R though Obama did a bit better then that as I remember. So that seems about par so far. I guess Obama didn’t get punished for his actions. I wonder how they will respond to O stumping for biden.Report
2018 might be instructive. Consider Dem gains in the Southwest, where Latinos are the predominant minority: Southern CA flipped multiple House seats; NV flipped a Senate seat; AZ flipped a House seat and a Senate seat; UT flipped a House seat; NM flipped a House seat; and CO flipped a House seat and a legislative chamber. The Republicans flipped nothing. The most recent AZ polls (rated A+ by 538, for whatever that’s worth) have Biden leading Trump narrowly, and Kelly leading McSally by slightly more.Report
If you really want to get meta though I think it’s fair to wonder how viscerally connected Biden is to these issues in the eyes of the real electorate (i.e. not OTers). On paper Biden has a lot of the same reactionary and/or problematic baggage that made it really hard for Clinton to attack Trump’s most outrageous actions and positions.
On the other I’m not sure any of it is pinned to Biden the way it was to Clinton. Even during the Obama years when he was at his most visible the line was that he was a gaffe-prone boob, not hypocritical evil incarnate.Report
On the other I’m not sure any of it is pinned to Biden the way it was to Clinton.
I don’t know.
I do know that there is a lot of footage out there and the Sandernistas are doing what they can to communicate displeasure with Biden’s former views.
Peter Daou famously argued that Berniebros cost Clinton the election.
I don’t know whether he’s right. I will, however, say that I’m experiencing hella major déjà vu.Report
I am just going to risk all social stigma, and speak truth to power; cheese is gross.
Now, go ahead. Fight me.Report
Biden is basically going to be our Konrad Adenauer if he wins the election. He is much better at doing the entire fireside chat, comforting the electorate thing than Trump, Sanders, and anybody else. He looks and acts Presidential. Trump most definitely does not.Report
The new McDonald’s Double Big Mac and small fries has fewer calories. If you get the large fries, it has more, but it’s still lower in fat. And yes, the Double Big Mac is what you think it is.Report
I mean it is Hardees. I knew as soon as you mentioned that the the end of the story would be “and the food was disgusting”.
On Biden and Bernie? Eh, I guess. But the attacks Bernie made most likely won’t be made by Trump because the man doesn’t even know the policy. Trump’ll, presumably, be spoon fed the attack lines and then will garble them furiously and no one will know what on earth he’s talking about. So then it boils down to Trump being Trump and Biden being Biden; in that match up Biden wins. I do agree, however, that Biden needs to make up his fishing mind about what he’s going to say about Hunters employment. It was legal, assuredly and so far there’s absolutely no evidence that Burisima got any benefit out of employing Hunter but Biden still needs to have something to say on the matter and his current position of getting angry because his kid is being attacked is useless.Report
Yeah, Biden will ripost with a “You’re a Dog Faced Poney Soldier!”
And follow it up with “you are a liar and full of shit, ma’am. Lets do a push up contest!”
All while facing a statue of Napoleon.Report
Personally I love when Republicans keep saying that Biden is non-functionally deranged from age because it lowers the expectations so the actual, far from scintillating, Biden can easily clear it.Report
No. He can’t.
In all seriousness, the left is going down a real bad, dark path with this. Not only does Biden fail to have the chops, the D’s are doind a major disservice to themselves in thinking he can pass that bar. He has failed to be cogent when he has to speak off the cuff, has been viscious in his responses, and gets flustered quickly. The web is full of video clips of him doing things like this. I might joke around a bit about it, but I have a close family member on this path. It isn’t pretty.
All of that, and the fact the D’s are putting themselves into corner with him. At this point there is no one else.Report
He can, he has, he will. The web is full of clips of every public figure doing various embarrassing takes. And choosing Biden is certainly a better bet than Bernie. As for vicious responses when speaking off the cuff and meandering when talking to crowds? Currently that’s the right’s qualifications for the presidency so Biden should be fine.
But I would certainly prefer if he names his veep pick sooner than later.Report
To anyone who’s lost a relative to Alzheimer’s, as I have, Biden’s frequent gaps are very disturbing. He can’t even get through brief appearances without it becoming obvious. He’s already seems worse than Reagan did in 1994, when Reagan announced he’d been diagnosed with it.
He’s already edging close to 25th Amendment territory.Report
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/shelter-in-place-San-Francisco-Mayor-London-Breed-15135075.php
The SF-Bay Area is essentially on quarantine until April 7th. Words like “essential” and “necessary” are doing lots of heavy lifting. A lot of offices are figuring out how to how to handle things remotely at the last minute.
I suspect that more things are going to fall because of dominoes and more courts will shut down for at least a few weeks.
Trumpists will all claim it is an overreaction.Report
Nah. As a Trumpist, let me say that the Bay Area should’ve been locked down years ago. It’s long overdue.Report
The governor and AG of Ohio tried to shut down tomorrow’s primaries so all the state’s Democrats don’t get infected with the WuFlu, arguing that people shouldn’t have to choose between their life and exercising their right to vote. But a county judge stopped them and said the voting must go on.
One of the reasons to have an executive branch is to make the hard calls like that, and one of the worsening abuses of the judicial branch is to render the government unable to exert its duly granted powers to make decisions and protect the public. But heck, the GOP folks can skip the primary and stay alive for November, when it counts.Report
I wonder if this situation will help Sanders by disproportionately keeping older, wiser voters away from the polls.Report
It’s bound to, though I don’t know to what extent. They should at least hand out disposable gloves so people don’t have to touch the same voting machine that a hundred other people just touched, but I doubt many poll workers thought of that.
The oubreak is one of those things that should invalidate an election, perhaps like holding one when there’s two feet of snow on the ground so that only people who own four-wheel drive trucks can vote. It’s a filter on exercising the franchise, and in this case the elderly and people with lung ailments and other concerns will be partially excluded.Report
More chaos. The governor of Ohio called off tomorrow’s election despite the judge’s ruling. Poll workers don’t have their equipment set up and won’t be ready in the morning.
PJ Media story
I would say they’ve [ insert your favorite euphamism ] on tomorrow’s vote, and should just schedule a do-over whenever the virus crisis is past. That may push things back too close to the Democratic convention, however. Though the candidates may think this is the end of the world, or the end of democracy, keep in mind that the citizens of Ohio and other states have shown, through their actions these last few days, that they think politicians are less important than toilet paper.Report
So apparently all the sings of there being some type of big influenza pandemic were out there and Trump ignored them despite experts trying to warn him. Its just like 9/11. There was lots of evidence that Al-Qaeda was planning something big and it was actively ignored simply. As a result millions of people across the globe lost their lives in 9/11 and the follow up. Now many more are going to suffer because the most ill-suited person ever to hold the office of the Presidency, somebody who sees his role as enriching himself and inflicting pain on people he hates, couldn’t bring himself to do the right thing.
https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/03/16/trump-inauguration-warning-scenario-pandemic-132797?__twitter_impression=true
We are ruled by a literal kakiocracy and there seem to be no end of idiots willing to perpetuate. You have Gohmert and Tomey holding up a Coronavirus recovery bill You have morons dazzled by the disingenuous offers of Romney and Cotton, even though they have not introduced any legislation in the Senate. Trump is continuing to be a bile filled Nero and Caligula gone to seed. The Jacobin crowd has gone full KPD and is claiming that the Democratic Party are social fascists so you might as well vote Nazi. You know how many countless millions across the world are going to suffer because of this.
There is one moral choice in the November elections. That is to go and vote for the Democratic Party on every office up for grabs. Federal, state, and local. The Republican Party is a death cult. They can not be negotiated and reasoned with. They must be eliminated and knocked out. Anybody who is considering voting Republican or sitting this one out or dividing their vote is a moral monster. The only thing they have is blood on their hands.Report
In case you weren’t paying attention, Trump was the first world leader to take action. He moved to shut down travel weeks before the European countries did. The Democrats all slammed him for xenophobia, and are still at it, still insisting that travel restrictions are racist and don’t work. If the Democrats were in charge we’d already be dying by the thousands from corona virus because they still don’t even support stopping airline flights from Wuhan. In a similar vein, Trudeau only blocked fights from China, Italy, Germany, and even Iran – today. Flights would arrive and people simply had to go to a touch screen and answer “No” to whether they came from Hubai province. Passengers snapped pictures of the screening “test” Canada was using and apparently shamed the government into at least acting like maybe there was a contagious disease out there, somewhere.
Bernie called the outbreak “Ebola” and Biden called it “SARS”. Does either one even know what planet they’re on?Report
This is what Gohmert is doing. He is a murderer.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/rep-louie-gohmert-delays-house-coronavirus-relief-bill-moving-senate-n1160681?cid=sm_npd_ms_fb_ma&fbclid=IwAR0pfLkzvAUh1av8r-6PyafyVSY_mNii4HFlaFSU5SOoZbPkVZL4LMBcqYMReport
Nancy held the bill up for a week by refusing to bring it to the floor, and then tried to sabotage it with special provisions. Now the bill is stuck in the House because the House is in recess, and Nancy is the person who decided the House should just shut down and go home. Gohmert wouldn’t be insisting that somebody first read the House bill before sending it on if Nancy hadn’t been caught trying to pull so many fast ones with it.
She is simply unable to do her job.Report
Another way to view it: the bill Pelosi negotiated (in private) with Mnuchin was inadequate so voting on it *should* be delayed until a better bill can be written. As it is, though, the revised bill apparently also sucks. So, you know, there’s that….Report
Dow is down below 20,000. Trump proposes 850 billion dollar “stimulus.” The biggest share is a payroll tax cut which benefits the wealthiest and is a back door way to gut Social Security and Medicare.Report
The ridiculous bill you’re referring to as a proposal from Trump … is that the bill Pelosi wrote with Mnuchin or some other bill?Report
{{OK, just learning that Trump’s proposing a fresh new hell bill …}}Report