From CNN: Harris selects Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be VP running mate, sources say
JUST IN: Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, according to multiple sources. They will appear together in their first joint rally in Philadelphia later today before visiting other battleground states this week.
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on Open Mic for the week of 9/9/2024I thought that the reason that we had to take in so many Haitian refugees was because Vance's runnin…
on Open Mic for the week of 9/9/2024considering the terms that Vance's running mate has used to describe Haiti, why do you assume Haitia… on The Party of the MiddleWell, avoid Springfield City Commission meeting footage and do your best to make other people avoid… on Open Mic for the week of 9/9/2024Wait, is "blood libel" no longer a very specific thing but now refers to a variety of untrue accusat… on The Party of the MiddleSure it is, in as much as Democrats support multi-cultural democracy. on Open Mic for the week of 9/9/2024Agreed.
on Open Mic for the week of 9/9/2024JD Vance is blood libeling Haitians.
on The Party of the MiddleAre you predicting that the Upper Midwest (MN. WI, MI) will be carried by Trump this November? It wa…
on The Party of the MiddleIt's kind of like accusing Trump of calling the NC gubernatorial candidate a "Jew lawyer". That is,… on The Party of the Middle"I admire its purity." In any case, I'm not sure that it's to the Democrats' benefit to amplify the…
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There are a number of commentators who are saying that Shapiro would have cost Harris the Hamas vote in the Democratic party and that strikes me as wrong.
Shapiro was, instead, a party to a murder coverup way back when and stuff like that is waaaaaay too distracting at this moment in time. Tim Walz is pretty dang liberal (nigh socialist!), he’s Midwest as heck, he’s got friendly physiognomy, and the only real dirt on him is the whole summer of mostly peaceful protesting and the media has pretty much agreed to never talk about that again.
So this is a strong choice.Report
The Hamas vote is where the ‘on paper’ people IMO make a foolish error. A forward thinking strategy isn’t worried about holding onto the Hamas vote at all, even in Michigan. In fact, and especially with an opponent like Trump, nothing would be better than pissing off the Hamas vote because the people who hate the Hamas vote greatly outnumber them and are more important for electoral college purposes anyway. The best thing to do is slap them right in the face, and if questioned ask if they’d really rather the guy that recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel instead, and who is ready to hand Gaza over to Jared Kushner’s friends.Report
Liberal and socialist are opposites. I will die on this hill.Report
I get the point, but…on my hobby horses I limit myself to maybe one sentence. You’ve got to accept changes in common language use. And while I think there’s merit in explaining why the modern conservative is more in line with traditional liberalism, it just gets to be a pain for author and reader if that’s explained in every single posting.Report
Not the end of the world but she should’ve picked Shapiro. This sounds paradoxical but I think the more ‘safe’ she plays it the more risk she runs of a last minute defeat. The term you’d hear in football is ‘playing not to lose.’ And we all know what that strategy leads to often enough in the 4th quarter.Report
Walz is a pretty strong pick but, agreed, also the safer one. Shapiro had more upside and downside risk. I’ve certainly thought quite well of Walz as my Governor but I’d have never guessed he’d be a contender for veep. With how vital PA will be I’d have leaned in the Shapiro direction myself but Shapiro has more vulnerable attack surfaces on him (not the Israel thing though, he’s indistinguishable from the other candidates on that).Report
I have nothing against him at all and as a politician he is way closer to my preferred flavor of Democrat than those that dominate here on the east coast. My main thing is that I think at some point the Harris campaign will need to take a risk or two. I get that we are still in the very beginning stages by virtue of how this has played out but it also isn’t like she has all the time in the world or anything either.Report
Probably so. I don’t know if Walz is in the Tim Kaine level of safety choice or not. It occurs to me that I haven’t seen Walz debate.Report
Yeah, this is an interesting one. At the moment it’s not at all clear who’s leading and who’s likely to be leading in a month or so if there aren’t any new significant developments. If I had to come down on one side or the other I’d rather be Trump here, but that’s purely a guess, and I’ve both overestimated and underestimated Trump before.
If I’m right, this would tend to support your idea that the Harris campaign will have to take a couple of chances.
But there’s more. In particular, I think you’ve got to look at not just the size of the downside but the nature of the risk involved. In this case, it’s Kamala. When spotlight has been on her, she’s shown herself to be pedantic, vapid and too closely tied to Left cultural enthusiasms. Basically, she’s a walking empty soundbite.
The question is, is that really all there is, or can develop and grow a little bit, is it just coconuts and brats and memes all the way down? If the answer is yes, the campaign ought to find a way to showcase that.
If the answer is no, and I think that’s what most people are afraid of, the Harris campaign has to thread a needle. Specifically the cost of losing the news cycle if much higher than a normal campaign and Walz is probably the best choice to address that.Report
Believe it or not I generally agree with your analysis and don’t have much to add. I suppose it’s all a question of what kind of campaign the Harris team thinks they can run successfully.Report
I don’t actually disagree much with Koz here either but I would offer a quibble- this is also Bidens’ old team Harris is working with.Report
Is that a good or bad thing? Seriously asking your opinion because it isn’t something I’ve thought about.
If I was going to quibble at Koz it’s that we seem to have a pretty good sense of what Trump’s ceiling is, and it is by no means intimidating. But while Harris turning a losing situation to a coin flip situation is (from our perspective anyway) a significant improvement, a play not to lose strategy keeps Trump alive and in the fight right to the end.Report
Looking at how Harris has performed since Biden stepped down, I’d tentatively offer that it is a very good thing.
Harris in 2020 was allegedly bad at staffing and burned through a lot of staffers. Being bequeathed a veteran staff by her boss seems, so far, to have prevented a repeat performance. Also the campaign has been run well so far and has been pretty tight lipped. Walz wasn’t leaked until Tuesday morning for a Tuesday afternoon announcement. That is remarkable.Report
Gotcha, and agreed its absolutely looked good so far.Report
I think this is spot on. Trump is such a political wildcard, and American politics, aside from a few back bench nutters in the House, isn’t usually equipped to deal with his like. There’s no real way to explain the DJT phenomenon.Report
Sure there is. There are a lot of white Americans who are fearful of the modern world because it upsets places and privileges they thought would always be theirs. DJT lets them rage about it, and gives them a way to try and stuff that change back in the proverbial lamp.Report
It amazes me that anyone can look at Trump and not see how completely he fits within the long history of the American xenophobia and cultural panics and resentments.
Like, any one of his speeches could be lifted straight from 1890 with just replacing “Irish” with “Mexican”, or from the 1950s Birchers panicked about creeping
transgenderismrace-mixing.There is nothing new about cultural fears and anxiety over shifting attitudes and demographics.Report
Is this misthreaded?
My prior comment was about Kamala, and fwiw one of bigger under-radar stories of this cycle is that DJT is the least wildcard-y now than he’s ever been since he rode down the golden escalator.
18 months ago or so, I was at least a little bit bullish on Biden because I anticipated a lot of gut-level last-yard resistance to voting for Trump. It’s a significant accomplishment for the Trump campaign to make that go away.
The Demos may win the Presidency this cycle but if they do, that won’t be why.Report
Silver (and others) have lots of numbers showing that Veeps rarely move the needle much in their home states. And if you’re putting stock in geography anyway, the argument is that Walz may help sure up the upper midwest and that may then extend into the Rust Belt. We shall see.
People more knowledgeable than I am have pointed out that Shapiro has some real easy attack points and the re-opening of a death investigation by PA’s Supreme Court could yield an October surprise the Dems definitely don’t want or need.
As far as I see it, there are pros and cons to all the potential picks and no obvious slam dunk selection. With that in mind, I don’t consider myself well positioned to second guess Kamala and her team. I’m sure they did their homework and made their choice with careful deliberation. Will she win? We don’t know. Will the result turn because she chose Walz instead of Shapiro? Almost impossible to know. Time will tell but right now I’m just glad the Dem ticket is (all but officially set) and both candidates seem sharp and likable. Hard to be unhappy right this moment given how things have been going over the last 6-ish weeks on the campaign trail.Report
Oh yes, I’m not remotely unhappy about things. It is entirely plausible that Harris’ vetters said “no bueno” and that was that- I was trying to suggest as much when I mentioned that Shapiro had more downside as well as upside risk.Report
Yea, sorry… I was responding less to you specifically and more to the handwringing I’m seeing here and elsewhere. One of my friends is all aflutter but he’s just been Chicken-Littling with a vague dose of FNC BS sprinkled in.Report
“The last time Harris and Walz teamed up was when he allowed rioters to burn down half of Minneapolis and then she raised money to bail them out.” – TwitterReport
Yes, that is certainly a line of attack they will face. Hopefully they are ready for it.Report
I believe Walz can point towards how it was him — not Trump — who called in the National Guard… despite the latter’s claims to the contrary.Report
I think that’s probably an ok rejoinder if pressed. You want the soundbyte to be ‘I called in the National Guard.’ Look up any time Pete Buttigieg is on Fox News. That’s what you want to emulate when they throw a tough question about 2020. It’s always clear, succinct, never equivocates and spins exactly the way he wants it spun. The only response is some form of ‘well ACTUALLY…’ aka the part no one ACTUALLY listens to.
But I’d be careful about getting into too protracted of a discussion of who said and did exactly what in 2020. Its overall a loser. They also need to be ready to talk about the here and now, and, frankly, be willing to throw some people and positions nominally on their own side under the bus.Report
One point that I think needs to be made:
The attack that Walz let Minneapolis burn is an attack that can be defended against.
However: It is an attack that needs to be defended against.
“How dare you? Read the room!” will not work. It will, instead, fail.
And pointing out that it could, theoretically, be defended against is different from Walz actually defending against it.Report
I’m not convinced of this, at all.
Even if we stipulate that Gov Walz can retrospectively justify whatever he did well enough, talking _about_ the George Floyd riots is death for the Democrats, no matter what in particular is being said about them.
Same with inflation, same with Israel, same with border migrations, same with Covid-inspired closing schools, same with anything really.
Either Kamala Harris has to show way more personal and policy depth than she ever has before, or the Harris campaign is going to be all about coconut memes and JD Vance has sex with a couch.Report
And what would talking about Jan 6 be for Trump?Report
Not good, for similar reasons. But, just like the Harris analogs it may have to be done, depending on circumstances.Report
So talking about the protests in response to George Floyd’s (and other’s) deaths is “death” for the Democrats but talking about the Jan6 attack on our Capitol Building and the peaceful transfer of power is merely “not good” for Trump.
Got it.
ETA: Trump has gone on record saying he’d pardon those convicted for Jan6 crimes, which is the analogue to any attacks on Kamala about her response to the protests.Report
Well, yeah.
For good or ill, Trump has built his rep. He’s already ate most of the downside for January 6.
It is widely believed of Kamala Harris among people who follow American politics closely that that she has very little knowledge or intuition regarding the serious issues facing America today.
If that is right, it is therefore a crucial job of the Harris campaign to prevent this opinion from spreading to the wider more apolitical voting public.
So to that end, it’s a very real risk that anything she says or anything the campaign says on her behalf regarding real things like inflation or whatever, will expose her lack of depth. And for that matter her association with the Biden Administration whose record on such things is not good.Report
Right, because reminding Americans about how they came together to protest police violence against their fellow citizens would be a bad thing?
Remind us, who was president for most of the pandemic? And how many red states didn’t close schools? And how has unemployment done under Biden?
Because these are things which happened, which people experienced, and which are actually hard to lie to them about.Report
Has anyone here actually heard Republicans talk about race in a way that doesn’t turn off normal Americans?
I want Trump and Vance and Curtis Yarvin and Steven Miller and the whole crew to be talking about race nonstop 24/7.Report
I wish I had your optimism. It is actually very easy to lie about such stuff, and to get people to believe the lies.Report
She risks losing the TikTok vote if she’s seen getting too chummy with a Jew.Report
Spoiler. There is no TikTok vote.Report
Another VP pick I’ve never heard of who won’t resonate in the south . . .Report
With the exception of Georgia because of Atlanta the South won’t be electing a Democratic presidential candidate anytime soon…NC will come back around but that will take a while.Report
Everyone I know wants to move to NC. Hell I kind of want to move to NC. It feels like it’s poised for the same kind of dynamic Virginia has experienced. Except that unlike Virginia, NC has the advantage of not being so overwhelmingly full of insufferable people, regular commenters of OT excepted of course.Report
Insufferability correlates to distance from the Shenandoah River.Report
Heh you aren’t wrong.Report
You can take the boy out of Chicago…Report
… and he’ll still crave tavern style pizza and rant about it to anyone who will listen, and many who won’t.Report
Rant on! Having just visited NYC and sampled their pizza, you can’t do any better than good ol’ square cut ‘za from the local Chicago pizzeria.Report
Seriously, I know it’s cliche… but I genuinely feel that NY Pizza is the most successful gaslighting campaign ever perpetrated in the history of man.
Everytime I’m with a New Yorker I’m like, ‘Ok, so this is it? This is real NY Pizza… the best? No foolin’?”
And it’s just mediocre cafeteria food.Report
The south may not elect a democratic president, but we could send a few down ballot Congressmen and Senators to help her out. I am not sure this will improve those chances however.Report
I suspect that Walz will resonate with a lot of southern liberals and centrists, in that he’s down to earth and extremely pro-working class for a 21st century Democrat. Videos like the one of him talking car repairs from the campaign trail will go over pretty well, I think. Give him time.Report
The South is largely Republican and our best politicians from there are Senators and we can’t risk losing their seats.
Walz is a regular guy. He was in the army, he went to public universities, he was a high school teacher and football coach. He is a very popular governor of MN who gave kids free lunches instead of reducing the child labor age like Huckabee-Sanders.Report
An interesting phenomenon is that the people who hated Biden for being a regular guy in 2020 seemingly love Walz for being a regular guy in 2024.Report
From what I can tell, the Left likes Walz because he’s a (true believer) Lefty who codes as a Moderate.
IMO that’s the biggest risk with Walz; overestimating the cloaking ability of the charm.
From what I hear, he’s supposed to be pretty darn good at it… but is it calibrated for National politics vs. Minnesota Politics? No idea.
I’ll note that Walz was on my list of Popular Govs that poll ahead of their state lean… but he was at the bottom of the list in a D+2 state.Report
The fact that Minnesota is D+2 is, itself, something of an indicator for the oldheads out there.Report
Yeah, my wife is born/raised in St. Paul and I lived there for a few years in the early 90s… it’s not your Opah’s Democratic state anymore.
There’s probably a dissertation on the ‘Democratification’ of the DFL just waiting to happen.Report
I think the biggest risk is that this isn’t a risk. There was an opening for Harris to send a message to those who may need one to get them comfortable voting for her. I don’t think VP picks determine much but I think it’s a missed opportunity.Report
Ok, you can double negative my comment into total agreement.
But yes, the goal oughtn’t to have been to make the *left* comfortable w/Harris…
But I’m being honest when I say I have no opinion on Walz and how he plays to the field of normies outside of MN (yet). That’s why I put the accent aigu on the part of the risk that assumes he’ll come across as moderate – when the assessment is coming from the left.Report
Walz is a bog standard Democrat. If he were a lefty, he wouldn’t have applauded Netanyahu during his recent speech to congress while Shapiro, checks note, called Netanyahu the worst PM in Israeli history this January. Watching people some how say that Harris and Walz are different on Israel despite saying the same things as Biden and Shapiro isn’t great.Report
Why won’t this resonate in the South? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ca8b1fbbd4446489991976be86c4314a9a2f9b856d6a169be63a00e19d79c8f4.jpgReport
Because he isn’t holding a gun.Report
“He’s pro-trans and gives free tuition to illegals, but he does take a nice picture with a pig.”Report
I have to vent on the subject of qualifications, in the sense of resumes. I do this every four years, and with increasing frustration. Neither party this time has a VP pick with a background I’d accept in a presidential candidate.
My expectation is: 8 years experience at top levels of government (House leadership, Cabinet, Senate, governorship, high-level judicial). Maybe 2 years substitutable from military, business, or running an Olympics. If someone’s been president before, it’s hard to say they don’t have the necessary experience, but Trump actually still doesn’t meet these qualifications.
It’s not hard to find people with this much experience. It’s not all I look for, but it’s not that high a bar. You don’t have to be over 70 years old to get there.Report
So Reagan wouldn’t have met this criteria. Bush HW would have. Neither Clinton, Carter, Obama or Trump would have met this criteria. So basically only HW Bush in the past forty some years is that right?Report
Reagan and Clinton have 8-yrs Governor… and HW gets the composite experience.
Carter, Obama, W and Trump wouldn’t get a Pinky Pass.
I mean, in terms of effectiveness… passes the sniff test.Report
Yeah I missed the 8 years governor part in the first read through. Though Walz is a six year Governor and was in the military prior to that.Report
Sure, you could fine-tune the algorithm to -was reelected and -would have 8yrs at end of term.
Not like they control the Presidential Election cycle years…Report
It’s funny how you say “Carter and Obama and Trump wouldn’t meet Pinky’s criteria” as though those guys were considered powerful Presidents who had a large number of historically-relevant achievements that resulted from their own initiative and policy direction.Report
Did I? I think all of those presidents under-performed their fundamentals… which is why I said it passes an initial sniff test.Report
Oh, I thought you were saying his test was not good because Look At These Dudes Who Got To Be President Despite etc.
So, I guess I agree with you!Report
Score one for unity on the interwebs!Report
Carter slipped through in a crowded field and there was plenty of concern about his resume, but he was close. Reagan had two terms as governor. HW was fine. Clinton had 12 years as a governor. W only had 1.5 terms as governor of Texas under his belt, and I opposed him on that basis. Obama obviously lacked experience, and spent 8 years demonstrating its value. Trump didn’t know what he was doing at all. Biden forgot more about politics than you and I will ever know (and I mean that in both senses).
But it’s also worth looking at their running mates and opponents.
ETA: Heh. Ford. But it looks like North and Marchmaine did the same thing I did. 8 years House Minority Leader.Report
I mean, Walz specifically has been 6 years as Governor and was military prior to that so he doesn’t seem particularly outside your criteria.Report
Five plus years as Governor, two as minority ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, enlisted in National Guard and spent half a year in Europe…just shy. Not as bad as resume as Vance, but less than I expect.Report
Fair enough.Report
House and Senate leadership (regardless of tenure), never runs for president and only rarely gets chosen for VP – Biden being the most recent example of maybe two in my lifetime. High level judges on the federal bench never want to give up their life time tenure, and state level judges like that never run for anything else. Governors run, but honestly few of them are really up to the job – Carter and Clinton are notable exceptions. I don’t think a cabinet secretary other the Clinton has run in several decades – and her combined experience as a secretary and Senator does trip over your line.
All of which is to say you can keep ranting, just know the system isn’t built for your preferences.Report
You can’t really refute a person’s criteria, you know. And partisanship doesn’t obligate you to try.Report
…running an Olympics would fit? Really? Because some of those have been very incompetently managed. I get what you mean, it is a large complicated endeavor, and so I’ll just assume there is the implicit addition of ‘and did not completely f*ck these things up’. (Which, honestly, would probably stop Trump’s business endeavors from counting.)
Speaking of qualifications, I reminded of the secret one that we’d all just assumed until we elected Trump: Someone who can sometimes talk normally and nonpartisanely, and not call out his enemies in a New Year’s Eve tweet or talk about yacht sex parties when addressing the Boy Scouts.
We never bothered to write that presidential requirement down, because it seemed like a thing anyone could do. Apparently not.Report
You know who did a pretty competent job of hosting the Olympics?Report
And didn’t manage to get elected President from it?Report
You’re confusing my expectations with the country’s sufficient conditions.Report
Nobody even posted on Twitter about it!Report
As I said, “qualifications, in the sense of resumes”. Not everything I expect from a candidate, and you can write down your own list, just like Philip can.Report
My good buddy who is a Reddit connoisseur tells me that this is an awful choice for Harris because both r/politics and r/conservative are celebrating.
It treads water, it doesn’t move the ball.Report
“Not to mention supporting changing his own state’s flag to more closely resemble the Somali national flag in some limp wristed attempt to garner votes from Somali immigrants.”
Reddit is probably not the place to go for insightful political analysis.Report
Treading water is much better than sinking the ship.
It’s a safe choice from someone who needed to make a safe choice.Report
Former OTer Bouie: “with a wine mom and a public school dad on the ticket you can really think of this year’s democratic ballot as the ultimate triumph of resistance libs.”Report
People said they wanted Biden so they could go to brunch again, but Biden was not brunch enough; they had to go deeper.Report
Walz might be the best pick but I didn’t like many of the anti-Shapiro arguments made. A lot of the online set is falling in love with Walz folkiness and Mid-Western goyishe Bernie Sanders vibe while seeing Shapiro as being too Jewish basically.Report
Team Blue is on both sides of the war AND they can’t afford a split. Ergo they need to promise both sides they have their full support without pointing out that there’s not much they can do.
Although honestly the entire line of reasoning seems seriously over blown. Hamas supporters may all be in Team Blue but they are tiny and should be ignored.
Of course that’s me trying to ignore emotional arguments. A brutal war looks really bad so we don’t want there to be one in Gaza.Report
My interests are narrow. Walz is much better on climate change and the environment than Shapiro.Report
Trump is totally having a normal one: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/GUU1G3DXwAAGQKP.jpgReport
Please proceed, Republicans:
Why Trump supporters are calling Walz ‘Tampon Tim’
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4815747-donald-trump-kamala-harris-tim-walz-2024-tampon-bill-minnesota/Report
More evidence:
Report
Is that all it took? Not that it would have worked in my all boys high school, but I have some grand-nephews who might profit from this advice.Report
Tell them! Give them this advice next time you see them!Report
(Filing this in things that get traction on Twitter but that all sane people know would go poorly in real life)Report
Actually it goes very well, not that most boys would ever be in the information loop that someone is on their period and needs a pad/tampon.
Like, it’s not a “strategy that will get you girls”. On the other hand if you’re friends with girls and they trust you enough to let you in that loop it will fortify your position as a cool dude among those girls, and those girls talk to other girls.Report
Yes, I can see the modern day John Hughes style montage coming together right now.Report
People do understand that this isn’t about tampon access for everyone, right? If they wanted to solve that, they could have a machine outside the restrooms, or anywhere I guess. It’s not for boys to grab one and carry in case of a female’s emergency.
And let’s be honest, if some dude went up to a girl and said do you need a tampon because I’ve got one, he’d be drowning in restraining orders.Report
We understand perfectly well that its about treating female to male transgendered persons as equal, and the revulsion the right has to that concept, Jesus call to love your neighbor as yourself not withstanding.Report
We can treat people who call themselves transgendered as equal. I’m all for that. We shouldn’t treat people who call themselves transgendered as if they’ve changed sexes. Jesus didn’t lie.Report
How I treat people has nothing to do with what Jesus did or didn’t say.Report
Jesus isn’t the only reason not to lie. Philip framed this as a religious question, but I consider it a universal one.Report
So you want a husky bearded trans man to shower with the girls.
I don’t think you or any other conservative wants this. What you guys really want is for no one to be allowed to change their gender.Report
You didn’t go far enough chip – they want them punished – to the point of self harm and suicide – for trying to exist as their authentic selves.Report
You want them harmed by doctors.Report
I want them to be treated by medical professionals along side competent psychologists. And if they are minors, I want that done in loving homes with the support of their parents. Which is standard of care across the medical community.
For adults, gender reassignment surgery is no more harmful then any other plastic surgery. Which last I checked conservatives are enthusiastic consumers of.Report
Again, where should trans people shower?
Are you willing to tell us?Report
I think that the example they’re more likely to use is the whole Stone Bridge High School incident that was, sadly, *NOT* hypothetical.Report
No, you are not. At every turn you have opposed any policy, legal, or medical change or stance that recognizes transgendered persons as equals AFTER they transition. The fact that you oppose this legislation is just the latest case in point.
Forcing a transgendered woman to continue presenting as a man, living as a man and assuming male roles in society is forcing them to lie.
I used the religious reference since you claim your Christianity as a part of your identity. As do many of your fellow conservatives. Who then proceed to act in the most unchristian ways possible toward the least of these your brothers and sisters.Report
As equals, fine; as changed in sex, no. As I’ve stated here and elsewhere.Report
Then you don’t want to treat them as equals. Because you want them to actively deny an integral part of who they are to satisfy your bigotry.Report
This doesn’t make any sense.Report
Why not?Report
You and I can treat each other as equals without coming to an agreement on religion or politics, right? We don’t have to agree with each other’s perceptions of reality. We can talk about commonly-recognized reality. An XY is an XY no matter what surgery is done, no matter what he may think about being XY. An XX, likewise. My liberty to believe things about myself ends where reality begins, as does yours.
Put a different way, treating people equally doesn’t mean accepting everything they say, particularly where reality differs from what they say.Report
You and I can treat each other as equals without coming to an agreement on religion or politics, right?
Try it sometime.Report
This
Contradicts this:
So no, apparently we can’t treat trans people equally since you don’t actually accept their differing reality.Report
Trans people existing in various stages of transition is a fact, a cold hard objective fact.
The husky trans man I mentioned above isn’t an opinion or hypothetical, these people exist as a reality.
It is the existence of this objective reality that conservatives reject.Report
re: accepting “their” dfffering reality:
Of course not, based on any coherent definition of “reality”.Report
So then,
Report
“I think you’re lying to yourself about a fundamental biological fact, but I can totally treat you as an equal,” is something basically no transgender person will actually believe, because they know it’s not true.Report
Obviously they are a cunning decoy to divert the natural inclination adolescent boys have for petty bathroom vandalism towards a harmless target.Report
In the interest of full transparency, we have moved from “king stud” to “close friend”.
Report
We’re moving from “emotional tampon” to “actual tampon”…Report
Apparently the latest Republican tactic is to pretend the Democratic nomination is still influx and Harris is still the presumptive veep nominee. I suppose this is just another attempt at making the Democratic Party look or be “illegitimate” but it also looks like a bunch of not very serious people losing it.Report
These are the same people who keep pushing legal challenges to ballots arriving after election day which are counted because they are post-marked on or before election day.
They aren’t serious but they do want to gum up the system so no one notices when they try and steal the next election.Report
Let’s look at openly racist jokes from Trump 2024’s official spokesman: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/08/is-it-racist-and-or-sexist-to-suggest-that-black-people-women-smell-badReport
Lets get this guy to go on camera and talk about George Floyd.
At length, repeatedly, over and over.Report
Harris has famously admitted to smoking pot. Is it racist or sexist to make fun of the smell left behind by a pot-smoker? No. Is it racist or sexist to assume that the joke was racist or sexist? Kind of.Report
Oh, wait, I get it, you were making an assumption about Steven CHEUNG thinking that black people smell bad. With that big unlabeled picture of an Asian face on screen.Report
Although it’s interesting that you dropped the implication in the LGM headline about sexism. Women’s aromas can change sometimes, it’s biological, and you shouldn’t make fun of it. not if you want to be the kind of guy who carries around tampons. But you dropped that part, so good for you. So…why did you think the sexism charge wasn’t worth repeating but the racism charge was? Are you saying something about black people?Report
Or wait a second, Harris is Asian. Is there a stereotype about Asians smelling bad? To other Asians?Report
Something definitely smells bad here, and it isn’t black people or Asians or women.Report
Apparently Trump’s presser is already a train wreckReport
Trump appears to think political asylum is literally allowing people from insane asylum’s into this countryReport