Well…that was some awkward, painful television to watch:
Full exchange on Biden saying he won't release his Senate records at the Univ. of Delaware —
"The idea that they would be made public while I was running for public office, they could be taken out of context … they could be fodder." pic.twitter.com/tUOGBBttOd
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 1, 2020
Andrew Donaldson
Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has been the Managing Editor of Ordinary Times since 2018, is a widely published opinion writer, and appears in media, radio, and occasionally as a talking head on TV. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter@four4thefire. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew'sHeard Tell Substack for free here:
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on The Mandate That Wasn’t
Notable Trump Supporter Popehat tweets:
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Let’s be fair about this. Nothing Joe says is confidence inspiring.Report
If you’re wondering if Trump has weighed in:
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Update!
After reading a bit more about this exchange and related, i think I’ve figured out why Joe said he didn’t understand the question. Mika apparently assumed all his records had been converted to or stored as easily accessible computer files. Hence her question about doing a search limited only to Reade’s name. He was confused, I think, because he assumed that she, being the daughter of Zbigniew, knew that that generally isn’t the case, and certainly isn’t the case wrt his records. (Though apparently an internet guy offered to scan his docs at a rate of 200 pages per minute. So there’s that.) At this point it’s mostly an academic point since the damage is already done.Report
Trump saying he could have been falsely accused was some top-notch trolling.Report
I actually think none of this will end up mattering. #MeToo is hypocritical, mostly kind of dumb, and definitely unprincipled. They will find a way to rationalize voting Biden. People in the broader left coalition who are skeptical of and/or indifferent to #MeToo will not see anything to pause over in another decades old allegation no one can prove or disprove. Conservatives will (rightly) identify the hypocrisy, particularly in the way the media has done all it could to downplay this despite the outrageously obvious parallel to Kavanagh, but they weren’t voting Biden anyway. No ones vote will change. Despite all the interesting things that can be deduced about our culture and political divides it really is IMO going to amount to a big ol’ nothing burger, at least as far as November goes.Report
It could be salutary since it could steer the policy push into a more liberal and less… uh… extreme direction.Report
I’d like that to be the case but I think expecting anyone to learn anything is probably too high a bar. If it passes it will be because it became passé the way the PC thing did.Report
Well the next time this cycles around and it’s a Republican it’ll be extremely difficult for anyone on the left to go to the undiluted “believe a woman’s accusation no matter what” standard. Not after most of them have not only gone to a standard of “listen credulously to a woman’s accusation and then start lining up the evidence, consider the accused’s claimed as well and use all of that to draw a final conclusion” for Biden but have also claimed that this has always been the standard and only the right wing nuts have been saying otherwise.
Which means that eventually that could well end up being the accepted general standard which is nice because it also happens to be the right standard.Report
Your optimism is truly a virtue (being 100% serious, no sarcasm) and I’m glad we have it here.Report
See what I wrote below, the only people who are pushing this freakign allegation are white people that hate Biden, Bernie dead-enders. As Amanda Marcotte says, “believe all women” was never meant to mean “believe all women uncritically.” People are just twisting and turning it that way to justify not voting or figuring out how they can make their vote for Donald Trump less evil.Report
I disagree. #BelieveAllWomen means exactly what the critics interpreted it as meaning. Biden said so himself, as did nutjobs like
Marcotte, as did Kirsten Gillibrand, as did everyone who breathlessly spent two months on the ‘credible’ allegation by Christine Ford. This is identical, and Reade’s allegation may be even more ‘credible’ since at least they’ve been able to dig up someone willing to say she said something about the incident around the time it allegedly happened.
It’s only being walked back because applying it the way they’ve argued it should and has been until now would hurt the Dem nominee. They can’t Franken the guy they need to beat Trump nor can they treat him like some inconsequential Title IX collateral damage no one in the press or party apparatus will ever meet at a cocktail party.Report
Indeed. In fact, the second level damage being done by treating this in a very dissimilar manner than Ford places the importance of highlighting a very real issue in the toilet.
#metoo becomes $metoo.Report
No, this is not identical.
Tara Reade knew Joe, worked with him, and there’s no question on whether or not they’ve met or even when they met. Tara Reade apparently reported what happened at the time to multiple people who admit that. The media has claimed there are records for her dead mother trying to pursue the matter.
They are both “he said she said” things, but with Reade the size of the universe is “people who we know for a fact worked with Joe” and with Ford the size of the universe is “all women in America”.
That doesn’t mean this is a serious thing, we still have the issues of “what was considered appropriate at the time is not now”, “celebrities attract crazy people”, and “different cultures/expectations/values/comfort zones” (that last being a thing with Joe who was way more touchy than some).
What I find interesting is the different response from the “just a job interview” people who were claiming “Ford was credible”. We have a TON more evidence from Reade than Ford. It’s a lot earlier in the process. It’s also not from an activist from the other team.
Does this rise to the level of disqualification? I’d say “not yet”, but if someone was claiming Kavanaugh was unacceptable then for Biden to be acceptable that showcasing wildly different standards of proof.Report
As Amanda Marcotte says, “believe all women” was never meant to mean “believe all women uncritically.”
That strikes me as wildly revisionist, Saul. And pretty obviously so. The complaint against the believe women narrative has been that it excludes thinking critically about accusations, a complaint which, when made, landed folks on the ‘apologist for sexual assault’ side of the debate.Report
It’s even more ridiculous considering if you had to pick one to prosecute you’d take Biden every day of the week. At least you’d have records putting him and Reade together in a time and place plus some apparently contemporaneous reporting to third parties. Far from a slam dunk but it’s more substance than ever materialized with any of the Kavanagh accusations.
Now I am firmly am against doing politics this way, and I doubt Reade matters come election day, but if you ever need an example of how nonchalantly the Democratic party and press lay traps for themselves…Report
Good comments.
I think a lot of people have staked out a consistent position that has no interest in protecting sexual harassment or worse, assault; but the issue is and remains how to address accusations. In so far as strides have been made to reduce barriers to reporting and insist that all accusations are taken seriously no matter the target, then we can all credit developments over the past 20-years (not just MeToo).
The political aspect isn’t IMO hypocrisy or both sides do it… I think Sully captured it pretty well in his last article; the issue is that the prudence of the Democratic party’s approach codified in the amendments to Title IX (as an example) is exposed as inadequate and inconsistent.
So the issue is that in a matter that Team Blue advocates as being a “thought leader” its thoughts are exposed as poor or perhaps not sincerely held. This stings.
As a result, Sully can decry a Title IX approach and still support Biden… because Title IX ought not be the way we adjudicate and deal with sexual misconduct. In so far as there are lots of democrats that are willing to rethink Title IX then this could be nothing burger.
In so far as democrats are not willing to admit that the Title IX model is untenable and instead double down on “white rage” or other nonsense… then I could see it becoming a political issue since it becomes a matter of prudence and policy.
The political conundrum, it seems to me, is that a reasonable strategic retreat to find a better way to address accusations requires sacrificing some ideological baggage. Biden being Biden probably doesn’t have the stature to ditch that baggage, and maybe worse, Biden being Biden its possible he doesn’t have any idea how. Biden has always been a follower, not a leader of the Democratic party… hence the deer in the headlight posture.Report
You know, the Dems could have made a great political play from this. Imagine, if you will, that the minute the accusations started to look semi-serious that they said “stop. we need to look into this.” And showed that they actually do worry about this, do take it seriously. I mean, it would backfire pretty dramatically if it turns out that he had done “something” bad, but at a certain point, you have to put your money where your mouth is.
But now? I just makes them look like cheap opportunists. And worse, that they don’t actually care about women qua women.Report
So basically is there a Sister Souljah moment in all this? Putting aside whether such a thing is possible for someone so directly involved, can we even have Sister Souljah moments anymore?Report
I don’t know… I think that’s some of the paralysis.
My hunch is an attempt to just gut it out… my other hunch is that the real danger is from the left… the left has a double interest in *not* jettisoning some ideological baggage plus an interest in tanking Biden.
On the margins I think it sows the kind of doubt that’s the worst kind of doubt for Democrats… that they aren’t really a mainstream party; or that the mainstream can’t manage the left. Whether Trump’s Republican party can execute such a strategy effectively? I’m doubtful.
Hence, gut it out and tell the left to shut it and suck it up.Report
You don’t always want to say both sides do it, but it we’re talking about nominating cognitively impaired gropey old men and pretending not to hear the embarrassing clueless things they say…Report
The only people who are pushing this obvious attempt at rat-fishing are Bernie dead-enders who think that if they jump up and down hard enough the Democratic convention will name Sanders rather than Biden as the Presidential candidate or Never-Trumper Republicans who are looking for a reason not to vote Democratic. Meanwhile, African-Americans and every sane Democratic voter is seeing this for what this is, rat-fishing. This is just emails 2020.
Ms. Reid herself admits to not using the words sexual harassment in her complaint:
https://apnews.com/aec7beb03e9e0e0e6e3c58111293e0ea
Elswhere, she is on record as saying that she told her boyfriend at the time that she left Biden because she received an offer to work on the campaign for the California governor’s race:
https://twitter.com/mrl218/status/1255744416616071168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1255744416616071168&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefault%26f%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-com%26t_i%3D110111%2520https%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F%253Fp%253D110111%26t_u%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F2020%252F05%252Fgetting-the-ratfuckers-back-together%26t_e%3DGetting%2520the%2520ratfuckers%2520back%2520together%26t_d%3DGetting%2520the%2520ratfuckers%2520back%2520together%2520-%2520Lawyers%252C%2520Guns%2520%2526%2520Money%26t_t%3DGetting%2520the%2520ratfuckers%2520back%2520together%26s_o%3Ddesc%23version%3D206d8ff2f80c3ca0938577332c03b31a
Reid is a freaking liar and should be treated as such.Report
It’s rat-fishing. The reason why we see this strong attempt at rat-fishing is that polls show Biden and Trump are neck and neck in Texas of all places. The Republicans know they are in trouble and are doing everything in their power to stop this.Report
For a handful of reasons, I am reminded of a comment I wrote back in September 2016. (Kazzy asked about my recollections of the Clarence Thomas/Bill Clinton thing that happened in the mid-90’s.)
The Kavanaugh hearings happened in July 2018, if you were wondering.Report
We’ve reached warp speed in the time between unexplained about-faces on moral imperatives. But God forbid you notice it lest you be dubbed some kind of reactionary. Like, I’m a pretty liberal dude, and that’s precisely why I find all these accelerators on the super highway to a post truth civilization to be so troubling.Report
When the facts are different, I reach a different conclusion.
What do you do?Report
Heh, trust me, we all know what the different fact is.Report
You keep repeating this like it is true but the entire thing seems like a big rat-fishing operation with me or at least a last desperate attempts by the Bernie Bros to get Sanders the nomination.
The big telling fact to me is that Reid claimed she reached out to Warren and Harris during the primary campaigns and they rejected her. I for one do not admit that people who are running for a nomination would simply reject this level of dirt on opponent. Either Reid is lying about reaching out to them or Warren and Harris saw her claim as an obvious lie.
The other telling fact is that Ronan Farrow declined to take up Reid’s story. I do not believe that Ronan Farrow is that loyal to Biden or the Democratic Party that he wouldn’t investigate this because Trump must be defeated.Report
The big thing for me is how her story changed and got more dramatic over time, and how she had some sort of strange about face in the last couple years where she went from supporting Biden strongly to now accusing him.Report
“she had some sort of strange about face in the last couple years where she went from supporting Biden strongly to now accusing him.”
yeah, gosh, it’s almost like at some point in the past couple of years Joe Biden was in, like, a really really important and powerful office.Report
It doesn’t matter to me if it’s the BernieBros, Vlad Putin, the Koch brothers, or some other bête noir. We’re watching completely different reactions to allegations of similar criminal misconduct by figures at important political impasses, where the acts in question occurred so far in the past as to be neither provable nor falsifiable. I’m still voting for Diamond Joe in November but this stuff isn’t cute, it’s patronizing, and it’s another force dismantling the norms people (including the press) insist are so important.Report
The real issue isn’t “Is Tara Reade telling the truth”, it’s the obvious double standard from people who were quick to convict Kavanaugh with even less substantiation. It’s been interesting seeing the various strategies — some people are insisting that there’s no difference in treatment, others are trying to justify it by seizing on minor differences in the two situations, others are just not addressing it at all.
A couple of people I know in real life are actually reflecting on how they’re reacting so differently to this situation and gaining some wisdom from it — I guess there could be many more such people out there, but the social media incentives don’t point to actually posting about it.Report
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Biden also just gave an interview where he said the virus had already killed 600,000 Americans.
Tweet with the video clip
I don’t think it will be much longer before we realize that somewhere between 60 and 65% of Americans are more qualified to be President than Joe Biden is. Jimmy Carter, who is still eligible to run, is bound to be more on top of current events.Report
Granted, that’s a hell of a gaffe, but I think that the message Biden was trying to convey is that he’s confident that a thorough investigation into the facts will exonerate him.Report
But, and here is the kicker, the politicing and media bias behind this is a little too transparent, what with the constantly mentioned Kavanaugh. The whole thing looks just a little too pat. This just confirms it.
And furthers the opinion that he is no longer ready for prime-time.Report
So, you may be saying “I wonder what the comment section was like about Kavanaugh in the beforetime”.
Here is a post from September 9th, 2018.
Here is a post from September 27th, 2018.
Here is a post from October 10th, 2018.
Here is a post from September 15th, 2019 (a mere 8 months ago).Report
it is funny to go back and see how it was a GIANT GODDAMN DEAL that someone made the “OK’ sign.Report
The Kavanaugh comparison is already well covered, but I also noticed this little beauty of a Biden quote that could just as easily be Trump talking about his tax returns…
“The idea that they would be made public while I was running for public office, they could be taken out of context … they could be fodder.”
I don’t even think there’s actually anything significant there, but I still find the double standard irritating. “Taken out of context and used as fodder” describes the majority of what passes for political journalism these days (on both sides), so it’s a reasonable concern, but neither Dems nor the MSM (but I repeat myself) extend such restraint to President Trump.Report
Tara Reade: Why a Liberal Democrat Supports Vladimir Putin
“President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity. It is evident that he loves his country, his people and his job. … President Putin’s obvious reverence for women, children and animals, and his ability with sports is intoxicating to American women.”
The whole essay is so bizarre I did a double take at the byline to make sure it wasn’t written by George Turner.Report
The phone wallpaper of putin riding a tiger shirtless is implied.Report
Yeah, something happened to this woman, but it wasn’t an encounter with Biden.Report
Terrible political opinions are irrelevant in every way to assessing any potentially inappropriate sexual behavior.Report
It’s not a political opinion. It’s a cry for help.Report
Ug. You can infer nothing about what may have happened to her from her terrible opinions. Love of authoritarians isn’t new or fresh. There are plenty of tankies around the twitterz and i dont’ think you can say they were all sexually assaulted there by creating there dumb as a stump opinions.Report
But so far as I know, her Putin love is new.
Her political posture seems to have made a180 turn sharply and suddenly without any reasonable explanation.
And her recollection of the event seems to have changed radically at the same time.
It’s entirely reasonable to see a connection.Report
The problem is people lie when their own interests are at stake.
Ergo, if she really is backing Bernie/Putin then this puts her in a position to trainwreck Joe. However… Joe’s people have a lot of interest in making that claim so that works both ways.
It would help a LOT if we can find out what she claimed/reported earlier.Report
It would be an interesting data point but isn’t determinative of anything. The fundamental problem is that absent some really extraordinary (and highly unlikely) evidence coming to light decades old claims can’t be assessed with any certainty. It’s why statutes of limitation exist for everything (not just criminal prosecution but contract and tort claims too). Numerous pieces of our legal system are (often imperfectly) designed to address the problem of time.
The idea that there’s some other way to reach a conclusion of any merit is completely bogus. And it’s not like others haven’t been raising this issue for years only to be rebuked as rape apologists by people like Joe Biden.Report
That’s a really strong point.
Now if a dozen other women step forward (Cosby) then I’ll view it as very strong… but to be fair with Kavanaugh 4 accusations (of the 5) that have been proven to be false and my strong inclination is to call Ford’s smelly enough to be false too (but that’s not proof).Report
Cosby was found guilty by a jury of his peers so I’m hesitant to treat it as a parallel. There was a trial and there was due process. That said there remains controversy in the legal world as to whether the judge was right to permit extensive testimony to uncharged crimes that themselves could not have been prosecuted. My opinion is it shouldn’t be done that way but a guy with a black robe disagreed and he is unlikely to be reversed.Report
Kavanaugh was a week away from a lifetime appointment. If he’d stepped down, he would have been replaced by someone ideologically identical simply by naming them. Likewise Thomas. In both cases no thorough investigation was done, they got their seat, and the discussion ended.
Biden is months away from an election, there is no easy mechanism for replacing him, and the discussion has no end in sight.
So why are we discussing these situations as if they were identical? Apparently because BS always DI.Report
If we wish to hammer out that it is, of course, a political issue and has nothing whatsoever to do with womens’ issues, I am certain that you will get everybody on the right to agree with you.Report
Whelp, as I said at the time, the Democrats made a mistake hyping the sexual assault allegations when there was a perfectly legitimate, very obvious, and constitutionally compelling reason to have him disqualified: he lied under oath, multiple times.
The upside of Mike’s worry is that Biden could resign without being replaced allowing Dems to finally run their sure-fire winning candidate in the general election, “‘Generic Democrat”.Report
How so?Report
We know what the Right will do. They’ve already accused him of groping a 14-year-old when at the time he was in a different state.
And of course it’s necessary to rush to judgment on this, because of the non-existent time limit.Report
Oh, of course! Women make false accusations all the time. They need to be treated respectfully but SKEPTICALLY.
There’s a burden of proof issue that must be met *FIRST*.Report
We also need to look at the motives of the people supporting the accusations in our assessment of whether or not the accusations are true.Report
If Ford had derailed K, Trump could have picked someone else the next day and the Senate could have rushed it through within a week or two.
If proof of Biden being bad is found… is there a mechanism to make him step down? Is there a mechanism to replace him?
That’s for anyone, because I have totally no clue. If I had a clue what it involved maybe I could gander on how long the process would take.
Now maybe if the answer is “the #2 guy takes it so it’s Bernie” we have the Dems running full Communist and the issue isn’t so much “time” as “electability”.Report
The mechanism is called the Democratic Convention. It’s scheduled for August 17th. If Biden becomes a liability, it can pick someone else.
Bernie’s nothing like a Communist, but that’s a different discussion.Report
Can they? Biden has enough votes to win the first round, and I’d thought there were rules (laws?) that said the first round you have to go with the guy the voter’s picked.Report
Well ackshually he doesn’t have enough delegates at this very moment…1435/1991 with 17.5 states to vote.
But I think this scenario presumes that Biden *withdraws* his candidacy; at which point the delegates would defer to whatever bylaws the convention stipulates…
And, technically all the other candidates have suspended their campaigns… so theoretically if consensus radically turned and Biden went all Honey Badger, they could “activate” tomorrow and, well… all hades would break loose.Report
My understanding is also that many states wouldn’t allow candidates who have removed themselves from the ballot to get back on. It would render moot not only the primaries that have happened but the ones left to go. No one could swoop in at this point and be able to claim a mandate from the party’s members.Report
That may well be… I had just read that candidates were suspending (which is common) not ending their bids. But yeah, the intricacies of filing for and appearing on each individual state’s slate? Deadlines? I have no idea.
I’d chalk that up to the hades aspect if it ever got to that (which I don’t think it will).Report
*withdraws* like with a pillow over his face?
But seriously, these are Democrates. They have superdelegates to handle the voting members getting out of line.Report
Technically Coronavirus with a co-morbidity of Pillow over face.Report
And if he doesn’t?Report
Yes? Is that not covered? People can re-enter the race (with varying degrees of difficulty and rule bending/breaking) if so inclined. I’m not seeing that inclination as of now… all I’m saying is that Biden isn’t the mathematical nominee and there are 17.5 more primaries between now and August.
But to your original point, no one in the democratic party can forcibly withdraw his candidacy for him (afaik) the way Trump could have withdrawn the nomination of K…
Whether Biden would continue his candidacy *against* a critical mass of opposition (if that ever emerged) is unlikely, and thus the likely voluntary withdrawal at or sometime before the convention.
My suspicion, absent new blockbusting evidence, corroboration, or floodgates of other women, is that all we’ll see is the left haggling over what constitutes “critical mass.”Report
The way the liberals on this board are lining up to defend Biden when it’s incredibly obvious that if this were anyone else, under any other circumstances, they would at least *claim* to find this indefensible, is fucking embarrassing. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.Report
Well, you have to understand.Report
You want Trump to be President? Trump? TRUMP? TRUMP? TRUMP?Report
Much like the 2016 election, I want a “None of the Above” option.
And before anyone tries to jump in with that ‘Well, you’re just a Bernie stan, so of course you would believe Reade’: if Bernie had identical accusations levelled against him, I would’ve dropped my support for his ass in a heartbeat. It’s called having basic standards of decency, people.Report
And I want a pony.Report
If you want a completely unproblematic politician to vote for, you’re being childish.
Ask for the moon.
Which is why you need to vote for Biden. Because Trump is really problematic.
Capeesh?Report
No.
I really don’t grasp what you’re struggling to say or not say here.Report
Only because you’re being intentionally obtuse for some imagined rhetorical advantage.Report
You understand *precisely* what he’s saying.
You just don’t *want* to.Report
RE: Trump
I’m fine with the innate lack of dignity he brings to the office (this includes the sex scandals).
I’m against the corruption and the personality cult he’s go going for him but those hit the radar as things of lesser importance.
I’m concerned on his mental stability.
I’m MUCH against his Trade and Immigration positions, to the point of not voting for him last time.
RE: Biden
No conclusion yet.
He’s better on dignity and sex but I don’t care.
He’s the same on corruption.
He may be the same on mental stability which is a damn shame.
I’m not sure if the personality cult thing is important enough to move the needle.
Probably the biggest concern I have is how well Bernie and Warren did. If that’s what counts as mainstream Dem then I have a problem with the party.
I’ll wait and see what Biden does after the nomination and do a deep dive on him then. If he comes out as fighting inequality at the expense of economic growth then I’ll hold my nose and vote Trump.Report
That’s right, everybody, the Responsible Adults are here to tell us that sometimes, you have to do the Responsible Adult thing and vote for the man credibly accused of sexual assault, so that the other man credibly accused of sexual assault doesn’t win! After all, that impulse certainly isn’t the thing that led us to this exact situation!
Seriously, come at me with an actual point. You do *have* one, right? One that isn’t just a repackaging of the same Lesser-of-Two-Evils nonsense that inevitably results in the endless rule of Evil?Report
As an engaged citizen, which of the options in front of you do you think is better for America overall?Report
Once you start letting people know that it’s okay for them to sell their soul in exchange for temporary advantage, you might find that they have different things that they hold as their second or third most important issues.
At which point you may wish you hadn’t thrown the whole “Morality? Grow the hell up” argument out there as an opening bid.Report
After all the chatter and navel gazing, as an engaged citizen which of the options in front of you do you think is better for America overall?Report
As someone without an immunity to iocane powder, I choose neither goblet.
Vermin Supreme is more to my liking.
He seems least likely to get me involved in a land war in Asia, after all.Report
And to you, disengaging from your role as a citizen of the Republic and retreating to the forest of the Ents is the superior moral choice?
I need to see a diagram of how that works.Report
Don’t see it as me choosing the superior moral choice.
See it as me choosing the lesser of two evils.Report
As someone once asked of the Yippies, when they ran a pig as a Presidential candidate in 1968, “If you don’t even take your political ideas seriously, why would anyone else?”Report
I do take my political ideas seriously.
That’s why I’m not particularly inclined to vote for Biden or Trump.
What political ideas do you have that lead you to “Oh, yeah… Biden 2020. Not even Biden 2012 or Biden 1988. But Biden 2020!” as being something that allows you to tell yourself “I’m taking this seriously”?Report
As I mention below, this election will be a momentous inflection point in American history.
Maybe not in your life. Maybe your life will go on just as it has.
But it will mark a radical turning point for millions of Americans either for good or ill.
Years from now people will ask, “What did you do when the fate of millions of Americans was at stake?”
I won’t have to answer, “I made snarky jokes”.Report
Would you say it’s the most important election in recent memory?
Years from now people will ask, “What did you do when the fate of millions of Americans was at stake?”
I’ll say “I worked from home, wore a mask, washed my hands, and advocated against settling for the lesser of two evils to people who were really, really big on supporting the lesser of two evils.”Report
That’s a very good question, coming from a guy who vociferously (and correctly!) went after Kavanagh and Trump for the heinous things they were credibly accused of doing to women. It’s almost as though you care more about an election than about the issue of women being sexually assaulted by their powerful male bosses.Report
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/we-need-a-wizard-who-can-appeal-to-the-moderate-orc-voterReport
As an engaged citizen, I already chose that option. You and people like you chose otherwise, leaving us with the equivalent of choosing between collectively shooting ourselves in the gut or shooting ourselves in the temple.
You lined up to cut your throats over the altar of ‘electability’, and now you get to vote for a guy who once forced a woman up against a wall, fingerfucked her, and then told her she was nothing to him. I hope you feel good about your choices.Report
(*I* get where you’re coming from, Zac.)Report
But no one could have foreseen this. In all the countless public photos of Joe Biden groping and sniffing girls, how could anyone have guessed that maybe he’d done something questionable off camera, when he wasn’t full paws-on while standing next to the podium at a White House press conference?
Sure, some might have made the statistical argument that eventually, given the amount of places he’s touched women in public, there would be no place on a girl that wasn’t touched, simply by random chance. But who can follow the sophisticated mathematical models that would have indicated the likelihood of something like this?
In any event, I think it’s time for the party to try some Hail Marys. Make up a new social rule and claim that was in effect back then.
Random Host on The View: When a woman walks willingly into an elevator with a man, isn’t there some form of implied consent?
Other random host: Obviously this wouldn’t apply if the woman was already in the elevator and a man got on later…
Other random host: Oh, of course not. But you know how it was ladies! Am I right?
Audience full of hand picked Biden supporters: Oh yeah! That was a rule back then!
Or they could come up with something out of left field, like “When you consider the seriousness of the charge, you also have to factor in the hotness of the woman, then and now.”
I’m sure they’ll figure something out.Report
Its a common weakness of revolutionaries and missionaries to secretly despise the people they want to save.
The American proletariat, the people of color, the suburban women, the immigrants working away in the meatpacking plans prefer Biden over all the other Democratic candidates.
You seem to want to make your vote all about you and your sense of identity, like picking a brand of clothing or favorite band.
Your vote in November will help determine the fate of the proletariat, the people we claim to represent.
Whether they get to form a union or not, whether they are allowed reproductive choice or not, whether they are regarded as first of second class citizens or not.
You get to help choose their fate.
I am very proud to say I prefer Biden to Trump, and will be proud of that fact til my dying breath.Report
“Its a common weakness of revolutionaries and missionaries to secretly despise the people they want to save.
The American proletariat, the people of color, the suburban women, the immigrants working away in the meatpacking plans prefer Biden over all the other Democratic candidates.”
That’s right, guys, the majority is always correct! That’s why Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon are the two greatest presidents in American history.
A forty-nine state wipeout speaks for itself, after all. Do you secretly despise the country the Republican party represents? Why will you not simply bow to the obvious supremacy of their democratic will?
“You seem to want to make your vote all about you and your sense of identity, like picking a brand of clothing or favorite band.
Your vote in November will help determine the fate of the proletariat, the people we claim to represent.”
I live in one of the ten bluest districts in the country. It will go to Biden by thirty or forty points regardless of who I vote for at the top of the ballot. So no, it will not determine that even slightly.
“I am very proud to say I prefer Biden to Trump, and will be proud of that fact til my dying breath.”
Of course, had you been unfortunate enough to be an Iraqi or Afghani in the last 15-odd years, your dying breath might have come and gone years ago, thanks in part to one Joseph R. Biden. You could have been obliterated by a Hellfire missile, your lungs exploding inside your ribcage from the concussive force, as your vaporizing children were the last sight seared into your dying brain.
But fuck that! You’re a well-off American white man, and you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing! That’s the sort of thing that happens to brown people, in parts of the world you prefer not to think about! Now you go vote for that man who aided and abetted in the worst crime of the 21st century to date, Chip. And you be proud. Very proud.Report
Oh, please. You can’t make an omelet.Report
Chip, from another, albeit more reluctant Biden voter, I think you’re missing the real response. That’s for the broader coalition to learn that the stupid Crucible games played on college campuses and in critical theory classes don’t work in the reality-based community and are too easily weaponized in bad faith by the dumbest, laziest people. They’re wrong and not all that different from the know-nothing dittohead-ism that ate the GOP in the 90s.
Zac is wrong that the answer is to ride some dead end wave of illiberal fanaticism. He’s 100% right though that everyone trying to split these hairs looks like a fool to the point of being farcical. And it’s a farce that isn’t even good enough for a Tom Wolfe first draft.Report
The problem with that, though, is that if you shrug and say “hey, there are tradeoffs, you’re never going to get the perfect candidate”, you open yourself up to questions like “which candidate is more likely to bring manufacturing back to the US?” and I could see how Trump would be more likely to do that. “Which candidate is more likely to make the Middle Class larger?” could also get someone to choose Trump over Biden. “Which candidate is less likely to cater to stupid Crucible games played on college campuses?” “Which candidate is likely to be investigated by the media rather than merely a source for press releases that don’t even need that much editing?” “Which candidate has a better track record when it comes to supporting invading new countries?” “Illegal immigration still bugs me. Which candidate will be better on that?”
At that point, you’re going to have to start appealing to stuff like “morality”.
But you already began with “well, of course there are going to be tradeoffs”.
Hey, of course there are going to be tradeoffs.Report
That Sir, is an excellent question and an excellent way to vote.Report
Which is why our vote is all about what priorities we think are best for America.
You have your list, I have mine.Report
You have your list, I have mine.
Almost kinda makes you wish you didn’t pull “Morality? Don’t be childish!” as your first argument, huh?Report
Our priorities ARE our morality.Report
And there are those who are proud to abandon their top priorities for their secondary ones. Or tertiary ones. Or quaternary ones.
And there are those who are ashamed to.
And there are those who refuse to.Report
Some of us choose to walk *away* from Omelas.Report
Yeah, but all my stuff is there.Report
There is no logic to those statements. “I refuse to abandon my multiple priorities” is, in the context of voting, gibberish.
Political battles become very binary.
You have two choices and only two.
You are going to wake up on a Wednesday and have one of two men be President, and everything that follows.
You either worked to make one side win, or you chose not to. Neutrality is a choice of indifference.
I know you wish it was different, but it’s not.Report
Let’s say that my top priority is X. That’s the thing I care about most.
How is Trump on X? How is Biden on X? Well, the thing I care about most has them being… well, pretty much the same. Ugh.
Okay. So let’s look at &. How is Trump on Y? How is Biden on Y? Ugh.
Okay, so let’s look at Z…
And, suddenly, I find myself looking at “Political battles become very binary.”
Your X is not my X.
Chip… Our priorities ARE our morality.
The fact that you don’t see the logic to these statements doesn’t mean that there is none.
It just means that my priorities are different than yours. Personally, I think that mine are better.Report
That ranking is the free choice you made, a listing of your moral priorities.
You have reviewed all the issues of the candidates, and how those issues affect other people.
And you conclude that you are largely indifferent, seeing both candidates as very close to the same.
Not the same in terms of all issues and how they affect other people. But the same in terms of the things that are important to you.
A ranking is itself a binary choice, something you decided to do or not.Report
Yes. And, as I said above:
There are those who are proud to abandon their top priorities for their secondary ones. Or tertiary ones. Or quaternary ones.
And there are those who are ashamed to.
And there are those who refuse to.
A ranking is itself a binary choice, something you decided to do or not.
No. Not really. There can be degrees in a ranking.Report
Let me say it a different way:
You see clearly the consequences of your ranking, and how this affects other people, and made your choice according to what is important. To you.Report
…said the man who voted for Elizabeth Warren.Report
I am not sure I have a good grip on the consequences… many of those will take decades to surface. Perhaps centuries.
And, I mean, if you include stuff like “one of the consequences of the Democrats choosing to run Hillary Clinton in 2016 was Trump winning the 2016 election”, then we’re in a weird place.
I mean, did *YOU* support the Democrats running Clinton in 2016?
How are you with the consequences of your ranking there?
For what it’s worth, I think the Democrats should have run Bernie.
I digress.
There are a lot of things that I think affect other people and I think that vocally supporting Biden despite a handful of #MeToo incidents does, in fact, affect them too.
That’s why I don’t support Biden.
Because of the consequences of my ranking and how this affects other people and I made my choice according to what is important.
To me.Report
We always seem to come back to this, don’t we, that people are to be absolved of their votes for Trump because of some argle bargle excuse or another.
Which is the point here.
Everyone of us makes a conscious willful choice of what we rank as important.
And we are all aware of how our voting choice contributes to the enacted policy, and how those policies affect all of our fellow citizens.
So whether people voted for either Hillary or Trump, or either Biden or Trump, the policies that get enacted are owned by those who vote in the majority.
In the same way that Zac lays the Iraq war at the feet of every Democrat who voted for Obama/ Biden, every needless death of an American in this pandemic is the responsibility of every Trump voter.
I defend my choice of Obama/ Biden, but it is my choice, something I willfully did with clear eyes.
I don’t pretend the devil or the DNC or HRC made me do it, or that the GOP said unkind things so I was forced to do it.
Those are things that children say when the vase gets knocked over. Things that people say when they are embarrassed to accept what they have done.
We can talk about our priorities and the alternative options and maybe those are correct or not. But we own ourselves and our choices.
What we see right now in the pandemic, is the direct and obvious policy choice of 60 million Americans who voted in 2016.
And in November, we all get a chance to either ratify or repudiate the status quo, and neutrality is a vote for the status quo. Because the status quo doesn’t need your affirmation, only your acquiescence.Report
“In the same way that Zac lays the Iraq war at the feet of every Democrat who voted for Obama/ Biden, every needless death of an American in this pandemic is the responsibility of every Trump voter.”
That’s a pretty wild misrepresentation of my position. Barack Obama did not vote for the Iraq War. He did not support the Iraq War. I may have strong disagreements with him on a number of things, but the mess he was dealing with was dumped in his lap; he didn’t create it. Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton, on the other hand, both chose of their own free will to vote for that disaster, and in the case of Biden actively pushed the Democratic caucus to vote for it alongside them.
I don’t hold anyone who voted for Barack Obama responsible for the Iraq War. But if you choose to reward with your vote Joe Biden, who casually helped to destabilize an entire region and cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions, then yes, you do hold some responsibility for that, whether their name has an R or a D after it. You will have helped legitimize their deaths.
“[…]the status quo doesn’t need your affirmation, only your acquiescence.”
I agree, that *is* a pretty strong argument for people going out and regularly assassinating right-wing and centrist politicians, judges, media figures and businesspeople. When you put it like that, the choice is very clear.
Or was that not the point you were trying to make?Report
I will vote for Biden in the belief that on balance, America and the world will be a much better, happier and just place than it is right now, even accounting for whatever he does wrong, or did wrong in the past.
And with regard to your last point, I still remember how on this very site back when Ferguson was exploding and I got a bit too enthusiastic about the violent uprising there, that Lee Esq mentioned that for the oppressed and minorities, unrestrained violence never ever works out well.
I think about that a lot now, when I despair of peaceful change and harbor dark thoughts about the alternative.Report
“I will vote for Biden in the belief that on balance, America and the world will be a much better, happier and just place than it is right now, even accounting for whatever he does wrong, or did wrong in the past.”
I will say this: I hope you’re right and I’m wrong. But I think when I’m an old man looking back on this time, that’s not the conclusion I’ll come to.
“And with regard to your last point, I still remember how on this very site back when Ferguson was exploding and I got a bit too enthusiastic about the violent uprising there, that Lee Esq mentioned that for the oppressed and minorities, unrestrained violence never ever works out well.
I think about that a lot now, when I despair of peaceful change and harbor dark thoughts about the alternative.”
Would you consider a place like Rojava to be working out well for the oppressed and minorities?
As a general rule, I agree that violence should be a last resort. But I am not a pacifist. The people of Rojava fought long and hard for what they’ve built there. They’ve killed, and laid down their own lives by the thousands, to build and protect it. And frankly, I think liberals and leftists around the world should take inspiration from that. If they could accomplish what they have against murderous psychopathic right-wingers like Assad, Erdogan and ISIS, imagine what we could do if we had a tenth of their courage and solidarity.
It’s famously been said that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable. The oligarchs of global capital have done everything they can to ensure that that will be the case. So if that *is* the case, why let right-wing lunatics who are already geared up for it and slavering at the bit be the ones who come out on top when that day inevitably comes? You might as well draw the chalk outline of a dead man and go lie down in it, to save time.Report
Are you suggesting that the US has “murderous psychopathic right-wingers”?Report
Well, perhaps it’s a horizon issue.
If we agree that T was caused by S, sure. We agree that S caused T. Did R cause S? Did Q cause R? Did P cause Q? Did O cause P?
No, of course not. There were so very many things that worked and P was caused by many things. Heck, while P contributed to Q, Q was caused by many things. R was caused by many things. S was caused by many things.
And suddenly we’re looking at T again, aren’t we? At whether S caused it or not.
Jeez, maybe intentionality has something going for it.
Anyway, you may not have been “forced” to do something by Hillary or the DNC.
Neither will I be.
Ah, freedom.Report
There’s another option, actually, that’s been exercised numerous times throughout history, but as a group, people to the left of center tend to be too violence-averse to pursue it, much to their long-term detriment. I’d be more specific, but I really don’t need the Secret Service showing up at my house.Report
I think that’s more of a problem with long term Dem strategy than Biden personally and in particular. And yea, to some degree what’s done is done. But it’s never too late to learn and Trump has a hell of a set of circumstances to deal with himself, if anyone ever bothers trying to exploit them.Report
Short term Dem strategy appears to have gotten us here in particular.
(But I say that as someone who does not see Trump as a problem but as a symptom.)Report
Well I agree that Trump is a symptom but he’s a symptom of a whole bunch of things not just bad D strategy. And what I’m advocating is a change of strategy to deal with at least some of the problems that resulted in Trump, not doubling down.
I still think for as terrible of a pick as Biden is he may be the best shot of plausible options. In fact of the front runners he’s the only one I could see actually altering strategy in a way that helps himself even if it’s through total blind luck.Report
That’s an essay I’d like to read.Report
Think Mr. Magoo wins the lottery without even realizing he bought a ticket.Report
“Zac is wrong that the answer is to ride some dead end wave of illiberal fanaticism.”
Well, it worked for the Republicans.Report
More seriously, since dry sarcasm rarely translates to text, I want to clarify that while I agree with the basic ends of the social justice folks, I also agree with a lot of what was in your first paragraph. If the left wants to actually make any material progress on those issues, it’s not going to happen on college campuses. Young people are not a reliable political constituency.Report
It all depends on how you define ‘worked’, at least at the federal level. Trump has a following and reports of the GOP’s imminent demise are vastly overstated. But I wouldn’t say their ability to eke out electoral victories is resulting in major policy wins. They don’t have much substantive to show for the last 3.5 years anyway other than the tax cuts.Report
It’s less the last 3.5 years and more the last 40. Our already-meager safety net was gutted, the unions were broken, defense spending continued to increase despite the end of the Cold War, and the rich basically openly run the political system. And all the while, their opposition party chose to adopt many of their positions, moving the entire country’s political center to the right. You don’t see those as massive wins for the Republicans?Report
On the contrary I see those as massive Republican wins and the kinds of things a much better party would be focusing on to win realignment. This trap Biden set for himself arises from prioritizing a bunch of mostly unrelated identitarian obsessions of parts of the professional class over what actually ails us. And it’s giving Trump and people like Trump the cultural weapons necessary for the ultra wealthy to keep eating everyone’s lunch.Report
I agree with everything you said there (assuming you’re not dismissing sexual assault as an “identitarian obsession”), but you phrased it as though you expected me to disagree? I think we may be talking past each other, a little.Report
I see the idea that every accusation of rape or other sex crime should be automatically deemed true and all sanctions social, criminal, or otherwise imposed to stem from such obsessions, yes.Report
I don’t know about “automatically deemed true”, but surely there is some reasonable middle ground which is neither that nor the current/old status quo?Report
I think that all complaints should be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated even when the accused is someone important. No favors for the rich or well connected.
But I also believe in due process, presumption of innocence, impartial fact finding, etc. Every accusation should be assessed on its own merits, which of course is almost never possible when we’re talking about events this far in the past. So no decisions based on woke pseudoscience or weird critical
theory rationalizations from the academy either.
I’ve read enough about what goes on in subconstitutional systems set up at colleges where certain types of activists are able to get their way (goaded by the feds of course). I’ve also seen how that perspective has bled into establishment Dem politics. It’s insane and irrational, and very much not something I think we should make part of our politics.Report
Our already-meager safety net was gutted
This isn’t true. This is about as far from true as a claim can possibly get. Please don’t just repeat a factual claim just because you heard it somewhere and it made you feel good. Do the work to verify it from reliable sources.
The best documentation of the long-term growth of means-tested spending in the US that I know of is Robert Rector’s. Note that the charts are adjusted for inflation. Yes, he works for the Heritage Foundation, but he’s not just making up numbers.
The CBO has published a report titled “Federal Spending for Means-Tested Programs, 2007 to 2027,” which shows that Federal means-tested spending (Rector combines Federal and state) nearly doubled from 2007 to 2017; that’s not adjusted for inflation, but cumulative inflation over that period was only 18%, so it’s still a huge increase in real terms, and backs up Rector’s claims for that period.
If I knew of any longer-term government sources providing the same data in an easily readable format, I’d link to them, but the work Rector did to compile those numbers from historical spending on 80 different programs was non-trivial.
Note also that Rector’s numbers actually understate welfare spending because he only includes means-tested spending. Much of Social Security and Medicare spending is aimed at alleviating poverty among the elderly, but since they’re not technically means-tested, they don’t get counted.
Anyway, you should take this as a wake-up call. If you actually think that means-tested spending has been cut over the past 40 years, your mental model of what the US government spends money on is wholly unmoored from reality, and you need to throw out everything you think you know and build a new model from more reliable sources.Report
If you think Team Red can’t find (or create) false accusations then I have a bridge to sell you.
If you think Team Blue can’t find (or create) false accusations then I suggest you read Ford vs K’s wiki… which doesn’t do that great a job with Ford herself but is fine with the other four.Report
Like a fine wine; pithy, yet appropos
Report