I see no reason to treat the "allegations" against Biden seriously because there are so many red flags on the accuser.
Not only is the legal system not taking her seriously but it likely shouldn't. If she wants to change that she can submit her claims to investigation, but my expectation is that's the last thing she wants.
Similarly I see no reason to disbelieve the court's verdict(s) against Trump. Trump has many red flags and a many decade pattern of this sort of thing. At some point we need to believe the dozens of women who have said there are problems.
Trump being bad doesn't mean whoever he's running against must be as bad, nor does it mean that we can't look past that and vote for him anyway.
I have one vote, that implies I can have one priority.
I don't know what "increase people's access to wealth" means.
I will say the big problem with the American Dream recently has been the increase in housing costs, but the solution there is to increase the supply of housing and we're not willing to do that yet.
This is DEI in a nutshell and sometimes it's explained at this level of detail.
Calling this "a messaging problem" implies this message can be made prettier. This is a very ugly message and it should be treated like an ugly message.
Having said that, for a "sitting VP" she's remarkably inept, uninformed(?), and bad at this. She was selected by Biden to unify his identity politics base. She wasn't ready to be at the head of the ticket.
There are a number of VPs who haven't been ready for prime time. Lincoln's VP was selected to bring ideological balance to the ticket, which is another way of saying he disagreed with Lincoln on basically everything.
More recently we have Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. Cheney at least was selected for his experience in governing, but if he had to head the ticket his total lack of charisma would have worked against him.
if you were on a jury with just a regular guy and it was her word against his
We have already run that experiment. We had a real jury with a real conviction. They spent many hours listening to evidence and no, it wasn't just "her word against his". I'm not going to spend minutes trying to repeat that.
For Biden, I seriously doubt it makes it to a jury because the case is so bad the legal system would filter it out before it gets there.
For Trump, he gets convicted. Not because "he's Trump", the legal system is designed to prevent that kind of emotional thinking. He gets convicted because not caring about the rules or about what other people think means he has no problems crossing lines or doing crimes.
If the claim here is she's really as demented as Trump but the media treats her more harshly, then...
1) This is really bad for her on the face of it.
2) The media was largely on her side proclaiming how super competent she is.
That last is the big problem. Trump was genuine, Harris was not.
Trump runs as a vulgar old man and makes it work. He likes telling exaggerated big fish stories and we make allowances because he's been doing it for decades.
Harris was trying to run as a super competent advisor to the President. That's a fine role. However to make that work she needed to be able to answer basic questions that she either couldn't or wouldn't.
Harris was artificial. The answer to most questions was babble while she tried to remember what the answer was supposed to be. It showed that she wasn't saying what she really thought.
That Bezos is elite doesn't change that the educated class is too.
elite
/ĭ-lēt′, ā-lēt′/
noun
1) A group or class of persons considered to be superior to others because of their intelligence, social standing, or wealth.
2) A member of such a group.
3) The best or most skilled members of a group.
Harris wasn't answering questions in paragraphs. Harris was avoiding answering questions by word salad.
Team Red had fun playing quotes of the full question and full answer.
Note "avoiding answering questions" is the best spin possible.
The alternatives are she didn't know the answers; or couldn't remember what her handlers told her to say but knew her own answers would be unacceptable.
The issue isn't that you and I think she should have gone. The issue is that the people who were professionally managing her thought she wasn't up to it.
And not just, "Joe Rogan is a bad idea". It seemed to have been, "interviews are a bad idea and long serious(?) interviews are a massively bad idea". Even in a toss up election where she's losing ground.
If we assume the people professionally managing her understood their jobs and were correct, then the implication is she was that bad at interviews.
Her longest interview was one hour with Howard Stern... but at least half that was talking about her rise to glory and the other half softball questions. In practice that might have been 15 minutes. So the same as her others.
I think it's very possible her people didn't want to let her out of the bunker for three hours and do the real deal. She'd go with a platitude, he'd ask a follow up question, she'd not have an answer. Joe was viewed (correctly) as "not one of their people" so that can't work.
Three hours of word salad would have been as bad as Biden's debate.
"Abolish" is a slogan. In practice Trump will do what he did last time, i.e. tell the administrative state that for every new rule they create they have to get rid of two.
Everyone I know thinks the same way I do ergo I'm correct.
From the Leftist media I watch, the thinking seems to be there is no difference between Trump and Harris/Biden for Gaza. They don't expect Trump to be better but since Biden isn't willing to stop a "genocide" it can't get any worse.
The problem is they've redefined "genocide" to mean "brutal war". There are more births than deaths in Gaza. We've been hearing how they're days away from mass starvation for the last 9 months and we're still days away.
Biden was Jimmy Cricket. Trump thinks Israel isn't being forceful enough.
The Left has more groups and more ways for them to be at odds. For example the Jews and the Arabs are both Blue and they have opposite ideas on how to deal with the current war in Gaza.
Team Blue's job is to put together a group that is willing to vote together. Since the Arabs decided anything less than preventing Israel from defending itself was "genocide", the calculation should have been that Blue can't depend on that vote and they need to get others.
That implies doing good things for the "pocketbook" voters since that's the biggest group.
As for "nutpicking", the problem implies there should be fewer ideological purity tests and not more. This flies in the face of the "everyone who doesn't agree with me is an Evil Na.zi" thinking. IMHO Blue would benefit from being more tolerant of ideological diversity.
It is a lot easier to believe Trump can be played than it is to believe that Trump is being blackmailed.
Trump is immune to sexual blackmail because he wouldn't care and his real life has been so interesting. Finding out that he's had yet another affair with yet another East European model is already well within expectations.
Trump is also pretty much immune to money blackmail because he'd just claim that it was normal business dealings with Russia and/or loans (btw, he has taken Russian loans). It'd be easy for him to say "Fish You, sanctions say you don't get paid" so that's probably already happened.
Thankfully none of his attempts at creating hotels in Russia have been successful so his empire can't be held hostage.
Giving Russia a veto over our defense moves 20 years ago would have resulted in a real problem now. Russia feeling it has no choice but invade about 20 different countries has nothing to do with Nato (witness how they've treated their non-Nato neighbors).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Four Stages of Post-election Cruelty”
Yes, I'm not. However one assumes she's still pro-trans and is personally affected by the trans issue.
On “He Got Away With It”
I see no reason to treat the "allegations" against Biden seriously because there are so many red flags on the accuser.
Not only is the legal system not taking her seriously but it likely shouldn't. If she wants to change that she can submit her claims to investigation, but my expectation is that's the last thing she wants.
Similarly I see no reason to disbelieve the court's verdict(s) against Trump. Trump has many red flags and a many decade pattern of this sort of thing. At some point we need to believe the dozens of women who have said there are problems.
Trump being bad doesn't mean whoever he's running against must be as bad, nor does it mean that we can't look past that and vote for him anyway.
I have one vote, that implies I can have one priority.
On “The Four Stages of Post-election Cruelty”
Here is a trans-woman who has run for office as a Democrat talking about how the Democrats have badly mishandled the trans issue(s).
Why We Lost - Brianna Wu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6fR0bhZJi0
On “An Election Map that Asks “What if Only Educated People Voted?” and a Follow-up Question”
I don't know what "increase people's access to wealth" means.
I will say the big problem with the American Dream recently has been the increase in housing costs, but the solution there is to increase the supply of housing and we're not willing to do that yet.
On “The Four Stages of Post-election Cruelty”
This is DEI in a nutshell and sometimes it's explained at this level of detail.
Calling this "a messaging problem" implies this message can be made prettier. This is a very ugly message and it should be treated like an ugly message.
"
First of all, you're correct.
Having said that, for a "sitting VP" she's remarkably inept, uninformed(?), and bad at this. She was selected by Biden to unify his identity politics base. She wasn't ready to be at the head of the ticket.
There are a number of VPs who haven't been ready for prime time. Lincoln's VP was selected to bring ideological balance to the ticket, which is another way of saying he disagreed with Lincoln on basically everything.
More recently we have Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. Cheney at least was selected for his experience in governing, but if he had to head the ticket his total lack of charisma would have worked against him.
On “He Got Away With It”
If we're going to go there, Trump was repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct before he ran for office.
Various women filed lawsuits against him. This is in the context of him always counter suing them and turning it into a legal mess.
He accidently admitted they were correct during the campaign when talking into a mic he didn't realize was on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_sexual_misconduct_allegations
"
if you were on a jury with just a regular guy and it was her word against his
We have already run that experiment. We had a real jury with a real conviction. They spent many hours listening to evidence and no, it wasn't just "her word against his". I'm not going to spend minutes trying to repeat that.
For Biden, I seriously doubt it makes it to a jury because the case is so bad the legal system would filter it out before it gets there.
For Trump, he gets convicted. Not because "he's Trump", the legal system is designed to prevent that kind of emotional thinking. He gets convicted because not caring about the rules or about what other people think means he has no problems crossing lines or doing crimes.
On “The Four Stages of Post-election Cruelty”
Then there's the commercial with her dancing and chanting "no more deportations" with the protesters.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/11/2024”
If the claim here is she's really as demented as Trump but the media treats her more harshly, then...
1) This is really bad for her on the face of it.
2) The media was largely on her side proclaiming how super competent she is.
That last is the big problem. Trump was genuine, Harris was not.
Trump runs as a vulgar old man and makes it work. He likes telling exaggerated big fish stories and we make allowances because he's been doing it for decades.
Harris was trying to run as a super competent advisor to the President. That's a fine role. However to make that work she needed to be able to answer basic questions that she either couldn't or wouldn't.
Harris was artificial. The answer to most questions was babble while she tried to remember what the answer was supposed to be. It showed that she wasn't saying what she really thought.
On “An Election Map that Asks “What if Only Educated People Voted?” and a Follow-up Question”
That Bezos is elite doesn't change that the educated class is too.
elite
/ĭ-lēt′, ā-lēt′/
noun
1) A group or class of persons considered to be superior to others because of their intelligence, social standing, or wealth.
2) A member of such a group.
3) The best or most skilled members of a group.
On “Open Mic for the week of 11/11/2024”
Harris wasn't answering questions in paragraphs. Harris was avoiding answering questions by word salad.
Team Red had fun playing quotes of the full question and full answer.
Note "avoiding answering questions" is the best spin possible.
The alternatives are she didn't know the answers; or couldn't remember what her handlers told her to say but knew her own answers would be unacceptable.
"
I haven't seen Trump's Rogan interview but my brother said although Trump wandered around a lot he did actually answer questions.
"
Three hours of word salad wasn't going to convince anyone that she's fit to be President.
Her lack of long interviews was clearly a chosen tactic. The only way that makes sense is the more we know the less she was likely to win.
"
RE: (hard to get to TX twice in a 107 day campaign).
There is this new invention known as the telephone. Or Teams. Or other streaming meeting services.
"
The issue isn't that you and I think she should have gone. The issue is that the people who were professionally managing her thought she wasn't up to it.
And not just, "Joe Rogan is a bad idea". It seemed to have been, "interviews are a bad idea and long serious(?) interviews are a massively bad idea". Even in a toss up election where she's losing ground.
If we assume the people professionally managing her understood their jobs and were correct, then the implication is she was that bad at interviews.
"
Uncommitted was thought to have 100k votes in Michigan. Trump won by 80k.
So a 50k flip would have made Michigan Blue.
"
Her longest interview was one hour with Howard Stern... but at least half that was talking about her rise to glory and the other half softball questions. In practice that might have been 15 minutes. So the same as her others.
I think it's very possible her people didn't want to let her out of the bunker for three hours and do the real deal. She'd go with a platitude, he'd ask a follow up question, she'd not have an answer. Joe was viewed (correctly) as "not one of their people" so that can't work.
Three hours of word salad would have been as bad as Biden's debate.
"
Welp, he’s getting called a Na.zi Collaborator.
Amusement. LOL.
And there you go. He's in the way of what Blue wants to do, ergo he's a Na.zi.
"
"Abolish" is a slogan. In practice Trump will do what he did last time, i.e. tell the administrative state that for every new rule they create they have to get rid of two.
"
Everyone I know thinks the same way I do ergo I'm correct.
From the Leftist media I watch, the thinking seems to be there is no difference between Trump and Harris/Biden for Gaza. They don't expect Trump to be better but since Biden isn't willing to stop a "genocide" it can't get any worse.
The problem is they've redefined "genocide" to mean "brutal war". There are more births than deaths in Gaza. We've been hearing how they're days away from mass starvation for the last 9 months and we're still days away.
Biden was Jimmy Cricket. Trump thinks Israel isn't being forceful enough.
"
Maybe. Trump is seriously erratic and loves to screw people while they're down if it's in his interest. Putin's interests aren't aligned with ours.
Having said that, Trump's leaked "peace proposal" is a disaster.
"
The Left has more groups and more ways for them to be at odds. For example the Jews and the Arabs are both Blue and they have opposite ideas on how to deal with the current war in Gaza.
Team Blue's job is to put together a group that is willing to vote together. Since the Arabs decided anything less than preventing Israel from defending itself was "genocide", the calculation should have been that Blue can't depend on that vote and they need to get others.
That implies doing good things for the "pocketbook" voters since that's the biggest group.
As for "nutpicking", the problem implies there should be fewer ideological purity tests and not more. This flies in the face of the "everyone who doesn't agree with me is an Evil Na.zi" thinking. IMHO Blue would benefit from being more tolerant of ideological diversity.
"
It is a lot easier to believe Trump can be played than it is to believe that Trump is being blackmailed.
Trump is immune to sexual blackmail because he wouldn't care and his real life has been so interesting. Finding out that he's had yet another affair with yet another East European model is already well within expectations.
Trump is also pretty much immune to money blackmail because he'd just claim that it was normal business dealings with Russia and/or loans (btw, he has taken Russian loans). It'd be easy for him to say "Fish You, sanctions say you don't get paid" so that's probably already happened.
Thankfully none of his attempts at creating hotels in Russia have been successful so his empire can't be held hostage.
"
Giving Russia a veto over our defense moves 20 years ago would have resulted in a real problem now. Russia feeling it has no choice but invade about 20 different countries has nothing to do with Nato (witness how they've treated their non-Nato neighbors).
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.