Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

We still have time to mess this up!

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

In my day, never was longer.

You cannot shame the shameless.

No Justins, No Peace

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Months of Tedium, Then Whammo

Reader Interactions

254Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    do we have confirmation that Kamala Harris is endorsing Biden tomorrow? I’m sure he would want that buzzing around twitter tonight

  2. 2.

    Jude

    Ever since Nevada, I kept telling my husband we’d need a miracle to get out of this mess about to happen on Tuesday. Looks like we got one.
    All I know is I want to beat Trump and agree with one of the 200,000 tweets I read today:
    I just want to vote for the candidate that Trump was willing to be impeached for vs the candidate the Russians are actively helping (Bernie, not Tulsi).

  3. 3.

    Rina99

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: 

    I’m not getting my hopes until I hear it from her. As a low-key Biden supporter these past months, I’m a little freaked out by how things have snowballed since Saturday. Now I’m paranoid and pessimistic, so I’m going to relax by watching Investigation Discovery and redirect that energy into fretting over the safety of family members.

  4. 4.

    MisterForkbeard

    It has been a crazy damn day for politics, no kidding. I feel a bit better about tomorrow – Biden and Warren both seem like they’ll go over the viability line in CA, which is most of what I wanted.

    Some outrage among my Bernie friends (who aren’t Bros) about former candidates weighing in now, lots of claiming that ‘the DNC’ is behind this. It’s really tiresome, especially since they don’t mind when candidates and political figures endorse Sanders.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  I looked and couldn’t find anything. What we do know is that Biden will be in Oakland tomorrow – it’s not certain if Kamala will be, though – she was in D.C. earlier today.

  5. 5.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Jude: We’re not there YET. I don’t think Biden is suddenly going to surge to 60%+ wins or anything – it’s too late for him to do that.

    But he will get more than we previously thought he would, and I think he’ll do pretty well. Likely come in above Bernie overall (eventually) but we’ll see

  10. 10.

    anarchoRex

    Wild to me that people are looking at the 2016 election and saying “yeah, let’s do that again but this time with a guy whose mental faculties are deteriorating before our eyes. It’s got to work this time!”

  11. 11.

    Mnemosyne

    I dropped my mail-in ballot in the drop box at the closest library tonight. As promised, I’m ridin’ with Biden since the voters of SC made their opinion very, very clear. G voted at one of the new voting centers that was near today’s workplace — he went with Warren since he’s been dying to vote for her for, like, 10 years.

    We’ll see how California goes, but I’m not sure it’s going to be the easy sweep that Sanders was thinking it would be.

  12. 12.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    I know, Bernie has really gone downhill since 2016. Sad, really. He probably should have listened to his doctors after his heart attack.

  13. 13.

    Belafon

    @anarchoRex: Which one: the person whose son worked in Ikraine, the one who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, the one running as a testament to just how much money he has, or the one the president insults by using a famous native American name?

  14. 14.

    Major Major Major Major

    The other thing that kills me is how ”candidates with no chance dropping out to endorse a likeminded candidate against a strong opponent” is being spun as “the DNC rigging the primary against Bernie” instead of like, very basic Intro to Political Campaigns stuff. Sanders’s supporters’ argument is that he alone can outsmart the corrupt establishment and administration and win. Their argument is also that he can’t even beat some gay dude from Indiana in fucking Iowa because of the corrupt establishment.

  15. 15.

    Belafon

    @Mnemosyne: I vote tomorrow, and I’m still torn. I want Warren, but I can’t ignore the fears and wisdom of those in South Carolina (especially the hard earned knowledge that us white people are idiots in large numbers).

  17. 17.

    Chetan Murthy

    Ugh.  You guys are makin’ me -think-.  I was and am a Warren stan.  But yeah, I think Bernie’s not a good choice either.  I’d rather have had a lot of other candidates than Ol’ Pervy Uncle Joe, but ….. now I’m starting to wonder if I oughta be voting for him tomorrow instead of Warren.  Ugh.  You guys … makin’ me *think*.

  18. 18.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Major Major Major Major: Right! I forgot about that.

    I’m kidding, but the hospital in Oregon that has so many COVID19 victims is really close to my sister’s house. Turns out that someone she works with (an intern) is at risk because he volunteered at a hospital that had some coronavirus patients before they knew what it was, so my sister is technically a 3rd degree contact risk (considered extremely unlikely).

    And while I was at work today, my county in the North Bay announced that we now have 2 people infected. They’re in quarantine at a hospital 10 minutes from my house.

    We’re considering what to do about it. For now, it’s just “be careful”

  19. 19.

    anarchoRex

     

    @Belafon:

    @Mnemosyne:

    So no concerns at all about Bidens mental state? The guy that just created a story out of whole cloth about getting arrested in South Africa just this week?

  20. 20.

    MisterForkbeard

    @anarchoRex: Yes. It sounds so insane that it’s almost certainly not what’s happening!

    Weird, that. Maybe you made some weird assumptions somewhere

  21. 21.

    Urza

    All of this, everyone seems to be forgetting Bloomberg is actually on the ballot Tuesday.  And there’s no way Bernie voters are voting for him, so he’s only helping Bernie win at this point which is the exact opposite of what he intends.  And it only costing how many hundreds of millions?

  23. 23.

    Kraux Pas

    @anarchoRex: yeah, let’s do that again but this time with a guy whose mental faculties are deteriorating before our eyes. It’s got to work this time!

    C’mon, be fair. There are way more ways that Hillary Clinton was superior to Joe Biden. If Biden gets elected after Clinton didn’t, I’m just going to be disgusted.

    Well, more disgusted. I’m already plenty disgusted with the primary without comparing the last go around with this one.

  25. 25.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Major Major Major Major: Yes. I’m flabbergasted by the response from my Bernie friends.

     

    I probably shouldn’t have been – they blame a LOT of weird stuff on ‘the DNC’, and also a lot of really normal stuff. Someone drops out, and it’s “vote theft” and endorsements amount to “rigging”. Super weird.

  27. 27.

    craigie

    Speaking as a California voter who already voted, if you want Warren, vote for her. That’s what my wife and I did (and so outnumbered our 20 year old who went for Bernie)

  28. 28.

    West of the Rockies

    @Chetan Murthy:

    My daughter and I voted for EW here in CA.  Kinda/sorta wish now I’d gone with Joe.  I wish it could be Elizabeth.  I really wanted Harris.  But Joe is what we have if we don’t want Senator Flappy Hands from Vermont.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    @Belafon:

    I did it because I made a pledge and it was important for me to stick with it. I think a Super Tuesday vote for Warren is still valuable because it will give her more negotiating room to get her priorities into the party platform.

  30. 30.

    anarchoRex

    @Kraux Pas: I actually totally agree that Hillary was a better candidate then than Joe is now. Which is why it makes even less sense to run a shittier version of her against Trump when he’s never been more popular and has a booking economy to point to.

  31. 31.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    he’s never been more popular and has a booking economy to point to.

    boy is somebody gonna be surprised when they watch the news for the first time in two weeks

  34. 34.

    MisterForkbeard

    @anarchoRex: Man, you are a weird dude. Almost like you’re a weird caricature of a person who’s just trolling annnnnnnnd I figured it out.

  35. 35.

    Chetan Murthy

    @anarchoRex:

    the stock market =\= the economy

    I’m so old I remember when Bernie-bots used to say that, but with the opposite meaning.

  37. 37.

    anarchoRex

    @Wag: maybe he will! I won’t. That’s the difference. You’re talking about a candidate blaming someone. I’m talking about a whole cohort of voters that did and will refuse to do any introspection about where they went wrong.

  38. 38.

    Belafon

    @Chetan Murthy: I wish Bloomberg had taken the opportunity to drop out as well. Had it gone down to a three person race, I’d tell everyone to have at it, vote for the person you want. That’s a good size, and really prevents one person from winning by a small plurality.

    Having made my argument that it might be worth backing just one candidate, is that the field is getting small enough that no one is going to get all the delegates for a state with 30%. But a lot of other ballots were already sent in, so who knows.

  39. 39.

    Cacti

    Bernie really has become the unifying figure he promised he would be.

    He’s united all of the real Democrats against him.

  41. 41.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Wag: if Bernie were somehow to stumble into the White House, he and his followers would still say, and believe, that he was the victim of a corporatist conspiracy

    but just look at the keen grasp they have on current events and the economy!

  42. 42.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Belafon: Neither is it lost on me, that if black Americans in SC can hold their noses and vote for Biden, with such an awful history when it comes to race …. then I should be able to do the same.

  43. 43.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Oh, are we talking about 2020 candidates now? Because there’s only one repeat candidate from 2016 whose run can be compared to how he’s doing now.

    Biden’s claim is not out of whole cloth. You did know that he went to South Africa during apartheid, right? He seems to be exaggerating a brief altercation with the authorities at the airport into an arrest, but it did happen:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51648166

  44. 44.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Kraux Pas: Neither of these guys are my choice (still a little sad about Warren and Harris, though holding out hope for Warren), but both of these guys have better head-to-head polling against Trump than anybody else, and Biden has a small edge over Bernie there.

    I think we’ll probably win even with these guys, if we don’t go nuts and self destruct the party.

  48. 48.

    MisterForkbeard

    I’m in a hotel tonight for work and I’m not kidding – there’s been a bloomberg ad on the TV during every one of the commercial breaks. And most of them are really boring.

  51. 51.

    WaterGirl

    @West of the Rockies: If no one gets enough delegates to win outright, more votes for Elizabeth puts here in a stronger position as the unity candidate.  Plus, who knows about the health of the two guys in front?

    What if enough people want Elizabeth first, but everybody makes the safe vote for Biden?  That would be sad.

    I don’t envy your choice. I get 2 more weeks to decide.  It may be over by then, or Elizabeth may surprise us.  How will you feel if Elizabeth does pretty well, and you didn’t vote with your heart?

  52. 52.

    Kraux Pas

    @MisterForkbeard: but both of these guys have better head-to-head polling against Trump than anybody else, and Biden has a small edge over Bernie there.

    Well, the rubber hasn’t hit the road yet. The over-crowded nature of the primary overwhelmed people and we haven’t gotten past it being basically a name recognition contest despite the fact that voting is already underway.

    Biden is a weaker candidate than Hillary in almost every way imaginable (except in penises) and Bernie brings a whole raft of unexamined issues.

  54. 54.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Mnemosyne: Don’t even try. Biden turning “I got in a showdown with authorities” to “I got arrested” is silly and really doesn’t matter, but trolls and haters have their scripts and they’re sticking to it.

    Compare and contrast with Trump an. Or decide that exaggerating an event decades ago is worse than lying about releasing your health records after a heart attack, and then admitting you can’t pass your own agenda after months of attacking anyone who says your plan is not realistic.

    The whole argument is stupid, just don’t engage.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    In the wise words of the Thin Black Duke recently:

    Remember folks, you don’t have to go to every argument you’re invited to, especially when the other guy has already made up his mind.

    I ?CatCake.

    Dear WaterGirl: Did You Know That...

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    I’m talking about a whole cohort of voters that did and will refuse to do any introspection about where they went wrong.

    I know, it’s really maddening how Sanders supporters decided to double down on their bad behavior from 2016 because abusing people was totally going to work this time. They really should have put some thought into building a coalition rather than just repeating their 2016 campaign. He’d probably be doing much better right now if he had bothered to mend some fences and apologize for the way he let his key surrogates like Turner and Gray publicly refuse to vote for the Democratic nominee.

  60. 60.

    patroclus

    I realize it’s just a repeat, but I just watched Amy give a gracious endorsement of Biden on MSNBC before a raucous Big D crowd and I’m beginning to feel better about her dropping out (even though in my view she was by far the best candidate).  I’m gradually moving with her towards voting for Biden when Illinois gets its chance.  Not super happy about it, but he’s the best of the rest and closer to me on the issues.

  61. 61.

    anarchoRex

    @Mnemosyne: oh damn, I didn’t realize Bernie lost to Trump in 2016, or was it just all his fault, I get the two confused sometimes?

  62. 62.

    Brachiator

    @anarchoRex:

    Wild to me that people are looking at the 2016 election and saying “yeah, let’s do that again but this time with a guy whose mental faculties are deteriorating before our eyes. It’s got to work this time!”

    I know. Which is why we all have to do our part to support Biden and to dump Bernie.

  64. 64.

    joel hanes

    @hells littlest angel:

    We’re all gonna die is the good news.

    We must love one another and die.

    There’s an Ursula LeGuin short story about an island on which a rare virus sometimes confers immortality.    Living a couple hundred years might seem attractive to the young, but consider what it would mean to be unable to die, no matter what a burden life had become.

    In the Satyricon, Petronius tells of seeing the Cumaean Sibyl, cursed with immortality by the gods, whose body has so shrunk with age that she was kept in a jar: “For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and … the boys asked taunting the Sibyl, ‘what do you want?’ she answered ‘I want to die‘.”

    Tolkien’s elves call mortality Iluvatar’s gift to men.

    In one sense, death the price we pay for individuality and sex.  Many living amoebae have, in this sense, lived for millions of years.

    In another sense, Death is one of Terry Pratchett’s best characters.

    But what do we say to death ?  “Not today.”

    Also, it’s Lord Peter Wimsey’s middle name, though pronouced Dee-ath in that case.

  65. 65.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Kraux Pas:

    Well, the rubber hasn’t hit the road yet. The over-crowded nature of the primary overwhelmed people and we haven’t gotten past it being basically a name recognition contest despite the fact that voting is already underway.

    I don’t think this is entirely true. Biden already has and IS currently going through a massive shitfest set of attacks. And they already blew their biggest wad on him.

    Also, it is REALLY SAD but having a wang means Biden has a lot less to deal with as a nominee. Here’s hoping he selects a woman as his VP if he gets the nom, hoping for Harris. But he may want to pick a more Dem Unity candidate instead.

  67. 67.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    Sadly, having a peni$ really seems to be a major factor this year. Warren should be blowing everyone else out of the water, but she lacks the most important thing that our media wants presidential candidates to have. ?‍♀️

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    @MisterForkbeard:

    I know. I should have just stuck to my original point and not even gone there. Fortunately, he handed me yet another fastball right down the middle of the plate. ⚾️

  69. 69.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MisterForkbeard:

    VP if he gets the nom, hoping for Harris. But he may want to pick a more Dem Unity candidate instead

    that occurred to me, too, but I can’t think of an obvious alternative

  71. 71.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Again, there’s only one candidate in this race that’s doubling down on his failed 2016 campaign strategy, and it ain’t Martin O’Malley.

  72. 72.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mnemosyne: but she lacks the most important thing that our media wants presidential candidates to have. ?‍♀️

    Loss of mental acuity? A bum ticker?

  73. 73.

    FlipYrWhig

    I’m in Virginia, primary tomorrow, and I’m still voting for Warren.  But if Biden bests Sanders by outdoing him among white working-class voters I will laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh.

  74. 74.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Brachiator: I like that this joke is literally so obvious that 3-4 people have made it. And everyone has their own slight twist on it.

    It’s sort of like watching your idiot friend say something incredibly dumb and then everyone else at the table is trying NOT to say the obvious thing. And only half can keep it under control.

    …I may have had a couple of really dumb and/or gullible friends in college.

  75. 75.

    Mnemosyne

    @anarchoRex:

    Actually, Williamson leads a harmful cult that discourages people from seeking medical care, which explains your soft spot for her.

  76. 76.

    Marcopolo

    Voting for Warren tomorrow. She’s been my candidate for about a year now and I want to cast a vote that will leave me smiling as I walk out of my polling place. And she has earned my vote. I do not expect her to be the nominee. Between Biden & Sanders it really is a coin flip for me. They both have their strengths & weaknesses & I believe either of them could beat or lose to Trump depending on what happens between now & Nov.

    I have received 4 mail pieces from Bloomberg in the past 2 days. Talk about lighting your money on fire.

    @anarchorex:

    Which is why it makes even less sense to run a shittier version of her against Trump when he’s never been more popular and has a booking economy to point to.

    Every indication is that COVID-19 is gonna drive a big fat stake through our (and the world’s) booking economy. When you game out the number of people who are going to wind up being quarantined (and how their absence from the workforce is going to put sand in the economy’s gears), the disruption to travel at all levels–including the transportation of goods, the cost that dealing with the virus is going to place on our health care resources–including the folks who will wind up owing thousands of dollars even if they only have a tangential experience with a hospital (just getting tested to see if they are infected for example), etc.., etc.., we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg right now. The Port of LA (the busiest port of entry in the country for consumer goods from Asia) just announced that traffic is down 25% over the past several weeks. There is a chance we might dodge this bullet but the performance of our national government to date doesn’t give me any optimism.

  77. 77.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Right? I’m not sure who he could nominate that the Sanders wing would like that wasn’t totally unacceptable. There probably ARE some good choices in there – he has some good and decent allies, but I can think of a good fit.

    People seem to really like Abrams, but I can’t see Biden choosing her due to her lack of experience. Who else would calm fears from the progressives? It can’t be Bernie or Warren.

  79. 79.

    Brachiator

    @anarchoRex:

    … Which is why it makes even less sense to run a shittier version of her against Trump when he’s never been more popular and has a booking economy to point to.

    Yeah, let’s vote for Bernie. He’s going to replace a booming economy with…well, nobody knows, but it will be just like they have somewhere in Europe. Or maybe Cuba.

  80. 80.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Chetan Murthy:

    Vote for Warren. It’s what you want, and if she picks up delegates it gives her something to bargain with later. And if she decides to endorse Biden, then that’s her decision.

  85. 85.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Who else would calm fears from the progressives?

    I won’t cede the term progressives to Rose Twitter, and it’s less about their fears than their resentments, and nothing will appease them. Their bitter self-righteousness is what makes them interesting to themselves.

  86. 86.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @joel hanes:

    Also, it’s Lord Peter Wimsey’s middle name, though pronouced Dee-ath in that case.

    In Murder Must Advertise, however, he explains to his new colleagues that while most people pronounce it to rhyme with “teeth,” he prefers rhyming it with “breath.” LOL.

  88. 88.

    Aussie Sheila

    Just finished a tour of the various cable shows on YouTube. Biden can barely follow a train of thought past two words. He looks and sounds less vigorous than tRump, although he is of course, an infinitely better person. Bernie looks to me as the strongest ‘movement’ candidate, but clearly it is not just ‘corporatist Dems’ that worry about his crossover appeal. Warren is by far imho the strongest and most vigorous candidate, but traditional Dem constituencies share the bipartisan fetish that women aren’t ‘strong enough’ to win against the weakest president going into a reelect. I have a feeling that Biden will eak out a win at the convention, and that he will go into the election as the great nostalgia candidate, ‘vote for the soul of America’ shite. What next? Look forward not back? Conservative democrats blocking any real improvements in the material conditions of the US working class?

    What happens if Biden wins, and everything stays the same, or worse, the global downturn really hits on 21st January 2021.

    Prepare for a worse and more strategic fascist than the one that won in 2016?

    God I wish the rest of the world could vote in US elections.

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    @anarchoRex:

    this is like the third joke of this kind, at least read the other comments before posting a stale joke

    You are only worth a stale joke. And there’s not much point in reading other comments mocking you.

    And to be somewhat fair, you should be trying to sell your candidate on his merits rather than waste time blasting candidates you don’t like. That shit is really stale.

  90. 90.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Mnemosyne: I’d like to think this, but BernieStan HATES Kamala with the fire of a thousand suns. I really dont know why.

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne

    @Morzer:

    Someone needs to go find me a GIF of Bill Murray giving Gilda Radner a noogie RIGHT FUCKING NOW!

    Especially since Murray announced tonight that he’s voting for Biden, so it’s even more on topic than usual.

  93. 93.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Aussie Sheila: I don’t know where this idea took root that of all people JOE BIDEN needs to be warned to take care of the working class. That’s his career-long shtick! Blue-collar guy made good who calls people “sonny boy.”

  94. 94.

    Brachiator

    @Aussie Sheila:

    What happens if Biden wins, and everything stays the same, or worse, the global downturn really hits on 21st January 2021.

    The world will stand a better chance if  Biden, or any other Democratic Party candidate wins than if Trump is reelected.

  95. 95.

    John Cole

    @Chetan Murthy: 

    Ugh. You guys are makin’ me -think-. I was and am a Warren stan. But yeah, I think Bernie’s not a good choice either. I’d rather have had a lot of other candidates than Ol’ Pervy Uncle Joe, but ….. now I’m starting to wonder if I oughta be voting for him tomorrow instead of Warren. Ugh. You guys … makin’ me *think*.

    If the candidate you liked the most is still in the race, vote for them. If Warren is still in the race in May when WV votes, even if Joe or Bernie has it locked up, I’m gonna vote for her. Why? Because I am voting for the person I want to be President.

  96. 96.

    patroclus

    And now a good speech by Beto endorsing Biden as well!  Good focus on background checks and curbing gun violence.  Also a $15 minimum wage, fighting climate change and adding a public option for Medicare.  And Biden got through his speech without any major gaffes!  I hope they enjoy Whataburger

    As a former Texan, I’m getting the feeling that Biden has a good chance to win the prima-caucus!

  97. 97.

    guachi

    @Chetan Murthy: Vote for whomever you want but if I still had my California ballot I’d switch to Biden from Warren.

    I don’t regret voting for Warren as I mailed my ballot soon after the Nevada primary, though I suppose I could have mailed it today and sent it express or priority.

  99. 99.

    Kraux Pas

    @FlipYrWhig: I don’t know where this idea took root that of all people JOE BIDEN needs to be warned to take care of the working class. That’s his career-long shtick! Blue-collar guy made good who calls people “sonny boy.”

    Slap enough backs and people might fail to notice you’re perpetuating the privelege of the financial sector over working people.

  100. 100.

    Eljai

    @WaterGirl: I think Elizabeth would be a great president.  I already early voted for her and I hope you get a chance to vote for her too.  Besides the above, though, I am deeply concerned about narrowing down the race to two 78-year old guys this soon.  I’d love to see Liz get to the convention with at least 10% of the delegates because she is the kind of person who would leverage a little power for the highest good.  I’ll happily vote for Biden if he’s the nominee.  I just want to make sure he’s up to the rigors of the job and I want Liz to stay on his case until he agrees to have all the Trump era criminals prosecuted, including Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao.

  101. 101.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Aussie Sheila: well, thanks for sharing

    Conservative democrats blocking any real improvements in the material conditions of the US working class?

    a Democratic Party more conservative than the one we might have if Biden runs a good campaign gave 20 million people health care through Medicaid expansion alone just for starters. I know Bernie convinced a lot of righteous adolescents of all ages that it was a failure, but he’s an asshole and his supporters are stupid. But thanks for sharing your condescending gloom and doom from ten thousand miles away. It’s helpful.

  103. 103.

    Martin

    So, the rumor is that yesterday Obama decided that Biden would be the candidate after the SC results put him near the delegate lead and has threatened a public endorsement which would pretty much kill the fundraising for the other candidates. He asked people to drop out on their terms and endorse Biden so that Bernie didn’t keep racking up largely uncontested (due to non-viability rules) wins. He asked those that already dropped out to endorse Biden. Reid got in on some of that too, apparently.

    I suspect Warren is okay to stay in because she has cash and will pick up some delegates tomorrow (Pete and Amy were either out of cash or out of viability in polls for tomorrow). Steyer was apparently asked to drop, and agreed. My guess is neither Bloomberg nor Bernie nor Gabbard was involved. Looks like Harris asked to wait until after CA voted to endorse. Not sure if Warren has the okay to stay in after tomorrow.

    This looked like a coordinated DNC move (no way all of this hit today without it being coordinated) but its actually a coordinated Obama move. I don’t think anything like this happened in 2016, but man, the stakes are much higher now.

  104. 104.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    Democrats have been told for the past four years that Hillary lost by the biggest margin EVAH because she lacks a ?. If we had all just fallen into the strong, manly, socialist arms of St  Bernie, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Etc.

    So, yeah, Democrats are a little freaked out that misogynist assholes will refuse to vote for a woman candidate because so many of them are proudly vocal about refusing to do it last time. And, sadly, not all misogynist assholes are men, either.

  105. 105.

    James E Powell

    @Kraux Pas:

    Biden is a weaker candidate than Hillary in almost every way imaginable (except in penises)

    I’d take Hillary Clinton as president over Joe Biden ten times out of ten, but one plus he has as a candidate is that he does not have the weight of a 20+ year smear campaign, led by the NYT, holding him down.

    Biden’s been in office since the Dead Sea was still alive and the complaints about him are from the left, the crime bill, the bankruptcy bill, etc. I don’t think “He got his son a cushy job!” is going to reach EMAILS! status because the press/media do not hate Biden like they do Hillary Clinton.

    Of course, I could be tragically wrong about this.

  107. 107.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Democrats only engage in the most well-intentioned misogyny.

    says the asshole who supported the asshole who spent six months dragging the most viable female candidate in history because of WALL STREET SPEECHES!

    Good god.

  109. 109.

    PJ

    @Belafon:

     

    @Chetan Murthy:

     

    @West of the Rockies:

     

    @WaterGirl: Warren is only “unviable” because people think themselves out of voting for the person they actually think would be the best President.  If you want her to be President, vote for her tomorrow.

    The most likely outcome is that on Wednesday Warren will be third in the delegate counts.  (This assumes that Bloomberg does poorly, which may be a big if but his poll numbers have dropping steadily.  I don’t think Buttigieg and Klobuchar voters are going to go for Mike, either.)  Neither Biden nor Sanders will have a crushing lead.  There will be two more debates and two-thirds of the delegates to be distributed in the remaining primaries.  There is no mathematical reason why Warren can’t actually win enough delegates to have a plurality or close to it going into the convention, and even if she doesn’t actually get the nomination, she can have a big voice in deciding who it is.  And I would bet that she will choose an actual Democrat, and not someone who has condescended to her as a candidate and who had his surrogates denigrate her and her supporters.

  110. 110.

    James E Powell

    @Mnemosyne:

    And, sadly, not all misogynist assholes are men, either.

    Too true. White women, no college is the key demo we need to flip.

    Do you think Joe Biden can do it?

  111. 111.

    Mnemosyne

    @Martin:

    Sorry, it sounds like you didn’t get the memo: talking to people and persuading them to act in the best interest of the country is now DNC Corruption, because only assholes actually compromise and talk to other people rather than going down with a sinking ship.

  112. 112.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mnemosyne: If we had all just fallen into the strong, manly, socialist arms of St  Bernie, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

    I think a lot of Ds could’ve outperformed Hillary in 2016, given the chance. Bernie probably isn’t one of them.

    That wasn’t all misogyny though. Some of it was definitely specific to Hillary.

  113. 113.

    Morzer

    @Aussie Sheila: Mmm.. so, you feel that, for example, a country that fell for Scott Morrison’s fear-mongering corruption would have something to offer in terms of enlightened voters?

  115. 115.

    Mnemosyne

    @PJ:

    As I said above, I think Warren is going to be stronger in California than people realize. There’s been a lot of hype about Bernie winning the whole state, but Bernie seems a little nervous about that.

    I chose Biden for my reasons, but there are still plenty of valid reasons to choose Warren.

  118. 118.

    Mnemosyne

    @James E Powell:

    I do think that Joe Biden can do that, because he overcomes the racial and gender barrier for them by being a white man, and therefore more trustworthy. It sucks for that to be true, but it is.

  119. 119.

    Kraux Pas

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I didn’t give a fuck about her speeches. I cared about her votes and actions in office. And I voted for her. She was the only candidate I donated to last cycle.

    My real problem was with assholes like you. Liars. Like what you did just there. You’re every bit as much a troll as the worst Berniebro out there.

  121. 121.

    James E Powell

    @Martin:

    So, the rumor is that yesterday Obama decided that Biden would be the candidate after the SC results put him near the delegate lead and has threatened a public endorsement which would pretty much kill the fundraising for the other candidates.

    Is there a source for this? It would be much more Obama-like if he waited until after Super Tuesday at the very least.

  123. 123.

    Martin

    @Chetan Murthy: So, I’ve been among the louder voices regarding the game theory at work here, and I voted for Warren.

    So, what a lot of people don’t realize is that many states require delegates won by a candidate that drops out to be uncommitted in the first round at the convention *unless* they endorse another candidate and then they are pledged to the endorsed candidate. That’s one reason why endorsements matter – it’s part of the party rules across the country that it is the mechanism by which delegates can shift.

    So, effectively, Biden now has his won 54 delegates, plus the 26 from Pete and the 7 from Amy in his column (unless he drops out and they get re-endorsed). So, Biden is now the presumptive leader because he effectively has 87 delegates to Bernies 60.

    So, any delegates that Warren wins would go to whoever she endorses should she drop out – and she’ll endorse Biden. So, a vote for Warren could keep her in the race, and maybe she gets momentum, but if not and she drops, it’ll turn into a Biden delegate.

    The place where this won’t work out is if Warren is below the 15% viability in your state, in which case you aren’t generating any delegates for Biden, but possibly could if you voted for him. But that’s unlikely.

    So, vote for Warren. I voted for her to try and get her over 15% in my state (she’s polling over 15% in CA, so I’m trying to help keep her over the line). Worse case, it turns into a Biden vote, and I’m fine with that.

  124. 124.

    Morzer

    @James E Powell: Obama’s let it be known that he doesn’t plan to endorse and sees his role as a peacemaker and unifier.  I doubt he’s changed his mind about that.

  125. 125.

    MisterForkbeard

    @PJ: In the prior thread he was saying Brian Williams was reporting on rumours about it. I think.

  126. 126.

    James E Powell

    @Morzer:

    That would be what I expect from him, based on his history. But did he say that out loud somewhere?

  128. 128.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    That wasn’t all misogyny though. Some of it was definitely specific to Hillary.

    As someone who is old enough to have voted for Bill Clinton in both 1992 and 1996, I’m going to let you in on a little secret: it was always misogyny. From Day One of his campaign. She was a smart, driven, ambitious woman who saw herself as his equal — and who he treated as his equal — and that drove a certain contingent of Americans absolutely batshit insane. From DAY ONE.

    It’s like saying that the Civil War was really about states’ rights or tariffs. No. It was all built on a foundation of protecting slavery. Same here. It was ALWAYS misogyny.

  129. 129.

    Redshift

    @Martin:

    So, the rumor is… 

    Uh-huh. That went from rumor without even a hint of a source to a presumed fact at warp speed. I don’t find Big Obama Conspiracy especially compelling. Drop out on their own terms or what? Candidates drop out when they’re running out of money and they don’t see a likely chance to turn that around. The candidates who are still in are the ones who have had success raising money lately. The ones who dropped out endorsed the remaining candidate who is ideologically similar. Doesn’t seem like that requires a lot of additional explanation.

  130. 130.

    PJ

    @Morzer:

     

    @MisterForkbeard: It’s not unbelievable that Obama would call them all up and ask them to drop out and endorse Joe, but it does seem out of character, and without any sourcing, I’d be highly skeptical.

  131. 131.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @joel hanes: Yes, and it’s based in large measure on her own early career as an advertising copywriter. Apparently the general atmosphere at the fictional Pym’s is remarkably similar to that at the real S. H. Benson’s. Even the minor characters are hilarious and well-drawn in just a few words.

  132. 132.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Morzer: Also I have long suspected that part of why Obama picked Biden for VP in 2008 was that he was trying hard not to anoint a successor, which picking, say, Hillary Clinton would have been understood to be. If my read on that is right, IMHO he’s leery about preempting that discussion, and he wouldn’t be pulling strings for anyone now, not even Biden.

  133. 133.

    Morzer

    @James E Powell: Obama hasn’t spelled these things out AFAIK, but that’s the story that’s been coming out of Obamaworld for the last 6 months or so.  Apparently Biden and his campaign have pleaded for an endorsement repeatedly and been told that Obama doesn’t plan to give anyone his seal of approval.

  134. 134.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    The same guy who totally whiffed on Russians helping to steal the election from Hillary is now failing to endorse his own VP?

    WTF

  136. 136.

    Martin

    @James E Powell: It was mentioned briefly on Brian Williams, and then I asked a person I know who might have knowledge of it and they passed along what they had heard.

    The reason given for not waiting until after tomorrow is that given the current polling, the field is dividing up the potential non-Bernie/non-Bloomberg delegates enough that Bernie was going to have a very good day, enough so that he’d likely at least be the leader going into the convention. That creates a lot of problems all around because the superdelegates don’t want him to be the nominee. But them not giving the nom to the leader, which is okay per the rules, but is a very bad look and would probably hurt turnout.

    Dems MUST win in Nov. We can’t be fucking around with this bullshit we’ve been fucking around with – people are going to die in large numbers this year because our President couldn’t manage a 3rd grade lice outbreak let alone a pandemic. Obama made a call. Everyone (or enough of them) are getting in line. It’ll be Biden, and if he leading into the convention, the superdelegates feel good about pushing him over the top.

    And better to fix this shit now, rather than 4 months from now.

  137. 137.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Mnemosyne: I think you and I are about the same age. Agreed. The amazing tragic-ironic thing is that Hillary Clinton went from being a hate object for being too liberal to being a hate object for being not liberal enough.

  138. 138.

    Morzer

    @FlipYrWhig: I suspect that Obama super-secretly thinks that Biden is too old and perhaps not er… well… umm… of premium presidential quality.  I think you are also right about his unease at the prospect of his VP choice being seen as his chosen successor.  I have sometimes wondered whether he chose Biden as a way of giving Clinton another relatively clear run at the presidency.

  140. 140.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Read “The Hunting of the President”, Republicans were more afraid of Hillary becoming President than Bill back in the early 80’s.  Their negative campaign against Hillary goes back 40 years.

  141. 141.

    Mnemosyne

    @PJ:

    My point was more meant to be that even if he did, it’s not a fucking “conspiracy.” It’s a conversation. He’s not a king, so he can’t “make” them do anything.

    Since Obama is a very smart guy, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s basically made himself available to all of the candidates for advice and chit-chat this whole time. Not because he’s pulling the strings behind the scenes, but because he knows what he’s talking about and would have good advice. But a certain contingent on the left seems to think that talking to people and listening to their sage advice is somehow a “conspiracy.” ?

    And now I’m getting myself all worked up over something that’s probably imaginary anyway. That way lies madness, or at least Sanders support.

  142. 142.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mnemosyne: Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I did vote against Hillary in the primary and 90 percent of the reason for that was her vote the Iraq War.

    I got past it enough to vote for her in the fall. I didn’t extend the same courtesy to Kerry. And I have a way deeper pool of reservations about Biden than either of them.

  144. 144.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Morzer: I thought his remarks of a month or so ago, that (roughly) old white men should get out of the way, and women should run the world, was about as close to an endorsement of Warren as he could get without actually going all in

  145. 145.

    Mary G

    I got a blizzard of texts from Bernie and Warren fans today. The Bernie people weren’t assholes when I told them I already voted for Warren. One of the EW people wanted to go back and forth on how wonderful she is to the point of being annoying.

  147. 147.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Morzer: That was a valid argument until Biden was the youngest dude running for the Democratic nomination. Now unless you think Obama thinks 70 year old Liz Warren is going to make a miracle comeback or Tulsi Gabbard has some interesting ideas about Syria, he’s derelict.

  148. 148.

    Eljai

    @PJ: @Mnemosyne:  I appreciate both of your comments.  I’ve been really angry at how the mostly male punditry on cable erased Elizabeth Warren out of the race.  But I got two co-workers to join me in voting for Warren and 1 who went with Biden.  I also believe that Bernie will under-perform the polls in CA.

  149. 149.

    Morzer

    @Mnemosyne: Obama has apparently had conversations with any of the candidates who wanted to hear his views.  Not sure if that includes Tulski and Marianne O’The Healing Crystals.

  152. 152.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mary G: somebody sold my cell number to Bloomberg. I tell his people he needs to get out of the way

  153. 153.

    Brachiator

    @James E Powell:

    White women, no college is the key demo we need to flip. Do you think Joe Biden can do it?

    According to the CNN South Carolina exit polls, Biden got 58 percent of the vote of people who had never attended college.

    He got 26 percent of the vote of white women/no college degree vs 25 percent for Sanders. All the other Democrats did worse.

    Biden got 23 percent of white men/no college degree, while Sanders did much better, with 37 percent.

    Democrats have their work cut out for them here.

  154. 154.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: 
    Hi there ?

    Where did I say the aca wasn’t an advance on the existing situation? That’s right, I didn’t . I just watched Biden on Last Word try and respond to a softball Q re 20 million plus uninsured usians.

    He could barely sputter out a reasonable, comprehensible response. He is f ing hopeless. Normally I enjoy watching US presidential debates, but I have a feeling that this time Biden v tRump will be eye covering fear akin to watching a kid trying to walk across a high bar with no safety net. In any decent polity he would be a laughing stock. However you go to war with the candidate you have I guess.
    As to political condescension, I’ll sit down when usians stop telling the world they are the greatest, oldest democracy in the world.

    You can’t even guarantee every one the right to cast a ballot and have it honestly counted. Not every country has compulsory voting like Australia, but the electoral chicanery and outright vote theft you ( not you personally, but the polity as a whole) put up with is, shall we say, less that optimal. The right wing rot starts from the head, and the head of the reactionary debacle that is the the first quarter of the 21st century started with US voter suppression, and the clear inability and unwillingness of US elites to stop it.

  155. 155.

    Morzer

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: It might have been. Or it could have been an acknowledgment that women were crucial to the Blue Wave and should be the future leaders of the party.  On balance, I think the second is more likely, since Obama and Warren did not always have a particularly congenial relationship and his team were apparently rather eager to encourage her to run for the Senate seat in MA as a way of getting her out of their hair.

  156. 156.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @joel hanes:

    “Miss Meteyard—of Somerville. One of the brighter ornaments of our department. She makes the vulgarest limericks ever recited within these chaste walls.”

    “Then we shall be friends,” said Mr. Bredon cordially.

  157. 157.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: And he could have endorsed Warren. And that could have actually made her viable in the first four contests. But now she’s done. I’ll be voting for Biden in tomorrow’s primary and mourning that I didn’t get to vote for Warren.

  158. 158.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Mnemosyne:

    It was ALWAYS misogyny.

    Ain’t that the truth!  Remember when she was dragged for having gone out and become of the top 50 (was it?) lawyers in the damn country, and all the press could think about was “you weren’t a good mother and wife, taking care of the home fires” (she was earning the bread that allowed the Clintons to have a decent lifestyle instead while Bill was winning-and-losing elections, sigh).  She responded with something like “well, I could have been at home baking cookies, but instead I went out and put food on our table.”  And got pilloried for it.  Which resulted in the annual “White House Cookie Recipe” or contest, or whatever it was.

    Good times.  Good times.  Yeah, it was misogyny from the get-go.

  161. 161.

    PJ

    @Mnemosyne: As someone sagely put it elsewhere on this blog, I believe, anything that doesn’t go Bernie’s way indicates the establishment powers have conspired against him and is also a sign of how much the people are with him.

    So Buttigieg and Klobuchar’s dropping out and endorsing Biden can’t be because they were running out of money with no way forward and he is the candidate most ideologically similar to their own positions, or because they personally can’t stand Bernie and his supporters.  I mean, Bernie just happened to have a rally in Minneapolis today, the day before the Minnesota primary, and Amy went out of her way to disrespect him and join Joe at a rally in Texas.  There must be a DNC conspiracy, or the veiled hand of the corporate neoliberal Obama behind it.

  163. 163.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Just Some Fuckhead: another way of looking at it: Warren could have used Obama as a political model, instead of Bernie Sanders and the curious campaign theory that unpopular ideas will become popular if you call them Big! and Bold!

  164. 164.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    I could go into my rant about how you were manipulated into that hatred of Hillary’s and Kerry’s Iraq war votes by right-wing propaganda, but it’s late and I’m tired, so I’ll shorten it to: people deliberately distracted you from blaming the Republicans by giving you another object for your hate, and it worked. Republicans have been winning elections ever since, just as they planned.

    Did you genuinely think that Hillary and Kerry were MORE responsible for the Iraq war than Bush, so it was more important to punish them than it was to stop Bush? How did it ever make sense to decide that Bush should be allowed to continue the Iraq war for 4 more years when Kerry could have pulled the plug on it after less than a year?

  165. 165.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @PJ: Marianne “Ratfucker” Williamson is saying that Klobuchar and Buttigieg have been bought off with future cabinet position promises. If you don’t have any other reason to get the Democratic primary under the control of actual Democrats, this is it.

  168. 168.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Warren thought she could thread the needle and be the consensus candidate. To that end, she misjudged the inherent misogyny of the Bernie cult and the fundamental fear of change by the rest of the party.

    But that doesn’t change the point. If Obama thought Warren was the best candidate, he should have endorsed her. He’s really proving to be an awful titular leader of the party.

  171. 171.

    PJ

    @Just Some Fuckhead: I just don’t get this.  Unless Warren is polling well below 15% in your state (because if she’s above 10%, she’s bound to pick up some of Pete and Amy’s voters), a vote for her will get her delegates and keep her in the race.  She raised $29MM last month alone, more than she’s ever raised in a quarter before.  She would be “electable” if people who believed in her actually, you know, voted for her.

    And if she’s polling way below 15% in your state, ignore that and vote for Biden, but there’s nothing ironic in how this defeatism gets me down.

  172. 172.

    Mnemosyne

    @Aussie Sheila:

    He could barely sputter out a reasonable, comprehensible response.

    You know that he’s a stutterer, right? Not sure if you Aussies call it “stammering” like they do in the UK.

    Biden has a speech impediment. He’s talked about it for years. Now, all of a sudden, people are acting like it’s some kind of moral failing or a sign of cognitive decline when it’s something he’s always had. The main difference is that he usually doesn’t have to speak extemporaneously as often as he’s doing now, which is far more likely to trip him up vocally than reading from a prepared speech that he can write to avoid the word pairs that give him trouble.

  174. 174.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    He’s really proving to be an awful titular leader of the party.

    He hasn’t been that for over three years. But I sense that any attempt to converse with you will just be an endless circle around the fixed point of “EVERYTHING IS OBAMA’S FAULT!”

  175. 175.

    Martin

    @Redshift: An Obama endorsement pretty much ends the game here among the non-Bernie candidates. And any candidate in the race when that happens is a candidate that Obama didn’t endorse.

    Sp their donations dry up. Their ability to get superdelgates dries up. Their potential endorsement dry up. An Obama endorsement does for the national race what the Clyburn endorsement did for SC. What’s more, Obama knows these donors, and a lot of these donors have said they’re waiting for the nominee to emerge. They aren’t interested in funding one dem against another. They want every penny to beat Trump. So in effect, they’re waiting for Obama as well.

    Obama doesn’t want to be the kingmaker though. He doesn’t want to endorse until things have shaken out, but the rules are especially favorable to Bernie, and none of the non-Bernie candidates have broken out. Apparently he’s worried, or at least some pollsters he trusts are worried (probably the person who put this bit of magic together) enough about tomorrow and thereafter that he felt he needed to put the word out.

    We’ll know in due course or not. I don’t find candidates dropping out to be terribly conspiratorial, but also immediately endorsing Biden, plus Beto and Reid coming out of the weeds to endorse on the same day, plus a leak that Harris will tomorrow night? Sorry, but there aren’t that many coincidences in the world. This was orchestrated. Like I said, I thought it was the DNC but it sounds like it’s Obama’s folks instead.

    And apparently Bloomberg also got the word, per some of his staff.

  176. 176.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @PJ: I can’t vote for Bernie if he’s the nominee. I have too many issues with his lying about and hiding Russian support in the 2016 primary and this one. I don’t have a problem with his politics but I don’t know if he’s working for America after he voted against the Magnitsky Act and voted against Russian sanctions twice and thinks Russia should be in NATO which doesn’t even need to exist at that point (same position as Trump, FYI, who doesn’t think NATO should exist.)

    My vote at this point is to stop Putin’s other candidate. It pisses me off but that’s where we are.

  178. 178.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mnemosyne: Their Iraq vote was cowardly. They didn’t show leadership. They just went along because that’s what you were supposed to do and God forbid Bush might paint them unpatriotic (note: he did anyway).

    The Democrats could’ve chosen candidates who showed better judgment. But they didn’t. These candidates were safe. They didn’t rock the boat. And, oh yeah, they lost.

  181. 181.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: He was. That’s why they rolled him out to endorse other candidates and campaign for them. Stop reflexively defending Obama. He’s failing. There is literally no downside to Obama shaping the primary.

  182. 182.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    “The Democrats” were people like me. I voted for Kerry in the primary, because I thought he would be a good president and he had the military credibility to end the war. But people like you decided that it was more important to punish him for his dumb vote than it was to end the war, and now here we all are, trapped in the endless war that you chose over John Kerry.

    But my actual point is that you did not, in fact, freely make that choice. You were manipulated and propagandized into it, and you never even realized what was really going on and who really wanted you to hate John Kerry enough to stay home on Election Day so Bush could win for the first time.

  183. 183.

    eddie blake

    @Kraux Pas:

    nah. they were fed fake information. go google cheney’s office of special plans. it’s just that they stovepiped the information they WANTED the house and the senate to see, while obfuscating the rest.

    on the OUTSIDE, it looked very differently, as i remember well, but i imagine if you were on the INSIDE, getting super-secret BRIEFINGS that happened to be DISHONEST,  you MIGHT make the wrong call.

    also, iirc, the legislation required W to go back to the UN and certify that they’d found WMD, a step the administration COMPLETELY blew off.

    kerry handling the “i voted for it before i voted AGAINST it” malarkey aside. i NEVER understood why he couldn’t simply say, “i voted for the mission until the administration refused to PAY for it, and put it on the CARD.”

    but yeah. there was a LOT more shit going on behind the scenes.

  187. 187.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Mnemosyne:

    I know he is a stutterer. That wasn’t the problem with his answer. He just didn’t seem to ‘get’ the issue that O’Donnel was very gently trying to steer him towards. He’s hopeless. He was being invited to tell the audience how his ‘health care plan’ would cover that population gap. He appeared not to know there was even a problem!

  189. 189.

    Mnemosyne

    @eddie blake:

    G and I went to see a movie on my grad school college campus and I had a weird flashback to listening to Colin Powell’s UN testimony on NPR while in that same parking garage and yelling at the radio because it was so obviously bogus.

    But you’re right, it was sort of like a trial: the jurors only get a certain amount of information, and in this case the “prosecutors” were dishonest and gave the senators fake classified information that manipulated their votes. They didn’t find out that Bush’s team had lied to them until after the vote.

  190. 190.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @eddie blake: Right, there’s no reason for the single-most popular Democrat since FDR to get involved in the primary. What are you all smoking?

  191. 191.

    Martin

    @PJ: So Buttigieg and Klobuchar’s dropping out and endorsing Biden can’t be because they were running out of money with no way forward and he is the candidate most ideologically similar to their own positions, or because they personally can’t stand Bernie and his supporters.

    You’re saying this as an either/or, when it’s probably both. If Pete and Amy are running out of money and their polling isn’t great, that means they need help. If people need to drop for this race to pull together – something I’ve been saying sheerly on the basis of the math under the current rules – so it’s not exactly a secret, then who drops? Well, the folks who are polling poorly and running out of money and need help.

    So, you wait until the race turns the right corner – Biden wins big on Sat, ⅓ of delegates get chosen on Tues, word goes out to those who realistically can’t go on that you won’t throw them a lifeline but if they drop and back Biden on Mon their names will be in consideration for administration positions/VP slot in thanks. Maybe that’s enough to bolster Biden. Warren stays in because she’s polling better than the others and she’s still raising money, but surely she of all people knows that it’s nearly impossible to win from here. I’m guessing she drops on Wed, but we’ll see. Maybe she does surprisingly well.

    None of this is a stretch. It’s a political party. The interest of the party can’t take a back seat to the interest of the candidates, and so deals are struck. And Obama is the kind of revered figure that he can do this subtly. All that’s really happening is manipulating the timing. Amy and Pete were done. Steyer was done. Warren is barely holding on. Bloomberg lost almost all of his potential on two debate stages.

    It’s not that Obama is some puppet-master. The conditions came together due to Bloombergs bad debating, Biden winning big, and a few candidates running out of road. Obama only needs to recognize that if we do this now, which doesn’t really put anyone out since all of the candidates can read their own polling, then we may get a lot out of it. Biden was almost nowhere on Friday, and now he’s the presumptive nominee again. That’s not a fluke. And what’s more, we might even avoid a brokered convention now, which was looking just about impossible 3 days ago.

  193. 193.

    eddie blake

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    wow. you ARE a fuckhead.

    YOU’RE the one who said clinton was called to campaign.

    ..and yet he CLEARLY wasn’t. by his VICE PRESIDENT.

    and yeah. i think pelosi is the leader of the democratic party, because she’s the one who is ACTUALLY, you know, LEADING it on a daily basis.

    but yeah. WE’RE smoking shit.

  194. 194.

    Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Clinton was impeached. He wasn’t in a position to be the leader of the party.

    Obama’s position as leader improved considerably after Trump got elected. Dems should have won in 2016, and nobody wants to blame Clinton for that, but the fact remains that Dems should have won. If Obama was running that campaign, I don’t think they would have risked losing PA and MI. Nobody is going to second guess Obama until someone proves they’re better at this than he was. That’s not going to be Biden, btw, if he wins.

  195. 195.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @eddie blake: What are you saying? Are you telling me about something you read in a history book? Gore eschewed Clinton because Clinton got impeached. Believe it or not, that was a big fucking deal when it happened for the first time in 130 years.

  196. 196.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    And how many people did you discourage from voting by complaining about how horrible and weak Kerry was?

    And that’s even before we get into the shenanigans in Ohio. That was the first real test of Rove’s plan to gerrymander the whole fucking country through voter suppression and outright cheating. The beneficiary in 2016 was supposed to be Jeb, but … oopsie! The Russians had other ideas about how to use Rove’s framework.

  198. 198.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Mnemosyne: I thought Kerry was a terrible candidate. But I probably voted for – and worked for – a more terrible candidate, Wes Clark. I wasn’t one of the Deaniacs.

    I’ve never forgiven Marcos for making me think Kerry was going to win. Even so, Kerry only lost because of shenanigans in Ohio.

  199. 199.

    eddie blake

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    wow. fuckhead AND condescending. i LIVED through it, fuckhead. i remember it VIVIDLY. and you’re maybe forgetting tricky dick, fuckhead.

    you’re the one who said ‘they’ trotted clinton out as the leader of the party. you were wrong. now you’re contorting yourself. you can keep digging, i imagine you WILL, i mean, you’re a fuckhead, after all.

  200. 200.

    Ivan X

    @Mnemosyne: Can’t argue with the media’s obvious desire for men (hellooooo? Kamala Harris here, can someone cover my campaign?), but why should Warren be blowing everyone else out of the water? She’s my choice too, but everyone else is not the BJ readership. She’s certainly the smartest and best prepared and most thoughtful, and it’s not even close, but we know sure as shit, going at least as far back as 2004 if not before, that that’s not what most people vote on. Qualifications are hardly relevant. People just vote on feelings they might or might not be able to even articulate, and I’d argue that even includes “high-information” voters like us. Further, her proposals scare someone like my dad, a Clinton Democrat who doesn’t want to be separated from his money. I think M4A in particular is a bridge too far for many and a stumble from which she never fully recovered despite her attempts to walk it back a bit.

    I also think charisma is 90% of what matters in a Presidential election, and while nothing’s more charismatic than smarts to me personally, it’s clear that I don’t represent the majority (cough W cough). Warren does some neat things on the campaign trail — she does have the personal touch one on one, like her selfie lines. But “big structural change” is a clunker of a rallying cry.

    I want to see Warren win, but I’m resigned to the fact that it’s almost certainly not gonna be her, and I can’t blame it all on the media. She is a decent retail candidate, but not extraordinary, and hewing close to Bernie policy-wise unfortunately put her in a competition with a messianic guy who already had a rabid fan base and knows the value of repeating something simple again and again, an art Republicans have mastered and most Democrats, including Warren, have not.

    I wouldn’t call it unjust or even unsurprising that Warren’s not prevailing. Just a huge bummer.

  202. 202.

    Yutsano

    @Just Some Fuckhead: Eh. He was doing his “rise above it all” schtick. I guess there’s a logic behind it but I could also see him staying out early when the race was crowded. YMMV.

  204. 204.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @eddie blake: Can you just fuck off? Clinton was the exception to the rule because he got himself impeached. Obama is the revered leader of the party. No blowjobs. No meaning of the word “is”.

  207. 207.

    Yutsano

    @Just Some Fuckhead: Al Gore lost because of the fucking Supreme Court. Not because he didn’t hug Unca Bill tight enough. Hell I was barely a college pip back then but I still remember this.

  208. 208.

    Kraux Pas

    @Mnemosyne: Kerry was horrible and weak. And I wasn’t propagandized. He’s the reason I felt that way.

    He was my Senator and I faxed my argument against the invasion to him and Kennedy. All I can remember is how absolutely livid I was when I got a letter back from Kerry’s office with his mealy mouth explanation that didn’t speak to any of my concerns.

    That Iraq vote is the original sin as far as I’m concerned. It was a monumentally poor decision that any rando armed with a newspaper (that they read past the first page) should have known was a bad idea. We’re still paying for it. Iraq is still paying for it. Officeholders who voted for it should have to pay for it too.

  209. 209.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Martin: as far as leader of the party goes, my impression is that ex-presidents step back, especially in presidential primaries. The Clinton example does skew the sample, and Bush was enormously unpopular, especially during Obama’s first term. And Reagan was slipping away while still in office… I vaguely recall when he spoke in at the 96 convention it was his first major public appearance in quite a while. No really good examples from recent years.

    If Obama was running that campaign, I don’t think they would have risked losing PA and MI.

    If he was running the campaign, or if he was the candidate? and FTR, I will criticize a lot of the choices HRC made. There were things beyond her control, but some that weren’t.

    I think Obama should have served as an example instead of being looked to as a king-maker. Since this is a dying thread I’ll risk saying: Warren and Harris (and Booker and Gillibrand) both learned the wrong lessons from 2016, and apparently none from 2018. The Dems who flipped seats and created the majority were a lot more like Obama than Bernie. Twitter is noisy, but small. AOC is charismatic and telegenic, but Lauren Underwood and Connor Lamb won the kind of voters who mean electoral votes. I see people talking about Stacey Abrams as a runningmate for Bernie, I don’t think they followed her gubernatorial campaign very closely. She talked a lot about reaching out and working across the aisle.

  210. 210.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Yutsano: But it woudn’t have come down to SCOTUS if he had Clinton out there in the other half of the country.

  211. 211.

    Martin

    @eddie blake: Pelosi is the leader regarding policy. Obama is the one deciding elections. I don’t think he wants to be, but this shit isn’t getting done without a playmaker.

    Part of my management style is to give the team the task and let them take a go at it without my directing them. A lot of the time that works, and they get there by a process that I probably wouldn’t have chosen, often times its better than I would have chosen. But I’m always keeping an eye on them, and if it looks like they’re stuck, then I have to jump in and sort out what has them stuck.

    Democrats can’t afford a brokered convention this election, and that’s exactly what they were headed toward. Obama just unstuck them probably by making a few relatively minor deals and threatening to play a larger role if it didn’t get sorted. That’s exactly what leadership is supposed to do in my book.

  212. 212.

    Morzer

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Polling generally suggests that The Squad are not… beloved… in the nation as a whole.  AOC appeals to a subset of Democrats, but I really doubt she could win outside a pretty solidly blue area.

  214. 214.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Martin and I agree on absolutely NOTHING. So you fuckers need to take this to the bank.

  217. 217.

    Citizen Alan

    @FlipYrWhig: Agreed. Part of the reason I approved of Obama’s selection of Biden as his running mate (despite my personal issues with the man) is that I thought Biden would never run to be Obama’s successor, and in 2016 we’d have a healthy primary that ensured the nominee was the strongest candidate. Obviously, that didn’t work out as planned.

  218. 218.

    Yutsano

    @Just Some Fuckhead: It’s not you. It’s filing season and I’m too fucking tired to argue the counterfactuals. I just know with Gore the New York city skyline wouldn’t have been altered by terrorists and we would have never been in Afghanistan or Iraq.

    Good to see ya. Don’t be too much of a stranger.

  220. 220.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, probably an unfortunate comment from me based on the misogyny of the Sanders campaign. Eemom can be a delightful human being. I long to see that.

  221. 221.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ivan X:

    I’m still holding out hope for Secretary of the Treasury Elizabeth Warren. That’s the kind of revenge I want for these past four years. ?

  224. 224.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Citizen Alan: one of the things that bothers me about Biden– as a person, not necessarily a candidate– is his kind of creepy, cult-like view of his family (“my word as a Biden”). Beau was supposed to be the one to take up the torch, the White Horse of the clan, now the father is running to fulfill his dream for his son.
    The gossip is Obama never wanted Biden to run, for a couple of reasons, Hunter being one of them. I don’t think Obama’s the type to hold grudges (see Clinton, H) and if he thought, as I once did, that Warren was the better candidate, it’s not his fault she misread the moment. If Obama did play a hand in the post-SC shake-up, it’s because the only Democrat two win two popular vote majorities since FDR knows Bernieism is a childish pipe dream, and the dreaming children hate him far more than they hate trump, and too heavy a footprint from him would only inflame them.

  225. 225.

    Mnemosyne

    @Kraux Pas:

    Officeholders who voted for it should have to pay for it too.

    … but only Democratic ones. Republicans get a free pass from everyone for their Iraq votes. In the public eye, the Democrats are solely responsible for the fiasco in Iraq. Not the Republicans who planned and executed the war. It’s the fault of the Democrats for not stopping them.

    And that is why Democrats lose. Over and over again.

  226. 226.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The Donald response to the Covid-19 situation is pure burning dumpster.  He has not the slightest clue what he is doing, nor does his shitstain dominionist veep.

    The stress on society, on government, on the Constitution has only just begun.  Utterly irrational panic and denial is setting in over Covid-19 and if you wanted a lot of change real fast, well, follow Bette Davis’ advice and put on your seatbelts, it’s going to be a rough ride.

  228. 228.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: You still haven’t figured out Obama could have endorsed whoever the hell he wanted. There’s literally no downside. They aren’t going to take his presidency away. He isn’t going to lose his pension or his secret service detail. WTF dude?

  229. 229.

    eemom

    Anyway, everyone has gone crazy, which is understandable under the circumstances. Would have been nice to hold off until tomorrow night at least, but you go to the apocalypse with the army you have, etc.

  231. 231.

    Citizen Alan

    @Yutsano:  In my personal opinion, Al Gore lost because he bought into the framing that everyone hated Clinton b/c of the impeachment when the truth was that Clinton was still the most popular politician in the country. He bought into it so deeply that not only did he not allow Clinton to campaign on his behalf, he also picked the execrable Joe Lieberman as his running mate solely because Lieberman had supported efforts to censure Clinton. Gore would have cruised to victory in Florida if he’d just picked Bill Nelson.

  233. 233.

    Mnemosyne

    @Yutsano:

    I need to get to sleep as well. Though my poor boss did seem to be coming down with the nasty flu B that’s been going around, so it may be a quiet day tomorrow.

    @eemom:

    Meh, we all need some way to pass the time while we wait for Super Tuesday results. I hope the MSM won’t expect them from California anytime soon — our county SOS’s seem to be serious about making sure the count is as accurate as possible, not as fast as possible. They even have webcams so you can watch county employees re-checking the ballots one-by-one.

  234. 234.

    Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, they should step back, and all indications is that Obama is doing that.

    That said, if the spread models are correct for Covid and the mortality rate holds up, we’re looking about about 3 million fatalities in the US. I hope to hell we don’t get remotely there, but it’s going to take many acts of government to intervene and they aren’t coming yet, and I have zero faith they will.

    3 million dead Americans seems like a pretty good reason to intervene, not to mention the entire dismantling of the nations rule of law (particularly to a guy who was editor of the Harvard Law Review). If the primary settled itself out, then he doesn’t need to intervene – so he holds back, asks the smart folks to keep him up to date on the delegate forecasts for everyone, their cash on  hand, etc. and if it looks like we’re fucking this up and throwing the race in Nov, then he’s going to step in because sweet jesus we can’t fuck this up. He can do it as subtly as necessary to get the job done because he’s not looking to be crowned kingmaker.

  235. 235.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @eemom: No, they don’t. Every single living president, for instance, came out against Trump. Obama endorsed Hillary two days after she secured enough delegates to win the nomination but before the convention and before the superdelegates cast their votes (ya know, the superdelegates who Bernie was trying to woo after shitting all over them before the primary started.)

    Obama has a chance to help a Democratic candidate win the nomination over Putin’s handpicked guy on the left. That would be a good thing to do after going MIA when his successor was being targeted by Putin.

  236. 236.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    That said, if the spread models are correct for Covid and the mortality rate holds up, we’re looking about about 3 million fatalities in the US

    Sweet jesus

  237. 237.

    Martin

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Martin and I agree on absolutely NOTHING. So you fuckers need to take this to the bank.

    Well, I agree with that. I hope I haven’t ruined it.

    Good to see you again, btw. Cole has told everyone to be nice, and it’s weird.

  240. 240.

    Morzer

    @Martin: I suspect the death rate for the coronavirus is being overstated, because we simply don’t know how many people had it without noticing/shook it off without much trouble or simply thought it was the flu.  That said, watching Trump play politics after dismantling much of the government’s capacity to respond and handle medical emergencies is deeply discouraging. If anything gave the coronavirus a chance to be a mass killer, it would be precisely that sort of toxic stupidity and corruption at the highest level

    Also worth noting: the mortality rate for the coronavirus applies to those who catch it, not the population as a whole. Not everyone will catch it, so the estimate of 3 million deaths is extremely implausible. It assumes  roughly 50% of the US population get the coronavirus and roughly 2% of that 50% die.  That’s not what we’ve seen so far in China or South Korea, despite the best efforts of a disreputable Korean cult.

  244. 244.

    Martin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah. Mind you, a competent federal response and we get nowhere near there. It would be shocking in scope, restrict citizens movements by a LOT, checkpoints around  the country, school closures, banning large events, a commitment to testing every American for free, etc, etc.

    Not space race level commitment, WWII level commitment. Anyone here see that happening?

    So, if we assume 1000 people have it in the US, and not a single new case is brought into the country, and there is no systematic containment strategy, at the current transmission rate (doubling every 7 days) then half the country will have it in 17 weeks. It then slows down simply because it starts to get hard to find people to infect further.

    There’s about 800,000 hospital beds in the US. The current estimate is 13% of cases require hospitalization. We’ll hit our bed capacity (assuming every bed is used for Covid) in 9 weeks if that holds up and this spreads unchecked.

    Epidemics will spread geometrically if unchecked. The doubling period is 7 days. Every 7 days you don’t get in front of it, you just made the problem twice as hard to fix. We’ve probably already doubled about 6 times.

  245. 245.

    Martin

    @Just Some Fuckhead: That assumes 100% of the population gets it. That basically never happens – you get a kind of emergent herd immunity, where so many people now have antibodies that it can’t spread very easily. But 50% can happen without much trouble. And I’m already discounting the 2.3% measured mortality rate to 2% because we have the greatest healthcare system in the world. The GOP says so.

    On the upside, it’ll take out way more Trump voters than Dem voters. On the downside, every single presidential candidate is at high risk of dying to it, as is one particular USSC member that every Democrat is praying for daily.

  246. 246.

    Martin

    @Just Some Fuckhead: Like, he’s actually banning people and stuff. We can still be mean, but we have to be appropriately mean.   In the old days, you could stab someone in the comments just to see what it felt like. Now they really have to earn it.

    Needless to say, I haven’t had anyone twist the knife in me since you and CS got scarce. Kinda miss that.

  248. 248.

    prostratedragon

    Burp!

    Illinois primary is March 17(!?), but early voting has begun. I will vote for Warren while out on my Wednesday errands.

    Meanwhile, I’m listening to Maria de Buenos Aires.

  249. 249.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

     

    That said, if the spread models are correct for Covid and the mortality rate holds up, we’re looking about about 3 million fatalities in the US. I hope to hell we don’t get remotely there, but it’s going to take many acts of government to intervene and they aren’t coming yet, and I have zero faith they will.

    Insomnia ridden late post.

    This “estimate” is certainly wildly exaggerated. The mortality rate might still be horrible, but let’s say that the affected population is mainly men and fewer women over age 60 with health issues that make them vulnerable, and limited successful medical intervention.

    A wild ass guess might be more in the range of 400,000 people.

  250. 250.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    I THINK OBAMA SUCKS AND SHOULD ROT IN ELBA!

    Now, why doesn’t he endorse my dream candidate!

  251. 251.

    AxelFoley

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Ah, still a fuckhead, I see. No one missed to your dumb ass. Back to whatever swamp you came from, troll.

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