Remember several centuries ago when the Democratic presidential primary was in full swing? One thing people liked about Joe Biden was that he beat up on Trump rather than criticizing his fellow candidates and re-litigating policy squabbles from the Obama years. If there’s one thing that unites our fractious party, it’s that we all despise Trump to the depths of our jaded, cynical souls.
Now that Biden pretty much has the nomination sewn up, the tone has changed a bit. Osita Nwanevu in The New Republic:
On Sunday, Biden made a virtual stop on Meet the Press, where host Chuck Todd controversially asked him whether Trump had “blood on his hands” given the administration’s bungling of the coronavirus response so far. “I think that’s a little too harsh,” he replied. “I watched a prelim to your show where someone used the phrase that the president thinks out loud. He should stop thinking out loud and start thinking deeply.”
In a Friday piece for Politico, Ryan Lizza quoted an outside Biden adviser who seemed to offer a reason for his reticence. “Biden has a thin line,” he told Lizza. “As much as I dislike Trump and think what a bad job he’s doing, there’s a danger now that attacking him can backfire on you if you get too far out there. I don’t think the public wants to hear criticism of Trump right now.”
Trump almost cracked 50% approval in a recent Gallup poll. That might be the zenith of his “popularity” if his dead cat bounce continues to fizzle as wave after wave of appalling pandemic and economic news continues to rain down on our heads.
I’ve been watching more cable news than I ought to and reading too many articles. While outlets like The Times are rightly pilloried for idiotic headlines and both-sidesy coverage by the brain-dead Beltway gang, I’m somewhat encouraged by the heat other mainstream papers and networks have brought to bear on the Trump administration, particularly about Trump’s attempts to revise recent history and claim he always took the danger seriously when he publicly and loudly did not.
Trump won’t stop holding news conference/rallies and giving himself high-fives for his stellar performance, but the truth is he and his team screwed the pooch badly in the early handling of the crisis, his failures of leadership are ongoing, and hundreds of millions of Americans are already suffering needless hardship because of it.
Pence tries to hide behind Dr. Birx’s skirt whenever he is questioned on this, conflating criticism of Trump with disrespecting epidemiologists, front-line medical professionals, first responders, Mom and apple pie. That dog declines to hunt. It also points to a huge vulnerability that the Trump people know they have.
There’s a specific person who deserves blame for unconscionable negligence, a person in whose office the fabled buck stops, whether he likes it or not. And it’s the big-mouthed orange braggart who is constantly in our fucking faces as we anxiously seek news.
Nwanevu argues that in light of that, Biden should “go for the jugular” right now, particularly since that was an implicit campaign promise: that Biden would beat Trump “like a drum.”
I’m no campaign strategist, but that sounds about right to me. Biden has offered constructive criticism and called Kellyanne Conway’s bad-faith bluff, and that’s fine, but does that go far enough? Early in the campaign, Biden called Trump a Nazi-coddling white supremacist who’s destroying the soul of the country. It was true then, and it’s true now.
It’s also true that Trump is a feckless incompetent whose lack of skills and inability to understand and lead the government is hurting us every day. Maybe it’s time to say so and point to specific examples.
We can’t sit idly by while that orange prick tries to prematurely claim victory if heroic early local mitigation efforts and our soon-to-be overwhelmed hospitals manage to keep the casualty count below 200,000 instead of in the millions. Trump’s catastrophic failures of leadership have endangered every single one of us physically and harmed virtually everyone economically. Go get him, Joe!
PS: The DNC moved the Milwaukee convention to mid-August in hopes that it will be safe to have a convention then, which is still very much an open question. Democrats from Biden to sitting House and Senate reps and state and local officials are already pressing the feds to do something to secure the vote in November by leaning on states to prepare to register voters and hold elections in the middle of a pandemic.
Trump opposes that because he knows the more people vote, the more will vote to toss him out on his orange ass. I’ve contacted all three of my worthless Republican federal representatives about this. Maybe you can too if you agree it’s a critical issue?
different-church-lady
Miss Bianca
Working on my screeds even as we speak, Betty…
A Ghost to Most
Someone needs to ask BS what is the acceptable body count for continuing his vanity grift. Wisconsin sounds like a fustercluck on its way to a disaster.
Amir Khalid
Who is this outside Biden advisor Lizza quotes, who doesn’t think the public wants to hear criticism of Trump right now? I see der Scheißgibbon getting plenty of criticism in the hardly liberal and not terribly courageous American mainstream media.
Baud
Sounds like Biden simply didn’t want to use the provocative “blood on his hands” phrase. Probably a good call. He’s criticized Trump plenty.
Baud
@A Ghost to Most: All of them, Katie.
BobS
There need to be two fronts- Biden’s words being diplomatically critical, with what he’s saying being supplemented and amplified by commercials that ‘take the gloves off’.
MattF
…and Putin sez Trump is lying. And he should know.
Fair Economist
IMO Biden should use his platform to repeat the facts about Trump’s response, like insisting it was fifteen cases going to zero when he had been repeatedly warned a new Spanish Flu was possible. Then “clouds and shadows” – keep asking what Trump will do to prevent such a massive failure from occuring again. Who will he fire, what briefings he will follow, etc. Trump probably won’t do anything useful anyway, but even if he did nothing could give reasonable people confidence in him again, and Biden can keep talking endlessly about what Trump did wrong and asking why he hasn’t fixed it.
low-tech cyclist
“It’s a little to harsh” for Biden to say Trump’s got blood on his hands?? Then WT everloving F was this Biden commercial about? It basically says Trump is a clear and present danger to the American people whose (in)actions cost lives.
(And then says the remedy is to vote for Biden in November. As if having Biden sworn in as President on January 20, 2021 would bring the dead of 2020 back to life.)
I don’t think the Dems need to ‘attack’ Trump, they just have to tell the truth about what he isn’t doing right now that he should be doing, and what he is doing that’s making things worse.
And they have to keep on doing so until either (a) it sinks in with the American people, which might take awhile, or (b) Trump actually starts doing the right thing, which would likely take until eternity.
MoCA Ace
@A Ghost to Most: Wisconsinites have until 5:30 pm today to request an absentee ballot at myvote,gov
I did it last night.
MisterForkbeard
@Amir Khalid: I actually sort of agree. The public doesn’t want to hear “A bunch of you are about to die and it’s because Trump fucked this up exactly like he fucks everything up.”
What people want to hear is that we’ll won’t have a catastrophe. Biden has to tread a thin line here.
He also has to avoid making the whole thing sound too partisan, because the media will be really happy to pretend that Trump has pivoted into The Presidency and that Biden is just being a partisan whackjob.
Mnemosyne
I think I disagree with you slightly here, Betty. What Biden is trying to do is not only say that Trump is a fucking incompetent, but also say what he thinks we should be doing instead.
And I still think that the Politico article happened because that “informal adviser” was pissed that Biden was not listening to him and went ahead to attack Trump’s incompetence anyway.
It’s like people have been saying for a while: Berlusconi didn’t get defeated because people pointed out that he was an asshole, he got defeated because people pointed out he was fucking incompetent at his job. I do think that’s the most salient point to be hitting over and over and over again while we’re in the middle of a situation that Trump royally fucked up. Trump’s fans love that he’s an asshole, but they don’t love that he’s terrible at his actual job.
MattF
‘Blood on his hands’ would give the cultists an easy point of attack. However true it may be.
MoCA Ace
@Fair Economist: This.
Biden needs to be analytical and stick to facts. Let the slowly (glacially) awakening pundits and other Dems get into the ral mean stuff. You know, stay above the fray with a wink and a nod ;)
Mnemosyne
@low-tech cyclist:
As Baud said, I think that Biden was refusing to use that specific phrase, not that he was declining to make the same argument using less inflammatory words. It’s a fine line, I admit, but Biden is treading it pretty well.
CindyH
@MisterForkbeard: Agree 100%
Geoboy
Republican Party delenda est.
eemom
For fuck’s sake, we’re gonna criticize Biden because he didn’t bite at the loaded bait dangled at him by the likes of Chuck fucking Todd, but used his own words instead?? JFC.
Omnes Omnibus
@A Ghost to Most: How so?
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
I finally figured out what people meant when they said that this is “Trump’s Katrina” for the media. It’s not that Trump has never catastrophically fucked up an emergency hurricane response before. It’s that he’s now fucked up an emergency response that actually affects the MSM in NYC and DC.
That’s it. They didn’t give a shit about the Americans in Puerto Rico because they don’t know anyone there. But this is happening in their own home cities to people they know and it’s freaking them the fuck out.
pacem appellant
I am not a campaign strategist either, but not invoking “blood on his hands” is distancing himself personally from that very visceral phrase, while his campaign and its surrogates make that point. It’s also only April 2 (Oh, gods, how much longer can we endure this?), so there is plenty of time to pull the gloves off, and today isn’t that day. I presume that closer to election day, Such criticism will have more punch.
trollhattan
Biden at least can hector Trump about finding and placing smart people in charge, standing the hell out of the way to let them work, and then being a megaphone for their advice. Compare and contrast with what Trump is doing instead.
Mandalay
O/T, but this morning Trump tweeted this:
Just to be clear, Trump is applauding the notion that Russia and Saudi Arabia will be cutting back production, which will benefit American oil companies, but raise gas prices at the pump.
Trump doesn’t even bother to hide his direct intervention, nor his allegiance to the the oil & gas industry over the American consumer. So much for the free market.
West of the Rockies
@MattF:
All the stuff below that Tweet is a horrific assessment of Trump and Republicans, too.
schrodingers_cat
BS and his cult of dead enders are going to make the convention a shit show. I am not sure that giving them until August to run amok is a good idea.
pacem appellant
Another random thought: the media cycle is going to be 99.9% Covid-19, 0.09% Trump jucking the pooch, so with Biden’s barely visible airtime of 0.01%, he’s got to make it count. Acting responsibly will contract well with the orange-in-thief.
LongHairedWeirdo
Right now, the GOP is salivating for any sort of attack by Biden they can turn on, to prove that he’s the real problem, attacking poor, hard-working President Trump while Americans are dying. He’s right to keep his ammo dry, and wait for the time when the nation agrees that Trump screwed the pooch, and only then, regretfully confess that “if Trump had listened – but he didn’t!”
Remember, the GOP doesn’t care about truth, fairness, irony, etc. – they’ll throw a hissy fit over an innocuous pun comparing a name to a title, and they’ll get everyone, including a lot of people who really ought to know better, to call for their fainting couch over anything Biden says that can be misconstrued.
So waiting, until the nation is ready to listen, is probably the wisest play. Remember, Trump can officially crow VICTORY!!!!!!!1!!!1!!!!elventy-one!! over 25,000 dead Americans – he’s predicted 100,000, after all! – when, with good testing, contact tracing, and a belief that US citizens can catch a virus while traveling, a competent President could have stopped the outbreak cold, with minimal death.
pacem appellant
@Mandalay: The only this his base cares about is owning the libs. He delivers, you gotta give him that.
WhatsMyNym
@MoCA Ace: The WI site for registering to Vote Absentee is at
myvote wi gov (fill in the dots).
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
“Hey everybody, I just made sure everything you buy or transport will be more expensive. Isn’t that great?”
What a putz.
On that topic, paid 75 cents less/gallon today than the last time I filled up, in March. Think every driving person in America doesn’t have things to use that extra money for ATM?
The Thin Black Duke
@eemom: I think I agree with you here. Like it or not, we’re in uncharted territory because things are going to be much worse than we expect it to be, and when businesses stay closed, jobs don’t come back, and there’s too many bodies to hide under the rug, people are going to be pissed. Joe’s a savvy enough politician to smell the blood in the water, and since it’s a sure bet that Trump won’t know what the fuck to do, all he has to do is be patient. Sooner or later, the voters are going to give Joe the rope to hang Trump with.
Omnes Omnibus
FFS, Biden has been criticizing Trump right band left. He has been saying what should be done. He didn’t say Trump had blood on his hands; OMG! I bet he is going select a Republican as his running mate and cut Social Security too.
He is doing what he should do. And a big part of that is looking and acting like someone who is capable of being the leader of the whole country.
MattF
@Mandalay: And probably lying, at least according to Putin. Trump is trying to goose the stock market. See:
twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1245730595285676037
germy
Miss Bianca
@eemom: I’m not.
Oh, I have plenty of appetite for bile. But I’m reserving my bile for my GOP representatives.
germy
James E Powell
Not according to what I see on twitter! In my timeline, the same people who in 2016 were certain that Sanders would be declared the nominee right after Hillary Clinton was indicted now insist that Sanders must be declared the nominee because of Tara Reade. I didn’t go too far into it, but it seems that Alyssa Milano is somehow preventing all this from happening.
germy
@eemom:
He was smart not to do that. Chuck Todd, Jon Karl and others of their ilk love dramatic quotes. Unfortunately, they then use those same dramatic quotes against the candidate (usually Democratic) so it’s wise not to play along.
Brachiator
Political strategists always like this “go for the jugular stuff,” even though it clearly alienates and turns off a strong segment of voters.
And I understand how people want to keep Trump hate alive.
However, I think that strong attacks will go nowhere right now, and also get lost in the hurricane of pandemic related news.
Right now, the news is focused on the virus. And people are focused on survival. I don’t know about other folk, but I watch less political news right now, because I just don’t care. And I need to get changing local information on how we are supposed to react to the pandemic.
I think that more than bashing Trump for his stupidity with respect to the virus, there may be some value in pushing out strong suggestions of what he should be doing, especially if this might have some impact on his dumb decision making.
But blasting him about the economy and taxes? Don’t matter. When we come out of this, there will be a need for a lot of changes. No one really knows how much economic devastation we will be dealing with, and even though some will be eager to resume old battles, a lot of this will be irrelevant. Tax the rich? Sure, but how are you going to sustain hospitals which have lost their traditional revenue streams, make up for lost state revenues, and help businesses and industries which may have disappeared during the pandemic?
I note that conservatives are renewing their bullshit that Trump is perfect and has handled the pandemic well. And they continue their attack on the Democrats. I generally ignore this during the best of times, but it seems especially insane right now. I’ve come across some conservative commentary that acts as though the pandemic is not happening. But, like Trump, these people cannot help themselves. They are stuck. They are living in their own ideological fantasy land. They don’t see how foolish they look. But at this point, this crap doesn’t enrage me. I just don’t have time for it.
I think that Biden should stock up his ammunition, but jab Trump judiciously. But maybe that’s just me.
ETA: When I have more time, I may try to find a little political nugget. But I seem to recall that in one California gubernatorial primary, voters polled noted specifically that they voted against a challenger who had ramped up negative political ads. They were so turned off that they no longer listened to whatever his own message or policies were. Also, the negative ads did not discourage them or induce them not to vote. They wanted in part to punish this guy for going negative.
I am pretty sure that the political consultant who advised this guy continued to get work, and kept selling the idea that going negative works.
For some weird reason, this also reminds me of an old tv commercial, a commercial within a commercial where an actor kept flubbing his lines about “Mama mia, that’s a speecy meatball.” The commercial kept showing the fake jar of pasta sauce, and tons of people thought the commercial was for a real product. But it was an ad for Alka-Seltzer, the digestive aid.
The marketing people got too wrapped up in how creative and funny their ad was, and forgot that the idea was to sell goddam Alka-Seltzer tablets.
We all know that the Democrats, if victorious, are going to have to clean up Trump’s mess. And so I think that the core of the message should be on selling the idea that they are the ones who will get the job done, more than it should be on bashing Trump.
And later, even the bashing should be purposeful. Trump always talks about how he loves to counter-punch. But he has a tired bag of tricks. When the Democrats do punch back, they should also let Trump know that they are not afraid of him, they know his tricks, but they are old, tired, lame and the Democrats have more power to slap him around. More than just going for the jugular, they need to expose Trump for the ineffectual windbag that he is.
trollhattan
@James E Powell:
Wilmer “has a path.” That path includes wriggling through a four-inch cave opening, scaling a 17,000 foot mountain, and walking through a field of scorpions, but it’s a path and he can just shout his way through it.
MoCA Ace
@Mandalay:
So? They probably have to cut back that much because every pipeline, storage tank, and ship is sitting full of oil products as we speak… there is nowhere to put the shit.
J R in WV
The commercials don’t need writers, nor scripts. They just need Trump’s own statements on network TV, even quoting Faux News showing Trump’s live statements, repeatedly contradicting himself just hours after the previous false statement.
Trump is such a soft target just because of his tendency to contradict himself so often. I’m glad Biden is going slow right now, he doesn’t need to be attacking Trump while Trump is failing so publicly and so transparently. Who was it who said “never interfere with your enemy when your enemy is busy damaging himself!” ??
I’m putting a lot of time into various web comics of a wide variety. A distraction from the horror of Trump’s Plague.
Nicole
I think the thing for us to spend our energy on is what Betty closed with- contacting our Congresscritters to make sure voting by mail, whether no-excuse-necessary absentee ballots, or whatever, is made possible. Turnout will be up as long as people have access, and that’s what the GOP doesn’t want. So that’s what we work for. I was sure Biden wouldn’t end up the nominee because of his lackluster primary campaigns in ’88 and ’08, but he has stepped into circumstances tailor-made for a candidate like him, and that’s fine. It’s on us to make sure the election happens, and that we give him as much of a majority in the House and Senate as possible. And everywhere we can locally, too!
germy
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
The Trump trench after four years is deeper than the eight-year Bush II trench, and that’s really saying something. An eight-year Trump trench would bust out somewhere in the Indian Ocean.
Mnemosyne
@James E Powell:
Don’t forget, the DNC is going to swap in Andrew Cuomo at the convention at the last second because Reasons.
trollhattan
@germy:
I’m nagonna google Neil Boortz, but should I infer his comment was “serious”? Neocons gonna neocon I guess.
I’m more worried about a hillbilly uprising.
Jess
I kinda agree with Biden’s strategy on this. Right now there’s a very good chance many Trump supporters will finally see the light when people they know are dying. Let them get to that point first, let them start looking for someone to blame, let them feel the burn of betrayal, and then point them at our miserable excuse for a president. If Biden piles on too soon, they’ll double-down (or is it thousand-down at this point?) on their cultism and hate Biden for making them look like the fools they are. Timing is crucial if we want to suppress Trump’ support in the fall. Being right isn’t enough when you’re dealing with pathological denial.
germy
@trollhattan: Dead serious. Not satire.
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: He and his followers can’t calculate percentages or add. Sad. Mathematical and scientific illiteracy is killing us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: raging bigot who was still considered part The Respectable Discourse in the Bush years, as I recall
p.a.
Problem is the Dems don’t have a Fux News of their own to do the dirty attack work. Morally good for us. Politically…
A Ghost to Most
@Omnes Omnibus:
: I was watching the (or a) election commissioner for WI. She said they were down 7000 volunteers due to c19, and were doing massive consolidation of polling places. Also that the Rs were blocking moves to allow increased absentee voting.
germy
Pelosi announces House panel to oversee virus response, setting up clash with Trump
Now that the $2 trillion rescue package for the epidemic is law, oversight of the massive legislation emerges as an early sticking point.
Origuy
In an earlier thread, people were talking about links to virtual museums. BBC History Magazine has several, including (of course) the British Museum, the Louvre, and the Anne Frank House.
p.a.
I’ll put good $$ against this proposition.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat: also: Constitutional literacy. I usually think they imagine President Bernie will rule by righteous fiat, but lately I get the impression they think Single Payer will be enacted, or not, by the Dem nomination process.
Immanentize
@trollhattan: Sander’s path requires, frankly, the death of Joe Biden. That is what he and his followers are banking on. Nothing less.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Dump’s road map is just a piece of paper that a toddler (him) scrawled all over with crayons.
A fucking Spirograph would give you a better road map that these fuckers.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: He will shout the cave opening bigger, scream the mountain into dust and give the scorpions a finger wagging that’ll make them all sting themselves.
sdhays
@germy: That top tweet is so stupid, I thought it must be snark.
germy
Krope, the Formerly Dope
What’s to litigate considering he portrayed himself as the only person doing anything of consequence in the Obama administration (at least during the debates)?
I mean, I’m fully on board. The team has spoken. But this still drives me crazy.
Origuy
@Origuy: The link didn’t go through for some reason.
Brachiator
@germy:
I loved the response to this.
This is another example of how conservatives are living in a world that does not exist. How they are stuck in their own tired polemic.
Also, conservatives have a fetish for the nostalgia of a white America. And yet, I note the number of medical experts fighting the pandemic and giving out information in news briefings appear to be Americans of Muslim background and Indian descent. And some of these doctors have died trying to protect all of us.
This is the real America.
And there is a variation of this with respect to medical experts around the world. Idiot conservatives keep trying to go to hatred against Muslims. Meanwhile, there are Muslims are doing everything they can to try to save the goddam world.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize:
they’re banking on Biden’s total collapse, no doubt, but I don’t think even that would have the outcome they’re rather hatefully hoping fo
ETA: if, like me, you see David Letterman trending on twitter and get scared, it’s a joke about the white-bearded and highly kinetic ASL interpreter at Brian Kemp’s “apparently, this ‘rona virus is contagious– who knew?” press conference
trollhattan
@germy: @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ugh, I’ve kind of forgotten those monsters in order to make room for the Trumpian monsters, but they’re just off waiting “their turn” aren’t they.
Do they all still work at The American Enterprise Institute?
Mnemosyne
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
There was an interesting article about this recently that someone else has probably already posted. Basically, Biden was the only candidate who was aiming for Hillary’s and Obama’s voters while most of the other candidates were debating whether Obama was a just okay president or a terrible one. Turns out that Biden can count votes and read internal polls better than his other opponents and knew that most Democratic voters didn’t think that Obama was a failure as president. ?♀️
eemom
@germy:
Right, and I thought we on this blog considered ourselves wise to the cheap tricks of emmessemm hacks.
So the fact that Todd’s bullshit question and the “jugular” advice of some other hack is a topic of serious debate kind of astounds me.
Maybe we’re more bored than we thought.
Omnes Omnibus
@A Ghost to Most: It is easy as fuck to get an absentee ballot in WI. A lot of people are doing it. I refer voting in a polling place on Election Day because I am like that. For this one, I am getting an absentee to avoid putting poll workers at risk.
Mandalay
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
We’ve just hit a million cases of coronavirus worldwide!
I’d just like to personally thank Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his part in increasing the death count: 237 new cases and 27 deaths in Florida today.
Knock ’em dead, Ron, and see you in church this Sunday, you vile fuck.
Kent
We are in unchartered territory here but I tend to think that we will be on COVID news 24/7 for at least 6 more months so we really aren’t going to need Biden to point out Trump’s incompetence. It’s not like news won’t be talking about Trump’s COVID response if Biden doesn’t. This isn’t like the Ukraine scandal where it took Impeachment to get it into the news cycle.
I know no more than the rest of you, but I think stable competence and surrounding Biden with a team of non-partisan expert types might be the way to go. Sort of a shadow cabinet where they put out recommendations and information. And basically talk about what should be done. Trump is so easily manipulated, that having Biden simply talk about the good ideas is liable to make Trump reflectively oppose them.
I honestly think there isn’t any jugular to go for here. Simply providing a contrast to Trump and call for return to normalcy. Biden should be working right now on jobs programs to get the country back to work when this is all over. People want to know what their lives are going to be like in November and next year. Biden should be talking about that.
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
I believe he prefers sharpies.
sdhays
@germy: Atrios likes to whine about the deficiencies of COVID-19 Bill #3, essentially saying that the Democrats got rolled by not demanding everything they could possibly want because, in his estimation, it’s the last one. And he uses Moscow Mitch’s mumblings as proof of this.
Moscow Mitch doesn’t know what the hell to do, just like his buddy in the White House. They have no concept of magnitude of the problem. Nancy knows this, and that’s why she and Schumer acted quickly when the shit started hitting the fan and didn’t use people as leverage. I still can’t comprehend how bad it’s going to get in April; my brain simply rejects the high numbers being thrown about. Dump and McConnell aren’t in control of anything any more.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I think I mentioned this before, but I’m back in touch with an old friend from high school who is Indian American. Her two younger siblings are both MDs. One is a pediatrician in NYC who is currently in quarantine after testing positive for Covid-19 and the other is an ER doctor in Austin.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
I also think that Biden has managed to come across as the adult in the room and someone who has empathy for what we are going through.
We have to keep in kind that the fighting we may find cathartic isn’t necessarily effective or helpful.
spc123
@BobS: The gloves can come off later, but not too late. It is not necessarily bad to give Trump a little more rope while not coming off as opportunistic to the large unthinking segment of the populace (and we will need some of their votes). Plus, it’s hard to edge in to our reality tv host’s most recent season. Ratings may be ok for now but the season finale is sure to disappoint.
Kent
Anyone see this article in the NYT? Stunning indictment of the MAGA south.
nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html
Especially the map at the end of the article with the confederacy all in red
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sdhays:
evergreen– something broke in him in early ’09. I can’t prove it, but I think it was reading his own comments section, when the PUMAs and the Naderites joined forces to declare Obama both a wimpy failure and a cunning secret Republican.
Ohio Mom
I hope you are still on this thread, different-church-lady. I want to hear about your sojourn in the hospital. If you already shared that on a different thread, I missed it.
hueyplong
@Immanentize: Both in 2016 and in 2020, Sanders’ “path” has been the fundamental collapse of the Democratic Party in one way or another. There is no reasonable way around that conclusion if you note that they can’t and haven’t even tried to be a campaign that can get more than 30% of the Democratic vote.
sdhays
@Mandalay: DeSantis is someone who I think may need to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life. He’s set himself up to be the target of a lot people’s long grudge.
Cheryl Rofer
Biden’s poll numbers are going up without his doing a whole lot.
Don’t interrupt when your enemy is shooting himself in the foot.
People are so frantic with worry now, and dealing with the difficulties of the shutdown and the disease, that they don’t have any mental space left to deal with the campaign. Biden provoking a fight will be negative for him. Just be normal and nice.
Biden’s tweets have been good, but they get buried. But they’re there for those who will see them.
People have always been tired of our endless campaigns. Save the ammunition for the late summer, when things might be more normal.
But I’l bet that the Democrats can’t have a big warm fuzzy all in one place convention in August. They should be planning for something else.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
I disagree with your characterization of the other candidates’ attitudes WRT the Obama administration.
But that’s not my point. The way the Biden portrayed himself erased the hard work of people like Clinton, Castro, Kerry, Warren, and Obama himself. Biden’s a braggart.
ETA: Granted, anything is better than a clown who had to be dragged kicking and screaming by a world-historical plague to listen to experts or do anything to help the American people. And, even then, only barely.
Brachiator
@Jess:
I think that Biden is doing the right thing to hold out an olive branch to these people. But I am not sure that most of them will see the light.
These people are very much like hard-core Southern racists who would rather die than be saved by a black doctor or nurse.
I even have a couple of people I work with who grabbed onto Trump’s early insinuation that the pandemic was a hoax, and strangely these people have not changed their view even though Trump is no longer pitching that lie. Thousands dying from the current pandemic? They talk about how many people die from the flu and how 9 million die from cancer each year.
It is just strange watching how they cannot pull back from the edge.
HOWEVER, if Biden can peel off enough of these people to help him in key battleground states, then every attempt to reach out to them will be worth it.
Lyrebird
@MomSense:
I’m dropping in briefly when I should be grading, but I’m not sure y’all have all seen Biden’s ad attacking Trump for downplaying the coronavirus threat… (link goes to Biden’s twitter feed)
Smooth talk in the TV show but definitely ready to fight appropriately on the big issues, seems to me (desperately holding on to my rose-colored glasses in the hurricane)
Cheryl Rofer
And this just showed up in my feed:
trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
Our CA county is one of several in the state to go all paper and we can drop ballots off starting a couple weeks before the election, or mail in, our choice. The week before the election a lot more places open and are staffed for those who wish to fill out their ballots there rather than simply put in the collection box. (Or register and vote, I guess.) IDK what the vote % is among all registered voters, but they make it so easy there’s no excuse to not vote.
IIUC we can also go online to ensure out ballot is in the system. I’m too lazy for that but suppose if I dropped it at an unstaffed early polling site, I might doublecheck.
Kent
We now have double the number of cases 225,000 as the next nearest country Italy 115,000. Deaths will soon catch up. No amount of Trump press conferences is going to whitewash the fact that the US is doing by far the worst job of containing this pandemic in the developed world.
I don’t think there is any need at all for hand-wringing about Trump’s numbers. We are still very early in this crisis. Another month is going to be a lifetime. Hell, in a month half the administration might be down with COVID. They are old and not distancing.
People are going to want to find the light at the end of the tunnel. That is what Biden should be providing them.
The Thin Black Duke
Exactly. Trump and the GOP’s strategy seems to be predicated on the insane idea that people won’t get sick and that this ongoing crisis will be forgotten in a few months. Unbelievable.
Betty Cracker
@germy: I think there’s a way to not take the bait Todd was dangling without absolving the target of the charge. I don’t think Biden’s answer was terrible, but it could have been better, e.g., “That’s a harsh way to put it. But there’s no question that Trump’s weeks of inaction cost us the chance to get in front of the problem while there was still an opportunity to contain the virus. Trump was downplaying the danger while his administration squandered time they could have used getting the American people ready to face this challenge and creating the equipment and testing capabilities we’re belatedly scrambling to build now to control the spread and get back to normal.” All true without being…shrill.
I don’t know what the best approach is. Just read another piece by someone else (forget by whom and what publication) that suggested Biden should keep on what he’s doing: demonstrating humanity and resolve as a contrast to the blithering buffoon and let people focus their anger as they will eventually. Maybe that’s the way to go. But I do know Trump is hoovering up mind-share like the inhuman attention-seeking entity that he is, and I am angry as fucking hell about this catastrophe as are tens of millions, and I feel like we’re addressing it when our leaders communicate that they get how fucking outrageous this is and say we’re going to come together to end it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Last week with Trump has been fascinating to watch; first Trump gave up on the denial, started with the we’re all doomed message and then now he’s off on Drug Cartels. I think Trump cut and run. The Mother f***ing coward. Typical of shitstains like him; they want to be in charge until the shit really hits the fan and then run for cover. You can set you clock to the day the news on the Epidemic turns good because Trump will be right back, patting himself on the back, bad mouthing the people who did the hard work and screwing the whole response up again.
germy
Krope, the Formerly Dope
There’s still a lot of this being pushed on Fox. They have plenty to say about how this is bad and to take precautions, but they still bring up these comparisons to mitigate political fallout.
Kent
Since Bush 2 they have gotten too used to creating their own reality. Which seems to work when it is stuff like wars and tax cuts. Because they have enough media and wealthy supporters to cheer and clap. But pandemics don’t listen.
CaseyL
@Immanentize: I was going to mention that, and decided against. Thank you for saying the unsayable.
Matt McIrvin
@Immanentize: Last I checked they were counting on the rape allegation against Biden to be true and for a bunch of other accusers to come out. That could probably do as well as Biden dying, but even in that case, they have to make their case that Bernie Sanders is the logical heir apparent.
A Ghost to Most
@p.a.: Agreed. They ALWAYS double down.
Redshift
@trollhattan:
Combining that news with the covid-19 response and the attack on environmental regulations and enforcement, it’s “Hey everybody, I think it would be great if you had to spend more money and have worse health and risk death so my buddies can make bank. You’re cool with that, right?”
Kent
This news article seemed to have dropped into the memory hole:
washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/03/31/gulf-of-mexico-warm-tornadoes-hurricanes/
Gulf of Mexico water temperatures are running 3 degrees above normal right now. We are poised for a monster hurricane and tornado season in the south. Drop a Katrina or Harvey on top of peak COVID in southern cities like Tampa or Miami or Houston and it is going to be true Armageddon.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent:
But there’s a chance it plays more like 9/11 and the early Afghanistan/Iraq wars, with the prevailing story being Trump getting his face on the news and playing the big hero, and his incompetence only becoming received wisdom among the general public several years later.
sdhays
@MomSense: It’s also not necessarily the time roll out “Jugular Joe”. As that piece of shit Andy Card said, you don’t roll out a new product until September. There’s plenty of time to talk about the blood on Dump’s hands, and by the fall, he’s going to be soaking in the blood of the Americans failed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Apple and oranges, the EU is the thing to compare to the US.
Also keep in mind China is lying threw their teeth and admits it; the Chines don’t count anyone infected who doesn’t show symptoms like the rest of the world does. According to the British the Chines numbers could be 14 to 50 times larger.
Mnemosyne
@Kent:
“Ready on Day One” is going to be a WAY more popular campaign promise than any pundit is willing to admit.
Redshift
@Immanentize: Yup, that’s exactly what I thought yesterday when I heard his campaign was saying he “still has a narrow path to victory.” Is he still holed up in Vermont making sure he doesn’t catch it?
(Which is really annoying to write, because none of these old guys should have to travel or gather, but it is what it is.)
hueyplong
@Betty Cracker: Biden’s opening line was probably just a lane change from Todd’s red meat wording to his own prepared response about Trump’s need to start thinking deeply.
Going back and forth about the exact wording of that lane change is something we do, stuck at home with time on our hands.
The more important things are the other posters’ points about Trump’s horizon being that night’s Hannity commentary when the reality of the next month is lots of death, economic wreckage, and deep psychological anxiety in the public as a whole.
Trumpsters and their RW media friends will make a big push about a turnaround to coincide with Easter, and then that will fail, spectacularly. Not rooting for it. Just noting its inevitability.
“Remember me? I’m that guy who’s not Trump” may be all that’s required by Memorial Day. And that day itself will be more than five months ahead of the election.
It’s going to be an awful slog, and the person least capable of undertaking it is squatting in the White House.
A Ghost to Most
@Omnes Omnibus: She said getting enough printed to meet the unexpected demand was the issue, and the Rs were fucking around, although she danced around that. All because BS won’t let it go.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Touché, sir.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mnemosyne: Also mottos that will be popular;
“Won’t scare the pants off you on day one”
“Knows were North Dakota is”
“Unlike the other guy, is man enough to admit he’s bald”
CaseyL
@Kent: Hurricane season starts in June and goes through October. IIRC, the really bad ones tend to be late in the season.
So the 2020 Presidential campaign will be in full swing just as we’re being hammered by superstorms on top of the ongoing COVD19 pandemic.
Yes, “apocalyptic” is a good word.
Yikes.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
@Mnemosyne: Yes, but even still, the media just dutifully reports what Trump says each and every day. They don’t form some collective opinion that Trump fucked up and continues to fuck up. Hence, the NYT’s “Trump says there are enough ventilators, some governors disagree” bullshit.
There are certain things that are just too large for the public to accept. The need to blindly rally ’round the president in times of crisis is practically in people’s DNA, even if the president is a major contributing factor.
They rally ’round GWB but can’t accept that his inaction might have led to 9/11. They rally ’round Trump but can’t accept that his inaction increased the scope and deadliness of the pandemic. Plus, we don’t have our own news channels and talk radio hosts endlessly sending out that message.
In the end, I don’t think people will blame Trump or even remember what he said from one day to the next. It’ll just be, “Yay, we beat it together!” A million stories about the president’s new “somber tone” will do that for you.
Mike in Pasadena
@eemom: Agree 100%.
Be sure to take a look at The Guardian’s daily map of covid19 cases in the US. Notice that east Texas, east Kansas, east Nebraska, and eastern half of North and South Dakota all show a distinct north to south line where an obvious pattern of disease distribution is consistently emerging. Probably meaningless, but it is interesting to watch the day-to-day changes. Also, take an old fasioned Rand McNally road map and notice how often the pattern of disease distribution follows highways. Not unexpected given that those infected often don’t know it until days later. I know, too much time on my hands.
Brachiator
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
RE: Thousands dying from the current pandemic? They talk about how many people die from the flu and how 9 million die from cancer each year.
I don’t even respond to this when they bring it up. Some of these people don’t know my political views, and my perceived neutrality is important to me because of the work I do.
Still I can’t help but note their irrational arguments in service of their devotion to a manifestly crackpot conservative agenda.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Simple reading of history with the 1918 Flue would suggest they are right,…
but,..
While society in general forgot about the Spanish Flue, the voters rejected Wilson and his constant drama for a series of boring presidents Harding, Coolidge and then Hoover.
pamelabrown53
@Matt McIrvin:
Disagree about the narrative playing out like the Iraq war, etc. People in every neighborhood,in every state will suffer from loss of a loved one, friend or neighbor…or someone they know and care about will be economically decimated. Hard to spin that kind of personal experience.
Mnemosyne
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
Well, that’s kind of my point. It looks like the majority of Democratic primary voters didn’t see that as Biden claiming credit for other people’s work. They saw it as him boosting the Obama administration (of which he was a part) and talking about all of the great things they did. I think a lot of pundits and Tweeters vastly underestimated how appealing that was to Democratic voters, the vast majority of whom still like and admire Obama. Biden deliberately tied himself to Obama and Hillary rather than distancing himself, and it worked.
Ruckus
Betty
Haven’t read the thread, just got back from my daily walk/thinking time and I watched Biden’s speech the other day and have to say, that was a very presidential moment.
It was the right thing to say and he said it in the right manner. He didn’t attack trump directly, which I think is smart. I can not imagine trump having 50% approval, just from the things I see on line. Yes he has voracious support from the hard right. And BS could interfere in the election enough to matter, but every day trump gets worse, more people die, especially with him doing his normal shit, is just more people who will never vote republican again. Lives are being shattered and destroyed and he could have changed that if he had, in any way, risen to the status of even a massively shitty leader. But he can’t even rise to that level. And a lot of people know this, even if they won’t admit it. Yes there are the fucking idiots, but we will always have fucking idiots with us. They’ve always been there, they will always be there. To some racism is more important than anything else, including their own lives. I doubt that will ever change, the percentage may go down but they are like a virus, there’s always another one on the horizon.
I think if Biden just holds a study course, he will win. Even faux news is breaking, OK maybe not quite that far – but close, over this fucking mess.
James E Powell
@trollhattan:
I watched Sanders’s interview with Whoopi Goldberg; she asks him to make a case for him staying in the race. He is not at all convincing. The rage against Alyssa Milano is based on her thanking Whoopi for this.
There is a speech Sanders could give – should give – announcing his suspension of the campaign and endorsement of Joe Biden. It would go a long way toward healing the wounds from 2016. It’s an easy speech to write, easy to give. The only thing standing in the way is Sanders’s ego.
A Ghost to Most
Republican pollster Frank Luntz had some blunt words for right-wing media figures who spent weeks downplaying the threat of COVID-19.
In a New York Times interview, Luntz said that many conservatives were so determined to “own the libs” at all costs that they would play down a frightening public health crisis even if it cost people their lives.
The rest of the Times story is a comprehensive overview of the ways that conservative media figures repeatedly told their fans that the virus was not a big deal, that the media was exaggerating its danger in order to score political points against President Donald Trump, and even that medical experts working for the Trump administration were not to be trusted.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Keep in mind that they don’t have to actively vote for Biden. They just need to stay home rather than vote for Trump. Any vote that Trump loses by whatever means is a plus for Biden, even if he doesn’t gain that vote. Remember what relatively tiny numbers we’re talking about here — fewer than 80,000 votes out of over 60,000,000 cast.
Kent
Events are happening at light speed compared to the Iraq war. We now have exactly double the number of COVID cases as the next nearest country and the distance between the US and the rest of the world is accelerating. Deaths will soon catch up. We aren’t going to have to wait for 2022 to discover the effects of Trump’s incompetence and criminal negligence. And we won’t need Biden to be pointing it out either. The stacks of body bags in the streets of American cities are going to do that for him.
Mandalay
@sdhays:
I sure hope so. His royal proclamation yesterday, restricting movement in Florida yet allowing church services to continue made no sense, and he managed to piss off everyone.
This is not the time for political pandering – it will come back to bite you.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: Biden knows how to bide his time. He doesn’t need to go there. By the time May is over, every single American will know that Trump has blood on his hands. Because every one of us will know someone – personally – who has died from Covid-19.
germy
@A Ghost to Most:
The House That Luntz Built
Redshift
Hey, has anyone seen a good article about the disparities in which states are getting medical equipment? Maddow last night was talking about it like it was part of the general Trumpster incompetence, but from the lists of states, it seemed very clear to me that states governed by Republicans get whatever they ask for (and more), and states governed by Democrats get a fraction of what they need.
So has any solid source actually analyzed this? If I’m right, people really need to know that Trump is actively killing people either for electoral reasons or because of pettiness, but I want to know for sure (and have a good source to point to) before I start screaming about it.
Sister Golden Bear
@trollhattan: Plus my county’s election officer sent out reminder postcards and emails (I’d signed up to get the election pamphlet electronically).
Funny how there’s a difference when your government actually wants people to vote.
hueyplong
@The Moar You Know: Agreed.
You know what no one will be using against Biden in October?
“You should have said Trump had blood on his hands sooner.”
Kent
Look at today’s NYT maps. Stunning indictment of the south:
nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html
Brachiator
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
There was a point in 2008, where Americans clearly lost faith in the idea that the Republicans could competently handle the economy. And even though John McCain was well known, and Obama a relative unknown, there was a turning point where the majority of Americans concluded that McCain and the GOP were not up to the task; and subsequently they put their faith in Obama and the Democrats.
Trump has in effect declared that dealing with the pandemic is not his responsibility. And Trump gets protection from Fox News and other strands of the right wing media.
His standard play, turning to his big business buddies and to Young Jared and the usual gang of sycophants, is not working.
I can’t say for certain that there will be another turning point, but Trump is doing all he can to give people a reason to abandon him.
Kelly
Open Thread: Ammo Bundy shows us his ass again
oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/04/ammon-bundy-who-led-malheur-occupation-now-organizing-against-ida…
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
There was a chance of that. The window for that chance closed about a week ago. Now it’s all on him.
A Ghost to Most
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
“We won’t need to hide the nuclear football from him”
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Magical thinking on both the fringes of the political spectrum.
MattF
Jen Rubin makes the observation that recessions coincide with Republican adminstrations. It’s a good point. And it’s a point that Democrats should be making.
Betty Cracker
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: I keep tabs on what’s in the Fox bubble by following Rev. Bobby on Twitter (his job is to watch Fox & Friends, poor fellow), and in addition to what you mention about offering phony “perspective” on casualty numbers, they also seem to be desperately downplaying the hospital shortages. Always a tell for issues the Trump campaign knows they’re vulnerable on, the Fox News line…
trollhattan
@James E Powell:
Agree completely. If Sanders truly cares for this country and all its people he will suspend, endorse Biden, and begin the battle to unseat Trump and flip the senate. Big “if.”
gsp
Remember when we thought 2008 was the most important election ever? That notion almost seems over dramatic with what is being faced here. Just the thought of what is riding on this election makes my stomach turn. Stating the obvious but he along with the Republican Party need to be defeated badly to change this trajectory.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
But, nevertheless, he did. As was pointed out by people on stage with him whose work he claimed. I guess it’s all past now, but it’s a bad look.
I’m sincerely looking for a way to get past my discomfort with this. I’m trying to build a legitimate base of enthusiasm for the guy beyond team spirit. “Other people disagree” doesn’t get me there. No shit they do.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
I read “blood on hands” and immediately pivot to “blood and soil.” That may be too inside-baseball for the average Joe but I have Trump Nazis on the mind constantly. The actual Nazis thrived on chaos and ours would love to do the same.
Speaking of, who’s watching “The Plot Against America”?
Mnemosyne
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
Like it or not, GWB had a human enemy he could point to so people would rally around him. That’s why the right is desperately trying to point the finger at China, even to the extent of claiming it was some kind of deliberate biological warfare — they’re trying to get that instinctive “us against them” reaction to come up again. But a virus isn’t that kind of enemy, so it’s not working like they hoped, and the deeper they sink into denialism, the worse it’s going to get for them and the people they personally know.
Kent
If you are explaining then you are loosing. Fundamental law of politics. I don’t disagree with your points but the media isn’t going to play it that way.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I think it is a fallacy to suggest that you can win by hoping that voters stay home. And it is doubly fallacious with respect to Trump, who always had a core of supporters who previously sat out elections because they felt that the politicians in place did not represent them.
There are people in the Balloon Juice community who insist that the Democrats should win on their numbers alone and that they should never allow the contamination of Trump supporters or Republican voters.
This is unrealistic in key battleground states.
And you always do better when you get people to vote for you. You want a comfortable margin.
Also, to be blunt, if Biden does select a black woman as his running mate, this will bring out some racists and sexists in droves. This makes it more important to bring voters out to positively choose the Democrats, and not hope that some people might stay home.
germy
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell:
god almighty, it’s almost as nutty as when they went after AOC for saying Warren was funny on SNL
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: DeSantis signed another EO that says the stay-at-home order he issued yesterday supersedes stricter stay-at-home regulations enacted by Florida cities and counties. So, I guess that means the moron megachurch preacher who was jailed for endangering public health by holding a large live service in Tampa is free to do so again this Sunday.
I wouldn’t give a shit if they locked themselves inside that hideous compound for the duration. But they’ll leave the infection party and maybe breathe on my child at a supermarket. That thought makes me stabby.
Mnemosyne
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
As I keep saying, Biden was not my first, or my second, or even my third choice, but he was much shrewder about Democratic primary voters than I gave him credit for, and his team was able to keep him afloat until they got him to South Carolina, where they knew he would win thanks to the relationships he had built there. I think that Kamala Harris had hoped to do something similar, but she ran out of money and got knocked out before she could get to SC.
One of the things a campaign can do is show us what kind of manager the candidate is. I think that Biden’s campaign is showing that he’s a very good manager: he’s steady, he’s thoughtful, and he listens to the people around him and takes their advice. To me, those are good qualities for a president to have even if I’m not in love with all of his policies.
I think that this year in particular has shown that Sanders is a terrible manager who hires bad staff that spend more time searching for their names on Twitter than they spend doing their jobs. It’s looking like a lot of his success in 2016 was thanks to Symone Sanders, who Biden was smart enough to hire and listen to this year.
So that’s my pitch: Biden is a smart manager who hires people that are good at their jobs and listens to them. It’s not sexy, but I would argue that it’s what we desperately need after 4 years of Trump’s malevolent incompetence.
James E Powell
@Kent:
They will blame African Americans and immigrants from countries other than Cuba.
mrmoshpotato
@A Ghost to Most: Dying of COVID-19 to own the libs!
I think this years-old Driftglass post sums it up nicely.
Jesus fucking Christ!
germy
@Betty Cracker:
If churches are deemed “essential businesses” then why not tax them like businesses?
Redshift
The other thing I’m looking for is a good source for where a baseline of we would be right now if Trump hadn’t screwed everything up so badly (and continues to do so). Not if the response was perfect, because of course it wouldn’t be in any administration, but with a president who had kept a pandemic response team together, listened to the early intelligence reports, invoked the Defense Production Act, etc. A week ago we were still seeing “well, you can’t blame all of this on Trump” articles, and the Trump team has made their attempt at setting the bar at “if no more than a quarter of a million die, we’ve done great!” I want a solid reference for where we would be with a real administration that cared about the country and not just them and theirs, so I can talk with confidence about exactly how much blood is on Trump’s hands.
(And forgive me if this has already appeared in one of the covid threads and I’ve missed it.)
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: That’s part of the pitch I’m making to disappointed family members and friends, and also that Biden isn’t particularly ideological. He’ll be dead center of wherever the party is — has been since 1972 — so if you want more progressive policies, work your ass off to elect a more progressive Congress. He’ll sign whatever they send him.
taumaturgo
Reverse roles and ask yourself: Did Donald withhold fire when confronted with the choice of running for president with a plain vanilla republican campaign or going full frontal against the opposition? By being cautious and playing by themselves three-dimensional chess anyone can see in recent polling how unenthusiastically this conservative type of don’t rock the boat campaigning approached has been received.
germy
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Well, it’s a two-pronged strategy. You want to win over the people who are winnable, and discourage the people who will never, ever vote for you. Given the results of 2018, I think there are a LOT of suburban voters who are on board this time who were indifferent in 2016. They let themselves be persuaded in 2016 that their vote didn’t matter, and now they’re pissed.
Hard-core Trump supporters will never be won over — no way, no how — so it’s a waste of time to even try. That’s why turnout and appealing to your base so they’ll vote is important, too.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
These are great American stories. I wish them well and hope they stay safe.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, well we had a lot of people who were potentially good managers who listened to smart people, people without Biden’s drawbacks. I don’t honestly think many people gave due consideration to anyone other than Biden and Sanders.
I didn’t vote for Clinton in the 16 primary but I had no problem finding reasons to be enthusiastic about her. I’m just worried and I’m going to need the energy to argue on this man’s behalf.
James E Powell
@Mnemosyne:
Is it really necessary to keep saying it? I thought we all agreed to stop using these negative predicates for statements about the person we really need to win this election.
A Ghost to Most
Amir Khalid
@germy:
I live in a country where Islam is the state religion — and which has suspended Friday prayers for the duration of the pandemic because it has become unsafe to gather in a mosque. Not only does God never forbid commen sense, He expects us to always use it.
germy
Patricia Kayden
Krope, the Formerly Dope
I tried a version of this argument on my sister who stated “Bernie is as far right as she’s willing to go.”
I asked her if she honestly thought that a version of Medicare for all that could make it through Congress, which means 60 votes in the Senate which would include people like Manchin, would be vetoed by Biden.
She insisted the answer is yes. He said he doesn’t support it. Apparently she believes this to be an immutable characteristic of the man. Refused to entertain that hypothetical scenario.
ETA: So obviously the answer is to risk the re-election of a man who does everything he can to resist any public health spending.
germy
@Amir Khalid: Did you see comment #45?
Miss Bianca
@germy: BWAHAHAHA!
Ryan
Has the DNC decided not to penalize states who move their primaries?
The Thin Black Duke
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: Dude, Biden is going to be the Democratic party’s candidate for president. Get with the program.
germy
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I think the idea that you can discourage voters is overblown, and also is a very unreliable strategy.
Also, some of the negative campaign techniques that political strategists love have the unfortunate effect causing lower voter turnout in general. So they end up alienating people they would want to come out and vote.
It is a common and persistent theme among Balloon Juice folks that appealing to your won base and trying to win over Republicans is mutually exclusive. This is just not true, nor is it supported by past political campaigns.
I agree big time that hard core Trump supporters will never be won over. But not every Republican is a hard core supporter.
And the Republicans have carved out many congressional districts to try to give themselves a permanent electoral advantage. But Trump and the GOP are vulnerable.
The Democrats need to press every advantage they have. The idea that “oh, we don’t want Republicans to vote for us” is just bad strategy and unnecessary.
pamelabrown53
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
Biden didn’t claim credit as much as he was an integral part of a competent team.
I guess others heard what I was hearing because of votes!
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@The Thin Black Duke: I am with the program. That doesn’t mean I can’t discuss my concerns with people. Grow up and stop taking your cues for political action from the Bernie bros.
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize: Which is a pretty risky proposition to be banking on, considering that Sanders is both older and, post-heart attack, arguably in worse health than Biden. Unless some Wilmer True Believer tries to carry out some ninja assassin trip (which, God forbid), I’m not sure the Sanders camp has any reason to be investing in this fantasy scenario.
Miss Bianca
@germy: What, they’ve totally abandoned “voter fraud” as their reasoning and are straight-up embracing “voter suppression, FUCK YEAH!”? They can’t even be bothered to pretend anymore?
Oh well, desperate times, and all that.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Yes! Well said.
It is supremely ironic that here Muslims clearly demonstrate that they are more rational than some American Christian fundamentalists, and also that they have a more enlightened comprehension of the demands of their faith.
Mnemosyne
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
His more rational supporters hate when I say this, but it’s true: a certain percentage of Bernie’s most vocal supporters are cultists. They genuinely think that anyone who votes for someone other than Bernie is by definition an evil person who wants to murder poor people.
You will not be able to reason with your sister, because she didn’t pick Bernie based on reason. Let it go and talk to people who are more on the fence.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy:
he keeps telling us he’s the real enemy (or at least, one of them), and why
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kent: I don’t means this as politics, if you want to get a feel for what is going on, compare EU with the US, since the EU is a federation like the US, just more badly run. You see the same thing; it’s out of control some EU states for cultural reasons, some are going good because the government it taking it seriously and then other’s EU countries are in utter denial. Just saying “Oh this will be the future in the US” doesn’t work because we are in 50 different responses right now and since Dumb Ass Donny capitulated to the Virus like a French Conservative to the Nazis in 1940, that’s not going to change.
germy
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: He wants to get those judges in before Biden wins the election.
That turtle is racing against time.
WaterGirl
@Kent: I wonder how well that maps to the DumbFuckistan maps from 2008. (I believe that was the year.)
Guessing it’s a nearly perfect match.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@Mnemosyne: I was about as far from supporting Bernie this go-around as I was Biden (they were my literal last two choices).
My personal problem, and I haven’t seen you doing this (this cycle), is when people lump his rational supporters in with the cultists or react to honest criticisms of other candidates by attacking people’s right to express them. (See the thin black duke above)
ETA: This mirrors the cultist behaviors, doesn’t help team-building, and isn’t excused by one perceiving oneself to be on the right side.
The Thin Black Duke
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: I’m sorry, but when I hear nonsense from you saying you’re not as ‘enthused’ as you’d like to be about Biden, it pisses me off. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, the election in November is the last fucking shot we got to try to salvage what’s left of this country, because if we give the GOP another four years, it’s over. I don’t want to hear anymore of the ‘yeah, but’ bullshit.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I think the best strategy is to lay out rational, humane policies and invite wavering Republicans to join us. Not change our policies to court them, but to make a case for why our policies are the best ones going forward.
I think that Biden has been very smart to adopt an Obama-like tone of yes, things are bad, but I know what to do in order to get us out of this fix. When people are already stressed and scared, very few of them want to hear about tearing down the few structures that are keeping them afloat on the promise of something new being built at some nebulous point in the future.
Mnemosyne
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
I will be more plain: your sister is a cultist. You will not win her over. Try other people rather than bashing your head on that brick wall.
Betty Cracker
@James E Powell:
Can’t speak for Mnemo, but I never entered into such an agreement and never will, particularly when it’s relevant in context, i.e., when discussing how to persuade reluctant voters to support the nominee.
Gratuitously trashing Biden is counterproductive, obviously. But so is tone-policing for insufficient enthusiasm or discouraging anything but praise of campaign tactics and strategies. We’re not cultists, thank dog.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@The Thin Black Duke: So tell me what’s worse, trying to have an honest conversation about your concerns and looking for ways to alleviate them in a forum with few, if any, swayable voters or actively pushing people who show any slight reservation away.
I’m voting for Biden regardless, but pull that shit with someone more on the fence and you will actively lose a voter every time.
johnnybuck
@taumaturgo: None of his opponents was the fucking President in the middle of a fucking pandemic.
Martin
California has launched a website intended to be an integrated safety-net/employment service site.
One of my bigger criticisms of government is that the traditional siloing of services routinely fails to connect to the function the taxpayer is trying to achieve. The feds are notoriously bad at this, states tend to achieve it in a scattershot manner.
Part of the problem too is that political parties that oppose these services can achieve their usual goals by burying them from view of the public.
Chyron HR
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
The funny thing about Bernie’s worshipers openly boasting that they will never vote for a Democrat (and proving that they weren’t bluffing in 2016) is that it completely alleviates us of the need to try and win their votes. Oops!
beef
@Redshift:
Go to gabgoh.github.io/COVID/, change the population to total US (~350e6), and slide the intervention day from 100 down to 30 or so. That’ll change the calculation in a two stage SEIR model.
You can’t take the numbers from this model too literally. There are lots of uncertainties that have a big effect on the final answer. A small change in R0, which we don’t know all that well, can result in 100s of 1000s of excess deaths. R0 isn’t constant across states. Et cetera. But you should be able to see qualitative differences between early intervention and late intervention.
johnnybuck
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: Well, if the last three years can’t give you the ammo you need I’m pretty nothing will.
Martin
@germy: Adam Serwer is really letting it fly. His latest Atlantic piece was similarly unsparing in its lack of bothsiderism.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@Mnemosyne: Well, I have near constant access to my sister and the gentle force applied by a river will eventually smooth the roughest stone.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@johnnybuck: It’s far preferable to have someone to vote for rather than someone to vote against.
Believe me, I can muster plenty of enthisiasm arguing against Trump.
Miss Bianca
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner): And yet, I saw an article the other day – I think it was from Business Insider, so *definitely* take it with a grain of salt – that indicated that even the WH press corps is starting to not show up for Trump’s briefings. We may get to the point where even the media start to realize that covering Trump’s BS and not calling lies “lies” is actually helping to get people they know and care about, killed.
Maybe they’re like Republicans that way – they don’t perceive the seriousness and consequences of their own complicity in normalizing right-wing pathology until one of their own oxen gets gored. ‘Tis true, ’tis pity, and pity ’tis ’tis true – if it takes the deaths of colleagues and loved ones to wake them the fuck up, I am sure the virus will oblige in spades. : (
terry chay
@Brachiator: He doesn’t need to peel them off. They just have to lose their will to vote.
They are.
gwangung
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: Well, just be sure who’s the river and who’s the stone…
The Thin Black Duke
Not for nothing, but it’s not ‘bullshit’ for me to recognize that most of time it’s people like you and yours that are voters who are not reliable, and that you can’t be counted on. In spite of the overwhelming evidence over the last fifty years on how destructive Republican administrations are, the people like you will either vote third-party (Nader, Stein), spew nonsense about how ‘both parties are the same’ or not vote at all. After seeing this circle jerk play out again and again, I refuse to hold out the tin cup begging for support that isn’t coming.
Nicole
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
What Bernie Sanders has taught me in the past 5 years is that 30% of Democrats are as susceptible to snake-oil salesmen as 99% of Republicans are.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know:
Biden his time, in other words?
I’ll see myself out.
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
I was going to go there, but I am happy to bow to you.
johnnybuck
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: No shit, then perhaps you could see how I might have been this way if Bernie somehow finagled the nomination. Frankly, I’ve only voted FOR three candidates in 8 presidential elections that I fully supported, which means most of the time I was voting against someone.
The Thin Black Duke
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thank you. He said it better than I did.
Mnemosyne
@The Thin Black Duke:
A whole lot of Bernie supporters on Twitter have been finding out the hard way that the denizens of Black Twitter keep receipts, sometimes going back to 2015. It’s been pretty fun to watch. ?
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Your governor is insane. I’ve watched the Tea Party cranks and the Church People help turn Virginia from purple to blue. DeSantis is going to accomplish in a couple of months what took those idiots a decade. The political fallout will pale in comparison of the human costs to Floridians, but it will be real.
LongHairedWeirdo
Oh, man. This spat couldn’t happen to two nicer fellows. Well, it could – but it wouldn’t.
Poor Trump is upset that someone is *MISREPRESENTING FACTS*, which is *so* unfair!
(The Trump campaign is scolding the Sessions campaign to stop acting like the President supports Jeff Sessions.)
You know, it’s interesting – I don’t know if there’s ever been a President more in need of special truth handling. For example, Trump is claiming it’s a lie to use his words “this is their new hoax” because he didn’t mean to say the *virus* was a hoax, just the Democratic *reaction* to it… which has proven to be extremely well founded. So “this is their new hoax” is a horrible thing for him to have said, whichever he meant. Ah, but because people *might* mean he said the *virus* is a hoax, he insists it’s false, fake news, and a lie, to use his own words.
Hey, Mr. Trump, wait until you learn that they can *call* you Don, but you ain’t their don, and they can cast you aside like waste, once you’re a liability – and you, yourself, demonstrated how to be utterly shameless in casting aside a tool once it’s no longer useful.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
So, you know precisely zero about my actual voting behavior and are reacting based on a set of prejudices. Got it.
Let’s just hope you and others operating on this principle don’t push away enough people to give Trump another narrow EC win, shall we?
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
I never mentioned anything about changing our policies. However, I think that you absolutely can and should court these voters. One way to do it is to understand their concerns, and to show where the Republicans have failed them.
The Democrats did this well when they talked about the GOP failure to deliver on bringing anything better than Obamacare, by lying about protecting pre existing conditions, and by running away from health care discussions. But then the Democrats let the discussion be derailed by pointless diversion into the Medicare For All debate.
Even if I agreed that Republicans are worthless racist scum who should be shunned, the plain fact is that they are not going anywhere. They are citizens and voters. I would rather try to win them over where we can.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: @Brachiator:
I abstained, but someone had to do it!
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
@Miss Bianca: It’s my hope that they stop playing stenographer, but it’s pretty clear they just can’t quit the addiction.
They have endless hours of airtime to fill, so turning their channels over to Trump is both an automatic source of programming and an automatic source of discussion for the rest of the day. They air hours of Trump, then spend the rest of the hours talking about what Trump just said.
Even when he’s just spewing outright lies, it’s still “important news” to them because it’s the president talking in a time of crisis. Just look at what CNN’s Jeff Zucker said about it. They’d rather make futile efforts at fact-checking later–after Trump’s misstatements have already become factual headlines–than risk not covering him in the first place. No one wants to take themselves out of the picture while their competitors carry on as usual.
Miss Bianca
@WaterGirl:
@Brachiator:
I knew I couldn’t be the only one. See, this is why I love this joint! : )
catclub
@MoCA Ace: of course, the units are wrong, or if correct make the amoun negligible.
It should be ten million BBL/day. Just ten million barrels is probably what they promised Trump, and he thought they meant ….
Also, given SA’s max production is about 12.5M BBL/day,
cutting that almost in half? wow.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: For the record, I’ve voted a straight D ticket every election since 06, leaving 02 and 04 as the only elections I was eligible to vote where I didn’t. (Those were straight D minus 1)
Brachiator
OT, it is bizarre how the right wing UK Daily Mail continues to bash health experts even as Corona Virus cases and deaths multiply. This nonsense is worse than Fox News here.
Just sad.
catclub
@Redshift: How about somewhere between South Korea – incredibly effective response, and Sweden – pretty well below the Italy curve.
Actually, Germany seems to be the western country that is farthest below Italy.
WhatsMyNym
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: You are correct, people on this blog don’t know you. Folks are just reacting to how/what you write.
You have to write for your audience.
Brachiator
OT, I am listening to a California pandemic briefing. Maybe Los Angeles county.
I am greatly appreciate how the spokesperson is talking about steps being taken to protect the homeless.
Also appreciate the emphasis on social distance and hand washing over masks.
PJ
@Krope, the Formerly Dope: All I can say is that if any citizen of the USA isn’t enthusiastic about voting Trump out of office, they were never reachable in the first place.
You can also tell your Jill Stein voting friends that Biden will do far more to achieve a progressive agenda than Sanders ever would.
Cameron
So stay-at-home goes into effect tonight in FL as a whole, and the Manatee County Commission is considering a 10-5 curfew. Good thing I’m not planning on going anywhere.
Martin
@MoCA Ace: Not just that, but the whole point of tanking the price was to make Bakken unprofitable and shut them down. The virus did that anyway. What they didn’t anticipate is that it made almost every other field unprofitable.
There’s parts of the US market that are priced negative. It’s bad for the US oil industry, but it’s catastrophic to the Russian and Saudi government because that’s all their revenue.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@WhatsMyNym: Well, some in this audience were willing to have a real conversation with me about this. I thank them.
terry chay
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: where do you get these easily fact-checked falsehoods?
Your EU is a “drop in the bucket” is actually more damning on what the disease is going to be like here. The original comparison was between the US and Italy. But if you are doing per capita rates (which is what you imply) data looks a lot worse for the US than it does for Italy because you have to shift the curve back three weeks. When you do you find that most of the US rates are SURPASSING Italy while the response in most areas LAGS Italy at that same point in time.
The Chinese counting system maybe missed as much as 20 percent of confirmed cases. You are confounding it with the number of infections which is not 15x higher but 5x. You can read the difference bwtween CFR (case fatality rate) and IFR (infection fatality rate) to confirm that ESTIMATE, which applies to all countries, even the UK which is also behind on testing like the US but unlike China.
@gwangung: I agree. Anecdotally, my brother, a professor in economics at an Ivy league has changed his behavior from a very reluctant Hillary voter in 2016 to a non voter in 2020.
This may sounds bad until you realize he used his position as a “reluctant Clinton voter” to influence many people, especially young students to become non-voters or to throw away their vote in protest. I mean he literally told my wife, in front of me, that she should have voted for Jill Stein because “she is a woman.” (That bit of misogyny caused her to write him off.)
Now that he is a stark raving mad person who repeats what he listens to on Trapo Chapo House or whatever the fuck that cesspool he throws his Patreon bucks at thinking its a political donation, nobody listens to his politics. My father, who was a consistent Republican voter until the 1994 when he became “apolitical”, is genuinely afraid for him. His influence has gone to zero many times over his non vote. I literally laughed when he called Cenk Uyger “part of the Dem establishment” before I politely told him that he was the one who demanded we not talk about politics in the phone call as he was talking about politics.
Like a trumper, these people are full of lies, engaging them only drags you down to their level of stupidity because their delusions are infinite. Console yourselves in the way they look to everyone else.
catclub
@Cameron: Kevin Drum shows aNYT map based on cell phones of ‘When did we stop driving more than 2 miles”
Which makes the south look really bad – which it is. But I wonder how much that is southern suburbia? I have only driven to the grocery store in the last two weeks, but that is 3-5 miles, depending.
[I suspect the NYT map is somewhat intelligent about this.]
Martin
@Brachiator: They’ll pivot hard to masks once there are masks to buy. They need to go all in on protecting the homeless. I don’t understand why we aren’t filling hotels with homeless. Anaheim is empty.
PJ
@catclub: As others commenting on that map have pointed out, much of the South consists of “food deserts”, where people have to drive many miles to go grocery shopping.
catclub
@Brachiator: Any news on Boris Johnson’s health? I have not seen updates.
Geminid
While we were still having primaries, I was struck by the phenomenon of a good turnout for Biden in more affluent white areas along coastal South Carolina. Made sense, as in 2018 the Democratic candidate flipped Mark Sanford’s seat covering these same areas. Exit polling in Virginia, another open primary state, showed similar crossover of moderate/conservative Republicans and Independents. While some have suggested these folk were merely hedging their bets, I think they are sick and tired of Trump’s chaos and will vote for Biden this fall. These people- fiscally conservative, socially moderate- used to be called “Volvo Republicans.” I guess now you call them Range Rover Republicans. Some of my work is for these people, and I think of three couples who split 3-3 in 2016, but will probably go 5-1 if not 6-0 for Biden this fall.
Martin
@catclub: I don’t understand how southern suburbia is any different from western ruralism and suburbia. Nobody is driving out west here.
Another Scott
ICYMI, Ways and Means Committee table on new unemployment benefits (1 page .pdf)
(via RepDonBeyer)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The 1918 flu was maybe completely different. People were used to others dying, infants, women in childbirth, basically all forms of cancer, diseases – measles, polio, etc, work accidents, pollution of all kinds……. My grandfather, born in the late 1800s and one of his daughters, born almost 100 yrs ago, each died in their 40s because of things that are regularly fixed with surgery now, one of her children died in his crib, we have pacemakers, cancer treatments, vaccines, medications, surgeries, transplants, pollution controls, water treatment, safety standards. Life is a lot different that it was when many of us were kids, let alone 100+ yrs ago.
Betty Cracker
@catclub: I saw that map too and wondered about that. It’s at least 30 miles round trip for me to get to a grocery store, and that’s true for a lot of people in rural areas. But I think they were tracking data from activities prior to the outbreak and after? If that’s the case, it does say something pretty awful about the reaction.
Martin
Welp, so much for that progress. De Santis has now overruled all local lockdown orders.
Ruckus
@Martin:
I beg to differ.
I live in east San Gabriel Valley and while the level is down, there are still a lot of people driving. I even know of someone who took a drive on Monday to the beach, just to get out of the house.
catclub
@PJ: yes, a more useful values than 2 miles, for those suburban food desert utopias,
, might be fraction of miles relative to normal.
Elizabelle
@Martin: That’s insane. DeSantis is going to get thousands of his constituents and others killed.
We need trials after the virus has passed. This is malfeasance.
catclub
@Martin: yeah. Westerners must be dramatically limiting NUMBER of TRIPS. Since distances out there are large. Southerners, not so much.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
I believe that the map does compare earlier info to later, so the comparison, if so is valid. And notice that a lot of the whiter areas are cities/states/areas that are shut down. That doesn’t mean no movement, just a lot less than normal.
Another Scott
@germy: Genius.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Ruckus: I meant per the map. We’re doing that too – just to get a change of scenery, but it’s still way fewer trips than we would normally do.
I don’t understand why western states, notoriously rural, are showing so much better on the map than the south is. The closest grocery store to my dad in Oregon is 20 minutes, so he goes every 2 weeks and stocks up. By comparison, why are people in the south seemingly going every day to their distant grocery store?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Martin: revealing my own prejudices, but… church isn’t just for Sunday for a lot of people ?
Per Nicole Wallace: The commander of the Theodore Roosevelt being fired
I thought it would take longer, a week or two
Brachiator
@Martin:
California, especially Southern California, is car culture. Ruckus noted people driving. I have, too.
Traffic accident are down here, but people are driving faster, some much faster.
I have heard some uncorroborated reports of street racing on now near empty streets.
Martin
@Mnemosyne: Can we pick Gavin instead? Less emotional during press conferences, but we actually implemented measures sooner than NY did. Suffolk County has more fatalities than LA does. Can’t blame De Blasio for that.
Martin
@Brachiator: We have a ton of street racing happening here now. But a lot of the people I know driving to places like the beach don’t get out of the car – they bring their lunch and have a car picnic and leave. So, they’re still following the rules.
Another Scott
@germy: Yup.
I called into Neal’s show once when he was on a little talk radio station outside Atlanta when I was about 11.
A woman called in saying that she had been stopped by a cop, yelled at, berated in all kinds of ways, and not charged with anything before he let her go.
Neal talked with her a bit, then she hung up. Over the next couple of minutes, he turned it into some sort of mirror-world encounter where the cop was a perfect public servant and she was wrong in every way imaginable. And then the calls started rolling in giving him high-5s for being such a patriotic American supporting our fine police force and on and on.
I nervously called in and said that he was misrepresenting what she said. He didn’t argue with me, but said that he didn’t remember it that way (or something). A couple of calls later, someone called in agreeing with me.
It was quite eyeopening to me at the time. But it’s what they do.
On that same station, there was once a weather report late Sunday afternoon where the temperature was reported as being 157 degrees with 235% humidity. The guy soon admitted that he was just desperate for someone to talk to…
It’s all about the ears, eyeballs, and clicks. They don’t get paid if people stop paying attention to them.
[eta:] Oh, and that’s why it’s important not to repeat their comments like these. As LOLGOP says, “Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.”
Cheers,
Scott.
Martin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No, that’s true. My Catholic great aunt went daily. But these are Protestants. Not being tied to the institution was the whole fucking point. Just zoom your prayer group, FFS.
Elizabelle
Cheryl just put up a fresh open thread.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: What letter was leaked?
Miss Bianca
@catclub:
@Martin:
Well, I, for example, out here in frontier CO, used to drive every week to Canon City to the big grocery stores (Safeway/City Market) to stock up on groceries, and to Salida, the next nearest big town in the opposite direction, also for groceries (Natural Foods is there now), for library books (best library in the region), socializing, and the occasional foray to the pot shop. Those trips are over, for the nonce. If I could get my brand of dog food through Chewy.com (they are out, out, out), I wouldn’t be looking at another trip out of county for at least a month.
As it is, I am still making trips into town every day to the office (closed to the public, only person here), hit the local grocery stores and butcher shop (trying to keep that to once per week now), and to take care of my horse, out at my boss’s place. So, yeah…I’m still driving, but a *lot* less.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: Yeah. I am way curious about that too.
Peeps: I copied Jim’s comment into Cheryl’s new open thread. Thought people might be more likely to discuss it there.
Kent
The south is no different from the west in terms of post-war sprawl. And besides, going to the grocery store is a once a week expedition. The map is actually showing DATES of travel decline. The south is just 2 weeks behind the rest of the country in terms of lock-down and that is what this shows.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl:
Cameron
@catclub: I don’t have a car, but suspect you’re right about suburban driving. My universe has pretty much contracted to the Publix and the Target in the mall across the street from my development.
Duane
@Martin: Their prejudices against homeless people are hard to overcome. Imagine that’s particularly true of the hotel owners.
Krope, the Formerly Dope
@Cameron: My experience with suburban living is that I have most of what I need a short drive away, but generally too far to walk on a consistent basis.
Except work, work is always a hike. This holds true across mny, many employers.
ETA: By hike I mean long drive.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thank you! I haven’t read the letter yet, but sight unseen i am grateful that someone appears willing to tell truth to power.
Off to read the letter.
frosty
@Mike in Pasadena: The line in the Guardian’s map is the 100th meridian, the demarcation between a climate that is humid enough to support agriculture and one that requires irrigation. I strongly suspect population is much lower on the west side and that’s what you’re seeing.
artem1s
@trollhattan:
you forgot ‘shanking the party in the back by looking the other way while his goons try to saddle the presumptive nominee with false rape allegations’.
artem1s
@germy:
Pelosi is Biden’s wartime consigliere. He doesn’t need to do the hit himself.
Ksmiami
@The Thin Black Duke: Because they are small and stupid
Martin
@Duane: The hotel owners can fuck right off. Gavin already has the authority to seize hotels and commercial spaces. But the state doesn’t need to even go that far – tell them they are required to house them and the state will pay them a flat rate per person/room.
Fair Economist
@Mike in Pasadena:
That was very obvious in Iran, and I am unsurprised it’s the case here.
Suzy
@Mnemosyne: One example among others: Joe Biden was given the responsibility by Barack Obama to manage the 2009 stimulus. The amount of money was unprecedented, and Joe Biden and his team managed it perfectly. Almost no waste. And no scandal. Joe Biden was on the phone almost daily with governors, mayors, etc. To control things and give advice.
Mr. Biden is honest, pragmatic, optimistic, and a good listener. He is good at building relationships. Moreover, while he is confident in his abilities, he is also able to see the talents and qualities in others. (He has complimented many of his fellow democrats for their smarts, their political talents etc.)
Those are all qualities that make a good manager.
And a good President.
UttBugly
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I could use some Back to Normalcy right now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker: If you want to see what a President Biden would be like, look at Jerry Brown’s 3rd and 4th terms as Governor here in CA. He won’t sign everything, but you’ll get most of the good stuff. What you will get everyday is good competent leadership from the top.
J R in WV
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
Krope, don’t be a once and future Dope, please!!! “Cause that’s where you appear to be leaning. Don’t earn a place in the pie safe, ’cause you won’t be coming back out until next year!
J R in WV
@Krope, the Formerly Dope:
In this sentence you separate yourself from rational Democratic supporters and prove you are probably still and may always be a dope.
Bernie currently has NO RATIONAL SUPPORTERS whatsoever~!!~ He has lost this primary, and by a much larger margin than he lost the last primary. It is over, and he is not rational if he keeps on fighting the Democratic nominee. Nor is anyone else fighting the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Thread is probably deader than dead. Just wanted to note that this was a great sense of fairness in an 11 year old.
J R in WV
@catclub:
When I have driven 5 miles, I haven’t reached the first gas station, and am still 20 miles from the nearest grocery store. I have been going to town every 2 weeks. Now I expect to go 4 weeks before going back to town to shop.