The juxtaposition of Biden as a 10,000 year-old relic and hologram as a symbol of the high-tech future is hilarious to me. https://t.co/ulO6AKBMwn
— Starfish Who Had Fun For An Hour (@IRHotTakes) May 11, 2020
Hip campaign professional Lis Smith, of course. Per Kotaku:
Former Pete Buttigieg campaign advisor Lis Smith cited “Travis Scott’s takeover of Fortnite” as a strategy for Democrats to consider when it comes time for the party’s National Convention in August. Because if you’re not already excited about Joe “30330” Biden, maybe parachuting around his giant digital head will do the trick.
“Stefan Smith, who had done digital work for Pete Buttigieg, cited the other day how Travis Scott’s take over of Fortnite and how that was a really creative way to think about it,” Smith told Politico’s Jake Sherman in a video interview, after being asked how she might run the 2020 Democratic convention if she were in charge…
Smith was making reference to rapper Travis Scott’s concert inside Fortnite last month, which drew an audience of over 12 million people. Larger than some of the game’s past events, the performance was full of special effects and choreography, including a giant singing avatar of Scott who was occasionally underwater and sometimes on literal fire, reshaping Fortnite’s world like some sort of in-game deity…
Because Fortnite avatars are so much more “fun” than, y’know, mere politics:
I have a better idea: give people coronavirus economic relief and don’t hold their hard-earned benefits hostage. https://t.co/b8cT22xGfd
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 11, 2020
“I think it’s probably the biggest challenge in modern history, quite frankly. I think it may not dwarf but eclipse what FDR faced” https://t.co/3tRcKjoM7X
— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) May 11, 2020
NYMag‘s Gabriel Debenedetti wastes too many pixels truffle-hunting in the Tara Reade muck, but this is worth reading. At least if you assume what voters might want is a working politician with actual plans, not another carnival barker:
… Because of the pandemic, none of Biden’s top advisers have seen him in person since mid-March, when a handful visited to prep for his final debate against Sanders. Nowadays, only two staffers — his traveling chief of staff and his wife’s chief of staff — ever occasionally drop by his house and only if they are properly masked and gloved. The same goes for his Secret Service detail. Biden hasn’t been tested for the virus, and he spends his time in isolation on a just about never-ending procession of phone calls charting this course forward. He rings both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to hear their updates on recovery legislation and to gently share his priorities when he finds it appropriate. He calls Democratic leaders in some of the hardest-hit spots, checking in with governors, including New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, and Washington’s Inslee, and mayors like Los Angeles’s Eric Garcetti. At times he talks policy with Warren.
And after a year of uncomfortable distance, Biden has been phoning Obama for guidance — on unifying Democrats, on choosing a running mate, and on campaigning and communicating amid the pandemic. The pair now speaks with such frequency that some people close to the former president are starting to get amused.
Still, the bulk of Biden’s phone time is spent with senior staffers and advisers, starting with two morning briefings — one on public health, one on the economy — coordinated by his former national-security adviser Jake Sullivan and his policy director, Stef Feldman.
In his economic briefings — which have featured former White House advisers like Jared Bernstein and Benjamin Harris as well as Heather Boushey of the liberal Washington Center for Equitable Growth — Biden has likened the necessity to spend massively and immediately, without the usual D.C. focus on deficits, to a wartime effort. Recently, on a private call with Colorado-based donors, a disenchanted Republican told Jill Biden, Joe’s wife and a prominent campaign presence, that he trusted her husband but feared he’d tacked too far left and wasn’t sufficiently concerned about “the pain” of the national deficit and debt. Jill, an English professor, replied, “I agree, there’s going to be so much pain that Joe has to address — it’s going to be the physical pain, the emotional pain, the social pain, the economic pain that this country is going to go through.” She ignored the part about the deficit…
Publicly, Biden has made no secret of his displeasure with Trump’s handling of the disaster, from his personal conduct — Biden has said the delay in distributing relief checks in order to print Trump’s name on them “bothered me the most” — to the administration’s failure to ensure small businesses access to relief funds while state unemployment systems were overwhelmed. (Biden “was incredibly pissed off — furious” about it when his advisers described the problem to him, one told me.) On his calls, he has been most focused on fighting the disease and righting the economy. In his conversations with public-health experts like Kessler and former surgeon general Vivek Murthy, Biden usually hears up to half an hour of straight-ahead updates on disease projections, equipment distribution, and treatment research before he gets to his policy questions. In one of their talks, Kessler and Biden spent an hour on the phone discussing topics including “the intricacies of adenovirus vectors as vaccines, the detailed science. How do you make the virus? How’s it being tested, where it’s being tested,” Kessler said last month. “He wants me to engage in the scientific details because it helps him — he can take what we’re saying, and it helps him formulate a policy.” In another recent call, Biden’s briefers ran through the virus’s “R value” in each state and effective contact-tracing procedures.
Two months in, Biden’s daily questions are often oriented around understanding the landscape he would face next year. “We don’t know how things are going to be in January 2021, but in all likelihood there is still going to be enormous suffering in this country,” said Sullivan, who speaks with Biden regularly. “A lot of people will be knocked down and will have a hard time getting back up.” When discussing his policy options with his advisers, Biden often mentions his experience with the Ebola and H1N1 outbreaks as well as his work overseeing the “cancer moonshot” in his final year as VP. But it’s the memory of 2009 that looms largest for him. “His receptivity to a lot of this stems from direct experience with the last recession,” said former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chief Richard Cordray, whom Biden has consulted about economic proposals. Cordray, a close ally of Warren’s, and others agreed that Biden’s particular fixation, after seeing that significantly more stimulus money is passed, has been to ensure that it is properly administered.
And he’s been bracing to face a stubborn Congress that may feel it has already done enough. Biden has long touted his ability to work with Republicans, frequently to the exasperation of younger Democrats who see the last decade-plus as a tale of nonstop GOP obstruction. He’s still talking with allies about how to win Republicans over on emergency economic and public-health legislation. “He does have to be closely attentive to: How can we put together a bipartisan coalition to work toward recovery?” said Delaware senator Chris Coons, a close Biden ally. But based on his experience in 2009, Coons said, “he is concerned about the willingness of Republicans to work in a bipartisan way to power the public out of this.”
Recently, friends have noticed that Biden is talking less about this and more about policies that Mitch McConnell’s Senate GOP would be unlikely to go for no matter what — like new environmental investments and oversight. The crisis, Biden believes, has expanded “the state of what is possible, now that the American people have seen both the role of government and the role of frontline workers,” said Sullivan. “He believes he has a more compelling case to make that this is the agenda that needs to get passed.”…
And yet he’s grappling with the sudden disappearance of an environment in which he thrived. He occasionally sighs to friends about the lost ritual of campaigning: the hugs-on-the-rope-line retail politicking for which he’s best known and in which the most empathetic version of him is best understood as a human who has known great pain, a time when he can look voters in the eye and grieve with those wishing to share their burden with the man who lost his wife and 1-year-old daughter in a car crash at 29 and then his son to brain cancer in 2015. When he first went into lockdown, he asked aides to find ways to keep him interacting with the kinds of voters who’d show up to his events, so they set up a “virtual rope line” and — after he nearly gave out his cell number on CNN while discussing what it feels like to lose a loved one without being able to visit them — regular private conversations for him with everyday people affected by the virus, especially frontline workers and grieving family members. More than once since then, he has interrupted aides on calls when they’ve griped about the limitations of their confined environment, reminding them of medical workers’ stresses and dangers and of the Americans suddenly without a paycheck…
Another blow to the RoseBro deadenders, too:
sorry dead enders hoping recent developments would cause Bernie to un-suspend and jump back in https://t.co/kLJwAXacQL
— The Public Option is good actually (@gdigitalzsmooth) May 11, 2020
Splitting Image
Isn’t this dangerous? People might think he is over-prepared.
Immanentize
Man, the posts come fast and furious today and are clearly not practicing safe social distancing!
raven
Some one has a dog barking at the Senate hearing!
Immanentize
@raven: sweet pup knows when to protest!
SiubhanDuinne
@raven: I know, isn’t that cute? Poor pupper just wants to go out (or maybe get some skritches).
Mary G
I just have to laugh at all the pundits who say Joe has to get out of the basement and see people. He’s modeling responsible behavior while Twitler is flouncing out of press conferences because nasty girls are mean to him and tweeting conspiracy theories. Voters are sick of it.
Gin & Tonic
Just heard Putin’s spokesperson tested positive. Russia is now the #3 country in the world in number of reported cases.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Interesting. A lot of gossip and tea-leaf reading about Obama being cool on Biden’s run– I took BO’s comments about old white men getting out of the way to be pretty much a Warren endorsement– but I hadn’t heard that things got “uncomfortable” between them
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: Inorite? Making it hard to get actual work done.
Baud
I’ll say this. Over the last year, Biden has had to deal with a lot of things thrown his way, and he’s handled it with No Drama Obama style equanimity.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Just a note, I’m following a live blog at Bloomberg about the Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s financial records.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I read that to mean Biden couldn’t rely on Obama because he had to win on his own. But maybe you’re reading is correct.
Gin & Tonic
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Reports on Twitter are that Trump didn’t send the first string.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Seems like bored people creating problems from thin air. Is there anybody in the entire country with a greater understanding of what’s at stake in November, than Obama? Doubtful. Even if–and I do not believe it–there were a rift between them, Obama would still work his tail off to get Biden elected. As it is, I believe he will be more than happy to go all in for Joe and go at Trump 100%.
And I don’t believe there will be any “Obama fatigue” to render him ineffective on the campaign trail. Although “trail” in 2020 will be a big problem for everybody.
SiubhanDuinne
Rand Paul just can’t help being an offensive asshole, can he?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: That boy ain’t right
Is this from the Fauci/Covid hearing? how are you following them? I shouldn’t even ask cause I’ve got to get away from the ‘tubes before the day gets away from me
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: CNN carrying the hearings.
Susan Collins is questioning now. I feel churlish even saying this, because I believe she has a physical challenge
(essentialtremor)(spasmodic dysphonia) that is obviously not her fault, but I just can’t stand hearing her voice.Dorothy A. Winsor
@Gin & Tonic: The R appointed justices seem to be taking the president’s arguments seriously. Specifically, they seem to believe that the House’s subpoena is written so that there are no limits on what they could ask for.
The hearing has now moved on to the NY state case.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Neither can I but that’s more because of the character of the person than the sound coming out of her mouth.
JustRuss
And right on cue, the deficit scolds crawl out of the woodwork. Glad Jill’s not putting up with their nonsense, I hope Joe’s on the same page.
Mary G
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
ETA: FFS!
Mary G
Looks like not all Georgia voters are dying to get their roots done:
Gin & Tonic
@Mary G:
Well maybe because they’re not requests of him, they are requests of his accountants. So no burden on him at all.
Why do I feel smarter than a SCOTUS justice? Hey, Imm, is it too late for me to take the bar exam?
Fleeting Ex-istence
This is what an able leader does. Biden is treating the virus responsibly for all of us.
Oral arguments in Trump v Mazar. It was sad, dear lord, as a friend of mine says. Ian Milhouser tweets that it was a trainwreck, which is what I heard. Douglas Letter, counsel for the House committees, is not focusing on the case elements and allowing hypothetical, political question, presidential harassment yada yada to muck up his time. The atmosphere was like that mylar chaff that is ejected from aircraft to foil radar trackers. Oops, pun.
different-church-lady
@Mary G: How many people is Trump getting out to see personally? Funny how they never ask that question. Know why? Because they’re regurgitating the “Where’s Joe?” ratfucking but trying to disguise it as their own thinking.
Mary G
Baud
Even if Vance gets Trump’s returns, it won’t be made public unless he brings charges, which he won’t do whole Trump is in office.
schrodingers_cat
I get by with a little help from my friends.
Baby elephant Twitter content dueling with kitteh Twitter content for cuteness and win.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: MSM and BS bros are team B and team C for the Republicans.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Sometimes I think it’s the elephants who should have won the evolutionary lottery instead of us.
Baud
@Mary G:
WHAT KIND OF TRUMP JUDGE ARE YOU???!!!
rp
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I interpreted this as Obama and Biden keeping their distance so that Obama could remain neutral during the primary and not show favoritism. And now that Biden has won Obama can jump back in. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@schrodingers_cat:
Baby elephants are the best
Mary G
I know it’s a telephone hearing, but I like to pretend that RBG is giving Kav the side-eye and thinking “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, asshole.”
Felanius Kootea
@Gin & Tonic: Number 2 per the John’s Hopkins tracker, with >232,000 cases. They’ve passed the UK and Spain. I don’t believe their official number of deaths (2116). Someone in Russia is suppressing those numbers.
Back to Joe Biden – I have to say that I’m really loving his ads. He wasn’t my first, second or third choice but he’s growing on me.
NotMax
@Baud
Ever read Footfall?
;)
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I think Obama stayed out of the primary because he knew it would leak and then Bernie would play the rigged card, again, to depress turnout in the fall.
noncarborundum
@NotMax:
My very first thought.
pamelabrown53
@rp: re: Obama and Biden
Totally agree with your assessment.
Baud
@NotMax:
I for one welcome our new Fithp overlords.
kindness
I’m not seeing the BernieBro contingent much lately. I don’t follow them so that is probably why. Still, it it doesn’t come through with the current is it even there? Hope not. I sure hope ‘those people’ will shut their pie holes and be happy to have a Democrat as President instead of burning it all to the ground and allow Trump to win again.
randy khan
@Gin & Tonic:
As of last night, #2 on the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 page, albeit about 1/6 the number of cases we have in the U.S. (although I assume Russia is massively under-reporting). Russia’s population is about 45% of the U.S. population, so if the numbers were remotely accurate they’d have a much lower infection rate than the U.S. And Russia has reported only 2,100 deaths (which is implausible, to say the least, but even if it’s off by a factor of 10, it’s not remotely as bad as the U.S.).
Baud
@kindness:
They’ve been quiet, regrouping after the Tara Reid gambit didn’t go anywhere. They’ll be back.
randy khan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
FWIW, I read that as saying that the distancing was uncomfortable (and presumably because Obama didn’t want to show favoritism), not that they were uncomfortable with each other for any reason.
gwangung
Personally, with Biden, there’s a strong possibility of “Only Nixon can go to China” actions occurring. That combination of seeming moderate-ness allows some sort of path to get very progressive things done.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: Like I joked yesterday: “It’s not to late for the republicans to nominate Bernie.”
different-church-lady
@Baud: They’ll be back. They’ll be back with the same allegations.
Mary G
Joe Falco
@kindness:
Right now, they’re just moaning that if Trump wins, it’ll be because Biden was a bad candidate and not because they sat on their hands or voted 3rd party. All so they can say, “I told you so!”
It’s annoying to read, but I stay plugged into it so I can stay up to date on Bernie’s brown-rosers.
Citizen Alan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My personal belief is that if Sanders hadn’t run again, Biden wouldn’t have run, and we’d have a very different race right now. Not that I’m complaining. Biden has been performing vastly better than his prior runs, and anyway, I’ll vote for a potted cactus over either Wilmer or Shitgibbon.
Fair Economist
@Felanius Kootea: Russia is just leaving exponential growth, according to their figures, so 1% death is plausible. It should go up substantially over the next 3 weeks. I don’t particularly believe their numbers, but they aren’t absurd.
Mary G
Scuffletuffle
It troubles me that in all the public discussions of financial help for ordinary citizens due to Covid, no one ever mentions that it is the citizens’ money that is paying and will be paying for these benefits ,via federal tax payments, whether now or in the future. The vast majority of large corporations seem to be able to skate on paying federal taxes, yet they reap the benefits of generous federal largess.
Surely there should be no hesitation in allowing us to spend our way through the crisis, since we are the ones who will ultimately foot the bill.
Scuffletuffle
@Mary G:
@Mary G: “Offer not valid for Democratic Presidents.”
laura
@Mary G: trump needs absolute immunity because he is askeered the world will find out just exactly how much of a broke ass joke he actually really truly is. He’s carrying a debt load as deep as the Mariannas trench. He cannot manage that debt. He’s begging for relief at his properties – and willing to stiff all of the local governments of their property taxes and assessments because cash flow has dried up. Trump is broke. He’s got nought but two challenge coins to rub together. And so all the presidents men all pulling contradictory legal theories out their collective asses because the actual irreparable harm is the whole world pointing and laughing at the broke ass joke that is Donald j Trump destroyer of wealth. Just a guy without folding money in his pocket.
Brachiator
This could actually be a good thing, if it reduces even the innocent touchy-feely hands on stuff that Biden is noted for.
Also, Biden has to adapt this shit for the modern age (and he has been effective in some of his ads). If you want to be cynical about it, you could say that Biden has established a “brand” as solid, sincere, empathetic. He doesn’t have to appear in public all the time to use this effectively.
One potential problem area. The NPR podcast “Make Me Smart” recently mentioned an article where a WaPo reporter talked about the difference between the Trump and Biden downloadable apps.
Trump app: Designed to keep Trump supporters energized, inspired and sometimes angry. After 5 hours, a user got emailed, texted to, engaged inside the app, solicited for money
Biden app: More genteel. After 7 hours, a user got a thank you from Biden
The question was whether the Biden camp had a digital strategist who understands political engagement in the digital age. And with the lockdown, surely there has got to be a lot of savvy media people with some free time on their hands who could be enlisted to liven this stuff up.
The Democrats have billions of ways to demolish Trump. They have unleashed some of them, but they should use every advantage they have, and more.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Citizen Alan: I think Biden’s running because his galant son couldn’t, but I think (hobby-horse alert) Biden won the primary because he was the only top-line candidate who didn’t wildly misread the electorate, for the primary, much less the general. That and his Obama association gave him the spark he needed to be something besides Generic White Guy candidate (Michael Bennet seems a very decent sort, but I think he would’ve struggled charisma-wise in the 90s)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@laura:
I’m willing to believe he’s broke, but I don’t see how to reconcile that with my suspicion he’s looting the government. Maybe he’s bad at looting?
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
Biden ran because none of the 100 or so other Democrats running seemed to have much appeal to the voters.
And Sanders was always going to run again, and always be a potential spoiler.
sdhays
@Baud: That’s a really good point.
Yutsano
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He has to be shovelling the money to pay creditors as he gets it. And even then the grift goes through the company and it does take some time to get it out once it’s deposited. It’s also how he has financed his elaborate lifestyle: everything is charged to the corporation as a “business expense” that is written off at tax time by the company. It’s an old tax scam that is only enhanced by choking the IRS off funding.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: This.
burnspbesq
OT: with all the usual caveats about reading too much into oral argument, I thought the House’s lawyer did an excellent job arguing the Mazars case in the Supreme Court this morning. It’s far from a foregone conclusion, but I can see the Court ordering enforcement of the subpoenas.
MisterForkbeard
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Obama just didn’t want to be in heavy contact with anyone running in the primary.
He’s willing to talk to all of them, but he had to stop his friendship with Joe during that time.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
That’s my reading, too. Obama worked hard to appear impartial, so he had to maintain aloof from all the candidates, even ones like Biden he had a strong personal relationship with. Now that Biden is the presumptive nominee, Obama can go back to helping him without looking like he’s trying to hand him the primary victory.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Brachiator:
Dave Weigel. I’m too old and cranky to get a sense of how this plays with the voters an app would be chasing. I getting to hate unsolicited texts as much as cold calls. I was watching a Biden ad that was getting “this is good” commentary on twitter, and even as a trump-hater and Biden fan I found it too long at almost three minutes. I assume these are made to be reposted and viewed on youtube, which must work, I get impatient waiting for the five second skip button to come up on youtube ads.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq: I thought Breyer opened the window to deferment to the lower court. I could be absolutely wrong but it looked like they were needing some excuse to punt.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Yutsano: That seems plausible. And the pandemic and resulting economic collapse have interfered.
@burnspbesq: I hope you’re right. The way Trump feels entitled to ignore the law is offensive on so many levels.
Kathleen
@different-church-lady: Biden Scandal Mad Libs.
burnspbesq
@Fleeting Ex-istence:
Milheiser didn’t listen to the same argument I did.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq:
Glad to hear that, he was getting beat up by some people on twitter, and it’s hard for a non-lawyer to get a handle on how valid such criticisms are.
In brighter news: the phrase “mopped the floor” was getting used a lot to describe Sotomayor’s time. And ‘screaming meltdown’ to describe Sekulow’s response to a softball from Alito.
In darker news: a lot of hints that Roberts and Gorsuch (the ones I suspect the most concerned about the appearance of partisanship) are looking for ways to rule for trump.
Mary G
@burnspbesq: I hope I’m wrong, but this seems the likeliest scenario to me:
I think Republicans have written Twitler off, but don’t want the exact scope of his criminality exposed until after the election, when they’ll pay him back for being a terrible president and further damaging their brand by saying “Lock Him Up” more in sorrow than in anger
ETA: This all makes me furious.
burnspbesq
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Gorsuch gave the DOJ lawyer a pretty hard time. Whether it will matter in the end is anybody’s guess.
Kagan eviscerated Trump’s lawyer and handed him his small intestine. Was fun to hear.
scav
Twitter is basically like the drunk at the end of the bar. Sometimes amusing when merely tipsy, generally a trainwreck and, on the whole, more usually a mean belligerent drunk when really in their cups. Not the one you’d go to for measured accounting, legal or romantic advice.
Roger Moore
@Felanius Kootea:
I am skeptical of all the official death counts. We know there are states here in the USA that are trying to minimize the numbers, so it’s hard to imagine that countries that are much more used to manipulating public information would refrain from doing so.
different-church-lady
@scav: But that’s where the press goes to find out what they should cover.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Public Service Announcement: NEVER give any organization or company you cell number for ANY optional reason what… so… EVER.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”
;)
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
As a person with essential tremor, I wonder what that would have to do with speaking? And a level of control is not unusual medically. That can be difficult for some but usually not impossible. For all it’s effects, I’ve not heard/read anything about it effecting speech.
Betty Cracker
Heartening to hear that Biden is frequently discussing policy with Warren. I was hoping the joint op-ed wasn’t a one-off. Say what you will about Warren’s political instincts, but the woman understands the financial levers that move the economy and politics. She knows how we got in this mess, and she understands how to get us out. I hope she continues to be a strong influence on policy in whatever role she plays after next January, even if she remains in the Senate.
Mary G
Somebody else trusts Fauci more than Twitler:
Roger Moore
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
He isn’t just broke; he’s deep in debt to people who aren’t going to let him wriggle out of his debts through bankruptcy. He has to loot as much as he can just to keep his creditors at bay.
germy
Rand Paul is truly deplorable.
Kay
My friend Pat is having a get together Monday night. She’s a nurse:
“Line: I will man the table in the kitchen. Each person will come thru the screened porch one at a time to maintain distance. I will be available with gloved hands to assist. Once you have your food, you will exit thru the laundry room and the garages to the deck and back to your place”
I printed it off and will put in my purse and review on arrival. She’s terrifying. Do NOT screw it up :)
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
IANAL, but I expect the Court to stall as much as possible in delivering a ruling. If they can avoid making one until after the election, the whole issue will likely be largely moot. If he loses, the Republican justices can let the subpoenas be enforced as a precedent to constrain the incoming Democratic administration. If he wins (shudder) they can rule in Trump’s favor, knowing they don’t have to make any logical sense in their ruling because it’s all about exercise of power rather than rule of law.
NotMax
@germy
Enough to make one wish Ayn’s last name had been Lipschitz.
;)
jeffreyw
@NotMax:
I remember me telling my momma, who had just mentioned reading something that seemed to be too fantastic, that I was reading a story about alien elephants invading earth, and winning.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
RE: One potential problem area. The NPR podcast “Make Me Smart” recently mentioned an article where a WaPo reporter talked about the difference between the Trump and Biden downloadable apps.
I’m too old and cranky as well, but even I have to wonder what is the point in asking people to download your app if there is not going to be any engagement? Then the app is about as useless as an “I Like Joe” button.
And if the Trump app gets results in the form of donations, what is or should be the Biden equivalent?
I have never been a person who says that the Democrats need to do exactly what the GOP does. And I have no use for the empty headed tribalism, demonizing, and “shut up and support the party even if we do evil,” that is the modern GOP.
But I would presume that the point of the app is to focus voter support, raise money, and get out the vote.
So, it’s a question of what is the best way to get it done.
ETA: Thanks for providing the Weigel link. I sometimes hit the WaPo paywall and can’t get a link to stick.
Kristine
@Brachiator:
I don’t have the Biden app, but I did sign up for texts and receive several every day. Surveys, engagement, and donation requests.
different-church-lady
@Mary G: I’m telling ya, one of these days Pence is going to attack Trump’s throat with the smashed-off neck of a beer bottle…
different-church-lady
@Kay: Why not just have a Zoom pot luck?
Brachiator
@NotMax:
It was originally Rosenbaum.
Mary G
@different-church-lady: The tell-all books are going to be off the charts.
SiubhanDuinne
@different-church-lady:
Not sure the FSM loves me that much.
SiubhanDuinne
@Brachiator:
She got “Rand” off a Remington-Rand typewriter she was using shortly after she arrived in America.
germy
@SiubhanDuinne: Ayn Remington would have made her sound like the author of cowboy novels.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
RE: I don’t believe their official number of deaths (2116). Someone in Russia is suppressing those numbers.
One of the biggest offenders has been the UK, which was reporting deaths in hospital, but not including all home or nursing home deaths.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
that boy ain’t right
???????
Brachiator
@Kristine:
RE: Biden app: More genteel. After 7 hours, a user got a thank you from Biden.
Thanks for this info. It is good to know. I posted the info about the NPR piece because the host of this program are usually pretty good and thoughtful. But it is helpful to know that there is more to the story.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
We’ve all been checking in w/her because she’s recently widowed and lives out in the country. I think she just wants to give us something.
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
adorable?????
Brachiator
@germy:
And that TV detective show with Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist would have been “Rand Steele.”
rikyrah
@Kay:
you gotta tell us how it turns out?
JaneE
I think Biden is doing a good thing by bringing Warren in on policy. Whether or not she is the VP, her ideas on how to do what needs to be done are a good place to start building a legislative program that Biden can present to Congress on day 1.
We need to hit the ground running, and with strong teams in place to tackle the mess that Trump has left. And we need multiple teams for every cabinet position, because the Trumpers have destroyed decades of work.
I never thought I would have to hope that our next president was recognizably a human being.
germy
the most horrifying deepfake:
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
Atlas Stampeded
Repatriated
@Brachiator:
This actually makes some sense. One of the most frequent complaints I’ve seen is about incessant fundraising email appeals. Downloading the app is a contact and demonstration of commitment at some level. If it gets intrusive or obnoxious, people will uninstall it.
Keeping it low-key builds trust, which will be much more important as November approaches.
Republicans appear to be using a different model of voter behavior, focusing on short-term base activation. It may end in burnout (peaking too early) but it may be all they have.
Belafon
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1260267215921844225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Amir Khalid
@JaneE:
I have a hunch, which I’ve mentioned before, that this is the win that Warren really wanted all along: having her policies on the White House agenda. She almost certainly wishes she were the nominee — who wouldn’t, in her shoes? — but having this influence on Biden goes a long way toward achieving her aim of protecting ordinary Americans financially.
Betty Cracker
I read that Weigel piece on the campaign apps last week. Fascinating. I’ve been getting an annoying amount of email spam from the Biden campaign ever since I made a small donation a while back, but I do like to keep an eye on the messaging game. It’s engagement of a different kind — take this survey, look at these polls, etc. Sounds like Trump’s messaging is all RAWR LIBTURDS ARE ATTACKING TRUMP.
It’s not just the apps and emails: the candidates’ orientation toward the voters are polar opposites too. Trump: THEY’RE UNFAIR TO MEEEE. Biden’s messaging is focused on the audience — here’s what we’ll do to help you. Seems like the former is preaching to the converted and the latter is appealing to existing and new voters, which seems smarter.
Uncle Cosmo
@SiubhanDuinne: Just FTR, let us note that for purposes of characterizing Collins the most important part of “spasmodic dysphonia” is the part pronounced phony.
HumboldtBlue
If we want an equitable future, we have to engage in civic life today. Last week, @MichelleObamaand @BarackObamasurprised some high school students during a @CPSCivicLifevirtual town hall and discussed the importance of staying engaged in our democracy during this crisis.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Shoulda been a Smith Corona. :-)
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
As an aside, I have tried to follow the work of many of the people that Warren has had as economic and financial policy advisors, and others whose works she has referenced or praised. A lot of good and thoughtful work.
And I have to say, by contrast, with Sanders, there was never much more than “this is how I think they do it in Europe.”
Anyway, and yes, it is great to see Biden turning to Warren and others for input. It almost seems quaint compared to the crap that Trump pulls.
Baud
@Belafon:
?
Barbara
I got a campaign related email I wasn’t expecting yesterday — a plea from Martha McSally. I scratch my head on that one, but it was basically an own the libs kind of message.
trollhattan
@germy:
ZOMG, that’s perfect!
germy
@trollhattan:
It’s every press conference.
Mary G
Old Dan and Little Ann
The “Obamagate scandal” has really sent the nuts in a frenzy. Sharing a a country with these people is depressing. Oi!
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
?
Uncle Cosmo
I don’t either. Russki koronyeri probably running low on ink for their stamp pads from stamping pnyeumoniya in “cause of death” blanks. (Srsly, if you want a lower bound on the real toll, subtract historical average deaths for the period from the current tallies.)
Here’s an unsettling thought – what happens if Vlad the Paler comes down with a bad case of COVID & the mafiyosi segué into a succession war-of-all-against-all (first prize ‘lebenty-seven nukes) while he’s fighting for breath? Say what you will about the bare-chested barstid, he’s not about to lob one into the powder room of the Capitol just because someone dissed him in a WaPo op-ed…
trollhattan
This new Biden ad kills. (Apologies if I’m repeating the link.)
More.
More.
More.
Brachiator
@Repatriated:
RE: Biden app: More genteel. After 7 hours, a user got a thank you from Biden.
I agree that fundraising appeals can be annoying. But you know what is worse than uninstalling an app? Not using it at all because there is no engagement.
From the Weigel piece:
And the bottom line is that you need results. Voter loyalty, money, votes. And again, the Trump app appears to be yielding results.
If Biden is going to use stuff like this, he should use it effectively.
Hell, I would love it if the app included a link to Balloon Juice. That would be too cool.
And I agree that it is possible that Biden supporters are not interested in the empty noise and BS that the Trump app seems to depend on.
And I can accept that a number of Biden supporters are all “don’t bother me. I shall come out on election day and reliably vote for Biden.” Hell, I am much like this.
But I wonder if there is a way to energize the people who may need or appreciate more engagement.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan:
Oh, man. Terrifying but all true.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@trollhattan:
I particularly love the way that ad suggests Trump is soft on China. LOL
West of the Rockies
So, one poll shows Biden up by 10%!!! over Trump in voters 65+, a cohort Trump won in ’16. Doesn’t that in and of itself predict a crushing defeat for Fat Donny in November.
Also, is Florida flat-out lying about their Covid numbers?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They’ve shown going by unexpected deaths the real numbers in Russia, Mexico and Brazil are three times what those countries are reporting. Trump is hardly the only authoritarian twatwaffle who thinks he can wish the Virus away, but Trump’s problem is the political reality of the US won’t allow it.
different-church-lady
@West of the Rockies: It predicts a crushing defeat for him in May. Unfortunately that’s a far as it goes.
jl
@Brachiator: Thanks for info. Biden campaign needs to find a way to make up the gap. But Trumpsters have been fanatically building up their internet machine for years. Let’s see how they do going forward.
And I think Obama, Sanders and Warren showed how much can be done by doorknock face to face campaign work. Won’t be a whole lot of physical doornock face to face this election, but I hope they are thinking about a way go get that done by other means.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
I especially enjoy the tacit admission that addiction is the only thing that counts in an app. It’s how Facebook fucked up our society.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mary G: So this entire argument is “Trump, and only Trump, needs an exception from the rule of law”
Uncle Cosmo
@jeffreyw: No doubt Niven & Pournelle’s Footfall. I reread that about a month ago. Pachyderms From Space with a lot more funk to their trunks.
Redshift
On the WaPo home page this morning, I saw some excerpts from their tweets covering the Supreme Court. The questions about “legitimate legislative purpose” were perhaps the most annoying, because the Trumpies basically made that up, it’s nowhere in the law, and now they’re whining that “legitimate legislative purpose” is too open-ended and could let them demand anything!
The other bit was the description of Kavanaugh’s question, which translated to “I already know how I’m going to vote, please give me some kind of excuse for it.” That would have been more annoying if I didn’t know he’s a blatantly partisan tool.
Brachiator
@jl:
Obama was also a social media wizard.
And you have said it yourself: Won’t be a whole lot of physical doornock face to face this election.
You need an effective alternative.
piratedan
@Barbara: she’s busy dry-humping 45’s leg as if she was an unfixed basset hound, hopeful that it will lead her to a craterous impact against Kelly this November.
patrick II
@randy khan: they got off to a later start, so depending on their countermeasures, the worse could be yet to come.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
I do not like this ad, even though it includes a lot of stuff I like and have praised elsewhere.
The ad is old fashioned. Old School. It is trying to build to a punch line. And even here, the punch line is buried at the 2:22 mark, almost near the end.
And it mentions Trump too often. It should have been more clear. Not just Trump, Trump, Trump, but failure, failure, failure.
In the age of the Internet, you have to put your main message up front. That way, if people only give it 5 or 10 seconds, you still have told people what you need to say.
The message should be: Trump failed. Vote for Biden Because He will Do Better.
Then you can add all the detail and do the punch line ending.
It is also odd that the ad tries to build to the punch with the relatively weak, “Donald Trump doesn’t understand,” instead of “Donald Trump fucked up.”
Captain C
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Perhaps most or all of the looting proceeds go to debt service?
artem1s
these inept rubes just do not understand the country club rules do they? Thou shalt not shout at your superiors. Roberts will not be happy about the WH sending these fixers in to his court to try to strong arm him. However he is still the worst chief justice since Taney
schrodingers_cat
@kindness: Who do you think is behind the Tara Reade allegations?
MisterForkbeard
@germy:
“here’s the other question and this is unprovable. I think New York would have lost the same amount of people whether we did anything or not”
This is pretty provable. Put X people in circulation, get Y exposure. Government lowers X through stay at home orders, Y goes down. Unless people exercise their ‘personal freedom to kill grandparents” and disobey the government, that’s a pretty clear update.
Or to use other evidence: Countries with strict lockdowns and testing regimes have less deaths and less virus growth than countries like us that fucked around constantly.
rikyrah
@West of the Rockies:
Yes,
Florida is lying
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
Trump doesn’t have a first string willing to work for him to send anywhere for anything. Much less the Supreme Court~!!~
The Lodger
@kindness: “SNOUTS. GET SNOUTS.”
burnspbesq
@artem1s:
which is why i think that Milheiser’s critique of Letter’s performance is not well taken. One of the hard and fast rules of appellate advocacy is that you HAVE TO engage with questions from the bench, no matter how inept or inane they might be. You can’t blow them off, and your ability to respond to the question you wish had been asked instead of the one that was asked is pretty limited. The difference between good appellate advocacy and great appellate advocacy is that the great ones (Ted Olson is an example) can find a way to embed the points they want to make in the points that the Justice has asked them to address.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
I personally think it’s the GRU using her like their hand puppet. No evidence past the timing of her remarks, withdrawing comments, making new comments, during business hours in Moscow and St Petersburg.