Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

The National Guard is not Batman.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

So many bastards, so little time.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Second rate reporter says what?

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

“Alexa, change the president.”

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

You are here: Home / Elections / Biden For President / Vote for the Democrat Open Thread: Joe Biden Is the President We Need, Right Now

Vote for the Democrat Open Thread: Joe Biden Is the President We Need, Right Now

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Anyone shocked by what the Media Village Idiots are convincing themselves is ‘a new & unexpected direction for Joe Biden’ is frankly too dumb to feed themselves with a fork. But, as my old man used to say, that’s why hamburgers (& cocktail weenies) were invented!

… “Yes, I’ve endorsed Vice President Biden and yes, we’re working to help organize progressives,” said Representative Barbara Lee of California, a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “But we have to make sure that an agenda that speaks to the aspirations of all Americans is an agenda that he embraces.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Biden’s words and his policies have drifted left.

He announced a new plan last week focusing on systemic racism, and indicated in a Snapchat interview that he supported a federal rent bailout. In discussing big businesses and stimulus money, he recently snarled in a Politico interview, “This is the second time we’ve bailed their asses out.”

And this month, he was co-author of an op-ed article with Ms. Warren in McClatchy newspapers, acknowledging that “for many Americans, our economy wasn’t working even before the devastation of the Covid-19 crisis.”

“The blinders have been taken off,” Mr. Biden said at a recent fund-raiser. “Because of this Covid crisis, I think people are realizing: ‘My Lord. Look at what is possible.’”

Such a messaging shift presents both opportunities and challenges for Mr. Biden, who spent much of the primary keenly focused on how a presidential candidate’s promises would play in moderate states and in down-ballot races in the general election.

His recent words have been met with skepticism from progressive critics, who argue that his long legislative record in Washington suggests that the current changes are cosmetic. At the same time, at another fund-raiser, a donor told Mr. Biden’s wife that the candidate was already moving too far to the left — an illustration of the competing forces Mr. Biden must navigate.

Mr. Biden’s advisers have indicated to donors and other supporters this spring that the campaign is focused on uniting the Democratic Party before turning to broader general election outreach…

“But mah PRIORS!”

Reader Interactions

220Comments

  1. 1.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Biden, throughout his long political career, has been right where the majority of Democrats are on most issues.  He has evolved as the mainstream of the Party has evolved.  It really should be no surprise to find him where he is now.

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Biden isn’t an ideologue with a “vision.” He’s a manager of people.  That’s his strength.

  3. 3.

    Constance Reader

    There are still 6 months until the election, y’all.  Remember what the polls said this time in 2016.  To quote a cinematic genius, “Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks yet, gentlemen.”

  6. 6.

    Scamp Dog

    As a Warren supporter, I thought I’d be kind of glum and resigned about having Biden as the candidate, but now I see him hitting the right notes and moving leftward, and I’m actually gaining some enthusiasm. Go Joe!

  7. 7.

    different-church-lady

    In recent weeks, Mr. Biden’s words and his policies have drifted left.

    They didn’t move there… he didn’t push them there… they just kind of… floated in that direction all on their own.

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    Biden isn’t an ideologue with a “vision.” He’s a manager of people. That’s his strength.

    It is noteworthy that this is Trump’s greatest weakness.

    All this journalistic nonsense over Biden shifting, or needing to shift to the left, just seems like a lot of irrelevant distraction. But I guess this confirms the charge that the media needs to “frame a narrative” and stick to it, rather than do actual reporting.

  9. 9.

    Emma from FL

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes, but you see, the political-science-major lefties (righties do it too but we’re not talking about them at the moment) only see the theoretical lines laid out for them in late night bullshit talks with their cool profs. Human beings making decisions based on conditions on the ground? Does not compute.

    P.S. Not talking about most media. Assume idiocy or malice and move on

  11. 11.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I saw this tweet earlier and chuckled, wondering exactly whom Serwer is subtweeting

    Adam Serwer @ AdamSerwer
    Polls are an imperfect tool for measuring public sentiment, but a far worse gauge of public sentiment is what pundits see on their personally curated twitter feeds and project onto the public at large based on what they, personally, find compelling.

    It could apply to a whole lot of primary coverage, and more than one campaign.

  12. 12.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Constance Reader:

    “Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks yet, gentlemen.”

    Wut?

    @Baud: most people I know– and read and follow, etc– have Electoral College-inspired trauma

  13. 13.

    Jerzy Russian

    One of my new pastimes now is binge watching very old TV series that are available on CBS All Access (I subscribed in order to watch Picard).  I just finished the Twilight Zone.   Part of the ritual is using the google machine to look the names of the actors, many of whom look familiar.  For example, in one episode, I thought “hey, that dude was possessed by Jack the Ripper in Star Trek”.  So I googled the actor’s name (John Fiedler) and discover that he was the voice of Piglet in the original Disney film.    I had no idea.  Along those lines, the voice of Pooh (Sterling Holloway) also guest starred in an episode of the Twilight Zone.    Also too, many actors from the original Star Trek made appearances in the Twilight Zone.  For example, William Shatner was a guest star for a few episodes, as was George Takei.  Some others include the cat woman from that weird planet and the leader of the planet that fought their wars by computer.

    Next up:  Hawaii 5-0.  The earliest episodes are more than 50 years old now.  The characters often use pay phones and read newspapers.

  14. 14.

    laura

    I’ll keep saying it – Riding with Biden No Malarkey Jitney Back to the Future 2020!

    Brother the elder keeps pissing and moaning about his age and lack of pizzazz. I keep telling him to shut it and suck it up and fall in line.with team broken glass. The alternative is unacceptable in every regard. I am hoping that Senator Kamala Harris is selected as his running mate. Let her bring the pizzazz.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good. Too many people didn’t appreciate the risks in 2016. But there’s a whole realm of reality that exists between “we’re definitely going to win; let’s oppose Biden from the left to move the Overton window” and “I should start packing for the death camps?”

    How can we expect to convince people that we can manage big structural reforms if we can assess and manage election risk like adults?

  16. 16.

    Jeffro

    In theory, a party’s presidential nominee is a figurehead for a coalition of interests.

    Biden fits that role EXTREMELY well for 2020 Dems.  In addition to many other fine qualities.

    Go Uncle Joe!

  18. 18.

    WereBear

    @Jerzy Russian: Mr WereBear and I play the same game to great enjoyment.

    Mr WereBear, an artist, has an amazing ability to pick out a bit player from the 1930’s (we love old movies) and know who they are, even if that fame came decades later.

  19. 19.

    Jeffro

    @laura: Harris or Warren would be great!

    I’m kind of hoping it’s Warren, and then we get a Warren/Harris ticket in 2024.  But cart, horse, all that.  Let’s just get Biden elected and flip the Senate.

  20. 20.

    Jeffro

    Btw K-Thug, beating Repubs about the head with the truth stick today:

     

    I’d like to suggest, however, that there may be yet another reason for the dangerous push to reopen the economy. Namely, Republicans in general and Trump in particular suffer from a deep sense of inadequacy.  When officials find themselves confronting an unexpected crisis, they’re supposed to roll up their sleeves and deal with it — bring in the experts, devise and implement an effective response. That’s how the Obama administration responded to Ebola back in 2014.  But the G.O.P. doesn’t like experts, and it doesn’t have policy ideas beyond tax cuts and deregulation. So it doesn’t know how to respond to crises that don’t fit its usual agenda. Trump, in particular, can do policy theater — sending Jared Kushner out to make noises about dealing with problems — but has no idea how to do it for real.

    And I think that at some level he knows that.  Given this sense of inadequacy, it was probably foreordained that Trump and his allies, after a brief period of seeming to take Covid-19 seriously, would pivot back to insisting that everything is fine. And they may, for a while, even convince some voters. But the coronavirus, which doesn’t care about political spin, will have the last word.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    @Jerzy Russian:   You can get the first five seasons of Perry Mason on Amazon Prime.

    Fun to google the actors and see how many appeared in 1950s B and C level sci fi and monster movies.  And, sometimes, a star of the future pops up in a supporting role.

    Mostly, the smoking, the smoking, the smoking and how women were so dependent on men at the time.

    But:  as much as Perry Mason did not feature actors of color in its first seasons**, it did have stories featuring WW2 survivors and refugees.  Rather a few.  Old world Europe makes its way to the City of Angels for a new start.

    ** A very few Asians maybe 3 seasons in, and 2 black men showed up as baggage handlers in an airport scene.

  22. 22.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker: I saw the one with Robert Redford not too long ago.  I can’t remember if it was the Twilight Zone or the Hitchcock show that had a very young (but still looking almost exactly like he did fifty-odd years later) Don Rickles

  23. 23.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Constance Reader: There are still 6 months until the election, y’all.

    Hello new visitor! It’s always a pleasure to welcome another hard worker for Democratic victory in November. Tell us what you’re working on in your neck of the woods!

  24. 24.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Betty Cracker:

    I was often surprised when seeing a now famous name in the credits, for example Burt Reynolds.  I would not have guessed it was him, but upon rewinding and looking again, it was him.

  25. 25.

    rk

    I don’t like Biden and I don’t like the idea of voting for him. Yes I’m bitter and furious. Hillary was hated. Kamla Harris and Elizabeth Warren went nowhere. Now I’ve got to vote for a 77 year old guy who I dislike. All this shows me is that come what may, this country, republican or democrat will always go for the man over a competent woman. I never considered myself a feminist, but I see that all over the world it’s women who’re showing competent leadership in tackling the virus, nurses who’re at the forefront. My field in healthcare is majority women. Yet I have to look at idiot old men and listen to their crap with Trump as supreme village idiot. For the first time in my life I’m so angry that I don’t want to vote.

  27. 27.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    The R ad knocking Biden for being old is shockingly out of tune with their electorate, especially in must-win Florida. Read the room! No wait. Don’t. You just go on doing you.

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    @Baud:

    And it’s just what we need right now. Not to mention his vast and deep knowledge of world affairs.

  29. 29.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Elizabelle:   CBS has all of the Perry Mason episodes.

     

    The Twilight Zone was extremely white.  I can think of only two episodes that had large roles for Black actors.  On both cases, it was Ivan Dixon from Hogan’s Heroes.

     

    And the smoking!  Rod Serling died from cancer on his 50s, as I recall.

  31. 31.

    zhena gogolia

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Oh, you sound like me with the British mysteries. “Oh, this guy who’s being accused of the murder on Father Brown played the father of the gay man accused of murder on Grantchester” (I turned out to be wrong about that one, but I’m usually right). It’s a fun game.

  33. 33.

    Hoodie

    Slightly OT, but what was the reaction to Stacey Abrams’ appearance with Joe last night?   You almost get the sense that Joe may use part of the quarantine time as an opportunity to audition running mates, what with this and the op-ed with Warren.  It may turn out to be a real plus that he isn’t having to be out on the road and doing rallies, because that’s not his strong suit and is a monumental waste of time and energy on what is mostly just entertainment and air filler for cable news.

    I thought Abrams did pretty well, gotta admire her for having the gumption to openly go after the job.   Joe flashed a couple of smiles when she’d say something smart, kind of like a teacher appreciating a promising student.   I don’t think he’ll pick her, but it was a nice bit of visibility for her.

  34. 34.

    Elizabelle

    @Jeffro:   Love the title of K-Thug’s column.

    Covid-19 Reality Has a Liberal Bias

    Unfortunately, the virus doesn’t care about political spin.
    And more from his column, safely locked behind the NYTimes paywall:

    … Indeed, virus trutherism — insisting that Covid-19 deaths are greatly exaggerated and may reflect a vast medical conspiracy — is already widespread on the right. We can expect to see much more of it in the months ahead.

    At one level, this turn of events shouldn’t surprise us. The U.S. right long ago rejected evidence-based policy in favor of policy-based evidence — denying facts that might get in the way of a predetermined agenda. Fourteen years have passed since Stephen Colbert famously quipped that “reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

    At another level, however, the right’s determination to ignore the epidemiologists is politically reckless in a way previous denials of reality weren’t.

    As many people have pointed out, the emerging right-wing strategy for dealing with this pandemic — or, more accurately, not dealing with it — closely follows the Republican Party’s longstanding approach to climate change: It’s not happening, it’s a hoax perpetrated by liberal scientists, and besides, doing anything about it would destroy the economy.

    Indeed, the antilockdown demonstrations of recent weeks appear to have been organized in part by the same people and groups that have spent decades denying climate change.

    Virus trutherism is also reminiscent of the various kinds of trutherism that ran rampant during the Obama years. Inflation truthers insisted that the government was hiding the truth about rampant inflation; unemployment truthers, including a guy named Donald Trump, insisted that the steadily improving job numbers were fake.

    But making false claims about the Obama-era economy didn’t come with any political price. Neither, sadly, has climate-change denial: The consequences of that denial unfold too slowly for voters to focus on the immense damage it will do over time.

    Virus denial, by contrast, could backfire badly on Republicans in a matter of months.

    In fact, in some ways that has already happened. [Discusses surge in approval ratings for world leaders and for US governors — even Republicans Mike DeWine, Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker — who are taking the outbreak seriously.  Whereas, the feckless and reckless Brian Kemp of Georgia …. not polling so well.]

    Now imagine the blowback — especially, by the way, among senior citizens — if an attempt to restart the economy leads to a new wave of infections.

    So why are Trump and company going down this route?
    One answer is that thousands of Americans may be about to die for the Dow. We know that Trump is obsessed with the stock market, and his long refusal to take Covid-19 seriously reportedly had a lot to do with his belief that doing otherwise would hurt stock prices. He may now believe that pretending that the crisis is over will boost stocks, and that that’s all that matters.

    Another answer is that Republicans may actually believe that the gun-waving, red-hatted anti-social-distancing demonstrators represent the “real America.” And there are indeed Americans who fly into a rage when asked to bear any inconvenience on behalf of the public good. Polls suggest that they’re a small minority, but the G.O.P. may consider such polls fake news.

  36. 36.

    Elizabelle

    In moderation for more of the Krugman column excerpts.  I think cuz it’s got a lot of links to previous reporting.

  37. 37.

    Aziz, light!

    Republican long-range plan:

    1. Fuck up pandemic response, trash economy, lose election.
    2. In first two years in office, Biden fails to bring economy roaring all the way back and/or usher in progressive paradise.
    3. Dem voters (especially lefties) punish Biden by not showing up for mid-term; Rethugs reclaim Congress and set stage for slick-talking non-moron candidates to run in 2024.
    4. Profit!
  39. 39.

    zhena gogolia

    @rk:

    So that we can have that noted feminist D. J. Trump for another four disastrous years. Good decision-making.

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    @rk:

    For the first time in my life I’m so angry that I don’t want to vote.

    Feeling like that is one thing, but actually not voting because of that anger?  That would make a person a short-sighted fool.

    Anyone who doesn’t vote for Biden this time around owns Trump and every single thing that he and his crooked and evil administration does.

    edit: But if you’re the fellow with a 2-letter nym who has been hating on Biden from the very first comment, then this is the last time I’ll respond to you.

  42. 42.

    terraformer

    People management – good people managed by someone who is good at it, is what we need.

    Biden can do that if he surrounds himself with good people (those who know WTF they’re doing), and then he manages them well. Delegating authority to get shit done. (I can dream): Warren as either VP or in some other cabinet position, with the power to do what needs doing; Harris as AG, let her go after these fucks, all of ’em; Bernie maybe at HHS – clean that house, help “regular” people.

    Biden at the top steers the ship, others make the motors run. Competence applied to regulating capitalism that has run amok. This can’t continue as it is. The R’s know that, so in their wildly effective and endlessly cynical, decades-long approach, their last resort is to stack the courts, which they’ve done and continue to do.

  43. 43.

    WereBear

    @Jerzy Russian:

    The Twilight Zone was extremely white.  I can think of only two episodes that had large roles for Black actors.  On both cases, it was Ivan Dixon from Hogan’s Heroes.

     
    Like Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek, he tried.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Also too, many actors from the original Star Trek made appearances in the Twilight Zone. For example, William Shatner was a guest star for a few episodes, as was George Takei. Some others include the cat woman from that weird planet and the leader of the planet that fought their wars by computer.

    I still have a vivid memory of most Zone episodes, but I can’t recall the one that featured Takei. I’m going to have to take a look.

    Although Shatner is often most associated with the frantic airline passenger who sees a demon tearing at the wing of the plane, I also remember him as the guy on his honeymoon who can’t leave the booth with a penny fortune telling machine that seems to predict the future.

    Next up: Hawaii 5-0. The earliest episodes are more than 50 years old now. The characters often use pay phones and read newspapers.

    Damn. It’s been 50 years. I remember when I thought the show was one of the more nimble detective series. I didn’t particularly have anything against it, but I only watched a few episodes of the new series, and was surprised that it apparently lasted 9 seasons.

    I seem to recall one or more episodes where Hume Cronyn played an elderly master criminal who (almost? definitely?) outfoxed McGarrett.

  45. 45.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @rk: I get the frustration.  However, think about the fact you will be voting to at least get the first female vice president elected.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl: well, putting trump back in office with all checks and balances neutralized as the (please god) ‘Rona vaccine is developed and the subsequent economic boom (let me cling to this) would be a huge boon for Nikki Haley 2024

  48. 48.

    Jeffro

    @Elizabelle: The virus-trutherism wackiness might well have the effect of getting the Trumpublican Party down to its 27% hard core.  I mean, what are they selling other than “GET BACK TO WORK!” and “RISK DEATH FOR MY RE-ELECTION CHANCES!” ?

    Even with vote-by-mail, they’re screwing up.  Who’s most likely to not want to go near a polling place in November?  Old folks!

    But I really did like the part about how the GOP just doesn’t *do* policy…they only have two tools in the toolbox, and the virus won’t respond to either tax cuts or racism.

  49. 49.

    Elizabelle

    @rk: Cannot blame you for your disenchantment.  But:

    Hillary Clinton bested Trump by over 3 million votes.  And I suspect Trump’s campaign and his helpers cheated in the swing states.  The media is way too glib about what a close margin that was.

    Hillary Clinton was demeaned for decades, and the FTF NY Times is guilty of fullblown Clinton Derangement Syndrome.  They assigned a character assassin/narcissist — Amy Chozick — to cover her campaign.  And when the FTF NY Times was opining that people did not see Trump’s “victory” coming — that was on THEM.  He was in their backyard (as Kay reminds), they did not see his danger, and tore down the only other candidate who could take him out because — Hillary.

    And then there were the third party candidates.  Delusional, and dampened voting enthusiasm among low information voters.

    If you want to blame anyone for Biden being the nominee, blame Bernie Fucking Sanders for his 2020 vanity run.  Guy is unelectable, but his being in brought Biden — and Bloomberg!! —  in as counterweights, and sucked all the opportunity out of the room for Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, a lot of fresher and younger politicians who are gifted candidates.

    African American voters are so shellshocked by Trump and his GOP enablers that they wanted to go with a known quantity whom they trusted.

    2020 is about 2 delusional and aged presidential candidates:  Trump and shouty Bernie, who cannot unite a Democratic party he demeans constantly, and refuses to join in non-presidential years.

    Yes, Biden and Elizabeth Warren are not young, but they are both more tethered to reality and coalition-building.

    But we can win this.  And we need your vote. There is time to build some optimism.

  50. 50.

    Jeffro

    @terraformer:This can’t continue as it is. The R’s know that, so in their wildly effective and endlessly cynical, decades-long approach, their last resort is to stack the courts, which they’ve done and continue to do.

     

    Doubling the size of the federal judiciary – to include SCOTUS – has to be one of Biden’s top 5 priorities upon taking office.  Anything to dilute the power of the unfit clowns that trumpov and The Turtle have confirmed.

  51. 51.

    Amir Khalid

    @rk:

    I too would have preferred Harris or Warren, either of whom would have made an outstanding POTUS. It’s a shame neither gained enough traction in the primary. But Biden did, he’s what you have, and he’s looking better and better every day compared to Trump. He’s a far better executive than Trump, a far better leader, a far more empathetic and appealing person. He’s leading Trump in the polling and looking very good for November.

    A woman is not going to be elected this November, true. But a woman will be VP if Biden wins. If Biden has chosen her well, as I trust he will, she is going to be a strong contender for the Democratic presidential nomination after him.

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @terraformer:

    Bernie maybe at HHS – clean that house, help “regular” people.

    the debris of his campaign suggests personnel selection and executive management are not his forte

  57. 57.

    Jerzy Russian

    @Brachiator:

    I thought Shatner was really good looking in that episode with the penny fortune teller.

     

    George Takei was in a Twilight Zone episode in the middle of the final season.  Only two actors appeared in that one.

  58. 58.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Elizabelle: From about Season 3 or 4 there’s what looks like a very light skinned black women sitting at the back of the court in the opening credits, also Hispanics are dotted through the “audience” in many court room scenes from about season 4 onwards.

    Also, in one of the later episodes, the appearance of a black guy who Perry calls as a witness, provides an important plot twist.

    I think the 1st season aired in the late 1950’s and, as I understand it, from reading about the early days of Star Trek, TOS, TV executives didn’t like black actors appearing in any significant roles for fear they wouldn’t be able to sell the show in the South.

    What did surprise me was the woman judge who appeared in a couple of episodes. That was very daring for its time.

  59. 59.

    Elizabelle

    @terraformer:   I could see Bernie at Labor (following Antonin Scalia’s son), if deal includes an extremely competent administrator as second in command.

    Agree with Jim:  Bernie’s got a bunch of lunatics on his payroll, who actively work to undermine the Democratic party.  No, no, no, no.  Bernie has horrible people skills and poor judgement.  He would be unelectable as a US Senator in about 47 states.

    Let him retire.  I don’t even think I’d offer him an ambassadorship …

  60. 60.

    Frankensteinbeck

    As predicted, Democrats are more and more lining up behind Biden.  We know damned well what the stakes are, and they’re a thousand times more important than some of us having particularly liked Warren or Harris.  I admit, while I never thought he was bad, Biden has surprised me with his skill at coalition building.  He’s no Obama, but Biden is reasonable, competent, means well, and his ego does not get in the way of taking the advice of people who know more than him.  Those are damned fine traits in a president, especially the last.  That last is also rare.

    To Bernstein, let me add a third – be trusted by African American voters as much as a white man can be.  African American voters were always going to decide this primary.  The moment they got the chance to tell us who they prefer, it was over.  At that, I said I would trust them, and they are proving that was the right thing to do.

    @Emma from FL:

    Yes, but you see, the political-science-major lefties (righties do it too but we’re not talking about them at the moment) only see the theoretical lines laid out for them in late night bullshit talks with their cool profs.

    I think the media falls in with these goobers, too.  The Narrative is ‘progressive wing’ vs ‘moderate wing’ in the Democratic Party, and it’s really ‘people who think racism is separate from economic inequity and both must be addressed’, and ‘whiny assholes who don’t understand why blacks won’t do what they’re told.’  There is a middle group of ‘really super mad about plutocracy but not babies who will take their ball and go home’, but functionally they fold into the first group.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    most people I know– and read and follow, etc– have Electoral College-inspired trauma

    God, yes.  Damn near everyone even slightly liberal has PTSD from the trauma of election night and living three years under the thumb of an abuser, where pain happens all the time and utter disaster could strike at any moment.  Serious, honest-to-god PTSD.  You can see how it has bent the behaviors of everyone who didn’t already have it.

    @Jeffro:

    But the G.O.P. doesn’t like experts, and it doesn’t have policy ideas beyond tax cuts and deregulation.

    And they hate helping people.  They loathe it.  It’s an entire political philosophy of cruelty.  The only solutions here involve directly helping the weak, and they don’t want to.

    @Elizabelle:

    You can get the first five seasons of Perry Mason on Amazon Prime.

    To take part in the whole TV conversation:  The final season of She Ra comes out today on Netflix, and I am going to BINGE that SO HARD.  Gotta go exercise and clear my brain and eyes, first.

  61. 61.

    Kathleen

    @Elizabelle: An article I read mentioned that Perry Mason was one of the first or maybe the first to have woman as Exec Producer (Gayle Patrick Jackson).  One of my fondest childhood memories is remembering how much my mom and I loved watching  that show together. She loved Raymond Burr’s eyes. Because of that show I wanted to be a lawyer. And Della Street was so cool.

  64. 64.

    Elizabelle

    @Kathleen:   Yes, that’s true.  Gayle Patrick Jackson attended law school for a while herself, before turning to TV.  And Raymond Burr had the best eyes and voice out there.

    I wish Amazon would put the full Perry Mason series on free Prime.  Would love to see how it changed with the times.

  65. 65.

    Soprano2

    It’s amazing to me how reporters talk about covering politicians as if they don’t have any agency in these decisions at all. I was listening to the 1A domestic news roundup this morning, and one of the women reporters on there said something like “The last time we heard anything about Joe Biden was when he was denying the Tara Reade allegations”, as if she had absolutely no obligation to cover or do any stories about the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee unless something about him falls in her lap, or it’s a scandal of some kind. I think Trump has made a lot of them lazy; they expect the stories to fall in their lap every day now from a twitter feed or something outrageous they say. She made it sound like it was Biden’s fault they aren’t covering him as much! Either that, or they’re looking for 2020’s “her e-mails” story and won’t cover him much until they can find it. Either way, it’s inexcusable to me how they act as if they have no agency in these decisions at all.

  66. 66.

    trollhattan

    @Jerzy Russian:

    We had a dorm “5-0” drinking game–on each “Book ’em, Dano” one must chug. We got caught once, pondering the technicalities of, “Book ’em Dano, murder one, three counts.”

  68. 68.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    That sounds like a clearly deliberate attempt to somehow mention “Tara Reid” in a story.  Whether it was to hurt Dems or simply to generate interest by alluding to a “scandal,” it’s pretty unethical.

  69. 69.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    pure gasbag speculation on my part, balloon juice, if you will, but did any other candidate have a chance of putting Florida in play?

    Political Polls @PpollingNumbers· 1h
    #Florida Poll
    Biden 53% (+4 Since March 7)
    Trump 47% (-4)
    Florida Atlantic University

  70. 70.

    Brachiator

    @Jerzy Russian:

    The Twilight Zone was extremely white. I can think of only two episodes that had large roles for Black actors. On both cases, it was Ivan Dixon from Hogan’s Heroes.

    This was television and movies of the era. One of the local digital broadcast stations would show entire series runs of some shows. I was down with the flu for a couple of weeks and watched a few examples. I was struck at how rarely any nonwhite characters were shown, even in shows where you would expect more diversity. For example, no black beatniks on “Dobie Gillis,” and even an episode featuring juvenile delinquents and supposed organized crime figures was distinctly whitebread.

    BTW: one of the Ivan Dixon Twilight Zone episodes, “The Big Tall Wish,” had an all black principal cast.

  71. 71.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Soprano2: yeah, all the “Joe Biden is stuck in his basement”… is presented as a weakness he’s responsible for

  74. 74.

    Mike in NC

    George Takei was in a Twilight Zone episode in the middle of the final season. Only two actors appeared in that one.

    @Jerzy Russian: Saw it a couple of years ago. George Takei plays a young Japanese-American willing to do some odd jobs for a racist WW2 vet played by old time character actor Neville Brand.

  75. 75.

    Kathleen

    @Brachiator: I remember those days well. It was huge huge deal when Bill Cosby co starred with Robert Culp in I Spy and Diahann Carrol started in Julia. Julia premiered in 1968 and I Spy first aired in 1965. In 1967 Petula Clark had Harry Belafonte on her show and during a duet she touched his arm. Talk about a firestorm. None of the Southern affiliates aired the program. Good times

  76. 76.

    Oklahomo

    @Jerzy Russian: Old TV shows can be so fascinating.  I was channel surfing a few months back and dropped into the middle of a Rockford Files episode.  Rotary phones on desks.  Ashtrays everywhere, and people smoking.  The cars look almost sci-fi strange now. People reading newspapers.

  77. 77.

    rk

    @Elizabelle:

    But we can win this.  And we need your vote. There is time to build some optimism.

    It’s very hard for me to build optimism. I work in a hospital and the morgue is on the same floor where I work. Occasionally I see bodies being wheeled in, or hear a code blue being called in a room (I had never actually heard a code blue outside of TV shows before this pandemic started). Then I leave work and hear people bitch about being home, hear the protesters, hear Trump. All I know is that we’re never going to be able to beat the virus in this country. My co-workers and I will have no respite. Nurses and doctors are not allowed to take PTO during this pandemic. It’s starting to get better, but now we’re taking two steps back. All I do is go to work, go to sleep, lie in bed till it’s time to go to work again. I know that when the time comes I’ll go and vote for Biden, but he’s so uninspiring and not the person we need at this time.

  78. 78.

    Emma from FL

    If y’all think the “spot the actor” in old tv shows, try it on radio. I am addicted to classic detective radio shows. Raymond Burr plays the villain often in those. As much as I love his voice in Perry Mason, I was shocked when I first heard him as a villain, or the asshole cop that harasses Our Hero. The man’s voice was a full spectrum instrument.

  79. 79.

    Kelly

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Damn near everyone even slightly liberal has PTSD from the trauma of election night and living three years under the thumb of an abuser,

    Electoral College trauma reaches back to 2000. Two R presidents in a row in office after losing the popular vote still horrifies me.

  80. 80.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rk:

    Biden, but he’s so uninspiring and not the person we need at this time.

    he inspired a solid majority of Democratic voters to support him, and “the person we need at this time” is the person who can beat trump in the Electoral College, which, at the moment, most polls suggest Biden can do. Biden didn’t create racism or sexism in the electorate, and Biden didn’t trick Harris and Warren into going all in on eliminating private insurance, which I suspect even now is unpopular.

    I’m sorry Covid is hitting you hard and close, assuming what you type is true, but you’ve been obsessively spewing your hatred into these threads since Covid was a story about a city in China most Americans have never heard of.

  81. 81.

    Brachiator

    @rk:

    I know that when the time comes I’ll go and vote for Biden, but he’s so uninspiring and not the person we need at this time.

    I read your very thoughtful comment and was very surprised that this was your concluding sentence.

    I think that any of the Democrats who ran for president would be good with respect to the pandemic than Trump, and just a display of confidence and a lack of the need for constant praise that we get from Trump would be inspiring. I am not quite sure what you are looking for.

    But thank you for a very vivid description of your work challenges. I hope things get better, for you, and for us all.

  82. 82.

    James E Powell

    @Kathleen:

    Talking about African Americans in 60s TV shows reminds me of a recent discussion re Little Richard and 50s rock and roll radio. DJs like Alan Freed are now considered heroes of a sort for having the courage to play African American artists on their shows.

    How effed up is a country where it takes courage to play some of the greatest music in human history on the radio?

  83. 83.

    Old School

    On the subject of Perry Mason, HBO has a Perry Mason series starting this summer.  It’s a young Perry Mason series, so he will be a private investigator rather than a defense attorney.

    I’m hoping it is good rather than eyerolling.

  84. 84.

    dopey-o

    The woman Biden chooses for VP  has strong actuarial odds of becoming the first female POTUS  before 2024. It may well be Elizabeth Warren. I would hope that whoever she is, she gives a strong outreach to Black Americans. Black women will be the key to winning an undeniable victory in November. We saw that dynamic play out in April in Wisconsin.

    And an undeniable, indisputable victory in November is the only path out of the current morass. We can drive the MAGATs and morans back into their man-caves before they ruin this country for our children and grandchildren. I hope and pray….

    I may not live to see Biden inaugurated in January. But near the top of my bucket list is seeing imPOTUS with a prison haircut.

  85. 85.

    Elizabelle

    @rk:   Hugs.  I wish we could give you some of our time off.

    I hope you will write more comments about hospital life during a pandemic, and how it is affecting you and your colleagues.

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    @Emma from FL:

    I am addicted to classic detective radio shows. Raymond Burr plays the villain often in those. As much as I love his voice in Perry Mason, I was shocked when I first heard him as a villain, or the asshole cop that harasses Our Hero. The man’s voice was a full spectrum instrument.

    Perry Mason was one of my mother’s favorite TV shows. I never paid much attention to it, but was still a little surprised to see Burr as the possible bad guy in the Hitchcock film “Rear Window.”

    And it was a bit of the shock to see him switch from the cool, unflappable Perry Mason to the irascible Robert Ironside.

  88. 88.

    geg6

    @Emma from FL:

    I find that phenomenon endlessly fascinating.  I was a political science major myself and, back in the Pleistocene era, it wasn’t like that at all.  Yeah, we studied a lot of theory but we also studied a lot of practical politics and analyzed why it worked or didn’t work.  I don’t know what happened to the field.  I don’t understand the lack of realpolitik it seems the whole academic discipline is suffering from.

  89. 89.

    Chyron HR

    @rk:

    It’s impressive that the people responsible for sabotaging Clinton, Harris, and Warren’s campaigns have managed to brainwash you into attacking Biden’s campaign as well.  Good job.

  90. 90.

    cmorenc

    @Constance Reader:

    There are still 6 months until the election, y’all.  Remember what the polls said this time in 2016.  To quote a cinematic genius, “Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks yet, gentlemen.”

    True, it’s too early to start opening the victory bottles of champagne this far ahead of the election.  Nevertheless, right now I’d much rather be us in Camp Biden than them in Camp Trump.

    How ironic that Biden is such a well-known and long-established figure in American politics, instead of one of the relatively fresher faces most of us originally thought would be a better fit to run against Trump – and that unlike with Hillary in 2016, this factor works so strongly in our favor in the circumstances of 2020.  It’s going to be extremely difficult for Trump to change the electoral dynamics from “referendum on Trump” to “referendum on Biden”, whereas without an actual track record in office in 2016, with help from the Russians and a critically timed assist from Comey, Trump was able to nudge 2016 into more of a referendum on Hillary than of himself, despite some known significant negatives about Trump obviously visible to anyone not willfully blinding themselves to them.

    This time around, Trump has generated so much negative inertia among a majority of the electorate, that it’s sinking in within his camp that his base, however energized, will be insufficient to win in 2020 without suppressing and discouraging potential Biden voters from turning out.  And however dubious Trump’s claim to be the cause of a good economy was before CV entered the horizon, he was correct that the economy was his strongest potential appeal to voters outside his core hard-core base, and that his best chances of reversing the current dynamic is if he can quickly restore booming electronic growth and employment by early fall, and promote frustration and resentment over the shutdown, which would presumably drown out enough of the pushback about health risks to prevail in the election.  He doesn’t give a crap about those public health consequences (or secondary economic post-election negative fallout), so long as he thinks he can win with this tactic.

  92. 92.

    rk

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I have no idea who is this that you’re talking about. I come to the comments very occasionally. I’ve been reading this site since shortly before Cole became a democrat. I despise conspiracy theories about China and have no idea about unheard of Chinese cities.

    Also, I don’t hate Biden, I just don’t like him (I reserve all my hatred for Trump and his supporters). We had two talented smart women, Harris and Warren. It’s very bitter for me to think that they both went no where. As far as eliminating private insurance being unpopular. All I can say is, good luck to everyone when the bills start coming in for prolonged hospital stays or when the unemployed pay for COBRA. I get scared thinking of people in ICU and CCU with COVID. Many of our patients have been there since the beginning of April. I can’t begin to imagine what those bills will be.

  94. 94.

    Subsole

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    This. There is a scene in the tv series Years and Years where Trump gets reelected. Gave me fucking flashbacks. 

    ’16 was a capital-t Trauma for a lot of folks. And we haven’t been able to process it. No one has acknowledged it. Every single media outlet either downplayed it or flat ignored it.

    If this ends, the decompression is gonna be something.

  96. 96.

    MisterForkbeard

    @laura: Right there with you. I was Harris, then Warren, now I’m reasonably happy with Biden.

    I will note that excessive trolling from the left/right about Reade, ‘corporatism’ and other is not making we want to talk about how much I like Biden. It’s inviting a ton of crazy nonsense and attacks from (usually) sane people, and I know a lot of people had a similar issue with Hillary: Loved her, but talking about her positively just got you pounced on so people tended not to do it.

  97. 97.

    Ruckus

    @Scamp Dog:

    Biden was not my first choice, nor my second. But he is, overall a good person. Sure he’s made some mistakes over his career, who the hell hasn’t? He’s human, he knows he’s human and he acts like a human is supposed to act, at least according to Ruckus. Our political representatives are supposed to represent all of us, an impossible job. The good ones do the best they can and for many of those the best they can is damn good. Joe is one of those. He’s not hiding behind the walls and demanding attention. He’s asking for our vote to run the country in all of our interests, not just his own. He listens, he learns, and how many people do that? OK soap box away…..

    We have to defeat shitforbrains® if we want any semblance of a country to live in. And not just in the top office, across the board we have to defeat his sycophants. We’ve been in this place before, not as deep into shit world as we are now but we are in it and we are and should be concerned. He’s stripping the carcass for the parts and if he gets another 4 yrs there won’t be anything left, government/country/us. Any of the front runners would have been dramatically better than shitforbrains®, but that’s not who the majority picked. They picked Joe, I’d bet because he’s a proven, not a what if. We have to defeat them all. moscow mitch has to go – support Amy McGrath if you can. Because he’s actually worse than shitforbrains®, he has power, he abuses his power and less than .2% of the country voted for him.

  98. 98.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Just a general observation:  I am pretty much done with anyone who is still talking about wanting an “inspiring” candidate.  If defeating Trump isn’t inspiration enough, I don’t know what is.  Get over your grief about the primary.    There are two choices in November, one is supporting Biden and the other is doing anything else and tacitly supporting Trump.

    I won’t be working on outreach to iffy Biden supporters this year.  I don’t think it’s really in my wheel house.

  101. 101.

    Elizabelle

    @rk:  I didn’t take Biden that seriously as a 2020 candidate. Thought he was a placeholder until Dems coalesced behind a not-Bernie candidate. Surprise, surprise.

    I’m good with Biden, though. Competence, compassion, experience, and a wonderfully smart and accomplished wife go a long way.

    He does not have to beat Barack Obama. He has to defeat Donald Fucking Trump, who is going to have the body count of a War President. And that is the closest Trump will ever come to being a WP, unless we want to credit him with War against the American people (especially those who are not his supporters) and against truth, decency, and the rule of law.

    Our transitional presidents will come later. And possibly sooner than you think.

  102. 102.

    Subsole

    @Jeffro:  I voted Warren in the primary. Do not want her as veep. Want her doing econ policy, Klobuchar as AG maybe, and Harris as VP since she seems like she’d be a natural bridge for a lot of our coalition – Black, Brown, Women, and Asian. Also respectable enough to play to professional suburban crowds.

  104. 104.

    J R in WV

    @different-church-lady:

    May 15, 2020 at 11:02 am

    In recent weeks, Mr. Biden’s words and his policies have drifted left.

    They didn’t move there… he didn’t push them there… they just kind of… floated in that direction all on their own.

    They floated, all alone, as if on a cloud of unicorn farted perfume bubbles!!  ;-)

  105. 105.

    Brachiator

    @Old School:

    On the subject of Perry Mason, HBO has a Perry Mason series starting this summer. It’s a young Perry Mason series, so he will be a private investigator rather than a defense attorney.

    I don’t know whether the character had much of a private life in the novels, but he practically has none in the TV series. From the way this show has been described, it is almost as though they just decided to hang the name “Perry Mason” on a random TV series that someone came up with.

    But who knows, the show may be OK even if you ignore that it is supposed to be about a young Mason.

  106. 106.

    Subsole

    @eric: I always liked that show. An affable, absent-minded and decidedly NOT fastidious reimagining of Sherlock Holmes.

  108. 108.

    rk

    @Elizabelle:

    I hope you will write more comments about hospital life during a pandemic, and how it is affecting you and your colleagues.

    It’s very strange. The hospitals have been full of COVID patients, yet so many things in other areas are completely shut down. No routine work, no elective surgeries, all regular practices shut down. So a lot of the doctors and nurses are overworked to breaking point, yet many have been furloughed. ICU, CCUs are full with COVID patients, our hospital was more than fifty percent COVID, some in surrounding areas are 90% COVID.

    The support from the community for health care workers has been very good and lifts up spirits. But I wish they would stop calling us heroes, because that’s not true. A lot of us would rather not be doing this, but this is what we all signed up for (and would not quit even if I could). There’s not a heroic bone in my body and I feel like a fraud.

    After this is over I want to take a long vacation, but from the way it’s going I feel we’re going to seamlessly transition into fall when the flu season rears it’s ugly head along with COVID.

  109. 109.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @rk:

    he’s so uninspiring and not the person we need at this time.

    He has been empirically proven to be the most inspiring candidate in the primary.  How you personally feel about him is irrelevant.  More voters wanted him than anyone else, in the end.  In particular, the candidates who had a narrative of ‘inspiring’ proved to be only inspiring in a bubble.  Hell, I liked Warren and Harris more than Biden, but the facts are in front of me and I am not going to stick my fingers in my ears and go “Nuh-UH!”  More people, way more people, were inspired to vote for Biden.

  110. 110.

    trollhattan

    Thought Biden’s candidacy (late April 2019) was absurd and unneeded, given there were already what, two-dozen candidates and still more jumping in? But the too-vast field took one another out and here he is–perhaps fifty years in politics can craft a good political strategist. Now he’s our guy and I’m all in–no reservations, no recriminations, just crush Trump, Trump’s minions and the Republican Party. Get this done.

    President Biden will strive to do the right thing. I do not question whether he’ll assemble a good team, that seems to be a major strength.

  111. 111.

    The Moar You Know

    I don’t like Biden and I don’t like the idea of voting for him. Yes I’m bitter and furious. Hillary was hated. Kamla Harris and Elizabeth Warren went nowhere. Now I’ve got to vote for a 77 year old guy who I dislike. All this shows me is that come what may, this country, republican or democrat will always go for the man over a competent woman. I never considered myself a feminist, but I see that all over the world it’s women who’re showing competent leadership in tackling the virus, nurses who’re at the forefront. My field in healthcare is majority women. Yet I have to look at idiot old men and listen to their crap with Trump as supreme village idiot. For the first time in my life I’m so angry that I don’t want to vote.

    @rk:  That’s very interesting!  Hello new visitor! It’s always a pleasure to welcome another hard worker for Democratic victory in November. Tell us what you’re working on in your neck of the woods!

  112. 112.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MisterForkbeard: @Subsole: I remembered this, from Michelle Goldberg, as a thing that happened, but it was a thing she feared would happen:

    Until Tuesday night, I had assumed that my neighborhood, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, was overwhelmingly supporting Bernie Sanders. Sanders bumper stickers and T-shirts outnumbered those for Hillary Clinton by what seemed like 20 to 1. A couple of times, I thought about putting my baby daughter in a Clinton onesie—whatever my hesitations about Clinton’s candidacy, I love the idea of my girl’s first image of an American president being female. But I always hesitated, not wanting to invite playground harangues from local dads about Goldman Sachs and the Fed.

    but:

    I’ve heard anecdotally from other women who’ve kept their support for Clinton somewhat quiet, because they assumed they were in a minority. On Tuesday I spoke to Bushwick resident Savannah Cox, a 26-year-old writer and researcher at the New School, a famously progressive Greenwich Village university. “As a Clinton fan, I have had to be diplomatic even though I am patronized,” she says. “I am honestly sick of it.” She describes one male friend who offered to speak more slowly so she could fully grasp his point about Clinton’s complicity with the fossil fuel lobby. Cox says she has stopped talking about politics with her friends: “I can’t do it. I don’t want to engage.” (Bushwick’s neighborhoods were divided between Sanders and Clinton.) Again, this is a single anecdote, but it makes me think I’m not alone in being reluctant to advertise my support for Clinton.

  113. 113.

    Brachiator

    @Kathleen:

    An article I read mentioned that Perry Mason was one of the first or maybe the first to have woman as Exec Producer (Gayle Patrick Jackson).

    I did not know this! As an actor, Patrick was the spoiled  and spiteful sister in one of my favorite films, “My Man Godfrey.”

    And evidently she was instrumental in getting “Perry Mason” done as a TV series, because the book’s author did not want to OK any more adaptations of the character.

    Because of that show I wanted to be a lawyer.

    This is really cool. People underestimate how inspiring fictional characters can be.

  114. 114.

    Subsole

    @terraformer:

     

     

    @Jeffro:

    It has to be priority 1. Otherwise we waste our 2 yr window waiting for Reconstruction 2.0 to get struck down by Roberts.

    Priority 2 is massive electoral reform. President goodbrain flat said it- in a functioning democracy, the Cancer Party loses.

    The rest, whatever. Above my pay grade. But those two first, in that order.

  115. 115.

    Nicole

    I was terribly disappointed when it was clear Biden would be the nominee, but the thing is, it’s not his fault the nation is so deeply racist and misogynistic.  And, if the nominee was going to be an old white guy, we could do a lot worse than one who I think has genuinely learned and grown over his time in government.  And, regardless of my feelings about what he did for the credit card industry for his home state of Delaware, he never, to the best I can tell, personally profited while he was an elected official.  After the past  3.5 years of watching pigs at the governmental trough, that counts for a lot.

    My only real anxiety is that he’s not going to go after corruption (especially in the GOP) after inauguration.  We can’t take another round of Democrats choosing to rear-view mirror GOP malfeasance.  I read an article last week about GOP operatives reaching out to the Biden campaign to work with them that set all my anxieties ablaze, because they certainly aren’t offering to help because they want what’s best for the average American; they want things to continue to go in a way favorable to the wealthy.  And Biden, unfortunately, in the primary expressed fondness for bipartisanship.

    That said, he’s been doing things pretty right so far (this one article seems to be an outlier), so I will stay optimistic.  If he picks a Harris as VP, I think it’a a good sign he’s aware of and respects the voters who got him where he is.  If he picks a Warren, it’s a sign he’s serious about going after corruption on a system-wide scale.  If he picks a Klobuchar, then I’ll start to really get anxious that he’s focusing on the wrong voter base and the wrong priorities.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    @rk:

    As I wrote here, just above, Joe was not my first choice, nor my second. Age was a reason, record was a reason, gender was a reason. But this is a democracy, or at least it is supposed to be one, and the majority is the winner. You can hate that all you want but they have not chosen anywhere near badly enough not to vote. Note voting, not voting for the democrat, that gets you shitforbrains®, it’s as simple as that. And shitforbrains® is not just not good for the country, the federal government, all of us, he is a distructo monkey. He’s already killed thousands with his bullshit, and it isn’t getting better.

    In a democracy you never get exactly your ideal, you get the best you can get. Six months ago many of us didn’t think that Joe was the best we could do, but your fellow citizens have spoken and now he is, so we have to suck it up and get on board. A presidential election is far more important than one person. shitforbrains® has no concept of that, he is by far the most important person in his tiny little world, Joe understands this – more important than one person – better than most. He’s not the only one running who did BTW, but he’s the person we’ve got.

  117. 117.

    Betty Cracker

    @rk: FWIW, you’re not alone in feeling disappointed and disillusioned. As long as you’ll vote to get rid of Trump anyway, which I believe you already said you’d do, it’s all good. Hope the work situation gets better.

  118. 118.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @The Moar You Know: Jesus Fuck.  rk has been around for a while.  Not everyone who says something you don’t like is a troll.  Sometimes people are simply wrong.  FWIW I think rk’s head is up rk’s ass on this topic, but I don’t think rk is a troll.   Christ!

  119. 119.

    trollhattan

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Starting in Arkansas, Republicans began poisoning the Hillary Clinton well and it ultimately worked. It will piss me off the rest of my days, what it cost the country.

  121. 121.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Elizabeth Warren is too valuable to be Vice President.  Her immense skills would be better utilized as Attorney General where she can tear ass and put all the Trumpies in prison –  “Get Some!”

  122. 122.

    Elizabelle

    @Nicole:

    If he picks a Harris as VP, I think it’a a good sign he’s aware of and respects the voters who got him where he is.  If he picks a Warren, it’s a sign he’s serious about going after corruption on a system-wide scale.  If he picks a Klobuchar, then I’ll start to really get anxious that he’s focusing on the wrong voter base and the wrong priorities.

    Hear, hear!

  123. 123.

    Brachiator

    @WaterGirl:

    Where does one find classic detective shows on radio, with Raymond Burr?

    That was an observation from Emma From FL.

    I mainly know Burr from his movie and TV work. I used to listen to a lot of CBS radio drama, but don’t recall Burr on any of the shows I heard.

    One standout for me was character actor John Dehner as Paladin on the radio version of “Have Gun, Will Travel.”

  124. 124.

    eemom

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    If defeating Trump isn’t inspiration enough, I don’t know what is.

    And just like that, untold millions of pixels could be spared.

  125. 125.

    Elizabelle

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:   I think financial system restructuring for Elizabeth Warren.  She has understood how  the status quo preys on the middle and working classes for years and years.  Did a lot of work on bankruptcy — those who filed … were not who the Republicans would have you think they were.

    Let someone else do the prosecuting.  Bring it on!

    Nuremburg Trials for the Trump administration.  Do not rule out execution for treason and crimes against the American public.

  126. 126.

    Citizen Alan

    @Brachiator:

    I got into the novels when I was in law school. I don’t remember him having any sort of social life in the books either.

  128. 128.

    bemused

    I am very much enjoying truckers blasting their horns at trump in Rose Garden presser. Looks like the truckers plan to keep it up during entire time.

  130. 130.

    Humdog

    @geg6: Grad school in polisci at UCLA in 1990. Got papers marked down for spending too much time on practical applications instead of theory. Think tank jobs appeared to be available only for thinkers who took the result the leadership wanted and working backwards to “prove it”.
    So I took my million years of school and went into wholesale cut flower biz!

  131. 131.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Bernie has a looooooooooooooooooooooooong 30 year history of being lazy and doing nothing in Congress.   Plus, he turns 80 next year.  He would be a disaster of a secretary for any department.  Moreover, they have a republican governor in Vermont and we would lose a Democratic vote for six months.

  132. 132.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Subsole: Both. My wife doesn’t like Biden and has a strong opinion on him due to Anita Hill. She told me in mid-March that even though she despised Sanders she’d prefer him over Biden, though that was a close call for her.

    Online, I posted something in support of Biden during the beginning of the Reade allegations where I praised Biden’s reaction to it (“This did not happen but please give her allegations the benefit of the doubt and investigate it in order to prove it”).

    I got supportive comments on it from a few people and several (mostly white) dudes yelling about how I was ignoring women. When I pointed out that Reade has a bad history and credibility issues and we were STILL rightly taking her seriously, I got shat on for demanding ‘perfect witnesses’ and attacking an accuser the same way every accuser gets attacked, etc. I eventually muted the thread and refused to read it again.

    I’m seeing a lot of Pro-Biden stuff posted on the anti-Trump reddits, facebook groups and twitter groups, so that’s something.

  133. 133.

    Kay

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    especially in must-win Florida.

    It’s weird for Ohio too- the biggest Trump supporters here are older. I don’t think it’s meant to attract though- it’s meant to make Biden unappealing to young D voters. Nothing they do is positive. They don’t know addition, just subtraction. They know Trump can’t win- a campaign of positive attraction- the only way they stay in power is they cut Biden’s total.
    It’s even more pronounced this time- they’re not even bothering to promise anything. They have no positive agenda, at all. I mean, the ’16 “positive agenda” was a pack of lies but they’ve dropped even that amount of effort. It’s 100% anti-Biden.
    I’m thrilled they’re attacking Obama. I wonder if he deliberately goaded Trump into it- it is just unimaginable that the tightly disciplined Obama was running his mouth to a media person. That wasn’t an accident.

  134. 134.

    Elizabelle

    @rk:

    Yet I have to look at idiot old men and listen to their crap with Trump as supreme village idiot. For the first time in my life I’m so angry that I don’t want to vote.

    Wait, what??

  136. 136.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay:

    I wonder if he deliberately goaded Trump into it- it is just unimaginable that the tightly disciplined Obama was running his mouth to a media person. That wasn’t an accident.

    It was some kind of conference call, I believe, with something like 75 former staffers (?– the O’Bros mentioned none of them were invited…), so yeah, Obama knew that would get out, but give him some room to say he wouldn’t comment further on a quasi-private conversation. And with his public graduation speech coming up tomorrow, I suspect that was part of a deliberate roll-out strategy. And no way will trump be able to resist the bait.

  138. 138.

    rk

    @The Moar You Know:

    That’s very interesting!  Hello new visitor! It’s always a pleasure to welcome another hard worker for Democratic victory in November. Tell us what you’re working on in your neck of the woods!

    Hi there. I’ve actually been here longer than you. My only interactions (very few admittedly) with you have always been you accusing me of being a troll or some such crap. Sarcastic suspicion seems to be your standard response.

    In my neck of the woods I work 50 hour weeks in a hospital. My state hasn’t even had a primary yet, and I’m doing absolutely nothing for the democratic party and never have other than to vote for every candidate they come up with and encourage my friends to do the same. And yeah, I dislike Biden and yet will vote for him come November. And yeah, I can still wish that democrats had not chosen a 77 year old man to lead them. Strangely enough I liked Biden when he debated Palin and wiped the floor with her. But I don’t see that guy anymore.

  139. 139.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I’ve wondered about that too: if Obama deliberately goaded Trump into attacking him. Could be! The remarks that set Trump off were on a call with 3K administration “alums,” so he surely knew it would leak.

    I see it as a Democratic campaign asset, Trump’s compulsion to lash out at Obama at the slightest provocation. Could come in handy at all kinds of points in the campaign.

  140. 140.

    Mnemosyne

    @Elizabelle:

    Keep in mind that, at the time “Perry Mason” was filmed, TV was still following Hollywood’s Production Code, which meant that non-white people could only be shown in subordinate positions. Most films and TV shows just left them out for simplicity’s sake and so the network didn’t have to deal with Southern TV stations threatening not to show their episode.

    This is the same era where Petula Clark caused a nationwide uproar because she *touched Harry Belafonte’s arm* while they were performing a duet on his TV show.

  141. 141.

    Ruckus

    @The Moar You Know:

    rk has been around for quite a while. Can’t remember if she/he is here most days or not but this person has been here for a while and is involved in the discussions.

    Now you should understand and I’d bet you do, that a lot of people are highly disappointed that one of the women did not become our candidate. Hell I’m one of them. So bitterness should be expected, it is after all the pill we have to swallow sometimes in a democracy and work hard to fix whatever and move on. And that fixing hasn’t happened yet in this country.

  142. 142.

    WaterGirl

    @rk: That was apparently jk, and not you.   Yay for that!

    I can’t imagine being on the front lines in the medical field, nor can I imagine looking out ahead and thinking it might be that way for 2 years.

    It’s one thing to do a big push for an emergency with an ending, but no one can keep that up for an extended period of time.  All the best to you.

  143. 143.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Democrats will love Obama v Trump. Must keep our base entertained :)

    I like the idea of Trump lumbering after Obama, chasing him, while Joe Biden campaigns for the “normies” – the vast, lightly-engaged electorate. There’s a lotta ways this could work well.

  144. 144.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, too, today PBS published what is probably the definitive debunking of Tara Reade’s allegations. Short version: her coworkers remember her as an incompetent employee who had to be told multiple times that she was dressed inappropriately for a professional office, and they eventually fired her. She most likely told her family and boyfriend the original “sexual harassment by other employees” story because she was embarrassed about being fired, and the legend grew from there.

    The worst that Biden’s staffers say about him is that he did have a bad habit of touching and hugging people who may not have wanted to be touched or hugged, and they admit that they should have told him sooner that some people were weirded out by it.

    pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-74-former-biden-staffers-think-about-tara-reades-allegations

  145. 145.

    WaterGirl

    @Nicole:

    If he picks a Harris as VP, I think it’a a good sign he’s aware of and respects the voters who got him where he is.  If he picks a Warren, it’s a sign he’s serious about going after corruption on a system-wide scale.  If he picks a Klobuchar, then I’ll start to really get anxious that he’s focusing on the wrong voter base and the wrong priorities.

    Yes, yes, and yes.

  147. 147.

    rk

    @Ruckus:

     Can’t remember if she/he is here most days or not but this person has been here for a while and is involved in the discussions.

    I’m a she. I’m very disappointed that Warren and Harris went nowhere. Warren didn’t even win one state.  I could understand why Hillary didn’t win. She had 20 years of republican hatred to deal with.  But to me Biden winning makes no sense. I have a total disconnect with Trump supporters and republicans. Now I have a disconnect with democrats as well. What do people see that I don’t see?

  149. 149.

    Kay

    I want Inslee for VP – which I won’t get.

    I like him and I don’t care what you say :)

  151. 151.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @WaterGirl:

    @rk: That was apparently jk, and not you.   Yay for that!

    ah, well, sorry for my confusion, in my defense the comments are even more similar than the nyms

  152. 152.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:   Why not Inslee for Interior, or Energy, or EPA?

    Or maybe clean energy czar.  We could use a few czars in the upcoming Democratic administration.

  154. 154.

    MisterForkbeard

    @rk: Honestly, I think most Dems see Biden as a decent person with good enough policies, and someone who would keep a steady hand on the steering wheel. When people stop actively looking for reasons to dislike him, there’s a lot there to like.

    It’s also a bit of a ‘return to normalcy’ thing – Biden is a good, known quantity. He was part of one of the best presidencies of the past 40 years, and he has a lot of goodwill in the Democratic Party.

    EDIT: I say this as someone who was/is a huge Harris supporter. I’ll also say that the chance that Biden is considering Harris for VP is (to me) a big point in his favor.

  155. 155.

    MisterForkbeard

    @WaterGirl: If he’s going after Klobuchar, I’d see it as a relatively poor decision but still pretty positive: Klobuchar is competent, firm, and can drive Trump supporters up the fucking wall.

    Would still vastly prefer Harris for the reasons @Nicole cites.

     

    @Elizabelle: Maybe we can troll Trump supporters and call them “acting Czars” just to fuck with them a bit. Though I’m not sure they’d get it at all.

  156. 156.

    Soprano2

    I saw DeForest Kelly the other night in “House of Bamboo”. It was strange to see him play a criminal.

  157. 157.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MisterForkbeard: I like Biden and I like Klobuchar, but… he can’t.

    I don’t want to presume to be the white guy who speaks for people of color, but I just cannot imagine an all-white ticket.

  159. 159.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Maybe I should rephrase.

    He should pick Harris. Or Abrams. Maybe Val Demings. Most likely Harris – basically an ‘excite the base’ and ‘dance with the one that brought you’ moment.

    Choosing Klobuchar, Gretchen Whitmer, etc – would be overall a positive thing (competent, ass-kicking female VP!) but not really suitable for this moment in time.

  160. 160.

    tokyokie

    @WereBear:

    Mr WereBear and I play the same game to great enjoyment.

    Mr WereBear, an artist, has an amazing ability to pick out a bit player from the 1930’s (we love old movies) and know who they are, even if that fame came decades later.

    I play that same game with myself. My favorite came while watching Kanal, a Polish movie about the Warsaw uprising. I noticed one actor, who back then had hair, and thought, “That’s Kronsteen (the chess-playing SPECTRE mastermind) from From Russia With Love.”  I looked it up, and sure enough, it was Vladek Sheybal. (He had moved to Great Britain and had become an acting teacher and theatrical director, and made an acquaintance of Sean Connery, who talked him into taking the part.)

     

    And as we were discussing old Twilight Zone episodes, there’s one with a western setting that featured Lee Marvin, Strother Martin, and Lee Van Cleef that I swear was shot while The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was in production at times when those actors and some of the movie’s sets weren’t being used.

  161. 161.

    Betty Cracker

    @rk: I’m convinced it was at least 80% fear-driven. Because of the existential threat of Trump, everyone put on their pundit hats and decided a woman or non-white man was too risky, and when it was coming down to a choice between Sanders or Biden, they bolted for the safety of Biden.

    @Kay: I think Trump’s insane hatred of Obama also looks weird to fence-sitters who don’t pay close attention. Democrats love Obama, and most non-Republicans seem to think he was at least okay. This ObamaGate garbage isn’t going to resonate outside the unreachable base, IMO.

  163. 163.

    zhena gogolia

    @Oklahomo:

    I mentioned here the other day that even “Sex and the City” looks ancient — landlines, huge cell phones, people hailing yellow taxicabs, people getting together in big crowds in nightclubs (oh, I guess that happened not too long ago).

    ETA: Oh, and Carrie is excited to see her column in a paper newspaper that she gets out of a newspaper thingie on the sidewalk — they don’t have those in NYC any more at all!

  165. 165.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Not that I expected Uncle Joe to give a New York nanosecond’s consideration to pardoning Orangecandyass, but it’s nice to have that on the record.

    What’s his position on “shot while attempting to escape”? Asking for a fiend… 8^O

  166. 166.

    rk

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m convinced it was at least 80% fear-driven. Because of the existential threat of Trump, everyone put on their pundit hats and decided a woman or non-white man was too risky, and when it was coming down to a choice between Sanders or Biden, they bolted for the safety of Biden.

    I agree with that. I have a friend who cried for a week when Trump was elected. she said “we have to choose a white man next time”.  I didn’t take it seriously at the time, but I guess a lot of people have internalized it.

  167. 167.

    Mnemosyne

    @rk:

    Black Democrats like and trust Biden because he’s been working with them for years. He started even before he was Obama’s VP and stepped it up after he was picked. It’s apparently been known for years among Black politicians and voters that if they needed a big endorsement or appearance, they could call Biden and he would show up.

    Black Democrats picked Biden. After the fiasco of 2016, I vowed to follow their lead because they were self-evidently the only voters who knew their asses from a hole in the ground. Joe wasn’t my first (or second, or third) choice, but I’m ridin’ with Biden now.

    If she gets through the vetting, I honestly think that Harris will be his VP, which I think will soothe a lot of currently ruffled feathers.

  168. 168.

    Nicole

    @Kay:

    I want Inslee for VP – which I won’t get.

    I like him and I don’t care what you say :)

    :) I’m so happy to see you commenting again.  How about some  fun, then- if you couldn’t have him for VP, where else would you like to see him in a Biden Administration? (since we’ve been playing put-the-former-candidate-in-a-slot with so many other of the contenders)

    I’m having a very down day and it’s a little mood brightening to imagine a Democrat selecting their team.

  169. 169.

    senyorDave

    @rk: Strangely enough I liked Biden when he debated Palin and wiped the floor with her. But I don’t see that guy anymore.

    Funny, that is almost exactly the image I get of Biden right now.  When he debated Palin I thought he easily could have fallen into a couple of traps – be seen as being dismissive of her or come off as a bully or try to show how much he knew compared to her.  Instead he treated her with a lot of respect and let her show the world how unqualified she really was.

    I would love to have had Warren or Harris or maybe even Booker as the candidate but it didn’t happen.  If Biden wins I suspect his policy choices will be be pretty liberal.  If Trump wins in 2020 the country will be completely unrecognizable by 2024.  A Supreme Court with an at least one additional Kavanaugh or Gorsuch., probably two or three.  An EPA that is either gone or just a tool of big business.  And even more open corruption.  I wouldn’t be shocked if Trump’s first action after being re-elected would be to have a photo op showing him receiving one of those gigantic Publishers Clearing House checks, except it would be made out to him, signed by Steve Mnuchin and the amount would be $100 billion.  I’m not sure I would even blame him if we were stupid enough as a country to re-elect him.

    Did not care for Sander style or the people around him, but I would have crawled over broken glass to vote for him, would have donated money and time.  I have grandchildren and they should not have to grow up in a US that has been shaped by Trump.

  170. 170.

    Elizabelle

    @Uncle Cosmo:   Enjoyed your bringing up Terry Stafford’s “Suspicion” on the morning thread.  Great song.

    Although:  the lyrics.  Such a controlling and suspicious boyfriend?  Run girl, run.

    Found Elvis’s version (not as good, cuz it was the background of Stafford’s single that was so remarkable) and an American Bandstand with Stafford lip synching his hit.  Handsome, but he has a very slight Addams Family “Lurch” quality to him.  Maybe it’s the teeth.

    Wiki informs that

    “Suspicion” had the distinction of being sixth on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 4, 1964, when the Beatles held down the top five spots.  … [Suspicion and its follow up] were produced by Bob Summers (brother-in-law of Les Paul), who played all the instruments on the tracks as well as engineering and recording them, except for bass which was played by Ron Griffith.

    Wish Terry could have had more hits.  And Bob Summers sounds interesting.

  171. 171.

    Subsole

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Yeah. Most people are just gonna want to forget this shit ever happened while they rebuild their lives.

    The next media battle is gonna be the cancer party screeching about witch hunts to the media, and the media amping it as ‘divisive’ so people push the Democrats to drop it all and let everyone off the hook.

    I hope the response is that if you let kids torment animals, they eventually graduate to tormenting people. Bad hires are inevitably followed by worse hires. This has to be framed as restoring norms. A ‘return to good business’ kind of thing. Joe can pull that off.

  173. 173.

    Betty Cracker

    @Mnemosyne: IIRC, polling was all over the place across all demographics in the run-up to NV. I know Bloomberg was polling ahead of Biden in FL and making a run at a plurality in SC too before Warren dismantled Bloomberg in the NV debate.

  174. 174.

    Subsole

    @MisterForkbeard:

    Harris would be awesome, though I really like what O have seen of Demings.

    My alien space bats fantasy is Maxine Waters. But that’s just me being petty.

  177. 177.

    Elizabelle

    @Nicole:

    I’m having a very down day

    Hugs.  You were so kind to me when I was having a terrible day, and I will never forget that.

    If we are able to have a free and fair election, and get votes in despite coronavirus (mail, mail, mail) — and fairly counted — I don’t think Trump has much of a chance at all.

    Weirdly, maybe having to do massive vote by mail will foil the GOP plans for voting machine interference.  Paper trail, and take a page from California and allow voters to know when their vote has been received and counted.

    Which means not allowing the network big mouths their forum on Election Night.  Counting votes by mail will take a lot of time.

  179. 179.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I just cannot imagine an all-white ticket.

    Ah, but the Global Oligarchy Putschists could. IMO they were scared to death of the everything-Sarah-Palin-wuz-spozeta-be-but-with-decency-brains-&-heart GOV Whitmer on the ticket shaking a bunch of MILF-curious horndog Trumpanzees off the Manchurian Cantaloupe’s bandwagon. And (again IMO) that goes a long way toward explaining why they went out of their way to incite near-riots in MI.

    (Just FTR:  I had [still have] my doubts about the wisdom of committing to a woman Veep this early – I’d’ve preferred leaving things up in the air until the Convention – but that’s moot now. I think Harris will be the choice, & an excellent one both for holding the Thugs’ feet to the fire during the campaign and  backstopping President Uncle Joe after 20 January next.)

  180. 180.

    Immanentize

    I am stuck in a faculty meeting (on line) in which my colleagues are totally wanking about having students coming to campus this fall.  It is so depressing.  As much as people want to make chin music about the pedagogical advantages of F2F teaching, Not. Gonna.Hap.En

  182. 182.

    Dave

    @rk: FFS the primaries were as democratic as humans could devise.  I worked for SPW and Biden beat her along with trouncing the sage of Brattleboro. Grow up. AS regards M4A..fine idea but the psychos in the Republican party may someday get another bite of the Apple and a unified system is a prime opportunity for looting. Decentralized is more expensive and cumbersome but different baskets and all would help. For AG…think about Bill Weld for a year or so. Revenge is a dish best served cold and all

  183. 183.

    Emma from FL

    @geg6: I think that it wanted to distance itself from sausage-making. Bright, clean guidelines and no mucking about in the dirt with the peasants, don’t cha know? They wanted to forget that politics is down and dirty dealmaking and backstabbing, and, by God, it should always be thus. Purity ponies from either side of the spectrum end up trying to hoard all the power “because their souls are pure and they want only the best for all.” And therein lies dictatorship.

    (does my academic background show?)

  184. 184.

    Subsole

    @Betty Cracker:

    I was also thinking of framing it as a ‘handyman’ kind of thing.

    Like, yes. We are hiring lots of new judges to offset (pick the most egregious of the unqualified fedsoc hacks).

    Yes we are prosecuting people for blatant corruption and mass murder and what any other state would call crimes against humanity.

    Yes this costs money.

    Y’all elected Grover and the Teepers.

    Grover and the teepers hired Mitch and co. to break the government.

    Governments are expensive.

    Don’t like getting handed a massive bill? Don’t turn your kids loose in the art museum with power tools and spraypaint and carte blanche.

  185. 185.

    J R in WV

    @Sab:

    Warren is a bankruptcy and commercial law lawyer. She doesn’t begin to have the criminal law skills to be AG.

    Really? Compared to Jeff Sessions or W. Barr? Really?!!?

    Was not aware that the AG actually prosecutes criminal trials, was under the impression they had Deputy AGs and US Attorneys for that work…

    ;-)

    I agree there are better places for Professor Senator Warren, perhaps even in the Senate!

  186. 186.

    geg6

    @Humdog:

    You’re a bit younger than me.  And it also may have been being at different schools with different faculty in our particular places.  But that wasn’t my experience at all as an undergrad.  I socialized with several professors after hours and they were more hardened pols than I thought I’d come across in academia.  I was a Pitt when the steel industry was coming apart and the local Dem and GOP structures were falling apart, in their different ways.  Reagan was in the White House and Gen X Alex P. Keatons were everywhere (I’m, like Obama, a Gen Jones, neither Boomer nor Gen X).  Several of my profs were former politicos or operatives or from the labor movement.  It was a real education that I didn’t appreciate as much at the time as I do now.

  187. 187.

    Emma from FL

    @rk: But it was the black voters who elected him. So that doesn’t count? He’s been there for them for decades, and he supported Obama without a single misstep. He had their backs, they had his when the time came.

    Perfect politics.

  189. 189.

    dww44

    @clay: I scrolled and didn’t see that anyone had answered your query. Yes, Burr was indeed the villain in “Rear Window”. I saw that movie in later years, long after I grown up with his Perry Mason character. Was kinda hard for me to take.
    @MisterForkbeard:  I like all three of those and do believe that Biden owes African American Democrats a plum or two. However, in terms of electorally helping his ticket, I gotta think maybe one of the Red State ones would be optimal?
    @Kay:I also really like Inslee as well, and maybe he’s deserving because he took all the incoming heat from Trump at the start of the Pandemic.

  190. 190.

    rikyrah

     

     

    Poll-IPSOS
    How concerned are you about possibly getting the COVID-19 virus When you return to work.
    White- 50%
    Black-68%
    Latino-72%

    These numbers translate to me…
    “It’ll be all I can do to get to and from work, virus-free. I will have No more energy for anything else.” ??

  191. 191.

    Feathers

    Here’s the trailer for the new Perry Mason TV series: Link

    It looks like a reimagining, but there probably aren’t that many people who are still attached to the books or TV show to be bothered by it, as long as the show is good. I read many of the original books and recall them as being edgier than the TV show. Raymond Burr will always be a noir villain to me. The Blue Gardenia is probably his scariest, but so many… Pitfall, Ruthless, Sleep My Love, Raw Deal, His Kind of Woman, etc.

    On the no black characters in TV shows, it’s easy to blame the TV executives, but the truth was all scripts were approved by the advertisers (see Mad Men). Shows with black characters wouldn’t be shown in the South and advertisers wanted all the eyeballs, so southern station owners had a veto on what could be shown on television. I read long ago about a fight someone had over a pro civil rights episode. “Racists buy laundry powder,” was the response to why the plot line was rejected.

    I think the production code was more subtle. Miscegenation was banned outright. So was speech denigrating any race or religion. From 1956: “No picture shall be produced that tends to incite bigotry or hatred among peoples of differing races, religions, or national origins.” So while there wasn’t black representation, there wasn’t the sort of outright racism which one might have expected otherwise. I would be very curious to see work on what was cut out of films for being too racist.

    Something I’ve always wanted to write about is the negative impact that the Production Code has had on subsequent generations. When white people say there was no racism, they probably mean that there was none in movies or TV, which is, in a way, the collective memory of the nation of the 20th century. Movies and TV started showing the racist realities at the same time as civil rights victories were won. This made it easy for small minds to believe that the racism (and premarital sex) was caused by its onscreen depiction, rather than the entertainment industry finally being allowed to (somewhat) depict reality.

    If you ever want to see a movie about racism that snuck through the Production Code office, find the uncut version of The Phenix City Story. A taut little noir, it includes the racism part of the corruption in the South. The argument was made that the film should be allowed to be shown uncut because it was a true story that needed to be told, and that the facts of the case were known anyways. It needs major trigger warnings, even today (rape, child murder, racist epithets, etc). There were screenings of the film for the Freedom Riders were show them what they would be facing. Part of what let the film be shown is that the real life participants in the story asked the studio. There was an introduction to the film with the actual residents of Phenix City who took on the town government/mobsters. It is fascinating to watch. I would try to watch it after the film, if possible. It shows the difference between Hollywood and life in a stark manner.

    Sorry to be so long, the thread is probably dead by now. May repost.

    Edited to fix link

  192. 192.

    Miss Bianca

    @rk: If you’re not “inspired” to vote for Italian food over tire rims and anthrax (thank you, JC, for that enduring image!), then I really don’t know what to tell you. Except, maybe, to try to get some more sleep, sounds like you’re having a very rough time.

  194. 194.

    HumboldtBlue

    @One More Red Nightmare:

    Yes, but that’s some pretty weak-ass tea for a debutante.

    At least drop a “motherfuckers I’m here!” or, “hey bitches, it’s me One More Red Nightmare, how youse doin’?” or something like that.

    Show some effort, some pizzazz, some oomph.

  195. 195.

    sdhays

    @Elizabelle:  If you want to blame anyone for Biden being the nominee, blame Bernie Fucking Sanders for his 2020 vanity run.

    I think this is very true. I think if the first old guy had taken his position as a respected elder that he could have had after 2016, the second old guy would have been much more likely to let the younger generation to take on Dump.

  196. 196.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Betty Cracker: Yeah, polling was all over the place and people were in a panic deciding whether Sanders or Bloomberg was the least worst  option.  Some people, including Biden and a commenter or two who noted that there were actual Dems still in the race, did not panic.  And, hey presto, a real Democrat came out on top.

  198. 198.

    gwangung

    Needing a candidate to be inspiring is, I think, a luxury.

    Other folks treat this pragmatically. Under which candidate will I be better off? I choose a candidate in the generals like that.

  199. 199.

    sdhays

    @Betty Cracker: Warren dismantled Bloomberg in the NV debate

    She deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom for that alone. Or at least a Noble (sic) Prize.

  202. 202.

    Another Scott

    @Omnes Omnibus: +1

    Plus, join the rest of us who didn’t have their first choice win for years and years, but ultimately voted for the remaining much better choice…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  203. 203.

    different-church-lady

    @rk:

    All this shows me is that come what may, this country, republican or democrat will always go for the man over a competent woman.

    a) The democrats went for a woman over a man just four years ago.

    b) Lots of democrats voted for women in this cycle, but the field was too fractured for one to rise to the top

    c) If Biden brings us the first female vice-president in history, it will move us a long way towards destroying the glass ceiling of high political office.

  204. 204.

    different-church-lady

    @Soprano2:

    I think Trump has made a lot of them lazy

    Oh no, they were lazy long before Trump came along. Trump just gave them a way to turn lazy into an art form.

  205. 205.

    Another Scott

    @Elizabelle: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”

    All the conditions are in place for an historic blue wave.  But we still have to fight for every vote.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  206. 206.

    Jay

    @rk.

    Politics is a bus, not a taxi. You take the one that goes closest to where you want to go.

    A huge number of voters are on the “return to normal” bus. Between building connections to influential communities and being “not Dumph” is the main reason you have Biden.

    The world is changing. Slowly, people are realizing that a lot of society, economics and politics are broke, and have been for a long time.

    That whole “drift to the left” that apparently is happening with out any “agency” is why you vote for Biden.

    I didn’t vote for Trudeau. Too Big Business/ProCorporate/Centerist. I voted to make sure that the Con Scheer didn’t get elected.

    Now, because of Covid and Dumph, even Trudeau is “drifting” left.

  207. 207.

    Mnemosyne

    @Betty Cracker:

    Yeah, I was glad that I was able to hold back and wait to fill out my ballot until the SC results were in, and I don’t think I was the only person who was waiting for that. The polls this year were really unreliable, so I wanted to see what actual voters were deciding, not caucusgoers.

  209. 209.

    Mnemosyne

    @J R in WV:

    I’m holding out for Treasury Secretary Elizabeth Warren, myself. Imagine the freakout from the Jamie Dimons of the world. ?

  211. 211.

    Brachiator

    @Feathers:

    I think the production code was more subtle. Miscegenation was banned outright. So was speech denigrating any race or religion. From 1956: “No picture shall be produced that tends to incite bigotry or hatred among peoples of differing races, religions, or national origins.” So while there wasn’t black representation, there wasn’t the sort of outright racism which one might have expected otherwise. I would be very curious to see work on what was cut out of films for being too racist.

    You have this almost exactly backwards. You are right that TV executives didn’t want to upset advertisers, but the racism was built into Hollywood long before this.  And the Production Code also internalized the racism in America society to get in front of local censors boards which might have hurt the box office.

    I hope you do repost this in a non-political thread. It might stimulate a lot of good conversation.

  214. 214.

    Wolf

    Biden as the nominee:  Me and my fellow minorities would be voting for a ham sandwich with that being one without even cheese over Trump while crawling over broken glass.   Babies in cages, the meat packing industry, increased attacks against anyone who is not a white males, messed up response to Covid-19 disproportionately hitting minorities, etc.

    You need motivation.    Motivation is staring me in the eyes and breathing down my neck.

  215. 215.

    Suzy

    @Soprano2: A very good portions of reporters on tv ARE lazy. Always have been. Not a new thing.

    THAT’S why the republicans can play them like violins. Repubs create false controversies; they give lazy reporters something to talk about, without doing any research.

    I watch a lot of cable news. Rarely I see some REAL reporting that goes beyond superficiality.

    It’s the “news du jour”, with opinions and bloviating all day.

    Rachel Maddow is the exception to the rule.

  216. 216.

    J R in WV

    @One More Red Nightmare:

    May 15, 2020 at 2:30 pm

    Delurking. First comment. Is this how it’s done?

     

    Nope!! You need to be superior, arrogant, and pick a fight with either a front pager or someone who has been commenting here since before you could read.  //s means end of sarcasm!

    Looks like you have it nailed down, actually. First use of your nym a front pager needs to approve you, which is pretty much automatic, even if you pick a fight right off.

    But we prefer if you sing in key with the rest of us…

    Welcome, fellow Jackal !!!

  217. 217.

    Feathers

    @Brachiator: The portion about the production code was following on a comment saying that the production code said you could only have non-white characters in supporting roles. When I was doing my heavy film reading, I was focused on censorship, which tended to be concerned with sex, religion, and violence. You are right, race was self-censored. I am sure there have been more recent books and papers covering race and the production code.

    I didn’t talk about the factor of presenting law and the government in a favorable light, which meant not depicting systemic racism. Part of my curiosity is about what the depiction of an America without racism meant, and how it has affected our present. Most of the discourse seems to be about labeling this as racist (which it is, of course). I’m interesting in the corrosive effect it’s had on American life.

  218. 218.

    Brachiator

    @Feathers:

    The portion about the production code was following on a comment saying that the production code said you could only have non-white characters in supporting roles.

    It was crazier than this. Hollywood and audiences had no problem having white actors do “yellow face,” so Boris Karloff could play Dr Fu Manchu, and Myrna Loy could play his daughter. Even uber WASP Katherine Hepburn could play a Chinese woman in the 1944 drama “Dragon Seed.” However, once Paul Muni was cast as the male lead in “The Good Earth,” the anti-miscegenation rules meant that Anna May Wong could not be cast as his wife, so the role went to Louise Rainer. Casting had to reflect the reality of racist laws against “race mixing.” Even a secondary character, a dancer that Muni’s character falls in love with, had to be played by a white actor.

    I didn’t talk about the factor of presenting law and the government in a favorable light, which meant not depicting systemic racism. Part of my curiosity is about what the depiction of an America without racism meant, and how it has affected our present.

    Where I think you go wrong is in talking about how Hollywood did not depict systemic racism. Hollywood, and most of American culture, was most racist in not depicting nonwhite people at all, or in only depicting black people as naturally subservient, ignorant and foolishly happy and satisfied at their condition. There were films that were banned in the South because they dared depict black people in too positive a light.

    Perversely, even some film critics got stuck on this. I remember film critic John Powers once objecting to a film set in the South because it did not depict any scenes of violence by white racists against black characters.  This is its own kind of perverse racism, expecting to see black characters humiliated even if it has nothing to do with the story.

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