Here’s a startling passage from a Washington Post analysis of how the Biden and Trump campaigns hope to shape political narratives about the pandemic:
White House officials also hope Americans will grow numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day, according to three people familiar with the White House’s thinking, who requested anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. Americans will “live with the virus being a threat,” in the words of one of those people, a senior administration official.
This part of the Trump “strategy” isn’t new. It’s all the Trump campaign has since Trump refuses to focus on an issue he considers a “political loser,” lacks the intellectual capacity to comprehend what’s happening or how to address it, is incapable of learning from the example of more effective leaders and is surrounded by fellow incompetents and ass-kissers who are incapable of challenging his views. But still, it’s remarkable to see such a monstrous thing summarized in print like that.
The article says the Biden people see the COVID-19 crisis “as perhaps the clearest way yet to contrast the former vice president with President Trump, using the stumbling response and renewed surge in cases as way to paint Trump as uninformed, incapable of empathy and only concerned about his own political standing.” They would be correct about all of that, and the 2019 Biden tweet below would make a great ad, maybe with an animated Sharpie circling the date to underscore Biden’s prescience:
According to the article, both campaigns now understand that the virus will be “the preeminent force shaping the results of November’s election.” That makes sense on July 6, 2020, but dog only knows what else this wretched year has in store for us. Here’s hoping Trump doesn’t use any of the tools at his disposal to change the subject. That’s the thought that keeps me up nights.
Open thread.
Gravenstone
It’s the pandemic, stupid doesn’t quite have the ring of the Clinton original, but it’s what we’re boiled down to at this rate.
dmsilev
I know this is the usual thing for political reporting, but I fucking hate that reporters are willing to grant anonymity to people who say “some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”, except now this is real life and not a comic movie.
JMG
It is very difficult to change the subject when said subject is “you are at risk of serious illness and possibly death.” People tend to focus on that.
Barbara
@JMG: And your kids are at home semi-permanently as their life is frittered away because I am a half-assed moron and I don’t give a flying fuck about your future anyway.
MattF
@dmsilev: And it is kinda important to know just who is promoting the idea that ‘numb’ describes a hopeful scenario. I’d guess some of the ‘economists’ in the WH, rather than the usual political geniuses. And I apologize for all the air-quotes, but it seems to be unavoidable.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I thought I knew what it felt like to hate an American president when Bush was in office. Now I really know.
DRickard
I’m still laying odds DOPUS orders the nuking of a major blue-state city before Labor Day to prove what large… hands he has. I think the officer corps will refuse to carry out the order.
schrodingers_cat
Immigrants were the control group, now the the Orange malevolence has been unleashed on the population at large.
mali muso
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Come sit by me. I feel such a rage, I can’t even put it into words.
Van Buren
The alarming thing is that this strategy just might work, given how America has responded so far.
Suzanne
We must never, never let anyone who was involved in this administration re-enter polite society after this is over. They need to be pariahs for their entire lives. Like, so bad that their relatives change their names.
And anyone who voted for this deserves a lot of public shaming.
Steeplejack
@Gravenstone:
“It’s the pandemic, stu—arrgh!” [Thud]
Kropacetic
When I have found occasion in the past to mention Trump dismantling the pandemic task force and ignoring the playbook left behind by the Obama administration (who has time to keep up with all Trump’s atrocities?), it was initially met with a resounding “I don’t believe that.”
I heard a pretty novel argument the other day though. “That task force wouldn’t do anything, it was just a waste of money.”
We got them to stop denying reality (on this)…progress?
Josie
“the White House’s thinking”
I would like to know who in the White House besides Trump thinks this way. I want to know who deserves to be strung up, preferably by their thumbs or their ankles, when this is over.
ETA: I didn’t used to be a terrible person. Hopefully I will recover my optimism at some point.
rk
Hard to change the subject when hospitals collapse and bodies pile up on the streets. Because that’s what an uncontrolled pandemic will look like. Our hospital never reached the worst case scenario because of the strict measures taken by our governor. But had it done so it would have turned ugly. What happens when there literally is no room in the hospitals? All this talk about Trump changing the subject makes no sense. We’re on a train heading over a cliff. No one is going to get distracted by a speech from the conductor about the monster in the bushes.
Nicole
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
I hear you.
germy
There was a boat rally for #45 in upstate ny:
https://dailygazette.com/galleries/2020/07/04/trump-boat-parade-northville
(confederate flag flown)
Baud
The problem for Trump is that the liberal media won’t talk about all the people Trump hasn’t killed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@DRickard: “President Trump order a full nuclear attack on the Yellowstone Super Volcano when he learned that #yellowstone was out trending #RealDonaldTrump on Twitter”
jc
“Nature bats last.” Trump thinks he can shape that narrative. Biden is just trying to address reality like a sane person.
evap
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Yes, exactly. I really thought that it wasn’t possible to have a president worse than Dubya, but I was so very very wrong. Sometimes I feel as if the gods are all “Dubya the worst president? Hold my beer!”
On the other hand, I was a huge Obama fan from the beginning and believe he will end up being by far the best president in my lifetime (I was born in 1958). Maybe if there can be worse than Dubya, there can be better than Obama?
Baud
Succinctly put.
chrome agnomen
“And anyone who voted for this deserves a lot of public shaming.”
you misspelled ‘stoning’.
@Suzanne:
West of the Rockies
So the new Trump 2020 poster shows him with his hands thrown up in the air and the catchy slogan, “Meh, what are ya gonna do?”
Or maybe, “Could be worse!”
patrick II
Today SCOTUS handed down a 9-0 decision that states could force electors to vote for the presidential candidate who gathered the most votes in that state. That ruling does not address whether state law can force a state’s electors to vote for the candidate who gathered the most votes nationally. Some states have that law based upon the mutual assurance of enough other states doing the same.
But also, the purpose of the electoral college is to independently stop the great unwashed from voting for someone unsuitable for the presidency. If it can no longer do that it can serve no other purpose than to subvert democracy.
Danielx
Trump 2020 – You Probably Won’t Die
It needs work.
frosty
Speaking of changing the subject – what happened to bounties on US and coalition forces? Do we not care about that any more or have I missed the news somehow?
Kay
@jc:
Biden doesn’t even have to stay with “they refused to do any work to control the virus”
They’re ALSO not doing any work, now, today to mitigate the negative effects of the virus they failed to control. It’s a rolling disaster. It gets worse every day.
Everyone talks about how they’re incompetent and corrupt, but I think the fact they do very little work at all should also be mentioned. So much for the much-exaggerated conservative work ethic. They barely show up.
Kropacetic
Hard work is a virtue for the poor, not the masters of the universe.
Salty Sam
Disagree. We’ve crossed a line some time back, and the anger/disillusionment genie is not going back into the bottle.
MattF
@Kay: And, watching ‘Fox and Friends’ every day doesn’t count as work.
patrick II
@Kropacetic:
No. They didn’t stop denying reality. They are just adjusting to a more effective strategy for denying it.
eclare
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): QFT. Come sit six feet from me.
schrodingers_cat
@Danielx:
Orange Clown 2020.
I don’t care if you die.
Kay
When the Trump Family rose to power I wondered how people who supposedly run this thriving empire just walked away from it to become full-time social media racists and shitposters. They all stopped working at Trump Enterprises the moment Daddy landed his no-show job and apparently none of them were missed.
None of these people ever really worked. They couldn’t spend 40 hours a week attending fundraisers and racist rallies if they did. Their private sector jobs were as phony as their “jobs” in the Trump Administration. They play-act at working and always have.
germy
Cuomo is on.
He’s continuing with the press conferences.
Baud
@MattF:
It was too much work for Trump.
BroD
@Gravenstone:
OR: “It’s the stupid, stupid”.
Kropacetic
Are you referring to his morning briefings?
To be fair to Trump, he is accustomed to a lifestyle where a round of golf can legitimately amount to a hard day’s work.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Too honest for Trump.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gravenstone
works for me….
@Kay:
It’s not my highest priority for the post-trump era– that would be some kind of joint House-Senate committee to examine pretty much every decision made by the DoJ from Sessions to Barr– but I would be curious to know if trump’s “super-TiVo”, as he calls it, is government property and can tell us how much TeeVee he watched on an average day. Bolton caused an outburst of Village harrumphing by stating the thing that they all knew, what at least I already knew: that trump spends most of his time, and I’d wager holds most of his meetings and briefings, in the dining room off the Oval Office where his TeeVee is always on.
Betty Cracker
@evap: Do you buy the notion that a crisis is required for a genuinely transformational presidency? I think there’s some truth to that. If he loses in November, Trump will leave behind a mess that could make two or three subsequent presidents truly consequential.
patrick II
@evap:
Not if we don’t vote for her in the primaries.
Kropacetic
I don’t understand this. The same yahoo I mentioned upthread used these polls to suggest that Fox isn’t in the bag for Trump or the Republicans generally.
What are they supposed to do? Lie? How does that help…anyone?
Barbara
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): I have actually moved on from spending mental energy hating Trump to hating anyone who defends him. I don’t often have visions of carrying a baseball bat so I can make a point, but I have gotten there when it comes to the pandemic. I have to work to avoid being paralyzed by rage.
Mallard Filmore
“Americans will grow numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day”
There may be enough Americans to accept this, but it is madness for our world wide trading partners to allow the USA to give them a good reaming. Europe and Asia went to considerable effort and pain to stomp COVID down. No way they are going to let the ‘Rona virus run wild again as our businessmen, technicians, engineers, designers, etc bring it back in.
True or not, Trump is claiming that he is bringing manufacturing back to America. This is good, because the way things are going we will need to build our own stuff again.
Made in the USA, for the USA market. China gets everything else.
rikyrah
I see no lie here at all.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I saw an article the other day alleging that Eric (the dumb one? who can say?) is running the show now at the company. What a crock. IIRC, you pointed out during the campaign that it was telling that they all walked away from their “jobs” and the company kept rolling along, which would be odd if they actually did anything.
rikyrah
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
clap clap clap clap
Jinchi
You mean with marches in the streets in cities across the nation for weeks on end? Americans have responded pretty well. The problem is we only get one chance every four years to exercise any political power against a president.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If Dems take the Senate, the legislative branch for Biden will be, I think, far more amenable to advancing a progressive agenda than the one Obama had for his first two years. Joe Manchin, Tom Carper and Kristen Sinema still exist, but even Manchin (I hope) may prove to be less of a dick than Lieberman or Blanche Lincoln or (I could probably list a dozen names). The Press and the Courts will be problematic.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
Makes it easier for Trump to call accurate polls “fake news.”
joel hanes
@Kropacetic:
What are they supposed to do? Lie?
Why should they be different than the rest of the conservative establishment? Of course Trump expects them to lie.
HumboldtBlue
Kellyanne and Kayleigh, girls, come quick! The boss is in a hole.
Wapiti
@Barbara: Being paralyzed with rage can be good. If you assault some fool, you could be arrested.
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker: @Betty Cracker:
If its anything like the corp Ive worked for for the past 10 years, the folks who do the real work are damned glad to see them gone.
Kropacetic
And then what? There’s only one poll that matters and they can’t lie about that.
hells littlest angel
It’s the only strategy Trump knows. He expected people to live with his tough steaks, rotgut vodka, fraudulent “university” education, etc, etc.
Baud
@Kropacetic: Fundraising. Encouraging the media write horse race stories. Discouraging Democratic turnout.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: It’s quite possible that the Trump company would be bankrupt if it weren’t for the various revenues coming from Daddy being president.
PJ
@Betty Cracker: LBJ had a transformational presidency, in good ways (civil rights) and bad ways (Vietnam), but it wasn’t really precipitated by a crisis.
Where I think a crisis helps is, as in 1932, it can demonstrate the thorough incompetence or wrongheadedness of the policies of the party in power, allowing for an overwhelming victory in Congress as well as for President. That’s what really at stake here: if Biden has a Democratic Congress (and the filibuster is done away with), his would be the most progressive Presidency in more than 50 years, and likely the beginning of a Democratic dynasty lasting for decades. The caveat is that by January, the country will be in a deep, deep hole, it will take a long time to root out and prosecute the corruption and rebuild the civil service and government generally, and Republican judges will do their best to stop everything.
Kropacetic
Those steaks were beautiful, perfect. Just sear them to a nice charcoal black, put some ketchup on, delish. A shot of vodka from our Russian sponsors, heaven.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
They’re not essential! You can’t take 3 and a half years off and be essential. Whatever it was they did at that company was so unimportant they didn’t even have to be replaced.
The wives and girlfriends were apparently also unemployed. They’re all paid to campaign for Trump now.
Kropacetic
@Baud: I think favorable polls for Hillary Clinton did more to discourage turnout than anything else. Dewey defeats Truman and all.
Baud
@PJ: As you know, the Dems have two years to fix everything.
Baud
@Kropacetic: Dems respond differently than Republicans to polling. But I agree that it hurt us.
Jinchi
One of the problems with Trump’s narcissism, is that when Fauci told him 2 million Americans could die if we did nothing about the pandemic, Trump immediately gave himself credit for saving 2 million lives.
So we’re just shaving a few points off his total – if a million Americans are dead of coronavirus before election day, Trump will be perfectly happy to take credit for another million who didn’t.
Now if the stock market tanks again, then we’ll see some action.
Baud
@Jinchi: The big problem with Trump trying to spin this is that we can see how much better most of the rest of the world is doing.
Aleta
Yesterday my friend sent back to me a link I’d mailed him in 2014. (It may well have been linked or even written by someone here.)
In 2014 US media outlets were doing stories about how “African corruption” made the ebola crisis worse. We need those type stories to be done about US management practices and politicians and corporate callous indifference. (Support good journalists.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
Whatever happened to the story that prominent and extremely independent businessman Donald Trump Jr was putting together a group of investors to buy OANN? I’ve always thought trump’s goal in 2016 was to build up a Russian-funded media cash-cow before Comey pushed him into the Oval Office.
Barbara
@Mallard Filmore: The point is that there is not going to be much if any new foreign investment in the U.S. and certainly no tourism. States like South Carolina and Alabama that fall all over themselves to get foreign manufacturers to locate plants in their state can forget about any of that for at least two years. And even if you never go 10 miles outside of Orlando, lots of people come from across the globe to visit Disney World and put money in your community. And that’s before we even consider the increasing dependence of universities on foreign students. It’s a kind of lunacy to pretend we won’t be hurt.
PJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: As far as I know, there is no Democratic equivalent to Max Baucus in Congress now, who would block a public option. Carper is not an idealogue, Delaware is now solidly Democratic and would support a public option, and he will go along with whatever the Democratic consensus is on health care. Sinema seems to be even more of a weather vane, and if Kelly is elected and it looks like AZ is really trending Democratic, I think she would also go along with the consensus. Manchin would offer the most resistance, as WV isn’t trending Democratic any time soon, and he would be shellacked in his next election, but that wouldn’t be until 2024, and he may not even run then, since he would be 77. So I think it’s likely a public option would be approved.
different-church-lady
It’s hard to believe they think “We really don’t care if you die” is a winner, but here we are.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know. I assume, however, that there were a number of right-wing investments that went bust when they lost the golden opportunity to attack Hillary’s presidency for four to eight years.
Baud
@PJ: Neoliberal.
PJ
@Baud: Yeah. The question is, can they fix enough in two years to win in 2022? I would hope that the memory of the Trump years would still be large in people’s minds, but the media will be against the Democrats, so who knows.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Hell, we can’t afford four more weeks of Donald Trump.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My guess is that just now there’s fewer people ready to spend large amounts of money promoting Daddy Trump’s reputation. Go figure.
trnc
Where was that? I don’t remember seeing anyone push back on that news, mostly because I think everyone in this crowd has come to expect that sort of thing from the idiot.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I think the “Trump Organization” is actually pretty small compared to the attention it gets. If you take away the licensing agreements, isn’t it a couple of dozen hotels, condo buildings (money laundries) and golf courses? I think it was The New Yorker that did a deep dive into the gameshow, and said it’s earned trump and his producer “hundreds of millions” each, and that (and this is more my hunch/guess than anything else) gave him the prominence and the seed money to start laundering Russian money through the condos
Barbara
@PJ: The good thing about Manchin is that West Virginia, unlike Montana, will never look a federal gift horse in the mouth. They might be trending burgundy but they expanded Medicaid as soon they could.
Shalimar
@Baud: Can you still go on a Cletus Safari when there are no more Cletii?
Jinchi
They did last time.
and the time before that.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
That’s part of what will be so delicious about beating them. They all have nepotism no show jobs. If we boot their asses out of there they’ll have to look for work.
Baud
@Barbara:
Plus, I have a feeling Bidencare will be less offensive to West Virginians than Obamacare was.
Barbara
@different-church-lady: As I said in my Wa Po comment, it won’t be long before Trump connects the dots between his COVID-19 response and his white power campaign message: “We’re killing the right people!”
PJ
@Baud: Guilty as charged (why, yes, when I seek to attain universal affordable coverage as soon as possible, I do want millions of people to die).
MattF
@different-church-lady: Actually, ‘We think you won’t care if you die’, which may, technically, be true.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PJ:
Didn’t Baucus’ own plan have a public option at the beginning of the process? before he decided that his friendship with Chuck Grassley was more important than actually expanding access to health care?
Kropacetic
OK, but not credibly. Not even the Trumpiest Trumpsters I know believe he won the popular vote.
PJ
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know, but Wikipedia says he took a shit ton of money from the health care industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Baucus#Health_care_reform
different-church-lady
@Barbara: It would be a rather extreme version of sparrows on curtain rods, but I suppose if anything would turn it around for him, that would be it. “More of their grandmas died than yours!”
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @PJ:
Baucus was in the back pocket of the insurance industry. Lieberman at least had the excuse that many of his constituents were employed in the insurance industry.
Betty Cracker
@PJ: Good point about the crisis in the 30s demonstrating the consequences of misrule. If Biden wins, his situation will be more analogous to FDR’s than Obama’s was in 2009. That said, I’d argue that LBJ did have multiple crises on his hands upon ascending the presidency. He inherited office by means of a deeply traumatic event, and the lack of civil rights and clusterfuck in Vietnam were crises in their own rights.
germy
She blames his psychological issues on his being separated from him mother at a young age.
Now he’s recreating that psychodrama at the border.
WaterGirl
Trump’s Floor Collapsed When COVID-19 Hit His Base
by Martin Longman
Kay
The Trump employees believe the public won’t notice this and instead are worried about statues and “cancel culture”.
MattF
@germy: And they’re moving the publication date to July 14. Next week.
Kay
“Cancel culture” is the funniest new campaign tactic to me because that’s almost exclusively an elite thing. The center of it is opinion writers at the NYTimes and Andrew Sullivan. You could not fill a ROOM with people who even know what it is.
Uncle Cosmo
Concur. But how do we get there?
Turnout in 2016 was anemic, but even then 140M voted. Even if the Good Guys win a 60-40 landslide with that low turnout, there will have been 56 million votes for Agolf Twitler.
Now add families etc. – we’re probably talking about 100 million Trumpistas. Maybe 30% of the population.
The sane folks can shame & shun till they’re blue in the face (as well as the ballot), but Trump supporters will just slither back into their hermetically-sealed community enclaves & marinate in their resentment as they plot revanche.
You’d really need an epic blunami – no one left in the Shitgibbon’s cage but the authoritarian-follower 27%.
Could it happen? Only if the Democrats actively reach out to any- & everyone we might convince to come over to this side.
Judging by the general attitude of the Jackaltariat, na ga happen. Most of the posts I see here indicate nothing so much as a willingness to slap a one- or two-word label on the forehead of anyone who ever thought of voting GOP, consign them to the outer darkness, and drive up reliably-Democratic turnout to win – even if that means not coming anywhere close to the margins required to turn this nation around.
And what that will get us is either a smarter fascist in ’24 or ’28 who’ll put the lamps out all over the country for good – or Civil War 2.0 where the other side has most of the weapons & nearly all of the cops.
germy
@MattF: I’d like to read it without actually giving her any money.
I suspect if she’d been treated generously by Trump, she wouldn’t be writing this book. It’s not about saving the country, it’s about revenge. Which is fine, he deserves everything she does to him.
But… No more money from me for that family. Even the “good” ones. My taxes have enriched them enough.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I’m sure all the stuff worth reading will leak out and be tweeted and posted here, there and everywhere.
I spite-bought Kitty Kelly’s book on the Bush family and got bored after about a hundred pages.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Trump seems to be betting that a good chunk of these people will get sick or die, and so not be able to vote against him in November.
p.a.
I just can’t watch network news, and don’t have cable. Are the major networks spending any time showing how other nations (eventually) got their individual responses to the pandemic effective? Or at least more effective than us?
germy
Sab
@Suzanne: I am doing my best on public shaming of the maskless. I just shun them. I turn my back on them in the park. I move to a different line in the grocery.
Saw an idiot at the bank today who accidentally drove away from the drive-thru window taking the airtube canister with him. He stopped at the exit, got out of his car and ran back to give it to the next driver in line. He didn’t have a mask so she wouldn’t open her window to talk to him. Nor would the next car. He finally had to send it up the tube himself on foot. Don’t know what the teller thought when it arrived.
Next time have a mask in the car in case you need it.
Next time wear a mask.
MattF
@germy: Disagree. I’m in the ‘It’s only money’ camp. Trump is vulnerable, and we’ve learned from the Lincoln Project that means now is the time for a hard kick in the teeth.
Kropacetic
@Kay: “Cancel culture” is the funniest new campaign tactic to me because that’s almost exclusively an elite thing. The center of it is opinion writers at the NYTimes and Andrew Sullivan. You could not fill a ROOM with people who even know what it is.
It’s the new “PC.” If you criticize what I have to say or stop watching, that’s obviously a deficiency with you.
p.a.
@Brachiator: passive voter suppression won’t be enough. I think Rethug strategy will require intimidation at least, probably violence on a scale not seen since the Civil Rights Movement, or a federal attempt to delay/cancel the election because of the pandemic.
hitchhiker
I suppose this could happen, for some Americans, as long as the escalating death toll happened to “others” and it had little impact on their own day-to-day lives.
BUT the most reliable voters are my own demographic, the over 65s. And it’s not going to be possible to ignore the fact that we can’t travel safely and can’t see our grandchildren without fear of exposing ourselves. I’m imagining a few hundred thousand conversations with the millennial parents of those grandchildren. They get it. They’re not watching Fox.
“Mom, don’t come. I want to see you, and yes, the baby is growing fast, but it’s not safe.”
That grandma might not be worried, because she watches people on Fox telling her it’s all fine, but the fact is that her life is harder and much diminished. The Biden people should put up some stories about how grandparents in Europe are living life right now, and connect those dots.
Kropacetic
Well, I don’t know about the TV networks, but I don’t see much in the paper. And I have even less faith in the networks.
So stock answer to “is the MSM mainly focused on reporting important issues that may help Americans understand the world and make decisions?” No.
bemused
It’s going to be a massive cleanup job at the WH when all the trumpers and sycophants are booted out. I just hope it won’t take a long time to disinfect the whole building for covid before the adults can move in to right the ship.
The current administration is like teenagers partying and trashing a home when the parents are gone for a weekend. This mob has had almost four years to destroy the place. Mindboggling.
Sloane Ranger
@rk: Hard to change the subject when hospitals collapse and bodies pile up on the streets. Because that’s what an uncontrolled pandemic will look like.
And this is the issue currently. The pandemic is out of sight and out of mind unless you are one of the still comparatively small number of people to have been personally affected.
People know what a pandemic looks like, they’ve seen the films. Pandemics involve clearly ill people staggering around in the streets before collapsing dead in the gutter, their faces black and distorted, but only after they’ve coughed or sneezed green, blood streaked mucus on passersby.
Pandemics involve trucks cruising the streets with people wearing spacesuits picking up the corpses and throwing them in the back, while loudspeakers blare requests to bring out your dead to families whose loved ones have died at home.
This won’t happen. If medical facilities become crowded, Governors will open emergency hospitals and people will continue to die out of sight, while the general populace continues to party.
Sorry for the graphic detail.
Kay
@Kropacetic:
Andrew Sullivan, who spent 5 years calling everyone who wasn’t moronic enough to back the Iraq invasion an unpatriotic borderline terrorist is not allowed to whine about being called a racist.
trollhattan
@Shalimar:
Yes, but you might want to change your title to ghostbuster.
Kropacetic
And none of the organization and few potential allies.
Aleta
@germy: Leave it to the T campaign to turn lakes into unsafe stressful experiences for people hoping to relax for one day. They organize these rallies to resemble spontaneous enthusiasm, and they don’t have to pay for an arena, speaker travel, security, cleanup or give away masks for show. And it’s free media. They probably set up some tables to sell junk and get addresses. It also triggers that aspirational impulse that helped T in 2016, to identify with people who seem to have $.
…
trollhattan
@Uncle Cosmo:
Come January we’ll begin a Cliven Bundy Blizzard like we’ve never seen. I hope Biden’s ready, because he’s getting zero first-term honeymoon from those losers.
SiubhanDuinne
@evap:
As long as the gods are never “Trump the worst president? Hold my beer!”
Kropacetic
Of course he is. We simply aren’t required to heed his whining.
Confession, used to read the Daily Dish every day during the Obama years. I didn’t agree with a lot of what he wrote, but they did excellent work aggregating information from across the internet. This seems to have coincided with the only years of his life he wasn’t a right-wing wacko.
In fact, I’m pretty sure I learned about this site from Andrew Sullivan.
Kay
Oh, God. It’s an actual photo of that statue with “we will protect this”
So they’re going with the 100% statues campaign. Which is too bad for the public, because it means every single person in political media will now discuss statues for the next 6 weeks.
trollhattan
@Aleta:
There was a Trump boat thingie down (or was it up?) the Sacramento River through town on the 4th, but I’m not sure anybody particularly noticed. Boaters are kind of off in their own world, like golfers and RVers.
Sab
@PJ: My personal opinion is that in two years we won’t have a vaccine yet, so Republicans won’t be out of the woods.
Suzanne
@Kay: Fucken Dreher has been churning his readers into an absolute lather over “cancel culture”. I don’t think they know that it’s really just unpopularity.
Brachiator
@PJ:
JFK’s assassination was definitely a crisis, one that still has an impact on American society in an ongoing cynicism about the viability of democracy.
Much of any progressive wish-list will have to be put on the back burner as a new administration struggles with how to deal with the pandemic and to maintain a functioning society.
And right wing nutjobs have tasted blood. They see how much they can accomplish with a populist authoritarian, and will be eagerly looking for another Trump. Democrats cannot assume anything like a dynasty.
Kay
@Kropacetic:
I never liked him. He’s a bad person. Even during his “good person” year when he supported Obama he was an absolute moron about health care, and he INSISTED on talking about it. He knows NOTHING about it, never bothered to learn anything, but he has written thousands of words about it.
Also, his gross intrusive obsession with Sarah Palin’s pregnancy was appalling. He does not own her body and she owes him NOTHING as an explanation. No one who actually considers women equals would have done that. The close ups on her belly, him snooping around, ugh. Fucking knock him on his ass if he came NEAR me pregnant.
Brachiator
@p.a.:
The GOP will not want to delay the election, and they cannot cancel it. They will try to get the maximum benefit out of voter suppression efforts by sticking to the November date and even hoping to benefit from the lingering effects of the pandemic.
Kay
@Kropacetic:
Week after week he and his gross followers would OPINE on Palin’s pregnancy. Is she a BAD MOM? Is that why she went on an airplane close to her due date? Did she INDUCE? Horror of horrors! Maybe it isn’t her baby at all! Maybe she’s lying about the baby! W.T.F.
Not one of them said “you know what? This is NONE of our business”
He’s a prolifer who thinks he has some ownership interest in women’s bodies. Gross. Beat it, jerk.
Origuy
This happened in my home town. It’s a college town, fairly progressive, but surrounded by Indiana.
There’s video; it’s pretty horrifying.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: & @Kropacetic: I’m not sure regular people know what “cancel culture” is, but I still believe “PC” is an underrated explanation for the appeal of Trumpism. It’s not separate from racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc., but rather a way to carp about those topics without being openly racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc.
Unfortunately for Trump’s reelection prospects, it looks like it’ll be harder to gin up butt-hurt over toppled statues of Columbus and Confederates when people are getting sick and dying in droves.
Aleta
Wajahat Ali
Kropacetic
@Kay: Oh, I agree 100%. But he and his team also did a good job scouring the internet for varying perspectives making points well. I’ve been legitimately less well-informed since the Dish closed up shop. Still in the market for something to replace it.
I also like that he published a couple of my emails, a rebuttal to his glowing review of Mitch Daniels’s response to the State of the Union and a defense of YA literature.
scuffletuffle
@West of the Rockies: How about “What, me worry??”
Sab
@Kropacetic: I did also.
I would say that he needs to get out more, but working and occassionally interacting with Ta-nehisi Coates didn’t improve him, so apparently he is irredeemable. Sorry position for an alleged intellectual to be in (actual facts couldn’t change his mind after he emigrated to a new country for more freedom.) Sad.
Kropacetic
Irony, thy name is Bret Stephens. Seriously, he’s the worst thing I’ve seen happen to that newspaper in 20 years of reading it. OK, the push to invade Iraq was worse, but Stephens is a somewhat more durable problem.
Gets talked about a lot on Youtube.
Ksmiami
@Nicole: and his supporters and enablers too. I want them obliterated
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
My take on young people tearing down statues of people who are not objectionable is that young people are fucking furious they got stuck with this collapsing country, and I don’t blame them for that.
Throw it in the harbor. Start fresh.
Kropacetic
Actually they did. He published them.
Citizen Alan
@Barbara: I honestly don’t hate Trump as much as I hate Trump voters. Like I’ve said all along, if you come home and find out your roommate bought a chimpanzee and it smashed all the furniture and smeared shit all over the walls, you don’t get mad at the chimp for doing what any sensible person would expect a chimp to do. You get mad at your dumbass roommate who should have known better.
Sab
@Suzanne: They have been cancelling us for decades. Organizing boycotts. Whining to newspaper and television editors. Organizing boycotts of big name brands. They have been doing this for decades.
I would say what sorry snowflakes, but I like actual snowflakes. I don’t like whiny twerps.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Oh absolutely. There’s two parts to it. The first is that they genuinely used to be able to say offensive things without social sanction. The second is that a lot of people associate “not saying offensive things” with “being indirect about what you mean”, which is a folkway/value of the upper class. So they haz sadz about it because the social norm is shifting away from them, and people will now see them for both hateful and gauche.
glory b
@germy: There was one in Pittsburgh too. The Trump boaters and some BLM protesters who were marching downtown yelled at each other, but both events remained non-violent.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I could see throwing statues in the harbor. If I were a young person. Must make a hugely satisfying splash.
Suzanne
@Sab: I know. But it’s high-minded principle when they do it and it’s seething mob behavior when we do it.
Kropacetic
If you mean offensive things, even if you don’t say them, that’s a problem. Better habits of mind is the only thing that will fix this. Don’t hate, respect people.
Sab
@Kay: You just made me laugh.
Way bigger splash than tea.
rikyrah
@mali muso:
I will join you
Kropacetic
Cancelling isn’t pressuring organizations to black ball or government censorship of views real Americans don’t like. It’s ::checks notes:: not finding comedians’ jokes to be funny.
Kay
@Sab:
BLM, as a movement, is hugely successful. I saw a measure over the weekend that has it as the largest protest movement in the country. Ever. The statue obsession probably detracts from that but at the same time sometimes you just want to knock it all down.
glory b
@Aleta: I saw a series of tweets by Tom Nichols about this. He said that he has been very critical of many left wing positions and wrote about them, but no leftie ever tried to have him fired or left thousands of F bombs in his voice mail.
So yeah, he also agrees that snowflake-ish behavior and cancel culture is a Trump follower thing, not a leftie thing.
rikyrah
@patrick II:
I will believe this until the day I die.
IF all we had known, as a country, was what we knew about Dolt45 and Russia in 2016…
If this had been Obama or Hillary?
The Electoral College WOULD HAVE NEVER MET.
Kropacetic
Destruction of property in the name of fighting for freedom from tyranny is so Un-American
Jinchi
Everyone already knows he’s a liar, but that doesn’t matter to his strategy. Trump really believes a lot of his own BS and he believes he can create his own reality just by speaking it.
That’s why he harped on the idea that millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton – and demanded investigations and prosecutions years into his presidency. That’s why he insisted Ukraine investigate Biden and the Democratic server – despite knowing that he collaborated with the Russians. It’s why he threatens to fire his own pollsters for giving him accurate information. It’s why he tells his people to “slow the testing down, please”, and it’s why he constantly tells us the virus will go away “like a miracle”. Trump needs people to stop worrying about dying from coronavirus to win re-election, so he tells us to “live with it”.
He says all this stuff out loud, in public, because he doesn’t realize how stupid it sounds. He’s not only incapable of empathy, he doesn’t even know how to fake it.
Sab
@Suzanne: Those black guys marching, in order, at social distance, with muzzle awareness at Stone Mountain seemed to be a very more much “well-ordered militia” than any of the Bundys or the Bougaloo brother nutcases (or the terrified, armed-above-their training-level personal injury lawyers.)
Kropacetic
People across the street are shooting off fireworks. At 1 in the afternoon. On a cloudy day. SMH.
Citizen Alan
@PJ:
I would describe taking office after the assassination of one’s predecessor “a crisis,” personally.
Betty Cracker
@Aleta: Hahaha! Good for Ali. “Bret” should be the new “Karen.”
Sab
@Kropacetic: I hope there is irony here I am missing. Putting up really obnoxious statues all over the South twenty and thirty years after you lost a war that devastated your region, because you lost because you had bad generals with bad strategies, sems like a bad idea. (Bad idea? American South? Okay.)
Kropacetic
@Sab: You’ll find the link I posted was to info on the Boston Tea Party; an event considered important to the founding of our nation, centered on the destruction of property.
So, yes, intended as ironic.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Me too. One of the worst things Biden said during this campaign was that today’s young people have no more cause for complaint than his generation did. To his credit, he walked it back.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker:
@Aleta: as several people tried to remind Bret and whoever decided to pay him, he tried to get an (if memory serves) associate professor at a small college fired over a tweet
Suzanne
@Kropacetic: I agree with you, but it isn’t me who requires convincing.
To some extent, if all they think are offensive thoughts and it is made clear that they will experience negative consequences from saying those thoughts aloud….. the deficiency is with the person, who should get some new thoughts.
germy
Attempted lynching at Lake Monroe:
https://bloomingtonian.com/2020/07/05/bloomington-man-threatened-with-noose-during-assault-at-lake-monroe/
Sab
Awkward question here. I went to the bank today. Sweet teller I have dealt with for many years inside the bank.
She is busty. It was very hot today. She was dressed accordingly.
When I drove up to the window and talked to her the only thing visible was her impressive cleavage. I couldn’t even see her face.
I ignored it. She should probably be made aware. She is a good teller.
Yikes, or not.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Sarah Cooper, How To Mask. If I were a billionaire, I would pay her to do these and put them on TV as ads.
How many times do you think The Beast hate-watches these and then calls Barr to ask why she can’t be arrested?
Kropacetic
@Suzanne: Oh, I know I’m preaching to the choir on this one.
Cameron
@Aleta: Screw that. Anybody who wants to be an admiral in the Trump Plague Navy is more than welcome to the spot.
artem1s
White House officials also hope Americans will grow numb
they believe this is no different that Clenis fatigue or any other voter fatigue issue. what they aren’t taking into account is that translating a vote against Biden is equal to a vote against COVID. The GOPers love to hate vote against something or they stay home and sulk.
Jinchi
You can’t cancel most people, because you never invited them in the first place.
Soprano2
Until Trump was president I didn’t know I could hate someone so much. And I hated George W. Bush and haven’t forgotten how bad he was. This is like a whole other level of hatred. It needs a new name.
Ladyraxterinok
@Kropacetic:
@Kropacetic:
See sElection 2000. A consortium of newspapers examined the FL that the courts preserved . All but 1 stated that ballots clearly showed Gore won.
The result was slayed to be published–and was actually published—on 9/12! !!
NO ONE NOTICED
cain
@Kay:
I look forward to seeing that rage channeled to the voting booth because that is where it will change and we have to show them it will change.
Kick the damn Republicans out and we will show you change like you will not believe.
MoCA Ace
My BIL believes Dump when he says to ignore all that screaming from the front of the train. There is no cliff… only good times ahead.
If he survives the wreck he will ignore the dead bodies and say see, it was all a big nothing-burger. If not, his last words before the ventilator tube is inserted will be swearing his allegiance to Mango Mussolini.
You may think I’m kidding but I am not. He has been guzzling the cool-aid for years. Those like him are legion. Probably around 27% of he country.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Seriously. I’m not sure why Cooper’s shtick works so well. Maybe it’s stripping away the trappings of office and erasing the distracting orange melon, piss-colored cotton candy hair, etc., that reveals the foolish babbling in its unadulterated form.
Ladyraxterinok
@PJ:
No crisis???
It STARTED with JFK’s assassination!
No crisis???
MattF
@Betty Cracker: I think a reason it works so well is that Trump’s ‘manliness’ is a sham, painting over a distinct lack of manliness. ‘Show’ will always work better than ‘Tell’.
jonas
One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. We recognize their playbook.
Zelma
I woke up this morning angry. Apparently I had been dreaming about Trump and his horrible supporters. In that weird moment between sleep and wakefulness, all I could think about is how much I hate those people. I thought I hated Nixon and Bush, but now I understand that was just strong dislike. Now I know what hate is.
I never felt this way about the people who voted for Nixon or Bush. I thought they were misguided or misinformed. I didn’t hate them personally. But I do hate Trump’s supporters. I don’t like feeling this way but I can’t seem to help it.
MoCA Ace
@Sab: That is a tough one. Exactly where is that bank… I should probably see for myself before rendering an opinion.
(I’m including a preemptive “lighten up Francis”. Just couldn’t help myself)
cmorenc
It’s going to be formidably difficult for Trump to either successfully “normalize” COVID risks or deaths, or to change the subject, when across every part of the country, everyone who ventures out in public enters a “Twilight-Zone” like scene where everyone is wearing a mask to go into the grocery store or bank – a scenario unimaginable six months ago. Kinda hard to make the situation seem normal or forgettable to most folks. Parts of the country where folks may willingly numb themselves or mask-wearing is rather lax are pretty much deep-red areas Trump was going to carry by big margins anyways, not critical contested areas of the country.
misterpuff
“When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I’ve got that feeling once again
I can’t explain you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably dumb”
The Birth of MAGA
jonas
@Betty Cracker: I think that’s exactly it. If anyone else talked this way to you, you would think they were a complete moron and walk away spinning your finger next to your forehead.
But no…that’s the President.
MoCA Ace
@Betty Cracker: I’m not sure regular people know what “cancel culture” is.
I’m not ‘cancelling’ people. I listen to enough of their opinion to realize they are full of shit and I choose not to let them waste any more of my time.
Didn’t know it had a name.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: the one she did of Fredo’s interview, when he asked Daddy why he likes Ivanka better, was so brutal I almost felt sorry for the LAC
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Oh, I’m glad. I was horribly bitter about that. Especially from him! WTF was his generational challenge?
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
My father doesn’t like Biden (he liked Harris- he may have had a crush on her) but he’s voting for him. He says he’s a “draft dodger” – Biden got deferments.
“Draft dodger”- old man with these archaic phrases :)
I said “you’re voting for him if you live that long!” and he said “ha! I will“.
Another Scott
One for Capt. Mnemo:
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
Kicking off another work week in the Trump Administration- the laziest people on the fucking planet.
Kropacetic
Not like the Republicans were the only ones promoting that hooey.
Kay
@Kropacetic:
Elizabeth Warren is a woman before her time. This country has a huge corruption problem. She’s right.
But someone younger is going to have to take up that cause. By the time people figure it out she’ll be 80.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
In addition to the dead-on lip-synching, she doesn’t try to oversell it with her facial expressions or body language. Just a little accent here and there. Actually, I think the “Lone Ranger mask” thing is the most she has done.
catclub
Year Zero was a HIT in Cambodia!
Kropacetic
Or after. Teddy Roosevelt had the right idea. Break. Em. Up.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay:
Not sure I agree. I feel like a number of social conservatives view ‘cancel culture’ as the boycotts of small businesses because of homophobic or racist statements by the owners. Those people are pretty panicky about the future.
Kropacetic
Gee, some business owners insulted potential customers AND those customers have friends and allies? Well, fuck ’em. I’m entitled to your business.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@MoCA Ace:
I used to think that. Now I think it is closer to 37%.
WaterGirl
@Sab: I am seeing couples where the woman (always the woman) is wearing a mask but the guy is not.
Today when I had to pass said guy in the grocery store I said as I passed “I wish you were wearing a mask”. I tried to keep it low key, thinking that maybe he could take it in that way. But for all I know, he gave me the finger as I passed. i’m still not going to let it go by without comment.
Cameron
@Another Scott: I don’t quite get why this is a good thing. Aren’t most states already winner-take-all?
rikyrah
@hitchhiker:
That’s what I keep on thinking.
These folks know the reality of their lives.
And no amount of propaganda from Fox will change that.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I don’t even know what cancel culture is.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Gawd. Can smell the flopsweat off that Trump tweet. LOL.
Indians, like Elizabeth Warren …
Desperation times.
different-church-lady
@Kay: I am unbelievably pissed off that this has become an argument about symbols. Take every single statue of every single dead white male and throw them in the Mariana Trench and cops will still be executing black people in the streets. It’s just jaw dropping the way liberals and activists always manage to confirm the caricature of them not being able to focus.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle: twitter speculation is he got word from somebody that the SC went against him on the tax case, but I don’t think Jeebus loves me that much.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kropacetic:
Agreed. The world is changing and I am happy about it. The racists and the homophobes (particularly the devout) are not. They can see where the trendlines are going and the odds are not in their favor. Just because I pity them, doesn’t mean I don’t want them to lose.
The Moar You Know
@Sab: I don’t give a fuck how well disciplined they were or what their race is, I am seriously NOT OK with groups of armed people parading in public to make a point. That’s fucking banana-republic level shit, and yeah, that’s where we are now but I’ll never approve of or encourage it.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please ….
The Moar You Know
@Zelma: In fairness to us all, they really go out of their way – I mean REALLY out of their way – to be as hateable as possible. They put their backs into it. I often wonder where we’d be as a society if all that work and energy and money had been channeled into, oh, something like picking up trash off the street.
The Moar You Know
@different-church-lady: It’s not a caricature. Look at the numbers of people enrolled in parties. This country should have been under total Democratic control for decades.
Instead, we deal with both societal problems and the GOP (I repeat myself) like a kid who’s just eaten an entire bag of sugar, while the GOP moneymen just continue to quietly go down their list, checking off item after item.
Social media made it worse, but thankfully also is sucking increasing numbers of the opposition into the same ADD mindset.
Another Scott
@Cameron: IANAL and haven’t read the opinion.
My impression is that the ruling(s) mean that the states can (still) run elections the way they want. If they want to write rules that say unfaithful electors can be punished, then the SCOTUS said (as I understand it) that’s Ok.
Kevin Drum apparently is taking this to mean that the National Popular Vote Compact process is therefore Ok.
When I was a youngster, I was taught that we had an EC so that demagogues like Donnie could never be elected as the EC would prevent the passions of the easily befuddled masses from ruling. We saw in 2016 that that wasn’t the case. So, I’m not sure that there’s any reasonable reason not to have a national popular vote and scrap the EC. The National Popular Vote Compact is a way around the need to amend the Constitution on that point.
I posted Charlie’s tweet as a shout out to Mnemosyne regarding Hamilton.
tl;dr – Dunno. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@PJ:
What do you call having a president shot in the head, if not a crisis? You kids !!!
I was 11 or 12 years old and remember those days of fuzzy B&W TV news film like it was yesterday. Not a crisis? Give me a break!
J R in WV
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I will always wonder what Comey’s family finances look like over the 18 months before and after the 2016 election. I will always thing that man was paid handsomely for his work to elect Trump, by someone, somehow.
But we will never know, just as we will never know who paid Jack Ruby (who had a fatal case of cancer at the time he did the murder) to kill Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas PD parking garage!
J R in WV
@Kropacetic:
I have removed you from my Pie Safe list — But don’t push it, buster!!!
;-)
Sally
@Danielx: trump 2020 – if you live that long
ballerat
@Kay: He’s a gay man who is fascinated yet repulsed by what goes on between a woman’s legs.
ballerat
@Kropacetic: Statue obsession is a deflection of the BLM movement. I’d not be surprised if it’s been instigated and shaped by outside sources.
The movement’s opponents can’t stop its momentum or outright discredit it. There is no toehold. No good look to opposing blatant racism and white suprematism.
The statue thing could change the dynamic to “heritage”. Which is where the right can find better traction with their base with righteous indignation. Which is what the base lives and watches fox news for.