In ABC Exclusive Interview, Joe Biden says he felt no pressure to pick a Black woman for VP. He selected Kamala Harris because she fit the closest and the best to what he was looking for in a Veep.
(??: this could choke you up ??) #BidenHarris pic.twitter.com/ERgA25WQsF
— ??? ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER ??? (@flywithkamala) August 23, 2020
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden says he blames Donald Trump for "walking away" as COVID-19 ravaged the country, in a televised interview alongside running mate Kamala Harris on the eve of the Republican convention https://t.co/l27gNNSIxt pic.twitter.com/Z4HzbtVckH
— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 24, 2020
31 years after they joined hands to demand freedom from Soviet oppression, citizens of the Baltic states formed a human chain in solidarity with Belarusians fighting to throw off the chains of dictatorship.
We stand with the people of Belarus as we stood with the Baltic nations. https://t.co/i1wVnU0wkZ
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 23, 2020
In interview, Biden says he will stick to his stay-at-home strategy https://t.co/H6J9XC83kY pic.twitter.com/2M1Phg0ELk
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 24, 2020
Here’s the Ohio version of the @JoeBiden campaign’s Goodyear ad, which features this quote from Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan: "When you come after Goodyear, you're coming after Akron.” pic.twitter.com/Z5RwHZkSW3
— Sarah Mucha (@sarahmucha) August 23, 2020
On The Road – Albatrossity – The Sandhills of Nebraska
debbie
How not-Republican not to have a party platform. Not only has the GOP lost a cudgel with which to beat Democrats with, but they have acknowledged that their plan for the country is more of the same: Total chaos.
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: They are stating clearly that they have ceased to be a political party and are now just a personality cult.
Baud
Scanning the overnight thread, I see that the NYT continues to validate my theory that they are garbage.
I’m actually seeing a spate of “how Trump can win” stories in the media, including MSNBC. Almost seems coordinated.
Baud
Jeff Flake is a flake, but he’s apparently part of a “Republicans for Biden” effort, so good on him for that.
Jeffro
@debbie: hey wait a minute, they just released a 50 bullet point list of all the things that they’re going to do…
… it’s like underpants gnomes turned to 11 ???
One of the bullet points is, literally, “return to normal”
Raven
And a shitty day to pack up the van in a hurricane! (Sort of)
Baud
@Jeffro:
Out: Platforms
In: PowerPoints
Gin & Tonic
@Jeffro:
I support that, actually.
Ken
Totally incompatible with their other goals, particularly “do whatever Trump says”.
topclimber
@Baud: I missed the big thread on this, but isn’t Adam N the one Shrub and Darth called a big-time a-hole, while barely off-mike? I think he was pushing for Iraq answers and they were not amused. He was not with the Village agenda of the day, as I recall.
Mensch then, schmuck today?
JMG
@Baud: This is a genre with which I am familiar. In sports, I used to write it. I covered Super Bowls during the ’80s and ’90s when the NFC teams pulverized AFC teams for a dozen straight years. In order to keep people reading, it was necessary to spend the week before coming up with ways why it might possibly be different this time, even if you were pretty sure it wasn’t gonna be. Political reporters also know that Democrats love to fret and feel anxious, so they will devour “Trump can win” stories even more avidly than Trumpies will.
JPL
@Raven: The weather is not that great for traveling, so be safe.
PPCLI
@debbie: “Our platform is to support whatever the leader says.”
In another country, in the 20th century, this was known as the “leader principle”.
Ken
@Raven: Speaking of which, current projections are that Marco makes landfall at the Mississippi delta as a tropical storm Monday evening, then follows the coastline to Houston.
Laura makes landfall at the Atchafalaya basin as a hurricane late Thursday, then hooks north and east along the Mississippi and Ohio valleys.
(And there’s a part of me that is obscurely annoyed that they’re arriving out of alphabetical order. Looking back at my childhood behavior in school, I sometimes think that had I been born thirty years later I would have been diagnosed as on the spectrum.)
Baud
@Jeffro:
Is one of the bullet points “Be Best”?
Baud
@JMG:
Interesting.
germy
I watched the ABC interview last night with Biden and Harris. The interviewers kept trying to poke holes into their solidarity, but it didn’t work.
David Muir asked about busing, even showed the debate clip! And then Robin Roberts asked about it AGAIN, and Harris replied “Frankly, I think those questions are a distraction” and my wife and I cheered.
Robin Roberts has interviewed so many celebrities who love talking about themselves, she’s gotten used to asking personal questions, and so when she asked the candidates about their own “personal experiences” with cancer, they turned it around and brought the topic back to the Affordable Care Act. Because this interview (and election) isn’t about Biden and Harris, it’s about us.
I wasn’t impressed with the questions, but I liked the answers. And Biden is as sharp as a tack. He doesn’t sound “diminished” in any way to me.
Baud
@topclimber:
Haven’t a bunch of ‘heroes” during the Bush years tuned out to be schmucks?
Baud
@germy:
I got tired and bailed on the interview. Glad to hear they did well and pushed back strong against the stupid.
Immanentize
@Raven: Don’t forget Bodhi!
Baud
JPL
@germy: When trump saw that, he told his aides that he wanted Roberts to interview him. Me,me, me.
Kay
@Baud:
I’m ok with it this time because I’m seeing the same thing locally with Democrats. They’re all doing this. They ARE afraid he can pull it out with the electoral college, they ARE afraid the Willie Horton play Trump and the GOP are doing will work. There’s a very good reason for this fear! It DID work in 2016. They don’t have to go all the way back to Dukakis- they just saw it work in 2016.
Dorothy A. Winsor
No platform? Whatever happened to the Rs are the party of ideas?
topclimber
@Baud: I try but cannot envision many names on that list. On the other hand, schmucks who got schmuckier…YOOGE.
With humility toward the Venerable Baud, I ask, who do you have in mind?
Cheryl Rofer
I was surprised and pleased yesterday to see Biden’s tweet connecting the Baltic Chain to the events in Belarus, which I had been explaining on Twitter.
Events surrounding the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 1990s recovery of those countries are disappearing from our collective memory. The story of US participation is very mixed; some folks who stood to profit from it insisted on “shock therapy,” which went badly and is now a handle for Putin to beat us with among Russians. On the other hand (yes, mine), there was good cooperation among many parties to avert a nuclear catastrophe. And many things in between.
Good to know that our next president (?) knows that history. And not surprising – he was in the Senate at the time, and the Senate did a lot to fund and encourage the nuclear part. Yes, he also recalls a functional Senate.
Baud
@Kay:
Hillary was always down in Ohio. It wasn’t last second racism that turned the tide.
Ken
@Baud: Former Republican national security last week, former Republican lawmakers today. Wonder who’s next? Though we can be sure “former” will be in there, the active ones just promised they’re doing whatever Trump says.
Baud
@topclimber:
Well, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi come to mind because they are infamous now.
Andrew Sullivan was much more respected at that time than he is now.
I feel that there are others, but I can’t recall names at this moment.
Baud
@Ken:
Yes. Even brave Sir Romney won’t be on that list.*
* Unless it’s just before the election and Trump is polling at his natural 27% level.
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I thought they were just copying and pasting the 2016 platform? (Including criticisms of the “current” administration)
Steeplejack
On a personal note, I happened to read last night that the East Falls Church Metro station (here in NoVA) reopened yesterday, two weeks ahead of schedule, so I will be planning my exit strategy from driving my friend to work at Trader Joe’s. It has been easier the last few weeks, driving her only one way, but I will be glad to get out of the routine and further reduce my (slight) coronavirus exposure. It has been 5½ months.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Same. I like our chances this year, but to the extent “Here’s how Trump can win” stories help keep us from getting complacent, I’m all for them. Complacency was likely as big a factor as Comey and Butter Emails in the fluky 2016 outcome.
He can win. I don’t think he will, but he’s already working every angle, including using institutional power to cheat and replaying the racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue playbook.
Immanentize
@Ken: Former President? And his family?
Immanentize
@germy: They changed their minds on just re-copying the 2016 platform. Updating it proved to be too much work.
They are deeply lazy people, unfamiliar with sustained effort.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I wouldn’t mind a story that’s says that the most likely way Trump can win is complacency among Democratic voters. But these stories always attribute the cause to Trump’s political genius or Democratic leadership missteps.
clay
@Ken:
Situation Normal, All Fucked Up
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: Has the current president said anything about Belarus?
Kay
@Baud:
No one is saying it’s political genius. It’s flat-out blatant racism and the Trump Campaign and Fox News and their other outlets are promoting it. It is. The only question will be if it works to the extent they need it to work. That’s what Democrats are (rightfully) concerned about.
Cheryl Rofer
@JPL: No. He probably doesn’t even know it’s a country
ETA: Also, he can’t think of any favors Lukashenka might do for him.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Going by the advertising Trump is forcing to be viewed on You Tube, looks like Trump going to pretend Biden is the president and Trump is the challenger.
And all four nights of the GOP convention are going to be Trump talking. Boring. Trump’s not even a good entertainer.
rp
@JPL: Unless I’ve missed it, I don’t think he’s said anything about the California fires or the hurricanes either. I know we’re all numb to it now, but his complete abdication of the responsibilities of POTUS is breathtaking.
jonas
We — and esp. the media — have to stop looking at Republicans through the lens of politics, or of political parties. If we instead ask “what would a doomsday cult led by a narcissistic madman do?” we’d have a better handle on how they’re going to behave.
Immanentize
well, my Fall Semester classes begin today. I’m all online. Two sections on Criminal Law. This summer I had the young woman who decided it would be funny to smoke a joint on camera in class. She emailed this weekend and let me know that she ended up doing poorly.
I wonder what new excitements this group will bring me:
— The Dante Club
jonas
Look, it was either that, or elderly celebrities yelling at a chair. And you forgot Scott Baio.
Baud
@Kay:
Is that really newsworthy though?
Are there stories about how Biden can win by an even bigger amount because of the wreckage that Trump has caused?
I agree that the media is playing to fears that Dems can’t resist averting their eyes from. But satiating that market has the effect of helping Trump and the Republicans IMHO.
TS (the original)
@Baud: Seems like more space in that article was given to the response by the trump campaign spokesman attacking Biden.
MazeDancer
If the interview last night encouraged you to make a Voting Plan – and goodness knows the RNC will – here is all the info you need to do so: PostCardPatriots.com
Plus, your plan can be Illustrated and tweeted out to inspire others. Just like these fine Balloon Juicers.
Post your Voting Plan here in the comments and it will soon be made into some Armchair Activism. Or send your your plan to PostCardPatriots @ the G mail place.
Sab
Not unexpected. Our neighbor across the street who has all kinds of people visiting maskless all the time just put up her Trump sign. She didn ‘t have one last time.
Kathleen
@Baud: And that coordinated script invariably occurs after Dems have stunning victories either in voting booths or events like the convention. I’ve felt since 2015 that media are being paid or blackmailed. I thought that Senate Intelligence Report included how media are coopted across the globe.
This is not tin foil country. In 1977 Carl Bernstein wrote Rolling Stone article about the CIA and the media. There is precedent for belief in media manipulation.
Emma from FL
I’ve asked this before in different ways, so I’m going to try again, more directly and perhaps offensively. WHY THE HELL have Democrats forgotten what happened in 2016? Trump did not win because the racists let their freak fly. He won for two reasons: WITH THE HELP OF RUSSIA, the voting in four states was manipulated so he could take the Electoral College; AND a certain Mr. Comey went out of his way to damage Hillary Clinton by giving the professional leftists “reasons” to vote for third party no-hopers.
Democrats should be worried about making sure this blatant manipulation does not happen again. Trump has his base and it’s not going to move because they are basically Heaven’s Gate cult. We need to concentrate on improving the playing field and making sure the don’t succeed in screwing with the vote.
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t know who it helps but in this instance I don’t think it’s a narrative media are creating. I also have an issue with attributing the 2016 loss to racism and then insisting it won’t be a factor this time. It’s cured? They’re doing completely ordinary handwringing about whether the latest racist appeals with shave 2 points off Michigan, or whatever. They see the Trump offense on it and now they’re looking to see if it’s working.
Baud
@Emma from FL:
I think Trump’s overt racism did help turn out some new voters. But it wasn’t some last-minute ad playing to racial fears. It was an intrinsic part of his campaign from the start.
Baud
@Kay:
It’s not cured. But it’s already hard wired in.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: The racism has been an intrinsic part of his life, and his father’s life, for decades.
Kay
@Baud:
The amusing part to me about the NYTimes/Wille Horton story is they’re pretending they have to go back to Dukakis to find an example of the GOP using race to drag one of their pathetic candidates across the finish line. 2016 and 2018?
Guffaw. Bush used demonizing gay people in 2004! How about “they do this every fucking election and here it comes again”?
Kathleen
@Immanentize: Rethugs had a platform in 2016? Who knew?
Emma from FL
@Baud: Maybe so but I remain unconvinced that they turned the tide in his favor. trump allowed the freaks to be more upfront about it but what “won” him the election was ratfucking and the Purity ponies.
Kathleen
@Baud: I agree with you
Baud
NYT Breaking News: Dog could bite man!
The Thin Black Duke
The racism is the point.
Matt McIrvin
I am so exhausted. Just worn out. Having gut feelings that we’re going to lose. I know what the polls say, I know what my logical reasoning says, but my gut says we’re losing, and I can’t tell if it’s just bad head chemicals or what. The polls will show Biden winning all the way to the end, and then Trump will mysteriously win and we’ll be arguing for months about what happened.
I’m thinking a lot now about the mail-ballot rejection rate. How, even if we manage to circumvent everything Trump does, we could lose just because more of us chose to vote by mail and 20% of voters who were unfamiliar with the process just forgot to sign the ballot envelope correctly, or wrote their addresses wrong, or some such stupid thing. And then we get hung up in court fighting over the validity of those votes. The whole election could hinge on that.
So we tell people to vote in person to prevent that… and Republican state governments remove 90% of the polling stations and Trump puts armed thugs all over the neighborhood to scare them away. Can’t win.
Just exhausted.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Absent some major shift, Trump will have between a 20% to 30% chance of winning. It’s just a question of how your brain and heart can deal with that sad fact.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Steeplejack (phone)
@rikyrah, @Baud:
Good morning! ?
rp
@Kay: It definitely isn’t cured, but (a) it’s mostly baked in, as noted, and (b) what I think a lot of people on the left and right (and in the media) miss about 2016 is that Trump’s racist freak show gained traction because of economic security, not insecurity. Yes, the economy wasn’t perfect, but it was doing well enough in 2016 that a lot of people felt comfortable casting a f*** you vote. It’s easier to see politics as just a game if things are going relatively well. That’s not the case today.
Put another way, a black man named Barack Hussein Obama was able to win in 2008 in part because the country was in a bad, bad place, and people were forced to take the election seriously.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
As I mentioned yesterday, ABC is unavailable to me right now, so I couldn’t watch live last night. But I just checked, and apparently the whole thing is up on YouTube now. Will definitely catch it at some point today — not sure just when, as I also want to see DeJoy in front of the House committee.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
According to the interview with Stuart Stevens, author of It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump, they got their wish list during the Bush Administration! All this great stuff they pushed through, and then they were done!
And he maintains it’s not their fault it didn’t work. And he never admits those pointy-headed liberals were right all along.
So I think his “change of heart” is kind of callow and I’m not going near his mea culpa of a book. For one thing, he managed 336 pages about the great time he had putting W in office, twice.
But to admit all the things about Republicans were lies, he wrote 149 pages, and on the last one he expresses the wish that “America returns to its roots as a center right county.”
My mood about this guy can only be expressed through rusty farm implements.
JPL
@Matt McIrvin: Over the weekend I saw an article that said Arizona is receiving the extra $300.00 for unemployment. First thought was that Mnuchin is going to distribute it to states that trump needs to win. Although I feel that’s true, it might be a tad late. Kelly is up nineteen points against McSally. If that poll is even fifty percent off, Arizona will turn blue.
Matt McIrvin
@rp: I still see my lefty friends arguing the “racism got a foothold because the Democrats didn’t care enough about economic inequality” line. It’s useful rhetoric to pull the Democrats leftward, but I just don’t buy that it’s true… and comparing 2008 to 2016 is part of that. (Though incumbency also plays a role in that comparison.)
eric
@Kay: How about: John McCain to a South Carolina “white” courtesy phone. They are who they have always been.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Hmmm. It seems there can be an actual advantage to having an old guy run for President.
JPL
@rp: He doesn’t care. Melania should order him a jacket stating that he doesn’t care.
mali muso
@Immanentize: We start classes today too in hybrid mode. So of course, Zoom is experiencing a worldwide outage. *headdesk
Barbara
@Matt McIrvin: This is when you just have to find that one candle you can light in the darkness. Exhaustion and fear are what the other side is counting on, leading you to spend more time worrying than acting. I am not criticizing you in the least, because many of us feel exactly the way you do.
Immanentize
@mali muso: Who could have predicted???!
Dorothy A. Winsor
I just got back from a walk. I was looking for yard signs and completely uncertain of what I’d find. There were no R signs. Six houses had Sean Casten signs. Casten flipped our House district from R to D in 2018. One of those yards also had a Biden sign. Maybe the Biden nomination is too new for the signs to show up yet?
I was surprised. I live in a well off, lily white Chicago suburb.
TS (the original)
@JPL:
Took awhile to find that poll. Way ahead for Kelly than any other recent polls. They seem to poll worldwide and are based in the UK where they do many of their polls.
Edit: Link
JPL
@TS (the original): Nate has up the latest polling out of Arizona and one had Kelly even with McSally.. I do think he has a healthy margin, but probably not double digits. McSally’s latest gaff on skip a meal and donate the money to me doesn’t help.
O. Felix Culpa
@Emma from FL:
I generally love your comments and look forward to your posts. And I am sick to death of “why aren’t the Dems doing X?” shrieks from folks who haven’t looked into what the Dems are actually doing and recognizing the limits of what the minority party can actually effect. Do you think the party is unaware? Do you really think they aren’t doing what is in their power to do? Nancy and Chuck have been calling out Russian interference to the extent they can given secrecy requirements. Our state party has for the first time hired a Voter Protection lawyer for this election and there are tons of other organizations working on the same issue.
I get the anxiety, I really do, but please, let’s stop the “Dems should do this thing that I haven’t really checked to see if they’re doing and in fact they actually are but I chose not to investigate and recognize real-world limits to their power to make things happen.”
Subsole
@Kathleen: They are being blackmailed.
If they treat us fairly the republucans won’t take their calls ever again or come on their shows anymore or buy them posh cocktails during campaign season.
The entire format of talk show media collapses then. The reporters don’t get handed juicy morsels to write up before deadline, they have to go hunt up everything whole cloth. They don’t get to mingle at the Saturday Chardonnay Social.
I agree, they are compromised, but by vapidity and greed, not pictures involving live chickens and dead boyscouts.
O. Felix Culpa
@Matt McIrvin: Are you exhausted from consuming negative news or are you exhausted from putting it all out getting folks to vote? If the former, my unsolicited advice is to stop or reduce time on social media and instead get involved with the latter. WaterGirl has posted a variety of ways to get positively engaged. We all feel overwhelmed by the horror of this administration, but preemptive surrender only plays into their hands.
Emma from FL
@O. Felix Culpa: I think commenters here and elsewhere keep saying “the racists will come out and we’ll lose like we did in 2016”. So does the press and that particular proposition is gaining hold. My point is, racism was NOT the reason we lost. Ratfuckery was.
I prefer reality.
(in addition) And I’m only anxious at twice removed. My sister and I have no descendants. Our line dies with us. I feel for parents looking into the future but it does not affect me anywhere near as much.
cmorenc
@Kay:
Two big differences with 2016 that will make the “Willie Horton” strategy vastly harder for the GOP/Trump to pull off in 2020 are:
– in 2016 they were running against a candidate(Clinton) whose image they’d already been at work trashing for over 20 years even before the campaign started – call it misogyny but she (falsely) came across to a majority of the electorate as too-calculating and ingenuous to warm up to, plus she was hampered by the accumulated Clinton baggage spilling over from Bill’s past. By contrast, in 2020 the GOP is running against a candidate (Biden) with a more widely favorable image and much less time to work with.
= in 2016 Trump was able to run as a challenger-reformer with no track record in government to hinder him. in 2020, Trump is the one carrying tons of negative performance baggage. True, Trump’s record as a “successful” businessman was amply open to challenge for anyone willing to skeptically look at obvious facts – but Trump was able to coast on his image from “the Apprentice” and successfully bullshit his way past problem areas in his record. The “successful billionaire businessman” shtick isn’t going to be nearly so potent a selling point this time around against his mismanagement of COVID and associated economic collapse.
O. Felix Culpa
@Emma from FL: I prefer reality too. I also prefer doing everything I can to help create the reality I want to see. So I’m spending my “retirement” working as a full-time volunteer for the local Democratic Party to get out the vote. We can’t control what others do, but we can each contribute what we can within our own context.
Emma from FL
@O. Felix Culpa: That I agree with and will do what I can myself.
Barbara
@Emma from FL: In general I think ratfuckery was probably more important, especially given how much potential it had to harm Hillary Clinton in particular. But racism clearly explains significant shifts in voting preference in certain states like Iowa. You “preferring” reality doesn’t necessarily mean that reality comports with your preferred understanding of it.
O. Felix Culpa
@Emma from FL: Thank you! I know we say this every cycle, but Florida might be in play this year, if we can overcome the inevitable ratfuckery at the polls. Every little bit helps.
catatonia
@rp: He’ll probably break out the Sharpies and show Laura going into Rhode Island or something
Wapiti
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I ordered my Biden-Harris sign the day he announced his pick and it hasn’t arrived yet.
Reboot
@Emma from FL:
deleted because repetitive
Woodrow/asim
@Emma from FL:
Racism was the reason the race was close enough to ratfuck. Just as it’s at the core of the vast majority of horrific actions this Administration has taken.
Avoiding a repeat demands we address the root cause and the tactics that pushed things over the edge. This is why we’re working to push as hard for a landslide — not just to overwhelm rat-fucking as a tactic, but also to push back against the White Supremacists who are demanding to control so many of American society and governance.
H.E.Wolf
Yes! Every little bit does matter, and I agree with you that reducing one’s time on social media is good self-care.
I’ve found a couple of volunteer GOTV tasks that I can do at home (one is for FL, and one is local), and while it doesn’t eliminate my worries, I know I’ll have done something concrete to help.
J R in WV
@JPL:
Does the current “president” even know what Belarus is, where it is on the map, what it has to do with the EU and NATO, does he know anything about Belarus or any of the nations surrounding Belarus?
Nope. Knows nothing, doesn’t care to know anything at all. Can’t actually learn anything new about anything at all.
tokyokie
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The Republicans are still a party of ideas. It’s just that none of them are any good.
J R in WV
@Kay:
YES, but they will never admit that the only reason it worked in all those elections was because the media worked as hard or harder than the Republifascists did to drive that racist message home to all the little racist fascists who fear the others, and are frightened of change of any sort.
It is partly the fault of the Republifascists, but in large part is the fault of the MSM, who appear to be in the pocket of the racists and fascists in today’s political world.
And it scares the shit out of me!!!
J R in WV
@Baud:
In the 2016 election, my plan was to go into town every evening and do phone bank work, calling into Ohio every night, as WV was a lost cause for Democratic candidates from the git-go.
By the last weekend before election day, I was too burnt out to continue. We voted in person that November Tuesday, and retired to the remote hollow to watch the returns on the Innertubes… it was SO depressing. I went to bed after several shots of bourbon by around 10 pm, when it was obvious the Nazi had won.
Hoping this won’t repeat this year, I can’t believe that after driving the nation into hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of unemployed, racist killings by the cop killers everywhere, people of any quantity are still willing to vote for the monster in charge of the Plague spreading to every nook and cranny of the nation.
J R in WV
Damn~!~
Last again~!!!~
………… ;-) ……..