Joe Biden is handling his business at this press conference. Not even raising his voice, but obliterating trump.
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) September 2, 2020
In progress, but you can go back and watch the entire thing.
The Biden-Harris campaign is on fire.
Open thread
Elie
He is smooth and on point… I am THRILLED at his responses and command of the conversation. He has got some reigns in his hand and he is driving the conversation — I am so so happy at this moment.
Baud
@Elie:
I can’t watch at the moment, but I’m glad to hear it. Unfortunately, our candidates have to be near perfect to avoid weeks of bad press.
Leto
It was a good presser, but the media’s questions are still shit. Their framing is still Republican friendly. They still expect him to fix shit now, instead of demanding this from the beast. It’s grating.
Elie
@Baud:
I hear you, but at this moment, he is the man in charge .. I am most impressed by his comfort — not rushing through answers, thoughtfully deliberating — in command but humble at the same time. Man oh man, this is a great follow on his last speech a couple of days ago…
Elie
@Leto:
So what? He wasnt rattled in the least and took the conversation in the direction that HE wanted.
cmorenc
Anyone watching or listening to Biden’s presser has no doubt he’s mentally and physically on top of his game. It’s a masterclass refutation of the meme Trump and GOP partisans are trying to push.
One clear sign an alleged “undecided” voter is actually a Trump voter maintaining a facade of not having made up their mind is if they express their concerns that while Biden is admittedly a very nice person, he’s lost a half-step and they’re concerned he’s not up to the job. I think MSNBC did an interview yesterday of an “undecided” suburban woman voter in Wisconsin (who voted for Trump in 2016) yesterday who fit that description up to a ‘T’ – she wanted Trump to show a different attitude, as if she thought he might undergo a radical lasting personality makeover the last 60 days before the election. She claimed to have been mostly disengaged from national politics since 2016 until recently – but there were plenty of tell-tale signs she was plugged into right-wing talking points / media /facebook etc.
Leto
@Elie: Because when you continually hear Republican talking points coming out of the mouths of reporters, it’s irritating. Not saying he was rattled, it’s more a comment of something we talk about all the time here.
Elie
@cmorenc:
THIS
Anyone watching or listening to Biden’s presser has no doubt he’s mentally and physically on top of his game. It’s a masterclass refutation of the meme Trump and GOP partisans are trying to push
Elie
@Leto:
Reporters gotta reporter — do their stupid shit stuff. I care only that he is cool and ready… and he was
MazeDancer
Everything Mr. Biden says is so reasonable and responsible.
Twitter is ignoring.
Hoping parents are listening.
Elie
We have to be careful to not demoralize ourselves… Lets not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We have to enjoy these times cause you know we will have hard times and really hard times ahead. But let us savor this — let us feel some lightness and comfort for a change. I am enjoying the heck out of every positive opportunity — we have waited so so long!
MisterForkbeard
@cmorenc: Don’t bet on it. Biden did a great job here, but the live feed on facebook was filled with Republican drones screaming things like “ANSWER THE QUESTION!” and so on.
They’ll do what they did with his last great speech a few days ago: Just say that Joe did terribly and clearly has dementia and then take a couple of small missteps out of context and yell about it.
Omnes Omnibus
He has been more or less unflappable since he started this campaign. When everyone was convinced that he was broke and done and the primary was going come down to Sanders vs Bloomberg, he simply stuck to his plan to bet on SC and did his thing. Come on, man! He’s ready.
Immanentize
Saw this Twitter reply to pitchbot DougJ:
“Dems fumble response to Trump’s November coup e’tat”
Omnes Omnibus
@MisterForkbeard: Fuck ‘em
Betty Cracker
In response to a question about Trump’s visit to Walter Reed, Biden said he won’t speculate but commented, “Nothing this administration does is normal, so who in God’s name knows what that was about.” LOL! So true!
Elie
@MisterForkbeard:
Why do you focus on those folks? How does that help us take on this campaign in a positive way. I don’t know about you, but I do my best campaigning when I feel strong and positive. I EXPECT the orks to do what orks do. No I don’t read that shit and don’t want it in my head. Yes, I keep up with some of it, but I don’t wallow in it. We shouldnt be letting that stuff in to our heads and hearts — Just sayin
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, he was broke. Which makes his win all the more amazing.
Baud
@Elie: Thank you. Exactly right.
Amir Khalid
Deleted
Baud
@Immanentize:
Haha. That’s a good one.
MisterForkbeard
@Elie: It was just a comment on this: “Anyone watching or listening to Biden’s presser has no doubt he’s mentally and physically on top of his game. It’s a masterclass refutation of the meme Trump and GOP partisans are trying to push.”
Basically, that the anyone mentioned here is wrong. Now, things like this certainly blunt the GOP’s attacks (and would be even better at it if the media commented on this stuff at all other than to repeat Trump’s attacks), but even excellent performances like this don’t put things to bed when the other side is literally paid to keep them going.
ETA: But I agree, don’t let it get to you and it’s probably a bad idea to read it. God knows reading the comments on Harris’ posts by the dedicated trolls there is demoralizing. :)
Elie
@MisterForkbeard:
Well seems like you are looking for a reason to focus on that. Your choice. I can’t do that. I am not advocating a wishful thinking approach where I ignore anything bad that the otherside does — I know however, that for us to overcome this and be victorious, we have to function and focus on OUR game — our capabilities, message and tone. That is what Biden is doing and I am following the leader. As I said upstring, orks gotta ork.
Hoodie
@Omnes Omnibus: I think Joe ran out of fucks to give a long time ago, but in a largely positive, “every day’s a gift” kind of way. Now he’s not trying to be something he’s not, and what he actually is has turned out to be a pretty good fit for the times. If one of the other Dem candidates had really emerged, my guess is that he wouldn’t have been bothered in the slightest. He always been a sharp guy but kind of nervous in the service, but that seems to be gone this time around.
different-church-lady
@MazeDancer:
It feels like there’s some kind of law of inverse relationships in this.
TaMara (HFG)
Me popping in to remind everyone to be positive and stay focused on winning. Sees @Elie: has it covered. Goes back to work.
Kay
@Hoodie:
I find that really appealing about him. He’s been in government so long and there’s still this genuine sense of “look at how far I’ve come!” He’s grateful. It’s so rare. It’s the gift of people who are consistently underestimated and get ahead anyway, right? They never think about what they “deserved” and didn’t get.
mitzimuffin
I am happy to see him standing straight up and being calm. I’m so tired of Trump slouching over the podium like he can’t be bothered.
Kay
This is harsh but really good. It’s the only Republican analysis of Trump I’ve read that doesn’t qualify what has happened to Republicans by mentioning Democrats:
Immanentize
@Kay: I have a professor colleague — the guy is an honest to goodness “Brand” and has dozens of study guides under his name. No student gets through law school these days without one of his study guides. Anyway, he and I would (before Covid) just sit and marvel how lucky we are. It’s like we hit a lifetime lottery getting to teach what we love and to be a tenured professor to boot! We are both up from modest means and we marvel at how crazy it is that we are where we are. Who let us in here? If they find out, will we get kicked out? It’s not really pretender syndrome, just amazed at our luck.
Not many of my colleagues share this attitude.
Emma from FL
Once upon a time I believed that truth could convince and change minds. I grew up and realized that the monsters will always be with us. I don’t have a single active social media account because sanity will not survive arguing with people of bad faith, and I have come to realize that they don’t matter in the real world. Political Twitter and Facebook are for people who have time/get paid/are obsessed by an unreal game in an unreal setting.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Immanentize:
“Election experts divided over the legality of Trump executive order to seize mail ballots two days before election; Dems vow suit and claim ‘unprecedented power grab’”
Emma from FL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: “Today, seventeen states led by California and New York have filed suit to block any election results that do not include a full accounting of mail-in ballots. The states will not collect or forward any taxes to the federal government until the matter is resolved.”
Kay
@Immanentize:
Compare with Trump, right? He never, ever gets what he thinks he deserves. It’s one long complaint about how he is being treated unfairly. Melania: “I am the most bullied person in the world”. The world!
cmorenc
@MisterForkbeard:
…Yeah, but the folks who will buy that are all either:
West of the Rockies
@cmorenc:
She wants to vote for Trump but doesn’t want to be made to feel bad about it. “I’m a nice person! I just don’t like poor people or smart people or immigrantish people or icky gay people or…”
Amir Khalid
Joe Biden did fine in this media conference. He showed how a proper president faces the media. His answers were factual, well thought out, and to the point. He didn’t say anyrhing new, but then he wasn’t asked any new questions. He criticised Trump without resorting to petty insults, untruths, or conspiracy theories. He drew the right contrast between himself and Trump. His campaign will be well satisfied with how he did.
Baud
@Emma from FL:
It can if it’s backed by power.
Emma from FL
Not really. People cannot be forced to change their minds. They simply learn to hide their opinions.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cmorenc:
If we’re thinking of the same interview, she was a ’16 trump voter who now claims to be undecided, and she heard Biden is losing it– couldn’t point to any example or reason, but she’d “heard” it– and thought trump should send Ben Carson to Kenosha. Because… you know…. the same reason trump appointed that brain surgeon to be head of Housing and URBAN Development
Kay
So funny. That’s exactly what happened locally. We had the Biden signs but not the Biden/Harris signs so I was telling people to take a Biden sign and I’d let them exchange it for a Biden/Harris. We get the new signs tomorrow- I hope they just “buy” a new one – it’s a donation but literally every single person donates so we’ll also double profits! :)
Just kidding. I can’t help it. You think it’s a campaign office I think it’s a store. It’s fine.
Baud
@Emma from FL:
If that were true, slavery would still be the law.
Hoodie
@Kay: Barry Lopez has tried to verbalize a theory about the need for “elders” to help deal with a lot of problems we face to day. This often gets misinterpreted as arguing for gerontocracy, but that’s not really what he’s saying. Not all old people are elders; a lot of our older people, particularly affluent older white people, have been infantilized. Being an elder also is not the same as being in charge, but an elder can be a transitional leader, such as when a group is lost and reflection is as much as or even more important than action. I think Biden may have grown into that kind of role when he was Obama’s VP.
West of the Rockies
@Kay:
Well, I mean, Susan Collins did furrow her brow a few times.
LongHairedWeirdo
Since it’s an open thread, I just had a potentially really happy-making thought.
Trump loved that he could get away with widespread violations of the Hatch Act. The Democrats can’t stop him, and the Republicans won’t.
Good for him. Doesn’t that mean we will have lots of people who can be told “we’ll dismiss these charges, with prejudice, in return for your testimony” assuming the record breaking *6th* Republican President tainted with criminality *in a row* is sent packing?
(Seriously: Nixon, Ford (who pardoned him), Reagan (Iran Contra), George HW (ditto, plus it seems very likely that he delayed the release of the hostages in Iran), George W (lying us into war, and numerous other issues), continuing with Trump.)
West of the Rockies
@Immanentize:
Who would have thought that thirty years ago today we would all be sittin’ here drinking Chateau de Chasseles, eh?
James E Powell
@cmorenc:
The press/media love to interview “independent” or “undecided” voters who turn out to be lifetime Republicans, sometimes even local officials of the Republican Party.
Elie
..Most of all, and what I think is part of Biden’s “secret sauce” these days — He is NOT afraid of Trump. He is honing in on Trump’s number.. he sees a scared, weakening man getting more and more hysterical. He is not afraid to start his running game
Kay
@Hoodie:
Oh, I hope so. We only think of the downside of the angry Trump supporters if Biden wins but they’ll be a much larger group of people who voted for him or didn’t vote at all and they’ll want him to succeed. People were actually really generous with Trump. It wasn’t until 180k of them died that they stopped hoping he’d “grow into the job”. A huge group of people didn’t vote for either Trump or Clinton. They generally want things to go well.
Nicole
I have to give Biden a f*ckton of credit- he started talking about the 2008 economic collapse, and brought up that he persuaded 3 Republicans to change their votes and I thought, “Oh God, here we go…” as I am fearful a Biden Administration will decide to let bygones be bygones, but then, knock me over with a feather, he went after the current Republican Congress and Mitch McConnell. Really well done. And gives me hope he’s not going to automatically start trying to reach across the aisle at the expense of what’s good for the nation.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nicole:
as ever, the key to that is making McConnell the minority leader
Kay
@West of the Rockies:
This is why I think the Mona Charen analysis is tougher and more true than the rest:
Trump’s a coward. When they pushed, he backed off. They just chose not to do it. It wasn’t that he was unbeatable. It’s that they didn’t even try.
Elie
@Hoodie:
I see what you mean, but no — I am seeing a leader in Biden — not a mentor — a leader who is not afraid to say whats what…
Kent
@Kay: My wife ordered some Biden Harris yard signs and bumper stickers online and they came this week. We are the only one in our neighborhood that has them up. Or the only one with any political signs for that matter. This is Clark County WA (Vancouver). I expect we are just early and that will change.
Unfortunately the bumper stickers that came are the magnetic type and the back of my Prius is all plastic so magnets won’t stick and I need to find some actual old-style adhesive bumper stickers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
huh, I wonder how they picked that date
Nicole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh please, please, please…
FelonyGovt
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t understand how could Trump supporter possibly have the FACE to claim that Biden is losing it. How about, listen to your own cult leader if you really want to observe someone who is “losing it”.
Immanentize
@West of the Rockies: Thirty years ago, I wasn’t sure I would be sitting anywhere right now…. But, here we are!
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I get vaccines – pro-vaccine, am I- but pigs will fucking fly before I trust any of the Trump hires on this vaccine. I’ll wait, thanks. These people have not earned my trust. Quite the opposite.
Martin
@Kay: Same here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FelonyGovt:
You mean this guy?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Clips of Biden will appear on the nightly news shows which are watched by relatively less involved voters. This is good.
Watch for Trump to declare he has something vital to say and schedule a “news briefing” during the nightly news hour.
FelonyGovt
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That would be the one. (Good ad BTW.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I believe the background story on Fauci is he’s staying in the job to keep an eye on vaccine development. He’s about the only person in government I trust on this issue.
I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I’m the opposite of that. But I don’t trust any of the old “guard rails”, including at the NIH
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: Me too. I hate being even vaguely associated with the anti-vaxxers, but these people cannot be trusted.
Kay
@Kent:
We’re getting bumper stickers too. They asked for those. It’s fun to volunteer in a D office in a R county because people come in, close the door, and just heave this SIGH, like they’re safe. I get it completely. Republicans talk all the time about how people are mean to them in blue parts of the country and I think it’s so typical that it never occurs to them that there are vast stretches of the country where the reverse is true. If people are mean to them as Trump supporters in NYC what do they think it’s like for a liberal in Alabama? They don’t. Think. Because they’re so busy whining. Me, me, me.
FelonyGovt
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Completely different. I desperately want to be vaccinated against COVID but I’m not going to be a guinea pig for a cockamamie untested vaccine that Trump has rushed out to try to get re-elected.
LuciaMia
So, is Trump suddenly scheduling another 5:30 presser?
LongHairedWeirdo
Oh.
My.
God.
(likely a paraphrase)”They think it’s all going to go away, like someone will sprinkle angel dust everywhere.”
Fairy dust, or pixie dust, my friend. But if *anyone* would be sprinkling angel dust around, it *would* be the Trump-folks.
ETA:
Time stamp is 27:50
I this is close to correct, but I *do* have a hard time transcribing speech, unless it’s enunciated very carefully:”but this administration seems to think it’s all gonna go away, like angel dust is going to be sprayed around.”
brantl
I think Joe was spectacular. We need to make a meme out of Smokin’ Joe.
MCA1
@FelonyGovt: They never subject themselves to raw, first hand exposure to either their god emperor or his nemesis. They believe they’re fully informed by their Facebook feed and the selectively edited clips of Drumpf rallies and interviews they see on Fox.
This happened with people who claimed to be disengaged or undecided but were just waiting for permission to vote for the orange turd in ’16, too. They didn’t actually watch the debates, for instance, or the DNC, they just read the coverage and analysis of them they could count on to give them the conclusion they wanted: both sides are just as bad so it’s OK to vote for the one who will lower your personal income tax rate.
These people still don’t know how much institutional damage Trump has done to our democracy, and they think we’re all rabid doomsayers; because he’s normalized everywhere they see, so they don’t regard him as egregiously outside traditional bounds.
brantl
@Kent: Put some magnetic tape on the other side of your bumper. You can get the stick on type from your hardware store.
Leto
@Kay: Biden said as much at the end of his presser. With all the lying that the Trumpov admin had done, why would anyone believe them on vaccines?
Emma from FL
@Baud: We might be talking at cross-purposes. Force can be used to change situations. I am talking about actually changing opinion. Slavery was changed by war. It did not change the minds of the losers or their descendants. No matter how many examples to the contrary, no matter how reality smacks them in the nose, they still believe that non-whites are inherently intellectually inferior to whites and it takes minimal encouragement to bring them out of the woodwork to try to re-establish the “natural order of things.” We have to keep slapping them down, certainly, but we cannot expect them to change.
Eljai
@Nicole: I love that he brought that up too, though for different reasons. But I agree with your comment. I liked that Biden reminded people that he and Obama entered office with the economy circling the drain. I mean it wasn’t that long ago! It was only because of the efforts of the Obama administration that Trump was able to enter office with a working economy.
neldob
The “civic hygiene” visual is spot on.
Yutsano
I’m watching it now. The “You wanna go to dinner?” quip cracked me up. You can’t see Dolt45 being that clever that quickly. Ever.
rp
“who in God’s name knows what that was about” is actually a great response. Without getting his hands dirty and in just a few words he effectively conveys that Trump isn’t an evil genius, he’s a complete clown. That will probably get under Trump’s skin and it helps reinforce the message that Biden is the serious, “daddy” candidate. (That framing is awful of course, but that’s how the press often sees the Republicans.)
sdhays
@Yutsano: He wouldn’t even think of offering legitimately, unless it was a woman whose … he wanted to grab.
sdhays
@rp: I thought it was great too. I do wish he had explicitly stated that it’s actually unacceptable that the WH isn’t transparent about this. It’s part of the job, and people need to be reminded of that. It’s not just a “norm”, the physical fitness of the President, who is our leader, but also our employee, is critical information. At least Congress deserves complete transparency.
wvng
I imagine that the Trump campaign team is freaking out right about now. I feel certain they have been living in a bubble where Joe is a doddering fool who cannot think clearly … and this presser demonstrates that he is doing just fine. On top of that, the storied Biden charm is entirely intact and boy did it feel good..
Kent
There’s no back side. It’s all just molded plastic wrapping around to the bottom of the car. I’d have to pull all the retaining clips loose and remove the plastic panel to get to the back side. I’ll just find some actual sticker versions.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The real key is making moscow mitch a past senator.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kay
@Leto:
You can’t trust them. I do think the broader medical/research community will blow the whistle, though, if that becomes necessary. I don’t think they’re going to sacrifice the credibility of the entire sector on the alter of Donald Trump, like the Trump employees have done.
gene108
@Leto:
Reporters framing questions in Republican talking points is more than annoying, it also frames how people think about the questions of the day.
For example, “President Obama, why do you have such a tough time finding common ground with Sen. McConnell?” is framed from a Republican friendly view point giving all the agency to Obama to fix the situation, and none to MoscowMitch. This influences what we think, when we consume news.
A Democratic friendly question would be, “Sen. McConnell, why have you lead your caucus to basically filibuster every piece of legislation Democrats proposed, when the country is facing the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression? Shouldn’t you be working to help struggling Americans, instead of stymieing attempts to do so?”.
It’s a huge fucking deal how hard wired generations of reporters are to thinking Republicans are serious people.
gene108
@Elie:
I love how natural Biden is. He’s like, “you know, this is the moment I was born for. Trust me.”
sdhays
@Kent: When I test drove a Prius several years ago, this was a problem since the dealer used a magnetic license plate and placed it on the top of the car. So, of course, during my 20 minute test drive, I got pulled over for not having a license plate. The officer was pleasant enough about it because I’m a white guy, but it was a really unpleasant experience.
It also reinforced my belief that Toyota’s user experience team retired and was replaced by morons. Who the hell came up with the idea of adding a separate button to put the f*cking car in park?
Ruckus
@FelonyGovt:
It’s total subservience. It almost doesn’t matter what their “leader” says or does. They have decided to follow whatever, whenever and that requires supporting the leader no matter what. It doesn’t matter than this leader is a dangerous sick loon. There are a lot of people on both sides who are like this, to my mind they are seemingly on the far right or far left, and the following is more important than anything else. What the far left wants is closer to what the left wants so it doesn’t seem as out there as the far right does. But the squishy middle on both sides are those that actually listen and think, not just follow, like lemmings.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
For the second time in two days, Obama’s campaign guru David Plouffe, a cautious man I believe, not a bomb-thrower, just comes out and says “trump is unwell”. I approve.
Leto
@Kay: Agreed; there’s life after Trumpov, plus there’s greater profits without him. Burning down your entire business just to please the Orange one? They won’t do it.
@gene108: Agreed; if we need better elites, we also need better journalists. Remember way back, in the before times, when Obama temporarily banned Fox from the WH press corp, and how all the press corp was all up in arms? Do you think they’re going to do the same thing when Biden bans all the far right-wing slimes who are in there now? Thinking OAN and the likes.
Dmbeaster
@LongHairedWeirdo: Dealing with the legacy of GOP criminality will be a crucial challenge for Biden as president. Obama’s failure on this point was a major error. And its not just Trump – its a culture of criminality there.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m glad, because any time there’s a dip in the polls, we get “advice” from people.
MCA1
@gene108: YES. Every word of this is spot on.
I do think the decades of ref working through crying about the “liberal media bias” helped get us here, too, along with the self-branding the GOP did for generations about being the patriotic, grown up party of responsible governance, etc.
Regardless, the implications of playing every game on the opponent’s rhetorical playing field are huge, and exhausting. The dynamic is always there that Democrats, and Democrats alone, have to justify every policy preference, because it’s presumed to be fiscally irresponsible or intended to hurt industry or weaken our military or whatever it is that Republicans want to point to.
MisterForkbeard
@LongHairedWeirdo: I don’t think so. Remember that Hatch Act charges carry a really slight penalty: Basically, a mark on your service record, possible demotion, and up to $1000 in fees. It’s primary use is to SHAME and cause scandal.
In this case, these same republican operatives won’t be working for Biden and can’t be affected by demotion. A future republican office won’t care about the black mark on their record, and the RNC or another entity will just pay the fee. And as we all know, Republicans are immune to shame.
Other charges (like corruption, or potentially hampering intelligence services to further Trump and Putin’s election strategy) might be possible, though. Hard to prove without smoking gun evidence, though.
Another Scott
@Kent: I’ve been looking for some magnetic ones to stick on my car’s hatch – Biden’s store doesn’t have any for some reason. Most of what they sell are the clingy vinyl things (no adhesive, surface tension or something holds it on and makes it easy to remove).
I ended up ordering a magnetic one from RedBubble:
https://www.redbubble.com/i/magnet/Joe-and-Kamala-Joe-Biden-Kamala-Harris-by-kdpauthor1/55184421.FRP2L
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
Yeah, the whole shifting system is something you have to get used to. But I have 65,000 on it and have never had to spend a dime except for oil changes and new wipers and tires. And my lifetime gas mileage is 51.8 MPG and I don’t particularly drive gently. The next car will be all electric though. Driving around with separate duplicate electric and gas engines in the car (which is what hybrids are) adds a lot of complexity. We can use my wife’s car for road trips and the electric car for around town stuff.
I’ve been disappointed that Toyota hasn’t jumped into the electric car market like Nissan and Kia. Instead they have double-down on hybrids. It would have been interesting to see if their engineers could have come up with an alternative to Tesla with enough corporate investment behind it.
opiejeanne
I am not anti-vax, either. Tomorrow we are getting our flu shots, but I will not trust any vaccine that becomes available because Trump shoved it through and forced its approval.
That business with Redfield mentioned above, his letter to the governors to apply for vaccine distribution for November 1 is just bullshit.
Kent
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Every day that passes with the polls essentially unchanged is a win.
Fair Economist
November 1 is *super* bullshit because it’s before the election but too late to find out if the vaccine is problematic or ineffectual. Just running the odds, it will probably be overall helpful but still grossly inferior to one of the other vaccines being testing.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Jeez, I hadn’t the will to watch that Ingraham interview but just wow. When even she can’t take out a whisk broom and clean up after him….
“He’s crazy.”
Yup
sdhays
@Leto: If I’m remembering correctly, he didn’t ban them at all. He merely was not going to let them sit in the front row with reporters from NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, etc. They collectively threw a hissy fit over seating. But when Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and McNinny (whatever her name is, I don’t care) shits down their collective throats or just don’t do press conferences for months at a time or brings in lunatic fringe website “reporters”, nary a peep.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Is the flu jab available now? I hadn’t heard and want to get mine ASAP. They’re said to perhaps build one’s overall immunity in addition to against the season’s chosen viruses (which are always a best guess) so I’m pretty eager this year.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: one thing that’s become clear as I read memoirs and listen to podcast form Obama vets: Donors are bed-wetters who demand their panic be taken seriously, which leads to bad press. There’s a story going around that I can’t find now about a Harris handling a donor phone call and some big shot stating as fact that “we’re losing the base!”
On the Nicole Wallace show, she took Plouffe’s assertion that trump is losing it and the whole panel went to town for ten minutes. I hope they started something. Jon Heileman went on at length about the old white man watching too much Fox News and getting more racist and paranoid. He didn’t call it Fox News Syndrome, but a lot of people do. Top people. People you’ve heard of.
Salty Sam
Can you provide a link or point the way to read up on this please?
trollhattan
@Kent:
The Germans have been quietly positioning themselves to enter the full-electric market in a big way and it will be both welcome competition and interesting to see their approach. One technical detail I read is they’re siloing off a fraction of the battery capacity, believing allowing 100% discharge is bad for overall battery health, and also adding liquid cooling to the pack. Considering lithium, I’m all for that idea.
Today I saw my first moronic Tesla customization–a Model S with ginormous wing bolted to the trunk lid. Needed touch to one’s $90k sedan.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I choose to imagine that Harris told that donor to grow a pair.
catclub
Yes, here. Got it this morning.
Kay
@Fair Economist:
I do trust that the vast majority of the medical establishment won’t bow down to Donald Trump. They didn’t bow down to his lies about the epidemic and they won’t cover for him if he recklessly harms people again.
I wish I could say the same for lawyers, but I can’t. More government lawyers should have flipped. They have an ethical obligation to report illegality and there’s no exception for “I wanted to keep my job”. The duty assumes you may lose your job, you are, after all reporting on a superior. It comes with risk. You still have to do it. They should have stood up. If we win and more illegality is revealed and it’s discovered that government lawyers were aware of it and did nothing they should lose their jobs. It’s unacceptable.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: It is available, but I’d heard they were telling people to wait another month out of the fear that immunity would wear off before flu season was over.
(But the person who told me that also pointed out that he didn’t see why one couldn’t get a second dose. Dunno if insurance would cover it.)
Uncle Cosmo
@trollhattan: @catclub:
IIRC, experts (real ones, not the Trumpled) advise not to rush out for the flu vax right away but wait til mid-October or later. Flu shot immunity tends to degrade over 3 months or so; getting one now would mean your protection would start to fade in December, heading right into the teeth of what’s usually the height of the season. (OTOH, if a large %age of people avoid in-person shopping and holiday parties out of COVID caution, interpersonal contact [not to mention grabbing fluish door handles] might be sharply down relative to a normal holiday season & the “height” might not be so heigh :^D. You rolls up your sleeve, you takes your choice…)
ETA: McIrvin sortakinda beat me to it just above, damn his eyes.
Matt McIrvin
(We may not have much of a flu season anyway–COVID lockdowns do a really good job of smashing down other contagious infections.)
Dave
@Kent: apparently they did the research and found that the effort to reach 200 plus miles on battery power is not energy-efficient at this time.
Jeffro
@Kay: I love the article, and not just because it’s basically what I’ve been hammering my dad and brother with for about five years now. =)
You have to maintain standards and be willing to police your own group, or you’re lost. I’d be thoroughly embarrassed to have had a such a corrupt moron as my Democratic party leader – I can’t even come up with a comparison, honestly – and would have been actively denouncing him all along, loudly.
zhena gogolia
Wow, been teaching on Zoom for 2.5 hours so have missed all the good discussion. Just have to say how much I love our students. They are doing great work. I just hope all the testing and isolating and masking is going to let us keep it up.
zhena gogolia
@Kay:
That is spot on.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Dmbeaster: Agreed. And one other happymaking thought: if Trump’s going down, I’ve seen multiple people saying that narcissists are glad to take down everyone who didn’t prevent this from happening. He might be so eager to hurt people that he won’t even think to demand a plea deal first.
Jeffro
Of course not. Their party is so far gone, they had no principles on which to challenge trumpov…for those few that did, they found out that their base has no principles as well. They’ve all been conditioned for 30 years that it’s enough to get screaming angry and just be against whatever Democrats are for. That’s enough for them.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: he’s unwell and ahem um not likely to get any better these next two months.
This race is, at worst (for Biden) static: he’ll still be at least at +7/8 come Election Day. I think his lead will actually get wider as we cross the 250k Covid death mark and trumpov still does nothing other than elevate this clown who wants ‘herd immunity’
zhena gogolia
@Kay:
I got my stickers but not my signs yet. No Trump signs in my neighborhood yet, so I may hold off.
Lots of BLM signs one neighborhood over, only one on my street.
Jeffro
@Uncle Cosmo: that’s what I usually do – get the flu shot in mid-October.
debbie
@cmorenc:
Tangentally, NPR’s On Point had a roundtable of Democrats. Overall, it was nice listening to them and their informed enthusiasm, but there was one man who called himself a Beto supporter and was considering not voting at all due to his lack of enthusiasm for Biden. I call bullshit on him; he was clearly a BS supporter. I wish he’d been challenged more on some of the silliness of his remarks (“Joe hasn’t done anything about evictions”).
Yutsano
@Jeffro: The Republican base wants one thing: the libz pwned. That’s it. As long as the Democrats are shoved into the metaphorical locker they’re happy. Oh and Democrats can never be legitimate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@debbie:
yeah, that’s a tell, people who think St Bernard was gonna institute Single Payer by wining the Dem nomination (with 30% of the party) can’t understand why candidate Biden hasn’t passed any legislation.
Kay
@Jeffro:
It’s fine. As it turns out the entire conservative political movement had no core beliefs at all. The whole thing collapsed the moment it was tested. Trump is HUGELY cynical. He bet it wouldn’t hold up under pressure, and he was right. They just didn’t meet the challenge they were presented with. He won. He absolutely trounced conservatism. There’s little or nothing of it left.
debbie
@Kay:
It’s surprising how many yards around here have both Biden and Biden/Harris signs. This is the first time I’ve seen this happen.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think I need a cigarette.
Kay
@Jeffro:
Rand Paul wants to round up some indeterminate group of people and check their travel records and financials. This passes without comment on the Right. Not charged with anything, not even the subject of an investigation- he just wants all their information so some entity he hasn’t named can investigate them. His principles didn’t survive being yelled at by protesters. That was enough for him to call for roving, general “investigations” of people who, I don’t know, wear 2 or more articles of black clothing at a time.
Kay
@debbie:
That is funny. Harris was an unequivocal hit in this town. They were genuinely pleased and excited. I don’t think that could have gone better, as a roll out.
debbie
@trollhattan:
They are available, but some think it’s too early to get it now.
PAM Dirac
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The “guard rails” are the data. A lot of data has already been published. There are numerous studies on antibodies levels, T cell response and other effects for various candidate vaccines. There are a number of studies with at least a some hint regarding what kind of response would protect from infection and the estimates are in line with what the vaccines are producing. The current published data, not orange fart cloud bullshit, makes very reasonable experts think that one or more of the current vaccines will turn out to be a useful tool in the pandemic. It is not at all impossible that the some of the current effectiveness trials will have enough data to confirm that suspicion before Nov 1. The thing to look for is not the announcement, it is the data. If the data are there, then it can be discussed, analyzed, and fit into a plan of attack, no matter when it comes and no matter what ink is spewing from on high. I don’t think it is very useful to focus on the bullshit, if it means ignoring good data.
PST
@Jeffro: I usually wait until mid-October as well for my flu shot, but this year I am worried about flu on top of Covid-19, so I went ahead with it. By January or February we may have a vaccine for Covid, and in any event we seem to get continually better at treating it. I could be wrong, of course, but my doctor approved. By the way, not only is the ordinary flu shot available, but so is the special secret double strength version that only we seniors are entitled to.
Elie
@gene108:
Yeah – totally. Plain talk, direct, no bullshit. Calm, easy in the saddle…
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: He does not have principles.
Ken
“Well, you’re supposed to have a freezer since the vaccine needs to be kept at -30C, and this is only a styrofoam beer cooler. And the layers of rat feces on the floor and the rusty water dripping from the overhead pipes are troubling. But what the hell, approved.”
evodevo
@Kent: I just use scotch tape and stick them in the rear or side window…
Logan Brown
@Kent: We have a 2007 Prius which is almost ready to hit 200,000 miles. It has never topped an average of 50 miles per gallon (stayed around 44 when I commuted 40 miles on the Interstate) but it’s a great car which my son is thrilled that he can drive.
Another Scott
@Kent: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27887943/toyota-ev-rollout-plans/
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bill Arnold
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’ll consider a vaccine after the phase III trials are completed, and the trials iare independently audited by a trustable party. And the trial data must be publicly accessible.
brantl
@Kent: then stick the magnetic tape on the outside. Neh? Put silicone caulk under the tape.
brantl
GrueBleen
A word of the day for you: anatidaephobia