Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This really is a full service blog.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Let me file that under fuck it.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Come on, man.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

You are here: Home / Elections / Biden-Harris 2020 / Thursday Evening Open Thread: Vote for the Democrats, *We* Don’t Want to Kill You

Thursday Evening Open Thread: Vote for the Democrats, *We* Don’t Want to Kill You

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“Abundance of caution”:


Per the Washington Post:

… Harris has not been in close contact recently with either communications director Liz Allen or the other person around her who tested positive, a flight attendant who is not a campaign staff member, an aide said.

Hours later, the campaign said another person–one who flew on the same plane as former vice president Joe Biden this week–had also tested positive. Biden was never within 50 feet of this person, the campaign said, and the candidate’s doctor concluded there was no need for him to quarantine.

Biden tested negative Wednesday evening, according to the campaign.

While Biden’s travel plans are not expected to change, Harris was stepping off the trail for four days, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said.

“Out of an abundance of caution and in line with our campaign’s commitment to the highest levels of precaution, we are canceling Senator Harris’s travel through Sunday,” O’Malley Dillon said, but “she will keep a robust and aggressive schedule of virtual campaign activities to reach voters all across the country during this time.”…

Elsewhere…

Look, all the people *we* care about have already had it or we figure they’re immune. Who cares what happens to all those faceless ‘voters’?

Reader Interactions

183Comments

  2. 2.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    NEW: With less than three weeks until Election Day, Joe Biden has opened up a double-digit lead over President Trump, the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds.

    It has Biden leading him 54% to 43% among likely voters.https://t.co/VbwMIb0LRQ

    — NPR (@NPR) October 15, 2020

    Marist is an A+ rated pollster by 538

  4. 4.

    RaflW

    I’m an approaching-old and yep, twitting is not currently available. So I’ll go see how the burger buns are proofing, and hope it’s time to bake ’em.

    One of the plusses of fall weather!

  8. 8.

    Matt McIrvin

    Twitter’s down and the DownDetector comments are full of MAGAts saying it’s a conspiracy to suppress the New York Post Hunter Biden article.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    Turns out the apple can fall far from the tree.

    The daughter of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani issued a scathing rebuke on Thursday against the President’s re-election efforts and urged voters in next month’s presidential election to throw their support behind Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden instead.
    [snip]
    After writing that she has dissociated herself from her father by forging an identity in the arts separate from her last name, Giuliani argued that “none of us can afford to be silent right now” when “the stakes are too high.”
    [snip]
    Giuliani then urged the public to “end this nightmare” by voting for Biden. Source

  18. 18.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    Thing is, the whole herd immunity thing has been stupid from the getgo.
    It’s not at all uncommon for immunity to a coronavirus to fade – either because your body forgets how to handle it, *or* because minor mutations will render it unrecognizable.

    (When I was younger, I heard you never catch *the same cold* twice – you catch a variant your body hasn’t encountered. I’m not sure if that’s true, or if it’s *essentially* true, because of minor, random, mutations making the same baseline strain different enough.)

    So: how long can we expect immunity to last? We haven’t the foggiest. We *do* know we can’t count on it lasting more than a year. Hard to count on something, when you literally *can’t* have evidence of that something! That’s why the CDC’s announcement, that you could count on 3 months of immunity, was a big deal. Also, note, everyone rushed in after that announcement to make sure people understood they didn’t mean “*only* three months”, they meant “at least three months” because it might last longer.

    Still, it sounds as if the Republican Party has decided that it’s *okay* if we have 200,000 deaths this year, for immunity that might not last all that long, because they think that’s still their best chance to keep the election close enough to try to steal.

  23. 23.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    My ballot came! You may remember it was accidentally sent to my old address in Iowa. I had to call the county clerk and get them to cancel that one and issue a new on. And it came. Now I’ll fill it out and Mr DAW and I will take them to a drop box.

  24. 24.

    JPL

    So finally after waking early every day since Monday , I voted for Joe in Fulton Cty, GA .   It’s pretty comical in a way.  Oldest son, waits five and a half hours on the first day.   Today only a forty minute line, but I did arrive forty-five minutes early.    I have been driving by and watching the lines since Monday.    Youngest son walks to the senior center today at ten and walks in and out in ten minutes.    Senior centers have been closed for events, but still open for voting.    OMG  He even sent me a pic, after both older son, and I sent him pics.

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @Matt McIrvin:

    the DownDetector comments are full of MAGAts saying it’s a conspiracy to suppress the New York Post Hunter Biden article.

    Gee, and my first guess was that it was a DDOS against Twitter by someone who was pissed they had blocked access to the Hunter Biden libel article.  I guess everyone has their own preferred conspiracy theory.

  30. 30.

    James E Powell

    I’m getting four emails a day from Gary Peters raising the hue & cry. WTF is happening in Michigan?

  35. 35.

    Kent

    @Roger Moore:Gee, and my first guess was that it was a DDOS against Twitter by someone who was pissed they had blocked access to the Hunter Biden libel article.  I guess everyone has their own preferred conspiracy theory.

    No chance of that.   A successful denial of service attack against an institution as large as twitter is something long in the planning by people with a VERY narrow skill set.  You don’t just wake up one morning, get pissed at Twitter, and then bring it down.

  37. 37.

    cain

    @Roger Moore:

    It’s all numbers and not real until every vote is actually realized. We need to make sure that this is overwhelmingly a landslide that there just can’t be any mistake who won.

  39. 39.

    bluehill

    @Kent: Timing is interesting given all that planning. Why now as opposed to election day? Wonder if something is about to drop?

  41. 41.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    Beware the Ides of October.

    ;)

    Or maybe it’s just time for Twitter to swap out the hamsters that power it all.

  42. 42.

    Jeffro

    What is this “third wave” bullshit?

    We never got out of the first one.  It just spread across the country from the Northeast to the Midwest, while continuing a ‘slow burn’ most everywhere else.  And now it’s on the rise from its already way-too-high level.

    “Third wave” my ass.  How about “continuing up, up, up!”?

  43. 43.

    JeanneT

    @James E Powell:  Polls are close and Peter’s opponent James is putting out very misleading tweets and ads about the many times Peters has voted against Social Security funding, Veterans pay increases, improvements in health care coverage, etc – counting his votes all the Senate Republican sponsored bills on those items, no doubt.   It’s infuriating.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @Kent:

    Maybe you don’t just wake up in the morning and try to take down Twitter, but maybe you make taking down Twitter a contingency plan if they interfere with your disinformation campaign.  I never said the person who was angry Twitter wasn’t helping to spread the Biden lie was a 400 pound guy in his mom’s basement; it could be someone with the resources to pull it off.

  46. 46.

    Kent

    @frosty:@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:  Does a likely voter poll take into account the 100,000 or more voters Republicans have newly registered in PA? I’m freaking out here.

    That shouldn’t affect polling at all.  Polling methodologies do random dialing and then discern whether voters are registered and likely to vote from their poll question responses.  They don’t do polls of registered voters by cold calling off voter registration lists.

    So whether or not someone was recently registered should make no difference in polling.

  49. 49.

    Mike in NC

    WaPo reports that Shelly Adelson has caved to Fat Bastard’s demand for a handout and coughed up $75M. Hope he has to burn it all up for TV ads in Mississippi and the Dakotas.

  51. 51.

    cain

    @Mike in NC:

    That dumb motherfucker. It’s not even going to the campaign, it’ll probably be used to pay debts and buy drugs.

    How much money has this man lost on Republicans?

  52. 52.

    Kent

    @Roger Moore: Shrug.  There is just as much if not much more MAGA pro-Trump stuff on twitter as pro-Biden stuff.  Maybe they can take down Facebook too while they are at it because someone on Facebook said something mean about Trump.

    Who knows.

  55. 55.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    The U.S. Postal Service agreed Wednesday to reverse changes that slowed mail service nationwide, settling a lawsuit filed by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock during a pandemic that is expected to force many more people to vote by mail.
    [snip]
    The postal service agreed to reverse all changes, which included reduced retail hours, removal of collection boxes and mail sorting machines, closure or consolidation of mail processing facilities, restriction of late or extra trips for timely mail delivery, and banning or restricting overtime. Source

    1) I’ll believe it when I see it.
    2) Inner cynic expects this USPS to slow walk implementation, certainly until after election day.

  57. 57.

    JPL

    Between Christie and Sasse today, trump might be a tad upset tonight.  It doesn’t matter though, cause I’ll be watching Joe.

  60. 60.

    TS (the original)

    Morning in my world and the state that has been in serious shutdown for over 10 weeks had  2 cases reported today. From 700 to 2. For years there are going to be cost/benefit studies of the cost of shutdowns, at the moment it all seems worthwhile.

    Now everyone will be talking about whether it goes up again when restrictions are eased.

    From a couple of threads back – mention of Dianne Feinstein hugging Lindsey Graham. I haven’t hugged anyone except my husband since mid February.  She has no clue as to what she is doing.

  63. 63.

    Kent

    @NotMax: Well, the USPS is a massive organization and the political lackeys represent a very very tiny veneer at the top.  If this is actually a legit change then employees in every sorting center and post office around the country are essentially authorized and empowered to start working harder.  And if there is local foot-dragging I expect we will hear about it as a large majority of postal workers are unionized and I expect a majority are Dems and people of color.  Especially in the big cities where all this actually matters.

  64. 64.

    JPL

    @Baud: He was in ICU for a few days and found god, masks and social distance.   So far not behaving like Hicks, but we’ll see tomorrow what happens.

  65. 65.

    Jeffro

    @JPL: I just saw that! (via WaPo)

    So…a week in the ICU can really change one’s perspective in some cases.  How about that?

    (rooting for injuries here, let’s go, GOP!)

  66. 66.

    Tony Jay

    You know, I swear to God that Election 2016 seemed to go on and on and on and on and, well, it was an interminable grind of infotainment bullshit and frequent WTFery. In contrast it seems like Election 2020 has just come barrelling around the bend on two wheels, hood steaming, chrome gleaming in the light of the rising sun, and it’s suddenly only three weeks away and that’s the biggest WTF of all.

    I guess this is what happens when a solipsistic dunce with evil in his withered little heart has the national platform and institutional power to completely steamroller through all of the efforts of the corporate Media to help him out by making it simply impossible for them to coordinate a destructive narrative about his opponent because, well,  he just can not shut the fuck up long enough for them to build up steam.

    It’s great. Thanks Tang, you complete moron.

  68. 68.

    A Ghost to Most

    In other news, the Cameron Peak fire is now the largest in CO history, and is skirting just north of Estes Park. Mandatory evacuations to Horsetooth Reservoir, just west of Fort Collins.

  69. 69.

    LuciaMia

    see how the burger buns are proofing

    Umm, burger buns. Mine still dont turn out quite the way I want when I make them. They come out more like globes than buns.

  70. 70.

    Jeffro

    @Mike in NC: $75M, 2 1/2 weeks before Election Day.

    He’s just trying to keep it close and hope that the GOP holds the Senate.  So very very many rich folks are hoping for this outcome – bye trumpov, but no new taxes to help pay for all the damage he caused.

    I truly hope they don’t get their wish.  They’ve really raided the shit out of this country.

  71. 71.

    cain

    @Baud:

    His Achiles Heel seems to be all things Israel. Of course, he also hates cannabis – thinks it is a gateway drug.

  75. 75.

    Kent

    @Tony Jay: It’s also Covid time, which has fucked with all of our sense of the passage of time.  I don’t ever remember an election where I have felt in such limbo as this one.  Probably because in a normal fall I’m so much busier working and coaching soccer and everything else.  Now I just sit at the computer and obsess.

  77. 77.

    guachi

    538 has Biden a hair better in Georgia (49.6 to 49.6) than in Ohio (49.4 to 49.6). Obama lost Georgia by 5.2 and won Ohio by 4.6 in 2008.

  78. 78.

    Jeffro

    National treasure Alexandra Petri has some sage advice for those of us wishing to NOT watch trumpov’s town hall tonight:

    (honestly, I thought it was just going to be one line on an otherwise blank screen: “don’t turn on your TV”)

    It’s better than that  ;)

    Here’s how best to watch President Trump’s town hall Thursday night on NBC and its affiliates:

    • Consult your local listings to find what channel NBC and its affiliates are in your area!
    • Tune your TV to that channel.
    • Unplug the TV.
    • Throw it out the window.
    • Watch the screen shatter on the asphalt or other pavement below.

    She keeps going… ;)

  79. 79.

    jl

    @LongHairedWeirdo: That is a very important point that the herd immunity crowd can’t answer.

    There are several reasons that herd immunity will go away after some time, the gradual loss of individual immunity is just one of them. As Fair Economist and I discussed last night on the History Repeats Itself thread (I think), the term ‘herd immunity’ is used in a couple of different ways in epidemiology. The relevant meaning for any reasonable scenario for covid is herd immunity interpreted as a threshold reached when effective R drops below 1 and new cases start to decline.

    Actually, how herd immunity, in that sense, controls very the very damaging cycles of viral diseases like measles, mumps, etc. before mass immunization is very well understood. No reason that disease induced herd immunity will not produce the same horrendous and unending cycles, even if individual covid disease induced immunity is long lasting over many years.

    Just as a fun note, asking students to show how the herd immunity threshold is reached at the top of a cycle when an epidemic wave starts to decline, and then again when the next one starts to  roar back is a fun way to torture students in an intro  infectious disease epidemiology class. The herd immunity threshold is crossed at the top of one epidemic wave, when effective R drops below 1, and then is reached at the bottom, when effective R rises above 1 from below. Why  does the herd immunity  crowd not understand it? Beats me.

    I think the herd immunity people either have an agenda that they don’t want to talk about, (and they are wrong about how epidemics work) and won’t or can’t learn, or are very confused self-righteous people. Or, of course, both.

    Edit: for a compare and contrast, Fair Economist rightly pointed out that ‘herd immunity’ also has a meaning that came out (IIRC) from veterinary science, which is about a state, not a dynamic process. What level of immunization is required so that the whole herd is protected even if all the cows, or whatever, cannot be immunized, or the vaccine provides imperfect protection.

    Even if herd immunity could be reached in less than four of five years (and all evidence indicates for covid, it will not), most likely scenario is that societies will be thrown into the cycles of viral disease epidemics that we had to put up with before mass immunization.

    End of rant/lecture.

    Sorry, not the end. The best response is to just point out the half a dozen, and growing number, of countries that are controlling covid at a far lower cost than letting the disease roar, and saying ‘case closed.’ You believe your lying eyes or vague hand waving?

  80. 80.

    Ken

    @Mike in NC: What is $75 million in ActBlue time?  About 3 days?

    (Thanks to the people who replied – I have edited my original guess so it looks like I was always right.  Baud, take notes for your presidency.)

  83. 83.

    Jeffro

    @TS (the original): national snooze media: “See?  Christie really gets it.”

    Biden & Co: “Um, hello??!  Been saying this for eight months now”

    media: “Ok, so both sides are now right and good, then”

    Biden & Co: (rolls eyes)

  85. 85.

    opiejeanne

    @NotMax: My husband is being subpoenaed as a witness in a drunk driving case. The driver, crashed through our fence at the corner back in February.

    The notice took 4 days to come from the courthouse in Redmond to our place in Woodinville, between 6 and 8 miles depending on the route the mail takes to be sorted and delivered, so more like 20-25 miles.

  89. 89.

    JeanneT

    @James E Powell:   I think at this point you can get the most bang for your buck for Peters by supporting the One Campaign for Michigan, which is doing great field work (as far as I can tell) to turn out voters for the whole Democratic ballot.   If we get voters to fill in the bubble for a straight Dem ticket, Peters will be in good shape.

    https://michigandems.com/one-campaign/

  90. 90.

    Kent

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: I’m seeing an absolute tidal wave of great Biden ads.  Yesterday’s Springsteen one was great too.  Is the Trump Campaign producing any good Trump ads at all?   I, for one, have not seen a single one. But then I don’t really travel in any MAGA circles, online or in real life.

    Where is Trumps “Morning in America” type ad?  Does he have any?   They used to be really good at that shit.

  95. 95.

    frosty

    @Kent: So whether or not someone was recently registered should make no difference in polling.

    Thank you!! Back to obsessively reading B-J and polls and getting ready to hit the pavement for the next three weekends.

  96. 96.

    Kent

    @Baud:

    @lamh36:

    I hope Biden wins Texas by one vote.

    My DREAM scenario:

    Biden narrowly wins and a bunch of ultra-red county senior citizen absentee votes get accidentally delayed by the USPS and show up late and aren’t allowed to be counted because of ultra-strict GOP voter suppression rules.  The Trump campaign sues to get them counted but they can’t because that would violate the clear black letter of TX law.

    He loses Texas BECAUSE he fucked with the Post Office.

    Game, set, match.

  97. 97.

    jl

    @Kent: I’ve read that many state level GOP officials and candidates, including some GOP Senators, are having nervous breakdowns precisely because of Trump’s campaign against mail in voting. For once, I hope those state level Republicans are correct.

  100. 100.

    Tony Jay

    @Kent:

    Oh certainly, it’s totally changed the dynamic, but a less self-obsessed incumbent could have turned it to his advantage and let the Media do what they love to do without slamming his bollocks onto their keyboards every two minutes.

    Instead it’s been a continuation of his reign of error, accelerating and throwing up geysers of shit like a gaudy rented limo popping wheelies in a half-flooded sewer. All Biden/Harris have had to do is be…. normal. Nothing sticks to them, because Trump won’t let anyone else have even a moment in the limelight.

    It’s a good thing. Normal is good. People vote for normal. And let’s be honest, compared to Trump the week old carcass of a dog propped on a stick with one gooey eyeball stuck to its cheek would look normal and sober and eminently electable.

  101. 101.

    Kent

    @sdhays:@Mike in NC: Wait, are the Dakotas suddenly competitive?

    No, settle down.

    If he HAS to burn ad buys in Mississippi and the Dakotas then it is the biggest wave election since 1984.

  104. 104.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Just googled.  Christie said he was wrong not to wear a mask at the White House.  He wasn’t just in the hospital, he was in the ICU for 7 days with COVID.

  108. 108.

    lamh36

    @WaterGirl: I just saw that.  So NOOOOOWWW it’s time to take it seroiusly…FUQ you Christie!

     

    @MSNBC

    BREAKING: Chris Christie urges Americans to wear masks to fight the coronavirus that put him in ICU for 7 days, warning that the virus is “something to take very seriously.”

  109. 109.

    zhena gogolia

    @WaterGirl: 
    I don’t know. I’m going to do Tunes of Glory on TCM. Alec Guinness, John Mills, kilts, bagpipes. Wake me when it’s over.

  110. 110.

    jl

    @Tony Jay: ‘the week old carcass of a dog propped on a stick with one gooey eyeball stuck to its cheek’

    You make good points, but should probably refer to the majority of the US political ruling class in more polite terms. Cultural thing. We in the US are more sensitive than our comrades in the other parts of the English speaking Anglo world.

    OTOH, at least you are not Australian. God knows how one of those would phrase it.

  112. 112.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:

    I think the herd immunity people either have an agenda that they don’t want to talk about, (and they are wrong about how epidemics work) and won’t or can’t learn, or are very confused self-righteous people.

    I think the core of the “herd immunity” people is wishful thinking.  They desperately want to get back to normal, and the herd immunity story is an excuse for why it’s not just OK to go back to normal but actually better and smarter than applying public health measures until we can get a vaccine.  It doesn’t matter that there’s no scientific evidence it will work.  The power of wishful thinking is far more important.

  113. 113.

    Kent

    So, according to my woke 17 year old, all of Gen-Z and the TicToc kids are multi-streaming the Biden town hall across many multiple platforms to ramp up the ratings.  Apparently it’s an organized thing like how they fucked with the Oklahoma City covid-fest.

  115. 115.

    zhena gogolia

    We’ve been bringing in our Biden/Harris sign at night so the vandals don’t get it. Today we forgot to put it back up until noon (tree trimmers were here and we got distracted). My husband said that as he was putting it back up, a nice lady walked by and said, “I like your sign!”

  117. 117.

    Jinchi

    @Baud: It’s impossible for Biden to win Texas by one vote. He might be able to win it by 100,000. Anything less than that will be lost in the inevitable recount as Republican officials successfully challenge as many ballots as needed to restore Trump as the rightful winner.

  118. 118.

    jl

    @lamh36: Wonder what would happen if we did all of our public health education that way.

    Politicians advocate running into the street, then…

    “Lemme tell you, wandering into the street and getting hit by a bus is damn serious. I know from personal experience!”

  119. 119.

    Tony Jay

    @jl:

    Ah, got ya.

    “the week old carcass of a dog propped on a stick with one gooey eyeball stuck to its cheek… in a really nice suit.”

    That’s better. 8-)

  121. 121.

    Kent

    @Tony Jay:

    Oh certainly, it’s totally changed the dynamic, but a less self-obsessed incumbent could have turned it to his advantage and let the Media do what they love to do without slamming his bollocks onto their keyboards every two minutes.

    Instead it’s been a continuation of his reign of error, accelerating and throwing up geysers of shit like a gaudy rented limo popping wheelies in a half-flooded sewer. All Biden/Harris have had to do is be…. normal. Nothing sticks to them, because Trump won’t let anyone else have even a moment in the limelight.

    Every head of state in the planet who has done a good job combatting Covid has seen their popularity and ratings INCREASE during this pandemic.   All he had to do was do his job.

  124. 124.

    sdhays

    @Kent: That’s what I thought, but Mississippi threw me because of the closer than expected Senate race. If it had just been the Dakota’s or, I don’t know, Idaho, I wouldn’t have wondered.

  125. 125.

    Roger Moore

    @cain:

    oh yeah, apparently the senate has time to drag Jack Dorsey into a senate hearing.

    I think they should drop everything and spend every waking hour between now and January 3rd investigating Twitter and Facebook.  It’s far more important than any other business they could be doing.

  128. 128.

    Jinchi

    @jl: The herd immunity threshold is crossed at the top of one epidemic wave, when effective R drops below 1, and then is reached at the bottom, when effective R rises above 1 from below. Why does the herd immunity crowd not understand it?

    “Herd immunity” as a political agenda is simply an excuse to do nothing at all and pretend it’s an actual strategy.

    You’re asking people to educate themselves : Which is doing something.

  130. 130.

    Jeffro

    @lamh36: Chris, we’d respect you more if you’d just FINISH THAT THOUGHT: “…wear masks and don’t listen to president* trumpov!”

  131. 131.

    Gravenstone

    @lamh36:  Vintage Republican/”conservative” approach to life. Nothing a Democrat/liberal wants has value unless and until it affects the Republican personally.

  132. 132.

    Kent

    @Juju: @JPL: what did Sasse do?

     

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/10/15/kisses-dictators-butts-republican-ben-sasse-gave-blistering-condemnation-of-trump-in-audio-of-town-hall/#4cfd49633554

    Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska launched into a scathing critique of President Trump’s leadership in a telephone town-hall with constituents despite supporting his reelection, offering a glaring example of the private discontent many Republican lawmakers have with the president.

    Asked by a constituent about his relationship with Trump, Sasse highlighted what they have in common briefly launching into an extended criticism of Trump, according to audio of the call obtained by the Washington Examiner.

    Sasse, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, alleged Trump “kisses dictators’ butts” and “sells out our allies,” even going so far as to say he has “flirted with white supremacists.”

    Trump “ignored” coronavirus and then “went into full economic shutdown mode” while proposing sub-part mitigation measures, Sasse claimed, summing up his pandemic leadership as not being “reasonable or responsible or right.”

    Sasse repeated accusations made by many never-Trump Republicans that Trump doesn’t embody traditional conservative values in his lack of concern for the deficit and his private ridicule of evangelicals, also echoing vocal concerns from some of his GOP Senate colleagues that Trump may have hurt Republicans in Congress electorally.

    Sasse’s spokesperson James Wegmann confirmed the comments to Forbes while asserting in a statement that Sasse is only focused on maintaining GOP control of the Senate, which he said is far more important than control of the White House.

  135. 135.

    Jeffro

    @Kent: Wegmann: “He only meant it in terms of saving his own a$$ and the Senate GOP majority…nothing was meant as a critique of the current president*, yadda yadda yadda”

    SORRY!  You don’t get to have it both ways any more, GOP.  People are recording everywhere and it gets out in a hurry!

  136. 136.

    Tony Jay

    @Kent:

    Yup. I’ve seen that point made here before and it’s so true it’s laughable. Don’t try to ‘use’ something like this, just do what all the guidebooks say about dealing with genuine threats and look like you know what you’re doing. Leave it to the professionals, occasionally make a speech, follow what the scientists are telling you and watch those favourability ratings go up and up.

    But with Trump, as with Johnson over here, that’s simply not something they’re capable of doing. It turns out television celebrities with massive egos and no work ethic are… bad at this stuff. Whocuddaknown?

  141. 141.

    jl

    @Jinchi: Since my obnoxious pedantry is going down well, so far, and I want to be fair and balanced, I’ll throw the herd immunity crowd a bone, from research done starting with pandemic flu and now being elaborated for covid.

    The herd immunity strategy could work to let the disease spread and then land right on the herd immunity threshold, and we could be kept their, approximately. But, hey, all it would take is an endless cycle of carefully timed shutdowns. What’s not to like?

    Still an unworkable strategy for other reasons that many commenters and yours truly have mentioned.

  143. 143.

    Jeffro

    WaPo headline about Rudy G just needs to add “willing”, as in “Giuliani was WILLING target of Russian intelligence”

  146. 146.

    Gin & Tonic

    BREAKING: Sun rises in East.

    White House was warned Giuliani was target of Russian intelligence operation to feed misinformation to Trump https://t.co/0yRwY64Qop
    — The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 15, 2020

    As I’ve commented here in the past, the people Rudy has been meeting with in Kyiv stink to high heaven. The only saving grace, as it were, is that in addition to feeding him disinfo, I’m quite sure they’ve been emptying his pockets. As one does.

  148. 148.

    HumboldtBlue

    My ballot has been accepted by the elections office and will be counted.

    Thanks, Ballottrax.

  151. 151.

    Kent

    @Tony Jay: We had the world’s best infectious disease agencies, the best research institutions, the most resources, the default currency, and other advantages that no other nation has.  All they needed to do was let the government actually do its job.

    This wasn’t a failure of action.  Doing nothing at the White House would have been fine.  We had good institutions.  This was the most epic deliberate sabotage of policy in American history.

  157. 157.

    Quinerly

    @Baud: tuned in for Trump. Not going to watch… But… He refuses to say when he last tested negative before testing positive. Doesn’t remember if he was tested day of debate. “I take a lot of tests.”

    “85% of people who wear masks get it.”

  159. 159.

    A Ghost to Most

    @Baud: Too easy to jigger. Have you ever wondered why Rs in the south often win by slim margins?

    Because big margins are too much work.

  160. 160.

    mad citizen

    Watching trump right now.  Savannah asking many covid questions.   If trump’s lips are moving, he is bullshitting.  It’s all bullshit, all the time.  Just mispronounced Kamala.  Asshole.

  163. 163.

    guachi

    I’ve got abcnews.com on and streaming Biden but I’m not really listening. I just want to give ABC better viewer numbers.

  168. 168.

    jl

    @Kent:  IMHO, the dismantling of of the federal level US pandemic taskforces is an ongoing disaster producing disability and death every day, and will continue to do so. The damage didn’t end with the lack of an early warning.

    Adequate response to an epidemic of an emerging disease is a complicated multidisciplinary task. You need to bring together clinicians, epidemiologists, economists, health education experts, logistics experts, community leaders. You also need those brave, or crazy, experts who love to fly into the middle of where people are dying gruesome deaths for unknown reasons and stay in the middle of it until the problem is fixed. That is, outbreak control experts with practical experience.

    Even for the well intentioned states, doing all that on the fly is just beyond the resources and expertise of even the best state public health departments.

    You are right. It is sabotage beyond what the architects could even imagine.

  171. 171.

    Kent

    I’m channel flipping.  Biden is calm, collected, and informative on Covid policy.  Trump is going on endlessly about his own personal trial with Covid and how great he did.  Quite the contrast.

    Biden is actually getting better and better each time I see him on TV.

  172. 172.

    mad citizen

    @Quinerly: I always wished I could go back in time and watch the train wreck for entertainment.   So I settle for watching the shitstain.

  173. 173.

    Quinerly

    Trump again attacking Governor of MI (and her husband for boating)

    It’s going of the rails…

  174. 174.

    Tony Jay

    @Kent:

    You’re right, and you’re right to be angry.

    Also, it’s not just Trump, this is modern Conservatism in action. Their ideology is as fake as Scientology, a mask for all the greed and hate and social savagery slopping away in the darkness of every national ‘soul’, but boy do a critical mass of them believe in it enough to give the crusted oaf in the White House their backing while he fails to deal. So very, very badly.

    I get it. We’ve got similar institutions, and they’ve been abused just as badly on this side of the Atlantic, with similar results.

  175. 175.

    mad citizen

    @Quinerly: I always wished I could go back in time and watch the train wreck for entertainment.   So I settle for watching the shitstain.

    At the rate it’s going, there is a chance he walks off.  Never seen Savannah like this.

  176. 176.

    Quinerly

    @Kent: won’t denounce QAnon. “I just don’t know about QAnon.” and “they are strongly against pedophiles.”

  179. 179.

    jl

    @lamh36: Glad to hear it. If things keep going well, many of the big SF attractions will be back open, maybe most. But need to plan ahead and make reservations early. People are tired of going to the beach or parks and then listening to SF Public Health yelling at them. So bigger demand than usual for approved activities, with much lower capacity.

  180. 180.

    Ken

    @sdhays: @Kent: Trump still might do ad buys in the Dakotas because he’s not normal.  Also there would be some sort of kickback scheme involved, or it would turn out the ad agency was owned by one of his spawn.

  183. 183.

    sdhays

    @Ken: True. After all, it was previously reported by lamh36 that they’re running ads in Louisiana and no one’s suggesting that Dump is in danger of losing Louisiana.

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