If only someone were able to influence the degree to which the explicit "I'm going to do the authoritarianism" statements – the ones that are five-alarm fires for ???? democracy – were platformed and centered in the National Conversation™? instead of the horse race & theater ??????? https://t.co/fWO9EUWprW
— Mark Copelovitch (@mcopelov) November 11, 2023
the media is absolutely terrified of biden winning again. a lot of these outlets won't survive another four years without trump https://t.co/sFf2TpKlsp
— Dutch East Indies Consultant (@canderaid) November 13, 2023
1/ A. Trump seems more cognitively healthy than Biden
B. 1-6/indictments/trials will have no effects on voters
C. Biden’s 5 pt margin will be wiped away by Biden voters now pro-Trump or think Biden is as bad as Trump
D. After underperforming in 2018/2020/2022 Repubs are now…— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 13, 2023
2/…seen by voters as a functional & serious party capable of governing
E. Dobbs no longer matters to women
F. There’s a large poll of non-voters who will vote in 2024 & favor Trump by 15 points (as in the Siena polls)
G. Trials won’t hamper Trump’s campaigning or…3/…campaigning won’t matter
H. Trump’s financial situation won’t hurt his ability to campaign, or it won’t be a problem bc his businesses are healthy & not imperiled legally
I. RFKJr’s anti-vax position will peel off more Biden voters than Trump voters
J. Wealthy…4/…anti-choice white male coal peddler from Appalachia will cut in to Biden’s support more than Trump’s
K. Fact that he’s drawn no serious primary opposition & no Democrats are calling for him to be replaced doesn’t show Biden is secure, it shows a mass inability of Dems…5/…to recognize reality Biden can’t win
L. DC gossip is a stronger predictor of electoral success than is low unemployment/shrinking inequality/economic growth
M. The GOP & Trump will avoid any conflagrations, and Trump is the inevitable nominee, but, in the case…6/…Trump isn’t the nominee, GOP will choose a nominee who is seen as legitimate, will unify the party, won’t lose any of the infrequent voters Trump drew out in 2016/2020, & will keep Trump from trying to sabotage their candidacy & the party
If someone says Biden is doomed…
7/…ask them which of these not particularly plausible scenarios, in what combination, will keep Biden from defeating Trump or his successor as Republican nominee.
8/ N. Biden’s campaign ability is negligible, & being able to do full-fledged field organizing/in-person GOTV will give the Dems no gains compared to 2020. https://t.co/ZzAlhvE6YW
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 13, 2023
Trump is out there pretty explicitly promising fascism and talking about fascists and authoritarians he admires and some in the media are still trying to figure out the angle for their reporting.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) November 14, 2023
One guy is 83 and will leave the country in much better shape than what he inherited. The other guy is 80 and is a fascist demagogue who doesn't seem to know who the current president is. Both sides. https://t.co/cV8FbH1EOA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 13, 2023
Another quote from the Jonathan Martin op-ed that has Nate all aquiver:
I dunno, I think it's a winner. pic.twitter.com/HSGR3Zc7GH
— Tom Watson (@tomwatson) November 13, 2023
Mallard Filmore
This thread has been up for a few minutes. I CAN”T be the first commenter. Is there a problem with the blog software?
NotMax
Well, they’re dishing out plentiful servings of manure.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I’m voting for the oldest guy for prez because he knows how to get shit done. That and anything else is a vote for fascism, which is a bad thing that conservatives really like. Vote experience, vote old dude who gets shit done… vote Biden.
We all (wife & adult kids) got the good kind of shot Saturday. My wife and the two kids opted for flu and COVID shots and I opted for just the COVID as I need to go back in a week or two to get shot #1 of the shingles vaccine and I’ll do it then. Nobody got sick after shots, just a few sore arms (mine was not sore). Nice!
Good morning all…
Rusty
The WP and the NYT are on two diverging paths about Trump. Surprisingly frank headlines about Trumps rhetoric matching fascists and his plans to use government to go after anyone he perceives as an enemy from the Washington Post, whereas the NY Times is normalizing it all. I don’t have a regular subscription to the NYT, but I do pay for the crossword. It may be time to cancel it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So it took the MSM all of a week to ignore the elections.
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
Maybe because they were on Tuesday?
;)
Dunno about all sources but the ones i tend to watch or read regularly are still pounding their chests about ’em.
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
My #6 seems not to make sense as you edited Thursday from your comment.
:)
Kathleen
Reposted from downstairs somewhere:
From quiet, self effacing house painter who aspired to be an artist to fiery Fuhrer. Here are our Top 10 hot takes on what (and who!) puts the goose in his step!
By Jonathan Martin, Peter Baker, and Maggie Haberman (@urbanmeemaw)
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Past results may not guarantee future performance, as the stock-and-commodity-trading industry says, but the last time Biden faced off against Trump, Trump had the advantages of incumbency and was using them to put his thumb, his palm, and both bloated buttcheeks on his end of the scale, and it still tipped for Biden in the Electoral College plus giving him a sizeable majority of the popular vote.
And that was without Trump facing ninety-some-odd criminal charges in four different jurisdictions, not to mention that three years ago Roe, not Dobbs, was the law of the land. The political landscape has not changed in the 21st-century GOP’s favor in the last three years.
Martin
@Rusty: Washington Post is a product of DC – it’s rooted in political reporting. NYT is rooted in business reporting – everything is seen through a market lens.
eclare
@Kathleen:
That is brilliant.
Martin
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: The problem won’t be the voting. The problem will be what happens after the voting.
eclare
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Yeah I just don’t see large numbers of people who voted for Joe in 2020 suddenly deciding that Drumpf is their choice in 2024.
mrmoshpotato
@Rusty: The New Yorker has a good online crossword.
mrmoshpotato
@Kathleen: We already have DougJ! 😁
mrmoshpotato
@Martin:
What is David Brooks’ column seen through – a ditch of pig shit?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Martin: Yeah, the GOP’s going to be more brazen in their attempts to overturn the results, but they won’t have the advantages of Presidential incumbency that allowed them to get as close as they did on January 6. I’ll lay odds Johnson will no longer be Speaker, Kamala Harris will still be President of the Senate, the DOJ won’t be populated by toadies willing to pressure states to overturn results, and while the GOP may try shenanigans at the state level and attempt to get the race thrown into the House, I really think they’re going to have a weaker hand than they did last time.
Martin
@eclare: That’s not how it works. 127M votes were cast in 2016. 155M were cast in 2020. Trump added 12M votes from 2016 to 2020. Biden added 16M votes over Clinton.
Nobody needs to switch, and it unrealistic to think any votes will switch. The election will be at first decided by who stays home or who choose to vote who didn’t before. If I had to guess, Biden is likely to keep his 81M voters and Trump lose some of his 74M 2020 voters. The polls will likely not be able to pick up on this because their LV models are pretty busted (I’m sure some will get it right, but we’ll have no way of knowing which until its over).
The election will next be decided by who is in Congress and on the courts, and possibly who will commit to violence – just like in 2020 – regardless of what happened in the first step.
Tony Jay
The US News Media’s entire argument rests on the theory that millions and millions of American voters are so incredibly concerned about Joe Biden’s age that they plan to set aside every single reason they’ve had for voting against Donald Trump and the Republican Party over the last few years just to get rid of him.
I’d be quite happy to bet real cash money on them being wrong about that. Quite a lot of it in fact.
Popular vote margin goes up, not even a whisper of a chance of losing the electoral college, Democrats get back control of both chambers of Congress. If Trump somehow isn’t the GOP nominee then the gap is bigger because millions of MAGAts stay home.
Martin
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Harris will be president of the Senate, short of assassination or impeachment. That’s not determined by the 2024 election.
They will have a weaker federal hand (depending on what happens in 2024 congressional races) but that just means they’ll work it harder in the states and USSC – or ramp up violence. Thus far, USSC has thankfully resisted the effort. I think that’s why a conviction of Trump is so important – it’ll influence how the courts respond afterward.
Martin
@Tony Jay: That’s what I think as well. I think Trump + Dobbs keeps the Democratic turnout numbers from 2020. I think the same dynamic pushes GOP turnout back toward 2016 numbers.
Holding the Senate is going to be really hard. We need a candidate in the mold of Fetterman to have a chance of holding WV. Blue collar union guy, rooted in social gospel, that could work.
Tony Jay
@Martin:
It could, but who is there that could fill that mould and raise their profile sufficiently in the time remaining and garner the funding necessary to match what the GOP are going to be throwing at the open WV seat? It’s much more likely that the same electoral reality which will be crushing Republican chances elsewhere make Justice the next WV Senator.
The Democrats will just have to get a real Dem into Sinema’s Arizona seat and pick up a couple of Senate seats elsewhere. I’ll leave it to those much more knowledgeable that I to say where those seats might be, but I’d suggest that everybody keep in mind that in this climate, with Donald fucking Trump as the likely GOP candidate, the Republican House shitting the bed on a near daily basis and Dobbs acting as a noose around the necks of GOP Senate and State candidates across the nation, there’s no better time to push hard to turn a Democratic advantage into a genuine Blue Tsunami.
Put it this way. Over here the Tories have rendered themselves so toxic and right-wing that even the stale, spiteful incompetents running the Blairight Nu-New-Labour Party are going to win big next year, even if only with Lib-Dem help in lots of rural seats. Imagine how much better their chances would be if they had the unity, record and progressive policies of the US Democrats.
And no, I never thought I’d write that either.
satby
@Kathleen: well played urbanmeemaw! Watch out pitchbot 😉
Geminid
I found out what Turkiye may have wanted from New York Mayor Eric Adams: expedited approval for a Manhattan building that contains the new Turkish Consulate.
That is according to a Politico article summarizing three investigations into Adams and his associates. The first centers on a close Adams ally, a Ms. Suggs, and concerns straw donors to Adams’ 2021 election campaign. The second focuses on Mr. Ulrich, an Adams ally who took bribes in return for favorable treatment by the City building agency Ulrich ran.
The third investigation resulted in FBI agents climbing into Adams’ car and confiscating two phones and a laptop computer. These were returned a few days later. Federal prosecutors are looking into whether straw donors gave Adams’ campaign Turkish money.
satby
@Mallard Filmore: probably overnight backups of the database.
Blue Galangal
The NYT is irretrievably corrupt and complicit.
Geminid
@Martin: There a Democratic candidate who may fit your description, a military veteran who is gaining support among West Virginia Democrats. He still won’t have much of a chance against the popular Governor Jim Justice though
Fun West Virginia fact: in 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned hard for West Virginia’s 8 electoral votes and won them. Now it has only 4, its House delegation having plummeted from 6 members to only 2.
Splitting Image
@Martin:
This is the situation. If Biden keeps his 81 million votes and Trump gets the same 60 million he got in 2016, Biden wins going away and the Democrats will probably keep the Senate. Just focus on keeping those Biden votes in the states which have a Senate race.
If Trump keeps his 74 million votes and Biden gets closer to the 63 million that Hillary Clinton got in 2016, the Senate will be the least of the country’s problems.
Turnout is everything here. The polling companies are making assumptions about turnout to estimate voter preferences when it would make more sense to make assumptions about voter preferences to estimate turnout. They’re not going to be providing much information between now and next November.
Geminid
@Geminid:
@Martin: The Democratic candidate I was talking about is Zach Shrewsbury, a 32 year old native of West Virginia who served 5 years in the Marine Corps.
Rusty
@mrmoshpotato: Thank you for the suggestion, very much appreciated!
Baud
@Geminid:
Go Zach!
Martin
@Geminid: The timing makes me wonder if Bob Menendez was involved.
Martin
@Geminid: Until around 2008, I believe WV was the state with the highest registered Democrat to registered Republican ratio in the US. They had been voting against their registration for a while, and Obama just blew that whole thing wide open.
But that’s how strong WV favored pro-labor Democrats, and when Democrats traded labor for civil rights from 1981 to Biden, they lost WV on both sides of that – WV being very adverse to outside culture leaking in. But the former part of that trade has lasting value – and is particularly strong right now, while the latter fades. Even West Virginians get used to the queers – eventually.
Which is why I wonder if a blue-collar loud union voice, particularly one who looks more like Fetterman than, say, Manchin would at least give the state a run. I think it’s a long shot, of course, but there are better and worse ways to run in that state, and I don’t really think national Dems have any clue what the better way is.
Geminid
@Martin: Probably unrelated. Unless one of Menendez’s many Greek American or Armenian American supporters found out about the Turkish connection and dropped the dime on Adams out of spite. Those folks stay mad at Turkiye.
I’m guessing the 3rd case grew out of the first straw donor case.
MomSense
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
The margins were so close last time – only about 45,000 votes so it’s going to be really close. It only takes small shifts to turn the election. If I were polling/doing voter ID calls for the Biden campaign now I’d be checking in MI to see what the Israel Palestine disaster is doing. They are probably looking at a terrifyingly small group of precincts to see what the situation is. In 2012 the Obama campaign was looking at 14 precincts in 7 states and making a small group of us do really tough phone banking on specific topics to carefully selected demos. I was doing healthcare calls to independent women aged 50-65 in two precincts in VA. It was wild.
Martin
@Geminid: He’s got the look. And he’s 32? That boy looks older than me and yet is barely old enough to run for Senate.
Geminid
@Martin: Zach Shrewsbury looks a little bit like John Fetterman, and he might actually be working class.
Fetterman presents as working class, but his father is a well-to-do insurance executive who subsidized Fetterman and his familiy while the son was Mayor of Braddock.
Baud
@Martin:
You just have a baby face.
Matt McIrvin
It’s a fact from polling that Biden is underperforming Democrats in general. I don’t really buy the “polling is garbage” explanation–the recent Democratic victories have actually been pretty much in line with the advance polling, in the races where there was some, if you aggregate the numbers. Maybe not with the worst-sounding poll you might cherry-pick for the drama.
The question is just what it means. Polls ask what you’d do if the election were held today, but the election is not being held today. Biden isn’t really campaigning yet (but Trump is; he was always campaigning even when he was President, since he preferred that to governing). There’s a general pattern that voters always prefer “generic Democrat” to any specific one, and that there’s often dissatisfaction with an incumbent President this far out. It doesn’t mean you throw away the advantages of incumbency and do something that signals an admission of failure. A lot of the “dump Biden” talk seems to be from people who imagine that you can just do a cost-free switch to an alternate timeline, A versus B.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: A lot of the “dump Biden” talk comes from people who were dissatisfied by the outcome of the 2020 primary, and wanted a more “progressive” candidate to win.
Baud
@Geminid:
Seems like the centrists and the left are teaming up. A sort of mini horseshoe.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Yeah they are unhappy about their patron saint losing, although now many of them have turned against him also.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: @Geminid: a lot of the “dump Biden” talk is from people who aren’t going to vote Dem anyway; and the rest is from people who don’t understand how politics works (in this or any other country) at all.
O.T. there’s few things so peaceful than enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee as the dawn breaks.
bbleh
@Martin: yabbut Trump was terrible for Teh Economee and Biden has been golden. I think it’s more their respective social circles and audiences
@Martin: @Geminid: as a resident, I don’t think ANY Dem, even the Risen Lord, would have much of a chance in WV. Justice is 100% known, he’s definitely NOT a lunatic, and he definitely IS a rich white coal-industry plutocrat. He’s tailor-made for the position.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly right. Biden could lose, but so can anyone else.
What’s going on is that people want to feel strong knowing they can manipulate Dems or, barring that, want Biden to lose so they can tell Dems “I told you so.”
Whatever happens, never apologize.
Matt McIrvin
@MomSense: People here get mad at me when I say we just barely won in 2020, but even though it doesn’t look like it, we just barely won in 2020. The popular-vote margin has zero relevance to who wins and the margins in the states that really mattered add up to less than the population of the town where I live. If I recall correctly, Trump outperformed most of his polling, just like he did in 2016. But everything critical broke in Biden’s direction by just a hair.
The thing that makes me nervous is that I think Biden was pretty much maxed out then. I don’t see any single state that Biden is likely to pick up relative to 2020–maybe North Carolina, but that’s a long shot. And he could plausibly lose any or all of the swing states he got.
Princess
I don’t know what Nate Silver’s problem is. He’s become untrustworthy on every single issue.
Baud
@Princess:
Villagitis.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: It’s horseshoes all the way down.
We saw this sort of infernal centrist-far left alliance in 2016–what they have in common is an intense suspicion of partisanship and the party apparatus, and a need to be the cleverest boy in the room. And, in 2016, a lot of sexism.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: Hell, I didn’t vote for Biden in the 2020 primary, I voted for Elizabeth Warren, though I knew her chances of winning the nomination were remote. But I’ve lived through a lot of Presidential elections and I know roughly how these things work, too.
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: I think it depends on what people mean by “polling is garbage.” There definitely are some problems with the pollsters’ methodology — the number collection is fine, but then they have to adjust for differences between the population from whom they collected numbers and the population they THINK is going to show up and vote, and therein lies all sorts of wishful thinking, backcasting, myopia, etc., as well as simple ignorance: they don’t really know any better than anyone what’s going on in “people’s minds.” And the other, of course, is that people aren’t necessarily honest to pollsters, either on purpose — to game the system or just to fool around — or inadvertently, eg by comparing Biden to an ideal and finding him lacking. And the overall trend in the last several elections has been one of overestimating Republican chances (which is the reverse of the historical pattern btw, to the point that pundits would routinely add a couple points to Republicans’ polling numbers to account for Republican voters “coming home”).
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t think North Carolina is a long shot. Joe Biden lost it in 2020 by around 80,000 votes, I believe. His campaign could not put a lot of resources into NC that time because they only achieved fundraising parity in August of that year. Now they are already working on winning the state next year.
LiminalOwl
@mrmoshpotato: I like the London Times one. (Usually I can get about a third to a half. Finished it completely maybe 3 times in the 20+ years I’ve been attempting. Keeps me on my toes.)
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
I hate this; it’s contrary to everything I’ve ever learned about how to behave as a human being in the world. But it’s the rule in politics.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I didn’t mean it as a universal rule. I’m saying don’t apologize about sticking with Biden if he loses. It’ll only encourage people not to take responsibility for their own civic duties.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Most Warren and Sanders supporters came around and now are solidly behind Joe Biden. The ones that haven’t are quite vocal but I don’t think they are that numerous.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh: The question is just whether Presidential elections are different, or if it’s that something’s changed in the post-Dobbs cycles. The polling underestimated Trump in both 2016 and 2020, but is that still relevant? Nobody really knows.
The “red wave” narrative in 2022 wasn’t really all that supported by the available polling; that was pundits spinning stories.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m sure the polls immediately before the election will be relatively accurate.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: 2016 was really odd: there was a very regionally specific systematic error in the state polling, in the Great Lakes region, that caused all the aggregation to predict a Hillary Clinton win. The turnout models were way off for just that one part of the country. Everywhere else they were pretty much on the nose.
I’m not sure what the geographic distribution of error was in 2020. I don’t think it was as concentrated.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
The far-left types are almost entirely off my radar, so I don’t see any of that. But I hear a lot of it from the Nate Silvers of the world.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I believe Biden will win the popular vote, but the Electoral College is scary. It’s also a stupid way to run a supposedly democratic country.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Same here. I used to see a lot of the anti-Dem left everywhere on the Internet, but that has dropped off considerably. Could just be relative changes on info bubbles.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Not by much in 2016; 538 was giving him a 30% chance of winning by the morning of Election Day.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: The predictions I saw on election eve, 2016 gave Trump a 30% chance of winning. It was like a poker game where Clinton needed to fill an outside straight and Trump had to fill an inside one. The odds were in favor of the outside straight being filled but gamblers know it doesn’t always work out that way.
But there was a widespread belief that Clinton had the election “in the bag,” and I think that worked to her detriment.
Princess
@Matt McIrvin: It was off in Hillary’s own polling too. The campaign had us calling Iowa on Election Day. Iowa. We should have been calling Wisconsin. Even Obama 2012 had us call Wisconsin.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, but he can give away 33 EVs from 2020 without losing. (The Biden states in 2020 had 306 EVs then; they have 303 now.)
PA should be much more solid for Biden than it was in 2020. If it hadn’t been for Gaza, I’d say the same about MI, but I’d like to see how Arab-American sentiments settle out. Based on election results since 2020, I’d say we’re in better shape in AZ and WI than in 2020, though still not comfortably so.
Geminid
This morning’s Politico Playbook tells me that the House will likely pass Speaker Johnson’s proposed continuing resolution to fund the federal government into the New Year. It will likely pass today with more Democratic than Republican votes, like the one in September did.
The key procedural vote will be to suspend the rules, allowing a debate and a vote on the spending package today. That will require a vote of two thirds of members. Now that Rep. Gabe Amo has been sworn in the required number will be 290 if all 434 Representatives vote.
Baud
@Geminid:
That’s the whole government, not the two step proposal?
Another Scott
@Princess: @Baud:
That pitchbot guy is pretty sharp. Always breaking the news before FTFNYT (and Silver and)…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Heh.
Another Scott
@Baud: It’s the two-step. But it’s pretty clean, so …
Probably the interesting part is the vote on the rule, and what (if anything) the Democrats can get in exchange for helping Johnson pass this thing.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Rusty: You’re welcome.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Democrats get to keep the government open and funded at current levels, I believe. That’s their payoff
And everyone gets to go home today. Senators will probably get to go home tomorrow.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: And the poster boy for the movement, Dean Phillips, is definitely not far-left–he seems to be staking out conserva-Dem territory.
Another Scott
@Geminid: In the TheHill story I link above:
There’s only so much we can do in the minority, but Grijalva’s question is a good one. Perpetual 4-6 week CRs are damaging.
To be clear, I expect that a FY24 budget will eventually be passed (and supplementals for Ukraine, Israel, Korea, the border, etc.). But this process is damaging and not a win even if there’s no shutdown.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I got off Twitter about six months before the Muskoxpalypse, and that reduced a lot of my exposure to the kind of leftist who constantly bangs on about the “shitlibs”.
I see them sometimes on Mastodon but Mastodon is less likely to show you this stuff unbidden. I follow a lot of Black posters there who are really insistent about the need to vote Biden/Harris even if there are things you disagree with them about.
I did recently see a response to one of them from someone going by “Socialist Stan” who just said “Why should I concern myself with the smooth functioning of a dying empire?” but these people tend to get pushback, though Mastodon isn’t really the place for dogpiling.
(Israel/Gaza has unearthed a lot of frustration, though. Foreign policy usually seems to be the area where leftists are most likely to make dramatic renunciations of the Democrats.)
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I still say 95% of the “dump Biden” stuff is actually about Kamala Harris. Those people are terrified something will happen to Biden and she will become president. If Biden’s VP were a white man (or even a white woman) you would not be hearing nearly as much hand-wringing about Biden’s age.
bbleh
@Another Scott: But this process is damaging and not a win even if there’s no shutdown.
True. But it’s most damaging to the House Republicans, and it’s being portrayed that way in the MSM, so if we suffer a sprain while they get laid out with a couple broken limbs, I’ll take it.
And btw, government contractors — who unlike government employees don’t get back pay if the government shuts down and then reopens — won’t get shafted. If not a win, at least that’s not a serious loss.
Kathleen
@eclare: Thank you! (belated)
Kathleen
@mrmoshpotato: LOL! He’s my “North Star”!
Kathleen
@satby: Thank you, satby!
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Some of it could be charitably characterized as fear by proxy–they worry we’ll somehow be left with Kamala Harris as our 2024 candidate and she will be crushed because other people hate her. But the closer we get to the election the less likely that is.
There’s also a minority of Democrats who want Biden to step down in favor of Harris, though. I think that was what a lot of people who saw Biden as a one-term transitional candidate imagined might happen back in 2020.
Kathleen
@Another Scott: I swear NYT “reporters” have hired him on the down low to write their stories.
SFAW
@Another Scott:
Maybe he could do some freelancing for Cole?
Geminid
@Another Scott: You state a good general principle, that frequent continuing resolutions are a poor way to fund the government. But getting down to cases, I don’t think this would be a good time to go to the mat with Republicans over a year-long budget. Jeffries and the other Democratic leaders know they have to choose their battles, that there are times to pick fights and times not to pick them. I think they made the correct decision in this case.
BellyCat
FYFY
Subsole
@Princess:
What Twitter does to a motherfucker.
Subsole
@Baud:
Could also be budget shuffling in the Kremlin.
Not all Leftier-Than-Thous are Russian shills or botnets. But good lord a lot of them are.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
Have any studies been published that analyze how the 2016 turnout models were broken for certain states? (There is another class of potential explanations (statewide fraud by the GOP), but there is (AFAIK) no published evidence for them, either.)
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Isn’t it amazing what some people can get paid to create?
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
There is a major difference. Other than editorial writers, Joe Biden has produced, SFB is being tried for felonies. And I don’t call him ShitForBrains for no reason. There are many of them. As someone whose mother was still working when a year older than Biden, at the local police department, and someone who is not all that far behind SFB – age wise, I see a huge difference between the two of them. SFB is deteriorating at a noticeable pace, to anyone paying attention, is on trial for some criming, very much in public and has never been more than all that and dirty, wet dish towel in his life. His siblings have done well for themselves – and others, SFB started out crap and has only gotten worse over his entire life. In a life race between SFB and Joe Biden, Joe wins hands down. Has he lived a long time? He has, longer than many of us, but not longer than a rather noticeable segment of humanity. Has Joe Biden lived well, as in been a far better person? This man’s opinion is – absolutely. Has he picked an exceptional backup in a job that can really need one? That’s an overwhelming yes. We pick presidents based upon what we think the job takes. They do the job based upon how good they are. In a race between Joe Biden and SFB, there is, for the country, for humanity, for all of us, for this planet, only one choice. And we made that choice once prior, the last election.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
I follow a lot of Black posters there who are really insistent about the need to vote Biden/Harris even if there are things you disagree with them about.
No president will ever give everyone what they want, it is an impossibility. A government that gives ALL the people everything they want will always be an impossibility. Some are wealthy and want to pay zero taxes. Some are poor and don’t pay taxes but still need housing and food. The rest of range between responsible/understanding and those that lack any concept past themselves. IOW humans. The job is to do the best possible job to meet the needs of everyone, not the desires of a few.
linnen
Martin @10; Saying that the New York Times reporting is focused though a business lens was shot long before they went all in on HRC’s email server and ignoring what really went on in Trump’s business ’empire’.
Bobby Thomson
Calling Axelrod a prick is blatant pandering to Balloon Juice
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: If I had a 30% chance of winning the lottery, I would play it every day.