Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

I really should read my own blog.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

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

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Sunday Morning Open Thread: It’s Biden vs. Trump — Our Very Serious Media Will Have to Deal

Sunday Morning Open Thread: It’s Biden vs. Trump — Our Very Serious Media Will Have to Deal

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And it may just break a few of them, over the next eight months…


Lifelong conservative, former Republican:

Some people balk at Matt Yglesias, but for me he’s Captain Obvious — if he can spell out the issue, it ain’t complicated:

Reader Interactions

184Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it” is the logic behind every government shutdown

    That’s their philosophy about everything.

  6. 6.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Yglesias’ “talent” is how he manages to phrase things in a way that makes it seem like he’s part of some correct, reasonable majority on any given issue, when in fact he’s a useless turd whose input has never been salient in any context whatsoever.

    Just another rich guy, born on 3rd and think he’s hit a triple.

    And while I’ll take the vote of another, not-pretend Republican like Chovanec, you can be damn sure he’ll be voting straight (R) down the rest of his ticket.  People like him are a constant reminder that the modern GOP and it’s policies are a force to be stopped regardless of which godawful person they put up as a candidate for president.

  9. 9.

    SFAW

    it always just ends up backfiring on congressional Republicans.

    Not really, MattY. You numbskulls keep predicting that it will, but …

    From Wikipedia:

    The 2014 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 4, 2014, in the middle of Democratic President Barack Obama’s second term. Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives and won control of the Senate.

    Republicans won a net gain of nine Senate seats, the largest Senate gain for either party since the 1980 United States elections. In the House, Republicans won a net gain of thirteen seats, giving them their largest majority since the 1928 elections.

    All that was a year after the 2013 shutdown. Maybe if they shut it down in August, it will result in some blowback, but given the electorate, it’s not guaranteed.

  10. 10.

    azlib

    Naturally, the media totally ignored the fact that Trump only got 60% of Republican votes in SC, while BIden gets 96%.  The media would be wailing about Biden’s weak performance. Trump’s 60% performance is an awful result for a de facto incumbent. A significant number of Republicans are not happy with Trump.

  11. 11.

    NotMax

    FYI. Sweet surveillance.

    Canada-based University of Waterloo is racing to remove M&M-branded smart vending machines from campus after outraged students discovered the machines were covertly collecting facial-recognition data without their consent.
    [snip]
    A University of Waterloo spokesperson, Rebecca Elming, eventually responded, confirming to CTV News that the school had asked to disable the vending machine software until the machines could be removed. Source

  12. 12.

    RSA

    “The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it”

    I remember reading this in Dune when I was a teenager. Today I have two thoughts. One is that Paul Atreides was thinking like a terrorist, which I didn’t realize then. The other is it might be possible for multiple different parties to destroy a fragile thing (like, say, an ecosystem), which means no one party can have absolute control over it.

  15. 15.

    bbleh

    @azlib: A significant number of Republicans are not happy with Trump.

    THIS!  Note also that in NH and the IA election, Trump received below 60% of the vote. And these are Republican primary voters, who in general tend to be motivated and extreme.

    This to my mind is one of the most important results of the season so far.

    If enough Republicans just leave that line blank, and Dems show up to vote and stay anywhere near as united as so far they have, it’ll be a walk.  GOTV is going to be especially important this year.

    Volunteer! Organize!

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @zhena gogolia:

    So since FDR, we’ve had one landslide and the GOP has had four (72, 80, 84, 88).

    Consistent with my view that we can either be liberal or we can be popular, but not both.

  18. 18.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    It’s “interesting” to note that, as extreme as Goldwater was in 1964, he’d probably have to run as a Dem today.

    ETA: And zhena gogolia beat me to it, of course

  19. 19.

    Brit in Chicago

    @azlib: Yes, even in SC 40% of those who bothered to turn out for the R primary (not a huge number) didn’t vote for TFG. How many of those will either stay home or vote for Biden in November? Not half, I don’t suppose, and not enough to make a difference in SC, but their counterparts in some swing states may refrain from voting for TFG in large enough numbers to make a difference.

  21. 21.

    Brit in Chicago

    In fairness to Matty Y (yes, fairness to everyone I hope) I read his “I’m starting to think” as ironic.

  22. 22.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Starting to think Republicans’ professed interest in border security isn’t entirely on the level, and they mostly just want to use chaos to win elections so they can cut Medicaid, cut rich people’s taxes, and ban abortion.

    I assure you, Mr. Yglesias, they care a great deal about the border, but it’s like abortion used to be.  What they want is to close the border.  The border is open if any brown people are immigrating.  Democrats aren’t offering them that and will never offer them that.  Merely increased border security is weak sauce, easy to throw away for any ulterior reason, maybe worse than useless because it takes away the argument they can use in front of normies.

    EDIT – @Baud:

    So since FDR, we’ve had one landslide and the GOP has had four (72, 80, 84, 88).

    The last of those GOP landslides was more than a generation ago.  I’m pretty sure you can’t use it to define the current political landscape.

  26. 26.

    SFAW

    @Brit in Chicago:

    I guess that’s what passes for his ironic detachment or something.

    MattY was semi-OK 10 years ago, but he’s pretty much lost the shark, or jumped the thread, or whatever it is that you kids used to say.

  27. 27.

    Fake Irishman

    @SFAW:

    I highly doubt that Goldwater would be (or should be considered) a Democrat, even a centrist one, today. Anti- Civil Rights, anti Medicare, Anti-Medicaid doesn’t fly anywhere in the Dem caucus today.

    We (fairly) give Bill Clinton a lot of crap for “welfare reform” but often forget that he didn’t cave to GOP threats and vetoed multiple bills that would have destroyed Medicaid and clipped Medicare. (Those vetoes also forced concessions on welfare reform too from the GOP)

    Also, can we bury the idea that Obamacare was just like a Heritage plan from the early 90s? Both had exchanges and government subsidies, but Obamacare had all sorts of standards for those plans and expanded Medicaid while the Heritage plan gutted Medicaid, had no standards for exchange plans and would have involved massive out of pocket costs.

  28. 28.

    SFAW

    @Baud: ​
     

    Didn’t mean to. Just noting how hard it us for is to be dominant post-FDR.

    There’s an extended discussion to be had re: the Rethugs’ long-term (40 years? 60 years?) destruction of the public education system, and how that allowed Fox to become the power that it is today. [Yes, I understand that Rupes and the Evil Roger Ailes (as opposed to the Good Roger Ailes, lefty blogger) had something to do with it. But I think were the electorate a bit more capable of rational thought, Fox would still be an also-ran.]

  30. 30.

    H.E.Wolf

    @bbleh: ​GOTV is going to be especially important this year.

    Volunteer! Organize!

     Yes! Especially: volunteer. Volunteer your time and effort if you can – and at the local level, if you can.

    The field organizers are often in their 20s. I get a kick out of their 20s-ish energy levels, and the cross-generational collaboration reminds me that we’re all in this together. If asked, they’ll find a place for us introverts in a volunteer effort.

    And there are work-from-home options! “Armchair activists” means something different in our circles. https://balloon-juice.com/postcard-writing-in-early-2024/

  31. 31.

    mrmoshpotato

    Those vending machines had better have Reese’s Sticks at a reasonable price, or there will be Office Space.

  32. 32.

    Jeffg166

    If the presidential race were based on popular vote I doubt a republican would ever get elected president again. It’s the archaic electoral college that is the problem. Biden only won that in 2020 by 42,844 vote in three states. Every vote will matter in 2024.

  33. 33.

    TBone

    My inner curmudgeon is grumpily staring at the avalanche of IVF stories taking over the airwaves and muttering “wtf, dudes. women are still dying, doctors are fleeing ob/gyn in droves, and in much larger numbers than people affected by frozen cells.  Way to change the subject, my dudes.”  *Stomps off to make covfefe.

    ETA I know the legal and theofascist ramifications are serious. I’m still pissed.

  36. 36.

    Mousebumples

    @TBone: I agree, but if this IVF focus switches any one time voters the Leopard Eating Faces Party who thought the leopard wouldn’t eat their faces…

    Are the tax cuts no longer worth it for the wealthy GOP class when they can’t use IVF for procreation?

  38. 38.

    bbleh

    @Frankensteinbeck: The border is open if any brown people are immigrating.

    “The border is open” if any brown people are visible (other than perhaps doing lawn care).  “The border is open” every time a Republican hears “para Español, marque el cinco.” “The border is open” throughout tax season.  And don’t get them started on those Inner City types with their welfare and Obamaphones!

    The actual border, alas, is a proxy.  The real issue can’t be addressed except perhaps by full-on white-nationalist blood-and-soil pogroms, and even once those are done they’ll find someone else to hate.

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    @Mousebumples: ​

    Are the tax cuts no longer worth it for the wealthy GOP class when they can’t use IVF for procreation?

    As someone who has been through IVF (OK, actually it was Mrs. SFAW who did all the work), I would suggest you re-think that one. [I know you’re a good person — I usually read your comments — but that comment is skirting asshole territory.]​

  41. 41.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @SFAW:

    @Frankensteinbeck: ​

    The days of landslides on either side are long behind us, that’s for sure.

    That will change with the Baud! 20XX! campaign, of course.

    Ladies and Gentlemen, presidential advice. Pull down your pants, Baud’s landslide is nice.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: But I think were the electorate a bit more capable of rational thought, Fox would still be an also-ran.]

    BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…. You a funny man.

  47. 47.

    TBone

    @Mousebumples: how many are worth taking the focus off of Roe and the Supremacists Court, I wonder. I’d wager more women will die due to medical neglect and abuse and than will switch their votes.

  48. 48.

    Lyrebird

    This is not meant to connect to any other comments here, just to the things people who wanna have babbies go through:

    @SFAW: Suitably-distanced virtual hugs SFAW & Mrs. SFAW!  My family grew yet another way, but boy howdy, did I get an education in how quick so many people are to presume and judge!  Whether it’s fertility treatments, forms of adoption, whatever you do, here comes the “but don’t you realize???” and “why didn’t you X???” when perhaps those things have occurred to you before.  Some dear friends of mine had to go through experiences that led to their IVF doc losing his license.

  49. 49.

    Jeffro

    I saw that 1st Yglesias tweet and I was like, “I’m pretty sure I liked and reposted that one”

    (checks Twitter)

    yup!

  50. 50.

    Jeffro

    Republicans, good luck with this dynamic going on all spring and into the summer:

    [Haley] questioned Trump’s mental fitness. She criticized Trump for saying he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members he is unhappy with. She pushed back hard after Trump mocked her husband’s absence on the campaign trail. (He is serving a voluntary deployment in Djibouti with the South Carolina Army National Guard.) She rebuked Trump’s “America First” policies, saying recently that “it’s not ‘America First’ to bankrupt Social Security by doing nothing to fix it.”

    “I feel no need to kiss the ring. I have no fear of Trump’s retribution,” she said in a speech recently, as many Republicans suggested that she was hurting her political career by extending her campaign against Trump and ramping up her criticism…

    Some Republicans see a practical value in Haley campaigning for as long as she can, on the outside chance that some dramatic event makes Trump unviable. “If something happens, she’s the one who can pick up the pieces,” said Levine. “It makes sense for her … to stay in, continue to gather delegates. She has the money to do it.”

    go Nikki go!  You sure earned my (VA primary) vote ;)

  52. 52.

    SFAW

    @Lyrebird: ​
     
    Hugs to you as well. Our children were via fertility treatments and adoption. Fortunately, living in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, we got few — if any — jerky comments. But I know people experience ithat far too often.

  53. 53.

    azlib

    @Brit in Chicago: It would only take a few percentage points of Republican voters to stay home or vote for Biden to swing the election decisively to Biden. Of course the math gets tricky, since it is the swing states that matter because of the electoral college. My prediction right now is Biden will win a close election but we all need to work as hard as we can to make that happen.

  55. 55.

    jimmiraybob

    “The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it”

    I get a David Koresh, Jim Jones kinda vibe.

  56. 56.

    Jeffro

    or this dynamic:

    (Scaramucci, responding to a GOP critic on Twitter when he professed that Haley would be a much better choice – for the GOP and the country – than trumpov):

    Check in with the people that actually worked for Trump and understand his full on mental illness. None of his former cabinet members have endorsed him. NONE. Do the homework like you do in your portfolio. You don’t want the return of crazy. We can handle bad policy but not the overthrow of the system.

    I expect Biden/Harris will roll out public endorsements from trumpov’s former cabinet members this summer and into the fall.

  57. 57.

    jimmiraybob

    @azlib: ​
    I have been telling people that if they just can’t vote for a Democrat and don’t like Trump that they should write in Abe Lincoln to send a message. Technically, he was a Republican.

  58. 58.

    JML

    @Fake Irishman: seriously. Goldwater might have gone libertarian (the current version of that “party” could be malleable enough to fit Goldwater’s dogma) but never a democrat.

    I’m never sure if people throw these kinds of suggestions around as a way to showing how crazy the GOP has gotten or an attack on the Democrats from the left. But I’m constantly inundated with claims from the left that there’s no difference between the dems and the GOP, so I’m sensitive to this one.

  60. 60.

    oldgold

    I watched Meet the Press this morning.

    Gavin Newsom was a guest. He was damn good. Much better than anyone in the Biden administration, including Biden, in selling the administration’s accomplishments and attacking Trump.

  61. 61.

    TBone

    @NotMax: I was just thinking of her last night, her line in a movie, where she is being introduced to someone who says “I’ve heard so much about you.”

    “Yeah, but you can’t prove any of it.”

    😎😆

  65. 65.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @JML: The people who make the “Clinton and Obama were the two best Republican presidents in my lifetime” comments have a very crabbed view of the Left/Right divide that is based solely on economics and set in 1964.  For that reason, they overlook civil rights, commitment to democracy, and the fact that the economy has changed over the past 60 years.  They are the people who think that we need to pursue the white working class even if it means yeeting everyone else into the sun.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @Frankensteinbeck: Dunno.

    If every eligible voter voted, and every district were fairly drawn, then bigger majorities for progress would be possible.

    Bad things happen when politicians pick their voters.

    90-some-odd % of people want stronger gun laws…

    Lots of progress is possible, we shouldn’t count landslides out. We should work to make them possible.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @oldgold: Do you think that it is possible that he is being used as a surrogate by the White House because he is good at that kind of thing?  Just maybe?

  74. 74.

    oldgold

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes, I do. But, that does not negate the point that the Administration is short on effective messengers.

    Plus, I do not believe Newsom is being selfless in making these appearances.

  75. 75.

    Bill Arnold

    @jimmiraybob:
    As RSA says above, it’s a quote from Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965)
    Paul is threatening the Guild Navigators, who use The Spice to see a little way into the spray of possible futures to … navigate into a future where the interstellar spaceship is at the desired destination, with destruction of the source of The Spice.
    This would entirely break interstellar civilization in that universe.

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @oldgold: Of course, he isn’t being selfless ffs.  As for the rest, it seems like more of your vague disappointment with Biden.  Christ.

  80. 80.

    Melancholy Jaques

    In all the ranting and raving about the border, no one seems to bring up this fact:

    New data released Wednesday by the Commerce Department showed that in 2023, Mexico was the leading source of goods imported to the US — ahead of China for the first time in over 20 years. Mexico surpassing China as America’s top trade partner signals a significant shift in global commerce dynamics.  Business Insider, Feb 9, 2024

    Seems kind of important.

  83. 83.

    WaterGirl

    @Melancholy Jaques:  Someone on BJ in the last week or two said that this change is less significant than it appears.

    They said that this is mostly goods from China, that are coming through Mexico.  If that’s the case, then Chica is still #1in terms of imported goods, but with a Mexico veneer papered over it.

    At least Mexico is getting a cut!

  85. 85.

    Fake Irishman

    @SFAW:

    Fair enough. And that’s what I think most people are arguing when they say that, but just wanted to get a corrective out there for folks who might internalize it in another way.

  86. 86.

    oldgold

    @Omnes Omnibus: I am not disappointed in Biden – far from it.

    That expressed, I take seriously the fact that a majority of voters, particularly the zillennials,
    believe he is too old to be re-elected to an additional 4 year term.

  87. 87.

    Mousebumples

    @SFAW: you might be right. My apologies if anyone was offended. I’m just frustrated at the many people who want tax cuts and don’t think about the other policy implications and how it can affect them  otherwise. Will this open eyes and change any minds and votes was more what I meant.

    @TBone: isn’t this IVF ruling a result of the Roe overturn? I don’t think it’s taking the focus off, but rather adding to the body of evidence of why that decision is about more than just abortion.

  95. 95.

    Matt McIrvin

    @zhena gogolia:

    Barry Goldwater was so CRAZY!

    Today he’d be a centrist Democrat.

    Not really. The thing that made him the seed of the modern conservative movement was his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. It didn’t really matter what stated principles he was applying to oppose it.

  96. 96.

    Jackie

    @Jeffro: Our WA primary is 3/12. If Nikki is still in it, I’m contemplating voting for her. We’re a strong Blue state, but my neck of the woods is MAGA red. Anything to keep TIFG’s numbers as low as possible…

    I’ve realized this past six months or so, the MAGA signs and flags have almost disappeared around here. Of course they may well pop out again come late summer, but it’s so nice driving around and not being visually assaulted with TIFG/MAGA paraphernalia.

  97. 97.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @oldgold: Okay, I will play.  How, pray tell, would one of those black swans get to the nomination?  How do they get Biden to walk away?  Is Harris one of your swans?

  99. 99.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    The days of landslides on either side are long behind us, that’s for sure.

    I wonder, sometimes. I’d have thought that was already true in the early 2000s. But in the days right after 9/11, in a country stricken by trauma, George W. Bush was running at close to 90% job approval. Suppose there had somehow been a Presidential election in 2001 (I know, it’s a dodgy counterfactual). I think he might have managed a landslide. Not 90%.

    I don’t think a Democrat could have managed that, even right after 9/11. They’d probably be blamed for it and lose. But a Republican, with the Hack Gap working in his favor, maybe.

    But that was also over 20 years ago now.

  101. 101.

    Yarrow

    @oldgold:

    I take seriously the fact that a majority of voters, particularly the zillennials,
    believe he is too old to be re-elected to an additional 4 year term.

    Good for you. What are you going to do about it? Continue to concern troll and potentially depress the vote of said voters and thus help elect TFG? Or recognize that Biden is the candidate and get on board?

    Maybe come up with an analogy, like “Biden is like the long time coach of a great team. He may be older but he’s got decades of experience and his team wins. His players are young and talented and he knows how to pick the best and get the best out of them. Just like Biden has a young, talented, diverse staff. He’s a fantastic leader and his decades of experience are invaluable. He knows how to get things done and he does.”

    Or something like that.

  102. 102.

    WaterGirl

    @oldgold:

    But, that does not negate the point that the Administration is short on effective messengers.

    That may have been true for some democratic messengers in the past, but there are many excellent and effective democratic messengers on government these days.

  103. 103.

    Barry

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: ​
     
    “Just another rich guy, born on 3rd and think he’s hit a triple.”

    In one of his rare moments of clarity, he confessed that his original
    ‘look at me I’m a brave contrarian for supporting the Iraq War’ was BS; he wanted a job in the MSM, and the MSM supported the war 100%.

  104. 104.

    Jay C

    @oldgold:

    Just MHO, but I don’t think the problem is that Biden Administration is short on effective messengers: to me, the bigger problem is that the mass media in this country are still basically hard-wired for Republicans (or at least to default to Republican framing as *a*, if not “the” norm); and the best messengers in the world aren’t going to be of much use if their message is (unlike their GOP counterparts’) relentlessly filtered through a template of simplistic reductionism (not to mention the pernicious effects of “gotcha” journalism, which rarely seems to be used on Republicans….)

  105. 105.

    Barry

    @SFAW:

    “I guess that’s what passes for his ironic detachment or something.”

    In the mass media, ironic detachment is taking the view that what happens to the rabble (or foreign rabble) Does Not Count.

    IMHO, it’s done to excuse evil.

     

    “MattY was semi-OK 10 years ago, but he’s pretty much lost the shark, or jumped the thread, or whatever it is that you kids used to say.”

     

    IMHO, he started off problematic, and quickly grew into becoming a ‘team player’, as they say.

  106. 106.

    Cacti

    Could someone tell me again how Merrick Garland hasn’t been a complete coward about bringing the J6 principals to justice.

    I could use a laugh.

    Biden also doing his best to warmonger himself out of a job with his 3rd UNSC cease-fire veto last week. Somebody pass me the bourbon.

  108. 108.

    Anyway

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    A black man was elected president.

    It started before that. Dubya and Rove esp in his second term were very much Chamber of Commerce types and had their eyes on bringing Hispanic voters into the GQP fold. But Laura Ingraham and other RW activist/ commenters made it their mission to sink every trial balloon and make sure there would be no movement on regularizing the undocumented.

  109. 109.

    JWR

    Good Lord! Kirstin Welker just said that Trump “trounced” Haley by nearly 20 points in SC. (No, Kirstin… a “trouncing” is like Biden’s wins over Lady Woo woo, the Dean Machine, et al.)

    Also Good Lord! I hadn’t heard certain of Trump’s speech in front of a Black audience, but wowza! Listened to a few of them a while ago, and like I said, wowsa! Dude’s one nasty piece of work.

  111. 111.

    japa21

    @oldgold: Which might matter in a primary (if there was an alternative available) but in the general they will be faced with a choice of old and competent vs old, crazy, racist and authoritarian.  Which is why I am not as worried about the age factor.

  112. 112.

    WaterGirl

    @Cacti: Hey Cacti, Cole and I have been trying to reach you by email.  Can you send an email message to me at the address below so we can get in touch?

    watergirl at balloon-juice.com

    thank you

  114. 114.

    Scout211

    @oldgold: Plus, I do not believe Newsom is being selfless in making these appearances.

    I’m confused, politicians who are selfless?  Do you know any of those?

  116. 116.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @WaterGirl:

    Whether the goods originate in China or anywhere else, they enter the USA through Mexico. Things like closing the border, putting up walls, creating conflict, etc., are not only not a good idea, but they are not really possible without catastrophic economic losses.

  117. 117.

    Bill Arnold

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    A black swan on the R side would be for D.J. Trump’s apparently progressively worsening (maybe rapidly) cognitive issues to be sufficiently and obviously advanced, and legal issues sufficiently troubling, at the time of the GOP convention, that Haley (or somebody else) is given the GOP ticket head.
    Another R-side black swan might be some play with the GOP VP ticket with obviously-demented-Trump as the nominal ticket head and somebody competent/scary as VP.

  121. 121.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Anyway:

    Dubya and Rove esp in his second term were very much Chamber of Commerce types and had their eyes on bringing Hispanic voters into the GQP fold.

    My point is made.  There was a split in the party about immigration.  None of them actually liked brown people of any stripe, but some found Hispanic immigrants useful.  The whole party jumped the shark when Obama got elected.  From top to bottom they declared that the brown horde must be stopped at any cost.

  122. 122.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Bill Arnold: All very fine, but I am interested in what “black swans” oldgold thinks could save us from Biden’s age.  I remember from Taleb’s book that one shouldn’t bet the house on a black swan event happening.

  123. 123.

    oldgold

    @Scout211: You are correct, but with everything in politics it is a matter of timing and degree. Of course, he is positioning himself for 28, my question is the degree to which he is looking at 24.

  124. 124.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    I’ve had a few decades to watch republicans and my very first thought is that they really do not want a democracy because it means that they have to at least occasionally cooperate to have an actual functioning government. And that is really not what they want. What they want is something along the lines of current day Russia, while MAYBE being a bit less obvious about it than say vlad is. They want a government that follows every single line of their premise of government and that premise is not democracy. Sure they want people to vote for them but they really, really do not want any discussion of what kind/type/structure of government they actually want. And that kind is a very controlled, structured, religious, non democratic (as in not the choice of the common people), monetary government. You know sort of what vlad has….. The hard core that like someone like SFB is, because he thinks he’s totally in charge, not a leader but actually an owner, you know like vlad, that they should be in complete control, without any of that silly opposition to them. They are not the conservative side of the aisle, they are the total controlling side of the aisle. They just haven’t figured out how to kill off the opposition or that doing so is their only real chance to be in charge. Look what vlad just did, killed off one of his main dissenters. Not exactly what most of this country think is appropriate. They want to be dictators they just realize that there are not multiple dictators in one country, so they have to do it a bit differently. It is possible that they have not thought out their entire line of BS.

  125. 125.

    Another Scott

    @oldgold: In his debate with DeSantis, Newsom said something like:

    “Neither one of us is going to be elected president in 2024.”

    He’s being a very strong team player.  That’s a very good thing.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  126. 126.

    Jackie

    @oldgold:

    Plus, I do not believe Newsom is being selfless in making these appearances.

    You’re correct: Newsom selfishly does NOT WANT TIFG in office again.

  127. 127.

    Anoniminous

    Black Swan Event — an unpredictable or unforeseen event, typically one with extreme consequences.

    If an event or happenstance is known then it isn’t a Black Swan Event.

  129. 129.

    trnc

    @Baud: Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton all got less than 50%.

    Well, one Clinton did. The other got more than 50%. And while we’re at it, so did Gore. IMHO, these stats are at least as important as the Obama and Biden stats.

  132. 132.

    kalakal

    @oldgold:

    that does not negate the point that the Administration is short on effective messengers.

    The problem is not with Biden’s spokespeople, it is with the MSM and what someone above called the ‘hack gap’ ( tips hat).

    Also consider that the media market is so fragmented. Most normies don’t watch Meet the Press or avidly consume the FTFNYT. The vast majority of people under 35 get their information from their social media networks and Bidens team is good at this.

    Fox may actually be counterproductive to the GOP now. As the GOP base gets ever crazier only a nutjob can win a primary, but in doing so they alienate more and more normies. The real question is boosting the under 30 turnout, get them to show and it’s in the bag for us. To most of them the MSM is irrelevant and Fox is a repellent  freakshow.

  133. 133.

    dirge

    @Mousebumples: I don’t think it’s taking the focus off, but rather adding to the body of evidence of why that decision is about more than just abortion.

    To put a finer point on it, the incoherent position on IVF adds to the body of evidence that somehow, incredibly, in the decades they’ve been railing about this issue, not a single one of them has thought through the implications of their… “beliefs” seems like the wrong word.  Maybe there’s a German word for “bad faith rhetorical cudgel which one is suddenly forced to treat as a sincerely held principle, with unanticipated consequences.”

    As Kay often points out, there is no coherent abortion ban policy that actually, in the real world, achieves anything resembling what anyone wants.  Even “pro life” activists keep telling us that women bleeding out in Texas is an unintended outcome.  Probably some of them are lying about that, but I think most just have a deep seated, pathological need for simple answers, an inability to engage with the world as it is.  Where their policies ought to be, is instead a seething cauldron of inchoate desires.  Mutually contradictory, irreconcilable desires.  I doubt many of them have gotten further than “reproduction confuses me, abortion upsets me, make it go away,” and they’re now angry and frustrated that they “won” but it still hasn’t gone away.

    And of course, the same pattern governs just about every republican position now.  “I don’t understand X;  X makes me upset;  make X go away,” where X is homosexuality, low flow shower heads, immigrants, working women, sex, death, avocado toast, whatever.

    The lesson here isn’t about any particular issue.  The lesson is that you can’t put people like this in charge of anything more complicated than a microwave pizza.

  135. 135.

    kalakal

    @dirge:

    bad faith rhetorical cudgel which one is suddenly forced to treat as a sincerely held principle, with unanticipated consequences.”

    Well stated. With some exceptions they have zero interest in solving whatever ‘problem’ it is they’re wibbling on about.

    They simply want ammunition to attack the Dems, the type of ammunition is irrelevant

  136. 136.

    oldgold

     

    @kalakal: To a considerable degree, I agree with you; except, as to your assertion that the Biden administration is good at social media, I have no idea if that is accurate.

  138. 138.

    Bill Arnold

    @Anoniminous:

    unpredictable or unforeseen event

    “unpredictable”, “unforeseen” are doing some heavy lifting.
    There are a lot of people, and most large events are foreseen by at least a few of them. (Or at least are part of enumerated lists of risks.)
    They may not get sufficient traction to affect decision making, or be dismissed as amusing Cassandras, or as crackpots, or …

  139. 139.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @dirge: I felt obliged to register and upvote this astute comment on this dead thread.

    Or put otherwise, ding ding ding, we’ve got a winner!

  140. 140.

    Miss Bianca

    @oldgold: Maybe, by your own admission, you’re just not “with it” enough to judge the effectiveness of the Biden Administration’s social media messaging?

  141. 141.

    smith

    @dirge:  Women’s reproductive care has extra salience for them, beyond just being too complex to wrestle with, because of the misogynistic idea that women’s biological functions are unclean. Just give them a simple solution to enforce! Don’t make them even think about blood or tissue or internal organs or any of that profoundly icky female stuff.

  142. 142.

    Ksmiami

    @dirge: I was just thinking about this issue this am! The Republican mindset is so rigid and so ill cut out for the complexities of modern democracy- esp as one so technologically advanced and reliant as ours. These people are barely one foot off the African grasslands- it’s why so many of them chose to die with Covid vs adhering to minimal public health measures. They are also susceptible to frauds, religion and strong men.  If we want to move forward these people will need to isolated or jettisoned.

  143. 143.

    Ruckus

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    If your goods are coming from overseas, why would you ship them to Mexico and then ship them to the US? That adds a level of cost that does not go to the manufacturer of the goods but to the transportation and makes no sense. We have plenty of large ports that handle far more freight than Mexico has ports for. And I used to manufacture tooling that would go to Mexico for them to manufacture/sell products. I’ve traveled to my customers in Mexico and have seen first hand what their manufacturing is like. We have a diverse, reasonably large population (about 2 1/2 times the size of Mexico), a reasonably high end economy, many more large ports with massively more freight handling abilities than Mexico, and an economy several times larger than Mexico.

    And I like Mexico and the people, I’ve enjoyed traveling there, among many other countries, I’ve known and employed many fine people from there and have known many people from and that live there. The only other language that I’ve ever studied/learned any of, other than the form of English that we speak here in the US, is the language spoken in Mexico.

  144. 144.

    catclub

    @bbleh: THIS!  Note also that in NH and the IA election, Trump received below 60% of the vote. And these are Republican primary voters, who in general tend to be motivated and extreme.

     

    Everybody said that Trump not dominating – 70%+  in NH was becasue of independent and democrats voting in the GOP primary.

    The GOP primary in SC is closed, and he still was at 60%!  Go Haley!

  146. 146.

    catclub

    @JWR: I hadn’t heard certain of Trump’s speech in front of a Black audience, but wowza!

     

    Of course you had not. The MSM ignores those as run of the mill Trump crazy.  But imagine a similar speech by Biden  where he enters a fugue state?

  147. 147.

    RaflW

    Not a TPM subscriber, but I gather Josh Marshall did a piece on how Trump getting 58%-60% in the primaries so far is not what Kayleigh says at top. Yeah, he’s getting all the delegates he needs for the nom. But that’s not a juggernaut.

    Let’s peel some of those voters off, even just to stay home or vote for a 3rd party.

    eta: What @azlib said, also, too.

  148. 148.

    StringOnAStick

    @Omnes Omnibus: The average age in the Biden administration is 43 the last time I checked.  Biden (and Harris) give directions on policy, and these employees do the work of making it happen, so when I hear the Top Old arguments, this is what a point out.  I swear, people have been around too many micromanagers and think that Biden or any President handles every tiny detail, it’s a myth that needs to go away for every high level government pisitiin.

  149. 149.

    catclub

    @Baud: Nobody brings up the most capable, ready, Democratic politician to replace Biden.  Kamala Harris + Hillary Clinton.

     

    you can call me nobody.

  151. 151.

    StringOnAStick

    @StringOnAStick: and let me say fuck you very much to my Kindles autocorrect function, which appears to have been programmed by rabid weasels. It just changed that to David weasels.

  152. 152.

    dirge

    @kalakal: The problem is not with Biden’s spokespeople, it is with the MSM…

    On MSNBC the other day, they carried Biden speaking about Ukraine, but immediately cut away to a talking heads panel when he segued to domestic accomplishments.  Guessing the producers had designated that a “Ukraine segment,” so didn’t want to let the President of the United States go off-topic.

    But then the very same people go on to wonder why he can’t get his message out, when they literally just cut him off mid-sentence the instant he brought it up.

  153. 153.

    Scout211

    @oldgold:my question is the degree to which he is looking at 24.

    Sorry, I missed your reply to me and this thread is nearly dead.

    If you mean would he accept a cabinet level position in the Biden administration for 2025?  I think that is possible but not likely, since he would have 2 years left in his second term here.

    If you mean a presidential run in 2024?  Absolutely not.  Just from a practical standpoint, he has missed deadlines to get on the primary ballot in many states, including California. We are already voting here in the primary, which is on March 5th.  So the only way he could win his own state primary is by a write-in vote and that would be just silly.

  154. 154.

    RaflW

    @catclub: My preference would be Kamala Harris + Gretchen Whitmer.

    We do have some very good people on deck for 2028. Could one serve in a pinch some time in the net 4 years (not wishing at all for an opening, but it’s not unheard of in our history for a VP to be elevated during a term)? Yes.

  155. 155.

    Ruckus

    @dirge:

    They could start a fire with microwave pizza.

    You know set it on high and cook for an hour……

    They put the directions on the box for a reason…

  156. 156.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Anoniminous:

    According to Herbert the point of Dune is messiahs are a really bad idea.

    He sure was subtle about it!  We’re supposed to be glad that Count Fenring didn’t off Paul when he had the chance, and the jihad that Paul’s spent the entire second half of Dune trying to find a way to avoid is presented at the end as a Good Thing because the galaxy needs some shaking up.

    Arruckus. Doon. Dessert planet.

  157. 157.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Scout211: This is, of course, why I already said to oldgold that the ship had sailed on replacing Biden.  He’s the nominee.  As he should be.

  158. 158.

    wjca

    @SFAW: It’s “interesting” to note that, as extreme as Goldwater was in 1964, he’d probably have to run as a Dem today.

    But then, so would Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and probably even Bush II.

  159. 159.

    cain

    @Jeffg166: It also fucks up the math when it comes to representation. North Dakota whose entire population (and maybe add South Dakota as well) doesn’t add up to the population in LA.

    Population dense states get screwed under the electoral college because a collection of wankers elsewhere who represent a very small majority can lord it over other places.

    We can’t get rid of the electoral college, but maybe we can just give all the states the same number of weight.

  160. 160.

    Bill Arnold

    @Anoniminous:
    I’ve watched Taleb deliver a lecture (on that book/his work) in person. Interesting guy. He presents as a bit arrogant. Maybe that’s a mask; the story about his mother suggests that he believes that it is.
    If I were dictator-of-education, I would include teaching children the habit of estimating the probability that any thought of theirs is true. (Humanity will (probably) be facing serious computation-driven emotional manipulation efforts, at all levels.)

  162. 162.

    dirge

    @Ruckus: They could start a fire with microwave pizza.

    Yeah, well….  I assume they must be eating something, and just about anything else involves edge tools, exposed heating elements, or numbers you need both hands for.

  164. 164.

    RevRick

    @zhena gogolia: Goldwater would definitely not be a centrist Democrat. He might be a never-Trumper, but no way a Democrat. Today’s Democrats are the most liberal they’ve ever been. How do you think Biden was able to accomplish so much of the progressive agenda with a “hair of his chinny, chin, chin” majorities in the House and Senate?

  166. 166.

    oldgold

    @Scout211:  If Biden, for whatever reason withdraws, before the convention,  do you think Harris is a certainty? I do not. I think there would be a challenger(s).

  167. 167.

    RevRick

    @Fake Irishman: Agree 100%. GOP economic policies have three “principles”: reduced taxes (especially on the wealthy and businesses); slashed regulations; and opposed to downward income redistribution. Obamacare raised taxes on the wealthy, added a slew of regulations, and increased subsidies to the working poor ( and now under Biden) to the middle class.

  168. 168.

    Cacti

    @WaterGirl: The email associated with my BJ account isn’t one I check with any regularity. That would probably explain it. If you’re wondering if I worked some sort of strange devil magic to get around Adam banning me in a fit of pique. No. I’m not that tech savvy.

  169. 169.

    wjca

    @dirge:  “I don’t understand X;  X makes me upset;  make X go away,” where X is homosexuality, low flow shower heads, immigrants, working women, sex, death, avocado toast, whatever.

    When it comes to avocado toast (actually avocado anything), I’m all in for “make X go away.”  Hoping Baud makes sure that’s highlighted in his platform in 20XX.

  171. 171.

    dirge

    @Ksmiami: If we want to move forward these people will need to isolated or jettisoned.

    Isolated, or more precisely, dispersed.

    I think they’ve always been there, around the 27% crazification factor of the population, but they’re not normally unified.  They’re usually politically inactive, or scattered across third parties, or fringe players in the major parties.  Because as cranks with idiosyncratic, incoherent obsessions, they don’t naturally have anything in common with one another other than being cranks.

    I think Nixon’s southern strategy started the process of consolidation.  Previously, the racism, xenophobia, goldbuggery, moral panic, and conspiracy theory was distributed across the political spectrum, diffuse and ineffectual.  By now, they’re almost all in the Republican Party, enough of them to control it, unified around the one and only issue they all agree on:  tolerance for terrible ideas, affirmative action for cranks, fools, and frauds, rule by belligerent morons.  Kakistocracy.  Fascism.

    It’s not pleasant to admit it, but there are people that cannot be a member of any functioning political coalition, that must not be represented in a sustainable democracy.  Realistically, you can’t stop them from voting, so the best you can hope for is to disperse them enough to be safely ignored.  The purity purges and internecine conflicts within the Republican Party are encouraging signs, but that’s just the beginning of a long, slow correction, and it’ll only continue if they keep losing.

  172. 172.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @cain: North Dakota whose entire population (and maybe add South Dakota as well) doesn’t add up to the population in LA.​

    ND, SD, WY and MT together (3.42M) are over 400K short of the population within the Los Angeles city limits alone (3.849M). Add ID, OR, UT, NV and NE and the combined population of ~20% of the entire surface area of the Lower 48 comes up short of the Greater Los Angeles metro population by a couple million.​ Remove UT, NV and NE, add WA, and the entire northern tier of the Lower 48 west of MN is still a couple million short of LaLaLand.

  174. 174.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Bill Arnold: ​If I were dictator-of-education, I would include teaching children the habit of estimating the probability that any thought of theirs is true. (Humanity will (probably) be facing serious computation-driven emotional manipulation efforts, at all levels.)

    For at least a decade I’ve been telling anyone who I can corner long enough to listen (;^D) that Edward Teller was dead wrong when he said humanity would go extinct due to an inability to emotionally comprehend the exponential function. We are far more likely to off our species through an inability to understand probability and statistics on any level this side of the next over/under for an athletic contest.

  175. 175.

    Another Scott

    @Uncle Cosmo: OTOH…

    Dan Davies on substack:

    Once upon a time, in the early to mid stages of the Global Financial Crisis, a client said to me …

    “Danny, since this thing began, there have been two types of analysts. Some people, like yourself, have been trying to develop their understanding of an incredibly complicated system, under huge pressure, absorbing vast amounts of technical detail in a short time, and doing a fairly good job of it. Others have just been mindless bomb-throwers, trying to attract attention to themselves with ill-informed displays of competitive panic. I decided early in this crisis that I was going to listen to the second type of analyst – and they have turned out, systematically, to be much closer to being right”

    He was correct; I changed my approach as a result and consequently, I think, did a much better job of understanding the Eurocrisis. There’s a very great danger in believing that either a) the whole problem is of a size that you can fit in your head, so understanding it is just a matter of working hard enough, or that b) the relationship between the amount of detail you know and your understanding of the system is positive and monotonic. This is often not the case.

    (This is one of the reasons I am always sceptical of suggestions to have “elementary statistical reasoning” taught in schools, usually so we wouldn’t vote Brexit or some such. Quite apart from all the other issues, I have seen the behaviour of actual professors, and am thus pretty sure that if you taught most people better quantiative reasoning techniques, they would mainly use them to dig deeper and more robust rabbit holes).

    I think he’s generalizing too much from one specialized area into things in general, there.

    People need to learn lots and lots of stuff these days, but there’s too little time to do it all in school.

    :-/

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  176. 176.

    dirge

    @wjca: When it comes to avocado toast (actually avocado anything), I’m all in for “make X go away.”

    Look, I get where you’re coming from. Avocado toast is confusing and upsetting for me too.  But have you considered the costs, or the second order effects, of your “delete avocados from the observable universe” policy?

    First, of course, we’d need to collect all the Infinity Stones, which is not just practically challenging, but potentially geopolitically destabilizing.  Then we have to confront the knock-on effects for the crucial tortilla industry, and therefor corn and wheat farmers, who are an important swing state voting bloc.  Further, the loss of guacamole likely increases demand for sour cream dips, which even if you set aside the grave moral threat of ranch seasoning, will tend to drive up dairy prices, in an election year.

    In summation, the continuing existence of avocados is a complex challenge, best addressed with a nuanced, incremental, and dare I say, conservative approach.  Like, for example, we could ask Doctor Strange to selectively remove avocados from the subjective perception of anyone who dislikes them.

  177. 177.

    dirge

    @Another Scott: People need to learn lots and lots of stuff these days, but there’s too little time to do it all in school.

    Epistemology.  Teach people to seriously examine how they came to “know” the things they think they know.  Everything else is gravy.

  178. 178.

    wjca

    @dirge: Then we have to confront the knock-on effects for the crucial tortilla industry, and therefor corn and wheat farmers, who are an important swing state voting bloc.

    No, no, no.  No need to attack toast or its components.

    Just get rid of avocados.  Note that, in addition to the improved dining experience, it will save water.  Avocado trees being several dozen time worse than even almond trees (the standard for horrible in any dry climate) in water use per pound of product.

  179. 179.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud: I have often wondered what would have happened if Fox News had existed with its current media penetration in 1932, with 45 minutes out of every hour demonizing FDR as a communist and the last 15 minutes spent praising Hitler and Mussolini as role models for America’s future.

  180. 180.

    dirge

    @wjca: Avocado trees being several dozen time worse than even almond trees (the standard for horrible in any dry climate) in water use per pound of product.

    Really?  Relevant facts?  Seems like a cheap shot.

    Consider this:  no avocados, no guacamole, hipster bros starve, beard grooming industry collapses, death of masculinity, end of western civilization, global conflict, nuclear war.  Do you really want to be responsible for the extinction of humanity?

    But still, we should be making agriculture pay sustainable, unsubsidized water rates.  If that makes almonds and avocados punitively expensive, so be it.

  181. 181.

    wjca

    @dirge: Really?  Relevant facts?

    i stand corrected.  (I had read too fast, and missed that one source was using English measurements and the other metric.  Sorry.)  Still bad on water, just not as bad.

  182. 182.

    dirge

    @Citizen Alan: I have often wondered what would have happened if Fox News had existed with its current media penetration in 1932

    Probably pretty much what did happen.

    Father Coughlin:

    During the 1930s, when the U.S. population was about 120 million, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned to his weekly broadcasts.

    Not apples/apples comparable to Fox audience share, or to the modern 24/7 firehose, but I think of a similar magnitude of influence.

  183. 183.

    dirge

    @wjca: Still bad on water, just not as bad.

    Granted.  And I do agree that the way we manage water, especially for agriculture, is insane.

    Mostly, I just object to taking this conversation too seriously when I’m trying to derail it into absurdist territory.

  184. 184.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @dirge: I think I remember seeing a collection of his sermons in my late grandfather’s house when it was being cleaned out. That’s a book that I would have put straight into the recycling bin

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