Nikki Haley will suspend her presidential campaign today after former Pres. Trump swept up GOP nominating contests on Super Tuesday.
She is not expected to endorse Trump, @NidiaCavazosTV reports, citing sources familiar with the matter. https://t.co/8IAJ5P61Gd pic.twitter.com/bOFzpbkllk
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 6, 2024
I’m planning to post about Haley’s campaign this evening — and I suspect I’ll be just one in a series!
Thank you, Super Tuesday states! pic.twitter.com/lhqFJ3jSpv
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 6, 2024
On the one hand, the NYT talked to 900 Democrats and found that 45% of them didn't want Biden to be the nominee, while on the other hand, millions of Democrats have now voted in Democratic Primaries and 85%+ have chosen Joe Biden.
Who to believe… Who to believe?
— That Well-Adjusted Biden Guy (@What46HasDone) March 6, 2024
So far great night for Joe Biden, and a bad night for Trump.
Why?
Uncommitted “protest vote” against Biden has been a total dud but the Haley anti-Trump Republican vote share against Donald Trump is real.#SuperTuesday
— Fernand R. Amandi (@AmandiOnAir) March 6, 2024
I’ll spare us all the sight of his face at this hour of the morning, but frankly, TFG did not sound excited about his ‘win’, per the Associated Press :
Former President Donald Trump offered little celebration during his 20-minute speech at Mar-a-Lago on Super Tuesday.
Instead, he focused on moments from his administration and at times, shared a dark prediction of the nation’s future, especially under Biden…
This striking pattern of Trump under-performing his poll numbers continues. According to 538, Trump was meant to win:
– Massachusetts by 37 (NYT says he's up by 23)
– Tennessee by 69 (he's up 57)
– Texas by 64 (he's up 56)
– Virginia by 49 (he's up by 29)
The exception:
– North… https://t.co/slbUXH38O3— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) March 6, 2024
Trump is going to lose in November. We the Decent are sick to fucking death of him and his cult. https://t.co/51mllEVOzR
— Ray Jeezy (@Moski1213) March 6, 2024
Taylor Swift reminds her fans to go vote on Super Tuesday:
“I wanted to remind you guys to vote the people who most represent YOU into power. If you haven’t already, make a plan to vote today.” pic.twitter.com/cI7yxgGUjs
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) March 5, 2024
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
rikyrah
Didn’t know that they were trying that uncommitted BULLSHYT in other states 🤬🤬🤬
Baud
I appreciate the positive spin as a counter to the media, but I’m tired of all the reading of tea leaves and I’m not even paying that much attention.
Hopefully, super Tuesday was the unofficial end of primary coverage.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
So Haley is dropping out before Dean?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Baud:
Now our Failed Corporate Media will simply move onto the usual variations of horse race coverage.
schrodingers_cat
Californian BJers, can we keep Porter’s seat?
Brachiator
CNN exit polls suggest that Trump supporters are angry and stupid. Note that the exit polls could be off by a wide margin and still be problematic. The people willing to talk to pollsters are idiots.
That anyone believes this is astounding. I suppose the old saw that if you repeat the same lie often enough, some people will believe it, has some power. I think that Trump will once again declare that he will not accept the results when he loses again and we may have to deal with Insurrection 2.0.
If somehow, Trump wins, he is never going to do mass deportations. He always lies big. Biden may have to deal with a few asshole governors.
Trump supporters are as unhinged as their Dear Leader. They don’t care about governance or policy. They feed on anger and resentment and are very hungry.
ETA. Haley might not have a political future even if she tries to play nice and embraces Trump. Dear Leader will not be happy.
However, there’s a small chance that Republicans desperate to heal wounds may implore Trump to make Haley his VP choice. What happens here might be the only surprise in a dismal GOP primary effort.
Kay
Haley is very much a bigot re: gay people. Republicans have really backslid on that since Trump’s (single) win in 2016.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I wish she had stayed in the race longer. Has she endorsed the Orange One yet?
Princess
I think Taylor is more effective for our team just getting young people to vote than she would be if she straight out endorsed Biden (which she may well still do). Getting young people to believe in their own vote is 95% of the job for us.
zhena gogolia
Thanks, Taylor.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Brachiator:
Talk about a blinding flash of the obvious. CNN needed an exit poll to say that? JFC.
Spanky
@Brachiator: It always bears repeating that 50% of the population is below average intelligence.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t think I’ve even heard about her views on gay people.
frosty
Ha! You wish. I’m with you. I’m sick of the polls, the tea leaves, the FTFNYT spin, all of it. And I’ve been a political junkie since Nixon!
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: Having read that Obama had something like 13% uncommitted in some early primary state in 2012, I think “uncommitted” is a regular option in primary votes. I’ve never noticed it myself, so maybe not all states? Either way, I wouldn’t make too much of it one way or the other.
Spanky
@Princess: This woman is much smarter than a lot of people credit her for.
hrprogressive
Without wanting to get into “unskew the polls” territory, the idea that Trump keeps coming up substantially short in the states where he was still expected to win definitely gives me at least a little positive pause.
Of course, President Hillary Clinton would like a word with us about that.
But polling as an art and a science has suffered a lot in the last decade, again, the Red Wave of 2022 was barely a Mist, so, you know.
I frankly don’t really trust any of the polls anymore because I don’t think their accuracy in either direction can really be relied upon.
Some of it is for non-nefarious reasons (landline preferences, demographics of the electorate willing to answer unknown phone calls versus not, etc) but I definitely believe there are a lot of people who have their thumbs on the scale to, at best make it a horse race because “zomg ratings” and at worst, to try and manufacture their preferred result.
The same media tried so, so, so hard to make “the Biden recession is coming!!!” happen and by all accounts, while I wouldn’t say things are economically rosy for the working and middle classes, I would say we didn’t get the hard crash a lot of Fortune types told us was inevitable.
The bloc of Non-Trump GOP Voters is real, and if they stick to their word about not voting trump again, and/or voting Biden if that’s their only choice in November, well. I think that bloc is large enough that absent some sort of fuckery, I don’t see how he wins without those voters.
We’ll see what the next 6 months brings, I suppose.
Baud
@frosty:
It’s all so fake now. Who needs AI?
Soprano2
@rikyrah: Yes, I heard a story about them doing it in Minnesota. As long as they just do it in the primary, I think it’s a way for them to protest without voting against Biden in the general election. I’m truly hopeful that soon there will be an agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Baud
@Princess:
She endorsed him in 2020 so it would be noticed if she didn’t endorse him this time.
OzarkHillbilly
You a funny guy. ;-)
Baud
@Brachiator:
Agreed. That would be like overturning Roe v. Wade.
NotMax
Energetic entry for early in the morn.
Ambergris, Rise Up.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: They were trying it in MA too. Anywhere where there is a sizable Red Rose contigent.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They were always bigots
Hiding behind religion to justify it 🤬
Soprano2
He’ll say the “deep state” is keeping him from doing it, but the truth is we can’t afford to do that, it’s why no one has ever done it. The amount of money it would take would probably run into the trillions. It’s a crazy, unrealistic promise that the MAGA’s will lap up because it plays into their worst prejudices.
Kay
@Baud:
She’s gross about because she coats it in sugar and comes at it “as a mom“. Such a phony. Anyway – she’s 100% aligned with DeSantis and she proudly broadcast that at the start of the race but backed off as it became apparent she was appealing mostly to moderates. She’s not stupid, just bigoted.
mrmoshpotato
Sparing us every other hour would be ok too. :)
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Since California jackals are probably just drinking their first chai and preparing avocado toast, I will point out that Porter’s district was rated D×3 and that is what Porter won by in 2022.
With Joe Biden running against Trump this should be a better year for Democratic turnout, so I am optimistic about keeping the seat.
RevRick
@rikyrah: Good morning.
catclub
@Brachiator: CNN exit polls suggest that Trump supporters are angry and stupid.
so beware of the realization by Adlai Stevenson. Enthusiastic supporter: “Senator, all thinking people are with you!”
Adlai: “Thanks, but I need a majority.”
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
What will pundits whack off to until November then?
JWR
.. is a stupid question without following it up by asking whether or not these voters intend to vote for Biden regardless of their “feelings”. Or maybe that’s in the crosstabs? I didn’t look.
catclub
But after that she worked for him as UN ambassador. Somebody else posted that they should get Mattis, Bolton and others who were high up in his admin who should be saying “do not elect this guy!”
The problem with credibility is “so why did you take a job with him in the first place?”
RevRick
@hrprogressive: The Biden campaign has a tweet capturing a Fox News segment showing how great the economy has done under his administration.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Phony as they come. You are correct
rikyrah
@RevRick:
Should put it in an Ad on tv
Baud
@catclub:
I was talking about Taylor Swift and Biden.
Eyeroller
@catclub: They were talking about Taylor Swift, who apparently endorsed Biden in 2020 by being photographed with some frosted cookies. So if she doesn’t endorse again this year, that could possibly become an issue.
But it will be interesting to see whether Haley caves and endorses Trump.
Baud
@Eyeroller:
I would be shocked if Haley doesn’t cave. Republicans have never been harmed by being craven to other Republicans.
Spanky
In my perfect world, Nikki would endorse Dean on her way out.
Princess
These two things can’t be true at the same time: Porter can’t be both an empty grandstanding white board toting shell AND the only person capable of keeping that seat Dem. If you think she’s the former then certainly another Dem has at least an equal chance of keeping the seat.
Geminid
@Geminid: There are several potential Democratic House pickups in Southern California, including districts held by Ken Calvert and Mike Garcia. Calvert’s district is based in the desert east of Los Angeles, while Garcia represents one northwest of LA.
Two Central Valley Republicans are also vulnerable, David Valadeo and John Duarte. Duarte is a freshman who won by less than a thousand votes in 2022.
Ohio Mom
I liked hearing Haley put Trump down and will miss that, but have doubts how much of a difference her comments made.
Her um, insights, wouldn’t make a difference to Democrats, who don’t need any convincing to be against Trump, and wouldn’t make any difference to Trump lovers for obvious reasons.
I had occasional moments when I feared she had a chance and am glad she’s gone. Plus she made the hair in the back on my neck stand up so those muscles can relax now.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
These are the same people who think the Earth is 4,000 years old but at the very same time civilization was founded by white people from Atlantis 12,000 years ago. They’ve been raised believing in obvious bullshit is a virtue.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Trump always promises a lot of shocking things he’d likely never be able to do, but of course anyone who says this shouldn’t be near the White House in the first place.
And even a return to the deportation policies of his term in office would be a disaster–the malicious family separations where they went out of their way to lose track of children; the surprise raids constructed as traps, where people would get summoned by the State Department for a meeting about normalizing their immigration status and then get snapped up by ICE. That kind of thing just speaks of active contempt for a functioning society.
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
I think her comments gave the media permission to cover Trump in a way they wouldn’t have done if it were just Dems saying it.
Ken
@Spanky: Phillips was floating the idea of a Phillips-Haley ticket for a brief while, until he was asked whether a Haley-Phillips ticket might not be better.
OzarkHillbilly
@Spanky: In my perfect world, she would spontaneously combust.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The moon landings were fake AND the astronauts secretly found aliens when they got there!
Kay
@JWR:
The NYTimes business model is “small amounts of new/collected information, repeated endlessly and repackaged six different ways”
In the next poll they’ll ask the follow up question and put the whole paper to the task of promoting that nugget, then they’ll sell that across platforms – the newspaper, the website, the podcast, their reporters on cable news.
It seems insanely repetitive because it is. No one needs 20 employees writing about one poll, but it’s cheaper than putting 20 employees on 20 different stories.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Pretty sure “active contempt for a functioning society” is the official Republican motto.
Matt McIrvin
I was hoping North Carolina might be the one state in the Union that was a possible pickup for Biden over 2020, so Trump’s overperformance there is dismaying.
If he can’t take NC, I don’t think there’s a single new pickup he can get. Which means there’s very little margin in the Electoral College. He can’t afford to lose very many states.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Matt McIrvin: The people who cut Trump’s lawn will never be deported. Selective enforcement is a tool of fear.
And Stephen Miller will be there.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Pretty sure that kid was a citizen.
dmsilev
Haley presumably wants a future in Republican politics. What’s her best option? The two choices are grovel before Trump and hope that he gets enough of an ego boost to forgive her the crime of lèse-majesté, or don’t bend the knee and hope that he goes down in flames/goes to jail and she becomes the one person in the GOP who stood up to him.
Neither is particularly likely. She lobbed enough insults at him that he’s unlikely to forgive even for the brief ego-boost of seeing her grovel, and if he does go down in flames (as we all hope), a large large swath of the GOP will see her as a traitor who stabbed the Chosen One in the back.
Ken
@hrprogressive: Electoral-vote.com has similar thoughts on polls versus yesterday’s results. It’s not just that Trump largely under-performed his polls by five percentage points or so; Biden largely over-performed his, typically by ten percentage points.
Gvg
@Baud: Deport to where? Generally countries won’t agree to take them. Bigots assume we can just dump them somewhere, generally Mexico, but that isn’t actually possible and most don’t even come from Mexico. The countries they leave don’t want them etc. You can deport a few, not massive. That destabilizes the other country.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It means very little except that polling is t that reliable anymore.
Marmot
@Baud:
Now we move on to anecdotal evidence!
Baud
@Gvg:
Like Trump cares.
Mass deportation doesn’t mean 100%. It can be much less and still be inhumane.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: My observation voting in the primary yesterday morning was that turnout seemed to be low, which could magnify the effects of a protest-vote movement. But I guess Uncommitted only got about 9% of the vote (twice as much as Dean Phillips).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, this, it starts with Young Earth Creationism and cascades out into just about every conspiracy theory out there.
I have a couple of that type in my family, they are idiots, and treated like idiots by the rest of the family, so these conspiracy theories let them pretend they are secret smart ones.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I’ll never forget the time junior fascist Vox Day argued “Of course we can deport 10 million people–Hitler managed to kill that many, it’s doable!”
Matt McIrvin
@Gvg: In practice it’d just mean parking them in concentration camps until they die.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: I remember that. He seemed puzzled that people weren’t impressed by his reasoning.
Princess
Polling and primary wins over or below polling margins may not tell us much. Biden and Trump may have enthusiastic base voters but both may have troubles outside the group who votes in virtually uncontested primaries. But I’d rather be us than them at this point.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Crank magnetism can start anywhere–the QAnon fan I know got in through anti-abortion politics. Fear of food additives (shading in from legit concern, but then you start thinking poisons were deliberately introduced to “control the population”) is a big one.
sdhays
It’s ok, he won’t remember who she is by the convention anyway. The real problem is convincing him she’s not Nancy Pelosi; he’ll never forget her.
Baud
@Princess:
We could be down 90-10 in the polls and I’d still rather be us than them. They’re pretty skeezy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin: Hitler also wrecked the German economy doing it too, something the Fascists curious seem to ignore. For example only part of the German army was mechanized, the rest of it used horses just like in WW1. Most of the horse breeders where Jewish, so when Nazis shut them down it resulted in a huge shortage of horses for the Nazis precious army.
sdhays
@Matt McIrvin: He over performed among Republican primary voters. I’m not sure that tells us much about his performance in November.
Starfish
@rikyrah: They were not trying very hard. Michigan and Minnesota were organized, but other states really were not.
Baud
NC GOP has some pretty odious state office nominees. They’ll probably be the most interesting state to watch.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin: Bit of a who came first with Young Earth Creationism and Anti-Abortion with non Catholics. It seemed like the modern versions started the same time in the 1970s so likely for the same reasons.
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
In my perfect world, Mar-A-Lago would spontaneously combust while Orban is visiting TFG there.
And then my old favorite: everyone who says they believe in the Rapture would get Raptured.
Soprano2
@Gvg: That idiotic Ingrid Jacobs whose editorials periodically end up in my Gannett newspaper thinks Biden should re-start the remain in Mexico policy, even though Mexico says they won’t cooperate with anything like that again! These people think we can do whatever we want anywhere on Earth, it’s insane.
Baud
@Soprano2:
It’s not insane. It’s a well worn tactic of both right and left critics of the Democratic office holders. Invent a litmus test and then fault Dems for failing to meet it.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator:
Of course he will (if he loses). The difference is that he won’t be in control of the federal government when it happens. I think it’s pretty clear that 1/6 was only as bad as it was because Trump deliberately let that happen and was actively trying to do a self-coup using his executive power. Most of the participants also believed they wouldn’t be arrested because they would win and Trump wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to them.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Even during his first term he lost a lot in the courts but it wore on one’s nerves just keeping up with the shitty policies those years were traumatic
That’s why I have zero patience with the tankie tantrums against Democrats.
artem1s
Someone needs to explain to the FYNYT and pollsters that a someone who voted Dem in a open primary state anytime in the past 20 years is not necessarily a Democrat. That’s why these polls are so skewed. You poll 900 white guys in diners in Ohio and 95% percent of them are ‘libertarians’ or ‘independents’ who asked for the Dem ballot in the primary just so they could vote for whoever wasn’t the endorsed Dem candidate. Of course they lie to pollsters about their party affiliation. The whole purpose of open primary states is to give butthurt conservatives with oppositional defiance disorder an outlet to scream at the clouds.
RevRick
@catclub: January 6th made it clear, even to them, how terrible he was. Before that he was just a stupid bigot.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Right.
@schrodingers_cat:
Right. If Dems don’t turn out, I sure as hell don’t want to hear one word about their mental health.
Eyeroller
@Baud: I wonder whether the contested primaries for other offices in NC may have juiced MAGA turnout.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: How much did Haley get in MA do you know?
Soprano2
@Baud: Evidently, they nominated this guy to run for governor as a Republican. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/mark-robinson-north-carolina-facebook I guess they think Black people will vote for anyone who is black regardless of their views. This guy is truly odious.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t think Trump’s performance in the North Carolina primary indicates that Biden won’t win that state in November. In any event, the Biden campaign intends to win those electoral votes and is allocating resources accordingly. Trump won the state by only 80,000 votes last time, when Biden could send very few resources there.
Baud
@Eyeroller:
Could be. I’m no expert, but I don’t think people turn out as much when there isn’t a real contest.
Baud
@Soprano2:
And their Lt. gov nominee is apparently a Klansman.
Soprano2
@Baud: What I mean is that it’s insane to think we can force Mexico to accomodate a policy like that. It’s like Mehdi Hassan thinking Biden has a magic wand he can wave to stop Israel from bombing Gaza. I understand your point, though.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Haley got 36.9% in MA, according to the NYT’s results page
(And even without a *major* primary challenge, Biden got more absolute votes than Trump in Massachusetts. That surprises me a little, but I guess there aren’t so many Republican primary voters here.)
schrodingers_cat
Do white people feel peer pressure to diss Ds at every available opportunity? Or are they the only white people (even Ds) that the media puts on TV. Yesterday on the Snooze Hour most white interviewees outside the voting places were either voting R and even those voting D felt the need to diss Biden (both from the left and the right).
The one black voter they interviewed IIRC he was from Alabama. He said that he was voting for Biden because he was doing such a great job despite all odds. It was so refreshing to hear a full throated endorsement of Biden and not oh I am voting for Biden but I wish we had a better choice trotted out by the person interviewed before him.
Baud
@Soprano2:
That’s all I ask.
Starfish
@Baud: The appropriate response was You Need to Calm Down.
Gvg
@Baud: you think he can declare war and invade someplace in order to deport lots of people? That would really drive up costs. Can’t imagine the international reaction but i would guess it would destroy import and export businesses.
He might move on to killing them proposals, but i think that would get stopped.
Too many people don’t think.
Soprano2
@Baud: What a ticket, the R candidate for governor is a Black man who is a white supremacist, and the R lieutenant governor candidate is an actual Klansman. Well, I guess the sheet is off for sure now.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
IMHO, many do, and that attitude has been slowly spreading to non-white people who want to feel tough.
But I also think the media is selective.
lowtechcyclist
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
How does the modern Young Earth Creationism differ from older YEC? The only change I can see is the re-entry of fundies into politics in the 1970s, it’s not like they changed their stripes on creationism between Scopes and the 1970s.
OTOH, the fundies had been of the mindset for quite some time that being antiabortion was a Papist thing, and they only started coming around on that in the late 1970s.
UncleEbeneezer
Glad to see Schiff won. I voted for Porter but generally love Schiff too. It just dawned on me that in 2017 when I first got involved in activism/organizing that we had a contingent of supremely-Progressive DSA douchebags here locally who had a weird hatred of Schiff. I think it was because Schiff dared to speak the truth about one of their idols, Julian Assange. So therefore Schiff was just some Deep State thug, in their childish minds. These were the same people who didn’t really believe that Russia interfered in 2016, but that the DNC totally rigged the Dem Primary against Bernie. Not the brightest candles…
Anyways, I’m just really glad to live in a state with such a surplus of Liberal/Progressive Dem candidates. I would’ve been happy for Schiff, Porter or Lee to be my next Senator. It will be fun watching Steve Garvey go down in flames in November.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I saw a guy on Twitter comparing Obama’s 2012 primary percentages in these states with Biden’s wins yesterday, and in most cases Biden’s percentages were higher than Obama’s.
trnc
It absolutely was. Enjoy the 2024 general election coverage, starting now.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: That’s a good question, because we don’t know how many people they actually interviewed.
Marmot
@schrodingers_cat: Yes they do. I feel like it’s on the wane, but there’s a distinct bias toward seeing yourself as objective.
And my opinion is that South Park-style both-sides reasoning is still out there, making a hash of people’s rationality.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: I’m getting weary of it. The form it’s taking in my circles is “Oh, I wish we had someone better than Kamala Harris as VP.” I get a little hot under the collar when I hear that. It’s “her e-mails” all over again. When I challenged someone the other day to tell me what they had against Harris, they said, “She has baggage.” 😡
Matt McIrvin
…In Massachusetts, Nikki Haley’s stronghold seems to have been the wealthier western Boston suburbs, and parts of western MA. So, your old money Republicans. My town’s Republicans were very very Trumpy, which is not a big surprise given personal experience.
On the Democratic side, the “No preference” protest vote was strongest in Cambridge and Brookline–no surprise there either. But it seems to have made some headway in working-class towns with big immigrant communities.
Baud
@trnc:
It’ll be irritating but at least that’s a real and meaningful contest.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
More like blackage.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@schrodingers_cat: I woke up every morning wondering what awful thing he’d done or said overnight.
Starfish
@schrodingers_cat: Some of it is reflexive contrarianism that has been going on for a long time.
I am sure that the contrarians who were going to vote for Trump for the laughs are either hardcore or have no friends anymore.
RevRick
@artem1s: In every election I can remember, the rule of thumb was that each party candidate will garner 90+% of their party’s voters. Party ID does not equal party vote. In fact, nominal Independents are often more partisan than regular registered Democrats and Republicans. We can expect that 90% of the votes are already baked in before a single vote is cast in November. And of the remaining 10%, the only ones that really matter are the ones who live in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. So, the only polls that really matter are those states. National polls are largely irrelevant, save as hints of where those five states are headed.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: Find me any politician of her age and political experience who doesn’t have some “baggage”. They are uncomfortable with a black female possibly being president, full stop. It’s the “I like women candidates, but not that woman” thing.
Kosh III
:NYT talked to 900 Democrats and found that 45% of them didn’t want Biden to be the nominee…”
I’d prefer another D but Biden is the choice. I early voted for him and will do it again.
I’m sadly certain that on election night when Biden wins, the talking heads will already be yakking about 2028. I hate unending elections.
BTW my mother who always voted D believed the earth was 6000 years old and created in 7 days. Yet she had a Master’s degree(in 1938!). She was also a devout Lutheran(LCMS) Go figure.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: There was a concerted effort here by some Ds to try the too cute by half tactic of registering as uncommitted voting for Haley in the primary and then voting for Biden in the general
trnc
I don’t doubt their ability to create all sorts of chaos, but I doubt they can carry out the same thing at the Capitol this time. DT probably wouldn’t be able to get any kind of permit in the city, and I would bet on the National Guard being on hand to help with security.
JWR
@UncleEbeneezer: Schiff has come a long way since his days as a Blue Dog. Maybe that’s what motivated some of their hatred for the man.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gvg: Whether he can do it or not isn’t the point. Campaign rhetoric defines the priorities even if the specifics aren’t achievable. This rhetoric will lead to horrific actions if we let it.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: People who are highly educated and highly politically engaged seem to really go for these elaborate Weird Tricks of expressive strategery. Reminds me of the schemes on the early Web in 2000 to “trade votes” between swing-state Nader supporters and blue staters so people could somehow pump up the Nader vote without electing Bush (didn’t work I guess).
Baud
The absolutely last thing I’m concerned about is another insurrection if we win. More concerned about election stealing attempts.
MattF
I think part of the problem in polling is that ‘undecided’ means distinctly different things to Rs and Ds. For Rs it can mean, quite specifically, ‘I’m not voting for Trump’— which is different from a Dem thinking ‘I wish Joe was 25 years younger’.
trnc
@Baud:
No offense, but that’s kind of self-refuting, isn’t it? If he wins, it means Roe v Wade didn’t resonate enough to prevent him from winning.
Starfish
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s fine if you want to use the primary to remove the worst possible candidates.
Independents in my state get both primary ballots and can vote in either. More power to them. The Republicans complain about it and want to close their primary so only REAL Republicans can vote in it.
Kosh III
Sunday we were returning from NOLA and stopped for lunch at a Chinese buffet in Meridian MS.
At the table behind us were 4 people. They prayed over their food for several minutes before spewing the most ridiculous things.
Biden is giving every illegal alien a free motel room worth $53 per day for as long as needed.
Biden is giving them a credit card worth $10,000.
The statement that most sums up their complaints: he is doing that for illegals but doing NOTHING for decent white folks.
We just listened and shook our heads in dismay. I’d say it was a surprise to hear those statements but we live in a super-red rural county in TN.
Eyeroller
@zhena gogolia: That sounds like the “Kamala is a cop” BS that was circulating during the 2020 primaries. What other “baggage” would she have? Other than being female and mixed-race. Aargh.
As to the quantum cat’s remarks about white people, I don’t think there’s peer pressure to diss Ds even among D voters. I think it’s just arrogance and the comfort of not having much to worry about no matter what.
Baud
@Kosh III:
Standard stuff. Hating Dems over grievances has been ingrained into their culture.
Matt McIrvin
@Kosh III: Part of the reason William Jennings Bryan was such a committed creationist was that he despised the “Social Darwinism” of the money conservatives of his day, an equally stupid version of which still exists among libertarian and techbro types. Of course it bears no resemblance to actual evolutionary science but it was a popular misuse of it from the beginning.
lowtechcyclist
@Kosh III:
LCMS is Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and they’re much more conservative than mainstream (ELCA) Lutherans. I don’t know all the ins and outs of what the LCMS Lutherans believe, but it wouldn’t surprise me if YEC is popular amongst them.
trnc
@Kay: Agreed. This was kinda weird:
Hmmm, tell me more.
WTF?!? “Not the best record” doing a lot of work here.
Starfish
@Kosh III: Oh someone from Mississippi was doing that to me the other day. He was like drugs are expensive and made in China. Maybe the grain of truth is based in this?
Baud
@Starfish:
A lot of BS is based on a grain of truth. For instance, it wouldn’t surprise me if some undocumented were put up in hotels because they have to go somewhere.
trnc
@JWR:
I highlighted the most important part for context.
Melancholy Jaques
@Matt McIrvin:
I remember those discussions, but I don’t recall anyone providing a good reason to pump up the Nader vote.
TBone
We’re gonna absolutely TROUNCE them in November but it’ll be a long wait till then. Memories are resurfacing:
https://twitter.com/EllenKurz/status/1525312453856350208
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/03/watch-what-happens-when-marge-asked-about
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Trading votes didn’t work in 2016 either.
UncleEbeneezer
Absolutely. There is pressure in Whiteness to be Conservative/Libertarian first and foremost, and if you are not then to be an Independent who doesn’t really care. If not those, then it is acceptable to be a passionate Progressive. The worst thing you can be is a plain-old, Liberal Dem. Then you’re being a race-traitor and not even being a cool-kid Progressive while doing so. See: the contempt for Wine Moms.
I see White People in my life, who are quite liberal, bend over backwards to find excuses to criticize Dems, all the time in order to make their Conservative friends feel respected. Especially when I visit CO, TX etc. And while the Media is one of the worst offenders, I don’t think they cause this, I think they reflect it. Because it’s very widespread. Obviously Latinx, Asian-American and other non-White people pull this bullshit all the time too, but I believe it is a dynamic/phenomenon that is a direct result of White Supremacy (at least here in the US). The Dem Party is rightfully looked at as the party of Black People. And in a White Supremacist society, there is always a pressure on us not to get too familiar/down with anything associated with Black People. The rules of Whiteness are that we are supposed to be onboard with White Supremacy (and Patriarchy). And as much as Progressives see themselves as the other end of the spectrum from MAGA, in my experience MAGA people like them more than milquetoast Liberal Dems, because at least Progressives will bash Hillary, Obama, Biden and the Dem Party.
Jackie
@rikyrah:
I saw it on TV 😉
But, I realize what you mean 😁
Buy ad spots on RWNJ networks for clips such as that.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Vote for who you want to win. These tactics don’t achieve much really.
trnc
@catclub:
It’s a fair question, but squinting really hard, I can kinda sorta understand how career republicans might have thought they would be able to steer DT. Also, the people most likely to listen to Mattis and Bolton now would be republicans who voted for him the first time, so they’re all in the same club of dupes.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Some friends in Virginia voted for Haley but overall, crossover voters did not seem to move the needle much. I thought they might have more of an impact because Virginia does not register by party, so crossover voting is friction free.
I thought that Independents might also make this a good Haley state (a little over 30%* of Virginia registered voters self-describe as Indies). No big surge there either. Maybe they didn’t come out because they think the nomination race is settled.
But Haley was not that strong a candidate, I thought. Some voters really liked Haley, but I think a lot more voted for her because she’s not Trump. This is one reason I discount Haley’s prospects for 2028.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
👍
Another Scott
Yay! It’s nearly over!1
:-/
Meanwhile, ICYMI, InsideHigherEd.com:
Gee, such a school covering up such stuff is so shocking, shocking. :-/
Good for the DoEd. More, please.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Starfish:
Michigan and Minnesota are huge D success stories – both states have passed tons of liberal legislation with D governance even with substantial groups of R voters in rural areas. It doesn’t surprise me at all that liberals would be organized there.
Nettoyeur
@OzarkHillbilly: Hard to imagine for a party whose diehards want to deport 30M immigrants at gunpoint, enslave women, lynch LGBTQ and Democrats, and support Putin’s Ukrainian genocide.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Yeah, it seems like the split among white liberals is just why you hate Democratic politicians: because they’re too extreme or because they’re not extreme enough. You could only be all-in if they were exactly just right which is an infinitesimal target.
Because smart people aren’t cheerleaders for a team–that’s for dum-dums.
Republicans don’t have this inhibition.
Starfish
@Baud: We have an influx of people from Venezuela who do not have proper clothes for Colorado winters, and it was sad when Denver was out of money to put them in hotels.
I guess asylees are not undocumented, but they have to wait until they can get papers to work.
Kay
@Starfish:
So, if Michigan and Minnesota have substantial groups of activist Arab American voters who are anguished over what they see in Gaza and the US response, then we should take that seriously, given that those states have become liberal Midwest powerhouses.
Arab American helped get us there.
satby
@Baud: he’ll dump them in Guantanamo.
BlueGuitarist
@Brachiator:
Only about 46% of New Hampshire Republican primary voters acknowledged Biden’s 2020 election win, and the numbers get smaller from there
Would be better if CNN would ask these people not simply whether they think Biden won legitimately but ask if they are aware of
a. the 60 court cases, many with Republican appointed judges, that rejected claims of fraud in the 2020 election
b. Fox News having to pay $787 Million for false claims of election fraud, and that discovery for the lawsuit revealed that Fox hosts and executives knew that they were lying in claiming election fraud
Instead, they just keep echoing the lie
Matt McIrvin
@Eyeroller: There was the whole “ADOS” thing which seemed to be a Russian-troll-sponsored attempt to condemn her as Not Black Enough.
Mousebumples
Happy Wednesday! I’m still celebrating Sinema not running for reelection. And waiting for my state’s April primary.
Also, I read last night that Biden/Harris are opening over a dozen campaign offices across Wisconsin. 🤩
Geminid
@JWR: Voters in Schiff’s district have probably come a long way also since he was first elected and joined the Blue Dog Caucus.
Jackie
@Matt McIrvin:
TIFG promised to pardon the insurrectionists so they would be available to riot again; that can’t happen if he’s not re-elected, so what idiots are going to do a repeat – especially as their ringleaders are currently behind bars?
moonbat
How soon they forget the children in cages. Of course he’ll do mass deportation or try to. Then in usual Trump fashion there will be a push back from REALITY and they’ll fallback to some equally inhumane alternative like, I don’t know, prison camps.
It wouldn’t be Trump (or Miller!) if they didn’t try to see some of their Nazi fantasies come true.
catclub
They might be deported, and be replaced. But More importantly, the people who pay the people who cut Trump’s lawn will never be arrested.
Almost Retired
@Geminid: I’m also optimistic about retaining Porters seat for the reasons you referenced. In addition, the Republican candidate, Scott Baugh, is a tiresome retread and Liberty University graduate who has lost both his attempts at getting a Congressional seat. He lives -of course – in Huntington Beach, California’s Trumpiest beach town.
Matt McIrvin
@trnc: In 2016, there was this clever-clever idea in the political press that Trump was going to be a figurehead President doing the rabble-rousing public appearances for show while some eminence grise ran things behind the scenes and made sure everything stayed on an even keel. They didn’t count on Trump actually being too much of a narcissist to stand for that, or on him hiring a bunch of cranks and Russian influence agents.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Modi bhakts hate her as do the Indian tankies so there will be vile rhetoric against her from those quarters too.
Geminid
@Mousebumples: An article from Politico: “Senate Majority PAC drops $2 million ad hitting Republican Jim Hovde”:
Senator Tammy Baldwin, on the other hand, is on Wisconsin’s side!
Matt McIrvin
@Jackie: On the other hand, these are very not smart people. There will probably still be some to think that if they riot hard enough, Trump will ride on on a white horse and make everything right.
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: If you are a mainstream Dem you must be a square or one of those Sheeple!!1!, or just stuck on the “Dem Plantation” (a phrase that I think speaks volumes…). There’s also the belief that Libertarianism (which of course includes letting the “market” decide things like Civil Rights protections) makes you a Free-Thinker. This was the big thing in my family. Except for my Sister and I, everyone is proudly from the strain of “Don’t vote, it only encourages them” and then quietly voting for Trump, Gary Johnson or not voting at all.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@rikyrah: A have a friend in the Pacific NW who is all about ‘uncommitted’ protest vote. She’s whined incessently about how Biden didn’t forgive her massive loans for degrees she never completed. Her husband did get his loans forgiven as he qualified under one of the public service plans. But because HER loans weren’t forgiven, Biden has done ‘nothing’ for her. I’ll add this was someone who was meeping in 2016 about how she shouldn’t have to vote for the lesser of two evils (aka Clinton).
Starfish
@Kay: Exactly. I was unimpressed with the way this was all dismissed as just Red Rose leftists.
One of my (white bro) American friends who moved to Indonesia for his significant other sent me something absolutely unhinged and opposed to Joe Biden. He was always a normalish Democrat when I knew him a little over 10 years ago. I wrote him back and said that what he wrote was unkind and unlike him. But there are probably people like that who are voting in US elections.
I think living in a Muslim majority country is influencing his thinking on this, and I am just not seeing much US news coverage that is sympathetic to people living in Gaza.
What I am seeing from the Red Rose types is a lot of discussion of the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell. I am also seeing some discussion of the joint food drops that the US and Jordan are doing and how those food drops provide a meal for a small fraction of a population that is being starved.
Harris has been discussing a temporary six-week ceasefire.
It is not clear to me if Israel is going to get more or less aggressive as we get into Ramadan later this month.
trnc
@Baud: Fair point!
Josie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for this. What a good answer to anyone who says that he won’t actually do what he says he will.
catclub
@trnc:
 
Turn up your irony detector.
Ken
Speaking as a veteran of the talk.origins wars: In the late ’70s the fundamentalists, having been thoroughly slapped down by the courts on sticking the Bible into school science classes, came up with the idea of “Scientific Creationism”. See, it’s science. And if it happens to match Genesis 1-10 closely, well, that’s just where the science leads.
Though this led to some truly monumental
laughsscientific discoveries*, it didn’t achieve the goal of an end-run around the courts and school boards. Nowadays of course they’ve given up the pretense of calling it science, and just have the state legislature accredit their Bible schools and give them money.* For example, a “scientific” model of the atmosphere with math and everything, showing that a miles-thick layer of water could be balanced above the air. It scientifically shows why people had much longer lifespans, since the Sun’s harmful rays were blocked; and also why there was a sudden flood that covered the whole world when the layer destabilized.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: By the time I’m talking about (2017) he seemed pretty damn Progressive to me. He was openly calling out Trump’s connections to Russia and I even saw him give a great speech about the threat of White Supremacy to America, emphasizing the importance of protecting Voting Rights and Abortion etc. I was genuinely shocked that these Progressives I knew hated him. It always felt like there was more than just a bit of Anti-Semitism in the mix too.
Spanky
@Kay: I’d welcome any suggestion that doesn’t involve Biden’s magic wand. The msm is uninterested in reporting what might be happening behind the scenes, nor is it interested in reporting Bibi’s interest in lowering Biden’s support at home.
rikyrah
@Brachiator:
That is who they are. It’s never about policy. It’s about him hating who they hate.
NEVER ever forget that story about the Dolt45 voter down in Louisiana or Mississippi who literally said.. after the story explained that her SO was getting hurt by Dolt45 policies..
” he’s not hurting the right people.”
jonas
It does bear repeating that all (iirc) the polls showing Clinton ahead by a nose in 2016 were taken before our good and extremely independent and non-partisan friend James Comey decided to sink her with his emails letter (while conveniently omitting that Trump was also under investigation). Clinton had it in the bag. I think it’s fairly incontrovertible now that Comey’s letter effectively handed the election to Trump in the last week of the campaign.
Jackie
@Eyeroller:
Don’t forget she slept her way to the top! 🙄
Kay
@Starfish:
I’m impressed with Harris on it. She’s been a leader – there have been reports for months that she was expressing concern based on what she was seeing out campaigning.
I think the Biden team (now) know it’s a real problem and has to be addressed.
Michigan and Minnesota are huge successes in the liberal national project. Both states have passed women’s rights, gay rights and voting rights laws state level. Let’s not blow it by insisting every dissenter to Biden’s Gaza policy is some kind of 5th columnist who must be culled from the Democratic Party. Gaza is, objectively, a fucking human rights catastrophe. Ignoring that isn’t going to work.
Soprano2
@Kay: I agree that we should take their concerns seriously. The ones I have a problem with are those like Medhi Hassan, who seems to believe that Biden can make a phone call to Bibi and get Israel to quit attacking Gaza, period. (Does he think Biden hasn’t already tried that?) He says he hears this from Israeli generals, which might well be true, but doesn’t take account of the political blowback Biden would get if he announced that we were going to quit supporting Israel in order to get them to stop bombing Gaza. You’ve already got pundits calling everyone who’s upset about what’s happening in Gaza “pro-Hamas”, and unfortunately many people unthinkingly parrot that. What will happen when they start calling Biden “pro-Hamas”? These decisions have political risks no matter which way he goes.
TBone
Yesterday’s open thread by Anne Laurie is featured in today’s ‘Mike’s Blog Roundup’ at C&L. For anyone who didn’t know (like me)!
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/03/mike-s-blog-round-3
Betty
@Princess: I think she feels confident that young women know who represents their interests without naming names. Republicans have kindly made that clear.
Kay
@Spanky:
One of the things they want the US to do is to bar donations from US supporters to violent settler groups, like the US cracked down on Irish Americans who were financially supporting the IRA.
Biden can do this without Congress.
Soprano2
@Jackie: Which is super dumb, since Biden will still be president when they certify the election regardless of which way the vote goes in November.
matt
I see Dean Phillips is down 1,497-0 in delegates. Scene from the Phillips campaign:
PHILLIPS: So that means I can still win, right?
Spanky
@TBone: Great! Now we’ll be an almost Top 9000 blog.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Biden is not ignoring Gaza. Just repeating this over and over gain on Balloon Juice doesn’t make it so.
UncleEbeneezer
They are people who are forever in search of a reason to ditch the Dem Coalition. If it’s not Dronez it’s GoldmanSachs. If it’s not GoldmanSachs it’s Medicare4All, GreenNewDeal, Nancy’s Ice Cream, Student Loans, Train Derailments, Afghanistan, and now Gaza. It never stops and never will. It’s what they do. Being most eager to ditch our Coalition is considered a virtue in their eyes and a willingness to do so (at the worst possible times) is a huge part of their political identity. To some extent, it’s the only thing that matters to them.
TBone
@Spanky: 😊
Omnes Omnibus
Oh, that could never happen.
Seriously though, as a WASPy guy, I have been shocked at how quickly Anti-Semitism popped up in the Gaza protests. My Jewish friends have been less so. It really does lurk just below the surface for a disturbingly large number of people.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Another thing they want the US to do is to authorize the UN group in Gaza to provide aid. The Biden Administration cut them off based on bare assertions by the Israeli government that they were affiliated with Hamas. They think the US should demand proof rather than accepting everything Israel asserts. That seems reasonable to me.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
Am I the only one who remembers that the Border Partrol have been given the 100 miles from the border leeway. Why do you all think he won’t be rounding up people? Take the muthaphucka at his word.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: I’m curious as to what you think of Rep. Lou Correa. I think he’s the last Blue Dog standing in Southern California, maybe the whole state.
And what do you think of the Democrat who will Rep. face Mike Garcia this November? I see he’s a former NASA administrator; does he have the Right Stuff?
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Russia knows how to press those anti-Semitic buttons very well. They have been at it for centuries if not millenia.
JWR
Good Gawd! Just listened to Haley’s suspension speech, and her bucket list of everything wrong with America and how to fix it sounds very Trumpy. She’s a damn krazy lady!
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, the Biden Administration apologized for their own careless and thoughtless rhetoric where 25k civilian casualties were ignored, so I think that’s more reliable than Twitter activists.
Harris was ahead of them, probably because she campaigns on college campuses.
They should make her the lead on it. I don’t think they trust Biden anymore. Just give it to her.
Mousebumples
@Geminid: yup. I think they’re running a similar campaign to what Fetterman ran vs Oz in 2022. Though Baldwin in the incumbent. Hovde ran for Senate previously, I think, but I forget when/against whom.
schrodingers_cat
@JWR: Did she endorse Trump?
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
BJ is ignoring Gaza. It really isn’t petulant Lefties bitching about the public option. It’s a humanitarian disaster, and it gets worse every day.
They’re correct to be anguished and they aren’t going to be easily dismissed.
Jeffro
I see I am late to the party this morning… 😁
I am very encouraged for November. Regardless, I plan on doing everything I can for the next eight months to make sure that my kids…and their kids…don’t grow up in a Christian nationalist trump family kleptocracy.
Now then…off to the slopes! ⛷️
Ohio Mom
@Baud: Which of course is good money for the (presumably) American owners of the hotels. Very similar to supplying arms to Ukraine, it’s a shot to our economy.
Geminid
@Mousebumples: So is Hovde really a carpetbagger, or can he be credibly tagged as one? Maybe someone can show up at Hovde rallies with a boombox playing “California Dreaming.”
Jackie
@schrodingers_cat: Nope. She specifically said she wouldn’t endorse him – “unless he reached out and welcomed ALL GQP into the fold.”
So an open ended no endorsement.
Leto
WaPo: Federal judge orders minority business agency opened to all races
And we have more of this, for decades, to come. Thanks, Mitch.
schrodingers_cat
@Jackie: Good! I love the smell of R dissarray in the morning!
TBone
Gettin’ this party started with some crossover today 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEQydmaPjF0
jonas
It’s arguable that Hitler’s obsession with exterminating the Jews effectively cost him the war, not only in terms of the resources and manpower invested in the machinery of genocide but in simultaneously expelling or killing some of the greatest scientific minds of their generation.
Fascists always lose wars because their all-consuming commitment to ideology (in particular the infallibility of “The Leader”) will always lead them to make fatal tactical and strategic blunders. It will happen to Putin eventually, too.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: You said Biden was ignoring Gaza now you are saying its BJ.
BJ ignores a lot of topics that are near and dear to me and unlike you I never had an opportunity to be a frontpager. Ask JGC to reinstate you and then discuss it from the FP.
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid:
There are ads featuring his big ass house with its views of the Pacific. They have gotten Real Housewives of Orange County to talk about what a good neighbor Hovde is. Wikler and his team are good.
jonas
@Jackie: She actually said “GQP”?
Big Fly
@mrmoshpotato:
Each other.
evodevo
@Matt McIrvin:
Yep…and even then most of the J6ers didn’t begin to be arrested for months/years, so they all thought they got away with it anyway because they weren’t rounded up right on the Capitol grounds. Enough of them have been sentenced and imprisoned nowadays, however, that suddenly those “brave” militia-cosplaying guys have been avoiding any Trumpy support demonstrations like the plague LOL – I doubt very many would show up to a Jan6 replay when Biden wins this time…
Omnes Omnibus
@Big Fly: ::shutters::
JWR
@schrodingers_cat:
Not yet. By which I mean not today
ETA or what @Jackie said up at #197. But I bet she eventually eases towards openly kissing the ring. /Fixed for clarity.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I just tire of the constant punching Left.
I’m not thrilled that centrists block or ruin every Democratic initiative but I don’t run around calling them traitors or whatever.
It’s a coalition. Whether BJ denizens like it or not they have to accept dissenters. I also think dismissing 30k dead civilians out of a population of 2 million as “cosplay” sounds monstrous. You really can’t put this in the same basket as all the other objections with “the Left”
Theyre right. It’s a disaster.
RaflW
@Baud: And the mass-deportation rhetoric, if Dotard is Preznit, will embolden 1) razor-wire-deaths enthusiast Greg Abbott & similar red-state horrors and 2) gun toting vigilantism by MAGA morons.
It will be bad.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@OzarkHillbilly:
I was thinking putting her onboard a rocket and firing it into the Sun but your way is cheaper and much more cost effective.
SiubhanDuinne
Mitch McConnell just endorsed TIFG. Not at all surprising (EDIT: and his endorsement won’t make a particle of difference, won’t sway a single undecided, won’t convince any voter to do anything they weren’t already going to do). He’s a fucking tool, the Turtle.
jonas
I’ve come across similar thinking as this, both on the right and the left. Conservatives are convinced Biden is just randomly forgiving loans for shiftless dropouts who took on debt and then want to shirk it, while a lot of progressive types are outraged that their private loans (and in some cases, credit card debt they racked up while in school), which have no government backing or anything, weren’t forgiven. In reality, the loans Biden is forgiving are ones that *should* have been forgiven, in many cases long ago, but weren’t because the programs weren’t implemented correctly or got gummed up in red tape.
WaterGirl
@Baud:
No matter the outcome in December, Dems will still be in charge until noon on Jan
6Jan 20, 2025. That will help with insurrection issues.edited: I meant Jan 20 but was thinking about the insurrection on Jan 6 and my fingers betrayed me as I typed.
Another Scott
@Starfish: My J is a big Bernie stan and reads a lot of red rose stuff. She told me last night that she’s scared to death that Scholz is going to start a nuclear war by giving Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
It took me a while to talk her down…
:-(
She always votes the right way in the end, but she has a torturous path to get there sometimes!
It’s really, really easy for people to be in a news and opinion bubble, and hard to drag them out sometimes.
Hang in there, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: I don’t know anything about either. I’ve been taking a break from getting too into the weeds on local/state stuff. But Garcia is awful, so I support his Dem opponent and I really want us to get that district back. Our local SwingLeft will be doing canvassing up there on weekends but I probably won’t be able to participate because of work conflicts and a jazz jam that I really need for my own happiness.
cmorenc
@Baud: re: Trump’s pledge for mass deportations – true, Trump won’t actually need or be able to deport more than a fraction of them – what he will do is put on a huge, cruel, degrading show of deporting the appearance of massive numbers of them. Like during his administration 2017-21, but more bigly and demonstratively showier, with more publicly degrading touches.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Of course he did. I expect Haley to fall in line too. That’s what Rs do.
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl:
Don’t you mean in charge until noon on Jan 20, 2025?
Jackie
@jonas: MY editing 😂 My auto correct always changes gop to GQP.
Miss Bianca
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: And you’re still friends with this person?
Doesn’t sound like it’s worth the effort to me, but then, I’m an asshole.
getonthebus
@Kay: I think a lot of people are missing how radicalizing Gaza is for Gen Z. Similar to, but feels much more intense than the Iraq War was for Millennials.
It’s a huge issue for them, and it feels like a generational moment where a long-standing, long-accepted ‘fact’ of the international order is finally at a tipping point.
Mousebumples
@Geminid: https://www.californiahovde.com/
From WisDems.
@Omnes Omnibus: yes, Wikler for the win.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Now that effort I can get behind. It’s aways chapped my ass that so many of these “settlers” seem to be Americans.
Omnes Omnibus
Perfect.
mrmoshpotato
@JWR:
Ring kissing. Ha! More like Haley openly sucking Dump’s orange ass like McTurtle apparently just did.
Mel
@Kosh III: Loud, performative praying in neutral public places is almost always a sign that far worse things are about to be said.
SiubhanDuinne
@schrodingers_cat:
Yup. The only remotely suspenseful element is when.
mrmoshpotato
@matt:
Awwww sad face! ☹️
Brachiator
@Baud:
RE: If somehow, Trump wins, he is never going to do mass deportations
No. It’s like Trump promising to repeal Obamacare and giving the country something better.
Matt McIrvin
@getonthebus:
Except that they’re going to express it by electing Trump, who will double down and massacre their protesters.
So I guess it’s really more like Vietnam.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl:
The new administration comes in on January 20, but the new Congress comes in on January 3. They’re the ones who count the votes on the 6th. So it’s complicated.
Bupalos
@trnc: Of course they can’t even try the same thing. That isn’t really even possible. But an attempt to undermine democracy with the election as a central theme and rallying point is extremely likely.
It’s never too early to be thinking about what that attempt may look like, and how we can better prepare to address it.
Manyakitty
@Miss Bianca: we spread our right wing nutjobs far and wide. One of my cousins is amongst the horrendous illegal settlers. We don’t speak. She and her ilk are definitely a serious problem, and if there’s a way for Biden to control that, bring it on. (The rest of this comment is not aimed at you, Miss Bianca)
As one of those troublesome Jewish people who is sensitive to the easy antisemitism that accompanies a lot of this discussion, I appreciate the attempts at a measured approach to discussing the challenges around Hamas and Gaza. (Hi Geminid)
The shrieking about how Gaza can and should sink Biden, that Palestinians are the only ones who matter, and the associated negations of Jewish people in general, is less awesome. I feel that HERE, amongst the allegedly enlightened, more than I ever expected, and it’s a gut punch every time.
By the way, does anyone care about the hostages any more?
Reminder that Jewish people comprise 0.2% (that’s two tenths of a percent) of the world population.
Bring on the tar and feathers.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin:
NASA hired Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing, but being the perfectionist he was, he insisted on filming it on location.
Leto
@Matt McIrvin: I’m just going to point out that there’s literally no way to lodge a complaint against Biden, or his policies, that’s acceptable to BJ. Any type of pushback/criticism, even outside of election season, is just consistently met with, “WELL TRUMPOV IS WORSE! DO YOU WANT TRUMPOV?!?!” Which is disingenuous as fuck. It also doesn’t mean that they’re not going to vote for Biden. Also if you want the Vietnam comparison, Israel is engaging in LOAC violations the same way that the US did in Vietnam. And in Afghanistan. And in Iraq.
Geminid
@Mousebumples: Now I’m thinking Wiisconsin Dems should get a “Mamas and the Papas” cover group to shadow Hovde. The can entertain people with the other hits and save “California Dreaming” for Hovde’s walk-on song. They’ll get plenty of attention even if they have to sing outside the venues.
Kay
@getonthebus:
I want to try to explain sort of “my theory” of political coalition, because I have come to think it’s a little different than that usually expressed here.
I think The Left are part of our coalition (although they’re not Democrats) in the same way I think the 45% of white women who vote for us are part f our coalition, and the 55% of working class men who are in labor unions are part of our coalition. I COULD think “well, 25% of the Left don’t vote for us so they’re splitters and should be shunned) or “55% of white women don’t vote for us so they’re the problem” or “45% of labor union members don’t vote for us so they’re the problem” because I’m not in coalition with them – I’m with the 75% ( or 45, or 55) who do vote for us.
To me the coalition is with other liberals and Democrats. It isn’t a coalition of me and Joe Biden. So when other liberals or Democrats are bashed, I defend, because they’re in my coalition. I’m loyal to them, not the pol at the top of the ticket.
Bupalos
@Leto: So what you’re saying is that any kind of pushback is met with…some pushback… from some people?
MisterForkbeard
@jonas: This is a dead thread, but Trumps own in house polling and analysis guy said as much AT THE TIME, and again a few weeks after the election.
He believed they were losing until Comey intervened and he saw the evidence in their polling of Hillary support
Bupalos
@Kay: To me this is an excellent description of the virtue of political solidarity.
geg6
@schrodingers_cat:
Have to agree with you on this. I’m sick and tired of hearing about how Biden doesn’t seem to care about what’s happening in Gaza. Unless you work for the White House or State Department, you have no idea whatsoever what the President is doing because he doesn’t blast delicate negotiations in public.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: You never vent about annoying friends and family?
Kay
@getonthebus:
So if you tell me 20% of college students who usually back us at 80% are very upset about an issue I think “they’re in our coalition” and I want it addressed. The connection isn’t between us and Joe Biden. The connection is between us and other liberals or Democrats (or even, this cycle, anti -Trumpers – they’re in our coalition too and happy to have them, although short term).
schrodingers_cat
@Manyakitty: Not Jewish but agree completely with what you have written from the second paragraph on.
Hamas and their mass rape hasn’t got a line of acknowledgement from many self described feminists. The unspoken assumption is that Hamas has no agency here.
Kay
@getonthebus:
And, actually, in Michigan and Minnesota Arab Americans vote 70% D. They’re absolutely in the tent and just leveraging that clout like every single other Democratic group does. But like I said it doesn’t need to be 100% of any group – shit, I’ll take 10%. This is a game of addition. I get 75% of Leftists and I’m happy.
College students have the same kind of leverage – in Michigan they do. They’re probably at least 100k votes. Geography matters. You can ignore this in Brooklyn or Boston. You can’t ignore it in Dearborn or Lansing.
Brachiator
@Leto:
Do you really believe this? Trump is not remotely qualified to be president and we have already seen him use the office as though it was a personal plaything. He is not only a resentful man-child, his anger and sense of resentment always leads him to reach further in toppling norms and reasonable practice.
He has packed the Supreme Court with justices who have stripped women of their reproductive rights. He did nothing to slow states from erasing transgender persons.
His stupidity during the Covid pandemic resulted in people dying who did not need to die.
Pushback against Biden all you like. But if you don’t understand why Trump is unacceptable, put on your MAGA hat and move on.
Geminid
@Manyakitty: The sanctions the US announced last month may have an effect on West Bank lawlessness. Initially, only 4 settlers were hit but reporters noted that tgey could have a wide reach including to banking and morgtage institutions. Finance Minister Smotrich urged Israeli banks not to comply, but so far they show no signs of resistance.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent PM Netanyahu a letter a few days ago.. She commended him on the agreement by Israel to forward taxes to the Palestinian Authority (through Norway) but told him that Israel risked an economic collapse in the West Bank unless it reissued work permits to the ~150,000 residents West Bank residents who worked in Israel up until October 7. She also pointed out that this has hurt Israel economically; between the Israeli Reservists who’ve been mobilized and Palestinian workers barred from Israel, the building industry is grinding to a halt.
Normally, Yellen would have sent the letter to her counterpart, but U.S. policy has been to boycott Smotrich and his ally Ben-Gvir.
Manyakitty
@schrodingers_cat: thank you.
Also, FWIW, I work for a company that was founded by an immigrant Indian woman. The vast majority of my immediate colleagues live in India (mostly Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai). Your discussions about the social and political turmoil there help me understand some of what they are dealing with. I would never learn about it otherwise, and I truly appreciate it.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Okay, but some of this seems to be Democrats uncomfortable with anyone reminding them this human rights catastrophe is ongoing. “They’re interrupting our Schiff victory party!”
Social media is even worse “oh, are your little fees fees hurt because of the …tens of thousands of civilian dead?” What?
They should be uncomfortable with it. It’s horrendous.
Leto
@Brachiator: perfect example. “I have a disagreement with Biden on this issue.” “Put on your MAGA hat and move on.” /end scene
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: They can dish it out but can’t take any disagreement.
Jackie
TIFG uses vinegar to entice “banned” Nikki supporters to donate and vote for him:
Manyakitty
@Geminid: that’s a glimmer of hope. May it become a cascade.
tam1MI
Like how the Vietnam protesters were so pissed at Johnson (and by extension, Humphrey), they threw the election to Richard Nixon. Our country has paid a heavy price for that one, and still continues to pay it.
cain
@schrodingers_cat: AIPAC working hard to kill it. They got several million in attack ads against Dave.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Continue the identification and culling of disloyal Democrats! That’s a great election strategy.
Bupalos
Can’t disagree harder, and what scares me most is the vast majority of this country watching Trump lo these many years now and not seeming to understand that by far the worst thing about him is not any particular policy or political alignment that he wanders in or out of, it’s that he’s a different kind of politician. One that doesn’t just lie constantly, but lies in a fundamentally different way, a way that simply mocks the idea of the truth and law and democratic governance. And that this is where the danger comes from. Haley is not on the same planet as Trump, and I cringe every time I hear around here how she’s “just the same” or “she has the same policies” or “hates the same people.”
EarthWindFire
@zhena gogolia: That’s better than the “She just bugs me” and “she laughs inappropriately” that I got. Both from Dem women of a certain age…grrrr.
Kay
@tam1MI:
The Vietnam protestors now. Jesus. We’re now punching Left into the past. Who’s responsible for Reagan? Have we identified which group on the Left caused that?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Disagreement is fine and principled when you do it, but no one can disagree with you because shut up that’s why. Got it.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: YES! I was trying to type Jan 20 but thinking about whether they would try another Jan 6 insurrection!
WaterGirl
@Matt McIrvin: I was thinking in terms of who controls the military, the national guard, etc.
I am pretty confident that on Jan 3 we will have the House with a strong majority.
But point taken.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
They’re not Democrats. They don’t owe you a vote. They’re Leftists or liberals who to a greater or lesser extent are in Left of center coalition.
You all welcome Never Trumpers. Think of the Left side of the Democratic Party as Never Trumpers. You’ll get 75% of them.
Bupalos
@JWR: She literally led off with “I wish Trump well, I wish anyone who becomes the American president well, because our country is too precious to let out differences divide us”
If you think that is a statement that could ever flow from Trump’s mouth, I don’t know what to tell you. She’s a politician of the opposition party and that implies and demands political statements and postures you or I are going to disagree with and find totally unreflective of our reality or wishes.
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Katie Porter’s senatorial ambitions put that seat in play.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
We won’t get 100% or them or whatever the “loyalty percentage” is, but we do need their 70-75% in Michigan and it can’t be 50%. They know this. Hence using their leverage.
Jackie
As soon as Nikki quit, McTurtle endorsed TIFG.
YAAAWN
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I am a liberal and I lean left on many issues. But I have no time for performance artists who run on D tickets but undercut other elected Ds all the fucking time. Also people who are always threatening not to vote D and keep searching for a pretext to do so. YMMV.
Also going back to my policy of not engaging with you because you don’t engage in good faith and resort to strawman arguments.
ETA: I am not talking of the actual Palestian Americans who are directly affected but performative leftists who flit from issue to issue threatening not to vote D.
geg6
@Kay: It is horrendous. But I don’t understand what they expect Biden to do about it. He has no control over a non-governmental terrorist organization and he has no control over Bibi and his minions in the Israeli government. He can only try to help as best he can, trying to balance the interests of the Palestinian and Israeli partisans there and here in the US. It’s a no win situation and all the kvetching about it on a top 10k blog also does nothing other than irritate and piss off your “coalition” here. If I would ever run across one of these young people who are so fired up about Gaza (which I have not, despite working on a college campus that houses students from 28 states), I’d ask them exactly what they expect him to do and what would the consequences of that be. I’m 65 years old and have followed the conflicts in the Middle East since I was a child and I don’t see a good guy among any of the countries/organizations in question. The PA sucks, Israel sucks and Hamas sucks. So what to do in that situation? If all they have is criticism of what IS being done, then they need to support the one person who seems to want to do something to help both Israelis and Palestinians and who they could plausibly influence. Otherwise, I really don’t care about their snit fits over Biden.
Brachiator
@Manyakitty:
Sometimes I wonder whether Netanyahu cares about the hostages.
I would like to see all the hostages returned safely. I would like to see peace and stability in the region.
tam1MI
Almost as terrific as throwing an election to Donald Trump to Teach The ShitLibs A Lesson.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@lowtechcyclist:
I just want the indisputably good people to get raptured… the mother Theresa’s of this world. The people who believe in the rapture, but think the criteria is what you believe, instead of how you behave, I want them to discover they’ve been left behind. I want the rejection and disillusionment to be maximally painful.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator:
I don’t wonder about that at all.
Bibi cares about himself and his power. To him, his own people as hostages are just a tool to be used when it’s convenient for him.
Manyakitty
@Brachiator: amen. Couldn’t say it any better than that.
For the record, I think Bibi forgot about them almost immediately and that Biden remembers them in his prayers every night.
Soprano2
@Kay: Josh Marshall wrote an interesting piece about this that I’m going to reproduce in full because it was a subscriber-only article, and members are allowed to share the articles in full. The short story is that it’s more complicated than the activists say it is. Not saying what they want is unreasonable, just that it would be unusual if there weren’t any Hamas in UNRWA.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: I think he’d try, but the money that would be required to do this at the level they are saying they want to do it makes it impossible.
Brachiator
@Leto:
I specifically noted that pushback is acceptable, even necessary.
You are looking for dissatisfaction. I can’t help you.
rikyrah
@cmorenc:
So, this entire thing of ‘ oh, he’s not REALLY going to deport these people’.
Where is that coming from?
He means that. And, the muthaphuckas under him mean it.
WHO the phuck is going to stop him from doing so?
I wanna know,.
wjca
Somehow, I first read that as “everyone who says they believe in the Rapture would get Ruptured.” Works that way, too.
Manyakitty
@rikyrah: nobody. He broke most of the guardrails and will disregard the rest.
rikyrah
@getonthebus:
It’s radicalizing because of the privilege that they have, coupled with their general ignorance, as well as the desire for simplicity.
What amuses me is the thought that they can pull this bullshyt in 2024, Dolt45 gets in, and their assumption that they’ll be able to vote in 2028. THAT is what amuses me most. and, then, they’ll be the first ones up there whining and looking stupid when they can’t vote, after Gaza is turned into Bibi’s parking lot. When not one Republican has said ANYTHING in defense of Gaza, but, they purse their phucking lips as to how they’re going to ‘ punish’ Biden.
Whatever.
Soprano2
@Manyakitty: I think the problem is that there are so many people on both sides of this issue who believe only those on their side matter. It doesn’t help when people who genuinely care about the civilian deaths in Gaza are called “pro-Hamas” by pundits, or when so much anti-Semitic rhetoric is directed at Jewish people who are truly terrified by what Hamas did on October 7th. Both sides matter, both sides have legitimate concerns that need to be addressed, but it seems to me that as long as the temperature on this issue is close to the temperature of the surface of the Sun it’s going to be extremely hard to actually do anything about it. I heard an interview with an Israeli woman who was asked about the suffering of small children in Gaza, and her reply was something along the lines of “All I see when I see those crying children are future Hamas terrorists who can come here and murder me and my family”. Then you have the Hamas-supporting Palestinians who want to drive all the Jews out of Israel. What are we supposed to do with that? It’s a tough issue.
Soprano2
@Leto: Most of us are terrified of another Trump term, that’s what’s happening with that. Absolutely terrified.
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
And please understand, I am someone who would cut off all funding to Israel. Let them scrounge and find another financial Sugar Daddy. America’s given enough to them.
Geminid
@Manyakitty: I haven’t followed the new sanctions regime very closely as I have little patience when it comes to financial regulations. I just remember pictures of some Israeli trying to withdraw money at an ATM and being denied. Last night though, someone on Israeli Twitter was talking about a Treasury Department action and said, “Uh-oh Treasury’s bringing out the big gun, Section such-and-such.”
Evidently, the State Department laid out a new formal policy regarding the West Bank that underlay the sanctions regime. Analysts said it broke new ground and stated a U.S. national interest in curbing illegal West Bank settlements.
Manyakitty
@Soprano2: it’s terrible and there’s no satisfying answer. All I know is Bibi makes everything worse and I worry that he’s dragging Israel down the drain with him.
Meanwhile, Jews outside of Israel wonder what will happen to us and where we can go if the fascists get back in power. Like, I spend a lot of time worrying about where to go and when to leave before it’s too late. We may not say it out loud very often, but I guarantee it crosses everyone’s mind.
Fools like Stephen Miller think they won’t be lined up and marched into the ovens with the rest of us.
Manyakitty
@Geminid: GOOD. Israel the country still needs support. The Netanyahu regime and its destructive policies are another matter entirely.
cain
@Jackie: Also, why would you demean yourself endorsing someone who called you ‘birdbrain’.
Surprised the Indian conservative sphere didn’t get pissed off calling an Indian woman ‘birdbrain’.
Soprano2
@Manyakitty: I often feel like the two sides are talking past each other, it’s so frustrating. I have sympathy for the people who truly care about the people in Gaza and want Biden to do things he can actually do to help the situation. The ones I can’t stand are those who seem to believe he could control Bibi and the whole Israeli government by making a phone call and then saying we’re going to cut them off completely. What would happen to Biden’s support with American Jews if he did that? Aren’t they an important part of the Democratic coalition too? These performative people don’t seem to think that’s an issue at all. OTOH, I have no patience with the people who care nothing about the suffering of the Palestinian citizens, who characterize all of them as Hamas, and who think what Bibi is doing is OK and justified because of what Hamas did. Neither side has covered themselves in glory in this situation.
Leto
@Soprano2: I am too. But the current office holder is Biden, and I can express a dissatisfaction with this. Or am I not allowed? I agree with his policies, overall, like 99.999% but this one I’m expressing a disagreement and would like him to do better. Or do I need to hop on the Dem equivalent of MAGA where any type of disagreement with Dear Leader is considered rat fucking/disloyalty? Brachiator’s response to me is the perfect example. “Shut the fuck up, or go put on your MAGA hat”. So lemme know how we’re supposed to respond from here on out.
@Brachiator: lol, no you didn’t:
Literally all you said. I’m not looking for dissatisfaction. I’m voicing a critique. Your response was “TRUMPOV IS WORSE”. Make sure to take off your clown makeup before you hit the sack.
geg6
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Just to be clear, Mother Theresa herself was not an indisputably good person. She had good PR people.
Manyakitty
@Soprano2: the vast majority of American Jews support the Palestinian civilians and want to see the region in relative peace. There’s also been consistent anger about Bibi and his policies. We exist in an in-between state of powerlessness. It’s like being told that you’re too argumentative. What do you say? No, and prove them right, or yes, and agree? Either way, your rights and your interests and your views don’t matter.
Complicated.
Paul in KY
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Also just all the infrastructure and logistics being denied to German military.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: I agree. I’m not writing off the NC! Think the crazy Gov guy & TFG will be drags on their ticket.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: I think they throw on the white ones who say what they hope to hear.
Paul in KY
@Ken: This: ‘ For example, a “scientific” model of the atmosphere with math and everything, showing that a miles-thick layer of water could be balanced above the air. It scientifically shows why people had much longer lifespans, since the Sun’s harmful rays were blocked; and also why there was a sudden flood that covered the whole world when the layer destabilized.’
is completely nuts! Also funny too.
wjca
Only look at how well it’s working for the Trumpists.
Kosh III
This was on Huffpost and X.
Sadly this is not a rare opinion. The only thing he left out is that she should be barefooted. sigh…..
““A woman is not going to be a good president. She don’t have no balls to scratch. She’s just gonna scratch her head. All a woman is good for in my book is having babies and taking care of the house. That’s the old thing. You know, I’m old school.”
Also “On X, critics couldn’t believe that such views still existed in 2024” They are alive and well in lots of red areas, especially in the formerly(1861-65) treasonous South.
Brachiator
@Leto:
You really are stuck. I never said that you should shut up.
I will even acknowledge that I might have misunderstood the point you were making.
But I kinda don’t care. If you are voting for Biden, your reservations are whatever they are.
WeimarGerman
Does anyone know if Garvey’s win in the CA Senate partial term election means he goes straight to Senate, or is there a runoff?
For those not fully informed, there were 2 Senate races in CA yesterday. One for the remaining time of Feinstein’s seat and one for the next term. Garvey won the partial term due to Dems splitting their votes among a slew of candidates. It looks like more votes went to Barbara Lee for the partial term than the full term and that may have allowed Garvey the win in the partial term race.
And looks like Katie Porter’s seat will be lost to GOP in the Fall. Dem establishment backed Dave Min despite his DUI at 2x the limit last Fall. That should tank him in a district that Katie barely won.
Paul in KY
@WeimarGerman: He didn’t win any ‘partial term’ race (thank God). Gov. Newsom got to appoint a person to complete Sen. Feinstein’s term.
evodevo
@geg6:
Totally agree there…she was a hypocrite par excellence..her hospices denied pain relief/antibiotics/etc. to the patients there (and her charity had plenty of dough in the bank), but when SHE needed medical care, she was flown out of country to top medical facilities. She would be right at home with most talibangelical fanatics today.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: Thanks for that.
Soundbites are going to be the death of humanity.
“There are tunnels (some are utility tunnels)!!1″
“(Maybe a dozen) of tens of thousands of Gazan’s with a connection to UNRWA (as employees or contractors or…) were involved in the October 7 attack!!11″
We need to be really, really careful about jumping to conclusions about things reported by involved parties in a war. (Not that they’re always lying, but we have to be careful.) I would have thought we would have learned that about the Kuwaiti incubators, but … :-(
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@geg6:
Disagree. The US has a lot of influence in Israel. This is just not a good talking point – it’s not true. The Israeli government itself admits the US has a lot of influence. Of course it does. There’s only 9 million people in Israel. They have to care what the US thinks. I feel like people ignore the actual news on this because it contradicts this whole line. The person who believes he will be the next PM of Israel just finished a visit to the US because the Biden Administration is fed up with them. That visit was because they care, very much, what the US thinks of them. They have to.
The Gaza activists aren’t persuaded by this talking point because it’s simply and obviously not true.
Another Scott
@evodevo: Hitchens’ book about her made her sound like a monster. I don’t know how accurate the book was, he was a rather notorious polemicist after all, but he seemed to have lots of receipts.
Just goes to show, one always has to have their wits about them and not accept the default PR as being accurate. Even about “saints”.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@geg6:
AIPAC doesn’t spend tens of millions of dollars a year to lobby Congress because Israel doesn’t need the US and doesn’t care what the US government thinks. Demonstrably and obviously not true. Of course they do. They don’t have any choice.
WeimarGerman
@Paul in KY: See https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/returns/us-senate-unexpired-term where Garvey leads.
Kay
@Soprano2:
But if this is what you’re saying “Biden could do something but he won’t because that’s politically risky too” then say that. Don’t say “the President of the United States is completely powerless on foreign policy” – no one wil believe that a for a good reason – it’s not true.
I’m open to horsetrading arguments. Just don’t tell me how powerless the US is in international affairs. We’re making a choice here. Let’s be clear.
Timill
@WeimarGerman: There’s a runoff in November (as for the regular election); winner takes office for the remainder of Feinstein’s term (ie to Jan 2025).
https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_special_election_in_California,_2024
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: No one has ever said that the President is powerless on foreign relations. People talk about there being limits on what he can do given that other countries also have agency. Please don’t mischaracterize what people are saying.
George
@getonthebus: I doubt that more than 10 percent or so of Gen Z could have pointed to Gaza on a map of the Middle East before last October.
There are crappy things happening to people all across the world. It is interesting that apparently so many Gen Zers suddenly take note when it is a US ally that is (admittedly) behaving badly.
Look, Israel is wrong in what it is doing, but the timing of what happened, and the way the situation in Gaza is being used to attack Biden, is too convenient to be random chance. Putin knows how to wage war against the west and democracy using alternative means than what he is using in Ukraine.
Paul in KY
@WeimarGerman: I stand corrected on that not being for Sen. Feinstein’s term. However, there is a appointed Senator in there right now & she will stand aside for whomever wins in Nov. Will be a major upset if Garvey wins, IMO.