BREAKING: The Biden campaign just released this powerful ad highlighting how anti-American Donald Trump is and how patriotic President Biden is. Retweet to make sure all voters see this. pic.twitter.com/LilbjJ4BLM
— Biden’s Wins (@BidensWins) April 2, 2024
A lot of people will talk about the border, but one thing President Biden has done successfully (and as usual, gotten zero credit for it) is rebuild our legal immigration system so it's firing on all cylinders after Trump spent 4 years trying to dismantle it. https://t.co/xywBFlSeyY
— That Well-Adjusted Biden Guy (@What46HasDone) April 3, 2024
So, did a sit down with @adamnagourney of the @nytimes on why I am so optimistic about winning this November.
It's a fun one. Enjoy!https://t.co/jvN4CVWJXe
— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) April 3, 2024
Some reassurance (I hope) for the worriers — from the NYTimes, “Many Democrats Are Worried Trump Will Beat Biden. This One Isn’t.” [gift link]:
Simon Rosenberg was right about the congressional elections of 2022. All the conventional wisdom — the polls, the punditry, the fretting by fellow Democrats — revolved around the expectation of a big red wave and a Democratic wipeout.
He disagreed. Democrats would surprise everyone, he said again and again: There would be no red wave. He was correct, of course, as he is quick to remind anyone listening.
These days, Mr. Rosenberg, 60, a Democratic strategist and consultant who dates his first involvement in presidential campaigns to Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1988, is again pushing back against the polls and punditry and the Democratic doom and gloom. This time, he is predicting that President Biden will defeat Donald J. Trump in November…
I talked to Mr. Rosenberg about what it feels like to be an outlier in his own party, and why he sleeps so well at night while so many of his fellow Democrats are plotting their moves to Paris after November. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length, and because Mr. Rosenberg — God love him — likes to talk about this subject. A lot…
The idea of this interview is that, at a time when there is so much fretting in the Democratic world, you are not — and have never been — a bed-wetter. Can you explain why? This goes back to the midterm congressional elections in 2022, as I recall?
Yes. The argument I made then was threefold. One was that the Republicans did something unusual in 2022. Usually when a party loses elections, they run away from the politics that caused them to lose. And Republicans were running toward it. They were becoming ever more MAGA, even though MAGA had lost in 2018 and 2020.
Second, that Biden was actually a good president, and we’d have a strong case to make. And third, there’s been this huge increase in citizen engagement in the Democratic Party. We’ve been raising crazy amounts of money and have an unprecedented number of volunteers because of the fear of MAGA.
We were stronger and better than was the conventional wisdom. The constant mistake everyone’s been making since the spring of 2022 has been the overestimating of their strength and the underestimating of ours. We went into Election Day with there being this huge belief that the Democrats were going to get killed. I believed those three things were going to allow us to do better than people expected in 2022. And I have that basic view now about 2024…
Are there any other Democrats who would be — would have been — stronger against Trump in this election?
I don’t think that’s even worthy of — no, no, I mean, Joe Biden’s the nominee. I mean, it’s not worthy of speculation, right? Look, we just had a primary. People could have challenged him. They didn’t because they didn’t think they could beat him. And the two candidates who did challenge him got crushed.We are quietly confident. In the grand scope of things, we can handle this; we can win the election. The big thing that people got wrong in 2022 was that they thought the Democratic Party wasn’t going to bring it, that we weren’t hungry and we weren’t energized. And it turned out that we were.
Dan Rather: pic.twitter.com/qrIQN2sx6Y
— BeachPretzel (@BeachPretzel2) April 4, 2024
On The Road – BigJimSlade – Kauai 2015, Helicopter tour, Na Pali coast
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
Awe 🤗
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Soprano2
This story about people who think there’s some kind of behind-the-scenes manipulation such that Biden will be replaced as our presidential candidate is topical. I heard it on NPR this morning. It makes you want to shake your head. Evidently there are right-wing influencers on Tik-Tok pushing this crap, and way too many gullible people believe it.
Baud
@Soprano2:
I’m not sure what they gain by pushing that story. Maybe some people will be mad at Dems when Biden isn’t replaced? Or maybe they’re hoping Biden has a health episode so they can spin his being replaced as a conspiracy theory.
Torrey
I am delighted to see Rosenberg (and everyone else who does so) pushing back sharply against the “isn’t there anyone else who would have been better?” idiocy. More of this, please.
I realize journalists have to ask questions, but I really wish they’d put a bit of thought into asking good ones. (And then shut up and let the person talk.) The “who else would be a good choice” question is just amazingly stupid, especially at this point in the process. And I notice no one seems to be asking if the Republicans couldn’t have come up with a better nominee than Trump.
Dr. Jill did something similar, back during the 2020 campaign, when someone asked about a case where Biden seemed to produce a gaffe, and her response was along the lines of “after Trump? you don’t even get to ask that question.”
Melancholy Jaques
@Soprano2:
“For some” is doing all the work there. Where did NPR find this “some” and how hard did they look? Why do they always feel like they need to find “some” and present them as if they are important?
Still waiting for that NPR story: “We talked to Democratic voters and they love Biden and Harris.”
Torrey
The ad is great: reminiscent of all the good parts of Reagan’s “Morning in America” ad, with a bit of Biden’s “Go From There” ad from 2020 and urgency/importance conveyed by the focus on the insurrectionists’ Trump flags.
ETA: I particularly liked the slightly angry/defiant tone in Biden’s final line in the ad, the simple “I’m Joe Biden, and I approve this message.” It’s formulaic, but listen to the voice stress to top off the message. Nicely done.
Baud
@Melancholy Jaques:
Good call. The media always finds these odd balls to feature, like pro-choice women who blame Biden for Dobbs.
Glory b
Good PA polls:
https://x.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1775840127685644677?s=20
Princess
This is an excellent ad and I love the way it picks the Reagan-GOP pocket with its “defending our freedoms” as its major theme and its “not let the sun set on our democracy” counterpoint to morning in America. Props to his comms team.
Melancholy Jaques
@Glory b:
C’mon Glory b, you know that every “good news for Biden” line has to be followed by a “but in this Ohio diner” type negative. It’s for balance.
Jeffro
great start to the day w/ both Rosenberg and Rather, AL! (high five)
I was pleasantly surprised to see this in the Post this morning – it certainly needs more attention: America has legislated itself into ‘red’ and ‘blue’ schools
Let’s have a national conversation about which one the majority of parents prefer!
Soprano2
@Baud: They talked to someone in the party who said that they think as time goes on and people realize Biden is the candidate, more of them will decide to vote for him. They also had a guy in the story who said if Biden did end up being the candidate, he would vote for him. This was a guy who voted for TFG in 2016.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Cripes. Dan Rather used 6 adjectives in a row.
Jeffro
@Soprano2: as an antidote (sort of) to NPR’s take on things, here’s “What Excites You About This Election”?
(feel free to fill out the form – I did! something about “stomping America’s fascists into the ground”, I think ;)
Soprano2
@Melancholy Jaques: The story was about the influencers online in places like TikTok who are pushing the lie about replacing Biden. I don’t know why they insist on talking about things like that, but I actually think it is good to expose the idiocy of these people, and how most of them are right-wing influencers.
Princess
@Glory b: From Franklin and Marshall, which is located in PA. I think all things being equal, given the difficulty of polling, local, long-standing outfits probably do it better.
Glory b
@Baud: MSNBC had a Latina say she switched parties & is enthusiastic to vote for Trump & is sure he’ll use his business acumen to figure out a way to forgive student loans.
A pro choice Republican woman said the same about him figuring out how to protect abortion rights.
Go figure.
cain
@Baud:
They gain a controversy that if it gets a footing they can air and get people to sit in front of the TV and fret.
It’s our of Rove playbook where you create your own reality and keep doing more as you process the older reality. Trump took that and did stealing and lying at massive scale.
VOR
@Soprano2: It’s an article of faith among many Republicans I know that Biden won’t be the Democratic nominee. Most I’ve talked to also don’t think Harris will be the replacement Presidential candidate either. Or VP for that matter, that somehow Harris will be replaced on the ticket. Some of the names I’ve heard as Presidential candidate replacements are Hillary, Michelle Obama, and Gavin Newsom.
Of course, it’s also an article of faith among those same people that Biden is senile or demented but Donald Trump is a vigorous young man with a tip-top intellect. And that Trump has never told a lie, it’s all just fake news.
dmsilev
@Melancholy Jaques: It’s a big country. There will always be “some” people holding a particular opinion, you just need to dig hard enough to find them and then pretend that their numbers are meaningfully large.
Betty Cracker
Nurses are the best.
Layer8Problem
@Baud: Gloom induction. Morale sappage. “They’re casting about for someone, anyone to replace that self-evidently-inadequate-because-reasons Joe Biden. Perhaps he doesn’t have the grit to go up against that powerhouse TFG. Oh noes!” And when he continues to be the candidate because he’s won the primaries and been chosen at the convention and is in fact the best choice those demoralized voters presumably decide to stay home on Election Day. The Republicans hope so anyway.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Probably thankful the rocking put them to sleep.
SiubhanDuinne
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Each of them accurate.
Baud
@Glory b:
I think they actually hold casting calls.
narya
I listened to a Pod Save America w/ Sarah Longwell, the R focus-group-doer, who is wildly anti-Trump; it was very interesting. One thing that Biden keeps talking about that a lot of the MSM seem to have forgotten is the effect of seeing J6 WITH OUR OWN EYES. Longwell was interviewing people who are lifelong republicans who were completely appalled by that and who hold TFG responsible. Another point: people keep coming out to vote for Haley, even though TFG is the nominee–I really think that’s an important point. Not all of those folks will vote for Joe, some will vote for the orange menace, but it’s a non-trivial point. Thus: that ad up top speaks to precisely those sentiments, and I approve that message. ;-)
New Deal democrat
As I wrote yesterday, the all but certain deliberate targeting of Chef Jose Andres’ aid workers by the IDF may lead to an important shift in US public opinion about Israel’s Gaza operation.
Alexander Chee wrote:
https://bsky.app/profile/alexanderchee.bsky.social/post/3kpatnj7c4s2r
“As Haaretz noted in their analysis of how this assault on WCK might reshape Israel’s plans for Gaza, Jose Andres and WCK ‘has unmatched social credit in Washington.’ So yes, he can and did get Biden on the phone to tell him he cannot be arming Israel while claiming to want to feed Gazans.
“Biden can’t wave off Andres like he has all the rest of his critics.”
There is a legal doctrine that you are held to intend the natural and probable results of your actions. The natural and probable result of Israel’s deliberate targeting of food aid workers is to stop the delivery of all food to starving Gazans, ensuring mass starvation as much as possible.
For US public opinion about Israel, we may have just reached the tipping point.
JWR
Rescued from the last thread, condensed: Seth Meyers laid a stinker during last night’s A Closer Look. He closed with a bit about Biden actually having some sort of magical power to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza by simply demanding one, which only proves he doesn’t really want one. Here’s the video set to start where he does the One Weird Trick thing
ETA reposting, because the people who watch his show vote.
TerryTime
@VOR: It’s projection. The election is 7 months away and fatass is absolutely unhinged. It’s not POTUS ranting all day. He’s the smiling competent one.
And it’s always projection.
Melancholy Jaques
@dmsilev:
And their worldviews and grievances legitimate.
OzarkHillbilly
@Glory b: There’s more than one born every minute.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@New Deal democrat: A lot of Americans absolutely revere Chef Andres and WCK. Targeting them comes across as evil. Which it is.
Layer8Problem
@Glory b: “Hello, Republican Party? We need some randomly chosen members to explain to our viewers why TFG’s the best ever.”
“Hmm, let me check my vetted, telegenic, and rehearsed voter list here . . . .”
Tony Jay
@Glory b:
Odds of both the Latino lady and the Republican lady being ranking members of their local GOP county parties are pretty damned high, but obviously something no proper journalist could be expected to find ‘newsworthy’.
It’s all about the narrative. All the time.
Betty Cracker
@narya: Re: the podcast, I also like the emphasis on “seeing is believing” — Trump sent his goons to sack Congress and overturn the election, and we all saw it on TV. TPM’s Josh Marshall noted something similar when highlighting the recent Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial, which he quoted as follows:
Yep. And stupidly, IMO, Trump is making martyrs of his violent thugs, calling them “hostages” and promising to pardon them. I don’t think that plays well outside of the cult.
So yeah, maybe people are disillusioned about a rematch blah blah blah. But one of the two viable candidates tried to do a coup after we voted last time, and we all saw it.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: we do not forget, and we do not forgive.
hueyplong
@Melancholy Jaques: “’For some’ is doing all the work there.”
Exactly. That summarizes and dispenses with the NPR story. By this point, we should all be conditioned to expect to detect the powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity when we see “for some.” That’s exactly the wording used when FoxNews starts a new meme to be repeated over and over about the Democrat Party.
It’s nothing but fecal-infused propaganda when you see any of the following:
“For some…” [wholly made up meme being launched]
“… rigged.” [an election is only legit if the R wins]
“unfair to Trump” [the looming specter of consequences]
“real America” [pushing an extremely unpopular position]
“woke” [Demoncrat things given an extra dollop of outrage because attributed in whole or in part to Negroes]
OzarkHillbilly
Female photographers celebrate Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday Some really good ‘uns. Also. your daily moment of “Aaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww….”
p.a.
Now for the change to reach the Biden admin. to go beyond words to actions. I believe it’s CW that “unless they’re at war, the American voter doesn’t care about foreign policy”, but with Ukraine and now Gaza, these undo the CW*. The admin. has done o.k. distinguishing itself for being on the popular side vs Republicans on Ukraine. Gaza is the fly in the ointment.
*not saying foreign policy supersedes domestic issues.
Mai Naem mobile
I like the ad. I’m not sure about the voice doing the voice over. It makes the ad sound like an old ad. I also figure they’ve focus grouped the ad and the focus group didn’t agree with me about the voice.
Shakti
It’s a good ad. It reminds me of the Sorkin era. It should actually resonate with real moderates and people over 50, and most importantly people who have only been paying half attention. The stirring string and piano movie trailer music and the old man who sounds like he’s going to narrate a World War II documentary really make it.
Sandia Blanca
@Betty Cracker: I saw a clip last night from Karl Rove, of all people, attacking the “hostages” label for those thugs. Never thought I would agree with him on anything, but in this case he was spot on.
JWR
Last night I watched PBS’s News Hour, followed by DW News, and finally BBC News. The first two, PBS and DW, both had pretty weak tea Gaza interviews, but the BBC person did a long interview with a member of Bibi’s so-called War Cabinet, and ouch! Bibi’s guys are getting really prickly about the WCK massacre. The guy continually went back to 10/7 and ‘why aren’t you people (still) talking about that?’, and Hamas this and Isis that and finally shouting about all these Nazis storming about. It was really something.
Amanpour & Co, OTOH, has been very good this week. It’s replayed at 9AM (PST) on one of your local PBS stations. PBSWrld for me.
schrodingers_cat
@Glory b: They never ever have WWC men who vote D. I have met a fair number of them living in New England and in NY. They are usually blue collar union workers. In fact most of the IRL Rs I used to know were the old guard R types. Most of them have either become Ds or independents now
So the narrative the MSM pushes about Rs never quite fit in with the Rs I knew.
Kristine
@Jeffro: I replied with a comment about saving democracy and women’s autonomy.
Ten Bears
I have often thought that following the disaster that was Bush the repubs threw the elections to Obama. Seriously ~ John McCain? Mitt Romney? Given the mess they’ve made, I can’t help but wonder if they’re trying to throw this one
zhena gogolia
@New Deal democrat: Biden hasn’t waved anyone off.
Geminid
@JWR: I’m curious, do you remember which War Cabinet member? There are three voting members: Netanyahu, Gallant and Gantz; plus two Observers, Eisenkott and Dermer. That sounds like Ron Dermer
Ed. Dermer could be described as Bibi’s guy, and that’s why he’s a War Cabinet Observer. The other three- Gallant, Gantz and Eisenkot- fall somewhere in between despising Netanyahu and hating his guts.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Its funny how the leftier-than-thous think that they represent the public opinion when they are not even the majority of Dems.
I have sympathy for the actual people in Gaza not the tankie blowhards wearing scarves and blabbering about Genocide Joe and evil America and their amen chorus on liberal blogs such as this one.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: It’s demoralizing. I just hope they don’t lose the election for us. Again.
Baud
@Geminid:
I wonder how long the war cabinet can hold together.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: If the recent special elections are any indication, they won’t. But for supposed allies they sure do a lot of harm to their own team.
Heh remember back in 2020 when BJ and blogs like BJ thought Warren would win the nomination. She came 3rd in MA. Liberal blogs are not the best predictors of public opinion.
LiminalOwl
Meanwhile, since I haven’t seen it here yet: reports that John Eastman is competing with Groucho’s definition of chutzpah:
John Eastman Asks for Delay in Disbarment Citing Hefty Legal Fees
(Doesn’t appear to be an April Fools article, and the Daily Beast isn’t the only source reporting this.)
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Focus on the reachable. Forget the rest. It’s like trying to get the NYT to change how they cover US politics.
catclub
No. The economy is too good. They want to take credit for that. The economy was still pretty weak in 2012. I was amazed Obama was re-elected with almost 8% unemployment.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I would if the subject didn’t keep coming up here at BJ, my last remaining news source.
TBone
@LiminalOwl: he is too late, except for a good laugh.
Baud
@catclub:
Agreed.
gene108
Democrats have a rational and incredible fear of the Electoral College allowing the popular vote loser to become president.
If we had a national popular vote to elect the president, Democrats would a lot more chill.
It’s not more complicated than this.
Splitting Image
@VOR:
He’s more honest than most of his supporters. I’ll give him that.
gene108
@catclub:
What doesn’t get reported is when Republicans took over state governments, they refused federal stimulus money, cut taxes, and laid off about as many state and local officials, including many teachers, as the private sector was adding new jobs.
Every facet of the Republican Party tried to destroy the recovery to make President Obama a one term president.
RevRick
@Glory b: Franklin & Marshall is a decent state poll, and since it’s outside the margin of error, this is a terrific sign.
Betty Cracker
@Sandia Blanca: Rove is an evil chucklefuck, but he recognizes the threat Trump poses to his precious party. Sort of like McConnell.
JWR
@Geminid:
That sounds right. I think it was him.
mrmoshpotato
@Soprano2:
I’m also gonna roll my eyes.
Kay
“The subject” is politics. If that’s no longer permitted at BJ and we all must repeat only good news then it’s not a “news source”, it’s an echo chamber.
I disagree that the most pressing problem we have in this country is the Left side of the Democratic Party. I think they’re part of the coalition the same way the Right side of the Democratic Party is. If the point of BJ is to shut down the Left side of the Party then that isn’t something I’ll be working on. I guess an objective of “owning the libs” instead of winning elections isn’t limited to Republicans.
its goddamned ridiculous to blame the Left side of the Party for Gaza. It’s a joke.
We can pretend Gaza isn’t happening but 75 per cent of Democrats oppose it along with 65 percent of Independents. That’s a US political issue.
There’s lots of analysis on what Biden can do on Gaza. Just this week there were pieces in the NYorker and The Financial Times. “He can’t DO anything” isn’t going to work with voters because it isn’t true.
Maybe the Biden Administration will take some action after this latest attack on aid workers maybe they won’t – but US policy on Gaza still won’t be the fault of college students in Lansing.
New Deal democrat
@catclub:
FDR was elected in a landslide in 1936 with, at minimum, 12% unemployment. It’s not the level that matters, it’s the *change* in the level. When the unemployment rate broke under 8% in 2012, I knew Obama was going to win.
As real incomes have improved in the last 20 months, so gradually has consumer sentiment, and following that with a further lag, Biden’s approval and polling numbers.
if the price of gas cooperates (cross your fingers), that trend will continue.
tam1MI
@zhena gogolia: Biden hasn’t waved anyone off.
Biden giving the back of his hand to them is the lie they tell to justify throwing the election to Donald Trump.
hueyplong
@Betty Cracker: Imagine the improvement in your mood if, a year from now, we are referring to Trump as “the gravedigger of the Republican Party.”
Warblewarble
Every member of the Israeli war cabinet is a war crimminal .Whether they hate Bibi is not the point. THEY ARE ALL WAR CRIMMINALS.
Baud
@hueyplong:
He’ll be that regardless of whether he wins. The only question is how many innocent people will be hurt in the process.
hueyplong
@Baud: Yes, but one of those gravediggers is more palatable than the other.
Kay
@tam1MI:
There are plenty of news accounts about the latest meeting with Biden and what, specifically he said and what the people who met with him objected to.
I would suggest if you’re only reading Balloon Juice on Gaza you might not be getting any actual news on the real US political situation re Gaza. But obviously you don’t have to. I guess they all could’ be “lying”
Baud
@hueyplong:
Of course. We do what we can.
Geminid
@Baud: Netanyahu never really wanted the War Cabinet but he was pressured into it by popular demand and political pressure, including from within his Likud Party. Besides Netanyahu’s conflicted legal status and his obvious failure to secure the country, reports were that he was stunned and not very functional in the days after October 7.
I could believe that; I did a double-take back then when I saw a picture of Netanyahu because he looked so old. Unfortunately, he bounced back.
The US also pressured Netanyahu at the time, and Chuck Schumer made a high profile call to Benny Gantz when Netanyahu dragged his feet. Gantz had offered to bring his 12-MK party to form an emergency government and the War Cabinet structure was his price. Gantz was Defense Minister in the two governments before this one, and Democrats generally respect him.
Netanyahu caved, and the new coalition agreement was ratified by the Knesset October 12. That is customary for all coalitions and gives the agreement the force of law, so Netanyahu can’t wriggle out of it.
I don’t think Gantz and his ally Eisenkot will leave until new elections are called. Gantz just said he wants elections by September.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: they will greatly enjoy the Trump policy on Gaza
Baud
@Geminid:
That’s too bad. That’s way too slow.
Kay
I still think Biden will win the election but I can count so I know he has to be concerned about 1. Polls (not all polls are wrong – that’s delusional) and 2. A 35 per cent approval among Independents on his I/P policy. I also know he can’t win MI and WI without college students and he’ll be hurt by Arab American defections in MI and MN. These are facts.
These are real challenges. They exist.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
Just stop saying there’s nothing Biden can do if you’re not wanting to read anything on what he could do.
I agree he’ll be better than Trump.But he can take action now to change course (somewhat). It isn’t true to say he can’t.
hueyplong
@Kay: Are these students expected to defect to Trump or, instead, staying away from the voting booth?
Old School
@Kay:
I assume you mean this story from yesterday?
Kay
Just FYI although it is now hardened “truth” on BJ to blame the Left side of the Party for 2016 there were a lot of factors on why Clinton lost – we had huge defections from the RIGHT side of the Party. Ds didn’t lose OH and FL in 2016 because Lefties didn’t vote. They lost OH and FL because Obama’s Right flank voters voted for Trump in those states.
Kay
tam1MI
Stop putting words in people’s mouths. No one here is saying there is nothing he can do, what we are saying is that he is already doing a lot but the bad faith “Uncommitted” crowd refuses to meet him even halfway (all the while taking a page from the Republican playbook and accusing him of doing what they are doing). They’d rather throw the election to Donald Trump.
Kay
@Old School:
did you read the whole thing? there’s an account from another physician too. She showed Biden photos of starving Palestinian children and he told he had already seen them. They were photos she took – from her phone. He couldn’t have seen them.
Geminid
@Baud: Gantz is making a political statement here; he’s not going to try to bring the government down before then. But he’s not leaving and letting Netanyahu be in charge either.
This may conform to the prevalent view that elections should wait until after this war, but that consensus started to shift when Likud proposed the new draft law. Now the Knesset has adjourned for several weeks, a way of kicking the Draft can down the road.
The theory behind delaying elections is that the government might not get important work done in the interim, but this government can’t get important work done anyway so more Israelis are asking, why wait?
Kay
@tam1MI:
Well, steel yourself because if someone in some country doesn’t figure out how to get massive amounts of food and medical supplies past the IDF and into Gaza a half a million people are going to starve to death and whether you like it or not that will upset the 75 per cent of the Democratic Party who oppose Biden policy on I/P
The US has to get food in. This is an emergency. “The US” on foreign policy is Joe Biden. He can’t fail at this. The cost of failure is catastrophic for this country. It is not in our national interest to starve 500k Palestinians to death
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: She does not argue in good faith. For example no one here has said this.
However the antics of the purity left aid the biggest threat to democracy, namely the Republican party under Trump.
NickM
@schrodingers_cat: I have a friend who has gone off the deep end with the “Genocide Joe” “Blue MAGA” and “Trump is bad, but Biden is a mass murderer” crap. This is a formerly sane, kind, rational person who I know cares about the people and issues that people on our side care about. I can’t really figure out what happened to her — she presents as having MAGA-type brain worms that lead to a slightly different flavor of crazy.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Frankly it’s a little surprising, the resentment of young voters, considering how many teachers we have commenting here.
They have a genuine disagreement with Joe Biden on Gaza and they’re a lot more informed than you-all are if it’s true that you’re only reading BJ because it’s a safe place or whatever.
Baud
@Kay:
Do you think Biden was
Kay
Biden should be polling better. He’s bleeding somewhere – maybe Gaza, maybe economy, maybe border maybe all three – I think he loses Right wing Dems on the border but I’m ok with that – I don’t want him joining the bash immigrants choir to pick up Right wing rural Dems, but all the polling isn’t wrong – he has to pick up support to win. I think he will but that is not reality yet, IMO.
The Thin Black Duke
I think it’s fair to say that none of us have any idea what’s going on behind the scenes in regard to Gaza, but it’s hard for me to believe in a scenario where Biden doesn’t give a damn about the casualties.
Kay
@Baud:
oh Christ Baud. Joe Biden has been a successful pol for 60 years
you never ever refer to children generically – it’s offensive and uncaring
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: Yeah, I can’t believe this rematch is happening, either — I’d thought Trump couldn’t possibly run again, he’d be, well, prison was a stretch, but at least somehow too tangled up in legal matters and otherwise dishonored. Which he is, but not enough to stop him from running.
I am completely sure Biden will win the popular vote. It’s that pesky Electoral College I am not completely sure about. Fortunately my life is full of enough distractions to distract me.
Kay
@Baud:
She thinks he didn’t want to see the photos because he doesn’t want to hear about THE COST of this.
It doesn’t matter. Unless they get some aid in, and fast, Joe Biden will see many,many more photos of starving Palestinian children as long as there are still people alive to record it.
Baud
@Kay:
I said photos generically. Sounds like you think he was lying or senile.
Citizen Alan
@Glory b: Somebody needs to investigate those women. Because I would bet good money that they either are or are married to officials in the republican party.
Kay
I actually think there’s an interesting discussion to be had re losing some Right wing Dems in the border – Democrats are moving Right there, probably in response to polling.
But we don’t discuss Right wing Dem defections on BJ so this is yet another area we won’t be discussing.
We’re pretty much down to defending Merrick Garland and bashing college students, realiy
oh and hating the NYTimes (which I support – can’t talk enough about that)
Villago Delenda Est
Sunday morning, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Never forget.
Kay
There’s also an interesting move re Muslims in the D party. Corey Booker is a huge Israel supporter yet he’s also been a strong supporter of Muslims in the D Party. I think they’re a more important constituency than they were in the past – Booker is always ahead of other D’S – he’s smart.
Baud
@Kay:
Most of us want to lose right wing Dems because we want the party to be both more successful and more progressive than it is. Most of us like that the Dems have been moving left since 2002. But that only works if we can gain voters on the left. So people on the left who oppose Dems are our natural adversaries.
schrodingers_cat
Polls are the word of God except the ones (even exit polls after the election) showing a majority of white women voting Republican even after Dobbs in 2022
Enjoy your bad faith arguments. I am out of here.
Freemark
@Princess:
They are good generally good. As a side note this polling outfit was founded at my alma mater, Millersville University, and became highly regarded. Then F&M, which is a well funded private school, ‘stole it’ by offering the founding Poly Sci professor a lot more money then a state school could afford.
Old School
@Kay:
I did read the whole article I linked to. That story is not in it.
japa21
@Kay: It’s true some blame the left but that’s a minority view. I think more of the blame for 2016 is on Comey and the media. Actually, I think the majority view is that the “left” is a nuisance and nothing more.
As to Gaza, I agree with you that it is a potential land mine that could blow up the Biden campaign and that it has to be carefully managed. Again, it is only a few who are saying that there is nothing Biden can do. The real question is the degree he can do something that will have any impact both over there and over here.
All that is above my pay grade as well as all those people who are demanding One Magic Trick.
And the real problem is that, even if he could stop Bibi and the IDF from further engagement and Gaza and even if he could get aid into Gaza, how does he control Hamas so they allow the aid to reach the civilians and keep them from doing more attacks on Israel.
Again, above my pay grade. I do understand your frustration and agree with it.
Oh, and the students are in East Lansing, not Lansing.
tam1MI
@Kay: But we don’t discuss Right wing Dem defections on BJ so this is yet another area we won’t be discussing.
Actually, I think this is something worth discussing. Slate magazine had an article identifying immigration as the number one concern of likely voters according to some poll or another. The author suggested that Biden declare a national emergency on the border and use the declaration to redirect funds from FEMA to help ease the situation. I think that might be an idea worth discussing.
Scout211
To continue the theme of AL’s “good news” morning thread, federal workers have a bit more in the way of job protections this morning. Link
. . .
Kay
@Baud
fair enough
May localDems are Right wing. I know these people really, really well. We’ve lost a bunch to Trump. Ohio is no Longer competive not because of Left wing Dems but because of Right wing Dem defections.
you’re not losing FL because of the Left. You’re bleeding Right wing Dems.
Brooklyn and Boston don’t matter.MI and MN and WI do.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
Did you read Betty Cracker’s thread about the WCK convoy killings yesterday? There was a very good (IMO) discussion of the Gaza situation.
cain
@Kay: I don’t remember that – my thought was that it was pure misogyny on our electorate. Clinton fit all qualifications – arguably, the GOP’s grift operation could have made a ton more money being a minority party who can encourage every kind of conspiracy theory to make her life as President a living hell.
Mike in NC
Shorter Dan Rather: Fat Bastard is a piece of shit.
Kay
Faction fights are part of the D party and have been for the 30 years I’ve been active
i love all of you and want you to win but WE DISAGREE on some things. It’s fine. We won’t break. I’ll still set up the Joe Biden headquarters in my blood red city and staff it. I have thick skin and I’ve never been afraid of a fight :)
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: Biden is being attacked for this by both the left and the right flanks. The stay in Mexico program is not popular with immigrant right activists.
Immigration as an issue has never been much discussed on BJ ever. I used to keep bringing it up in the comments when T was President and some commenters would engage but not that many. Heh I have been compared to Susan Sarandon for being too left on this issue by my progressive better on this blog. Good times.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus:
The IDF and by extension Bibi have massively fucked up there. I think Biden has no choice at this point but play hardball. Israel plans to starve them all into submission.
Knowing Hamas, they’ll just start putting out loudspeakers and tell them their deaths will be a good one and that the afterlife is going to be awesome followed by screams of “Cowabunga!” /s
geg6
@Jeffro:
Did you actually read the shitty newsletter where they took this garbage from? This Jess Bidgood person is perhaps the most idiotic of idiots at FTFNYT. Froomkin tore her apart.
https://presswatchers.org/2024/04/the-washington-press-corps-doesnt-have-a-freaking-clue/
Kay
My advice is to embrace the factionalism because Democrats are not lockstep and never will be
you have to love them as they are :)
imo
tam1MI
@Kay:
I feel the same. We agree on 99 percent of everything, it’s that 1 percent that gets snarly.
And for the record, re: the Gaza situation, I agree with the Uncommitted folks stated aims, it’s the tactics that makes me question their sincerity to the cause they are ostensibly championing.
japa21
@Kay: Exactly.
Jeffg166
@Glory b: I hope that holds. If the all registered Democrats in Philadelphia showed up to vote TFG would be crushed early in the evening.
VFX Lurker
Agreed. I wrote five Postcards to Voters in Florida last night. My efforts are much better spent on those who want to vote Dem than those who do not.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Maybe the people on this blog aren’t the ones who should be front and center on the effort to persuade young voters on I/P issues. OTOH, this blog tends to be pretty good (for a bunch of elderly shut-ins) on the gender issues that are also very important to younger voters. Well, except for the small number of people who chased off our gender nonconforming FPer.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: One thing I heard in a story yesterday that I don’t think most people understand is that I think this happened in Egypt! So they can’t even say ‘Whoops, we dropped a bomb in the wrong place”. Doing that in Egypt shows that it was a deliberate targeting.
Nelle
@Layer8Problem: You laugh but when my daughter was a stringer for the NYTimes, they would ask her to find Trump voters to talk to and she had a list of ones able to talk without spitting or drooling (a short list). She has, at least for now, left journalism.
Old Man Shadow
Republicans won’t consider it a success unless there is zero immigration from Latino countries and we authorize the border patrol to shoot anyone approaching the U.S. border.
Princess
I think our discussion of Left and Right is itself impoverished and it a weak way that people who are very engaged in politics try to use to categorize people.
Take a 2016 white male voter, 40-50. Anxious about immigration, indifferent to hostile to what he would call “identity issues”, pro or at least neutral on guns, wants cheap or free healthcare. This is not an imaginary person — polling suggests there are a lot like him. You can easily imagine a guy like this feeling very at home supporting Bernie Sanders in the primary — I encountered many like him in 2016. I have a son in law who is much like this voter. And then this voter votes for Trump for president. Is this guy someone we lost on the Right of the party or on the Left? Some in here would say Left and talk about horseshoe theory. I’d call him more Right. Really, he’s a mixture of impulses, fears, and concerns but he’s exactly the voter Bernie and Trump knew how to target and Hillary had zero to offer.
Now take 2024. Who is our target now? Or better: who are our targets?
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Purity left likes to speak for immigrants, gender non-conforming folks, black people etc. But does not like members of these groups to speak for themselves if they are not regurgitating the official leftie dogma. As an immigrant that was my first hand experience on this blog. It was quite unpleasant because I didn’t expect it. Now I know better.
Most Americans are woefully uninformed about immigration issues. Politicians like T use that to their advantage
TBone
@Scout211: that is GREAT news!
BR
The thing I think it hardest about the Gaza situation or the border is that the people who Biden needs to win back on either of those aren’t likely to accept any measures as sufficient. I think he should be doing things re: Gaza but let’s be real — do you think anyone shouting about it on TikTok is going to suddenly say “oh, I support Biden again now that he’s airdropping a bunch of food”? Nah, they will say “too little, too late”. Same on the border, because the GOP will shout and the media will parrot that anything he does is a half measure or making things worse.
Biden can make a real difference for the people in harm’s way, but that won’t sway voters who have painted themselves into a corner.
TrainedWreck
@Torrey: yeah this NYT article & interviewer are smarmy condescending garbage, with every line I just rolled my eyes harder @ how useless, irrelevant, wrong and snotty about being wrong NYT farcical drivel is re: American politics. Ur gross NYT. So greatfull Dems have assets like Rosenberg making no apologies and holding line Reality based outcomes American politics, despite nonsense NYTs etc narratives designed defeat democracy w snotty wrong drivel
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Immigration and refugee issues are not a topic in which a lot of people here have more than a passing interest. Criminal justice reform also doesn’t get a lot of traction. This blog can’t be everything to everyone. It is good at what it is good at.
Villago Delenda Est
@TrainedWreck:
The Horse Race narrative must be guarded and continued at all costs, for clickbait is all we know about.
geg6
@Old School:
So the guy goes in with a closed mind, determined to walk out and not listen or exchange any ideas with the president on what options were realistic and available. To which he was personally invited.
Yeah, that’s someone that I have no empathy for. He went there to be the center of attention and make a big show of it and did nothing for the Palestinians and people of Rafah.
Stupid. Just stupid.
And before you say it, I’ve never been a fan of Israel in the last 20 or so years. I have tons of sympathy for the Palestinians and I do what I can to help. But this performative bullshit is nothing but performative bullshit.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah I agree with you. Was trying address the false narrative that BJ is not discussing this issue because of defection of right wing Ds.
I have been called everything from Susan Sarandon to a liar by the lefties on this blog’s FP and comments on this specific issue. As a result I have stopped discussing it altogether over here. I have also had provisions of the visa I was on, whitesplained to me.
rikyrah
It’s always been Putin helping the Orange Menace.
Like we didn’t already know this.
That I am seeing this on TikTok, and not every news channel…
Yet another reason why the MSM is useless.
They can’t be bothered to do their phucking jobs and connect all the dots?🤬🤬🤬
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLBfg6rs/
I watched Velshi sub for Larry O last night, and he brought up the insider trading part, but didn’t bring up the funding part. Is it too much to ask for all the dots to be connected? It’s not a conspiracy, if it’s all in black and white. Wish someone would do a white board with the pictures and show the connections…like the cops do.
geg6
@Kay:
So your suggestion is what? Please, if you know so much more about what to do, please enlighten the rest of us. Is your solution to invade Israel? Because I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.
Shakti
@Kay:
In Florida, imho it’s hard to buy the line the economy is good because some of the worst metros for inflation, food costs, and the cost of housing are in Florida. Living indoors and eating are not optional activities.
The border is a proxy for something else — but I’m sure he’s lost votes on that. I’m not sure how many “border” voters he can siphon off. B/c the way people talk about it its like they don’t have a sense of scale and can’t be bothered to talk about why there are “so many migrants”.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
I did read it, thank you.
It just doesn’t make any sense to me to look at a map of the US and electoral votes and conclude The Left are losing elections for Democrats
NY, CT and MA are not in play :)
tam1MI
My sentiments exactly.
geg6
@Kay:
If it was such a big issue with them, you’d think I’d have seen that on campus. Amazingly, there have been absolutely no signs of that here. Zero. Are they aware of it? Of course. We have many students of Middle Eastern heritage here. And they have lots of friends. And even among them, not a peep other than when I’ve brought up the subject.
Brachiator
Good to see Biden and the Democrats doing this smart campaigning.
The Democrats can also hit back hard by emphasizing how the Republicans let Trump sandbag the recent immigration legislation.
Soprano2
@Kay: It’s the same in Missouri (along with the dropping populations of St. Louis and Kansas City), but I don’t know what we can do about that because in order to win them back Democrats would have to become Republicans. It’s like what James Carville wants, for Democrats to throw most of our coalition under the bus so we can get the voters he likes and understands back into the fold, with no actual guarantee that they would come back.
I see so much of people talking past either other here lately, it makes me discouraged. I think people are upset and afraid about a lot of things right now, especially TFG winning the election. Stupid Israel just made it about a thousand times harder to get aid into Gaza by deliberately targeting those WCK people (I will never believe it was an accident, I can’t believe they think anyone will buy that, firing three missiles at vehicles is not an “accident”). What aid worker wants to go there to help people knowing that if Israel even thinks they have one worker who might be a Hamas fighter they’ll have no compunction at all about shooting missiles at you. As I’ve said elsewhere, Biden should use this incident to say there will be a pause in all aid to Israel because we’re not going to let you use our money and weapons to murder aid workers. I think another part of this is that the Israeli public had a reaction to 10/7 similar to the one we had after 9-11, and they are not sensible about what’s happening in Gaza right now. All they want is to eliminate the threat to themselves, and as long as Bibi tells them this is what’s necessary to do that a significant number of them will support it even if they don’t like him.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Something else the TFG supporters never mention (they probably don’t know it) is that the government of Mexico says they will refuse to cooperate if we try to reinstate the “stay in Mexico” policy. After all, it doesn’t just affect us, it affects them too! They act like Mexico is just another state that we can use however we want.
Geminid
@Soprano2: The drone strikes that killed the seven WCK workers were carried out in the Gaza Strip, not in Egypt. But the details of the strikes released so far show the targtting was deliberate.There are good maps that show where the three strikes were made.
VFX Lurker
I remember “Bernie or Bust” in 2016. A social media campaign loudly declared that if the Democratic party didn’t put Bernie on the ballot that November, they would ensure Trump won.
It worked, to a point. I remember Bernie supporters boasting about voting for Stein or writing in Bernie that November. I remember another Bernie Bro who voted for Clinton, yet blamed Clinton’s loss on…Clinton voters who rejected Bernie at the ballot box. Not his tribe.
I blocked/unfollowed them all, so I don’t know if they ever accepted the credit they wanted for President Trump.
I later met one “Bernie or Bust” white man in 2019, who did proudly take credit for Clinton’s 2016 loss. He had no remorse. He threatened to do it again in 2020 if we didn’t vote for Bernie in the primary.
I voted for Joe.
geg6
@Baud:
That’s pretty much exactly what she’s saying. Just like she says all the time that youngs hate Biden. She provides no evidence for any of it, but because she says it, it’s true and anyone that disagrees is just stupid.
Torrey
@cain:
Not seeing evidence that “submission” is the end game here.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: I agree that most Americans have no clue about immigration and our immigration system. The ones who say “They should come here the right way” have no earthly idea what that actually entails, or how hard it is. I listened to a “This American Life” program about a man in Africa (I can’t remember the country, Somalia maybe) who got one of those “diversity lottery visas”, and all the stuff he had to do in order to actually qualify to use it, and how he had to dodge gangs in order to do it. Most of those “come here the right way” people would not be able to do what this young man did. I believe he ended up in Maine. That’s definitely the kind of person who makes America a better place to live, yet all the MAGA’s don’t want him here solely based on his skin color.
Josie
@Brachiator:
This. We need to amplify the decisions made on the recent failed immigration legislation and put the blame squarely where it belongs.
schrodingers_cat
@VFX Lurker: BS bros poisoned the well for HRC. That was definitely on contributing factor for her loss.
Soprano2
@geg6: You said it better than I could. I hate performative bullshit, mostly because I don’t think it actually accomplishes anything other than drawing attention to the person who does it.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
People keep bringing this up as though it is the most meaningful political response. It ignores the pain and despair that some people feel about the plight of the Palestinians.
They are being crushed now. Today. If they are wiped out, what does it matter that a possible Trump presidency will continue the disregard for Palestinian life?
And note that I believe that Biden is doing what he can. But for some people, this is not enough. I hope that these folks rethink their position, but I understand where they are coming from.
Also, it says much that in the UK there is rising revulsion at Netanyahu’s war strategy because British aid workers have been killed. Had they been Palestinians, would the British care as much?
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: Did you know that many countries that send above a certain # of immigrants do not even qualify for the diversity visa lottery?
India, China and Mexico among others.
Bernie Sanders has been one of the staunchest anti immigrant voices on immigration throughout his congressional career is something that is lost on these purity ponies. He moderated somewhat when he ran for President.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Immigration policy under the Orange Menace
Yes…a good time had by all.
Poe Larity
Hate giving this guy hits, but it’s a very analytical admission of process and coherent about other segments of the right that many on the left would agree with.
https://newaltright.substack.com/p/how-the-alt-right-won
It’s been quoted by a couple of pop rationalists who are saying “Wow, all those misinformation and Antifa folks were exactly right about these people”
He calls himself former a former WN but still holds some of those views. Moved to what he thought would be a paradise red-state and was miserable.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: I assume you see WI as one of the states in play. WI, as I have said many times here, is not purple because the voters are in the middle. Our people are very polarized. Our reds are scarlet and our blues are navy. This is how we can have both Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin as senators. How we can have Bob LaFollette and Joe McCarthy. There aren’t that many people on the right edge of the Democratic Party. Honestly, if the Greens were a serious political party they could run candidates in local elections in Dane County and win.
Frustration with a perceived “Nach Hitler, uns” attitude is understandable IMO. Look how well it turned out for Thälmann.
schrodingers_cat
@VFX Lurker: OT art question. What app do you use to draw on your iPad.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I will add canceling GCs under the guise of the Muslim Ban. That was his first fucking executive order.
Citizen Alan
@BR: When I think about the question of what Joe Biden should be doing differently in Gaza, my mind continually turns back to the question of “What could FDR have done to stop the Holocaust in 1938 in the face of an objectively pro-Hitler GOP?” And the answer is “not much.” So much so that after Pearl Harbor, FDR only asked for a declaration of war against Japan because Congress would not have approved on against Germany. And if Hitler had been smart enough to condemn Japan for Pearl Harbor and use that as an excuse to break alliance with them, I don’t think we’d have gotten involved in the war in Europe and Britain would have fallen.
The Nazis have learned since then.
Geminid
@Soprano2: The Israeli reaction to the attack on October 7 was much more severe than our reaction to 9/11. Part of this was due to the relative size of the countries. We had 3,000 killed out of a population of over 300 million. Israel lost 1200 out of a population of 9.5 million. That’s like the US losing 42,000 people in one day.
The other reason Israelis reacted so harshly to the October 7 attack was that Hamas and their allies filmed so much of it, and they put their gruesome work out on social media. Those videos circulated all over Israel and left many Israelis in a rage.
Matt McIrvin
Articles focused on reassurance perversely make me feel worse, because they remind me that reassurance is necessary. They just come across as whistling past the graveyard.
Kind of like the way that “good news/respite” threads can actually bring me down if they’re identified as such, because that reminds me of what the respite is from. I’m sometimes happier seeing other people freak out because at least someone is thinking about the same worries.
I kind of like the ACLU’s current money pitches that are about the things they’ll do to attempt to protect freedom and democracy in the possible authoritarian darkness of a second Trump administration. It reassures me that someone is thinking about that. And helps calm me down from just turning to hopeless or violent thoughts.
JaySinWA
I don’t understand why you think it happened in Egypt. The reports an maps I see say Gaza, in IDF controlled territory. Why do you believe it was Egypt?
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
We didn’t lose FL because of Lefties. We lost it because of Right wing Democrats who defected, some of them Latino.
Betty Cracker posted that a month ago with ample documentation and the BJ chorus denied it.
this isn’t discussing politics – it’s something else, I don’t know what.
Tge stab in the back stuff is truly disturbing – they’re fucking 19 year olds at MSU, not our enemy.
Citizen Dave
@Villago Delenda Est: Old U2 fan here. The lyric on the U2 website is
Early morning, April four,
Shots ring out in the Memphis sky.
Which is wrong. MLK was shot at 6:05 p.m. April 4. Thursday.
The lyrical error is well-known and the web says Bono has at times corrected the time reference in live versions.
Soprano2
@Geminid: Thanks, perhaps what they said was that the convoy started in Egypt and I misheard it. These days I’m not always sure what day it is. Ask me how mad I am at the doctor at the hospital and the nurse who did the discharge for my husband. They changed his meds but made ZERO mention of this to me. When I pointed out to the nurse that two of those meds are ones hubby already takes, he acted like he didn’t even hear me and insisted they are new meds. Now I find out two days later that they changed the dosage and eliminated one med altogether, without a word to me about that AT ALL. That poor home health woman on the phone, I had to tell her I wasn’t yelling at her when she told me.
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2:
I don’t even give Israel that much credit. I think killing aid workers in order to discourage future aid was the end in itself. Eliminate aid, increase the number of Gazans who starve to death, and let “The Palestinian Problem” take care of itself. Opposition from the West has been the only thing that has stopped Bibi and Likud from outright genocide in Gaza for the last 50 years. And now, not even that is enough.
Matt McIrvin
@BR: What they want is for us to, at the very least, completely cut off the alliance with Israel, and preferably regard Israel as an enemy.
And, frankly, at this point, morally that makes sense. But politically… if Biden actually did it, he’d likely lose more support than he gained.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@Soprano2:
Is that the story Morning Edition headlined by talking about “next year’s presidential election”? I gave up after that and switched to an 80s Hits station. (Sultans of Swing, and yeah, the boy could play.)
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, I knew that. The whole idea of the diversity visa lottery is to get immigrants from countries that don’t send us many immigrants in other ways. That story was quite eye-opening for me. I had known just from stories I heard over the years how hard it could be to come here “the right way”, but I had no idea how perfect you have to be. It’s crazy.
Citizen Alan
@VFX Lurker:
I would have gotten in his face and said that I hoped he had a heart attack or car wreck or something and died before the election.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Stab in the back is a different theory from German history.
Also, I thought we were talking about states that are in play in 2024. Like WI, MI, and PA.
ETA: Please do inform us what discussing politics is.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I wish you had as much untroubled free time as I do. It’s tough not to have any.
Soprano2
@JaySinWA: I heard a story where they said something about Egypt. I think I misheard what they said.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: It is super hard to even get a long term visa like a student visa or a work visa. Forget getting a GC.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: The lie “We only oppose ILLEGAL immigration” really gets my blood up. Yeah, you want to make almost all of it illegal and then only oppose illegal immigration. We know that–that’s what was going on under Trump, thanks to Stephen Miller.
Soprano2
@Geminid: I wish I did too, thanks. My life is scheduled to the hilt right now, I don’t even relax on weekends that much because there is so much stuff I have to do.
UncleEbeneezer
While simultaneously lecturing us all on how to stand up for marginalized segments of our coalition…
piratedan
In my own mind, what appears to be missed in all of this is how much in parallel Netanyahu and Trump are and we’re seeing in real time what an outcome of a 2nd Trump Administration would look like.
Netanyahu, under indictment, sure to be kicked out if a vote/election takes place. Taking advantage of a tragic attack to keep himself in power, giving himself power to do the one thing he’s always wanted to do, which is carte blanche to eradicate Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank with expansion there as well). Biden can place pressure on him, he can even stop sending him aid and arms. Okay, he does that, then what? Does Bibi just keep on? The Democratic style of government cannot appear to defend itself from the tyrants that seize power and profess to keep that power and choose not to relinquish it.
If you got a fascist in charge (and lets be clear, Bibi IS a fascist), they don’t give up power if they can help it. If the people of Israel cannot remove him thru democratic means (and apparently despite protests and millions in the street) they have not been successful yet, what can the US do? Lead a coup? It seems that Biden can drop the hammer and cut ties militarily, financially and even diplomatically and make them a pariah state. Will the rest of the US approve? Would Bibi even care?
Kay
We’re at Yosemite which is gorgeous but snow is coming in so my husband wants to leave (probably smart) – we had 2 beautiful hiking days
our son just texted us “if it’s not raining you’re not camping” which is what we told them on rainy hiking trips :)
They always get you with your own bullshit
WeimarGerman
@geg6: Darn I thought I’d be the first to add that link here.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: also, I hate to say it, but liberal fave John Fetterman is terrible on immigration (probably just following his constituency). He’s also super pro-Israel.
Gvg
@Kay: um Kay, do you think Americans are generally ready to go to war with Israel to land food in their country against their will, and have our soldiers possibly shot, with orders to shoot back? Because I don’t.
American Jews are a small part of the democratic coalition, more than the Republican, but I don’t think they are all ready to accept that, plus most Americans are used to thinking of Israel as an ally. In face legally it is an ally, and invading a country is always a problem for a law abiding country.
This has to be pressure and negotiation and Biden cannot guarantee any specific result.
Kay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh bullshit. I chased off no one
i was a front pager here. People disagreed all the time. 100 lockstep comments is a fucking bore and I don’t kowtow to demands that I mimic the rest. Fuck that.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: And my comments show that most supposed progressives love for immigrants is mere lip service in many cases.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin:
Biden isn’t particularly good on immigration in the grand scheme of things. He is just miles better than Trump. Same is true on Gaza.
Kay
@Gvg:
I agree Jewish people are a Democratic coalition. 100 per cent
so let’s talk coalition politics instead of finding enemies on the Left.
Muslims are a growing D coalition so you’ll see some D movement in that direction
They’ll have to thread a needle – agree
Citizen Alan
@Poe Larity: I hope I don’t regret clicking on an essay by a god-damned Nazi POS from a government computer.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: This, of course, a fourth:
4. He thought he’d already seen those specific photos.
That wouldn’t be being senile, just mistaken. Lots of people have lots of images on their phones. Some they photographed themselves, some were downloaded from other sources. Those photos may have looked similar to photos in the press, for instance.
FWIW, I agree with Kay that political leaders have to be very careful and controlled in their responses to these photos, even if they’re seeing them for the 18th time that morning and even if they are on all the news sites.
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
I reject your patronizing lectures on feminism
surely you can understand why I would do that – please don’t tell me what my experience in the world is.
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
As the scenario was described, #4 isn’t a possibility because they were pictures on a particular person’s phone that she herself took.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud:
Hence the successful Baud Presidential campaigns of 2012, 2016, and 2020.
;)
Ksmiami
@Glory b: they’re morons. Hope the Latina enjoys getting deported
Ksmiami
@Kay: snow in Yosemite is no joke… stay safe
Chief Oshkosh
@schrodingers_cat:
Whew! Thank Dog!
Now, who brought the donuts? Break ’em out and start sharing!
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat:
Ain’t that the truth.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: But how would Biden know that a priori?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
You, yourself? No.
UncleEbeneezer
Everything Biden is doing will end if Trump gets elected. The only question for any rational adult in November is: which of these two candidates is better (not perfect, not magical, not ideal) for the things I value? That is the reality and the same decision that Black People, Women, LGBTQ People, Native/Indigenous People face in EVERY election. Anyone who thinks things can’t get much, much worse for Palestinians if Trump wins, is dangerously naive. Not voting, protest voting will do absolutely nothing to help Palestinians. Voting for Biden and Dems, will.
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Also, it says much that in the UK there is rising revulsion at Netanyahu’s war strategy because British aid workers have been killed. Had they been Palestinians, would the British care as much?
It’s been a huge issue that the UK Media has done its best to semi-cover and sideline into a both-sidesist conversational cul-de-sac where hundreds of thousands of people from all creeds and colours march peacefully in protest and the usual suspects on the pro-Israeli Right scream about coded antisemitism and fictional Hamas supporting no-go areas in major cities. The point being to present the pro-Israel (plus a bit of milquetoast handwringing) policies supported by the Government and its pseudo-Opposition as the moderate middle-way between extremes.
The targeted murder of these aid-workers has wrecked that cosy strategy because of how it happened and when it happened. Unable to deny the starvation being inflicted on Gaza’s civilians, the idea of increased charity aid (rather than a ceasefire) being the solution was allowed to become conventional wisdom. Media friendly, photogenic, what could go wrong?
The IDF deliberately murdering aid workers using a drones a targeting algorithm straight out of the Hydra playbook, that’s the kind of thing that grabs the back of a population’s head and rubs its collective nose in the puddle of stagnant piss that its Government has enabled by arming the murderers. Combine that shocking realisation with the automated response from the pro-Israel lobby (its not true – it was justified – talking about it is antisemitic – you must love Hamas – etc) and the UK News media is scrambling to adapt to a situation where the ‘very sensible policy’ adopted by the current and future Governments is being widely-viewed as obscene by many of the people who are soon going to be asked to go to the polls and vote for them.
Or, shorter. A LOT of people already cared – but the unarguable obscenity of this particular act of mass murder has made it plain to a lot more people that they should care too.
NotMax
@Kay
Not so much the ultra orthodox Hasidim (or for that matter the Lubavitchers).
VFX Lurker
Because I’m comics-focused, I mostly use Clip Studio Paint. However, most of the iPad artists I know use Procreate.
Really off-topic: there’s a free fire and smoke solver for iPad! It’s called Axiom. It has nothing to do with drawing…but it looks like fun!
(Axiom is normally a commercial plugin for the Houdini software. It was used to generate the fire/smoke for the Continental hotel explosion in the most recent John Wick film).
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But if it wasn’t revealed to him that there were new photos, it would be irrelevant to point out that these were new photos.
cain
@Brachiator:
I think this is an excellent point – if genocide is happening right now – what are we doing about it? News articles about the U.S. selling more arms to Israel (great timing, eh?) could depress the vote or maybe not as we have a lot of other issues here. But it could kill enthusiasm for the Dem party as a whole.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
What is this “for some” nonsense?
Also, I keep hearing from a couple of “independent” talk radio hosts here in Southern California that they are disappointed about the “rematch.” It’s weird. They don’t even talk about what Biden has done, or evaluate Trump’s time in office. They talk as though the presidency is an entertainment program, and they are supposed to get new characters every four years. And they never mention any potential candidates. Details don’t matter. Their imaginary candidate is always better than Biden just because he would be shiny and new.
And note that their phantom candidates are typically male.
It’s tiresome and stupid.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Soprano2: oy! Your husband is so lucky to have you looking out for him. Bemused Senior had the advocate role for her mother when her mother, suffering from dementia and physical issues, was in the hospital. It was a nightmare, even with good medical staff.
Bless you.
Ksmiami
@Geminid: Hamas targeted young people at a music festival. Imagine what we would do to a middle eastern country if Arabic terrorists targeted Coachella or Disneyland.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: True, though, Erik Loomis’s LGM screeds about Biden basically continuing Trump’s immigration policy misled me to think that immigration was still nearly zeroed out under Biden until I looked up the statistics.
I suspect my position on immigration (we could basically open the borders wide and it’d be a net gain for our society) would be a landslide loser among Americans in general.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
When do you stop trusting people? I know I am quicker than average to give up on folks, but I prefer that than being slower than average.
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Haven’t we had THE tall about LGM?
I am with you on immigration. We are probably a very small minority.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I’m wary of selectively mistrusting people who tell me things I don’t like to hear, but that can sometimes make me too eager to believe things I don’t like to hear.
Mr. Bemused Senior
There’s the difference between you and me.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Republicans tell me things I don’t like to hear all the time. I stopped trusting anything they say a long time ago because they objectively lie or mislead much of the time.
Your rule is not a good one IMHO.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: It was a group effort.
Baud
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
I’m sure there are others. I hope so for your sake.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Baud: well, I am wearing pants.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: talk not tall.
schrodingers_cat
@VFX Lurker:Thanks! I have heard about Procreate.
WhatsMyNym
Mexico is a another country, why don’t they seem to want to accept these immigrants instead of sending them on?
It’s just like the immigrants in Europe, who take great risks to get there and then do it all over again to get to England from France.
satby
Though that is exactly what you did, repeatedly, to planet eddie. And attempted to get others to “pile on”, which you always are so opposed to. I’ve been a feminist since before you were born, and your hostility was appalling.
SoupCatcher
One of the Robber Barons is supposed to have said, “I can always pay half the poor to kill the other half.” It feels like it costs less to do this than it used to.
Social engineering can be an obstacle similar to gerrymandering. Sometimes, the amount of money spent on social media to heighten legitimate disagreements in our Democratic coalition can peel off enough support to help Republicans win. TPP was an early proof of concept of this.
WhatsMyNym
@Geminid: Gaza is not another country, it’s controlled by Israel.
wjca
Because then they can continue to bewail what our government is doing. Carefully ignoring their part in enabling it.
Matt McIrvin
@WhatsMyNym: Immigrants largely go where the work is, and that’s probably what’s happening in this case.
We have a market for cheap labor that’s exploitable because it’s extralegal. It’s a bad situation, and the kind of solution I’d prefer, massively expanding legal immigration, wouldn’t replace it–in fact it’d make immigrants generally more expensive to hire, because they’d have legal status and you couldn’t threaten them with deportation.
But I think the fact that advocates of deporting all undocumented immigrants never want to go after the people who hire them is a tell.
wjca
@Old School:
Emphasis added. Definitely approaching the meeting with an open mind.
topclimber
@Baud: Belated FU.
Geminid
@WhatsMyNym: Not sure what this has to do with my comment. I did not mention Gaza.. Please explain.
MomSense
@Kay:
Surely you see the difference between disagreeing about issues as opposed to one’s identity.
bookworm1398
@ Ksmiami. The same thing we do to people who shoot school kids?
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: I think we underestimate the degree to which low-ish-info people saw Bernie Sanders as running to Hillary Clinton’s right, not to her left. That was about cultural issues rather than economics.
Geminid
@MomSense: I did not see Kay attacking Planet Eddie’s identity. I didn’t think she was aggressive either, but she definitely held her ground and I thought it was good ground.
This cannot be verified because the posts are gone. I did not comment in any of Planet Eddie’s threads, but I went back and reread his first three posts twice because of the controversy, and I remember them differently than others are saying here.
Melancholy Jaques
@tam1MI:
Because, of course, Trump has welcomed them and other advocates for Palestinians and he has promised to give them everything they want.
Ruckus
@VOR:
it’s all just fake news.
I’m a bit more direct.
It’s all just bullshit. We all saw what SFB was like as president.
Anyone with the experience of seeing an older generation individual aging – and not in a quiet, refined, dignified way, because not all of us do so in that way, has seen this concept of behavior. Maybe not to this level but then how many normal people are related to SFB? This is a human with an ego about the size/weight/stench of a fully laden garbage truck, aging as ungracefully as is possible.
Kay
@MomSense:
I didn’t attack their identity. I stick up for trans people all the time. I have no intention of groveling and apologizing for being a feminist however.
I’ll debate Planet Eddie anytime but I won’t accept lectures on feminism from male commenters on balloon juice
Feminists are part of the coalition Planet Eddie needs. It’s dumb to attack them. I won’t hold it against trans folks though – I’ll still fight like hell for them
Kay
@Geminid:
They were mad I wouldn’t parrot the exact line that 100 commenters ahead of me parroted.
I’m not a fucking doormat. If Planet Eddie thinks I’m apologizing for feminist they are mistaken. There are plenty of women who shit on women. I’m not one of them.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Cisgender people running into a thread by a Trans/NB person, getting defensive and insisting the focus turn to Cisgender feelings, is aggressive and one of the ways Trans/NB People are routinely made to feel even more unwelcome/marginalized, even in Liberal/Progressive spaces. That was one of the main points PE was trying to make. How people responded made it quite clear who understood the assignment and who didn’t.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer:
@UncleEbeneezer: I don’t buy any of that.
Princess
@Kay: The one thing I have learned in the past four years is it doesn’t matter who you are or what your identity is, if you crap on women, there will be people to praise you for it. Count me as another who doesn’t miss PE.
Paul in KY
@Glory b: I think they are paid ratfuckers.
Paul in KY
@Kay: Sen. Clinton did not run a great campaign. Maybe a bit better than VP Gore’s, but she focused (in hindsight) on the wrong things about TFG’s unfitness for the office.
satby
@UncleEbeneezer: notable in these rebuttals is the complete disappearing of Sister Golden Bear, who supported PE and raised the same points. And that the nicest commenter on this site felt moved to suggest Kay tone it down, before John came on and told everyone to cool it. Ranks as one of the ugliest threads we’ve ever had in the 18+ years I’ve been around.
TERFs are not credits to feminism, take it from an old school 1960s feminist.
Paul in KY
@Kay: If it’s the same starving kid (pic taken by someone else), then he has seen them.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Trans/NB talk regularly about all the challenges of dealing with Cisgender bullshit and the kind of erasure and marginalization that they face, even from well-meaning allies. And that scenarios like the aggressive/defensive responses to PE’s posts are really extremely commonplace (as other Trans/NB commenters affirmed in those very same posts). I see/hear/read these sentiments and frustrations from Trans/NB people I know or follow all the time! It’s one of their biggest gripes about our coalition.
Ramalama
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m an ‘overseas’ American voter who votes with MA. Most of my friends and family who live there were planning on Warren until South Carolina, which shifted EVERYTHING. It felt sudden.
lowtechcyclist
@New Deal democrat:
And consequently, the natural and probable result of the U.S. supplying Israel with money and weaponry to conduct this war is that we are aiding and abetting Israel’s effort to cause mass starvation of Gazans.
ISTM that that is reason enough for the U.S. to cease compliance with the MOU with Israel until Israel withdraws from Gaza. No piece of paper can legally require one to cooperate in a criminal enterprise.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Also that lady could have been lying.
Paul in KY
@Princess: Hillary had alot to offer that generic doofus. He probably just didn’t want to vote for a woman and/or her specifically.
I would have considered him more Right than Left.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Glad you are on top of it. You have to be, cause these people just see your husband as an entity they can charge money for and will also be dead soon.
You are a great wife. Your husband is lucky he has you.
Paul in KY
@SoupCatcher: That was Leland Stanford. A real POS.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Hah! Sure is a tell!
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I voted for Warren but I did not think Warren was actually going to win the nomination. I kind of suspected it’d either be Biden after all, or Kamala Harris, or some dreary Third Way centrist like Bloomberg. Early in the primary season there were a lot of weird little one- or two-week boomlets where the conventional wisdom would latch onto some candidate and it reminded me more of what I’d been accustomed to see in Republican primaries.
People kept insisting that Bernie really could go all the way and the case just seemed really fragile.
Kay
@Princess:
Its the 1990s all over again on here
”I’m a cool woman who hates all those uncool women”
My favorite part was Balloon Juice men tendentiously explaining intersectional feminism to me – they all assumed I hadn’t heard of it
They told me to go watch a you tube on it – that was the level of thought involved
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
You would never, ever explain and scold like you do EXCEPT to a woman.
I mean honestly – how dare you explain Sab’s step grandchildren to her? She doesn’t recite your pat, facile line on “white feminism” so you tell her those kids won’t trust her?
why is it so important to you that I conform to your views on feminism? I’m not ordering you to adopt mine.
If Planet Eddie can’t handle a single commentir or who disagrees on their views on feminism that’s not my problem.
I guess I could have parroted the rest of BJ but 100 of the same comments is a fucking bore.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I believe I will call it anti senioritus.
Except that while he is younger, SFB is delaminating rather rapidly, if the many reports I’ve heard are right, President Biden is not. Many in this country do not look at seniors other than their parents (and yes sometimes them as well) as anything but a drain on everything/everyone else, because old farts are generally living longer. If one has healthcare that has improved so dramatically in my lifetime that many are surviving longer. I will shortly be 3/4 of a century old, in good health. I am by far not the only one.
El Muneco
@Citizen Dave: Also, the site of MLK’s murder is surprisingly claustrophobic, it’s not nearly as open as I’d originally pictured it. I just take the lyrics as poetic and metaphorically correct even if they don’t get all the literal details right.
El Muneco
@Matt McIrvin: As I’ve noted on LGM before, my grandfather was an illegal immigrant who was dodging the (legal) draft in his home country, but got away with it because that country was Canada and he passed the paper bag test, so was able to get a job in the shipyards.
Weirdly, my position on immigration is the only opinion I have that makes me significantly left of the median Dem and not another neoliberal shill – I’m on the same “Do they want in? We’ll find a place for them” team as you are…
El Muneco
@SoupCatcher: See also: “We don’t need to worry about mutinies no matter how badly we treat the common troops, since we can always bring in the Navy to suppress the Army and vice versa”
satby
So you opted to be mean. Because someone didn’t conform to your views on feminism. Months later, it’s still bugging you; but I suspect you feel shitty about how mean you were, and that so many of us witnessed it. It may feel good in the moment to beat someone down, but the bile in you spirit stays with you. So there’s no confusion, I am a female, a feminist, I don’t hate other women, and I don’t agree with or respect you at all.
El Muneco
@Princess: (129) I’m with the other(s) – I’m mostly on LGM and moonlight here and a few other places, but even though we do love ourselves some hippie-punching and red-brown alliance … the number of commenters even there who would consider that hypothetical dude to be a horseshoe leftist would be in single digits. He’s not even a Democrat unless he votes anti-TFG as a single issue and will flee as soon as the crisis is over.