Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

We’re not going back!

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Thursday Morning Open Thread: We Have *Debates*!

Thursday Morning Open Thread: We Have *Debates*!

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… THE DETAILS:
Trump and Biden have agreed to two debates. The first will held at 9 pm. Eastern time on June 27 at CNN’s studios in Atlanta, in a critical battleground state. “To ensure candidates may maximize the time allotted in the debate, no audience will be present,” CNN said in a statement. To qualify, candidates must receive at least 15% in four national polls of registered or likely voters that meet CNN’s standards.

Anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would moderate the debate, CNN said.

The second debate will take place on Sept. 10 and will be hosted by ABC. While ABC has yet to detail where that debate will take place or the format, it set the same 15% polling threshold as CNN. Anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate that debate, the network said…

THE TIMING
The first debate will play out in a jam-packed and unsettled political calendar, before either candidate becomes his party’s official nominee at the summer conventions — scheduled to begin July 15 for Republicans and Aug. 19 for Democrats.

The June 27 match-up will come after the expected conclusion of Trump’s criminal hush money trial in New York, foreign trips by Biden in mid-June to France and Italy, and the end of the Supreme Court’s term. That term will include a ruling on whether Trump is immune from federal prosecution for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. The debate will also come before the expected start of two criminal trials on opposite coasts for the president’s son, Hunter.

The second debate would take place before most states begin early voting — though some overseas and military ballots may already be in the mail…

WHAT ABOUT OTHER NETWORKS?
The debates will be the first televised general election match-ups to be hosted by an individual news organization. The 1960 debates, which helped show the power of the medium to influence public opinion, were hosted jointly by the leading networks of the day, ABC, CBS and NBC. The presidential debates of 1976, 1980 and 1984 were organized by the League of Women Voters, and every debate since has been hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Traditionally the debates are simulcast across all networks and other streaming outlets to reach the widest possible viewing audience. It was not yet clear whether the 2024 matchups would be shared similarly…


pundits: trump called biden's bluff on these debates. the president is likely quivering at this fact.
the 4 biden campaign texts i've received today: I will gut that punk ass like a fish. i shall break him, like you would a dog. i shall grind his bones to make my bread

— ?????? ?????????? (@danmynrd.bsky.social) May 15, 2024 at 6:43 PM

Reader Interactions

132Comments

  5. 5.

    rusty

    I think the Biden campaign is smart with this.  Trump has spewed out enough unpopular comments in the last few months that getting them highlighted early in the campaign should help set the baseline.  Trump is in favor of criminalizing abortion, selling himself to the oil industry, abandoning Ukraine and letting Russia and China take over other countries.  The list goes on.  Add Trumps habit of rambling off topic.  I also loved Joe’s smack down approach to announcing the debates and goading Trump into responding.

  6. 6.

    Jeffro

    Biden, in his opening statement: “You’re not going to try and give me Covid like last time, right Don?”

    Great tweet selection btw AL!

  10. 10.

    TBone

    I hope Dark Brandon will simply pardon Hunter if he is convicted of anything.  Heads will explode and I say GOOD. Stone and Manafort committed actual treason and still walk free.

  11. 11.

    Jeffro

    Speaking of good tweets, here’s one from a @JVLast via Tom Nichols’ feed:

     

    Trump’s first term turned out much worse than anyone feared.’ He did the mean tweets and some racist stuff. He deployed armed, masked, and unbadged federal agents to grab citizens off the streets. He did his family separation policy with migrants. Not great, but also not “end of the Republic” stuff.

    But then the sum of all fears hit. America was handed a real-deal, genuine crisis while Trump was at the helm and the result was that one million Americans died from COVID while Trump oversaw the greatest failure of the federal government since the Great Depression.

    And then Trump lost his re-elect and attempted a coup.

    How bad was this? If you went back in a time machine and described Trump’s COVID response and coup attempt to Republican voters in 2016, they would have accused you of being a hysteric.

    it really can’t be emphasized enough…trump didn’t turn out to be as bad as many of us feared…he was WORSE

  13. 13.

    p.a.

    What does tRump have, what can he mentally package for a debate besides spittle-flecked “migrantsMIGRANTS booga booga!” “SleepyCriminalMastermind Joe”?

     

    Sadly migrantsMigrantsMIGRANTS could have legs beyond his bigotbase.

  15. 15.

    Soprano2

    One reason I wish the TFG trial was televised is because people would be paying a lot more attention to it. There would be clips online that millions of people would see and hear, and they would see how he’s behaving and hear what these witnesses are saying about him. I suspect that for a lot of people his trial is mostly background noise.

    I continue to be amazed that the press is obsessed with the weaknesses of the candidate who hasn’t been indicted for 88 felonies and isn’t currently on trial for some of them, and has never talked about how Republicans need to stage an intervention at their convention and vote for someone else to be their candidate.

  17. 17.

    Basilisc

    I’m just looking forward to a reasoned exchange of views that enables informed viewers to better understand the two candidates’ differences on key issues of domestic and foreign policy.

  18. 18.

    Ohio Mom

    I remember laughing in shock as Trump stalked Hillary at that debate. I could hardly believe my eyes. To me, it was one of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moments. No one would put that in a movie about a presidential race, it would be seen as too preposterous.

    Surely, such behavior would kill Trump’s chances; other candidates in other debates, lost because of minor lapses (of course, Trumps menacing behavior was not a lapse, it was intentional).

    But no, this undignified, unpresidential, beyond creepy action only helped Trump. So it’s hard for me to be sanguine about our chances in a debate.

  20. 20.

    TBone

    The Penice fly larvae might hatch out of the dead ferret carcass on Orange Turd’s head.  Magats.

  21. 21.

    bbleh

    Contra much Wearily Knowledgeable Opinion, I think “debates” ARE useful when candidates are not well known to the broad mass of voters (most of whom tune all this sh!t out until October or so), because they reveal character in a way that scripted speeches, position papers, etc. do not.  You get to see the human, in the (televised) flesh, responding in real time to mostly unscripted and deliberately challenging circumstances, for an extended period, with no re-takes, no prompters, etc.  It’s very useful information for people who don’t have the time or inclination to immerse themselves heavily in politics.

    BUT in this case, both candidates are so well known that, absent the occasional zinger, I don’t think they’re gonna be very revealing.  Trump will do his usual blather / Gish-gallop / bluster / rule-breaking thing, class bad-boy acting out to the amusement of his little friends and daring the teacher to do something about it.  Biden will be canny and composed, and I’m pretty sure he’ll slip in some remarks about things Trump has said that will raise some eyebrows among the less-informed, and he’ll look and sound his age.  Absent a medical crisis for one or both of them, I don’t see any surprises.

    I also think, again contra Informed Opinion, Trump won’t back out.  And I think if things go as expected, it won’t be a win for him, which is why Biden goaded him into this situation.

    Can I haz my 6-figure Times Politics Knower salary now plz?

  22. 22.

    Another Scott

    Fritschner’s right – they won’t stop.

    And we’ve been here before, with someone who wasn’t quite as deranged as TIFG. Wikipedia:

    On December 16, 1988,[99] LaRouche was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud involving more than $30 million in defaulted loans; 11 counts of actual mail fraud involving $294,000 in defaulted loans; and one count of conspiring to defraud the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The judge said that the claim of a vendetta was “arrant nonsense”, and that, “the idea that this organization is a sufficient threat to anything that would warrant the government bringing a prosecution to silence them just defies human experience.”[100] Jury foreman Buster Horton told The Washington Post that it was the failure of LaRouche aides to repay loans which swayed the jury in the Virginia case. He said that the jury “all agreed [LaRouche] was not on trial for his political beliefs. We did not convict him for that. He was convicted for those 13 counts he was on trial for.”[5]

    As part of the trial in Alexandria, six of LaRouche’s associates were also found guilty. His chief fund-raiser, William Wertz, was convicted on ten mail fraud counts. LaRouche’s legal adviser and treasurer, Edward Spannaus, along with fund raising operatives Dennis Small, Paul Greenberg, Michael Billington, and Joyce Rubinstein, were convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Wertz and Spannaus were sentenced to five years imprisonment each, with Spannaus serving a total of two and a half years until his release from custody.[99] Both were fined $1,000.[101] The others received three-year terms and various fines.[1]

    While in prison LaRouche released claims that he was tortured as part of an assassination attempt.[102] LaRouche ran two political campaigns from prison: for Virginia’s 10th Congressional District in 1990 and for U.S. President in 1992.[103] One of his cellmates during his incarceration at the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Minnesota was televangelist Jim Bakker. Bakker later devoted a chapter of his book, I Was Wrong, to his experience with LaRouche.[104][105] Bakker described his astonishment at LaRouche’s detailed knowledge of the Bible. According to Bakker, LaRouche received a daily briefing each morning by phone, often in German, and on more than one occasion LaRouche had information days before it was reported on the network news. Bakker also wrote that his cellmate was convinced that their cell was bugged. In Bakker’s view, “to say LaRouche was a little paranoid would be like saying that the Titanic had a little leak.”[106] LaRouche also befriended Richard Miller, a former FBI agent and fellow inmate who was imprisoned on espionage charges.[107] LaRouche was paroled in 1994 after serving five years of the 15-year sentence, the normal schedule for parole at that time. LaRouche commented later that “… in effect, George H. W. Bush put me in the jug, and Bill Clinton got me out”.[108]

    Larouche died in 2019 at age 96.

    As long as he’s alive, TIFG will keep this crap up. It’s who he is.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  23. 23.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Trump will show up. Or not. Either way, it’s a win-win for Biden. Trump is thisclose from degrading into the “Breakfast at Bernie’s” presidential candidate.

  24. 24.

    JMG

    It is beyond clear to me that the only reason Trump is close to, let alone leading, Biden is that Americans have blocked their memories of the pandemic as being simply to traumatic to keep. So Trump was President from 2017-2019, and nobody, except maybe Biden, was President in 2020. Before the disaster was a golden age is a pretty common folk myth, even if before the disaster things kinda sucked.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @JMG:

    I’m not going to judge people until the election is over, but I’m also not going to make excuses for them.

  26. 26.

    narya

    First post-surgery run this morning! I am still old and slow, and I still don’t care.

    Also too, for Wisconsin/Illinois (or any other) peeps: my friend group has at least two extra tickets to the Great Taste of the Midwest, in Madison, second Saturday in August. If you’re interested let me know, and/or let one of the front pagers know.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Stephen A. Boyd, Ph.D.
    @StephenABoydPh1
    The control and the vicious cruelty…precisely their point. Ask yourself this: if they REALLY cared about “unborn babies”, why does the ENTIRE Bible Belt have the highest maternal/peripartum mortalities of any of the 32 most advanced countries on the planet?
    Quote

    Right Wing Watch
    @RightWingWatch
    ·
    Apr 29
    Christian nationalists Steve Cruz and Ben Zeisloft agree that any woman who gets an abortion “should be killed”: “She should be tried and convicted; dig a hole and put her down.”

  28. 28.

    dmsilev

    I continue to marvel at the decline and fall of Nate Silver. 2024 Silver is exactly the sort of person that 2008 Silver abhorred and showed to be ignorant.

  29. 29.

    Math Guy

    What I would love to see is a debate in which the moderators are able to fact-check responses in realtime. If tfg denies ever having said xxx, a video of him saying xxx can be played immediately.

  30. 30.

    Anonymous At Work

    So glad that the townhall format is going away.  Those are useless formats now.  The people are pre-screened for any knowledge or opinions or any sense that elections matter or have consequences.

    They had their time but the Commission of Battered Spouses bleached and leeched the value from them.

  31. 31.

    gene108

    Also a pretty decent chance Trump pulls out because it’s “rigged,” but if it actually happens Biden is going to make a criminal trial jab that will cause Trump to go absolutely ballistic

    Biden doesn’t need to poke Trump about his trials to get Trump to go off. Trump’s whole debate “strategy” is going to be to talk non-stop, talk over President Biden, and the moderators airing his grievances about political persecution, Biden’s weaponized government trying to destroy him, etc.

    I doubt Trump’s going to behave with the restraint he showed in 2016 and 2020. He has everything to lose by not winning this year.

    Trump is still very loud. He uses volume to convince people he’s vigorous.

  32. 32.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @JMG:

    Similar to how the people forgot about Bush and blamed Obama for the economic collapse and the bank bailouts.

  35. 35.

    jonas

    @Jeffro: America was handed a real-deal, genuine crisis while Trump was at the helm and the result was that one million Americans died from COVID while Trump oversaw the greatest failure of the federal government since the Great Depression.

    And four years later, a lot of Americans’ memory of this calamity is “Well sure, but eggs and my Big Mac were a lot cheaper, so it wasn’t all bad!” Time was people held government responsible for real fuckups (like Trump’s Covid response) and less so for pretend fuckups or things outside its control (like droughts that cause the price of farm commodities to rise). But we appear to be long through that looking glass…

  36. 36.

    Another Scott

    @Anonymous At Work: The Commission was a horrible idea from the start, IMHO.  The parties didn’t like the League of Women Voters asking sensible questions, so they took the debates away from them.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  38. 38.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @dmsilev:

    Nate Silver seems to be emotionally tied to Trump coming back. When Biden wins in November – winning every state he won in 2020 except for Georgia – he will still be arguing that Biden did it wrong.

  39. 39.

    MomSense

    • Ok, this has been bothering me for some time.  Setting aside the immorality and the certain civil rights violations that will result from trump’s plan to do mass roundup and deportation of “illegals”, just how much do MAGATs want to pay for produce?  When no migrants are available to harvest our food, a fucking head of romaine lettuce is going to cost $25.  Do they no longer care about the poor salad bar at Applebees?
  40. 40.

    JoyceH

    I just can’t believe Trump’s handlers will let
    him debate. They see him every day, they have to know how he’s declined. Though maybe they’ve gotten used to it? But I think they’ll find an excuse to pull out. Like they will set up a Fox debate and Biden will decline so they’ll cancel the rest.

    As for Biden zinging Trump on his trials, he can’t do that – Nixon almost got Manson a mistrial by talking about the case. He can mention the completed trials though, so there’s the Carroll and the business fraud.

  42. 42.

    Soprano2

    @dmsilev: He’s one of those guys who thinks because he’s smart about some things he’s smart about everything. I have yet to see anyone make an argument for why a younger presidential candidate would be better for Dems other than that they wouldn’t be old. That seems to be it.

  43. 43.

    Scout211

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I thought I saw a Trump post this morning about a Fox hosted debate. I can’t find it now. I hadn’t had my coffee so who knows.

     

    I posted that yesterday to one of the debate threads. He agreed to a Fox hosted debate.  I think it was October 2, if I remember correctly.  Biden’s team hasn’t responded and I hope they never do.

    ETA: Link

    President Joe Biden’s campaign accused former President Donald Trump of “playing games” after he went rogue and independently announced a third debate with Biden following the candidates agreeing to two debates.

    Biden took to social media on Wednesday morning to challenge Trump to two debates, which the former president quickly accepted. Debates are set for June 27 on CNN and September on ABC. After these events were agreed to, Trump appeared to go rogue, announcing a third debate in October on Fox News — without any word from Biden’s camp.

    . . .

    “Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Crooked Joe Biden on FoxNews. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd,” Trump wrote. “The Hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Thank you, DJT!”

  44. 44.

    Kay

    Detroit sees first population growth since 1957

    wow

    The NYTimes doesn’t see the good economy because it’s centered around places the NYTimes doesn’t are about

    They prefer Detroit as “dying rust belt city”

  45. 45.

    Kay

    Detroit sees first population growth since 1957

    wow

    The NYTimes doesn’t see the good economy because it’s centered around places the NYTimes doesn’t are about

    They prefer Detroit as “dying rust belt city”

  46. 46.

    Soprano2

    @Another Scott: I am listening to the current Pod Save America podcast right now. They say the Biden people lost confidence in the debate commission when they allowed TFG’s people to flagrantly violate the covid conditions of the debates in 2020. I think the debate commission is done because of that – if they weren’t willing to enforce their own rules what good are they? Plus, I’m sure they would never agree to cut anyone’s mic, and that’s a necessary condition of debating TFG.

  48. 48.

    jonas

    @JMG: What people remember is the robust economy Trump inherited from Obama and then fucked up with his upper-class tax cuts and response to the pandemic which consisted primarily of talking up the stock market, which he claimed was the ultimate benchmark of presidential success, and less on containing a deadly pathogen.

    Biden needs to remind voters that a lot of the things that are worrying them now from inflation to the deficit to growing wealth inequality stem directly from Trump-era policies to coddle the rich that he’s had to spend four years fighting to get back under control.

  50. 50.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: Wow indeed. I’m a Detroit native. When I was growing up, the population was close to 2M. Detroit was the 5th largest city in the country. It seemed to miss out of the revival that took place in other big cities, but I still have hope. This is a good sign.

  51. 51.

    Ohio Mom

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yes, Hillary should have acknowledged Trump was stalking her, one way or another. Even just turning around and staring him down might have worked. Being passive never works on men like that.

    It was a thin line, if she acted too much like a scolding mama, that could have backfired — we already knew she was shrill (/s). Though voters who would have been angry at Hillary for putting Trump in his place were already a lost cause.

    I can’t blame Hillary for not being prepared to be stalked, that was debate behavior without precedent.

  52. 52.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: The NYTimes doesn’t see the good economy because it’s centered around places the NYTimes doesn’t are about

    This could be more true than you know. Yesterday I asked my investment guy what if any storm clouds he saw in the economy, and he replied “Commercial real estate”. He said they have no bank company holdings, no insurance company holdings, and no REIT’s because of this problem. So yeah, the NYTimes could be seeing the problems of downtown NY City real estate and thinks that’s the big story about the economy. I also predict that all of the cities around the Great Lakes will eventually start to grow again because of the easy availability of water. Those cities in the Southwest are going to eventually be in big trouble because of a lack of enough water to support their populations.

  53. 53.

    jonas

    @Soprano2: The debate commission was useful back when both major parties and their candidates were normal politicians who observed decorum and rules. With Trump, that was all out the window* and the only way you can “debate” him is with a set of rules that severely curtail his ability to rage around and fling feces at everything on stage.

    *actually, if we recall, it went back — as so much of this populist shit does — to Sarah Palin who told the VP debate moderator (Gwen Ifill, iirc) in 2008 that she didn’t need no stinkin’ “rules” and was not going to respond to questions she deemed unworthy.

  54. 54.

    Soprano2

    @jonas:  which consisted primarily of talking up the stock market, which he claimed was the ultimate benchmark of presidential success

    He’d better dial that back, because all three markets hit record highs yesterday, and the Dow is flirting with 40,000. That’s why I was agape at hearing a woman complaining about how her 401K went up and up when TFG was president but it’s not doing that now, and all I could think was “what are you invested in because my stuff is certainly gaining in value?”.

  55. 55.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @JoyceH: OT, but I am greatly enjoying Mary Bennet and the Bingley Codex, and looking forward the next books in the series.

  56. 56.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ohio Mom: I don’t blame her either, it was unprecedented. If it had been me I doubt I would have done any better than she did. Hindsight however is always 20/20 and I would have seriously enjoyed her putting him in his place like a 3 yo.

  57. 57.

    jonas

    @Soprano2: I was just saying this the other day to a friend of mine: I think America’s future will once again lie in the Great Lakes states precisely because of the climate and availability of water. Micron Technologies just sited a huge chip fabrication plant near Syracuse precisely because of the nearby fresh water source (Lake Ontario) that they needed. As climate change renders large swaths of the South and Southwest uninhabitable for people and many animals, or unsurvivable in hurricane season, places like Michigan, Ohio, and upstate New York are probably going to be far more attractive places to live, grow crops, and site manufacturing.

  59. 59.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Ohio Mom:

    I can’t blame Hillary for not being prepared to be stalked, that was debate behavior without precedent.

    I blame the f’in moderators, who made no effort to rein him in. It was their job to control the situation and they chose not to.

  61. 61.

    jonas

    @Soprano2: Sheez. Even if she was all in on gold bars and bitcoin, that 401k should have been doing amazing. What the hell did she invest in?

    I sold the stocks and moved my two oldest kids’ college savings accounts into cash two years ago when they started school, as one does, and while they had a good run since we started saving for them 15 years ago or so, man they could have easily squeezed another 3-5k out of them had I not had to liquidate when I did. But since you don’t know which way things are going in the short term, while you’re paying the tuition bills, you don’t want to be stuck with things sliding backwards.

  62. 62.

    Anonymous At Work

    @Soprano2: Hence, the Commission of Battered Spouses, despite being a pretty bad analogy.  “We set ground rules but don’t dare enforce them or the Abusive Spouse will get abusive.”

  63. 63.

    schrodingers_cat

    History buffs: How did NYT cover FDR and LBJ. Were they covered with the concern troll mode that NYT uses for the more recent D Presidents like Clinton and Obama?

  65. 65.

    Eyeroller

    @Soprano2: I can only speculate she put it all into “safe” bond funds. Those move inversely to interest rates.

    Edit: or as Baud says below, she’s either lying or she believes a counterfactual because it fits her information sources and worldview.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @jonas:

    Just assume she’s lying. Her news sources told her things were terrible so she adopted that as her world view.

  67. 67.

    Anonymous At Work

    @O. Felix Culpa: They feared being called “liberals” in bad faith more than enforcing the Commission’s rules.  Hence, going to networks directly for a debate makes MUCH more sense.  Network employees enforcing their employers’ rules, and the network will be judged based on its employees’ enforcement of employers’ rules.

  69. 69.

    schrodingers_cat

    NYT loves autocrats. In their podcast about the Indian election, most of their coverage is focused on one person. India is a parliamentary democracy so unless the BJP gets a majority of votes in the lower house Modi cannot become the PM. That is not guaranteed at all. Also 25% of the country still has to vote as the last stage of polling is on May 20th. NYT and the rest of American media are covering it like a Presidential election which it is not.

  70. 70.

    narya

    @Another Scott: Daaaaang . . . no way I want to run THAT much! But the part about just getting up and doing it totally resonates–it got me through the pandemic, for one thing. I’ve slipped away from it a bit since retirement, but I’ve been thinking I need to get back to something closer to “get up and go out first thing.” I also cannot run every day–I walk many days. I also will run some distance then walk back. Really, it’s the get-off-my-ass-and-move that seems to be the main thing.

  71. 71.

    Jackie

    @bbleh: Normies aren’t paying attention to politics. The debates will be a refresher course of the REAL CONTRAST between our presidential choices.

    I saw a poll (I know🙄) yesterday that 17% of Americans believe Dobbs is Biden’s fault – undoubtedly due to Biden was the president when Roe was overturned. For this reason alone, I hope TIFG brags repeatedly that HIS Supreme Court appointees were the reasons Roe was overturned during the first debate (in case the 2nd debate is cancelled for whatever reason.)

  72. 72.

    Kay

    Detroit took a really different approach the last ten years.

    Some national reporter should write about it. Detroit went hard with “welcome to all comers!”, embracing new residents (including and especially immigrants) instead of becoming fearful and ungenerous and bitter.

  73. 73.

    Soprano2

    @Betty: I heard that, but he can’t have it both ways. The market is going up because the fundamentals are good, and they are still confident there will be rate cuts this year.

  75. 75.

    Soprano2

    @jonas: Unfortunately we don’t know, because the reporter wasn’t smart enough or aware enough to ask that follow up question. I suspect we would have found out it is indeed still going up, but she just doesn’t feel as good about it now. It was just a placeholder for “everything was cheaper in 2019 and I miss that”.

  76. 76.

    narya

    @Kay: I also have enjoyed the HGTV show set in Detroit–this gay couple basically buys up small, completely gross abandoned houses and renovates them, often several on a block, it seems? The neighbors seem to like it (of course they’d only show positive ones), and the houses are quite modest.

  79. 79.

    catclub

    @Melancholy Jaques: Similar to how the people forgot about Bush and blamed Obama for the economic collapse and the bank bailouts.

     

    I do not see it that way. Obama was re-elected AND they continued to blame GWBush for the collapse.

    Now the 2010 House election…..

  80. 80.

    catclub

    @Eyeroller: 17-20% of Americans believe any number of insane things.

     

    Are you suggesting that believing Elvis is alive on a hidden planet insane? I say good day, Sir, good day.

  81. 81.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @narya: I’ve seen that show. It’s great. Also, I once watched another one about tiny houses being built in the Cass Corridor. A number of them were inhabited by young people who has aged out of the foster care system.

  84. 84.

    Ruckus

    @Soprano2:

    President Biden does the job. He’s not standing on stage yelling about how great he isn’t, he actually does the job of being president, instead of the exact opposite. It is after all, an actual job of running the country, for all the people, rather than spending all day running for office so he can stay out of jail. Would I like that he was a bit younger? Sure that would be nice, like the time he was in second place in that white building. But we are where we are, we have 2 candidates, both old, the one only very slightly younger and going senile rapidly right in front of us and unable to actually  do the job of being human and one in the job, actually being reasonably good at being both human and president.

  85. 85.

    narya

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: That sounds really fabulous. Kids who age out of foster care are really screwed so much of the time, IIUC.

    @Timill: Interesting! What I like about it is that it’s really focused on (a) functionality, (b) affordability, and (c) the NEIGHBORHOOD. Fixing up a couple of houses on a block improves everyone’s environment, and it isn’t just razing a house and building a lot-line-to-lot-line McMansion. No clue whether it’s “real,” but I sure hope so.

  86. 86.

    Jackie

    @Eyeroller: True. But being as Roe/Dobbs is a HUGE GOTV topic, it’s imperative the CORRECT REASON Roe was overturned is broadcast as often as possible. The debates will be widely watched by a lot of those 17%.

  87. 87.

    mrmoshpotato

    Hillary Clinton should moderate both.

    “Donald, stop being a lying sack of shit who wants to fuck his own daughter!”

  89. 89.

    Ruckus

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    I think he’s way past the this close from the degrading stage, he’s deep into it and the throttle is pinned to the floorboard. As an old fart myself I’ve seen the degradation on many occasions and this is a lot worse than what it normally looks like, but then ShitForBrains is anything but normal.

  90. 90.

    ...now I try to be amused

    @Ruckus:

    President Biden does the job. He’s not standing on stage yelling about how great he isn’t, he actually does the job of being president, instead of the exact opposite.

    Amen.  Biden chooses to do the right thing over the thing that makes him look better. President Obama was the same. People who believe appearance is reality will never understand or appreciate them.

  91. 91.

    Captain C

    @jonas:

    Even if she was all in on gold bars and bitcoin, that 401k should have been doing amazing. What the hell did she invest in?

    Truth Social.

  93. 93.

    Soprano2

    @Ruckus: Up until close to the end you could talk to my grandfather for 15 minutes and not know anything was wrong with him. It was only when he started telling the same three stories again that you knew there was a problem. I think it’s getting harder for them to conceal TFG’s cognitive problems. The thing is, different types of dementia present differently; there is no one thing called “dementia”.

  96. 96.

    schrodingers_cat

    @zhena gogolia: My public library has all of NYT archives. But I am not motivated enough to dig through them to test my hypothesis. I was hoping that someone here had already done that.

    Before there was MAGA Haberman there was Judith Miller who was Cheney’s mouthpiece. NYT has an institutional problem it seems to me. I am wondering how far back it goes.

  97. 97.

    Citizen Alan

    @Ohio Mom: I shall say she should have just looked over at him with a concerned expression and said “Are you okay, Donald? Do you need someone to help you?” Just pretend he was a doddering old fool who had wandered away from the podium.

  98. 98.

    Ruckus

    @bbleh:

    I believe that SFB is massively living up to my moniker for him and that he has also massively regressed, mainly because he started out as a massive asshole. And only knows how to go lower. Which means he is going to be a massive asshole to his last day. And yes I agree, he has NO reverse gear, he’s full speed ahead, because he only sees one way out of the mess he leaves behind every step he takes, even as/and because he thinks he is the worlds greatest human. And he is, once again, at the minimum, 100% wrong.

  99. 99.

    Anyway

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: re Detroit

    One of my favorite chopped winners was a Detroit resident who’d come to the country a few years before as a refugee from Burundi. He had come with nothing and now worked in a restaurant, had a wife (also a refugee), twin girls – hardworking, optimistic, hopeful, charming – so inspirational.

    He planned to donate his Chopped winnings to  a hostel in Detroit where he and his wife had stayed when they first got to the US. He said the place was a great help and resource to them and others like them… seems like Detroit has tools in place to help newcomers assimilate and adapt.

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    @Soprano2:

    The thing is, different types of dementia present differently; there is no one thing called “dementia”.

    Absolutely true. A large part of the path of decline is based upon the personality of the human in decline. A normal human will not make a lot of noise nor decline and all the while make a lot of noise, letting everyone know how bad it’s going, because they are shit in the first place and while they may have been able to hide it a bit (he didn’t…) as they go down that path they have to unknowingly let every other human know they are going, badly and full speed in the one direction we all end up going one day.

  101. 101.

    Jeffro

    @jonas: trump showed the GOP that as long as you never hold anyone from the Republican Party accountable for anything, and have zero standards, in our current political system and media environment, you pay no real price.

    (that’s what it feels like, anyway; in practice, they did gradually lose the Senate, the House, and the White House)

  102. 102.

    Captain C

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Before there was MAGA Haberman there was Judith Miller who was Cheney’s mouthpiece.

    Judith Miller was so bad, and openly in bed with the subjects of her reporting (figuratively and apparently literally) that Maureen Dowd of all people accused her of doing her reporting with her legs in the air.

    NYT has an institutional problem it seems to me. I am wondering how far back it goes.

    At least to the ’20s and ’30s, when they were knob-polishing both Hitler and Stalin (Walter Duranty is the contemporary definition of willingly useful idiot with his glowing reports on Stalinism and denial of the genocide-by-famine that Stalin was doing to Ukraine in the ’30s.  He won a Pulitzer for his efforts (* gag *)).  I also remember them (the FTFNYT) humping Whitewater (you know, a shady land deal in which the Clintons were victims) in the ’90s as hard as they humped Butter Emails in 2016.

    ed. for grammar

  103. 103.

    Jeffro

    @jonas:  I was just saying this the other day to a friend of mine: I think America’s future will once again lie in the Great Lakes states precisely because of the climate and availability of water.

    I was going to say the same thing!  Glad I read through the thread for once.  =)

    But yeah…the whole Great Lakes region + the NW and NE have great potential.  hell, they’d better!

  104. 104.

    Soprano2

    @Ruckus: I can tell you from my experience that the mental “governors” that help us tell white lies to smooth things out seem to go away. My husband is in general more prickly with me than he used to be, which makes me wonder if this is what he always thought he just didn’t say it out loud. It’s one reason I need help, he’ll do things for other people that he won’t always do for me.

  105. 105.

    Jeffro

    @Jackie: I saw a poll (I know🙄) yesterday that 17% of Americans believe Dobbs is Biden’s fault – undoubtedly due to Biden was the president when Roe was overturned.

    I saw that too and a) given how Rs respond to polls, and b) given the ‘crazification’ factor, 17% actually seemed like a victory.  For what, I’m not sure – “facts”?  “Evidence”?  Something like that.

  106. 106.

    Soprano2

    @Jeffro: Here at work we sometimes say that water will be the oil of the 21st century. It’ll be the thing that drives the economy and people’s behavior and even wars.

  107. 107.

    Victor Matheson

    I suspect in any reasonably moderated debate Trump will wind up like Kristi Noem’s dog.

  108. 108.

    grumbles

    Nate is an excellent example of the structural theory of media awfulness.

    Dude literally made his bones on hard numbers and quantitative analysis, and now that he’s a Name, everything is about how he feels about things from his 1%er perch.

    I mean, it is pathetic. But that’s just human. The machine is going to keep saying the same things. If not  through his mouth, then it’ll find another one.

  109. 109.

    Anonymous At Work

    @Captain C: Between the Club For Growth-driven primary destruction of Rockefeller Republicans and the pro-segregation defection of Southern Democrats, American politics lost any “balance” that the NYT insisted that American politics MUST MAINTAIN at all costs.  Combined with the Washington Post bringing down a Republican President, it left the NYT unbalanced and with serious feelings of “hardware” inadequacy.
    So, I’ve always felt that the Sullies and their editors want a Democratic President’s head on their platter both for “Balance” and because of hardware envy towards the Washington Post, “a mere local paper” in their eyes.

  110. 110.

    TerryC

    @Kay: I donated the first 9 baskets for a new 18-disc golf course at Palmer Park in Detroit two years ago. Now there are 27 freer\ holes there. Finally, a Detroit city course accessible to mass transit!

  111. 111.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:

    it really can’t be emphasized enough…trump didn’t turn out to be as bad as many of us feared…he was WORSE

     

    Every horrible thing that we did that made us lose sleep….

    when the crisis was over, we breathed a sigh of relief.

    The deliberate incompetence was obvious from the beginning.

    Counting down the days…

    But, our luck ran out with COVID.

    I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

    Our.luck.ran.out. 

     

    I thought the thing we, as a country, could never come back from, was his dropping Nukes somewhere.

    I never thought it would be from a pandemic.

  112. 112.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Jeffro: After the disaster of Covid, after all the people recognizing that maybe disbanding the pandemic response team was a bad idea in retrospect, after all the new warnings about avian flu, what’s high on his list for things to do on Day 1?

    Disband the pandemic response team.

    A small thing in light of the other “I’ll just be a dictator for one day”, but it still appalls me.

  113. 113.

    Anyway

    Bill Kristol has spoken of how successful the Rethug project of “working the refs” has been. Constant attacks of “liberal media” (from the 1990s?) has resulted in MSM terrified of saying anything positive about Democrats. Also not to look closely at policy as reality favors liberals

  114. 114.

    Jackie

    The Biden-Harris campaign said Thursday that it has accepted an invitation from CBS News to participate in a vice presidential debate in July or August, Axios reports.

    The campaign accepted the invitation to participate in an in-studio debate on either July 23 or Aug. 13.

    Deadlines for TIFG to crown his chosen VP’s tiara.

  117. 117.

    linnen

    @Jeffro:

    I remember liberals describing Trump’s behavior in real time during the 2016 and were called ‘hysterical’, that it was all an act.

  118. 118.

    rikyrah

    @Jeffro:

    But then the sum of all fears hit. America was handed a real-deal, genuine crisis while Trump was at the helm and the result was that one million Americans died from COVID while Trump oversaw the greatest failure of the federal government since the Great Depression.

     

    Which is why I have felt that the Biden Campaign SHOULD be putting out damn near daily

    ” Are you better off than you were 4 years ago”

    Ads.

    Because, to remind people, when the shyt hit the fan, the level of deliberate incompetence of this Administration.

  119. 119.

    Jackie

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Disband the pandemic response team.

    Didn’t TIFG do that early in his first term? Which contributed for being behind the eight ball when the Covid first pandemic started?

  121. 121.

    rikyrah

    @Soprano2:

     I also predict that all of the cities around the Great Lakes will eventually start to grow again because of the easy availability of water.

     

    I just replied something similar about why I think Detroit is gonna continue to grow.

  122. 122.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: As an immigrant my luck ran out the day he was elected. I did contemplate leaving for good. We had just bought a new home and I was wondering if that had been a good decision. I also tried to figure out how much stuff I could fit in my car along with my cats if I had to leave for Canada. I was in that mindset of fight or flight for weeks after the November election. I chose fight and started my application for citizenship in December. Mailed it in a day before the Orange One’s inauguration and became a naturalized citizen on the July 4 of 2017.

    The stunt the Orange One pulled on the first day of office with the Presidential EO banning all Muslims from entering showed that my fears were grounded in reality.

    I was one of the lucky ones. There were many who were not so lucky

    His evil has been apparent since he stepped off that escalator with those gross statements about immigrants. He said Mexicans but he in reality put a target on every immigrant’s back

    ETA: I convinced 5 other GC card holders to apply for citizenship that same year. So that was 5 more voters in the Democratic column in 2018 midterms.

  124. 124.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @catclub:

    Maybe we travel in different circles. The belief that Obama did the bank bailouts was fairly widespread in the ones it is my fate to travel in.

  125. 125.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Eyeroller:

    17-20% of Americans believe any number of insane things.

    I would double those percentages. It’s just fortunate that most of the insane things people believe are inconsequential. See, e.g., astrology.

  127. 127.

    rikyrah

    @schrodingers_cat:

    As an immigrant my luck ran out the day he was elected

    That, I completely understand your viewpoint.

    And, I fear that we will have to pay for those separated children. I believe in my heart, that we’ve created future terrorists with what we did to them.

  128. 128.

    Jeffro

    @rikyrah:

    Which is why I have felt that the Biden Campaign SHOULD be putting out damn near daily

    ” Are you better off than you were 4 years ago” Ads.

    Because, to remind people, when the shyt hit the fan, the level of deliberate incompetence of this Administration.

    They have been putting those exact type of ads out on social media, which is good.

    Have I seen any mainstream “remember when?” reporting to follow up on those?  No, I have not, which is bad.

  129. 129.

    StringOnAStick

    @Soprano2: We have a neighbor like that.  She presents well but it takes longer than 15 minutes to realize it.  Hers is originally from a severe head injury 4 years ago, but in the last year those that know her can tell she’s slipping.  I could hear her discussing major landscaping work with a contractor who was obviously getting increasingly frustrated with her demands as he told her she had 3 options, but she was fixated on something else and that can’t be done.  I was going to give him a hint via a phone call but his vehicle had zero signage, indicating it’s a new company.  He’s probably new at this and doesn’t have the experience to recognize a nightmare client yet.

  132. 132.

    Ruckus

    @Soprano2:

    If he is a senior then it is always possible that it is him.

    Or not.

    We all age differently but it seems to me that some lose their concept of not saying every single thing that pops into their head – their filter is plugged/lost/out of order, because some of us lose some of our higher functionality as we age. OK we all do, but some seem to lose it in bits and pieces rather than in any sort of logical order. And it takes higher functionality to discern using a number of things we learn not to do at the wrong time or in the wrong way. It’s humanity, it can be good/great, it can be something far worse, it can go away in those bits and pieces or all at once. And we really never know till it’s happening, and often the person it’s happening to never knows.

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