Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

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

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

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

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

No one could have predicted…

People are complicated. Love is not.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Thursday Morning Open Thread: News the Media Can Use

Thursday Morning Open Thread: News the Media Can Use

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Pandas!

Now, if they could just work up a similar level of enthusiasm for Democrats…


Reader Interactions

182Comments

  3. 3.

    geg6

    Speaking as an old white woman, I can’t think of a better group of people from whom to take my voting cues than black women.

  4. 4.

    Math Guy

    Biden has a lot of positive accomplishments he can point to when he debates the orange train wreck. In June.

  6. 6.

    Mousebumples

    I feel like the pandas are a great way to reach normies.

    But maybe that’s just because I loooooved pandas when I was a little kid.

    🐼

  14. 14.

    Caveatimperator

    To the Nathan Robinsons of the country,

    Unless you’re an outright revolutionary Communist, if you’re anywhere on the left, you probably agree with at least some of Biden’s positions, or at least think they’re closer to yours than Trump’s are.

    The election will happen with or without you. Sitting out of the election will not make it stop, it just means you don’t get to influence it.

    When the election is a choice between someone who agrees with you 30-40% of the time, and someone who agrees with you 0% of the time, why not vote for Biden who will give you some of what you want?

    The election of people like AOC also shows that more progressive politicians and issues will get traction if you participate in party politics and show up.

  15. 15.

    satby

    @Baud: pretty much only what I read anymore, along with Betty, TaMara, and John. And our more infrequent posters, sadly not on as often as we might wish.

  16. 16.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Biden asked the reporter if they were OK: “Did you fall on your head or something?”

    Yes. Brought to you by the fine people at SATSQ.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @Caveatimperator:

    When the election is a choice between someone who agrees with you 30-40% of the time, and someone who agrees with you 0% of the time, why not vote for Biden who will give you some of what you want?

    1. If you’re a member of a dominant group (white, male, middle class or wealthy), that 0% is never really 0%.
    2. Some people have convinced themselves that 0% will lead to 100% down the line.
  18. 18.

    dmsilev

    @Caveatimperator:

    When the election is a choice between someone who agrees with you 30-40% of the time, and someone who agrees with you 0% of the time, why not vote for Biden who will give you some of what you want?

    But, but, that’s so impure and intellectually unsatisfying! I want it all, and a pony!

  19. 19.

    Ken

    @Math Guy: You really think there will be a June debate? I’m expecting Trump will back out with some ridiculous excuse, like “I’m in prison.”

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    @Ken: He could call in. Even with that half billion dollars in defamation fines hanging over him, I’m sure he could afford an hour or so of prison telephone time.

    Maybe.

  21. 21.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    We actually got to go into the panda enclosure at the national zoo.

    Alas, the pandas weren’t in it at the time. It was in the 80s, the Friends of the National Zoo rounded up volunteers to build play furniture for the pandas. Eventually it got replaced with more sophisticated stuff but it was fun for several years to visit the pandas and see them using things I’d helped build with my own hands.

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Orange juice makers are considering turning to alternative fruits such as mandarins as wholesale prices have “gone bananas” amid fears of poor harvests in Brazil.

    Prices of orange juice reached a new high of $4.95 (£3.88) a lb on commodity markets this week after growers in the main orange producing areas of Brazil said they were expecting the harvest to be 24% down on last year at 232m 40.8kg boxes – worse than the 15% fall previously predicted.

    Orange trees in Brazil have been suffering from citrus greening, an incurable disease, after extreme heat stress and drought during their key flowering period in the latter part of last year fuelled by the climate crisis.

    The predicted poor crop in Brazil, which accounts for 70% of all orange juice exports, marks the third difficult global harvest in a row. As well as problems in Brazil, Florida in the US has been hit by a series of hurricanes and the greening disease, which is spread by sap-sucking insects and turns the fruit bitter before killing the tree.

    The series of poor harvests has limited manufacturers’ ability to ride out the current difficulties by mixing the new crop with frozen juice – which normally has a two-year lifespan.

    I blame Kamala.

  23. 23.

    geg6

    @Ken:

    Gag order will be the excuse, regardless of the fact that the trial will be over.  Count on it.

  24. 24.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Ken: Donald Trump will never see the inside of a prison cell. I’ve been saying that for years and it’s still true.

  26. 26.

    Caveatimperator

    @Baud:

    Oh, there’s definitely a not-insignificant slice of the very furthest left who are fascist-curious and consider liberals more their enemy than fascists.

    White privilege explains leftist petulance a lot, but so does this.

  27. 27.

    Math Guy

    @Ken: I’m 50-50 on there being a debate. I’m also terrible at making these kinds of predictions.

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    So, question for the trial attorneys among us. Is this a good choice of strategy for the defendant?

    Judge stunned as man with suspended license joins Zoom hearing while driving
    “Mr. Harris, are you driving?” asked the bemused judge as Corey Harris asked for time to park his vehicle.

    […]

    After Harris appeared to park his vehicle, the judge tried to make sense of the situation.

    “He was just driving and he doesn’t have a license,” Simpson said. After a lingering silence, Harris can be seen opening and closing his mouth at least twice before saying, “Um.”

    (link)

  31. 31.

    Betty Cracker

    @OzarkHillbilly: The citrus industry in Florida has in slo-mo collapse for a long time due to greening. It’s a terrible thing, and of course the usual suspects are making bank. I keep hoping for a scientific breakthrough.

  32. 32.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Caveatimperator: I keep trying to think of the best reason I can to NOT vote for Biden, just to get into the heads of these people, and the best I can come up with is that you think the cure for this country’s problems is to destroy it. Physically destroy it and have the survivors build something new from the ruins.

    Or, you’ve decided that making things better is pointless and we need to enter a punishment phase: hurt the American people as much as you can for their sins, to serve as an object lesson for civilizations a thousand years in the future, or out of some non-consequentialist duty to punish.

    I don’t really have anything else.

  35. 35.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @dmsilev: “What are you going to do about it, take my license away?”

    @Gin & Tonic: You’re probably right. And it’s probably true that the hard core cultists will defend him even harder. But I don’t think it adds to his electoral prospects, and at any rate it had to be done. It’s a travesty the other trials have been derailed. The principle that nobody is above the law is central to American democracy.

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: I used to drink a lot of OJ but at some point switched to V-8. My wife and I both love mandarins tho, so that will hurt us anyway.

  37. 37.

    Caveatimperator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    And let’s say for the sake of argument that this is true. Who’s going to come into power when that power vacuum forms?

    Most of these wannabe revolutionaries are just that, wannabes. They aren’t stockpiling weapons or food for a coming civil war, or drilling, or building strong community organizations in preparation for a coming period of instability. The Revolution, to them, is just like the Rapture. It’s something they hope someone else will do that will fix everything.

    I might have some respect for these people if they were truly planning for a revolution, or planning to carry it out, instead of just kvetching on the Internet.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    @Math Guy: I think it’s more likely there won’t be debates than there will be. I don’t think Trump is up to the task, and his campaign managers know it.

    But I can see Trump going for it because of overconfidence on both his part and his fan base’s. Many of his supporters are convinced that it’s Biden who is not up to the task, and that Trump will mop the floor with him. Trump feeds off their energy, and if he is convinced his supporters are right I’m not sure Wiles and LaCivita can persuade him otherwise.

  41. 41.

    TBone

    @satby: also brings to mind

    Take off the gloves. This ain’t a fucking cotillion.

    😆

    That was in tribute to Jamie Raskin’s recent article about recusal oversight.

  42. 42.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Geminid:

    Trump feeds off that energy

    That is true. However, the debates will be held without audiences, so I wonder if he can generate that energy with no believers in sight.

  45. 45.

    BlueGuitarist

    Yesterday the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) added 5 candidates to the “Red to Blue” program, which should provide them with significant, much needed, support:
    Ashley Ehasz (PA-01)
    Janelle Stelson (PA-10)
    Peter Barca (WI-1)
    Kristen McDonald Rivet (MI-08)
    Shomari Figures (AL-2).

    The first 4 are in swing states in the Electoral College,
    have competitive US Senate races that Democrats must hold,
    and overlap state legislative swing districts:
    super swing districts.

    (AL-2 has been redistricted.)
    (A little confusing that DCCC defines as “red to blue” districts without a Democratic incumbent running for re-election, so includes districts like MI-08, held by retiring Democrat Dan Kildee.)

  47. 47.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Caveatimperator: To be fair, anyone planning to fight a war with any chance of success wouldn’t be planning illegal/violent actions where you or I can see them, or using the public Internet for it.

    But their public actions would have to be building the groundwork by attracting broad support from the people. And what I see is mostly these expressions of contempt.

  50. 50.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Geminid:

    Trump’s demand that Biden take a drug test seems like setting up a pretext to back out and blame Biden.

  54. 54.

    lowtechcyclist

    If I was talking to one of those leftist purity ponies, I’d talk about global warming.

    Like it or not, our only chance of addressing climate change in time is to elect (as Kos would say) more, better Democrats.  If Republicans control any branch of government, or either house of Congress, they will block any attempts to do anything about it.

    If they want there to BE a future where the world is a better place than it is now, then they damn well better vote for the party that will at least try to address global warming, even if it may not be up to their standards.

    But if Trump wins, we can forget about doing anything positive about it until the 2030s even if there is a real election in 2028 and the Dems win. Because legislation won’t be passed until 2029, and implementation won’t start immediately.

    So the question for them is: do they want there to BE a future, or not?

  56. 56.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @clay: OMG, if you haven’t already, check out the rest of this album! It’s really amazing from beginning to end.  I got sucked in when I heard the song Pieces on NPR one morning.  My fave tunes on it are Ship Of Promises, and Home.  Also, check out To Be Counted Among Men (probably the most beautiful song of theirs) and Cecilia And Her Selfhood (which has a really cool, animated video).  Sadly, after Becoming A Jackal their work changed, adding more electronic vibes and their following albums each only had one or two good songs, imo.  But that first album is truly one of my fave albums of the 2009-10 period.  Conor O’ Brien has an amazing voice and is a really great songwriter/lyricist.

  57. 57.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    The trial is restarting, with Trump back in the courtroom. I’m eager and yet I know that, from what we can see, not much will be happening and coverage will be all talking heads.

  58. 58.

    Geminid

    @O. Felix Culpa: I’m thinking about the decision to debate at all. The projected format does negate some of Trump’s “strengths,” and plays to Biden’s. I see it as a high-risk, no reward proposition for Trump, an irrational choice.

    My expectation is that Trump will tease a debate up until he bails out. But this does not seem entirely certain, because Trump is not a rational actor. I’m not sure Susan Wiles can keep him on the rails.

  59. 59.

    JoyceH

    @Layer8Problem: Any sort of testing would have to be mutual and failure to comply would cancel the debate. I’ll always remember Trumps failure to comply with the COVID testing requirement for the 2020 debate, probably because he already knew he had COVID.

  60. 60.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin: To be fair, anyone planning to fight a war with any chance of success wouldn’t be planning illegal/violent actions where you or I can see them, or using the public Internet for it.

    That statement does not apply to the avg RWNJ MAGA head. I’m not sure it applies to most RWNJ “revolutionaries”. Same for LWNJs too. They all want to associate with their fellow travelers and these days that’s on the internet.

  61. 61.

    Chris

    Biden was asked by a reporter today if he would serve four more years if reelected or hand over power to Kamala Harris. Biden asked the reporter if they were OK: “Did you fall on your head or something?”

    It’s fucking spectacular how hard they’re committing to the bit, isn’t it?  I mean, the entire notion of Biden resigning and Kamala taking over was manufactured out of thin air by the media in the first place all the way back in 2020, but they’ve bought into the script so hard they actually think they can make it happen simply by continuing to talk about it.

  64. 64.

    catclub

    @Matt McIrvin: to serve as an object lesson for civilizations a thousand years in the future,

     

    There is a youtube channel that does that for major past civilizations.

  65. 65.

    TBone

    Dotard is stewing in swamp ass. He is not in control of his situation.  That thought alone makes me very happy. I got all day, all week, all summer out here in the beautiful USofA.  He’s shivering and terrified. Tick tock.  It’s a great day.

    🎶

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o8uVSzVY8kQ

  66. 66.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Matt McIrvin:

    That’s an interesting thought experiment. I think it basically comes down to those folks (mostly white, mostly male) thinking (to the extent that they think) that they’ll be fine. Any negative outcomes will just hurt people they don’t like and who aren’t them.

    IOW, harm to others is a sacrifice they’re willing to make.

  67. 67.

    sab

    @Mousebumples: I remember back in the 1980s when we got our first pandas from China. There were all kinds of barriers. My half Chinese nephew was a tiny child at the time and he too loved pandas. He thought the pandas were having trouble getting visas, like his Chinese grandparents. It was so sad and yet so cute.

    Pandas and grandparents all arrived. We collected a full set of panda commemorative coffee cups from McDonald’s. I believe the nephew still has them.

  68. 68.

    BlueGuitarist

    @TBone:
    @frosty:
    @Betty:

    Any insight on down ballot opportunities overlapping PA-10?

    From afar:

    PA-House-88 (includes Mechanicsville, Lower Allen): rematch between D challenger Sara Agerton and R incumbent Sheryl Dozier (Leans R, but one of the 6 R-held state house seats carried by Fetterman)

    PA-Senate-15 (Dauphin county): D Patty Kim – seems likely to flip redistricted seat

    PA-Senate-31 (SE Cumberland county, northern York) Although Shapiro and Wolf carried the district for Governor, Biden -13 more typical of district partisanship; R incumbent Mike Regan retiring. Extreme R candidate Dawn Keefer (in state house) seems likely to win vs carpenter Mark Temons, who might do better than the previous D (40%), and could help present elections up and down the ballot as normie D vs extremist R.

    Do you know of other competitive (or potentially competitive) seats?

  69. 69.

    Soprano2

    OMG, that tweet where Biden asked the reporter if he had fallen on his head. That’s the best laugh I’ve had all week. That was a well-deserved burn! What’s wrong with these people anyway? I’m still laughing at it!

  70. 70.

    cain

    @Ken: actually he will use that as a way to get out of prison.

    Of course, Joe could easily quip before the debates start ‘Hi Donald, hows prison?’

  71. 71.

    Baud

    @Chris:

    If it was a mainstream media reporter and not a Fox News type, the reporter should be chastised if not fired.  Laundering right wing talking points should lead to a loss of credibility.

  73. 73.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Chris:

    …was manufactured out of thin air by the media in the first place all the way back in 2020, but they’ve bought into the script so hard they actually think they can make it happen simply by continuing to talk about it.

    They’re doing it with the economy. It’s one thing to be sour on the economy if you’re strapped and struggling or even if you can’t afford the vacation you want but another to believe that the stock market is down or there is high unemployment when it’s simply comparing a bigger or smaller number to another.

    Leading the public to a place where there’s no objective truth seems to me one of the reasons the media’s business model is flailing (not that there aren’t others).

  74. 74.

    SFAW

    @Matt McIrvin: ​
     
    Or you could use Saint Ralph the Pure’s rationalization after giving the 2000 election to W: Ralph opined that things would get so bad under W’s regime, that there would rise, in response, a wave of liberalism that would last for a generation.

    Fuck you, Ralph, you self-important asshole.

  75. 75.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: If they’re smart they’ll do good mock debates to try to convince him, but he’s so narcissistic and overconfident even that might not do it.

  76. 76.

    SFAW

    @Gin & Tonic:

    You and me both, youngster. I laugh when I read various pundits talking about him being in jail.

    I don’t often wish to be wrong, but this is one of those times.

  77. 77.

    StringOnAStick

    The USFS did a controlled burn very close to town yesterday.  It’s out but the smoke settled overnight thanks to low temperatures (34!) and the air is 168 “unhealthy” and I can smell smoke inside because the furnace has to run once last night.  This perfectly encapsulates the entire issue of global warming.

  78. 78.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Geminid:

    Many of his supporters are convinced that it’s Biden who is not up to the task

    Bafflingly, many in the media seem to believe this.  On MSNBC the last time I heard discussion of a debate the framing was why it might be worth Biden risking it.

  80. 80.

    SFAW

    @Soprano2: ​
     
    Yes. And his in-debate tactics would likely be a Gish Gallop combination of his “greatest hits” (e.g., “Sleepy Joe Brandon STOLE the election”) plus myriad lies about anything and everything.

  81. 81.

    Soprano2

    @lowtechcyclist: I think it’s interesting that now that we have a Democratic president who is actually doing something about climate change they’ve pivoted to “we can’t vote for Biden because of Gaza”, because a year ago they were hollering that climate change was the MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE out there. I guess they’ve forgotten all about it, huh? *rolleyes

  82. 82.

    SFAW

    @Baud: ​
     
    I thought I had seen some coverage indicating that President Biden thinks he’ll smoke TFG in any debate. Probably true, but I’d feel better if he talked about what a master debater TFG is, and how he’s worried about how he’ll “lose” a debate to TFG, etc., etc. In other words, set low expectations to semi-inoculate against the inevitable MSM chant of “Biden lost the debate!”

  83. 83.

    clay

    @UncleEbeneezer: I will check them out; thanks for the rec!

    They really only caught my eye because the band/song combo seems like the BJ raison d’etre: villagers becoming a jackal.

  85. 85.

    JML

    I love it when the Biden team puts out “good news” stuff like this and shows what they’ve accomplished. I hate it when dems can’t celebrate accomplishment and only talk about what they didn’t get done or how much better it could have been. People like winners, and showing your work that way helps position you that way.

    Now, if we could only get more of the media to report it…

  86. 86.

    Chris

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    They’ve been doing this for a long time, but it’s usually during election years.  2000, 2016.

    At some point after 2016, it occurred to me that if the media wanted to, they could make a go of wrecking any Democrat’s presidency by simply going into election-year-mode all the time, simply spending an entire presidency screaming about nothing But Her Emails or whatever.  I would say they’ve concluded the same thing and decided that Biden was going to be their test case.

    I’m certainly not saying it’ll definitely work.  But I will say that if it doesn’t, it won’t be because they didn’t try.

  87. 87.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gin & Tonic: @SFAW: FWIW you are probably right wrt the election interference case.  Not because of anything to do with him being Trump, but because, as LAO has noted, NY seldom imprisons people for Class E felonies.

  88. 88.

    sab

    Sojourner Truth gave a famous speech in Akron Ohio a century ago. We have had a plaque at the site for decades, but we/they just put up a life-sized statue and created a little green park around it. Very cool. It commemorates both abolitionists and women suggragettes.

    Cleveland Plain Dealer (cleveland.com) has a story about it today.

  89. 89.

    Scout211

    News from outside the courtroom (NBC)

    Inside the pro-Trump area, a Trump supporter (a guy in a cape) is loudly arguing with an anti-Trump protester. Three police officers are walking over now to break them up.

    Seems to be a regular thing now.

  92. 92.

    sab

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t much care whether he goes to prison. I just want him to be officially, with due process, branded an election interfering felon for all the world to see. And a Loser.

  93. 93.

    Scout211

    News from inside the courtroom. Judge Merchan is going over jury instructions.

    Trump’s head is bobbing slowly forward until his chin rests on his chest before he jerks it back every so often. He is resting his hands on his lap.
    At one point, his eyes closed.

    Also a regular thing.  LOL

  94. 94.

    frosty

    @Betty: ​It’s nice to think so but I’ve seen good people lose to Perry too many times. Like, forget it Jake, it’s York County. We’ll drag the rest of the district down to our level.
    Which doesn’t mean I won’t be knocking on doors.​

  95. 95.

    wjca

    @Geminid:  I can see Trump going for it because of overconfidence on both his part and his fan base’s. Many of his supporters are convinced that it’s Biden who is not up to the task, and that Trump will mop the floor with him. Trump feeds off their energy, and if he is convinced his supporters are right I’m not sure Wiles and LaCivita can persuade him otherwise.

    We need a steady drumbeat, from Dark Brandon, of speculation that Trump will “chicken out.”  Mixed with various other accusations of cowardice.  Especially accusations that, as a loser, he doesn’t dare debate.

    Get that idea out there, and Trump will insist that he show up.  No matter what wiser heads in his campaign staff want.  (See how he screws up his lawyers’ attempts to make a case for him.)

  96. 96.

    stinger

    @SFAW:

    I’d feel better if he talked about what a master debater TFG is, and how he’s worried about how he’ll “lose” a debate to TFG, etc.

    I don’t know — I feel there are enough lies coming out of TIFG’s piehole; please let Joe stick to true statements and objective reality.

    Besides, Joe doesn’t need to set the bar that low. Set it appropriately high — and then leap lightly o’er.

  97. 97.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @sab: Same. Prison would be an added bonus, unlikely for the reasons LAO and Omnes point out. But conviction works just fine for me.

  98. 98.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Omnes Omnibus: Of course they’re Class E. This is Donald J Trump, they’re the classiest felonies ever seen in NY.

    I’ll see myself out, thanks.

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @dmsilev:

    Judge stunned as man with suspended license joins Zoom hearing while driving

    “Mr. Harris, are you driving?” asked the bemused judge as Corey Harris asked for time to park his vehicle.

    This was one of the saddest and funniest video clips that I have seen in a while.

    He should have told the judge that the car was a Zoom background.

    It’s also amazing to see how we adapt to new technology.  A remote court appearance with computers and cameras.

  100. 100.

    stinger

    @sab:

    Cleveland Plain Dealer (cleveland.com) has a story about [the new Sojourner Truth statue] today.

    Thank you for reminding me that I subscribed a few weeks ago! Off to read about this!

  102. 102.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Scout211: ​
     

    Any idea from whoever you’re following whether this sounds like refreshing the jury’s general understanding, or whether they’re focusing in on any particular instructions?

  103. 103.

    sab

    @Baud: Tsk tsk. So confrontational and divisive. I can admire Sojourner Truth while still loving my white, liberal husband and step-sons.

    My late grandmother born in 1895 always thought it was silly for women to want to vote but she never missed an election. She was a diehard Republican.

  104. 104.

    Raoul Paste

    @lowtechcyclist:  This.
    Climate change is THE  existential issue.

    I have a t-shirt that says “Every disaster movie starts with a scientist being ignored”

  108. 108.

    dmsilev

    Washington Post trial liveblog:

    Yesterday, Donald Trump complained on social media that he does not know what the charges are in this case. This morning, he is sleeping while the judge repeats his recitation of the jury instructions, including the legal definition of the charged crimes. In sight of the jury, Trump’s eyes are closed, his jaw is slack and is head is drooping down to his chest. He occasionally readjusts and dabs his lips.

  112. 112.

    Jackie

    @JoyceH:

    Trumps failure to comply with the COVID testing requirement for the 2020 debate, probably because he already knew he had COVID.

    TIFG absolutely KNEW he had Covid and kept spittling while shouting at Biden trying to infect him.😡

  117. 117.

    wjca

    Utterly off topic

    I see that the Biden administration is (finally!!!) considering scrapping the ridiculous restriction on Ukraine striking the Russians inside Russia when using US-supplied weapons.  I just hope that they not only do so, but have the wit to NOT announce it.  At least not until the Ukranians have a chance to mount a surprise wave of attacks on everything from the artillery batteries firing on Ukranian cities to the bombers launching missiles.  Don’t give them time to redeploy, just smash them.

  118. 118.

    Geminid

    @Soprano2: I think one problem lefties have with the clean energy transition the Biden administration is that it relies so much on the private sector. Some of them question whether we can save Earth if we leave Capitalism intact, or if saving Earth under those conditions would even be worth it.

  121. 121.

    sab

    @Baud: I know. We used to tease her about it until one Thanksgiving she got so angry we thought she was going to have a stroke. So we stopped teasing her about politics.

  122. 122.

    Princess

    @Matt McIrvin: An awful lot the people I know who are so left they can’t vote for Biden are white men and I m coming to conclude that the best reason not to vote for Biden is they like their white male privilege just fine thanks.

  124. 124.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: ​
      A big chunk of my family was. The Civil War was a bog factor. Also, there was a tradition of progressive Republicans here in WI (Robert La Follette*). They moved to the Dems over the New Deal.

    *The most recent La Follette in WI politics was Douglas who stepred down as Secretary of State in 2023. He is a Dem.

  125. 125.

    Chris

    @Baud:

    I can support people being Republican before FDR. That’s when the Great Moral Shift commenced.

    Pretty much.  I always figure that from 1932 onwards, there is no national election in which the correct answer isn’t “vote Democrat.”  (Though from then on until 1994 or thereabouts, there remain a lot of local and state elections where that’s not true; FDR himself occasionally backed Republicans over Democrats in local elections, hence helping LaGuardia put a stake through the heart of Tammany Hall).

    Conversely, in all the national elections before 1896, you’d be crazy not to pick the Republican over the Democrat.

    It’s that 1896-1932 era that gets really murky.  The Republicans have been circling the drain for so long that it’s becoming increasingly hard to tell them apart from the Democratic reactionaries they used to fight.  And the Democrats are finally, incredibly, turning into a party that stands for something other than Southern segregationists and Northern mob bosses.  But there’s still so much good left in the Republican Party, and so much bad left in the Democratic Party, that it’s hard to tell exactly when in those three or four decades the equation shifts from “Republicans > Democrats” to “Democrats > Republicans.”

  128. 128.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: The FBI also has a long tradition of conducting disruption and sting operations in which their moles play-act as violence-happy leftist radicals.

  129. 129.

    sab

    @Omnes Omnibus: My grandmother was from Wisconsin. Her uncle ( Francis McGovern) was a progressive Republican who was governor for a term and she was official hostess because he didn’t have a wife.

  132. 132.

    Math Guy

    @Raoul Paste: Agree 100% with you. No matter what we do, a lot of damage due to climate change is already “baked in” and we will have  to live with the consequences for decades. The political question now is do we want to the next few decades to look like something from a Mad Max movie (republicans) or like a scene from The Grapes of Wrath (Democrats)?

  133. 133.

    smith

    @Princess: He’s napping again, so it’s no big burden on him.

    The most recent RW freakout vis a vis this trial is that he wasn’t informed of the charges against him (this because he keeps whining that he doesn’t understand them). If he hadn’t slept through the trial he might have gotten a clue.

  135. 135.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @sab: I was just about to say the same thing.  What sort of community service would be fitting for TFG, do you suppose?

  136. 136.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Princess: I’m seeing a fair bit of “I am going to vote for Biden but you can’t make me LIKE it,” often from people who are not white men. It’s not an ideal situation but my attitude is fine, if you’re going to show up, complain all you want.

  140. 140.

    Steeplejack

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    The best “community service” for Trump would be “silence”: no access to social media, no interviews and no appearances in the media.

    Won’t happen, of course.

  143. 143.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Yep, this is absolutely true. “TFG babbled incoherently for 30 minutes and peed on himself, but Biden got the name of the president of Turkey wrong, is he up to 4 more years as president?” would be the coverage.

  144. 144.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    @Baud:

     

    Some people have convinced themselves that 0% will lead to 100% down the line.

    ”Nach Hitler, uns!” Of course, in 1944 Himmler ordered Thälmann shot at Buchenwald, which is a point that seems to slide past these people.

  146. 146.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @sab: I am not overly concerned about sentencing.  If this jury convicts, being able to stick the words “convicted felon” in front of the Trump’s name will provide a great deal of satisfaction.

  148. 148.

    Geminid

    I was following news about the December 3, 2022 Moore County power station attacks throughout the year after. It was a big story at the time, with 45,000 customers without power for 5 days. Nothing new was being reported, and I slacked off before this story appeared on CBS 17’s news site:

    WCBS17, December 18 2023

      Documents reveal new details in substation attacks

    Newly unsealed court documents reveal that just days after the attacks, Moore County received a tip leading to multiple search warrants.

    [According to] court documents, a man called Moore County authorities and told them his co-worker had been in communication with a right wing group that had a plan to attack substations in Moore County.

    Investigators then requested phone records from AT&T and T-Mobile. That led to the the questioning of a former Army Ranger who worked for a power management company. Phone records placed his wife’s cellphone 900 yards from a substation, just minutes before the attack.

    However, he initially told investigators his wife was in Charlotte at the time.

    A December 16 Raleigh News and Observer article has more details. Both articles noted that a woman’s death had been attributed to the power outage (she was found dead in her home a few day afterwards). That would raise the maximum penalty under an applicable federal statute from 20 years to life imprisonment.

  150. 150.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: So, it’s like the “I’ll vote for a woman, just not that woman” thing. “Sure you’ve done stuff to save the planet, but you’re doing it wrong”. *rolleyes

  154. 154.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Matt McIrvin: It’s still pretty problematic in that it effectively signals “so I won’t really judge you, if you don’t” vote for Biden.”  Like, you could just say you’re voting for Biden and leave off the complaint.  Or just say nothing at all.

    A lot of people pulled this performative, Holding-My-Nose bullshit in 2016 and I can’t imagine it didn’t help Trump by encouraging jack-offs to vote Stein/Johnson or not vote at all, because Hillary was History’s Greatest Monster™.

    Even here, you see frequent commenters feeling compelled to pull this “I’m voting for Biden BUT…” bullshit.  It’s silly and does absolutely nothing to help our chances in November.  It’s time to stop fucking around and support our President and strengthen our coalition.  With everything that is on the line, that really isn’t too much to ask.

  155. 155.

    Geminid

    @wjca: One irony of the debate over use of weapons inside Russia is that Turkiye never had that restriction,* and for a long time they were the only Nato country that allowed Ukraine to use their weapons (including the TB-2 Bayraktar drone) against targets on Russian soil.

    The second country was Sweden. That was a few weeks ago, and just a few months after Turkiye finally allowed them to join Nato in January.

    * See Mitzer, “The Stalwart Ally: Turkish Arms Provisions to Ukraine,” Nov. 23, 2022. An interesting article.

  156. 156.

    BlueGuitarist

    @frosty:

    thanks!
    Looks like PA-S-31 doesn’t go further south than the city of York.

    I like a carpenter as a Democratic candidate, but PA-S-31 is a tough district, and further south in York county looks even tougher.
    But PA is one of the most important states.

  158. 158.

    Baud

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Normally, I would share your sentiment and agree that it would be better if people left off the but. But I lean toward Matt here. I’m a believer in leading by example, and here the example is voting. I think it’s at least plausible if not likely that the example encourages fence sitters to vote rather than encouraging them to not vote. Hard to prove and YMMV.

  159. 159.

    Matt McIrvin

    @UncleEbeneezer: Kay has made the argument that on Gaza, for instance, explicitly conceding the “hold your nose” point could help bring other reluctant voters on board, whereas coming on strong with “you must support our great and noble President” will just repel them if they’ve got objections.

  160. 160.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I agree. If you’re trying to persuade people, try to find common ground, rather than convincing them that they’re wrong on a particular issue. But I also think sometimes libs go too far and concede too much in searching for common ground.  If someone keeps insisting that both sides are the same, that’s someone you can’t find common ground with.

    IMHO

  161. 161.

    hueyplong

    @sab: “Trump doing community service just boggles my mind.”

    Kind of odd that the best “community service” Trump could perform would be to go to prison.

  163. 163.

    Geminid

    @TBone: There’s a woman who lives in Moore County, Cheryl Christie-Bowman, who blogs about Moore County politics from a liberal point of of view. I need to see if she’s come up with a new installment of the “Timeline of Terror” series she started after the attack. The series begins in 2015, when radicals started taking over the Moore County public school system, and then follows events leading up to the substation attacks.

    Bowman says that the political dynamic she describes in Moore County tracks trends in many other rural/exurban communities across the country, and I think she’s right.

  164. 164.

    Eyeroller

    @Matt McIrvin: Very few people put it that way.  Mostly it’s “a protest vote or nonvote doesn’t help the situation.  The alternative would be worse for your cause.  There is no third option.”  (Gaza isn’t the only cause for which that’s true, but it’s one of the more inflammatory.)

    I rarely hear about Republicans threatening to withhold their votes in the general to “punish” the party.  They do that during the primary.  If a particular group doesn’t vote for a party, then the party would be quite sensible to conclude that this group doesn’t support them, so they can put their cause on the backburner and seek votes elsewhere.

  165. 165.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Getting people to think in terms of voting as a lever to push things in the direction of the least worst practical consequences, rather than as your expression of your personal ideals which you should withhold if those ideals are compromised, is valuable in itself.

    I’ve said for a long time that, from talking to people who are politically engaged but are third-party voters or reject voting altogether, they just do not have our sort of consequentialist model of what voting is for and what it accomplishes. They see it more as an assertion of identity and commitment, and the identity is not one they are willing to claim. If perverse consequences occur as a result of their rejection, that’s not their fault, it’s the system’s fault. They’ve washed their hands of it.

  166. 166.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Right. There are people like that, just like there MAGA.  There are whole groups of unreachable people. We just need to recognize them as such rather than blaming ourselves for not being good enough for them.

    ETA: Whenever we’re “good enough” for one group of holdouts, we’re no longer “good enough” for another group of people.

  167. 167.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Other than Michigan (which is a real problem but those voters can probably be made up elsewhere) the “Gaza vote” isn’t going to matter. There arent enough of them. So why so much energy expended on getting them to vow to vote for Democrats? What is that actually about? We’ve all established the young people who have dropped off don’t list Gaza as important – inexplicably it is not Lefty youg voters who have dropped off, it’s center and Right young voters.

    Wouldn’t it make more sense to try to swing some white male labor union members in Michigan? There are half a million labor votes in the state. They vote about 50% Dem. Pick up 80k of them and youre good.

  168. 168.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Matt McIrvin:

    they just do not have our sort of consequentialist model of what voting is for and what it accomplishes. They see it more as an assertion of identity and commitment, and the identity is not one they are willing to claim. If perverse consequences occur as a result of their rejection, that’s not their fault, it’s the system’s fault. They’ve washed their hands of it.

    So stupid, selfish children, in other words.

    I get that the younger generation(s) identify more with issues and are suspicious of/cynical about political parties. Our county party did GOTV outreach to young voters on that basis. But the underlying assumption was that they cared about outcomes, even if they didn’t identify with the Democratic Party, and that voting was a singular way of moving towards what they wanted. Thankfully, a large number of young people are not as callously indifferent to the world as the folks you cite, and turned out to vote.

  169. 169.

    Jackie

    @Omnes Omnibus: Oh! You’re right! Well, since TIFG’s a known germaphobic, how about cleaning the streets where the homeless are  – ahem – “relieving themselves.”

  170. 170.

    Eyeroller

    @O. Felix Culpa: ​I used to have a coworker with a PhD in political science. She said, and I’ve read elsewhere, that there is a lot of political science research that indicates that people who vote for a party based on policies are a minority. It is mostly an expression of identity, and/or emotional response. This would be especially true for people with lower educational levels. It really shows up when Democratic policies win as referenda but then the same electorate consistently votes for R politicians who do their best to work around the policy. In fact a lot of voters have at best a hazy association of policies with the parties, and our media not only doesn’t help to educate them but probably all the boffsiderisms confuse them even further.

  171. 171.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Eyeroller: Assuming that the President is a kind of dictator who does everything that happens on his watch is a common thing. It leads both to unrealistic expectations about what he can do, and incorrect attributions of credit and blame when good or bad things happen.

    When the COVID relief payments happened, the checks had Donald Trump’s signature on them–there wasn’t much Democrats in Congress could do about that, but they’d supported the bill because it was important. But I think Trump got a lot of public goodwill out of that, that helped him make the 2020 election close–many people apparently thought that was Trump’s own money!

  172. 172.

    Jeffro

    @BlueGuitarist:Trump’s demand that Biden take a drug test seems like setting up a pretext to back out and blame Biden.

    “I’ll take one if you’ll take one, Captain Adderall”

    -Dark Brandon, probably

  173. 173.

    Eyeroller

    @Matt McIrvin: Well, Trump is a very rich man who cared about them so much /s.  As another example, I hated W and I certainly had no problem blaming him for the botched response to Katrina, but I would never have blamed him for the hurricane itself. But a shockingly high fraction of the public (maybe the 17-20% that is the “beyond crazified” on just about any issue) blamed him for the hurricane happening.

  174. 174.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    Wouldn’t it make more sense to try to swing some white male labor union members in Michigan? There are half a million labor votes in the state. They vote about 50% Dem. Pick up 80k of them and youre good.

    I think that’s what Biden’s trying to do, rebuild as much of the Rust Belt “blue wall” as is possible.

    Part of this, frankly, is just playing to your strengths.  Biden is an old white guy from the nation’s industrial heartland.  He’s never going to fire up nonwhite voters in the way that Obama did, but he’s probably going to resonate a lot more with those Rust Belt WWCs than Obama could have.  So that’s what he’s going for.

  175. 175.

    Jeffro

    @Princess: An awful lot the people I know who are so left they can’t vote for Biden are white men and Im coming to conclude that the best reason not to vote for Biden is they like their white male privilege just fine thanks.

    We have to also consider the possibility that they’re stupid, or overgrown toddlers, or both.

    (w/ apologies to toddlers)

  176. 176.

    wjca

    @Chris: Biden is an old white guy from the nation’s industrial heartland.  He’s never going to fire up nonwhite voters in the way that Obama did, but he’s probably going to resonate a lot more with those Rust Belt WWCs than Obama could have.  So that’s what he’s going for.

    So, have MVP fire up the nonwhite voters.  That’s just basic division of labor.

  177. 177.

    Kay

    @Chris:

    I don’t know. I can’t get a read on them, locally. My son is IBEW and he is very pro Biden but he’s a D pollworker and probably an outlier for a 26 year old male. All skilled trades have done very, very well under Biden in the Great Lakes states. My son’s hourly in Toledo is now higher than NY or CA (demand) and Toledo/Detroit area is very affordable. They’re flush. I would hope UAW too, although they are more Right leaning than trades are. Biden knows all this, as you say, he was Obama’s white male whisperer. The big thing they will bitch about is guns but I think D’s are done chasing gun owners so he’ll just have to push past that.

  178. 178.

    Kay

    @Chris:

    Union members are in this kind of once in a lifetime sweet spot in Toledo/Detroit area where they have very high wages and very affordable housing/cost of living. Finally, finally, Toledo and Detroit get a break and the NYTimes wants to kill the rust belt baby in the crib.

  179. 179.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Yes, and I’m hopeful that the Biden campaign is smart about this and knows they should do things like this.

  181. 181.

    Marc McKenzie

    @O. Felix Culpa: That’s it, right there.

    The far Left has a Lord Farquaad problem, and they don’t seem to care.  And we’ve been seeing that problem on display since 2000, and especially since 2016.

  182. 182.

    Sally

    @Baud: Since I am the only person who agrees with all my policy positions, and I’m too unelectable to stand (ha), I vote for the best/closest available. I think we should turn the “hold you nose and vote for the lesser of two evils” line to “vote for the best available”. Sounds more positive – is more positive. It’s a “do your best” kind of attitude.

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