I find myself wanting to scream “stop knee-capping your own party!”
Please, can we take a step back and look at the structure of the 2024 presidential race?
A man found liable for sexual assault that the judge called “rape” is the Republican nominee.
A man convicted of 34 felonies and is running for president out on bail is the Republican…
— Stuart Stevens (@stuartpstevens) July 13, 2024
Pets by request – realbtl – Changes
Another Scott
“Next post” is an interesting title. ;-)
[eta:] No, everyone hasn’t gone mad. Too many, though, are letting their anxiety get the best of them – with strong encouragement from bad actors.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cacti
So are Jeffries and Schumer now on the “not real Democrats” list too? It’s getting crowded these days.
Fair Economist
You’d think by now Democrats would have learned about message discipline.
Biden has done a great job. Talk about it.
Trump did a terrible job and is a terrible person. Talk about that.
Don’t talk about anything else. Whenever somebody asks a question, turn back to one of those theme.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: That’s a most excellent summary
WaterGirl
To repeat my comment from the earlier thread:
WaterGirl
I hate this timeline.
SoupCatcher
While it’s hyperbole, it sure feels like all the money in the world is on the other side pushing back. We know where the fight is. It’s in the same place it’s always been. And we are fully engaged. One of the hardest things to do in a fight is to withdraw and regroup under pressure; almost always, a better approach is to stand and keep fighting.
It’s 2 July 1863 and we can either be like Dan Sickles and decide the fight needs to be somewhere else so we pull our resources out of the line and the 1st Minnesota pays the price, or we can be like Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine and not only hold but push back.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
On the bright side, their little game of telephone where they selectively edit quotes to equal their constructed “message”, isn’t even surviving being debunked between the Morning “news” and the Noon “news”,……
narya
I’m at a queer-centered straight-friendly open mic night at a local bar. Highlight so far is the dyke bartender starting off the proceedings with a song about finding love at the hardware store. I keep thinking about the comment someone made about keeping time/space for joy.
mrmoshpotato
But his emails! Oh wait, fuck that!
Vote blue all through!
NaijaGal
I don’t think there’s any point having more posts on this topic. No one on BJ has budged from their original views and it doesn’t look like anyone is going to. If the US had adopted a campaign financing model similar to the UK’s , which caps the amount each party can spend, perhaps we’d be having a different conversation.
Right now, donors call the shots in both parties, which is precarious for democracy, as we’re seeing. It’s looking like either the donors win and push out a sitting president four months out and the base is so demoralized that we lose in the fall, or the donors have elected Dems who need money kneecap the candidate because he refuses to drop out, which also increases the chances that we lose in the fall. What a place to be.
LAC
https://www.threads.net/@darkaverymariah/post/C9jBXcPOPI3/?xmt=AQGzQjp1T9AOihxbu-GrdcbY01ksZzY8wd18xbj2JvoPsg
JiveTurkin
This is an easy race to win?
Why is it an easy race to win? Hillary Clinton should have won easily, she didn’t. The debate changed the dynamics, it left an impression that will be hard to change. It wasn’t Obama having a bad debate against Romney. Undecideds in swing states think Trump is more fit to be president, and feel that the age issue is a bigger deal than the felonies.
When each candidate starts out with about 45% of the vote it is never an easy race to win.
Darkrose
Just checking–is this an open thread? Because I was thinking of posting about something good.
guachi
A big survey of Black voters in battleground states. Reposting so more can read it. If you want talking points about what “Black voters” actually think this is a good place to start.
https://split-ticket.org/2024/07/17/we-polled-black-voters-heres-what-we-found/
Also, Vance’s speech sucks
WaterGirl
@LAC: Circle the wagons, is right!
WaterGirl
@Darkrose: Yes, please do! If I forgot to add open thread, i will remedy that.
edit: Nope, it said open thread. :-)
Urza
Its days like this i’m reminded most humans are not at all governed by logic and cant grasp it even if they wanted to. And its really hard for those of us that do work with logic to understand.
Starfish
@Darkrose: Narya posted something good, and everyone is bored with the circular firing squad so go for it.
Subsole
One thing I would like these folks to answer:
Assume you get your way and we run your preferred candidate. When their polls tank, do you ditch them too? Having thrown leadership aside once, why not do it seven or twelve or a hundred times?
Are we gonna reshuffle the deck every time George Clooney writes an op-ed? New ticket every time your donors read the wrong Twitter feed?
Where, exactly, does this whole dynamic end? You folded once, how do I know you won’t fold the next time the polls look dicey?
Also, if the internal polls are that dire, then release them. Show your work. You are asking us to take a radical step, a step that has ended in catastrophic damage to our democracy the last two times we tried it.
I am not willing to do so because of some nebulous “Oh, our super secret polling numbers say that The Vibe is off.”
If the situation is that drastic, then stand on your facts. Enough of this insinuation and doubletalk. You want us to let go of the raft that has kept us afloat for four years after our heads went under the waves twice, and go swimming off over the far horizon for…for…you can’t even tell us who.
No. Not how this works.
It is at the point where the insurrectionists need to produce a plan, or pick up a bucket and do what they can to save our democracy by pulling with the rest of us.
WaterGirl
@JiveTurkin: Oh really?
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: So I guess this poll changes everything, since the previous poll with a Truep bump was so important!
guachi
@Cacti:
What’s weird is as far as I can tell none of the people, not one, who want Biden to drop out consider those who want him to stay as apostates who need to be drummed out of the Democratic party.
And, wow, Vance’s speech still sucks. It’s nonstop suck.
@WaterGirl:
That’s not a poll. It’s a prediction that uses “fundamentals” to give Biden the lead. What it actually shows is that Biden is running far behind where the fundamentals would indicate he would otherwise be if he were “generic Democrat”.
Splitting Image
As always, the main question is “Who benefits?”
As we speak, the Republicans are having their national convention, their speakers are demanding the rollback of every kind of civil rights, the conventioneers are waving signs demanding mass deportations, and the whole party is rallying behind a platform of fascism starting on day one.
All of which is being pushed off of the front pages because of the continuing saga of Joe Biden’s age.
Starfish
@Subsole: These questions seem pretty disingenuous and ingracious so why would anyone ever answer any of them?
George
@WaterGirl:
I like Kennedy shown as a flat line.
Chris
I’ll repeat one more time that the last time I saw this many Democrats shitting themselves and grabbing the nearest microphone to obediently repeat NYT/GOP talking points was after 9/11. (In fact, it might have been the last time I saw this many of the nation’s elites unified about anything).
I was thirteen at the time, of course, so I didn’t understand anything I was seeing. I actually thought, bless my heart, that the adults had it under control and whatever they were doing must be what’s necessary. The adults, of course, did not have anything under control, and what they were doing was a fucking disaster that took twenty years for us to even begin to pull out of. It would be nice if the same wasn’t true this time around, but there’s absolutely nothing to suggest it so far.
Oh well. In 2044, I look forward to us kneecapping AOC’s presidential campaign because she got caught on tape praising the wrong Star Wars character, or whatever the fuck has been determined to be the History’s Greatest Scandal of that year, while the other side’s Norman Osborn/William Stryker presidential ticket discusses whether nuking San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle should be their first act as president, or merely in the top ten. (And the media assures us that Osborn’s actually a moderate because anonymous sources have assured us that he only intends to nuke Los Angeles).
Jackie
@guachi:
Is TCFG sleeping through it?
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Everyone was chosen by god to whatever happened, because god is all of what is, was, and will be and we, as aspects of god, chose much of this for ourselves.
Elizabelle
@Subsole: Thank you.
unrelatedwaffle
@Chris: I like your optimism that we’ll still have a democracy in 2044
NotMax
Vance praising and the crowd cheering for his cemetery plot.
Why put off occupancy?
//
Splitting Image
@Splitting Image:
Oh yes, and J.D. Vance is now openly talking about barring women of childbearing age from crossing state lines.
As the dog said, this is fine.
guachi
@Subsole:
If the candidate’s polling tanks before the convention because of an unfixable problem that the candidate made worse through their own actions then, yes.
George Clooney is not the reason 60% of Democrats want Biden to withdraw. Democrats and independents have been saying it for months.
Once the nominee is finalized it’s basically done. At that point you’ll see many people who wanted Biden to withdraw stay unenthused.
The nearly endless polls that show Americans want Biden to withdraw aren’t secret. They’ve been available for MONTHS.
Okay. Look at all the polls (waves hands around) that show voters want Biden to withdraw and that they think he’s too old. Voters understand how time works. Biden’s age problem is unfixable.
“Shut up and get in line” will convince no one. I was in the military for 21 years. I know what it means to have to obey the orders of those appointed over me. I’ve said “yes, sir and yes, chief” more times than I can count. Now that I’m out, I guarantee you that being ordered around by someone on the internet will have no effect whatsoever.
EDIT: Vance’s speech was bad from start to finish.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Barf. I gave up when the orange menace showed up on split screen.
VFX Lurker
Earlier today, I had to deal with a Biden voter venting his anxiety in a group chat. It’s not the first time my leftist friend has done this. Any time something goes the least bit wrong for Dems, he starts hugging his Teddy Bear of Despair™ and he will. Not. LET. GO.
He’s committed to voting for the D on the ballot this November, but he still wasted my time.
Anyhoo, I just wrote ten more Postcards to Voters in Florida for a school board election, so I feel better now. Will aim to write more tomorrow.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
…or again.
Eolirin
You know, I keep thinking that post I made that WG was going to FP (nudge nudge) no longer makes sense to post because events have moved on.
Except then apparently not. Over and over again. ><
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JiveTurkin: This is an easy race to win?
IDK, it’s certainly curious that the Drop Biden folks called it off when Trump was shot and then the micro second it was clear that no one gave a shit about it, and the RNC is bombing they started right up up again.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
538 is a little different than it was before. They use a model that weights “fundamentals” heavily (more than polls) at the outset then gradually pulls back on “fundamentals” and adds more polling. Biden’s 538 number wil go down, inevitably and inexorably, if his polls don’t improve.
Its like the difference between “too early to call” and “too close to call”.
The first means they don’t have enough information. That’s 538 right now.
Turgidson
I’ll never *completely* forgive Stu Stevens for being at the helm of the despicable Mittens 2012 “Lie About Obama 24/7” campaign, but he, along with Jen Rubin, who was maybe Mittens’ most devoted cheerleader on the planet, has been the most sincere Never Trumper out there and seems fully devoted to righting his past wrongs.
Eolirin
@Chris: Oh please, AOC won’t make it to 2044 if we lose here, and we won’t be having elections anyway. :P
Subsole
@Starfish:
In what way? I see people who say they want to jettison Biden because the polls are bad. I take them at their word. I am not assuming they are turncoats or sellouts. Ido not, in fact, think Adam Schiff woke up and decided to break it off in our collective ass because he does not recognize the stakes.
My first issue is, what sort of precedent does that set?
Do you not see how letting some polling numbers (that we can’t even look at) and a bunch of random Twitter panic determine who our ticket is could open a door that leads to bad places?
What is to stop them from jettisoning another candidate three days before the deadlineif their polls are bad?
I think it is a fair concern. Scoff if you like.
Second problem: these people are proposing radical action. To just toss your president and VP and start over from scratch? That is extreme.
If you propose extreme action, you need to provide something more than vague handwaving about what comes next.
I get that peoples’ nerves are raw. Let me reiterate in plain words: I do not, in fact, think Schiff or Jeffries or Pelosi are trying to ratfuck us for the sake of American Fascism. (For one thing, they’d be pulling this shit in September if that was their goal.)
I do think they owe us a lot more than they have provided by way of argument.
What part of that do you find unreasonable?
WaterGirl
@Eolirin: would you mind sending me an email message to remind me about that so I’ll see it first thing in the morning? I’m already in bed. Or I would do it myself. :-)
guachi
@Jackie: I don’t think so. But the speech was boring. I’ve never heard Vance speak before in my life and had no preconceptions about what to expect. It was just inert and weird.
Eolirin
@WaterGirl: Sure no problem.
No One of Consequence
For the love of all that may be Holy (one cannot prove a negative), consider the possibility that there is not a unicorn down there, that it is INDEED a bottomless well of shit and the light is getting harder to see by.
I believe this line of thinking should be abandoned, wholesale. Comes down to logistics and probability as I see it.
CAN a substitution be done? Yes.
If so, IS the probability of state lawsuits (times unknown N states) over the ballot likely to cause/cost SEVERAL electoral college votes, approaching 1 ? Also yes.
And if any election-related cases make it to the Supreme(ly-compromised) Court, is the probability of the conservative majority ruling in Trump’s favor, regardless of precedent/reason/goodTasteOrSense/ShameOrLackThereOf; approaching 1? Again, yes.
If it wouldn’t thin the too-thin-already ranks of likely-Dem voters, I would posit the suggestion that when one approaches an ambiguous ‘nearby’ radius of the Unicorn in the BottomlessShitPool, that the shit becomes overly-oxygen laden and can be directly taken into the lungs via breath. Our Betters should try that if they are going to soil themselves so publicly, and with such demoralizing repetition, without a sound plan for getting to Not Trump on Nov 5, let alone surviving the Republican Legal Fuckery that all that will entail.
Getting exasperated
Seeing ourselves getting perforated
By our self-overrated.
Polls don’t vote. YOU DO. So do so, and bring a couple friends.
Peace,
-NOoC
Gretchen
@Darkrose: We could use something good!
Kay
@guachi:
He’s wildly over rated. As dull and joyless as DeSantis.
Juju
I just joined Joe Biden’s text list.
Gretchen
@Subsole: I love your comments. The one last week about flipping the table and setting the cards on fire and wanting us to swim over the horizon towards a barnacle-encrusted plank that we’re not even sure exists summed up my feelings beautifully.
Jay
@Subsole:
not to be a pedant, it’s only half radical,
other than dumping President Joe Biden and all his backers, the rest of “The Plan” is ?????.
So it’s half radical, and half “I got nothing”,
Underpants Gnomes Politics by the Chicken Little Democrats.
guachi
@Subsole:
That Democrats want to win and that they listen to the party that overwhelmingly wants Biden to withdraw. Being responsive to voters is a good thing.
65% of Democrats and 75% of independents wanting Biden to withdraw isn’t random Twitter panic. It’s people like my wife, a MI voter, who don’t really follow politics on social media who think Biden is too old and want someone different.
Nothing. Responding to circumstances is a good thing. The far right in France is not in power today because candidates who placed 3rd dropped out at the last minute in order to prevent the right from winning the runoff.
Doc Sardonic
Want to lose this election by replacing Biden, thereby disenfranchising the primary voters that voted for him to be the nominee. Keep pushing that line because I guarantee you that a good chunk of them will sit the election out. Watched it happen first hand in Florida when the squishy Dems nominated a former Republican for governor, because a young, tell it like it is woman scared them. Dem turnout was down significantly and it earned a second DeSantis term and cost a winnable Senate seat. Also, if you think a Democrat will get many black votes for a couple of generations your dreaming and/or on the really good shit. For those wanting to send a message to Adam Schiff, if you have donated to his campaign ask that your donation be returned.
Kay
Rick Perlstein
@rickperlstein
14m
JD fell flat. My 5th convention, and this is the wettest fish of a Wednesday keynote by far iirc.
Starfish
@Subsole: We knew that Biden was 80 years old before the primary, and yet no reasonable opposition bothered to even try. Marianne Williams and Dean Phillips were not “reasonable opposition.” There was no reasonable opposition because we always let an incumbent have a second term. Neither our incumbent or anyone else said, “Hey, this dude is 80 years old, maybe we should try something else.” Why? I have no clue.
If these are unprecedented times (and the Democratic Party is yelling at people it wants to donate saying that they are) and this is an unprecedented election, then maybe “Oh, we will follow tradition” is not the message that people are looking for here. It took until now for Biden to say “Hey, maybe we should put some ethical standards on this stupid Supreme Court.”
Biden stumbling over himself on the questions about abortion at the debate was super embarrassing. This is an issue that we are telling voters is really really important, and our dude muddled the message!
It is not the job of Joe-Random-Voter to set the strategic plan of the Democratic Party. If there is disagreement at the top levels of the party about the candidate, then they need to sort that stuff out and decide who is on the ticket.
Random Commenter #71 on Balloon Juice does not set the party priorities so asking Random Commenter #71 on Balloon Juice to define the plan is not legitimately looking for the answer to the question “What is the plan?”
piratedan
I guess Joe Biden stating that rich people should bear a more reasonable tax burden has scared the shit out of rich people, so they’re with-holding their money from the campaign to express their displeasure that they do NOT wish to be held more financially accountable in fixing the planet, fixing the country and treating their fellow countrymen as equals.
this has had the effect of squeezing the balls of certain elements of the Dem party to gather their attention.
Gretchen
@guachi: those polls don’t ask if they want Biden to withdraw because of his age. They ask the questions separately: do you think he’s too old? Will you vote for him? The first is substantially higher than the second, and includes me. I wish he were younger, I would crawl over broken glass to vote for him, and I think it’s insane to flip the table and set the cards on fire at this late date because you think other candidate’s favorables won’t plummet as soon as they are the candidate and the target of all the Republican and media firepower.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That’s the bit that convinces me this is all bullshit.
Harris is supposed to also drop out for reasons…Biden had a bad debate, so when that happens the VP also has to go now?
But there is never any hit at who is this replacement candidate is, except some weird talk it is Manchin.
guachi
@Doc Sardonic:
The general election isn’t limited to only primary voters. If you pretend general election voters don’t exist then you can suffer the consequences by ignoring their desires. And the idea the most ardent Democrats who would vote in a D primary and probably hate Trump will just sit out the election in petulance is really, really weird. Is there any polling anywhere indicating Biden/Harris primary voters wouldn’t vote for Harris/random D instead?
The comment about Florida is weird. You think ignoring primary voters is bad and then say Florida was bad for Ds because they didn’t ignore primary voters. Which is it?
Your comment about Black voters doesn’t hold water if Harris is the nominee. By 74-11 Black D voters in battleground states would approve of Harris as the nominee. That’s more than approve of Biden.
Starfish
@piratedan: Adam Schiff is the candidate of cryptocurrency.
Just the other day, I saw this whiny garbage from some venture capitalist about how Biden’s tax proposals for people with $100 million or more make him sad.
Wapiti
@Splitting Image: This. The “Dem elites” wasted a week, possibly at the behest of their richie rich donors, and didn’t highlight the bad on the other side.
Kay
Edward Luce
@EdwardGLuce
25m
Vance speech seriously flat. You can feel the energy draining from the arena
Trump probably realizing Vance is a dud right about now…
Gretchen
@piratedan: Rich people are already unhappy because Joe got extra money for IRS enforcement and they’ve been concentrating on millionaire tax cheats. They’ve collected billions – not a popular action among the rich. And the Trump tax cuts expire in 2025 unless the new administration extends them, which Joe will not do. Rich people want him gone.
Mr. Onion Belt
(delurk)
This last month has been choppy reading. I guess I will chime in with a few thoughts. Because why not.
The corporate media wants, and is getting, drama. The corporate media is also funded by the same donor class that wants the excitement of a brokered convention. They want action all the way down, and they got that special scent of blood in the water after the debate.
The reason is that the Biden team was overconfident. I think most progressives were sharing in that overconfidence. The expectation was that Biden would perform as well as he has on previous occasions. That didn’t happen, and suddenly Trump’s star is on the rise again. This happened right before the July 4th holiday, so there was no real news that could sufficiently occupy anyone’s attention.
Also, none of Biden’s accomplishments have really stuck in public consciousness. Those of us who were already invested in Biden’s presidency took stock of what he has accomplished and love the liberal agenda he has enacted over tremendous resistance.
However, there is a big problem, and that is the algorithm. Our experiences of the world beyond our local community has been curated into epistemic cages where we are fed information consistent with our tastes. This has grown into evermore niche avenues based on what our social media profiles, search histories, purchase histories, and those of our “friends” reflects back at us like a funhouse mirror.
We are simply not experiencing the same reality anymore. There are tangential experiences and the occasional deep bond that can flourish, but we are largely herded and organised into compartments we didn’t choose. In the case of national politics, those of us committed to some kind of sane grasp of objective reality are being overshadowed by forces of malevolence and myopia. The myopic are much more vulnerable to the showy “inevitability” of malevolence. Their opinion of Biden, from what I can gather, is that he is allowing too many migrants, ushered in inflation, and left Americans to die in Afghanistan. Those with any attention left that isn’t being pointed towards their obsessions and shiny objects are skimming politics and mostly getting the scum on top. There is tremendous misinformation, disinformation, and obfuscation going on. The media, for thirty years, has hounded and attacked and enabled attacks against prominent Democrats. This is nothing new.
I think most of you are heroes for fighting the good fight of retaining sanity and objectivity. Sadly, I think “doom” is analogous to “outrage” on the political spectrum. Left-leaners can’t resist doom and feelings of helplessness. It’s like an indulgence. Right-leaners can’t resist outrage. The thing is, these feelings are pretty close. Conservatives provoke outrage because they feel their “way of life” is under siege. I think liberals feel doom for a similar reason: the world as we knew it (and hoped it could be!) is slouching towards Bethlehem.
But we have hope. Hope is the antidote to doom. Hope is faith in humanity that we can pull our heads out of our asses. The fact is, I have hope in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I believe their intentions are in the right place. They have sure done a lot against a system that has been programmed for 45 years to be a gridlocked shitfest that is one more butch built asshole away from falling apart.
So, for fuck’s sake, let’s hope and fight and back our president. Question the mechanics and sourcing of every poll, even the ones that go our way. Let’s use our minds and our hearts to pierce the veil and stop letting these algorithms and algorithmic meat puppets tell us what to think.
I am not a crank or a Putin bot. The end.
janesays
@Chris: Pretty sure if Trump gets back in the White House in November, there won’t be a United States of America in 2044.
Chris
@unrelatedwaffle:
An incurable optimist, that’s me.
guachi
@Gretchen: Not doing a thing because you fear Republicans being mean to you is learned helplessness. Republicans will attack you no matter what you do so there’s no reason to pay attention to anything they say. Who cares?
Gretchen
@Kay: I’m curious how Vance’s positions go over at home. He wants to eliminate birth control, but only has two children. He wants to deport immigrants, but his wife’s family are immigrants. Her Wikipedia entry was changed from saying she was born in India to saying she was born in California, today, so it’s not clear that he wants to deport her. One of his kids is named Vivek, but he thinks immigrants dilute our culture. He doesn’t think women should work, but his wife is a very successful lawyer. He doesn’t think women should leave violent marriages because it’s better for the kids to stay together……
Gretchen
@guachi: It’s not learned helplessness if, observing that a thing has happened every single time in the past when you do something, to decide not to do that thing again. Stand and fight, don’t knuckle under. Definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Seeker
@Juju: Tell Joe he needs to withdraw
Subsole
@Chris:
Bold of you to assume she won’t be dead if Trump wins.
@guachi: Thank you for the calm reply.
I can show you just as many polls that say the two are running even. I frankly do not trust polling, lately. It just seems weird. Lots of ticket splitting, and in ways that don’t make sense to me. The math don’t math.
Lots of noise, lots of push-polls. Lots of very small and selective sample sizes being spun as representative of trends that, frankly, seem a bit of a reach. Plus, they haven’t exactly been accurate these last few years. (“Red Wave on line 4…”)
If you want to trust them, fine. I don’t – good or bad.
Do note, that argument cuts against me as well. For every poll I can wave at you saying they are running even, you can wave one at me saying Biden has to go. Which is why I am trying not to rest my arguments on polling.
The polling I was referring to (and I did not make this clear, sorry) was campaign iinternals.
Supposedly those are very high-quality and reliable. I am not sure why they would be immune to the flaws we see in other polling, e.g. non-response bias, but they would at least be generated in an effort to ascertain factual reality. This is much better than a lot of polling I have seen.
Unfortunately, I cannot read those polls. I would like to. Kay has made some persuasive arguments that those numbers are driving the democratic reps to do this. If that is do, I think they owe us a look at the data. Going public with the numbers won’t do us any more damage than the last three weeks of this shit.
Now, please pay attention to this part. It is important.
I am not ordering you to do shit. I am a civilian. I lack that authority.
I am saying if you don’t want us all to drown, you need to do some things differently.
Because motivation-wise, “It’ll all be okay, bro. Trust me,” is not going to cut it when you are proposing drastic measures. I see a lot of folks who want to leap into the abyss and cannot tell me what comes next. The historical record for following their suggestions does not return comforting results (Hello, Nixon. Hello, Reagan…).
Again, thank you for the measured response. I have been very sad to see how we jump on each other here. Would like to avoid contributing to that.
john b
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I haven’t seen many people saying that. Most are saying she is the natural fit to run in Biden’s place
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Wapiti: read the comments from the people like Kay who watching the RNC; they pushed themselves out of the news by being as exciting as a HR power point presentation.
guachi
Hot off the presses! Emerson dropping polls at midnight. Who does that?
EMERSON polls (7/15-16)
National Trump +4
North Carolina Trump +7
Arizona Trump +7
Georgia Trump +6
Nevada Trump +5
Pennsylvania Trump +5
Wisconsin Trump +5
Michigan Trump +3
No Senate results to compare to, as far as I can see.
Al Rennick
Stuart Stevens and Adam Schiff are both honorable, decent men worthy of great respect. Much as I admire Stevens, I have to side with Schiff on this issue.
I thought Biden was too old four years ago, but still voted for him because Trump is a fascist.
But for fuck’s sake, he can’t delete the memories of all 40 million people who watched the CNN debate.
Joe’s pitch count is too damn high. He needs to give the ball to the fresh arm in the bullpen, Kamala Harris.
Nominating Kamala instead of Biden will dramatically change the narrative and totally shake up this race.
I’ve heard and seen enough reporting about Biden’s pathetic poll numbers:
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/famed-dem-pollster-privately-showing-biden-devastating-numbers-as-part-of-ongoing-effort-to-get-him-to-quit-cnn/
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/getting-worse-for-the-president-cnns-john-king-says-democrats-fear-trump-on-track-for-blowout-330-electoral-vote-win/
NotMax
Like the VIP lounge at a hatters convention.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The people started this have made it very clear that they want Harris to go to. I suspect the utter absurdity of that idea that is one of the reason the whole effort is so half assed.
rikyrah
Kenny is telling it like it is 👊🏾👊🏾👊🏾
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRo8DJvM/
NaijaGal
@NaijaGal: This came out more pessimistic than I intended. I definitely believe Biden can win.
I also believe that the existence of Project 2025 is a winning issue for Dems and there is plenty of time to explain exactly what it would mean for the average person, especially in the light of recent Supreme Court decisions.
john b
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
who specifically?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@john b: Axois
JiveTurkin
Biden will bow out of the race by next week, when he’s losing national by four in any poll he’s in deep shit trouble.
Seeker
@guachi: Honestly, I think it’s probably too late to fix this.
But I will say that anyone who doesn’t think Joe should withdraw is delusional. You can complain that the media has been unfair…but it doesn’t matter. Part of being a good candidate is currying favor with the media
I am baffled by the refusal of people to see that the debate effectively ended this candidacy
john b
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
axios is not a person. And when did this “start”?
Sloegin
Schiff acomplishing the two-fer of handing the Presidency and the Senate to the Rs will be a real low point marker in our history.
guachi
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The “people that started this” were the American people who have stated for months they want Biden to withdraw. The elites weren’t listening. In polls out today 48% of Black D voters want Biden to step aside and by 74-11 Black D voters are happy with Harris as a replacement.
If Biden withdraws and throws his support to Harris then the people who want someone else will get no support. It kinda requires “someone else” to state they want the nomination. As far as I’m aware zero prominent Democrats have said they are willing to be considered.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@john b: The day after the debate.
Seeker
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: people want Harris to go because she’s one of the lowest regarded national politicians in the history of polling and can’t win a national election. It would be great if that weren’t true, and it may be unfair, but it doesn’t matter. Its reality
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@NotMax: That alleviated so much…
john b
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
half the political world was saying that the day after the debate. The “PSA Bros” were saying it the same night and they are super supportive of Harris
WaterGirl
I’m hearing “trolling, trolling, trolling” in my head, to the tune of the theme song to the tv show Rawhide.
This is like a ping pong match, only a thousand times less fun.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@guachi: Let me quote Seeker
wjca
And seriously pleased that he was right in thinking that Vance would not, probably could not, outshine/upstage him.
JiveTurkin
@Seeker: Partially because some people saw the debate the way they wanted to see it. They see it as he started to poorly but was much better at the end. I saw it as he started horribly, and made it all the up to mediocre at the end. He badly lost the debate. It doesn’t matter that Trump lied, it matters how people saw the debate. And undecideds felt he lost. He gave some of them an excuse to vote for Trump. I don’t know if Harris can win, and there are almost four months left, but Biden is a very badly damaged candidate.
It sucks that the public as a whole is dumb as a stump and half of it believes we are headed to being a third-world nation because Trump repeats it so often, but that is where we are it.
RaflW
@Jackie: Trump fell asleep during his son’s speech. I don’t feel sorry for any of them, but what a loveless, horrible family. Generations of harm and impacts.
Jay
Lot’s of new “Drive By” nyms, in this thread,
funny how this is not an Op.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
It’s more like Pickleball, but with murders and foreign agents.
wjca
Hitler became Chancellor about 1932. In 1952, Germany was a democracy again.** Unwise to be certain about how things will turn out.
** Yes, it was a horror show getting there. But that’s not the point. The point is that it’s hard to predict with certainty even a couple of years out. Let alone longer.
NaijaGal
@WaterGirl: Yeah. I think I need to stop reading Balloon Juice for a while. Nothing I’ve read about winning chances improving if Biden drops out rings true to me (who gives up the power of incumbency – a successful incumbent on several fronts who has previously beaten this very opponent?) even though I respect Kay as a former front pager.
Will keep donating and will find time to write postcards. Did call Adam Schiff’s office, for what it’s worth. That felt good. Keep up the good work!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jay: They seem to not able to agree on the rules among themselves.
Belafon
I’m just gonna post the 538 model showing Biden with 277 EVs now, compared to 271 last time, for all the people who want to go with the “he’s losing in the polls” doom.
My wife, for the first time in her life, is working with a group to get Democrats elected. She got down after the debate like a lot of people, bit she’s doing the right thing in this election: working to get Democrats elected.
https://bsky.app/profile/tristansnell.bsky.social/post/3kxijak2xlb23
(And don’t call it bullshit unless you call yours bullshit first.)
Subsole
@Starfish: The people proposing this needed to provide detail. I am referring to Pelosi, Jeffries, and co.
Was this your idea? Or Randovoter69’s? Or the Jackaltariat’s?
I am not asking you to provide a plan. I am asking the elected officials who decided this was a good idea to. Not you, or Randovoter 71, or this comment section.
I honestly felt the debate was not nearly as damaging as the three-week freakout over it. I mean, I guess we’ll never know, now. But don’t people here joke about the American attention span? Sometimes silence is your ally.
It also rankles a bit that since the Debate That Levelled Mt. Everest, Joe has gotten up and done multiple speaking engagements (scripted and candid) in front of friendly, neutral, and downright hostile audiences, carried himself very well, and yet we are told to ignore all that because of the Almighty Debate Which Will Not Fucking Die.
You have proof he can do the job. He’s doing the damn job now. Maybe highlighting all the things he has done and is doing would be more productive than sitting around doing what we’re doing now. Guess we’ll never know.
As far as the gripe about having it handed to him on a platter? Nah. Sorry. Don’t biy that. Nobody shoved a gun in anyone’s mouth and said don’t run. I think you are assuming they did it for tradition. Maybe you are right. Or, maybe they didn’t run because Biden didn’t look vulnerable. You think whatsisface was the only person who did some exploratory polling about knocking Joe off? I don’t. I bet some other folks did, and didn’t like the numbers they got back. Which is a damn sight different than “just handing it to the old man because muh traditions.” But that is pure conjecture on my part.
And thanks for keeping it civil. We are not enemies here. We must not be enemies.
WaterGirl
@NaijaGal: I hope you don’t go away. Maybe just choose which posts to read . We have something important coming up, hopefully tomorrow.
piratedan
i kind of see the new handles here and they remind me of the folks that are on the street at the bottom of the building while someone is on the ledge and they’re shouting “jump! You fuckers!”
the RNC goes first with their convention and you can expect a bump for them as all eyes are on them and the networks do what the networks do. Time will pass, we’ll have the Paris Olympics, links will be spread around, information shared. The Dems will have their convention. They will follow the rules. The speeches will be good, the policies laid out, GOP lies will be noted. The media will grade them all on a curve.
then we’ll settle in for the slog to election day as each party will have their messaging in front of the people of the country and people will make a choice based on whatever ad they saw last or via self interest or via tribal obligations.
Dems will point out the fascism, the deportation policy, project 2025, Dobbs, SCOTUS, their candidate is a felon
GOP will state that the southern border is awash with illegal immigrants coming to rape our white wimmins and to try and take credit for every fucking thing that Biden has done thanks to their judicial appointments and rock-solid foreign policy and economic game plan.
the Dems have a good to great ground game, the GOP has their evangelical churches.
guachi
@NaijaGal:
Biden’s approval ratings are in the dirt. It doesn’t matter if Biden has been actually successful or not. What matters is if people think he’s been successful or not. And people do not.
@Belafon:
538 showing Biden winning is not based on polling. It’s based on fundamentals. And what we see is Biden falling far short of where the 538 fundamentals state he should be. This is so because he’s a weak candidate. 538 is not a website that supports Biden staying in, it supports Biden getting out so we can plug in someone who can better get us to those “fundamentals” numbers.
As we get closer to the election the fundamentals are weighed less and less and you’ll see Biden’s win % drop and drop.
oldgold
Vance is the only good thing that has happened for our side in month.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay:
Assumes Trump is actually awake. /s
cain
@NaijaGal: There is one way to settle this. See you on election day.
sab
@oldgold: Biden and Harris giving a bunch of good speeches doesn’t count?
Captain C
@Kay:
Didn’t TCFG want to ditch Pence shortly after choosing him?
JoeyJoeJoe
@JiveTurkin: No. Also pied for wasting everyone’s time by subjecting them to a baseless prediction.
NaijaGal
@guachi: Hmm. He wasn’t my first choice in the 2020 primaries. I loved Elizabeth Warren. You could say my approval rating of him was low back then (sky high now). It didn’t stop me from voting enthusiastically *against* his opponent. Now I’d vote enthusiastically *for* Biden.
I know you’ve been here a while, I remember your nym, but I think we’ll have to respectfully disagree on what approval ratings mean when it comes to actual voting behavior.
I don’t think Biden is going to drop out. I don’t think people should sit on their hands when he doesn’t drop out, given the alternative.
NaijaGal
@cain: Yup – I am definitely planning to vote like my life depends on it.
guachi
@Subsole:
The response to things matters more than the thing itself. Many, many people who want Trump to be defeated (like my entire family) didn’t like what they saw and think Biden is too old. All of us got there independently after the debate except my wife, who was already there. That means me, my mom, dad, and two sisters.
You can’t unring the bell. Most people think Biden is too old. The debate won’t die because people understand how time works.
Elections are about the future. Just like with an athlete on contract I can see he’s performing now but not wish to sign him for 4 more years. Stating he’s doing the job now is of no consequence to people who don’t think he can do the job in the future.
Subsole
@Kay: How’s he gonna recognize that? Fucker was asleep.
But I’m supposed to be worried about Joe being up to the job?
Ugh.
Subsole
@janesays:
Shit. There won’t be an American Republic in 2030…
Captain C
@wjca:
West Germany was a democracy again. East Germany was well on its way to becoming Stasiland. And the whole country had been subjected to the B-17 urban renewal project.
(ed. for style)
Damien
Hey, did you guys hear about the SCOTUS reform proposals that our President endorsed?
Did you hear about his commitment to eliminate medical debt in his second term?
Did you hear about Joe’s commitment to voting reform?
No?
Maybe start telling people about the good stuff. At this point, I’m all in for whoever is the nominee, even if I think it’s fucking moronic to drop Biden.
Start helping the nominee who actually won the primaries now, then help the candidate who won the secondaries if it comes to that. Stop complaining, start spreading the good news.
I just had to listen to my neighbors talking about immigrants voting with fake IDs and how they should be rounded up. I’m so tired of this same fight every day when we have actual fascists knocking at our door. Whatever you think of Biden as a candidate, can you just start fucking talking about his positives instead of, as WaterGirl pointed out, kneecapping him?
Subsole
@Gretchen:
They go over fine at home.
These people see themselves as the new Southron Planter gentry. All those rules and restrictions are for other, smaller people. Disposable people.
Clarence Thomas would absolutely bring back miscegenation laws. Because he’d only be bringing them back for us. And his awful wife knows it.
Now, reality may not conform to their expectations. But that’s pretty cold comfort for everyone who had their rights stripped.
Subsole
@Seeker: For whom?
SFBayAreaGal
This is the first time I have used the pie function and wow, the pies are delicious.
LNNVA
@Damien: Thank you for this.
oldgold
@sab: Not really. In this news cycle a “good speech” and $3.75 might get you a mediocre cup of coffee.
Cacti
@guachi: Tracks with the latest batch of YouGov polls that also show Biden trailing everywhere.
Everything is moving in the wrong direction for him.
Archon
If these people get their wish and push out Biden the deep part is they will wash their hands over this whole debacle if we lose, in fact they will blame us for being too loyal to the incumbent President and not pushing him out sooner.
I just REALLY hope the donors and the elites know what they are doing because if we lose with 2 low id governors on the ticket the Democratic Party is finished.
Seeker
@Subsole: Harris would be a better candidate but it would be great to have one of the dem governors agree to lead the ticket instead of her
Captain C
I posted this downstairs:
I suspect by “internal polls crashing” a lot of scared pols mean “big donors angry at other shit and using this as a pretext to threaten to withhold support.”
Subsole
@wjca:
Correction:
Half* of Germany was a democracy again.
The other half? Yyyyeahhhh….they had to wait another 30 odd years.
* or thereabouts
Roberto el oso
This may sound shallow and just a form of coping BUT neither I nor anyone that I know has been polled on a single goddamned thing in the last year. And believe me, we are the sort of nerds who would let the others know if we did get polled. Therefore I’m just flat-out dismissing the meaningfulness of polls until we get past both conventions and Labor Day.
Gretchen
@Jay: Pie filter fullest it’s ever been. Half of the comments are sweet treats.
Jay
@oldgold:
Only if you say, “can I have a small cup of coffee, please”.
I you just say, “can I have a small cup of coffee, its $5.50”.
If you just say “small coffee”, it’s $7.75.
Flexible pricing is all the rage.
danielx
Was at lunch with some friends today, one of whom brought a friend with him. Usual catching up and whatnot, then one of the people did what I wouldn’t have in the company of a stranger: what about the guy trying to shoot Trump and what happens now? I wouldn’t have brought it up because of interpersonal dynamics; so and so is a friend of a good friend, but what if he has bad taste? Some back and forth, and finally someone asked what I thought. Trying to be somewhat sensitive without touching off the unknown stranger…I said, yeah Biden is probably too old, but I have confidence that he won’t sell out his country in a heartbeat and I have no such confidence in Trump. The unknown stranger turned out to be a very nice woman who was not enamored of TFG but….goddamn politics is serious nowadays. Always has been, but there I’ve been alive for thirteen presidents* and have seen and heard and learned some shit, and I never ever thought I’d see Project 2025 as a policy springboard.
Edit: is it purely my imagination or has the troll population gone off the end of the normal curve of late?
guachi
@Archon:
You mean the vast majority of Democrats and independents?
I think the majority of Americans who have been saying for months they want Biden to withdraw will be right to blame you for not pushing him out sooner. I will deserve some of that blame, myself.
I think donors and elites listening to the vast majority of voters is a good thing. I can only hope Biden also listens to them.
mrmoshpotato
@Archon: Yell this from the rooftops!
Archon
@guachi: Thats not how its gonna work. Were likely to get a bunch of post-Biden dropping out polls that, lo and behold don’t change the fundamentals of the race at all. In that case all these people pining for Biden to get out “for the good of the country” will want Kamala to do the same.
Subsole
@Captain C:
Oh, foo. We replaced what we broke. /s
My granddad lived in postwar Germany, for a while. He took pictures of the town in Germany where he was stationed. In 47-48, they were still rebuilding. Place had been gutted.
AnthroBabe
White fucking pundits have gone mad. I thought this fuckery was done. I cannot be online anymore.
Chris
@Damien:
No, I haven’t. It’s almost as though there’s been a total media blackout on anything that could be construed as “praising Biden” or “letting Biden’s message get out,” one that’s been going on since long before the debate and may have a great deal more to do with the situation we’re in right now than anything that’s happened this year. (Checks New York Times website. Checks Washington Post website. Checks CNN website). Nope, absolutely nothing.
Say, I wonder if one day we might get serious in talking about how to get around the gigantic obstacle that this presents, that it presented in 2016, that it presented in 2004, that it presented in 2000, that it’s going to continue to present for as far into the future as anyone can see even if Democrats do remain theoretically competitive, and what the best ways might be to get around that?
Oh well, I guess we’ll never know. Best get back to obediently bleating the narrative they’ve been filling us with for four years. Wouldn’t want people to think we’re some cult of partisans here.
TooManyJens
Until I see an actual workable plan for replacing Biden that has a reasonable likelihood of improving our chance of winning this election*, I’m going to continue to think that constantly bitching to the press about how incompetent your presumptive candidate is is a stupid fucking idea. It is also a quintessentially Democratic Party idea.
* No, “Candidate X is polling a little better than Biden against Trump, therefore if we dump Biden for Candidate X they’ll actually do better” is not a plan, it’s magical thinking.
Cacti
@Archon: Nope, I will blame Biden, his vanity, and the yes-people in his inner circle for encouraging a run for a second term.
Gretchen
@Subsole: they never want to answer that question. Johnny Unbeatable is just waiting in the wings.
Chet Murthy
Over at LG&M, esteemed commenter Eric Scharf really fuckin’ nailed it: http://disq.us/p/2zlupwq
This has the ring of truth.
Yutsano
I am not trusting polls for one simple reason: polls are not accounting for the Dobbs decision. And I don’t think polls can capture that with any accuracy. But it has so far given every Democratic candidate at least a 5 point boost. So why that has suddenly evaporated because of one bad event isn’t clear to me.
The other point to consider is polls are snapshots in time. They would predict the election if it were say a week away. But it’s not. The Democrats haven’t had their convention yet.TThere is still time for narrow voting margins to be changed.
Third, the people who want to replace Biden have to have their plan in place before August 1st. And no one has put up any credible candidate (the only one is Kamala and almost no one is suggesting her) nor the plan to remake the entire campaign structure in three months. If anyone has assembled that concrete plan I haven’t heard anything about it yet.
These aren’t the only reasons I’m sticking with Biden. I think he can win especially after Dolt45 gets an actual sentence. But these are some of the more rational ones to me.
caphilldcne
I’ll say here what I said at LGM with some edits. I continue to be completely baffled by the discussion here. This is a GOTV election. We have a stronger GOTV apparatus. We have an insanely unlikable opponent who is deliriously overconfident. We have vast swathes of the country (more than half counting women alone) who are at risk for losing some or all of their rights. We’re 4 months out. The polling is behind but within the margin of error. We just need to be out there fighting for every vote. I feel like it’s up to us to drag Biden or Harris or whoever across the finish line. But the Democrats standing around stomping on their own dicks is not only tiresome, it’s political malpractice when every action should be focused on defining the fascist party and why they’re bad.
caphilldcne
@Chet Murthy: agree with this. Also the conversation over there is worse than here. Thanks for wading through it.
Ruckus
@LAC:
A lot of seniors fit in there as well.
I worked till I was well into 72 yrs old and it paid off. I also had skills to sell at a decent price while doing that and it paid off. So for me my retirement, while nothing like even a half a millionaire let alone billionaire would be, I live and eat just fine. I was a working stiff my entire life, from mowing lawns to owning 2 separate businesses at different times. I worked. Physically and mentally worked, dirty hands and all. I have the VA for my healthcare because I enlisted during a war, and I was lucky enough to miss participating in the shooting part. Is life better than when I was born over 75 yrs ago? Yes it is. Is it as good as it should be? No fucking way. (I was in the blankety blank damn Navy… That’s the last time I apologize for that. Life is better for many, many more than it was when I graduated HS, or severed in the military, or even most of my life. Could it be better still? You bet your ever loving ass it could. But it is better than any previous time in my life, in many ways and for many people. Will it ever be perfect? No, it will not. There have been books written, movies made, promises broken, because perfection in humanity or really any living beings is an impossibility. We are like any other living thing or creature. Our creation is random, our growth is random, every minute/second of our lives is random and it is the same for all creatures big and small, all the minerals and every rock and molecule of air is basically random. We’ve made stories/religions up trying to define the world, all the molecules and each one of us, and it’s still a crap shoot. But it’s the crap shoot we have and the one the makes us and gives us an ending, be it six months (one cousin) or 100 yrs. (I have a neighbor who is 98) It’s waking up every damn day and putting one foot after the other. It’s helping people if you can and it’s getting help if you need it. It’s enjoying the ride that is this merry go round of life. It’s not being greedy or a pompous ass, it’s helping when you can and getting help when you need it. It’s understanding that not everyone gets all of it or even a bit part. It’s what we have, it’s life, it’s good, it’s sad, it’s grand, it’s shit and it can be all of that in one day. It’s what you do with it that counts, not counting what you’ve gotten, it’s life. Some do it grand, some just scrape through, if you are lucky it’s at least in that middle ground. It’s life, it’s black, it’s white and it’s all the shades in-between. Enjoy it when you can, work like hell when you have to and do your best not to make it worse for others. It’s life.
Gretchen
@Archon: I think you’re right about this. They don’t have a plan for what happens when they push Biden out, but it will be everyone else’s fault for not figuring it out after their brave action.
Jay
@Chris:
you mentioned partisans,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RYy_8u4blk
This is the fight, y’all can win it with votes, or,……..
Yutsano
Don’t tell anyone, but the military is one of the most socialist programs the US has. Universal health care, near universal housing, free clothes and three free meals, plus a paycheck, all for agreeing to be in the military for at least four years. It’s probably a facile comparison but it’s hard to be proven wrong.
danielx
@Ruckus:
Truth.
Damien
@Chris: I just applied to join the Biden media team as a producer. I’m setting things in motion to put my business on pause and taking a substantial pay cut, not to mention temporarily planning to move across the country to Delaware to do literally everything I possibly can to put this man and this team back in the White House.
I will be godDAMNED if I wake up after the election wishing I had done something different, done something more.
I’m already writing 500 postcards by hand, I’m already donating as much as I can, and I’m already making the positive case FOR Biden and not just AGAINST Trump to anyone who will listen and a lot who won’t.
Joe Biden is an absolutely phenomenal president, and I’m going to do everything I humanly can do to make sure he’s a phenomenal president again.
and if the candidate changes I’ll apply to work for them too.
And if Biden won’t take me then I’ll join a voter registration group, and if they won’t take me then I’ll walk around with a sandwich board.
If you aren’t willing to do the work, I ain’t got time for whiners.
guachi
@Gretchen: If Biden withdraws then whatever Biden chooses to happen after he withdraws will happen. If Biden says “I endorse Harris” then that’s what happens.
According to a poll released yesterday, Black voters would line up behind Harris if Biden endorsed her. I’m sure most Dems who want Biden gone would follow suit. I would. My mom would and she doesn’t even like Harris. Is Harris too old? No? Good enough for her and good enough for me.
ColoradoGuy
One thing that is very different about this election is the Oligarch Class are all-in on fascism. The Sulzbergers are aligned with the Murdochs who are aligned with Putin. Putin and Xi are both multi-billionaires, and the 1000 billionaires in this country have shown their hand.
Project 2025 outlines an Iran-style theocracy to keep the newly impoverished masses distracted while wealth streams upwards towards an oligarchy. The torments of millions in the for-profit concentration camps are merely a sideshow to distract and entertain the Neo-Confederates in the downwardly mobile middle classes.
I am surprised how long the Sulzbergers have been able to pretend they run a “liberal” newspaper. They were the #1 news-laundering feed for the Richard Mellon Scaife propaganda factory during the Nineties, the #1 news-laundering feed for Cheney war propaganda in the early 2000’s, and the most persistent source of the “But her emails” press narrative in 2016. They have been a propaganda amplifier (as well as source) for more than thirty years now.
Folks in the rest of the world wonder how on Earth the American political system is so weirdly distorted. Well, add the Murdoch family to the Sulzbergers, and very narrow corporate ownership of the TV stations, and there’s your answer.
Cacti
QFT
Roberto el oso
@guachi: I have seen absolutely nothing that would corroborate your description of the anti-Biden crowd as being “the vast majority of Dems”, absolutely nothing.
And the idea that if he stays in and we lose that you will be blaming us is pretty precious. You really think that if Trump wins any of us will have the time or energy to luxuriate in blaming one another? Pretty certain we’ll all be otherwise engaged. Intra-party grudges will be wayyyyy down on the list of priorities.
frog
@Gretchen:
Think of the life skills the kids pick up as they watch Daddy beat up Mommy.
Jay
@Gretchen:
I was going with Underpants Gnome theory,
but it’s looking more and more like one of Baldrick’s Cunning Plans,…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsXKS8Nyu8Q
Gretchen
@Damien: thank you for this.
Chris
@ColoradoGuy:
Yep. The fact that so many people on our side still buy them as either a reliable source or a liberal one is absolutely insane, and as I’ve said for years, it’s the biggest obstacle we face in politics by far.
Chris
@Damien:
All the props.
Gretchen
@Jay: good one.
Captain C
And I just called my congressman (Dan Goldman) and left a message telling him that I support President Biden staying in the race, that no one had presented a plan other than “I hope it all goes well”, and that I was appalled at the defensive crouch that Democrats seemed to be (semi-anonymously) taking and I wanted it to stop. Also said nice things about his term so far, which I hope will at least cheer up the intern who has to listen to my message. Also, I kind of hope if they notice the time stamp that they take it as someone who cares enough to call at 1:15 in the morning.
Ishiyama
Bleating like sheep: “The donors and elites must save us! Their superior vision and understanding is beyond the reach of you lower class voters. Listen to your betters, they make the right choices for us all.”
Feh.
guachi
@Roberto el oso:
Almost every poll on the topic for months has shown Democratic voters want Biden to withdraw. Just from the past week.
AP-NORC poll dated 7/11-7/15 65% of Ds say Biden should withdraw.
Morning Consult Ds 48-43 withdraw. Black voters 55-36 withdraw.
NYT poll PA Ds 46-48 withdraw. PA indy 68-27 withdraw
NYT VA Ds 58-39 withdraw. VA indy 60-32 withdraw
NBC Ds 33-62 satisfied with nominee
The D numbers are self-described Democrats and not the entire universe of D voters.
Jay
@Ishiyama:
The Extreme Court, Citizens United and tax cuts have put American Democracy up for sale to the highest bidder
Space Cadet Felon Dust has “promised” $45 million a month to a 34 Felonies Rapist Pedo PAC’s.
Cacti
@Ishiyama: Babbling like a cultist: “If you criticize dear leader, you are a heretic. Dear leader is the party. Dear leader can’t fail. He can only be failed by the faithless.”
Jay
Once upon a time, a certain prickly pear used to have an occasional comment worth reading, if just for a well argued counterpoint.
Sad what they have become.
Kid’s,……. don’t buy drugs.
When you are a Rock Star they give you them for free.
luc
Whoever the candidate, Democrats need way better messaging regarding the INFLATION, or they will lose.
This is the biggest weakness.
Darkrose
@WaterGirl: So it does! Thanks :D
Okay, so good stuff:
I’m in Toronto (first time in Canada!) for the 2024 IDEAL Conference. Sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, IDEAL stands for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility in Libraries and Archives. It’s been amazing, and I feel so energized.
There were five of us here from my school, including a colleague I co-wrote my first journal article with, another who presented on a search tool she worked with researchers on to help clinicians find articles on health outcomes for members of the trans and gender-expansive communities, and the two colleagues I presented with. Our topic was “Creating an inclusive library strategic plan,” based on our experiences on the teams writing and implementing the strategic plan for our library.
The presentation was today, and despite being at 5 pm on the last day of the conference, the room was packed. We had some robust discussions and people seemed to liked the video we did with quotes from various library colleagues.
Some of the sessions I went to were amazing, like the one on accessibility in instruction and assignments, and the one on combating disinformation. That one raised some tough questions; academic librarians often tell students to seek out peer-reviewed articles as authoritative sources, but what happens when those articles or systemic reviews are fundamentally flawed, like the paper on “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” where the author only interviewed parents on anti-trans websites, or the Cass Review that doesn’t disclose the conflicts of interest.
I was struck by how lucky I am to be doing DEIA work in California. No, we’re not perfect, but librarians in places like Texas and Florida are continuing to fight for their students in the face of massive pushback and bullshit from the right. Seeing people in the field committed to doing the work to make academic libraries more equitable and inclusive.
guachi
@luc: My 75 yo mom wants to see Buttigieg as VP for Harris because he explains everything so well. Just park his ass on Fox News 24/7 or something
Oh, I also think Harris should be the candidate because VPs don’t actually have a job so she can campaign non-stop.
Darkrose
@Jay: Bill Nighy was the best thing about that movie.
dc
@Damien: Bravo!
Ruckus
@Chris:
Don’t ever let go.
We are in a situation that is self made and not self made at all.
We have, at least now, an older man as candidate, who is current president. How old is the opposition candidate? Not much younger, 3 yrs. Which one overall is showing far worse? Yes that’s also the other guy, who did shit and tried to start a civil war, or actually an uncivil war and is showing signs of far worse aging than our candidate. Would I like a younger candidate? Possibly but he’d have to be a lot better and BE ELECTABLE. Got anyone in mind?
We are in a peculiar spot here, because our country is trying to bend in two impossibly different ways. One works reasonable and one doesn’t work at all. Guess which way I’m going….. Yes it’s the man who has shown he’s good and his back up who is also good. Not the guy who is worthless shit in elevator shoes.
Damien
@Cacti: Well, personally it seem more like “we have a process that we developed over decades of presidential elections, this process has given us this candidate and we don’t feel like discarding the will of millions of Democratic voters. Especially for an unknown contender, or Biden’s vice presidential candidate who happens to be two things that a good portion of America seems to hate; and ESPECIALLY because there doesn’t seem to be any plan laid out to address the very real, overwhelming logistical challenges created by the suggestion that Biden step aside. Without those things, it doesn’t make any sense to follow through on this idea; if you can provide answers then it might be worth entertaining further, but at this time Biden is our candidate and has been a transformative president, perhaps instead of continuing to undermine him (even with the best of intentions!) we can collectively shift into working to get this candidate back into the White House until something happens to change the status quo?”
Truly, explain to me how the horrific logistical challenges are addressed and we can keep talking, but “Biden step aside” is only one step of a hugely complex process, and if someone has Fisked it I’m all ears
tam1MI
With such wonderful powers of persuasion as this, I just can’t figure out why the Dump Biden folks are failing to bring anyone here over to their side…
Ruckus
@Al Rennick:
WHO DO YOU HAVE THAT IS BETTER?
I’ll wait.
Jay
@luc:
Inflation, or should I say Greedflation and Shrinkflation is down.
One would never know that because the Democratic Party don’t own any Media Corporations and Biden is Old.
Chet Murthy
@Jay: Even moreso than whether TCFG wins, whether Teh Fash [sic] win, this election is about whether The Big Lie wins.
Ishiyama
“Useful Idiots”? or “Trotskyite Wreckers”? Does it make a difference which they are?
frog
@Subsole:
How would that work? Obviously darkies and honkies getting together would be forbidden. How about Turks and Poles? Koreans and Thais? Can whites marry those beautiful Polynesians in Hawaii?
Does the loving couple need a DNA test to get a marriage license? What’s the limit? One bad drop, like the slaver Confederates used? One bad grandparent of the Nazi rules?
So many questions.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Close but I’d say on the minimal evidence I’d say it isn’t as bad as some see. We are far better off than we were 4 yrs ago. But of course that was after SFB so a bar of soap might have done better. How we got SFB in the first place was pure shit on a shingle. I’ve tried to find one thing he did properly or realistically. I’m at a loss. And some want him back and he’s worse than ever.
I’m guessing that some just do not want a country. I got nothing else.
Archon
@tam1MI: I’m actually starting to think Guachi and Cacti are the same person just that Cacti is the meaner, more condescending, less persuasive persona.
Fair Economist
@Al Rennick:
Nominating Kamala gives Trump another 1-3 point bigger lead. That’s a shake-up alright, but the wrong one.
Nominating anybody else will be even worse, because of the effect of shiving Kamala. This is probably why I’m *still* seeing fundraising emails from both Newsom and Whitmer, asking me to donate to *Biden* for President. Nobody is going to want to captain the Titanic.
Our best chance, per polls, and per political history, is Biden. Without him, it’s Kamala. Without her – urgh, what a mess that would be.
Darkrose
Yeah, having a white governor leapfrog the Black woman VP is a great way to get Black women to enthusiastically support the ticket! It’s not like most of us haven’t had that happen to us already. “Listen to Black women! Except when you don’t like what we’re telling you. Then you can shut up and fall in line.”
kindness
Do the pied people here not know they are being pied by more of us than not? They seem to be paid almost. Not all of them but I suspect several.
@Archon: yea, I stopped reading them. They wasted my time. Pie.
Stuart in Austin
I’m really tired of the trolls. Biden was the best candidate a month ago and today he is still the best. Russia and China are working hard at discouraging us but when early voting starts here in Texas I’m voting for Joe, even if I have to write him in!
Chet Murthy
@Fair Economist: Word. Word.
Jay
@Fair Economist:
I am surprised that Jill Stein and Bernie Saunder’s arn’t coming up as potential replacements for Biden in the trollatoriate.
cain
Just so you know how insane things are – at the RNC:
https://twitter.com/snarkylicious/status/1813810286325022781
A what looks like an older Japanese man, cheering for internment camps for millions of Japanese.
Make it make sense. Then one of the BJ commentators who doesn’t post here that often tells me she knows Japanese grandparents who were interned and are MAGA.
I mean, if you’ve got people like this who had a bad experience being interned, and yet will turn around and support it? I’m flabbergasted.
Cacti
@tam1MI: Tell us again how New Yorkers and Californians aren’t real Democrats. Today Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries joined the not real Democrats list. The 60% of Dems who want him to step down? Also not real Democrats, I suppose.
Getting mighty crowded on the BJ list of heretics.
cain
@Darkrose:
Chis Evans – https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1813678337413595409
Jay
@cain:
They don’t think that it will be them, it will be “the others”.
Archon
@Jay: Oddly enough this self-sabotage of the Democratic party isn’t coming from its left flank.
Ruckus
@wjca:
SFB is falling down a very tall staircase – and that’s of his own making. His mind was never there and a box of crackers. And it seems to be getting worse minute by minute. He’s a convicted felon. He’s falling apart. Actually he’s falling farther apart. He’s not in any way presidential. Not one, not a fraction of one, not a billionth of one. He’s shit with lifts and absolutely nothing else, nothing positive in any way. He’s shit on a shingle and that was always a bad meal in the Navy. He’s made it far worse.
NotMax
@Yuitsano
From back when polling was somewhat more reliable.
“Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they’re growing.”
— Adlai Stevenson
;)
prostratedragon
@Subsole: Neither Pelosi nor Jeffries is proposing “this,” unless there’s some news in the last hour or two. I also think Pelosi does not want to get in front of the new leader on this or any other matter.
Jay
@Archon:
It’s not all that odd. The “dump” Fmr. Madam GOAT Speaker Nancy Pelosi movement wasn’t from the left.
Other than a certain Prickly Pear here who pretends to be “left” at times, but probably hands fake $20’s to the unhoused, so they get arrested, to keep it’s property values up.
Ruckus
@TooManyJens:
I’d call it magical not thinking, but that might just be me.
Jay
@Ruckus:
Well, he does have a maxi pad glued to his ear, that should have some minimal “value”, even if it’s just to make MAGgoT’s buy more maxi pads. We know what it did for adult diaper sales.
tam1MI
Well, they have persuaded me to withhold my vote from Hillary Scholten and write in Joe Biden’s name instead. Although that may nit have been what they were going for.
Cacti
@prostratedragon: Who do you think fed the story to the press about Schumer/Jeffries private meeting with Biden?
It wasn’t the White House.
TooManyJens
@Darkrose: I was about to say “I don’t get how people don’t see that,” but of course I get how people don’t see that.
Christ.
It’s perfectly fair game to challenge the previous admin’s VP for the nomination in the normal course of things. Being the VP doesn’t automatically entitle someone to be the next candidate. (Biden had to fight for it and that’s fine and appropriate.)
BUT. This is not that situation. This is not the normal course of things. This would be an emergency situation, one in which you have a person who’s been prepping for four years to be the one who would step up in an emergency situation. Instead, people want to pass her over and spend energy and TIME (which we do not have!) trying to pick someone else? What does that say?
prostratedragon
@Gretchen:
Lecture-demonstration
Geoduck
I hope Biden stays in the race, but man, whatever their actual personal opinions, Pelosi, Jefferies and Schumur all really need to suck it up, get in front of a microphone ASAP and try to staunch this constant trickle of “Senior Dems Say Biden is Doomed” garbage with unambiguous statements of support.
Or have they done so, and the media just hasn’t covered it?
Slightly_peeved
@Fair Economist:
Of course, we don’t even know if Kamala wants the gig right now. Has a bit of a glass cliff vibe.
how many of the people publicly asking for Biden to stand down said explicitly that they want Harris to replace him? I know Schiff didn’t. I know Clooney wanted the mini-primary. Most of the rumour-mongers are silent on this part. So I don’t know where this confidence that Harris could be the only possible replacement comes from. Perhaps the same place the idea overturning the primary voters because of vibes would result in a poll boost comes from.
guachi
@tam1MI:
The “dump Biden” people have a majority of Americans on their side. And the idea that literally no one else on this site thinks Biden should withdraw is silly. Many of them are getting shouted down and blocked, though.
I had three people in one thread wish for my death because I posted polling saying Biden was losing and Americans wanted him to withdraw. Death wishes over polling!
@Archon:
I am not surprised to see delusional conspiracy theories here.
Cacti
@Geoduck: That isn’t going to happen because they can all see that Biden is sinking like a rock.
Fair Economist
Who’s spearheading the effort to get rid of Biden?
Cryptocurrency billionaire Mike Novogratz.
Their problem isn’t that Biden is old. Their problem is that Biden is honest.
Ruckus
@caphilldcne:
All of this. ++
But.
Let’s face it Joe Biden is old. He’s also a very good president. We have a VP who I think could/can do a very good job if necessary. I even voted for her in the primary, I think she’s that good.
Next, I think Joe Biden is the best choice that I see right now and I do not see much else in line. This country is a democracy and from history and what I see in this country a democracy is more difficult because there are differing points of view and people whose view is dark, twisty, smelly, harmful and horrible. Any natural citizen over 35 having lived in the US for over 14 years can run and that’s out of over 330 million people. I’m qualified. I know a lot of people that are qualified. I’d bet I can get at least 2 votes and I’m 6 years younger than Joe Biden. But I’m retired with an extra dose of tired. Could I do the job? Hell if I know but I’m not interested in finding out. He can, he is, and his second in waiting is in my mind well qualified. And he is so damn far ahead of SFB in every possible measurement except stupidity that to me it’s not even a contest.
Darkrose
@Fair Economist: Huh. Kind of disappointed in Abigail Disney.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Medical anxiety plus bad sleep brings up a quote from Samuel L. Jackson:
“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”
Joe Biden is the Democratic candidate. Until such time as he is not, our task is to work to defeat the Trumpists with him at the head of the Democratic ticket.
Fair Economist
@TooManyJens: More to the point, the overwhelming majority of Democrats who voted to make Biden the nominee did it with the assumption that Harris would take over if he had to leave the job. So, if he does leave because the cryptobros hate him reining in their scams,, Harris needs to get the nomination.
Cacti
@Fair Economist: Yes, it was cryptocurrency that made Biden look like a confused, feeble old man on the debate stage. 🙄
Jay
@Slightly_peeved:
Both Biden and Harris are the favorites of the actual solid “base” of Democratic Party voters, 20% of the voters.
The wishcasters think that if Harris is top of the ticket, the Democrats will only lose maybe 20,000,000 votes. If there is no Harris, it will be about 40,000,000.
It is nothing more than a Baldrick ‘cunning plan”.
And it’s racist. The ******* will vote for us anyway, because,……
No, diss the ticket and they will downvote or stay home.
There is no Mracle-Ersatz.
TooManyJens
@Fair Economist: Ain’t democracy grand?
The billionaires want to pick the nominee. And if they get to do that, they’ll expect to be able to control whoever it is. And given this precedent, they’ll probably be right. They’re no better than Russian oligarchs. (Except maybe slightly less murder-y. Probably.)
guachi
@Jay:
In a poll released yesterday of Black voters in swing states only 34% agreed with the statement that it would be wrong to bypass Harris.
What’s your evidence that Black voters would stay home en masse if Harris wasn’t the nominee?
And if they’re the “actual, solid base” but they stay home then they aren’t really the base.
TooManyJens
@Cacti: Nobody made Hillary Clinton use a private email server either, but they did choose to keep the focus on that and let it drown out everything else. It’s even easier to do that now than it was 8 years ago. Yeah, Biden’s old, yeah, people have had reasonable concerns about that, but let’s not pretend this is a wholly organic phenomenon.
Fair Economist
@Jay: The cryptobros funding Dump Biden want the Democrats to lose. They don’t have a plan for a replacement, and the fact that any replacement would do worse is the point. They want Trump to win so they can cheat people freely.
Oh, and why is George Clooney in on this? 50 million in crypto investments.
Archon
@guachi: Who do you think the Democratic ticket should be?
And don’t insult my intelligence by pretending you want it to be Kamala at the top.
guachi
@Archon: I’ve said repeatedly that I want Harris. Had this been done last year I’d have maxxed out my donation to Whitmer in the primary. But it’s not July 2023.
@Fair Economist:
I have yet to receive my payment. Damn cryptobros.
Jay
@TooManyJens:
And yet, they have no nominee.
And who are they?
Nepo Babies,
Crypto Crooks,
assorted Crooks, Liars and Scammers.
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
I can’t totally disagree with you on the military. Except the housing, free clothes and the food. And the paycheck was damn small. I got free clothes in boot camp, never another free thread. The heath care on board ship was minimal at best and the food, now there is a real departure in concept. I had really, really good rarely and really, really crap food most of the time. I was once the guy that handed everyone all the boxes off the semi backed up on the pier to restock the ship and not one meal for the next six months would not have been beaten by any McDonalds. Boy it sure looked good in the boxes…… My bunk on the ship damn near broke my back and that was with a piece of wood under the mattress, which if I got caught would get me in trouble. (it was under there when I first went on board. As most of the canvas bunks had some Illegal wood to make it usable.) IOW it wasn’t all that and a bag of chips. Did I survive? Sure, I’m here, decades later. Was it better than being drafted into the Marines? Or the Army? During Vietnam? You bet your aunt fanny it was. My point was on paper the military was OK, in real life, during my tour, with Vietnam going on, not so much. Could it have been worse? One million percent yes it could have. I met some great people and I met some that I’m not at all sure were human. More of the second than the first. But I also learned that even if all were shit, one could get through it and come out the other side.
Jay
LMFAO at how the extinct Guaicuruan keeps trying to engage with people who have no interest in engaging with them.
Slightly_peeved
@Jay:
oh I completely agree it’s a ridiculous idea to pass over Kamala. The whole thing’s ridiculous – I live somewhere that the leader of the country getting replaced by another party member was commonplace until the parties realised how much voters hated it. But if it was to be anyone it has to be Kamala.
My issue is that the people who are publicly pushing for this aren’t mentioning Kamala at all, so I don’t know if they agree.
Jay
@Ruckus:
Thank you for you commonsense, practical, life based comments. I always read them.
NotMax
Kee-rist on a crabcake, people.
DON’T FEED THE TROLLS.
Jay
@Slightly_peeved:
Hint, they don’t.
guachi
@Slightly_peeved:
This is such utter garbage and a lie I’m surprised you even typed it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@guachi: “Once the nominee is finalized it’s basically done. At that point you’ll see many people who wanted Biden to withdraw stay unenthused.”
Awwww, you’re not doing a Snoopy dance about it. Want me to start singing “Feelings” for you? I can see your stupid ass this fall…
“I’m not enthused about stopping Trump from winning because I didn’t get my way.”
Go fuck yourself. Really, Along with the big money fucks in the party. Go pout somewhere else. I can’t wait for Biden to be nominated so we can see you perform the Hee Haw favorite Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me.
caphilldcne
@Ruckus: that’s where I’m at. I presume things will settle out and we’ll have a candidate soon enough. I’m all in whatever happens. I don’t think the US can afford another 4 years of trump.
Ruckus
@cain:
The human race runs all types, kinds and levels of human. In many ways finding common ground can be rather difficult because it often isn’t the group or persons you expect. At all. It may or may not be worse now that there is so much open communications, some will just pick the easiest or shortest story because it was that. Some have lives of always being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. And some overthink every damn thing. It’s humanity. It’s not one audience it’s millions of them
LanceThruster
Sorry. The party kneecapped themselves. Shifting blame is what they do. They made sure they positioned a candidate whose biological clock was ticking the moment they got into office, and though it was acknowledged one term made the most sense for obvious reasons now, get caught this flat-footed.
The gang that couldn’t shoot straight (are all firearm allusions now stochastic terrorism?).
[smdh]
guachi
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
People are not required to be excited about a candidate. My wife is a registered Republican who hates Trump but thinks Biden is too old and would be unenthused if he stayed in the race.
I’ll give you my wife’s phone number. You can tell her to “go fuck herself” if you’d like. I’m sure it will go over well.
Jay
The extinct Guaicuruan has an opinion with out any facts. 0 links to it’s posts advocating for Harris.
Unsurprising.
So much horseshit that there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
LLM’s could do better.
T had a video conference today from her Union. The Union local officers were informing the Union members of what went down, during the Layoffs. 20% of the staff were cut, major “rules” and “agreements” were broken, the ORG shit all over their “values”, drove several local Union officers into stress leave and medical care,……… along with a bunch of the laid off,……..
all held on the same day that the Org announced $1 billion dollars in “new” facilities and programs, Faculty travel and pay increases and an “Employee Appreciation Day” where the Org blew $1million on junk and pizza, instead of keeping peoples jobs.
Rathskeller
@caphilldcne: absolutely perfect
206inKY
@guachi: It’s been a nonstop stream of vitriol on here, so I’m guessing a lot of Biden skeptics have just left. The hateful language against Schiff in the last thread was mind-boggling. The 65% of the party that wants Biden to step down are all apparently DINOs—Jeffries, Schiff, Pelosi, Whitmer, Schumer, etc. All apostates who can’t possibly be drawing on insight from personal experience with Biden in recent months. Even people who are enthusiastic about Harris (like me!) are pawns of the media who want a brokered convention (who cares if they openly reject this idea?).
When you’re screaming into the void that 65% of the party is delusional for trusting their own lying eyes, maybe they’re not the problem.
LanceThruster
@LanceThruster: for the record, I didn’t think Biden would make it this long, but that also presumed they wouldn’t keep pushing the fiction that he was fine. I pretty much assumed there would be some sort of medication cocktail with diminishing returns over time.
Slightly_peeved
@guachi:
Ed Case, Greg Stanton, George Clooney and Adam Schiff do not mention who should replace Biden. Well Clooney mentions a mini-primary, so clearly not Harris taking over. I’ll check some of the others.
Slightly_peeved
Jim Himes does not endorse Kamala: https://x.com/jahimes/status/1811558379661185359
NotMax
Off to escape for awhile by watching Quartet.
Jay
@206inKY:
The anti-Bidens, drive by’s, trolls have not left.
Many, who have engaged the
warp drivepie filter have noticed that other than three regular subjects, almost every other thread is pie filled.We got 12 “new” nyms today, alone.
Slightly_peeved
Mikie Sherrill not only does not endorse Kamala, she says Biden should lead the search for a new nominee, which to me implies that the one right there next to him isn’t who she’s looking for: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna161018
Jay
And another remote diagnosis of Foot Parkinson’s pops up from Tiny Misshapen Mushroom Wiggler Man.
Srry, TBone, stole your penis joke.
Ruckus
@LanceThruster:
You are thinking of shitforbrains. Diminishing returns is all there is and all there ever was with shitforbrains. How enough idiots voted for him is beyond me. Other than claiming to be a billionaire he had absolutely nothing. His family is/was not made up of stupid people including him. It’s just that he is a worse than useless fuck, with really nothing other than the money he stole from his siblings when their father died. He has zero positive anything, humanity – zero, personality – zero, intelligence – zero. Sure he got a decent education, what did he do with it? Absolutely nothing positive. On the measurement of life line he gets a – yes ZERO. Many people with far less possibilities in life get far more than a zero, they add to life even if only a slight amount. He’s added only pain and stupidity. ZERO. That’s his life total – ZERO. And all those zeros added to what he started with and he still gets ZERO. At best. I’m sure some will argue with me that he gets a NEGATIVE. And I won’t argue with that one bit. I did say zero at best.
Jay
@Ruckus:
C’mon, tell us what you really think.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@guachi:
I’ll let you deliver the message to your Republican wife for me…lol! Thanks for the laugh though. Explains a lot…
Ruckus
@Jay:
NO
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jay:
He does sound a bit restrained. He’s always been a very polite person, though.
guachi
@206inKY: I was informed that being publicly for Harris was an impossibility. There was a poll released today of Black swing state voters – actual, real data as opposed to people pretending to speak for Black voters – where:
Harris had higher net favorables (by +7)
Harris did slightly better in voter preference (by +3)
Believe Biden should step aside by 43-49 (so more say stay)
63% think Biden should endorse Harris if he does back out. This tells me there are many Black voters who a) want Biden to drop out and b) want Harris. The % of Black Democrats who think Biden should immediately endorse Harris was 74%.
I have not seen polls this specific about other types of voters.
https://split-ticket.org/2024/07/17/we-polled-black-voters-heres-what-we-found/
Ruckus
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Thank you!
High praise – a bit restrained.
Does that mean I don’t swear enough? Because with all the politics going on and how they are going on (SFB) I’m having a bit of trouble being even a bit restrained and not swearing like the sailor I was, in the navy and in real life.
LanceThruster
According to this, Joe staying in the race is now the odds on bet. Be careful what you wish for.
Tony Jay
Yup, it’s official. Everybody has gone totally tonto, and it’s not going to get better until after the election. Probably something to do with the stakes in play and the awfulness of the opposition. Maybe if the forces of the Far Right hadn’t just received a democratically administered bloody nose or two elsewhere, the Fraternity of Heritage Media Outlets wouldn’t feel driven to troll the minds of their audience so viscously, but they were, and they do, so fuck’em with bristled cod-piece anyway.
Until mid-November, looks like it’s simply buckle-up and ride the turbulence time.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Slightly_peeved:
I can’t qwhite put my finger on why she would feel this way but I am sure that she believes that her reasons are as pure and white as the driven snow.
Found another shitty Democrat. New Jersey really needs to do better than someone like this.
M31
huh, Biden now within 4 pts in FL and 2 in NC
time to panic
Maxim
@No One of Consequence:
This. Do all the “dump Biden” people not realize that the GOP is salivating at just this prospect ?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Ruckus: Yup, not enough sailor words for ummm… punctuation! Everything else is dead nuts on target and safe for delivery around children.
😁
Jay
@Ruckus:
I used to work with a Glaswegan. He used profanities as punctuation.
Then, he became a consultant, and a teacher at a tech school. In both jobs, I worked with him when he was a consultant and I represented the consulted, I was a student, when he was a teacher.
In both roles, he could no longer use his preferred punctuation.
Listening to him became odd, large gaps in a sentence.
That was 30 years ago, so feel free to let loose, learning new strings of invective would up my game.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Tony Jay: Turbulence, huh? No wonder I’m feeling sick. Although that may be the anxiety reaching overload levels here.
Seriously. I’m at the point where I’m dreading opening up any news source because it’s all going to be screaming about Dems in disarray, how we’re doomed, how the GOP’s ascendence is inevitable.
Starting to get unpleasant intrusive thoughts that aren’t letting up. It feels like I can see the oncoming freight train but I can’t get my legs to move to get me off the tracks.
Sorry if I’m going egocentric here, but I can’t imagine I’m the only one who’s in a perilous place, mentally, at the moment.
guachi
@Maxim: Point out the relevant laws that would leave off whomever the Democrats nominated if Biden withdrew
You can sue anyone for anything at any time. That Republicans might sue is irrelevant.
Jay
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Go for a walk in the woods, visit a dog park, the only park where an adult with out a kid or a dog does not come off as a creep.
There is a Media, troll, Foreign Op, Ogliarch organized Op going on.
Yeah, Nepo Babies, Crypto Bro’s, Great Crime Billionaires are withholding “$90 billion”, (really?) in PAC money, from Biden/Harris and demanding that they get to dictate a new nominee, for which they have no nym, just some imaginary candidate or Manchin, Sistema ticket,
Meanwhile, the Biden/Harris campaign raised $112 million in one week, for direct spending, $81 at a time.
Postcards to Voters has had to pause, because they can’t keep up to the massive demand.
It’s July, the weird has just started. Normies won’t be paying attention until September.
Betty Cracker
@Darkrose: That’s terrific! Thank you so much for the insight into your colleagues’ commitment. There’s a lot that’s depressing right now, but good people are still showing up to do critical jobs. Kudos to all of you!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Just remember that there a lot of people who want to see us fail and are working hard to dispirit us and make us question things. The pressure is on and this isn’t stopping until the fat lady sings. They are chumming the waters with disinformation and the sharks are in a frenzy because they want REAL food.
Thus the clamor for them to be proven right. We need to win this to put the moneyed class on the left in their place. They want to force the politicians to boot Biden by cutting off the cash flow from their deep wallets into theirs, thus the clamor from the Tonya Harding wing of the party.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Jay: I’ll see what I can do (although it’s supposed to hit 101 Fahrenheit here in Athens today). Thanks for the bits of good news to offset the bad. It actually helps more than you might realize.
Jay
Methinks that the extinct Guaicuruan should have followed the example of 37 Felonies Rapist Pedo’s later lawyers, and have demanded the Crooks, Liars, Crypto, Nepo Babies money up front.
That’s what we do with Soro’s Bucks.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@guachi:
You can keep polishing your turd but it’s still a turd.
LanceThruster
@Ruckus: politics and elections involve a calculus where ambiguity plays a large part. Why should Trump’s flaws and shortcoming be more of an issue for his supporters than complicity in genocide is for Dems? And Dems right out of the starting gate had to ignore why Buden dropped out in ’88. What’s it say about a person who lies publicly about insanely easy stuff to verify to boost his own ego? I also recall Buden belittle some by saying he was smarter than them, and even mocking someone else’s fitness with a oush-up challenge. He once said in the old days he handle a guy like Trump by taking him out behind the bleachers (for an implied 4ss kicking), talked smack before the debate (“Bring it, pal”), and now Trump has challenged him to a round of golf to see if that was just more false bravado on his part. Even without all the rest, I’m not genocidin’ with Biden, goddammit. That’s just a bridge too fvcking far. Your mileage may vary. That’s your right. He’s even waited too long to stop the slaughter (which he’s not doing anyway). The damage has been done. Didn’t stop Schiff from throwing him under tge bus… actually twisted tge blade for good measure it seems.
Both sides run on the notion of whatever it is you want to criticize about our guy, at least he’s not their guy. Congress mirrors the electorate in that they’ve seen the key to power is party über alles. Those not buying into such cynical justifications “no matter what” (sound familiar?) are stridently condemned as in league with the devil.
It’s *always* vote harder and not “earn votes better”. It’s as if they can’t grasp the concept not being entitled to a certain block of votes because then they might actually have to be responsive to what voters actually want. Case in point is how well Medicare for All polls from people of both parties (and independents). Talk about an opportunity to get crossover votes (and not Schumer’s worthless assurances of the mythical moderate Republican getting behind Hillary because Trump was too whack-a-doodle).
A Hail Mary done right and not reeking of desperation is called for.
Jay
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Take a cotton baseball hat, soak it in water, stick it in the freezer. Do the same with a kerchef, wrap it around your neck, go out early, or late, smell the flowers, sit in a cafe,
chill in the heat.
TrainedWreck
@Fair Economist: 💯🙏
Slightly_peeved
@guachi:
Angie Craig wants an “open, Democratic” process to select the new candidate: https://x.com/AngieCraigMN/status/1809577054062432688?lang=en
oh – Seth Moulton at least mentioned Kamala:
(https://www.wbur.org/news/2024/07/04/moulton-says-biden-drop-out-election)
So so far, of the reps calling for Biden to stand down I’ve found one who’s mentioned the idea of giving the nomination to Kamala but as one option among many, and multiple proposing a do-over primary.
That’s not to say a rep hasn’t come out publicly and said Biden should hand over the nomination to Kamala, but even if every other one I checked did so it doesn’t look the inevitability that some people are arguing. If anything, it looks like the choice is more likely to be Biden or shitshow.
Edit: Raul Grijalva says to “look elsewhere” for a new nominee: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/second-us-democratic-lawmaker-says-biden-needs-end-campaign-new-york-times-2024-07-03/
Tony Jay
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
No, no, I think it’s perfectly understandable. A natural reaction to what’s going on and how hard elements that – should – be doing their jobs are instead throwing paper bags full of runny dog mess into the faces of bystanders and reporting on the smell.
I’ve said this loads of times, but I find it oddly comforting. Bad people who are put in a position where they can do bad things are going to do those bad things because they are bad people. That’s what’s happening here. Bad people are doing bad things and because of the positions they’re in it’s having a tangible effect on the world we all live in which is making the chances of more bad things happening increase.
We’re not bad people, so we don’t like to see it, and it’s making us all feel a bit helpless and nervous and snappy and we all just want it to stop – but it won’t, because it’s still true that bad people who are put in a position where they can do bad things are going to do those bad things because they are bad people.
All we can do is acknowledge that sometimes, most of the time in fact, there’s nothing we can do to stop the bad people doing what they do. Sometimes we can punish them afterwards, but preventing it? Nope. But that’s not our fault. We can’t stop them being bad, but we can stop letting them drive us bonkers with our expectations that they can do better.
They can, but they won’t, because SEE ABOVE. Hence fuck’em and just win big in November.
prostratedragon
@Fair Economist:
@Fair Economist:
A significant part of the Project2025/Agenda47 program is meant to enable a huge bustout. The 2007-9 crisis was a testbed. They were always going to come back for the real thing.
Jay
2024 tickets will be Biden/Harris vs 34 Felonies (so far) Rapist Pedo/Immigrant Apartheid Billionaires Sockpuppet/Nepo Babies/Cryptobro’s/Great Crime/ Incels/ChristoFacists,……..
like it or not.
Slightly_peeved
In a few minutes of my life I’m not getting back, I listened to this interview with Mike Quigley at https://youtu.be/bmy2pu7a0h4?si=kowSklilZzRU6te1
As the title suggests, he says that the Dems need to unify behind a new candidate, and while he mentions “The vice president” he first mentions a deep bench of other Democrats. So he’s not advocating handing it over to Kamala.
I’ve got other stuff to do but I think that’s enough to establish my point. I’ve gone through about half the representatives who are talking about Biden standing down and not a single one has proposed a straight handover to vice-president Harris.
I might go over to LGM and point this out, since (Cheryl excepted) they’re also arguing it’ll be Harris OF COURSE. Then again maybe I should go slam my dick in a car door because it would have just as much impact and feel only slightly worse.
Jay
@Slightly_peeved:
Stick with the hand, not with the dick.
If Dark Brandon is ditched, so will Harris be ditched,
and the ditcher’s have “nobody” in the wings.
They don’t even have a plan for getting Nobody and VP Nobody on the ballots, with only 23 days to go,…….
The ditchers just want to wreck,……
LanceThruster
The MSNBC banner currently reads “CCN: PELOSI PRIVATELY TOLD BIDEN HE CANNOT WIN”
Nancy SMASH indeed.
If only that was true for Nancy’s bid for reelection. She’s now joined the ranks of traitorous scum, right?
Isn’t it time for Obana to let the rest of the Dems know that Joe is a made man? A goodfella? What’s that tell you? Is his recent Covid diagnosis an out, or extenuating circumstances?
Jay
Tiny Mushroom penis wiggling about doesn’t understand the word “privately”,
MSNBC banner now says the best sex Tiny Mushroom penis wiggling about, has privately said that the best sex he has ever had was anal with his Mother,
Not what you think,
It was pegging.
Jay
Pig fucker politics and the FTMSM has joined in,
https://www.thestanduplawyer.com/make-the-sonofabitch-deny-it-the-rise-of-pig-fucker-politics/
sab
In the pie filter, does anyone know what the green cookie with the red dots is? I think it’s a holly leaf on a christmas cookie. Am I right or confused?
Jay
@sab:
srry, can’t help you, don’t have anybody pied.
Darkrose
@Betty Cracker: Thanks Betty! It was really inspiring to be here. Trying to hold onto that feeling.
Ramalama
@Ruckus: just being nosey… Where did you do basic training? I have a dog walking friend, older gent , Québécois, Vietnam vet. He enlisted in 1961 because he was in a bar in New York State where the drinking age was 18 when québécs was 21. Barely spoke English. I’m secretly trying to do an oral history with him, speaking into my phone dictation after we chat about our dogs and he mentions something about his life as a soldier. Did you serve when the USA flag have 48 stars on it? Maybe we need more of your history, too!
prostratedragon
@Slightly_peeved: Oh, don’t waste the energy. And please, please never again listen to Mike Quigley. Not even if he’s calling out desperately for hrlp.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
The reality is that the keep Biden in polling of Democrats is at 35% and dropping. You keep attacking the majority of Democrats who do not see him as viable anymore. You may feel let down by those of us who now see this election differently and I feel let down by Biden and his campaign. He was losing before the debate and called for the debate to change the trajectory of the race. It only accelerated the trajectory.
Jay
@MomSense:
Dump Biden, and you lose 20,000,000 votes.
Dump Harris, total will be 40,000,000 votes.
Enjoy 2025, Project 47 and your last election,
23 days to go and the “Dump Biden” Chicken Little Caucus has bupkis, no nominee, no savior, no plan, other than dump Biden, dump Harris, led by Nepo Babies, Crypto Bro’s, Chicken Little Democrats and the FTMSM,………
all though “leading” is a far stretch.
Another Scott
@MomSense: “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the other guy.” – President Biden
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cacti
@Jay: The Emperor’s new clothes are beautiful. Keep telling yourself that.
Another Scott
@cain: People at the RNC are extremists. The party has been taken over by people who have trashed every norm and demand double-think and total loyalty to whatever nonsense is handed down. They have to be extremists to be selected to go there. They’re cultists. One should expect cult-like behavior there.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
LMFAO, “Prickly Pear” doesn’t even know that I am Canadian.
We rarely “like” American Presidents. Hell, we mostly don’t “like” any Americans.
Let alone US Presidents.
Carter, meh, but we did bail your asses out in Iran.
Reagan, what a shit show, and it crossed the border,
Clinton, meh. We did the whole Yugoslavia thing at a large cost because of NATO.
The Bushes, shit show, We showed up for Dubya Dubya 1 because of the UNSC.
Afghanistan because of Article 5.
Dubya Dubya Me Too, noped, until “stabilization” was bailed to the UNSC because you were useless.
Obama, was ok, not great, just ok.
Then you fuckers elected 34 felonies, (so far) Rapist Pedo, what the fuck!!!!!!!
President Joe Biden is the first “liked” US President since FDR in 1942.
And that’s it, in over 60 years, you have managed one “like” in your closest neighbor and largest trading partner.
That’s not a good history of yelp reviews. If the US was a restaurant, the Health Department would have shut it down decades ago.
Manyakitty
@WaterGirl: it’s so very stupid
AM in NC
@Damien: This. 10000000000% this. DO.THE.WORK.
STOP WHINING. It just demoralizes the people we need to be doing the work.
Tinare
Oh my God. Democratic leaders are freaking out because the Republican Party is coalescing around Trump instead of taking the lesson that REPUBLICANS ARE COALESCING AROUND TRUMP. Do the fucking same around Biden. Shut up and fight. What the “normies” see is one scared party. This is why Democrats is disarray is a thing the press can sell it successfully. I don’t get it. They are coalescing around a fascist criminal. But Republicans know if they keep repeating a messaging over and over, no matter how crazy, it works. Democrats can’t stay on simple messages. It drives me nuts!
MomSense
@Tinare:
Biden’s campaign spent hundreds of millions in battleground states and his numbers fell. Normies have been saying consistently they think he is too old to do the job and we were ignoring them. It may be ageist but the fact is that we have always expected health reports on our presidents because we all acknowledge it is the most powerful position in the world. We can’t unwind that now. We used to joke about how the job aged Obama and he only went gray.
SFAW
@Jay:
Joke’s on you — when President-for-Life Trump takes over, he’ll shut down the Health Department. What will you complain about then, person from Canadia?
SFAW
@ColoradoGuy:
I don’t know/remember if “Punch” Sulzberger was a good publisher; my general impression is that he was, but I wasn’t really looking at it during his reign.
But “Pinch” has/had a full-on hatred of the Clintons, and probably the Dems, and Pinche is just as bad. Rupert Murdoch is the person I blame most for how fucked-up the Republicans (and the country, because Rethugs) have become, but Pinch and Pinche are sure trying to supplant him.
MomSense
@Jay:
Jay you seem to think that I am arguing this is a guaranteed win and I’m not. I am furious with Biden and his campaign for putting us in this position where we have to choose between two horrible, high risk options. His hubris and his messaging post debate which has been pretty much I alone can fix it are infuriating.
if you won’t vote for the Democratic nominee that’s on you. I’ve said all along that I will and that I’ll work for them too. This is a fucking Hail Mary because if we keep going we lose not just the White House but also the Congress. That’s the fucking reality we are in. Am I scared? Of course. I prefer to do something about it rather than bury my head in the sand and attack other Democrats. Biden and almost all the commenters here have been attacking other Democrats, name calling, and insulting us. That isn’t going to get us anywhere.
Cacti
@Jay: Hey, that’s great, eh? And WTF does any of that have to do with the fact that Biden is sinking like a rock because he looked and sounded like a nursing home patient in the first debate? Or the subsequent perception that his staff have been gaslighting the public about his fitness for a second term? 🤔🤔
Chris Johnson
@George: So would the worm ;)
Chris Johnson
@piratedan: No no… the GOP has Charlie Kirk, instead of a national organization. Their national organization broke.
Charlie Kirk is a youtuber. Fuck, man, _I’m_ a youtuber. What does that tell you?
Their whole operation is gonna be run by Charlie Kirk, the Trump sons, and like Rudy Giuliani. I’m really not making that up, that’s who’s in charge over there. Look at the RNC if you don’t believe me. There’s no adult supervision and it’s grifters and loons all the way down, and they have to do ACTUAL WORK for it to work.
Back in 2016 Clinton absolutely should have won, but I was in New Hampshire working for Bernie and a key thing we observed (whilst unknowingly nannied by russian operatives) was that we were canvassing small rural towns. And they said they had not seen ANY Dem canvassing. Clinton had written them off and focussed on the voters she liked better in cities, and that was the strategy. Should have won, but that’s one small data point illustrating a mistake.
Now, consider how Charlie Kirk and Rudy Giuliani etc. are going to act.
They’re trying to chase AWAY the RINOs and are the last fucking people in the world to even try to win over a moderate, in what is clearly a GOTV election.
Cacti
@MomSense: Biden is on track for the worst loss by a Dem candidate since 1988, and the general response in the BJ comment section is to stick fingers in ears and go “la la la la, I can’t hear you”. Or to brand you a heretic for saying that his debate faceplant did irreparable damage to his campaign.
Chris Johnson
@Roberto el oso: Me either. However… I routinely delete email spam, lots of which is of indeterminate origin, and lots of that has an obvious political lean.
Is THAT what these polls are? Are all polls now only applied to people dumb enough to read spam emails and respond to them trustingly? God help us all o_O
Chris Johnson
@Archon: FWIW, I’m pretty sure Balloon Juice rules of engagement really discourage sitting around speculating who is a troll. ‘cos that gives rise to weird metagamey stuff that’s easy to make toxic.
It’s Monsters Are Due On Maple Street shit.
Me, I talk about pie-ing ARGUMENTS that I find disingenuous and suspicious. And so I leave the obvious ones. And then it looks like I have pied them anyway ‘cos they engage with the trusted ones and with each other and you can lose your damn mind over this stuff :D
So just don’t.
If you only knew some of the stuff I’ve been through on this blog… you have NO IDEA how ridiculous it can get. Just don’t get into the metagamey stuff. Focus on lines of argument: troll narratives are lines of argument. It’s not about the names or the people.
Bupalos
@NaijaGal: That’s a particular framing. Polls say a sizable majority of rank and file voters want Biden to step aside. Journalist like Kate Riga and Ezra Klein suggest the feeling among pols is near universal, they just won’t brave a common action problem and want Biden to go without a public kerfluffle. That donors also feel this way isn’t an indication of perverted power disparities.
None of us actually know, and ultimately only Biden gets to decide.
Chris Johnson
@M31: We can take Florida.
Barney
To answer the thread title: no, not everyone has gone mad, but the Republicans have, and a significant proportion of independents are mad-curious, if polls have any meaning at all.
Stevens claims “this is an easy race to win”. It ought to be, but clearly isn’t. His happy talk of “hang together” sounds great for a sports team, or a military operation, but this is about curing a national epidemic of insanity. Is there evidence that what the undecided voters are looking for is a unified party above all? That might be true – what the idiots currently like about Trump and his followers may just be “they are united”, and it’s possible that a message of “united, but not criminal, treasonous or evil, unlike the other guy” is what would swing enough of the votes our way.
But it’s possible that the voters for whom “united” is the most important thing are all going to vote fascist anyway. And that what is needed is to turn out people who are thinking about not voting at all. And that doesn’t have to mean “get united”, but “get a vision of the next 4 years they’ll bother voting for”.
SFAW
@Chris Johnson: But where would you put it?As a compromise: can you/we take only certain parts — oh, let’s say the governor, a large part of the legislature, maybe a good chunk of The Villages — and drop them in the Marianas Trench? That might work.
ETA: Feel free to include their two US senators in that group.
Bupalos
@Damien: I hope no one here is taking any of this outside these conversations with known broken-glass voters. I’m among the replacers, and I would never do anything but talk up this administration, how it has done, and how it will do. It helps to know and feel passionately about policy vision like the IRA because that’s what leads for me anyway, not personalities.
I hope the discussion here also isn’t reducing positive efforts, we will deeply regret it if we leave effort on the table because we were shouting at each other in a sealed room. Though yeah, for both sides of this argument, it’s getting to be a time waste and compromising the community.
Another Scott
So you’re telling me there’s a chance??!! (0:32)
The candidates are Biden and Trump.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
wjca
This.
Actually, the whole thing, but this summarizes it well.
Scott s.
@JiveTurkin: exactly right
Paul in KY
@JiveTurkin: Any human who thinks TFG is more ‘fit to be President’ than Biden is about too stupid to breath or a MAGA POS just spewing their talking points.
Paul in KY
@guachi: Even a senile & bedridden Biden could do a better job than TFG!!!
Paul in KY
@Chet Murthy: To me, all the more reason to support Joe!