One of the best decisions I’ve made was picking @KamalaHarris as my vice president.
Now that she will be our party’s nominee, I couldn’t be prouder.
Let’s win this. pic.twitter.com/wD1gqyHyVI
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 2, 2024
On Friday, Doug Emhoff and Chasten Buttigieg held the most successful fundraiser in Fire Island’s history, shattering a record previously set by Cher.https://t.co/gR9ekS7Y7G
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) August 2, 2024
Kamala Harris raised a record $310 million in July, according to her campaign, compared to the $138.7 million Trump raised in July, @bill_allison reports.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) August 2, 2024
RCP offices looking like the inside of the fuhrerbunker right now https://t.co/mKaIlNDKOz
— The Great El Wokismo (@canderaid) August 3, 2024
I was worried that if Biden stepped down, all that pent-up anxiety and frustration in the Democratic Party would explode into internecine fighting. But instead it got immediately channeled into incredible enthusiasm. I’ve never been more glad to be completely wrong.
— Will Stancil (@whstancil) August 2, 2024
megan thee stallion officially endorsed kamala harris at lollapalooza yesterday and the crowd went insane lol pic.twitter.com/1Wcm156IoY
— orange county dem ???????? (@orangecountydem) August 2, 2024
Comity is VP Harris’ in-laws doing a fundraiser for her, and that fundraiser being promoted by her husband’s ex-wife:
It’s happening!! Barb and Mike are excited to meet the Boomers! https://t.co/oWkyDgtmHM
— Kerstin Emhoff (@keprettybird) August 2, 2024
Baud
Legitimate fear, but the people who got screwed are Bidenites, who like Biden put country over ego.
Plus, the nod went to Kamala rather than someone else. That helped.
WereBear
Ooooooo. Pete might have the odds, here :) But you know, he’s young, with young kids. I still say a bigger Cabinet post is his best move, because he’s doing well with media at Transportation, and still getting home at night.
OzarkHillbilly
Didn’t Kamala manage that feat in just one (plus a day or 2) July week?
WereBear
@Baud: We also have to win.
Subsumes smaller issues. Well, it should.
If last time was the Battle for the Soul of the Nation, this one is about its sanity.
Baud
@WereBear:
Obviously, that’s not correct, or we never would have gone through this in the first place. Biden didn’t get the benefit of the “we have to win” feeling.
Anyway, we’re here. It could have gone a lot worse than it did. Now we just have to push the ticket across the finish line.
Frankensteinbeck
The pent up anxiety and open panic were because Democrats so badly want to beat Trump. With Harris as the only viable post-Biden nominee to do that, of course both the voters and officials fell in with explosive zeal. Anything else was pure pundit fantasy football.
WereBear
The Shrinking Trump experts are praising how “weird” is a great way to express Trump’s illness in a way most people understand. Then, the weird got doubled down with Shady Vance.
MagdaInBlack
The “Professional Left” July 30 podcast is all about the “Weird” and as always with them, both interesting and fun.
I’m reluctant to post the link because I so often do it wrong.
NotMax
Afore I fergits, happy natal day to SiubhanDuinne!
WereBear
@MagdaInBlack: Here is The Professional Left podcast, I always use their blogspot site.
WereBear
@WereBear: At the 29 minute mark of their latest podcast, there’s a hilarious country song about Vance’s… passion.
Can’t find a link, but it was hilarious.
Didn’t know there were so many couch songs, already repurposed.
Layer8Problem
@NotMax:
Yes indeed, Happy B’day SiubhanDuinne! And did I hear right that it’s also Omnes’ birthday as well?
MagdaInBlack
@WereBear: Thank you! That’s much cleaner than youtube 🙂
NotMax
Y’know what? it’s a dog days of August weekend. Ricky Nelson has an idea.
:)
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Not clear if that includes money raised when Biden was still in it.
Kay
Yay! Former staff pushing back on media and Republicans attempt to launch the misogynist “pushy, demanding FEmale” trope they love so much.
I think she’s “warm” too. Interesting he used that word.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Yep, hence my question mark.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Still a good number.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
Kay
Also it is hysterical how Walz’s former employees are frantically lobbying for him on Twitter.
He has quite the army! :)
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Absolutely, I just wish they were a little clearer about it. Not that it really matters.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Good morning.
WereBear
@Baud: I was thinking of the last campaign, when that was the sentiment, and we did win.
I felt he could certainly President, but campaigning on top? He could kill himself, and then where would we be?
Now we have a young and dynamic campaigner, the media is forced to recognized some of the heroic quality of the bold move, and this is what is going down in the punchline of all the historians…
Baud
@WereBear:
We lost the one before that though.
Obviously, the electoral college situation sucks for us. But we stuck with it.
Nukular Biskits
@Baud:
Admittedly, I just got up and I’m waiting for my first cup of coffee but wot?
Scout211
More news about the veepstakes:
So it was totally an accident . . . or was it???
BritinChicago
@Baud: Yes, I worried about that too, but instead we have the exact opposite: Dems in array! In fact in lockstep, like the elves arriving at Helmsdeep….
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqIMhrS14B0)
Kay
@Scout211:
I watched it and thought it could easily be a promotional “booster” video – they’re lobbying for him (which all the candidates are doing). One could easily take it either way.
Baud
@Nukular Biskits:
Bidenites, who, like Biden, put country over ego.
WereBear
@Baud: We can’t feed kids when they run a state. Corporate media scraped the barrel and pulled out all their tricks. Electoral college is a Confederate trick we’ve never looked at directly.
Racists will find it a sore spot, though. Let’s get through the election, and see what the populace thinks about getting rid of it.
I’ve been voting Democratic for decades and I’m sick of the way it holds everything back and keeps power in the hands of sick twistos.
I would sell it that way.
hrprogressive
Stancil hits a nail on the head regarding fears about Biden dropping.
The chorus of “Anyone But Biden” ranged from folks saying “Well, just let VP Harris do it” to all these fantastical thoughts of “open primaries” and “an open convention” and whatnot that, for some of us, it really did feel like if TPTB got their way in shoving Joe out the window, it was going to be the type of chaos that really did hand the election to Convicted Felon Donald Trump.
Instead, Biden said “Hey I’m gonna bow out, I endorse my VP to carry the baton” and quite nearly literally everyone just went “Hell yeah, that sounds awesome, here’s my money and endorsement”, almost nearly immediately.
So, yeah.
Not quite 2 weeks out from the day that changed the race completely, I’m super glad to have been wrong, too.
All the 2008 talk has really shifted the vibes, the race, the narrative.
The GOP has been flailing to try and counter the narrative.
The Democratic base and establishment is legitimately fired up to get Harris to the Resolute Desk.
Still a lot of work to do and I’m sure it will be “close” by American Standards, but a couple months out from Election Day, it’s as if the storm clouds have at least started parting and the sun is peeking thru again.
Never would’ve guessed it.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Baud
@WereBear:
I mean, the electoral college has only been a problem in the post Clinton polarization. I would like a popular vote election, but if we can find a way to break the GOP’s electoral college advantage, we’d be sitting pretty.
BritinChicago
Presidential elections in this country are won and lost on emotion more than policy. (Though policy-wonks wish it weren’t so—as do I.) I’m hoping that joy and hope beat out the anger and fear that TFG is a master at stoking. Off to a good start, I’d say, but far from a done deal.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Even if it did, the press scared donors so badly that contributions fell off a cliff. Then the press used that to scare us even more. I am a ‘win, baby, win’ and have no problem picking up Harris, but the press’s frothing determination to destroy Biden and depress Democrats leaves me with deep resentment.
Chief Oshkosh
@Nukular Biskits:
“but the people who got screwed are Bidenites, who, like Biden, put country over ego.”
ETA: Doh, I see Baud self-corrected. However, that now has me wondering – I’ve seen Baud self-correct at least two other times since their return from vacationing in Lower Slobovia…
Who is this new person, and what did you do with the real Baud?!
Matt McIrvin
47-42-6 is less good than it looks, since (a) the Republicans’ EC advantage might still override that margin, and (b) there is no way RFK Jr. is going to get 6%–third-party fringe candidates almost always do worse in the actual election than in advance polling, and his vote is likely to come home to Trump.
But it’s the right direction for things to be going in.
hrprogressive
@Baud:
“It’s Weird how we don’t Elect our President by Popular Vote. Let’s change that.”
After the success of branding the Fascist GOP and all their policies as “Weird”, I think just rolling with that might be an easy enough sell for the normies from here on out.
Scout211
Sarah Cooper is back to mocking Trump!
She does it again with How to never vote again
Eolirin
@Baud: Jan 6th hadn’t happened yet. This has a different level of existential.
Kay
@hrprogressive:
Well, but literally everyone who was pro drop out knew Biden would voluntarily withdraw and endorse Harris. That was a given.
That was the assumption going in. There was no possible way any of it could occur without Biden voluntarily withdrawing, which people were told over and over. We also knew he would endorse Harris. All the “uncertainty” should have baked those two things in, because they had to happen.
WereBear
@Baud: No, it’s always been a problem. Used to put the increasing Confederate stranglehold on the country which led to Civil War.
Always the same people. Working the refs. Gerrymandering to strategize. Lying. A culture that encourages abusive people, because it runs on fear.
It’s baked in our history, but it doesn’t have to be our future.
WereBear
@Baud: I mean, sure, that’s why there was so much incredible pushback. They had to create the Clinton polarization.
Or they would stop winning.
NotMax
@
hrprogressive
Only so long as it’s via an amendment and not a constitutional convention. The latter option opens up a whopping big can of worms.
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
That you think this was driven by the press and donors explains why you feel the way you do.
I think you are wrong in your analysis and I came to a different conclusion about what to do.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Agree. She needs 6 or 7 ahead in polling to win by 4 because Trump outperforms polling. Four is safe. It’s Biden 2020. They’re going to contest regardless, but the Democratic Party has lots of smart lawyers and their lawyers are old gas bag has-beens who have brain worms.
Starfish
@hrprogressive: “Keep Austin Weird” would like to have a word.
hrprogressive
@Kay:
Sure, but, there was enough clamoring for “an open convention”, and, appeared to be enough reasonably serious people claiming they would either run themselves or prop up a puppet candidate for the billionaire techbros that the idea of a seamless transition from POTUS to VPOTUS was not a given until it materialized.
I’m glad everyone who thought this is exactly what would happen…is what ended up happening, but it is not accurate to say it was a forgone conclusion prior to the event occurring.
Again, I’m beyond stoked, because it reset the race in a way I couldn’t have fathomed.
But there were very real concerns among the “Stay the Course” crowd.
We’re glad we were wrong.
WereBear
@NotMax: Throw it in with the ERA. That’s closer, and it’s about safeguarding voters of all kinds who live in blue states and feel like their votes are not counting as they should.
A lot of them are women.
AND they are right, which always is a plus for Democrats.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: There’s a misperception that the Republican advantage in the EC comes from the small-state bonus. It doesn’t, really–we have some small states too, and the net Republican lean there is a tiny number of electoral votes.
It’s mostly from the fact that the EC makes everything hinge on the large purple states, and the biggest purplish states have happened to lean slightly but persistently to the Republicans in recent cycles.
But there are exceptions. Virginia is one, for instance. In the last cycle, Georgia and Arizona went Democratic. People aren’t that confident about them this time around.
But it also means that if the increasing population in some of these states happens to be from Democratic voters, there’s a point where they flip. Subject to vote-suppression tricks, of course.
rikyrah
Brian Schwartz (@schwartzbCNBC) posted at 9:08 AM on Fri, Aug 02, 2024:
NEW: Billionaire Elon Musk has created a PAC collecting voter data from those living in key states through an online “register to vote” form that does not directly register people to vote.
All of this in an effort to help Donald Trump become president.
https://t.co/1NlzNXPAGG
(https://x.com/schwartzbCNBC/status/1819374704488013844?t=zJnOee8yV8o-aUMHz4LE-g&s=03)
MomSense
@Kay:
Exactly. Also we had an open convention. All the contenders, save one, came out right away in support of Harris. Mr ego britches Manchin thought he had a lot more sway than he really did. You love to see it.
The process was always open convention because of the rules. People seem to be confusing open convention for contested convention. I never thought that would happen.
Another Scott
@WereBear: Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg has many talents, is very comfortable in his own skin, and has a pretty wide-ranging background. He’s apparently done a great job at Transportation. He’s no James Horace Burnley IV (fortunately, [ spit!! ] ). It’s great to see him have enthusiastic support in lots and lots of places.
Like many here, I would like to see Pete win bigger elected races and have him show us that he knows how to pick good people and demonstrate that he can do what’s necessary to move things forward while taking 51% of a loaf before pushing for him to have the big chair. Actual experience in assembling and getting votes for legislation is important, though not determinative.
As with Obama’s first run for president, sometimes you have to jump in even when everything isn’t in place because “time waits for no one…”
Large majorities make all kinds of things possible, of course.
I expect Kamala will make a good pick for good reasons.
We’ll see what happens.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
WereBear
FYI, someone asked earlier about where these anti-Trump ads are appearing and some of them are on Fox, while Conway’s “he’s mentally ill” ads are getting to him. He’s giving lines in his speeches to refuting them.
Running them on the Golf Channel (oh, that’s cruel!) and localities where Trump “lives.”
hrprogressive
@NotMax:
While I’m sure there are some “devil in the details” that I’m not aware of, the National Popular Vote Compact seems like a good enough idea on its face to get it done.
Legislation is probably a good idea.
Unless/Until the courts are remade, literally everything the other side doesn’t like will be litigated, so.
Absolutely no “constitution conventions” while the Fash hold state legislature in their grips.
Percysowner
@Baud: A writer at WaPo suggested that we expand the House of Representatives and distribute the seats the way it was intended with more seats being tied to state population. Since electoral votes are tied to House seats, that would increase the strength of Blue States, which tend to be more populous. I don’t know any ins and outs, but it sounds like a way around the EC, make small rural states have fewer EC votes, so we don’t have to worry about them so much. You also have to eliminate gerrymandering, which will be a lift.
Soprano2
@Kay: Good, I was already seeing that crap. At my job they pushed my female boss relentlessly until she decided to take a position in another department. A friend told me that when my boss pushed back on the criticisms, some of which were unfair, she was told she was too combative! I bet they never use that word to describe a man. That’s worrying to me, to know that’s happening in our department. My friend told me she begged my boss to file a lawsuit. She said my boss went to an attorney, but didn’t do what she needed to do and missed her opportunity to file a discrimination suit.
Nukular Biskits
@Chief Oshkosh:
I read that sentence several times and just could not wrap my head around it.
I was pretty sure I knew what Baud meant but it read weird to me.
<see what I did there?>
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
If the polling is based on 20% (or even 30%!) Black vote for Trump and that erodes then we could have a situation where he drops quite a bit because the electorate changed – the assumption was wrong because the assumption was based on Biden. That would be fun and calm normie Democrats. That could happen. It hasn’t yet but it could.
Layer8Problem
@hrprogressive: I disagree with the assertion (not yours) ” . . . literally everyone who was pro drop out knew Biden would voluntarily withdraw and endorse Harris. That was a given.”
There was too much talk about One Weird Trick convention plays.
Josie
@Frankensteinbeck:
I take joy in the fact that they unwittingly opened Pandora’s box, Uncle Joe foxed them again, and they have no idea what to do about it. Meanwhile we work like crazy to get Harris elected. Win win.
different-church-lady
@hrprogressive: It’s not the fear of potential chaos if Biden stepped aside that worried me the most.
Instead, it was the real-time chaos that actually unfolded during those three weeks that had me utterly freaked out, before [insert whomever your favorite hero is] managed to land this thing on the Hudson River.
Watching that circus made out of donkey droppings and own goals did not give me a single bit of confidence that anything good would come of it. I was quite convinced we were fucked either way. Because the party had completely abandoned any semblance of smart political optics or behind-the-scenes craft. If Biden stayed in, they’d continue to make it impossible for him to recover. If Biden dropped out, they’d start doing Idiot Fire Drills and squabbling over replacements.
And I still feel like somehow, just enough people (including Biden) were smart enough to somehow engineer a silk purse out of this sow’s ear, while everyone else was stapling their hands to their foreheads.
We didn’t avoid catastrophe; it was a catastrophe. It’s just one that got fixed fast because of skill and luck.
TBone
@NotMax: just watched Rio Bravo the other day and will watch it again on TCM John Wayne day today just because I can.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Things are going to get very strange, not in a good way, if the Republican EC advantage gets so large that they can win Presidential elections with, say, a 5% or 10% popular-vote deficit. I hope we’re not there yet. Biden’s win in 2020 was a 4.5% lead; Hillary Clinton lost with a 2.3% lead.
(What I hope is that situations like Georgia 2020 are a sign that this doesn’t only go in one direction.)
Another Scott
@MagdaInBlack: (You can just paste a “naked link” – just the URL address – in the Visual editor tab and FYWP will take care of it. If you want to get fancy, you can click on the “chain” icon in the Visual editor – 5th icon from the left – and past in the URL and then whatever text you want to be shown for the link. If something really bad happens with the link, it can be fixed later.)
(FYWP really only has issues with long text without spaces where it can put in a line break – it breaks the right margin – not with URLs – it wraps URLs correctly. At least, as long as it recognizes it as a URL.)
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
🤬🤬🤬
Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) posted at 7:07 AM on Sat, Aug 03, 2024:
The Times has a piece on Trumps unilateral debate ploy which takes the whole thing at face value, says “unclear” if Harris has agreed to it yet and barely mentions the ABC debate Trump just pulled out of but follows his line of criticism agst it https://t.co/nrK28HyRRQ
(https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1819706679853711834?t=30gSBXx9mq9QUxnc9KSeLQ&s=03)
Kay
@MomSense:
Democrats cannot say “yes, we plan to coronate the Black lady”. I mean, Christ. We know this. Harris HERSELF didn’t say it. Why? Because you can’t.
Why anyone would want to do that to her, even. It’s such bad politics. Watching the pieces fall into place was one of the best things I’ve ever witnessed in politics. Now THAT’S a functioning, rational political party. Go team.
NotMax
@hrprogressive
The Compact is a deep legal quagmire without prior Congressional approval, running smack up against Article I, Section 10, Clause 3.
rikyrah
Neera Tanden🌻 (@neeratanden) posted at 6:59 AM on Sat, Aug 03, 2024:
So Trump is too afraid to face Kamala in a neutral setting he previously agreed to. He basically admits that to face her he’ll need to the assist of two Fox hosts and its whole network.
You know what that is?
It’s weak.
(https://x.com/neeratanden/status/1819704536056950808?t=Vmomk_w4zajZ3ouHchVe8A&s=03)
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I try not to think too far ahead because I prefer to be happy. Let’s just win.
oldgold
IF as we get into autumn this race clarifies and solidifies, with it appearing reasonably certain that Harris is going to beat Trump, many including me, expect Trump to begin campaigning in an extremely malevolent manner that would include the encouragement of violence.
That expressed, like Anthony Scaramucci, I would not be totally surprised if Trump flat out quit.
WereBear
@Kay: Perhaps the Trump fans we are surprised to see supporting him are only getting the filtered version, the sales pitch, from people who look like them.
Let Trump be Trump. That should help. Plaster his real, goaded, Uber-choad persona from coast to coast.
How many only got the pretty version?
Until Project 2025, we couldn’t prove it.
TBone
@Scout211: 🇺🇸💜 thank you for that!
Matt McIrvin
@Layer8Problem:
Maybe it’s a question of whether you’re listening to excited media pundits and dramatists or actual insiders. The day Biden dropped out, Aaron Sorkin had an op-ed published saying the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney! That has to be peak Aaron Sorkin, the Aaron Sorkiniest Aaron Sorkin has ever been.
I didn’t think it would be Harris because my impression from the media peanut gallery was that the people who wanted Biden out super didn’t want her either.
sdhays
@Frankensteinbeck: Same.
MomSense
@Layer8Problem:
There is a lot of talk by people who don’t know what they are talking about. Harris had the campaign cash and apparatus in her favor. Why would anyone worry about what tech bros say? They had no idea. They didn’t spend over a year of Saturday mornings in horrifically boring rules committee meetings.
The person who knew why and what and when and how was Nancy Pelosi. The GOAT strategist and tactical genius.
geg6
@Frankensteinbeck:
Exactly right.
Layer8Problem
@different-church-lady: 👍
Kay
@MomSense:
I read a short description of a PoliSci paper once that posited that US Democrats were the most successful political party in the west due to their ability to overcome structural disadvantages and entrenched regional racism. If they pull this save off they’ll be legend. It’s truly exciting to watch.
Nancy Pelosi is the queen of strategists :)
NotMax
@TBone
Chacun à son goût In my little world John Wayne is an acquired distaste.
WereBear
I would love to try a psy-op on Trump where he is told he can get more than 30% of the black vote if he would just “turn black” and it’s only for a week, and he would be staying at the best hotels, yes, there are rich black people, and yes, they let them in.
Just think of all the genuine outreach that would create. A day? Sir, an hour. We’ll get only the best makeup artists…
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
Yup if you were listening to media talking heads you had a completely different impression of what was happening. It was not accurate. That is why it is best not to pay too much attention to them.
TBone
@rikyrah: the PAC collects your personal information if you’re in a swing state and does NOT redirect you to a voter registration website as it does for voters in non-swing states. It merely thanks you for bending over with no kiss necessary! 😡🤬
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
I have many feelings which will never be expressed or explored because they’re not helpful to Harris winning. But I’m very skilled at repression.
TBone
@Josie: 💜
I posted your anthem in the early thread today.
And now taking this opportunity to repost a classic Brooklyn Dad Defiant instead
https://x.com/mmpadellan/status/1816420629702115621
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
IDIOT DEMS: “We need to convince the country Biden has to step aside.”
PELOSI: “No you dopes, we need to convince Biden he needs to step aside.”
WereBear
@Starfish: That’s the good kind.
One thing is that I’ve heard from wonderful people who make Austin great… but it’s still in Texas. And that’s holding it back.
That’s what is holding Texas back.
Another Scott
@Baud:
Expand the House.
(repost) 1725 members would fit in the existing building.
Short of that, I still think saying that each State gets at least 2 House members (why shouldn’t a State have at least as many House members as Senators??) would help quite a bit. It’s simple and easy to explain. Half of Wyoming = 292,000, so roughly 1130 House members.
Let the Senate continue to represent land if necessary. But Electors should overwhelmingly represent people.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@oldgold: I don’t think he’ll quit. People spent the whole 2016 cycle waiting for him to quit. And I’m pretty sure he actually thought he was losing that one up to the end.
If he loses, it’s a certainty he’ll claim it was rigged, encourage violence and agitate to get it thrown out somehow. I’m actually not as worried about that as I was in 2020-21 because of the simple fact that Trump is not currently the President, and that gives him fewer levers to operate. The Electoral Count Act of 2022 also makes the legal situation a bit more explicit, though honestly the things it says are things any intelligent reader of the Constitution should have already understood. And while the Supreme Court seems fired up to do nutty things in the service of far-right ideology, this same Supreme Court actually took a dim view of Trump’s attempts to get the 2020 election overturned.
But the more we run up the score, of course, the less likely a Weird Trick is to succeed–politics is not like code and legal Weird Tricks follow the political tide.
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Christ almighty, can we just clone you a million times?
NotMax
@WereBear/a>
“You think they love you in orange, sir? Wait ’til you try blackface!”
Kay
@MomSense:
When I saw Pelosi came out for Walz I thought I would switch from Shapiro – she’s just good at this- but then I realized her whole thing is the US House solidarity so she would of course back the former House member so it may not mean much.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Already in the works. Baud! 20XX!
rikyrah
Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) posted at 8:07 AM on Sat, Aug 03, 2024:
“It is clear that Trump really has buyer’s remorse,” Josh Shapiro said about Trump’s pick of Vance.
Trump took Vance for a race against Biden. Now it’s Harris, who’ll pick her VP shortly. Will Trump try to step on that story by picking a new one himself?
https://t.co/DyarfpQNK7
(https://x.com/BillKristol/status/1819721713803809265?t=CzmUFdLZvfQebHEIfTb38A&s=03)
NotMax
No linky intended above. Fix.
@WereBear
“You think they love you in orange, sir? Wait ’til you try blackface!”
Nukular Biskits
My two bits? Joe Biden made the right calls:
Obviously I’m glossing over a lot here and there’s probably a bit of wishful thinking mixed in with my opinion, but I don’t think he should have done it any differently. And, yes, I was 100% behind Biden and was panicked when he made his announcement he was stepping aside.
There will be (and still are) arguments that Joe should have never filed for reelection or should have stepped aside months ago. I disagree. While the timing and manner in which he did step aside are a huge gamble, it has paid dividends in wiping the smug smiles off of Trump/MAGA faces. They’re seriously sweating it now and we’re finally seeing “REPUBLICANS IN DISARRAY!” headlines and news stories.
While I have my fingers crossed and won’t take the election for granted, I’m feeling far more confident now than I was just a couple of weeks ago.
TBone
@NotMax: I watch for Deano and Ricky mostly but I don’t discriminate against the Duke for being a product of his time and location. It’s history (Wayne’s history) – John Ford made great cinema and I watch it for that. I know this wasn’t Ford but I attribute much of Wayne’s outlook to Ford.
Layer8Problem
@MomSense: And yet none of that confident “we got this” stuff showed up in the pre-Drop-Out discussion. Either one relies on a creditable news media and its statements or one doesn’t.
Starfish
@NotMax: Please quit ruining this for me. I want to mint a $1 trillion coin to pay down the national debt also.
Kristine
@different-church-lady: Thanks for that comment. Pretty much set out how I felt.
different-church-lady
@Layer8Problem: Plus pre-drop-out polls didn’t have Harris doing much more than a tick better than Biden. Nor anyone else, for that matter.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Thank you, NotMax!!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
$310m raised defines gobsmacked.
Also too, assholes like Stancil are always wrong, basically being a 3rd rate Yglesias. He’s only moderated his output in recent times because he’s running for office against real liberals, not self-professed “progessives” like himself.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
I’m always team Pelosi.
sdhays
@oldgold: He can’t quit. He’s running to stay out of jail this time.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
You know what else is bad politics? Going on TV and telling the country your current presumptive nominee/incumbent has no chance of winning.
Starfish
@different-church-lady: Relying on polling has seemed deeply foolish for a few years now, so whatever polling whoever wanted to wave around to justify their favorite position in the Democratic Circular Firing Squad was suspect.
TBone
@NotMax: someone made a meme subbing in the word “orange” in all the places Donold used the phrase “turned Black.”
🔥
TBone
@SiubhanDuinne: happy anniversary! Of your birth 😊
WereBear
@oldgold: We should start sending him good excuses on social media.
My dog ate my paperwork. Except he doesn’t have a dog.
The people I pretend to care about are sick.
Wait!
Vance can come down with something. A blood transfusing billionaire has got to know some other weird people who will fix that right up.
Better pop that Mountain Dew Diet yourself, there, Vancey.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
Tell it.
Kay
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I think he’s great. I donated to his campaign without even knowing what he’s running for. I think it was an absolute class move to admit he was wrong.
NotMax
@TBone
Among other detriments, and unlike the bulk of Hollywood, Wayne refused to lift a finger to raise so much as one thin dime for war bonds during WW2.
Layer8Problem
My feelings now: Biden’s gone, Harris is the candidate, she’s got all the right stuff, the other side never changed, we need to win, so make the win happen.
Nukular Biskits
@different-church-lady:
Baud is EverywhereMan already.
different-church-lady
@Starfish: Sure, but what I’m saying is if you’re gonna use a poll to convince me Biden has to go, you better have something in the same poll to convince me someone else is going to do better. Otherwise I’m just gonna say you’re shooting craps.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
Again, Biden hit his ceiling. His campaign spent over 100 million in ad buys to swing states and his polling went down. When someone with as close to 100% name recognition who is also an incumbent does worse the more people see him – his polls are not going to get better. And like I tried to explain, Harris has room to grow. It’s already happening. The more they see her the more her polling goes up. We were seeing Biden’s ceiling and her wainscot (somewhere above floor).
NotMax
@TBone
Good meme.
:)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@different-church-lady:
Butbutbutbut, that was different because…reasons. //
Oh, and yeah, it was a catastrophe (like the way you put that) that we’ve seemingly (hopefully) recovered from beyond anybody’s dreams. Proof will be November.
Frankensteinbeck
@Layer8Problem:
Yeah, but it was all by The Usual Suspects, not anyone you should ever listen to.
@Layer8Problem:
No one knew for sure, which is why I was pro Biden staying. That Harris would succeed him, yeah, almost certain. That she could pick up the good parts of incumbency, purely up in the air. I have to assume people like Pelosi saw data that the situation was so bad they had to take the chance. I confess I did not realize just how hard the press had been screwing us – and for years – until I felt the relief that it was over
different-church-lady
@MomSense: But there was no clear indication of that ahead of time.
Just to be clear, I am not re-aruging this decision. It’s clearly turned out to be right. All I’m saying is the fear was quite justified (even if all the defenses of Biden weren’t).
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: +1
Humans are weird.
Biden has done just an astounding job. Really amazing.
But politics is unfair. People don’t vote logically. People are tribal. Too many people can’t or don’t bother to vote. There are few if any real-world consequences for campaigns lying and breaking election laws. Vibes count for far too much.
It’s really, really annoying.
But it’s what we have to deal with.
Biden didn’t want to run in 2020, but felt he had to to protect the country. He did it, he won, and he protected the country and made it possible for the country to move forward faster. He’s a true leader, a true statesman, and has helped protect the messy and imperfect world in which we live in so very many ways.
He deserves to go out on the highest possible note. And Kamala winning, with long and broad coat-tails in the House, Senate, and state and local elections, would be a wonderful sendoff for a greatly deserved restful retirement. The elections will be closer than they logically should. It’s terribly unfortunate. But all of us need to do what we can to make the best results that can happen happen for his and all of our sakes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: The fact that Harris’s polling post-switch is so completely different from pre-switch should serve as a cautionary tale about entertaining A vs. B hypotheticals based on polling. Most people simply haven’t thought a lot about hypothetical scenarios until they’re real, and you can’t just frictionlessly swap out candidates and expect the numbers to be the same. Of course, in this case the effect of the swap was a benefit rather than a cost.
columbusqueen
New story came out this morning on CNN about Shapiro’s aide Mike Vereb. Dude threatened a woman in 2018 using Shapiro’s name while Josh was state AG. She headed a nonprofit having a policy dispute with the AG’s office. This stuff is really leaving me questioning if Shapiro’s judgment is really that bad in picking aides; Vereb was one of the ones closest to him. Sorry I’m not any good at posting the link to CNN.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
Because it was true. This idea that the Democratic Party would deliberately kneecap their nominee just because Geroge Clooney told them to is NUTS. I would bet you 500 dollars right now that George Clooney ran that op ed past his buddy Obama prior to submitting it and Schiff cleared his with Pelosi. They can’t lose and they were going to and not just the Presidency – Congress. That’s why they broke the glass and took this risk- because it was the LESSER risk.
You really think you have to tell Nancy Pelosi and Obama that Black women are the strongest supporters of the Party? They don’t know that? They need people on Twitter to tell them?
SiubhanDuinne
@Layer8Problem:
Yes, it is. Waiting for him to show up on a thread.
And thank you for the kind wishes!
sdhays
Oh, my! That…can’t be real, can it? Surely it was The Onion or ChatGPT?
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: There were rumors going around that Pelosi and Obama wanted Biden out, but I assumed that those were pure fabrications inspired by the pundit-and-donor buzz, which was not focused on Harris. Obviously I was wrong about that.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Another Scott:
That’s the hope. It’ll cement his legacy and provide Harris the platform for her own, hopefully, great presidency. Nothing like getting the Electoral Trifecta even with stoopid Senate rules, milquetoast Dem Senators, etc.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
“After testing the waters, the great JD Vance has decided he needs to spend more time with his brown family.”
//
Matt McIrvin
@sdhays: Real but quickly retracted:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/aaron-sorkin-mitt-romney-nyt-kamala-harris-b2584192.html
Kay
@columbusqueen:
It seems to me (also) that Shapiro’s competitors are rolling all this shit out, which is just par for the course. It’s a very competitive business they’re in and they’re all insanely competitive people.
I’m not doubting these things happened. But this is a roll out. He’s drawing all the fire because he’s the front runner.
Baud
@geg6:
Happy to see you.
Did The Troubles chase away satby? I haven’t seen her around.
Best timed vacation on my part. Normie life is calling for me again. Maybe after the election.
different-church-lady
@Kay: That’s a whole lot of words to respond to things I didn’t assert.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
No, there was no guarantee her numbers would go up enough. Still isn’t. BUT if the president does worse the more people see him then he is guaranteed to lose especially going in to peak campaign season when the job is to be seen all the time. And it was at the point where he would take down ballot candidates with him that more and more candidates in tough races stepped forward to say he should step aside.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
MAGA aren’t the only ones who have lost their minds.
Eolirin
@NotMax: We would only need a bare majority and a filibuster carve out for that permission to be granted though. That’s a lot better than an amendment.
WereBear
@TBone: Ford got most of his best performances. But I’m not a Western fan.
Childhood oversaturation.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: Right.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, that is correct.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
Here’s where words matter: they probably didn’t want him out. Instead, they concluded he had to be out, no matter what they wanted.
Phrase it like that and it takes a lot of the “betrayal” emotion out of the argument.
Layer8Problem
@Frankensteinbeck: “Drop Out Joe” presented with nothing else was a throw of the dice. “Drop Out Joe, Baton Goes to Harris” was a logical Plan B, with large amounts of indefiniteness based upon what the big donors and assorted Smart Guys were asserting were smart moves. “Drop Out Joe, Baton Goes to Harris, and All the Necessary Backing is Lined Up” was the best possible play. We didn’t know that until the end.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
In case you didn’t see my emojis earlier,
🎉🎊🎈🎂🧁♥️❗
columbusqueen
@Kay: Or he’s drawing the fire because he’s got a shitty track record of picking bad people. My understanding is that Pennsylvania progressives didn’t hammer him on these issues two years ago because of his opponent being so terrible. But the VP chatter has put this garbage out on the national stage. Shapiro is not a good pick. Leave him in Harrisburg.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
The only certain was that Biden’s trajectory was down and this was long before the debate. It got worse and threatened Congress. I’m trying to explain to you that the one certain in the “chaos” as you called it was that Biden was losing and it was getting worse.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: satby has definitely not been around. Even in Sunday garden chats.
Baud
I do like that cartoon up top.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Turning a state like Texas blue would make the Rs much less enthusiastic about the Electoral College.
I don’t know how realistic that is.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
:-(
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
We seem to inch closer every four years.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
In retrospect, that’s absolutely right.
Before the decision, it seemed overwhelmingly likely as well.
What was not known by us was whether someone else would do better.
The non-moron part of the party was in a much better position to evaluate the odds, and they made what seems like the right decision. But for most of the rest of us it was scary as hell. And no amount of “She had this all the way” bluster is going to erase that memory.
Layer8Problem
@Matt McIrvin: Statements by unattributed sources are false, except when they’re true.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: There are quite a few absentees. I’m still here because I’m bloody-minded.
ETA: And pie is delicious.
Layer8Problem
@Baud: You can’t go. “A nation turns its lonely eyes to you . . . “
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: See, my actual theory (incorrect!) was that the Pelosi/Obama rumors were false and the Democratic Party was not going to do any of this–Biden was going to stay in regardless, because the alternative was the crazytown scenarios of convention floor fights between nobodies that the pundits were imagining.
If Biden was staying in, the dreams of a convention insurgency to unseat him were just going to hole his general-election campaign below the waterline. And I was prepared to grit my teeth, give Biden all the support I could and ride that wreck to the bottom, contributing as little to the damage as I could in the hopes that we could keep it close enough to mitigate the horrors after.
This on the basis that the alternative all sounded like a Sorkin fantasy, and those don’t actually happen. (Whereas Presidents losing reelection after bruising divisions surface at the party convention–yeah, THAT happens all the time. I can think of it happening three times in my personal memory.)
Pelosi and Obama and Biden and Harris, whoever was responsible for all this (probably a bit of all of them), were actually playing their cards pretty close to their chests while the buzz went on.
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne:
Happy birthday!
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I’m fine with a good faith disagreement and enjoy sparring with you – you were never insulting and what not. I objected to being called a racist or some kind of Russian op or being told to “shut up” because what I was saying was a minority view and uncomfortable. But you never did that. We can agree to disagree.
geg6
@Baud:
I’ve decided that I wasn’t going to let the bullies chase me away. And that there are some people here who are eminently ignorable due to their know-it-all self image. So I won’t be talking to them. I’ll stick to talking to those who don’t think they know everything and who are reasonable and clear minded about their level of knowledge and expertise of politics and what the future holds. The exception being you, of course. 😉
Baud
@geg6:
I’m not an exception to your rule. I literally don’t know anything.
Shalimar
@different-church-lady: Let’s use Loomis at LGM as an example of this. He was doing a victory lap a few days ago for being right that replacing Biden with Harris would be a big boost. And he is correct about that part of it. He was saying the whole time that Harris was the only alternative.
But Loomis was also pushing the outright lie that Biden had become so incompetent that he couldn’t even tie his own shoelaces anymore. It was a bad debate, but Biden is still more competent than the average person. He hasn’t lost it completely. Repeating over and over that he had was devastating to our chances if he hadn’t dropped out.
And dropping out was strictly his choice. The guy they were insulting at every turn. No one could legally force him to stand down. Thank god he did. I am glad Harris is our candidate. The next 3 months will be better with her than Biden. But we’re damned lucky it played out exactly the way it did.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
You don’t have to explain that to me. But there were phases. By the end of the chaos there was no chance of pulling out of the tailspin. But had behavior been different, there could have been a chance for recovery.
Now I am not arguing that Biden should have stayed in. I’m saying that the freakout (a) cemented the failure, (b) removed the option of recovery, and (c) seemed to me like it was going to hurt the successor as well by making the party look dysfunctional.
Also: I really wish people would stop lobbying me over whether it was the right decision, because I’m not saying it was wrong.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@columbusqueen:
The School Voucher *Democratic* governor has no business being on the national stage.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/pennsylvania/article_155b4402-c5d4-11ee-9ff0-f76befd5c26e.html
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Nukular Biskits: I think that a lot of us who were … let’s just say “less than enthused” about Biden dropping out? … were worried that there’d be a vacuum on our side, with a competition to fill it that would turn into a bloodbath. The screaming from so many directions at once following the debate just amplified our fears. And while those fears may not have come to pass, I don’t think they were unreasonable. I, for one, thought I might have been staring down the barrel of the apocalypse, and I know I wasn’t the only one.
Granted, in retrospect, it’s obvious that Biden and Harris had contingency plans in place (including the one in which Harris gets woken up at three in the morning by a distraught staffer addressing her as “Madam President”). But I’m prepared to read a history in ten or twenty years discussing how much effort it took to make this transition look so effortless. There was no guarantee it’d work out this well, and no way for anyone to take solace from it in advance.
The Pale Scot
I haven’t watched Spitting Image in years, I didn’t know it was still on. This skit has a BLM bot and a GOP cyborg and is bloody funny it is.
https://youtu.be/Zes1eX2MD2E?t=172
Layer8Problem
@Kay: “I objected to being called a racist or some kind of Russian op or being told to “shut up” because what I was saying was a minority view and uncomfortable.”
Never from this chair. And you’ve said too many solid things in the past for a disagreement to become estrangement.
different-church-lady
@Kay: Even though I didn’t see it directly, I have no doubt you got heaped with abuse. Tons of bad behavior on both sides.
Can’t say I ‘enjoy’ sparring, but I am glad you feel I do it respectfully. Here’s to less reasons for it in the future!
Belafon
Enthusiasm should not be how a country is run, because it’s ephemeral and easily manipulated.
Layer8Problem
@Shalimar: Well, Loomis is a dick.
Kay
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
He’s getting harder and harder to defend but I can’t let go of my one point in PA :)
What if we need that!?!
eclare
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Yes, I’m looking forward to a book about how this all went down. Because it was seamless.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@geg6:
We call them “reply guys” in housing twitter because they basically are a form of trolls, always working to get the last word in.
What’s hysterical is that they hate passive-aggressive responses and yet never follow their own advice when it comes to pie-ing people whose comments and tone bother one.
Oh yeah, they don’t follow that advice because of the “reply guy” thing.
Same people that fall into the Loyal-Dems-But profile who also peddle a lot of neoliberal, Reaganomic bullshit (like 3rd Rate Yyglesias, aka Stancil, does). The Venn Diagram between the two has significant overlap.
SFAW
@NotMax:
Thanks for the reminder!
Happy Happy Happy Birthday, Mob Enforcer SubaruDianne!!!
Kay
@Layer8Problem:
I understand solidarity and teamwork, I really do but we have to leave room for disagreement or we can go wrong as a group. And we don’t want that. That’s bad.
Belafon
@Shalimar: yep. Their Biden wouldn’t have gotten those prisoners released.
different-church-lady
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I am constantly flabbergasted by the idea that for four years she’s been second in line to an almost-octogenarian and everyone acts like they hadn’t put any thought into this until last month.
geg6
@Shalimar:
A perfect example of what pissed me off so much about this. I’m glad it’s all worked out for the best (so far). But I will never forget or forgive the slanders against the President that Loomis and all too many here and elsewhere leveled against him. It was disgusting and makes me ashamed that they are supposedly on my “team.”
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Nitter
Twitter version
Good, good. Keep this stuff moving.
(via GottaLaff)
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Layer8Problem:
Oh, if only there were a way to nominate that in good faith…
The Pale Scot
I haven’t watched Spitting Image in years, I didn’t know it was still on. This skit has a BLM bot and a GOP cyborg (JimCrowmatic) and it’s bloody funny it is.
https://youtu.be/Zes1eX2MD2E?t=172
M31
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I mean, Yglesias himself is already the 3rd rate Yglesias.
I mean, he posted, the day Biden dropped out, that Manchin would be a great pick. That is astoundingly stupid.
Layer8Problem
@Belafon: “Nah, nah, his staff did all the work, while he was busy snoring face first in his oatmeal!”
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
What was known was that someone else had the potential to do better and even if the top of the ticket lost it wouldn’t drag down everyone else. Polling was showing that down ballot candidates were going to be dinged because those polled believed they were covering for Biden’s inability to do the job. I can honestly say that is ridiculous as he has been doing it well but that was not the perception.
And for years people had been polled and they wanted a younger candidate. We can say that isn’t rational but that was the reality and it wasn’t going to change.
My personal feeling is that the pundits really didn’t care or understand what MVP Harris had been doing since Dobbs and the school shooting in Nashville and the political shenanigans that followed. She has been touring colleges and universities and speaking to overflow crowds of young people about those issues. She was building a movement under the pundits noses and they didn’t see it because of misogynoir and because they are assholes. I had a strong sense that this was the moment for her. Those two issues plus all of the excitement about a prosecutor finally achieving Justice (at the ballot box) against a person who keeps getting away with it.
Being a prosecutor in 2020 with the George Floyd protests was bad timing. Being a prosecutor with the backdrop of Dobbs and such a corrupt SCOTUS is excellent timing.
hells littlest angel
Remember when people said she wasn’t good at campaigning?
different-church-lady
@M31:
Stupid like a fox.
different-church-lady
@MomSense: Potential. POTENTIAL.
schrodingers_cat
@Frankensteinbeck: It was aided and abetted by many on our side. The drip drip of congressional backstabbers was orchestrated. There was nothing organic about those 3 weeks.
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
So, you’re saying the decision was wrong?
Yes, I’m effing kidding.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Belafon: Biden is almost the exception proving Douglas Adams’s rule about power:
Trump absolutely fits this rule.
different-church-lady
@SFAW: Well, apparently that’s how it’s reading…
Kay
I do think I have a slightly different view than many here on the agency of the major players- the pols themselves. So in a Shapiro situation where he’s in a competitive race and this rain of shit starts just mysteriously falling on his head I think “probably his opponents in the race for VP” and BJ often is “must be another plot by Lefties (or whomever)”. It’s an insanely competive arena they chose and they are there because they are people who are intensely competitive. This is the nature of the thing itself. It’s not all “media” or malicious forces or donors. It’s them. They want to win. I mean they can become a team but first they have to beat all the others.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: And yet the backstabbers are not happy they want us to sing paeans to their perfidy.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@different-church-lady: If I were writing a movie about it, then the day Biden got diagnosed with COVID, he’d pick up the phone and just say “Kamala. The green folder. Get ready.”
TBone
@Baud: now you’ve done it! Where is Baud?
UncleEbeneezer
Good for you. Pushing people like you out, is what the bullies want.
different-church-lady
@schrodingers_cat: The narrative was already almost out of Biden’s grip. The ‘backstabbers’ (for lack of a more accurate term) knocked it out permanently.
It was a fantastically dumb thing to do publicly, no matter how well it’s turned out.
Kay
@hells littlest angel:
Brutal schedule. Which is what you need. Obama in 2012 was doing 2 or more states a day by the end of July. Trump is lazy as shit – he does two events a week. She can easily outwork him.
BritinChicago
@Kay: She needs Michigan and Wisconsin (which should be ok, I think) plus PA. If GA is really in play again then that together with AZ would let her win even if she loses PA. Various other winning scenarios are possible, but look to me like the most plausible at the moment. National polls are really only of interest to the extent that they predict the result in one or more of the closely contested states (of which there are somewhere between five and ten, depending on how strict we’re being).
The only states I’ve been able to vote in in this country are MA and IL, and in neither case has my vote mattered at all for the Presidential election. I cast the vote anyway, of course, but it’s not a good system.
different-church-lady
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: “Already have it in my hand, boss.”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I felt like I’d been literally punched in the gut when I heard the announcement about 3 pm (is this going to be one of those “you always remember where you were” moments?) I was on a Zoom call just after that and the immediate reaction was “I hope it’s not Kamala, she can’t be elected in this country.” It only took about 2 hours for the optimism and enthusiasm to kick in. The mood shift in our party over the course of that one afternoon was one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen.
I think the roll out of the announcement was just right, and I think a lot of that is Biden showing just how good he’s going to be in an advisory role. I also feel good about what he can get done in his last 6 months as President, when he can do the kind of Presidenting he does best and not have to worry about the campaign.
One of the calming voices I listen to is Robert Hubbel, who has a substack called “Today’s Edition”. He was reporting a couple of days before The Announcement that many of his readers were shrieking at him that by supporting Biden, he was a terrible person. That shocked me. So I didn’t expect party unity to happen, let alone so fast. Democrats don’t do unity so well.
It’s nice to be so wrong. I’m going to try to join the Seniors for Kamala call, though I don’t feel like a “senior”. Yeah, I’m a boomer, but so what? (I think I’ll be recovered from my cataract surgery by then.)
Kay
@different-church-lady:
Entire leadership of the Democratic Party other than Joe Biden is the more accurate term.
Steve LaBonne
@Shalimar: Worse even than Loomis was Campos posting every day about his ridiculous Parkinson’s nonsense. That’s when I had enough.
different-church-lady
@Kay: The ‘backstabbers’ are the ones who ran to the TV cameras instead of the Oval Office.
SFAW
@Kay:
I’m glad you’re still here.
I value your political insights, and of course your political activity.
Not that it matters: I think you’re wrong re: why Pelosi is (apparently?) supporting Walz, but I’ll never “pie” you.
[I think Shapiro’s negatives (labor, vouchers, etc.) outweigh his theoretical positive re: PA, and I view Pelosi’s support as similar thinking, but that may just be “confirmation bias” on my part.]
Matt McIrvin
It seems like there are a bunch of people here who place an extremely high moral value on loyalty, and were upset about the “dump Biden” movement on that basis.
That wasn’t what really bothered me. If anything, my biases are toward (1) an extremely pessimistic assessment of threats, and (2) a tendency to assume in the absence of very strong evidence that the future will be like the past. Those together had me thinking that we were probably heading for disaster but that the attempts to change course were based on unlikely fantasies and would probably just make it worse. So I was feeling very bad about the whole situation but also a bit constrained not to express those doubts.
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne: I’m on a personal crusade to make sure Campos never lives it down.
brendancalling
@MagdaInBlack: that’s such a great podcast. That’s the one that inspired us to launch the Progress Pondcast. BTW, am hour after we published episode 13 (Case for Kamala), Biden dropped out. So we did a follow-up yesterday.
linkHere’s the link. We talk the historic significance of her candidacy, JD Vance’s problems, Trump’s NABJ appearance, and the hostage/prisoner exchange.
columbusqueen
@Kay: The risk of a bad October Surprise about shit Shapiro did himself seems to me uncomfortably high. If he tolerated this crap in a close aide, I’m very suspicious he thinks a little harassment is A-OK. Rolling the dice & having snake eyes come up is too dangerous in a tight race. I also don’t want to lose the advantage Harris has with women.
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
JHC
scribbler
@MomSense: You would be a lot easier to take if you didn’t so often use phrases like “I’m trying to tell you.” It sounds like you’re talking to a stubborn toddler who just won’t accept the obvious. It’s more than a little insulting.
UncleEbeneezer
Some pearl-clutchers claimed to be big-mad that Megan Thee Stallion twerked as part of her performance at the Atlanta rally for Harris, because of some respectability bullshit. Let me just say, for the record: I dissent!!!
SiubhanDuinne
@TBone:
Thank you!
I am of the opinion that being 82 years old is just … silly.
Kay
@BritinChicago:
I still worry about Michigan. I’ve been worried about Michigan for six months. For some reason it’s been historically hard to poll and the 80 to 100k Arab American votes concern me. We can do it without them, but we have to replace them by pulling from somewhere else. Maybe suburban white women plus labor? I donated to two county parties in MI (swingy counties) because I wanted to do something productive and I’m still an Ohio resident. I also contacted Elissa Schlotkins campaaign to volunteer because I just like her for Senate. I won’t feel confident about MI until the votes are in.
M31
@different-church-lady: Yes. And while it has all turned out well (SO FAR) I was so pissed off that Biden dropping out gave the loser pundits and the FTFNYT a win, and that they’d build on that win to screw over Dems even more with the ensuing chaos.
Watching them flail and piss and moan and get completely shoved into the background has been a distinct pleasure.
Maybe we’ll know in a few years that Biden, Pelosi, and Harris gamed it out in advance to make it happen the way it did.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
Defending the castle was the right publicly-facing decision to make. But I think what went on is that some people got so emotionally invested in that defense that once the writing was on the wall they couldn’t let go. And many of them lashed out. It was understandable from an emotional standpoint, but rationally it wasn’t sound or helpful behavior.
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: and yet, he vetoed school vouchers and we do not have them in our new budget here in PA. He has said that anything that takes away any public funding for public education is a nonstarter. I am a broken record on this because I see the same claims over and over here.
Here’s some current information about how Shapiro has had to deal with our rethug-controlled legislature – hint: like a boss!
https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2023/07/pennsylvania-budget-josh-shapiro-education-school-vouchers-deal/
He knows how to Nancy Smash!
https://www.chalkbeat.org/philadelphia/2024/02/06/governor-josh-shapiro-pushes-record-funding-for-public-schools-no-vouchers/
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
I guess where we disagree is that it wasn’t the freakout that cemented it. The debate was supposed to get him out of the downward trajectory. It didn’t. The debate was his Hail Mary attempt. No amount of shutting up and supporting him was going to fix it.
What persuaded Biden to step aside was finally being shown the swing state polling and being a good pol he knew he had no way to win.
I’m not trying to lobby you. I appreciate that you weren’t one of the people who was bullying and insulting me constantly here.
BR
@columbusqueen:
Yeah, I’m nervous about it as well. “When you’re explaining, you’re losing” and we would be explaining out of the gate with some of these Shapiro stories (his old articles and recent statements about Gaza, his staffer problems). Only thing I can hope is the vetting team was able to unearth all old clips from all the candidates so they find the baggage for all of them.
Kay
@BritinChicago:
But with my concerns about MI now you see why I’m like “we need Shapiro for PA!!”
I want a backstop.
JML
I’d settle for the Wyoming Plan, and set the size of a House district at the size of the smallest single-state population and let it flex from there every ten years when we do a census. That would make a big difference in making the House the People’s House again, as well as reducing the influence of the smallest states on the electoral college back to a more reasonable number.
You’d need to build another building for Congressional offices and staff and spend a little more money on Congress generally, but it would also reduce the influence of special interests to some degree; harder to get to everybody.
schrodingers_cat
@different-church-lady: We still have over 90 days to go. The grievance caucus that is ostensibly a part of the Democratic coalition is already kvetching about Shapiro as the VP pick. If she doesn’t pick him, they will latch on to some other grievance
I am seeing an uptick of Gaza comments which had completely disappeared for the 3 weeks when Biden was old.
different-church-lady
@scribbler:
Why is everyone looking at me?
p.a.
What can this Dem admin & DoJ do proactively to prevent voting shenanigans, since voting laws (except the on-life-support Civil Rights Laws & Amendments) are the province of the individual states? It’s one advantage over 2020: who’s in charge. (
Bueller?Merrick? Merrick?)But the usual suspect states & independent trumpist bad actors all over have pages of playbook to at the very least create chaos everywhere and hope Fed Soc judicial parasites step in to “2000 election” the job for donnie.
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
I generally didn’t have a problem with Campos, the way many other jackals did — yeah, he was more gloom-and-doom than I’d like, but other than that he was OK — but he really got annoying toward the end, i.e., before President Biden dropped out.
But the evil part of me keeps checking to see if he pulls any gloom-and-doom re: the Harris campaign, so I can tell him to FOAD. I’m kind of an asshole that way.
Mike in NC
Crawled out of bed this morning. Switched on MSNBC. “Trump doubling down on racist attacks on Harris. Vance tripling down on attacks on women without children”. Sounds like it’ll be a fun weekend.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
On this we can agree: he had one mission, and he blew it.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@different-church-lady:
Don’t look at me, I was looking at Baud. :P
Kay
@BritinChicago:
Also Sherrod and Marcy Kaptur are in good shape and OH is red for Presidential – my congressional reps in Ohio – so I can do something in MI.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
What a bright and cheerful array! Thanks, Baud — you’ve definitely got my vote now!!
JML
@Kay: Labor is definitely rising again in MI and they were all in on Biden and should be just as strong for Harris. The UAW matters there and after this round of contracts their members are listening. And they know who was there for them and they know who’s a scab.
Between Biden-Harris & Big Gretch, I feel good about MI. But we absolutely 100% need it and can’t take it for granted.
Kay
@Mike in NC:
He’s never going to step down but I think he will fire his campaign managers. He’s crazy angry and of course none of it can be his fault. They’re gone soon.
Matt McIrvin
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My wife came up to me and asked “What do you think?”
“About what?”
“Biden withdrew from the campaign.”
I was very surprised about that because I was not predicting he would voluntarily step down. Said “Dunno. Depends on what happens.” My immediate thought was that it could be very good or very bad.
Saw online that he had endorsed Harris, and that mildly surprised me–since the usual protocol was for a term-limited President in a primary situation to not endorse anybody, and I thought he’d follow that if he was stepping down.
Poked my nose in here, saw people were taking it badly and backed away for a few hours. Concentrated on other things.
Then in the late evening, I started to see all these people on Facehole posting “all in for Kamala!” posts and thinking “WTF? Is Harris really happening?”
I comforted myself a bit with the realization that if it *wasn’t* Harris, whoever it was would probably have to curry favor with Harris.
Only really sunk in the next day that Harris was really happening. And I did not expect that at all. Aside from all the other stuff I’ve mentioned, the people I knew online who were most all-in for Harris as a potential replacement were also all-in for Biden. So I thought of him actually being replaced by Harris as something that would basically only happen if he died or resigned for medical reasons, not as the most likely scenario.
SiubhanDuinne
@eclare:
Thank you!
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Nitter
Twitter version:
Good, good. Doing the work still matters – a lot.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
Jeff (Gutenberg Parenthesis) Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) posted at 7:30 AM on Sat, Aug 03, 2024:
OMFG. The Times — via its quite white man, Jeremy Peters — hits a new bottom. It seeks out “many” (read: “dozens”) of people to tell this racist nation’s first Black and Asian presidential candidate to stop talking about race.
The Times’ dismissal of “identify politics” is the northern-white-liberal equivalent of Republicans calling @KamalaHarris the DEI candidate. She is the target of blatant racism, which The Times still refuses to name. Instead, it engages in this incipient racism: telling the Black woman to shush.
The Times is worse than broken. The Times damages democracy.
https://t.co/Ju5DqbBclg
(https://x.com/jeffjarvis/status/1819712509185606077?t=y3HG7K4zidHS_HOr0RLNNQ&s=03)
eclare
@Kay:
I remember reading somewhere that in Obama’s 2008 race he asked his campaign manager if he could take weekends off. “Not if you want to win.”
TBone
@SiubhanDuinne: I love that for you AND desire to emulate it! 😍
We are all now wearing multicolored tutus in your honor!
Kay
@JML:
Thanks. Labor are also Sherrod’s and Marcy’s base in Ohio and they seem to be on board so I think that’s a good sign for MI. I live in the NW part of OH that borders MI and labor union locals are reciprocal between the two states – they can work in either state – they mix and match locals. My son is in a Toledo local and he’s working with a Detroit local right now. They go back and forth all the time.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
I was stunned twice that day.
The first was seeing Biden was stepping aside — even though I had been waiting for it for days, it was still a shock.
The next I wasn’t expecting at all: the mind-spinning speed with which everyone just got on the same page immediately. I literally couldn’t believe it was happening.
Matt McIrvin
@SFAW: The prevailing commenter buzz on LGM is that the Democrats are going to blow it by picking Shapiro for VP, and that’ll be the thing that ruins our party. Because they mostly hate him and the Democrats have to blow it somehow.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Biden has been the best president for labor and economics since LBJ. He achieved the soft landing of a full employment economy and low interest rates. He deserved a second term on the basis of his achievements and record as President. He did this by going against the austerity mindset that dominated even Obama’s administration.
That’s just one aspect of his record. But it didn’t matter. Vibes of white people mattered more.
Geminid
@Kay: Pelosi favoring Walz could also result from conversations she and other leaders are having with rank-and-file members, particularly those in battleground districts.
I think a lot of these Representatives are politically astute because they have to be. Like the rest of us, they are still guessing but they are doing so with a good base of knowledge. They might be telling leadership that they believe Walz can help them if he’s on the ticket, and more than the others would.
M31
@rikyrah: you know the NYT has a style sheet that has all the different allowable ways to say ‘uppity’
Kay
@eclare:
I think they attracted The A Team because she’s a good candidate and it’s this amazing late in the day “save” that will be both fun to work on and also meaningful and historic not just because of what Harris is but because of what Trump is. They want to put him away for good. That’s an inspiring goal.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: So that negates 3.5 years of excellent work.
I don’t think it’s the Biden “deadenders” who are beating the dead horse. It seems unless we all start singing hosannas, it will never end.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Sounds like the Dems succeeded in teaching their voters, that the press is a pack of lying assholes. Which sure is useful with the presses bullshit about Harris’ “harsh giggle”. I don’t hear that anymore.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer:
Good grief. She is one of the most popular rappers out there. And if they’re lying on their fainting couches from twerking do not play “WAP” for them.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I;m just curious why you read them. They’re such sad sacks. It’s just “woe is us” all day long. I don’t read them because the visual clutter of the site is unbearable to me but I hear so much bad about them now I wouldn’t anyway.
different-church-lady
@different-church-lady: Oh, and then I logged in here and said in effect “don’t mourn, get to work!” and carelessly stomped all over people’s raw nerves unintentionally.
:-(
M31
@Matt McIrvin: lol that doom ain’t gonna gloom itself
LGM, hahahah, the Eeyore caucus
and the foot-Parkinson’s distance diagnosis champeens
hueyplong
I wish people would give up their puzzles for 90 days and accelerate a drop in NYT subscriptions.
Resubscribing could follow immediately upon their doing something good for once, which would then total two separate acts of the training they so desperately need.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
Well, thanks! Just going to finish my coffee and then mob-enforce myself into doing that laundry I’ve been procrastinating on. Follow my Substack for other ways to make your 82nd birthday just.that.memorable.
lowtechcyclist
And that’s even with the first three weeks of July having been a disaster of intraparty feuding and angst.
Man, we’re all pulling together again now, and it feels so good!
Stopped by the Democratic Party booth at First Friday yesterday evening, and signed up as a volunteer. I’m not worried about our winning Maryland for Kamala, but we also need to make sure Alsobrooks keeps Larry Hogan out of the Senate, and there’s a school board race in my county where we’ve got to keep the book-banners out.
columbusqueen
@Kay: What about WI as the backstop? In which case Walz could give you that.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia:
Not in my view, but unfortunately I don’t get to make the rules.
rikyrah
Isaac Arnsdorf (@iarnsdorf) posted at 9:07 AM on Sat, Aug 03, 2024:
Harris campaign says there was no agreement. Michael Tyler: “Donald Trump is running scared & trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to & running straight to Fox News to bail him out. He needs to stop playing games & show up to the debate he already committed to”
(https://x.com/iarnsdorf/status/1819736766741430366?s=02)
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Yep. We have to carry their slippers on our heads while singing their praises. Their vibes are more important than anything else on this blog and in the country at large
ETA: Can you email me at my blog email. Thanks.
Steve LaBonne
@schrodingers_cat: Politics ain’t West Wing. Our brilliant system puts elections in the hands of the least informed voters. We’re all at their mercy.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Honestly, I hadn’t been reading LGM at all for the past few months. For the first day or two after Biden dropped out, though, Balloon Juice was reeling and they were fired up and happy! Seemed like a good time to check them out again.
But they’re gradually returning to form.
lowtechcyclist
@SiubhanDuinne: Happy birthday!
One of my favorite Dylan lines is the one about how if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying. It’s pretty clear that you’re still busy being born. So congrats on being 82 years young!
schrodingers_cat
@Steve LaBonne: I speak of Congressional Ds who stuck the knives in Biden’s back. Biden couldn’t fight his own party.
I was pilloried as a troll when I saw Nancy Pelosi’s pawprints on the Congressional drip drip campaign. Which independent reporting has confirmed.
eclare
@Kay:
I was glad to see Plouffe join Harris’ campaign.
Kay
@columbusqueen:
That’s true. The Walz pick (IMO) is just a theory I do not share. I do not think we will pick up WWC men. I think we took a share of suburban college educated white men from Republicans and they’re the direction we’re going in. For them, it’s Shapiro or Kelly. They want a moderate who looks like them and speaks like them.
But I’m fine with really any of the VP’s on offer. I think Harris is what this is about.
BR
Some folks have pointed out that RFK Jr is hurting Trump in the polls more than Harris and that he’ll probably drop out and endorse Trump. I buy it — he’s already been in secret talks with Trump about a potential HHS cabinet position (!!). But a number of his voters just hate mainstream parties so I don’t know that they’d show up to vote at all if he drops out.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: They seem to have returned to their baseline form of stupid, with a splattering of irrational exuberance.
One thing I’ve noticed both here and there is the flood of unfamiliar nyms that ran rampant for almost exactly those three weeks had evaporated and I’m just seeing the established regulars again.
BR
@Kay:
Shapiro has the polo shirt look down cold.
Steve LaBonne
@schrodingers_cat: That’s also politics, I’m afraid. If you lose your party’s support it doesn’t matter if it’s for good or bad reasons, you can’t continue for long. At the time I was furious and terrified because I never imagined things could go the way they have actually gone.
Kay
@columbusqueen:
I am a liberal but I think the argument that Harris will be painted as a Commie is true so she needs a moderate man to temper that. A lot of Democrats are moderate or Right leaning. I just don’t know how many Prairie Populists we have left.
They’re going to go after her Lefty parents. Guaranteed.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
A message that needs to repeated.
A long with the question; why, gentle reader are you still subscribed to the New York Times?
MattF
@rikyrah: What TFG wants, with his ‘debate’ proposal, is a WWE wrestling match. No rink in the center of the arena, but that’s just an oversight.
Captain C
@rikyrah:
And, it seems, on purpose.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: That gives me a 404. If I click your nym I get X, which I’m not on. Should I ask WaterGirl for it?
schrodingers_cat
@Steve LaBonne: Agreed.
UncleEbeneezer
@BR: How much of the 2020 Biden/Harris campaign was about Kamala explaining why she wasn’t a cop? That shit was all over the place in the Primary, but once she was the VP on the ticket I don’t remember it ever really coming up again. The focus is gonna be on Harris, not her VP pick.
November is gonna be about Roe, not the VP’s stance on vouchers. And if anyone tries to suggest otherwise, pivot and make it so. Hammer it repeatedly. Make EVERY conversation about abortion. That’s how we win, regardless of who our VP is.
Seonachan
@Matt McIrvin: from your link: “In his essay, Sorkin drew parallels between real-world events and his acclaimed TV series….”
Even with the deluge of recent examples, I didn’t think it was possible to have one’s head so far up one’s ass. I guess it just kept going until it popped back into its original position, so no one noticed.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Try this: [email protected]
I must have had a typo in the first link.
Kay
@BR:
He does. I’m thrilled you get what I was clumsily trying to express. I live in Ohio and this is my social group – moderate or Right leaning college educated men and women. They’ll do Harris but we have to reasure them that no one is going to be “radical”.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
Thanks, and as I said to Kay, I have no doubt you had to suffer a lot of abuse. And I understand how that can create a combative and suspicious state of mind even when there’s no disagreement. (Trust me, I’ve fallen into that trap myself plenty of times.)
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: He’s at an age where time catches up to you fast in ways that are very visible.
Is Biden still competent to be President? Yes, he is, and a very good one. He clearly doesn’t have dementia and he’s still doing the job and doing it well. If at some point during his second term he wasn’t capable of that, I think he’d have had the presence of mind to step down and Harris would be right there, set to be a good, possibly great President. She was the main reason I wasn’t too worried about it. And the seeming unwillingness of many of the dump-Biden folk to recognize that, yes, it drove me nuts.
Was Biden capable of being the face of a successful reelection campaign while also doing the job? It was looking like the answer was no. Deserve has nothing to do with it.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Does Sulzberger owe money to the Russian mafia? Is that why he is so soft on Moscow’s candidate?
Josie
@SiubhanDuinne:
Doing laundry on your birthday. Heaven forfend! Oh well, Happy Birthday anyway.
scribbler
@geg6: I’m so happy to hear this. Thanks for sticking around!
Starfish
@Baud: It really was the best timed vacation on your part. Everyone was asking where you were because surely your lack of pants would unite us into saying “Baud, please put on some pants.”
TBone
@eclare: I have a great story about WAP and my rumpy neighbors’ son but since we’re not yet after dark, shall refrain except to say that, when I called out Ben Sha-pee-word, he turned tail and went RUNNING home to mama😆
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
We have to get a Voting Rights Bill passed.
JML
I go to 270towin.com from time to time just to look at the possibilities for the map now and in the future, and it’s interesting. The GOP collection of states they need to win is just as fragile as the Dems, just in different ways. If FL or TX ever flip back to the Dems, they basically have no path to win a national election. They’d need to run the table on WI, MI, PA, NC, GA, AZ, NV without losing ground anywhere else. Losing FL would be almost as bad. And while expecting to flip either state in this election is highly unlikely (although you never can tell, especially with FL) things can end up turning more quickly than people realize, which is why the GOP is scrambling so hard to rig the game.
the California Experience is telling in looking at tipping points for states. Before Clinton won CA in 1992, no Dem had won in CA since LBJ in 1964. It had been a GOP stronghold…and they haven’t won it since. The GOP went from being a powerhouse to a non-entity pretty quickly.
But I look at NC and GA as potential tipping point states as well. the demographic trends in both states are good for dems, they’re able to make some wins state-wide, if not consistently (yet) and they’re growing states. And if the GOP starts losing there, then they’re back to needing to sweep PA, MI, WI, and AZ to squeak out a win. That certainly not impossible, but if they’re losing in NC & GA it’s hard to find a formulation that’s winning in PA to me.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Happy Birthday! Get out those coloring books and color!
BR
@Kay:
For better or worse, all of her potential picks scream “normie” — they’re all middle of the road white men. Even Walz is considered by folks in MN to be a centrist, and the progressives there grumble about him not getting out of the way for even more progressive candidates. So I’m not worried about any of them scaring off moderates, though I’m not a moderate or a white man to be able to judge that. FWIW, my friends who are normie white folks in NC, and live in a wealthy neighborhood, are pushing for Pete, because they think he will sell well. I dunno if he will.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Happy Birthday!!
schrodingers_cat
Test
Shalimar
@Steve LaBonne: I went back over all of Loomis’ posts on the subject yesterday. I haven’t looked at Campos and don’t think I want to. In this particular case, Loomis was finishing a book during that period and wasn’t posting much other than grave visits. The only reason he was out-assholed is because his volume slipped for reasons beyond his control.
Kay
I saw a really unfair attack piece on Kelly yesterday about his 2004(?) divorce. His ex violated an agreed-upon court order so he filed a motion for civil contempt. In a motion for civil contempt there is boilerplate language about a jail term. The language is important legally because when there is a possibility of incarceration certain constitutional protections kick in but be aware that civil litigators file this motion all the time (because it’s the only remedy they have for violation of a civil system order) and it means almost nothing. This article is just a pure smear.
TBone
Since the MSM went ahead and unilaterally RSVPd VP Harris for a Fux debate, here is a campaign response:
https://x.com/weijia/status/1819739935521308696
🔥💪😍
snoey
@BR: VP pick can only hurt you.
This is all small stuff, but Walz codes as old, Pete is unnecessarily edgy, and Shapiro centers Gaza.
Kelly seems safest.
Matt McIrvin
@JML: I think Presidential trends were hard to detect during the 1980s because they were happening under the water of general massive support for Republicans across the whole country. There was a regional realignment happening but it wasn’t obvious how it was working out until 1992.
TBone
Safe is for baseball.
UncleEbeneezer
@eclare: Right? And like who doesn’t know that when you hire Megan you’re gonna get some twerking? That’s WHY YOU HIRE HER!!! She even did so, in a blue suit (with a crop-top to highlight her curves, naturally) which is downright formal for Megan, lol.
Matt McIrvin
@snoey: Kelly or Shapiro maybe alienates labor, the question is how much.
rikyrah
@Kay:
But someone who is right on positions that we don’t have to waste time “explaining” things less than 100 days out is the reason
Governor Santa Claus
And Beshear have leapt to the top of the list for me.😒
Kay
This garbage article screamed “Kelly tried to put his ex IN JAIL”
No one was going to jail and there’s nothing else he can file when someone violates an order. Our media are ridiculous.
hueyplong
@snoey: Kelly may be the safest in one arena (presidential), but he’s the most dangerous in another (Senate).
SiubhanDuinne
@lowtechcyclist:
That’s a great line! Thank you so much!
Kay
@rikyrah:
I feel like Beshear has become the compromise candidate. But we all know she gets to decide. It is fun to speculate.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Going with the Charli XCX imagery already signals they’re not scared of youth-culture stuff that will offend some normies. But they may be less familiar with her.
Starfish
@Kay: Yes. We have been Russian sleeper agents here for years. We were just playing the long game by being here back when Cole was a Republican, before he was driven over the edge by the politicization of Terri Schiavo.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
None of the VP candidates have a different position on Israel, so Shapiro or not, that’s coming. Since they are not genuine actors, we should expect nothing less 🤬🤬
TBone
@TBone: related
https://digbysblog.net/2024/08/03/dont-be-so-gullible-mctimes/
Anyway
I wish all the anti-LGMers would take their jihad to LGM — Campos and Loomis don’t post here — critique, bash them where they post. I hatehatehate the anti-LGM comments , so annoying.
Kay
@Starfish:
I recognize there are malicious actors but that can’t trump what is actually happening. Iran may be exploiting Gaza but they didn’t invent Gaza. It’s real. The opposition is real too.
Shalimar
@MomSense: I wouldn’t use the words downward spiral, but I do agree with you on this point. Biden has an excellent record across the board in numerous areas that he does not get credit for with the general voting public, and the campaign was not doing a good job of getting that message out there. The debate was Biden’s chance to change that, to start the positive publicity to compare to Trump’s constant negativity, and he failed. I don’t think Biden was incompetent, I don’t think he showed signs of Alzheimers or Parkinson’s or any of that, but he was physically frail and tired and he did not capitalize on the best chance he was going to have before the convention to create a positive narrative for his campaign.
snoey
@Matt McIrvin: Kelly is reversing on some labor issues.
Don’t know enough about the Senate seat.
MomSense
@Starfish:
Hold on, I was once a CiA operative disturbing this blog from the basement at Langley. Am I a double agent?
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Muthaphuckas on TikTok, from their purity pony perch, attempting to shame Black people out of voting for the VP.
Very heartened to see the numerous videos from Black content creators telling them to kiss their Black assses, and that we aren’t throwing away our votes for Palestine.
White leftists being White leftists 😒😒
SiubhanDuinne
@Josie:
When I consider the alternative … seriously, with apologies for TMI, I don’t have a single clean underwear or t-shirt. So laundry it is!
Thank you for the b’day wishes. Much appreciated.
schrodingers_cat
test
BritinChicago
@Kay: Yes, you’re right, I wasn’t thinking enough about the possible problems in MI. If she loses that the map gets really tough. WI and PA and AZ and NV would do it, or GA which has more EC votes than MI. I hope before too long there are polls which are more reassuring, but right now it looks like a squeaker, at best.
Soprano2
@geg6: Unfortunately way too many ” normies” saw it the way Loomis did. I had one friend post on FB that it was obvious Biden had dementia (based on how she saw her parents develop it) and that it was elder abuse that his family was letting him run for president because “of course ” he was too impaired to know he couldn’t do it. I get that, because it’s true that people with dementia think they can still do things they can’t (like drive). I pushed back on it, but way too many people were agreeing with her. I don’t like it, but I don’t think Biden could have convinced people like her (she’s highly educated, respected, and not a wingnut) that they didn’t see what they clearly thought they saw.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@M31:
Heh heh, so true. We call him “The Turd” for good reason(s).
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Most pro-labor President in generations
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: Harris is great on labor, Trump is awful. That’s where the focus should be, not on where her VP stands. We can litigate all the VP candidates’ stances in 2032 when they are the presumptive favorite to follow up Harris. Until then, there’s really no point to any of this handwringing over VP stances.
Also, everything we’ve seen since Dobbs tells us that THAT is what this election is going to be about. We should lean into that at every opportunity. We need to make that true with our own words and actions. Always pivot to Roe or Project 2025. ALWAYS!
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: And he got zero credit from those whose purport to speak on the behalf of labor and economic justice.
BritinChicago
@JML: The UK has 650 MPs and a population a little over one-fifth that of the US. Constituencies average a little over 100,000 people. Even that’s pretty large for an MP to provide the usual services to their constituents.
Starfish
@schrodingers_cat: Might there be war in the middle east where Hezbollah killed some Druze Muslims in Israel, and Israel retaliated by killing a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon AND a Hamas leader in Tehran or is just all fake concern by middle eastern people?
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
OT, but glad that those clowns in Alabama played themselves by not voting in the UAW.
Thought they would free ride on UAW, and get positive policies. The minute they didn’t vote for the UAW, the car company reneged an what they were to get.
They got played, and looked stupid. They get what they get for voting down the Union.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TBone:
And I’m the same broken record in response. This link shows that he’s still a big pro-voucher bullshitter:
https://www.thecentersquare.com/pennsylvania/article_155b4402-c5d4-11ee-9ff0-f76befd5c26e.html
Matt McIrvin
@eclare: One of the videos released for “WAP” was a lyrics video with various relevant images superimposed. When the line comes up about buying a new cell phone to take pictures of her… WAP… the phone that appears is a bit of a nostalgic throwback and it’s a model that I wrote code for, back in the day.
It’s the greatest thing that I’ve ever been tangentially involved with.
TBone
via No More Mr. Nice Blog
https://crooksandliars.com/2024/08/kamala-harris-has-superpower-against
Donold Spitting His Chiclets
Shalimar
@Anyway:
1. Campos and Loomis do get a lot of bashing on LGM for all of this.
2. Some of us can’t bash them there because Loomis has banned us for calling him a trolling asshole.
Bupalos
@Frankensteinbeck: Fortunately Their evil conspiracy somehow backfired. They must be so mad right now. Imagine slopadopolis in his lair, seething in bitterness that all his carefully laid plans were foiled when Biden sprung his trap and Slopadopolis found that he, the dastardly trapper, was in fact the trappee!
catclub
This is an incredible double standard. Any sane person would look at Trump-Vance and conclude EXTREMELY RADICAL. But they are GOP so that is ok.
UncleEbeneezer
@snoey: People will find reasons why Kelly is unacceptable too. It’s what they do (many of them right here at BJ). Loyal-Dems-But will always find a “But” to bash our ticket, hold their noses etc. The reality is this election will be about Harris and Trump, Roe and Project 2025. Ignore the people who try and focus on the flaws of whoever Harris choses for VP. Or change the subject to Roe and Project 2025. Be insistent. They are the much bigger concerns and they actually resonate with voters.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@UncleEbeneezer:
Exactly, and that’s coming from somebody like me who thinks the right-wing voucher bullshit in a Democrat is an awful thing to have. As somebody said a week or so ago, it’s an “own goal” kinda pick.
But, if Harris does that, we all look the other way, hold our tongue for now (cuz that’s what actual Dems do) and pivot to abortion. I’ve said this time and time again, use Roe/Dobbs like Joan of Arc as a martyr for the cause in order to rally the troops.
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: from February.
I live in Pennsylvania. Do you?
https://dced.pa.gov/newsroom/governor-shapiro-signs-bipartisan-2024-25-budget-investing-in-economic-development-k-12-and-higher-education-and-public-safety-to-create-freedom-and-opportunity-for-all-pennsylvanians/
SatanicPanic
@Anyway: I got banned from there years ago for mocking Campos, so I can’t ☹️.
Gvg
@Percysowner: Eliminating gerrymandering should be done, for fairness. No other reason is needed and historically it is popular. The hard part is designing a system that can’t be gamed and can be understood by most people so they can tell when something is wrong, or lies, and even crooked courts can’t screw it up. Figure that out and then start selling it to people.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
I personally like pritzker the best and one reason is that I think he helps us more with center and center right. I also like that he is a legit billionaire and all those class warfare run govt like a business nonsense arguments will go nowhere with him.
Nelle
Started to read and see that some of the valued denizens of the blog are not going to let go of relitigating who was right and who was wrong. I guess that putting like-minded people in contention with each other succeeded on some level. I hate that I need to step away from reading the comments, but there it is. Harris is offering the future, not the nurturance of grievance. I find that more productive than this. I hope that I’ve misinterpreted this. I do make errors.
Nettoyeur
@rikyrah: @Nukular Biskits: Joe Biden executed a masterful rope a dope on Trump, who committed his campaign to an attack on Joe and a fragmented Democratic Party but ended up confronted with Kamala and a united Democratic war machine. The same thing happened to the Japanese Kido Butai in WWII when they attacked an overmatched Midway Island, but ended up fighting the cream of the US Navy’s carrier aviation. The Japanese lost four carriers in one day, and it was the turning point of the war. Future historians will try to figure out just how much of this was brilliant improvisation and how much was a shrewd scheme.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Yep. And Orange One’s harping on KH’s Indian identity is going to make make the Indian American vote share go from 70 percent for Biden to 90 percent for KH.
SatanicPanic
Confession. I really did think Biden is suffering from cognitive decline. He says too much weird stuff and he freezes in a really conspicuous way. I still think he does. It may be because my dad was going through the same thing at the time and I was seeing it everywhere but the parallels were too obvious to ignore. I am pretty sure we’ll find out in a year or two that he does have something serious. my father just passed away this week so if this is deeply insulting to the president I understand but it’s been a difficult year.
UncleEbeneezer
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: VP doesn’t determine the President’s education policy. What is Harris’ stance? That’s what really matters until 2032.
Bupalos
@different-church-lady: Biden should have acceded to the party’s judgement day 1. That was the source of the fooferaw, a party refreshingly unwilling to just march off to the gallows with a maimed candidate, up against the reality that no one gives up power. It wasn’t a great situation but trying to get him out isn’t what maimed him. His communication decline emerging into more public view is what maimed him.
The campaign to change candidates started privately and had to become more public and impose costs on Biden and the party as his refusals escalated. There wasn’t some other way to do this.
SatanicPanic
@Steve LaBonne: didn’t you get banned from there a few years back? Iirc I got banned a few months later
hobbitdreams
@Nelle: You are not wrong.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: They alienate the online left. I don’t know how much that translates to on the ground realities.
Bupalos
@Nettoyeur: EVERYTHING IS PLANNED DO YOUR RESEARCH.
Kay
@catclub:
Agree. But we don’t get to demand voters “should” do something. They do think Trump is too radical, which is why they started leaning D. But that doesn’t foreclose them ALSO thinking Harris is radical.
It’s business people too. If they’re not on board somewhat they’re going to oppose her and they’re powerful. Like it or not Americans are pro business and pro rich people. This is the deal we made when we took a share of the white suburbs from the GOP. They’re moderates.
SFAW
@Kay:
Speaking only for myself: I still read them because they’re often interesting, and cover some topics/areas we don’t see here.
Another part of it (for me) is that this joint has so many blogs (etc.) that far-too-many jackals consider double-plus-ungood. It’s been LGM for a long time, but Kos and Charlie Pierce seem to inspire a number of jackals to tell the rest of us how much they hate them. Yeah, it’s maybe a little less these days (except for LGM), but it’s still tiring/tiresome. [NB: Not talking about numbskulls like Yglesias and similar — they deserve every bit of derision they receive.]
PS: I realize I may be inflating my internal estimate re: how many jackals do the 30 Minute Hate on other blogs. But it’s still there.
piratedan
Just a friendly reminder that we have to be a bit discerning in how we process the nuggets of information about these VP candidates. Oftentimes we read a media distillation of their positions and like most media distillations it can be lacking. The media doesn’t do nuance.
Is Kelly anti-Labor… no, he isn’t
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/26/mark-kelly-supports-the-pro-act-why-it-matters-to-his-vp-prospects/74534343007/
is Shapiro in favor of all charter schools and school vouchers… no he isn’t, at least not at the expense of getting a state budget passed.
https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2023/07/pennsylvania-budget-josh-shapiro-education-school-vouchers-deal/
these people under consideration are solid Democrats and support the Democratic agenda, so I’m not going to get into any rending of garments for anyone of them. Just have to trust Ms. Harris to make the call that works for her as a running mate to work with her and help turn the country away from Fascism.
Josie
@Nelle: You are not making an error. What you describe is what I am seeing. Our gallant front pagers are trying to turn it around, but the ship is a really big one in some rough seas. I hope they are successful soon.
It’s all getting pretty repetitive.
WereBear
@Nettoyeur: Didn’t someone drop out on Midway (illness) and we got an admiral better suited to the moment?
mrmoshpotato
Nice editorial cartoon – but shouldn’t Putin’s bitch be playing with a bucket of Soviet bullshit?
Lord knows he’s sucked the Kremlin’s asshole since at least 1987!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@TBone:
We’re gonna hafta agree to disagree on this one. You’ve linked to a governor’s office press release touting his accomplishments. Great. If I lived there and he was the (D) running for governor, I’d vote for him. But it’s a piece about accomplishments, nothing about future plans.
But the Feb piece talks in great detail about the politics behind what he would eventually sign while still providing plenty of ammo to blast him with about his voucher bullshit.
I’ll continue to bring this problematic aspect of his record up until somebody provides an interview, etc., where he’s asked specifically about his stance on vouchers going forward. If he repeats the “unfinished business” crap from the Feb piece, then we’ll all know where he actually stands. If he says “I’ve changed my mind on vouchers”, hooray! But until then, his public utterances on the matter remain pertinent to how Dems who firmly believe in public education and that vouchers should have no role whatsoever in Dem policy.
Another Scott
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: VP something something warm bucket of spit.
Good politicians represent their constituents. They find ways to “just win, baby.” Being VP is very different from being a governor, and good politicians know how to do the job whatever the job is.
What matters is how well the POTUS and VP get along, the trust, the quality of his/her support for the POTUS in private and public, etc.
The VP isn’t going to be setting education policy.
I trust Kamala to make a good pick, here and in all the places where she puts names forward to set policy, etc.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@different-church-lady: it’s this, for me too.
Also not acknowledged is that many of the (white, male) voices pushing for Biden to bow out were not AT ALL in favor of Kamala Harris being the nominee.
They’re pretending they were, now, having been shown just how popular she actually is; but it’s rather like the white people who love MLK today but were happy to see him gone.
Kay
@SFAW:
Thanks. I generally agree on the group shunnings. Not a fan.
I can’t read Facebook either -too chaotic. Ballon Juice is visually “clean” to me – spare – and that’s what I like.
I love labor professors too.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: In some markets, in 2020, Trump’s campaign managed to successfully sell the idea that Biden and Harris were autogenocidal Communists similar to the Khmer Rouge. These things can float entirely free of any semblance of reality.
SiubhanDuinne
@SatanicPanic:
I’m so sorry about your dad’s passing, and the cruel disease that preceded it. Peace to you.
eclare
@rikyrah:
I like Governor Santa Claus too. Anyone who gives schoolkids free breakfast and lunch is a good guy.
Jacel
@Baud: My only concern about switching to a popular vote for the Presidency is the present absence of scrutiny of voting results beyond the state level. Alabama’s Secretary of State could report that 200 million votes were cast within their borders for the Republican candidate, and who would have the authority to dispute that?
Chief Oshkosh
@Nettoyeur: OK, Boomer…
/s
Sure Lurkalot
@eclare:
Yeah, maybe he’ll be so busy he’ll quit his podcast gig with Kelly Ann.
UncleEbeneezer
Note, they made this statement knowing damn well that Shapiro is a possibility as VP. Anyone who squawks about vouchers can just go back to this statement.
scav
@Nelle: A good old airing of the egos is rather a self-starting event.
TBone
@piratedan: thank you
SFAW
@Jacel:
I would hope/expect the NPV people would make sure the elections become Federal-run, not state-run. [Or at least Federal oversight.]
Another Scott
@Nelle: @Josie:
Everyone, myself included, has hobby horses that they like to ride and ride and ride. It can be hard to recognize it at times.
The pie filter is your friend.
Cheers,
Scott.
BR
@Kay:
Some serious business folks and VCs are on this list — some I know personally, who are fighting the good fight in that industry to wrest control from the tech bros (and some big names — Ron Conway is considered the godfather of startup venture capital in California, Vinod Khosla is universally respected to the extent that Musk was begging him on twitter to vote for Trump the other day, and of course everyone know Mark Cuban for better or worse):
https://www.vcsforkamala.org/
eclare
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s a rather dubious honor since you can’t casually bring it up in some crowds. But congratulations!
TBone
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: that’s NOT from the Governor’s office but not gonna argue since you’re not reading what I post anyway. Maybe others here will, though, so it’s worth the effort. I love my Commonwealth and our Governor has done real good by us here in PA!
Against formidable, billionbaire-backed orgs AND the rethug legislature!
https://news.yahoo.com/news/shapiro-school-voucher-record-gets-220829443.html
Look at what he does, not at what he says!
SatanicPanic
@SiubhanDuinne: cruel is right. I honestly think I need EDMR. Thank you for your kind words.
Sure Lurkalot
@Kay: Maybe the youth vote is unreliable because we chase after the “moderate” white man demographic.
You know what’s not moderate? $2,000 per month for a 400 sf studio apartment and the go along to get along economic policy that gives us just that.
Matt McIrvin
@eclare: Ironically, the camera on that model wasn’t that great–it’s not what I’d recommend as fit for purpose.
eclare
@SatanicPanic:
I’m sorry about your father.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@UncleEbeneezer:
Thanks for the NEA link. I was wondering what national, public education groups & unions were saying, in general, about Harris.
OT: sigh. My wife and I have been volunteering all week for the “Girls Rock Denver” band camp. We had a Covid case on Wed so masked up Thu-Fri. Last night, two staffers at the place we’ve been holding camp, Girls Inc. of Denver, tested postive.
Today would have been the Showcase, 9 bands of 8-14 year old girls who wrote their own song during the week and did a run thru yesterday. Thus, the amazing folks that run Girls Rock decided to cancel today.
I still hafta go in and help load all the gear up and get it back into storage. Acoustic drum kits for 10 bands. I’m a roadie and drum tech! And sad, would have been great to see the girls do their thing after watching them work all week.
Steve LaBonne
@SatanicPanic: Indeed, I was one of the many Loomis bannees, at the height of the pandemic when he was posting dangerously ignorant takes. When I felt like coming back I just created another profile. This time I banned myself (deleted my Disqus account) and I have no interest in commenting there again. P.S. Very sorry about your father.
CaseyL
I’m not sure how much the criticisms of potential VPs like Shapiro or Kelly has to do with trying to get out ahead of what the Very Online Left is going to say, or whatever the MSM framing is going to be. But it does strike me as nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.
Anyone who doesn’t vote for Harris because “Shapiro is for school vouchers!” or “because Kelly is anti-labor!”…. wasn’t going to vote for Harris anyway, and just wants an excuse that doesn’t make them look like a tool.
And they may not, to their friends who agree with them.
But they will still be tools.
Betty Cracker
Did y’all know young Doug Emhoff was hot?
We now return to our regular scrolling, already in progress…
Chief Oshkosh
@SatanicPanic: I am sorry for your loss. My dad passed some time ago, but my sibs and I still miss him almost daily.
cain
Georgia and Arizona were both nail biters. We weren’t confident back then either. If we didn’t have that tie breaker thing we could have been cooked in Georgia for the senate race. I don’t remember how Biden fared but both these states are still making their journey towards blue.
Gvg
@schrodingers_cat: it’s looking like it’s vibes of young people resenting not being listened too and a lack of opportunities due to old people filling spots above. Sometimes that is because bad economics in prior decades required those old people to keep working instead of retiring but never mind.
The second factor is rich people wanting to keep sabotaging fair taxes finally getting to them.
Stupid combination. Hopefully Harris can ride the tiger long enough to get policies into effect that will tame things. I want to retire soon myself.
TBone
@CaseyL: 💜
TS
@Geminid:
I’ve enjoyed listening to Walz but he sometimes comes across like Tim Kaine in 2016 & I wonder if that is what is needed. The VP candidate needs to be able to command crowds without the presence of Kamala and forcefully put across the message. They need to be seen and reported by the press.
TBone
@Betty Cracker: he looks too much like Pauly Shore in that photo for me to be attracted…
I think he looks great now though!
cain
@Kay:
I love how Margaret Thatcher is some super genius to these conservatives. She can’t hold a candle to Nancy Pelosi. She is definitely a GOAT.
SatanicPanic
@Chief Oshkosh: I don’t think it’s fully hit me yet. We were good friends and I’d see him weekly. I’m glad I got to spend a lot of time with him in recent years.
rikyrah
@hueyplong:
NO SENATORS
JUDGES JUDGES JUDGES 🤬
The Thin Black Duke
@rikyrah: These assholes (yeah, that’s what they are), don’t know any black people. Maybe they think they do, but their black co-workers realize how treacherous fake white liberals are, so they keep their distance and mind their business. We’re not currency you get to spend to buy yourself unearned street cred. They’re Colonizers.
Eunicecycle
@different-church-lady: I noticed that, too. I pied a bunch of them so my feeds were pretty heavily pastries. But now I am pastry-free!
SatanicPanic
@Betty Cracker: Emhoff? More like Doug Imhott
BR
@rikyrah:
I have a solution for you: Senator Mitt Romney for VP :P
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@different-church-lady:
@Steve LaBonne:
Amen. That was horrible along multiple vectors, and it made it impossible for me to read Campos, Lemieux, or the lives-to-offend Loomis persona. I’m there for the comments, Cheryl Rofer, and occasionally one of the other FP authors, but I can’t stand to read those three anymore at all.
rikyrah
@MomSense:
Illinois is solid, and I don’t know if he would help in the Midwest the way that I think Governor Santa Claus would.
columbusqueen
@Kay: I think Walz gets you a ton of suburban moms who feel he’s a good guy. Maybe it’s just me, but I find Shapiro deeply off-putting. There’s a cocky, arrogant edge to him that reminds me of Andrew Cuomo. It’s why I’m so paranoid Shapiro’s been a bad guy with women in the past. His vibe puts my teeth on edge.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And let us note, that San Fransisco has plenty of “moderate” white men who vote constantly Blue because the Cal Dems actually give a shit about governance, rather than the Cal GOP that is doing,er, something that seems to involve bears, maybe?
It’s really simple,
1) Vote for liberal who wants to at lest try to fix things.
2) Vote for Wierdo in clown make up who wants to attack Mexico to stop the transvestite sharks from eating all the electric boats.
Geminid
@Starfish: The drone strike against the Hezbollah leader in Beirut was clearly in response to the casualties in Majdal Shams last Saturday.
I don’t think Israel’s Tehran strike against the Hamas leader was though. Israel was gunning for Haniye anyway, and when they got their chance it happened to fall within the same 24 hours as the Beirut strike. For various reasons, Israel would not attack Haniyeh while he was in Qatar.
But I think your central point, that there could be a major escalation in fighting in the Middle East soon, still stands. Iran will retaliate as they did last April, and their attacks will likely be more extensive than in that exchange.
Israel’s response will likely be more intense also. A lot here will depend on how damaging Iran’s missile barrage is. That is why U.S. forces in the region will try to shoot down every Iranian missile they can.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Radical?
Phuck Outta Here with the whining of business people who get every advantage in this country.
she was District Attorney in San Francisco.
She was Attorney General of California.
She was the United States Senator from California.
In what, was she radical?
In what world did go after anyone who hadn’t done wrong?
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Nitter
Twitter version
Good, good.
(via MuellerSheWrote)
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@Professor Bigfoot:
Thank you. The gaslighting that people like me didn’t see the obvious, deliberate not mentioning the Vice President while demanding that Biden step aside.
No. I’m not going back and forth about this.
We have a democracy to save. I’m all in.
But, if we actually pull this off and succeed?
Yeah , we’ll get back to them.😒😒
rikyrah
@SatanicPanic:
So sorry for your loss.🙏🏽😢
Frankensteinbeck
@geg6:
Yes. I can understand thinking Biden needed to go because he was tanking the election. He was the victim there, but we need to win whether or not it’s fair. If your (universal you) argument he needed to go was about him being cognitively impaired, I am less sympathetic.
@Bupalos:
Honestly, I see no conspiracy. People were just doing what they have always done. The pundits love beating on a Democratic president, and even the honestly liberal pundits are pundits first and the idea of the Democratic election crashing and burning was exciting news they wanted to cover, so they made it happen. Party leaders made pitiless decisions based on what they thought was our best chance to win once the stampede was off and running. Voters heard ‘Biden can’t win’ so much they believed it and their enthusiasm tanked.
It still did backfire on the assholes who specifically want Democrats to fail, thank goodness.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Geminid: It is progress towards an actual peace in a twisted war is fucked up kind of way. Hamas could simply just take endless cheep shots at Israel because it’s leaders were off hiding in other countries and leave the Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Scrap to do the dying. That always undermined US pressure on Israel to stop this BS.
geg6
@different-church-lady:
As he never should. Vile person. Just vile.
geg6
@TBone:
The people opining on Shapiro know nothing at all about him, how he’s governed and the kind of person he is. And they are bound and determined not to know.
rikyrah
@columbusqueen:
The videos with his daughter also brought me around to Governor Santa Claus 😂
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Are you talking about pundits?
different-church-lady
@TBone: Yeah, but so is out.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Whooooooooo!!
{fans self vigorously}
geg6
@Soprano2:
Yeah, well I am currently living with a partner going down that road and I never saw anything from Biden that even comes close to it. Not. One. Thing.
Ruckus
@Baud:
I like Joe Biden. He is a very, very good president. But. There is a limit too. And that is while he isn’t out of touch with the nation, he is, as I am very well aware of, because I’m not far behind him, old. Now I also think that a president has to have a fair bit of experience in life, breathing, working, thinking for at least a bit of time, of doing the work of public service and of working for the citizens that pay them. Of seeing what getting up there entails. Could a 30 yr old do the job? Maybe, but I’m doubtful, just on the living experience level. It does change most of us. An older person’s perspective is different. I didn’t say necessarily better, just different, can be wider. And that makes this particular job – being a better president, and it’s because of that wider perspective. That doesn’t mean everyone has it but being a bit more on the adult side of things, it’s far more likely.
That’s a long winded way of saying that I believe, given what she has done, how long she’s been doing it, her perspective, gives her the tools to do a very good job.
geg6
@UncleEbeneezer:
It’s hilarious to me that so many people think Shapiro is hostile to labor. Dude has 60+% approval in the state. You don’t get that here if labor doesn’t like you.
schrodingers_cat
@CaseyL: From Twitter: A post I agree with
Reclaim the Fight
@reclaimthefight
·
20m
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
GottaLaff on Mastodon:
Doing the work. Good, good.
Thanks to everyone in the trenches. It’s important!!
Cheers,
Scott.
CaseyL
It’s amazing to me that people are still going on about how Joe Biden is mentally fading, right after he pulls off the prisoner exchange.
And the people doing this are “on our side”! Right here on BJ! The people doing this say they’re wise to MSM framing and reject it!
This gives me very little confidence that BJers won’t savage Harris if she picks Shapiro or Kelly as her VP. I keep seeing the charges of pro-voucherism and anti-laborism debunked, and then a commenter goes and swipes at Shapiro or Kelly again, like the debunking never happened.
It’s not just the Right that ignores inconvenient facts.
geg6
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Not exactly a source I trust being a conservative, libertarian outfit.
Kay
@columbusqueen:
That’s interesting. It’s also the second time I’ve seen the Cuomo comparison. I’m not picking it up but I know exactly what you mean. I was once watching Bill Richardson (remember him?) at an event on C-SPAN years ago and it hit me like a ton of bricks – something going on between him and women. Not good.
But I don’t get it w/Shapiro.
Juju
@Baud: If we did the House of Representatives according to a growing population as was intended, rather than setting a fixed number and re-arranging that number according to the current census, that would take care of the electoral college advantage. California’s population grew, yet they lost some representation in the house.
Martin
Reposting this from last night, but there’s a nice YouTube discussion of the rise of Kamala in popular culture and young voters that people might be interested in seeing. The host is a makeup artist and LGBTQ activist with a large online following, and the guest is a media critic YouTube/podcast/writer.
These are not political analysts but it’s a serious discussion (an hour) through what I would say is a pretty accurate lens. They talk about authenticity, cynicism, how to reach and not reach young voters, the importance of being cultural relatable but why that’s not a substitute for competence, the dangers of fandom toward politicians, and so on. Fair warning, it’s not particularly kind to Biden. It’s not always kind to Harris either. Zoomers in my experience pretty much never pull their punches – if they have a criticism, they air it, don’t take it personally. Toward the goal of trying to understand why the energy of the campaign shifted SO heavily with the announcement, there is a lot of insight here. They do a pretty good job of giving explainers for memes and the like, so I think most anyone will be able to follow it
Comments are worth reading as well.
Kay
@columbusqueen:
I think the VP speculation has sort of filled in for a primary and has been fun. I don’t feel strongly about any of them so am just going with straight “we need PA”, hence Shapiro, but I take your gut seriously on the Cuomo comparison. I’l have to watch him and see if I see it.
SatanicPanic
@CaseyL: he has an administration for that. We don’t know that he personally did all that work. And anyway, people are surprisingly capable at doing things they’re good at until they’re not. My dad had dementia and was body surfing two months ago. He could still talk about his profession at length. Two weeks ago he stopped being able to walk or swallow. Now he’s dead.
I understand that some people see his situation differently and that’s ok. But I saw what I saw (even before the debate) and I don’t think Biden’s all there. And the media had very little to do with that. Either way it’s done and I don’t want to fight about it but can we just agree that some people have a different perspective and it’s not crazy or stupid?
Kay
@Martin:
Thanks. I keep thinking about my youngest’s GF told me weeks ago (very politely -she’s Wisconsin nice) that people would be energized with a new candidate. She was really very persuasive and I was impressed with her confidence raising it with me. She felt sure about this.
Kay
@columbusqueen:
But I have to admit I didn’t see it with Cuomo. I thought he was entertaining and smart. Not really my cup of tea, with a kind of glibness, but I understood why he was popular.
Martin
@columbusqueen: I agree. And we are not the only ones who think that, btw.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Shapiro, but he does set off that alarm that I think would cause a lot of people to not trust him and put that on Harris for choosing him.
Gavin Newsom has that effect on a lot of people as well. I think it’s because he’s dyslexic and has to memorize his speeches so he comes off as overly polished, but it’s a similar vibe. I really like Newsom, but that’s still a real thing.
geg6
@SatanicPanic:
How about we agree to not speculate about other people’s health if we are not medical professionals who have examined said person? I can get behind THAT. Anything else IS crazy and stupid, in addition to being irresponsible and rude.
SFAW
@SatanicPanic:
I’m so sorry to hear about your father. I hope you’ll be OK (as OK as can be expected during such a tough time).
frosty
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: “I hope it’s not Kamala, she can’t be elected in this country.”
That was my immediate reaction too. My opinion has changed
geg6
And now we’re getting hot takes that Shapiro is a sexual predator based on “vibes.”
I don’t even want her to pick Shapiro because I like him right here in PA. But this smearing people with no evidence whatsoever is out of hand here.
I’m back out. Fuck this shit.
SatanicPanic
@geg6: I don’t agree with that. I didn’t need a doctor to know what was wrong with my dad. And we do it all the time with Trump. I understand why it’s sensitive for you- it is for me. I think we should allow people to voice their concerns. If I’m right we’d have been totally fucked.
SFAW
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
But it’s the Demoncraps who turned the sharks into transvestites! And they want to take away our 2nd-Amendment-protected electric boats! (The boats with frickin’ lasers on them, of course!)
Another Scott
@SatanicPanic: I’m sorry about your dad.
My MIL had Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. She lived with us around 6 years.
Biden has neither.
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@Martin:
Oh my a Matt Bernstein video. I like him. He’s smart. Love his take on memes as art. I haven’t seen this one so I’ll watch. I just mowed the lawn (I’m out of practice) before the thunderstorm starts. Switching to indoor chores so this will be good to listen to while I work.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: The electoral college, like so many structural problems in our system of government, would mostly cease to be a problem if we simply increased the size of The House to something better representative of our population. Instead of 538 electoral votes to fight for, make it 4500 or so electoral votes, evenly distributed according to state population.
Martin
@Kay: I don’t think folks here realize just how badly Biden had lost pretty much everyone under 45 or so. In that video there’s a point where one of them says ‘it just didn’t feel cool to be a lib, you know?’ and like, yeah, that’s a HUGE problem for the party when that happens. That’s not entirely on Biden – you can get that off of other politicians. I think AOC tightening up how and what she speaks to under Pelosi’s mentorship has contributed to that since she carried a fair bit of that energy, Bernie did too and he’s not had a platform in quite a while. Katie Porter did a lot more of that than people realize and she’s lost some of the focus on her being out of politics after this year. Democrats need to find that energy, and Harris kind of brought it.
I think there’s one concern in this in that all of the Harris memes were from a GOP account that was dunking on her, which young people found funny. That is, Harris didn’t really open herself up to this. This is not something that the campaign sought out or invited, not until the day after the announcement when the campaign started to embrace it. The challenge is recognizing that this sort of connection to young people is designed by young people to be impossible to engineer. The instant you think you can create the viral moment is the instant you fail. It has to be organic and that feels like an impossible ask of a campaign which are always about engineering this. In my link up in 414, I think the observation around manufactured consent toward the end of the discussion is a pretty good one. Is the Harris team young enough to understand this and do the young people have enough pull to be heard? We are about to find out.
Ruckus
@M31:
Manchin would be a great pick
Astoundingly stupid. Completely asinine. Far, far below ignorant.
Manchin president????? Of what, his back yard?
And even that is asinine.
Martin
@MomSense: The ‘oh my’ made me laugh.
tam1MI
Because the idea of a party kneecapping their own nominee is NUTS to begin with. George Clooney as one of the voices urging that action on is established fact.
different-church-lady
@Citizen Alan: I have a hard enough time dealing with 400 people saying stupid shit on the floor of the House, so the thought of 4000 is just…
Martin
@geg6: The hot take wasn’t that he was a sexual predator. The hot take is that he comes off as kind of phony. And as a society we are decreasingly trustful of people who come off as phony, because we wonder ‘what are they hiding, just be yourself’. The accusation that there was a coverup of sexual harassment by someone in his office doesn’t help there.
JD Vance isn’t bombing because he has a shitty take on women. He’s bombing because he comes off as a phony creep even to Republicans and nobody knows what’s under the surface – and the ‘I think women aren’t human’ is the part that’s on the surface.
Did we not learn the John Edwards lesson? It seems we should have learned the John Edwards lesson by now.
different-church-lady
My intuition is always right.
Your intuition might be right if it matches my intuition.
Otherwise you’re a fool.
(Am I doing this right?)
SatanicPanic
@SFAW: i am going to go back to therapy but right now im mostly relieved it’s over
Ruckus
@Kay:
shitforbrains, AKA trump, is a useless POS. (But you knew this….)
If his ego wasn’t the size of a 75% off store, and that lump of crap inside his head actually worked at least as good as anything inside that 75% off store, he’d still be a useless POS. That was his selling point to his voters – his uselessness.
Citizen Alan
@UncleEbeneezer: I Remember when megan thee stallion was on she-hulk, and during the post credits bump, there was a scene of her teaching jennifer how to twerk in jenn’s office. And the incels went absolutely berserk.
MomSense
@Martin:
Was not expecting to see him linked here
Starfish
@Martin: I am just here because I wanted memes.
https://nitter.poast.org/KamalaHQ/status/1819750067462402408#m
MomSense
@SatanicPanic:
Sorry about your dad.
Martin
@MomSense: I’m trying to educate. I do not think it is working. LOL.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@NotMax: I’m not a big John Wayne fan per se, but I love Stagecoach, Red River, and Rio Bravo.
Ruckus
@BritinChicago:
Actually it is a good system.
It’s a too large portion of the users of the system that is the problem. And one is never going to find the ONE PERFECT system, because of course, there is no perfect system, not in humanity. It’s humanity that makes any system imperfect. Mainly because humanity IS IMPERFECT. Not saying it was designed that way but having it defined very loosely automatically creates imperfection.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: I think with walz, we don’t pick up wwm so much as improve our position with suburban women based on his educational background and pick up rank and file military vetsvbased on his “enlisted soldier does good” storyline.
different-church-lady
Any rate, I’m glad we’ve all found something new to fight about.
Geminid
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I think Stagecoach was John Wayne’s breathrough movie. Wayne had been a B-movie western lead for a while, but never moved up. But director John Ford saw qualities he liked in Wayne and cast him as the young cowboy on his way to prison.
schrodingers_cat
@SiubhanDuinne: I wanted to wish you a very happy birthday!
Soprano2
@SiubhanDuinne: Love and roses on your birthday, SAI sister. 🌹
Soprano2
@different-church-lady: It is funny how we quit seeing new people, isn’t it?🤔
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
He’s pretty good.
Ruckus
@SatanicPanic:
This.
I’m an old. Not as old as Joe Biden but not all that far behind. I see the world differently today than even a year ago, and a hell of a lot different than 50 yrs ago. First because the world is different and second, because my perspective is different. A lot different. I do not see Joe Biden as incapable. But I also see the past and it is a lot bigger than the future, as it gets for everyone. I believe that Joe Biden would do a good job as president. But. This country is not about one person, not even the person at the lead position. It is about all of us and making it as reasonable as possible for all of us. And that demands a person of the moment. And Joe Biden, for all his good/great points, is past that moment. And we all get past that moment at some time. We have over 300 million people in this country, at least one of them is capable of being president and doing a great job. And even if it is just perception, that Joe Biden has passed that point, that is what most people are going to see, and how they are going to feel. And this is a government for all of us.
karen marie
I know this competition-length comment thread is dead but didn’t want to get yelled at for posting to the respite thread.
Same, President Carter, same.
SatanicPanic
@Ruckus: I can agree with all this. If Biden had run and won I think he’d have had a successful second term because of his team. But he’s not what he was even a few years ago. I don’t think it’s wrong to have brought it up
BR
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch:
Not a great response… too much explaining and defensiveness. Better to mock and attack immediately.
Nettoyeur
@WereBear: Adm Halsey had to stand down because of serious outbreak of shingles. He recommended Raymond Spruance to Pacific commander Nimitz because of his coolness under pressure. Spruance had no experience leading carrier forces, but relied on Halsey’s brilliant aviation coordinator Capt Miles Browning. As history shows, their partnership was incredibly successful. Midway was the beginning of the allied victory in the Pacific, and a triumph of brilliant intelligence led by the eccentric genius Joseph Rochefort at Pearl Harbor, backed by courageous decisions from Nimitz and his advisor Layton, with the actual fighting done by some of the bravest pilots ever. The recent moviecis very accurate and worth watching.
Anyway
@SiubhanDuinne: Happy Birthday Ms Subaru!
Fake Irishman
@schrodingers_cat:
Pelosi also happened to be, you know, right in her assessment of the situation.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: If there had been more of this, and less HIS BRIAN IS FALLING OUT OF HIS SKULL CAN’T YOU SEE THAT there would have been a lot less fighting and resistance.
SatanicPanic
@different-church-lady: some shit you just can’t unsee. You don’t think it was true that there’s anything wrong and that’s fine. But other people see this
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-NK822OGXX/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
and we come to a different conclusion. I don’t know what you think we should do. If I’m right and there is something wrong, we’d have been fucked. And clearly I wasn’t alone. I think we should allow space for people to talk about this stuff.
schrodingers_cat
@Fake Irishman: That’s your opinion.
Nettoyeur
@Bupalos: No doubt, but the exact details will remain hard to find for some time. Were Joe and allies running a long con on Trump from the get go, so that all the
old age stuff and stubborness was just a ” broken wing act ” to build pressure that would fake out Trump, propel Kamala and unify the Dem party? Or did Joe really intend to have a go, only to realize it was not in the cards, and then pull off a double reverse? Either story is a sign of great political acumen. Joe may go down in history as the FDR of his time. We’ll see.
Ruckus
@SatanicPanic:
It is not wrong to discuss it.
I feel it is wrong to be prissy about it, which some seemed to do, and not just here. Joe Biden has been a pretty damn good public servant and not everyone who takes a public servant job is doing it for the right reasons. Joe Biden is one that did. He didn’t come from a wealthy family, he didn’t have all the doors opened for him, he had to work and did so at public service and he has done it well. I can see that others recognize this and wanted him to go out with one last job well done. As I’ve stated here I’m not all that much younger than him and I started working an actual physical job when I was 12 (family business). And I retired almost 2 yrs ago. 60+ yrs is enough.
This is a country of, by and for the people, all of them. It requires participation to at least some degree. Some do more, some do a lot more, and some do the bare minimum. Joe Biden has done far more than most of us do, and done it well. And my position is that enough is enough and he has reached more than enough. The nation doing a standing ovation would be the minimum. I cannot think of too many who have done his level of service. But we all reach our limit at some point, and I think he has reached a more than reasonable one.
tenor.gif
terry chay
@Kay: Trump does not overperform polling. His only “over performance” was 2016 and was by 3 points. The reason was that the polling lag didn’t capture the shift due to the FBI investigation until too late. Polls that came in post election that polled right before the election were actually spot on.
BTW the 3 points were localized to the NE and rust belt. Everywhere else it was spot on. Also the polling dip (not gain) was limited to minorities in those cities.
none of this matters. The fact that they are giving Kennedy 6% shows these polls are massively flawed since those are nonvoters for sure. Their models must be terrible to not have filtered out nonvoters outside MOE making this poll suspect.
Nettoyeur
@Chief Oshkosh: Joe the (sort of boomer) does seem to have the luck if the Irish don’t he? Or maybe he’s just smarter and more battle hardened than the loudmouths.
Nettoyeur
@different-church-lady: Dark Brandon is so cagey that it is hard to know what is planned, what is accident and what is inspired improvisation in the moment.
Nettoyeur
@different-church-lady: Dark Brandon is so cagey that it is hard to know what is planned, what is faked, what is accident and what is inspired improvisation in the moment.
columbusqueen
@geg6: i don’t know if Shapiro is a predator, but the fact his leading aide is makes me nervous. Based on my personal experience in Franklin County politics, birds of a feather flock together, & it’s very rare for an underling to be bad without the boss occasionally joining in. It happened to me in my early 30s, hence the root of my paranoia. I hope to God I’m wrong.
SomeRandomGuy
I’m sorry – my head hurts too much to let this go.
History doesn’t have theme songs, or fanfares, so the punchline to Biden’s term won’t be “he did it all in ONE term!” That will be left as an exercise for the reader, “he started 1/20/2021, he ended on or before 1/20/2025.”
And to be brutal, history won’t think he did all that much. “He didn’t get universal health care coverage? But his presidency overlapped with Covid-19!”
The punchline will be “although he swept the primaries, a large fracture appeared in his party before the Democratic National Convention; he was forced to forego renomination to paper over the breach.”
Now, if you want to write a story about how “…this was the start of the modern era of the Democratic Party” *YOU* have to write that – you can’t wait for some dumbass historian to figure it out, you have to make the story so true, and obvious, and obviously true, so EVEN A HISTORIAN has to agree that it’s a fair cop (though they do take a contrary position, as you’ll see in chapter 2856, page 43,271, paragraphs one through four thousand, each consisting of least 19 sentences of no fewer the 312 words of… wait, where are you going?”)
Ruckus
@columbusqueen:
Lived/worked in eastern Franklin County for 10 yrs on the outskirts of Columbus. Not a bad place, although not really my style, a lot cheaper back then than where I lived before and after.
Randal Sexton
Im kinda wondering what is the longest thread on BJ ? And what was it about. And what I will have for desert. And how much wood can a wood chuck chuck …..
Ramona
@Percysowner: since 2000 I’ve thought expanding the house is way overdue. A ratio of 330M to 438 House seats is RIDICULOUS! It might well be that we have the smallest ratio of representatives to population of any other democracy in the world.
There are 656 members in the UK House of Commons for a population of 68 million!
Chris T.
@Kay:
“There are definitely 12 chickens in this box of a dozen eggs.”
As it turned out, there were 12 chickens. So you were right. But your certainty unnerved some of us, especially to the extent that you (generic “you”) never even claimed such certainty.