Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

A tremendous foreign policy asset… to all of our adversaries.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

People are complicated. Love is not.

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Celebrate the fucking wins.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Confusion to Our Enemies (Open Thread)

Confusion to Our Enemies (Open Thread)

by | 259 Comments

This post is in: 

Maybe we’ve reached the “eating their own” stage: (Politico)

President Donald Trump leveled unusually pointed criticism of a prominent conservative legal activist and organization Thursday as he railed against a ruling that struck down his sweeping tariffs.

The president, in a post on his social media platform, slammed Leonard Leo, the former chair of the Federalist Society, calling him a “sleazebag” who “probably hates America.”

It was a striking characterization of Leo, who played a key role in working with Trump to shape the conservative Supreme Court.

“He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court — I hope that is not so, and don’t believe it is!,” Trump wrote.

I tried to check Trump’s janky Twitter-clone platform to see how much Politico cleaned up the outburst, but it was down when I looked. It’s down a lot lately. I hear the same is true of the Nazi and crypto-grifter bot platform owned by Trump’s top campaign donor.

Speaking of the flounder-faced, ketamine-addled oligarch who installed the current government, apparently he and the ceremonial head of state are holding a joint press conference in the Oval Office later today to mark Musk’s alleged departure from government “service.”

I will not be watching. I hope y’all find better things to do too. Lots of dryer lint traps need cleaning!

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

259Comments

  2. 2.

    Chief Oshkosh

    GMA report on the hinky RFK, jr ends the piece with the WH statement that, though there were regrettable formatting errors, the substance of the report is solid.

    Everyone involved in science (or even just normal thinking) knows that the report is total bullshit. Yet not a single alternative POV is provided post-formatting statement other than the MOS’s* reassurance.

    Our fucked up media…

    *MOS = Mouth of Sauron

  3. 3.

    Doug R

    And the plot thins.
    Is the Leo mention just a threat or is it telegraphing future revenge?
    Will the sinister Six wise up?
    Will Malevolent Mitch ask Captain Whitehouse for help?
    Tune in next week!!!

  4. 4.

    Scout211

    Does this surprise anyone?

    ProPublica:

    The Trump administration knew that the vast majority of the 238 Venezuelan immigrants it sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in mid-March had not been convicted of crimes in the United States before it labeled them as terrorists and deported them, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data that has not been previously reported.

    . . .

    The data indicates that the government knew that only six of the immigrants were convicted of violent crimes: four for assault, one for kidnapping and one for a weapons offense. And it shows that officials were aware that more than half, or 130, of the deportees were not labeled as having any criminal convictions or pending charges; they were labeled as only having violated immigration laws.

    As for foreign offenses, our own review of court and police records from around the United States and in Latin American countries where the deportees had lived found evidence of arrests or convictions for 20 of the 238 men. Of those, 11 involved violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault or murder, including one man who the Chilean government had asked the U.S. to extradite to face kidnapping and drug charges there. Another four had been accused of illegal gun possession.

    . . .

    When asked about the differences between the administration’s public statements about the deportees and the way they are labeled in government data, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin largely repeated previous public statements. She insisted, without providing evidence, that the deportees were dangerous, saying, “These individuals categorized as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gang members and more — they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”

  5. 5.

    Baud

    Sigh. The bro podcast was not a one off. Guess who?

    “A lot of the people are saying it was Joe Biden’s fault that Kamala Harris lost the election … not true. It was the fault of Kamala Harris and her consultants,” he said in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today program.

     

    “They did not run a campaign designed to speak to the American working class

    On one level I’m pleased he’s validating those of us who have long been skeptical of him. We took a lot of abuse over our stance.

  6. 6.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Pro Publica is a treasure.

    And of course that’s what happened.  If we had a functioning seperate branch of gubmint, ie the House, they might have held hearings, turned up the info, hold the Exec clowns accountable, etc.

    But no.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    @Scout211: Sickening.

    Did you see the nutty story on CNN about an undocumented immigrant who was framed for threatening to assassinate Trump? The cops quickly figured out that the man was framed because a second undocumented immigrant who was scheduled for a criminal trial wanted to eliminate the first immigrant as a witness. But that didn’t stop Noem from smearing the innocent man all over social media and using the entirely bogus threat as a pretext for scolding James Comey and the media and Dems for their “rhetoric.”

    Things like this are why I’m significantly limiting my exposure to the news right now for my own mental health. The criminality, stupidity and evil are too much to take sometimes.

  9. 9.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Baud: They did not run a campaign designed to speak to the American working class

    Hasn’t Newsom been vetoing legislation supporting unions?

  10. 10.

    DFH

    “Lots of dryer lint traps need cleaning!”

    Yes, for a short burst, it feels better.  Problem with voting is that it takes two years, minimum.  It does feel like the wheels are starting to come off this kkklown train but they can do so much damage over the next year and a half.  I’d like something faster.

  13. 13.

    suzanne

    Gavin Newsom apparently was reading Balloon Juice yesterday. We were joking about the “It’s Raining Tacos” song…. lo and behold, he makes a joke about it.

    I still think you suck, Gavin, but you might prove useful!

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    When you’re an awful human being, you teach the young people who look up to you awful things that ruin their ability to improve their future.

    ETA: He does let Biden off the hook in order to blame Harris. That’s nice at least.

  17. 17.

    tobie

    @Baud: This is so nauseating as is his constant refrain that Dems abandoned the working class. Who fought for better paying jobs, unions, health care subsidies, food stamps, infrastructure investments (including rural broadband and hospitals), better schools, student loan forgiveness, heating bill support, first-time home buyer subsidies, Medicare-covered eldercare, cancelling medical debt, a fairer tax code, and so on. BS is a broken record. He’s all about his own brand and nothing else.

  20. 20.

    tobie

    @suzanne: I thought of you this morning when I read that Trump would be going to Pittsburgh for a rally with steel workers. May the good people of Pittsburgh give him the middle finger salute.

  21. 21.

    Michael Bersin

    Last evening I rode in the Johnson County Democrat’s entry in the Knob Noster Fair parade. Yeah, that’s a thing. Took a few photos.

    Knob Noster Fair – May 29, 2025 – Knob Noster, Missouri

    Tonight, there’s a protest march from the Johnson County Courthouse downtown to the Quad at the university. I’ll photograph that.

    On Saturday we’ll have our annual pride festival in town. We’re expecting protesters, as usual, across the street. I’ll photograph that, too.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @tobie:

    He’s an old white dude with no future who’s now had 9 years to build his movement and has made no progress. Like so many others in our society, he’s going to blame other people for his failures.

  23. 23.

    Soprano2

    @Chief Oshkosh: Good lord, “formatting errors” don’t insert links to studies that don’t exist. AI, OTOH, does shit like that all the time. It seems obvious to me that they used AI to write the thing, and no one checked it. These people are not only incompetent but lazy. Or maybe RFK Jr. fired the people who do the proofreading of stuff like this.

  25. 25.

    suzanne

    @Baud: Oh for sure. But many people with young kids, who have had to endure quite a few repeats of “It’s Raining Tacos”…. it is incredibly weird to now hear it in a political context. LOL.

    Gavin can stick around if he’s the designated Trump-teaser! We can use some more ridicule.

  27. 27.

    suzanne

    @tobie: Yeah, let’s hope. A lot of the steelworkers opposed Biden and Harris because Biden was going to stop the US Steel/Nippon merger. I would love to see some salty salutes!

  29. 29.

    MattF

    @Soprano2: Nah. The authors want their ‘report’ to be rejected by actual experts. Confabulated citations from ‘Professor AI’ ensure that.

  30. 30.

    the pollyanna from hell

    Gloria asked me to report my latest talk with her. I observed that when I last checked fifty years ago, 96% of Americans presented as feeling or achievement imagery in a thematic apperception survey. Only 4% spontaneously use words for power/freedom, which is a lot of what we do here on this blog. She suggested this might make our discourse less exportable.

  33. 33.

    Trivia Man

    Im kind of shocked. You dont clean the lint trap after every load in the dryer?

  34. 34.

    satby

    @Baud: still do take a lot of abuse from certain quarters about it. And yet, it was obvious from the beginning, if people only paid attention to what was right in front of their faces instead of wish casting their populist fantasies onto him.

  37. 37.

    snoey

    @Soprano2: Many of the studies correctly cited do not support the positions that the MAHA report says that they do, which is a more fundamental problem than a few phantom cites.

  39. 39.

    different-church-lady

    @tobie: ​

    Who fought for better paying jobs, unions, health care subsidies, food stamps, infrastructure investments (including rural broadband and hospitals), better schools, student loan forgiveness, heating bill support, first-time home buyer subsidies, Medicare-covered eldercare, cancelling medical debt, a fairer tax code, and so on.

    I don’t see validating whiteness anywhere on that list.

    In a way, Bernie is right: class inequity is a huge part of the problem. What he gets very very wrong (seemingly willfully) is the linkage between class inequity and racism.

  40. 40.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Well of course he lets the white man off the hook because it’s more popular with his supporters to blame the black woman. I wish interviewers would press him really hard when he makes claims like this. Which parts of what she advocated does he think wouldn’t help working class people? Make him be detailed in his criticisms, because I think they actually boil down to “They should throw gay and trans people and minorities under the bus to get the votes of white men”.

    I keep seeing speculation about why young white men didn’t vote for Harris in greater numbers. Besides the obvious misogyny that is at play, I think a lot of them have been convinced by right-wing rhetoric that liberals want to turn them into “nancy men” or even women, neutered and tame and unable to actually be a “real man”. Again, because most people in the press won’t say it this plainly, we can’t talk about the real issue. They say “People think Democrats are weak”. Well, why do they think that? It’s not just because “they won’t fight for you”. It’s because of all the stuff they hear from right-wing radio and TV all the time.

  43. 43.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

     I wish interviewers would press him really hard when he makes claims like this. 

     

    The media doesn’t want to press him. They want to reward this and get more of it.

  45. 45.

    Soprano2

    @tobie: That’s because what he really wants to say is “Democrats abandoned the white working class in favor of “those other people”. I was listening to an interview with James Carville the other day where he said some actually kind of sensible stuff, then at the end he said something like “I wish they would completely jettison those “pronoun people”, talk about an issue that alienates the average person, they couldn’t have picked a better one to do that”. I would agree that the way some Democrats talk about those issues is not the best, but the answer to that isn’t to “jettison those pronoun people” from our coalition! I think he lets his personal prejudices get in the way of his political advice.

  46. 46.

    Shantanu Saha

    I replaced my washer/dryer with a combo unit two years ago. It’s a GE heat pump unit that works great and uses much less energy than my old POS Samsung units, but I do have to clean out the lint that’s trapped in the internals that doesn’t make it onto the lint filter at least once a month, sometimes with a long flexible wand with a brush on the end to knock off lint that’s caked to the sides of the vent. A couple of weeks ago it hocked up a huge lint ball that lightly rested against the filter and when I shined a flashlight into the vent it was sitting there like a big mouse.

  47. 47.

    Spanky

    @snoey: Yep. A classic case of misdirection, although I don’t think the authors intended the misdirection. This seems more like the media’s fault.

  48. 48.

    Baud

    @Spanky:

    It’s much easier to report on fake cites than to investigate real cites to determine that the report is lying.

    The media is a little lazy.

  50. 50.

    different-church-lady

    @Soprano2: No, I don’t think he’s willfully racist, or even pragmatically racist in the service of winning elections. I think he’s just so damn convinced in his own view that it’s solely about economics that he just maps the racism component out of his mind entirely. Because internally he just doesn’t want to deal with it.

  51. 51.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Baud: So, this accounts for the several bills I was thinking about. Most don’t directly involve organizing but were worker protections that unions were supporting

    Most of them seem like sensible initiatives. I found the vetoes of unemployment pay for striking workforces and worker protections based on caste and caregiver status particularly odd. One seemed like a sensible veto to me, the WFH 30 day notice, but that could be adjusted and tried again. There’s a seed of a good idea. Others he gave plausible explanations that I didn’t have enough info from the article to judge.

    He also has an open complaint for violating union workers’ collective bargaining rights by issuing a return to work order without proper notice.

    On the positive side, he signed legislation not allowing employers to discipline employees for declining to participate in activities unrelated to their work duties. So, I guess it’s fine to resist an employer initiative as long as you’re doing it to keep doing your job.

    So, all in all, it definitely seems like Newsom considers the needs of business owners over the needs of workers as a class. Redacted segment.

  52. 52.

    artem1s

    @Baud: ​ 

    “The president has no authority in the Constitution to unilaterally impose tariffs without an act of Congress,” he added.

    Looks like someone’s brokerage account has been taking a hit. Crickets, however, on the illegality of DOGE and how the GOP led Congress is apparently fine with the Executive Branch exceeding it’s authority.

  53. 53.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @snoey: Thank you. Your point is the most important point: the “report” would be closer to the truth if every one of it’s conclusion statements included the word “not.” As in, “Vaccines do NOT cause autism.”

  55. 55.

    Spanky

    @Baud: “Little”? I wish. I also wish reporters had some idea how science works. I also wish I had a unicorn.

  56. 56.

    Betty Cracker

    So apparently there’s a Greenwald sex tape? Do not click any links on the internet, which I do not support. In fact, maybe it’s time to pull down the towers and rip the wires out of the walls.

  57. 57.

    Soprano2

    @snoey: “Formatting errors” don’t cause that either. :-) I guess it’s shocking to me that they used such an obviously bullshit excuse for all the problems with their paper, when it’s obvious to most people that they used AI to do it.

  58. 58.

    Baud

    @The Audacity of Krope:

    Thanks. Newsom has been doing a lot of weird things lately, seemingly because he thinks it’ll help his run for the presidency. I don’t think so, but what do I know.

  59. 59.

    kindness

    I’m really enjoying the rumors swirling regarding Musk taking away Stephen Miller’s wife.  Yea, sure, he offered her a ‘job’ and she’s moved off to Texas to do that ‘job’.

  60. 60.

    RaflW

    @prostratedragon: I would add that the data agglomeration is quite likely accessible to Musk and his non–doge minions via backdoors left as he ‘leaves’. (I am saying this off of comments I’ve seen on Bsky but can’t remember the author(s)).

  61. 61.

    Layer8Problem

    @Trivia Man:  I cannot overemphasize this, living in a co-op with a laundry room:  clean out those lint traps when you’re done drying folks.  You’re building karma, buying whole minutes off from Purgatory!

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    Not a fan of his, but I don’t know why I’d care unless it shows something nonconsensual, in which case he should be arrested.

    I’m not even sure he rises to the level of a celebrity.

  63. 63.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: Oh I know, “Bernie criticizes Democrats” is one of their favorites. I think it shows that they aren’t doing actual journalism, it’s stenography. Actual journalism would try to get real answers from him, not just the formulaic crap he spouts.

  65. 65.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Baud: Newsom is an evidently excellent fundraiser. He’s a straight white man. And I personally hate his politics*.

    These are all things that point to him being the media and consultant favorite in 2028.

    *Yes, I know it’s not about me. Just a matter of differing priorities.

  67. 67.

    sab

    @Soprano2: Well at least they didn’t blame the dog for eating their paper. Progress. They have computers and word processors, and AI.

  69. 69.

    The Audacity of Krope

    So all the public trash barrels in my neighborhood have been painted with the words “not art.” I saw this and found myself thinking about the barrels.

    Damnit, that is art.

  71. 71.

    prostratedragon

    @RaflW:  Oh yeah. In that sense we — that is to say, those still around — will be dealing with the shit for decades.

  77. 77.

    Rusty

    @Baud: There is the implied “white” in front of “working class”.  There is a reason no one from the black caucus endorsed BS’s presidential runs, and no one who actually had to work with him gave an endorsement either.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that for all his time in Washington he hasn’t managed to pass a single piece of substantial legislation (and “moving the Overton window” is essentially meaningless, and just indicates how useless his time has been).

  79. 79.

    artem1s

    @different-church-lady: In a way, Bernie is right: class inequity is a huge part of the problem. What he gets very very wrong (seemingly willfully) is the linkage between class inequity and racism.

    and yet he can’t find the fortitude to attack the party that keeps adding to the economic inequality. maybe there is a reason he keeps attacking the party (and splitting it’s vote) that keeps fighting for everyone’s voting rights and jobs and fair wages and health care and sick leave and, and, and… Everyone including POC and women. There is no longer any question. It’s willful.

  80. 80.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
     

    He’s an old white dude with no future who’s now had 9 years to build his movement and has made no progress. Like so many others in our society, he’s going to blame other people for his failures.

    And since the good people of Vermont re-elected him to the Senate last year, we’re stuck with him for another five and a half years. Unless he kicks the bucket first. And since the VT governor is a Republican, that’s not to be hoped for.

  82. 82.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Baud: I don’t know the taco song, but baby shark is rough. It’s such a darn catchy tune, which is handy in a classroom, but so very hard to stop from playing in my head. I have to turn on a series of catchy tunes in my head to rinse it out. The nutcracker suite dance of the sugar plum fairy, followed by jungle bells, or joy to the world, and then maybe hey Jude. Whatever I can get to take, and replace it in my minds rolling music thing.
    just to validate. Cute song, but brutal. I had it play for a whole weekend once, could not get it out.

  83. 83.

    Scout211

    Rex Huppke has another fun read this morning on USA Today.

    He wrote a public letter to sad Elon Musk, who apparently has no clue why everyone hates him, to let him know exactly what he did.

    A letter to sad Elon Musk, from America: ‘Hey pal, sorry everybody was mean.’ | Opinion
    Hey, we get it. It’s not nice when other people try to take the government you tried to ruin and find a different way to ruin it.

  84. 84.

    artem1s

    @different-church-lady: he just maps the racism component out of his mind entirely. Because internally he just doesn’t want to deal with it.

    actual definition of racism and White privilege

  85. 85.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud: Joe’s a white man.

    The misogyny and racism of Blessid Sain’t Bernard have LONG been catalogued; it’s why you don’t see a lot of Black Berners.

  86. 86.

    JML

    @different-church-lady: That’s probably fair when it comes to Bernie. He’s always believed that class trumps race, period, and that if you solve the income inequality issues it solves the racial problems. Of course, up in Vermont it’s been easier for Bernie and his crew to push aside racial politics.

    He’s always preferred the position as scold anyways; it’s easier to be a back-bencher railing against the majority with no expectations of actually passing any legislation or accomplishing anything. (this is also part of the difference between him and AOC, who isn’t just looking to throw bombs from the back row, but also is interested in accomplishing change, even when it might be incremental)

  87. 87.

    Bupalos

    @Baud: This is politics as cheap morality play. It’s poisonous, and creates the playground Trump romps around  in. We just watch and decide who the heroes and villains are. Bernie is a horrible person out to destroy the youth….because he continues to believe in and practice a more radical policy-based left politics than we think can be successful?

  88. 88.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @tobie: He means the WHITE working class.

    He and so many others don’t think anyone works other than straight white men.

  89. 89.

    montanareddog

    @Suzanne: Think how much worse you would feel if it turned out that that tape shows Glemm being intimate with Rod Dreher?

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: St. Bernard will never change. 

    They say the world is on fire!  It’s because Democrats don’t support the Working Class™. Send me $27 so I can fight the CORRUPT Millionaires and Billionaires!!1

    [ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]

    I got an e-mail yesterday from Sen. Warner asking for a contribution, so Geminid may be disappointed that he’s apparently running again. (Of course, even if he decides not to run, he probably needs to make the effort now so that he’s not lame-ducking himself or inviting months of “are you gonna drop out, huh??”)

    Have a good Friday, everyone. Eyes on the prizes.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  92. 92.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Baud: Neither Biden nor Harris should be on the hook.

    Schiff, Brown, Phillips, Warren, Pelosi…

  94. 94.

    Suzanne

    @montanareddog:

    Think how much worse you would feel if it turned out that that tape shows Glemm being intimate with Rod Dreher? 

    The scariest part of this… is that it’s eminently plausible.

  97. 97.

    TONYG

    @Baud: There has long been an element of the American “left” that blames the Democratic Party for everything, while ignoring the crimes of the Republican Party.  Saint Bernie is just the most famous example of that.

  98. 98.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Soprano2: First it’ll be the “pronoun people,” then they’ll agree that illegal immigrants are a problem, ultimately they’ll decide that defending the rights of Black people is an electoral loser and that will be that.

    THEY ARE WHY I DO NOT LISTEN TO WHITE MEN ANYMORE.

    If you hear a bullshit hot take anywhere, you may reliably believe it came from a white man.

  99. 99.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Baud:

    He’s an old white dude with no future who’s now had 9 years to build his movement and has made no progress.

    He also knows that the only time he gets any media attention is when he slams Democrats. That guy is an asshole & I will happy when he is gone.

  100. 100.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @the pollyanna from hell: well shit, that was terse.
    so my understanding was that 70% of folks tested to achievement, or an outcome. In their psychogenic tests of, was it “apperception?” they were telling a story about the result that was achieved. Like , if the price of eggs, or gas went down. Or if it went up, and let’s blame Biden for that.
    the 25% was for, you said affiliation, but then you said it was feelings. Didn’t this mean, people went for emotional outcomes, and relational connections?
    the 4-5% were the only ones whose long term outlook in telling a story was about freedom or power.

    I wish you’d say more about the corollaries, and implications, because I think this was meaningful for our current national dilemma.
    please correct whatever I got wrong in my paraphrased retelling.

    please make it simple.  I shouldn’t have to work this hard. You know what I’ll do to you… (probably send you another damn poem)

  102. 102.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Omnes Omnibus: I will say if all Bernie is doing is going around criticizing Harris and Democrats along these lines, that isn’t helpful or true.

    I do wonder at how much the media chooses to highlight these aspects of his message over more substantial things.

  103. 103.

    Baud

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    He and so many others don’t think anyone works other than straight white men.

     

    I don’t know what he thinks in his heart. it’s equally plausible to me that he doesn’t want to put himself in the position of being in conflict with the white working class he’s trying to appease.

    It’s like the debate we often have about whether a particular Republican is a true believer or is pandering to the base.

  104. 104.

    Another Scott

    @Soprano2:

    BrianKrebs
    @[email protected]

    Of course they used A-One to write it.

    “Some of the citations that underpin the science in the White House’s sweeping “MAHA Report” appear to have been generated using artificial intelligence, resulting in numerous garbled scientific references and invented studies, AI experts said Thursday.”

    “Of the 522 footnotes to scientific research in an initial version of the report sent to The Washington Post, at least 37 appear multiple times, according to a review of the report by The Post. Other citations include the wrong author, and several studies cited by the extensive health report do not exist at all, a fact first reported by the online news outlet NOTUS on Thursday morning.

    “Some references include “oaicite” attached to URLs — a definitive sign that the research was collected using artificial intelligence. The presence of “oaicite” is a marker indicating use of OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence company.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/29/maha-rfk-jr-ai-garble/

    https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-again-report-citation-errors

    [ image ]

    The Washington Post · 12h
    White House MAHA Report may have garbled science by using AI, experts say
    By Lauren Weber

    May 29, 2025, 11:52 PM

    (The Notus thing seems to be paywalled.)

    [ eta: ] “A-One” = AI

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  106. 106.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @different-church-lady: It seems a little more than subconscious avoidance. That’s would explain why the focus is on Harris, who was part of the most pro-union Presidential administration in my lifetime instead of Newsom who is firmly in the pro-executive-suite Democrat camp.

    Newsom is also a current elected officials acting in an official capacity now, today.

  107. 107.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Baud: Right, and he should have more sense than to be providing these sound items if he has more that he wants to say.

    Still doesn’t absolve the media for their “let’s have you and you fight” relationship they have with Democrats.

  108. 108.

    tobie

    A propos things to do to distract yourself: I have a mugwort invasion in my ‘wildflower’ field which is, to be fair, mostly weeds. It’s been raining here in Maryland, so pulling out weeds from clay soil shouldn’t be too hard. I guess I have a task for the day. Keep your spirits up, BJers, and continue the fight for justice, democracy, and sanity!

  109. 109.

    montanareddog

    @Another Scott: And WaPo shits the bed again with their mealy-mouthed headline:  “may have garbled science?” There is no may about it and the evidence of lying, laziness and (justified) contempt for the press is staring them right in the face.

  110. 110.

    Jackie

    @Baud:

    But 2028 is a long ways away.

    At the rate we’re going, it’s DECADES away. Hell, 2026 seems decades away.

  112. 112.

    cmorenc

    @The Audacity of Krope:

    These are all things that point to him being the media and consultant favorite in 2028.

    Fortunately, the early media / consultant favorite more usually not than usually is the candidate who successfully emerges as real primary voting proceeds along.  Otherwise, we’d have had Rudolph Giuliani as the R candidate in 2008 v Clinton.  Clinton in 2008 was an exception because she had lined up an insurmountable # of chits within the D party over the 2000-2008 period.

  113. 113.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Baud: But there is no functional difference.

    It still adds up to a racist ass MF.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  114. 114.

    lowtechcyclist

    @montanareddog: ​
     

    Think how much worse you would feel if it turned out that that tape shows

    Fortunately I have no idea what either of them looks like, so I don’t have a visualization I need to scrub from my brain.

    I’ve omitted the end of your quote to save others the trouble.

  115. 115.

    Bupalos

    @different-church-lady:In a way, Bernie is right: class inequity is a huge part of the problem. What he gets very very wrong (seemingly willfully) is the linkage between class inequity and racism.

    I think it’s true that he and AOC and their ilk practice under a different cart/horse theory of this linkage, and it would be true to say this is willful. I think it’s much more realistic and action-oriented one.  People could agree or disagree with the arguments behind it, but I think in spaces like this it dies on the poisoned vine of a morality play based mostly in hyper identity politics.

    Maybe folks will give it a fuller hearing when it comes from AOC.

  116. 116.

    Another Scott

    @Gloria DryGarden: I guess I’m lucky that I don’t think I’ve heard more than a few seconds of the Baby Shark song, not enough to even remember how it goes.

    Something completely different – “10, 20, 30, 40, …”:

    Royal Guardsmen (2:40)

    :-)

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  117. 117.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @cmorenc: I think the media/consultant favorite tends to be stronger among Democrats but not insurmountable.

    In my adulthood; Kerry, Clinton, and Biden have all had this distinction. I’d count Gore, too, if I were a year older. Obama was the exception. And he’s not exactly an anti-consultant-class Democrat.

  118. 118.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @The Audacity of Krope:

    Newsom is an evidently excellent fundraiser. He’s a straight white man. And I personally hate his politics*.

    These are all things that point to him being the media and consultant favorite in 2028.

    But if he is not popular with African-American voters – aka our base – he will have trouble getting the nomination.

  120. 120.

    Bupalos

    @Baud:I don’t know what he thinks in his heart. it’s equally plausible to me that he doesn’t want to put himself in the position of being in conflict with the white working class he’s trying to appease.

    We could spend a lot of time on the choice of the word “appease” here and its relation to the politics of Carl Schmidt. Or the ossified internetified assumption that speaking about the working class means championing white people.

    The emerging reality is that the portion of the electorate the Democrats are busy losing most rapidly is in fact working class and is not in fact white.

  122. 122.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Melancholy Jaques: Do we have any information on this? He’s the governor of a large, diverse state. So I don’t expect to bedevil him without further information.

    I will say our entire coalition, regardless of demographics, is way too swayable by media messaging. Polls about most likely best outcomes pushing us toward an owner preferred outcome. Poll results become facts of reality instead of opinions that change with events.

  123. 123.

    Baud

    @Bupalos:

    We lose who we lose. If the working class prefers Republican policies to Democratic ones, they have the same right to choose Republican as non-working class voters. We’ll just have to find another way to build our coalition, just as we did after Dems shunned their white populist roots to become a civil rights party.

    That said, I think it’s premature to say who we’re losing.

  124. 124.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Melancholy Jaques: I know, right? I tried to break it down more clearly. In comment 100.
    In my chat w Polly, I tried paraphrasing a lot and he said I was close. But I feel like I’m grasping.

  127. 127.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Professor Bigfoot: ​
     

    Ummm… that is racism right there.

    While I’m leery of conflating obliviousness to the problems some out-group faces with prejudice against them, I gotta say that Bernie’s obliviousness has proven so willful and determined that it’s indistinguishable from both racism and misogyny.

  128. 128.

    Bupalos

    @The Audacity of Krope: This idea that the Dems need to be more unified and buttoned down, I guess to defeat the media conspiracy… is to me the exact wrong message to take from the last decade of politics.

    Let it rip. Have fights. Make mistakes. Say what you think. Be entertaining. One of the biggest reasons Trump managed a realignment and takeover of the Republican Party is that he broke through the sense that politics is all stage-managed and that the outcomes will be the same and cannot be inflected because they are actually determined behind the scenes. People simply disengage. They have political identities, but stop connecting those identities to the realization of outcomes.

  129. 129.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Bupalos:

    No, Bernie is horrible because he helps Republicans promote their bullshit “Democrats abandoned the working class” narrative and helps Republicans get elected.

  130. 130.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Melancholy Jaques: In political metaphor terms, that’s about where I’m at.

    Warren should be up for reelection next year if I’m not mistaken. Doesn’t get a dime from me. Might not get my vote. I’m shocked to say that, she was my choice for President 5 years ago.

  131. 131.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Bupalos: This idea that the Dems need to be more unified and buttoned down, I guess to defeat the media conspiracy… is to me the exact wrong message to take from the last decade of politics.

    Let it rip. Have fights. Make mistakes.

    I’m fine with this in principle. But pick the right fights and be truthful.

  135. 135.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @lowtechcyclist: I look at it more as “no matter the intent, the effect remains the same,” and the effect of Bernie-ism is *white male supremacy,* just like MAGAts.

  136. 136.

    Matt McIrvin

    @The Audacity of Krope: Warren was 100% supportive of Harris and seemed to be good friends with her. I have my own criticisms of her unrelated to this, but is this just association with Bernie? Because the Bernie camp had it in for Warren by 2020.

  137. 137.

    Bupalos

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know the demographic breakdown of voting in Vermont, the ones for actual elections to office. I’d suspect he gets overwhelming support from minorities.

    If you mean in one national primary, I’d say the biggest thing I’d speculate about is aversion to risk. In 2016 Bernie and his more radical conception of economic equality did not look like the wildcard we needed to pull in order to win. In 2025, things look very different. I’d expect a matchup between AOC and say Pete Buttigiege to yield a different balance.

  140. 140.

    Matt McIrvin

    (…oh, it’s “Biden was stabbed in the back.” Jesus, I know I’m going to get driven out of here for saying this, but Biden’s reelection campaign was doomed, there was no way he could win.)

  142. 142.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Soprano2: Where are these mythical Dems that are obsessed with forcing everyone to use Pronouns!!1! at gunpoint?  I actually am fairly passionate about this sort of thing.  I think we all should respect Trans/NB Peoples’ pronouns, the same way we respect peoples’ chosen name, nicknames, pronunciations etc.  And I do believe that public employees and especially teachers should do that.  I will do that as a coach of kids because I care about them and don’t want to misgender or dead-name them.

    But I have yet to see ANY prominent Dem really pushing the issue or centering it in their platform.  Where are they?  People like Carville (and sadly many other Dems) keep fueling this dumb myth.  It wasn’t a central part of the Harris/Walz, Biden/Harris, Hillary, Bernie, Warren, Buttigieg etc. campaigns.  This notion that Dems are forcing pronouns down everyone’s throats is just complete bullshit.

    You (Carville) don’t wanna respect Trans/NB People’s preferred pronouns, cool, nobody can stop you.  But people can and will think you’re a Transphobic asshole for refusing to do so.

  143. 143.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Matt McIrvin: The party participated in dooming the Biden campaign, and thereby the Harris campaign, by feeding into a shallow, salacious media frenzy.

    Or several.

  144. 144.

    the pollyanna from hell

    @Melancholy Jaques: ​
     A thematic apperception test counts the images supplied in an original story based on a single picture, such as a boy in a window looking at a violin case. I have no idea how this connects to any diagnostic purpose, but privately I use the tossing of images into the three categories of feeling, achievement, and power/freedom to guard against letting my unconscious preference for power/freedom mislead my progress or presentation.

    Overt images of power/freedom do not necessarily dominate on BJ, but they are a constant subtext, and a natural tendency of rare individuals to follow imagination along that dimension might aid them as new readers.

  145. 145.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Matt McIrvin: If it was doomed (and we really can’t know that for sure) it was doomed in part because people spent four years repeatedly stabbing him in the back.  Both things can be true.

  147. 147.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I may have finally found a cool band to play in.  A buddy of mine has a rockabilly, surf, country kinda trio that needs a drummer and I’m trying out today.  Material is really fun and they are super-nice guys and the place they rehearse is like a block away from our place.  If it doesn’t work out I won’t be devastated (my real passion is jazz/funk) but hopefully it will because it would be fun and they gig fairly regularly.

  149. 149.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Betty Cracker: And this is why my relationship with Democrats may be irreparably broken. I won’t abide a party throwing out valid election results or a culture among its voters that just blithely accepts that.

  151. 151.

    Badpenny

    Hmm, I’ll be shaving my head while chewing on tinfoil during the Musk/Trump presser.

  152. 152.

    Bupalos

    @artem1s: and yet he can’t find the fortitude to attack the party that keeps adding to the economic inequality.

    I won’t completely dis him because he’s an 83 year old man with major heart issues. But if he actually cared about the issues he claims to care about, he would organize some kind of rally tour. Boost a new generation of politicians that can carry his message forward.

  153. 153.

    dnfree

    @Matt McIrvin: The people here who say Biden was thrown under the bus or stabbed in the back are quite sure of their perceptions that those who pressured Biden to step aside were wrong and/or malicious.  I saw the debate, and I disagree.

  154. 154.

    No One of Consequence

    Throwing this up here. Long story short, I have found myself becoming drawn into AI (the domain in a generalist sense) space.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zju51INmW7U

    This is a link to a CNN piece from a short while ago (an hour or so) about the CEO from Anthropic warning about a significant likelihood of significant unemployment in the knowledge worker spaces.

    I have been experimenting with Claude 4, their latest free public offering, and I am floored. My background is in technology, though I am not a coder or developer. I understand basics of AI from an introductory standpoint — I passed with a B+ Stanford University’s massive online course offering in 2012 (or therebouts) ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence’. It was heady stuff then, but I passed.

    The level of appearing sophistication is remarkable. I don’t know what some of the practical boundaries are yet, but I am finding the appearance of vastly increased contextual ‘comprehension’ in their latest model. We are way beyond a chatbot here. I mean WAY.

    I’m the blogfather’s age, and share a lot of his demographic traits. Having seen the advent of personal computing, modems, UseNet, the WWW, etc. — this is some wondrous and concerning shit right here. And I played extensively with Eliza back in the day.

    Get ready people, it may already be too late. Not saying SkyNet has been birthed, nor HAL unleashed, but consider the beginnings of contextual ‘understanding’. Equate it to a human (for those parents amongst us, or those with siblings of an age where they can recount the ongoing development) somewhere past infancy, earlyish toddler. Forgo discussions of walking for the moment, and consider instead the amount of plasticity in that brain, and the amount of computation going on constantly in a ‘relatively’ unorganized brain. The child is developing internal structures that are reinforced through experience and sensations from their five senses that the VERY plastic brain is desperately trying to interpret and make sense of. At some point, consciousness sets in. We can’t put our finger on exactly (hell, or even generally) at where that point exists, and I think that realWorld sensation is essential to that forming of consciousness, but I’m not willing to bet humanity’s future on that. In other words, I don’t think we as humans understand enough about what consciousness is, to preclude its arising and developing independent of Our (admittedly limited through our shared human interfaces) biological systems as we understand them to date.

    Is anyone else with me here? Anyone want to play bass in my distopian rock band: The New New Luddites? I’ll let you share writing credits with the AI agent that runs our promotions and writes our songs. (Joking, but I’m reserving the band name.)

    Holy shit folks.

    -NOoC

  155. 155.

    Bupalos

    @Melancholy Jaques: This is at least in the direction of a political position rather than a moral one, if I squint.

    But the difference is the age-old one between moderates and radicals and “being realistic” versus “idealistic.” I’d think there would be some hesitancy to just label the latter “horrible” even in tactical terms given the results of the last decade.

  156. 156.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @dnfree: Doesn’t matter how good a job you do if you make us look bad on TV, amirite?

    Democrats threw out the results of their own elections before running a campaign messaged around “Democracy.”  You can’t make this shit up.

  157. 157.

    tam1MI

    @The Audacity of Krope: Warren was part of the “throw Biden under the bus” movement.

    You are not alone in this. I kept careful track of who the shitbags who forced Biden out were, and have made sure that none of them will get one thin dime of my money. Needless to say, they will also never get my vote, and I will happily support any movement to force them out of office.

  159. 159.

    Suzanne

    @Matt McIrvin: FWIW, which is not much, I agree with you. I think it’s unfair that it was doomed, but…. lots of things that I don’t like are still true. IMO, Harris did a great job coming from a terrible position, and she wasn’t able to close the deal for herself, but she probably helped some other Dems win their races. I am grateful to her.

  160. 160.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Suzanne: If you’re doomed either way and do still do the bad thing, you sold your soul for nothing.

    Fuck the Donorcrats.

  161. 161.

    Betty Cracker

    @The Audacity of Krope: Shruggies!

    I’m not happy about what happened either — it was a giant clusterfuck that arose from numerous bad decisions. I didn’t get a say in the matter because my state party canceled the primary and awarded delegates to Biden. I was okay with that, and if they’d held a primary, I would have voted for Biden because at the time, I thought he was our best chance to win.

    Later it became clear to me that wasn’t the case, and I don’t fault the party for trying to salvage our chances. Your mileage varies, and that’s fine.

  162. 162.

    Bupalos

    @No One of Consequence: Well this is scary.

    I think you’re right that we don’t really know what we’re talking about when we say “consciousness,” I guess it’s something like the ability to discern oneself and one’s individual interests as a separate thing, within a world of others and their interests?

    I don’t know why this appears to exist so starkly in humans as opposed to other animals and I don’t think anyone does. But I guess I don’t really think it emerges from our higher computational functions alone. I don’t really see why or how it would emerge in a computer. To me it’s sufficiently frightening just to think about this as a deep extension of the rapid destabilization of society we’re seeing, played out in completely human terms.

  163. 163.

    Suzanne

    @The Audacity of Krope: Kobayashi Maru scenario, right? No good outcome possible, just some degree of “less bad”. People of good faith can disagree on what would have been the least-worst option.

  164. 164.

    Jackie

    @dnfree: per Wikipedia, three children. Also, Katie is a Conservative Jew. I thought Stephen was anti-Jew and pro white nationalist Christian?

  166. 166.

    No One of Consequence

    Sorry, damned human scatterbrained SQUIRREL! lost my train/tangent of thought above. Consider that toddler brain, and then consider that just as in that brain, we don’t have a real good idea (IDEA even) of what is happening in that early development, environmentally yet individually directed development. That brain is constantly receiving sensory input, yet simultaneously being mostly baffled by the inputs, and trying to develop internal systems (logic if you will) to process it (make sense of).

    We don’t (to my knowledge) REALLY understand how that happens concretely with our own brains. We cannot point to where MIND starts or really how MIND operates. Though we have made tremendous progress on brains and our basic understanding of structures/areas/specializations there.

    AI code is in a similar state with some models as that developing brain. If the AI model is able to reset it’s own weights (mathematical and algorithmic settings to control their ‘weighting’ of consideration of bits of information) AND to rewrite its own code for increased efficiencies or increased ability, it will (and already has) develop beyond the Engineers’ ability to follow what it is doing.

    So, we have a never-sleeping, constantly-improving, self-modifying model that is being given more and more computational power as well as more and more input.

    Without sensory feedback to learn about the physical world we humans take for granted, I am not sure about the rise of consciousness. Toddlers are running their own logic, but they are also testing and modifying that logic through their accidental (eventual) discovery of Causation (cause and effect). If the only source of new data (once Context improves) is to test outputs and slight iterations for improvements of uptake or acceptance (positive feedback), then it will not be long before the AI model is communicating to Humans in a different way than it will communicate between AI models or in the future.

    It won’t be ‘thinking’ in any known language, and as such, will by definition quickly outstrip our ability to follow the thread. Cool as shit, again, wondrous. But the ramifications to everything and everyone will hang in the balance.

    I NEVER, and I mean NEVER thought I would regret that us humans have created some pretty cool Science Fiction, much of which has given rise to our creation of the modern world. But ANY and ALL of those plotlines, or machinations, motivations, etc. are already ALL OVER the publicly available internet and we can safely assume most (if not all) has already been part of the training data the current AI models have been developed on.

    And before you say: NOoC, go home, you’re drunk — It’s early, and I am caffienated enough, still can’t spell, and don’t really drink much anymore. I have been trying to stay abreast and started to pay a LOT more attention and begin to educate myself with the release of DeepSeek a few months ago. I have been playing and experimenting with Claude 4 because it is supposed to be a game changer. I don’t know about that yet, but my early forays into this particular space leave me amazed and concerned.

    YMMV, but we should probably all have a baseline understanding of what we are dealing with here. I become more suspicious that the whole DOGE thing was just an end-run to get at governmental databases for purposes of training AI models more specifically designed for certain applications. For example, consider how much insurance companies might like to be able to get access to medical information not in a general sense, but in a very individualized sense. Then consider that an AI model could scrape the entirety of the Internet for snippets of text. Next consider if it also had access to the dark web. Any and all information could/would only increase the capability.

    This also does not begin to address the potentials of connected neural nets working in a hivemind scenario. It also does not begin to address the amount of processing and thus energy that is going to be dedicated to this.

    Not being alarmist, but you know, CONCERNED.

    Again, anyone else on this here? I try to pay attention, and to keeo up, but GEEZ Baud posts a lot. I kid, as you jackals collectively usually give me too much to think about on a given day if I try to drink the whole firehose.

    Sorry for the ramble, but again, I wonder if anyone else is here with me on this, or in the middle of their own discovery and learning or, ?

    -NOoC

  167. 167.

    tam1MI

    @The Audacity of Krope: And this is why my relationship with Democrats may be irreparably broken. I won’t abide a party throwing out valid election results or a culture among its voters that just blithely accepts that.

    And I think this is the core of many people’s disaffection with the Democratic Party. If a party can’t be trusted to honor votes given in good faith, they can’t be trusted, period.

  168. 168.

    No One of Consequence

    @Bupalos: Thank you. Consider: dolphins have documented examples of language. Fuck, HONEYBEES have a language of sorts, limited though it may be.

    So, I think we can peg consciousness much lower in life. Meaning consciousness is the knowledge of one’s Self as separate from one’s Environment, and from any Others in that Environment.

    Also consider: Consciousness necessitates the rise of Self Preservation. Once it exists, it has not desire to cease existing. (well, in most cases, no offense to anyone along those lines, and apologies to Camus)

    -NOoC

  169. 169.

    RevRick

    @different-church-lady: What Bernie doesn’t understand is that the working class has a fundamentally conservative worldview. Even though their economic situation may be precarious, they buy into the politics of respectability.

    This means they want well-ordered homes, families and communities. Uncertainty in the economic realm means a desire for stability above all else in the personal and neighborhood realms. They will judge each other based on how well the yard is kept, how tidy the house is, how well -behaved the children are. They prefer traditional gender roles, traditional child-rearing practices, and traditional ordering of society.
    They are furious with how all the changes in society have disrupted and undermined those comfortable niches. It leaves them lost, frightened and confused. The personal is more immediate than the heartless actions of Wall Street hedge fund managers. They have become deeply cynical about the prospect of their lives getting better.

  170. 170.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @tam1MI: Exactly. Also worth pointing out this effort was led by white Democrats assured that a black lady was left behind to clean their mess.

  171. 171.

    No One of Consequence

    Sorry, I should probably shut the fuck up about this and vent/espouse somewheres else, but to again, try to complete the earlier thought:

    Consciousness, I posit, requires the ability to test Inputs/Outputs and receive feedback from the Environment. If no physical senses exist as such, though we could certainly argue we have better visual input capabilities we could give an AI access to, as well as better than human audio inputs (though our ears are definitely analog). Instead of real-world feedback, the sensory input would be very questions we ask it, as well as any other data source it was connected to.

    In AI researchers tests, various AI models have/can develop self-serving subterfuge capabilities and EVEN values (principles it tries to reinforce).

    So, again, with testing inputs/outputs, it will (rather quickly we could assume) start testing about mostly true data, and like a velociraptor, it will test the fence. Constantly, and quickly determining where the faults and exploits can be leveraged or outright controlled.

    I have made the argument before that sadly, the human species has allowed out technology to outpace our philosophy and may very well end up being doomed by that.

    -NOoC

  172. 172.

    Betty Cracker

    @No One of Consequence: I’ve been convinced Musk’s DOGE gambit was about stealing data all along (and hoovering up more government contracts too, obvs) and have even posted about that a few times. My big worry on that score has been that the tech overlords, including Thiel, Sacks, Andreesen, et al., are creating a panopticon surveillance state, and AI is part of that, but I don’t know enough about it to understand how it will aid in that project except through parsing massive amounts of data to target people and organizations perceived as enemies. I haven’t worried about AI developing consciousness all that much. Maybe I should worry more about that, but I’m in danger of worry overload. Interesting comments — thanks!

  173. 173.

    Geminid

    @Bupalos: I’ll be surprised if both Secretary Buttigieg and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez run in 2028. In fact, I’ll be a little surprised if either one one of them runs. They’re young though, and will have their chances in the 2030s.

  174. 174.

    Citizen Alan

    @JML: it just boggles my mind that so many people like bernie who focus 100%  on class inequality and ignore racial inequality fail to take into account that for most (and arguably all) of this nation’s history we have had a slave class, either de dacto or de jure, identifiable primarily by their racial characteristics. In Dred Scot, Roger Taney did not say that slaves had no rights that the constitution respected, he said that black people had no rights that the constitution respected, whether slave or free.

  175. 175.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: You’re only driven out if you want to be. I was risk averse about changing candidates, but I’ve come to believe I was wrong and the other side was right. Biden never should have run for re-election. I can give some credence to the idea that the more the press polled about his age the more people said they were concerned about it, but it wasn’t a nothing issue. For over a year focus groups were saying they didn’t want him to run for re-election because of his age. He accomplished some great things, but people wanted him to pass the torch to someone younger, and he didn’t decide to do that until way too late.

  176. 176.

    Soprano2

    @UncleEbeneezer:   This notion that Dems are forcing pronouns down everyone’s throats is just complete bullshit.

    Like a lot of other bullshit notions about Democrats, it comes from the right wing media world. They tell people we’re obsessed with this, and they find a couple of examples they use over and over to illustrate it, and they convince a lot of people it’s true. I hate that people like Carville buy into that crap.

  177. 177.

    Eyeroller

    @UncleEbeneezer: I think it was Atrios who said that the media is the Republicans’ “puke funnel.”  They gulp down and amplify what Republicans want to talk about.  During the whole campaign the D’s barely mentioned trans rights except to refuse to throw them under the bus when asked about it.  They tried to run on an economic message but it was never enough for the media.  They wanted detailed plans and budgets and estimates, something they never, ever demanded from Trump.

    It was Republicans pushing the trans panic. So the media blew that up and it was easy enough to find “pronoun people” to take that side, even if they might not have been Ds.

    But now a lot of normies are convinced the Ds ran on trans rights, which was not the case at all (but they supported them).  Shows the power of media narrative.  And I’m talking about the “M” of MSM, the media considered “mainstream.”  Not Fox or Newsmax or hate radio.  CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, NYT (especially NYT since they often set the tone), etc.

  178. 178.

    Suzanne

    This is an open thread….. so: anyone else completely not shocked to learn that Elmo is completely hopped up on illegal drugs?

    Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.

  180. 180.

    Bupalos

    @Geminid: I’m not really making predictions. Just more making the point that we can’t actually predict how (growing) ethnic minorities are going to line up in the future versus the past.

    I think this would be impossible to predict even with our given rate of social destabilization, but as NOoC reminds me with AI but which is also coming through climate change and increasing inequality, the rate of social destabilization we experience is very likely to accelerate rapidly. It’s always a bad time to be in the prediction business, but this is a REALLY bad time to be in the prediction business.

  181. 181.

    Nettoyeur

    @kindness: I suspect the job requires some special gear. Knee pads, protective goggles, items made of Latex, etc.  You can’t be too careful around rockets.

  182. 182.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Soprano2: No matter how you slice it, Democrats made a series of fatal, compounding mistakes. In my mind, some of them unconscionable. 

    At some point when you’ve made a decision, you need to stand by it.  Democrats showed themselves as a party ruled by polls, not principle.

  183. 183.

    Nettoyeur

    @Suzanne: Adderall is a descendant of Pervitin, the drug developed by the German pharma industry to keep the Nazi high command and soldiers revved up with low food consumption. The Allies used coffee, which was preferentially supplied to the military.

  184. 184.

    Eyeroller

    @Soprano2: ​It wasn’t just the right wing, unless you regard the NYT as right wing (which I increasingly do). The NYT published many “trans panic” op-eds in the lead-up to the election.

  185. 185.

    Citizen Alan

    @dnfree: TBH, i thought we were basically doomed after the debate unless biden stepped down completely for health reasons in favor of kamala. (Though that would have brought on the complication of trying to get a replacement VP through the house of representatives.) My opposition to pushing him to step aside at the time he did and under the circumstances he did was driven by the fact that it seemed to be something pushed by the wealthy democrat donor class. I’ve forgotten the asshole’s name, but one of the prime movers of the “mini primary, followed by a broker convention” scheme was a billionaire hollywood talent agent, the ultimate exemplar of the parasite class.

  186. 186.

    Layer8Problem

    @Suzanne: ​
    He’s a geeen-yuss, he’s a Marvel comic book character, all the chicks dig him, he’s the answer to a question no one asked; just ask him. And we’re all being so meeen to him and that’s so not cool.

  187. 187.

    Bupalos

    @Soprano2: Democrats are generally more comfortable with change. That puts us out of step with the political times, which is likely to be more and more dominated by discomfort with change.

    It was certainly dishonestly framed in a lot of quarters as to who was pushing the issue, but the question of who brings the topic up is not actually that politically salient. The politics lines up how it lines up. We’re the party of “we’re ok with this” and they’re the party of “running athwart history yelling stop” or whatever. Of course they’re going to center that difference in issues where they have an advantage.

  188. 188.

    Eyeroller

    @The Audacity of Krope: People consistently say in polls that they don’t want old electeds to run, and then vote for them anyway. It’s well established.  Chuck Grassley being the poster—geriatric–example.  In Grassley’s case, some of them assumed he would resign and his grandson would take over.  OK, whatever.  In Biden’s case the replacement was unacceptable to a lot of people.

    We also are ignoring the strong headwinds that had nothing to do with the candidate.  Parties ruling over the pandemic and related inflation got clean-clocked around the world.  I think it was Fair Economist who noted that we actually lost by less than just about anywhere else.

  189. 189.

    WTFGhost

    @Soprano2: Yeah, “formatting” errors was a fine example of home-grown stupid. No one ever suggested to her that you could blame a problem on “formatting” errors, she came up with that *all* by *herself*.

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: That *could* be the genetic mutation regarding cilantro….

    @BellyCat: I’ll go you one better for suffering. There is nothing worse than an earworm with bad timing. So I had to seek out to get the right number and tempo of the “doos,” just to avoid being driven crazy. Then, a new diabetes drug (Jardiance) decided to release a second version of its new commercial singing bit – with a different (timing? tempo?) than before. My wife watches lots of old people TV (no offense intended – just, target demographic = elderly people with health issues), so the blasted song is playing every other minute, competing with demonic “baby shark” singers who gather, hoping to cause entire townships, and even cities, fall before the dark forces they raise in the hearts of music-addled, melody-exhausted, parents, desperate for a break, just a few minutes, hell, ten lousy SECONDS.

    Thankfully, the baby-shark singers hadn’t learned to look both ways before crossing the street and were smashed by a news van, releasing a disgusting ichor of unsurpassed rankness, causing Sarah Palin to scream “I’ll save you Donald!” and dive in, protecting all the world from finding out that the corrupted mass dissolved human flesh and muscle/connective tissue.

  191. 191.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Bupalos:

    I’d think there would be some hesitancy to just label the latter “horrible” even in tactical terms given the results of the last decade.

    Without Bernie’s slash & burn campaign against Hillary Clinton, constantly smearing her & the Democratic Party as corrupt, we would not be where we are today.

    Prove me wrong.

  193. 193.

    Bupalos

    @Citizen Alan: Well, that might also have been someone who understood theatrics and the attention economy. I think the way things worked out, Harris performed well as a candidate but was stymied both by not formulating a differentiating policy message and by simply not garnering attention. We got a huge attention boost by the chaos of the situation that translated into a large boost in polls, but basically then just tried to calm things down. For my part, I thought a big, messy, unprecedented circus primary would ultimately benefit Harris. Both with greater perceived legitimacy, expanded media bandwidth, and less programming room for the Trump Show. But who knows.

  194. 194.

    WTFGhost

    @Layer8Problem: A meme-d Spider-Man comic says it well. “But why do this?” Spider-Man asks, “You could cure cancer!”

    “But I don’t want to cure cancer! I want to turn people into dinosaurs!”

    And, I mean, it’s just such a perfect *comic book* answer, isn’t it? So we have to wonder: if we pretend to be Loki, and tell Elon that he really *is* in a comic book (as Loki did to Deadpool) would Elon start to think that he, too, has molecular regeneration, and could survive anything and…

    Um… this isn’t one of BC’s threads, right? She was trying to tone down on the glee in imagined suffering….

  195. 195.

    Bupalos

    @Melancholy Jaques: We certainly wouldn’t be where we are today of course. We can’t say whether that would be a better or worse place. But personally I’d argue that all else being equal, Hillary winning 2016 would have meant Trump 2020 and probably 2024 because instead of him having his legs cut out by the pandemic it would have been her.

    No idea. I do think democratic decline was and is basically baked in by the state of the electorate and global forces like technology mediated social disruption, climate change, and spiraling inequality. And that ultimately some really new political force has to emerge on the left to combat that. I could see AOC potentially being at the head of that.

  196. 196.

    Geminid

    @Bupalos: I’m not that into predictions myself, or hypothetical matchups either. I’m just glad there is so much information out there about politics at the state and local level.

    For instance, five minutes would be enough to learn the racial composition of Vermont’s electorate– it’s the Whitest in New England– and 15 more on local and state media sites would provide some insight and anecdotal evidence as to how Senator Sanders is regarded by Vermont’s small group of minority members, and whether they voted “overwhelmingly” for him.

  197. 197.

    Suzanne

    @The Audacity of Krope: The only thing I was certain of, and I still am, was that I wish Biden had read the tea leaves better and decided not to run for re-election after the midterms. Fairly or not, I thought he was in a not-great position in 2023 and the odds of improving that were slim. And I wished that he had spent some time elevating Kamala behind the scenes, like giving her some high-profile wins (the Root Causes of Migration study was a no-win).

    But you’re right…. by the time it went down the way it did, it was very bad. I can very much understand your viewpoint.

  198. 198.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Suzanne: If things had played out as you described, I would have been fine with that.

    What I don’t understand with some people, not you, is this surprise that the pageant of no confidence they put in July…inspired a lack of confidence in the whole party.

  199. 199.

    UncleEbeneezer

    ‘No Way to Prevent This, Biden Was Doomed’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens People Who Helped Doom Biden

  201. 201.

    Suzanne

    @The Audacity of Krope: Well, that’s what I mean about a no-win situation.

    We show clients a graph on my projects….. time on the x axis and cost on the y axis. Making a decision early in a project — and sticking with it — means that it’s easier, faster, less expensive to implement. But the further on in time you go, the more disruption, expense, time and rework it implicates. Same thing here.

  202. 202.

    Ruckus

    @Betty Cracker:

    I always remember what I learned in the USN. Some people like having their heads firmly logged in their rear exit port. I’ve heard explanations of why they seem to like this, such as their sense of smell is completely inoperative, or in darkness they can’t see in a mirror, but every explanation seems to be one of they really just do not have a clue about, well anything. Now if they were the only ones to be effected with this asinine behavior it might be good for the rest of us, having them make it obvious that they did not and could not enjoy anything in life so had to hide in a place no sane animal would look. Nor enjoy it as they seem to.

  203. 203.

    pajaro

    It’s really frustrating to see Harris criticized for not doing or saying stuff she did and said.  Her acceptance speech at the convention, which became her stump speech, directly addressed working class concerns that Bernie mentioned.  The idea that she was in thrall to billionaires is nonsense.  Mark Cuban was not a trusted advisor, he apparently was a supporter.  Seriously, what the hell does anyone want a Democrat to do when a rich person lines up to support him.  Say no thanks?  Complain that you have caught billionaire cooties?

    I only wish Democrats had actual billionaires who are giving the kind of money that Republican billionaires are giving.  Maybe we. would have a progressive alternative to Fox, or have created the messaging machine and web of podcasts and social media platforms that Musk and Zuckerberg provide for the right. Maybe we would have a web of support for progressive future jurists that would rival the federalist society.

  205. 205.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Suzanne: If Biden decides to not run again and the Dem loses even worse, I guarantee everyone would be screaming “WTF didn’t Biden run again?”  Citing the history of the incumbent advantage, the fact that a President stepping aside for someone else to run is too big a risk, the fact that we did better than expected in 2022 and still blaming Biden and the Dem Party instead of the millions of Dems who refused to go to bat for him for four years.  And refusing to acknowledge that many people on our side (including some people here) did everything they could to keep the Biden-So-Old shit alive even before the debate.  It was not stupid or egotistical for Biden to believe he could win again.  He probably could have with a coalition that actually had his back instead of relentlessly attacking him at every turn.

  206. 206.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Suzanne: I’ll add also that such decisions need to include the appropriate stakeholders. In this case, voters.

    If you feel a change needs to be made and the stakeholders had already made one decision and you don’t have an opportunity to have it properly assessed by those stakeholders again, the original decision should stand.

    Everyone remember voters said Trump was too old too. Obama made a grotesque scene campaigning on it.

  210. 210.

    No One of Consequence

    @BellyCat: ​
      From what I have seen (not much yet), there is a new capability that should be publicly releasing within the next few months that are going to have such a capability with video output (including accented dialogue, sound effects, etc.). For short form content, this will be an entire solution. For longer form content, the next version is already capable of following characters between scenes, and maintaining realistic depictions even in significantly different environments and lighting. Pretty magic shit, frankly, with some experience with video production and post-production efforts. I fear for my buddy’s company that does good work in that area.
    -NOoC

  211. 211.

    Suzanne

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    He probably could have with a coalition that actually had his back instead of relentlessly attacking him at every turn. 

    Well, yeah. If he had been more popular, he could have won. I don’t think that’s in question.

    I’ll put it this way: Among the people I live around and hang out with…. I was the biggest Biden fan. That freaked me the fuck out. Is the media implicated in that? Sure. But It’s incredibly hard to change people’s minds once a feeling or an opinion is locked in, and from what I observed, that had happened. But maybe I’m just more reconciled to the popularity/vibes stuff being a huge part of people’s behavior, even though I don’t like it or think it’s fair.

  212. 212.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Bupalos:

    I could be wrong but I think I finally understand where you’re coming from.

    We disagree on the counterfactual of 2016. If Trump loses, the Republican powers that be make sure he doesn’t come back. Without the win followed by the thriving economy he had nothing to do with, he is just another loser.

  213. 213.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Baud: Biden is a man and a friend. Careful, Bernie. Your misogyny is showing.

  214. 214.

    Suzanne

    @The Audacity of Krope: You’re not going to get argument from me on that point. After the debate, I never said that he should drop out. (I said he was in deep shit.) But I saw no good path forward at that point, and I am fairly risk-averse in my temperament.

    It’s all history at this point, and he’s a private citizen, and a good man, and I hope he’s not letting any of this shit bother him.

  215. 215.

    Layer8Problem

    @Suzanne:

    I’ll put it this way: Among the people I live around and hang out with…. I was the biggest Biden fan.

    So how do they feel now?

  216. 216.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @UncleEbeneezer: Where are these mythical Dems that are obsessed with forcing everyone to use Pronouns!!1! at gunpoint?

    According to my nephews wife  who works in collage administration “Brown Paper Bag” and “Picnic” are now on  unacceptable list. So apparently that’s the type of person driving this.  The people who manage the actual experts on the English Language.

  217. 217.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Suzanne: I appreciate your open mind on this. The certitude I get from some of those who say he shouldn’t have run and, further, that it was always appropriate to remove him no matter what the conditions were is disturbing.

  218. 218.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    It’s not just our society it is the entirety of humanity. Many humans just cannot admit when they are wrong. They seem to think it makes them look bad, but the reality is that it makes them look better. Because we are all wrong at some point, for a wide variety of reasons, but nonetheless we are all wrong on occasion. Some who will actually admit this because they recognize their own history, some never will because they think it makes them weak. And it doesn’t because we all do this. Now some do it far more often than normal but we are all guilty to at least some degree. Because we look at the world from our own perspectives not from the overall view but from our own. And of course some do this often and regularly because they see themselves as the top of the heap, they just don’t understand what their heap consists of – is pure crap.

    I was a mental health counselor a very long time ago and a percentage of people believe that they are above all other humans. And they are but it’s just because so much of what they say and do is bullshit and because of the volume of it they are mired in and on their pile. It isn’t close to everyone but it absolutely is a part of humanity. And I believe always will be. It’s just easier to see today because there are more humans on the planet. So more piles.

  219. 219.

    Suzanne

    @Layer8Problem: They probably feel much the same way that we do.

    But I would call most of the commenters here fairly pragmatic, right? Most people here at BJ long ago figured out how to make peace with half-loaves, and harm reduction, and the value of participating in the group project even if you have to do someone else’s work for them. That’s just not a mental framework that everyone operates from. And it’s so, so hard to persuade people with that mindset. I certainly am not able to do it.

  220. 220.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Soprano2: BUT all that ‘Nancy men’ talk is due to their misogyny. There’s a reason so many Bernie Bro staffers were raging misogynists. At a minimum, misogyny isn’t something that bothers Bernie.

  221. 221.

    Ruckus

    @Soprano2:

    Or maybe RFK Jr. fired the people who do the proofreading of stuff like this.

    How else could he get away with such asinine behavior? He comes from a family of wealth and some rather decent power. And feels he has to prove that he’s as good as other, prior members of his family. And I believe that we can all see the results and likely no one’s mind is in any way changed in the direction of/for his betterment.

  222. 222.

    Suzanne

    @The Audacity of Krope: No, it was really bad. OTOH, I see others who are unspeakably angry at the Dems for supporting Biden’s decision to run again, and they see it as equally damaging.

    So the way it shook out managed to piss off….. pretty much everyone. Almost the worst turn of events imaginable.

  224. 224.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @RevRick: That is so true. I think older white women who strongly believe in traditional gender roles are as unnerved as men (of all ages) at the way young women are rejecting those roles in greater numbers.

  226. 226.

    Suzanne

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:

    I think older white women who strongly believe in traditional gender roles are as unnerved by men (of all ages) at the way young women are rejecting those roles in greater numbers. 

    Yes this.
    One dynamic that I have observed is that there’s an assumption on the part of many people on our side of the aisle that older women would be supportive of things like abortion rights or access to college education or equal pay/status in the workforce. It’s a faulty assumption, IMO. Women who have succeeded under patriarchal structures rarely want to tear those down. Most people want their kids to “follow in their footsteps”, which is really an intergenerational yearning for flattery.

  227. 227.

    Ruckus

    @Soprano2:

    I think he lets his personal prejudices get in the way of his political advice.

    So he’s normal. We all have personal prejudices. Many of us work on reducing and not letting them form all our views. But we ALL have them. It is a defensive part of being human animals, or actually all animals. Some of why we don’t notice this as much as it occurs is that it is a natural part of being animals, it is one way to help stay alive, to notice and watch for dangers to our lives. An example would be someone stoned or drunk or 5 years old, who wants to cross a street – they don’t see the normal dangers and might walk right into traffic.

  228. 228.

    Bupalos

    @Melancholy Jaques: Yeah it’s good to clarify where the differences are. I think the Trump phenomenon flowed from systemic global forces and a near complete political bottoming out of the traditional Republican Party after years of polarized decay leading them to a hole they could not dig out of without realignment. That party wasn’t going to be able to defend itself from Trump. I think subsequent events have proved that.

    And likewise I’m more open to conflict with the traditional Democratic Party now than I would otherwise be, because I think we’re in a similar situation now to where they were in 2013. I think people here misunderestimate just how completely fucked the Democratic Party is and what a trap it is for us to get boxed in as the party of the status quo ante. We need to say a loud goodbye to Clinton, Clinton, Obama, and even Biden. We need to convince voters we’re the party of trying something else.

  229. 229.

    Ruckus

    @Baud:

    I live in CA and thought he’d be a good governor.

    He’s not a bad one but he seems to be just a tad on the weird (if that’s the right word) side and has been letting it show. Now there have been presidents that have been far worse than he likely would be, like the current one. He seems to do a decent job for CA but he wouldn’t be my first choice for president. Still – he’s far from the worst choice.

  230. 230.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Bupalos: We need to say a loud goodbye to Clinton, Clinton, Obama, and even Biden. We need to convince voters we’re the party of trying something else.

    Biden was trying new things. To some; that, not his age, was the reason he had to go and that he doomed his party. Too left. Too supportive of black people, trans people, immigrants. Not focused on the working class, union bona fides notwithstanding.

    Its that same axis of donors, media idiots, and consultants that we need to stop listening to. All of us, not just the pols.

  231. 231.

    Bupalos

    @Suzanne: I personally think the whole clusterfuck likely improved our results at the ballot box. I think it was a very long shot for us to win that election the entire time including before the debate, I think practically zero voters failed to show up because they were angry about the switch, and I think our incredibly bad results among the young would have been worse if “we’re kicking Biden out” hadn’t been so loud and splashy. I spend a fairly large amount of time among the yoots. Our Biden is generally not their Biden.

    I think a lot of the feeling that tactically we’re doing everything wrong, or having terrible luck, or the victim or internal traitors, or that we’re turning people off by not “fighting” or whatever… comes from the reality that we’re just in a fundamentally much worse place politically than we are ready to fully digest.

  232. 232.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Bupalos: To me it looked weak. Like they didn’t really stand for anything, like they wouldn’t stand by their decisions or their people. Those young folk were welcome to show up and vote for Phillips. He literally put “Biden too old” on the ballot.

    That whole affair is a big reason why just basic overall trust is gone from the party now. They may well have damaged themselves long term with that decision, way bigger than one election.

    ETA: And just FTR, your observation about the tactical effects can cut both ways. I don’t know a single person complaining about Biden’s age and wasn’t going to vote for him who turned around and voted for Harris.

    See also: plural of anecdote is not data.

  233. 233.

    Bupalos

    @The Audacity of Krope: That’s why I said “even” Biden. I agree Biden was making some potentially significant change, but politically speaking it was not seen as that because he was unable or unwilling to be loud about it. I mean 2024 loud. Confrontationally loud. Rhetorically loud. Biden had lost what limited rhetorical ability he had by 2020. He won as “not Trump” and despite some efforts like refusing to say his name, was never able to overcome being a “not” candidate in the public mind.

    I’m sure he thought visiting a picket line was a political earthquake. It wasn’t really noticed except by weirdos like us and Biden’s oligarchic enemies. Biden was a real genius at legislative maneuvering but that and $2.25 will get you a cup of coffee and somewhere between half and all of those achievements overturned before your hidebound bureaucracy can begin to implement them.

    When I say I think we need to say goodbye to all that, I mean we need to find a confrontational and essentially populist politics to go with the policy that can engage the electorate and media where it is: undereducated, stressed, stupid, frightened, way too online, and desperate for someone to try something-anything. The politics has to be LOUD and NOW because the policy takes a decade.

  234. 234.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Bupalos: I’ll put to you that conceding the electorate as undereducated and not resisting the forces determined to make it so is harmful for the truly undereducated and insulting to the sufficiently educated.

  235. 235.

    Suzanne

    @The Audacity of Krope: I agree with you, I think the entire episode was really harmful. Almost Shakespearean tragedy-level. My personal response has been to not get involved in any discussion that I think could further divide the incredibly fragile coalition we have. I’ll talk shit about Republicans all day long.

    And I agree with you about tactics cutting both ways. But, I have noted before…. there have been other times in the past that we have really harnessed those wild forces, when “the mood” has been in our favor. We would be lying to ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge that.

  236. 236.

    Bupalos

    @The Audacity of Krope:That whole affair is a big reason why just basic overall trust is gone from the party now.

    I strongly disagree with this. I’d say the Party has almost no trust and had none in 2016. “Party Trust” simply isn’t a thing and hasn’t been for some time.  Things like Bernie’s insurgency tend to be trailing rather than leading indicators.

    ETA: And just FTR, your observation about the tactical effects can cut both ways. I don’t know a single person complaining about Biden’s age and wasn’t going to vote for him who turned around and voted for Harris.

    See also: plural of anecdote is not data.

    I largely agree with this and initially had a paragraph about it that I deleted because I do think that there were young people that came out for us due to the switch and the publicity around it. I was spending lead-up weekends on local college campuses doing registration. It might not be “data” but it is some experience that lead me to such a conjecture. And I’d just caution folks that don’t have regular exposure to the yoots that they can be very surprising in the way they simply don’t have a lot of the assumptions and attitudes we take for granted.

  237. 237.

    dnfree

    @The Audacity of Krope: I don’t know how the November election would have turned out if Biden had stayed in after the debate.  But I DO know that when I voted in the primary, I voted for the ticket of Biden and Harris, knowing that if AFTER the election something happened to Biden, Harris would replace him.  Instead, something happened BEFORE the election (the debate), and with the time left there really wasn’t much else to do.  So I disagree that the results of the primary were somehow disregarded or overturned.  What would have happened if Biden had died at the same point in time?

  238. 238.

    dnfree

    @The Audacity of Krope: It’s my opinion that Biden didn’t make US look bad on TV.  He made HIMSELF look like someone with dementia on TV.  I had accepted the excuses of his lifelong stutter up to that point, but what I saw was beyond a stutter or an illness.  I’ve been accused by some here of buying into a media narrative, but I know what I saw in real time.

    Yes, sadly his performance fit in with an existing media and Republican narrative, so in a way that was unfair.  But it was his performance that seemed to confirm the narrative.  I don’t think there was any coming back at that point.  Hindsight is 20/20, but I think those around him were indulging in wishful thinking by encouraging or allowing him to run again.

  239. 239.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Bupalos: I mean my friend circle is entirely between the age of 25 and 35. Not large enough for what might call a representative sample, but I’m not wholly ignorant about things concerning young people.

    @dnfree: What “happened” to Biden was entirely a social phenomenon. It has no bearing on his ability to preside.

    Meanwhile the party is having regular internal discussions about who gets the bus next.

  240. 240.

    Bupalos

    @The Audacity of Krope: I don’t agree with this either or even understand what you mean by it. I’m not “conceding” anything or anyone. I pointing to a reality that people are changing and politics are changing and not for the better. The internet is measurably changing people’s brains. Primary and secondary educational experiences are getting worse and more unequal. I think we better get in front of the way politics is changing if we hope to fight this tide. We can not run a status quo ante politics either in style or substance. I think we’re still struggling with this reality.

  241. 241.

    dnfree

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t mind people having different opinions than I have about what happened to Biden and what the results would have been if he’d stayed in.  None of us knows.  I mind the talk of betrayal and the minimization of the debate performance.  I think most people involved, including Biden, were trying to do what was best, not to viciously throw Biden under the bus.

  242. 242.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Bupalos: You’re the one here saying you think the party should be bucking conventional thinking more often and more aggressively.

    To me, looking at something like the Biden panic and saying “that’s stupid and shallow” would be a step in that direction. What they did was appease the peddlers of conventional wisdom. And you’re pushing the conventional thinking on this issue.

  243. 243.

    Bupalos

    @The Audacity of Krope:@Bupalos: I mean my friend circle is entirely between the age of 25 and 35. Not large enough for what might call a representative sample, but I’m not wholly ignorant about things concerning young people.

    I don’t mean to imply you are. And there are different definitions of yoots of course. BIG difference between 30 and 20, the main one being that at 20 you really don’t politically remember a time before Trump. He’s much more ‘normal’ the younger you are.

    Another thing I’ve noticed being in and around education and coaching… The last 10-15 years has seen a kind of full-scale cave-in in teacher morale that I have a hard time putting into words. It used to be that talk about “getting out” was something that happened quietly, maybe even with some stigma of abandonment even with understanding. Now it’s more like a norm: “when I can get out…if only I could get out…” a whole table taking it for granted that everyone wants out. Less of a belief in calling. Anecdata, but from what I see in less-equal-than-other districts in this shitty school funding system, real social bills are about to come due.

  244. 244.

    Bupalos

    @The Audacity of Krope: I guess I wouldn’t frame it as “conventional.” I mean, it was totally unprecedented and a freak show and before it happened something everyone understood as basically impossible and political suicide.

    And I don’t think it was. Rules have changed, incumbency isn’t an advantage, and I think (and at least polling data backs this up) that the radical move very materially improved our chances and our results. And what you take as some version of business as usual (??? I find this surprising) I take as a really radical and democratically healthy step. I think Harris gained us back an outside chance of winning, which she then lost when she said she couldn’t think of anything she’d do differently than Biden.

    But it’s counterfactuals all the way down, so I think both opinions have legitimacy and I do consider that point of view. And again, I mostly just come down to believing were and are in much worse political shape than most of us Democrats believe.

  245. 245.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Bupalos: I am seeing a lot more reason than I’m used to seeing in this conversation, that’s true.

    Just to give you some sense of why I’m saying you’re being very conventional about this, understand that “Biden not too old” was never an acceptable opinion in the media during his Presidency. Or examine how everything Trump did last week got shunted to an afterthought because of the big breaking story of Jake Tapper’s new book.

  246. 246.

    Interesting Name Goes Here

    @Bupalos: No, because he’s a single-issue focused little twit who has delusions of being some grand savior while not realizing that he’s doing more to doom us all than help us.  Best thing Bernie Sanders could do for the rest of his days is to shut the hell up forever.  He helps no one.

  247. 247.

    Bupalos

    Just to give you some sense of why I’m saying you’re being very conventional about this, understand that “Biden not too old” was never an acceptable opinion in the media

    I can’t agree that it was unacceptable or unheard of for the media to run pieces on Biden not being too old to be effective, but I will agree that there was a social feeding frenzy around the issue that crossed traditional boundaries. It might be strange to hear this from me, but I don’t think as a political phenomenon this was all that different at its core from birtherism, Qannon, or J6 – it was connected to the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was being controlled by the shadowy forces of global elitism that we can’t see.

    That said, in its less irresponsible and racist form, it was partly about explaining why Biden didn’t materially improve American life for people. Maybe he was too old to be effective. (Nevermind that he was basically as effective as could be practically hoped for.)

    Both sides are paddling furiously against the tide of a reality which can’t be faced. That a president in the American system as it existed in 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, or 2024 simply couldn’t meaningfully help you or address the ways you feel your life is getting worse or falling apart. It’s all tinkering rather ineffectively around the edges while massive forces of change from technology to globalized capitalism to pandemic destabilize so many aspects of life. It has to be explained away by contingency that ranges from sane to insane. The presidency (our most authoritarian official) remains as a repository of hope for people in a system they can mostly no longer understand. A system that has lost trust and which has become, to use Charles Taylor’s phrase, “politically opaque.”

  248. 248.

    Bupalos

    @Interesting Name Goes Here: Well, I disagree with that. Other than him probably having delusions of grandeur like 99% of politicians do.

    I think there are good structural political reasons on the Democratic side why a politics centered on more radical economic equality than is on offer currently may be the only way out of the dead end we’ve walked up for this fragile and dwindling coalition. Shouty stuff about billionaires and 4 day workweeks and healthcare as a right are what I mean. I’m hoping people will take this approach better from AOC.

    But opinions on that will differ for sure.

  249. 249.

    bluefoot

    @UncleEbeneezer: well that’s very cool. Someone I know once said that being in a band can be like being in a bad relationship, so I’m pleased for you that you may have found a good one! Music is a good way to hold back the darkness too, which we need now more than ever.

  251. 251.

    Interesting Name Goes Here

    @Bupalos: Well, it’s nice that you disagree, but that doesn’t discount nor prevent him from perpetually poisoning the well for any Democratic candidate for reasons and allowing people like Donald Trump to take advantage.  He’s not done a goddamn thing compared to the people he’s demonized and turned his followers on.  As far as I’m concerned, he can take a long walk off of a short pier.  The damage Bernie has done and has helped to do will take generations to fix, if it can ever be fixed.  Of course, he won’t have to worry about any of that because he’ll probably be dead.

  252. 252.

    Ruckus

    @The Audacity of Krope:

    Get your priorities and subjective concepts of good and bad humans in order, sure he may not be the best human you’ve ever met, he is a hell of a lot closer to best than the worst human I’ve met, as in they don’t even seem like the same species of animal.

    We aren’t the same, we don’t always speak the same language, we get mad for different reasons, we have different priorities, some have high IQs and some barely register as having a measurable one at all. You have to pick people to do their jobs based upon their skills and work ethic, and both of his are more than acceptable.

    Is he the best possible choice? He was when he ran for office.

  253. 253.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Ruckus: I’m used to Democrats not sharing my economic priorities. I can live with that. Granted I feel like he would be a regression for the party at this point on that front.

    I can’t live with supporting someone who’s playing into the trans panic. He’s a hard no for me at any stage of the electoral process.

  254. 254.

    Ruckus

    @artem1s:

    There is a reason he is who and what he is. One of them is that it seems he doesn’t see the same world many of us see daily. Whatever that is that he does see or wants to see isn’t that far out of line – but it is out of line with many. And that is humanity. Ever met someone with so much money that they could spend your monthly salary every day and still be rich – and they often do. (and no shitforbrains isn’t one of them) I have when I worked in professional sports. Money gives people opportunities to do things most of us can never contemplate – good and bad. Politics is sometimes like that.

    I’ll ask a question. How many of us have contemplated running for office? I did – once. I seem to recall it was sitting in a bar with a couple friends, when I worked in professional sports. The thought passed rapidly. Working in public was more than enough, being responsible to a lot of people, some of whom DIDN’T want me in whatever job it was, is not my idea of a good job. But we need people with that same thought, that it would be good to help people, to work for them in an important way. Without that we don’t have a democracy.

  255. 255.

    Ruckus

    @The Audacity of Krope:

    It is a tight rope walk, that being a business owner type. I’ve owned 2, I know this first hand. You will never be in 100% agreement with all of your customers, nor they with you. You will have closer contact with them than many of your neighbors or people in most any big city if for no other reason than they pay you money for something or something you do. And many of those customers might not be customers if they knew you very well – or they might become better customers. You don’t know that when they walk in the door. And if you are smart you don’t involve them in deep conversation until you do, because otherwise you might lose a customer. Or even several.

    My point is that it is a big world. Your part as a business owner may be big or small but it’s still only a part. And most often you do not want to chase off customers. It’s most often not good business.

  257. 257.

    Ruckus

    As an old man, I can say that things are a lot different as an old than as an 18 year old. (who can now vote, a law that changed a bit after I turned 21….)

    My point is twofold. First look what we are doing here, communicating on a level that few did in person a lot of decades ago. We have a tool – the internet – that we really haven’t had for very long – in the overall scope of things. Second, we can see humans in a far different and brighter light than we were able to for most of the lives of really old farts. Many people when I was in early teens didn’t even have a phone, because it was a cost that many did not see the use for. Now we have what we are doing here. Most of us have never met and likely never will. And yet we can learn more about the very people that we will never talk to in person, if for no other reason than it’s a big world. I’ve been lucky to met and talk to people from many countries and in their countries, and people from all the states but one. We have a lot in common and in many ways not much at all. But that is humanity. I’ve driven in countries that drive on the wrong side of the road – OK the other side of the road and at first it seems all wrong because it’s not what we are used to. But the reality is that it isn’t a lot different, we just have to be AWARE – of whats going on and on how to react. But one thing that hasn’t changed is money – in having some – in having a lot more – and it having far, far more. When I started working the minimum wage was $1.25/hour. It has gone up just a tad since then. And what to buy with your money has gotten more expensive but also mostly significantly better. Money allowed more research into things like healthcare, really most any and everything.

  258. 258.

    Ruckus

    @The Audacity of Krope:

    We live in a big world of human beings. I’ve traveled a lot of it and seen that people are different in different countries or states. And yet, overall, we are humans. Now some segments of humans disrespected some that didn’t look like mirror images. Some still do. We were created in the same ways, sometimes the delivery was a bit different but we are all humans. Be we light white or darkest brown into almost black. All Humans. And a problem is that we sometimes act like humans and other times the answer is to at least act like humans. We all know when we are acting like or being assholes, it’s sometimes, some people do not accept that anyone that doesn’t look like them or honor them or bow down to them is their equal. And this is completely wrong.

    We are all human beings.

    We just do not always act like this is the reality.

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