Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

that said, i anticipate that he won't even come close to winning the nomination.

everyone has their lines that cannot be crossed. and this is mine.

Biden's a tool, but promoting Lieberman ahead of him seems so so wrong. He pushes all my buttons, maybe it's a style thing.

Is Frist's running mate Terry Schiavo, I heard he just pronounced her alive and well.

i'm tempted to answer milo by saying "not this time," but i know myself better than that -- still, if either biden or lieberman is the man on 11/2008 then i am going into the voting booth w/ a HAZMAT suit (if i bother to show up at all).

George H.W. Bush. Robert J. Dole.

and republicans have credit card bills, too.

both of them are way more beltway-insider names than they are "outsider-running-against-the-system" names

clinton won (first time) bcz of perot also

right, because he is the Senator from Delaware. when he is President, he won't be from Delaware anymore.

also, is there some way that this is equivalent to being especially bad & shameless wrt EVERY industry (tho the drug companies especially, in Frist's case)?

perot was the glitch - a third-party contender bcz he was RICHER THAN CROESUS he holed bush's vote then collapsed himself: that's a pretty rare circumstance; i don't believe clinton wd have smashed through bush's defences on his own

clinton second time was merely a successful amd popular incumbent, so not a glitch winner then, no

(i somewhat doubt he would, given what a fuck-awful show he put on)

the exit polls in 92 matched the results. and maybe Kerry did win.

"difft kind of battle in a very difft situation" is actually the general point i am makin: biden seems to me the poster-boy of "if things play out the way they did last time, it's OUR TURN"

Bush could be assassinated by then.

Did many know who the hell Clinton was outside Arkansas before the 1992 election?

Let Biden try. I'm voting for the best guy.. if McCain runs and wins the nomination for the Repubs and someone like Biden or Lieberman wins the Dem nomination, I'm considering McCain..(and i stress "considering")

IF that happens, so much for what a Dem or Repub means.

I did -- but that was because of his hilariously long and bad speech for Dukakis at the 1988 convention, when I cared about such things. ;-)

Larger point's taken, though. It's still 2005. Right now I'm waiting on the midterm elections and those are still a year and a half away anyway.

re biden and his "constituent services" (i.e., being citibank's and MBNA's bitch): it isn't as if the credit card companies have ever been hurting for cash. before the bill, they were very profitable and had the bill NOT passed they would have remained very profitable. (hint: their rationale for all of their outrageous fees and rates were to protect themselves should their cardholders go bankrupt -- well, now that THAT has been taken care of, let's see if those fees go away & the rates drop [fat chance].) this wasn't exactly like some senator fighting to stop the closure of a military base (the biggest and perhaps the only employer in his state).

my hot button issues are economic ones. if a democratic nominee votes for ANY of the following: (a) the bankruptcy bill; (b) the permanent repeal of the estate tax; (c) makes ANY sort of deal on privitizing social security; then they are O-U-T in my book. i'm sorry to get all naderite here on those issues, but they cut to the core of what the democrats are supposed to be about. if they vote wrong on ANY of those, then they are damaged goods and i honestly don't give a fuck what their stances are on other issues.

that said, it's still early and i doubt that biden's gonna get anywhere anyway. he's damaged goods.

anyhow i'll vote for biden if he gets the nod - i like him more than i ever liked gore - but i'm hardly crazy about him. i'm hardly crazy about anyone in the race as of yet (but i could be by winter 07)(and living in a redass county in a redass state part of me really can't wait to get a 'Hillary' bumpersticker), but i'm hardly snickering 'it's the same old, same old situation, same old ball and chain'. would i like whatever a 68 bobby kennedy looks like in 08? yeah. i'd like to wake up with a stack of hundreds on my pillow too. but just becuz i don't don't mean i don't get out of bed and get to work.

but biden is neither a moderate nor principled. he HAS undercut dean -- and durbin! -- for god only knows what purpose (i think that he's caught a bad case of lieberman-itis, but if his doing so is his way of "acting on principle" then it's REALLY god-help-us time). and sorry, but i think that folks are underestimating how biden's support of bankruptcy reform has made him poison in the primaries.

Yes, the guy's television performances are good and yes, he appears to be a credible realist on foreign policy in the Democratic Party. But the plagiarizing anvil is fatal, assuming that he can even get beyond the loony lefties who will never forgive him for sleeping with the enemy (Big Business.)

Oh, and he's a Senator, too. Save him for a Cabinent pick, Hillary.

Seriously, unless the candidate was exceptionally strong, I cannot see a north-eastern democrat (inc. states like Wis. and Minn. probably?) being elected, unless against a very weak or very extreme Republican...

Clearly they need to go for the person most likely to win, whilst hopefully getting some at least in tune with their 'values'.

Oh yeah, thanks for voting against capping credit card interest rates at 30%, Joe.

Isn't Edwards kinda short, though? I imagine that would be a problem in the eyes of a run-of-the-mill voter, if only on an atavistic level (which is a pretty important level), and no doubt it carries some weight in who the Dems decide to choose as their representative / scapegoat. Kerry looked more "presidential", in terms of the way he carried himself and the fact that he's "straight as a ramrod" or some crap. Of course, then he opened his yap and all that statuesque regalness went pfffffffft.

neil kinnock, rip

that said, i anticipate that he won't even come close to winning the nomination.

-- Eisbär (llamasfur), Sunday, June 19, 2005 3:51 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

well, my judgment isn't TOTAL shit at least.

mark s. schooling american political junkies on this thread

hey guys, it's OUR TURN now

we don't need no Joey Biden. tho we might still get him on a ticket.

Biden's "a noun a verb and 9/11" is still my favorite quip thus far.

there's gold in them hair plugs

did Joe Biden kill the Giuliani candidacy? :O

That's not a huge stretch, actually. Biden really put him on the defensive about what had been his biggest (ok, only) selling point.

Of course it was a weakness to be exploited as well. But Biden fucking nailed it, and I love him for that.

from the NYT profile of Credit Card Joe:

During and since his time leading the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Biden has been derided by some critics as the “Senator from MBNA,” or “(D-MBNA),” because of his close ties to the credit card behemoth that was based in Wilmington, Del., until it was bought three years ago by Bank of America.

Employees of MBNA Corporation had heavily contributed to Mr. Biden, pouring more than $214,000 into his campaign coffers going back to 1989, making the company his single biggest supporter, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Moreover, in 2003, after Mr. Biden’s son Hunter had graduated from law school, MBNA hired him as a management trainee and quickly promoted him to executive vice president. After Hunter Biden left the firm to become a partner at a Washington lobbying firm, the company paid him a $100,000 annual retainer to advise it on the Internet and privacy issues. Mr. Biden also paid Hunter’s law firm $143,000 for “legal services,” including nearly $60,000 in outstanding bills just last month.

In another MBNA connection that has raised questions, Mr. Biden sold his Delaware house for $1.2 million in the mid-1990s to John Cochran, a senior executive of the company who would become its chairman and chief executive.

Campaign consultants for Raymond J. Clatworthy, a Delaware businessman who ran twice against Mr. Biden, tried to make an issue of the sale in their race in 1996, suggesting a sweetheart deal, but Mr. Biden produced an appraisal of his home that matched the purchase price.

Mr. Biden became an early supporter of a controversial bankruptcy law that was championed by the company and other credit card issuers and finally passed in 2005, making it more difficult for consumers to erase their debts. Mr. Obama, who voted against the measure, recently skewered the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, for backing the bill, saying it allowed “banks and credit card companies to tilt the playing field in their favor, at the expense of hard-working Americans.”

A report last year by Credit Suisse, the investment bank, concluded the law had had a “profound impact” on the country’s subprime mortgage crisis, leading directly to a rise in foreclosures.

Mr. Obama has made the bankruptcy bill an issue on the campaign trail, announcing a plan in July to revise the law and give more protection to debtors. He has argued that his opposition to the legislation demonstrated his support for working families, while casting Mr. McCain, who voted for the measure, as being in the pocket of credit card and banking industry lobbyists.

in case anyone is curious about what would make vote 3d party -- or not at all -- for president, it is this.

when will tad check in on this one?

Eisbar otm, obv

http://blogs.timesunion.com/jericsmith/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/grinderman.jpg

Cockburn on Biden,

a man so ripely symbolic of everything that is unchanging and hopeless about our political system that a computer simulation of the corporate-political paradigm senator in Congress would turn out “Biden” in a nano-second.

The first duty of any senator from Delaware is to do the bidding of the banks and large corporations which use the tiny state as a drop box and legal sanctuary. Biden has never failed his masters in this primary task. Find any bill that sticks it to the ordinary folk on behalf of the Money Power and you’ll likely detect Biden’s hand at work. The bankruptcy act of 2005 was just one sample. ...

Another shining moment in Biden’s progress in the current presidential term was his conduct in the hearings on Judge Alito’s nomination to the US Supreme Court. From the opening moments of the Judiciary Committee's sessions in January, 2006, it became clear that Alito faced no serious opposition. On that first ludicrous morning Senator Pat Leahy sank his head into his hands, shaking it in unbelieving despair as Biden blathered out a self-serving and inane monologue lasting a full twenty minutes before he even asked Alito one question. In his allotted half hour Biden managed to pose only five questions, all of them ineptly phrased. He did pose two questions about Alito’s membership of a racist society at Princeton, but had already undercut them in his monologue by calling Alito "a man of integrity", not once but twice, and further trivialized the interrogation by reaching under the dais to pull out a Princeton cap and put it on.

In all, Biden rambled for 4,000 words, leaving Alito time only to put together less than 1,000. A Delaware newspaper made deadly fun of him for his awful performance, eliciting the revealing confession from Biden that "I made a mistake. I should have gone straight to my question. I was trying to put him at ease."...

His “experience” in foreign affairs consists in absolute fidelity to the conventions of cold war liberalism, the efficient elder brother of raffish “neo-conservatism”. Here again the ticket is well balanced, since Senator Obama has, within a very brief time-frame, exhibited great fidelity to the same creed....

Why did Obama chose Biden? One important constituency pressing for Biden was no doubt the Israel lobby inside the Democratic Party. Obama, no matter how fervent his proclamations of support for Israel, has always been viewed with some suspicion by the lobby. For half the lifespan of the state of Israel, Biden has proved himself its unswerving acolyte in the senate.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08232008.html

good ol' cockburn, still worrying about that "Israel lobby"

yes, they're mythical, right?

(or just wholly unrepresentative of the Israeli political spectrum)

wholly unrepresentative of american jews, who have also shown no real animus toward obama beyond pre-existing partisan identification, so i don't know where cockburn is coming from

Robert Dreyfuss (and Reidar Visser) The Nation:

On Iraq, Biden is worse than McCain

Perversely, by selecting Biden, Obama might in fact hasten the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, if only because Iraqis won't be able to stomach Vice President Biden pompously lecturing them on why Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds can't live together. ... Biden has quietly suppressed talk of his partition plan even on his own web site, in cleaning up his act in preparation for being named Obama's running mate.

Let Biden try. I'm voting for the best guy.. if McCain runs and wins the nomination for the Repubs and someone like Biden or Lieberman wins the Dem nomination, I'm considering McCain.

IF that happens, so much for what a Dem or Repub means.

-- donut e-goo (donut), Sunday, June 19, 2005 9:35 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

lot of stupid shit on this thread

morbz that article lost me two sentences in with

"Obama, whose mushy Iraq plan excites no one, is marrying his own's flawed ideas -- which mostly revolve around beefing up US forces in Afghanistan and unilaterally attacking Pakistan --"

the guy I saw saying those things sure looked and sounded like Obama.

i for one am excited to attack Pakistan unilaterally

"BRING'EM ON"

http://www.postwritersgroup.com/mugshots/krauthammerdesksmall.jpg

If I had a krauthammer...

I thought that was Tony Shalhoub at first.

im going to multilaterally attack pakistan

lot of stupid shit on this thread

care to elaborate

"BRING 'EM ON"

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/programGuide/program/Kevin340x255.jpg

White peeps w/curly brown hair all look like Kevin McDonald to me.

haha!

but whatever it's 3 o'clock in the morning and 91° here so my um "analytical skills" are sharply cut w.the perverse boredom of bein unable to get to sleep

-- mark s (mark s), Monday, 20 June 2005 01:11 (3 years ago) Link

it's 3am. do went want mark s taking the call?

well, it's a bit cooler tonight than it was then

Joe is good buds with the ex-senator who is most deserving of living out his dotage in prison:

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/politics/ny-usdama0828,0,1825927.story

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'look, here's what happened.'"

QUALIFIED

oh shit he goofed up some "well, duh" historical facts that's just as bad as CONFLATING THE SPANISH PRIME MINISTER WITH CENTRAL AMERICAN DICTATORS or NOT KNOWING WHAT THE BUSH DOCTRINE IS thanks for fighting the good fight

didn't he insult one of Obama's ads yesterday?

thanks for reading my mind, Dave, but you're slipping.

I'm much more offended by his cowardice and whoredom, of course.

we are lucky the mccain campaign is imploding now anyway, no-one cares about biden's foot-in-mouth problems.

"no one"

doc, what about the large chunks of the patriot act he wrote...in 1994!

Dr Morbius is offended

no-one who matters

you should def get a job w/ the DNC.

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z246/jt_ffroggy/biden.jpg

that picture's pretty cool but would be so much better if we could see Lugar and not Norm

Norm Coleman's head is about to collapse in that photo.

does that costume have a Bank of America mannequin fellating Joe?

Yes, it does. Your attention to detail is amazing.

I just finished Jane Mayer's The Selling of Clarence Thomas. I'm trying to forget Biden was a milquetoast as Senate Judiciary Committee chair.

part of his efforts at Obamalike above-partisanship, 16 years early. He's a visionary!

“It’s good to be back in Athens. Now you say ‘Back in Athens, Biden, when were you here?’ Well I went to the University of Delaware and we came out here to play Ohio University. Now that was 228 years ago and we did just fine, but the thing I loved about the university was that it was such a beautiful town and we all hung around out afterwards.”

“Now I made a little mistake here that day, I made a little mistake.”

“I wandered in, I met this lovely group of Ohio University…students,” Biden said winkingly to laughs from the crowd.

“And uh, without knowing it, I shouldn’t admit this on national television because it’ll reveal that I’m over 60, but I thought that we were gonna go get something to eat. What’s that street you have down there, all you guys? See, I…and so I just said to young, two young women I had met, said well why don’t you…we’ll be right back, I said well I’ll come with you, and they said OK, and I walked into their dormitory and was immediately accosted by a cop who arrested me because back in those days men were not allowed in women’s dormitories.”

“But I promise you I never breached the first floor and it was only a temporary detention. But that’s what I most remember about Athens. So folks, look, it’s good to be back here.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_lizza

what does "never breached the first floor" mean? is it a diaphragm thing?

He greeted the server. "I'm an ice cream guy. Is ice cream down that way? Could I get a sugar cone and chocolate chip?" He turned to a friend, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). "What you gonna have? It's on me -- I'm the last of the big spenders from up north. . . . I'm getting plain old chocolate chip. That's plenty, God love ya." He greeted a woman named Bonita. "Hey, Bonita, I'm Joe. Not the plumber, Joe the Biden." He greeted a man who said his name is Jeff. "Hey, Jim, where you from?"

I fukkin cannot wait for this man to take office.

(given, that was from a dana milbank piece on how he's not allowed to run his mouth on the campaign trail, or whatever. feed the foodless, no more black against old, young against poor, vote once, vote twice for obama/biden, you middle class honkies)

lol joe the biden

"Hey, Bonita, I'm Joe. Not the plumber, Joe the Biden."
so so awesome

hasn't McNasty been calling him Joe the Biden for 2 weeks now?

Biden uses "God love ya" whether he's ordering ice cream or apologizing to paraplegic legislators.

also, he's the #1 or 2 reason I can't vote for Bam

for whom are you finally voting?

ya got me. even the 3rd-party candidates suck this year. (altho voting for an actual Socialist would be a nice tribute to McCain/Palin)

the Daily Show will not be boring

the Daily Show will not be boring

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, October 29, 2008 8:28 AM (ten years ago)

sigh

a lot has changed in 10 years

just dropping in to say fuck this clown

but not Joe! xp

The @JoeBiden pizza at Gianni’s in Wilmington where the newest presidential candidate visited pic.twitter.com/0UqzgEikso

— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) April 25, 2019

gets my vote

xpost http://static1.squarespace.com/static/568c12c9c647ad1e518142b3/t/56b4f1f84d088eb6572105ec/1454699003865/ZOSO-LOGO---black.png?format=1500w

the adventures of joe lolo

rip big man, heaven needed a handsy corporate cardboard cutout who was close friends with one of 20th-century america’s premier white supremacists

I look forward to his reputation being dragged into the fucking sewer where it belongs. I hate this guy.

I know almost nothing about him aside from the fact that he was VP. Why is he so awful?

love g***neb stumping for joementum 08 in this thread

does that costume have a Bank of America mannequin fellating Joe?

― Dr Morbius, Tuesday, September 30, 2008 5:03 PM (

Biden voted for the Iraq war, authored litigation that made bankruptcy more punitive to debtors and beneficial for lenders (who as the senator from delaware are his primary backers), was pro mass incarceration in the 90s, was against busing in the 70s.

Basically if there was a choice between doing the right thing and being a status quo bootlicker, Joe picked being a bootlicker.

Ah, I see. Thanks!

and that's hardly comprehensive

also: hair plugs

also inappropriate touching at least, v possibly worse skeletons lurking nearby

basically he is the exact opposite direction the party is moving in

tbf biden would probably be better than james buchanan, thus far the only president born in pennsylvania

“Sloppy Joe” would have been a better nickname

about the strongest defense that can be mustered for biden, via TPM, is that he's old and most politicians fucked up left and right. but the conclusion is still negative: "It was a different time. But now we’re in this time."

On numerous fronts there are things about Biden, knocks against him that aren’t entirely fair or are things which are properly seen in the context of their times. But they are still things. Biden’s home state of Delaware is the home state of Big Credit Card. He was always close to that industry. He was a big promoter of the 2005-06 era bankruptcy bill. He carries this into an era in which Democratic politics are steeped in the politics of financialization, debt and inequality. It may not be an albatross. But it’s a decent sized bird.

He was also a big promoter of the Clinton crime bill. A lot of the activism against this bill I think takes it greatly out of context. The bill was coming just after the peak of the late 20th century crime wave which totally transformed American politics. Though we know now it had just crested, this was not at all clear at the time. Quite the contrary.

It was also to a great degree meant to counter throw-away-the-key crime politics being pushed by the GOP. If you were alive at the time you’ll remember that much of the 1994 campaign was run on the basis of GOP ads targeting programs like midnight basketball as risible liberal feel-goodism. Even a majority of the Congressional Black Caucus voted for it. It wasn’t responsible for most mass incarceration which was and is happening at the state level and it wasn’t all focused on incarceration. Far from it. Yet for all that, we’re living in an era when mass incarceration and police misconduct against minority communities and more are at the center of the political discussion and rightly so. You can say it was 25 years ago. But it as at best a complicated history to carry into a campaign in 2020. It was a different time. But that makes it complicated to run with a candidate from that different time.

And did I mention the Anita Hill hearings? The logistics of managing that dreadly hearing were a bit more complicated than it looks in retrospect but … well, that happened too.

Then there’s #MeToo. I’m a 50 year old man and my life experiences are not those that have the best insight into the storm around Biden. My general take is that he’s this glad handing, hugging kind of guy. I don’t think these incidents are sexual per se. I don’t think they’re harassment. You can see a lot of this in how he interacts with men. But whatever should have been the etiquette of physical contact and friendly intimacies thirty years ago, this isn’t how we do it today. You can say that he’s a guy in his late 70s who was just acculturated in a different way. But he’s running for President in 2020 today. Again, a lot of explaining, a lot of weight to carry into a campaign in 2020.

The joke about hugs at that union event a few weeks ago is another case in point in my mind. Many interpreted that as a not terribly subtle signaling, telling an older and generally male crowd, ‘Hey, you know you how it is. You know what I’m dealing with here …”

I don’t think it was contrived like that at all. I think it was purely off-the-cuff and straight up. Just his way of having some fun at his own expense with a moment of humor. But when I watched it in real time I was brought back to watching that press conference where Hillary Clinton explained, by implication and elliptically, that after determining which emails were personal and which work-related, she had the former emails destroyed. I remember watching that moment, closing my eyes and thinking, “Is this really where we’re going here? Really? Because I saw this movie when it was in the theaters the first time.”

Then there’s busing. Apparently Biden’s very early politics in the early 1970s was anti-busing. This was a very different time. There was lots of opposition to busing. That’s one reason it didn’t last very long. It wasn’t all racist. This is one of the problems with running for President in an era of boisterous and aggressive movements of social change when you’ve been in politics for literally 50 years. It was a different time. But now we’re in this time.

As you can see in each of these cases I find it a bit nettlesome and grating re-litigating these various episodes from years or even decades in the past. I’m not here to defend Biden. It’s not my job and I don’t think he needs defending. These are things that happened and all need to be seen as part of the eras in question. They are what you make of them. Context and completeness are important. But this is all really the point. Who wants to relitigate the last 50 years of the history of the Democratic party while you’re trying to run a campaign to oust the worst President in American history?

i should have just linked: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-perfect-candidate-whos-totally-ill-suited-to-the-times

and not saying i agree with that take, fwiw. but it probably resonates with a lot of older people who were also on the wrong side of history from 1970-present

Warren changed her politics, and her explanation is good enough. Yes I prefer consistency in an ideal world, but people change and it can be authentic

Biden has literally nothing, theres not even a pretence. How is he supposed to navigate a 2019/2020 primary when his only skill is being able to stand next to Obama

I'm more forgiving about the crime bill, i.e. It Was a Different Time, because I can remember little resistance, even from the black community.

That's all I'll concede.

Young Joe:

https://books.google.com/books?id=7FQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA47&dq=joe+biden&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK4KTD9evhAhVRRqwKHWbjBu8Q6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=joe%20biden&f=false

"My philosophy of government is to narrow responsibility so I know whom to crucify."

Alexandra Petri reminds us: You have to think about electability.

Let me begin by stating that I, personally, have no problems with any of the candidates. I am excited by all of them. So excited. Super excited and not even a tiny bit uncomfortable. Gosh, I would vote for these candidates as many times as I saw “Get Out,” as well as once for every mug or tote bag I own that says “The Future is Female” or “Love is Love” on it. (Imagine a lot of mugs and tote bags.) Were only that legal!

But you have to think about electability.

...

Look at the candidate and ask yourself this question. (You, of course, will vote for them, and so will I!) But would an average voter, whom I am picturing in suspenders, maybe, with a hat that makes a statement with which you and I might not wholeheartedly agree, and maybe even a T-shirt that says “FBI: Female Body Inspector” on it — is this average voter going to vote for them?

He might be economically anxious, this voter, if you know what I mean. Let’s just say that if this were a movie, Sam Rockwell would play him.

...

I am very excited about all the candidates. I am not talking about me! I just want you to think about the democratically engaged monstrous cretin given to making sexist remarks in business settings who has spilled some red sauce on his shirtfront and is not wiping it, this troll, this baby, this jerk of whom I completely disapprove, whose hateful ideas chip away at my spirit a little more each day I contemplate them!

We should let him decide who the nominee is, that is all I am saying.

Tbf Bernie also voted for that crime bill and is on the record saying he doesn’t regret it.

We have all voted for the Crime Bill in our hearts

poll

https://i.redd.it/zvxxkac94fu21.jpg

my favorite joe is the one that stands near obama and makes the funny jokes and obama's like "joe..."

*Obama grabs elbow*

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

just fyi

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/25/andrew-cuomo-plans-to-open-formidable-fundraising-network-to-joe-biden.html

Joe Biden is planning to roll out his campaign at an event filled with GOP donors and corporate lobbyists. https://t.co/7cKYcbfbpy

— The Intercept (@theintercept) April 25, 2019

how fast could i get banned from this website if i endorsed joe biden? i think it might be a good self-care move for me.

put forth a consistent, good-faith argument for handsy joe and I'm sure you'll see, bud

FP'd for your health, salud

the guy who eulogized Strom Thurmond is here to talk to us about countering right-wing extremists. very cool!!

thinkpiece about how Biden is Andrew Ridgeley to Obama's George Michael and this presidential campaign is his Son Of Albert

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/Andrew_Ridgeley_Son_of_Albert_album_art.JPG

prob just vote for someone else and focus energy on being positive about their characteristics idk anything else seems unconstructive and possibly contributory to toxic american political discourse idk

These ppl agree with you

“I’ve definitely had clients ask, where is Biden?” said Kim Monk, the managing director at Capital Alpha, which advises Wall Street investors from Washington, DC. “He’s basically an establishment candidate and would be much more in tune to building on what’s there as opposed to coming in and destroying what’s there and starting over.”

One analyst told investors amid a mild market freakout over single-payer the other day, as Axios reported: “How could the news get better? Biden wins the Democratic nomination without changing his current view against single payer.”

Industry lobbyists aren’t certain Biden will win. One Democratic health care lobbyist grimly predicted to me Sanders would take the Democratic nomination. A trade association leader brought up Biden’s two previous failed presidential bids. But they finally have a candidate in their corner with the profile to battle Sanders and single-payer.

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/26/18515699/joe-biden-2020-presidential-campaign-medicare-for-all

One Democratic health care lobbyist grimly predicted to me Sanders would take the Democratic nomination.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BLYU7HUCQAE5k8t.jpg

NY mag headline:

Biden Boasts Strong Support From Unions, Union Busters

Biden doing break after break on The View The Political View rn, an extended performance piece of Just Not Getting It

In his first sit-down interview of his presidential campaign, Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday repeatedly declined to directly apologize to Anita Hill for his handling of the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, instead delivering a broad statement of remorse for how she was treated during the combative questioning she faced from an all-male Senate committee that he led.

Appearing on ABC’s “The View,” which is heavily watched by women, Mr. Biden was asked by one of its hosts, Joy Behar, about his reluctance in recent months to offer a straightforward apology to Ms. Hill for his own judgment and leadership during the hearings. Ms. Behar suggested that Mr. Biden should say, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you, not for the way you were treated.”

“I’m sorry for the way she got treated,” Mr. Biden responded. “If you go back to what I said, and didn’t say, I don’t think I treated her badly.”

“Since I had publicly apologized for the way she was treated,” Mr. Biden said, “I didn’t want to, quote, invade her space,” by calling her privately.

still making dumb jokes to signal to non #metoo voters that he actually doesn't give a shit

go back to your different time, joe

https://www.theonion.com/tag/joseph-biden

lol at Dokken History month

a comment on LGM:

This is the reading that I have of one aspect of Biden's popularity. There were many times in the 2016 election that I thought that HRC was in many ways the perfect opponent for Trump to run against -- on so many levels, he could target her in ways that she couldn't respond effectively to. The most awful of these, naturally, was the way that she couldn't call him out for his loathsome behaviour towards women, because she's married to Bill Clinton. Anything she said there would have been greeted with howls of "Oh No she DIDN'T!" from the imbeciles who write for the public. This ate away at the heart of her campaign, which should have been a celebration of women and their increasing power in American politics.

I guarantee you Trump wants to run against a woman again, someone who he can tease and bully. I guarantee you that a lot of people understand that, maybe not intellectually, but emotionally; a lot of the trauma of the 2016 election isn't from Trump's victory, but from the slow-motion wave of bullshit that we could see engulfing Clinton, and understanding why she couldn't fight back against it. It is just a plain fucking fact (I think) that the psycho-sexual hangups of Americans give a man more space to return fire.

Now, I don't know how to deal with that; I don't consider it an argument for choosing Biden. But I do consider it an argument for laying off his voters.

There is a lot of truth to that

I don’t think employers should lay off their workers just because they support biden though. Too far

Also this:

a) There are a lot of Dem voters who are Democrats because they're good people, not because they have an ideology that brings them to the left beyond that. They believe in fairness and good government and that racism and sexism and discrimination of all types is wrong. But they also aren't really interested in socialism, think that a lot of our societal problems could be fixed if you just had people working in good faith to come up with some decent regulations or programs to "help people out". Those folks are all going to gravitate towards a Biden candidacy.

b) There are a lot of Dem voters who just want sanity to reign again. Things were more sane under Obama, Biden is a direct link to Obama, let's get Biden into office and we'll have sanity again. It's cargo-cult voting in many cases - they don't think about the wider implications of their vote, they just know last time they voted in a particular way that worked and they want to replicate that feeling.

c) There are a lot of Dem voters who have decided post 2016 that the country isn't ready for anything other than an old white guy yet. Obama moved the ball down the field but then we got Trump so it's time to fall back and elect an old white guy to office so we can regroup. Sanders is too far left for those types of voters, but Biden is kind of perfect. If they think that the problem is that voters in midwestern states are spooked by too much progressivism, then Biden should be able to calm them down because he's not very progressive. A perfect fit!

(My irritation with these groups feels like it should have a name. IMO the first two groups don't think deeply enough about politics, and the last group thinks too deeply and thinks their feelings and intuition about the process are actual facts rather than feelings and intuition.)

These comments don't represent my own views; however, last night at my watering hole I got into an argument with a truculent gay Jewban who has no patience for "fucking social justice warriors" and was relieved that "Joe" had entered the race. His best friend, who flirted with me and got my FB name as a consolation, stopped me from wringing the dude's neck, especially after I said, "If you direct your energy toward reforming your boring attitudes instead of complaining about millennials we'd get somewhere."

why were you hanging out with Bret Easton Ellis?

Whats LGM?

I think we should lay off the voters for all of the candidates!

I still think Bidens 'popularity' is residual and overstated, and nowhere near equipped to survive the primaries. Biden can only win with media/establishment support and it doesn't seem like he's their choice

Sanders isn't Bidens problem, Kamala, Pete, Beto and the rest are

He’s popular because people want Obama back and an end to the nationalist trauma. Answer b in alfred’s quoted thing

Lawyers, Guns & Money -- Scott Lemieux's blog.

no one is casting votes for like eight months. there's plenty of time to go over everyone with extreme prejudice. THEN we can worry about the voters.

NY mag headline:

Biden Boasts Strong Support From Unions, Union Busters

lollll this is so perfect

news from the field: my uncle (a white octogenarian in vegas who was a big bernie supporter in 2016) posted an article critical of biden and a lot of older honkies are saying biden is the best choice to beat trump. best comment: biden can unite the dems by selecting a millennial VP.

in other news, when will these cantankerous old fucks die???????????????

NEW: Joe Biden didn't support net neutrality when he was a senator. Now, his first act as a declared candidate for president is going to be attending a fundraiser held by Comcast's top lobbyist. https://t.co/EME4dCSofT

— Sludge (@Sludge) April 23, 2019

uh, he kind of... sucks?

I was on the fence, but this thread has convinced me: Joe Biden is one of the less good candidates!

there may be two or three better ones even!

Biden is not my favorite of the Dem candidates but the idea I have seen floated by people i see on FB -- that a Biden administration would be "essentially the same" as a second Trump term -- is poisonously, depressingly, offensively absurd

True; Biden would get far fewer judges confirmed.

I know you're joking, but even that would make a massive difference :)

Biden is a guy who almost literally has done nothing as an adult but hold elective office. What’s impressive about him is that he was great at holding a Senate seat in a tiny state — he got a total of 116,000 votes when he won his first Senate term — and at playing the role of Ed McMahon to Obama’s Johnny Carson for eight years. Absent his popular role as Obama’s goofy sidekick during the Before Time, his 2020 candidacy would be completely preposterous on its face.

There are certainly things to admire about Biden, starting with how he got himself elected to the U.S. Senate despite having done basically nothing impressive in his life to that point. Of course this also makes Biden a kind of poster boy for a certain type of white privilege of an extreme sort: you pretty much have to be an egomaniacal white guy to think, at age 29, with a track record consisting of not much more than gentleman’s Cs at obscure universities, that what the US Senate needs at this moment is me.

And it’s admirable that Biden was able to overcome a horrible personal tragedy immediately after winning that election (his wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in a car crash in December of 1972).

He also seems to have spent his whole pre-2017 career not cashing in on his political fame, which is an increasingly rare virtue in our political class (He does seem to have given a number of six-figure fee speeches since then though).

If he gets the nomination, I will of course support his candidacy with unambiguous enthusiasm (Again, Donald Trump is president of the United States). But the fact that he’s the frontrunner in the polls for the nomination at this point is hopefully just an artifact of our very strange moment in American politics.

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/04/joe-biden

1) Watching you go down in flames
2) Seeing you leave public life
3) Having crows rip out your hair plugs pic.twitter.com/UMA8UGC0y9

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) April 28, 2019

it's weird that the person next to joe is encouraging everyone to take the survey at the same time that joe is speaking

fuckin’ speech bubbles, how do they work

I dread the prospect of Joe Biden winning the nom and hope he gets clobbered

all the ad hominem bile though, who has enough left over to spend on this guy?

kids are in cages ffs

I dread the prospect of Joe Biden winning the nom and hope he gets clobbered

You hope he gets clobbered now, not if he gets the nomination, I trust. At that point I'd vote for a rotten egg in shit if it means getting rid of Trump.

yeah that's my point

luckily he has a lot of time to get clobbered and many angles to get clobbered from

less luckily he is going to outraise everyone else two to one (at minimum)

anyway he's a Joe Biden—not a Joe Lieberman, not a Joe Manchin

At that point I'd vote for a rotten egg in shit

habit left over from 2016

I'm With Egg in Shit

habit left over from 2016

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius),

in Swingin' Florida the menu options are limited.

less luckily he is going to outraise everyone else two to one (at minimum)

Don't actually think this is true. The big donors will give him a certain amount of money, but I think a surprising number of them will lean toward Harris.

Nobody wants to be seen enthusiastically backing a two-time loser.

i really can't see Biden beating Trump. Doesn't everyone accept that one of the reasons Hilary lost was that she didn't energize minority voters in places where it mattered? How the fuck is Biden going to do that? Does the guy have a lot of black support that I don't understand (maybe he does with older, POC union members, dunno)?

like, if the Dems are going to try to throw the dice on winning with the aging white midwest voter...I don't think that's a safe gamble, because lots of those people are going to be dead by 2020.

xp
I think Harris would be the ideal VP pick if he does get it, for that reason. Not sure if it would be smart or dumb for her to accept.

The big donors will give him a certain amount of money, but I think a surprising number of them will lean toward Harris.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson),

I'm not sure I'd go as far as 'surprising' but agree with this. Harris is safer bet than Biden for stopping Bernie. Depends what Mayor Pete does too, he's already knocked Beto Biden Jr out of the way

I can see Biden beating Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three states that cost Hillary the election. That, combined with Trump's unprecedented unpopularity (there's a new poll showing that 55% of overall voters - and 62% percent of women - say they will definitely not vote for him in 2020), is an argument for him. I still don't want him to be the candidate, because he's a blockhead with shitty positions. But he...could...win.

Any Dem could win if white people would get their shit together.

Pittsburgh: "Middle class is not a number, it's a values set!"

O RLY

I can see Biden beating Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three states that cost Hillary the election. That, combined with Trump's unprecedented unpopularity (there's a new poll showing that 55% of overall voters - and 62% percent of women - say they will definitely not vote for him in 2020), is an argument for him. I still don't want him to be the candidate, because he's a blockhead with shitty positions. But he...could...win.

Agree with all this, but the bigger donors are more bothered about stopping Bernie (and maybe Warren if it came to it) than Trump, which is why I think you're right in saying Kamala will be ultimately be the beneficiary of that, not Biden

no one knows who can beat who where. it's all just random.

time is a flat circle

I turn on MSNBC before switching to Netflix and, sweet baby Jesus, Nicole Wallace and her chant of the ever-circling skeletal family devoted all of four minutes to praising Elizabeth Warren for not just knowing more policy than any candidate but being "electric" in a room.

wait, why is trump's severe unpopularity an argument for biden specifically?

he could make inroads in wisconsin or something bc he is folksy

it's just random guessing

not sure its an argument for him maybe just against being yknow *too* cunty about him on the offchance youll be voting for him in a few months

I can see Biden beating Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three states that cost Hillary the election. That, combined with Trump's unprecedented unpopularity (there's a new poll showing that 55% of overall voters - and 62% percent of women - say they will definitely not vote for him in 2020), is an argument for him. I still don't want him to be the candidate, because he's a blockhead with shitty positions. But he...could...win.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Monday, April 29, 2019 3:59 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol. deems got dazzed

im not agreeing with that!

so biden's emotional openness--how he is very into being vulnerable in public, speaking about his personal tragedies, etc--seems phony and unctuous to a lot of people but i think he's betting it's the thing that will set him apart, especially in comparison to trump.

not sure its an argument for him maybe just against being yknow *too* cunty about him on the offchance youll be voting for him in a few months

eight months and up! now is absolutely the time to be cunty! he literally just announced!

i think that's a bigger part of his brand than appealing to midwesterners or being anti-pc or whatever this time around. in a frightening era of ideology he is just a guy and seemingly a pretty nice one. also, refreshingly not that smart.

I think Trϵϵship is otm

His speech this afternoon for those fire fighters wasn't a strong moment -- he sounded querulous, his voice almost cottoned in that manner familiar to anyone who's dealt with a senior. My mom, who turned seventy last September, is starting to suffer from minor memory lapses. This man is almost eighty.

i think his botox and fillers and stuff looks pretty good though, honestly. not too obvious.

the most stirring endorsement he is likely to receive on ILX

biden's emotional openness
also, refreshingly not that smart

good luck usa etc

i am not at all against minor cosmetic procedures to be clear -- wasn't a diss. if i look like that when i'm 77 i'll be happy.

to be extra clear though, he would be a disaster, as would any candidate that isn't bernie or warren. we need someone who thinks structurally.

seeing him speak I agree with Alfred, I'm scared of him being the candidate

honestly I do feel somewhat the same way about Bernie too for that matter, although he seems like he has more on the ball

I really don't want to see someone that old in office

i admit it's kind of weird that we have these candidates who are like at the upper end of the human life expectancy

bernie is an idea as much as he is a candidate though. a bernie victory (and also a warren victory) would just mean something very powerful because they've been so uncompromising. a buttigieg or a kamala, even with a super-bernie platform, just wouldn't mean the same thing

I have no fucking idea what Harris, Buttigieg or Beto would do in office and neither does anyone else (aside from "mainstream" corp satisfaction). It's their brand. lol platforms

I solemnly pledge to use my privilege to be cunty about Biden for at LEAST eight months

the geriatric fuckstick

a buttigieg or a kamala, even with a super-bernie platform, just wouldn't mean the same thing

The main problem with these guys is, anything they pay lip service to from a bernie-style platform or agenda, its not credible. The 'pivot for general' is part of the deal

One positive about Biden running is it kind of blocks Howard Schultz for a while. Not that I think he'll make a difference, but the longer he or any other balloon is blocked the better

also, refreshingly not that smart.

are you uh aware that the current president of the united states of america literally has brain worms

no no you dont understand the good is actually a deadly enemy of the perfect in this tweet i shall

Really hope it's not going to be Biden, but worth pointing out that even if he wins, he is running on a public option, and that's honestly a big win for the left.

pivot to general

Obama supported single payer at one time. A politician supporting a single position whilst running for office is not in itself anything to feel good about

was gonna say

Sure, but a politician supporting a single position he can never get passed into law anyway isn't necessarily something to feel good about either.

Take the win now and then, is what I'm saying

Civilty Czar Alyssa Milano says its a mistake to focus on policies, and whats most important are values and being a good role model. Need to stop attacking the candidates and get behind Biden

Pretty surprised as I'd have thought Mayor Pete would fit that better, but presumably she'll shift to him later on. Some of these candidates are fairly interchangeable and this is Bidens turn in spotlight, not sure who is next

I think it's Biden from here on out

Take the win now and then, is what I'm saying

a win which simply upholds the status quo is a loss

after Trump, what status quo?

Biden supporting a public option is not the status quo

"a buttigieg or a kamala, even with a super-bernie platform, just wouldn't mean the same thing"

it wouldn't mean the same thing but it a Buttigieg win would mean something. I know he's centrist by today's standards based on the policies he's articulated. That said, I think it would be incredibly meaningful to gay youth of the US to have a gay man in office. It would be as important a win as Obama was for the african american community.

i don't give a fuck about Imperial Mgr being a role model

they'll stil lall drown in 50 years

lol I saw that Alyssa Milano stuff retweeted, what a load of shit

That said, I think it would be incredibly meaningful to gay youth of the US to have a gay man in office.

a gay man in office who wasn't a former mckinsey ghoul who signed up for military service in the year of our lord two thousand and nine would be preferable

Yeah, and a socialist who isn't a massive pain in the ass narcissist would be nice as well, but you take what you can

narcissist = every motherfucker who ran for prez ever

As I said: You take what you can get

So wasn’t the handsy stuff and the Anita Hill stuff supposed to deep six Biden? Still waiting for that.

Glad you're excited Fred xp

NORMAL PEOPLE ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION TIL AFTER CHRISTMAS

x-post: I'm really not...

BECAUSE THEY WOULD KILL THEMSELVES RATHER THAN DEAL WITH THIS SEWAGE FOR 18 MONTHS

(that was for Instant Gratification Keyes)

Ok but pols typically suffer damage when the media is reporting on their negative shit, not 8 months later

Fred I think that "x-post:" was unnecessary

time for my refrain of every four years:

all these people are in my area constantly, please use your freedom to ignore the primary race if you can

Biden's going to be a few miles away from me this evening, looks like

Morbius otm

So wasn’t the handsy stuff and the Anita Hill stuff supposed to deep six Biden? Still waiting for that.

― We were never Breeting Borting (President Keyes),

I don't think any of the major candidates are going to torpedoed this early in the game. Biden has major backing, he isn't going to fall at the first hurdle. We're in that period of cycling through the establishment candidates and see what sticks, He's off to a good start but they're all getting a soft soap start. Still think Kamala is the main danger,

I mean none of them are even really running "against" each other yet, which I think could shake a lot of this out for better or worse.

Joe Biden Wednesday bragged about time he spent in the "hood," a place where he said he found "women of color" he helped train to do computer coding.

Speaking at a rally, the former vice president elaborated on how U.S. workers need to receive better education to prepare themselves for a changing economy, and used a visit to Detroit, Mich., to describe how businesses went to local organizations that help train minorities various coding and technical abilities.

“Through a program we had through community colleges, we can teach people how to code," Biden said. "We went out, literally into the hood, and they found, turns out, 54 (people), they happened to be all women, the vast majority were women of color, no more than a high school degree, aged 25-54, and a third of them only had GEDs.”

The use of “hood” drew nervous laughter from some Democrats in the audience. One person let out a “yikes,” but later cheered for Biden at the end of his anecdote.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-brags-about-his-time-in-the-hood

"When asked whether Mr. Biden would pay a political price for his grilling of Anita F. Hill during the 1991 confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas, Ms. Pelosi shook her head in the negative and waved a hand dismissively."

— Tim Barker (@_TimBarker) May 4, 2019

Pelosi also said it is best to pursue a centrist path, otherwise Trump may possibly dispute the results

"These results are indisputable, since the opposing party is so darn centrist" is what he will plausibly say

Pelosi also said it is best to pursue a centrist path, otherwise Trump may possibly dispute the results

― anvil,

To be fair, she said center-left in the story, the headline says "center." Thrush has carried water, wittingly or not, for the GOP in the past.

Worth reading:

If Pelosi makes an argument that the Democrats need to become more centrist, such that they need to start adopting policies that are closer to GOP policies, I will be the first to call her out. But that's not the argument she's making.

— Mangy Jay (@magi_jay) May 5, 2019

I was in a funk most of yesterday afternoon after reading the story until I realized it was 92 degrees and the pool looked awesome.

I'm just glad she found the magic ticket that will prevent Trump from contesting the 2020 result

more seriously, I take the use of terms 'center' and 'centre-left' with a pinch of salt, given that terms are used not necessarily honestly (who was it that recently from the right of the party that said they were the real progressive? maybe it was Pelosi?)

But even outside of that, things have changed so much that there are new centers. I may be wrong but don't a majority of Republican voters now support M4A? does this kind of make Bernie a de facto centrist? I think it sorta does! raising taxes on corporations, legalization, wars - not unpopular with Republican voters. Not a traditionalist centrism, but one that reflects todays realities and, for me, makes Bernie the safest choice to beat Trump

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5zwGVuW0AAnFvL.jpg:large

^ i am curious about what the x axis on this graph is supposed to represent exactly. is america really more conservative than it was in 19fucking60?

Bernie has always been centrist, American news media is just fucked in the brain

i like when they call him "ultra-liberal", like he's a seasteader

I'm just glad she found the magic ticket that will prevent Trump from contesting the 2020 result

yeah, really.

^ i am curious about what the x axis on this graph is supposed to represent exactly. is america really more conservative than it was in 19fucking60?

― :∵·∴·∵: (crüt), Sunday, May 5, 2019 5:51 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, but republicans are. the x-axis represents how partisan the votes are of each member of congress. centrists will no doubt point to this as a problem, but it's kind of a regression to the mean historically.

what's interesting about that graph is that the median democrat hasn't really shifted much, although the right tail has obv crept left, while reps have uniformly shifted right.

It's also April 2019 when most primary voters don't give a shit.

when biden becomes president and just does whatever his friends the republicans tell him to, it'd be funny for them to eliminate the wilmington amtrak station as part of their first round of austerity.

When I was at The Onion, it seemed like harmless fun to make Joe Biden a slightly gross and comical uncle, but now I see that’s been sort of weaponized and I regret my complicity.

— Joe Garden (@joegarden) May 6, 2019

aiming SCUD at him for using "weaponized"

"Sleepy Joe" Garden

I bet Trump really regrets wasting "Sloppy" on Bannon

Oh oh I see [insert all the cuss words] https://t.co/PyKzqIrJhE

— The Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) May 7, 2019

there was a radio interview with Jill Biden regarding her book this week and I quickly switched it off when they asked her about that

the literal last person who should opine on the topic

“You can fuckin kiss me anytime,” a woman in the crowd yells st Biden. “That’s very nice, thank you ... wow,” he says. pic.twitter.com/Gi6gGRSlbU

— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) May 7, 2019

that's very nice, thank you

...

wow

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzGOAnhWgAAGhzV.jpg

one of the most cursed images in recent memory

same energy for sure

Nice how this time there are like four Deans, all of whom are better than Dean actually was, on the way to our somehow much worse Kerry. https://t.co/jU9xgMFEV2

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) May 14, 2019

He’s dominating in the polls, his fundraising is going gangbusters and he’s showing broad support from key political players in the early presidential states.

So where are the big energetic crowds, the lines around the block to get into Joe Biden’s events?

The question is no small matter in a party still recovering from a bitter 2016 defeat — a loss marked by a lack of enthusiasm for an establishment nominee in several critical states.

Attendance at the former vice president’s launch rally paled next to some of his rivals. In his first Iowa visit, he didn’t match the crowds that greeted Elizabeth Warren or even the less well-known Pete Buttigieg in their initial visits. So far, he’s kept his events to smaller venues where there’s little danger of empty seats.

In the eyes of Biden’s progressive critics — as well as President Donald Trump, who has publicly mocked him for it — the seeming lack of excitement or teeming masses at his events is a leading indicator of a lack of passion for his candidacy.

“I started to think the polls were wrong about Biden because it’s not what we’re seeing on the ground,” said Aimee Allison, founder and president of She the People, a national network devoted to promoting women of color.

“Inspiration is the X-factor and we’re waiting for the inspiration from Biden,” she said. “When the inspiration isn’t there, the turnout from the core of the Democratic base — women of color — isn’t there. And then we lose.”

To Biden’s campaign, attendance figures are a meaningless metric. Focusing on crowd size is Trump’s game, they say, an emphasis on style over substance that attempts to turn audience engagement into an argument about the 76-year-old Biden’s energy level.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/28/biden-energy-crisis-1345359

To Biden’s campaign, attendance figures are a meaningless metric. Focusing on crowd size is Trump’s game, they say, an emphasis on style over substance that attempts to turn audience engagement into an argument about the 76-year-old Biden’s energy level.

if this is true, hahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaaahaha

It's worrying, but I wonder if anyone thinking the main point is enthusiasm among women of color is actually checking how many women of color there are in the crowds for the other candidates...

jfc

In a somewhat odd moment at tonight's AFT town hall, Biden tells a 10-year-old girl, “I’ll bet you’re as bright as you are good-looking." He takes her over to the assembled reporters, then stands behind her and puts his hands on her shoulders while he's talking.

— Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) May 28, 2019

You know what they say, Biden could feel up a tween in the middle of Fifth Avenue and the Dem electorate would still say he’s the most electable candidate in the party.

joe biden gets the important support of bret stephens

What really changed after 1994 was that we hired more cops, incarcerated more offenders, and, most importantly, policed our streets a lot better. That year’s crime bill wasn’t the only reason those changes took place, or perhaps even the main one. What it did do, however, was move the country, with fractious but bipartisan support, in the right direction: of more policing and tougher enforcement and a powerful refusal to continue defining criminal deviancy down in the face of those who said we just had to take it. It was an act of moral clarity married to political possibility, which is what statesmanship is all about.

The result is a vastly safer country. That Biden played a major role in it is something for him to trumpet, not apologize for.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/opinion/joe-biden-crime-bill.html

we hired more cops, incarcerated more offenders, and, most importantly, policed our streets a lot better

truly do not understand ppl who would see this as a positive turn of events

I mean I know where they're coming from but I despair of any chance to get through to them WHY mass incarceration is a bug and not a feature. It 100% hits all their social priorities and reinforces their position exactly where they want it.

Attendant bitterness brought to you by the number of Blue Lives Matter/pro-NYPD bumper stickers and flags I see every fuckin day while stuck in traffic.

until the police treat people like bret stephens like they treat people of color, they'll never get it

The result is a vastly safer country.

Not for unarmed, innocent black men.

i could at least have a modicum of sympathy for someone who felt this way who did grow up/live in a high-crime area, but Bret Stephens is a straight up soft-ass boarding school fuckboy.

Not for unarmed, innocent black men.

fear not, bret stephens has thought about this and has a response:

Side effects? There have been a few. There may be a case that long prison terms cripple the lives and prospects of offenders, with disproportionate consequences for racial minorities. But locking up violent offenders (whose victims are also, disproportionately, racial minorities) creates a far greater margin of safety for those who don’t disobey the law.

There are also plenty of stories of aggressive, abusive and sometimes trigger-happy policing. But there’s also mounting evidence that under-policing hits minority communities much harder than over-policing. Just look at Baltimore, city of discouraged cops, terrified residents — and a record-high homicide rate.

Reminds me of a pharmaceutical ad where all the images are of laughing, happy people while the announcer rapidly monotones the dozen awful side effects.

crime rates have dropped in all developed nations over the last 30 years regardless of whether or not their criminal justice systems became more or less draconian.

otm

But locking up violent offenders (whose victims are also, disproportionately, racial minorities)

fuck this bullshit black on black crime myth

I think my fav Biden thing at the moment is when his supporters say "oh well those things he voted for in the past were a long time ago, and people evolve over time"

and the Biden says,"i dont give a fuuuck bitch, regret nothing"

Got an NRATV ad (starring a 20-something black man) on Twitter today criticizing Biden for being bros with Jesse Helms.

Biden reminds me of my ninth grade algebra teacher, who'd massage your shoulders as "encouragement." I think my teacher eventually hanged himself in his garage, which is more honorable than running for President. pic.twitter.com/GCCKfIFCcl

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) June 1, 2019

??????? https://t.co/iC2Iqf118P pic.twitter.com/rd3nXE0bWj

— Rachel Cohen (@rmc031) June 3, 2019

holy shit what an asshole

He marched with freedom, which is also on the march

the nyt article doesn't mention him except when generically listing other candidates, but hard to shake the sense that the line biden's "testing" there is an attempted blow at jesse jackson, whose platform that year was

creating a Works Progress Administration-style program to rebuild America's infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans

reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and demand"

reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs

cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration

declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation

instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union

giving reparations to descendants of black slaves

supporting family farmers by reviving many of Roosevelt's New Deal–era farm programs

creating a single-payer system of universal health care

ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment

increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all

applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and

supporting the formation of a Palestinian state

all stuff w nothing to do w the civil rights movement of course, which was about changing attitudes, which we changed

https://youtu.be/56nHBah7mdE

whatever

attitude is the most important civil right of all

as any biden voter will tell you it's a tragedy that even this far on from the civil rights movement many black americans have not yet secured good ones

Are his poll numbers beginning to drop yet? Seeing contradictory takes on this!

he did have a bump when he announced and then they kinda regressed.

He’s still at around 35% in polls this week

His poll numbers have been dropping a bit, but they're still up from when he announced, and he's still far, far ahead.

to put this in some perspective, HRC was about 50 points ahead of sanders at this time four years ago: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_democratic_presidential_nomination-3824.html

I don't think Biden is going to be the nominee

4 years ago Bernie's campaign was 7 days old and there hadn't been a single debate

now everyone knows Bernie and he's 19 points behind Biden

biden's lead is not that big for this early and his support is really soft.

if this was another two-person race sanders wouldnt be that far behind (and might be ahead depending on how you see the distribution of non-biden support)

I'm still hoping for Biden to fall apart, but I don't think it's going to be Bernie who takes the prize

i dont either, warren gang warren gang warren gang warren gang

bring on the dancing DNA tests

I don't think I know a single person I know in Iowa who has attended past caucuses regularly who has been polled, if anecdotal evidence means anything

After getting a chair for a woman sitting on the floor, @JoeBiden brings the house down by saying “I want the press to know — she pulled me close!” #FITN #nhpolitics pic.twitter.com/UL8CMg4tpQ

— Adam Sexton (@AdamSextonWMUR) June 4, 2019

he's gonna do these bits all the way

Iirc, according to 538, Biden's lead is about where a frontrunner usually is, and a frontrunner with this kind of support get's the nomination about 50% of the time. Sanders is doing pretty badly for someone with close to 100% recognition.

if we're thinking of the same article, the analysis was very iffy imho because all their comparisons were to democratic primaries with like 2-3 contenders. not exactly apples-to-apples. so it might be best to recheck the percentages once the field has thinned out a bit.

Um, no, that's not how most Dem primaries have been? That's not how I recall it at all?

If I'm looking at the same 538 piece they use Mondale and Romney as best case for Biden, and Hillary '08 and Muskie as worst case.

As m bison says, Biden's support is certainly soft, and Its difficult to see his lead lasting past the summer , but its also difficult right now to see if there will be any particular beneficiary

this is the article i'm thinking of: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-can-win-but-he-isnt-polling-like-a-favorite/amp/

... which admits that there are 19 candidates now but never attempts to address that in the analysis. their data does included crowded republican primaries like 2016 (i'd misremembered it as all dems) but still most of the contests are not comparable to the size of this field. and they later concede that they're including people who weren't even officially running, like ford in 1980. this isn't to say that bernie is going to be a dark horse champion but just that we really have no idea where all the voters currently backing 1%, 2%, 3%, and 4% candidates might end up. maybe sanders is their second choice, maybe it's warren, maybe it's harris, maybe it's biden, maybe it's spread so evenly that it doesn't really change much.

has anyone done a study to figure out which people are more likely to answer the phone when it's an unknown number, especially in the last couple years after the number of marketing/spam phone calls have skyrocketed?

I'm not saying all those people are Biden supporters, but polling organizations don't leave voicemail

There's been polls on who the voters prefer as their second choice, iirc, and Biden wins those as well. Sanders voters, especially, like Biden. And vice versa, Biden voters like Sanders.

The time to panic is now, honestly.

we're still eight months out. hold your horses

Anyone should just do what they think. Just don't wait until there's nothing to do but shout 'RIGGED' at the DNC. Again.

I'll be curious to see how aggressive other candidates will be willing to get towards him in the debates. Lord knows there's no shortage of material.

one thing he doesn't have is some golden aura where people would fear criticizing him. warren has already started that. i don't think it'll be a trump situation where the other contenders are too afraid of alienating his voters to say anything. (there may be some, particularly among the lowest tier, who are angling to be his VP pick of course.)

have a bad feeling that biden winning the primary will be the last hoorah of boomers fucking up the country bc his core constituency is 70 year olds

I'll be curious to see how aggressive other candidates will be willing to get towards him in the debates. Lord knows there's no shortage of material.

I don't see why they wouldn't be - situation doesn't seem analogous to Trump 16 at all. Don't see him lasting the debates, and there's potential big wins for whoever lands the first blows on him (especially as there's plenty of low hanging fruit to go for)

has anyone done a study to figure out which people are more likely to answer the phone when it's an unknown number, especially in the last couple years after the number of marketing/spam phone calls have skyrocketed?

Short answer: yes, lots of ppl. Polling organizations weight for that kind of stuff. I dont know the math details of exactly how it works under the hood, but pro polling orgs have an awareness of the differences between the demographics of who answers a telephone call in 2019 and whatever demo they're trying to poll. It's not just "25% of people we called said they like candidate x"

I don't see why they wouldn't be - situation doesn't seem analogous to Trump 16 at all.

It's not, but there is a different sort of pressure/mindset among a fair number of Democrats that "going negative" against your fellow Dems poisons the well. (Not that I expect this will deter Warren or Sanders; it's the others I'm wondering about.)

The online HRC fans who swear Bernie never endorsed or campaigned for her are legion.

speaking of "no shortage of material"

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign confirmed that he still supports a controversial ban prohibiting the use of federal funds for certain abortion services.

Campaign aides told The Hill that the 2020 presidential hopeful still supports the Hyde Amendment, which has prevented government health programs like Medicaid from paying for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman.

Biden’s campaign did say that Biden would be open to repealing the amendment if abortion access currently protected under Roe v. Wade was threatened.

NBC News first reported Biden's stance on the measure.

The support appears to differ from what Biden told an American Civil Liberties Union volunteer when asked about the Hyde Amendment last month.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/447023-biden-2020-campaign-confirms-he-supports-controversial-abortion-rule-report

(Not that I expect this will deter Warren or Sanders; it's the others I'm wondering about.)

― Simon H

It'll deter delaney and hickenlooper whoever the fuck that is and the also rans

wont deter Kamala surely? I guess you're thinking of Buttigeig/Beto? are we really consider anyone after that as a factor? Yang maybe wouldn't but not for this reason

if i were kamala i'd be pretty pissed off that the centrist donor support that should be mine is instead being thrown behind joe fucking biden out of what i would have a hard time not seeing as the misogyny+racism of those interests projected onto the american public they hate and fear, and i wouldn't see anything to lose in going after him hard

could be wishful thinking on my part because yeah if bernie+warren end up going it alone the bitching from the donors and media about treasonous probably-russian negativity and "circular firing squads" will never ever stop, and kamala joining an anti-biden bloc would make this harder for them. but as destroying him and taking his place seems like her path to the nomination i am hoping we are temporarily made allies.

buttigieg's version of going after biden will be to blather about how we need Youthful Leadership in a bid for the attention of that dumbest portion of my brain that is full of anti-boomer false consciousness. fortunately everyone in the country not crippled by g+t classes can see perfectly well that he is a vapid dweeb. beto i keep forgetting exists.

that all makes sense to me. i know making political predictions nowadays is idiotic but my inkling right now is that the nominee is either going to be Kamala or Biden. I just fear that Bernie and Warren have too much donor/Wall St/establishment animus to contend with, plus I have a lot of doubts about whether either of them can achieve substantial minority support -- no matter how much Bernie fans point to his favorables among African Americans, the fact remains that he got crushed in the South in 2016 and I don't see how that changes in 2020 vs. Obama's veep or an actual WOC.

Harris’s platform seems pretty good—support for green new deal and medicare for all and increased teacher pay—but is this something to take seriously? Like in a different year would she have a platform like this?

For sure i’d take her over biden or buttigieg (i liked him more before this supreme court thing) or lol beto but still.

Like in a different year would she have a platform like this?

no, but it's not a different year. president harris is not a jubilant prospect to me but it's not the death knell president biden would be. biden will never listen: he's running on not listening.

at this point I'm not terribly hopeful about what a Harris administration would look like. i mean, considerably more hopeful than Biden but way way less than Warren/Sanders, basically.

xpost, yup.

Yeah i agree. But i just wonder if she’s going to seem “inauthentic” versus trump, who tore apart of a bunch of career politicians in 16 on these grounds

everything depends on building and sustaining a mass movement; i remain a berniebro because he's the only one who behaves as if that is primary. will admit that prospects are not even that great even under him and less so under harris, but at least she moves.

trump tore apart republicans. everyone hates republicans

Harris doesn't really scan as "career politician" to me. she's maybe too guarded but she seems way more comfortable with sparring than Hillary, if that's what you're worried about.

yeah, i mean who knows. she will be better than hillary probably but i think trump will be in a better electoral position this time.

Especially bc he is going to do more fucked up disinformation stuff probably. My big prediction is that he js going to open an investigation against his opponent.

i suspect, on the merits or not, Harris is going to have a "Willie Brown cycle" in the news

Yeah something like that if she runs against Trump. I think we are in for an unbelievably ugly few months if Trump doesn’t have a heart attack or something

we are in for an unbelievably ugly next 18 months (until the election) no matter what, and if trump loses there is a high likelihood that he is going to go down kicking and screaming and contesting the election for many more months after that.

If he somehow died it would still be ugly but less bad. I also think it would help the democrats chances—trump’s cult of personifg is buoying a lot of unpopular policies

One of my friends who works in politics as a fundraiser for Democratic candidates is incredibly concerned about Harris as a candidate, not because he thinks she is terrible but because the prosecutor toolkit that makes her an effective and impressive Senator in Congressional hearings is uniquely unsuited towards doing well in a Presidential run. Harris is good at constructing a narrative and breaking down a witness to build upon that narrative; in the current context, she does not get to flex those muscles and is effectively just giving closing arguments constantly, which doesn't let her get to the meat of how she outlines/defines a position. (This may also account for why she's criticized as being disingenuous aside from the regular sexist/racist baggage.)

Yeah i mean who knows. I think being able to hammer soundbites is important now—a less flattering possible (and partial) explanation for bernie sanders’ success.

Harris did a decent job pumping up the crowd and speaking in a folksy way when I saw her stumping for midterm candidates last year. Not Obama-level, but not bad. Actual debates will flush out her narrative-building ability, I would guess.

I can't think of a single Sanders soundbite that's really punchy! His shtick is doggedly sticking to the basics, to the detriment of not catering speeches well to specific interest groups.

I can't think of a single Sanders soundbite that's really punchy! His shtick is doggedly sticking to the basics, to the detriment of not catering speeches well to specific interest groups.

This is his strength for sure, he's like a broken record, and easily pariodable but when you parody him you end up just repeating his platform! this is good. Most of the others don't really have a platform, or at least not one you can remember, but, weirdly, they don't really seem to have memorable catchphrases either (yet)

it's hilarious when someone tries to use a clip of Bernie saying something thirty years ago as a gotcha moment only to realize he said the exact same thing yesterday

Joe Biden's a bum. A right-wing chauvinist, good time prick, arrogant bastard creep who thinks that because he's got a $3,000 suit and the cachet of a lifetime sinecure in the Senate we should bow down to his beaming smile. A real racist piece of work. https://t.co/jPvivMUf5R

— Sen. Mike Gravel (@MikeGravel) June 6, 2019

The most consistent through line of Biden‘s career is his lack of respect for a woman’s autonomy. Not only does he pet and paw at women publicly, but he refuses to work to make abortion easier by supporting the monstrous Hyde Amendment. https://t.co/WJEDuihZT4

— Sen. Mike Gravel (@MikeGravel) June 5, 2019

where do I find some teens to run my twitter account? the Gravel kids are getting some good sniping in

Biden supports the carbon capture and storage (CCS) faith based initiative, and his staff are plagiarists.

The paragraph in Joe Biden’s climate plan about carbon capture and sequestration includes language that is remarkably similar to items published previously by the Blue Green Alliance and the Carbon Capture Coalition.

— Josh Nelson (@josh_nelson) June 4, 2019

all of the above! including the really pointless, dumb, expensive and bad ideas

I'm officially convinced that there is absolutely no way in hell Biden should be the nominee due to his abortion record. This election is going to largely be determined by women, and abortion is going to be a hugely galvanizing issue. This should really put an end to any "electability" debates about him. He is not electable.

along with Anita Hill, "I have no empathy" for millennials, credit card co Muppet, Iraq vote, etc

I hate Biden, but you can find bad stuff about any candidate, but anita hill and the iraq war vote are not going to be defining issues of 2020. Abortion almost certainly is.

It's a spectrum, but Biden isn't that far removed from Trump. There is no sharpening that tool.

I wouldn't go that far. But I won't think about it because he ain't getting that nomination.

i'm not so certain but i hope you're right because I absolutely think he would lose to Trump.

as D Perrin's podcast cohost said last week, the Dems nominating him and losing pretty much exactly as HRC did would be the ultimate self-inflicted Groundhog Day.

That's fine, but I'm really only interested in hearing opinions like that from people who think it would be a bad thing.

I can hear Perrin's giddiness.

^^^ pair of bad-faith comments

but i'm glad you're listening to it, Alfred!

I didn't: I'm going by the love-to-watch-you-burn tone of his tweets.

he's just an Angry Old Man, you know the type

I wouldn't go that far. But I won't think about it because he ain't getting that nomination.

I feel like you're about as sure of this as I was that Trump wouldn't get elected

https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/7056958/2147483647/resize/971x/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2F28%2Fe3%2Fea549ba74a21915366f2bed6f84f%2F190605-joe-biden-ap-773.jpg

That shirt is so Poppy Bush Interzone.

I feel like you're about as sure of this as I was that Trump wouldn't get elected

― Simon H., Thursday, June 6, 2019

Dem primary voters aren't GOP primary voters, despite this "electability" garbage.

despite this "electability" garbage.

This is both his strength (more so than fact he was good at standing next to Obama) AND his big weakness. His lead is purely out of this idea that he's somehow electorally invincible and a 'safe bet', but the problem with this is its a shield made out of glass. The minute he starts taking hits in the debates, the whole thing will shatter, and that shield was the only reason in the first place

I don’t think his lead is due to perceived electability. I think people like him and they also want a restoration of Obama era normalcy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Return_of_the_King

It's both. ILE is not the world, I have to remind myself at all times. I had a fight with two acquaintances visiting from Belgium last Friday -- liberals in every sense -- who wished the Dems could shake off their collective madness and "rally behind" a candidate. The more vehement of the two called me naive. I reminded him that primary battles don't play well overseas.

Joe should dust off Warren Harding’s famous campaign slogan.

Joe should dust off Warren Harding’s famous campaign slogan.

I had a fight with two acquaintances visiting from Belgium last Friday -- liberals in every sense -- who wished the Dems could shake off their collective madness and "rally behind" a candidate.

I'm all for that if the candidate is Warren

TOO FAR OUT FOR BRUSSELS

I am not taking pointers on anything from people who put mayo on their fries

DJP otm

on everything

I offended them when I pointed that while they were gay they were also two old white dudes.

lol

and belgians

Ahhhh, the Belgians were gay. Not Biden and Trump. Thought I missed some announcement.

Joe just reversed himself on Hyde Amendment.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/447392-biden-reverses-stance-on-hyde-amendment-after-blowback

Joe oughta dust off Warren Harding's old mistress

pic.twitter.com/kEwbWvGogI

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) June 6, 2019

^^^ the kind of incisive satire that's earned Perrin his status ("Dennis who?") in the world of comedy.

I think Dennis Miller has that corner on lock.

it's just a tweet, you silly nonentity xp

just learned that Symone Sanders is working on Biden's campaign, which is very disappointing but not altogether unsurprising, I did have a sneaking suspicion even when she was working for Bernie that she sucked.

Happy #BestFriendsDay to my friend, @BarackObama. pic.twitter.com/JTd1t7NtyL

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 9, 2019

lol @ the replies

Stark horror at the replies. So many srs pizzagate and Obama-not-American cheer squads.

Biden: I’m all for making the minimum age 15, like Bernie!

Obama: Joe, he said WAGE. Minimum WAGE! pic.twitter.com/ezcV03kjpp

— Joe Jacobbi (@joejacobbi) May 30, 2019

what a fuckin rube

Biden at a fundraiser tonight, on his desire to work with the Republican Party post Trump.

“With Trump gone you’re going to begin to see things change. Because these folks know better. They know this isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing."

— Sam Stein (@samstein) June 11, 2019

they do know better about Biden

wtf

.@JoeBiden in Ottumwa, Iowa: "I promise you if I'm elected president, you're going to see the single most important thing that changes America — we're going to cure cancer."

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) June 11, 2019

um

wow, that is something

I've not particularly enjoyed the jibes at older candidates mental faculties, but that from Joe either down the line out there craziness or super cynical. What was the reaction like? does it say, I can;'t click through

we're going to cure cancer

So, Joe Biden finally found his signature issue. iirc, Nixon also made this claim. It's evergreen.

sounds like joe knows the cure but won't tell us unless he wins? not unlike trump's plan for syria

i wonder if there was a massive federal push for this -- i'm talking the same focus that went toward going to the moon, or developing the atomic bomb -- if it could actually happen. ditto AIDs. and ditto renewable energy that is truly cheap.

life imitates art, if your definition of art is expansive enough to include a 2003 chris rock is president movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d60GozCNi2g

i don't hear any other candidates talking about curing cancer! they must be PRO-CANCER!

i wonder if there was a massive federal push for this

First, there has been a massive federal push for cancer research since 1972. It has done some good, but is far from "curing cancer" after nearly 50 years.

Landing a person on the moon and getting them back safely was almost entirely a logistical problem. Complex, sure, but it boils down to moving something from 'here' to 'there' and back again. Curing cancer apparently boils down to understanding the myriad workings of the human body at the molecular level, then intervening at the molecular level to fix whatever is misfiring. This, in an organism with tens of billions of cells, many of them highly specialized.

under joe biden, we'll cure cancer, but only if you can afford it

ottumwa is a massively depressing place iirc
he walzes in there and promises to cure cancer?
wtf

Treesh renewable energy is already cheaper than fossil fuels

waltzes i mean
smh @ this guy

i apprec the personal attention, Joe, but no

means testing for cancer cures
tax advantaged savings accounts for cancer treatment

"Biden is going to cure cancer" is going to be the new "Al Gore invented the internet."

ottumwa is a massively depressing place iirc

I almost choked laughing at this

imo marianne williamson should double down on this claim and appear in a town a little ways east of there and claim she's going to cure cancer RIGHT NOW through the power of group meditation

does no one else remember that barack obama, i think in the last year of his presidency, said biden was going to lead an initiative to cure cancer? i think during his last SOTU, maybe?

so yeah, biden's been working on this for 3 years now, he must be getting close

https://time.com/4178412/cancer-state-of-the-union-barack-obama-sotu/

I read the last four letters as "stfu"

America knows Ottumwa (if at all) as the home of MASH's fictional Radar O'Reilly

he walzes in there and promises to cure cancer?

christoph waltz is very disappointed in you

I’m disappointed in myself too!! MH — laughing bc it’s true??!! Jumping into Ottumwa and promising to cure cancer seems very snake oil sales, it’s so gross!

we'll (attempt to) cure (some) cancer(s)!!

I think we can find some common ground with cancer once Trump is gone. Maybe we can compromise, convince it to stop killing kids.

Here is Biden’s answer when I asked why he’s so confident that the Republicans who blocked the Obama-Biden agenda wouldn’t just block the Biden agenda if he beat Trump. pic.twitter.com/QKsRy3XdL3

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) June 11, 2019

should've just said "because I'm white"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-national-poll-says-bidens-lead-over-trump-is-of-landslide-proportions/

i don't know shit about polling fyi

Should be noted that the same poll also showed “landslide” margins for sanders, and to a slightly lesser extent warren and harris

Also the leading polls said trump had a 2% chance of winninf or somethinf right until the end

i remain confident that it is still june 2019

this is all true

still, i'd rather see the democratic candidates up 7%+ in a national poll at this point, rather than down

saw two 'creepy joe' gaffes in the last 12 hours, one to a 13 year old girls brothers, saying they needed to 'keep boys away from her' and another where he chose to take a question from a woman in the audience because she was 'better looking' than the guy he was talking to

are they gaffes if you know how bad it looks and do it anyway

Also the leading polls said trump had a 2% chance of winninf or somethinf right until the end

― Trϵϵship, 12. juni 2019 17:54 (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not in 2016, no, statisticians who had no track record said this, but 538 said it was about 30% and tightening.

Also, it seems pretty clear that Biden is too old to be President. Even though he is not the oldest candidate. People age differently.

"X has X percent chance of winning" /= "X is not winning"

President Trump told aides to deny that his internal polling showed him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in key states, according to a new report from The New York Times.

Later, when the polling in 17 states conducted by Tony Fabrizio leaked, Trump told aides to tell reporters that other data showed him doing better, according to the Times story written by Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman.

The polling reportedly showed Trump behind Biden in a number of the states he needs to take to win reelection, though the Times report did not identify them.

Beyond Trump's internal polling, a series of recent surveys have shown the president trailing Biden in several important states.

Last week, a Quinnipiac University poll found Biden 4 points ahead of Trump in Texas, a state Democrats haven't won in the presidential election since 1976.

is it no surprise to me that people being so exposed to the asshole as pres for the last two years might have them considering that maybe their fence sitting vote for him was ill advised. anyone that was not hardcore MAGA has got to be over his shit , right ?

he may not have lost a whole lot of support but it's hard to imagine how he could have possibly GAINED any over the last two years. and the margin was razor thin in 2016.

the leading polls said trump had a 2% chance of winninf or somethinf right until the end

on Election Day, 538 said he had a 1 in 3 chance of winning

I just looked it up and it was 28%

anyone that was not hardcore MAGA has got to be over his shit , right ?

i'm sure they are, but the full GOP + Fox + Breitbart + rightwing radio + white evangelical churches onslaught against the Democratic candidate hasn't started yet. soon, those people will be choosing between an extremely dumb and corrupt president vs the most communinist leftist socialist marxist radical eco-terrorist who may have also murdered someone and almost definitely set at least 2 or more of those big wildfires last year

I feel the tiny sliver of low info voters in key states who thought Trump might be more liberal on certain issues than he turned out to be is going to be enough to make a difference this time around. At least I hope so.

I have a hard time envisioning him losing tbh. The entire right wing media is warmed up and ready to do things his way—in 2016 he didn’t have this level of propaganda behind him

Don't forget that Democratic voters are likely to be more enthusiastic than the last cycle. if not because of the candidate they're voting for, then at least enthusiastically voting against Trump (and knowing that there is a very real possibility that he'll win this time)

trump can't seem to get above 42% in any reelection poll ive seen

Incumbency is always a plus, but the GOP's keeping the Senate is more likely than Trump losing -- a grim outcome.

trump can't seem to get above 42% in any reelection poll ive seen

― Jeff Bathos (symsymsym), Wednesday, June 12, 2019 1:22 PM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think people were lying to pollsters last time because they were ashamed to say they were voting for him

lots of polls the week before the 2016 election had him at 46%, which was what he actually got

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_opinion_polling_for_the_2016_United_States_presidential_election

I'm suspicious that any Democratic nominee is going to spend a lot of time in PA/MI/WI this time around, which sidelines entirely the question of what percentage of 'independent' voters misread Trump or what tiny percentage of Republicans might dislike him.