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

i'm talking about Dorian Lynskey, dummy

Donald Trump left our country unprepared and unprotected for the worst public health and economic crisis in our lifetime — and now we're paying the price. pic.twitter.com/aCxcqQqUqw

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) April 18, 2020

THIS is the line of attack?

wtf

Don't pay attention to what Biden is tweeting. No one else is. He could tweet his 12 step plan to turn the world into the Garden of Eden and no one would notice right now. His account tweeting anything is just pro forma at the moment.

maybe he should try doing pro forma better

it's a campaign ad

unfortunately i think that tweet isn't an outlier - it's part of the "strategy" of his campaign along with the DNC:

The group's "Beijing Biden" ads herald Trump's travel restrictions from China while declaring that "for 40 years, Joe Biden has been wrong about China," spliced with ominous music, footage of Biden with President Xi Jinping and ending with insignia of the red and yellow Chinese flag on the Democrat’s face.

The Biden campaign rebutted it in videos from the former vice president and foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken, which hit Trump for eliminating U.S. pandemic preparedness resources and for praising China's "efforts and transparency" in its virus response.

His campaign held a Friday call with reporters featuring Blinken and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. The Democratic National Committee issued a memo saying it was Trump who “rolled over for China.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/coronavirus-turns-china-2020-election-issue-trump-biden-clash-n1186611

there are a million ways to criticize trump on coronavirus. this would seem to be one of the worst, least effective ways to do it.

counting on xenophobia / racism

counting on xenophobia / racism

there's a lot of that going around these days

We should all just be thankful Keir Starmer hasn't yet given any major speeches for Biden to borrow.

would really degrade the white house if a plagiarist became president

xp - I can think of at least three more cogent reasons than that to be thankful right now.

I really don’t think it’s counting on anti-Chinese racism as much as it is the usual disappointing Democratic foreign policy instinct of always trying to prove “we’re tough on communists / terrorists / etc too!!!” in kneejerk response to any suggestion by the GOP that they might not be. Decades of the consultant class and dem natsec professionals have been raised on this.

Thus was it ever. The biggest reason LBJ pushed so hard on the Vietnam War was fear that the Republicans would smear him as soft on communism and accuse him of "losing Indochina" in the way that Mao's victory turned into poisonous accusations of "losing China". The irony is that before WWII, the Republicans were just as harsh on FDR about "foreign entanglements" and rode isolationism just as hard as they later Red-baited every Democrat.

"would really degrade the white house if a plagiarist became president"

- Neil Kinnock

JUst had the same supposedly left wing person who was slagging off AOC for not being working class enough try to present Biden asa paedophiile. Is that widespread now?
JUst not what the worlkd needs right now, apathy in voiting caused by people wh ostill think voting 3rd party in the next election is going to be a good idea. When surely everybody who can vote needs to vote against trump which would mean Democrat at least for this year's election. surely?
try to get things back to some form of normality before trying to reform the politicial set up in the US that's prevailed for the last decades.
Hate to think what is going to happen if there isn't enough vote for the opposite party to the world's #1 problem.

Biden wouldn't have been my ideal candidate but he's the one that is currently in place. Not to say taht things might change over the next few months re the current pandemic and him being the age he is and all.

Nothing can degrade the presidency. The WH is the HQ of Murder Inc and always has been, moreso since Americans became "internationalists."

leftists are just as susceptible to absurd propaganda as stupid right wing nutsos. xpost.

Biden ad is a response to this forthcoming approach from the Trump campaign:

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Trump-team-sees-edge-in-linking-Biden-to-China-15210585.php

Positions by both of them are fucking stupid and this is only going to speak to the worst subset of potential voters.

the race to the bottom is gen how these things go

akm, I think you mean stupid Democrats are just as susceptible

according to the rules, stupid votes count the same as smart votes. well, roughly speaking. in presidential elections, stupid votes in Wyoming and Alaska count the most.

try to get things back to some form of normality before trying to reform the politicial set up in the US that's prevailed for the last decades.

This is exactly the opposite of how it works. You can "this is not the time for good things!!!" every election from now until Florida is mostly saltwater.

"until"

It's never the right time to do good things, or criticize Democrats, say some

"incrementalism" will surely fix our current troubles

the USA has experienced several abrupt political shifts in the past. it could happen again. but it is much more fruitful to criticize bad policy as bad and talk up what is needed and why it would be good than to aim blanket criticism at The Democrats or The Republicans, which just amplifies the current tribalism and codifies the impasse.

incrementalism is literally the only thing that has ever changed public policy

the new deal was pretty radical

we don't need revolution, but we need a renewed social contract.

we need something like.... a green new deal.

The Civil War was relatively abrupt

but let’s pretend M4A would even be part of a major candidate’s platform without the ACA, that’s fun

the new deal was the product of decades of organization and policy shaping before the depression actually hit

the civil war was not remotely abrupt

shit, the war for independence wasn’t even abrupt, it might seem that way because of the cascade of missteps by the government of King George III

people have been thinking about and studying ways to create a clean energy infrastructure for decades. people have also been organizing and advocating for this.

ditto national healthcare coverage.

these aren't new ideas; they're pragmatic ways to address glaring and extreme problems in the country that are eroding--have eroded--the kind of civic trust you need to have a decent society.

the only reason these ideas can't get a foothold in actual policy is dysfunction and honestly corruption in the process by which we choose candidates. moneyed interests have had too much influence, for too long, and over time they're degraded our sense of what is possible.

that's why people get pissed off with the democratic party and the idea of incrementalism. like, there is no incremental solution to a house being on fire. you have to put the fucking fire out. this is also true of a political and economic system where people get fucking 100,000 dollar hospital bills and climate scientist say we are fast-approaching the precipice.

the Democratic Party has been an incredibly effective bulwark against advances in national health coverage and meaningful climate policy

yes, exactly

the Civil War was in the making since 1787

so effective that we’ve veered ever rightward on both, despite the overwhelming evidence in their favor and the GOP often being the minority party

the thing is, there was a revolution. a right-wing revolution that eroded the power of unions and made common-sense social democratic ideas seem "impossible."

publicly funded firefighting services are a result of incrementalism

so effective that we’ve veered ever rightward on both, despite the overwhelming evidence in their favor and the GOP often being the minority party

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/opinion/coronavirus-inequality-bernie-sanders.html?fbclid=IwAR0aCSmYDKEkHEJuvsmDrB5xxxTWF1_f8WI6wNrmrq8w1jD4dBRTaQbjZF4

this is an interesting article by a guy you might have heard of that sums up where i am

if you’re actually blaming Democrats for this that’s... I guess hilarious could be a word

zing!!! you got me it was definitely the dems that backed out of the paris accord and did everything they could to cripple the aca

How many times do we have to reference murc’s law in these threads

You're about four strokes away AFAICT

Murc's Law is the dipshit Democrat version of "oh, you think American mass incarceration is bad huh WELL WHY DON'T YOU CRITICIZE NORTH KOREAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS"

this conversation actually sucks. i agree with milo, basically, but... whatever. I'm out

the Civil War was in the making since 1787

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, April 19, 2020 12:58 PM (eight minutes ago)

Ok yes certainly but to actually upend the slave power required a bloodbath. Maybe we can gloss change as punctuated equilibria.