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

If Simon doesn't vote for Biden in November, I'm holding him personally responsible for whatever comes next

uh oh

Everyone: “Defund the police!”

Joe Biden: I hear you. I will put more money in de fund for the police

— Ahmaud Arbery (@thecoolliterati) June 10, 2020

It's cool, I'll vote for Biden on your behalf, Simon.

xp

When push comes to shove, a lot of Democrats seem happy to make the whataboutism and “love it or leave it” arguments that they’ll rightfully ridicule Republicans for.

since he's won the nomination maybe it's time for a new thread

nah, this thread is for every time he decides to run. might be needed again.

“Why don’t you just vote for Donald Trump” vs “Why don’t you just move to Cuba then huh”

This thread will be extra relevant when he wins so that people can scold us for not supporting Secretary of the Treasury Jamie Dimon and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

“Vice President Romney apologized for the dog abuse, why can’t you just accept that and move on?”

gee i can't imagine where i got the idea that you were okay with trump winning:

We survived Reagan and we survived HW Bush and we survived W Bush and we'll survive Trump - none of them managed to end the world. Voting for the lesser evil at each stop did give us a declining standard of living, forever war and the most imprisoned people in the 'free' world.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, April 15, 2020 7:11 PM (one month ago)

Which of those statements was untrue, again?

The fundamental problem of "normalcy" as a political program being that the norm is awful and miserable for most people.

"we survived reagan"

except for the thousands of people who died in the epidemic that his administration deliberately ignored

"we survived trump"

...

xp but normalcy is sure as hell not what we have now, much less what we'll have under a second Trump term

there is an active Trump thread, you know!

funny that he happens to be the person Biden is running against

xxxp - yes, Reagan and Trump were awful and evil. Good call!

If only Joe Biden recognized that. It's almost like Joe Biden's friendliness to the monsters in the GOP is one of the fundamental problems with him.

In this particular moment it's super fuckin' weird to be so defensive about one of the architects of mass incarceration.

mentioning Biden's deficiencies in a thread that maybe a couple dozen people post to is going to poison the minds of the electorate and get Trump reelected

why continue though, it's not like there is a point to prove anymore

why in the world would so few people post in this thread? It's a mystery

This thread will be extra relevant when he wins so that people can scold us for not supporting Secretary of the Treasury Jamie Dimon and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Biden is an astute enough hack to know that when the spoils get passed around you give them to loyalists, and that talking up bipartisanship for your veep or in cabinet appointments is just a thing you do to signal to independents what an open-minded moderate you are. You don't actually give sugar plums to the opposition without concrete concessions in return. Scoff if you like, but time will show which of us is right.

normalcy is sure as hell not what we have now, much less what we'll have under a second Trump term

imo whatever you're thinking of, it's over, it's never coming back and the results of the election won't change that

why in the world would so few people post in this thread? It's a mystery

probably people think you have to be crazy sensitive to participate

pretty sure if Trump loses, the psychic trauma and humiliation of having to deal with a constant daily flow of utterly shitty things flowing from his incompetence and malevolence will in fact come to an end.

xp

but it won't change the underlying contradictions of american society

imo whatever you're thinking of, it's over, it's never coming back and the results of the election won't change that

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Thursday, June 11, 2020

some kind of sanity at least, you can't be that nihilistic

no it won't! but it will remove one very big and unpleasant problem that is weighing a lot of us down.

xp

anyway I sincerely hope Trump 2.0 causes you all a little less humiliation in 2024 or 2028

there are absolutely more shitty leaders in our future, things are going to continue to swing back and forth just like they always have. that was a given no matter what.

xp not sure what that means but it doesn't sound sincere to me

I take no pleasure in your collective anguish. But a reactionary movement deferred is one that comes back harder.

And very possibly smarter, since almost everyone who's not Trump is smarter.

that's big of you

you're welcome

not sure what that means

To expand slightly, I think we can all agree that the GOP is now the party of Trumpism? The whole thing about isms is they tend not to end with their progenitors' election loss or gruesome, hilarious assassination.

Agree there is going to be someone like Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley in our future

Don't want to give up hope that we can defeat Trumpism

If Trump loses in a massive wave election will this continue to be true? I suspect most Republican politicians will be scrambling to toss it all down the memory hole.

obviously that's a big if...

Trumpism doesn't differ from anything the GOP has believed for the last 56 years, he just says the quiet part loud. Even if you believe they'll "toss it down the memory hole" they just go back to being more genteel in their racism... but if it heals some peoples' psychic trauma, hurray?

What other way forward do they have? They can easily blame the failure on the man himself but preserve the approach with a less divisive host, and they'd be idiots to do anything else. xp

pursuing a politics that has a broader base of support is a way forward that they have avoided for the last decade plus

The rot in white America’s heart will only ever put worse and worse Republicans into power

that may be true, but this appeals to an ever narrowing slice of the electorate, and is propped up by widespread efforts to steal votes rather than earn them.

Is it not working?

it has worked, I'm not convinced it will work much longer

The party of 'Trumpism today, Trumpism tomorrow, and Trumpism forever' is going to find it nearly impossible to get the electorate to endorse Trump himself a second time. Their only hope in November would be to engage in vote suppression on a massive scale, unprecedented since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed. Their next best hope is being out of power, since all they really know how to do well and consistently is to obstruct, complain, vilify, hatch conspiracy theories, and prove the country is ungovernable without their consent.

The Senate filibuster must be destroyed forever in 2021. If the ship is going down, at least it will be clear who was in charge.

if you trust Biden or anyone in his circle to meaningfully capitalize on or substantively counteract any of that then we have reached a pretty clear "agree to disagree" situation xps

also iirc Biden does not support ending the filibuster

(and yeah I know Bernie didn't either, but at least he had a scheme in mind to accomplish similar ends)

yes, I agree completely with your first post. As to the 2nd, you may well be right, but there needs to be huge amount of pressure put on him to do just that.