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

"Tom Sawyer" for me.

yeah i'm feeling like the time has passed for a harris pick. i .. think it might be warren. just a tgif feeling

like maybe the dnc platform got a little more pushback than expected and now they have to do a more "lefty" thing. idk. i'm tired

i'm feeling like the time has passed for a harris pick

I'm guessing no veep pick will be announced until after the convention has started and not leaking the news is among the campaign's highest priorities. It is literally the only event guaranteed to draw the attention of the public to what's going on there.

Also, I hope some top people in the Biden campaign have a good grip on the difference between writing a speech to be delivered before a crowd of 10,000 and one to be delivered on a set, facing just a camera. The veep speech and Biden speech are the best tools the campaign will have to break through the fog of non-stop Trump nonsense.

and one to be delivered on a set, facing just a camera

IIRC you're supposed to awkwardly drink from a bottle of water while staring at the camera

read a couple more karen bass profiles and she's definitely my #2 choice now.

which profiles convinced you?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/31/karen-bass-vp-candidate-los-angeles-388430
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rep-karen-bass-fought-for-blacks-and-latinos-in-south-los-angeles-now-shes-on-bidens-vp-shortlist/2020/07/31/6d224a58-d1d3-11ea-8c55-61e7fa5e82ab_story.html

she's my congresswoman btw, but only since last year, so i've never met her or really learned much about her until the last month or two

thx!

all the possibilties are unpopular with allegedly essential constituencies (cuban americans in karen bass's case). other than warren (who is my #1 btw), i'm not sure any of those worries rise to the level of taking a material risk on the outcome of the general election though.

and given that none of the candidates are perfect, i like that bass seems to be the least likely to run for president.

allegedly essential constituencies (cuban americans in karen bass's case)

So Bass might make it harder for Biden to poach a reliably Republican voting bloc? I don't think this is a real problem (as in it has no chance of happening, VP pick or no VP pick).

condolences for El Jefe vs standing O for Trump

According to Lord Alfred, the reliably republican Cuban American voting bloc appears to be losing progressively minded younger Cuban Americans.

it wouldn't cost votes in any other state, i don't think it would cost enough votes to make a difference to florida unless things tighten considerably (biden is up 6% right now), and the democrats don't need to win florida. it's bullshit, but it's literally the only thing we know about in her oppo file, so you see it mentioned in every article.

According to Lord Alfred, the reliably republican Cuban American voting bloc appears to be losing progressively minded younger Cuban Americans.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Friday, July 31, 2020

Miami-Dade is deeply, reliably blue; the geriatric Cubans just tend to be louder.

the people running this clownshow and trashing your favs through the press are the people Democrats decided to put in charge. this is what the administration is gonna look like! it's Chris Dodds all the way down! https://t.co/YIpH0feIiW

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) July 31, 2020

so

Uhhhh pic.twitter.com/LzWO259BNw

— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) July 31, 2020

was into her too but ummm

lol angeles

A willingness to flatter a specific bloc of voters is trad politics, especially when your whole live audience is made of that bloc; that is different from endorsing Scientology. Still, this was not the best of judgment in the internet age. Everything gets videoed and it will come back to bite you.

sweet milkshake duck, caek

generally nagl to flatter a “bloc” known for abducting/abusing/stalking

considering how many of SoCal's electeds have directly or indirectly validated the church, and how many of those same electeds on both sides of the aisle have turned a blind eye to the decades of abuses perpetuated against South Central, this feels ... off https://t.co/KubQGsRIdu pic.twitter.com/jQRY87oslF

— sahra (@sahrasulaiman) July 31, 2020

nagl to flatter a “bloc” known for abducting/abusing/stalking

but her live audience didn't view themselves that way and they have both money and votes which are up for grabs. this used to be how every pol worked a campaign, saying whatever was tailored to the people sitting in front of them. that was before ubiquitous video/audio recording and instant mass dissemination by anyone anywhere to billions of people. now everyone can look at your nagl. she should have known better than to trawl in those waters.

Los Angeles politics is a cesspool. If speaking at a Scientology event is as bad as it gets then she is the cleanest politician in LA. Also I think this is bad, but I’m not convinced this is a big deal for many voters in the era of Q.

Not a deal breaker for me.

For an organization banking so many celebs' money, Scientology really makes everything look chintzy.

:)

It's the Donald Trump of religions.

Next

Serious question: How big is the Scientology vote in L.A.?

In terms of votes, negligible. I don’t think they even particularly big donors as an institution.

Their numbers in LA are plausibly higher than any other city, but the amount of s¢ienos worldwide is so small that they would not fill all of the storefront real estate that the church owns in LA.

In 2011, the guy previously in charge of ordering e-meters reckoned there were between 10,000 and 15,000 active, paying members worldwide. In 2014, Mike Rinder calculated that even by inflated UK PR figures, there was a ceiling of 216,000 worldwide.


storefront real estate that the church owns in LA

After posting I wondered if I should have covered myself by including the Celebrity Centre as well, but: in the first link there, from Tony Ortega, the church owned 484 square feet of property for every active Scientologist in the world in 2011.

Since then, they have opened a 2.5 hectare (269,098 sq ft) centre in Sydney alone, for 100 attending members.

Scientology is bad and all but it would be weird to me to reject her over this and not any given politician who's given a speech to Catholics or w/e.

Agree with milo. Either treat all the cults the same or admit that one's aberrations can be overlooked while another's cannot

not to be cap'n save jesus but I don't think it's that weird to treat a new "religion" with an unbroken track record of intimidation, gaslighting, fraud and almost certainly murder differently from the ones millions or even billions have belonged to over centuries

Crusades to thread

not to be cap'n save jesus but I don't think it's that weird to treat a new "religion" with an unbroken track record of intimidation, gaslighting, fraud and almost certainly murder differently from the ones millions or even billions have belonged to over centuries

Failure to nip those other ones in the bud doesn't mean we shouldn't try (again, harder) with a new one.

Simon otm

Yes. I don't think many of you outside California understand how common it is. https://t.co/znH5PEpR1d

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) August 1, 2020

Biden is reading every word Bass ever wrote or uttered. The Scientology thing is not in itself disqualifying, nor is it buried deep. It would have come out the moment he chose her. So leak it now, take the temperature, allow yourself room to maneuver.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) August 1, 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hole_(Scientology)

Totes normal stuff, nbd.

What does Scientology want with my hole

For it to go clear.

Y'all acting like nearly every genocide and plundering of the past 500 years can't be directly or indirectly attributed to Christianity are wild. Of course it doesn't mean that Scientology gets a pass, but it's either all or nothing, afaic.

That politicians have to kowtow to ANY religion in order to get elected is insane.

some of you are absolutely blowing my mind with the revelation that christianity is sus

T/S enema vs enneagram

It's not about blowing your mind, Simon, it's that Christianity is a cult. It's just larger. And in substance and practice, it continues to harm a lot more people than Scientology.