I'm no Biden fan but the man has a stutter and its damn admirable how he's managed to overcome that disadvantage. I'm prepared to be extremely charitable with his misspeaking and casting something like that as "he forgets the President Obama's name" is something I have a problem with.
I'm going to guess he's not forgetting Obama's name, but forgetting that he's been told by handlers not to mention Obama directly.
I see the Democratic Establishment is commenting tonight!
(2 is what my wife thought as well. Is that a thing?)
Re: Bernie's people dismissing black Southerners as "the Establishment:" who knew there were that many black billionaires in South Carolina?!?
The problem with running as an insurgent, outsider. protest candidate is that it's really difficult to capture the centre when you've defined that centre as your mortal enemy...
Oh, is that how he covers for his stutter, by acting like he forgot what he was saying? Like "All men are created, uh, you know"?
I think its more like that he's detecting he's about to get hung up on a word, so, rather than get stuck on that word, he switches in mid-flow to saying something else that he won't get hung up on. It doesn't always sound elegant.
I'm hearing it as Biden's wanting to make clear he's not talking about the current president
I can see excellent reasons for committed Democrats to line up behind the candidate that's effectively been endorsed by the mainstream party structure. What the hell the mainstream party was doing endorsing an addled antique like Biden, who was a dope in his youth, on the other hand, is beyond me. Couldn't the centrists have lined up behind Harris? I wouldn't have voted for her in a primary, but I thought she was competent and I wouldn't have minded voting for her in the general much at all. (I will vote for any Democrat in the general, of course. But Biden will make me grit my teeth.)
Now seems like the right time to tell me only story about seeing Biden. Some friends got us tickets to an inaugural ball in 2012. As luck would have it, the ball was the Iowa one. Biden attended and briefly addressed the crowd. "For the last four years, I have been so grateful and proud to be your President. Um, I mean, Vice President!" We were tickled that we got the full Joe Biden Experience. It just wouldn't have been the same without a gaffe. (Not a fan of the guy's politics, but anything is better than the current unmitigated disaster.)
9: I know that's a rhetorical question, but I really feel sadness about the misogyny.
For all Biden's gaffes, this opponent has got to be the one where it matters least. He's just running on being affable and milquetoast. It's very inspiring.
"Gaffes" and "misspeaking" are about the dullest possible thing to base your politics on. What people call "gaffes" aren't even real gaffes. A real gaffe is something that's just thoughtlessly (but unintentionally) rude or tactless or insulting; like saying to a widow "so you must have a bit more free time now" or offering your barbecue ribs recipe to an observant Muslim. Maybe maybe a habit of committing real gaffes would be a problem because a politician's supposed to be diplomatic. But Biden does things that are along the lines of saying "next year in 1921" when he means "2021". These are utterly irrelevant. And it's also really obvious that "lol Biden is senile" is going to be the R tactic from now on, because you attack your opponent where he's strongest. If you're a draft dodger and your opponent is a decorated veteran, you start accusing him of cowardice. If you're a money launderer for the Russian mob and your opponent is a squeaky clean senator, you start calling her Crooked Hillary. And if you're a sundowning old fool, you start saying your opponent is gaga.
You can barbecue cow ribs or sheep ribs if you want to.
Real sundowning is fucking scary to watch/control.
Not to say that I'm not certain Trump isn't sundowning. The paranoia is a big part of it.
Don't rub it in their faces. They can't drink either.
You aren't even supposed to rub your own face these days.
Meanwhile , at the top of the New York Times:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1235806244817915904
Remember, here, that Mara Gay and her newspaper are going to be spending the next several months being VERY CONCERNED about Biden's "gaffes".
Yes, but they suck. They are going to find something no matter who the nominee is.
Times already being stupid on the "gaffes" thing. But the one that really got to me today (a Peter Baker* special) was Trump blaming the Obama admin for testing issues. Headline and firt two graphs were just rehashes of Trump's claims and only then some evidence of how wrong the claims were. The opposite of a "truth sandwich."
*Some might not recall that it was Baker who wrote the "cloud lifted" from Trump presidency after Barr's misrepresentation of its contents. Which BTW I have never seen anything like Judge Walton's blunt criticism** of Barr's "distortion."
**which the media has underplayed.
Biden really does seem senile though, partly because he seems so old. Trump's brain might be more addled, but he's vigorous.
Trump, Sanders, and Biden are all manifestly too old for the presidency. I don't really see any way to differentiate among them on that.
I am a bit baffled that you can know people who are actually senile - elderly relatives or whatever - and then watch Biden on TV and think "he is just like that, he looks like he's senile just like my great uncle is". I just picked a random video of Biden being interviewed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhXqaIAM7FQ
He speaks in coherent sentences, he has an argument, he discusses counterarguments, and then he reaches a conclusion. He doesn't hesitate when he's asked a question, he comes up with a prompt and cogent reply.
Yes. He seems fine to me in that count. Better than I would do if I had to talk that often and keep campaign hours.
If Biden is elected and serves two full terms he will still be younger than Ruth Bader Ginsburg is right now.
Good god but you people have fucked up.
The Atlantic finds the silver lining....
But it's just possible that the creaky machinery of an aging brain might make a president better at the job.
I didn't read this article - just enough to get the idea, which was more than enough for me.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/weekend-bernies-theory-presidency/607489/
There's loss of capacity short of senility. I have elderly relatives just a hair older than Biden, and while they're not senile, they've also changed a great deal over the last decade -- mentally slower and more easily confused, more likely to misunderstand or misspeak, and so on. I wouldn't say Biden's demented, but I think 2020 Biden is very noticeably less quick-witted and mentally capable than 2010 Biden.
Anyway, for reasons related to having sold out, I had to work sixty hour weeks lately. My working memory now sucks.
Anyway, for reasons related to having sold out, I had to work sixty hour weeks lately. My working memory now sucks.
13 is so good that I snipped and tweeted it.
But my blood pressure is great now. Because of pharma.
13, 15, 16: "Sundowning," both as a word and a concept, are new to me. I'm thinking that Boris Johnson lives at No. 10 Sundowning Street.
It was new to me until I saw it close up. It's scary because the change is so great and abrupt.
24: Saw that. Just for posterity, here's the link. It's an amazing document of our time, I think. We are so screwed.
Agree with 36. "Gaffe" reporting is almost always bullshit.
39: My association was towns that black people had to leave by sunset.
I'm glad to see the examples of Biden still being lucid and quick-thinking in this thread. I still hope all public appearances are before 5 PM. I mean, I like Biden, I just think he'll be easy to attack based on his 50-year record and he won't be able to come up with good answers to tough questions on the spot. And not even tough questions, things like people wondering why he doesn't support legal marijuana like 90% of other Democrats in whatever room he's in. He's trapped in the past on some of these things and he thinks legal marijuana is self-evidently ridiculous.
Re: Bernie's people dismissing black Southerners as "the Establishment:" who knew there were that many black billionaires in South Carolina?!?
This "establishment" thing keeps developing. First of all, all the people who took it as a personal attack when someone says he's against "the establishment", now think it's also an insult to be called "the establishment"? Second, just because somebody wants to claim that happened as part of the Biden victory lap doesn't mean it happened.
I like Paul Campos but this blog post is truly bizarre. So Jim Clyburn is one of the most powerful power brokers in the party and possible the single most valuable endorsement during primary season, but it's way out of bounds and extremely suspicious to imply that he's part of the "establishment".
24- I hate how when you buy a truth sandwich in the NYT cafeteria and accidentally drop it the sandwich always lands truth side down.
I thought "sundowning" was a more widely known thing as a sort of early sign of dementia, that the person is fine during the day but loses lucidity in the evening and night. I swear I remember seeing it as an explanation for Clint Eastwood's weird speech at the 2012 Republican convention.
Just looked it up to see if it's an actual medical thing. Seems like maybe not? There is "sundown syndrome" but it applies to people who are already dementia patients, that they become agitated and restless in the evening.
And Clint Eastwood is still lucid enough to direct movies several years later.
I thought sundowning was cocktails on the terrace.
9 I don't know why Harris didn't catch fire. Biden was polling in the lead most of last year, especially, I suppose, among the very same folks Harris would have needed to become "the not-Sanders." By the time Biden was weak enough that she might have overtaken him, she was long out of the race. Biden wasn't the mainstream's guy, really, until SC. He's had little money or organization, and before SC, was pretty thin on endorsements. After the first 3 contests, it was clear that (a) Sanders' theory that he could take the nomination by winning a third of the Democratic vote is every state was more or less true and (b) neither Buttigieg nor Klobuchar had found a way to appeal to Black voters, nor would either break out in California, especially with Bloomberg in the race.
Biden was near the bottom of my list, but with Sanders apparently unable to change youth non-voting behavior, and seemingly unwilling to try to make the sale to two-thirds of the people who actually vote, letting Sanders become the nominee looks like a losing proposition. As it stands now, Sanders can only become the nominee by either getting the wave of non-voters to show up, or by convincing an actual majority, not a plurality, to vote for him in a bunch of states. This thing isn't over, but he's going to have to figure out a formula, and simply insulting Biden isn't going to do it.
A thing about Harris: I was chatting with one of our legislative candidates the other day, a public defender and strong Berner. He said he thought the worm had really turned against prosecutors running for office. That they were having trouble in a lot of big cities, and that it wasn't the kind of path to higher office that it had been in the past. A genuinely progressive prosecutor can get re-elected, he thought, but the law-and-order types, which was the order of the day not too long ago, were going to find that there was no longer the same kind of appeal.
Clyburn's point was, I thought, fairly clear: Sanders says that he's being opposed by the political establishment, but look at the results (says Clyburn), he's also being opposed by a load of black voters in South Carolina (because very few of them voted for him) and it's ridiculous to say that they're part of the political establishment. Clyburn doesn't say that he, Clyburn, is not part of the political establishment.
A big part of the problem here is that "the establishment" can mean either "the wealthy and powerful in general" or "the senior ranks of the Democratic party", depending on context, and Bernie and his surrogates aren't always very clear which they mean.
but with Sanders apparently unable to change youth non-voting behavior,
Apparently that study showing he needs the youth turnout was bogus.
Though I agree he needs to change tack. Can't win on 30% of a divided field anymore.
I don't know why Harris didn't catch fire.
The electability trap took down all the candidates of color long before it did Warren.
It wasn't that Sanders needed the youth vote to win, it's that he was promised to bring it. And it made me optimistic until Super Tuesday showed that it was not happening. If he's not driving more young votes to the polls, that's like 75% if why I liked him better than Biden gone.
The universal health care plan is great, but if new, young voters don't show up, The kind of Congress where a good plan could pass isn't going to happen.
Anyway, he made me get my hopes up and then dashed them. This doesn't make me want to go stand on a wall against Biden.
As usual when I post about two things, the one I'm less interested in is the one everyone talks about. Harriot, and the linked thread, are great.
The thread is an interesting contrast to all of the "electability is bullshit" conversations that had been going on for months.
It is fascinating, but it's also stuff I already knew, and stuff I'm a little inhibited about talking about because it leads to African American voters (not all, but a substantial bloc, particularly older voters in the South) voting in a way I wish they didn't (roughly, for the most establishment Democratic candidate out of reasonable, sensibly motivated, loyalty to the Democratic Party as an organization that serves a useful social purpose in protecting their interests on an immediate, local level). And I don't want to question their judgment or their sense of their own interests, I just kind of regret that the world has worked out in such a way that they are less likely to vote for the candidates I see as best for the country, who are often not going to be the most establishment Dem.
It's a hard conversation to have without either coming close to sounding, or actually being, racist, so I don't tend to burble on about it lightly unless I have something well-thought-out to say.
Did you read this when it came around 6 years ago, ogged? Long but gives a deeper perspective on African American Democrats in the South (specifically Alabama), the power of coalitions, and the slow-acting poison of the Southern Strategy.
In 1998, Hubbard won a seat in Alabama's House of Representatives, which had been controlled by Democrats since 1874. But unlike so many of his Republican colleagues, Hubbard did not accept Democratic dominance as a fact of life. Instead, he was determined to end it.
It was the Democrats themselves who helped Hubbard realize his goal. During the 2001 legislative redistricting process, Joe Reed and other prominent black leaders were eager to further protect black incumbents. They successfully pushed to fill the House's 27 majority-minority and the Senate's eight majority-minority districts with even more black voters. In the process, they endangered the seats of white Democrats, who increasingly relied on African Americans to make up for the growing number of whites defecting to the GOP. James Blacksher, a civil rights attorney who advised Democrats on redistricting, is still stunned by the shortsightedness of this plan. It wasn't so much a gerrymander, he told me, as a "dummymander."
In 2002 and 2006, Republicans benefited from this tactical mistake, picking off white Democrats here and there. But in 2010, Hubbard, who had recently become the state Republican Party chairman, proposed the most audacious electoral plan in the history of the Alabama GOP. Rather than take out white Democrats piecemeal, he decided to eliminate them in one brutal election. He put together an 88-page playbook, innocuously titled GOP Alabama State Victory Plan 2010, and pushed the plan to conservative donors not just in the state, but all over the country.
The link in 53 is pretty crazy. I'd read that Vox article and felt really pessimistic about Bernie.
I like Paul Campos but this blog post is truly bizarre. So Jim Clyburn is one of the most powerful power brokers in the party and possible the single most valuable endorsement during primary season, but it's way out of bounds and extremely suspicious to imply that he's part of the "establishment".
Good god why am I procrastinating so much. I even had the Facebook app reinstalled on my phone before I came to my senses and took it off.
Anyway, it's not bizarre at all.
1) Many people cannot hear the constant railing against the wholly corrupt establishment without feeling alienated and insulted, especially when they have some loyalty or admiration for at least some Democratic politicians. Even if it's not intended this way, the rhetoric often sounds insulting to them, the *voter*. If you expand from Sanders himself to his stans, it is often clearly directed at the voters.
2) This is something that I personally know nothing about, but as Harriott's linked Twitter thread makes clear: older black Southerners are strongly identified with the party and their politicians -- they are continuous with their community in a way I could never feel. Calling Clyburn "The Establishment" and announcing you were a threat to him would, I can only imagine, not be a move to win them over.
To say something is tone-deaf does not mean there is no truth to it whatsoever. It is to say that it isn't the right thing to say in this moment. It's telling a widow she's got a lot of time on her hands. Again, just taking Harriott's word for it, it does not communicate a sense of bare familiarity with, let alone understanding of the priorities of, a group of people who have experienced intense oppression and marginalization, and who are taking their one moment to exercise meaningful power in the presidential election. Sanders had four years to think about how to address this, and it looks like he didn't figure it out, even though he lost the last time for the same reason.
I just realized I was pwned in part by ajay but I typed this comment and maybe it will add some value.
Oh, and I forgot the actual most insane NYTimes political piece of the last day or so; their inexcusably hostile and demented piece on Bernie's sister city stuff with the Soviet Union while mayor of Burlington. The Soviet delegation was went to Ben & Jerry's! This was 19-freaking 88 mind you. There was some actual "new" information that they got from the archives in Yaroslav (Burlington's sister city) but it was pretty tame and (in line with what was known generally about the Soviet's attempts to leverage thing like Sister Cities) but the framing by the Times is nuts.
I didn't quite get how the original paper being criticized balanced its findings with the simple fact that Sanders is as high as Biden in head-to-head matchups against Trump. (Taking a naive simple average of margins from the 538 tracker, its last 20 polls: Sanders +4.7, Biden +4.5. And that's similar to comparisons I've seen elsewhere.)
Like, it asked enough questions of its own group to simulate a lot of counterfactuals and assert "Sanders will drive some turnout to non-voting or to Trump, enough to tip" - but wouldn't that result show up via poll respondents supporting Sanders less and Trump more when asked the simple question in other surveys? Or is it prompting the surveyed population in ways they project will match negative ads in the campaign?
I don't know why Harris didn't catch fire.
See 56. Harris is a black woman. No further explanation is required. Barack Obama would have likewise been disqualified were he not, politically speaking, a cross between Superman and Jesus.
It's not even the senior ranks, as pretty much anyone involved in local Democratic politics anywhere can tell you. We have a particularly virulent form of it here, but it's pretty clearly everywhere. On the ground, "Establishment" means everyone not in the movement. Hand wave all you want, but that is what it means to the misfits and malcontents that disproportionately populate this movement, and which the movement has always needed to grow beyond.
I don't care about some fucking study. Sanders and his followers are continually making the argument that they don't have to try to win over voters more towards the center because they are going to bring in a horde of non-voters, including youth. Are they doing it? Nevada looked good. Super Tuesday didn't. This isn't over, but, as countless sportscasters have said, Sanders isn't going to win this thing if he doesn't put some more points on the board.
We're going to find out how much of Sanders' 2016 win in Michigan was misogyny, as opposed to an embrace by white working class men of the Sanders revolution. Anyone feel like taking bets on what it'll look like?
68 As the op argues, Black voters in the South are pragmatists about white racism. I don't think, though, that this is sufficient to explain why we weren't seeing more 'I love her, but' last year.
but the framing by the Times is nuts.
We have a guy in the White House who is indisputably beholden to actual current Russians and this is how the NYT places that in context:
While Mr. Sanders has taken heat from President Trump and his campaign for this outreach to the Soviets, his supporters say it was a timely effort to help defuse tensions and stands in contrast to Mr. Trump's affinity for strongman leaders like Russia's current president, Vladimir V. Putin.
I suppose if it's your belief that Trump won because of a combination of racism and sexism, then it makes some kind of sense for the Dems to choose a non-woke old white man to diminish the salience of those kind of "issues".
68: For Harris, I think the black woman and traditional prosecutor was a bad combination. I agree that there's anti-traditional prosecutor feeling out there, especially among people who are willing to consider black women candidates.
70: Obama had to win the Iowa caucuses (and do well in New Hampshire) to establish his credibility among black voters. As you say, pragmatists.
Yes, the NYT is going to be a net negative over the rest of the cycle. Probably a large net negative. It's too bad that the decent people doing decent journalism there, as well as the people who pay the bills, are unable to make a difference.
74 Exactly. And if you don't think you can beat Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden in Iowa and NH, then you wouldn't think you'd get over that hump. In the event, she might have beaten Biden, but he was still sucking up too much of the oxygen when she started to have fundraising issues.
I don't know why Harris didn't catch fire.
Probably made of asbestos.
Harris could have caught fire if Biden wasn't around. Wouldn't 95% of Biden voters have been perfectly happy with her? He didn't give anyone a chance for that to happen. I think she's the most likely one it would have happened for.
NMM to Woody Allen's memoir published by Hachette Book Group.
There were two big questions dividing the primary electorate (and probably even more so the donor class) - 1, whether to nominate a white man, and 2, whether to nominate a moderate. Many people thought both, many thought neither, and many thought 1 not 2, but very few seem to have thought 2 not 1. So Harris and Booker foundered.
the one I'm less interested in is the one everyone talks about. Harriot, and the linked thread, are great
I already followed Harriot on Twitter but I couldn't remember why, so I looked around and it's because he started the discussion about who is the world's most Black Famous person (highest possible score achieved by every black person knowing who you are, while zero white people know who you are).
I feel trapped because if I try to learn the winner, I'm taking away their crown.
I already followed Harriot on Twitter but I couldn't remember why, so I looked around and it's because he started the discussion about who is the world's most Black Famous person (highest possible score achieved by every black person knowing who you are, while zero white people know who you are).
I remember seeing a discussion about this that ended with a result of Gerald Levert. I thought I knew who Gerald Levert was but it turns out I was thinking of Eddie Levert. However I know who Gerald Levert is NOW, so a better answer may be out there.
Harriot wrote an article with the memorable title, "Pete Buttigieg Is a Lying MF" and then a follow-up article when Mayo Pete called him up to discuss it.
https://www.theroot.com/pete-buttigieg-is-a-lying-mf-1840038708
https://www.theroot.com/pete-buttigieg-called-me-heres-what-happened-1840055464
I'd seen the original, but that follow up was a good read
This isn't over
Yes it is. Biden has a lead in Michigan and such a big lead in Florida that Sanders might not get any delegates there.
Well, maybe it will be over next Tuesday.
Actually, delegates aren't points, they're humans. What sort of Iowan is going to go to a county convention in two weeks to be selected to go to the state convention to be selected as a Buttigieg delegate to Milwaukee?
Mick Mulvaney get sent to the special farm Northern Ireland.
What sort of Iowan is going to go to a county convention in two weeks to be selected to go to the state convention to be selected as a Buttigieg delegate to Milwaukee?
A doughy white male of about 35 years age.
It's got to be a good feeling for Mulvaney to go out on top. No OMB has blown up the deficit like he has.
We're going to find out how much of Sanders' 2016 win in Michigan was misogyny, as opposed to an embrace by white working class men of the Sanders revolution. Anyone feel like taking bets on what it'll look like?
Not me, nope. Ogged is right when he says it is over, because Biden is going to win Michigan, and then Florida, and then New York...
What's amazing/astonishing to me is that Biden has been running a lacklustre, underfunded campaign (apparently he spent nothing, or next-to-nothing, in Massachusetts, but still came in first in that state), but the voters are coming out for him, nevertheless. I guess it's the 'fear factor'? People are worried, anxious, rattled about the coronavirus; and they're just not interested in a revolution; they want someone who can calm their fears, and promise a return to an actually functioning government.
Being that Delaware was the first state (I read that on a quarter), it seems bad that we've never had a president from Delaware. Unless you count Delaware, Ohio. Maybe it's time?
69: AFAICS the swarms of new voters didn't happen and simply aren't going to happen.
The Sanders camp clearly decided early on, in their plan to blitz "the establishment" on Super Tuesday and never look back, that they weren't going to be fussy about choosing their allies. That's why grifters like Shaun King and bizarre characters like Brie-Brie and Sirota and even weirder figures like Marianna Williamson are all affiliated with the campaign.
In the meantime, dirtbaggers like Chapo Trap House (Bernie still appears on the show and the campaign hands out fliers at their events) have been making the Internet a living misery for their opponents and even some of their own supporters ever since, in ways the campaign has trained their mainstream followers to engage in every possible form of denialism and derailment about. The play was clearly supposed to be that Bernie was going to float above all this talking loftily about the Movement and fobbing all the toxicity off on Russian bots until it didn't matter anymore.
My guess as to the reason this hasn't worked out? The young voters they needed for their takeover of the party are the demographic that uses the Internet most, and is likeliest to form their primary impression of a brand online right off the top. If *I* were forming my first impression of the Sanders campaign online, I wouldn't like what I saw at all and I wouldn't vote for it. I suspect many of the voters they needed most saw the "movement" online conspicuously failing to walk its talk and said "no thank you."
Just a theory, mind you.
(Hello, Unfogged-land. Been a minute.)
Hello. It has been a while. Took me a second.
Pretty good! And how've you been?
97: I dropped out if graduate school. No need to rub it in.
I'm developing a cough. That's probably going to be awkward.
I'm pretty good these days, thanks. Freelancing for my bread these days, but I have a pretty steady gig with steady client and cash-flow. Working from home is rather, shall we say, eremitic, but it agrees with me. Were it not for all the encroaching fascism I'd call this a decent time, life-wise.
and even weirder figures like Marianna Williamson are all affiliated with the campaign
Yeah, let's highlight our anti-vax surrogate in the midst of a global pandemic, because 'science' is just part of 'the establishment,' I guess.
101: Having a cough is to feel like Patient Zero right now, innit. I feel you.
103: Right? I was fucking gobsmacked.
I was reading links to see how exactly a pandemic ends. Sounds like containment is not possible, and we're on our way to just biding our time and having the situation where coronavirus is just a disease that we get, until a vaccine is successful, and that the goal is not to overwhelm the healthcare system. But that gives rise to the perfect thing to hope for: public health measures that successfully flatten the curve and drag this out through the election season.
I've been feeling bad about the cognitive dissonance between rooting for things that ruin Trump while not wanting to inflict them on people. Dragging this out will best hurt Trump and minimize harm to people. Win-win!
I get the feeling Trump is hoping that the disease will suppress enough of the vote against him (by simply killing people who would vote against him) that he wins. I wouldn't put it past him.
Trump has no idea what to do, how to make this problem disappear. Turns out, you can't just declare bankruptcy against a deadly, and highly contagious, disease...
For what it's worth, I blank on people's names from time to time, even people I know fairly well. Back around 2002 I once blanked on my boss's name for about 10 minutes when talking about him - I covered by substituting "the guy I work for" in the conversation. 10 minutes later, I could recall it just fine. I'd been working for him around a year at the time. Mentioned it to my doctor, she thought it was perfectly normal thing as one gets older, and not a sign of developing cognitive problems. I was in my mid-40s at the time. So I'm inclined to give Joe a pass on temporarily blanking on Obama's name.
COVID-19 kills mainly older men and Trump's base skews older and male so win-win-win!
COVID-19 kills mainly older men and Trump's base skews older and male so win-win-win!
For some of us there's a sense of sitting in a trench waiting for some colonel in the rear to order us over the top.
On the other hand, maybe there's nothing to worry about.
95: Rod! Good to see you.
And I think that's right about young voters -- or not that it's universal, but that even for young voters, the Bernie movement style puts a bunch off. I don't have stats, but in my focus group of two young voters, Sally is all in for Bernie, and Newt is really sad Warren had to drop out and kind of hates the Bernie people he knows. I've had to talk him into voting Bernie when the NY primary comes around because still much better than Biden. (Oh, he would have done the right thing anyway. Talk to him about it, not talk him into it.)
My theory on their split is that it's their colleges. Sally is in a very activisty very integrated milieu out in Cali, so the Bernie people she knows are decent activists. Newt is in a much whiter/Asianer engineering school in Canada, so the people he knows who are into American politics are much likelier to be the bro-y type who takes Bernie fandom as a license to be an asshole.
That was me. My phone's started dropping my name all the time.
112: Wash your hands. And stop touching your face.
I'm sad about Warren.
As a Gen-X-er my earliest political memory was Clarence Thomas' Confirmation Hearings.
Then as a teenager I and my family were appalled by the way the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentences were disproportionately affecting African Americans.
Other than Al Gore's criticism of Bill Bradley for saying we couldn't afford universal healthcare in 2000, my first real adult political consciousness-raising experience was the Iraq War.
After that, the Biden-Bush bankruptcy bill also enraged me.
I really can't stand Buttigieg, and Klobuchar annoys me, but there was any number of other people in the race I would have preferred to Biden - Harris, Castro, Gillibrand (maybe even) Booker.
Hell, I wasn't a Hillary Clinton fan, and I like her better than Biden.
We face an existential threat, so we have to vote for Trump.
117 last: you didn't mean to say that, did you?
118,119: Well, if we want to face an existential threat, I guess it makes sense.
Oh my God, I really didn't mean to say that we have to vote for Trump! I am not awake. I meant to say that we face an existential threat in Trump, so we have to vote for Biden even though he sucks.
119 and 120: No.
In other news, I am recovering from septoplasty and the nasty splints were removed. For the first time in my life I can pretty comfortable breathe through both my nostrils without having to breath through my mouth. And I'm not snoring.
But clearly not yet sleeping as well as I ought to.
Well within the space of a few days I had my eyeglasses break and a permanent bridge I had redone last July come out.
In the immortal words of Roseanne Rosannadanna, "it's always something."
124: Ugh, what a bummer. Normally, I would recommend a dental tourism trip if it were cheaper, but that's probably not the right thing to do at this juncture.
at this juncture
Wouldn't be prudent.
126 But at least I got my job application done on team with three glowing letters of rec! How's your thing coming along?
128: Congrats on that last, Barry, but sorry about the dental work. AJ has a cap on a front tooth that we purposely had done while we had good dental insurance (in grad school, oddly enough), and it came out while he was eating about a year (!) later. The happy ending is that although the insurance bit sucked, he found an excellent prosthodontist to replace it, and his smile now looks kinda Hollywood (he had a Madonna/Letterman gap before). May your replacement be much more effective than the original.
126: I submitted it. I don't think I'm fully qualified, but I haven't seen anyone come in to interview for it. I did chat with the hiring manager. It was good practice.
We have to screen people for travel, so maybe there's someone who was in Italy they are waiting to interview.
131 glad to hear it! Good luck!
This reminds me that I need new glasses and that I haven't been to a dentist in like a year and a half.
124. Ouch, Barry. I'm going through the bridge thing, which so far has lasted over a month. They glued it back in but it fell out again, etc., repeat until insane. Good luck. Eyeglasses still okay, at least.
Oh my God, I really didn't mean to say that we have to vote for Trump! I am not awake.
I knew that! When I read your comment, I thought, 'There's no way bg is voting Trump, must be some weird typo thing due to grogginess....'
Septoplasty! That actually sounds...positive. Breathing freely sounds great.
Greatest mashup ever
https://twitter.com/kjhealy/status/1236467251387252737?s=21
Also I'm in a coffee shop in which all the art this time around is by someone with Moby's real name, which made me laugh to consider.
You don't make charming art about insects 1500 miles away on a regular basis?
Not usually, and my Texas relatives are from mom's side of the family.