He may drop out of the race but he'd be stupid to resign. If he does then the VP slot will be held open by House Republicans and they'll have their guy in place to fuck with the electoral vote counting.
This is giving me March 2020 levels of vertigo.
Unless he's literally dying, in which case, given the confirmation process for a new veep, he still should hold on as long as he can, that's not happening. But it does seem weirdly possible that he won't run again, which, I don't know, having the Democratic convention in Chicago wasn't fraught enough, I guess?
Wait. Why would resignation from office be on the table at all? I assumed we meant resign from the campaign.
1: Yes. He could have chosen not to run for another term but resigning now would be bad for the reason SP just said.
He's very proud and stubborn, and selfish. He'll probably, hopefully drop out, but he won't resign.
Yes more specificity needed on the prediction.
I am now leaning towards thinking he will step aside as candidate. Not sure if it is a good or bad idea.
I mean he's generally self serving when it matters most. He's gracious and not pettily selfish.
Me too. When he said that he was meeting with the governors, it felt like the seismic shift.
My prediction, I guess: Harris steps into running for president, Newsome for VP, and they don't win. Everything is the worst and the arc of history bends towards flames.
It's an extremely good idea. He's not fit to serve, and the vast majority of voters agrees with me. It doesn't matter that Harris is a somewhat weak candidate, she's good enough, and I don't think a contested convention would be so bad either. Candidates won't behave the same as in a primary, and there won't enough time for the same kinds of passion and ill will to emerge.
If Biden steps aside as the Democratic candidate, what happens to the campaign funds he raised? If I've already maxed out my donation to his campaign, per the FEC, would I then be able/obligated to toss another $3300 at the campaign of whoever does get the nomination?
From what I read, they can be donated to the DNC, and if it's Harris she could keep them. I don't think it's a huge issue. Any candidate will raise astronomical amounts of money very quickly and campaign money probably doesn't matter that much in a general election, it didn't in 2016.
I've just read people saying that on social media, so I could be wrong.
It's got to be Harris. No way around it for a multitude of reasons.
And Pritzker as VP, I ride with the Horde.
Hive and Horde 2024.
I think it's super risky but it's plausible what the race needs is a "game change" moment (comparison to 2008 very much intended) that shifts it from Biden down 2-3 points to Harris up 2-3 (because she's young, reasonably charismatic and not directly on the hook for anything specific Biden did). Ideally Biden finds some face-saving way to bow out (e.g., a "new" diagnosis that's bad but not 25th Amendment dire) so everybody can just pretend this wasn't a monumental party-wide fuck up. I'd guess moderate white guy (Beshear?) for VP.
When the Paper of Record™ is talking about how you should drop out, and maybe are actually kinda thinking about doing so, on a daily basis, your goose is probably cooked no matter what. I'd rather take a flyer on a last minute whoever candidacy than what looks like a guaranteed loss with Joe. But I really wish the powers that be hadn't wasted the primary season pretending that running a decaying octogenarian was a fine idea, when they clearly knew it was not.
The "game change" was supposed to be the early debate where everybody was reminded that Trump is a maniac and Biden is calm, reasonable and competent. It's been driving me a little nuts that the post-debate analysis has focused on the polls being stable/not a disaster for Biden when he really needed a bump, and not getting the bump is the disaster.
It is deeply frustrating to me that an idea with such obvious risk seems plausible. My personal estimate is closer to 30-35% chance that Biden steps down from the top of the ticket, but I may be underestimating just because I find so many of the people pushing the idea annoying.
Biden doesn't need a face saving moment. He needs to blame it on age in a way that highlights Trump's age as heavily as possible. "My opponent and I both remember when movies were in black and white and houses didn't have TV sets. It's become clear that our generation needs to pass the torch to the current generation. I still have the mental acuity, but I no longer have the stamina and vigor needed to take down fascism. I will stay on in an advisy role to highlight the will of the people in earning me this nomination in the primary this past spring."
(I still feel deeply uncomfortable with it. I'm just writing scripts here. Stepping down should be pitched as the courageous, heroic path for democracy.)
19 successful governor, white, damn good fighter and counterpuncher
The reason he needs face-saving is that everything in 23 was perfectly visible from the vantage of 2023, so why are you stepping down that's not (a) I'm an egotistical ass, who didn't perceive my own limitations, (b) my party is too out of touch to overcome (a), and (c) now the NYT is against me and I'm too weak and ineffectual to bring them to heel. A faux medical crisis is just the thing.
Why wouldn't he just take the opportunity to give the heroic speech for low information voters? Everyone following along would understand the context. Who cares if we all have had grave misgivings?
If Biden were capable of going out there and saying "look buddy...." like he used to it would all be over and he'd be fine but evidently he can't.
I don't think he's resigning or dropping out. I would be willing to take an even bet, charity, with either on the other side.
Newsom could not legally join Harris on the ticket as he's from the same state. Nor, I think, would he want to. He's already frittered away 8 years of his career as lieutenant governor and I doubt he would want to play that waiting game again.
Oh right. I take back my Newsone prediction as VP in 11. Some other assertive generic white man.
VP rumors: https://x.com/nick_field90/status/1808945874082615611
Beshear (KY), Cooper (NC), Shapiro (PA), all pretty sensible.
29: You mean, he's not going to become a resident of Wyoming?
31: Swinging North Carolina seems tempting.
Supreme Court Thread?.111: Biden did several interviews on black radio yesterday, scant mention only in alternative news sources.
OK, the NYT found them and now in a story headlined "Biden Stumbles Over His Words as He Tries to Steady Re-Election Campaign" in which for each interview (and a short "speech" he made at a 4th celebration) they found a verbal gaffe. This is their only frame. 80% of NYT Politics on this now (and probably every day until Biden drops --and not over then, see my next comment).
But the perfect encapsulation is the Peter Baker "analysis": Varying Treatment of Biden and Trump Puts Their Parties in Stark Relief. All about the parties reacting differently but of course not one fucking mention of the differential press reaction. It's so good to have Peter as a leading analrapist at the paper of record advising Dems that they need anustart.
Among the many irksome things is the whole "his voter's don't care" shtick about Trump--in the horserace frame the media insist on it is a the small group of "persuadable" voters that matter and they certainly demonstrably do care*.
*There is a colorable argument that even they do care about it for Biden but not for Trump because they are voting for different things . But 1) not really and 2) just interesting how the cultiness has driven the media narrative to such a degree.
I really want to be all "Biden 2024; Fuck the Media" but maybe hot. At this point I am sure any continued poll erosion is due more to the post-debate coverage rather than the debate itself; but that it is also real thing. Though I will say the most incensed normie Dem I know (incensed at the coverup of his "dementia") did see the debate but turned it off at 10 minutes. (I guess the beginning was the worst part.)
But speaking of the "coverup", the "but her emails" for Kamala is already taking shape--her role in "covering up" Biden's cognitive state. So far I have only seen it explicitly mentioned by Fox/Right-wing media and the truly butt hurt like Olivia Nuzzi, Nate Silver, and Alex Thompson (Bari Weiss hobnobbing Axios guy who has been cumming all over himself over the whole thing). But trust me coming soon to centrist pundits and "straight news" MSM everywhere.
Did you see any parts of the interviews? How'd they actually go?
13: He's not fit to serve
Absolutely disagree. May not be fit to run a good campaign.
37: I saw parts. They were Ok, typical Biden. So not great, but just sort of old Joe stuff. So not a strong "comeback" but not out of the norm.
WURD one here about 10 minutes..
39:And your comment led me to listen to the whole thing. A few rough transitions, but overall pretty typical; the NYT cherry-pick is just BS, but that is what it is going to be from here on out.
I realize I only turn up around here once a year, and invariably sound like a crazy person but here I am again.
Yesterday I finally cancelled my NYT news subscription (I know, I know). Eleven fucking front page articles on Biden being too old/mentally incapacitated and only a brief mention of Trump noting that he is laying low . . .
It was the ridiculous opinion piece on "Why I don't vote" that really pushed me over the edge-- on the 4th of July. Written by a Hillsdale College drop out who actually votes regularly . . .
42: Yes, so cool they could take some space from their incessant Biden hand-wringing to bring that valuable perspective. And I notice the teaser for the article is "Why I Don't Vote" and the article (now. did it change?) is headlined "Why I Won't Vote."
43: Yes, the headline most definitely changed but the graphic hasn't.
I listened to the WURD piece yesterday and it sounded like he was partially reading from a list-- but that is what you have to do in a 5 minute inteview.
I had trouble googling yesterday for anything on Biden's White House barbecue at first-- and then something turned up on Fox, of all places-- a perfectly decent AP piece:
https://apnews.com/article/biden-election-trump-debate-democrats-withdraw-campaign-8866379e91fdb1425bbd2eb5344655c5
NYT followed up an hour or so later with their "Bumbling Joe" shit which bore only minimal resemblance to the videos I'd finally found.
Oops-- it's not the same article but the tone is far more measured than much of what I've seen lately.
I am still a solid Biden/Harris voter.
The important thing is unanimity. Everyone needs to get with the program. Biden had that unanimity, and it should be no surprise if he sincerely believes he is the only Democrat who can rebuild that. It might be true.
Other people here may know more about the slide into autocracy of, say, Russia or Hungary. But whatever happens with Biden, I think the next phase is going to be Democrats tearing each other to shreds. Harris is selected and loses, and it's because the Democrats screwed up and should have gone with Shapiro or Biden. Biden doesn't drop out and loses, he's selfish and should have known better. Harris would have won. Or a contested convention produces a loser, and anyone with any sense knows a contested convention is a horrible idea. Why couldn't the various contenders just consolidate behind one candidate?
Me, I don't want to play that game. Nobody knows what the right thing is here, and all paths likely lead over a cliff. But you can be sure that people like Biden and Harris and others acting in good faith will be told that they would have won if only they had done this One Weird Trick.
What's frustrating about this is that while it might make sense for Biden to drop out (I lean no*), the media demanding that Biden drop out but not the similarly aged convicted felon insurrectionist is insane. Where's the editorial calling the Republicans to find literally anyone else with a pulse?
*He's been an effective president, and Harris probably loses. No one else is an option. So....
Not really on topic but I'm really enjoying using Witt's advice to access the NYTimes through my library without paying for it. I installed the app and everything.
If you own a newspaper and feel like you want a tax cut, what do you do? Promote Trump, again. You might do the same if you owned a newspaper, and felt like "the Woke" has gotten out of hand.
Democratic decision makers should understand that the media barons cannot be placated. They're not calling for Biden to drop out because they're afraid he might do worse against Trump than some other actual person. They want Biden out and they want Trump to win. Even those who don't actually want Trump to win, like the flex aspect: they want to cut the legs off Biden because they can, and want to show him who's boss. (See 2016).
I'm thinking we might just get a backlash. Not from the NYT, which has always been a hopeless cause. But maybe elsewhere pointing out the absurdity noted in 47 will start to get real traction.
The Philadelphia Inquirer had a great article on why Trump should leave the race-- one lone voice i n the wilderness.
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/first-presidential-debate-joe-biden-donald-trump-withdraw-20240629.html
52: That's a great editorial. I hope politicians will amplify it.
I don't have time to do a literature search but I feel like the thing about 47 is most of these editorial boards have called for Trump to drop out, or not to run in the first place, and probably called for him to be impeached, and cheered his conviction, and endorsed Biden in 2020, and will endorse Biden again if he stays in. Everybody knows there's not much point in trying to shame Trump into doing the right thing, and they're on the record that he's a bad person. The current media cycle is super annoying but it makes sense why this is how it's playing out.
If you own a newspaper and feel like you want a tax cut, what do you do? Promote Trump, again.
I don't think it's just financial. Contemporary autocracy has nominally independent media, but also some independent publications have been shut out*, so if you want to remain in a top position you've got to hedge or even go all out for the autocrat. It might be different if you saw your publication at stake**, but so far Republicans have shown they love prestige if they can bend it in their favor***, so a Trumpist CNN or NYT are still viable strategies for remaining at or near the supposed pinnacle of journalism.
*And on the extreme end, some of the more independent journalists have been beaten or murdered. I would not rule out this future for the US, but I'm optimistic that it's not going to happen within the next few years.
**By which I mean something like actual state-run media takeovers.
***See the Ivy League backgrounds of Supreme Court Justices.
54: However, one point per me above, is that for folks like "swing voters" standard run of the mill stuff does not break through. A frenzy does,.For instance, Jon Ralston (who I usually like) chastised people saying how little coverage there was of Trump calling for a military tribunal re:Liz Cheney especially the in light of the SC ruling. His point was that we all knew about it via media so what's the beef? How about emphasis and repitition.
55: Yep, if were ate going to be a Autocratic Kleptocracy the NYT surely wants to be the paper of record for the AK.
I cannot for the fucking life of me understand why Trump got a pass on saying that Democrats want to abort babies up to three days old. Like, there have been basically zero articles about it.
My sense is that banning early abortions is a wedge issue that divides Republicans, whereas talking about late term abortions is (unfortunately*) an issue that divides Democrats. So even though Trump was lying, bringing it up as a topic puts more attention on an area that hurts Democrats.
* appreciation again for Megan writing her article that might help shift some people's thinking about late term abortions.
Reading the NYT live commentary on Biden's speech is absolutely infuriating. They live in a world where they've already decided what's happening and anything contradicting their belief is either untrue or ignored.
"Biden flubbed a line on Trump's economic policy for his next term. Knowing his words will be closely scrutinized going forward, he made an effort to correct himself: "He's announced he wants another 5 billion -- trillion, trillion, not billion -- $5 trillion tax cut."
That's the standard for inability to speak now? About 75% of politicians need to quit immediately then.
"The big question for Biden is why he waited a week and a day after his awful debate performance to deliver this kind of forceful rebuttal to calls that he step aside. Instead, he let it fester for days as angry Democrats built momentum for the idea he should quit the race."
He did in NC the very next day? It was reported in your own newspaper!
"Biden spoke in a strong and animated voice. But in person it was still hard to understand some of his stump speech lines, which was not the case with the previous speakers."
He disproved things I wrote about him, but it still wasn't perfect!
"The challenge that Biden faces, according to numerous nervous Democrats I have spoken with, is that scripted events like Friday's rally in Wisconsin won't easily settle public concerns about his cognitive skills, or intense worries among party leaders that he is either capable of defeating Trump or serving as president until age 86."
Way to go triply meta here, it's not about whether his performance rebutted
concerns, or whether voters think he rebutted concerns, but whether a reporter thinks he rebutted the concerns of anonymous sources who are concerned about the concerns of voters. Concerning!
Does anyone have recommendations for volunteer activities?
If anyone in MA, has more local suggestions, let me know. I'm not good at the kind of volunteering that doesn't involve community of some kind.
Is the Biden interview as bad as it seems from twitter?
Hmm, different curation. Mine is equivocal. But certainly some fodder for the get outers. As there will be with almost everything he will ecer do.
My impression was that he came across as a bit too defensive and had the soft spoken thing going. Most media people in my timeline are negative on it, several saying the campaign is deluding itself. But bith that and the defensiveness are hazards of this kind if situation; in a political campaign you are have to appear to be all in. Journos know this; pols know this. I'm sure behind the scenes, there is a lot of contingency work going on.
It wasn't bad like the debate but the questions really didn't give him a lot to work with-- it was just are you sure you can do this and are you sure you're not fooling yourself over and over again and over . . . Painful to watch but it wasn't actually his fault. It's the relentless narrative that has been pushed down our throats by the MSM.
Just before the debate I ran into this quote from Mark Milley on 60 minutes:
GENERAL MILLEY DEFENDS PRESIDENT BIDEN'S AGE; SAYS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SHOULD REST EASY
"...I engage with him frequently and (he is) alert, sound, does his homework, reads the papers, reads all the read-ahead material, and is very, very engaging in issues of very serious matters of war and peace and life and death.
So if the American people are worried about an individual, who is someone who's making decisions of war and peace and makes the decisions of nuclear weapons and that sort of thing, I think they can rest easy."
https://x.com/ChrisDJackson/status/1809353918016594129
THAT is what I want from my president.
Yeah, it would have been nice to have a bit more on substantive questions. But as I said this is the spiral you get into.
"in a political campaign you are have to appear to be all in"
Sorry Stormcrow, under the Times rules typing something means it's time to send you to a farm in upstate NY.
There has been a lot going on with Israel/Gaza in the last couple of days and he alluded to it briefly-- he said something about all of the work that had been put into it may finally be coming to fruition . . . I hope that is true-- for the Israelis and the Palestinians of course but also for Biden. That could certainly disrupt the current spiral.
But from reactions I think it is pretty much over but the shouting.
I didn't think the debate made Biden unviable, but the subsequent full-court media freakout may well have done permanent damage. I'd rather Kamala was president than Joe, so if the switcheroo comes to pass I won't be particularly fussed about it. If it ends up going to the convention, then the Democratic establishment is even more wreckless and irresponsible than I think.
I still don't have a strong prediction, but I was remembering this paragraph from the New Yorker profile of Biden (emphasis mine):
The kind of people who believe that they should be President of the United States do not generally go graciously into retirement. Alexander Hamilton, who knew his share of ex-politicians, described them as "discontented ghosts." When Richard Nixon was between stints in office, he fretted, "I'm going to be mentally dead in two years and physically dead in four." Calvin Coolidge, the only twentieth-century President who voluntarily passed up a reasonable chance at reëlection, said that he hoped to avoid "grasping for office." (Coolidge noted that Presidents "live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment.") In Biden's case, he has been in politics so long that one of his aides told me a decade ago that he seemed "afraid if he stops working he might just fall over."
Another excellent editorial from the Philly Inquirer:
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/trump-verbal-miscues-presidential-debate-20240706.html
46: Biden had that unanimity, and it should be no surprise if he sincerely believes he is the only Democrat who can rebuild that.
Did he? My impression was that most everyone left of the center of the Democratic party would have voted for virtually any other reasonable Democratic nominee over Biden, for precisely the reasons he's likely going to lose this election. The problem was that everyone to the right of the center line harrumphed about how he was the best choice to beat Trump because Obama or whatever and wouldn't budge from that idiocy.
I've said it before but I'll say it again: the one thing that could have saved this country is if every Confederate officer had been hanged as a traitor in 1865. All our problems ultimately stem from allowing the slavocracy to continue in only slightly modified form up until the present day.
It's hard to say for sure without a campaign, but I would have voted for Biden. I think he's been the most effective president of my lifetime and I basically agree with him on pretty much all policy points. In 2020 if we had an earlier primary I probably would have voted for Warren, but in retrospect I think that would have been a mistake.
I've said it before but I'll say it again: the one thing that could have saved this country is if every Confederate Continental Army officer had been hanged as a traitor in 1865 1781.
75: You're pretty much offering the definition of political unity here: Supporting a candidate you have doubts about because he's the one everyone can agree on. Is Kamala the Cop going to get that kind of support?*
It's a quite literal tragedy, in the sense that people will probably die because Joe overestimated his ability to be TV-ready. But here we are.
And yeah, a lot of good could probably be done by wiping out the descendants of those Confederate officers, too. But US liberals have never been much for extra-judicial killings.**
*Maybe!
**So far!
76: Yeah, that pretty well sums it up for me, too.
My impression was that most everyone left of the center of the Democratic party would have voted for virtually any other reasonable Democratic nominee over Biden
I didn't vote for him in 2020 but would have voted for him over most challengers I can think of - probably Sanders or an analogue, definitely Warren. He, or his organizational structure, did a great job of uniting the party around action and getting stuff through Congress, plus all the executive stuff, better than I would have imagined in 2020.
I'll still vote for him in 2024 if he's the nominee.
I just don't want him to resign right now, not seeking re-election would have been fine, but I want to have a VP.
It seems like a sign of strange times that Jeet Heer ( https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/ron-klain-open-letter-biden/ ) and Yglesias ( https://www.slowboring.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-biden ) are writing similarly in calling for Biden to leave the race.
I'm still taken aback a bit when I see people* say that Biden won the nomination in 2020 through the machinations of political elites - not just the usual big money political support or alliances among politicians, but some sort of illegitimate maneuvering that masked the true popularity of Sanders.** There is an argument that the campaigns were abruptly limited by Covid, which is true, but I don't think it's clear that affected the outcome.
*Online, haven't had this conversation in person.
**I think in this view, it's always Sanders who would have won. I'm not actually sure if it's that consistent.
84: Super Tuesday was March 3, 2020. I remember helping manage a Warren canvass in the suburbs, stopping by a drugstore & seeing all the hand sanitizer shelves empty.
Minivat, do you have any plans to do any volunteering this fall? Since I live in a safely blue State, I'm trying to figure out what I can do.
83: I like that Yglesias acknowledges his failure to reckon with the question of what happens when Biden drops out, and he promises to deal with that in the future. Heer, on the other hand, engages in the kind of hand-waving that is really common among the anti-Biden pundits:
I'll note that recent polling now shows Harris is polling equivalent to Biden. Both lag Trump--but the crucial difference is that Harris has room to grow.
Well no, that's not true at all. It's the most ordinary thing in the world for a potential candidate to poll better than that same candidate when they enter the race. On the other hand, there's a strong argument to be made that Biden's current polls represent his floor -- that this miserable debate is the worst we're going to see from him. He has certainly done his part to lower expectations for the September debate.
And who says Harris gets the Dems' nod? That certainly makes the most sense to me, but my fellow Americans -- and even my fellow Democrats -- do not consult me when they make these decisions.
As a topic of conversation, I find this as depressing as Israel-Palestine. It seems to me almost impossible to take a strong stand without wiping certain facts out of existence. But I did like Yglesias' approach.
I agree, the Yglesias column was good precisely because it didn't have the tone of, "why is it so difficult for reality to conform to my vision" that many columns on the topic have.
84 Biden won is 2020 because the most reliable voters in the coalition (Black people, esp women, in the South) applied decades of lived experience in determining who could win the votes of white people in general. Sanders' campaign was defeated in 2016 in exactly the same way. I'm sure the archives shows me wondering in real time in 2020 why he didn't spend a year attending every Democratic picnic in the South that he could find. But we know the answer: Sanders' play was the he didn't need the most reliable voters in the coalition, but could form a majority out of the least reliable voters in the coalition. He did do ok in the early states, but was not brining in the numbers of young non-voters that was going to be necessary for the plan to work.
Biden's core support has not yet abandoned him, and when they do, he's going to have to endorse Harris. (If she wants it.) And if it's not her, her endorsement is necessary.
National polling is so far beyond worthless as to be objectively misleading. We know that the Dem candidate is going to win California, New York, Massachusetts, DC, etc. Polling those states artificially distorts the field. We know that the Dem will win college educated women. I'm going to vote for the Dem no matter which one gets picked, and most everyone reading these words will as well. We need to know who's going to being Black people to the polls in droves in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. Everything else is bullshit.
80 I voted for Warren in 2020, but Biden has been a better president that she would have been.
Yggles piece definitely captures a lot of what I have wondered or felt. Without the magical bow on the end.
89: Completely agree. Also would like to do something useful to help. Is there anything productive? Because I don't like just sotting around passively watching the Republic fail.
We know that the Dem candidate is going to win California, New York, Massachusetts, DC, etc. Polling those states artificially distorts the field.
That's really special pleading. Usually swing state margins run behind the national margin, so you need to be up nationally by even more to be up in the EC. Anyway, the swing-state-specific polling is even worse right now. There may be other reasons the polling is bad, but it's not that.
There was an argument (not one I accept) that the NYT was just reporting what everyone else was prioritizing by having Biden's age as the top headline on their site for 10 consecutive days. The Parkinson's doctor story is completely off the rails, thought. Picked up from the fever swamps of the NY Post and Alex Berenson, completely lacking context about the fact that the WH was working on a Parkinson's initiative, and worst of all not even thinking to check whether Biden was actually in the WH or traveling when the doctor visited.
Someone should be keeping track of the NYT's unapologetic bullshitting. I found this one really astonishing. No, Biden didn't say he fell asleep. He said he "almost" fell asleep," and he was unambiguously making a joke or engaging in a bit of hyperbole.
But what really separates the NYT from respectable journalism is the failure to correct this obvious error. Have they correctly reported the Parkinson doctor thing yet? Will they? Stay tuned ...
The parkinson's hit piece is insane. "This doc visited the WH eight times in eight months!!!!"
Three paragraphs later: "he also visited 10 times in 2013 and 14 times in 2014 and Trump ordered the WH not to keep public records of who visited."
Biden is Lisa Simpson rolling her eyes and saying "yes. I'm going to marry a carrot," and the media is the purple twins tittering "OMG she admitted it! she's gonna marry a carrot!"
I think if the "Dump Biden" people had just come in with something realistic like "Biden needs to step aside for Kamala" rather than all the various white boy fantasy scenarios we would be at a different place. But half of them dislike her intensely and the other half are (probably rightfully so) afeared of the racism and misogyny of the electorate, so its thunderdome scenarios.
98: The other thing is that these are all individuals with idiosyncratic ideas about how the perfect scenario will be constructed. And since there is no perfect scenario -- I personally doubt there is an adequate scenario -- everybody gets deniability. "Yes, as I said, Joe needed to step down, and if they'd followed my advice after that, they would have won the election."
Apparently Alakan Trump-appointed judge got up to bad enough shit thar he resigned. If he had lasted another half year he'd probably have it made.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2024/07/08/former-alaska-federal-judge-resigns-after-sexual-harassment-of-former-law-clerk-report-says/
100 I saw the resignation announcement last week,* but didn't see any context anywhere. This makes two vacancies out of 3 seats in Alaska, and Biden Reason has an opportunity, if the fucking Senate will just walk through the door.
* I was pro hac in a case that ended a decade ago, and I'm still getting PACER notifications.
93 I don't mean polling about whether Biden should step down, I mean polling as between Harris, Whitmer, Newsome. Is it really just noise in the swing states?
It says something about Newsom's national prominence that even political junkies aren't sure how to spell his name.
This makes two vacancies out of 3 seats in Alaska, and Biden Reason has an opportunity, if the fucking Senate will just walk through the door.
They're waiting for Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski to send them a list of names.
89 reminds me very much of the election we just had in the UK. Labour triumphed by focusing on the most important element of the coalition - in a word, normies - and not bothering over much about anything else. SKS himself and the entire shadow cabinet were pretty much selected on the basis of "who will get the normies to show up?" This didn't make everybody happy, but they won, bigly, and now only a handful of professionally butthurt twitter nuts are complaining.
The problem was that everyone to the right of the center line harrumphed about how he was the best choice to beat Trump
He did, in fact, beat Trump.
106: we actually IIRC had people on this site in 2020 harrumphing about how Biden was going to lose an election that any other Democratic candidate would win easily. In fact Biden polled better against Trump than any other candidate, and, as you say, beat him. And he is, last time I looked, *still* polling better against Trump than any other candidate. He's certainly doing better than Sanders who is older than Biden and had an actual heart attack during the 2020 campaign.
(And who thinks that Jeremy Corbyn was kicked out of the Labour Party because he was too much of a union man, which suggests that he isn't really in touch with what's going on these days in any great detail).
Jimmy Carter is still eligible for a second term.
Jimmy Carter is still eligible for a second term.
I appreciate Trump won an election, but I still don't think the US electorate is ready to vote for a candidate whose response to the My Lai massacre was to complain that William Calley got a raw deal and encourage everyone to show their support for him and the other brave fighting men of C Company.
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/05/21/archives/carter-credibility-issue-galley-and-vietnam-war.html
As the article makes clear, Carter was a stronger supporter of the Vietnam War than Richard Nixon or Henry Kissinger.
I was playing around with Our World in Data again, and my latest question is: how long does recovery from WW2 take? In other words: in what year does a country get back to pre-WW2 levels of GDP per person, adjusting for inflation?
UK and US never dipped below it, neither did non-combatants like Spain - Ireland barely dipped.
What about other European countries?
USSR: 1948.
France, Poland, Netherlands: 1949.
Italy: 1950.
Germany: 1955.
All makes sense, more or less what you'd expect - a few hard years, plenty of Marshall Plan aid (unless you're Poland), back more or less to normal by the early fifties.
And in Africa:
Nigeria: 1950.
Kenya: 1951.
Ghana: 1953.
No data for the ME, unfortunately, but what really caught my eye was the completely different picture in East Asia.
Japan: 1957.
Malaysia: 1962.
Philippines: 1961.
South Korea: 1967.
Indonesia: 1970 (!!)
Myanmar: 1978 (!!!!!)
That is a very long hangover...
Indonesian agricultural productivity fell by about half in 1942 and didn't recover until IIRC 1968.
I think Warren has gotten a lot more of her agenda accomplished through Biden and thinks he's the most effective guy to help her get the things she wants done, done. There was an article in the Boston Globe today where she reiterated her strong support for him. The article said she was on Biden's campaign advisory board. Senator Markey was less decisively in support.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/07/08/nation/elizabeth-warren-joe-biden-debate/
113: ouch. That'd do it, for a largely agricultural country. Why?
110: Carter was a mixed bag, but he did pardon Vietnam-era draft-dodgers. That was a pretty gutsy move at the time. And you're linking a 1976 article written at a time when Carter was recanting -- or, if you prefer, "lying about" -- his support for the war and Calley.
There's an interesting analog in the modern treatment of the Iraq War supporters. I think Joe (for example) has appropriately recanted his error on that.
So is Trump's sentencing still in two or three days?
Gotta say, this whole media freakout has worked out well for him so far. But her emails!
Agricultural growth in Indonesia : productivity change and policy impact since 1880
Apart from the construction of reservoirs and the irrigation projects outside Java, only fragmented evidence is available on irrigation issues during 1942-67. The third main theme was increasing disrepair of irrigation structures in Java at all levels. The colonial system of irrigation management depended upstream on the activity of the departments of Public Works, and downstream on the supervision by the section engineers. But during the Japanese occupation, the war of independence and the turbulent years until 1966, these conditions could not be met. Firstly, there were insufficient qualified Indonesians to fill the positions left by Dutch engineers. Indonesians in senior positions may have had adequate qualifications, but there was a chronic shortage of qualified people for the crucial middle management positions, due to which initiatives from the higher echelons were not carried out to the full.63 Secondly, the real value of available public funds decreased due to accelerating inflation.
Regulations guaranteeing a fair distribution of irrigation water during the dry monsoon continued to exist. But crucial operational manuals, maps and documents disappeared during 1942-49 and local irrigation regulations were not adapted to new local situations.64 Irrigation committees were reestablished in the 1950s, but many simply ceased to function.65 Due to inadequate supervision farmers were found tapping water directly from secondary canals, damaging the dykes in irrigation systems. There were attempts by the government to stem the deterioration of structures and management systems during the 1950s.66 The first Five-Year Plan (1956-60) and later the Eight-Year Plan (1961-68) contained several rehabilitation projects.67 But in real terms the budgets for such projects were much lower than pre-war public expenditure on maintenance and repairs.
It is unclear to what extent the projects were actually carried out, nor is the exact extent of the problems known. But it is likely that poor supervision and a shortage of construction materials caused increasing arrears in major repairs. Channels and reservoirs silted up and became overgrown, head works and distribution constructions fell in disrepair. There are several indications that deforestation contributed to the problems. The flow of water in many rivers during the dry monsoon declined, the silt content of river water increased and the number of landslides, spates and lowland inundations escalated.68
[...]
Research on paddy varieties was continued after independence, although most Dutch personnel had to leave the research station in Bogor during the 1950s. H. Siregar was the only remaining qualified rice breeder. He continued work as far as possible and tried to combine the positive propensities of japonica and indica varieties into varieties suitable to Indonesian circumstances.153 Work was increasingly concentrated in Bogor, because there were insufficient qualified people to supervise experiments and screening at the regional selection gardens.154 But during 1942-65 only nine new paddy varieties were released for multiplication, compared to eight during 1940-41.155 A large part of the collection of germ-plasm at the rice research station was lost during the early 1960s due to improper storage.156 During those years Siregar managed to continue his work due to research projects funded by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines.
[...]
During the Japanese occupation Dutch staff of the Extension Service was detained and replaced by Indonesians. Work was severely hampered by deteriorating communications, for instance with the research institutes in Bogor. Japanese officials became involved in agricultural extension in 1944 in an attempt to boost rice production. The Japanese re-organised the extension service into a uniform 'top-down' system, which used a command-style approach to agricultural extension.189 This technique may have been successful in Japan, Taiwan and Korea, but in Java it failed to yield the expected results. Food production plummeted during 1944-45. The Republican government inherited the extension service (Jawatan Pertanian Rakyat) from the Japanese and continued it after 1945. The Colonial Extension Service was re-established in the areas brought under Dutch control. But, apart from East Indonesia, the continued war of independence impeded effective measures to further agricultural recovery.190 Both services were merged after independence in 1949.
The new extension service explicitly endorsed the multi-disciplinary approach of the 1930s.191 A few 'community development' projects along Indian lines were also implemented, but they remained of marginal significance.192 The extension service had to overcome a multitude of problems, such as the lack of transport facilities and the erosion of the budget for agricultural extension.193 The main problem was the shortage of personnel. Some fifty Dutch officials resigned from senior positions in the extension service, while many Indonesians who had been in the Colonial Extension Service were promoted to positions at new universities or in the higher echelons of the Department of Agriculture.
The output of university graduates from the agricultural faculties did not start until 1952. But from the first 100 graduates from the Faculty of Agriculture in Bogor only two joined the Extension Service, to others presumably being deterred by the low salaries in the civil services.194 There were insufficient Indonesians with comparable qualifications, knowledge and experience to replace Dutch officials. But the shortage of candidates for the middle ranks was more crucial, because they provided the link with the farmers.
[...]
The Japanese military government turned the colonial regulation of the Indonesian rice market after 1942 into a strict 'top-down' system to control the entire rice market, as part of the plan to make Java the granary of the Japanese army in Southeast Asia.31 Farmers were obliged to deliver paddy to compulsory village cooperatives. But the real official purchase price was soon eroded by inflation. There was little incentive for farmers to produce a surplus and sell it to the village cooperatives, apart from compulsion from the local authorities in order to meet the quota imposed on them.
The attempt to control the rice market had disastrous effects and rice production fell. People in the distribution system received rice rations, but the urban poor and rural landless were not in this system. Rice trade between regions was forbidden and rice stopped flowing from surplus to deficit areas. There was a black market, but it was small and prices were high. Famine struck after severe crop failures and starvation spread during 1944-45.
Similar problems existed after the Japanese surrender in August 1945. The government of the Republic of Indonesia continued the Japanese system. But purchase prices were still not attractive to farmers and force was still used to procure rice for the civil service and the Republican army. The recovery of food production was impeded by the armed struggle during 1946-49. The colonial government could only introduce a distribution of imported rice in famine areas brought under its rule during 1947-49. VMF was revived in 1948, but it took until 1949 before it could purchase significant quantities of rice. The colonial government did not consider an attempt to control the rice market, although it prohibited the storage and transport of more than 1,000 kg of rice without permission of VMF in order to prevent hoarding for speculation.
Rice Price Policies, 1950-66
The Indonesian government continued the semi-public VMF after independence in 1949. The organisation retained its power to license rice mills, restrict shipments of paddy in Indonesia and impose a maximum on stored quantities of rice. There were several changes in the structure and operations of the food logistic agencies which succeeded VMF.32 Rather than 'steering' the rice market, as the colonial VMF had done, the new agencies aimed at regulating the production of milled rice, as during most of the 1940s. For instance, rice mills were obliged to work only for the agency and unauthorised trade of large quantities of rice was forbidden. The mills could not mill and trade on their own account. On the one hand this implied a considerable constraint on rice trade. Most commercial rice was hand-pounded, transported on bicycles and marketed by petty traders in small quantities.33 The measures therefore contributed to paralysis of the rice marketing system. Moreover, during 1950-72 purchase targets were never met and the milling capacity was therefore not used to the full during these years.34 One problem obstructing the fulfilment of purchase targets were the logistic difficulties in orchestrating transport and distribution.
[...]
Factory production of sugar declined during the Japanese occupation, because exports were impossible. But cane was still harvested in 1942-44 and sugar stocks accumulated. Recovery of factory production during the late 1940s was only possible after the Dutch recaptured large areas of rural Java. But that recovery was impeded by the substantial damage which factories sustained during the war of independence. In 1950 only 30 of the 91 pre-war factories were again in production. The number increased later to 55, but sugar enterprises encountered a range of difficulties in the reconstruction and operation of factories during the 1950s. One problem was that foreign exchange allocations were insufficient to import vital spare parts or the required chemical fertilisers. Stoppages during production for repairs increased.128 Pending the preparation of a new agrarian law, the legal future of the factories was uncertain, which made companies reluctant to invest in the recovery and extension of sugar factories. Inflation posed another problem.
[...]
The chapters in this book indicated that the colonial era was not the period of perpetual stagnation in farm agriculture for which it has often been held. Rather, the period 1942-66 can be singled out as an era of economic stagnation, if not retrogression. This dramatic period in Indonesia's history brought the country the political independence for which many Indonesians had long made major sacrifices. But it was also a period of wasted opportunities. The ravages of war are not the only explanation in this respect, because, as Paauw (1963b) indicated, other countries in the region recovered quickly during the 1950s from the setback of the 1940s.
No doubt Dutch colonial rule left Indonesia ill-prepared for independence, although it did lay foundations during the 1930s and late 1940s for a further acceleration of the growth of agricultural production. Moreover, the international economy, and therefore overseas demand for Indonesia's export commodities, was buoyant. However, such opportunities were dissipated in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Indonesian government sought to develop these policy foundations rapidly, with insufficient consideration of the fact that its ambitions stretched further than its resources.
No doubt general political turmoil and regional uprisings vexed effective government. But the key problem appears to have been that many of the measures which the Indonesian government took to further agricultural production sought to replace rather than to augment the market. Some of these have been discussed. Rice policies favoured urban consumers, rather than rice producers and restrained the operation of the rice market. Foreign exchange regulations penalised exports, which, with the relative demise of plantation production, came to depend heavily on smallholder rubber. Agricultural policies placed the sugar needs of the nation above the requirements and interests of cane farmers. On the whole, many measures were counterproductive and agricultural development was hampered at a time when accelerating population growth compounded economic stagnation.
Restoration of political and economic stability after 1965 was the most crucial factor in the re-emergence of growth in agricultural productivity. Such growth was not triggered, but rather accelerated by the expenditure of windfall revenues generated by rising oil prices and increasing exports of natural oil. The Indonesian government used these revenues wisely to further agricultural development. Both in absolute and relative terms, the financial resources available for improving the agricultural services and for implementing a wide range of projects, of which the dispersion of seed-fertiliser technology in rice agriculture was the most prominent, were unprecedented.
The general points being that in most of East Asia the wars don't end in 1945, but substantially later, and involve in addition to occupation/s and war the collapse of the prewar colonial economies and governments.
117: If you weren't kidding, no. It's been adjourned to sometime in September to give time to resolve the immunity issues.
Food for thought: anyone saying "Biden is behind in the polls, which means his chances in the election are poor" really also needs to have something to say about why it is that, among voters aged 18-29, the Democrats had a 26% lead in the 2020 elections, and a 37% lead in the 2022 elections, but are now 7% behind in the polls. https://x.com/matt_blackwell/status/1810848931045122256
Because it seems that either there has been a truly incredible shift in voting patterns - a net of almost half of that entire age group has changed sides in the last year and a half - or there's something amiss with polling these days.
Polling is fucked right now, but there's a lot more reason to believe the headline numbers than the cross-tabs. Basically Biden-supporting boomers love to answer the phone, but then you realize all your respondents voted for Biden in 2020 and so you have to up weight the Trump 2029 voters, and this ends up with a weird pattern where Biden is ahead with old people (not true!) and Trump is overestimated with everyone else (also not true). What's really happening is Trump voting old people won't talk to pollsters (and young people don't answer the phone at all).
120: Wasn't kidding, had lost sight of where things stood. Thanks!
122 is plausible and helpful for thinking about polling. Mostly the first five words, but also the details.
123: Oh, good. I have a terrible problem with taking deadpan claims to not know something seriously and just answering, and I'm always afraid I've missed that kind of joke again.
I've lived in Germany for almost a quarter of a century. What even is humor?
122: why does upweighting Trump 2020 voters lead to a belief that Biden is leading, though?
Do you know why there's so little crime in Germany?
Because it's against the law!
127: it shouldn't, that's why I said the headline numbers are more plausible.
"Basically Biden-supporting boomers love to answer the phone, but then you realize all your respondents voted for Biden in 2020 and so you have to up weight the Trump 2029 voters, and this ends up with a weird pattern where Biden is ahead with old people"
This is the bit I don't follow.
129: Is there a punch line that comes next, like the verb at the end of a sentence?
I mean, I understand that if 60% of olds voted Trump in 2020, but Biden supporters are far more likely to answer the phone, I'll end up with a raw sample that is 90% people saying "I am old, I voted Biden in 2020 and I'll do it again".
And I understand that I'll know that's wrong, because I've got exit poll data from 2020, so I know that I'm missing a load of 2020 Trump voters from my sample.
And I understand that what I will then do is weight more heavily the responses of the 10% of people who say "I'm old, I voted Trump in 2020 and I'll do it again".
But what I don't understand is how doing any of that leads me to the erroneous belief that old people support Biden.
I keep saying in my head: "Vote for the corpse, not the crook."
I think I said this here before but Twitter says that Biden's decline has been recent. If it is from the grief over the Hunter Biden trial, that is just so sad.
George Clooney today with an op-ed saying Biden should drop out.
I don't have a ton of experience with the elderly, but I have seen that the cognitive decline can be pretty sudden; very noticeable changes over the course of several months. And that's what we're hearing about Biden. One reason I thought he'd end up resigning is that this is the kind of thing that can only get worse, so he's going to have other bad moments, if not worse ones, and then the dam will break.
If he isn't the nominee on Election Day, it will only be if he came around to dropping out and his people crafted a done deal to step down for Harris.
(I make no prediction as to whether "step down" means resign or just drop out of the race.)
139 If he drops out of the race, the baying hounds will spend the rest of his term demanding that he resign. It's dumb for him to do anything before the Republican convention concludes, and any supposedly savvy person who doesn't see this is just a dope.
Further to 140.1 -- This will include repeatedly asking Harris, at every public appearance, why Biden shouldn't step down immediately. Stepping back from the race doesn't end anything.
Yeah, I wish the NYT decisionmakers were capable of realizing that even if your belief he has to step down is out of pure principle, making this your top story every day like it's Watergate by now is going to hurt the Dems' chances whoever's at the top of the ticket.
It's all down to persuasion at the top level now.
It really is remarkable to watch the NY Times try to bully him out of the race.
Yeah. I'm pretty convinced that he should step aside by now, but I'm so mad at the NYT that I kind of want him to drive the country off a cliff rather than letting them win.
It is astonishingly petty. And shameless about inserting themselves. And revealing about the depth of their fixation.
I thought George Clooney, of all people, made perhaps the strongest Biden-should-quit argument I've seen. Two things that I thought stood out:
--Clooney is a named person saying that yeah, Biden has slowed down unacceptably off the stage and
--He doesn't say anything stupid in that piece. Biden's age and acuity are legit issues, but people making that argument seem to always want to include stupid complaints and irrelevancies.
Clooney does, however, completely discount the problems with an open convention. That strikes me as unwise.
But I do agree with him that the Stephanopoulos interview was not reassuring.
Why is an actor getting an opinion column on politics?
147: Nothing post-debate has been reassuring, and he was already behind going into it. Moreover, the interactions Clooney describes were weeks before the debate at a big money fundraiser he had organized, so we're past "it could happen again" and into "it keeps happening." If Biden stays, the next four months--and JFC, the next debate--are going to be a long series of excruciating cringes punctuated by episodes of despair. Doesn't seem like a promising campaign strategy, but maybe it's at least a truly novel political act?
148: He is also a major-league Democratic fundraiser.
I am frustrated by the "Biden was picked by the voters!" argument. No one ran against him!
I think this illustrates (again!) how important it is to have real primaries.
151: He was picked in 2920. I wish he had said he was planning to retire on his own, but I worry about him being forced out.
I think this illustrates (again!) how important it is to have real primaries.
It's just an unusual situation. As Yglesias wrote (link in 83),
The reason no major political figure ran against Biden in the primaries is that major political figures are adults with polling operations and those operations told them they would lose. Dean Philips did, in fact, run against Biden, and it's not just that he lost, he never even put up "surprisingly good" numbers that would tempt someone else into the race. Don't forget that in the 2016 cycle, Bernie Sanders was not the major political figure he is today. It's not that Hillary Clinton's nomination was contested by a powerful left-wing faction, left-wing factional power was built because Sanders' campaign identified and exploited her weak standing.
Has a sitting president, heading for re-election and desirous of standing again, *ever* been successfully primaries?
154: Definitely not in the modern primary era. If there are any examples they'd be from the late nineteenth century at the latest, maybe even earlier.
The most recent example seems to be Chester A. Arthur in 1884, but the process worked very differently then.
Arthur was on the ballot at the convention but was ambivalent at best about running due to health problems and didn't mount a serious campaign. Blaine was the favorite going in and easily won the nomination.
Presidents are inherently a low-N sample, especially if you subdivide to any extent.
1856 is a better example. Pierce actively sought the nomination but lost out to Buchanan at the convention.
Andrew Johnson in 1868 is another example.
There may be a few other nineteenth-century examples, but it is very rare and hasn't happened in a long time.
Didn't LBJ drop out after seeing it would be tough to win the nomination?
LBJ: couldn't beat North Vietnam
Biden: couldn't beat the passage of time
Yes, the more usual pattern is for a president to decline to seek reelection if it looks like it'll be tough. Actually contesting the nomination and losing is much rarer.
I was going to say that if you lose a primary, you contested the nomination. But oddly enough, LBJ wasn't on the ballot in New Hampshire, only Eugene McCarthy. Still, I think in the context of the bizarrely long US campaign season, what LBJ did is much more like running and losing quickly than not running at all.
I think it was RFK entering the race that really led to his dropping out. But of course RFK was emboldened by the McCarthy showing.
"He was picked in 2920"
Ok I think we can all agree that 978 is too old.
145: Same. Today continued the onslaught, up to 5 Biden stories leading the web site with several normie Trump stories below. (The Farenthold piece on Mar-a-Lago's new MGA business is a good one but just not of the moment. Nada on the bonkers Miami rally.
167,169 me.
The current friendly fire fiasco is a microcosm of any hare-brained scheme. The play was unified Biden defers to Harris for those wanting him out but they could not put aside their masturbatory fantasies that would validate their preferred candidate. Clusters upon clusters.
145, 169;
Josh Marshall:
I'm here thinking that Biden shld step aside for Harris. And then hearing Dana Bash share the analysis of David Axelrod and George Clooney is like forcing me back into Biden's arms with all the unstoppable force of the trash compactor scene in star wars.
I don't go for the line that celebrities should stick to movies/sports/music/etc. but I also don't have a lot of interest in Clooney's political opinions.
Oh wait, here's Politico's Jim Van Der Hei with fresh insights into the Trump campaign:
Former President Trump is adjusting his agenda, the GOP platform, his vice-presidential plans -- even his debate style -- to win over more than a half-dozen persuadable voter groups in seven states, advisers tell us.
Rancid motherfuckers.
I watched a big chunk of Trump's rally last night-- I'm truly curious as to which voter groups he thinks are persuadable. He really is unhinged-- and he hasn't given up his "black jobs" bit.
The VanDerHei is just campaign staff bullshit stenotyped by Politico. Utter journalistic malpractice on multiple fronts.
This is part of one of the biggest bit of BS justification by the media for their Trump coverage. "His voters don't care." Yet they are all over it coming down to the "swing voters." The potential Trump voters that really matter are the same fucking voters as the Biden ones that matter!
Both Trump and the media are motivating a lot of previously unmotivated voters and pissing off the rest of us who have been trying to pay attention.
Biden has been showing up for work every day and doing a great job. His work schedule this week has been mind boggling-- and he still is making time to campaign. Pretty strategically, from what I can see. Black churches, unions, mayors-- and he still finds time to check on Houston, even when the governor is AWOL . . .
I also don't have a lot of interest in Clooney's political opinions.
I don't either, but I am interested in his take as a friend and supporter who was speaking with him in person in a non-scripted setting.
I also feel like complaints about media coverage are like complaints about the Electoral College. Legitimate and frustrating, but immovable features of the landscape that just have to be negotiated for the foreseeable future.
Zeke Emmanuel was calling for mandatory retirement at 75. I dislike him, but I'd be inclined to say we should amend the constitution for a mandatory retirement age for the president of 80.
179: Ah. so now you are going to calmly remind us of manifest realities. Well that's low. I did have the thought and 2016 that HRC might have tried going all in on the media hatred since they were going to be the way they were anyway, but it does look like they can be even worse when they want to be.
I will note that the NYT Editorial Board is out today with a "Trump is unfit to serve" piece which probably was spurred in part by reader anger.
And I did see a piece late last night on the Miami rally, although its emphasis seemed pretty odd to me. Trump was having fun and was exhibiting "cruelty." Just kind of an odd frame in the current context.
181: 4 More Years! 4 More Years!
My personal mantra. Well, plus a number of months.
If anyone still has an NYT subscription, they offer a $50 annual rate for next year for those who cancel and re-subscribe . . .
It's a great time to express your "reader anger" AND save money.
Right, so, for a start, an A Team - or to give it its formal name, an Operational Detachment Alpha of US Special Forces - has twelve members. But, as we all know, only four individuals were sent to the maximum-security stockade in 1972, later to escape to the Los Angeles underground, where they survive etc.
Conclusions: first, the crime which they didn't commit must have been serious and violent, because you don't put people in maximum security for fiddling their expenses. And it must have attracted a long sentence - you wouldn't bother escaping if you were only in for a year or two, you'd just wait it out.
Second, the narration doesn't say "some members of the unit". It says that the unit - the whole unit - was sent to prison, and promptly escaped. So the entire unit was, at this point, four strong. The only possible deduction from that is that the other eight original members of the team are dead. A four-man A-team isn't really combat effective, and would be refilled back up to strength as soon as possible - it isn't just a group of twelve interchangeable riflemen, it covers a large number of skills, with each member generally being cross-trained in two or more.
So it's safe to assume that the other eight men died either very shortly before the incident that led to the survivors' conviction, or - the most parsimonious assumption - during it.
Third, it happened during the Vietnam War. William Calley ordered the murder of over three hundred people during that war, and only got three years' house arrest.
BA, Murdock, The Face and Hannibal did something that got everyone else in their team - highly trained, experienced SF operators - killed, and that looked enough like a very serious violent crime to convince a court-martial that they deserved a long sentence in a maximum security prison.
And, I should add, something that left at least two of the four survivors suffering from serious mental health issues.
I mean, come on, you do not get into US Army Special Forces if you are unwilling to get into an aircraft, any more than you get into the field artillery if you have a phobia of loud noises. BA wasn't like that when he joined, something awful happened to him.
"A" is for aggravating circumstances.
I think a key element of all of this is that the party successfully got Biden to stand aside for Hillary Clinton, who proceeded to lose to Trump. I'm sure Biden and the people in his close orbit think that this is just a repeat of that mistake.
190: did they? I thought he didn't run because of personal issues (his son dying).
Certainly that was also a major factor, but my understanding is the whole Obama team backed Hillary and that was a factor too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/28/us/politics/barack-obama-biden.html
So wait, 186-88 are follow-ups to the micro-thread on Jimmy Carter? Or should I be looking more closely into this Miami rally? Apologies.
181 and 182: I dislike him, but he did not quite say that. He said that he personally would not choose life-extending treatment after 75 for himself. He's actually talked a lot about the need for society to help with long term care for the elderly, partly, I think, so that working people aren't overwhelmed, but he never said that everybody should die at 75.
Someone should ask Trump if winning in 2020 means he's term-limited out for 2024.
He's actually said that because people were so mean to him in his first term including two failed impeachment trials that his first term shouldn't count and he should be allowed to run in 2028 even if he wins in 2024.
Sounds legal to me.
he never said that everybody should die at 75.
I also don't think that everyone should die at 75, but I do have a list ...
Tremendous quantities of remorse are shown by the remaining A-Team members. Not a single person is killed by them, or even badly hurt, even though such might often seem justified. This suggests guilt.
Speaking for myself, the fact that the president is about to have a news conference and we're all waiting to see if he can approximate mental competence is absurd and depressing.
He just introduced Zelensky as "President Putin".
Ezra must be feeling pretty vindicated.
I just saw a suggestion to flip the ticket, so it is Harris on top. That seems like an elegant solution to me.
203.2 that's an awful solution that would only succeed in continuing to make Biden's fitness an issue throughout the campaign when the Democrats need to but it to bed quickly. Sorkin/pundit brain at work.
An hour late to his own press conference. Not good, folks.
Well, presumably the guy was busy.
Though, not super impressive so far.
And 198 was hilarious.
How about we flip a coin every day and either Biden or Harris is president for that day. Then, one day, the coin lands on its side and we get a power vacuum followed by 50 years of dictatorship.
And is it Botox and/or caked on makeup for the lack of wrinkles?
I think the answers were pretty nuanced and cogent. Bu t the theater overtakes it all. And the gaffes.
And not *completely* unfairly, ability to communicate and win are part of the jobs.
A lot more coherent than Trump ever was.
The spectacle as a whole is regrettable and ugly. I reckon it's now possible to see a bit better the line in Biden between his verbal slips and what's supposed to be 'cognitive decline'. He's in his 80s, there is going to be some 'decline', and there will be off days. This wouldn't seem to have any consequence for decision-making, and I just don't see any change in character, even if he is currently on the defensive (who wouldn't be?). The verbal slips, on the other hand, are a straight up (mild) disability. So the conversation has become about which prejudice is more prominent with 'floating voters'. Harris comes more or less guaranteed verbal slip-free, but is black, and a woman, and is that going to reduce her electoral appeal, runs the worry. Super.
With foresight that's closer to the ideal, I guess, Biden _might_ have ruled himself out from running about 2-3 years ago, stating that an age ceiling of, say, 80 is right for the presidency. Whatever age the orange one is at, certainly. Obviously we are where we are, and a certain bloody mindedness starts to take over.
186-188, 200: Just because of this, we are now watching the first season of the A Team. I am sure I never saw the early episodes, because we wouldn't have paid attention until it was already popular. I do not remember anything from the episodes I did see. This'll be fun.
I have kindof been wanting to re-watch Fantasy Island, but Steady's dad absolutely refuses.
Steady is at sleepaway camp, so he will not get the A Team experience.
Steady is at sleepaway camp, so he will not get the A Team experience.
I PITY THE FOOL!
"Just because of this, we are now watching the first season of the A Team"
My work here is done
186-188
My work here is done
I shared 186-188 with a friend who has fond memories of watching the A-Team as a child, and they appreciated it.