US Politics, July 2024 - "Will you just drop out, man?"

what a year June was

Turn on, tune in, drop out

thought this was a good piece by Tim Miller refuting the arguments made by what he calls "the This Is Fine crowd":

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/dear-dems-gaslighting-isnt-helping-biden-debate

And on the other end of the anti-Trump spectrum, the lefty podcasters at Know Your Enemy are also on the Biden's-gotta-go bus:

https://know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/joes-gotta-go-teaser

Biden's support at this point seems to be entirely concentrated within the White House and DNC. You could say he's ... increasingly isolated.

whenever anyone is "huddled" at Camp David with other people its not a good sign.

Especially when it's with Annie Leibovitz.

Huddling is bad for your back.

Cuddling preferred

how did we get to this point

Hope he does this soon:

Biden, who has ducked tough interviews and avoided no-holds-barred press conferences, is now considering both. Look for a town hall or big one-on-one interview this month.

I don't imagine it going well, but I'd love to be proven wrong. Either way, better before the convention than after.

lotta factors here but James Comey deciding to put his thumb on the scale in service of Trump (who would fire him a few months later) was a pretty major one

if Hillary is president, she maybe doesn't get re-elected in 2020 as the Republican controlled Senate is blocking key legislation to help with COVID recovery that they voted for under Trump. but SCOTUS is either 5-4 left leaning or at the very least, 5-4 right leaning, and we're not in this mess. it's infuriating.

how did we get to this point

by being ideologically pure and strategically idiotic. should never have challenged trump in court, for one thing. not with this court.

yeah I mean who knows if Hillary wins maybe we get Trump in 2020 instead. maybe this was all baked in the moment he started winning primaries. I don't know. I'm just so despondent right now. I really did not think they were gonna do it.

Clinton would never have gotten Garland (or anyone) on the Court.

yep. mccain said as much

ted kennedy shouldn't have died, obama should have compromised even harder with the healthcare industry, and scott brown should not have been so irresistibly sexy to massachusetts voters

idk, I really don't think they woulda stonewalled for four years. feel like whipping ability would have been harder after a third straight Presidential loss, would might have embittered some less ideologically 'pure' Republicans in the Senate.

RBG, otoh, they would have stonewalled using similar Garland logic.

xpost McCain was one dude.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/clinton-wins-gop-say-no-9-supreme-court

“If Hillary Clinton becomes president, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court,” North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr said in an audio recording of his meeting with GOP volunteers on Saturday. CNN obtained a copy of the audio.

still don't think they would have made it all four years stonewalling a nom.

and said this days later

https://apnews.com/united-states-senate-united-states-government-senate-elections-united-states-congress-87e0ea5ab5b64dd7abeb8e05f72e4ad9

just pointing that out for people saying what if Hilary won

i love how we're gaming out alternate shitty pasts. this is grim!

hilary is not and was never going to save us--that's my point here

good thing that isn't what I said! the current SCOTUS scenario only happens under Trump.

eh you said mccain was one dude and dude it's way more than one dude

Where’s Some Dude when you need him?

(I kid)

if hilary won

if Nader hadn't spoiled Bush/Gore (I don't think Nader spoiled Bush v Gore)

etc etc

Some Dude to thread!

haha! x-post

Some Dude has been posting on the Tom Petty thread if you need him.

any major ILX dude will tell you

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ITcOcQi4L._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg

Honestly, I anticipate martial law and civil war in my lifetime. I want neither and am not happy about it.

But reading David Brooks’ interview with Steve Bannon in the Times this morning, there was something that Bannon said that struck me as 100 per cent correct.

This is spiritual warfare, and those of us who value humanity need to start acting like it. This is about seeing people as siblings, about increasing connection and joy within our communities, and about proselytizing to those who don’t see things this way that life is better when it is lived in compassion for and faith in others.

I know I am often a crabby motherfucker who gets on all of your nerves, but all of my haranguing and testiness has a lot to do with these views. We are fighting against forces that would have us divided, starved, dead, but I believe many who follow this bleak line of thinking are persuadable and might see the light, particularly given how bleak their own lives must be.

In any case, good luck USA

You could say he's ... increasingly isolated.

irl lol

This is spiritual warfare, and those of us who value humanity need to start acting like it. This is about seeing people as siblings, about increasing connection and joy within our communities, and about proselytizing to those who don’t see things this way that life is better when it is lived in compassion for and faith in others.

These are the best tenets of Christianity, and it comes naturally to me as a longtime non-believer to hold myself to those tenets. So, OTM on the merits. A genuine lol if Bannon told Brooks he believes in compassion for and faith in others.

he said this:

"What we should be doing is cutting the number of foreign students in American universities by 50 percent immediately, because we’re never going to get a Hispanic and Black population in Silicon Valley unless you get them into the engineering schools. No. 2, we should staple an exit visa to their diploma. The foreign students can hang around for a week and party, but then they got to go home and make their own country great."

This isn’t what Bannon said to Brooks

We are fighting against forces that would have us divided, starved, dead, but I believe many who follow this bleak line of thinking are persuadable and might see the light,

I think there's a fundamental truth in this, all people are more pliable and less rigid than they might appear, even if only marginally, and its better to err on the side of assuming so rather than assuming not, where possible

As horrible as Clinton is, she wouldn’t have rolled over and played dead (sorry-“reaching across the aisle”) for 8 fucking years like Obama did

there is a metaphor I like to remind myself of from time to time: right before a star dies, it gets really big and bright and powerful

I kinda feel this way with America's right... the demographic/urbanization shifts are inevitable, but they're not gonna go down without a fight

I can’t believe Biden still isn’t even pushing harder on marijuana legalization. It’s a winning issue with Republicans, even, you goddamn idiot

"This isn’t what Bannon said to Brooks"

that quote was from the interview in the nyt.

the demographic/urbanization shifts are inevitable

the notion that these shifts will naturally favor the Democratic party is the weirdest white liberal fantasy and I've been hearing it for so many years -- this'll sort itself out, the bad guys are on their last legs, they're getting their licks in before they're obsolete. actually the bad guys are remarkably adaptable, and have made considerable inroads with the very demographics that Democrats think of as "theirs"/"ours." Any person who makes less than six figures a year is voting against their interests when they vote (R), but the Republicans have done a great job getting votes from those very people. indeed there will be many demographic shifts in the years to come, but to take those votes as tallied is a grave error imo. one I wholly expect the (D) establishment to make!

i was replying to alfred and xposted by accident, apologies for confusing scott!

lol I got confused too

JCLC otm

the notion that these shifts will naturally favor the Democratic party is the weirdest white liberal fantasy and I've been hearing it for so many years -- this'll sort itself out, the bad guys are on their last legs, they're getting their licks in before they're obsolete. actually the bad guys are remarkably adaptable, and have made considerable inroads with the very demographics that Democrats think of as "theirs"/"ours." Any person who makes less than six figures a year is voting against their interests when they vote (R), but the Republicans have done a great job getting votes from those very people. indeed there will be many demographic shifts in the years to come, but to take those votes as tallied is a grave error imo. one I wholly expect the (D) establishment to make!

As they say in Brazil, "money makes you whiter."

See: most people fleeing Venezuela, Columbia, and Cuba to South Florida.

...and Hispanics in Texas who aspire to be Rednecks.

A lot of Venezuelans went to Aruba, which is where my mother resides. They don’t tend to speak Dutch or Papiamento, so I’m guessing they’ll probably have a very hard time acclimating

I acknowledge my white liberal fantasy, but are there any major cities in the U.S. that are heavily conservative? Maybe Oklahoma City? Cities are where most people live, the majority

Salt Lake City, although they’ve elected Democrat mayors in recent years

Jacksonville was one of the last big cities with a GOP mayor until 2022, one of Florida's only bright spots.

SLC is a weird one, Mormons are not your average conservatives for a variety of reasons

Art makes him nervous, it's weird and deviant

Ron DeSantis strips more than $32m in Florida arts funding

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/30/ron-desantis-florida-art-funding-cut

I'm surprised. DeSantis really struck me as an art lover.

he called our local Fringe festival "a sex festival".

if only.

"and stuff like that"

Seems to be the new right wing target--like the LGBTQ+ Center in PA that supposedly had "sex parties"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-01/democrats-weigh-early-biden-nomination-to-squash-talk-of-a-swap

I mean I have done full frontal on the Orlando Fringe stage twice but I can tell you audience exit surveys showed 75% of them vomited. nothing sexy going on at all.

Columbia

The Morningside Heights to Florida pipeline

Speaking of Colombia, I am ready for Judge Merchan to send Trump to Rikers for some actual time served, or set up some conditions of probation that he will surely violate. Since we are in This Is Fine world anyway.

I sure hope that happens, felicity! The judge must be having a really weird year; hopefully he’s holding up OK.

Many XPs... Houston just elected an aging DINO for mayor, and it's going like you'd expect (public transit issues, library funding appearing then disappearing, went a ridiculously long time without meeting our millennial county judge etc.).

I think Dallas is the last major/big city with a Republican mayor.

and he was elected as a Democrat

On loan from the "the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive" thread, CNN just had James Carville on. I thought he'd be the ultimate circle-the-wagons guy, so it was surprising how adamantly he wants Biden to step aside. "I'm a great guy too, but I have no business running a campaign anymore."

massachusetts really likes republican governors. though now we have our beloved dem lesbian to lead us into victory. wait can she be president? she's cool.

I heard this good hour with Carville from last Friday morning, just after the debate. The podcaster is an excellent researcher and interviewer, and is also usually an atypical Gen Z-er (he's 29). He usually interviews artists, so it was interesting hearing him push back gracefully at Carville on issues related to Gaza, BLM, and so on. Anyway, unless you can't stand Carville, this is really good (and much better than seeing/hearing him beaming in via Zoom on TV).

“Uncertainty and anxiety translates into viewership” -Matthew Belloni on his podcast, The Town, a few days ago

The below is a long but interesting Bluesky thread that I'm just gonna reproduce in its (more-or-less, omitting some unimportant links) entirety.

*****

i'm getting so, so tired of the doomerism on here, and the press loves covering shit like a horse race instead of explaining fundamentals and what's at play, a job that seems to fall to

so here's a thread about why i'd rather be biden — yes, biden — right now

the baseline for this election is 2020. normally "the last election" might not be a perfect baseline, but it's the same guys with the roles reversed. both are quasi-incumbents, and we have a four year record for the both of them, with some recency bias for biden.

here's that map

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lui5epjfu4cdbyg6ujyn27tl/bafkreief6uqazuaak52yuq2yikh3twcnkm2ynwbv6zyem324lfyowfesza@jpeg

now, for trump to win, he has to do three things:

1) hold nc
2) flip georgia and arizona
3) make headway in wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania

for biden to win, he has to hold wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania.

holding nc:

trump won nc in 2020 by 1.5 points, the closest red state of 2020. in 2020 dem roy cooper won the governor's race by 4.5 pts, meaning a lot of trump/cooper split tickets.

for this round, the nc gop nominated a literal nazi as their gubernatorial candidate. not ideal!

next order of business is flipping arizona and georgia. i think both of these states were at least modest surprises to everyone in 2020, and on paper should be the most tenuous biden holds. trump should be able to flip them back, right?

well, it's still an uphill battle.

for arizona, we have multiple state-wide races to look at from 2022 to establish a baseline. katie hobbs beat kari lake by about 10k votes for the governorship. adrian fontes beat the far-more-trumpy mark finchem in sos by ~5 pts. trumpy blake masters lost by same margin to incumbent kelly.

so arizona, in 2022, given a slate of very trumpy candidates, rejected all of them. the most likeable (least serial killer like), kari lake, is running for senate again.

the az gop is bankrupt, and fake elector trials will start some time before the election, and will be big local news.

so trump has to overcome all that, which he may, it was extremely close in 2020 in arizona.

which brings us to the other surprise swing, georgia

georgia's gov kemp is not a fan of trump. there's been a lot of effort to pull electoral shenanigans there, but kemp isn't going to put his fist on the scales for trump if he comes up short, so on paper at least a decent dem margin in ga will hold.

like az, ga has had a few state level trumper candidates. in 2020 warnock beat loeffler by 2 pts, and ossoff beat perdue by ~1 pt. that's really close, but it's a margin that's pretty shenanigans-proof.

then in 22 ga gop nominated herschel for senate. warnock won by 1 pt in a "red wave" year.

so, like az, ga has rejected trumpist candidates at the state level multiple times in favor of dems, even facing national headwinds for the dem party like the summer 2022 inflation.

i'm not saying trump won't flip one or both of az or ga, but it's not a slam dunk, work must be done.

which brings us to the blue wall. if trump accomplishes the previous two things, he has to flip one of wisconsin, michigan, or pennsylvania.

wi is probably the most vulnerable, followed by mi, then pa.

wi re-elected ron johnson in 2022. god damn it, but by about 20k votes. in the same election, tony evers won the gubernatorial election by a 3 pt margin, so it's hard to draw a conclusion there.

since then, wi had a high-profile supreme court election, which flipped the court's make-up.

so this year wi is having its state leg elections under maps drawn up by evers after the sc ordered them to get their shit together, meaning this'll be the first competitive state leg elections in wi in 15 yrs.

elections have consequences.

meanwhile, the wi gop was doing this. (14-week abortion ban that the governor will veto)

abortion is very much on the ballot in wisconsin this year.

michigan just re-elected big gretch by ten points, the michigan gop is somehow worse off than the az gop (which has been taken over by complete psychopaths) by having a schismatic civil war, and is also broke.

biden was very public in supporting the uaw strike, among other union supports.

the big concern in michigan is the large muslim-american population who are, justifiably and understandably, pissed off at biden for not doing more to restrain israel in gaza.

i have no idea how important this will be, but if israel and hamas agree a biden-backed ceasefire it probably helps.

and this is why it's deeply unlikely a netanyahu-led gov't is going to agree to a ceasefire before the election.

of course, trump is doing everything he can to ruin his chances by using "palestinian" as a slur for biden and schumer; holding rallies at non-union factories; "black jobs"; things of that nature.

i think mi is the biggest wild card, but trump has to make inroads with people of color to win.

if pennsylvania falls, i think we're in full democratic collapse mode, and ironically the fall of the keystone state would herald the end to constitutional governance in this country.

we all watched dr oz lose, hilariously, to fetterman. the leg is split, and the gov is blue.

so trump's path to winning is:

1) hold nc
2) flip az and ga
3) flip wi

i've covered why nc is touchy, az and ga are uphill battles, and wi dems have shown the payoff of working with stacey abrams to get it together and start winning elections.

each of these things would be hard, but...

dobbs.

i haven't mentioned dobbs. which is funny, because it's the giant fucking blue whale in the room.

fielding weirdos and people who genuinely need help as senate candidates is enough of a handicap.

but now we're seeing the full influence of dobbs, and it's not pretty if you're a trumper

2022 midterm should have been a red wave based on fundamentals.

incumbent party, inflation not doing great, weird economy coming out of covid. 538's most likely house split was ~228-207 based on polls.

lol, nope.

and that was before the abortion bans really started to hit.

*since dobbs*, and the news that abortion bans are indeed as psychotic as people feared, you've had elections like this, a d+25 swing over a year earlier (Oklahoma state legislature)

in alabama, a d+30 swing (State House of Representatives)

things of that nature. you've also seen multiple amendments protecting abortion passing in places like 2020 r+8 ohio by 14 points, even after ratfucking shenanigans by the ohio sos.

there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that dobbs is a near-national d+20 swing in all but the safest seats.

a d+5 swing flips nc and florida, and puts texas in play.

fucking texas.

where ted cruz's internal polling numbers had him creating shit like this and trying to make himself out as a bipartisan dealmaker.

btw that cruz rebranding effort is going about as well as you'd expect.

dobbs is a god damned nuclear bomb on the political landscape. likely voter models have no idea how to deal with it. with polling response rates in the gutter, but the vibe from every actual election is this:

women. are. pissed.

it is sad that dobbs could end up saving the republic

so maybe it was a really bad idea for trump to say this during the debate:

“It’s bringing it back to the vote of the people, which is what everybody wanted, including the founders. Everybody wanted it brought back. And many Presidents had tried to get it back. I was the one to do it.”

which was doubling down on these comments a year earlier

“After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v. Wade, much to the ‘shock’ of everyone.”

maybe trump could overcome this if he could flood the zone with bullshit, or could capitalize on disillusioned dems with aggressive gotv, or create legal chaos with voting outcomes.

but the rnc is broke, its infrastructure dismantled. their gotv effort is being contracted to charlie kirk.

so, in conclusion, biden could lose and i could be wrong and in that case having a bunch of people on bluesky tell me "i told you so" is the least of my concerns. but the trump team has a lot of ground to make up to improve on 2020, and a lot of headwinds of their own making.

That's a not-bad political landscape for a well-liked and energetic Democratic candidate with a strong and coherent message.

Who wrote that?

People who can't find the effort to use capital letters drive me fucking crazy.

Trump’s ahead in NH post debate. This scenario is a bit rosy.

And this all assumes the election even matters, since Trump's already got a corrupt Supreme Court ready to install him no matter the outcome of the election. All this speculation as if this is a normal election feels pretty stupid and pointless to me.

Well, to quote the title of a 20-year-old book by noted Republican hack Hugh Hewitt, If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat. So we'll see.

one other factor is the Dems have a ton of money to spend and the GOP is funneling a lot of their cash towards Trump's legal bills, the whole GOTV operation could make a huge difference

There are some good, hopeful points in that Bluesky piece, but characterizing Kari Lake as in any way likeable makes me question the rest of it.

but yeah the problem with that thread is it ignores where the polls are *now*, which is about an 8 point swing from where they were in July 2020. so sure "he has to do all these things" but the polling is showing that he's likely to do just that.

that said I do still believe the polling is kind of fucked, I mean you have two big ones showing Trump's approval rating at 46%, despite the fact that he barely ever cracked 40% in office. these polls were taken right after he ate 34 felony convictions too. call me naive but I straight up do not believe that Trump is actually *more* popular now, I mean that just does not reflect what I'm seeing in the real world at all

The Biden campaign needs to hammer all the recent SCOTUS decisions: you vote Trump, here’s what you get. You vote third party, or stay home, here’s what you get. I’m so fucking angry lately, as are many. Channel that anger.

maybe they can find some time when their photoshoot is over

sadlol

And this all assumes the election even matters, since Trump's already got a corrupt Supreme Court ready to install him no matter the outcome of the election. All this speculation as if this is a normal election feels pretty stupid and pointless to me.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, July 1, 2024 2:24 PM bookmarkflaglink

As opposed to Trump gets elected, Thomas and Alito retire, the Republicans take the Senate, Trump appoints 2+ even worse Supreme Court judges, and many, many more Court of Appeals and district court judges to lifetime terms?

This is far more likely and predictable than the 3 a.m. escape-room-style emergency red phone call situation the my doctor brother is freaking out about.

"People who can't find the effort to use capital letters drive me fucking crazy."

uh oh i'm in trouble...

Thinking about a Trump presidency and who would be the leader of the Democratic opposition at that point. If they take/keep at least one house of Congress, then I guess it would be the speaker or majority leader. Because there will need to some pretty good rapid response organization pretty quick. Not counting on it, but I hope someone's thinking about it.

the dems need fighters. tough people. they don't have any. younger people too. people who can figure out ways to maneuver in this insane world. people who know how to use a computer. i can't even think of a politician that i respect or admire other than my beloved lesbian governor. i kinda like adam kinzinger! haha! he seems to take death threats in stride. i admire that. he's pro-life though. i don't actually know much about him.

He endorsed Biden before the debate lol

It would be bonkers if Biden won in Georgia again. I am very skeptical of that happening.

He endorsed Biden before the debate lol

yup, I got that email: "I'm a proud conservative, BUT..."

Speaking of Georgia, where is the outrage from Democratic leaders over goddamn Cop City? Oh, right, they gave them MORE money after 2020

Was that a federal issue?

where is the outrage from Democratic leaders and advocacy/legal groups about the successful Republican efforts at purging voter rolls by the 10s of 1000s in Georgia, especially in Fulton county?

It is one of the reasons I think that of all of the 2020 blue states, Georgia is the least likely to repeat

I know this is an obvious point, and I also recognize that comparing polls across decades needs a lot of caveats, but still it's worth looking at the approval ratings: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/

At this point in his term, Biden is polling behind every incumbent president of the past 80 years except for Carter. Including GHW Bush and Trump, who of course both lost. There is no historical precedent for an incumbent in that position winning a second term. So to think he has a decent chance, you have to believe the guy we saw on Thursday — and the campaign team that put him there — is capable of a historical electoral surge.

so you really do hate him

???

Literally just posting facts dude. If he was polling at even 46 percent I'd have a lot less of a sinking feeling. But he's not. Are you saying you think this is the guy to pull off a history-defying upset?

As my son said today, "I don't hate Biden. I wish he was on a beach somewhere having a nice chocoloate-chocolate chip ice cream cone and enjoying his retirement." Which is most likely where he'll be a year from now.

Well at least we know he won’t be in prison

biden isn't going to step down, he's going to lose, dnc will do their usual thing and milk outrage for donations along the way - this is who they are. turns out you can't win with one hand pointing at outrage and the other crumpling under any pressure and just fucking everyone over who isn't dead-ass rich.

“The Biden campaign needs to hammer all the recent SCOTUS decisions: you vote Trump, here’s what you get. You vote third party, or stay home, here’s what you get. “ the problem is people will say they booted for Biden and that’s what they got anyway. I’m not agreeing with them per se, but there’s no reason to think any of those justices are going to die in the next four years and give a dem pres a chance to even things out.

Haha “booted”. Voted.

massachusetts really likes republican governors. though now we have our beloved dem lesbian to lead us into victory. wait can she be president? she's cool.

― scott seward, Monday, July 1, 2024 4:21 PM (fifty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hold on now — you like healy?

but there’s no reason to think any of those justices are going to die in the next four years and give a dem pres a chance to even things out

Biden has the greenlight to order drone strikes on their homes now, though.

Need some propaganda of the deed liberalism.

biden isn't going to step down, he's going to lose, dnc will do their usual thing and milk outrage for donations along the way - this is who they are. turns out you can't win with one hand pointing at outrage and the other crumpling under any pressure and just fucking everyone over who isn't dead-ass rich.

Boot now or die

that post is completely incoherent and you guys are sad

xp to tipsy: I don't think Biden will have to have an upset or a history-defying win, I don't think he will lose. The polls are bullshit and the poll predictions aren't "facts". I think you and your son are wrong.

I just don't believe there is any way - with Roe v Wade especially, but also 34 felony convictions and now the insane Supreme Court decision - that Trump will win this election

xp to table

you are literally making posts about how your feelings about things count more than verifiable facts and map and i are the ones being incoherent? please

FAKE NEWS

akm, I hear you and I agree. I just feel like current anger at a completely rogue Supreme Court (and I feel like what we’ve seen is just the tip of the iceberg) is a vote-motivating factor. Since Trump now apparently can’t be prosecuted for anything. Is that what “undecided” or unmotivated voters really want?

I just don't believe there is any way - with Roe v Wade especially, but also 34 felony convictions and now the insane Supreme Court decision - that Trump will win this election

This is where I am, and where I've always been. I like Biden more than most people here, or more than the loudest people here, anyway, but more than that I simply don't believe that people are going to vote for Donald Trump.

Apparently Biden just addressed the SCOTUS decision.

I appreciate the facts and analysis.

I didn't think "least serial killer like" was at all an implication that any of the candidates in Arizona is likeable. As a woman I was and remain livid about Dobbs, and these kind of articles (though frustratingly formatted) do reinforce my motivation to keep talking about it and to spend some time in Maricopa County this fall.

Re: Biden addressing SCOTUS

It was another stern “tsk tsk” bullshit talk with a Teleprompter and no questions from the press. This is a fucking joke

okay, I'm not watching

I simply don't believe that people are going to vote for Donald Trump.

What makes you think people won't vote for Trump? I think tens of millions are going to do just this. This doesn't feel like something you can rely on

It really is. They’re gonna panic and send thousands of fundraising emails but won’t actually outline a plan to combat this, even as Trump swears on retribution. Maybe people would talk about your age a little less if you could show you’re possible of rising to the occasion. It’s so fucking pathetic.

It really is. They’re gonna panic and send thousands of fundraising emails but won’t actually outline a plan to combat this, even as Trump swears on retribution. Maybe people would talk about your age a little less if you could show you’re possible of rising to the occasion. It’s so fucking pathetic.

Oh, I know people will vote for Trump. They drive scary vroom vroom trucks they can’t afford in order to intimidate us and ward off potential mates

table - poll numbers are only 'verifiable facts' if you believe them.

You guys are like the stoners and outcasts I huddled with in my rural high school, trying to hide our pot smoking in the back woods over lunch from the teachers and conjuring our own canon of music, film, literature. Not part of the elite, the beautiful people, the jocks, or the brainiacs, just the stoners and the outcasts. I loved them and felt like I was a part of them, but they were very paranoid

Re: Biden addressing SCOTUS

It was another stern “tsk tsk” bullshit talk with a Teleprompter and no questions from the press. This is a fucking joke

t was another stern “tsk tsk” bullshit talk with a Teleprompter and no questions from the press. This is a fucking joke

Press conferences are Beltway drivel. The questions are nonsense -- and I was saying this when Bush II was president. We don't need them in 2024 when social media exists -- though this means a White House has gotta be GOOD at social media.

jeez I think his address is pretty okay, I dunno

of course they all switch back and forth reading teleprompter screens, that's been standard for a long time

Trump's misreading of the teleprompter has been hilarious/horrifying on many occasions

Isn't it more paranoid to believe that every poll (election and approval) is a damn dirty lie?

He sounded fine -- he had his B-12 shots. It seemed to have offered more assurance to the Not Very Online locals in a WhatsApp thread I'm on.

I just don't know if his ah moderation is what this world-historic moment demands.

of course they all switch back and forth reading teleprompter screens, that's been standard for a long time

Trump's misreading of the teleprompter has been hilarious/horrifying on many occasions

I don't think there's anything paranoid about thinking that either candidate in a two horse race has a really great chance of winning, especially given the problems of their respective opponents.

What I find more difficult to understand is having a definitive opinion on an outcome that doesn't seem particularly predictable

Well, this moment is a bit different, don’t you think? He urgently needs to dispel the notion that all he can do is read

― calstars, Monday, July 1, 2024

You really want him improvising? After all we've known about him for 40 years?

The only prez I've ever seen able to do it was Bill Clinton. Even Obama was better with prepared texts.

that post is completely incoherent and you guys are sad

real saddos get wrapped up in presidential elections 😎

I simply don't believe that people are going to vote for Donald Trump.

I’m assuming you mean “enough people,” since obviously tens of millions of people are definitely going to. I hope that’s true, but tbh he got way more votes in both 2016 and 2020 than I expected, so I’m not gonna lowball him this time.

I don't think Biden will have to have an upset or a history-defying win

But that’s quite literally what he needs. No incumbent president with his abysmal approval has won reelection in the history of approval ratings. That obviously doesn’t mean it can’t happen, there are a lot of unprecedented things in this election already. But it means that the exactly what it will take: a history-defying and -making victory.

The only prez I've ever seen able to do it was Bill Clinton.

I know we're all generally in agreement that he sucked & I don't dispute it but his ability to adjust on the fly & recalibrate was breathtaking

all of you are sad fwiw. you keep talking about ratings and failing

and xxp calstars no I don't think this moment was different

but I guess for all of you and the hair-on-fire media it just has to be about Biden and any perceived mistakes he might make, regardless of the content of his speech

and those really dismissive questions at the end: "what makes you so confident you should be the president"?

I mean, well, "because I am?" and "because who gives you ridiculously arrogant columnists and your op-eds with no knowledge of politics a say in who should be president?"

dan i'm trying my best not to make fun of you and stuff, but it's the combo of you being a complete dick about the way you're communicating with people + being so wrong that's getting to me, plus to be honest the whole situation with sliding into fascism and stuff. it's just too much, all at once. it's ok if you're a complete dick, but you should be correct more often. if you're wrong as often as you are, you should be a less of a dick. the fascism stuff isn't your fault

If there's anything we all agree on, it's that every NYT columnist except Bouie and maybe Michelle Goldberg should be thrown out of a helicopter.

ztbd otm

lol this is all just such a weird conversation to be having after that debate.

Joe Biden can still win, because the winner will be one of two names on the November ballot and he will most likely be one of them — which gives him a better chance of getting elected president than anyone else except for the other guy on the ballot. It's a weird election, almost nobody likes either of these guys very much, if there were a yes/no vote tomorrow on whether to dump both of them and start over I think it would pass with like 70 percent of the vote. So, it's possible that either of them wins by virtue of people disliking the other guy just a little bit more.

But. Anyone who can't be honest and admit that Biden is a terribly weak and personally unpopular candidate who is by all available evidence at significant risk of losing to a convicted felon and rapist is just not taking any of this at all seriously.

If there's anything we all agree on, it's that every NYT columnist except Bouie and maybe Michelle Goldberg should be thrown out of a helicopter.

Especially if we can try to drop on top of Trump on the golf course.

I’m assuming you mean “enough people,” since obviously tens of millions of people are definitely going to. I hope that’s true, but tbh he got way more votes in both 2016 and 2020 than I expected, so I’m not gonna lowball him this time.

He didn't get enough votes last time. Do you think he's become more popular since leaving office? I know Biden is unpopular. Don't waste my time with that. Do you think Donald Trump has become more popular since leaving office?

sorry z_bd, I'm glad you're not making fun of me. I know I can be a dick, I grew up in the 70s and we all had to loudly voice our opinions to be heard (the "me generation"), and I even could see my fellow students as dicks at the time, and I know that that is abrasive in today's world

but I don't really know what you were offended by, I would genuinely like your opinion

all of you are sad fwiw. you keep talking about ratings and failing

but I guess for all of you

There isn't really an 'all' as far as I can see, or even anything that approaches a consensus, so I don't think this is particularly true

Do you think he's become more popular since leaving office?

I mean, his approval ratings now are higher than when he left office (when they were close to but not quite as low as where Biden's are now), so I don't know. I wouldn't think he would be more popular, for all the obvious reasons. But the only indicators we have suggest he is. Cannot really overemphasize how little attention many people pay to politics, and how easily people are swayed by recency bias. Trump was the president they didn't like then, Biden is the president they don't like now.

It's likely that since people tend to think in political binaries, Trump's apparent (comparative) strength is partly based on Biden's unpopularity and so the opponent benefits by default. Am I agog that it seems very possible that Trump actually gets reelected? Absolutely. But I'm not in denial about the clear and present possibility of it.

And Trump is still very very unpopular! None of this means he isn't. But we have two very very unpopular candidates running, so you can't count on Trump's unpopularity dooming him.

you don't have to be a dick to post here . . .

BUT IT HELPS

<3

at this point i wonder if Harris is being underrated, just because if Biden actually stepped down, the sight of a normal-ish person who isn't decrepit in charge might be a huge relief to 55% of the population after dealing with the last 8 years.

tbh i'm trying not to get too worked up over the election, given that the Democrats with actual influence didn't bother to do so until 3 days ago.

going upthread a bit, unperson you said something about just being unable to believe that americans, after 34 felony counts, jan 6, the constant lying etc would vote for trump.

that resonates with me because it reminds me of how i felt in oct 2016! but...part of the shock, and hopefully learning something during that period, was the realization that yes, this is a very racist and xenophobic country, 45%+ of the people are so ready to cast that vote for a fascist.

so, why is it so hard to believe that the people who did that in 2016, knowing full well who trump was and who he represented, would do it again?

xp i think harris would do better than biden, and wish biden would step down. i'm not a big harris fan. but she would do better than biden.

Trump doesn't need to be more popular now, he just needs Biden to shed a small number of votes in several key states.

Isn’t he more popular now?

Needs a small number of people, in the privacy of the voting booth, to hand the keys to the crazy abusive uncle instead of the doddering one.

He didn't get enough votes last time. Do you think he's become more popular since leaving office? I know Biden is unpopular. Don't waste my time with that. Do you think Donald Trump has become more popular since leaving office?

this isn't directed at me, but...yes? didn't george fucking w bush get more popular after he left office? don't americans, demonstrably and reliably, have amnesia? have we not seen this play out over and over?

things can't be reduced to a single stupid thing like this, but can i argue that the most important swing issue of our times is who is more entertaining as president? old guy joe biden or the fascist?

didn't george fucking w bush get more popular after he left office?

Bush didn't go on a crime spree. He barely even gave speeches. He went back to Texas and became a painter. People didn't like Donald Trump when he left office and Donald Trump has spent virtually every waking moment since reminding people of what they dislike about him.

the number of people who believe in either A) christian rapture/apocalypse in their lifetimes or B) end of the world / human-caused apocalypse is staggering. it's not a marginal number of people. it's like, half of the country! at least! there are like 150 million people who are standing and grabbing their coats while watching the end of the game, or some shit!

People didn't like Donald Trump when he left office and Donald Trump has spent virtually every waking moment since reminding people of what they dislike about him.

ok! but yeah, john kerry obliterated gwb in those debates in 2006, and everyone already knew that he and his administration had lied about wmd's and the entire pretext for a disastrous war. and it didn't fucking matter! because george bush swings a golf club and is painting late in life and we love that! it's dumb as fuck but you know it's true.

Trump is pretty sui generis. I believe the polls and am listening to Sarah Longwell on the Focus Group on what is making "double haters" lean one way or another (or to RFK).

But I personally don't find any of these historical precedents that persuasive. First it's kind of fallacious to believe that because something has never happened before it will not happen. But second because these historical precedents, like even the ghoul Mitch McConnell are from a completely different era of civility. It's just a completely different thing with Trump. So these historical analogies don't resound with me any more than the sports analogies.

it's dumb as fuck but you know it's true.

so many applications for this excellent line. like, just US politics applications.

He didn't get enough votes last time. Do you think he's become more popular since leaving office? I know Biden is unpopular. Don't waste my time with that. Do you think Donald Trump has become more popular since leaving office?

But he did get more votes than every candidate who has ever run besides Joe Biden, including himself in 2016. So he doesn’t really have to get more popular, just hope that Biden gets slightly less popular in a few states.

I wonder if RFK has tried to have any public presence this past week or is just laying low. Seems like his time to shine — an alternative without the necessary party mechanics.

Donald Trump also spent 4 years being a complete wreck of a President and ended up getting more votes than he did in 2016. People are fucking crazy.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/162044/history-usually-kinder-presidents.aspx

https://i.imgur.com/fsNtil3.png

there is also a whole saying about distance making the heart grow fonder. it might seem like trump has been non-stop in our faces since 2020, but that's really only true for some people, not the majority of people. he's been banned from twitter, and news hasn't carried him live in a while. he's always there in the background in a way that other presidents haven't, and i agree that he's sui generis and that no one should be asserting any sort of certainty about what will happen. it's for that reason that i see a historical outlook (analogy?) that people tend to like presidents more after they leave office, even if it doesn't make any fucking sense, combined with vast swaths of the country who are either MAGA, white evangelicals, and/or accelerationist/apocalypse-watchers and are openly seeking chaos. that combo makes things very difficult to predict, which is why i find assertions that trump's 34 felonies are some sort of gamechanger kind of completely naive

Repeating BUT TRUMP DID CRIMES ignores that everyone has known he did crimes for years, 20% of the country thinks it’s cool that he did crimes, 20% doesn’t really care that he did crimes as long as he nominates the right Justices and 2-10% of the country doesn’t like that he did crimes but also thinks Joe Biden is a walking corpse.

otm

OK, I give up. You guys are right — Trump is an invincible sun god, destined to rule over a thousand year reich, and we can either supplicate ourselves before him or crawl into the bathtub, whiskey bottle in one hand, razor in the other. See you in November!

that's not at all what i'm saying. trump fucking blooooooooooooooows and half this country hates him. i think biden is in such bad shape right now that harris would do better, this november. that's how bad it is.

I don't think many people are saying they know what's going to happen. We're saying we don't know, but the signs are not good. We're all just reading runes here. I'd be happy for some good news. The felony conviction, that was good news. Lately not so much.

Hey it’s also true that 20% of the country thinks Joe Biden is a golden god, 20% doesn’t care if he’s sundowning as long as he nominates the right Justices and 2-10% doesn’t like that he’s sundowning but prefers that to fascism.

Pretty sure everyone here think it’s going to be close.

Well, except for the two people who think every poll is a lie and Joe’s actually dominating.

lol

Aw, Hindenburg is too old said some Germans before electing a monster

— Jen "I dissent " Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) July 2, 2024

i'm used to things not going at all how i think they should go. i don't think harris is a good candidate, let alone the best, but it's probably the vice president who is next up, right?

heavily related: if biden suddenly fell ill and died tomorrow, would harris become the democratic nominee? what would the process be?

She'd become president and then would have to nominated and approved at the convention. But definitely they would do that, in that scenario I don't think anyone would contest her claim to the nomination.

to be nominated

didn't george fucking w bush get more popular after he left office?

yeah because he was fucking gone at that point. its not like Trump where he spent his years out of office insisting that he should still be in office and was the very first to announce he was going to run in 2024

I get the logic, I know a president this unpopular usually doesn't get re-elected, but this is such an unusual election, I mean he's running against a literal felon who is running on straight fascism and calls the Democrats "vermin", this ain't exactly Ronald Reagan

at any rate it seems like the window for there being any other nominee is rapidly closing. if they do it in the next couple weeks it will at least be some sort of decision (albeit heavily belated). if they wait until august or september to replace him after another huge embarrassment, it will (rightly) be seen as reactive and panicked

my hunch is with two extremely unpopular candidates who are in some sense both incumbants it's gonna come down to who's NOT on the front page. like was Biden is getting hammered in the news for being old and sundowning on national TV but now it's all about this SC ruling and specifically about how Trump is going to be a king now, which by the way is something that actually does really scare swing voters

anyway, I'm betting Trump is probably gonna be the focus for most of this. and I'm hoping it reminds people of just what a fucking cancer he is.

know a president this unpopular usually doesn't get re-elected, but this is such an unusual election, I mean he's running against a literal felon who is running on straight fascism and calls the Democrats "vermin", this ain't exactly Ronald Reagan

I, too, believe those things to be disqualifying. I report sadly that many of our countrymen don't feel the same. Shit is happening all around us. My own school system, which pretty much blew off the book banners for years, is now having to go ahead and ban books anyway because the Legislature is making them. And they're just gonna go ahead and do it, because hey, what can they do. The University of Tennessee quietly deleted the word "diversity" this year from every office and department and job title that included it, because hey, what can they do.

The bad stuff is happening, and lots of people are not fighting it. Regret to inform. The immediate political landscape that I see around me has shifted much more authoritarian in the past four years than it was when Trump was in office. In a lot of red states, the terrain is even more Trump friendly than it was in 2020. My governor, both my senators, my county mayor are all enthusiastic Trump supporters, not just quiet grudging ones. Yes, things have changed in the past 4 years, and for the worse in a lot of ways politically.

My governor, both my senators, my county mayor are all enthusiastic Trump supporters, not just quiet grudging ones.

well yeah virtually every single Republican politician is an absolute lunatic because fealty to Donald Trump is the only thing that matters to the party right now. but I don't think the public feels that way, even the Trump voters I know sound like they're just sick of him

I also know lots of Republicans who are sick of him. Just saying that the actual political landscape as a whole is in many ways more Trumpy now than it was four years ago.

People didn't like Donald Trump when he left office and Donald Trump has spent virtually every waking moment since reminding people of what they dislike about him.

He constantly reminds *us* what we dislike about him because we're the kind of people who follow the news and post about politics on a message board. There are a lot of people like us, but we're not the majority.

idk I think he's really unlikeable and annoying to a lot of people as evidenced by the fact that his approval rating only goes up when he's not in the news

Donald J. Trump began an effort on Monday to throw out his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan and postpone his upcoming sentencing, citing a new Supreme Court ruling that granted him broad immunity from prosecution for official actions he took as president, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

In a letter to the judge overseeing the case, Mr. Trump’s lawyers sought permission to file a motion to set aside the verdict, doing so just hours after the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling involving one of Mr. Trump’s other criminal cases. The letter will not be public until Tuesday at the earliest, after which prosecutors will have a chance to respond.

The move from Mr. Trump’s lawyers came 10 days before the judge was set to sentence the former president for his crimes in Manhattan, where a jury convicted him on 34 felony counts related to his cover-up of a sex scandal in the run-up to the 2016 election. Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked the judge, Juan M. Merchan, to postpone the July 11 sentencing while the judge weighs whether the Supreme Court ruling affects the conviction.

The effort to set aside the conviction might be a long shot. The Manhattan case centers on acts Mr. Trump took as a candidate, not a president.

Yet his lawyers are likely to argue that prosecutors built their case partly on evidence from his time in the White House. And under the Supreme Court’s new ruling, prosecutors not only may not charge a president for any official acts, but also cannot cite evidence involving official acts to bolster other accusations.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/nyregion/trump-sentence-hush-money.html

I genuinely dont think that argument has a shot but hey they may get another nice long delay out of it

I'm very much step-aside, but I didn't think his response tonight was too bad. Even if it does seem like all his energy goes into getting by rather than a spirited response.

Do you think Donald Trump has become more popular since leaving office?

As a few people have pointed out, that seems irrelevant. Trump won't be running against himself four years ago, he'll be running against Biden today.

This really resonated with me earlier today (from Goethe's Elective Affinities, which Sam Wasson's Coppola book and One from the Heart led me to):

"So all in their different fashions pursued their daily lives, thoughtfully or not; everything seemed to be following its usual course, as is the way in monstrously strange circumstances when everything is at stake: we go on with our lives as though nothing were the matter."

Biden is historically unpopular- at least in part- because he is president during a time of such political tribalism that the other party is considered evil and it’s not considered ok to support a president who does not come from your party. Remember even as recently as GWB, after 9/11, the line was, this is the President, you have to support the President. What Republican would say that now about Biden? This is a different world than the world where all of our historical data comes from. You can’t compare now to then. You can’t compare Biden’s popularity to that of other presidents. Obama, Trump, Biden- increasingly so in that order- these are the presidents of our polarized time and there is just no comparison to the past.

40% popularity these days means you have the support of most of your party, no support from the other party, and the independents aren’t quite sure about you.

In 2012, Hillary Clinton's approval rating was 66%. by 2016 it was about 40%. I have a hard time believing a quarter of the country flipped their view on her because of an email server. the scorched earth approach works.

You can’t compare Biden’s popularity to that of other presidents.

I mean, these are all just data points. Biden's vote one way or another will be another data point. It could continue certain trends, or it could break with them. Past results are no guarantee of future performance and all that. But past results are at least information, as opposed to wishes and fears. Sure I see the case for saying "But this time is different," but there is no case for "This time is so different that having a seemingly ailing 81-year-old man with low approval ratings in charge is actually a good thing."

Way xp:
So he doesn’t really have to get more popular, just hope that Biden gets slightly less popular in a few states.

To the extent there is a distinction to popularity, Trump can also use excitement or agitation to boost voting turn out among his supporters .

A federal court on Monday blocked the Biden administration’s pause on approving new facilities that export liquefied natural gas, dealing another legal blow to the president’s ambitious climate agenda.

In a decision issued late Monday, U.S. District Judge James D. Cain Jr. ruled in favor of Louisiana and 15 other Republican-led states that had challenged the move. The judge, who was appointed by Donald Trump, wrote that the pause “is completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy [sic].”

You want “epitome” there, champ. Combined with the spelling error is just *chef’s kiss.*

Is it a spelling error of the movie or the judge trying be witty on his own (ie government by ideology as if some other kind exists)

Hm, possibly. If so I stand corrected.

the epiphany of ideocracy

Paging prog-metal bands in need of an album title.

well yeah virtually every single Republican politician is an absolute lunatic because fealty to Donald Trump is the only thing that matters to the party right now. but I don't think the public feels that way, even the Trump voters I know sound like they're just sick of him

― frogbs, Monday, July 1, 2024 8:15 PM bookmarkflaglink

I also know lots of Republicans who are sick of him. Just saying that the actual political landscape as a whole is in many ways more Trumpy now than it was four years ago.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, July 1, 2024 8:24 PM bookmarkflaglink

The landscape may be "Trumpier" but it's a mistake to assume Trump himself will remain static. Don't underestimate him.

His wife is sick of him, Mike Pence can't stand him, none of his lawyers or judges can get him to follow directions or orders.

This came out today:

Former President Donald J. Trump over the weekend escalated his vows to prosecute his political opponents, circulating posts on his social media website invoking “televised military tribunals” and calling for the jailing of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Mike Pence, among other high-profile politicians.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/us/politics/trump-liz-cheney-treason-jail.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4E0.204e.AC7KgnwMcQsv&smid=url-share

Lock up Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell? With taxpayer funds? Senator McConnell is not a well man. Trump promoting that post is bananas.

The RNC probably are freaking out, they just know not to Streisand Effect it into virality.

I wish I could find a screenshot of this newsworthy retruthed Truth Social post. Instead, the NYT runs a photo of Liz Cheney. Pathetic.

"Here's why that's bad for Joe Biden"

Locking up Cocaine Mitch is a policy that a solid 80% of the country would be fine with if not cheer outright. His willingness to shit on those seen as establishment Republicans (never mind that MAGA has been the establishment for eight years now) is a feature rather than a bug for his potential voters.

6 percent of registered voters in NH surveyed in two days after the debate said Biden won https://t.co/dQ0wg8VhgK

— Matthew Sitman (@MatthewSitman) July 1, 2024

Locking up Cocaine Mitch is a policy that a solid 80% of the country would be fine with if not cheer outright.

The interesting figure might be what percentage would be fine with if it lock up without a trial. I think collectively we use locking up and put on trial interchangeably to some degree so probably not the easiest thing to measure, but I suspect it could still be quite high

would expanding the court at the start of the Biden term have actually been possible and would it have avoided this.
I think your America is a bit broken. Is it fixable.

Remember even as recently as GWB, after 9/11, the line was, this is the President, you have to support the President. What Republican would say that now about Biden?

Interested in the most recent example of this rationale being used to boost a democrat president and republicans getting onboard with it.

I think your America is a bit broken. Is it fixable.

I mean, no, I don't think it is fixable, the justice system alone would take incredible unified political will to effect any meaningful reform and that's only one of the aspects of the brokenness, but I hear that's "doomerism," to say that things are really broken beyond repair, so I guess I will *checks notes* ...vote for Joe Biden

I'm not predisposed to doom, whether felt or performed, so all I can do in my little county is make life better for people who have less and are ground down by our justice system and their own despair.

Donald Trump also spent 4 years being a complete wreck of a President and ended up getting more votes than he did in 2016. People are fucking crazy.

I would have thought that the presence of Covid meant that 2020 was one of the most secure elections ever.
Meanwhile trump was saying that he guaranteed there would be fraud. So yeah think it was likely to be them.
Also I thought all of the occasions of things that they had been highlighting as means of fraud turned out to be them.

Just popping in to mention that, in the UK, the Tories have started a whispering campaign that Keir Starmer is too old to be Prime Minister... he'll be 62 in September!

Lol

64 by the time he's voted out!

This could go in various threads, but I'll park it here. Labor writer Hamilton Nolan has one of the most concise and cogent summaries I've read of current conditions:

You have to hand it to right wing ultracapitalists. They really know how to stick with a plan. All those decades of writing checks to the Heritage Foundation, writing checks to the Federalist Society, grooming law students, funding conferences, lovingly building an entire intellectual and professional ecosystem ideologically vetted cadres ready to penetrate government and destroy it from within… it’s all paid off. They are reaping the fruits of their labor now. The rest of us are in a very scary place, but you have to admire the persistence of the horrible people that got us here.

“Let’s do what’s best for the very rich above all” is not an effective political message in a democracy. So the very rich have long worked to both conceal the message, and undermine the democracy. The Republican Party exists to serve the interests of the rich, but its long marriage of convenience to religion and racism have tied all those qualities together in a package. Voting rights must be suppressed, the electoral system must be designed in a way that creates power imbalances that can be exploited for the cause of minority rule, and levers of power must be found that can most effectively advance the agenda of unrestrained capitalism, along with enough Christian nationalism and regressive race-baiting to bring along a large enough coalition to support the whole project. Here we are. Here we are! Take a good hard look at the landscape they have now produced, my friends.

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-end-of-liberal-institutionalism

He offers practical next steps, too — primarily via organized labor, since that's his bailiwick, but he has a lot of good thoughts.

Yep, Tipsy. This is all part of a very, very long game.

you do not gotta hand it to 'em

lol well you especially don't have to hand to them because they just came and took it anyway

I imagine Ham knew that opening line was going to get this reaction.

I like the column and I'm going to share it. I didn't like his burying the lede, though: (1) abolish the filibuster (2) expanding the Court.

really think the uses of dril's "do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to ISIL" tweet have been throroughly exahusted by now. we do not, under every circumstance of somebody saying "you have to hand it to them," gotta do the "you do not gotta hand it to 'em" thing

whaddya expect? It's a bunch of dudes on a message board. We gotta one-up each other.

if presidents are immune from prosecution, biden could kill the 6 justices who gave him that power, right?

as the world's population ages and there are more people over 65 then there are little kids you will see more and more fear-based politics. it already explains the ring-wing thing all over the world. if you tell old folks that people are coming to get them they will vote for you to keep them safe. despots feed on fear and it doesn't hurt that the climate/pandemic/etc makes it easier for everyone to be afraid anyway. and before you know it, Matlock is the President of every country on earth. doesn't matter that he isn't real. in general, reality will be less of a thing. trump is only the beginning.

https://hallmark.brightspotcdn.com/a2/61/fd15fda913c25ee9e53f0bbca8ab/matlock-0015.jpg

HamNo’s post inspired me to fill out the union card when I get home (I think it’s the card you sign to show interest?).

I don’t think it’s a universal truth that old people are necessarily conservative. Old folks in Portugal are apparently leftier than young people.

I was a young Clintonian centrist now I’m ready to join the New Weathermen.

piece of shit country

"I don’t think it’s a universal truth that old people are necessarily conservative"

i didn't say they were. i think they are more easily frightened. and if someone says they are the only one who can save/protect them then they will feel less frightened. i don't think the Democrats make people feel more safe. when Repubs say they are going to stop the millions of murderers from coming across the border older people feel safer. that's just my opinion. and my anecdotal judgement from the reaction of fear that my dad shows when i hand him a spoon too quickly and how tightly he holds on to the strap in the car when we are going 20 miles an hour.

i mean its been the GOP strategy my whole life. scaring people. with racism usually. and they have relied on older voters to vote for them. well now there will be even more older voters. is all i'm saying.

to your very anecdotal evidence, i will add my own

my parents (b 1945) would never EVER have voted for a republican, would never ever say that they are scared of immigrants, nor would they otherwise subscribe to this fearmongering bullshit. they would, however, expect republicans to behave like adults and work in a bipartisan fashion, and that is where they were wrong.

their mistake was believing that people could and would work together even if/when they disagreed on policy. that does not appear to be true for most of this century so far.

I don’t think it’s a universal truth that old people are necessarily conservative

They most definitely are here. Proportionately.

"Conservative" in terms of clinging to the values of the past, which depending where your past was will look different along the political scale.

I wouldn't nec say older Portuguese ppl are "leftier", it's just they lived through a dictatorship and thus know the value of what came after in terms of social services, unions, etc

I feel like if the US lived under an actual brutal dictatorship, attitudes would change fast (among most, but not all - there are always large numbers of people who support the police state). problem is the one that will show up is going to be a soft dictatorship that wraps everything in weak justification (i.e. yesterday's SCOTUS ruling) and plausible deniability, so most of the idiots in this country will say with a straight face that this isn't a dictatorship even as freedoms are eroded and checks and balances crumble.

basically fuckin' STar Wars Eps 1 -3 much more prescient than realized, maybe they were classics after all

my prediction. the oldening of america will more and more result in blue turning red in places that were always blue.

The good thing is that there aren't that many boomers left -- and your kids ain't having many kids or any at all.

i frequently read TPM's "morning memo", usually written by David Kurtz. today's was a bit different

...At this point in the narrative, it feels necessary to orient the reader to the narrator. I’m not by nature or temperament a hair-on-fire personality type. I counsel calmness under pressure. I value clear-eyed assessments of difficult situations. I can find pleasure in puzzling though solutions to hard problems. I’m more inclined to take the long view and try to prevail through perseverance. What I am about to say is uncomfortable, painful even.

Yesterday’s immunity decision by the Supreme Court took a sledgehammer to the constitutional foundation of American democracy and eviscerated the rule of law. It will, in my view, go down in the annals of wretched Supreme Court decisions alongside Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu. It makes Bush v. Gore look like a piker.

Three days ahead of the 248th anniversary of the American colonists formally shucking off monarchial rule in revolutionary style in Philadelphia, the Supreme Court gilded the U.S. presidency with monarchial powers the likes of which we’ve never had before, never sought, and thought we had rid ourselves of two and half centuries ago.

The American presidency now exists outside of the law and beyond the reach of the criminal law. In the Supreme Court’s view, the President is the law. This is new, it’s unprecedented, and the consequences are almost beyond our ability to imagine or foretell.

The rule of law, as the saying goes, must exist for everyone; otherwise, it exists for no one. By placing the president beyond the rule of law, the Supreme Court has deprived all of us of its protections. The constitutional structure we have relied on since 1789 — imperfect but resilient, a creation of man not of the divine, a work in progress never to be fully completed — was turned on its ear yesterday by an ahistorical decision grounded neither in the text of the Constitution nor our traditions and customs nor our best hopes for ourselves or our form of self governance.

It is a shock to the system that is going to take a long time to come to grips with and decades or longer to remedy. In the first few hours since the decision came down, I’m not seeing it sinking in yet across broad swaths of the media, the legal system, the political system or society writ large. The high court has ruled it so. There is no immediate recourse against it or against the new and alien structure it has foisted upon us. Short of a new constitutional convention or a series of constitutional amendments, we are stuck with it. That is going to take time to settle into elite consciousness.

The conceit that I began this monologue with — that vigilant watchdogs applying steady public pressure could rally those in authority to uphold the rule of law even in the extreme situation of a failed auto-coup — collapsed upon itself yesterday. What began as an effort to validate the rule of law ended up being the grim task of bearing witness to its demise.

As a former lawyer, I can tell you we are outside of the legal realm now. This is no longer the work of lawyers or judges. They have been displaced in a bitter irony by the Supreme Court itself (how this is an aggrandizement not just of executive power but of Supreme Court power is an essay for another day). My friend Dahlia Lithwick, a relentless defender of the rule of law, recognized yesterday’s seismic shift. “As an official representative of the legal commentariat I want to suggest that tonight’s a good news cycle to talk to the fascism and authoritarianism experts. This is their inning now …”

We have entered an uncertain new era. The door is now wide open to the kinds of fascism and authoritarianism we spent much of the 20th century and hundreds of thousands of American lives combatting overseas. Many of you will be skeptical of this. I will take no joy in being right about this. You can wait and see, but don’t wait too long. It may already be too late.

if presidents are immune from prosecution, biden could kill the 6 justices who gave him that power, right?

people keep saying that -- Biden is a Democrat. Democrats won't be weaponizing this ruling, as they absolutely immediately should. I don't mean he "should" kill anybody, but there's so much this ruling opens up -- it's not good! the stuff it opens up is fucked up! and a party that wanted to retain power would jump in with both hands; it's what an (R) admin will absolutely do. but I don't think there'll be any actual "how do you like your ruling now?" stuff from Team Liberal. we just don't work like that. we'd rather lose! after all, we have our standards.

they go low, we go die

cool

🟡 NEW: The next Republican Party platform will be written behind closed doors.

In a break from decades-long precedent, reporters and spectators will not be allowed to watch next week’s party platform committee proceedings, @daveweigel reports.https://t.co/I7MafQywLw

— Semafor (@semafor) July 2, 2024

which means several of them have spouses/girlfriends/mistresses getting abortions and they're calibrating how to hide this from their voting public

Totally normal and cool

I've seen a lot of weird talk on Twitter about how this ruling means that Biden can issue a bunch of executive orders on anything. I mean sure, he can order that all immigrants in the country are now citizens, but it would still be overturned by the courts.

the talk of Biden doing anything extralegal to expose the stupidity of the ruling/restore balance is entire fan fiction that people are using as a coping mechanism, I doubt anybody (or hope nobody) believes he's going to do any of these things.

the message is going to be...

...as always...

..."we need to show up at the ballot box"

But how can Biden keep reaching across the aisle and following Michelle fucking Obama’s words of wisdom?

looking at 3-way voter polls, it seems less like Trump picked up much after the debate, but Biden lost support. Kennedy's numbers jumped in several polls, including one having him at 13%.

that might be why, uh, having him step down might be a good idea, because people not fleeing to Trump, but to a shitbag third party.

meanwhile, Giuliani disbarred

I hope this ruling doesn’t lead to unthinkable practices like targeting an american citizen in a drone strike! (being facetious — this is awful)

the fallout of the immunity ruling on the hush money sentencing continues:

NEW YORK — Donald Trump’s sentencing in his N.Y. hush money case may be postponed from next week in light of Monday’s Supreme Court immunity ruling, with the Manhattan district attorney saying he is not opposed to a delay requested by Trump’s lawyers so they can seek to vacate his conviction.

The district attorney’s office noted in a letter to the court Tuesday that sentencing would have to be delayed from July 11 for the defense to make its case about how the Supreme Court’s decision could impact Trump’s state court prosecution.

Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records was based in part on evidence of meetings and communications that occurred while he was president.

In a historic and far-reaching decision on Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, and that evidence cannot be used to prove alleged private criminal activity if that evidence is part of a president performing his official duties.

New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan has previously ruled that Trump’s conduct in the falsifying records case has nothing to do with his official duties as president, a decision Merchan made when rejecting a request by Trump’s lawyers to postponed the trial until after the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity. The Supreme Court ruling was sparked by a different Trump criminal case, his federal election-interference trial in D.C. But it may impact his other cases as well.

Merchan must now rule on whether to formally adjourn the sentencing.

Even as they said they would not oppose a delay, prosecutors also said in their letter that the defense arguments about how the Supreme Court ruling should impact the New York case are “without merit.”[/q]

oh my fucking god

I'm going back to hoping they both die before the election

You know I’m now thinking that they need to replace him with Harris now, in light of the shock of the Supreme Court ruling. It actually might inject some new energy, even if Harris isn’t exactly someone to get excited about. That is, if she wants it and the Democrats are capable of actually doing something bold (I know, they aren’t).

the conversation around it is going to get louder, and not quieter. I don't know if it results in anything actually happening, but as much as Nancy/establishment/Biden want the convo to die down, the next week or two of polls is going to make the screams louder

Yeah, I saw that

Out of words.

Based on the rate of news in the past week alone, we're about 30 months out from MAGA squads knocking on doors to make sure the Trump portrait is hung to specs in all living spaces.

don't worry the Democrats have a comprehensive four year battle plan to deal with the fallout of another Trump administration. they've got this.

I look forward to seeing friends die as they’re nestled in their concentration camps

You make it sound kind of cozy.

How will the televised military tribunals work in the era of streaming? Will we all be required to subscribe to Trump TV? Will they be aired on every service?

I was alluding to my favourite episode of Strangers With Candy

He wasn’t president when he was paying a porn star. What is there to delay and review in this?

I keep picturing that scene from The Office where Michael declares bankruptcy by shouting out, "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY", with Trump just pacing around yelling, "THIS IS AN OFFICIAL ACT" before everything he does.

He was President when he paid back Michael Cohen and labeled it a campaign expenditure.

Paying Stormy Daniels was not the crime.

To me, something like this would seem hard to ignore (even though Biden's defenders quite likely will):

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/02/politics/cnn-poll-post-debate/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8mduTEvnU0

“Top campaign officials briefed donors in a call Monday evening. A person familiar with the call said the campaign stressed that Biden knows he needs to do better after the debate and that they plan to have him out more. “

RUH ROH

weekendatbernies.jpg

"dear Ralston, I just sent you a letter about razor blades I found in my cereal. thank you for sending me more boxes of cereal with razors in them"

Beamish: I should have recognized that it’s only my favorite show ever :(

pic.twitter.com/WtAQyt5CwV

— soylent spleen (@beeofstagnancy) July 2, 2024

I lolled

Future 2024. A Percocet and stripper in every home.

and Gucci flip-flops

wow it really is a possibility he drops out, i would have never thought it

Future to Biden: "You deserve it"

When clyburn says this, it might be happening

“I will support” Vice President Kamala Harris if President Joe Biden “were to step aside,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Biden-Harris campaign co-chair, told Andrea Mitchell earlier on MSNBC.

— Gary Grumbach (@GaryGrumbach) July 2, 2024

Degenerate gamblers agree

Kamala for nominee futures are skyrocketing right now, doubled since noon: pic.twitter.com/W4sqI25Ez0

— Quantіan (@quantian1) July 2, 2024

These things can happen fast:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/02/politics/house-democrat-call-biden-withdraw/index.html

this seems to be the best out of the terrible constrained options here, tbh, I realize everyone has been arguing abt Harris for days but the $200 mil already raised is a big deal

yeah I mean it can't be anyone else for that reason alone

It feels like anything is possible, in a way that sucks but is also wholly unreal. I guess … we’ll see whatever we’ll see, right?

the post on the Future subreddit foreshadows our new xanned-out Dem candidate

its really wild, I mean this is what we all feared in 2016 isn't it? the GOP is willing to blow up whatever norms they need to in order to retain power and punish people, while the Dems would loudly go tsk-tsk and talk about how "no one is above the law" while taking no actual action to reign things in. now that the demise of the country is starting them in the face are they really gonna just sit back and go "oh well, at least we followed the rules"? I mean history says yes but man I dunno with all the calls for Biden to drop out there's a lot of "holy shit do something" out there

I mean the situation seems pretty dire

New for @PuckNews:

Leaked polling from Democratic data firm OpenLabs shows Biden sinking in battleground states + putting states like Virginia, NH, New Mexico in play for Trump.

AND now - Harris, Whitmer, Newsom, Pete outpolling him in swing states.https://t.co/10VV6jFlh7

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) July 2, 2024

if their own internal polls are showing this...yeah, it'll happen.

Fuck Pete Buttigieg and don’t even joke about him being in contention

is Puck respectable? I've only seen'em quoted a handful of times over the years.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/30/vance-president-immunity-biden-trump-00165948

Sexual assault allegations against RFK Jr.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rfk-jr-reportedly-shared-photos-of-nude-women-bbqd-dog

Sexual assault and animal abuse doesn’t hurt American politicians

I don't need to click the story -- the url is a delight and water came out my mouth.

xp Puck is fairly new (launched in 2021) but staffed by people with reputable pedigrees. You might see them quoted more if they weren't so heavily paywalled.

I think their journalists are mostly refugees from legit legacy publications, but “leaked internal polling” is always going to be fishy.

Gotcha! xpost

RFK's response to the story was literally "I have a lot of skeltons in my closet."

skeletons

RFK Jr. had sex with a barbequed dog

In his closet. Under the watchful eye of Red Skelton.

Barbecue dog is only good if hickory flavored

Ok so now we need a 4th of July unity rally where Biden hands off to Kamala, she names Andy Beshear as veep candidate, and Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. (If one thing I didn’t think could happen actually might, might as well go all the way.)

I guess the next question is how much pressure will there be on Harris to remain the candidate or, for whatever personal reasons, step aside.

I’m old enough to remember when (male) candidates had to drop out of races because they had an affair with an adult woman or smoked a joint.

Why are people talking like Biden's stepping down? Because a Congressman from Texas said he should?

A congressman who looks like Garrison Keillor's stunt double I should add

He wasn’t president when he was paying a porn star. What is there to delay and review in this?

― The transparently flimsy and misleading (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, July 2, 2024 9:34 AM bookmarkflaglink

Mr. Trump’s lawyers proposed filing their court papers on July 10, and the district attorney’s office said it would respond two weeks later.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/nyregion/trump-sentencing-hush-money-trial.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4E0.4spB.kjsRzMDCFCdS&smid=url-share

Ok this isn't that long of a delay.

I agree, let's see Trump's legal team lock him into their legal positions on this July 10. Judicial estoppel worked so well for them in the interplay between Trump's representations about his net worth in the E. Jean Carroll case and the damage award in the civil forfeiture case.

I want to hear them go through each of the 34 felony convictions in an excruciatingly detailed and highly public way, so we can understand exactly which of the jury findings are considered official acts and which are not.

As an added bonus, these legal positions will help the current President (whether Biden or Harris) understand better exactly how far their current presidential immunities go, according to Trump.

I’m old enough to remember when (male) candidates had to drop out of races because they had an affair with an adult woman or smoked a joint.

― Dick Cavett Poo Party (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, July 2, 2024 11:44 AM bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, "Monkey Business" was considered a reason to drop out. How quaint.

My siblings were saying there is no way Al Franken would resign the Senate in today's climate, nor would he be hounded to do so.

Why are people talking like Biden's stepping down? Because a Congressman from Texas said he should?

mostly vibes tbh

Anyway I did all I could and emailed my Congressman and called my senators to call for Biden to step aside in favor of Harris. If it doesn’t happen, I guess I wasn’t forceful enough.

Clunker’s statement, if not taken out of context, is big.

Clymer

Hunter Biden has joined meetings with President Biden and his top aides this week at the White House, four people familiar with the matter tell my colleagues, who are told the reaction from some senior White House staff has been,  “What the hell is happening?”

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) July 2, 2024

I still hate what the DNC did to Katie Hill. She won a deeply conservative district. Fucking Pelosi

I watched him at some hurricane warning center today and it just felt like everyone in the room was watching and waiting for him to fuck up or perhaps stand out as fit and the whole thing felt uncomfortable.

I still hate what the DNC did to Katie Hill. She won a deeply conservative district. Fucking Pelosi

yeah, that was a huge shame.

I watched him at some hurricane warning center today and it just felt like everyone in the room was watching and waiting for him to fuck up or perhaps stand out as fit and the whole thing felt uncomfortable.

― (•̪●) (carne asada),

I think Hunter's off coke iirc.

If I liked the things Hunter likes and was facing a long prison sentence, I'd be inclined to go wild and plan to rehab behind bars.

To be fair to Doggett, he’s not just some random Democrat, he’s a 77-year-old white guy and longtime congressman who supported Biden in 2020. He ought to be Biden’s core political demographic. But it’s also significant mostly because he’s a crack in the dam, and those have a way of spreading.

I don't know. I prefer Mulder.

Clyburn was saying immediately after the debate, Biden or Harris, either one, so I didn't put much into his statement today

Why are people talking like Biden's stepping down? Because a Congressman from Texas said he should?

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes), Tuesday, July 2, 2024 2:46 PM bookmarkflaglink

Biden's literal campaign co-chair said he'd support Harris if he stepped down. after two days ago publicly pooh-poohing the idea. you don't think a lot of discussion happened behind the scenes for him to say that publicly?

The one state I don't believe in that Puck poll is New Mexico. Really?

Doggett's been a Texas House rep since 1994, and he's very well-liked and not prone to saying bullshit for attention

I take Clyburn's statement as a shot at the folks talking up Whitmer and Newsom over Kamala.

Whitmer would be a good choice

sentencing pushed until September, gives them 2 more months to figure out how to squash it entirely

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-hush-money-sentencing-immunity-b2572660.html

Whitmer would be a good choice

no, because then the $200 mil already raised is wasted, we've been over this

Yeah, but it would be the highest-rated episode of The West Wing ever. Two women, one white, one black, fighting for the Democratic nomination? How beautifully American-dream!

Seymour Hersh's substack looks at Biden's withdrawal in 1987 to see how he came to that decision then. Anyway, interesting tidbit I'd never heard:

They were set up on a blind date after Biden saw her modeling in a Parks Department ad at the airport, and they hit it off immediately.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/

As panic and confusion over President Biden’s faltering debate performance swept the ranks of Democratic lawmakers late last week, Sen. Joe Manchin III informed a few key allies that he would soon break with Biden in an interview on a Sunday news show, a high-profile defection that would underscore the president’s weakness.

Democrats feared Manchin — a moderate West Virginia senator who recently registered as an independent but caucuses with Democrats — would call for Biden to step aside. If he did, the senator would then become the first prominent elected official allied with the party to call for Biden to exit the presidential race.

But he didn’t. Senior Democrats heard of Manchin’s plans and started making calls to the independent-minded senator, who once used a Sunday show appearance to announce his opposition to Biden’s top agenda item and effectively kill it. The “full-court press” was quickly assembled to help dissuade Manchin from appearing on the show, according to two people familiar with the response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

president joe manchin nearly led the charge

sentencing pushed until September, gives them 2 more months to figure out how to squash it entirely

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-hush-money-sentencing-immunity-b2572660.html

― frogbs, Tuesday, July 2, 2024 12:27 PM bookmarkflaglink

The sentence might be squashed but the thing he paid the hush money for isn't hush anymore, and all these hearings draw attention to it.

The Focus Group was interviewing Hillary voters who were thinking of voting for Trump or RFK or sitting out. One thing (and I agree with milo on this), they mentioned is that part of the appeal to these voters is it seems like Trump is a "reset" or outsider again.

I think this could remind these voters that it's not that Trump is innocent, it's that Trump needs to be bailed out by the Supreme Court justices - that Trump appointed. It makes him the ultimate insider, a very different proposition than in 2016.

Fuck Pete Buttigieg and don’t even joke about him being in contention

Is it just me or is Buttigieg the best polling Democratic candidate in every swing state except Michigan (where Whitmer is the Governor)? pic.twitter.com/eDBOKnkLfk

— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) July 2, 2024

no, because then the $200 mil already raised is wasted, we've been over this

― I painted my teeth (sleeve), Tuesday, July 2, 2024 12:30 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago)

it literally can't be anybody other than Harris, y'all can stop now

no, because then the $200 mil already raised is wasted, we've been over this

there are several prominent Democratic donors for whom two hundred mil is not peanuts, but not really an "oh, shit" amount either. the question that needs to be asked is whether you're really getting any value at all on that 200 mil, because its worth is zero if it supports a non-viable proposition. The point about donors making a stink about who they donated to is an OK one if we actually thought politicians gave a shit about pissing off the people who support them which last I checked, no! I agree that for many reasons it could ONLY be Harris, on your main point I concur, but that 200 mil -- that's not really the sticking point I don't think

that's fair, point taken, just a super frustrating situation all around

Yeah, if this is something that might conceivably happen and not just fantasy baseball, I'm persuaded by all the arguments both optical and logistical that it would have to be Harris. I would have preferred an open primary (which she obviously would have run in), but pushing this to an open convention now definitely would be messy and problematic. I don't love Harris — more because of her poor primary performance in '20 than anything else, from a strictly pragmatic pov — but I think she has the capacity to generate at least some energy and excitement, there is a motivated Dem/progressive base out there that is pretty much desperate for anyone-but-Biden to rally around. It would change the entire dynamics of the race. Will Americans really elect a Black woman? It's a tall order, but we're already in unprecedented territory so ... maybe?

re: Buttigieg he's one of those D politicians who is very deeply hated by the young and hip, and by the olds who still consider themselves young and hip. he is very much on the "we'll work harder to defeat him than we will to defeat a Republican" list for these dudes

I like Whitmer and do not want to see her potential squandered on this last-minute shitshow

crut otm

also Pete is a CIA mole ;)

if he's CIA I really wouldn't mind him getting as much physical proximity to the (R) candidate as possible, like when they're in a room having some diet cokes or whatever

lol, save us deep state

i don't have anything to add just wanna say what a fucking shit show this is.

not despairing either just like, the debate and the immunity and everyone just knowing the democrats aren't gonna do shit

and none of the crazy shit trump said in the debate or like calling for liz cheney to be sent to a tribunal none of it even a blip

reminder to renew your passports now

Whitmer has said she doesn’t want it. If democracy survives, we can all immediately switch to hating her when she runs in 2028.

Buttigieg's sterling record with Black voters makes him a shoo-in.

Will Americans really elect a Black woman? It's a tall order, but we're already in unprecedented territory so ... maybe?

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, July 2, 2024 1:05 PM bookmarkflaglink

The US elected Obama twice. A significant number of Republicans voted for Nikki Haley over Trump in the primaries.

Whether those Haley voters are pissed off enough to stay home or vote for Harris or RFK, I don't know. But I don't think think this is as tall of an order, at least where I sit in my deep blue state bubble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDUP3GFHix4

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:izxpomdyri45gzhppiiyattq/bafkreifnrmqikuslkl6vnep2csux5kn2rczmlabv5dawrw43knqwnq4utq@jpeg

I don't think think this is as tall of an order, at least where I sit in my deep blue state bubble.

If she does end up as the nominee, I would very much want to believe this. But Black women ime scare the hell out of conservatives and maybe even some "moderates," they are routinely portrayed as angry, crazy, radical, threatening. They managed to make Michelle Obama scary, and all she wanted was for people to eat vegetables. (In that sense, Harris' otherwise lamentable law-and-order credentials might help, who knows.)

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7if4sphhnmtfsklcixbg2i4g/bafkreibgff27no3lr7e4gywu62aax75jbkwaj67nfwz5oj7s5mwzbd53ru@jpeg

Volunteering for the War on Terror a decade in to polish your political resume is far more disqualifying than Kamala being a cop.

xpost love how he frames this as "the difference is Trump didn't say he wanted to lock up his opponent". literally did that all throughout 2016 dipshit as a candidate!

as felicity inadvertently alluded to, correctly: the difference between harris and obama re: electability is that obama has won a democratic primary and (twice) a general election. the candidate that has the best chance of winning is the one the party should choose. harris would not be my choice in an open primary, but in the pinch the parry currently finds itself in, she may be the safest choice.

If she does end up as the nominee, I would very much want to believe this. But Black women ime scare the hell out of conservatives and maybe even some "moderates," they are routinely portrayed as angry, crazy, radical, threatening. They managed to make Michelle Obama scary, and all she wanted was for people to eat vegetables. (In that sense, Harris' otherwise lamentable law-and-order credentials might help, who knows.)

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, July 2, 2024 1:27 PM bookmarkflaglink

That could be true. However, as jaymc often correctly observes, it is not the preferences of posters itt that "matter" but apparently these voters:

1) hold nc
2) flip georgia and arizona
3) make headway in wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania

Haley won more votes than the margin of victory in Georgia and Arizona. These NeverTrump Republicans are really extremely fed up. Quite possible that Kamala being a "cop" is a feature for them, not a bug

I would very much like to know if those voters know anything at all about Harris' CA record!

Why, do you think the Haley voters will like it or not like it?

is it crazy to think that even more nevertrumpers will be born after the scotus decision

no

_Fuck Pete Buttigieg and don’t even joke about him being in contention_

🐦[Is it just me or is Buttigieg the best polling Democratic candidate in every swing state except Michigan (where Whitmer is the Governor)? pic.twitter.com/eDBOKnkLfk🕸
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) July 2, 2024🕸]🐦

lol, save us deep state

any port in a storm imo

My antipathy to Buttigieg is the one thing that drives the MSNBC contingent of my circle bonkers; they can't fathom it! They know him as the articulate mouse-faced gay dude who calmly destroys the GOP on FOX.

table and I don't agree on much politically these days, but we're as one re Buttigieg -- though I'd vote for him in the unlikely chance he's the nominee.

I think actual Never Trumpers could find Harris palatable, sure. But I assume they're already voting for Biden anyway. The key voters are more the "hate them all/none of it matters anyway" crowd, which inevitably is going to have its share of people who wouldn't tell you they're racist but have lots of questions about Black women being "qualified" for whatever it is they may be doing (apart from menial labor).

Still. After the past week I think Harris or anyone (or at least anyone who might conceivably end up in the slot) has the potential to change the dynamics and reset the race, and is therefore a better option than what we have.

There is no way I would vote for that warmongering McKinsey fuckface, hope him and his dumb husband actually witness the hellfire that evangelicals want all of us fags to see. They deserve it.

tough but fair

apologies for the long Twitter thread, but this spells out why it absolutely cannot be anyone but Harris, I mean this is the whole reason why you have a VP in the first place

1/ Democrats cannot nominate anyone except Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. It's impossible.

If the Biden candidacy ends, so does the Biden campaign. It's not transferable. Anyone else other than possibly Kamala Harris would have to start from nothing. That's can't be done.

— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) July 2, 2024

VP is charged with finishing the current term of unavailable Pres, not automatically becoming the nominee, especially before the convention

I think some of those objections in the tweet thread may not be quite the hurdles he says — and at a glance at his timeline, he has been very Biden defensive — but overall that seems right. That does not mean there shouldn't be serious shakeup at the campaign. This hasn't been a Harris campaign, it would need new leadership. If this actually happened, the people who steered the Biden ship to this point I don't think ought to be the ones calling the shots.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/politics/biden-lapses.html

coupla experienced campaign managers chimed into that thread to say it’s nonsense fwiw

There's just gonna be more stories like that NYT one. My (78-yr-old) mother was extremely happy about Lloyd Doggett, for anybody at all to be speaking out. She and my dad — both very lefty — are like personally pissed that Biden's running. They know what getting old actually does, they never thought he should have run again.

xp

Saw a reply in that thread from Dana saying "Show us how, then"

Did they?

pic.twitter.com/qaVBi8GgE7

— Zevia Jane (@JaneZevia63329) July 2, 2024

Still holding out that Trump nominates a complete lunatic as VP that turns off a handful of still-wavering swing voters.

No idea how the people around Biden thought they were going to keep all of this quiet through a campaign season. They should have followed through on the right-wing conspiracies about reintroducing COVID, make Joe wear a mask at all times and dub him with a voice actor.

Trump's old too, he could still die. Keep hope alive.

shouldve rigged him up as immortan' joe imo

one reason I hate tweet threads is that people's expertise tends to be assumed when they write tweet-threads but often times the tweeter is out of their depth with what they're tweeting about.

beginning one by saying "it's possible I'm missing something, but I dont' think so" isn't the most auspicious start

I wish daily for Trump's death. he has heart disease and that was as of 6 years ago!

Is QAnon still a thing? I feel like there should be some conspiracy theories out there about how Trump successfully cut off Biden's adrenochrome supply. So now they have to kidnap some more children.

xpost also relies a lot on suggestion of 'this is how it is' without much in the way of support, like I don't demand a bibliography or anything but y'know pertinent real-life or personal examples or at least references to governing documents that say these things and not just a suggestion that 'this is what it is'.

that said, I think it has to be Kamala.

I don’t think she has a chance

it still pisses me off so much that Trump got a really bad case of Covid and likely would've died a painful death had lifesaving drugs not been invented just in time to save his life

xpost also relies a lot on suggestion of 'this is how it is' without much in the way of support, like I don't demand a bibliography or anything but y'know pertinent real-life or personal examples or at least references to governing documents that say these things and not just a suggestion that 'this is what it is'.

that said, I think it has to be Kamala.

― perpetually awkward, perennially unhappy (Neanderthal), Tuesday, July 2, 2024 3:15 PM bookmarkflaglink

The support was about 20 odd substantive points.

I looked (not too hard) at the replies in terms of alternate plans and saw references to:

1. unspecified "legal process" (as a lawyer, I lol'ed)
2. refunding campaign donations
3. the RNC possibly filing lawsuits against the DNC for violating some of these laws
4. the idea of campaign lawyers collaborating on the new plan

So, this expertise thing cuts both ways. There could be a plan, and if it is viable, I am sure we will hear more about it.

and yes, keep hope alive, not Trump

Buttigieg literally mocked people who supported Sanders and M4All. He is an absolute piece of shit

Pronounced Booty-gig

I’m just waiting for Biden’s shitshow upcoming sit down with George Stephonopolous

Get a necromancer to bring Pete's dad back, let him run

Put that pres
Out to pasture

Biden already got Jack Black’s endorsement. Does that just automatically transfer to Kamala or someone else or do they have to go through some cumbersome process to get it? These are things people aren’t considering.

I want a refund on all my Dark Brandon merch

Maybe one of these 3 a.m. phone calls people are so worried about will confuse Biden into drone striking Kavanaugh, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett. Then people can use up their "Biden did this" stickers.

Dark Brandon must go through death to be reborn as the Antichrist

KEEP HOPE ALIVE

Thanks, Felicity. My mood is super dark right now and that made me lol.

Dark Brandon vs. Darkness Closing In Brandon

Now with added Immunity™

xxxp yes, K Hive

They polled Michelle

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/graphic%201%20jpeg_5.jpg

Gavin Newsom is slime but he's politically astute, he's gonna stay out of this mess and bide his time

Harris / Obama ftw, she could resign after 6 months and go back to her life. who cares. or VP Barack

RFK Jr. looks like a shrunken apple head

No idea how the people around Biden thought they were going to keep all of this quiet through a campaign season.

One of the depressing things about last week was realizing the aviator shades were a pretty good way of keeping us seeing what we wanted to see. Not that Trump doesn't have a dozen layers of disguise.

xxp Barack is ineligible to be VP, he has to be able to assume the Presidency

Come on, haven't we all wanted to test what the 22nd amendment means by what 'elected' means in "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice"?

trump will certainly test that if he wins and is still alive in 2028

SCOTUS will find the 22nd amendment unconstitutional on the basis of its conflict with the supreme power of the unitary executive. He needs no election and cannot be term limited. He is and has always been.

"term limits" are for suckers, let's get rid of this whole four year thing and replace it with "until he gets the job done"

I know I was saying that death-of-democracy talk hasn't really fired up many people, but it seems like Project 2025 is getting some traction as a threat. It's handy in having a scary-sounding and easy-to-remember name.

Project 2025 is not a game, it’s white Christian nationalism. It is the Sharia Law of the “Christian” crazy people who aren’t Christian at all but want to control every aspect of your life through their narrow and exclusionary interpretation of Christ’s egalitarian, inclusive,… https://t.co/F1sdIpkovi

— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) July 1, 2024

Rark Muffalo!

Project 2525 is made from people!

Already knew RFK jnr was beyond awful, but didn't know just how awful:

Mary found Robert’s diaries. In the back pages were lists of women with whom Robert had had flings. The book elaborates: “He ranked them from one to ten, as if he were a teenager. Ten, Mary knew, was for full-on intercourse. ‘My lust demons,’ he wrote, were his greatest failing.

“He used the word ‘mugged’ a lot – women who, he wrote, just came up to him on the street and said, How about it? If they had sex, he considered himself mugged, a passive victim of aggressive women.

“There were so many – astronomical numbers, Mary said, and she knew a lot of them: The celebrated actress who came to their house and went on vacations with her family. The older model who was always around. The socialite whose husband was one of Bobby’s good friends. A gorgeous royal. The wife of a very famous man. A lawyer. A doctor. An environmental activist. All these beautiful, accomplished women. How could Mary compete?”

Mary became distraught, weeping and drinking and struggling to get out of bed, the book says. Robert tried to forcibly hospitalise her, telling her that she would be “better off dead”. Callahan interviewed Mary’s therapist, Sheenah Hankin. When Robert asked for Mary to be diagnosed as mentally ill, Hankin refused, telling him: “Your wife isn’t mentally ill. She is angry and depressed, but she is not ill.”

Robert began dating the actor Cheryl Hines, who played Larry David’s wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm. He cut off Mary’s credit card and access to cash. Broke, she had to ask other mothers for an extra $20 so she could buy petrol and groceries.

Finally, she hanged herself at home. The book recounts how Mary had put on her yoga clothes and sandals, and walked out to her barn. “When she was found that afternoon, Mary’s fingers were stuck inside the rope around her neck. She had changed her mind. She had tried to save herself.”

Mary’s siblings insisted that her depression had been a direct result of her husband’s cheating and neglect, his threats to take the children and leave her with nothing, “bringing the full weight of the Kennedy family to bear against her”.

Robert, however, portrayed Mary to the world as a disconsolate alcoholic. In his eulogy, he took no responsibility for the anguish that his adultery had caused her. He said: “I know I did everything I could to help her.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/02/maureen-callahan-kennedy-family-women

xp
i wondered why heritage and conservatives were being so open with their administrative fascism plans, because why not just keep it under wraps and unveil it when it's time to end the republic once and for all? but right now it seems like another cruel game, because it works for them on both sides of reality. on one side, they use it to enflame trump voters that their man has a plan to root out the deep state whatever and replace them with loyal henchmen. then, after the election, they can deny everything, enact the plan differently, pull a few different levers (barf on me for typing that) and hold back on 1 or 2 of the most wretched things, and mock anyone who opposed them for believing in the project 2025 conspiracy theory.(in fall 2029, propublica will publish a brilliant exposé showing how project 2025 was implemented in plain sight in 2025)

also you can see how so much of the world is engulfed in authoritarian states and conspiracy theories - some of them are true, some of them aren't, but almost everything is plausible because the people in charge demonstrably don't care about the wellbeing of normal people

it still pisses me off so much that Trump got a really bad case of Covid and likely would've died a painful death had lifesaving drugs not been invented just in time to save his life

― frogbs, Tuesday, July 2, 2024 6:20 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

dirty secret of medicine is that the very best medical therapies we have for anything reduce mortality by at most 20-25%, early covid being no exception

can't we just bioengineer a virus that is only lethal to him

I mean his DNA is probably 75% Big Mac by now

President Biden tomorrow is having lunch with Vice President Harris, and will be meeting in the Roosevelt Room at 6:30pm with Democratic governors.

— Matt Viser (@mviser) July 3, 2024

JUST IN: Governor Gavin Newsom is heading to DC tomorrow to meet with President Biden and other democratic governors.

— Daniela Pardo (@danielapardotv) July 3, 2024

just run six people for President as one hybrid Prez

all hail hydra

agree Mr Shandling

I was out for four or five hours earlier today; felt like 2008 or 2016, wondering what news I'd come back to. Guess nothing much has changed.

I thought that congressman bailing was important because I assume that's something someone--not a Joe Manchin, but a party regular--does with some risk in terms of campaign support from the DNC. I thought he'd only speak up if he'd already sounded out other people beforehand. But I didn't know he's 77; maybe he's not running this year, and that's not a consideration.

I don't know, those kinds of things are always coordinated to some degree. He's obviously not the only one who thinks that, but having a fellow septuagenarian be the first one helps protect against the appearance of some ageist conspiracy against the throne.

The call to DC, hmm. Either the plan is to have them all give him their full public support like in some yakuza movie, or ... anything other than that would be interesting (and possibly not as depressing).

lol "fellow septuagenarian," if only.

fellow old guy, I mean

Newsom walks out of the West Wing missing a pinky

tbh I thought the "Biden should step down" story wouldn't last more than a couple days, it does seem like there are some legs

Feel like this clip of Raskin is revealing. He's obviously in a position to know what's going on. He evades the question about whether he agrees with Doggett — which is to say, he doesn't disagree — and instead talks about "massive unity" after things that are "happening very fast."

That doesn't exactly sound like circling the wagons around Joe.

.@RepRaskin on the Democratic ticket: "I know this is a moving target. It's got to happen quickly. But I can guarantee you—there will be massive unity and focus on that task when we get to the end of this process. And it's happening very quickly." pic.twitter.com/vXqLd4DMNz

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) July 3, 2024

jesus fucking christ. this is the org that gave Trump his Supreme Court picks

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court presidential immunity ruling: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be" https://t.co/ndMJlNlUKH

— Media Matters (@mmfa) July 3, 2024

wow @ that Raskin quote, that's the exact language you hear from NFL teams who are about to bench their starting quarterback

He truly thinks we’re fucking idiots

https://deadline.com/2024/07/biden-debate-trump-travel-schedule-1236000406/

Isn't that just acknowledging that he's too old? Hope there aren't any global emergencies when he hasn't had a nap.

Can't see Biden surviving this. On top of everything else, there's now four days' (and counting) worth of soundbites of what seems like half the party coming at him, from all directions, that would be hard to explain away down the road; they'd be running non-stop all through October on cable news, in commercials, etc. (I know: Trump says anything that pops into his head without consequence.)

Starting to lean that way as well. At first I thought they'd ride it out, after all everyone thinks he''s in this condition already anyway how much does it really matter if it's eventually become true or not. But momentum is a powerful thing, and if that starts to fall on the side of twist rather than double down and stick, will be difficult to turn around

Having said that, Democrats often exist in a limbo state of indecision, uncertainty, and procrastination, which means there might not be enough momentum in any particular direction, the worst of both worlds

'intelligence sources' and campaign hacks (probably mad about getting blamed) have also started leaking about Biden - the former that he's seemed loopy in intelligence briefings for more than a year, the latter that his debate prep started at lunch and left him time for an afternoon nap

Dropping out is bad ("hey, sorry Americans, he's not competent to run the country and we've been protecting him for a while now hoping you didn't notice - ooopsie!") and staying in is worse once the leaks and intraparty criticism have started, don't know where Democrats could find a silver lining here.

Staying in and doubling down, and dropping out with sudden issue are both exponentially better than the current worst of both worlds strategy which appears to be staying in while talking about how it would be better not to.

Pick a lane! The indecision is far worse than either path

pic.twitter.com/sG8QBHe1d7

— MAGGIE マギー 🕊️ 📿 (@MaggieAustenx) July 2, 2024

I’m all in

The first woke toddler

I have a dweam...

The question is more who doesn't agree with Congressman Doggett. The sooner the better.

NY Times playing a pretty dangerous game here trying to push him out

They played some pretty dangerous games in 2016 too iirc

“Pick a lane! The indecision is far worse than either path”

This is the thing.

The NY Times became Bush II’s free propaganda machine for America’s genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you know they’re always on the right side

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2ukXcDCrfE

xp kevin, i don't think it matters that harris is corny and insane

this could be spun as a charming thing. she reminds me of some kooky professors i had. they were still competent in their areas of expertise.

The indecision is far worse than either path

I disagree with this pretty strongly! It's a big decision, with a lot of complex political, legal, and financial consequences, and I don't want it done in a snap way. Doesn't matter to me if it gets decided in August, but it DOES matter to me if it's decided tomorrow because "we have to act swiftly and decisively" and then there's a massive fuckup about ballot access or who can spend what money or some previously undisclosed skeleton in the closet or whatever. You only get one chance at this, do it right.

I'm a KHiver now because it's somehow both the soberly correct stance and the funny irony-poisoned stance.

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) July 2, 2024

Carville and others on call with big Dem donors. Sounds kinda like this thread.

https://www.semafor.com/article/07/03/2024/on-private-call-democrats-weigh-comatose-or-dead-biden-and-alternatives

I disagree with this pretty strongly! It's a big decision, with a lot of complex political, legal, and financial consequences, and I don't want it done in a snap way.

I think if there were an unexpected situation due to an assassination or plane crash I would agree, rushing such a decision with no prep would be a big mistake. But I think in this scenario you would expect that the wargaming for such a situation has already been done, perhaps the timing came as a surprise but this kind of eventuality has been predicted for a while now to arrive at some point

Unless its the case that no preparation or contingency measure were previously thought out and ready to go, but that probably just exacerbates the seeming appearance of inertia and indecision

Non-US lurker here but I've been following the debate here, bewildered by how people have such strong opinions about whether he should drop out or not, because it seemed to me there are no great options and therefore no strong opinions make sense to me, and the stakes are so high that every consideration is terrifying.

However when I was watching that Raskin clip, I realized that if I woke up tomorrow and saw that Harris is replacing Biden, I would feel relief. If the speculation continues indefinitely, I suspect I will feel a growing sense of dread.

Anvil, we’re taking about the Democrats here, I’m sure they had no preparation for this.

Non-US here too, just overwhelmed by dread over it all for the last week. Seems insurmountable, esp after SCOTUS intervention. Hoping against hope Dems win both houses and presidency in November and find some way to overcome the corrupt SCOTUS, and/or something awful befalls Trump and 6/9ths of SCOTUS.

bewildered by how people have such strong opinions about whether he should drop out or not, because it seemed to me there are no great options and therefore no strong opinions make sense to me, and the stakes are so high that every consideration is terrifying.

To my surprise this has gradually become my position (as of 9:15 a.m. EST) too.

If the debate had really been just a one-off bad day and not a sign of cognitive impairment, Biden would be out giving press conferences and unscripted interviews left right and center to prove it. He hasn't. He's given one teleprompter performance. There's no way he can keep that up for another four months.

The indecision is far worse than either path

They're following Yogi Berra's advice: when you come to a fork in the road, take it. It sounds like it might be less indecision than intransigence/digging-in on one side vs. acceptance of the inevitable (reluctant or otherwise) on the other.

I realized that if I woke up tomorrow and saw that Harris is replacing Biden, I would feel relief

I had that reaction yesterday just at Doggett and what seemed like the possibility that something might change. I was surprised to find myself thinking, "Yeah, Kamala!" — not a thought I've ever had in my life til yesterday. So I'm going with that. It doesn't mean I have some great confidence in her abilities or prospects, more a measure of how grim and sad the prospect of a forced Biden march thru November seems to me. At least with Harris it's like, we could have an actual campaign with an actual candidate! She could go places and say stuff!

If the debate had really been just a one-off bad day and not a sign of cognitive impairment, Biden would be out giving press conferences and unscripted interviews left right and center to prove it. He hasn't. He's given one teleprompter performance. There's no way he can keep that up for another four months.

― Zelda Zonk,

He responded to the SCOTUS decision and has got an interview with George Snuffleupagus on Friday.

CNN was a solid drumbeat for Biden leaving last night. Just relentless. They've made up there minds over there!

The relentlessnes has been something to see. Online, too--the whole left side of their front page at the moment. Good for business is the obvious answer. (Not the people they're interviewing, they're sincere, but the programming decision to seek them out one after another.)

The fact that nearly a week after the debate this is just getting bigger makes it feel more likely something will happen. Biden team strategy to ride this out feels dumb and wrong.

What can be done about SCOTUS and these latest rulings? What a fucked-up situation whereby 9 partisanly-appointed individuals can seal the fate of a whole nation.

The easiest solution would be to expand the number of justices or to put a hit on Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh.

Anvil, we’re taking about the Democrats here, I’m sure they had no preparation for this.

Its not necessarily a surprise that this caught them unawares, I can see that. But not acting quickly one way or the other would confirm that. The worst decision of all is no decision

I agree about all the options being bad options. They're all exponentially better than no option

As a media person I just kinda roll my eyes at people complaining about "the media" in situations like this. Of course the media is all abuzz, it's what the media does — it's a hell of a story! — but they're not inventing any of this. They're responding to the same things everyone is responding too — what we all saw at the debate, and the actual-not-imaginary widespread public perceptions and reactions to that. This isn't some media lynching, it's just plain old news.

If you don't want "Party panics after disastrous debate" to be the headline, then don't have a disastrous debate that causes the party to panic.

fair enough but also the media are amoral eyeball-seekers

Well yeah, I mean, it's called "news." Novelty-seeking is inherent to the enterprise. And this is all pretty novel.

As a media person I just kinda roll my eyes at people complaining about "the media" in situations like this. Of course the media is all abuzz, it's what the media does — it's a hell of a story! — but they're not inventing any of this. They're responding to the same things everyone is responding too — what we all saw at the debate, and the actual-not-imaginary widespread public perceptions and reactions to that. This isn't some media lynching, it's just plain old news.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

OTM. As somewhat of a media person I have to explain to people that most political writers vote Dem, regard themselves as liberal, some are gay, others have trans kids; however, they're products of journalism schools and programs that instill #bothsidesism as if it were doctrine. They genuinely think they're being fair when ceding space to a kook climate change denier. They're subject to groupthink and hate falling behind a story picked up by the competition.

Their editors, however, skew right-ish. It gets worse at the top.

I've felt for almost a decade or so now that the weakening of the media in the internet age - the loss of ad revenue, the need for clicks to survive, social media whittling away what was left of a workable model - made fertile ground for such political "disruptions" like Trump and Brexit and so on, to the detriment of democracy and freedom and everything else that's good.

I agree with eephus though, if they made a decision now it would come off panicked and rushed, also "SCOTUS just turned the US into a dictatorship" is currently dominating the headlines and I think changes some of the internal strategy as well, problem is I just do not see how the Dems ever do the right thing

Alfred otm, but there's another factor which is just the excitement of a big story. People get hung up thinking about the ideology of news operations, but the biggest bias isn't really ideological, it's just "what's the most interesting thing happening right now." For people who haven't been in a newsroom when a big story is breaking, I don't really know how to describe it, but people just light up, the whole place turns electric. It's exciting. In the moment, it doesn't really matter whether the news is "good" or "bad" for the particular players in the story, it's the story that turns us on. Just how it is.

yup

Tipsy OTM. It becomes a moment of infinite possibility out of thin air - what takes can be pursue? Who can we call? What’s likely to come next?

(Stevie is also right though)

Yeah, the weakening of the MSM in terms of resources has been bad for all sorts of reasons for sure.

I don't disagree with any of tipsy's points here--good for business, as I posted--it's just that CNN generally takes a very bland middle ground, so it's a little surprising to seem this hammer so hard on this story. (Except: good for business.)

"seem this" = "see them" (there's a transposition)

anyway one thing I've been hearing a lot is that Biden should not drop out because the old and feeble stuff is already baked in, as it was in 2020 when he won the primaries and then the presidency, so it can't really "hurt" him anymore. the polls are kinda showing that, he's lost maybe a point or two while Trump hasn't really been helped, though I would argue that you shouldn't be running behind a criminal and open fascist at all

that said I think there's a much stronger argument there for him dropping out - if he's running against DeSantis or Cruz or Rubio maybe it's different, but something that is getting overlooked right now is that Trump is also very old and not in particularly great shape, he's constantly saying bizarre and brain damaged shit, he's freezing up during speeches too. it'll get worse as the campaign goes on. and yet the voters still think he's more "mentally fit" to be president by a wide margin. and honestly I'm not sure if they're even wrong to do so anymore! but if Biden resigns and it's Harris, suddenly that conversation is focused solely on Trump.

hard to predict how much that will help but I will say whenever the subject of politics comes up with people who do not follow this particularly closely (which is much of the country I'm sure) the one topic that's almost always brought up now is "our leaders are too damn old" - RBG, Mitch McConnell, and Feinstein are still on people's minds. both presidential candidates are of the age where normally the only viable "career" would be Wal Mart greeter. idk I think just recognizing that might buy the Dems a lot of goodwill, in fact Biden announcing his resignation is probably the one thing he could do to significantly bump his approval rating

as Robin says if the news dropped that Harris was going to now be the nominee, I'd feel a lot of relief. its kind of the one thing keeping me from despairing entirely. and I don't particularly like her! but she can speak well, she can do events, she can provide a stark contrast to Trump's utter insanity, something Biden sadly cannot do anymore.

Kamala's worst stylistic trait, of course, is that she's prone to word salad -- but so are both Biden and Trump. She at least does it confidently and happily, and it's usually a jumble of platitudes rather than an inability to articulate matters of substance.

I'm a U.S. non-lurker and am 100% in agreement with robin on this. I kinda figure that if people like me knew what should be done, and had the ability to carry it out, we'd be running things. And we're very much not.

Also, as a recovering ex-media person, I agree with stevie and his Lordship.

One little-remarked-upon cause of the demise of print journalism was not just losing ad revenue in general, but classified ads especially. Which were singlehandedly killed by a guy named Craig. Thanks, Craig.

something that is getting overlooked right now is that Trump is also very old and not in particularly great shape

otm, this has always been to me one of the obvious benefits of having any younger candidate vs. Trump. He's the one who ought to seem like old-man-yelling-at-stuff and totally out of touch with the actual America of 2024. But that potential advantage is totally squandered when the candidate is Biden, instead Trump benefits from seeming more vigorous and with-it.

Kamala is definitely a total weirdo, which I think maybe comes from being in a career where having a personality is seen as a negative, then suddenly needing to develop one for political reasons. she has like this Tim and Eric sense of accidental comedic timing. tbh if anything it's probably a good thing in this hyper online political climate. I sometimes wonder if Hillary would've had a better chance if she said more weird shit. all anyone remembers is "Pokemon Go to the polls"

...and "deplorables"

*BIDEN TOLD ALLY HE IS WEIGHING WHETHER TO CONTINUE IN RACE: NYT

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) July 3, 2024

How much does it weigh?

The story: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/biden-election-debate.html

President Biden has told a key ally that he knows he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince the public in the coming days that he is up for the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.

The president, who the ally emphasized is still deeply in the fight for re-election, understands that his next few appearances heading into the holiday weekend — including an interview scheduled for Friday with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — must go well.

“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place” by the end of the weekend, said the ally, referring to Mr. Biden’s halting and unfocused performance in the debate. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

The conversation is the first indication to become public that the president is seriously considering whether he can recover after a devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta on Thursday. Concerns are mounting about his viability as a candidate and whether he could serve as president for another four years.

Not much of an ally is they leak it to the Times, eh?