US Politics, August 2024 -- "Unburdened By a Has-Been"

Good morning!

Morning Negronis!

Reason to not be sanguine #1,002: Denialist takeover of local elections apparatus.

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/31/nx-s1-5058464/stephen-richer-maricopa-county-elections-arizona-primary

“Please clap”

Eh, ignore me

Good morning!

Headline from the often quite Republican-friendly Politico this morning:

"Trump and his allies had a plan for how to hit Harris. Then he opened his mouth."

The one upside to Trump’s racist tirades: the response from grassroots donors. As of this hour $23,961,076 has been raised through ActBlue today, the largest fundraising day in the past week. Donations began spiking immediately following Trump’s NABJ interview.

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) August 1, 2024

the shift in enthusiasm from biden to harris is wild, people really shouldnt be giving money to presidential campaigns tho they have more than they know what to do with

It's like "Whoever has the most money when the horn goes IS THE Winnah!"

it would be nice to think that being a disgusting bigoted moron would have electoral consequences

honk honk its da election gotta love it baby

In true ILX fashion, I was having a dream last night, and ILXor Crut showed up. I immediately asked them what was happening in the Politics thread. Crut looked like the kid who shot Trump's ear.

giving money to presidential campaigns is the modern proxy for having any political say in your life

crut what have you done

People should be donating to ActLordSoto.

give now to double negronis

Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich being released by Russia. An August surprise!

love to get my spies back

Alfred if this will help get your eventual books onto store shelves set up a GoFundMe

the subconscious association with crooks is less concerning to me than the association with ilx politics threads. what have i become??

Former WBOR DJ, Evan Gershkovich!

haha, crut, i'm pretty sure it was more a case of "is their news from the front!?" as i have allowed myself to sink deeper into the morass that is this countries' dumb story. and oh how dumb it can be.

"there"

Took a few seconds for this to click in--corny, but funny anyway.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/30/politics/video/white-dudes-for-harris-raises-4-million-for-campaign-digvid

I find you can have a lot of political say at the local government level. I work for local government, one cranky citizen with an ax to grind can change things. Just show up to meetings and hammer home your issues!

BRB, organizing a GoFundMe to get crüt some marksmanship lessons

Reason to not be sanguine #1,002: Denialist takeover of local elections apparatus.

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/31/nx-s1-5058464/stephen-richer-maricopa-county-elections-arizona-primary🕸

Otm I always tell my friends that if you can get 20 people to show up at a meeting with a coherent message — and avoid just yelling and calling people idiots (however tempting it may be) — you can have more impact than you’d think. Not that getting 20 people to do anything is easy.

Separately, from the NYT about that book the Heritage/Project 2025 guy that Vance wrote the foreword for:

But in recent weeks, Mr. Roberts’s publisher, Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of Harper Collins, pulled offline a digital advance copy of the book that had been available for download for book reviewers and booksellers, and the book’s publication may be delayed.

Broadside has also dropped the original subtitle, “Burning Down Washington to Save America,” and cover art featuring a charred match, and has toned down similarly incendiary promotional language for the book.

Ms. Bonham said the changes were made at Heritage’s request after the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump on July 13, though they had been discussed earlier.

Wow, that wouldn’t have been a provocative book cover at all

JD Vance was the first VP nominee to have a negative net favorability coming out of his party's convention... It's only gotten worse for him.

Given how Vance has dominated news cycles, it is, at this point, the worst VP pick since Eagleton in 1972... pic.twitter.com/GVanVIyHO6

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) August 1, 2024

The House Republicans have announced that they won't even take up the KOSA "online safety" bill that those assholes in the Senate passed 91-3. So it's dead for now, which is very good news.

Wild that Trump and supporters are doubling down on the race stuff, trying to "prove" that Harris has claimed Indian heritage in the past, as though she is somehow now trying to cover it up. Weird stuff!

its their fucked-up racist version of calling people "weird".

also this post should be seen from the other thread in case people missed it because its really really true:

They know at some level that performing a hostile takeover of someone’s identity is the quintessential act of domination by the slaver. Denying a person of their name , their social status, their kinship ties — these are signature moves of the Virginia plantation owner, and went hand-in-hand with ownership, droit de seigneur, the whole nine. The fact that a certain version of this tactic has been deployed against the occasional white individual (e.g., E Warren) doesn’t contradict this : tactics that have been perfected in the plantation can be deployed elsewhere: on the reservation, in the prisons, at the border, and so on. But that’s what I see, beneath the crude political calculations: a will to dominate that is unquenchable.

― keen reverberations of twee (collardio gelatinous), Thursday, August 1, 2024 4:55 AM (ten hours ago)

Facebook already has a post of Rachel Scott going around along the lines of “Dear Mainstream Media: Here’s What A Real Journalist Looks Like” and it is taking all of my self-control not to post “since when has ABC News NOT been part of mainstream media, you simple-minded cretins”

people really shouldnt be giving money to presidential campaigns tho they have more than they know what to do with

I basically agree with this and try to respond to every request for donations to Harris by donating to state legislative candidates and selected U.S. Congress races

nice

kosa situation is weird it sails through the senate then republicans spike it in the house even though its packed full of their favored culture war shit, youd think if this was about big tech not liking it they couldve got more done in the senate and wouldve said something about it it at some point

If you want the apparatus of government to be robust to a potential second Trump term you really want to have the right state legislators in place, is all I'm saying

re KOSA, sounds like a combination of tech companies and ACLU getting organized to fight and persuading some conservative groups that it could be used against them too (e.g. to censor anti-vax content as harmful to children).

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/technology/kosa-child-online-safety.html?unlocked_article_code=1._k0.UcC3.tmgXQWOdNLd0&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

thx

What was supposed to be a simple piece of legislation to protect children online has been dragged into a heated political war.

classic headass nytimes sentence

jus' a simple piece of legislation

I'm just a bill

they mention skepticism from trans activists but fail to mention that the sponsor of the bill is on record saying their skepticism is completely warranted

Supporters of the #KOSA have tried to bury this video of @MarshaBlackburn saying explicitly she wants to use it to censor transgender content online.

Would be a real shame if it went viral again while they're debating this on the Senate floor...https://t.co/e5JnEeReSS pic.twitter.com/yEMuz8CY7h

— Evan Greer is on Mastodon and Bluesky (@evan_greer) July 25, 2024

Meantime, a good read about complicated politics, to put it mildly:

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/evan-gershkovich-prisoner-exchange-ccb39ad3

people really shouldnt be giving money to presidential campaigns

in this era of ActBlue and crowdfunding of campaigns, a few small donations are OK. it lets the party understand how valuable it is to deliver policies that are broadly popular with voters, as opposed to concentrating all their efforts courting investment bankers and CEOs. but we give almost exclusively to local candidates and issues. nothing to Harris, yet, since she's raking it in so fast already.

What's really galling about the NYT on KOSA is I did a quick search of their editorials and can't find that they've even mentioned it, despite it obviously being a vehicle for censorship. The kind of thing the press is supposed to be against as a first principle. (Not that I expect great things from the NYT opinion department, but that oughta be a no-brainer.)

elites in their cant be bothered era

I'm starting to think this 9/11 plea deal is as much about protecting our Saudi "allies" if a trial were to happen, as it is about any closure for the families

it's a case where a plea deal works for both sides. the government tortured them for years, fatally tainting any legal case that could be brought, but the government clearly was never going to release them under any circumstances. the stalemate wore them down and by now their guilty plea is, politically speaking, almost meaningless.

I'd read somewhere that a lot of Guantanamo inmates were in no hurry to leave the island and be shipped to some supermax in Colorado - they were allowed to eat together, pray together, etc., something that might not happen in the U.S. (of course, this is after tortures ended and they were just stuck in legal limbo)

Trump's reaction to the US/Russia prisoner swap raises the question of whether he still gets the classified briefings that every other former president gets.

So when are they going to release the details of the prisoner swap with Russia?
How many people do we get versus them?
Are we also paying them cash? Are they giving us cash (Please withdraw that question, because I'm sure the answer is NO)? Are we releasing murderers, killers, or thugs? Just curious because we never make good deals, at anything, but especially hostage swaps. Our "negotiators" are always an embarrassment to us! I got back many hostages, and gave the opposing Country NOTHING - and never any cash. To do so is bad precedent for the future. That's the way it should be, or this situation will get worse and worse. They are extorting the United States of America. They're calling the trade "complex" - That's so nobody can figure out how bad it is!

I assume he's angry because he said only he could get it done

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-putin-free-wsj-reporter-evan-gershkovich-kremlin-news-them-2024-5

yeah this gives Laughin' Kamala a WIN - better to leave them in the Gulag

I'll take it:

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/08/01/congress/brown-leading-in-ohio-00172244

LOL @ Trump

we never make good deals, at anything

https://media.tenor.com/KAvm-TuOU90AAAAM/charlie-brown-walking.gif

SAD SACK

I don't think he's even read anything about it, a lot of it involves getting Russians out of Russia, Germans, Slovenia, etc... that's the 'complex' part that he can't comprehend

the WSJ story about it looks epic. i'm gonna read it when i get home. their front page headline is massive.

people really shouldnt be giving money to presidential campaigns

the fact that elections depend on how much money was poured into a specific campaign seems to be one of those ridiculous things that everybody just accepts with a shrug, so why not just make it explicit all the way and weigh votes based on how much money you paid for your vote

Wild that Trump and supporters are doubling down on the race stuff, trying to "prove" that Harris has claimed Indian heritage in the past, as though she is somehow now trying to cover it up. Weird stuff!

― jaymc, Thursday, August 1, 2024 10:04 AM (three hours ago) bookmark

Trump acting as the Identity Police is quite ironic, considering he used to call newspapers under the pseudonym "John Barron" to promote his own social and business activities. That's fucking weird!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdgP7GLEG_g

the WSJ story about it looks epic. i'm gonna read it when i get home. their front page headline is massive.

― scott seward, Thursday, August 1, 2024 2:17 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

seems like quite a lot of it went down minutes before Biden announced his withdrawal

From self-quarantine in his Delaware home, Biden, testing positive for COVID-19, was tuning out frenzied speculation about his future to push the deal over its finish line. Slovenia still needed to tick through the final legal arrangements to ship back the spies it held—and time was running out. One Slovenian official texted a Journal reporter to say he was “shitting bricks.” Biden called Prime Minister Robert Golob to nudge things along, adding wistfully: “I’ve really got to get to Slovenia.” About an hour later, he announced he was leaving the presidential race.

adding wistfully: “I’ve really got to get to Slovenia.”

let's go, Brandon!

that couple in Slovenia actually WERE spies, no doubt about it - pretending to be spaniards

Hmmm. Slovenia. Whom do we know from Slovenia? Melania, that's whom.

Perhaps Biden is going to go pick out a Slavic hotwife?

luka, tadej

Aug. 1, 2024, 1:21 p.m. ET1 hour ago
Peter Baker
Jake Sullivan is a stoic and measured person but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look as happy as he does at the lectern today.

well, if Peter Baker said it.

Trump acting as the Identity Police is quite ironic, considering he used to call newspapers under the pseudonym "John Barron" to promote his own social and business activities. That's fucking weird!

The weirdo cherry on top being he named his youngest son after this sock account.

fwiw I agree that donating to Harris is probably not a great use of your $ (the message that their is enthusiasm no appetite for an open convention has been sent and the marginal value of your money isn't huge given the hundreds of millions sloshing around).

but if you want to donate, I recommend this statehouse slate https://app.oath.vote/donate?p=tspgs-hi&ref=tsp-tlaunch

and/or https://www.voteriders.org (tax deductible)

booyah

A reporter asked Biden on Thursday about Trump’s suggestion that he would have brought the detainees home without giving anything in exchange.

“Why didn’t he do it when he was president?” Biden replied.

Was just coming to post that. The video of that moment was hilarious. He gave a thumbs-up and walked out right afterward.

depending on November's outcome, Biden could well end up with a pretty darn secure legacy - stepping down when he did, this prisoner exchange, the economy and job market, etc.

people are always going to genuflect before these great men regardless but one would hope they consider genocide in the debts column ahead of such generics as "the economy"

spoiler: they won't

gotta think the only thing biden will be remembered for is stepping down

and his dog biting like 20 secret service people

he was trying to warn us

at least he had a dog to bite the officers... Trump had no dog ;-(

commander biting the secret service over and over is def the highlight of the administration

thing is you can see how a dog might consider those guys a threat

Woke Doggo

Trump had no dog ;-(

He just likes talking about them being hunted down or being inferiors.

Gov. Shapiro cancels weekend fundraisers in the Hamptons

Shapiro’s “trip was planned several weeks ago and included several fundraisers for his own campaign committee,” spox Manuel Bonder said. “His schedule has changed and he is no longer traveling to the Hamptons this weekend”

— Allan Smith (@akarl_smith) August 1, 2024

hmm

Trump was never invited to the Hamptons

Not even a single Hampton

Sad

Even Sammy Hagar had a standing Hampton.

Why is Trump being so modest about his own crucial role in the prisoner exchange?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/01/world/video/jd-vance-prisoner-swap-russia-trump-digvid

Facebook link, so get it while it's hot!

https://scontent-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/453509203_7915081215251510_8752367693122142959_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=0D673SPiQfUQ7kNvgGXP17i&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-2.xx&gid=AnI3YROGKcAZJZpYfd8mNd-&oh=00_AYDSVKjaLLcqGltdDDjsuvSaudWgkULHLlUmq2hdTHKjTw&oe=66B1BA55

Here to tell you that someone just won Twitter with Stephen Miller’s new nickname, Pee-Wee German.

"people are always going to genuflect before these great men regardless but one would hope they consider genocide in the debts column ahead of such generics as "the economy"

no love for the almost 200,000 dead russians biden is indirectly responsible for killing either. nobody cares here. well, maybe russian-americans care. they aren't allowed on u.s. television though. (okay, anecdotal. but i watch a lot of t.v. and i have never seen a russian-american talk about the war. feel bad for all those prisoners who were lured out of jail to become cannon fodder. or forced to be cannon fodder. and, obviously, i feel bad for the ukranians too. its sickening. the whole thing is just sadness. and don't get me started about yemen. hundreds of u.s. airstrikes. nobody even knows what a yemen is here. hundreds of thousands dead from war and hunger since 2014. just bleaker than bleak. and don't get me started on sudan! and then there are those american troops i syria and iraq...)

UAW President Shawn Fain doesn't like the idea of Mark Kelly or Josh Shapiro as Harris's VP. He supports Beshear and/or Walz.

Ah yes

https://www.mediaite.com/news/billionaire-gop-donor-peter-thiel-blames-christianity-for-wokeness-it-always-takes-the-side-of-the-victim/

xp I mean, name me a President in the last 50 years who hasn't presided over some form of genocide or funded/been involved with foreign powers that summarily murdered hundreds of thousands of people. Outside of maybe Carter, I can't think of any, and maybe one of you can correct me on Carter.

At some point you just start making relative comparisons, I guess

Carter, heeding neocon advice, kissed the shah's ass.

and Somoza's iirc

Even Sammy Hagar had a standing Hampton.

I almost read this as "Sammy Hamgar" and thought he maybe needed some oil in the Hamptons

xxp forgiveness and turning the other cheek is the epitome of wokeness, he's absolutely correct

wokeness
wokeness
even if
even if
you don't love meeee anymore

yeah when i think of wokeness i think of humility.

Jimmy Carter was kinda pro-Khmer Rouge for awhile because they hated the Vietnamese

i don't know, i blame christianity for pretty much everything. its easy to do. pick something! you can find a way to blame christianity for it.

If only more American Christians actually followed the religious messages of "love thy neighbor", "judge not, lest ye be judged" and "do unto others as they would do unto you". That's literally empathy and "wokeness" right there. Not exactly what the "religious right" seems to be doing these days.

haha WTF... Putin was shaking in his jackboots

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) suggested Thursday that fear of a second Trump administration motivated Russia to agree to the historic prisoner swap with the U.S.

“We certainly want these Americans to come back home. It was ridiculous that they were in prison to begin with,” Vance said.

“But we have to ask ourselves: Why are they coming home? And I think it’s because bad guys all over the world recognize Donald Trump’s about to be back in office, so they’re cleaning house,” he said. “That’s a good thing, and I think it’s a testament to Donald Trump’s strength.”

Former Rickover-era Naval nuclear engineer Jimmy Carter also thought that nuclear war was winnable and changed US strategic nuclear policy to launch-on-warning - arguably making everything less safe.

re: Carter - "Inaugurated 13 months after Indonesia’s December 1975 invasion of East Timor, Carter stepped up U.S. military aid to the Jakarta regime as it continued to murder Timorese civilians. By the time Carter left office, about 200,000 people had been slaughtered."

Every president assumes responsibility for mass deaths somewhere in the world. Its part of the job.

Thiel’s explanation of woke is on par with Trump’s attempt to describe religion. These people are really stupid.

Every President is responsible for crimes against against humanity... and that's okay.

And here's why.

Fuck you milo

"I mean, name me a President in the last 50 years who hasn't presided over some form of genocide"

oh gosh i know i was just bringing up stuff that nobody cares about or thinks about in the u.s. and that never gets talked about here either. its cool that people in the u.s. care about people in gaza but they really don't care about dead people in yemen, sudan, iraq, or for sure russian soldiers.

Vance is after Harris for using a fake Southern accent even though she was raised in Canada. So I'm making a note to myself to drop the fake Southern accent.

i'm going to make a note to myself to cultivate a Southern accent.

Win or lose, Vance should be the new Secretary of Authenticity.

some of her gestures and intonations code very NorCal/Oakland to me but maybe that’s just me?

It took me 30 years but I finally embraced y'all wholeheartedly.

It starts with being obsequious to customers while waiting tables, starts to slip out here and there when you're drunk and one day it's "all y'all" this and "all y'all" that.

montreal is technically southern canada, so....

Harris moved to Montreal when she was 12

some of her gestures and intonations code very NorCal/Oakland to me but maybe that’s just me?

I hear that.. looking at her birth certificate, it turns out I walk by her Oakland birthplace all the time - a field where there used to be a Kaiser hospital. It's a field now but I understand they're going to build a women's health bldg eventually

A haunted one of course

Never thought I'd see an article like this on fucking Politico.

Weird, cruel, and basically human garbage. If there was a Fuckhead Ocean, Vladimir Futon is crawling on the bottom of it.

Psycho shit like this will get you lots of bookings on Tucker Carlson's show but normal Americans are too busy cheering the U.S. women in gymnastics to create chalkboard scrawls blaming Kamala Harris for who Algeria sends to the Olympics. pic.twitter.com/xo0tg9N2eH

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) August 1, 2024

Considering this gobshite supports women staying in abusive marriages, I think he's made his position on "grown man pummeling a woman" fairly clear

I feel the California accent has a bit of a twang to it. Stoner diphthongs

But dude

I feel the California accent has a bit of a twang to it

"on the streets of baykersfeeld!"

huh

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is likely no longer the favorite to be Harris' VP nominee after his involvement in a sexual harassment coverup has come to a head.https://t.co/vV6wojztVH

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) August 1, 2024

if true, that's a relief

VP vetting is described as the most thorough colonoscopy you'll ever receive

this would explain the event cancellations

Just saying:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:hoj627nc4fjm2bnpxnpj5uj6/bafkreiekeqkq2iwsh6azkruodo5amoqenab7uvgqa4shyfcn6wgs5xopla@jpeg

Of course part of me would be "Do you mind if I use this an excuse to get out of square dancing, one of the more obnoxious things Henry Ford foisted on the country?"

it's not high school football season

2 county fairs is a lot of hot dogs, and following that up with square dancing is so wrong you'd have to imagine walz's body would rebel

it's not high school football season

The Football Industrial Complex has dictated that August games are urgent and key.

Ha, looks like the post sharing that was deleted. But we must dare to dream.

2 county fairs is a lot of hot dogs, and following that up with square dancing is so wrong you'd have to imagine walz's body would rebel

let's be honest, walz's body appears to be made of square dancing and hot dogs

I don’t know what to believe anymore. She probably chose The Rock.

Who knew that all it took to unite this message board was a former high school teacher with a corny-but-chill Midwest-dad aura? Damn, please make this happen, Kamala!

The Hill is still showing a pic of Newsom as a possible pic which is fucking delusional

i'm sure he was going to the washington county fair, i'm taking the kiddo these this weekend

I think the remaining contenders all have to go to DC on Saturday to sit down with Team Harris.

Who knew that all it took to unite this message board was a former high school teacher with a corny-but-chill Midwest-dad aura?

What's funny is there are at least two of those just among Democratic governors, but Tony Evers isn't the right man for VP

Harris moved to Montreal when she was 12

Fun fact: friends of mine were in her grade at Westmount High, and my mom met hers at the Jewish General where they both worked.

Btw she was super-gregarious and adored by all the “tribes” in high school.

Harris moved to Montreal when she was 12

Fun fact: friends of mine were in her grade at Westmount High, and my mom met hers at the Jewish General where they both worked.

Btw she was super-gregarious and adored by all the “tribes” in high school.

Harris moved to Montreal when she was 12

Fun fact: friends of mine were in her grade at Westmount High, and my mom met hers at the Jewish General where they both worked.

Btw she was super-gregarious and adored by all the “tribes” in high school.

Re Kamala and Montreal

Fun fact: friends of mine were in her grade at Westmount High, and my mom met hers at the Jewish General where they both worked.

Btw she was super-gregarious and adored by all the “tribes” in high school.

okay, okay

Btw she was super-gregarious and adored by all the “tribes” in high school.

even the wastoids, dweebies, and dickheads?

sorry about the quadruple post!! worst case scenario of something i was half-embarrassed to post even once but then something went awry and it posted four times, as though to make me regret it forever.

If Walz is elected VP will Alan Sparhawk play an inaugural ball?

we can hope

xp good post collardio gelatinous!

even the wastoids, dweebies, and dickheads?

ok i'm prone to hyperbole

so speaking of (american) football, is KH going to hold a combine of some sort where she'll be clocking Shapiro, Walz and Co's 40-yard dash and having them bench press? This is what I keep picturing.

Gladiator pit. Last VP candidate standing gets the nod.

I think the remaining contenders all have to go to DC on Saturday to sit down with Team Harris.

Funny way to spell "fight to the death"

Lil xp

Next Monday she's taking them all to Red Lobster for Endless Shrimp, and the last one to tap out gets the VP slot

Congratulations Gov Walz

shapiro can't have shrimp

wild that vance is still on twitter doing gender science after all the negative publicity since he was selected youd think hed give it a rest for a minute try to figure out how to not make everyone hate him

yeah but it showcases Harris' deep ties to Algeria's womens boxing

I think I hate Vance more than Trump.

he's looking like the least popular VP pick since Eagleton in '72

kind of kicking myself for not going to the fundraiser one of my former workplaces had for Harris years ago when she was running for AG (she and the founder's then-wife knew each other). Instead I got to meet Tim Kaine when he wandered through one day which was anticlimactic (oh I did meet Jesse Jackson there once also which was cooler).

Harris' Berkeley childhood apartment is not super far from my house. I walked by there a lot when Biden/Harris won in 2019. It's a preschool/daycare now. They had lots of signs up saying "Please don't ring the doorbell".

Whoa I just remembered I met Tim Kaine

I've met Diane Feinstein & Gerry Brown but they're not all that exciting

I've been telling people that I went to the same university as Harris. I did my internship, residency and fellowship training at the University of California San Francisco (which is comprised entirely of graduate colleges), and she went to law school at UCSF

Around the same time?

lol, kesha is doing her tribute to j.d. vance right now at lollapalooza.

xp no, 5 years earlier. the first I heard of her was in 2003 when she challenged the widely-known (and notorious) incumbent Terence Hallinan for SF District Attorney, she caused a lot of excitement and beat him in the election, and then was re-elected in 2007

ancient history, but I remember those races well

I wonder how much Rahm wants to be on the considered list.

I met Gary Hart! He shook my hand and said “hi, I’m the next President of the United States”. I must have been like 12.

i feel like a lot of the clinton-era people are gone. thankfully. rahm is safely in japan far far away. i guess i wasn't fan. i still have to see stupid james carville on t.v. because i'm stupid enough to watch t.v.

donna brazile. she's on t.v. they put susan rice on msnbc sometimes. hill and bill are nowhere to be seen though. thank you jesus.

even al gore. never see him. he works for a venture capital firm now. to save the planet.

thats how it should be if you lose you have to go away and not remind us of how you blew it, hillary has been really bad at that

Apparently Carville is on MSNBC which I refuse to watch, but I see people bitch about him being there often enough

Lanny Davis, who drove me up the wall in 2008, still pops up now and again.

thats how it should be if you lose you have to go away and not remind us of how you blew it, hillary has been really bad at that

― lag∞n, Thursday, August 1, 2024 9:40 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflag

MSNBC is the phantom zone for these people

i tried to watch msnbc recent because of some political event and it was so bad, not in a i disagree with these people way it was just really poorly made tv

i watch msnbc for the cheerful personalities. it brightens my mood, even if it comes with apocalyptic prophesies here and there.

Hillary pops up on The View like once every six months. As I noted over on the the Trump containment thread, she and Bill both spoke at Sheila Jackson Lee's memorial today. He sounded phlegmy and old.

looked thru a heap of used books the other day and this popped out and i almost screamed when i saw the picture. he's gonna get you!!!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81en5-UyrEL.jpg

embarrassing typo on the first name there

Boy Clinton was his Rap name.

He looks like he’s looking down someone’s blouse

If Walz is elected VP will Alan Sparhawk play an inaugural ball?

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, August 1, 2024 4:03 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would hope that Alan would know better than to do something so fucking stupid.

he would only do it for mitt.

I would like him to play at any inaugural ball!

I made my college friend and also my cousin watch that ryanlong03 video posted about the charli xcx von dutch brat coconut tree edit featuring Harris

why did I stay up till 3am making a von dutch brat coconut tree edit featuring kamala harris and why can’t I stop watching it on repeat pic.twitter.com/hqcmerD1Pb

— ryan (@ryanlong03) July 3, 2024

but the NY Magazine cover of her sitting on a giant coconut was kind of appalling

i scan/read newspapers every day and i watch news on t.v. every day and i don't think i ever read a single article about kamala harris or about something she was doing in the entire four years of her VP-ness. i don't think i saw or read an interview with her. i couldn't tell you a single thing that she did and i rarely heard her mentioned. she was a cipher to me. if a big deal was made about a woman of color being VP (and there should have been!) i missed it. i saw mike pence WAY more in his four years. ditto biden with obama. and ditto dick cheney (sadly) and al gore. but maybe she just wasn't doing stuff that interested me. or maybe she was flying around the world the whole time. its weird though. anyway, i'm making up for lost time.
i did pay attention to her when she was a senator though and i thought she was a badass!

You missed when she had that duel?

see, i knew i missed some cool stuff!

biden is up past his bedtime. prisoner plane just landed. nice plane!

kamala's there with joe.

aww, nice hugs!

Strange watching Biden and Harris be interviewed at the same time when they're really operating in two different worlds right now. Must be tricky for her to maintain the right amount of deference.

she definitely sounds deferential but also presidential! she was pitch-perfect.

I've been telling people that I went to the same university as Harris. I did my internship, residency and fellowship training at the University of California San Francisco (which is comprised entirely of graduate colleges), and she went to law school at UCSF

Er, hold on. (I work for UCSF...we're a grad medical school. Assuming you mean the former UC Hastings, now UC College of the Law, which is in SF?)

Satisfying seeing Biden and Harris greeting the released prisoners.Trump must be *this close* to an aneurysm.

Rosenberg: I think when you look back at this magical moment that we’re in now, there are three things that really contributed to it: the picking of Vance, Joe Biden’s selfless act, and Kamala Harris coming out of the gate in a very commanding and strong fashion. I think all of… pic.twitter.com/pDJoQy7hYU

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 1, 2024

I have mercifully never even heard of simon rosenberg, but none of us should compelled to care about what these people think. they are idiots and partisans, and no one apart from simpletons who are voting dem regardless — and thank god for them — are hanging on their words. instructively, a few of these folks happen to post to this board, and if you are a masochist you can read some of their posts in the july thread to see how insane they look in retrospect. to try to find a common cultural document, it’s not unlike the denialists in “don’t look up”.

The selflessness of being told you suck, you're going to lose and all your favorite billionaires are going to stop giving you money so you'll get routed by a guy that had 50% of the country singing "should have been a better shot/got him in the head."

Jeez, k3v, sorry this board continues to disappoint you. Sorry not everyone's up to your standard of intelligence.

Maybe you need to find a forum with better clientele.

In the meantime, I think that your tone is unhelpful and dickish.

wtf

The “selfless act” stuff does kind of make me grind my teeth. He was incredibly selfish not to drop out sooner or even to consider staying in. He was borderline forced out and could not realistically stay in in his condition. I get that maybe it’s sort of a formality to make the whole thing smoother but it’s a reminder of why I never want to work anywhere near politics.

I would like him to play at any inaugural ball!

Proof that you don't understand Low's music or message in the slightest.

As someone who suffered through a Low set once, part of me would love to see a bunch of politicians and rich assholes punished in that way, but another part of me just isn't that mean-spirited.

Loving the hot takes this morning! Keep cooking team! I'm sure the whole board will be on your side no time!

Good morning!

re the conversation upthread as to whether bidens support of israels ongoing genocide is just typical american foreign policy, on some level obviously yes, the zionist project has had an aspect of genocide since before the creation of the state of israel and israel has been a very close ally of america for a long time, some might say as client state or cats paw, at the very least the countries ambitions towards fucking up the middle east are aligned, and on a wider scale the US is always bombing someone shipping weapons all over the world aligning with the worst governments doing all sorts of coercive extractive shit etc

the thing that really stood out for me about this particular thing is bidens obvious enthusiasm for it, seems like the single thing hes had the most enthusiasm for in his entire presidency, as soon as it started he the rest of the government just started dumping weapons in there, its instructive to contrast with the weapons supplied to ukraine where there are very particular rules about how they can be used theyre all tracked etc, they decided that israel can just have as many weapons as they want with no restrictions no tracking

then in the face of strong opposition from democratic voters he just did not wavier at all, a complete unwillingness to hold israel to account for even the things that one would think almost everyone could agree on like dont starve civilians, needless to say its been a very public parade of war crimes and all we got from him were bizarre speeches about how jews cant be safe in the world without the state of israel

we finally found the one thing that biden and the centrists believe in

will the prisoner swap help Harris in the long run? little early for an October surprise. Biden's retort ("why didn't he do it when he was president?") was the perfect response. Vance is out there already giving Trump credit for it.

trump getting shot at got like two and half days in the news

things keep happening!

I was at the Ocean City boardwalk and all the stores are selling t-shirts with bloody Trump raising his fist.

the boardwalk is trump country, its citizens official bikini inspectors

I thought it was a little telling that Colbert opened his first post-shooting episode (a live one after the first night of the RNC) by giving a thoughtful condemnation of the act...and then went into some slightly softer than usual jokes about Trump being awful...and he was back to his old self by the live ep on Thursday after Trump's death march of an acceptance speech.

fp'd unperson for terrible Low take.

I guess if I agreed with it it wouldn’t be an unperson post

Trump was really low-energy at the convention. Now running against a female person of color seems to have put a little racist spring in his step.

watched a youtube lawyer break down laws around assassinations and he started with this big condemnation of the act saying the vast majority of americans are appalled and it was like are we still doing this all the pretending just cut to the chase buddy tell me about the rules actually i have no idea why im watching this at all

Lmao

So many things didn’t happen that would have prolonged the shooting story:

The shooter didn’t turn out to be a liberal
The Dems didn’t react with glee
Trump didn’t pivot to being a unifier
The shooting story didn’t kill the movement to get Biden to step aside

i love low but i remember years ago a friend of mine who didnt know them went to a show with friends and when i asked him how he liked it he was all "good name for that band"

i think one thing with the trump shooting is on some level everyone knows hes a piece of shit, and if you shoot a piece of shit its not that big of a deal, its not usually what people shoot but im sure its happened before

true. am i sad when a mob boss is whacked? not really

except vito spitafore, poor bastard

when trump is shot

https://i.imgur.com/PHN5K0q.gif

true. am i sad when a mob boss is whacked? not really

And if he's barely nicked on the ear by, er, shrapnel or... something?

Teflon Don

In the last thirty minutes we had seven “Weirdo” billboards go live in North Carolina. Please help with photos if close to any. Chip in https://t.co/tLqBQPT6ep https://t.co/ovkTLNLBBM pic.twitter.com/QaA8j6m5WI

— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) August 2, 2024

Not to go all James Redd on the thread, but I've had this song in my head for the last two weeks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OzXUbKFuCk

lol Kyle Rittenhouse has announced that he is planning to write in Ron Paul for president

ahahaha they can't even keep him on board

hate it when the weird little murder you elevate to national prominence turns on you

damn i hadn't thought of ron paul in a minute

one of the weirdest thing was seeing some music scene adjacent acquaintances switch from ron paul to bernie on facebook

like i either want one thing...or the complete opposite

When you’ve lost Kyle…

“We’re not weird people,” Trump added. “We’re we’re actually just the opposite. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-jd-vance-weird-remarks-1235072789/

As someone who suffered through a Low set once, part of me would love to see a bunch of politicians and rich assholes punished in that way, but another part of me just isn't that mean-spirited.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Friday, August 2, 2024 6:08 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

As if we didn't need more proof that you are an irascible prick

man I never knew any of this crazy stuff about Eagleton! wild times back in '72.

Like I'm absolutely sure it's been pointed out a million times by now but the GOP is basically just wall-to-wall 'im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad.' rn and it's truly astonishing and beautiful to behold

xp "crazy" prob not the best word choice there, sorry

once youre in the blender its hard to get out xp

If Alan Lichtman added "Most times the ticket has seen Alan Sparhawk musical projects perform live", Kamala selecting Walz would win the 'key', since I've seen TW at 2 Dem/DFL events featuring Retribution Gospel Choir and Black-Eyed Snakes, one interestingly was a fundraiser for Bernie (not sure he was making an endorsement)

So many things didn’t happen that would have prolonged the shooting story:

The shooter didn’t turn out to be a liberal
The Dems didn’t react with glee
Trump didn’t pivot to being a unifier
The shooting story didn’t kill the movement to get Biden to step aside

― Jersey Devil Vance (President Keyes), Friday, 2 August 2024 14:00 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think you uh missed out on the actual biggest thing that didn't happen

"As if we didn't need more proof that you are an irascible prick"

tell me you wouldn't lose your shit if someone called you a prick on here. LET'S BE CIVIL, PEOPLE.

lol dmac

tell me you wouldn't lose your shit if someone called you a prick on here. LET'S BE CIVIL, PEOPLE.

― scott seward, Friday, August 2, 2024 9:00 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

How about you mind you own business.

you are my business and you're being a dick.

Posts here are everyone's business! While your sentiments wrt Low were OTM, the name calling is rough to see here.

I like all of you (even the annoying ones), but I do not like Low one bit (shrugs)

i saw low open for swans in the 90s and it was kinda fun to see sad aggro swansfan faces as one slow drip low tune after another poured out of the speakers like morose honey. i thought they were tops.

it’s like ilm exists for low parades and brawls

The only time I ever saw Low play was at a private view at Walker Art Center, and they fit the event and the space very well.

I'll concede that it's possible that Low's mopey, boring music could be quite affecting in a small club packed with their morose devotees. But opening for Radiohead in an arena, standing perfectly still under a single hanging light bulb, they suuuuucked.

mopey music at a radiohead concert??

I would say for the last 20 years that hasn't really been their thing, they'd turned into quite the rock band and then after that a really wildly experimental band but obviously they are absolutely not for everyone. Lol xp

I feel bad for you, unperson.

It's clear that you don't actually care for anything beautiful.

When table goes Low, unperson goes High on Fire

I like High on Fire, I've seen them live a few times.

Now I'm imagining Afroman and Sparhawk collaborating on "Because I Got Low"

ok that I would listen to

i also don't like low, because they're mormon and have a messiah complex.

When table goes Low, unperson goes High on Fire

― jaymc, Friday, August 2, 2024 5:27 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

hell yeah my favorite band, like the complete opposite of low

i like that about them but admittedly have not had to deal w the lds

It's fine, Low are the best band of the past three decades, and all the haters are RONG

Can I just say how wonderful it is that we've gone from 'the country is definitely over' to discussion of the merits of the band Low within the space of really not that many days at all

it's Lowver

when they play Low, we go to sleep

we're low back

I got my dad a copy of Ones and Sixes for his birthday, he really loved it

He also really likes Algiers

Up now on Rolling Stone's site:

Trump’s Racist Attacks on Kamala Harris Are Part of a Larger, Unhinged Plan
Team Trump believes questioning Harris’ racial identity is smart politics — and is behind him “100 percent,” says a person close to Trump

Donald Trump’s comments on Wednesday questioning whether Vice President Kamala Harris is Black were not an off-the-cuff expression of racism, but part of a broader campaign strategy that Trump and many of his key lieutenants plan to make a heavy focus of their final three-month sprint to retake the White House.

Asked on Wednesday about Republicans accusing Harris of being a “DEI hire” or “DEI candidate,” Trump responded by questioning Harris’ racial identity. “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” he said, adding: “She made a turn, and she became a Black person, and I think somebody should look into that.”

As unhinged as this sounds — and is — Team Trump believes this is a politically smart message, according to three people on and close to the 2024 Trump-Vance campaign. In their private conversations, Trump and some of his closest advisers appear to believe that leveling this attack as loudly as they could help sell the idea that Harris is a “phony” in the minds of independent voters. Trump believes he wins battles when he gets to define the messaging terrain and have Democrats and his media nemeses fight him on his terms (hence, Trump’s deep annoyance at Harris and Democrats’ relentless drive to call him, J.D. Vance, and other conservative leaders “weird”). So, Trump and his allies have been reveling in this line of racial-identity sniping, hoping to bait Democratic leaders into a mud fight.

Some Trump advisers have even argued — including long before Trump began this Harris-isn’t-Black crusade — that painting Harris as inauthentically Black could potentially resonate with certain Black voters, particularly disaffected, young men — who are already skeptical of Harris and President Joe Biden.

The sources stressed that Trump’s comments were not — as has been the case numerous times in his campaigns and during his administration — a situation in which the former president has gone rogue on the stump and indulged his own lack of political impulse control. (These sources in the past have generally had no trouble privately admitting it when that has been the case.) Rather, this is a case of Trump and an array of his aides and influential allies settling on a race-baiting strategy that they are, for the time being at least, convinced will work out well for them in this presidential election.

“It’s not by accident; it’s intentional. We’re behind the [former] president, 100 percent,” a person close to Trump tells Rolling Stone.

In that sense, it is similar to the relatively new, extreme Republican Party-wide policy aim of bombing or invading Mexico. What sounds like an unhinged, errant Trump thought is a mainstream conservative view and plan of action.

The line of attack, of course, has its share of critics among the conservative elite. As Politico reported last month, House Republican leadership practically begged their own rank and file during a private meeting to avoid talking about Harris’ race. Those entreaties clearly aren’t sticking.

On Thursday, Vance — the Ohio senator who Trump tapped for his 2024 vice-presidential slot — swooped in to further buttress the Team Trump tactic. “She is everything to everybody, and she pretends to be somebody different depending on which audience she is in front of,” Vance told CNN. “I think it’s totally reasonable for the president to call that out, and that’s all he did,” Vance said.”

The latest round of Trumpian gutter politics appears to be motivated by a sudden sense of urgency within the upper echelons of MAGAworld — a sense that did not exist just weeks ago, when Republicans thought Trump was cruising to a landslide against Biden, before he bowed out of the 2024 race and endorsed Harris. According to two sources familiar with the matter, behind closed doors, Trump has expressed bewilderment — or genuine surprise even — at Harris’ uptick in the polls, her latest fundraising hauls, and the ease with which her party rallied to her, as opposed to devolving into a disastrous intra-party power struggle ahead of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Indeed, almost immediately after Biden dropped out, close allies and trusted associates to Trump started directly warning him not to underestimate Harris as a general election rival.)

Harris responded to racist Trump’s comments Wednesday evening at an event in Houston. “It was the same old show: the divisiveness, and the disrespect,” she said. “And let me just say the American people deserve better.”

Trump delivered his broadside against Harris, questioning her racial identity, during a remarkably hostile Q&A before the National Association of Black Journalists convention. It soon became apparent that this was not just Trump being himself, but a coordinated campaign message.

The former president posted a video on Truth Social of Harris cooking with the actress Mindy Kaling, and talking about her South Asian heritage. He wrote: “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!”

Before Trump arrived at a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a Business Insider headline was projected on screen at the event that read: “California’s Kamala Harris becomes first Indian-American U.S. senator.”

Trump did not specifically repeat his attack on Harris at the rally, though his legal spokeswoman and lawyer Alina Habba certainly tried. “Unlike you, Kamala, I know who my roots are,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I know where I come from.”

In a throwback to Trump’s incessant demand to see President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, far-right activist Laura Loomer posted an apparent copy of Harris’ birth certificate online, writing that the document “proves she is NOT BLACK.”

The attack on Harris has been bubbling up in pro-Trump circles for years. Ali Alexander, the far-right Trump supporter who organized the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, tweeted in 2019: “Kamala Harris is implying she is descended from American Black Slaves. She’s not. She comes from Jamaican Slave Owners. That’s fine. She’s not an American Black. Period.”

when they play Low, we play Sleep

This will end well, I’m sure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HVejEB5uVk

Kamala has to deal with these attacks like obamadirtofftheshoulder.gif and move on

isn't there a completely different message board to discuss the merits of Low?

Some Trump advisers have even argued — including long before Trump began this Harris-isn’t-Black crusade — that painting Harris as inauthentically Black could potentially resonate with certain Black voters, particularly disaffected, young men — who are already skeptical of Harris and President Joe Biden.

harris already polling at obama numbers with black voters, the problem with appealing to disaffected people is you dont actually have much credibility with them theyre just disaffected

ah, the old racism dial

"this one goes to eleven"

I only got into Low about five years ago and now I'm a fan. Didn't know about the LDS roots!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQiSz-gD75s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC79_QRqCEU

The original lineup of Low quite literally stayed on my grad dorm living room floor back in 1994 after a show and we had Bob's Big Boy for breakfast the day after. Friendly, quiet, good people, and I will always honor Mimi's memory.

The former president posted a video on Truth Social of Harris cooking with the actress Mindy Kaling, and talking about her South Asian heritage.

I'm sure any fan of the American Office finds this extremely amusing, immediately conjuring up images of Ryan the Intern and "WUPHF.com!"

Sorry if this has already been shared

https://apnews.com/article/kamala-harris-nomination-dnc-463d0b8095f2ca3526b3af3a2f44c3ca

in that video that trump posted kamala LITERALLY says that she is half Indian.

gotta pick a side tho no fair having two cuisines

or she says that mindy looks like everyone IN THE INDIAN HALF of her family. which may have been too subtle for Trump.

that post collardio made about pulling slave handler psychological warfare tactics re kamala's ancestry is a good one. how kamala effectively responds to that is a good question. i feel like unfortunately the best thing would be to respond in some depth and not just brush it off. but a response where she doesn't play into the 'prove your ancestry' trap, she flips it to emphasize the point that americans are diverse but we share a culture, identity and an ethos. melting pot stuff.

Meantime on the 'they eat their own' front. (Worth it for all the quotes ripping into each other.)

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/01/recount-confirms-bob-goods-loss-after-gop-rallies-to-oust-one-of-their-own-00172424

The Mindy Kaling/Office connection is a good one, because Trump's handling of race is basically Michael Scott-level, but hateful instead of just clueless.

melting pot stuff

yeah, the idea of 'intersectionality' just blows their minds, but it's coded into our national DNA

Are u german or scottish bitch because huns and haggis aint makin it

I bet he doesn’t even know if he’s Pictish or not.

angle or jute make up your fucking mind, Trump! you are obviously catering to the angle vote with one speech and jute with another.

picts foreveh! the jutes should go back to jutland where they came from.

is there even a pictish haplogroup, and most u&k, what do they think about Low

I bet he doesn’t even know if he’s Pictish or not.

His mother's from the Western Isles so highly unlikely there's any Pict in there. Norse/Gael I'd warrant.

US Politics, August 2024 - Do You Know How to Walz?

Even by GOP standards it is a stunning disconnect with the American People 2024 to think the idea of mixed ancestry is incomprehensible to the average person.

xpost Goddamn that's perfect

the argument is more that shes code switching when its convenient for her dei ambitions

Things We Lost In the Misfire

code switching = Vance being a salt-of-the-earth hillbilly or a polished venture capitalist depending on who he's currently addressing

yup tho tbf he doesnt do a very convincing hillbilly

interesting piece on the pronunciation of kamala https://defector.com/donald-trump-bumbles-his-way-toward-a-more-perfect-kamala?giftLink=567e8f87bb464d05c9d12d8ff3771da7

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:474ldquxwzrlcvjhhbbk2wte/bafkreihk53fk4lcfdkpxkyocmoogcqxm6elfqw4ckmw4f7ndtarasmoy6e@jpeg

i feel like unfortunately the best thing would be to respond in some depth and not just brush it off.

Why? Who would this response be aimed at? Who is the audience for it? Seriously. Have you ever heard the phrase "I won't dignify that with a response"? This is exactly the kind of thing that sentence was created for. The only correct response to Trump's bullshit is "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

yeah, I'm not gauging a lot of voter concern about Harris' ethnicity - this is a manufactured attack as they really don't have much else

wow @ Vance's expression there

I really think the only way to address it, if one would do so, is use it to call out the hypocrisy of republicans. How they hate identity politics, but they're always the ones who are trying to politicize the identity of others. How they're the ones talking about corruption, and yet they're rallying behind the most corrupt failed politician this country has ever seen. Etc etc.

“shut the hell up about pikachu” is extremely relatable.

I bet he doesn’t even know if he’s Pictish or not.

― guillotine vogue (suzy), Friday, August 2, 2024 5:56 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

To reprise one of my favorite posts to ilx over the years, "Picts or it didn't happen."

I really think the only way to address it, if one would do so, is use it to call out the hypocrisy of republicans. How they hate identity politics, but they're always the ones who are trying to politicize the identity of others. How they're the ones talking about corruption, and yet they're rallying behind the most corrupt failed politician this country has ever seen. Etc etc.

Even that feels like a waste of time. No one cares about hypocrisy. Harris has three months and the slogan "We're not going back." Looking over your shoulder at your opponent = going back. The message should be 100% "If you elect us, we will do A through Z. And by the way, my opponent is a convicted criminal." That's all you need for three months, especially when you're gonna get at least two weeks' worth of pageantry and press pandering (the VP pick next week, the convention after that) and at least one week where your opponent is gonna be on his back foot (sentencing in September).

Joe The Pikachu won’t like that.

So this is the Hard Seltzer in that Vance pic(t): https://happydad.com/

Hard seltzer: the drink for people who say the words ‘adult beverages’ out loud.

i'm fine with them doing a *trump's greatest racist hits* ad in all 50 states and having that be the major response. "is this the person you want in the white house?" that kind of thing.

i would love it if the Harris campaign sponsored a youtube channel of young people hearing Trump quotes for the first time. play them rally soundbites with headphones on and get their responses. that would be funny AND eye-opening. you know they never listen to Trump. why would they? everyone loves a good reaction video.

Scott, you should email that idea to the campaign!

conservative whites seem to believe in a one-drop rule for whiteness, ironically. One reason I don't speak to 99.9% of my paternal family is because of their disassociative relationship with their own heritage. They are 1/2 Mexican, but (mostly) look white (grandfather is of English lineage). I myself am almost 1/2 native american from my mother's side. At some point on FB my paternal uncle announced that I 'don't embrace my whiteness' which made me go, huh? I mean I look white. I'm a big anglophile. I eat grilled cheese sandwhiches. How much more white do you want me to act? But I grew up closer to my native family and am a registered tribal member. But apparently because I am 1/4 white I am, in their view, "completely white". These people are incapable of understanding or accepting mixed races. It utterly fucks with their view of the world. "why wouldn't you just BE white if you get to BE white?"

I think they did that in 2016 - ads with kids watching trump say awful shit. Not sure it had much of an impact.

Did the mayor of Philadelphia just announce Shapiro as the Dems' VP candidate? https://t.co/gbhiM75tWb

— Bradford Pearson (@BradfordPearson) August 2, 2024

Yeah, Clinton's campaign was all about pointing out how Trump is rude and crude and politically incorrect. But that's his appeal!

xp i actually announced it earlier today, before the mayor

so the Shapiro sexual harassment coverup that Daily Beast revealed yesterday is BS?

Sharpiro oppo research surfacing

Ellen Greenberg was “found” dead by her fiancé with 20 stab wounds. Shapiro sat on the case for 4 years, upheld the cause of death as suicide (originally ruled homicide), and punted due to a conflict of interest: his ties to the fiancé, whose family is close friends with Shapiro. https://t.co/kylNk1bRf5 pic.twitter.com/Wq3QJWu54W

— Ryan Andrews (@RyanAndrewsUTLA) August 2, 2024

Yes Josh Shapiro wrote this when he was in college but this is bad even for that age. When I was in college my bad takes were like free will is an illusion or whatever lol pic.twitter.com/m07BbQtyxP

— Ken Klippenstein 📎 (@kenklippenstein) August 2, 2024

I think they did that in 2016 - ads with kids watching trump say awful shit. Not sure it had much of an impact.

2016 is the dim and distant past in terms of politics. Trump's nonsense was not taken very seriously then. Now we we are post-COVID, post-Jan6 and post-RoeVWade.

Wait he was in the IDF??? pic.twitter.com/bhsn5lbwpX

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) August 2, 2024

Perhaps not actually in the IDF but Shapiro volunteered for some military program in Israel.

yeah, i wouldn't have kids listen to trump to point out how vulgar or rude he is. kids are vulgar and rude! thought it might be more along the lines of the "weird" campaign. gen z kids can be brutal. they would be laughing and be like "what is he even talking about? hannibal lector?". in that funny devastating way that kids have.

x-post

"Lecter"

i guess my dream is to have as many people as possible laughing at donald trump in public for being such an idiot.

my dream is to have him in jail and as broke as fuck and everyone aware of it, but ~stages~

yeah first things first.

my dream is to see him have his skin peeled off in public, his skull filled with piss, his internal organs ripped out and fed to pigs, and his skeleton scattered over a broad terrain

Pass the salt.

Dreams sometimes come true; a few of these likely will.

akm's option works for me

that part of game of thrones where the queen walks down the street naked? that might work...

you give him a choice. 10 years in solitary -vs- walk naked down the length of 5th avenue and everyone on the sidewalk gets a tomato.

xp i want him to know and feel the reality of the law, and the people to see it, feel it, know it.

there is real joy outside the law for sure. and even, within limits, against it. but to treat it as he has? let him get the wrath.

that other akm torture and its runoff? satisfying but corrupting imo

lawful evil handbook quotes are so fucking square

that's why he deserves a chaotic evil fate

disagree but yo i get it

YOU DON'T SAY, NYT! (i need 6 minutes for you tell me that? also, she wasn't the candidate for President in the 2020 election. she was running to BE the candidate and the DNC probably never would have let her be the candidate in the first place. A primary is a whole different thing than the actual Presidential campaign. mostly because of $$$. you have to do so many low rent humiliating things in a primary. so much fried food.)

Analysis

Kamala Harris is shaping up to be a different candidate from the one she was in the 2020 primary.

6 min read

I think it'll be sadder than his skin getting ripped off... his version of hell will be when people stop paying attention to him

A mopey Howard Hughes figure, slouching around the moldy ruins of Mar-a-Lagoo while Melania goes on yet another overseas trip with her young tennis instructor.. muttering to his valet about yet another run for the White House.. yelling at Fox hosts who no longer return his calls... etc.

my second place but vying for first

she was running to BE the candidate and the DNC probably never would have let her be the candidate in the first place

Huh? She was the preferred establishment candidate in the year leading up to primary voting.

I just heard a brief interview with the Republican mayor of Mesa AZ who's endorsing Harris for President.. he acknowledged that some people think he's a RINO for not supporting Trump, but said something to the effect of "As a lifelong Republican, I really hope we hit rock bottom this year."

I thought that AA-ish language was apt - Republicans are addicted to MAGA Trumpism even if they know it's not good for them or the party - the party is shrinking and becoming more desperate to hold on to what power they do have, but only a clean break with Trump-style populism will let them move forward - to what? I don't know... but their current agenda is seriously off-putting and 'weird'

yep that makes me think of the "American is an alcoholic drunk on racism" analogy - the country is in denial and has not yet started recovery

"America" not "American"

It seems like ridicule and dismissiveness are gonna be the tone going forward; there's an interview with Buttigieg in the Times that includes this question:

Have you read “Hillbilly Elegy”?
It’s one of those books that I own but haven’t read, just to be honest.

brutal

"Huh? She was the preferred establishment candidate in the year leading up to primary voting."

well i can't remember that far back! i just assumed the Dems would want to put all their money behind some drip like Amy Klobuchar.

It was kind of a mess as I recall - there wasn’t really a clear consensus candidate, was there?

can't believe twitter deleted the immortal "have you ever done acid?" post re: 2020 primary contender's (fake) answers

I kind of want to read hillbilly elegy. Who down for book club

e.g.

Klobuchar: yes (lying)
Yang: I'm microdosing rn
Harris: ur under arrest for reading this tweet

(xp to myself)

whenever i see amy klobuchar on television i think she's going to tell me to move my car because the buses are coming back from the field trip and she wants to make sure there is enough room for them in front and she would really appreciate it if i could wait for my child a mile away over by the utility shed.

"I kind of want to read hillbilly elegy. Who down for book club"

would you please just watch the damn movie already! why am i alone in my knowledge of just how horrible that movie is? i was traumatized way worse watching that movie than j.d. was growing up with his violent drug addict mother.

lol

xp i remember my boston mid-lib sister big-upping hillbilly elegy at the time, as truly we are born out of the real trials of kentucky 1930, but i was “uhh, nah.”

xps - the dem establishment may have hoped Harris would emerge as a strong 2020 candidate in the mold of Obama. she ticked a lot of the right boxes. but I don't recall there being any tailwinds from the establishment pushing her. they wanted to see her poll well and generate some excitement in Iowa, but Bernie, Warren, Klobuchar and Buttigeig crowded her out and left her no unoccupied place to perch. Somehow or other Iowans didn't warm to her. Shocking, I know.

Maybe I’ll watch it airplane over the shoulder style, where I see the visual but not the audio

no you have to hear glenn close and that horrible child actor. its 100% hilarity.

I just saw that book in a shopping cart with a broken printer and some cables

a fitting resting place

Read What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte or a Space on the Side of the Road by Kathleen Stewart instead

or Dorothy Allison's "Skin"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Ti53TsLSc

luv u skot but I will never ever watch that

She had endorsements from Spielberg and Shonda Rimes. That’s pretty establishment.

OMG that movie looks like such shit

"luv u skot but I will never ever watch that"

every generation gets the Reefer Madness it deserves.

Hollywood endorsing a California candidate isn’t really establishment backing.

They didn’t have a good establishment candidate, that’s how we got Biden.

just listen to the If Books Could Kill episode on Hillbilly Elegy

in a primary its eat or be eaten. being in the white house for four years and suddenly becoming the Presidential candidate? there is no comparison betweeen the two. which is why the news stories that are all: "she doesn't seem like the same candidate that she was four years ago...." well, duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
which makes me think that they just want to keep bringing up that she "imploded" and "crashed & burned" four years ago. because the NYT sucks. in the end.

It's fitting that Cherelle Parker, the worst mayor thatPhiladelphia has ever had, made that announcement about Shapiro, whose whole ideology and schtick is frankly as loathsome as Vance's

I'd be a much better presidential candidate than I was four years ago

xp that shit Keyes posted earlier should def be a dealbreaker, we'll see I guess

and wait Parker is worse than the MOVE guy? daaaamn.

The Fauxbama voice is no bueno.

Since she was elected, Parker has:
- removed the entire budget and all construction plans for two tiny home communities for unhoused people
- done sweeps of Kensington, moving people into what amount to involuntary treatment facilities (aka jails)
- forced all city workers into in office work, when that plan is totally unnecessary and also infrastructurally impossible
- helped speed the council's rejection of badly needed safe injection sites
- dismissed zero vision principles in a city with terribly bicycling infrastructure
- suggested that she will ultimately go for basketball arena that will destroy Chinatown

She sucks, Shapiro sucks, this is all deeply disappointing.

ty table, that is all terrible

worse than frank rizzo!!!???

A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago saw Rizzo ranked as the fifth-worst American big-city mayor to serve between the years 1820 and 1993. When the survey was limited only to mayors that were in office post-1960, the results saw Rizzo ranked as the absolute worst.

I think table's point is that she is clearly doing her best to win that award, her term isn't even over yet!

rizzo was the pits. i watched his casket go by. i didn't spit at it but i wanted to.

Feels like the momentumnous of this is lost a bit when it happens virtually:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/02/politics/video/kamala-harris-democratic-presidential-nomination-cnc-digvid

Her entire policy agenda seems to be catering to business and killing the poor.

Philly is the poorest large city in the US, and changes need to be made, but none of her policies are actually about changing conditions on the ground, just disappearing the problems so that investors don't get scared.

(Urban Dictionary) "Momentumnous: Adjective form of the word 'momentum'...Used to describe (in a literary fashion) heavy hard and quick pelvic thrusts."

Not really what I was trying to convey.

lolll noted!

every single person I know in Philly hates her.

every single person I know in Philly hates her.

She sounds awful, but tbf hating everyone is kinda Philly's whole thing.

donald trump probably loves frank rizzo. he was a nightmare for black people. when he was police chief and then mayor. just a complete nightmare. he let his cops - and they were HIS cops - do whatever they wanted with no questions asked.

Cherelle Parker is the same, except— surprise!— she's a Black woman.

NEWS: Harris and @PeteButtigieg met today for about 90 minutes about the VP job, sources tell me. The meeting was not at Harris's home in Washington.

— Jarrett Renshaw (@JarrettRenshaw) August 2, 2024

It was at a Dave & Buster's

It was at BUNKER, duh.

She just watched him eat for 90 minutes, the vetting process is complete

oh god no pix please

comma after god there, DNW

https://media.tenor.com/5MmXI2qcGIwAAAAM/biden-consume.gif

pics or it didn't happen

lol omar, jesus

I don't make the news, I only report it

being here a lot, i do have to remember that lots of people actually like mayor pete. i don't hate him. he can be hard to look at but that's not his fault. he's a great attack dog.

as of 5 hours ago:

Among Democratic respondents, Buttigieg had an even larger lead, with 69% saying they had a favorable view. Kelly and Shapiro once again came in second and third, with 56% and 51%, respectively. Cooper garnered 31%, and Walz received 28%.

Why is he hard to look at? Someone told me recently he reminded them of my dad, which surprised me but wasn’t an insult coming from this person.

its a beady-eyed thing...also because he looks like a 12-year-old altar boy with a huge five o'clock shadow.

69% though. that's a huge number. with a number that big there has to be independent crossover.

Shapiro being a genocide supporter who covers up backers’ crimes and staff sexual harassment is a good way to make Pete palatable to everyone. Clearly she learned the lesson from Biden handing over to her.

i guess i can learn to love...chasten.

i do love the name of chasten's hometown. Chums Corner! You always have a friend in Chums Corner!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chums_Corner,_Michigan

I will say this — you want to get Donald Trump to literally scream slurs into a hot mic, you pick Mayor Secretary Pete.

I was surprised to see Shapiro floated tbh cuz the only awareness I have of him (Canadian who tangentially consumes a fair bit of USAnian media esp around election time) were stuff about how horrible he is, esp. on Gaza. Gaza being the Dems’ biggest negative with their left wing — and even their centrist base — you would think Harris would stay well away.

Pete is fairly popular, IMO. I don’t know what the oppo is on him, but he’s pretty widely known as the guy who goes on fox and DESTROYS their dumb anchors with FACTS and LOGIC and A QUIET SMUG GLEE. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has some (R) favourability just because of his reasonably cheerful presence on fox.

did not know this about Pete:

His father was a translator and editor of the three-volume English edition of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and influenced his pursuit of literature in college.

I think that particular poll of the candidates is skewed against some of them because of lack of familiarity, it was one of those were they called people and asked if they would approve/disapprove/ don't know who the hell they are of each of the following choices. Almost half the people had no idea who Tim Walz was.

Normal MSNBC-watching Dems loooove Pete

The Pete hatorade reminds me of theater people who are like "we need more women playwrights represented, the big theaters produce almost no plays by women" and then two of them get produced everywhere and these same people are like "no, we didn't mean those two."

Yesterday I was ready to believe that Shapiro had it sewn up. But this article says that she's doing face-to-face interviews with all of the finalists this weekend (which I guess is why everyone cleared their schedule): https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/01/kamala-harris-vp-search-00172401

ah ty jaymc, that makes sense

I'm not a Shapiro stan but that whole murder/suicide thing I'm gonna need to see a lot more info about... the death was in 2011 and he wasn't state AG until 2017, so what is the narrative exactly?

His father was a translator and editor of the three-volume English edition of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci

it’s why he went to mckinsey

Again, mockery:

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2nkztwlaqopwokupbumpou7f/bafkreihpakmmsvjkretjazybiufnovepd5p3kk73ku5oh5fenob3z2ib2q@jpeg

Hey, and Kamala’s dad is a leftist economist:

One of Harris's most notable contributions to economics is his 1978 book Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution, a critique of orthodox economic theories that provides an alternative, synthesizing the work of David Ricardo, Kalecki, Marx, Roy Harrod, and others.

Kamala and Pete, Red Diapers for America!

What are they mocking aside from their policies, statements or positions? I grant that "most unpopular VP pick in American history" is unverifiable hyperbole, but is far milder as mockery than "childless cat ladies".

Vance has the lowest favorability rating of any VP pick immediately after the party convention since the 1980s, with a net negative favorability of -6 points, according to CNN. In recent years, the average for a VP nominee has been +18 points at this stage.

What are they mocking aside from their policies, statements or positions?

The point is the difference between this and the usual Democratic tone of "we humbly submit that our policies may differ slightly from those of our worthy opposition, but nonetheless we wish them well."

I'm surprised at this: "Walz received 28%". this has to be down to just unfamiliarity, right?

Just heard someone point out that a good reason for the Harris/VP campaign tour to start in Philly, in addition to PA being a swing state, is that half of the campaign staff are still based in Delaware.

xp Yes

https://x.com/YouGovAmerica/status/1818341247162941907/photo/1

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GTwLhLkXkAATSAo?format=jpg&name=small

(that's a different question, but it shows that Walz is largely unknown)

I don't think Whitmer or Newsom are even in the conversation anymore, are they?

I didn't really know who he was until three weeks ago myself so that tracks.

newsom/whitmer are not in contention

under consideration. whatever

ok so I followed the wrong link. here is the favorability poll referenced upthread, taken more recently, via
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/50224-kamala-harris-2024-election-donald-trump-jd-vance-abortion-july-27-30-2024-economist-yougov-poll

https://i.imgur.com/C9CvcLY.jpeg

pete's got it in the bag! i'm sure a lot of past campaigns would have loved favorability numbers like that.

guess its not much wonder the dems are corporate shitheads, their voters like it

Normal MSNBC-watching Dems loooove Pete

― jaymc, Friday, August 2, 2024 6:54 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I keep posting this and can't stress it enough. They adore him as TALKING TRUTH TO POWER guy

voters are into his cable news shenanigans surely, I doubt ppl know let alone have opinions on his cultish business stuff

xp what Alfred said

I doubt ppl know let alone have opinions on his cultish business stuff

― brimstead, Friday, August 2, 2024 8:13 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

thing is if you had a politics with any sort of material/class values it could just discard guys like him on sight, instead youve got watch fox news host get destroyed by smart man

I think Kelly has the "hard to look at" vote wrapped up. He looks like he had his ears fixed bc they were too pointy before. (I also am not a fan of the "politics as family business" aspect of his potential candidacy. GG is a great lady and has been through a lot but 2 in one family is 1 too many for me. RFK Jr stands as human evidence of this not being a good idea)

Not to mention HRC

it's all about the keys! the 11...14 keys! 9 keys?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IpbWCzLdXE

gonna need more keys im thinking 25-30 minimum

he totally disses nate silver in that. the mop top key guy.

yeah i seen them fighting on twitter pretty funny

mop top is logical when you listen to him.

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:yxavlmxjv2j2nwvjesmq5ogl/bafkreig4uz2n7rk3gdyvknwopd3l3mnh6k2cmqkeihyniqhtquisblr3bm@jpeg

country needs to think long and hard about if it wants a foodie president

Trump didn't even drink

not much wonder the dems are corporate shitheads, their voters like it

You should recognize that voters don't like Pete because he's a corporate shithead. They like him because he's got his public image locked down as smart, well-scrubbed, well-spoken, responsible young Democrat who smiles and would be polite to grandmothers.

Let's face it, we'll be lucky if Harris wins and the Senate stays 50-50, giving whoever her VP turns out to be something meaningful to do. We live under a fucked up political system.

they'll make him the River Walk Czar

You should recognize that voters don't like Pete because he's a corporate shithead. They like him because he's got his public image locked down as smart, well-scrubbed, well-spoken, responsible young Democrat who smiles and would be polite to grandmothers.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, August 2, 2024 8:35 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you should recognize some stuff

Not that it matters but on reflection I have decided I think Walz should be the guy (but I maintain my view that any of the people seriously under consideration would be fine)

why do you think 69% of democratic voters in that poll like Pete?

if you look upthread just before your post you can see i already had this conversation

Aimless is right, tho. Most people who like him probably aren't even aware of the reasons why someone would call him a "corporate shithead." Others may know about his past, but don't see it as a mark against him, not because they *approve* of it in any meaningful way, but because they don't disapprove of it. It's not an important factor in how they judge politicians.

if these walz could talk

the things the left wing of the party dislikes about pete (wars, mckinsey, general reptilianishness) are things average dem voters generally like. it’s not hard to understand why he’s popular!!

ah, thanks. now I see it. it's because democratic voters don't analyze politics according to "material/class values". sorry, I apologize for not noticing that you do recognize that democratic voters like corporate shitheads indirectly due to class blindness rather than directly liking their corporate shittiness.

tbf sometimes they do directly like the corporate shitheadness specifically im sure its not hard to find some politician being celebrate for their careers in for profit medicine or whatever, but yeah there is a widespread inability to identify the enemy, even tho in general its pretty much unanimous that corporate political influence is out of control when presented with individuals who represent that voters in general of both parties are generally cool with it

https://i.imgur.com/xGS6c9w.png

Do most people even know what McKinsey is? It probably just sounds like he used to work for a hedge fund or something.

iirc maga chud Charlie Kirk moaned about a Harris / Booty ticket right after the debate, predicting an Obama-like wave to usher in the new age of Woke and Gay. if he actually gets it correct, bravo li'l klansbro

i mean headge funds are bad too but in a world with active anti corporate politics you just wouldnt have to worry about mayor pete wriggling his way through, fwiw i dont think everyone should have to know what mckinsey is i dont think yr aunt is a bad person, but she does like corporate shitheads that just a statement of fact

i dont even think the corporate shitheads are bad people mostly but i do think they should be barred from public office

and their companies should be broken in to tiny little pieces needless to say

pete makes sense for harris. i bet they get along. i'm not mad about it, except i'm gonna be hella annoyed by the memes and the boys' pete stanning etc.

corporate shitheads reached critical mass takeover of govt a long time ago, actually it was probably always corporate shitheads, makes sense considering what the primary function of u.s. government is, to make capitalism work. n.b. i don't like corporate shitheads and i don't like government either, i lean anarchist.

not that long ago there was a strong anti corporate stream in american politics, in the lifetimes of many people in this thread the biggest company in america was broken up due to anti trust concerns, many things like the weekend and the end of child labour were achieved via the famous people power, it can happen again, not if everyone thinks its impossible tho

people like when they hear stuff like this about pete. it makes him sound like jake gyllenhaal in one of those propaganda hollywood movies:

"but he was also an armed driver for his commander on more than 100 trips into Kabul, where he was tasked with watching out for ambushes and explosive devices along the roads and ensuring that the vehicle was guarded."

they like the small town mayor thing too.

yeah because they have no politics

New Deal coalition broken. Thanks, Carter and Clinton!

I don’t like Pete’s support of the Jones Act.

xps i wonder if that moment was only possible because of post wwII conditions cf piketty capital in the 21st century. capital hitting hard growth limits since the 70s but everyone's just become even more addicted to it, even though there's a little more awareness of the problem than there was before occupy wall street. there's gonna be some major infrastructure decay / rupture before more people become anti-corporate, that movement won't be reflected in the government as presently constituted though. obviously i don't know what i'm talking about, pure conjecture.

i think an anti corporate platform would be very popular right now, only problem is the corporations have a lot of power to prevent that

He is a committed supporter of Israel, favors a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, opposes proposals for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and disapproves of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's comments in support of applying Israeli law in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

via petewiki...

thats just democratic party boilerplate

Pretty sure Biden’s been committed to “a two-state solution” while sponsoring genocide.

Defense Secretary Revokes Plea Deal for Accused Sept. 11 Plotters
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III assumed direct oversight of the case and effectively put the death penalty back on the table.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/us/politics/911-plotters-plea-deal.html

well okay then.

I know “old people like Pete because he’s a nice young man” is a cliche at this point, but it’s probably true. He’ll boost the democratic vote among people who voted for Eisenhower and still take the Republican Party seriously.

not too many people left who voted for ike

Ford then, you get my point.

*this is the real crazy story. i'm optioning the rights as we speak. Netflix i'm coming!*

Prisoner Swap
Children returned to Russia had no idea parents were spies, Kremlin says.
Anna and Artem Dultsev, spies posing as Argentine ex-pats living in Slovenia, were returned to Russia with their children, ages 8 and 11, who do not speak Russian.

Life as Sofia and Daniel knew it ended Thursday when they stepped on a plane destined, they would later discover, for Moscow, as part of a landmark prisoner swap. When President Vladimir Putin greeted them at Vnukovo Airport a few hours later, he did so in Spanish: “Buenas noches.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/02/russia-prisoner-swapspies-children/

Pelosi wants walz https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4806591-tim-walz-harris-vp-house-democrats/

Ford then, you get my point.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, August 2, 2024 11:07 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

no one voted for ford!

pelosi otm

I find it hard to believe that Harris really is still considering six candidates for VP. either this is some over the top due diligence optics or they’re wanting to start picking her cabinet as well.

for me (an amateur, granted) it should so obviously be walz so cut the crap let’s go already.

it should be the hawk tuah girl

It has to be Walz purely so a photo caption about the inaugural ball can read: Walz to the Ball

And then he and his wife can go on a listening tour called “The Walz Have Ears”

that would be fine too lagoon

these interviews are going to be amusing. are these white dudes going to sit in a waiting room while one of them gets interviewed? what happens if they all decide to dress exactly like Steve Kornacki that day? Could get awkward in all sorts of ways …

The VP process has mostly been fun and exciting for Democrats who are still trying to recapture the high of toppling Biden, can't blame Harris's people for dragging it out.

Suddenly people all over the country give a shit about the Secretary of Transportation and Governor of Minnesota, free media coverage left and right.

I do wonder how in tune the campaign is with the online Walz-mentum. Not that they should be basing their decision entirely on Twitter/TikTok enthusiasm, but it's not immaterial.

Pete's got the highest negative polling for all voters in that thread, which is the key. The ones who like him are already going for Harris, they need to get the non locked-in votes.

Backing out of the debate like a little piss baby

Trump backs out of ABC debate, says he’ll only debate Harris with Fox moderators in a packed arena pic.twitter.com/XWDp8soXBC

— Christian Vanderbrouk 🇺🇸 (@UrbanAchievr) August 3, 2024

these interviews are going to be amusing. are these white dudes going to sit in a waiting room while one of them gets interviewed? what happens if they all decide to dress exactly like Steve Kornacki that day? Could get awkward in all sorts of ways …

― keen reverberations of twee (collardio gelatinous), Friday, August 2, 2024 8:29 PM

And when each one leaves they say to the ones still waiting "I nailed it, dudes, you all might as well go home!"

My assumption was that he was just making up the bit about suing ABC--didn't remember anything--but actually true:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/media/trump-lawsuit-abc-george-stephanopoulos-rape-claim/index.html

So much as I hate to say it, that probably is a conflict of interest. Of course, why would he ever have agreed to ABC in the first place? And no conflict of interest with Fox, not at all.

After I posted that last night, I was going to come back and clarify: a conflict of interest in a strictly legal sense, that's all. It's not an actual conflict of interest--it wouldn't change ABC's moderation at all (if anything, they'd probably go easier on him because of this). It's simply, of course, a lame excuse.

So the question then is, should Harris accept his proposed terms? I don't know MacCallum, but isn't Baier supposedly one of the not-completely-crazy people there? (And also, she could benefit from what I think is that tendency for debate moderators to want to be perceived as fair.) As for the "FULL ARENA AUDIENCE," if Harris has to endure ravenous shouting and interruptions, and she were to handle that by just smiling and waiting it out, I can't believe that would make a very good impression on that sliver of voters she needs. Hard to say, but I'd probably call his bluff.

Absolutely not. Do the debate that was a CNN edited and if he doesn’t show up, spend half the time telling the audience he was afraid to be there and that cowards shouldn’t be President.

Right, I mean, no, of course she should not accept his terms. lol.

“oh well trump wants it this way, guess we have to do it this way” uhh no

fuck no. 8 years ago, doing a debate in front of a packed arena of jeering idiots who interjected constantly was unimaginable. then trump entered us politics. it is not normal at all to hold a debate in front of a partisan crowd who is there to be entertained.

it's the debate this country painfully deserves, but i'm hoping it is not the debate we get

very funny to demand to be debated in an arena full of your screaming fans

it’s very funny to be a “fan” of someone you hired to to a really important job but whatever

people are like that

at a site in an area to be determined

:-o

the glorious event will be held at a time of our choosing which is in the future

Harris should not capitulate to a debate on Trump's terms without seeking some kind of concession.

She remains in a position of strength if she remains committed to the ABC debate and dares Trump to show up.

A campaign official also told me, “It is our understanding that ABC intends to provide the airtime to whichever qualifying candidates show up - even if it is just her.”

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) August 3, 2024

If she's given the free air time at CNN, sure. I think she'd make out fine either way.

you're being an embarrassing idiot

There you go again. I'm being embarrassing because I think she's a great candidate who could stand up to anything. Okay.

Don't you have some LOLs and OTMs you need to hand out?

Also, the agreed-upon terms of the ABC debate do not specify the participating candidates. So nothing has changed in the terms themselves, just in the candidates who qualify.
https://abc.com/news/adaaae86-2621-41c7-b8f3-33a5215783f2/category/1138628

15%, so she wouldn't have to put up with Kennedy--that's good.

she should debate kennedy that would be funny

This is the right move. There is no reason for Harris to give into Trump's demands when she has the stronger hand.

The Harris response, in short: we’ll be at the ABC debate that Trump agreed to with Biden on Sept 10, regardless of if Trump is. Any other debates can come after that and depend on discussions. pic.twitter.com/IW0ufZPG5P

— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) August 3, 2024

Is that not a problem then--legally--if he has a pending lawsuit with ABC? Honest question, I don't know.

I'm sure *he* will say it is a problem. He filed the suit in March, so it was already in litigation when he originally agreed to the debate.

He has--and yeah, that's what I wondered last night, why did he agree in the first place? (Remembering now how his ongoing tax-audit because a default excuse for everything for a couple of years.)

(because = became)

Because he thought he'd be debating Sleepy Joe!

Anyway:

https://t.co/xTLWp3Gj35 pic.twitter.com/Xi95CMLZ23

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 3, 2024

I think they've stumbled onto a perfect nickname: Mr. Anytime, Anywhere, Anyplace.

it seems wrong when i see "one way or the other" instead of "one way or another". i guess i just see it less. or never. i never see it.

no, i've seen it. just see it less. where i live.

Please take a few minutes and listen to @AllanLichtman as he picks the winners of the nine presidential elections. He developed a system called the Thirteen Keys to the White House.
He is saying Kamala Harris has all thirteen keys to win.#DemVoice1 #DemsUnited pic.twitter.com/d4sPYBnNeM

— Izzy Ⓜ️Ⓜ️ 🇺🇸 (@1zzyzyx1) July 31, 2024

Will Alan Lichtman’s “keys to the white house” hold true in this elections? He’s preliminary calling a KH win and has correctly predicted every president (with the exception of Gore vs Bush which was a fairly controversial win). This election cycle has been an unpredictable shitshow so far.

Obama was going to show up with or without McCain for their first debate; he called the old coot's bluff. Why should Harris do likewise?

it seems wrong when i see "one way or the other" instead of "one way or another". i guess i just see it less. or never. i never see it.

― scott seward, Saturday, August 3, 2024 11:34 AM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Depends on your feelings for Blondie

Polls are very close giving KH a slight advantage

https://abcnews.go.com/538/harris-trump-tied-538s-new-polling-averages/story?id=112494481

i posted the moptop key guy upthread a bit. i like his keys to the kingdom system.

sometimes i see these freaks that elections dredge up and get a little sad knowing that ill forget about most of them before long

Great pic of Harris in that ABC story

with all due respect to the 13 keys to winning, i've been watching enough baseball to know that you only need 3 keys, and they're the hyundai keys to the game:

- keep the momentum up
- get into their bullpen early
- defensive pressure

- stop the steal

ah very nice shaprio going with the intractable tribal conflict story sometimes you just have to lean on the classics

Genuinely, what could a person possibly mean when they say the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been going on for a thousand years?

Even going back 2000 years, the Israelites/Judaens primary conflicts have almost universally been with Christians and Roman pagans. https://t.co/aj5d0TDZqm

— Isi Breen (@isaiah_bb) August 3, 2024

it seems wrong when i see "one way or the other" instead of "one way or another". i guess i just see it less. or never. i never see it.

― scott seward, Saturday, August 3, 2024 11:34 AM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Depends on your feelings for Blondie

lol ymp

Lichtman and his keys are way too Dr. Feelgood's Cure-All Miracle Oil for me. The evaluations for each of the keys being true or false seem to come down to his own subjective evaluation. Not total nonsense but not really great for a prediction engine. His pitch is great for the zeitgeist—ignore polls, ignore the twists and turns of the day—but at the end of the day his system has called 9 out of 10 elections correctly. Not really that impressive when you consider that picking randomly his chances of getting 9 out of 10 right since 1984 are about 1 in 500. So if you have 500 people who have devised systems for predicting the winner of presidential elections since 1984, it's virtually guaranteed that 1 or 2 of them will perform as well as the keys have. And nobody wants to put the 499 people who predicted wrong on the news, Jim Cramer has that job and he's not going anywhere.

and most of those elections were pretty easy calls

at least if kamala loses nobody will have to pay attention to dude's keys again

what am i looking for? my keys lol

Anecdotally, every single Dem voting friend: ‘she wins unless the DNC fucks up, so I am worried because… the DNC!’

A tricky point in calculating odds... at least 2-3 elections since 1980 have been easy to predict (1984, 1992, 2008), but I was assuming we were talking about election prediction "engines" that weren't just one person making educated guesses (which I think Lichtman's "engine" is still a little too close to). But if you design your prediction engine after those "easy" elections have taken place, those elections are obviously going to influence your engine design and increase its accuracy.

xp What do they imagine will happen exactly?

'96 was really easy; maybe '88 too, after Dukakis's fast start.

when people claim that their models predicted things that predate their models

https://i.imgur.com/zFw2Vsq.gif

lol lagoon

The real strength of the keys system, I would reiterate, is that it is a tonic for doomscrolling... Lichtman is telling us that the election will be decided by medium and long-term factors, those factors are pointing to a likely Harris win, and the day-to-day shit doesn't matter so you can safely ignore it. Irresistable!

he also said that Biden probably would have one if he hadn't dropped out.

if anything bidens gotta be stronger by the keys system because hes the incumbent, im guessing that has to be a key most obvious key in the world

I was assuming we were talking about election prediction "engines" that weren't just one person making educated guesses (which I think Lichtman's "engine" is still a little too close to).

Yeah but if you design something that works on its own, you wouldn't get interviewed on TV. Nobody interviews a plug & play engine. They interview gurus with secret inside knowledge.

if you design your prediction engine after those "easy" elections have taken place, those elections are obviously going to influence your engine design and increase its accuracy.

Shoot first, THEN draw the bullseye.

well, it's the media that is drawing the bullseye after watching everyone take their shots at the side of the barn.

Lichtman's probably glad Biden dropped out because Biden getting shellacked by Trump would have blown his keys system. After that debate, fuck your keys... Biden was toast. Trump would have run rampant at the second debate against Biden, now he's too scared to even show up.

The Lichtman model was not only applied to presidents from the 80s onwards it’s based on 31 elections since 1860. However it’s not perfect since there has been two instances in which his model failed by a wide margin:

While developing the keys, Lichtman retrospectively applied them to every American presidential election from 1860 to 1980.
Republican President Theodore Roosevelt's election in 1904 is the only occasion where all 13 keys were true for the incumbent party, while the elections of 1876 and 1960 both had nine false keys against the incumbent party (the Republicans in both years): there were also nine false keys against the incumbent Republicans in 2008, an election the keys predicted prospectively.
In 29 of the 31 elections, the keys corresponded with the elected president,with the exceptions being:
In 1876, when there were nine false keys against the incumbent Republicans, indicating the defeat of Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes: Democratic nominee Samuel J. Tilden won a majority of the popular vote, but an Electoral Commission declared Hayes the winner of the Electoral College by a single vote in a disputed election, and Hayes was therefore elected president.

In 1888, when there were five false keys against the incumbent Democrats, indicating the re-election of Democratic President Grover Cleveland: Cleveland won the popular vote, but Republican nominee Benjamin Harrison won the Electoral College and was therefore elected president.

So yeah it’s not foolproof but I still think it has some interesting concepts to analyze behind each “key” and how important certain factors are to win an election.

I could see 2024 being a case where once again KH wins by popular vote but gets Trumped by the electoral college.

Lichtman was melting down for a solid week about the disaster that would befall Democrats if Biden dropped off the ticket. I think he’s now just playing catchup, doesn’t want to be left out. He’s kind of a doofus. But I hope he’s right (now).

https://thepostrider.com/allan-lichtman-is-famous-for-correctly-predicting-the-2016-election-the-problem-he-didnt/

the 2000 election was decided by Palm Beach ballot design choices, which was probably not one of the 13 keys. his tone of absolute confidence about predicting future events is annoying.

also like everyone itt I hope his current prediction is correct!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU-MGQksnZ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3b4Jg8K5L0

the 2000 election was decided by Palm Beach ballot design choices

I've been thinking about New Hampshire's results and how ~8000 third-party votes there decided that election.

I was going to ask how Alan Keyes scored on his system the three times he ran, but I guess you have to win the nomination first.

https://media.tenor.com/iWT1Dtw2ScoAAAAM/keymaster-rick.gif

Lichtman's Keys Are Making Sense

xxpost Did just fine thanks

that Postrider article is pretty damning imo

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

"President Keyes"--that had never occurred to me! Is that actually the source?

Yeah, joke name chosen in 2008. Still haunts me.

Really glad to see Clipse showing up here

i think harris will debate trump on sep 4. it makes sense to not cave right away to make him look like a wuss and extract a couple concessions on format. but ultimately it's in her interest to debate him no matter what and she can claim the higher ground of "any time any place" plus the glory of beating trump on his own turf

No. Don't allow him to dictate the terms, fuck all of that shit.

yeah, if Harris agrees to that she has already lost

ultimately it's in her interest to debate him

Why? Seriously. Tell me what the point of "debating" Donald Trump is. Who will gain new information by watching a game show hosted by one or two lobotomized corporate newsreaders, at which one person will articulate potential future policies and the other will lie about his own record, call his opponent stupid and crooked, and vomit up nonsense? What the fuck could anyone possibly gain from that?

i think it would awesome if she showed up at ABC and did it by herself. people could really get to know her and she could just laugh at Trump on national t.v. It would make him look so dumb.

Why? Seriously. Tell me what the point of "debating" Donald Trump is. Who will gain new information by watching a game show hosted by one or two lobotomized corporate newsreaders, at which one person will articulate potential future policies and the other will lie about his own record, call his opponent stupid and crooked, and vomit up nonsense? What the fuck could anyone possibly gain from that?

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Saturday, August 3, 2024 5:12 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

to win over voters, get more votes and win the election

It's in her interest to debate him, it's in her bigger interest not to yield to him even if she shows up by herself. Barack Obama was prepared to do it in '08.

You can’t evaluate Lichtman’s model since the majority of features are subjective. It’s no different than tarot where only the cartomancer can read the cards. It’s anti-scientific flim-flam.

No. Don't allow him to dictate the terms, fuck all of that shit.

― Cow_Art, Saturday, August 3, 2024 5:06 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, if Harris agrees to that she has already lost

― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Saturday, August 3, 2024 5:08 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

is there any evidence that the terms of the debate matter? trump wants the same format as the cnn june debate, which biden agreed to. the race is still close, and a debate will get lots of media attention and draw a direct contrast between them. imo she will come out very favorably in that contrast, unlike in the june debate which made trump look good. she stands to win big from a good debate, i don't see her passing up the opportunity

The time prepared for a debate is better spent doing retail politics in swing states. Most of the country has made their decision, per usual, the focus should be on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Moreover, there’s far better ways than a debate to keep the base energized.

you can't win a debate with Trump because he doesn't debate. you're just giving him an hour or two of the narrative being all about Trump

Most of the country has made their decision,

she's been candidate for like a week

you can't win a debate with Trump because he doesn't debate. you're just giving him an hour or two of the narrative being all about Trump

― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Saturday, August 3, 2024 5:32 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

whether or not it qualifies as debate on some epistemological level doesn't really matter, you're just putting them both up on tv next to each other speaking extemporaneously to make a salient contrast. the contrast in the last debate was so extreme it ended in biden exiting the race. this contrast in harris-trump will be pretty sharp too imho; 78 year-old incoherent asshole everyone's tired of seeing v.s. 59 year-old relatively fresh face who can form sentences. winning a debate gives you a short term 2-3 percentage point bump, some of which surely dissipates over time but (1) only 56 days between sep 10 and voting day (2) race is close so why not take it? could be the difference between the race being a toss-up and her being clear favorite

"FULL ARENA AUDIENCE" makes it a street fight instead of a debate -- I'd say don't do it.

I get the "What's the point of debating a total fucking weirdo liar?" opinion. There's but one reason that I do not agree:

The big upside of her debating him: its a great opportunity for her to bully him a bit and make him look stupid, showing the skittish indies that she's fearless, essentially destroying their one potentially-effective (not that I agree with the substance, just that indie voters might) campaign message, which is "Is she tough enough? Do you really want her negotiating with China?", etc. Of course, I'd not do it with Fox frauds because the questions will be framed in a way to help him, so we need neutral moderators. But if she was to stand up to him really strongly and get him all flustered and confused, hello 2020 map plus maybe NC

I think the piece y'all aren't getting is (a) debating in front of a FOX audience of screaming monkeys (b) if you've got momentum you don't yield to terms. He's the chicken shit.

i think the smart way for her to play it is to be tough for a couple weeks, make him look really scared and weak begging for his preferred terms, roast him for it in the media, but then ultimately extract some concessions on format and agree to sep 4 debate on fox (maybe no audience, or bipartisan audience of joe the plumbers), play it off like *sigh* it's clear one of us is the adult in the room, then smoke him in the debate anyways

if you've got momentum you don't yield to terms

This is exactly right. There shouldn't be a debate at all, frankly, but if there must be one it's gotta be the ABC one that was already agreed to, and he should have to crawl to get that.

Yes, exactly! That's what Harris is doing by being tough now!

i'm wary of reading too much into her momentum tbh. she's at an amazing place in the polls relative to biden but (1) that's a low bar, (2) trump tends to outperform his polls, and (3) she's still not looking great on electoral college. momentum is fickle this could easily be a transient bump of enthusiasm. don't want to leave any arrows in the quiver on the theory that she's super far ahead based on momentum and can coast to victory imo

I agree that there is an inherent value in the public being able to watch the candidates in operation side-by-side. at least that has applied in the past, where both the nominees are more conventional politicians and neither one is the incumbent, so there are more voters who can be swayed by a good performance.

This time it feels to me like Trump is a thoroughly known quantity to voters. They already hate him or love him. He is struggling to get his footing and he needs Harris to make mistakes that change the focus away from his struggles. He trusts his FOX allies to gin up some weird gotcha questions to tilt the playing field for him.

Harris's main need is look and sound like someone people could trust to lead the government. A really good debate performance would go a long way in that direction, but it isn't necessary. She can do it other ways.

If she does the Fox debate and does spectacularly well, flopson, I'll be here to do some cutting-and-pasting with you. Ideally, I hope she does both. I get the no-capitulation argument, and Harris's press release is good, but I just can't see him not looking comparatively foolish in any debate context.

This was a good point, though:

8 years ago, doing a debate in front of a packed arena of jeering idiots who interjected constantly was unimaginable. then trump entered us politics.

It's unfortunate Trump has managed to sometimes make me forget how things operated before he came along.

cant see harris agreeing to a weird format trump debate, maybe theyll agree on something more normal idk

unfortunately i can't make my case based on her own record in the 2019-20 primary debates, since she arguably won the first debate (slamming biden on busing) but badly lost the second (got lost in the weeds litigating the cockamamie version of m4a she was pretending to support versus the public option biden never actually tried to pass). but i think my optimism is a combination of (1) feeling that she's levelled up as a public speaker, and (2) the 2020 dem primary highlighted a lot of her weaknesses

Just to correct myself above, I think the "packed arena of jeering idiots" started in 2012 with Gingrich, that debate where he turned on John King. Trump seemed to feed of off that four years later.

If she doesn't agree to the Fox debate, the Dems can spend their whole convention making fun of Trump for chickening out of the ABC debate

don't know how much that would be worth in votes, but it would be a good time for everyone involved

in the entire history of the universe, not a single person has gained any advantage from conceding or agreeing to anything proposed by convicted rapist Donald J Trump. utter rejection is the only legitimate response.

Harris and Trump held events in the exact same venue five days apart:

Sad, @realdonaldtrump pic.twitter.com/H7O3GDr6nF

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 4, 2024

nice

She’s not going to agree with a Fox debate, please. No point to it, and the only people who would care about her not bothering are their own audience.

indeed. why would anyone agree to do a debate at a trump rally? even if you theoretically kick his ass, the crowd will bury you and the press will run with that

in other news, nate silver thinks shapiro should be the VP choice, which *should* be the nail in that coffin

ha perfect

VP Pete can do the Fox debate.