US Politics: Terminal America

[denstorebog]

Personally, I really want Biden to run, and I think he'd win, too. With his insane resume and his carefully cultivated image as a down-to-earth, working man, he's a pretty perfect compromise between the factions of the Democratic Party. Anyone who ever liked Obama or have come to miss him since January 2017 will vote for Biden in an instant, and I can't imagine anyone who voted for Hillary who would not do so as well. He is kind, calm and collected, a perfect counterpoint to the egocentric madness of Trump. He has already been through the smear machine as VP pick. And what little polling we have (yes, yes, I know) suggests that he the #1 pick to take on Trump.

In a perfect universe, I want Trump to die from a stroke in 2021 after turning on CNN and hearing that

Quote

... this morning, the comprehensive plan to roll back every executive order ever penned by former president Trump was put into motion by order from newly elected President Biden and Vice President Obama.

(And yes, that would be Michelle Obama. Can't say that wouldn't be a fucking awesome ticket.)

[The Wedge]

24 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I get every reason for why Uncle Joe didn't run in 2016, though I do wish he had.

I do believe, with health and medicine what they are these days, that age need not be the impediment it once was.

If this isn't an intention to run though, it's certainly a salvo in shaping the conversation and tone of the next race.

I maintain that if Hillary had asked Joe to stay on as VP for another term and he accepted, she would have wiped Trump off of the electoral map.

I mean, the job of VP isn't Constitutionally limited to two terms, is it?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

48 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

Eh... for a net positive, you need at least some positive to begin with, which... wasn't the case. Basically, Trump was seen as not caring about NATO except as a protection racket, blowing up the G7 talks by being unwilling to even the most basic commitments, and generally pissing off everybody with his rudeness.

 Merkel's comments on beibg unable to rely on the US any longer didn't come from a vacuum, and considering her usual style, they were remarkably direct.

Yeah, this sounds exactly like the German reports I was hearing.

Also, they referred to the G7 as the G6+1.

[Maithanet]

9 minutes ago, The Wedge said:

I mean, the job of VP isn't Constitutionally limited to two terms, is it?

No, it is not.  I'm not sure Biden would want to play second banana for another four years though.

[aceluby]

And the Trump clusterfuck just keeps getting better....  So much for draining the swamp.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/us/politics/lobbyist-ethics-waivers-trump-administration.html?_r=0

 

 

Quote

 

Robert Weissman, president of the liberal nonprofit group Public Citizen, said he believed the waivers issued by Mr. Trump’s White House undermined the purpose of the ethics rules. The rules were written to prevent the government from becoming a revolving door, where industry players can come in and help their former paying clients, he said.

“They are circumventing what they touted as their signature ethics achievement,” Mr. Weissman said. “It’s utterly at odds with candidate Trump’s ‘drain the swamp’ rhetoric and it suggests that the Trump executive order is not worth the paper it is written on.”

 

 

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

So House Intel Committee chairman Devon Nunes, who was forced to recuse himself from the Russian investigation, has continued to be a good Trump lap dog and is pursuing a leaks investigation, as Trump has been demanding, and issued 3 subpoenas to the NSA, the CIA and the FBI regarding John Brennan, Susan Rice and Samantha Powers. Why Powers is one question.

The subpoenas asked the agencies to provide details of any requests made by two top Obama administration aides and the former CIA director to "unmask" names of Trump campaign advisers inadvertently picked up in top-secret foreign communications intercepts, congressional sources said. The former officials named in the subpoenas were Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and former CIA Director John Brennan.

http://www.trunews.com/article/nunes-ignores-recusal-issues-subpoenas-to-cia-fbi-and-nsa#sthash.P1Y8z8mt.dpuf

[Mexal]

50 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

From my understanding (according to reports), he was pushy and very unfriendly during the NATO summit. (He also got what he wanted without giving anything - which I blame more on Merkel et al than on him - , then insulted "The Germans"...) He's also expected to distance himself from the climate treaty (or has he already?). It has also been suggested (in talk shows and such) that DT is trying to deflect attention from Russia etc. I'm sure the satire/ political parody shows will have a field day with him, but then they always do and it's hard to top reality...

What did Trump get? Trump's whole shtick is he's a master negotiator so if he's getting what he wants without giving up anything, I can see why they'd spin that as a positive. Thing is, I'm not seeing what he actually got.

2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

So House Intel Committee chairman Devon Nunes, who was forced to recuse himself from the Russian investigation, has continued to be a good Trump lap dog and is pursuing a leaks investigation, as Trump has been demanding, and issued 3 subpoenas to the NSA, the CIA and the FBI regarding John Brennan, Susan Rice and Samantha Powers. Why Powers is one question.

This annoys me. Recuse oneself, like with Sessions, means jack shit these days. It's a political stunt to take the public pressure off themselves after monumental fuck ups (e.g. lying to congress, midnight rendezvous at the WH) and it has seemed to work.  

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

The Democrats need young voters and picking a man in his seventies would be foolish.  I really hope Biden, Sanders and Clinton all stay out of the 2020 race. 

It would be foolish for multiple reasons -- and yes, they are all too frackin' old.  If the DNC goes there it deserves to be hacked by the russians.

[Kalbear]

Older candidates do not mean turning off younger voters. Sanders certainly didn't, and it's pretty hard to appear less old than Sanders does (he does the crazy old man yelling at cloud thing really well). 

IMO, the most important thing for a candidate is someone who is positive in their viewpoints and charismatic. That is what appears to motivate people to vote Democrat. How old they are is immaterial. How old their ideas are might be more important, but there's no sign that Sanders has ideas that are too old, and there's no sign that Biden (of the cancer moonshot or the 'this is a big fuckin' deal fame) has old ideas either. 

And this of course goes into the old liberal canard, which is that if the candidate isn't exactly perfect for what you want then you'll take your ball and go home, whereas conservatives will vote for Tub O' Lard if it has an "R" label by it.

Now my hot taek: I really like Clinton, and I want her to continue to be out there fighting and doing positive work, but please stop talking about the election. I get that you're pissed, I really do; it was absurdly unfair, and we're only now realizing how unfair it is, but I do not want to relitigate the election for the next 4 years and it won't help things. Instead, please focus on showing everyone what they are missing out on. Show them the good that can be done now - and how much better it would be with you as POTUS. Focus on state and local initiatives and getting more young people into politics at every level. Lead by doing things, not by talking about how much you were screwed out of it. 

[Altherion]

4 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

I do believe, with health and medicine what they are these days, that age need not be the impediment it once was.

I don't think the issue is entirely due to physical aging -- even before modern medicine, there were people who were fairly sharp and active in their 70s (there just weren't many of them). The problem is that once past the median age (roughly 38 in the US), the older one is, the further one is removed from the majority of the population. Biden became a Senator in 1973 and then Vice-President in 2008. That is, he has been in the upper tiers of American government longer than most Americans have been alive. He lived through, say, the Great Recession, with a completely different perspective than somebody who was struggling to find or keep their job or keep a business running at the time.

Of course, there do exist extraordinary individuals who manage to empathize with others even across generations and class boundaries. It may be that Biden is one of them -- he is undoubtedly closer to it than certain other famous politicians -- but is it really so difficult to find somebody younger?

[aceluby]

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

I don't think the issue is entirely due to physical aging -- even before modern medicine, there were people who were fairly sharp and active in their 70s (there just weren't many of them). The problem is that once past the median age (roughly 38 in the US), the older one is, the further one is removed from the majority of the population. Biden became a Senator in 1973 and then Vice-President in 2008. That is, he has been in the upper tiers of American government longer than most Americans have been alive. He lived through, say, the Great Recession, with a completely different perspective than somebody who was struggling to find or keep their job or keep a business running at the time.

Of course, there do exist extraordinary individuals who manage to empathize with others even across generations and class boundaries. It may be that Biden is one of them -- he is undoubtedly closer to it than certain other famous politicians -- but is it really so difficult to find somebody younger?

You voted for a guy who is the oldest president ever.  A guy who has never had a struggle in his entire life.  Who was born rich.  And literally can't empathize with anyone.  So yeah.... this is just a bunch of bull shit.

[Altherion]

Just now, aceluby said:

You voted for a guy who is the oldest president ever.  A guy who has never had a struggle in his entire life.  Who was born rich.  And literally can't empathize with anyone.  So yeah.... this is just a bunch of bull shit.

I didn't vote for anyone. And the choice in 2016 was between somebody who was 69 and somebody who was 70 so there is not much difference between them in this respect.

[drawkcabi]

Trump's approval ratings will take a big jump up after this briefing. The left can't really solidify their hate any more than it is and the people on the right, they're hooting and hollering cheers when Trump said we were dropping out of the Paris agreement.

Those that fall in between I predict will break for Trump as the stupid and/or ignorant swallow the climate change hoax line and 19th century jobs are the key to 21st century employment and success.

Bah.

[Isalie]

So, Florida voted for Trump right? 

[aceluby]

27 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I didn't vote for anyone. And the choice in 2016 was between somebody who was 69 and somebody who was 70 so there is not much difference between them in this respect.

Sure do carry a lot of water for a guy you supposedly didn't vote for.  And nobody was talking about Hillary.  We were talking about Joe Biden and your frankly ridiculous analysis of his long, storied career in public service.

[Maithanet]

12 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

Trump's approval ratings will take a big jump up after this briefing. The left can't really solidify their hate any more than it is and the people on the right, they're hooting and hollering cheers when Trump said we were dropping out of the Paris agreement.

I'm pretty skeptical that this will have much impact on Trump's popularity.  Taking action on climate change polls well.  Trump's base will love it, and that's it. 

[aceluby]

2 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm pretty skeptical that this will have much impact on Trump's popularity.  Taking action on climate change polls well.  Trump's base will love it, and that's it. 

Yeah, if anything I see this as hurting his popularity.  At least in my area, there are quite a few hunters who voted for him because of 2nd amendment crap, but ultimately understand that they kind of need a good environment so they have something to hunt.  There's also a lot of business leaders coming out against this since it's a missed opportunity to lead in the emerging market.  If he was actually a good businessman, which it's pretty obvious he's not, he would want new markets to take advantage of.  But this is a 70 yr old guy whose only success has been in a business that was handed down to him and every other venture into other areas were saturated markets and added no innovation.  

[drawkcabi]

3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm pretty skeptical that this will have much impact on Trump's popularity.  Taking action on climate change polls well.  Trump's base will love it, and that's it. 

If you're going to be skeptical be skeptical towards anything being able to take Trump down. Don't underestimate the ignorance of people. They will only hear "Murica! Hell yeah!" from that speech.

Trump will get the base plus solidify all the rust belt people who voted for him and probably sway a bunch who were on the fence.

[Maithanet]

4 minutes ago, drawkcabi said:

If you're going to be skeptical be skeptical towards anything being able to take Trump down. Don't underestimate the ignorance of people. They will only hear "Murica! Hell yeah!" from that speech.

Trump will get the base plus solidify all the rust belt people who voted for him and probably sway a bunch who were on the fence.

Where did "taking down" Trump come from?  We're talking about whether this anti-Paris stand will help Trump's popularity, and I don't think it will.  The business community is pretty overwhelmingly against it and independents usually favor this type of multi-lateral action.  It's hard to see anybody but Trump's existing base really swayed by this. 

[Mexal]

I'm so embarrassed to be an American. I might consider myself German from now on and go sort out my passport finally.