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U.S. Politics: By Gawd King, That's Joe Biden's Music!!!!


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25 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Out of curiosity, what do you think should be the "play" from this?  Because IMO bringing a Nazi flag to a Sanders rally is a very confusing political statement, which makes it harder to react to.  In more or less descending likelihood:

1.  It could be a threat (the Nazis are coming for all you liberals).

2.  It could be a protest (you guys are like Nazis in your embrace of big govt).

3.  It could be a false flag (Nazis like Sanders, he must be terrible)

4.  It could be an actual show of support (we Nazis are with you, because Nazis support MFA?  I'll admit this seems unlikely.)

I’d have guessed it was a statement against Sanders himself.   Like for being Jewish.  
Eta- ninjad by OAR

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1 minute ago, butterbumps! said:

I’d have guessed it was a statement against Sanders himself.   Like for being Jewish.  

Given the guy was shouting racial epithets outside of the gathering, yes, probably something like that. This was a white supremacist trolling.

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i think persons sympathetic to the NSDAP are sufficiently incoherent to intentionally support a known secular jewish candidate if that candidate has demonstrated opposition to some policies of the state of israel and to lobby groups in the US.

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4 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

What past history would that be?  The bankruptcy bill that literally launched Warren into to politics?  Pushing the 1994 crime bill?  Fighting for higher profits for drug manufacturers?  Berating Anita Hill?  The Iraq War?  Oh right, that ghost of organic leftist past.

Be honest in your arguments. Progressive purity tests don't work now and they certainly don't hold up when we look at any candidate (including Bernie on immigration, guns, etc) within the context of their own time. Fuck purity tests. I'm more impressed by a candidate who makes mistakes, because they all do, and then can grow from those mistakes.

Biden pushed Obama to back gay marriage rights. Pushed for domestic violence action. He introduced the first climate change action into Congress in 1986. Was part of getting the ACA passed which was very controversial then. Other times also where Biden took unpopular positions for that time.

Again, my point is this need to hyper-classify candidates especially with purity tests rather than just letting them be has hurt the candidates and contributed to us being left with 2 old white guys. Warren's spot on.

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1 hour ago, Simon Steele said:

Also.............I don't know the quote you put. What's it from? 

 

I'm busy today and probably won't end up responding to much, but that quote is from Biggie.  The introduction to the song Kick in the Door.

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16 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

Biden pushed Obama to back gay marriage rights.

Do we really know this?  I know as VP he came out in favor of gay marriage before Obama did, but a lot of people thought it was meant as a trial balloon, and that it was all choreographed.  Have accounts of the Obama WH provided clarity on this issue?  Because I think this is a good point to bring up when I'm talking with my Biden-skeptical progressive friends, and I want to make sure I've got the facts.

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4 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Do we really know this?  I know as VP he came out in favor of gay marriage before Obama did, but a lot of people thought it was meant as a trial balloon, and that it was all choreographed.  Have accounts of the Obama WH provided clarity on this issue?  Because I think this is a good point to bring up when I'm talking with my Biden-skeptical progressive friends, and I want to make sure I've got the facts.

What I've heard, but it doesn't go against my main point. Biden is currently moving left now that he's free to do so and Warren was right about the need to hyper-classify being damaging.

 

Adding:

If there's conspiracy theories about trial balloons and what-not, that kinda results in people believing what they want to believe. :dunno:

https://www.politico.com/story/2012/05/obama-expected-to-speak-on-gay-marriage-076103

 

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Here’s something about why black voters, particularly older black voters, tend to break for candidates like Clinton and Biden: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theroot.com/an-open-letter-to-white-liberals-blaming-low-informatio-1842100419/amp

Bernie Sanders has barely even tried to convince black voters that he gives a damn about the specific and unique problems they face in this country. 

I’d also like to address the vitriol, and it will tie back to the article posted above as well. It seems that a lot of people think that as long as you’re not chanting cunt at Barbara Boxer or doing some other sexist nonsense, you’re participating in civil discourse. The thing that really pisses me off though is the insidious suggestion that anyone who supports a candidate other than Bernie is voting against their own interests because they are “low information”, AKA stupid. This is said a lot, and it is said and believed by otherwise well meaning people. But guess what? Calling people stupid because they don’t completely buy into your preferred candidate is not civil discourse. And when people get upset because you’ve called them stupid, you’re not being attacked; you’re being called out.

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11 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

What I've heard, but it doesn't go against my main point. Biden is currently moving left now that he's free to do so and Warren was right about the need to hyper-classify being damaging.

 

Adding:

If there's conspiracy theories about trial balloons and what-not, that kinda results in people believing what they want to believe. :dunno:

https://www.politico.com/story/2012/05/obama-expected-to-speak-on-gay-marriage-076103

 

Following up, there's also this story about it a couple years later (2014) .https://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/joe-biden-gay-marriage-white-house-response-105744

Quote

 

Vice President Joe Biden really did get ahead of President Barack Obama on accepting gay marriage in 2012 — and the White House really wasn’t happy about it, despite the two leaders’ many attempts to claim otherwise.

That’s the story laid out in Jo Becker’s new book, “Forcing the Spring,” which documents the past few years of successful efforts to expand the legalization of gay marriage, according to an advance copy obtained by POLITICO.

Speculation that Biden’s comments on “Meet the Press” in May 2012 were meant as a trial balloon, Becker writes, came from people “not privy to the chaos that erupted inside the West Wing after an emailed transcript of the interview landed in the inbox of the White House press team.” A furious Valerie Jarrett, Becker adds, accused Biden of “downright disloyalty.”

 

 

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45 minutes ago, Fez said:

In general, especially regarding older black voters, I think they are more pragmatic, more moderate, and more systems-orientated than most Democratic voters.

What I mean by that last one is that they see the levers of the Democratic Party and the rules of Congress as a way to protect themselves and improve their communities. For instance, any time there's a push for Congressional Democrats to institute term limits on committee chairs (like Republicans do) or to not rely solely on seniority as the criteria for obtaining chairs, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is always the first to oppose the push. There's a lot of CBC members that have been in Congress for a long time, saw how white Democrats (and Republicans) used those chairs to benefit their districts and push policies they wanted, and want to be able to do the same to help their communities. And because most CBC members are in incredibly safe districts, a lot of them do build up the seniority to have those chairs. Which leads them to see efforts to change things (often pushed by liberal white reformers) as an attempt to undercut black political power; and their voters side with them.

That’s an interesting take, but is there any evidence that black voters do this more consciously than other voters? I ask because the first thing that came to mind is how DFL voters here in MN treat Collin Peterson. He’s the Chairman on the House Ag Committee, and because he’s from an ag state, he can basically do whatever he wants because we want him in that spot to bring the bacon home.  

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1 hour ago, sologdin said:

the notion that a candidate is vicariously liable for that candidate's alleged supporters has always been difficult to take seriously.  maybe imputing to the candidate those acts of that candidate's campaign workers taken within the course of their employment threrewith is reasonable. But this is even more attenuated--the corollary liability of a candidate's supporters for the acts of other alleged supporters.  i suppose the theory must be based on the following inept syllogism:

a) the act of any alleged supporter of a candidate is imputed automatically to the candidate, who is vicariously liable by virtue of respondeat superior for all acts of alleged supporters of the candidate.

b) each supporter is liable for all acts of the candidate they support, including vicarious acts, as they are not permitted to mitigate their support or disagree with any specific policy preference or conduct thereof while maintaining their support generally.

_________________

ergo, each alleged supporter of the candidate is vicariously liable for the acts of each and every other alleged supporter of the candidate, including the mise en abyme of being vicariously liable for the mutual vicarious liability of each other, ad infinitum.

 

I've been calling it the Cootie Theory.

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voting against their own interests

a very difficult thesis to substantiate, i think.  it gets used by lefties quite a bit, sometimes not cynically, perhaps--but always it has a vanguardist pedigree: the leninist represents the unconscious or semi-conscious working class, which has failed to come into the fullness of its hegelian klasse fur sich and accordingly must have its interests dictated and its conduct directed by the charming marxist lawyer, say, who is advocating tirelessly on their behalf. it is sadly an authoritarian's cypher and in that capacity will justify any cruelty.  

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45 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

Be honest in your arguments. Progressive purity tests don't work now and they certainly don't hold up when we look at any candidate (including Bernie on immigration, guns, etc) within the context of their own time. Fuck purity tests. I'm more impressed by a candidate who makes mistakes, because they all do, and then can grow from those mistakes.

Biden pushed Obama to back gay marriage rights. Pushed for domestic violence action. He introduced the first climate change action into Congress in 1986. Was part of getting the ACA passed which was very controversial then. Other times also where Biden took unpopular positions for that time.

Again, my point is this need to hyper-classify candidates especially with purity tests rather than just letting them be has hurt the candidates and contributed to us being left with 2 old white guys. Warren's spot on.

That's great.  Those are all good things Biden has done.  But don't lecture me on honesty; none of that makes Biden an "organic leftist" or "moving organically left".  This is a guy who has repeatedly lied about his civil rights involvement, and quite recently was lying about getting arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela.  Whining about purity tests doesn't change Bidens record, and the public just "letting candidates be" without being critical and holding them accountable is how we get guys like Biden passing shit that only benefits corporate donors (see the bankruptcy bill).  And again, that piece of legislation is why you even known who Elizabeth Warren is.  Because Biden the Organic Leftist made it more difficult for people to get out of debt to help out the credit card companies.  

Any easy way to not have to hear this stuff your calling 'purity tests'?  Don't describe guys like Biden as "organically left".

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After decades of stagnation and promises that don't amount to much, they're now skeptical of sweeping government promises in general. I've heard about a lot of interest in promoting business ownership and in Warren's economic development plans which points to wanting independence (through capitalism) which puts them at odds with Bernie with both the unattainable, sweeping government solutions and the anti-capitalism. His I talk, you listen/my way or the highway style also doesn't help.

This was very eye-opening and reinforced what I've been hearing in focus groups.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-detroit-residents-pushed-back-against-tree-planting?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Quote

The tree-planters met stiff resistance: Roughly a quarter of the 7,500 residents they approached declined offers to have new trees planted in front of their homes. It was a high enough volume of rejections for such an otherwise valuable service that University of Vermont researcher Christine E. Carmichael wanted to know the reasons behind it.

She obtained data that TGD collected on the people who turned them down, and then visited Detroit to interview staff members and residents. What she found is that the rejections had more to do with how the tree-planters presented themselves and residents’ distrust of city government than it did with how residents felt about trees. Carmichael’s findings (with co-author Maureen H. McDonough) were published this week in the journal Society and Natural Resources.

...

A couple of African-American women Carmichael talked to linked the tree-planting program to a painful racist moment in Detroit’s history, right after the 1967 race rebellion, when the city suddenly began cutting down elm trees in bulk in their neighborhoods. The city did this, as the women understood it, so that law enforcement and intelligence agents could better surveil their neighborhoods from helicopters and other high places after the urban uprising.

The city was chopping down trees at a faster clip at this time. And  the city was flying helicopters over their homes at one point—to spray toxic DDT from above on the trees. However, the government’s stated reason for the mass tree-choppings was that the trees were dying off from the Dutch elm disease then spreading across the country. These were competing heritage narratives of the same event—the clearing away of trees in the 1960s. The two narratives are in conflict, but it was the women’s version, based on their lived experiences, that led to their decision to reject the trees today. It’s not that they didn’t trust the trees; they didn’t trust the city.

,,,

However, environmental justice is not just about the distribution of bad stuff, like pollution, or good stuff, like forestry projects across disadvantaged communities. It’s also about the distribution of power among communities that have historically only been the subjects and experiments of power structures.

 

 

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21 minutes ago, sologdin said:

voting against their own interests

a very difficult thesis to substantiate, i think.  it gets used by lefties quite a bit, sometimes not cynically, perhaps--but always it has a vanguardist pedigree: the leninist represents the unconscious or semi-conscious working class, which has failed to come into the fullness of its hegelian klasse fur sich and accordingly must have its interests dictated and its conduct directed by the charming marxist lawyer, say, who is advocating tirelessly on their behalf. it is sadly an authoritarian's cypher and in that capacity will justify any cruelty.  

Why is it that I have to wade into the murky waters of GenChat to find you? I miss you solo, come home.

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‘This Was a Grift’: Bloomberg Staffers Explain Campaign’s Demise

Quote

Not a single Bloomberg staffer that I spoke to was surprised by the campaign’s implosion. Speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisal and because of the campaign’s nondisclosure agreements—which The Nation obtained a leaked copy of in February—campaign employees cited that bruising debate as well as a general lack of enthusiasm for Bloomberg among the staff for ending his presidential run.

“Ever since the first debate all of us faced a ton of hostility [when knocking on] doors…and could hardly get any volunteers,” one field organizer told me. “I once had a woman chase me back to my car demanding that I say you can’t buy the presidency.”

...

But despite an almost limitless budget, the Bloomberg campaign would learn that money can’t buy loyalty. Staffers described an almost total lack of belief in Bloomberg himself. “Most people knew this was a grift,” one campaign official explained, describing even leadership as being unwilling to fulfill basic campaign responsibilities. “At our first office meeting, my [director] said, ‘We don’t need to canvass. We can just make calls, right guys?’ And everyone was like, ‘Yeah, that’s sensible.’”

This raises my spirits.

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So. The 'minority' vote is divided between the two old white B guys: Biden gets African Americans and Bernie gets the Latinix vote.  Neither one of which seems to have the capacity to reach out to the group they haven't already been reaching out to. Neither one seems particularly interested in women, per se either.

~~~~~~~~~~

Book review of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties by Christopher Caldwell - The Washington Post
Despite the subtitle, the book is less a history of “America Since the Sixties” than a sustained claim about a wrongheaded turn in the constitutional order since the Civil Rights Act of 1964

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/blaming-all-of-americas-problems-on-the-civil-rights-movement/2020/03/05/b1f6de8a-526e-11ea-b119-4faabac6674f_story.html

Quote

 

....“The new system for overthrowing the traditions that hindered black people became the model for overthrowing every tradition in American life,” Caldwell writes, tying anti-discrimination law to affirmative action, feminism and gay rights. Once comfortably confined to the margins, these “old minoritarian impulses . . . could now, through the authority of civil rights law, override every barrier that democracy might seek to erect against them.”

It takes a special sort of politics to blame all of America’s ills on the civil rights movement. The key, Caldwell believes, is that social equality — not just for African Americans but also for women, gay people, immigrants and others — united elites and minorities, but the costs were borne by everyone else. This argument links two wings of modern conservatism: social traditionalists who resist redistributions of cultural and political power, and populists who resent the growth of unaccountable elites in government and business. From its inception, Caldwell asserts, the “second constitution” curtailed essential freedoms and augured “the vast increase in federal government oversight that would become the sine qua non of civil rights.”

If the book comes up short as history, it performs a valuable service as an articulation of white grievance politics. Rarely are authors so blunt about how people might interpret the halting gains of others as a loss for themselves. “Almost everyone other than white heterosexual males could benefit in some way from civil rights laws,” Caldwell explains. “Those who lost most from the new rights-based politics were white men. The laws of the 1960s may not have been designed explicitly to harm them, but they were gradually altered to help everyone but them, which is the same thing.”

“The Age of Entitlement” thus joins a growing body of postmortem analyses of the 2016 election, providing an origin story for nonelite white people who concluded that the “system” had everyone but them in mind. White identity politics, in other words, emerged because progressive reform outpaced popular opinion, subverting democracy to structures and institutions beyond voters’ control. “The civil rights approach to politics,” Caldwell argues, “meant using lawsuits, shaming, and street power to overrule democratic politics.” Once white people figured that out, the result was the political rise of “a New York real estate developer.” (Caldwell coyly refuses to type the words “Donald Trump,” giving him the Voldemort treatment for some reason.)....

 

 

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