US Politics: Help Me Vladimir!!! Xi Wants Me to Lose!!!

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

If Trump were Machiavellian, I'd say the strategy is to make himself and Biden seem more alike, which is definitely to Trump's advantage.  But I don't think Trump is Machiavellian. 

Well, I'd say the best strategy for Trump right now is to step back and let the left fight with each other about it.  He can always start attacking later, but doing so now has the potential to unite his opposition.

[Stannis Cool-Ranchus]

9 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Okay, then what? Does President Trump sign off on those bills? Are there 60 votes in the Senate to resist filibusters? You're telling me we'll get not just Democrats, but Bernie-aligned Democrats, elected in places like Arizona and Florida? Because those are places you need Democratic Senators to get any major change done. The vile, watered-down, give-away-to donors ACA passed by the skin of its teeth two years after the shock of the financial meltdown.

I've pretty much braced myself for a second Trump term at this point. I'm putting my hopes and efforts into continuing the whole grassroots thing. Put a Democrat I can vote for up and I'll vote for them. My advice would be to vote as progressive as possible if you want a united party. Shit, I'd have voted for Warren. She's definitely not a rapist (again, unlike Biden) and she probably wouldn't golf, like, at all.

8 minutes ago, Week said:

The ACA was barely passed through reconciliation (with huge concessions - i.e. Lieberman killing the public option) and has been fought by the right in Congress and the courts every day since. We're "lucky" we even have the ACA.

The ACA was so close to finished that fucking John McCain had to cast a deciding vote to save the ACA. 

Our institutions are ill-suited for drastic change and years of GOP slander - amplified by Fox News - of government has retarded progress forward immensely both via rhetoric, starving the beast, and hollowing the out the government of capable public servants. I don't see a path forward other than incrementalism and you haven't articulated a realistic alternative.

So if they're going to attack it that hard anyway, why not just push for the system that's actually going to cover everybody? What is the point of this midgrade thing? Everyone always talks about the ACA like it was some necessary compromise, like the GOP would somehow have come harder against universal healthcare. As if they even could have.

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

Withholding your vote is an option if you want to change the dichotomy. Though I am voting, just not for President. Like I said, down-ballot elections are very important to me this cycle.

This is so amazing. This is the best.

First off, no, withholding your vote does nothing to change the dichotomy. Nothing at all. What it does is encourage the other side to make sure people like you remain disaffected and able to not vote. 

Second off, it is very easy to say that you choose to do nothing when you're living in fucking Germany and you aren't going to be affected by all of this. Jesus fucking christ, the privilege on this bullshit. 

[DanteGabriel]

4 minutes ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

I've pretty much braced myself for a second Trump term at this point. I'm putting my hopes and efforts into continuing the whole grassroots thing. Put a Democrat I can vote for up and I'll vote for them. My advice would be to vote as progressive as possible if you want a united party.

 

"Hopes and efforts" sounds a lot like "thoughts and prayers." Meanwhile under a second Trump turn, more people will suffer. Lots of people I love are already suffering under what he's done in three years. Another five, I don't know how much more damage he'll do, but I know it'll increase on an exponential scale, like the way a virus spreads, because he's doing long-term damage to the country's civil infrastructure, culture, and its very image of itself. I think we are approaching Sauron-grade stuff with a second Trump term.

I'm trying to be nicer here but this resignation to defeat sounds pretty cowardly. Did you say you're living in Germany? So you've got access to health care, your rights aren't under immediate threat? Do you appreciate that a lot of well-intentioned people are trying to avoid more damage being done in the immediate term, and it sucks to be called a cowardly rapist-supporting incrementalist because Biden is the presumptive nominee and we don't see any other way to defeat Trump now?

[Week]

4 minutes ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

So if they're going to attack it that hard anyway, why not just push for the system that's actually going to cover everybody? What is the point of this midgrade thing? Everyone always talks about the ACA like it was some necessary compromise, like the GOP would somehow have come harder against universal healthcare. As if they even could have.

How are you going to pass it? You'll need far more than 51 Dem senators and that is not happening anytime soon. Beyond the political power, you are talking about changes that are orders of magnitude larger and more complex. My wife works for a health issurer - the complexity is immense and this is a mid-range Dental outfit. The data exchanges, pay schedules, doctor networks, etc. all will need to be ripped and revamped nationally. There isn't a "single payer" or "M4A" switch to pull. If there was, I would agree with you - uh - more.

The point of the midgrade thing is to demonstrate competency and efficacy. Fortunately (!), many thousands of deaths have been prevented through medicaid expansion, adding pre-existing condition coverage requirements, minimum essential health benefits, etc. 

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

So if they're going to attack it that hard anyway, why not just push for the system that's actually going to cover everybody? What is the point of this midgrade thing? Everyone always talks about the ACA like it was some necessary compromise, like the GOP would somehow have come harder against universal healthcare. As if they even could have.

The compromise wasn't with the Republicans, as @Week mentioned, it was with the Joe Liebermans and Ben Nelsons and Bart Stupaks that were necessary in order to get anything passed - and killed any potential for more aggressive reform.  That was the reality.  If you wanna complain about those members, have at it.  But they hardly represented the whole of the Democratic party then, let alone now.

[Kalbear]

34 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Thank you. 

That's a big reason I posted what I did and when I did, since things were getting so heated again. Since I was responsible for the mess earlier in the week, I hoped that posting something explaining why I (or others) may feel that way to help with understanding each other (thanks for the advice @Kalbear); I know that everyone is dealing with a ton more stress than they usually do, but it's difficult to remember that with all the shit going down.

 

I'm glad to hear you're doing better. I'm sorry for all you've gone through.

And yeah, it took me a long time to understand that emotional connection is more important than rational arguments. One big reason is that we as humans misread intentions all the time - we assume that everyone understands our intent, and we assume bad intent in a lot of places that isn't there. The way you get around that is by trusting that person, and a way you can build that trust quickly is by emotional connection. It's much harder to miss intent when you're saying something like 'the reason I care about the ACA is because my son's cancer wouldn't be treated without it' vs. 'I support the ACA because millions of unnamed people have coverage because of it'. The latter is almost entirely just some random fact that we can't sympathize with, but most non sociopathic humans can understand and empathize completely with the former.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

3 hours ago, Fez said:

Who knows? It could be that Biden is entirely telling the truth and knows that nothing happened and that there's nothing to vet. Or it could be he knows/is betting that Reade did file a complaint but screwed up the paperwork and so it wasn't filed the way she thinks it was. Or he's expecting that senate archival procedures will not be altered for this situation and no one will see what's there until 2043, so he can say whatever he wants. Or he's pulling a Trump move of just trying to push off the issue to another day.

This seems like a distinction without a difference. The rest of that twitter thread says that the records would be part of the Senate Historical Office and all such senate records are governed by a mandate that they may not be released for 50 years. However, trying to distinguish the Senate Historical Office from the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives seems irrelevant, considering how much material is transferred from the one to the other each year. Biden's statement specifically calls on the Secretary of the Senate to look into the records, which I think is the way of getting through all the red tape there.

Isn't this all obfuscation (from Biden not you) anyhow? I haven't had a chance to relisten to the original Halper interview, but I am fairly certain that Reade said she never filed an official complaint, but had talked to people above her about how to do it. I believe she decided not to so she could preserve her career. Again, I may be wrong, but that's what I remember. I can't seem to find anything in the news because it's all just focused on what Biden said, but I'll relisten to the episode when I go for a walk later.

[Week]

1 minute ago, Simon Steele said:

Isn't this all obfuscation (from Biden not you) anyhow? I haven't had a chance to relisten to the original Halper interview, but I am fairly certain that Reade said she never filed an official complaint, but had talked to people above her about how to do it. I believe she decided not to so she could preserve her career. Again, I may be wrong, but that's what I remember. I can't seem to find anything in the news because it's all just focused on what Biden said, but I'll relisten to the episode when I go for a walk later.

I believe that she said that she did - however, it was limited to harrassment. So, that doesn't really move the needle either way. It's neither a confirmation nor exculpatory. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

It's amazing to me that you think we haven't already hit bottom. At this point we're just bouncing.

We're not close to the bottom yet.  Wait a few more months, a year . . . .

[Stannis Cool-Ranchus]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

The compromise wasn't with the Republicans, as @Week mentioned, it was with the Joe Liebermans and Ben Nelsons and Bart Stupaks that were necessary in order to get anything passed - and killed any potential for more aggressive reform.  That was the reality.  If you wanna complain about those members, have at it.  But they hardly represented the whole of the Democratic party then, let alone now.

Yeah, the compromise was with DEMOCRATIC donors. That's what I've been saying and I'm done responding t this circular fucking argument with you.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

I don't know how you folks feel about Sam Seder, but I am a big fan, and I think that his analysis of the whole left wing voting for Biden thing. I have cued it up to the start of the discussion and it goes for about 10 minutes. I think that it might be good for people on both sides, as far as leftists taking something constructive away, and for more moderates on how to talk to with disaffected people who are unhappy about voting for Biden. In our discourse among the left and its component parts, those of us further to the left need to be able to see that those who are willing to vote for someone who isn't in line with where we need to go aren't necessarily at that position because they are against our vision, and those who are already on board need to see just because those of us on the left are critical of Biden doesn't mean that we all seek to undermine and sabotauge him and are therefore ok with another 4 years of Trump.

 

I like him. He's an interesting guy, and obviously he is a leftist but I don't see him being so divisive as other vocal leaders in the group, and he sometimes catches flack from the younger people in the left, I think. In fact, this segment you linked seems to be in direct response to this whole concept of refusing to vote for Biden. The one caveat, though, is if someone can't vote for him due to the issues with Reade, I think that's understandable. I can't argue with that. 

Before the Reade allegations, I always said that the most important thing is Biden's VP pick because he is so old. I saw a Washington Times article (or similar outlet) saying his biggest problem is death. I thought it was a bit overt, but it's true that given the tolls of the Presidency, Biden may not make it to, or be capable of running a second term (though Trump seems to be fine, amazingly). That's why a Klobuchar pick would be a disaster. If you're going to get these people dragging their feet, Biden needs to give them hope with a good VP pick who is interested in them.

 

[DMC]

Just now, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

Yeah, the compromise was with DEMOCRATIC donors. That's what I've been saying and I'm done responding t this circular fucking argument with you.

Two Senators and a House member are representative of Democratic donors?  Just because your arguments have no merit is no reason to get upset.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, DanteGabriel said:

Hillary Clinton's platform was the furthest left platform the Democratic Party has ever had.

More progressive than FDR's? 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

8 minutes ago, Week said:

I believe that she said that she did - however, it was limited to harrassment. So, that doesn't really move the needle either way. It's neither a confirmation nor exculpatory. 

Yes, that's right. Thank you. 

[Stannis Cool-Ranchus]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

Two Senators and a House member are representative of Democratic donors?  Just because your arguments have no merit is no reason to get upset.

Yup, guess that's it.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Week said:

I believe that she said that she did - however, it was limited to harrassment. So, that doesn't really move the needle either way. It's neither a confirmation nor exculpatory. 

I've been kind of avoiding news on this front, but I also thought she had said that she didn't file a formal complaint, but that she had spoken to her supervisor about it. Although, I could be conflating two different complaints, as you suggest.

[Kalbear]

7 minutes ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

No, it's not. You don't know a goddamn thing about my situation, seriously, please, shut the fuck up about this. You have no fucking idea how and why I'm here.

It doesn't matter how and why you're there. You're there. You're not in the US. If you don't recognize that being able to move to another fucking developed country is privilege? Please. 

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

More progressive than FDR's? 

It was, actually. It was kind of amazing. Pity it wasn't particularly covered and the entire election was either emails or Trump. 

[Stannis Cool-Ranchus]

Just now, Kalbear said:

It doesn't matter how and why you're there. You're there. You're not in the US. If you don't recognize that being able to move to another fucking developed country is privilege? Please. 

No having to leave your home and your job and most of your family behind over a fucked up incident by people who were supposed to have your back based on something you have no control over is not privileged. Privileged is when you can live your life without having to deal with that kind of shit. Having an escape hatch when you don't have that privilege is lucky.

Casting judgment on people you don't know for the way they live their lives, making assumptions of shit you're clearly ignorant of even after being asked repeatedly to stop is for sure a white thing though, so I don't know if you're in a position to be lecturing people on privilege, hm?