US Politics: In A Hypocritical Condition

[A Horse Named Stranger]

18 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I'm not following you. How is it "nonsense" to ask our political leaders to stand up to Trump. Part of Biden's "appeal" was that he would be tough with Trump. When Trump has single handedly caused so much harm (strictly speaking about his Covid response, let alone everything else), you see it as strategy to not emphasize this for those voters you think might still come from the right? I also think it's funny you think I'm raging. More eye-rolling. Project what you will on me, but what I typically see happen from you is that you use personalized attacks to compensate for not knowing how to deal directly with an argument. 

And I've spent a "second" thinking about why he didn't do it. He's taking some ideological high road that literally does nothing for him except tell all the people who already thinks he's a decent man that he is a decent man. The way Omar went against Trump was not petty, nor a rage-induced attack. It was measured, and it kept the message on what Trump has done, not his likely suffering right now. I think you have trouble seeing beyond a binary. There is a whole spectrum of replies to this beyond "attack" and "thoughts." Also, the whole "thoughts" thing is what really annoyed me. This is also an issue of Democrats unable to respond to shifts in public thinking. Every time a shooting happens, people run the politicians through the mud for saying "thoughts and prayers." This "thoughts" thing seems an attempt to circumvent that kind of public attack. It's a platitude. Biden literally said nothing, and he achieved nothing except, again, with those who love him and probably CNN and MSNBC.

So you noticed an overarching theme/narrative with the Biden campaign?

Character matters, decency matters, Biden is a man of character, Biden is a decent man etc. They repeating that ad nauseam to hammer this message home (message discipline is the word here I think). This theme also gets repeated over and over and over again by the Lincoln project and the other anti-Trump conservatives.

You can roll your eyes all day long, keeping the message discipline up is far more important than some cheap political point scoring. And you are proposing the exact opposite. Throw that away, just to piss all over Donnies hospital bed. It's really not worth it.

And the best part is, Biden does not have have to get his hands dirty, there are enough Democrats in the trenches to do it for him.

[All Cats Are Bad]

Incidentally, I think Ilhan Omar is a national goddamn treasure. This woman gets death threats the way most women get dick pics and she continues to bring it. I love that she'll straight up call for every penny of student debt to be cancelled and name the GOP for the morally bankrupt death cult that it is. I wish she could run for President.

[Sophelia]

6 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

In politics (at least in the UK) the absence of not expressing sympathy immediately after an event by default means you don't give a shit and may even be happy the event happened.  I know US politics is different for UK ones, its just something that is not done until he recovers.  Its certainly not something you do right before an election.

I second this (also from the UK). It would be very unstatesmanlike not to send well-wishes. It's expected behaviour from world leaders to congratulate others on their election wins, and to send best wishes during illnesses, regardless of any personal feelings.  It's diplomacy. 

[Lollygag]

This is an article about the history of German Americans and how they went Trump in 2016 but are disappointed in him in 2020, primarily because of the history of German Americans and their preference for isolationist, non-interventionalist policies which haven't panned out under Trump and also his stoking racial unrest.

I appreciate this being discussed finally. German Americans weren't a group naturally inclined to assimilation but it was forced because of WWI and WWII especially. My Mom remembers church services and newspapers in German when she was very little, but that's been lost. My Grandma was warned to never discuss her ancestry even though everyone here is German. German surnames, street names, place names were changed during these two WWs and are only now beginning to be changed back.

Myself and my community would be partially fluent in German if not for Hitler especially. A lot of German Americans feel this loss and some of the culture survives in a low-key way, but it's only safe to go back to ways lost a few generation ago during Oktoberfest as too many dumbass white nationalists use German cultural imagery to push their cause and one gets associated with that.

This article could take this a step further. There's a strong vein on non-involvement, isolationism, and not-my-concern-can't-fix-the-whole-world-ism which runs through rural communities which is often misinterpreted as racism or other isms by city people. Not speaking out in the face of injustices because of wanting to be left alone can be classified as a type of racism, but city people interpret this is a more active form of racism.

https://theconversation.com/will-german-americans-again-put-donald-trump-over-the-top-in-the-presidential-election-146283

Quote

Things changed in the wake of two world wars. To avoid stigmatization, German Americans stopped speaking German, anglicized their German names and became outwardly more American than any other European immigrant group.

As a result, most contemporary German Americans have lost an authentic connection to their cultural heritage. Unlike other ethnic groups, they do not collectively link their identity to political action.

Yet, despite this low level of community organization and activism, German Americans show common voting patters.

...

A new, empirical study suggests that German Americans’ support of Trump in 2016 was not a simple outcome of party affiliation and not primarily an articulation of racism.

Rather, German Americans were enticed by Trump’s isolationist agenda, an ideological preference their communities had developed long before 2016. In fact, presidential candidates with policies of protectionism and anti-interventionism have consistently benefited from the German American vote.

...

Interestingly, the tendency to support anti-interventionist presidential candidates even extended to Democrat Barack Obama. More successful than any Democrat in presidential elections in decades among German American voters, Obama put forth a prospective foreign policy agenda that contrasted sharply with that of John McCain, who stood for the continuation of George W. Bush’s unpopular wars in the Middle East.

...

Rather, this phenomenon shows a consistent attraction to isolationist candidates in these communities rooted in the first half of the 20th century. That’s when German Americans vehemently opposed U.S. military intervention in Europe while being forced to rapidly assimilate.

...

Nevertheless, we believe that Trump’s campaign faces a problem in attracting a similarly large number of German Americans voters this November. Expectations that isolationist policies would lead to greater prosperity in the Midwest were disappointed. Moreover, throughout Trump’s presidency, his record as an isolationist was overshadowed by his image as a racist.

We believe that many of those German American swing voters, who voted for a noninterventionist Obama in 2008 and then were attracted by Trump’s isolationist agenda in 2016, are alienated by his incendiary response to police killings and the Black Lives Matter protests.

A central tenet of isolationism is a strong desire to stay out of trouble through noninvolvement. This applies all the more at home. A growing understanding that the president’s actions did not deescalate but instead amplified violence and chaos on American streets will likely keep many German Americans from voting for Trump a second time.

 

[Zorral]

Just gone up on the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/04/world/trump-covid-live-updates?

As suspected They lied.

He's getting / got steroids which makes him very irritable.  He still has his tiny hands on the nuclear keys ....

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

By the way, the NBC poll showing a 14 point lead may indicate a real bounce from the debates, but these tend to be ephemeral. However, with the COVID news this week, who knows.

Their statement was that it waas likely an overreaction from the debate as it was a poll taken almost immediately afterwards. It probably is not that strong. 

[Lollygag]

I'm gonna go somewhere else the above article didn't (wouldn't?) go.

As a German American, Trump's focus on strength alarms me as it's toying with not getting back in touch with ways lost before the WWs, but it may be forming a line for German Americans to reconnect to German culture during WWII in this vacuum. His increasingly blunt discussion of eugenics, Politico has an article about the right talking about Trump's "god-tier" genetics", and a recent article about how awesome it'd be to form this super-alliance with Germany when I know what they're trying to turn Germany back into freaks me out.

Think there's real danger that German Americans who were forced-assimilated so recently opens the door to a reconnection to the wrong aspect of the culture, and frankly one that has no place in German American history at all.

[Kalbear]

This is what I picture with his doctor as well

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

21 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I'm gonna go somewhere else the above article didn't (wouldn't?) go.

As a German American, Trump's focus on strength alarms me as it's toying with not getting back in touch with ways lost before the WWs, but it may be forming a line for German Americans to reconnect to German culture during WWII in this vacuum. His increasingly blunt discussion of eugenics, Politico has an article about the right talking about Trump's "god-tier" genetics", and a recent article about how awesome it'd be to form this super-alliance with Germany when I know what they're trying to turn Germany back into freaks me out.

Think there's real danger that German Americans who were forced-assimilated so recently opens the door to a reconnection to the wrong aspect of the culture, and frankly one that has no place in German American history at all.

Eh.  My great grandmother stopped speaking german publicly after wwii.  She was born in Michigan in 1900.  She occasionally spoke it with her cousins, and later lasped into it in her final years when she was suffering from dementia.

My grandmother and my aunt's and uncles love using her recipes but I think it's kind of bizarre to assume that any of them are going to start going fascist because Trump likes Nazis and 80 years ago people stopped speaking German in public for appearances sake.

I am not very convinced that german americans alive today are so yearning for a connection to their heritage that they'd shackle themselves to Trump, who probably couldn't tell you shit about Germany.  The whole concept is baffling.

 

[Ran]

The Atlantic has a piece from Susan Hennesey and Quinta Jurecic of the Brookings Institute and Lawfare making the centrist  case for expanding the court, which folds into the discussion going on with Ornstein as well as the Klein/Yglesias discussion on The Weeds about "constitutional hardball". The argument, in brief, is that so long as the Democrats try to pretend the norms will prevail, the Republicans will take advantage of them. Making it credible that they the Democrats too will play hardball may be vital to convincing the Republicans to stand down on racing to replace Ginsburg before the election... but if it fails, they should go ahead and expand the court because it's within the same rules that the Republicans claim to be adhering to.

We'll see how it all plays out. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

So you noticed an overarching theme/narrative with the Biden campaign?

Character matters, decency matters, Biden is a man of character, Biden is a decent man etc. They repeating that ad nauseam to hammer this message home (message discipline is the word here I think). This theme also gets repeated over and over and over again by the Lincoln project and the other anti-Trump conservatives.

You can roll your eyes all day long, keeping the message discipline up is far more important than some cheap political point scoring. And you are proposing the exact opposite. Throw that away, just to piss all over Donnies hospital bed. It's really not worth it.

And the best part is, Biden does not have have to get his hands dirty, there are enough Democrats in the trenches to do it for him.

A man of character would probably at least appear to sympathize more with those who have lost loved ones, than the one who caused the pandemic. I know you want to call this "cheap," but I call it acknowledging the hurt and pain this man caused, and telling people you're on their side, not the "billionaire" who caused this. Think about the debate where Biden tried to make this point: how many of you have loved ones who are no longer there due to this man's handling of the pandemic. Now those same people may see Biden as a man who sympathized with the man who caused so much harm to their personal lives. It's not petty, it's not about revenge--but you can't see beyond the binary, as I noted above. The fact you keep referring to this as "pissing on his hospital bed" or whatever shows you're failing to see gradation in how this should be done.

What we could have happen (and likely given how Trump destroys "normal decency") is that he recovers, and he says, "See? Hoax." And Biden did nothing to control the message. He waits until Trump takes control of it.

[BigFatCoward]

Is someone really arguing for showing how they are the anti trump, by doing exactly the sort of childish and pathetic 'told ya so' that trump would do? 

 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Simon Steele said:

And I've spent a "second" thinking about why he didn't do it. He's taking some ideological high road that literally does nothing for him except tell all the people who already thinks he's a decent man that he is a decent man. The way Omar went against Trump was not petty, nor a rage-induced attack. It was measured, and it kept the message on what Trump has done, not his likely suffering right now. I think you have trouble seeing beyond a binary.

Yeah how dare Biden and all these supposed "leftists" take this ideological high road and have the audacity to wish Trump well on a recovery.  Like, take this guy for example:

 

[Lollygag]

18 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Eh.  My great grandmother stopped speaking german publicly after wwii.  She was born in Michigan in 1900.  She occasionally spoke it with her cousins, and later lasped into it in her final years when she was suffering from dementia.

My grandmother and my aunt's and uncles love using her recipes but I think it's kind of bizarre to assume that any of them are going to start going fascist because Trump likes Nazis and 80 years ago people stopped speaking German in public for appearances sake.

I am not very convinced that german americans alive today are so yearning for a connection to their heritage that they'd shackle themselves to Trump, who probably couldn't tell you shit about Germany.  The whole concept is baffling.

 

I definitely agree with this and it's my take, too. What concerns me more is Trump projecting aspects of German American culture which remain and then...turning it in a direction that benefits them? I'm not sure I'm wording that right. I'm thinking of the brainwashing Republicans have done to the rural communities over decades, their escalating with the absurd things they believe now and how social media can take existing things and blow them up.

I strongly suspect at least with some white supremacists that their it's ok to be white/white is awesome thing is rooted in seeing a growing minority community exhibit a culture which some white communities don't have and they're reacting to that lack of culture in tremendously unhealthy ways to compensate for some nebulous feeling of loss. Also strongly suspect this is at least partially why race politics or race identity politics makes them uncomfortable and they just don't want to think about it - they themselves are in a void of sorts and with Germans Americans, it was because of WWs and not by choice. Tradition and culture is sooo important to rural communities and I've seen where they've already been twisted to latch onto the wrong things.

[DMC]

32 minutes ago, Ran said:

Making it credible that they the Democrats too will play hardball may be vital to convincing the Republicans to stand down on racing to replace Ginsburg before the election... but if it fails, they should go ahead and expand the court because it's within the same rules that the Republicans claim to be adhering to.

I mean, the Dems can threaten to burn the Capitol down with the GOP caucuses in it upon taking power, it's still not going to deter McConnell and the GOP Senate from confirming Barrett.  Regardless, expanding the court needs to be one of the key - if not the key - agenda items for a Biden administration if the Dems can capture the Senate.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

21 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

A man of character would probably at least appear to sympathize more with those who have lost loved ones, than the one who caused the pandemic.

He didn't cause it. He's botched the response and made things worse than they needed to be. But he obviously wasn't standing in a Bio-Chem Lab creating that virus.

21 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

I know you want to call this "cheap," but I call it acknowledging the hurt and pain this man caused, and telling people you're on their side, not the "billionaire" who caused this.

Again, caused is the wrong word. So expressing sympathy and displaying, well, basic human decency is now taking sides? Again, what did Biden actually do. He wished him and well and offered a prayer for a speedy recovery. That bastard. If that's about the extent of the worries in your life, I envy you.

21 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Now those same people may see Biden as a man who sympathized with the man who caused so much harm to their personal lives. It's not petty, it's not about revenge--but you can't see beyond the binary, as I noted above.

Talking about seeing beyond the binary, eh?

21 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

It's not petty, it's not about revenge--but you can't see beyond the binary, as I noted above. The fact you keep referring to this as "pissing on his hospital bed" or whatever shows you're failing to see gradation in how this should be done.

Or it shows your total absense of political instincts/common sense within you. No, offense. But that's pretty much the only explanation, on why you would even contemplate providing a collapsing Trump campaign with even a tiny bit of ammunition. If you fail to see how your "good argument" will be spun, then we should all thank the holy spaghetti monster, that you have no influence over Biden.

21 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

What we could have happen (and likely given how Trump destroys "normal decency") is that he recovers, and he says, "See? Hoax." And Biden did nothing to control the message. He waits until Trump takes control of it.

Again, Biden's campaign is build around decency and character matter, let's rebuild those. Biden can hammer Trump over dodging out of the campaign thanks to that hoax, or whatever if the Trump tries that. For now this goes absolutely swimmingly for Biden. Trump's claim it's nothing gets contradicted by him having to go to the hospital and being put on experimental medication.

16 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Is someone really arguing for showing how they are the anti trump, by doing exactly the sort of childish and pathetic 'told ya so' that trump would do? 

Isn't that obvious?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

2 minutes ago, DMC said:

I mean, the Dems can threaten to burn the Capitol down with the GOP caucuses in it upon taking power, it's still not going to deter McConnell and the GOP Senate from confirming Barrett.  Regardless, expanding the court needs to be one of the key - if not the key - agenda items for a Biden administration if the Dems can capture the Senate.

Wouldn't abolishing the electoral college be higher up on the to do list?

[IheartIheartTesla]

1 hour ago, Kalibear said:

Their statement was that it waas likely an overreaction from the debate as it was a poll taken almost immediately afterwards. It probably is not that strong. 

Yeah, I saw that too (it was mainly the Republican pollster who said that I think, they had both a D and an R design it); kinda begs the question just why they took a poll right after if it ends up being useless. Experts should take these things into consideration.

[DMC]

Just now, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Wouldn't abolishing the electoral college be higher up on the to do list?

That'd require a constitutional amendment for Congress to be able to do anything about it.  Obviously that ain't happening.  Best strategy is still the National Popular Vote, which has little to do with a president's agenda.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Also, why do they want to release Trump tomorrow? Regardless of how he is feeling, the next few days are critical, and even though the WH is well staffed and equipped, its not a hospital.