US Politics 47 - Biden Time (To Be Litigious)

[Larry of the Lawn]

Just now, Chataya de Fleury said:

And this does not negate what @Lollygag had said.

LG has shown absolutely nothing to argue that there was a hostile takeover of the GOP.  In fact Trump had a high approval rating among GOP voters.  I'm not seeing what makes this a hostile takeover.  "Most didn't come willingly?" Oh really?  

[Poobah]

50 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

As for AoC I think she has made good points, especially about Dems needing to dig in at the local level and make policies that can excite voters, especially young voters. I do think some of her attacks on the Dems, or even aspects of the larger coalition that brought Biden to victory, is unproductive at this time.

I mean what are her actual options? As an outside observer so far as I can see her and other actually somewhat leftist members of the Democratic party (Bernie, other Squad members) either stay silent while the center/center-right Democrat establishment take shits all over them and scapegoat the hell out of them, or attempt to run their own narrative and get accused of sowing dissent. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I'm going to ignore the spaghetti on the wall and go back to my main point that you're not addressing.

Socialist =/= Democrat. Bernie's not a democrat by his own words and party affiliation. Bernie had hostile takeover thrown at him all over the press and he didn't bother correcting that.

 

Sanders ran on the Dem primary and satisfied all their requirements to do so, twice. it doesn't matter if he calls himself an independent or a democratic socialist or anything else.  He's long caucused with Democrats.  That's not an 'attempted hostile takeover'.  

 

By your logic Joe Biden never bothered correcting the Hunter Biden laptop and emails - does his silence on that mean he agrees it's all true?  

Still curious about what I said that could be an ad hominem, considering in that same post you accused me of intellectual dishonesty. 

[The Anti-Targ]

I just noticed Georgia is going to do a recount. No matter really as it will only affect the size of Biden's win. But it probably helps to somewhat normalise the process of getting the results certified rather than having the Trump campaign throwing lawyers at the state and hoping something sticks. I can't imagine a >10K lead being overturned by a recount unless someone finds a way to invalidate a whole bunch of Biden ballots during the recount.

Not sure how recounts go in detail. Do they just do a straight re-count of votes making sure there was no error in the count (e.g. a Trump vote being accidentally counted as a Biden vote) or the filling in (filling out?) of the ballot as to render it invalid (ye olde dimpled chads), or is there a deeper evaluation of ballot validity? Of course once a ballot is in the counted pile it becomes anonymous, except perhaps it might be identifiable as a mail-in or provisional ballot, but still not who cast the ballot. So I don't see how a re-count can invalidate thousands of ballots that are correctly completed. It is not a tool for detecting voting fraud, just for ensuring an accurate count and  weeding out ballots that are invalid because they were not correctly completed.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

Also maybe don't listen to Jim Clybern, because if this is actually how he thinks, he is a monumental idiot.

 

My grandpa thinks a lot of silly things too.  I still don't like to call him an idiot.

2 minutes ago, Mr Meeseeks said:

Right? I thought it was the losing party that was supposed to start eating each other.

Said this the other day, but it's both head-shaking and amusing that the first inclination the Dem-leaning voters have after ousting an incumbent president by (what will be) 4 to 5 points is "what did we do wrong?"  Whereas just because they lost ground in the House and didn't quite take back the Senate, GOP-leaning voters would be spiking the football, hammering brews, and owning the libs in the same situation.

[kairparavel]

32 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Yeah, it’s about the quickest way to make me put away my checkbook and volunteer hours.

Don’t take my 28 years of voting Dem for granted, and don’t be so quick to give all the props to brand new voters who may not turn out ever again.

Conversely, if you are dedicated to the cause you don't take your ball and go home because someone ticked you off. Don't get all 'Not all Dem voters'. 

I don't know how else to put it. Like, is it about you or is it about everyone pushing forward here, bumps and all? Because the people you are possibly frustrating with your views are quite likely seeing the bigger picture and keeping on for the whole.

[GrimTuesday]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

My grandpa thinks a lot of silly things too.  I still don't like to call him an idiot.

Well, your Grandpa isn't one of the most influential members of the Democratic party and actively trying to undermine the rise of the left wing of the Democratic party.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

23 minutes ago, DMC said:

My grandpa thinks a lot of silly things too.  I still don't like to call him an idiot.

Said this the other day, but it's both head-shaking and amusing that the first inclination the Dem-leaning voters have after ousting an incumbent president by (what will be) 4 to 5 points is "what did we do wrong?"  Whereas just because they lost ground in the House and didn't quite take back the Senate, GOP-leaning voters would be spiking the football, hammering brews, and owning the libs in the same situation.

Liberals feel like they've lost if they didn't win enough, and conservatives say they won even when they got stomped out. 

[Lollygag]

23 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

Bernie's failure with black voters was obviously devastating to his campaign and we can ask why he failed, but arguing that he literally refused to try is just an absurd characterization. Of course he tried. In the end, he failed spectacularly with older black voters, but performed quite well with younger black voters. Unfortunately, older black voters vote at dramatically higher rates than younger black voters. Again, he has to answer for his failure here. But describing it as a product of refusing to reach out because black voters didn't buy what he was selling has no basis in reality. 

Going door to door selling something and calling it quits because they don't want *exactly* what you're selling isn't reach out in politics. The point of reach out in politics is to present a solution they will buy into, best accomplished by listening and requires flexibility and adaptability. But in this case, that would force Bernie to compromise and he wasn't willing so he walked away.

 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, GrimTuesday said:

Well, your Grandpa isn't one of the most influential members of the Democratic party and actively trying to undermine the rise of the left wing of the Democratic party.

Don't tell my grandpa what he can't do!

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Liberals feel like they've lost if they did win enough, and conservatives say they won even when they got stomped out. 

Yup.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

4 minutes ago, DMC said:

My grandpa thinks a lot of silly things too.  I still don't like to call him an idiot.

Said this the other day, but it's both head-shaking and amusing that the first inclination the Dem-leaning voters have after ousting an incumbent president by (what will be) 4 to 5 points is "what did we do wrong?"  Whereas just because they lost ground in the House and didn't quite take back the Senate, GOP-leaning voters would be spiking the football, hammering brews, and owning the libs in the same situation.

The Democratic Party appears to have an actual ideological divide while the Republican Party basically does not. They're pretty much all in lock step on crony capitalism and white nationalism. 

[Ran]

Clyburn and his constituency of moderate Dem black voters are the one who pushed Biden through the primary, ultimately, and I don't think any other Democrat in the primary would have managed to win this, so ... I would say dismissing him out of hand would be a mistake.

The problem is one of nuance. Things that work in some districts don't work in others. 

 

[Ser Reptitious]

1 hour ago, Lollygag said:

Just like progressive and socialist can't be used interchangeably, the same thing goes for the term left wing. The whole hates socialists so hates all left wing isn't right. The Republicans are right in a way in that socialists are disingenuously trying present as democrats and they've succeeding in slapping this label onto democrats who don't warrant this at all.

Here’s a radical notion: how about instead of obsessing what to label to stick to the various elected Democrats, they (and we) instead start talking about which policies to agree on? 

And especially for Democratic members of Congress it’d a refreshing change of strategy (as far as I can tell) if they actually hashed that out in a closed meeting, and agreed on strategy and messaging while they’re at it (some horse-trading may be required). 

Have you ever noticed that outside of primaries GOP members of Congress hardly ever seem to be sniping at each other the way Democrats do? I mean, are moderate Republicans regularly calling out their more right-leaning colleagues as “far right” and openly dismissing their policy proposals as unrealistic and/or too radical? Do they openly blame them for real or imagined election set-backs? 

I think most of us tend to agree that the Republicans are very good at getting together behind closed doors, hash out policies and strategies, and then show a unified messaging front, and that is what tends to win them elections. So why oh why is this so damn hard to do for the Democrats? 

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

The Democratic Party appears to have an actual ideological divide while the Republican Party basically does not. They're pretty much all in lock step on crony capitalism and white nationalism. 

Yeah.  Another opportunity to recommend Asymmetric Politics (Grossman & Hopkins 2016), the most prescient work on American parties of at least the past decade.

[Gorn]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Liberals feel like they've lost if they did win enough, and conservatives say they won even when they got stomped out. 

The goal of liberals is to pass actual policies; the goal of conservatives is to prevent liberals from passing policies.

To accomplish their goal, liberals need the presidency and the Congress and the Senate and a friendly Supreme Court. To accomplish their goal, conservatives only need one of those.

[GrimTuesday]

Just now, Ran said:

Clyburn and his constituency of moderate Dem black voters are the one who pushed Biden through the primary, ultimately. I would say dismissing him out of hand would be a mistake.

The problem is one of nuance. Things that work in some districts don't work in others. 

 

There is no nuance here, if Clyburn thinks that the Republicans are going to do a damn thing to he the Biden administration, he is just plain delusional. If one of the Justices drops dead on January 21st, that seat will remain vacant until either the Dems take the senate, or a Republican takes the white house. We are not going to see any stimulus because if it helps the economy, it hurts Republicans electorally. Dems need to accept that the Republican party as it currently stands are a bunch of inhuman demons who care nothing for anything other than imposing a capitalist theocracy on the American people.

[Ser Reptitious]

1 minute ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

@Ser Reptitious - this is not new.

Um, yes, I agree. But wouldn’t now, more than ever (with the spectre of Trumpism still hanging over the country) be the time to finally do this? 

[OnionAhaiReborn]

2 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

Going door to door selling something and calling it quits because they don't want *exactly* what you're selling isn't reach out in politics. The point of reach out in politics is to present a solution they will buy into, best accomplished by listening and requires flexibility and adaptability. But in this case, that would force Bernie to compromise and he wasn't willing so he walked away.

 

I already addressed the claim that Bernie was unwilling to compromise, with examples of him compromising. That's when you claimed he literally refused to even try to win black voters, which I demonstrated to be false. Now here we are again. I'm gonna be done with this now. I think you are being deeply unfair, but your views on this are obviously unshakable, as are mine. He's never going to run for President again, it doesn't really matter. 

[GrimTuesday]

1 minute ago, Ser Reptitious said:

Um, yes, I agree. But wouldn’t now, more than ever (with the spectre of Trumpism still hanging over the country) be the time to finally do this? 

It totally would, but as we know, it has to be the left wing to learn its place and shut up and let the establishment keep cashing Wall Street checks and keep on pay lipservice to progressive causes while doing basically nothing to help people.

[GrimTuesday]

1 minute ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

One would think; however, as this thread is illustrative, the circular firing squad never goes out of fashion.

The establishment centrist wing of the party were the one who started shooting, the left is rightly reacting.