US Politics: holding our breath waiting to see what happens next

[Zorral]

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/joe-biden-upset-finally-decided-in-arizona-democrats-score-11-more-electoral-votes/

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/whyy.org/articles/lgbtq-community-relieved-at-biden-win-but-worry-scotus-could-jeopardize-rights/amp/

 

Oh yeah almost forgot about the fact gay rights are at risk of getting torn apart anyway.

Barrett will probably go with Alito and Thomas and Kavanaugh.

So pray Gorsuch and Roberts comes through again.

[Martell Spy]

The party not being united in 2016 is entirely Clinton's fault. I came to this conclusion after watching how adept Biden was at uniting the party this time around.

[Fury Resurrected]

24 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

The party not being united in 2016 is entirely Clinton's fault. I came to this conclusion after watching how adept Biden was at uniting the party this time around.

I don’t think it’s entirely Clinton’s fault. I don’t like her as a candidate, I don’t like her judgement on several very important votes in the senate, she’s way to the right of anything I’d be happy about. But I think a lot of what worked against Clinton is sexism against a woman who doesn’t try to mask her ambition with the expectations people have for women’s behavior. I think a lot of it is also the conspiracy theories about the Clintons.

In Biden’s case, I think the Barrett nomination and the quarter million dead Americans from COVID did more party uniting than any person could have done.

[GrimTuesday]

8 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I don’t think it’s entirely Clinton’s fault. I don’t like her as a candidate, I don’t like her judgement on several very important votes in the senate, she’s way to the right of anything I’d be happy about. But I think a lot of what worked against Clinton is sexism against a woman who doesn’t try to mask her ambition with the expectations people have for women’s behavior. I think a lot of it is also the conspiracy theories about the Clintons.

In Biden’s case, I think the Barrett nomination and the quarter million dead Americans from COVID did more party uniting than any person could have done.

I think there are a lot of reasons that the party wasn't united, but I think that Bernie being the cause is way down the list. There were a lot of things that went wrong, some were Hillary's fault, some were out of her hands, ultimately I think that it will be one of the elections that political scientists will be studying for a long time.

[Martell Spy]

37 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I don’t think it’s entirely Clinton’s fault. I don’t like her as a candidate, I don’t like her judgement on several very important votes in the senate, she’s way to the right of anything I’d be happy about. But I think a lot of what worked against Clinton is sexism against a woman who doesn’t try to mask her ambition with the expectations people have for women’s behavior. I think a lot of it is also the conspiracy theories about the Clintons.

In Biden’s case, I think the Barrett nomination and the quarter million dead Americans from COVID did more party uniting than any person could have done.

I voted for Clinton last time around. I'm talking about the massive overtures Biden made to Sanders, the party platform, etc. Possibly Sanders really cared that Biden is male, but I tend to think he was just effectively bribed. That the bribe happened is very easy to prove since it was out in the open.

I'm really shocked, but the virus seemed to have little effect on this election, or there'd have been a GOP legislative wipe-out. Tens of millions gave Trump a complete pass on it.. Biden having a large coalition ranging from leftists to liberals to centrists seemed to really matter.

[Martell Spy]

2 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/whyy.org/articles/lgbtq-community-relieved-at-biden-win-but-worry-scotus-could-jeopardize-rights/amp/

 

Oh yeah almost forgot about the fact gay rights are at risk of getting torn apart anyway.

Barrett will probably go with Alito and Thomas and Kavanaugh.

So pray Gorsuch and Roberts comes through again.

Is there a case?

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Is there a case?

From the article. ”There’s currently a case in the Supreme Court about a Philadelphia adoption agency that wants to turn away same-sex couples. It’s the first major dispute to come before Barrett.”

[Martell Spy]

Just now, Varysblackfyre321 said:

From the article. ”There’s currently a case in the Supreme Court about a Philadelphia adoption agency that wants to turn away same-sex couples. It’s the first major dispute to come before Barrett.”

Well, at least we get to see if the Handmaid hype is real.

[Sci-2]

Lincoln Project says they were useful:

 

[mormont]

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I guess the good thing about team Trump throwing lawyers at every state that could be that after this is all over no one will be able to say, with any credibility, that the Trump team didn't get a chance to plead their case.

It won't stop people from believing the election was stolen from Trump. But the average person will know that Trump had every chance to show evidence of fraud and couldn't.

He has a sticky note!

[Relic]

Following up on yesterdays exchange - 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/trump-pseudo-coup-significantly-lacking-in-popular-support-polls-say.html

A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds that about 60 percent of Republicans believe Biden “won the election,” which would suggest that only 40 percent at most believe Trump won it. On the other hand, a YouGov/Economist poll finds that about 60 percent of Republicans say they think that Trump’s legal challenges will lead to the results of the election being overturned, and a Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that 70 percent of Republicans “don’t believe the 2020 election was free and fair.”

Let’s take the highest number there—70 percent—and assume that it applies to everyone who voted for Trump, not just Republicans. Then let’s add 5 points to it given that polls before the election underestimated Trump’s national support by about that much. As an extremely generous back-of-the-envelope calculation, then, we find that 75 percent of Trump voters may believe he should legitimately be the next president. (Another reason that’s likely generous: Supporters of both parties often give ludicrously inaccurate answers to polling questions about matters of fact, suggesting that they interpret those questions as serious, but not literal, cues to signal their partisan identity.)

Even given all these assumptions, though, we would still only conclude that the portion of voting-eligible American adults who are prepared to believe Trump should remain president is 23 percent. Twenty-three percent! This is the base on which he is trying to build an illegitimate takeover of federal power

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

He has a sticky note!

Compelling.

[SFDanny]

6 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

Fair enough, I saw absolutely no evidence that Bernie was trying to screw Hillary in 2016, I think he should have dropped earlier, but at the same time there were few if any Bernie supporters who didn't vote for Hillary would have voted for her if he had dropped out before he did.

I don't think Bernie's aim was to "screw Hillary." Rather I think Sanders let his ambition override his promise of support for her when it was most needed. It led Sanders to decide to carry his campaign all the way to the convention, and to mount a quixotic and unprincipled effort to win superdelegates to undermine the vote of the voters in the primaries and caucuses which had already been won by Clinton. It is when he lost me as a supporter. I voted for him in the California primary and had supported him, in large part, because he had made it clear that he would support Clinton against Trump, and his ambition made him forget that promise when it was most needed.

The result was, although it was crystal clear who the winner was, he didn't come through on his promise until after a disastrous display of anti-Clinton sentiments at the convention. When his support was most needed, he was absent. The few rallies and appearances he made after the convention in support of Clinton could never make up for the division he caused in the days between the last primary and the end of the convention.

What angered me most was the hypocrisy of Sanders incredibly stupid and unprincipled efforts to upend the will of the voters with the votes of superdelegates. Something he had railed against almost from day one of his own campaign. Character shows in moments like this, and Bernie showed he placed his own ambition over the needs of the moment.

It is one very important reason why I didn't support him this time. Instead, I supported Harris in her run. Although, I must admit, I would likely have supported Harris regardless of what Sanders did in 2016. I think I made the right choice.

That doesn't mean I think Sanders is an enemy to be forever castigated for the role he played in 2016. He is an important voice and he has helped to raise terribly important issues. Although, he sometimes confuses his raising of those issues with his supposed authorship of them. He certainly isn't the only one to do that.

I read there are rumors that Sanders wants a cabinet position. Most often he is mentioned as a Labor Secretary. I would have no problem with such a move, if it is true, except with the very real problem of who would take his place in the Senate. Vermont has a republican governor. 

As to the last issue you raised, while it is true most surveys say that the percentage of Sanders's 2016 voters who supported and voted for Clinton was in the high 80 percentile range, the loss to Trump was in numbers so small in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that one cannot but wonder what would have happened if a few more Sanders voters had cast their ballots for Clinton in those states. Perhaps we all would have been spared the damage of the last four years.

That is not to say Sanders was the only reason for Trump's victory. The list of reasons is long, and has to start with mistakes Clinton herself made. It certainly has to include James Comey, Russian interference, successful voter suppression campaigns, and much more. But one lesson of 2016 has to be the need to build a broad unified movement against dangerous reactionary, and even fascistic, forces that exist in our nation. The idea of some "purists" on the left that that movement must be limited only to those who agree with them on every issue is sectarian and infantile in the extreme. It plays into the hands of the far right. The so-called "Bernie or Bust" section of Sanders supporters exemplify that idiocy.

 

[OnionAhaiReborn]

The Seven Pillars of Biden’s Foreign Policy

Sharing for this alone:

 

Yet there is an undercurrent of relief in many parts of the world that American leadership is back. “Biden is an excellent choice both for us and the free world, which is facing complicated challenges,” Tzipi Livni, the former Foreign Minister of Israel, wrote in Haaretz over the weekend. “It certainly won’t hurt to have a mensch as the leader of the free world.”

[The Anti-Targ]

Ha! I just found out I only have 1 degree of separation from Joe Biden. When my parents were working in Israel in the 90's and early 2000s, my Dad met him along with the US ambassador to Israel. Dad liked 1990's Joe Biden quite a bit. Unfortunately he died less than 1 year into Obama's first term, and he was more or less terminal for most of that time  and just before the 2008 election, so didn't really pay any attention to US politics at the end.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Read this list of grievances by the Trump campaign for a good laugh: https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/trump-voter-fraud-michigan-lawsuit_n_5fabef94c5b68707d1fb0166?ri18n=true

Quote

“I was told ‘go back to the suburbs Karen’ and other harassing statements,” Jennifer Lindsey Cooper wrote. “The Democrat challengers would say things like ‘Do you feel safe with this [woman] near you’ and ‘is this Karen bothering you?’ I believe this was designed to intimidate me and obstruct me from observing and challenging.” 

Unacceptable.

[DMC]

John Harris has a piece up on the Great Intraparty Debate.  It's fairly evenhanded and clearheaded overall, but does include a pointed criticism of AOC's NYT interview on Saturday that, refreshingly, has nothing to do with ideology or policy priorities.  Thought it was worth sharing:

Quote

Ocasio-Cortez, on some occasions, counts as one of the party’s freshest and most-appealing new voices. Her sour interview Saturday with the Times’ Astead W. Herndon was not one of these occasions. She said moderate lawmakers who blamed the left for losing their seats or having uncomfortably close calls have only themselves to blame for being “sitting ducks.” She plausibly asserted that she knows a lot more than most members about effective use of social media. She implausibly suggested that if more members had used Facebook effectively, and accepted her help when she was practically begging to give it, the Democrats could have avoided the losses which leave Pelosi clinging to a narrow majority. “Every single that rejected my help is losing,” she complained, “and now they’re blaming us for the loss.” She gets so frustrated by the lack of support from fellow Democrats, she said, that she considered not running for reelection.

Self-referential commentary is hardly unusual for a politician of any stripe or any generation. More striking about AOC’s interview was that she sounded less like a political visionary and more like a campaign operative, boasting for reporters at some hotel bar as last call nears. This from the primary sponsor of the Green New Deal? This is the transformative future of the Democratic Party?

 

[The Anti-Targ]

This article is a good summary of the various tactics being used to try to support the fraud claims.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/us-election-viral-twitter-theories-flourish-as-trump-campaign-claims-statistical-evidence-of-fraud/FOX4QZYHWUJOQ7FCNJKKXMLVNM/

Notable are the claims made by corrupt Rod Blagojevich, who's sentence was commuted by Trump just this year. Not that the claims are notable, or particularly worthy of merit, but that media is giving time to the corrupt guy who's freedom he owes to Donald Trump. He's credible because he has insider knowledge of how the Democrats cheat? No, he's irrelevant because he's never going to get anywhere near a court to testify in Trump's favour, nor is his name going to appear in any affadavit alleging anything. But he's a tool for sensationalising the stories and allegations, so of course the media will use him.

There seem to be a handful of legal academics who are willing to possibly permanently damage their careers trying to support the fraud claims.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Everyone should read that story! BLM masks! A large man wearing a BLM shirt! I stuck my foot in the door so the police officer couldn’t close it and I was arrested and I have never been arrested in my life, said the 57 year old bankruptcy lawyer!

eta: the story posted by Tesla