On April 13 2020 06:36 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2020 03:15 Sent. wrote:On April 13 2020 02:40 TheTenthDoc wrote:On April 12 2020 09:44 Zambrah wrote:On April 12 2020 08:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I definitely second the impression that biden's age is showing, been feeling that since he announced his candidacy.
I'd still vote for him against Trump without a second's hesitation or ill feeling about it, though. Trump wants everything to be about himself and his gut feeling is the primary motor behind his decision making process - I'd expect Biden to have a far more delegatory nature and his mental decline to be less of a big deal in how he performs his presidential duties. To me, it's more worrisome in terms of how likely he is to win the general election - when Biden was attacked for bis apparent senility in one of the debates, it seemed to play very poorly with the crowd, but Trump and the people surrounding him aren't gonna pull any punches at all. Yeah, Trump is going to HAMMER him in any debates, Biden is almost guaranteed to trail off into nothingness multiple times and Trump will probably throw some serious barbs his way.
That being said, I still don't think thats going to help Trump win. Trump won when noone knew how he'd perform, against an unfathomably unpopular candidate, after a full 8 year Democrat presidency, and he lost the popular vote. Im pretty sure nothing will change between now and election day when it comes to who people are voting for, camps are set, most people who are engaged are going to be impossible to budge from their anti-Trump or pro-Trump vote. Having watched the Trump/Clinton debates, this seems unlikely to me. Trump was and is a very, very bad debater, and the trends in polling for him were pretty bad in the aftermath of all the 2016 debates (even the primary ones IIRC). I think the "trail off into nothingness" meter will be at least equal for both and Trump descends into nonsense very quickly even when he has a script. That said, you're right that debates are just so far from election day and the news cycle has accelerated so much that their impact on actual votes is not likely to be very high. (also, for what it's worth I thought Biden did fantastic in the 2012 debates against Paul Ryan-watching those debates is a master class in humiliating your opponent and undermining their claims of being a "policy wonk"-but Paul Ryan is a terrible debater and that will have been 8 years ago, so it's not worth much) I don't get how you can call Trump a very bad debater in the context of presidential debates. He's great at saying what his potential supporters want to hear, and I don't think you can say the same about Clinton. In my opinion he gained more than he lost from those debates, though I admit that's arguable. Either way I don't see how Trump's a much worse debater than Clinton or Biden. I have more faith in Biden than I had in Clinton because he can at least make himself sound like he believes in what he says. 'Making shit up that sounds good' isn't good debating. Ever. And that's a bad standard to use because it's been proven that Trump's supporters are willing to engage in Olympic-level mental gymnastics to justify everything Trump says or filter out everything he says and replace it with an 'ideal'. Trump is a very good campaigner, but even then he's only a good campaigner when dealing with a largely uncaring electorate that can't be bothered to put in the legwork to learn much about the guy and are willing to ignore anything bad as 'fake news'. You put Trump in almost any other western country and he'd get annihilated. Even the Trumpiest Trump characters in other nations tend to have a better grasp on politics that are actually happening because they have a minimum standard of entry for the electorate to take you seriously. Trump's arguments are completely illogical and based largely on lies and the correct assumption that so long as he lies long enough and loud enough people will just believe him out of exhaustion (or even worse, just not care that he lies because they've decided he's their guy so lying is good now) instead of... you know... NOT VOTING FOR A LIAR. By the measure you're applying here Trump could out debate Noam Chomsky on leftist theory because he'd just stand there talking nonsense and everyone who was a Trump supporter would say 'man Trump owned that lefty, had him scrambling just to get a point in edgeways, Trump really is the smartest man in the world'. Clinton obliterated him as a straight up debate performance. It just didn't matter because we're in a time in politics where nobody really listens to debates as anything other than a bit of entertainment, because the debate format itself no longer promotes deep, long-form debate on a subject that would really dig deep into the candidates' knowledge, plans and ambitions in specific areas. It's ludicrous to dedicate three minutes of a debate to 'the economy' or 'how you will improve it'. That's a three hour conversation minimum. Show nested quote +On April 13 2020 06:26 Logo wrote:On April 13 2020 06:01 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 13 2020 05:40 Biff The Understudy wrote:On April 13 2020 03:59 GreenHorizons wrote:On April 13 2020 03:54 Gahlo wrote:On April 13 2020 01:30 ChristianS wrote:On April 13 2020 01:19 IgnE wrote:On April 12 2020 04:17 ChristianS wrote:On April 12 2020 03:36 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
The very first contest (if you ignore everything leading up to it in media and the party) demonstrated that electoral contest was not valid imo. Several subsequent state contests demonstrated that as well. If you set aside the electoral fraud we all witnessed in Iowa and the subsequent voter suppression lines in Texas, Chicago, Wisconsin, etc.. the small fraction of the general electorate that constitutes the Democratic primary (typically a moderate group) selecting Biden doesn't allow me to draw the conclusions you have. Bernie support among the left is overwhelming, the left is only a small part of the Democratic primary (for many reasons within and beyond their control)
[quote]
I'm suggesting the increased scrutiny a competent and non-complacent media would provide could expose people to enough to realize how terrible of an idea it is to put Biden up against Trump and there's more than enough votes left to prevent that fate. Also that doing so by way of delayed primary voting and a delayed convention (made possible/unavoidable by covid-19) is far preferable than trying to come up with solutions after Biden is nominated or if he wins, or worse, if he loses. But your assessment of the validity of the election isn’t the issue here. Whether you think those irregularities cost Bernie the primary (and I think it’s pretty clear they didn’t), there’s not any clear metric by which Bernie could claim legitimacy. He didn’t win the primary, he hasn’t been ahead in polls at almost any point, and at this point he himself has dropped out. You’re hoping some negative media will take Biden down, but he’s been in the public eye for decades, including as VP for eight years. If there’s an angle the media could cover him by that would sink him, why would it only happen in the next 6 months?Do you think Bernie was wrong to drop out? Do you think he was likely to turn it around? And more importantly, do you really think there’s a real chance of convincing voters to support a guy who already dropped out? What about Tara Reade's accusations? Yeah, that one’s a little more plausible. If we’re answering “how will the public respond once this story is widely reported?” I have no idea what the answer is, or what would happen if more women came forward. My intuition is that it would damage but not sink him, but that’s really nothing more than a guess. What if we had an Access Hollywood-style “in his own words” proof of sorts? Probably the more difficult question is “how should we respond to credible but unproven allegations against powerful figures like this?” I had a long back-and-forth with Mohdoo a few months ago that felt productive (to me, at least), but I suspect the same conversation in this context would be impossible to have. Tempers are a lot higher now than they are then. If it's credible then he should be shouted down to suspend his campaign the same way people told Fraken to gtfo when things came out about him for a position he already held, at a lesser station, on a lesser allegation. The flak blanketing Biden from this is ridiculous. People saying they don't care because it's 1 allegation and not the 21 pointed at Trump - as if you couldn't even just put another moderate instead if you're so deadset on being anti-Bernie. People accusing blindly that she's a Russian plant because she made a blog post a few years back about liking the country after visiting or something. More like #BelieveAllWomenWhenIt'sConvenient This is Neb's point about agency. Democrats are helpless to prevent nominating a child caging, racist, probable rapist and/or just think that's better than social democratic policy. I even heard he was raping children in pizzerias. And that he had death squads assassinating people who worked for his campaign. I suggest we call him Killden. I think this is a gross way for Democrats to deal with credible accusations of rape along the lines of how Republicans treated Ford. If somehow congress did drag her out for hearings I don't think Democrats will look great trying to discredit her for Biden either. I'd add toward ChristianS point, that if Biden didn't also have a long well documented history of inappropriately touching women and violating their personal space that argument would be more convincing. It's amazing the way people argue that voting for Biden isn't selling out or a moral failing, but then react this way to a credible sexual assault allegation which makes it really really hard to believe the first point. On April 13 2020 06:24 ChristianS wrote:On April 13 2020 06:13 Gahlo wrote:On April 13 2020 05:40 ChristianS wrote:On April 13 2020 03:54 Gahlo wrote:On April 13 2020 01:30 ChristianS wrote:On April 13 2020 01:19 IgnE wrote:On April 12 2020 04:17 ChristianS wrote:On April 12 2020 03:36 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
The very first contest (if you ignore everything leading up to it in media and the party) demonstrated that electoral contest was not valid imo. Several subsequent state contests demonstrated that as well. If you set aside the electoral fraud we all witnessed in Iowa and the subsequent voter suppression lines in Texas, Chicago, Wisconsin, etc.. the small fraction of the general electorate that constitutes the Democratic primary (typically a moderate group) selecting Biden doesn't allow me to draw the conclusions you have. Bernie support among the left is overwhelming, the left is only a small part of the Democratic primary (for many reasons within and beyond their control)
[quote]
I'm suggesting the increased scrutiny a competent and non-complacent media would provide could expose people to enough to realize how terrible of an idea it is to put Biden up against Trump and there's more than enough votes left to prevent that fate. Also that doing so by way of delayed primary voting and a delayed convention (made possible/unavoidable by covid-19) is far preferable than trying to come up with solutions after Biden is nominated or if he wins, or worse, if he loses. But your assessment of the validity of the election isn’t the issue here. Whether you think those irregularities cost Bernie the primary (and I think it’s pretty clear they didn’t), there’s not any clear metric by which Bernie could claim legitimacy. He didn’t win the primary, he hasn’t been ahead in polls at almost any point, and at this point he himself has dropped out. You’re hoping some negative media will take Biden down, but he’s been in the public eye for decades, including as VP for eight years. If there’s an angle the media could cover him by that would sink him, why would it only happen in the next 6 months?Do you think Bernie was wrong to drop out? Do you think he was likely to turn it around? And more importantly, do you really think there’s a real chance of convincing voters to support a guy who already dropped out? What about Tara Reade's accusations? Yeah, that one’s a little more plausible. If we’re answering “how will the public respond once this story is widely reported?” I have no idea what the answer is, or what would happen if more women came forward. My intuition is that it would damage but not sink him, but that’s really nothing more than a guess. What if we had an Access Hollywood-style “in his own words” proof of sorts? Probably the more difficult question is “how should we respond to credible but unproven allegations against powerful figures like this?” I had a long back-and-forth with Mohdoo a few months ago that felt productive (to me, at least), but I suspect the same conversation in this context would be impossible to have. Tempers are a lot higher now than they are then. If it's credible then he should be shouted down to suspend his campaign the same way people told Fraken to gtfo when things came out about him for a position he already held, at a lesser station, on a lesser allegation. The flak blanketing Biden from this is ridiculous. People saying they don't care because it's 1 allegation and not the 21 pointed at Trump - as if you couldn't even just put another moderate instead if you're so deadset on being anti-Bernie. People accusing blindly that she's a Russian plant because she made a blog post a few years back about liking the country after visiting or something. More like #BelieveAllWomenWhenIt'sConvenient But there was photographic evidence with Franken, no? As I said to Mohdoo a few months ago, I always blink when people say without a qualifier “#BelieveWomen,” because I don’t think it takes much analysis to see that “any man accused of anything by a woman should immediately be cancelled unless the accusations can be incontrovertibly disproven” isn’t a very workable system. If the only choices are “she’s a filthy liar who should be mocked and shunned” or “he’s a filthy rapist who should be imprisoned or, at least, shunned and unemployable” a lot of lives will be ruined on either side. Of course, that conversation was in the context of Warren being called (paraphrase) “a greater enemy to women than sexists because false accusations make other women less likely to be believed,” so in that context, I didn’t get a ton of pushback on the idea that #BelieveWomen needs some qualifiers. The trouble is that the public is desperately uncomfortable with uncertainty, but the situation is fundamentally uncertain. So they look for some way to collapse on either “she’s a liar” or “he’s the devil” and use that as the answer to every question about how to treat both of them. The question of whether we should treat the allegations as true or not really needs to depend on for what purpose. If a girl confides her story in a friend, they should be understanding and not interrogate her for “proof.” If she’s asking for criminal charges, we should expect some proof. Our present situation is in between: she’s not calling for imprisonment, but she’s clearly interested in ending his career. How credible is the claim? If I’m not mistaken, she says she told a friend and a family member at the time; both of them confirm. To my knowledge there’s no physical proof, either of the assault or that she told people. Iirc Christina Blasey Ford had therapist notes long predating Kavanaugh’s nomination; no such proof exists here. As I understand it, she had come forward previously last year, and specifically did not describe anything like what she now alleges; at the time it was more the kind of “hair-sniffing”/invasion of personal space stuff that several other women also described. On the one hand, it’s not unusual for victims of sexual assault to downplay what happened to them out of shame/fear of what people will think of them; on the other hand it’s often considered a sign of invented rather than factual stories that the story changes substantially over time. In terms of motivation, Tara Reade is apparently a big Bernie fan (and, bizarrely, a big Putin fan); that obviously doesn’t disprove her allegations, and it certainly wouldn’t be surprising that she wouldn’t support Biden if her allegations are true. But it does offer a pretty decent answer to “why would she make this up (and choose the moment she did to come forward)?” If I’m not mistaken (and someone please correct me if I am) she first revealed these new allegations on a pro-Bernie politics podcast, which would be pretty consistent with the “desperate Bernie supporter tries desperate tactic” narrative. So where does that leave us? Obviously YMMV, but to me, the allegations rest entirely on the word of Tara Reade (and to a lesser extent, that of her friend and family member); and we can’t rule out that this allegation was invented to influence the Democratic nomination. That leaves a lot of uncertainty about what actually happened, enough so that I don’t think “cancelling”/ending the career of the accused is warranted. If I’ve misrepresented the facts anywhere, I promise it was unintentional and I invite someone to correct me. Otherwise, I’m sure some of you disagree with me, but I’ve tried to approach the subject carefully and compassionately; I hope you guys will do the same. That's where you're kinda losing the plot. They are refusing to even hear her out. They're just circling the wagons the same way Rs did for Kavanaugh. If we're gonna play semantics with "believe women" then I think we can agree that the interpretation of "hear women out" is the goal, which is flat out not happening here. Granted, I don't think in the majority of cases an automatic canceling is reasonable - since yeah she may be lying or misremembering - but if there's a reasonable concern that the guy we want to be president(or dislike the least as the case may be) is a rapist then a pause isn't unreasonable. Did Ford come forward with all her evidence before the hearing? Idr. If there's no meat to it when they hear it out, that's the breaks. It fucking sucks that people don't have evidence of something horrible happening to them, which may not be the case here. Same way we don't know whether or not Bernie said a woman can't be president, there's no evidence of it, and his past behavior firmly leads otherwise. However, instead of addressing it, they just keep dodging from it. Sure, she should get to tell her story. That’s a conversation between her and whoever she wants to help her tell it on her terms. IIRC WaPo or some other newspaper helped Ford go through what evidence she might have, vetted the story as much as they could, and then published the allegations. Media outlets should do the same here. There’s quite a bit of time left to come up with evidence, if it exists, and people should absolutely look for it. But such cases don’t usually leave a lot of evidence. If that’s true here, that leaves us with uncertainty. And I think this isn’t going to be the last time an allegation like this surfaces at a politically significant time, and we really need to have a better idea how we want to deal with it. Isn't there some supporting evidence already out? A few people have said she relayed the story many years ago and the interns she was coordinating at the time claim she was abruptly removed from that duty. On top of that you have the initial story, that Joe Biden was pouring money into the Times Up charity after Tara Reade went to them. Plus the whole video-graphed history of Joe Biden being really 'hands on' with women doesn't really help here either. Like I said a few pages back, without a full, credible investigation all this amounts to is an irreversible surrendering of the moral high ground. You can never get indignant when the Republicans do this if you're going to circle Biden and protect him from credible allegations (in fact, more credible than the ones levelled at Kavanaugh since that was purely testimony from decades prior with no recentish behaviour to call upon; Biden's accusations are a lot more recent). And this is how America slides inexorably further and further to the right; the Democrats make themselves hypocrites on yet another moral point, the Republicans can then ignore it in their candidates.
There's this fucked up thing in the US where people love Trump JUST because he pisses off Liberals. That's it! That's their entire justification for loving him. They don't care about anything else he does or says. As long as the "Libtards" are pissed off, they're happy.
I don't know how you're supposed to reason with people like this. They're so mad about so many different things that this is how they choose to outlet that anger.
When I see people like this, it makes me understand how shit like Ethnic Cleansing is a thing. They're so drunk in their hatred that they can't think about anything else anymore.
It's horrifying, and it's sad.
|
EPT
