Joe Biden

[Phallarchist]

19 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

There is ZERO evidence for this fantasy of yours. Did it cause some black voters to question supporting him? Almost certainly. Is he still likely to cause a significant drop in African-American votes for Mango Mussolini? Yes.

It's especially hysterical to see you waving the Trump banner when you claim to be so supportive of alpha males, when your candidate wears lifts, lies about his height and weight, whines like a baby incessantly about how badly he's treated, and throws Twitter temper tantrums whenever he gets cranky. The toddler-in-chief is the least adult male president we've ever had, and you sing his praises like a cuckold. Pitiful.

I am not a Trump supporter, and even if I were, it would not be because he's a masculine ideal. You're just randomly spouting the latest
talking points, apropos of nothing.

Biden's task, had he been trying competently to win an election, was to try to convince these million voters to choose him over Trump. He instead elected to mock them by way of defining them out of their own race. Perhaps Trump's support has eroded such that these voters are now considered disposable, but I would think that the marginal failures of 2016 ought to be regarded as monitory.

Edited May 27, 2020 by FaceLoad
URL

[BootmanLA]

6 hours ago, FaceLoad said:

Biden's task, had he been trying competently to win an election, was to try to convince these million voters to choose him over Trump. He instead elected to mock them by way of defining them out of their own race.

Again, there were not "these millions" of voters who might choose Trump over him. There were just over a million, last go-round, and every, and I do mean EVERY, credible poll suggests that Trump's standing with the African-American community has eroded substantially. At this point, I would predict with some confidence that he will get a lower percentage of the black vote than Romney or McCain did. 

That does not mean Biden's gaffe was harmless. While not presuming to speak for black voters (unlike some), I will note that I believe I understand the point Biden was making: that black voters backing Trump are unlikely to have shared in the overall, experience typical of black Americans. He is certainly not an eloquent, off-the-cuff speaker, but he is still light-years ahead of Trump in terms of everything that matters. And in the long run, that is ALL that matters. Bitching about his imperfections is only going to dissuade voters from showing up to vote, and we need every voter we can get.

[tj87]

I don't know if this was always the way - or if it has come about because of social media and a change in how we consume news. Society generally has found itself a complex mess where people, institutions and movements must be perfect in order to exist - and in the absence of perfection; good just isn't enough. This is an argument coming from both extremes of the political spectrum and it's destabilising our ability to understand and communicate with each other.

There isn't room to make mistakes, or be even be moderately in favour of supporting all your causes - these attitudes and behaviours are easily weaponised, and turned into a message aimed to instil a sense of fear or hate or righteous indignation in one group, by others with a vested interest in making you feel like that.

Look past the every day ephemera - the overriding substance is what matters most. Biden is FAR from perfect, but another four years of what you've currently got...?

 

 

[twoguyssssss4fun]

But the real question.. which one of our former , or future presidents was most likely to be found in a sling in a bathhouse?

[tj87]

16 hours ago, twoguyssssss4fun said:

But the real question.. which one of our former , or future presidents was most likely to be found in a sling in a bathhouse?

I don't know, but something tells me Elizabeth Warren's flogged a fair few men on a Saint Andrew's Cross.

[BootmanLA]

On 5/27/2020 at 4:41 PM, tj87 said:

Biden is FAR from perfect, but another four years of what you've currently got...?

From early in the Democratic primary process, -when there were what, 25 self-declared candidates running? - I've been asked repeatedly who "my" candidate is, the one I was supporting to become the nominee. As I told each of them, "I'm voting for the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she may be, even if it's the reanimated zombie corpse of Adlai Stevenson." Because this, exactly - four more years of what we have occupying the White House now will destroy what's left of America.

Nothing about Joe Biden - nothing that's been reported thus far - even begins to stir me from that position. 

Edited May 29, 2020 by BootmanLA
Hit "save" too fast. :)

[ChasingAss]

On 5/27/2020 at 4:41 PM, tj87 said:

I don't know if this was always the way - or if it has come about because of social media and a change in how we consume news. Society generally has found itself a complex mess where people, institutions and movements must be perfect in order to exist - and in the absence of perfection; good just isn't enough. This is an argument coming from both extremes of the political spectrum and it's destabilising our ability to understand and communicate with each other.

There isn't room to make mistakes, or be even be moderately in favour of supporting all your causes - these attitudes and behaviours are easily weaponised, and turned into a message aimed to instil a sense of fear or hate or righteous indignation in one group, by others with a vested interest in making you feel like that.

Look past the every day ephemera - the overriding substance is what matters most. Biden is FAR from perfect, but another four years of what you've currently got...?

 

 

Hasn't the UK been voting for right wing shit consistently over the last decade? I think the US will manage to sustain it self either way.

[tj87]

1 hour ago, ChasingAss said:

Hasn't the UK been voting for right wing shit consistently over the last decade? I think the US will manage to sustain it self either way.

Sort of, we had a hung parliament for a chunk of that but yes, our political system is in terrible shape at the moment too - and it's interesting to chart the path it's taken because it shares many of the similarities of what's happened as is happening in the US, but our system differs in many ways too*. The print news media is almost exclusively right wing, some extremely so and they cater to the worst sort of tribalism that I spoke to earlier - they're all owned by very rich people who intend to stay that way. In 41 years; our version of the democrats; Labour, have been in power once for four terms.

It seems once a party gets in; votes are usually happy to keep them there until the opposition cycles through enough leaders to find a winner; then they'll jump on whatever political crisis is happening and force the tide to turn.

Our democrats were in power at the time of the financial crash; and after the Iraq war it was easy for Conservatives to point the finger and say "look at this mess". Voters wanted change and they were presented with a very moderate, quite competent leader David Cameron. As a government, they were quite socially liberal; gay marriage was legalised. But fiscally, they were very conservative, crippling the economy with massive austerity cuts that hit poorest working families the hardest, the NHS, prisons, legal aide; and when you take away the stitching of the social fabric; people start to get angry.

This was then jumped on by the extreme right wing factions - who blamed Europe - and to avoid losing another election to extremists on the right; Cameron promised a vote on EU membership - fully expecting to win without even trying in full Hilary Clinton hubris-style.

Unfortunately the EU is FAR from perfect; and like Clinton, that made it a convenient scapegoat for campaigners and a boogieman. A huge campaign basically said "We can't pay for social services unless we quit the EU because they take all your money."

It was very very close, but leave won; and then for four years NOTHING happened politically. This is where our systems differ; you don't vote for a leader, you vote for a representative and whichever party gets the most reps in the house gets to make the decisions.

While all this is going on; to counteract the far right; a huge movement is underway to elect our Bernie Sanders to leader of the democrats. He's fully socialist which they love, despite the fact he has absolutely zero leadership qualities and is extremely unpalatable to moderates - had you elected Bernie to be your nominee btw, I guarantee Trump would've won four more terms. People just aren't ready for that sort of socialism.

Anyway, Brexit vote wins, Cameron quits and after some pretty nasty infighting; a very useless, inflexible head mistress - incredibly bland - took her chance at leadership and tried and failed to deliver, then she called for an election and was effectively denied the job; no party got a mandate to lead, no party in the househouse got enough votes to pass any legislation - and instead of coming together to try and find common ground and pass legislation; it all descended into the worst kind of politics with plenty of talk but little action, no attempt to try and win votes with compromise; just endless attempts to make an end run on Brexit, which failed over and over and over and over again.

Four years later, she gives up and our Trump- Boris Johnson fights another election; opposite a not-much-liked socialist (whom for four years the press has been calling an anti-semitic loser*) Boris didn't have to do anything to win it; just avoid making any mistakes, even if it means hiding from the press in an industrial fridge - which he actually did.

Where Boris and Trump differ:
Boris isn't a very good leader; he'll lie to get what he wants, but he has an agenda for the country and he knows how to get stuff done. - even if I don't believe it's the right thing. He would be an excellent salesman - he would make a fortune. Unfortunately over a decade of conservative party, the A-team and the B-team have now all been used up so our cabinet is made of largely exhausted substitutions who drop the ball frequently. In the pandemic, they've made some interesting fiscally liberal choices that may turn out to be quite good for the economy; but the management of the situation has been fairly haphazard.

Trump however not only isn't a very good leader; he isn't a very good person - by which I don't mean he's a mean person; i mean he's failing at being human altogether. He can't take in information and disseminate it. He doesn't appear to have any faculties to process logic. He wouldn't even be a good salesman; he's like some blob creature from Rick N Morty - there's no there there; his days are filled with what can I tweet to make my team like me more? And politicians just use him to get what they want or work around him.

Yes the US may manage to sustain itself, but in what form and at what cost? The US has the might to change the world for the better (or worse). When wielded, you can instil a sense of global order and Western democracies look to you to do that; as a partner and a leader. You can bend the world to your whim with awesome political and diplomatic power, backed up by awesome military power - and to the US benefit, but it requires that the world sees there's a man behind the wheel; at the moment America is just a big-ass monster truck with a brick wedged onto the gas pedal and an empty cab because the last driver bailed out four years ago.

Absent US leadership; you're just gonna leave China to take the top spot and flounder away as some banana republic pseudo-democratic country while the rest of the world struggles on without you.

*Where we differ; Boris is just one faction of the in the right wing party and there are plenty of representatives who are willing to call him out on his BS and use political means to force him into making a decision. This is something that doesn't seem to happen in the US, even is Susan Collins keeps alluding to the notion that she might one day, if Maine keeps her in office - The Republicans, all except Mitt Romney, are the party of Trump. We don't have that over here. There are people to the right and to the left of Boris Johnson - although he won such a large majority it may not matter too much...

**There's never been any real evidence that Jeremy Corbyn is anti-semitic, but there's plenty of evidence to suggest pro-Corbyn factions in his party were - and also that he had absolutely zero leadership skills or ability to get rid of them so the idea festered until it became as good as true.

-

Finally our democrats have someone pretty competent in the top spot, so I've high hopes for the future. I don't know if Biden is the best candidate for the most powerful position in office but against Trump... He's lightyears ahead. If he can act like a leader meanwhile avoiding any catastrophic mistakes. Fingers crossed the US will begin picking up the pieces.

Sorry for monopolising the Biden board.

 

 

[evilqueerpig]

Bernie Sanders has NEVER registered as a Democrat, so the DNC shouldn't have allowed him to run for the Dem nominee, either in 2016 or this year.  If the "Bernie or bust" crowd hadn't sat out the 2016 election, the selectoral college might've not been a factor.  As for the orange moron, the RNC willingly hopped into bed with him like a $20 hooker.  We need to take the Senate back and if he's not defeated, Moscow Mitch can be relegated to the dungheap of history.  For all their false piety, the evangelicals backed a serial adulterer, just to further their antigay, antiabortion agenda.  Biden is far from perfect, but anyone is preferable to the paranoid narcissist who currently occupies the oval office.

[BootmanLA]

On 6/26/2020 at 4:36 PM, evilqueerpig said:

Biden is far from perfect, but anyone is preferable to the paranoid narcissist who currently occupies the oval office.

I will vote for Joe Biden, assuming that as expected he gets the official Democratic nomination this summer.

If the Democratic nominee is the reanimated zombie corpse of Adlai Stevenson, I will vote for the Democratic nominee.

If the Democratic nominee is a can of baked beans, sold on the "dented/damaged" aisle at the discount dollar store , I will vote for the Democratic nominee.

NO candidate the Democrats could nominate could possibly be a worse president than the one we have now.