***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[storm2006]

A thousand words INDEED. Obama is gearing up to play basketball with a dusty rock that looks like it’s been through the infinity gauntlet. PRESIDENT ELECT Trump is delicately drinking a fresh bottle of Fiji. It’s clear which leader presided over a BOOMING economy.

 

[DLF]

A thousand words INDEED. Obama is gearing up to play basketball with a dusty rock that looks like it’s been through the infinity gauntlet. PRESIDENT ELECT Trump is delicately drinking a fresh bottle of Fiji. It’s clear which leader presided over a BOOMING economy.

Also 44 (refuse to say Obama’s name) is talking on a flip phone while walking down a flight of steep stairs while NOT wearing a mask. How irresponsible.

meanwhile lord trump drinks water carefully bc if he chokes and dies on water, the free world will be in jeopardy.

 

[osh kosh bosh]

I didn't want to admit it...

but it does seems that older black democrats made the correct choice in giving Biden the nomination.

because if current conditions persits it's gunna be a layup for Joey.


and im not sure it would be for Warren or Sanders.

 

[dwalk31]

I didn't want to admit it...

but it does seems that older black democrats made the correct choice in giving Biden the nomination.

because if current conditions persits it's gunna be a layup for Joey.


and im not sure it would be for Warren or Sanders.

The momentum will shift if he does not pick a black running mate.

And if there are any actual debates.

 

[boris]

The momentum will shift if he does not pick a black running mate.

And if there are any actual debates.

Trump running on the 2016 platform again with this atrocious pandemic response is going to shift support?

 

[stuntman mike]

And if there are any actual debates.

that one worries me but i don’t think it’s overwhelmingly in favor of trump. if biden can get through it without looking too senile, he should be ok. if he can push the right buttons, he might be able to get trump to say some really dumb ****. i think the right person could provoke trump into saying the n-word on live tv. you know that ****er says that **** in private.

 

[mister friendly]

Bolton such a grizzled Republican veteran.

 

[Methodical Management]

That is a weird headline considering that President Trump and President Obama have both had the same number of Supreme Court Justices appointed and neither of President Obama's picks were black either.

This is a weird response, because the headline isn’t limited to the Supreme Court.

Here are the facts, if they matter to you:

Diversity of the Federal Bench | ACS

Current statistics on the gender and racial diversity of the Article III courts.

www.acslaw.org

 

[RustyShackleford]

I didn't want to admit it...

but it does seems that older black democrats made the correct choice in giving Biden the nomination.

because if current conditions persits it's gunna be a layup for Joey.


and im not sure it would be for Warren or Sanders.

Yeah, even I'm surprised at how well Joey is doing.

Things can change of course but if it is a generic campaign though November, and turnout doesn't drop well below 2016, he is gonna wash Trump. The Senate is even looking like it might flip. Even if Trump does better with black voters by a couple points, if Joey keeps the gains over Clinton it looks like has has with rural voters, older voters, and white voters, it will be a bloodbath for Trump.

Some massive has to happen to swing the election back to Trump for him to win in a traditional way. The GOP and their allies gonna try to cheat though.

Adam Sewer put out a article this morning that raised a good point. The Trump and the GOP are struggling to effectively slander Joey because he is a old white guy and it more centrist. So all the culture war stuff they ran with Obama and Hillary just doesn't land the same way. Plus Trump doesn't have a strong economy to run on. Mans needs needs Biden to be caught up in a major scandal.....

Trump Is Struggling to Run Against a White Guy
The president is having a difficult time deploying his traditional culture-war playbook against Biden.

Eight months into Barack Obama’s first term as president, the right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, who was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump earlier this year, warned that Obama’s election had ushered in a dangerous inversion of power.

“Obama's America—white kids getting beat up on school buses now,” Limbaugh declared in September 2009, in response to a viral video of a fight between a black teenager and a white teenager on a bus. “In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.”

Limbaugh was offering a template for the next decade of culture-war arguments on the political right. For eight years, the Republican Party’s chief villain was the first black president, whose center-left liberalism was decried as “Kenyan anti-colonialism,” whose health-care bill was “reparations,” and whose election set off a “race war” waged by power-mad black Americans. His anointed successor, Hillary Clinton—in Limbaugh’s words, a “feminazi” armed with a “testicle lockbox”—was an easy target for anxieties about a different inversion of power, that of America’s traditional gender hierarchy. Clinton’s defeat was not sufficient to remove her as a target; to this day, Fox News’s most successful hosts return to the Clinton oasis like wanderers dying of thirst

Trump, first by embracing the “birther” movement, and later as the candidate who promised to return the United States to an idealized past, successfully rode these backlashes to the White House. Four years later, Trump is hoping to ride the same wave of anger, fear, and resentment to a second term.
There’s only one problem: His opponent is Joe Biden.

For the past few months, Trump and the conservative propaganda apparatus have struggled to make the old race-and-gender-baiting rhetoric stick to Biden. But voters don’t appear to believe that Biden is an avatar of the “radical left.” They don’t think Biden is going to lock up your manhood in a “testicle lockbox.” They don’t buy that Biden’s platform, which is well to the left of the ticket he joined in 2008, represents a quiet adherence to “Kenyan anti-colonialism.” Part of this is that Biden has embraced popular liberal positions while avoiding the incentive to adopt more controversial or unpopular positions during the primary. But it’s also becoming clear that after 12 years of feasting on white identity politics with a black man and a woman as its preeminent villains, the Republican Party is struggling to run its Obama-era culture-war playbook against an old, moderate white guy.

The president’s sparsely attended rally in Oklahoma on Saturday was a showcase for Trump’s blunted arsenal. He warned that “the unhinged left-wing mob is trying to vandalize our history, desecrate our beautiful monuments,” to “tear down our statues and punish, cancel, and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control.” He warned that the left wants to “defund and dissolve our police departments.” He fantasized about a “tough hombre” breaking into your home at night, warned that Biden was a “puppet of China,” called the coronavirus the “kung flu,” and complained that Democrats had objected to his characterization of some undocumented immigrants as animals (Trump later claimed he was exclusively referring to MS-13 gang members).
But even Trump didn’t really buy it.

“Joe Biden is a puppet of the radical left,” Trump said, before acknowledging that “he's not radical left. I don't think he knows what he is anymore. But he was never radical left.”
Trump’s supporters are having similar trouble talking themselves into believing Joe Biden is the apocalypse. In 2016, an unlimited variety of merchandise and swag referring to Hillary Clinton in unprintable sexist terms was available at every Trump rally. In 2020, Trump fans cannot even come up with Biden T-shirts to sell. Biden has been eating into Trump’s support among older voters and even among white evangelicals, a group Biden cannot expect to win but whose support Trump cannot afford to allow to slip. When the Fox News host Laura Ingraham warns that Biden “will just melt for the macchiato Marxists,” you can sense the weariness of a tired stand-up comic clinging to a set that no longer makes anyone laugh.

I don’t want to overemphasize the importance of campaigns. The unemployment rate is above 13 percent, and may be as high as 16 percent; more than 120,000 Americans have died in a pandemic; and thousands upon thousands have joined protests against police brutality in the past few weeks. A majority of the public believes Trump has botched his response to all three of these events, and as a result he is polling badly.

Yet none of this means Trump cannot prevail. The first five months of the year have seen a pandemic, an economic collapse, and a nationwide uprising against racism in policing. The next five might yet see a Trump comeback, particularly if the economy recovers before November, if some unforeseen event turns the political landscape to Trump’s advantage, or if Biden himself implodes somehow. But up until this point, the former vice president has proved far more resilient than his detractors have expected, even surviving Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine into implicating Biden in a crime that never occurred, an act for which Trump was impeached earlier this year.

Although Democrats may take heart from Republicans’ difficulty in deploying their traditional culture-war playbook against Biden, that very difficulty illustrates how embedded racism and sexism remain in American society. Biden himself mused last year, “I think there's a lot of sexism in the way they went after Hillary. I think it was unfair. An awful lot of it. Well, that's not gonna happen with me."

Biden’s electability pitch was not just about being moderate relative to the rest of the primary field, but also about being a straight, Christian, white man, one whom Republicans would find difficult to paint as a dire threat to America as conservative white voters understand it. While Biden’s campaign struggled in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, one black voter told The New York Times, “Black voters know white voters better than white voters know themselves. So yeah, we’ll back Biden, because we know who white America will vote for in the general election in a way they may not tell a pollster or the media.” In the primary, Biden’s strength, particularly with older black voters, seemed to stem not only from his long-term relationships with black leaders or his association with Obama, but from voters’ perception that his background makes him ideally suited to halt Trumpism before it turns into the kind of decades-long backlash that followed the civil-rights movement.

Their bet on Biden as the candidate best positioned to neutralize Trump’s white identity politics appears to be paying off for the moment. Politico reported on Monday that the president is “surprisingly hesitant to engage his opponent—at least by Trump standards—and some advisers think he’s struggling with how to take him on.” It is not just that Trump’s supporters find Biden less threatening because he is a white man; the president himself feels that way. The notion of a Biden presidency simply does not provoke the visceral rage that Clinton and Obama did—not in Trump, and not in his supporters.

It’s not that Biden, as compared to his predecessors, lacks flaws for Trump to exploit. In fact, while the two candidates are different in most of the ways that really matter—Biden has a baseline respect for democracy and the ability to express remorse—they possess superficial similarities. Watching Republicans struggle to land a punch on an elderly white man with suspicious hair, a reputation for exaggerations and fibs, questionable policy judgment, and a track record of racist remarks who is running a nostalgic campaign for a bygone era, and yet whom voters seem willing to give the benefit of the doubt no matter what—well let’s just say their opponents know what that’s like.
That Trump’s campaign is being hampered by some of the same social forces he rode to victory in 2016 might be a source of dark amusement. But when you think about it for more than five minutes, it’s not terribly funny.

This line especially sticks out...

“Black voters know white voters better than white voters know themselves. So yeah, we’ll back Biden, because we know who white America will vote for in the general election in a way they may not tell a pollster or the media.”

But let some tell it, older black people didn't choose Bernie because they just don't understand their own oppression.

 

[RustyShackleford]

BTW, everyone should read Adam Sewer's stuff.

 

[rexanglorum]

Things are lining up for a big Biden win and as importantly, flipping the Senate.

Let’s hope something can be done with those majorities. In the last few administrations, the end result is bigger and bigger income inequality, greater and greater power imbalances between workers and capital, and more structural disadvantages for Democrats when it comes to elections and political representation.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Also to keep it #1HUNNA, I don't think Biden picking a black female running mate would affect black turnout or voting patterns.

Unless maybe it was Abrams specifically for Georgia.

There is a strong argument for picking a black woman, but all things considered, I just don't feel Biden picking a black woman in 2020 matter as much as Obama picking a white guy in 2008.

I feel he definitely should, without question he should, but the turnout reason is not a strong argument.

 

[hipstermike]

So like Marc Maron said, what if he doesn’t leave though

 

[Christian Pulisic]

What did I just watch

 

[obeahmyal7]

Yeah, even I'm surprised at how well Joey is doing.

Things can change of course but if it is a generic campaign though November, and turnout doesn't drop well below 2016, he is gonna wash Trump. The Senate is even looking like it might flip. Even if Trump does better with black voters by a couple points, if Joey keeps the gains over Clinton it looks like has has with rural voters, older voters, and white voters, it will be a bloodbath for Trump.

Some massive has to happen to swing the election back to Trump for him to win in a traditional way. The GOP and their allies gonna try to cheat though.

Adam Sewer put out a article this morning that raised a good point. The Trump and the GOP are struggling to effectively slander Joey because he is a old white guy and it more centrist. So all the culture war stuff they ran with Obama and Hillary just doesn't land the same way. Plus Trump doesn't have a strong economy to run on. Mans needs needs Biden to be caught up in a major scandal.....



This line especially sticks out...



But let some tell it, older black people didn't choose Bernie because they just don't understand their own oppression.

I've long been skeptical of opinion polls. But I that Sanders beats Trump. I thought that Biden's record would catch up to him and keep black and younger voters home. I think I confused American politics as it is for what I hoped it would be.

I think Sewer gets it right. And the decision by Biden's folks to keep him off the mic and out of sight has been brilliant. I have concerns about the ability of The Lincoln Project and never trump republicans to push the Democratic Party further right, but I welcome their digs. Whatever it takes to end this nightmare.

 

[hipstermike]

What did I just watch

Florida being Florida basically

 

[AEA18]

So like Marc Maron said, what if he doesn’t leave though

We get to see him get dragged out

 

[RustyShackleford]

What did I just watch

I knew when the mods locked the NT Conspiracy Theory thread, people would go elsewhere to vent.

 

[rexanglorum]

Broadly speaking, Americans should be voting for more left wing candidates. All races, all social classes and not just now but in the future but also retroactively. Blue collar whites and professional class whites guys should have supported Jesse Jackson in 1988. Bernie should have been a retired two term President by now. Elizabeth Warren ought to be the leader of a center right Party, social Democracy should be the minimum baseline for being taken seriously. Paul Ryan should be as oastracized as Davis Duke (post 1990 to pre 2016).

The biggest obstacle is coordination. No one bloc wants to waste their political capital. It’s a thin wedge sort of dilemma. A dilemma which can only be overcome by direct action. When capital and it’s politicians have to give ground, change is not only seen as doable but demanding structural change comes to be seen as normal and conservatism and Centrism becomes the thing that is seen as weird and foolish.

 

[mister friendly]

Trump is one the greatest politicians of all time, remember 2016? He came back from one of biggest campaign deficits and won the Presidency the first time he had run for public office.Donald Trump wins at everything .

Obama says Democratic operatives need to do more to get Biden and other Democrats

 

[Benny Hinn]

So like Marc Maron said, what if he doesn’t leave though

 

[RustyShackleford]

Trump is one the greatest politicians of all time, remember 2016? He came back from one of biggest campaign deficits and won the Presidency the first time he had run for public office.Donald Trump wins at everything .

Obama says Democratic operatives need to do more to get Biden and other Democrats

-Trump is not one of the greatest politicians of all time.

-It was actually his second time running for President.

-Trump's win was not that spectacular in hindsight. He got a ton of outside help. Comey's letter swung the election at the last minute, the polls were inside the polling error, and he sneaked through. The stars aligned for dude at the last minute but the trends that helped him get into office where not some aberration. His most impressive move was priming Midwesterns white identity.

Biden is polling well above Clinton right now. Most importantly in swing states.

 

[boris]

What did I just watch

A lot of buzzwords there that generally come from one side. It seems like that side could easily persuade these people to wear masks if they actually cared about America. Do you disagree, dwalk31 ?

 

[Belgium]

 

[dacomeup]

The momentum will shift if he does not pick a black running mate.

And if there are any actual debates.

You were saying that Biden couldn't win before. We're not really banking on your analysis right now. Trump had also floated that he wouldn't debate this election cycle, citing "unfairness". Desperation may change that, though.