US Politics 2

I don't think anyone here is hanging him out to dry or suggesting it is in any way as bad as .1% of what Trump does on a daily basis. But the fact is the Democrats need to have a credible and reliable candidate to combat the Republicans and so far all we are seeing is the same bunch of old, white men (and an old white woman!) that are going to be easy prey for the republican media war machine - even before making gaffes like this.

Surely the democrats have more to offer than this?

Yes I agree better candidates should be found. The problem I think is with the practical effect things like this have on campaigns and the overall narrative that the floating voters are subjected too. Democratic politicians are made easier prey for republican media when democrat support is criticising them for the same things, and the more important point (of equality and access to education in this case) is forgotten.

D: "Trump is a racist!"
R: "No he's not, that's just liberal propaganda!"

R: "Biden is a racist!"
D: "We agree!"

Trump is undoubtedly worse, but the differing approaches will make them appear much closer together. Similar things happen over here, like the Brexit vote being between the black-and-white "the EU is terrible and the UK will be better off alone in every way" and the more accurate, but ultimately less effective "the EU has problems but on balance we are better off within it". Every admission of EU flaws was giving ground to vote leave, and fueling the discussion they wanted to have. Here, criticism of Biden from the democratic side is feeding into republican attempts to discredit any democratic candidate. That's how I see it when I read the replies to that tweet.

The American Left need to get realistic, they aren't going to find that candidate who can pass their purity tests whilst also being a household name that people will go out to vote for. Your average joe sixpack doesn't know or care who Kamala Harris is, but he's heard of Joe Biden and that just has to be good enough. They just need to beat Trump, everything else is secondary.

Joe Biden is so old he was conceived just after Pearl Harbour.

If that’s the best hope for the future if America then they might as well just end the country now.

His casual racism is also a big problem, “hey Trump’s really really racist, what if we got somebody who’s a bit less racist?”.

It does seem like these are the final years of a political era in the US and that younger people on both sides will emerge and hopefully be a bit more open to compromise and sanity but maybe that's just me being optimistic for once.
I think it will need for the TV news to change and be less partisan and using opinion hosts less though as while people like Hannity and Fox and Friends exist and popular the propaganda will continue and hit jobs like we've seen recently against their newest enemies in the so called Squad will also sadly continue.

OrangeRKN wrote:

Karl_ wrote:

twitter.com/AndrewHClark/status/1159630998667239425

Maybe it's because Trump is president (see above) but this seems so very uncontroversial to me. His overall point is wanting to promote equality. His implied equivalence of poor to non-white is an awkward stereotype, but in the US one with statistical reality. If his agenda is to address that, that's a good thing. A proportional response is surely to correct his language while still agreeing with the overall point, not to hang him out to dry - especially when the president and leader of the opposition is posing for photo ops with a baby he orphaned.

I mean, I don't have that much skin in the game: I'm (clearly) not American and I don't follow it all that closely. My probably-hot take is, look, they're still at the stage of nominating a candidate for the Democrats, and Biden strikes me a weak candidate with a worrying history of racism and uncomfortable behaviour around women, who only appears to have learned superficially from those mistakes and is still ridiculously gaffe-prone in a way that, to me, implies a mask is slipping rather than it being the random noise of genuine misspeaking.

Not all candidates have to be perfect. I don't think anyone should get #cancelled over one gaffe or even a history of gaffes if they would otherwise be a good progressive candidate---we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good---so I could extend critical support if, say, his policies were really good. But he is one of the least progressive, most "establishment" candidates in the running. Trump galvanises his supporters, no-one is going to be galvanised by Biden.

I think are lots of better candidates in the race. Sanders and Warren are easily much better. I can see an argument for critical support for Gabbard even if she is an imperialist. Even some of the problematic meme candidates (#YANGGANG #MARIANNEMINDSET) would be better than than this wholly-pro-establishment kinda-racist kinda-pervy ancient white guy.

While I'm spewing hot vomit all over this thread, Harris is bad. Private prisons and wrongful incarceration is one of the biggest problems in America today and she was an unapologetic part of that system. She is the least likely candidate to do anything meaningful about ICE imo, she has a track record of kicking legal system reform into the long grass and that DONE Act stuff is milquetoast at best.

OrangeRKN wrote:Yes I agree better candidates should be found. The problem I think is with the practical effect things like this have on campaigns and the overall narrative that the floating voters are subjected too. Democratic politicians are made easier prey for republican media when democrat support is criticising them for the same things, and the more important point (of equality and access to education in this case) is forgotten. [...]

I can see this argument once we are properly in the head-to-head part of the election cycle, but surely now Democrats need to be critical of every candidate so that they actually select the best one?

Karl_ wrote:I can see this argument once we are properly in the head-to-head part of the election cycle, but surely now Democrats need to be critical of every candidate so that they actually select the best one?

They need to select the most electable one. That doesn't always marry with being the "best" one, sadly.

Tafdolphin wrote:

KK wrote:Joe Biden also almost referred to Theresa May as Margaret Thatcher. Fact is he's just too old to be President. I can't imagine how tired Biden must be at the moment.

I don't think age should be used as an excuse here. Bernie is a year older and you don't see him strawberry floating up like this.

Biden's just a casually racist arse.

The only reason he even has a shot is his association with Obama.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said publicly for the first time on Thursday that his panel is conducting an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, adding that the committee will decide by the end of the year whether to refer articles of impeachment to the House floor.

The committee has said as much in recent court filings as it seeks former special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury materials and testimony from his investigation’s star witnesses. But it was a rare rhetorical escalation from the New York Democrat, who has privately pushed Speaker Nancy Pelosi to support a formal inquiry of whether to remove the president from office.

“This is formal impeachment proceedings,” Nadler said in a CNN interview. “We are investigating all the evidence, gathering the evidence. And we will [at the] conclusion of this — hopefully by the end of the year — vote to vote articles of impeachment to the House floor. Or we won’t. That’s a decision that we’ll have to make. But that’s exactly the process we’re in right now.”

That timeline would put an impeachment battle in the middle of the Democratic presidential primary contests, which begin in early 2020 — a concern for Democrats who believe that the window to act on impeachment is quickly closing

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/ ... gs-1454360

strawberry floating finally.

Preezy wrote:

Karl_ wrote:I can see this argument once we are properly in the head-to-head part of the election cycle, but surely now Democrats need to be critical of every candidate so that they actually select the best one?

They need to select the most electable one. That doesn't always marry with being the "best" one, sadly.

Well sure that's reasonable, for sure I agree that pragmatically-speaking political parties have to make decisions like that. But Trump dismantled establishment-endorsed candidate after establishment-endorsed candidate during his last campaign. Why do you think Biden is well-suited to deal with that?

Sanders and Warren have name recognition, they are genuinely good speakers (and seem to be friends which would help on a Sanders/Warren or Warren/Sanders ticket!), and they aren't tainted by a close association to the establishment.

This isn't left purity, they are all liberals from where I'm sitting. Has Warren even read Marx? Psh!

Karl_ wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:Yes I agree better candidates should be found. The problem I think is with the practical effect things like this have on campaigns and the overall narrative that the floating voters are subjected too. Democratic politicians are made easier prey for republican media when democrat support is criticising them for the same things, and the more important point (of equality and access to education in this case) is forgotten. [...]

I can see this argument once we are properly in the head-to-head part of the election cycle, but surely now Democrats need to be critical of every candidate so that they actually select the best one?

Very true, and look how much criticism Trump got from republicans at the same stage. The difference this time round of course is that Trump is already a given, so the two parties are at different points in the cycle. It seems more dangerous for the democrats in that respect.

Karl_ wrote:But Trump dismantled establishment-endorsed candidate after establishment-endorsed candidate during his last campaign. Why do you think Biden is well-suited to deal with that?

Mainly because Biden is known, and he's known in an uncontroversial way. He was a very visible part of a very popular administration. He's also suffered a fair bit of personal tragedy that will garner sympathy and make him seem more relatable.

And if that all sounds very shallow and superficial, hey - this is America.

Sure. It looks likely that Biden will get the nomination whatever happens, so I hope you're right. He might be a bit crap in many ways but he's obviously a far lesser evil than Trump.

Walmart has instructed all of its stores to remove any signs or displays of combat or violence, including video games.

It hasn't changed its approach to selling guns.

A hollow gesture that makes it appear as if they're doing something, when in reality they're doing strawberry float all.

KK wrote:A hollow gesture that makes it appear as if they're doing something, when in reality they're doing strawberry float all.

Worse I think. They're giving credence to an overt distraction from the real issues.

Swap a few words around and that gooseberry fool is a 2012 Onion headline.

Moggy wrote:

twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1159298817478414337

“It’s great people died because I got to make a video about how much everyone loves me!”

I've just watched this with the sound on for the first time and burst put laughing. That music needs to go over the game of thrones intro.

You feel as if it needs an equally as dramatic voiceover and someone saying at the end "Trump visits Dayton, Ohio and THEN it's on to El Paso, Texas...it's Trump On Tour - Friday's at 10, only on THE SUPERSTATION T.B.S."

How the heck are people interpreting what Biden said as racist? Minority communities are disproportionately poor. White privilege is an undeniable factor. Therefore, poor people should, rightly, be considered just as talented as "White kids" because that is factually accurate.

That's literally the opposite of racism. Are people really denying the genuinely unfair struggle of poor minority communities and the unfair advantage you get just from being white?

http://hardyik.es/