For sure Harris wasn’t at her best the night Tulsi went full-on Tulsi at her. (I had to laugh last night when Tulsi started invoked Aloha during her closing statement; she’s not quite in Biden’s league for nastiness but she’s close.)
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It’s official.
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Pictured: Deval Patrick’s polling results.
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How does he keep finding feet to stuff in his mouth?
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You know, Biden scares me as much or more than anyone on that stage last night, but I think people are getting this moment wrong. (I try to be nothing if not fair, you see.)
Listen to his verb tense at that moment:
What I hear is “the only African-American woman that’d ever been elected.”
I think Booker and Harris misheard him as saying “that’s ever been elected,” and that’s what almost everyone (except the transcriber of this video?) has been hearing since then.
Then when the laughter starts, Biden says, “No, I said the first. I said the first African-American woman. The first African-American woman.”
Isn’t he just rephrasing “the only African-American woman that’d ever been elected”?
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All Cops Are Bastards
Just pragmatically, I don’t think the “ACAB” slogan will win Democrats any elections. And maybe it’s just meant to be a punk rock expression of feeling rather than a literal statement, but I don’t understand how it’s useful in serious political discussion. What about the cops who worked on the cases of Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone, for example? Bastards, the lot of them? Dismissed with a cry of “ACAB”? There’s got to be more nuance than that in the real world.
Caveat: I recognize that reasonable people can disagree; we don’t have to agree on this; I readily admit that I lack the authentic punk rock spirit.
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Let’s compromise.
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I don’t think that you’ll find any posts where I suggest that it should be made into an election ad.
In this particular case, I was mainly referencing it (along with the Phil Ochs song) to highlight the point that the murderous brutality of American domestic policing is not disconnected from the murderous brutality of American foreign policy. As is demonstrated by Pete’s enthusiasm for re-importing military counterinsurgency tactics into the domestic sphere.
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So…regardless of his phrasing I think that’s what he meant to say.
But I think it was another Biden moment, which is to say really clumsy and not thinking about what he said before he said it and that can translate into acting imprudently as well.
But yes, I think you’re essentially correct.
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?
I think that’s what he did say. And meant to say.
Again, I have the opposite of any interest in defending him. I wish he’d drop out tomorrow.
What’s more interesting to me is how, it seems to me, pretty much everyone misheard him.
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I only mean is that even if he actually said what most people (myself included) heard, I think his intent was as you said.
No worries. I know better than to think you’d defend Biden. You’re just being reality based, something we’re in dire need of now more than ever. You’re likely correct and we probably misheard exactly what he said.
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Thanks. I don’t mean to put too fine a point on it.
Maybe it’s one of those things where if we develop a certain conception of someone (“Biden is such a doddering gaffer!”), it becomes a map that we pay more attention to than the actual territory. Or something.
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Definitely, and we should certainly focus on his staggering shortcomings on policy history and platform, not the doddering gafferness that’s kind of been the focus of his faults even since he was veep. It’s an excellent observation.
I freely admit that mostly I posted about it because Harris (who I’m only slightly less un-about nominating) achieved the Platonic ideal of a shrug emoji and I needed a sliver of levity.
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Yes, coming from you, I believe it. Some people might grasp at straws to defend him, but somehow I can’t picture you being one of them.
To me, a Biden v. Trump is asking people to choose between gleefully evil and negligently evil. Which is not to say “both sides”. But it does veer dangerously close to the territory of “less bad”.
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This might explain some of how people misheard it:
I am not trying to buy him sympathy. See my last comment. But I think it’s better if we focus on what he has supported, voted for and done, as opposed to verbal slip-ups. There’s plenty of disqualifying material there.
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In the meanwhile of Biden trying to walk back what Booker was able to do to him in the debates
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Nice to see Fox going the TMZ route of doing things
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