Fucked indeed. The current best choice ticket includes someone who argued that releasing non violent offenders early from an overcrouded prison system was bad because her government would loose their pool of free labor! She did not want to loose their slaves. Idon’t think it is actually possible to be a democrat, and less progressive than that.
Most of those prisoners now work as groundskeepers, janitors and in prison kitchens, with wages that range from 8 cents to 37 cents per hour. Lawyers for Attorney General Kamala Harris had argued in court that if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool.
The thing about Covid-19 is how it affects the lifestyle of every American. Trump’s incompetence and malfeasance on this front is as strong as a motivator to vote Blue as one gets. Especially to the young crowd who are being put deliberately in harms way by the GOP.
Definitely. Not only was she profoundly ignorant of anything past her memorized talking points, when she did reach for deeper context it was just bizarre.
Considering that they largely rose to prominence by conflating personal liberty with the “right” to choose the most expensive, least successful private insurance in the modern world over universal health care, I’d say you’re right.
Oh, and also virulent racism, which is a very pernicious form of ignorance.
It’s odd it took Biden’s team this long to get on with their VP pick. Not saying they shouldn’t vet more but I’m wondering if the delay was tactical as to run down Trump’s numbers which is interesting but I don’t know if it’ll get them much. I think now the other issue they’ll have with a woman VP pick is the fact that Americans generally got a double standard where men are expected to be tough and women who are tough (say like a former prosecutor like Harris) is seen as “too b*****”. So they got an uphill battle to build Harris’ VP brand. I’m not even considering her politics because honestly for Presidential runs those change as quickly as the wind blows. Right now the DNC is trying to ramrod a centrist pick based on their theory that Americans will want a centrist for the Whitehouse (imo, they’re wrong but let’s see if they can swing it). Ultimately, I think Trump is doomed only because he keeps opening his mouth and with women he keeps making himself more and more unpalatable. He’ll still get a large share of the white men vote (particularly non-college educated) but I think it’s clear he lost the white woman vote for all demographics save for his base which IIRC is just a third of the GOP base, so that makes his job much harder and his path to an electoral college victory is pretty much one or two paths.
It might just be that they wanted to give the opposition as little time as possible to build up a narrative of their pick as some sort of murderer or whatever conspiracy theory they will employ. The less time they have to invent things to bash her with, the better.
I don’t think they need much time or imagination for that matter:
I would not even consider her centrist. She is quite a bit further right than myself and I’m guessing, most americans. They will have to be carefull with their bashing or they might actually bash their own ideals by accident.
Shhhh. He has to get his foot in the door first. If he went the Bernie/Warren route of moderate leftism, we’re looking at four+ more years of Trump/Barr/McConnell.
Now that Harris pretty much sews things up, can we start funneling money into the KY senate race?
Agreed, but really, anything that makes it seem more normal to more of the population is a plus.
How it’s not already normal-seeming to anyone is bizarre to me, I just find it hard to empathize with even intellectually. It just takes one quick glance at not just leaders of other countries today, but all the queens and empresses and female pharaohs going back centuries and millennia, many of whom were very successful at building and maintaining and ruling large states as well as or better than men who held those positions.
I had the feeling that the decision was made several weeks ago, and that the timing of the announcement was just that: timing. It let the current office holder make several unforced errors without the announcement drawing attention away from Don’s failure. And it’s announced right when he was hoping to smother the airways, so it stole his thunder again.
“He did what he always does,” the source said. “Whenever there’s a discussion about policy or the issues of the day, he would come in with what he thought but he will and does entertain everyone’s opinions.”
“At certain points, it seems like he may change his mind, but typically he ends up where he starts,” the confidant added.
100% agreed! I really hope no one actually thinks the democratic process in this country yields anything close to the best available candidates.
I just hope that this time we all remember that voters don’t pick the president on election day. What we actually do is pick one of the two pres/vp pairs who is going to win, or a third party candidate who won’t, all are valid and meaningful choices. If we vote in the primary, we get to choose among maybe a dozen people. The vast majority of the selection process has already happened at that point. The press, the donors, the parties, election laws and officials, and centuries of history already ruled out the hundreds of millions of other citizens, eliminating variation on every axis they don’t like, no matter what we each care about.
Edit to add: My point is, most of the work involved in getting better candidates happens over the course of years and decades leading up to each particular election. I assume you already know that, but a lot of people don’t seem to. Want better candidates in 2040? Start electing them to local and state office now, stop paying the big newspapers for corporate slant, stop voting for nincompoops especially in the primaries, start caring about even abstruse details of how laws are enforced and policies are carried out, and so on. It’s a lot more effective, and a lot cheaper, than what we need to do now to try to change the 2020 election results in late 2020.
O/t, but would love to have a candidate capable of understanding the idea of quantum soccer. Would be a huge win for the intelligence of our leaders. Not necessary, not the only or most important kind of intelligence, but still.
