Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/06/26/biden-would-require-masks-in-p.html
…
5 Likes
Try Medicare for All if you want some support Joe. Oh that’s right - your money doesn’t approve. Sorry American people…
7 Likes
You’re making the perfect the enemy of good (or adequate, however you view things) there. Supporting Biden means you’re not getting everything you want, but not supporting him in the election means helping Trump, and you know that with Trump, you’re getting 100% of what you do not want.
20 Likes
15 posts were split to a new topic: Rehashing the Democratic primary: agency and voting interests
I think — like I’m sure many of you Americans do too — that the fact that masks have become as much of a political statement as a health measure is absolutely horrifying.
Mask wearing becoming a political statement is so dystopic, so perfect an American snapshot, so absolutely and grotesquely chilling.
And as someone who loves you very much, and nervously shares the world’s longest land border with you, I don’t know what to say that feels right. Get well soon?
19 Likes
This was an idiotic thing to commit to. Not because it isn’t the right thing to do (it is) but because it will now mobilise every dumb fuckwit brainless zombie death-wish right-wing voter to go out and vote against him. Some of them may have stayed home.
He did not have to make it an issue right now, did he? Could he not have said that if elected he’d consult with the relevant specialists and scientists as to how best to protect public health at that time, blah blah blah, without committing one way or the other right now?
2 Likes
True, but the same could be said about abortion or corporate taxes being restored to >$0 or any number of cultural issues the right decides to distract themselves with. A candidate has to take a stand and since the majority of Americans support a more aggressive response to this pandemic, I don’t see this motivating anyone who wasn’t already dug in.
8 Likes
in my opinion, there is no controversy regarding biden’s public stand on masks. people who refuse to wear masks on principle, or because they were told there was no need to and believe it, or because it is unmanly, have no regard for anyone but themselves anyway. and for the portion of that population that you pose may be more motivated to get out the vote for trump, ehh, only if the line is short and there are no foreign looking people on it, and they can find a place to park and if there isn’t something better to do.
2 Likes
I don’t think he has the power to do it, but he could at least lead by example and cite it as official policy from the CDC.
2 Likes
Having a candidate pull his punches on public health measures during a raging pandemic just in the hopes that it will prevent a few unreachable cultists from voting is not a strategy I’m particularly interested in playing with.
5 Likes
I understand your point of view and have some sympathy, but he is not a current leader that the mass of people are asking for direction from on this, and anyone likely to wear a mask does not need any cue from him.
He is, however, as you say, a candidate and should be doing everything to maximise votes for and minimise votes against, to increase his chances of winning. It’s all about winning / beating Trumpty-Dumpty (and his eggshell-thin skin), right now. Riling up the fuckwits is not a way to do it. Hilary did the same (much worse) with her basket of deplorables quote.
How many fuckwits will now be quoted as saying “I’m voting for Trump 'cos Biden’s gonna take away my freedom to breathe”? (Betcha Donny-boy brings it up in 3…2…1… or at his next rally). Biden didn’t need that extra impetus against him, however small. He just gave a gift to Trump’s campaign speechwriters (yeah, I know, do they exist? Either way Trump’s gonna use it.)
So yeah, under any other circumstances a pandemic would be a time to put aside such considerations. But not under these circumstances, I’m afraid.
If it wasn’t masks, it would be something else. The right wing slime machine has evolved since swift-boating Kerry. They don’t even need an actual gaffe, they can manufacture content based on innuendo and implication. Trying to game out every way that that could be used to rile up Bubba and then mitigate that risk by being inoffensive oatmeal would mean Biden doing and saying nothing until November 4th.
3 Likes
Echoing this from your other border as well.
6 Likes
If the POTUS had this kind of authority Trump would have already made us all wear MAGA caps.
6 Likes
Awwww. Thanks, you two!
3 Likes
More on Topic, I’m still a bit stumped at how just wearing a face-mask has ended up being a political statement, rather than whatever you print on it. That makes no sense. You can easily print any political statement you want on your mask (marijuana leaf, “MAGA”, “Bernie Bro”, “BLM”, “All Lives Matter (except for black lives)”, “I Don’t Want To Die, Do You?”, etc. The mask could say anything you want.
2 Likes
Breitbart is busy projecting every flaw of Trump on Biden right now.
1 Like
It seems pointless to me- isn’t it kind of assumed that anybody but Trump would support wearing masks during a pandemic? Did anybody doubt that Biden would encourage this? It feels like having to actually say this only normalizes the idea that not wearing masks isn’t completely insane behavior. Is Biden also going to promise not to shoot people on Fifth Avenue?
1 Like
I’m all for taking away the right to breathe from fucktarded MAGA Nazis who refuse to wear masks.
Because their right to breathe (as in not wear a mask) threatens to take away my right to breathe (as in death). Permanently.
3 Likes
3 Likes
