Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/25/trudeau-sans-abs.html
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To me, Biden and McCain were two sides of the same coin.
Both exuded this charisma and likeability but would slit your throat as soon as you weren’t needed anymore.
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Still outpolling Sanders and Warren.
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Lobbyists aren’t bad people
Yes. Yes they are.
Please, please, please do not put another old rich white person up on the ballot. Yeah, I’m talking about more than just Biden…
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So much for Uncle Joe’s attempt to discourage supporters from forming a super PAC. He and the other neoliberal-lite Dems are hooked hard on that Citizens United crack.
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Got any more of that soft money?
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No Joe 2020
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what timeline is he living in? Unregulated Campaign Funding is the goal of Mitch McConnell, the republican members of the FEC, and the courts.
Decades from now, we’ll still be dealing with the Trump bench. And that’s if Trump loses. If Trump “wins”, the future is bleaker. And hotter.
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“Azerbaijani oligarchs, Comcast” Now there is a juxtaposition one doesn’t see very often.
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David Bromwich says that “the money-grubbing aspect softens the contrast with Trump that Democrats rightly feel they must offer” and he’s right. London Review of Books, 24 October, 2019
And yet when you see it, it makes perfect sense.
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“It’s human nature. If you, Lynn, bundle $250,000 for me, all legal, and then you call me after I’m elected and say, ‘Joe, I’d like to talk to you about something. You didn’t buy me. But it’s human nature, you helped me, I’m going to say, ‘Sure, Lynn, come on in,’” he explained.
Yeah, right. And US presidents don’t want a second term (as if they’ll shoot down a request from someone who helped them get to the first term).
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Well, no, they’re not–at least not generically. How do you think Planned Parenthood and the EFF try to influence legislation?
Maybe you mean that lobbyists who take positions you disagree with are bad people? But that’s politics–unfortunately, the best system we have for resolving disputes where large numbers of people hold differing views on things. (As far as I can think of, the other options are (1) rule by fiat and (2) war.)
Or maybe you mean that lobbyists who abuse the system are bad people? Which, I guess, fair enough–but the phenomenon of people who abuse the system isn’t peculiar to the institution of lobbying.
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Joe Instead Of Donald 2020
(if it gets to that)
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It won’t, Biden is just bored with civilian life, he’ll go bye bye soon.
AIUI, he’s still in the lead in the polls, but Warren seems to be rising (and IMO would be preferable as the US president).
Of course, until the actual primaries start, this is all more or less guesswork. 
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Comcast? Dear god!
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No, I mean that I hate the fact that “lobbyists” is even a thing. I don’t like people who get paid large sums of money to play middle-person between one entity and another when those two entities should have direct lines of contact.
I don’t care if it’s EFF, PP, NRA, or whatever other organization. If you have to pay someone to influence a politician that’s the first step on a very slippery slope to outright corruption.
Votes and voters should influence politicians. Nothing else, even well-intentioned lobbyists. But I suppose I’m just dreaming of a utopia.
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Practically, how do you imagine that would happen? Imagine, for example, that you are one of two senators for the state of California, where 40 million people live. At least 13 million of them voted in 2016. If you did nothing but talk to one constituent every minute and didn’t sleep, you would just about have time during your six-year term to talk to the voters. (JUST the people who voted.) Maybe you could split duties with your co-senator, assuming you were from the same party and trusted each other, and you might be able to fit in meals and sleep (but probably not, y’know, actually going to the Senate and voting–those cross-country flights really eat into your voter-contact time).
Or maybe you’d just listen to the (tiny minority of) voters who were engaged enough to show up at your events or write you letters? Of course, they might not be–really, would almost certainly NOT be–fully representative of voters’ preferences as a whole.
Maybe you could just rely on the idea that the voters approved whatever platform you came up with when you ran for office? Hope it’s general enough to give you specific guidance when a bill comes up for a vote that has some things you said you’d vote for and other things you said you wouldn’t!
Representative democracy is REALLY messy. Votes do not translate to full endorsement of any one politician’s platform. Lobbying uses money as a proxy for a position’s popularity or an issue’s importance. Often that doesn’t work; but sometimes it does. And–though I’d be happy to hear of one–I’m not aware of a system that works better, even though the one we’ve got often doesn’t work very well at all.
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