And he will, instead of acknowledging how de-coupled Wall Street is from Main Street. As with law-and-order, the Dem establishment isn’t really interested in being pro-active by calling out the hard underlying truths but rather is trying to take a reactive and lukewarm centrist approach to whatever the GOP and the corporate media wants to talk about. That approach goes out of its way to avoid discussing those truths.
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Yes. If I may be allowed to split a fine hair and maybe redefine some terms… there may be reporters but they are certainly not journalists. The USA is badly in need of some journalists.
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I’m certainly not disappointed by Biden leading in the polls, but I’m wary of it. If terror of Trump winning gets some Biden supporters to vote that otherwise would stay at home confident in their victory, that’s a good thing. Hubris and complacency seem to be defining traits of many middle-of-the-road Democrats.
Also, laser-blasting Joker-Biden is way scarier than any of those mouths-for-eyes pictures, geez!
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This is exactly what I’ve been trying to explain to my family lately (kids interested in YouTube/social media, esp.). In all of human history, the basic mechanism of community shaming kept people more or less in line with basic human decency. Societies certainly went off the rails at times (Western European colonialist triangle trade, fucking Nazis, etc), but societal norms were still enforced at the community level. This has had negative aspects such as the oppression of women via religious writ, but overall people were rewarded by participating in civil society. Now, for the first time ever, a person is equally rewarded for being reprehensible in their treatment of others as they are for good behavior. I can’t think of another point in history where anyone of any gender, race or religion would be rewarded for being just inhumanly terrible.
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Remind me why capitalism is so great for our society again? Oh wait, it’s not. At all.
And I don’t believe any of this quoted portion is really prophetic or bound to be true: win or lose, Trump still exists, the conservative rot machine is still going to be loud and active, and if the media is really so powerful that it can invent a “close race”, it can invent new ways to torment America in a post-Trump world and continue profiting on advertising dollars. They’ll be FINE.
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Even Machiavelli observes “Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred”
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Who thinks Trump will just wander off and shut up if he loses? And, there’s longevity in his family. They’ll be FINE.
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My opinion is that the Dems ought to go all out and hammer their core points that will give them the highest Dem voter turnout, even if it means Milquetoast Biden. Once the election is won, Biden & Co. can work on any other points that are relevant to fixing the mess the country is in. If BernieBro points won’t convince my mom to vote Dem (she’s likely a closet Dem, but talks Rep), mention them in passing, but don’t let them suck the air out of the room.
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One pattern I’ve seen a few times from a certain brand of progressives:
Anti-Trump Voter A: The Dems have shot themselves in the foot by choosing candidates who are so uninspiring. Our chance for ousting Trump is doomed!
Anti-Trump Voter B: [Expresses some form of enthusiasm for Biden/Harris]
Anti-Trump Voter A: What the hell is wrong with you??
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NPR is beating this drum hard. “The economy” seems to be all they can find to say about Trump that might be positive? But they say it in a generic way that implies that’s its obvious because obviously Republicans are all better with money. This is such a tiresome lie refuted by all the data and such shoddy journalism. National debt grows and GDP growth slows under every R POTUS. Trump is a disaster on the economy. He started a trade war, FFS. Something 100% of economists agree is a terrible idea, and 100% of economists don’t agree on anything.
Journalists treating this The Economy talking point as though it’s reasonable is just signal-boosting lies that will help Trump get re-elected.
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Honestly, they don’t even need Trump & Co. to continue the current victimization fest. The QAnon/evangelical/white supremacist faction that’s been up on his shoulders yelling at literally everyone else will still be the GOP’s primary base; as long as Republicans exist, we’ll have to deal with that mess. It’s enough to keep every type of media distributor busy for the next decade.
I think once he’s out of office, however, there will be plenty of other news to keep the actual majority of the nation occupied and tuning-in. He’s been gas on the fire, but the fires will still be there: the systemic racism, the police brutality, the climate crisis, this pandemic, and the Republican lawmakers and judges doing their best to make life harder and more painful. It will, nevertheless, feel very good to not have a president actively working to destroy us.
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Never forget: even at a total shit-show, someone is always selling tickets.
Follow the money.
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As a person with literal tribal ancestry, I absolutely HATE it when they use the word “tribe” and “tribal” to describe groups of people with terribly regressive ideas (at least from the pov of the speaker).
I’d much rather use the word clique or in-crowd or camp or in-group or ANY OTHER WORD besides tribe and tribal.
Thanks.
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What were we talking about again?
Mean while Nate Silver’s Fivethirtyeight has held steady…
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I’ve got three words for you: extended criminal trials. When Trump loses, make sure there’s a long, drawn-out criminal trial of him, his family, and all his associates and enablers. The media will make money hand-over-fist. I mean, the most journalistic media I’ve consumed in my entire life was during the impeachment hearings.
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Yes, 100x yes.
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Nicely said.
Yet more reasons to keep pushing, as if anyone should need it:
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Every. Single. Republican except one voted to acquit the impeachment. If they aren’t taught selling out the country is not OK, it will be OK.
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The federal courts have been well and truly packed, and the beltway Usual Suspect Democrats haven’t given a shit about it. I expect they’ll notice at some point - they will need a replacement excuse for being utterly useless. The rest will need the senate to start (very slowly) rolling that back.
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He isn’t going to leave.
He’s not leaving.
It’ll be OJ Simpson: no real spike outside the indictment and the trial. But the thing is about Trump now is the constant day-in-day-out reaction of him and the news. An indicted Trump won’t be tweeting, because if he does he’s going to jail. He’s gone silent for days at a time in the past when things are hairy and he’ll go silent when lawyers tell him to. He’s an egomaniac but he is moreso a coward. It’ll be nice if he does something stupid like try and leave the country and get literally arrested, but he’ll ultimately do the cowardly thing and what’ll enrage you is the nice treatment he gets on the way to pleading no contest to one charge of tax evasion.
“Civil war is actually starting now” is a much better 2021 plan B for media than Trump Trials, if you really want to get down to brass tacks. Civil War in the U.S would resemble Northern Ireland in the 1970s: no real military involvement; sporadic but simmering violence between cops and paramilitaries in purple America (or blue cities closely surrounded by red); a bell curve of deaths arcing over the course of a decade; a few tens of thousands of people killed in the peak year. Just imagine the heroes and villains we can make out of that.
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so, so true but let us not forget the whole “horse race” theme that so many political correspondents get into during campaign season as if acknowledging that a clearly winning campaign is clearly winning would violate some standard of objectivity.
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