Election 2020 - Here we go again

[Brantly B.]

Trump's War on Basic Human Decency

Something struck me while reading that, and I don't know if it's still worth analyzing Donald Trump's political behavior or not, but: The author asserts multiple times that the only thing that's honest about Donald Trump is his hatred, even though he gives evidence to the fact that it's not. Trump was a friend of Harris in 2015, and famously a close friend of the Clintons; and he probably still is, if they're ever going to give him the time of day again. All of his likes and dislikes were purely phony, a matter of political convenience that only existed on conference podiums until June 2015.

It's a thing I point out because it's a hook that people generally bit down onto on both sides; conservatives saying "He says what he thinks!" when he takes a big shit on the opposition, and liberals taking it as evidence that he's just a party loyalist and not just taking the path of least resistance. I point it out because it's an affliction that runs deep through both USAs; the fact that the only thing we consider as "honest" anymore are the things that are negative and hateful, to the point where we can be manipulated very easily in that manner. Everybody who affects politeness is lying; everybody who screams and rants like a baby at least believes what they're saying. Even though that's not generally how we live our lives, it's what we expect from everybody else, and that doesn't seem sustainable.

God damn, I hate how every time a moderate loses, it's somehow the fault of the progressives, and every time they win, it's "this was only able to be won by a moderate."

Almost to the person, lower-race moderate Democrats did extremely poorly in the election. Biden's campaign was boosted by progressives, not the other way around. Good luck demonstrating that to anybody moderately minded though.

Should I be thankful that I don't personally know anybody who's happy about a Biden win? Ehhhhh. At least I'm not being woken up by a torrent of slurs for a while.

[mharr]

Neatly ignoring the fact that if America was in the general habit of running serious progressive candidates, Trump could never have happened in the first place.

[Friday]

The discussion that came up was, of course, if Sanders or Warren could have won the general if they somehow magically got a pass through the primary.

This is a topic worth discussing, I think, but I can't actually discuss it with anyone who brings it up, because they always bring it up in the context of "there's no way they could have won."

[Brantly B.]

I can't find it atm but FiveThirtyEight either wrote or linked to a fairly convincing article that argued that the current makeup of Democratic Party in Congress is likely to make Biden act a lot more progressive than people expect of him. The thrust is that historically, Biden is not reliably an American centrist; he's reliably a Democratic Party centrist, meaning that he just positions himself near the center of wherever the Dems are on the Overton window at any given time. That's how he managed to be in favor of the 1994 crime bill but also in favor of later reforms that softened those same penalties; part of it is that the man realizes that in a quarter of a century the criminal landscape of the country might change a little, but most of it is that the Party shifted pretty dramatically on the issue and Biden dutifully went along with it.

Certainly this is not the behavior of the most principled man, but it is kind of funny; we've reacted to four years of Trump's no-rules solo act by replacing him with one of the most political politicians to ever politicize. And with moderation being demonstrably unpopular across the country, chances are that his positions moving forward will be... moderately extreme.

It's possible that he'll act differently as President of the Entire Goddamned United States, but I find it doubtful. As nice as the concept of a President who's not implicitly or explicitly aligned against half the country is, Biden should know full well that trying to shake hands with face-eating leopards before they commit to stop eating faces will only get your face eaten. And there's really no talking to Mitch McConnell; with him at the helm, the Congressional Republicans of today look exactly like the Congressional Republicans of 2016-2020, only now with more QAnon people in it. If Biden has any backbone at all he'll demand that the Rs find a way to at least symbolically put McConnell face down in a dumpster before there's any chance at all of normalizing negotiations with them.

The discussion that came up was, of course, if Sanders or Warren could have won the general if they somehow magically got a pass through the primary.

This is a topic worth discussing, I think, but I can't actually discuss it with anyone who brings it up, because they always bring it up in the context of "there's no way they could have won."

It really depends on which states you think Sanders or Warren would have not won that Biden did. I don't think there really are any. The one that was always in contention was Florida, but after making the case that he'd win Florida, Biden went and basically bugsbunnysaw.gif'd it into the sea. I think he spent like 12 hours there. Beyond that, I think Pittsburgh was just going to vote for Any Democrat, Phoenix was going to vote for Any Democrat, and Las Vegas was going to vote for Any Democrat But O'Rourke.

What's trickier to answer is if Sanders or Warren would have done better in Congressional races. I think, going with my gut, that Sanders would have pulled a lot more House Democrats in with him, and probably would be doing about even with Biden in Senate races so far, but would probably have already lost Georgia (simply because Ossoff looks like a moderate when standing next to Bernie, plus he'd have to deal with the extra anti-Semitism). Warren would probably have had a negative effect on both House and Senate races, with the possible exception of Texas, but not enough to matter. So I guess in a way Biden was the most electable candidate, but not in terms of the Presidency; Any Democrat could have taken the Presidency away from Trump at this point, I'm pretty sure. Even O'Rourke.

[Thad]

Trump's War on Basic Human Decency

Something struck me while reading that, and I don't know if it's still worth analyzing Donald Trump's political behavior or not, but: The author asserts multiple times that the only thing that's honest about Donald Trump is his hatred, even though he gives evidence to the fact that it's not. Trump was a friend of Harris in 2015, and famously a close friend of the Clintons; and he probably still is, if they're ever going to give him the time of day again. All of his likes and dislikes were purely phony, a matter of political convenience that only existed on conference podiums until June 2015.

The racism and the misogyny and the pettiness and the cruelty were, and are, very definitely real. That he was willing to kiss people's asses until he felt they slighted him doesn't mean that, say, his disgust at the concept of a woman taking a bathroom break was insincere.

His total lack of loyalty to ostensible "friends" is pretty well-documented, too. He speaks wistfully about Roy Cohn today, but he abandoned Cohn without a second thought when he was dying of AIDS.

There's a fluidity there -- he's certainly been able to accept people he's previously mocked once they start kissing his ass; see everyone from Lindsey Graham to Kim Jong-Un -- but I can't really envision a scenario where he has anything friendly to say about Hillary Clinton again or, say, Rosie O'Donnell.

Almost to the person, lower-race moderate Democrats did extremely poorly in the election.

That's not really true. There were moderates who did well and moderates who did poorly, and there were progressives who did well and progressives who did poorly; on the whole the party did worse than 2018 but better than 2016. I think it defies an easy "progressives vs. moderates" narrative, though Lord knows people will try.

(Course, if you subscribe to point of view that individual Democrats' actual politics don't really matter that much in terms of getting elected, that narrative fits pretty well.)

The discussion that came up was, of course, if Sanders or Warren could have won the general if they somehow magically got a pass through the primary.

This is a topic worth discussing, I think, but I can't actually discuss it with anyone who brings it up, because they always bring it up in the context of "there's no way they could have won."

It's not exactly a testable hypothesis. Even if the nominee in 2024 is progressive and wins, that doesn't prove anything about 2020.

What we do know is that moderate Democrats won in 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012, and 2020, lost in 2004 and 2016, and had a slim enough margin in 2000 that Bush was able to steal the election. We don't have any data on how progressive presidential candidates performed during that time, because none have made it through the primary. (I suppose you could make an argument that people thought Obama was a progressive.)

Given the particular breakdown of states Biden won and by how much, perhaps there is something to the notion that a progressive candidate wouldn't have been able to do that -- but insofar as that's true, it's because progressive voters are systemically disenfranchised.

Course, "what if exactly the same, only Bernie?" is something of a silly hypothetical to begin with, because the campaign wouldn't have looked the same with Bernie.

[mharr]

The whole thing has at least handed progressives a nice big stick to beat the Democratic party with going forwards, the stick called "Do you want another Trump? Because this shit is how you get another Trump".

[Metal Slime]

The whole thing has at least handed progressives a nice big stick to beat the Democratic party with going forwards, the stick called "Do you want another Trump? Because this shit is how you get another Trump".

and the DNC will quietly nod to itself and say "Yes, that would be preferred to more progressives. Also, look at what it does for turnout and fundraising when there's a Trump in the office!"

[Thad]

The whole thing has at least handed progressives a nice big stick to beat the Democratic party with going forwards, the stick called "Do you want another Trump? Because this shit is how you get another Trump".

Nope.

Like Friday said, when moderates lose, it's always the progressives' fault -- for not turning out, for voting third-party, for ruining what would have surely been defeat for Lindsey Graham by criticizing police brutality --, and when moderates win, it's always because they appealed to disaffected coal miners or whatever, never because progressives turned out in record fucking numbers.

[Friday]

I'm not a true Bernie Bro believer, I don't think he would have automatically done better than Biden. Or the same. Or worse. I don't actually know how he would have done!

Like Thad said, there's no historical progressive candidate to look at, except maybe Obama, and that's only because people perceived him as progressive. So we have very little data.

Like I said, I think it's a topic worth discussing. We may actually one day be discussing it for real in 2036 when AOC runs. I hope so. By which I mean I hope she runs and also that we're still fucking posting here 16 years from now.

[Thad]

I will grant that, as slogans go, "defund the police" is a radical way of describing a series of reforms that really aren't that fucking radical, and there's probably a more palatable way of saying "stop giving them tanks, stop using the police to try to resolve health crises, and the entire system needs to be rethought to focus on helping people instead of murdering them, and restaffed by people who have that mindset."

[Friday]

It's important to keep in mind that "we got here on purpose" when it comes to the cops and why they do what they do. They were originally designed to oppress black people. That has not changed.

There's a perception among moderates that the cops sort of just stumbled into this anti-black, oppress the people mindset on accident due to lack of training and being given fully automatic weapons and tanks. But cops have always been like this since they existed in America. They didn't start getting the fucking military equipment until somewhat recently. I don't know about training, historically, but in many areas, the police are a self-selecting white supremacist group. And when they're not, they're infiltrated by white supremacists over time until they are.

[pacobird]

holding you to that six-pack, thad

[Thad]

I said half.

[Brantly B.]

Doesn't help the overall feeling that we were a sacrificial generation, but it sure as hell beats watching the next one deal with all the same shit.

[pacobird]

yeah, I hope I did not come across as saying we shouldn't do it

[Mongrel]

Let's wait till it passes, hey?

Interviews are interviews.

I just hope that Schumer and the rest of the gang realize that they the only reason they didn't get blown out BIGLY was because of the fucking COVID PANDEMIC. Like, I'm not sure that sans Covid Trump would have won, but that's a hell of an easy argument to make.

[Mothra]

[Mongrel]

dyyyyinnnnngggggg

[Friday]

yeah, I hope I did not come across as saying we shouldn't do it

nah, I didn't read it that way back then.

It's the same as when they made epic Mounts cheaper when TBC came out. I had just finished grinding 8 hours a day in AV for months to hit rank 11 and get my cat, and then the announcement comes down that mounts are being reduced to 200g.

And also, doing all the quests in Hellfire gets you like 180g or something.

I was angry. But also, I knew that it was correct.

[pacobird]

yeah, I hope I did not come across as saying we shouldn't do it

nah, I didn't read it that way back then.

It's the same as when they made epic Mounts cheaper when TBC came out. I had just finished grinding 8 hours a day in AV for months to hit rank 11 and get my cat, and then the announcement comes down that mounts are being reduced to 200g.

And also, doing all the quests in Hellfire gets you like 180g or something.

I was angry. But also, I knew that it was correct.

The main thing that annoyed me is that nobody was explaining to me why it shouldn't extend to those who recently paid it off. Like, that's a choice. To compare to the mount thing, they could have given you a mail praising you for being a Very Good Girl and a fancy hat, but they didn't. It's not a huge deal, but as long as we're talking about it as a problem, leaving people like me out sends a pretty clear message about the value of the sacrifices - and they were pretty significant sacrifices - I made to meet this problem, and how early they started. Michigan State over Northwestern, Arizona Law over Duke, etc. The cynic in me feels like the message to state school kids won't be lost, especially given how on-brand that message is for all factions of Democratic Party power.

Anyway, the reason it's newsworthy is that Biden, contra Mongrel's expectations, really wouldn't need Congress for this. The DoE holds the debt and they don't need appropriations to just forgive it*. Larger question is whether this is something you want to spend political capital on, but with McConnell still around political capital doesn't exist as a meaningful concept so fuck it



*also the reason I have no problem with not getting a check, but if this were an act of Congress with appropriated funds, yeah, that'd be an issue