#joe biden will not get a second term that is a fact and it will be his own fault

[bloodyke]

next person to bring up project 2025 to fearmonger support for genocide joe is getting blown up i cannot stand you bitches

[mariacallous]

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

Lamenting the state of the media recently on X, Jeff Jarvis, another former editor and newspaper columnist, said: “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media?”

These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences. This is not entirely new – in a scathing analysis of 2016 election coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election” – but it’s gotten worse, and a lot of insiders have gotten sick of it.

In July, ordinary people on social media decided to share information about the rightwing Project 2025 and did a superb job of raising public awareness about it, while the press obsessed about Joe Biden’s age and health. NBC did report on this grassroots education effort, but did so using the “both sides are equally valid” framework often deployed by mainstream media, saying the agenda is “championed by some creators as a guide to less government oversight and slammed by others as a road map to an authoritarian takeover of America”. There is no valid case it brings less government oversight.

In an even more outrageous case, the New York Times ran a story comparing the Democratic and Republican plans to increase the housing supply – which treated Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as just another housing-supply strategy that might work or might not. (That it would create massive human rights violations and likely lead to huge civil disturbances was one overlooked factor, though the fact that some of these immigrants are key to the building trades was mentioned.)

Other stories of pressing concern are either picked up and dropped or just neglected overall, as with Trump’s threats to dismantle a huge portion of the climate legislation that is both the Biden administration’s signal achievement and crucial for the fate of the planet. The Washington Post editorial board did offer this risibly feeble critique on 17 August: “It would no doubt be better for the climate if the US president acknowledged the reality of global warming – rather than calling it a scam, as Mr Trump has.”

While the press blamed Biden for failing to communicate his achievements, which is part of his job, it’s their whole job to do so. The Climate Jobs National Resource Center reports that the Inflation Reduction Act has created “a combined potential of over $2tn in investment, 1,091,966 megawatts of clean power, and approximately 3,947,670 jobs”, but few Americans have any sense of what the bill has achieved or even that the economy is by many measures strong.

Last winter, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a Nobel prize in economics, told Greg Sargent on the latter’s Daily Blast podcast that when he writes positive pieces about the Biden economy, his editor asks “don’t you want to qualify” it; “aren’t people upset by X, Y and Z and shouldn’t you be acknowledging that?”

Meanwhile in an accusatory piece about Kamala Harris headlined When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?, a Washington Post columnist declares in another case of bothsiderism: “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” The evidence that corporations have jacked up prices and are reaping huge profits is easy to find, but facts don’t matter much in this kind of opining.

It’s hard to gloat over the decline of these dinosaurs of American media, when a free press and a well-informed electorate are both crucial to democracy. The alternatives to the major news outlets simply don’t reach enough readers and listeners, though the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica and progressive magazines such as the New Republic and Mother Jones, are doing a lot of the best reporting and commentary.

Earlier this year, when Alabama senator Katie Britt gave her loopy rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address, it was an independent journalist, Jonathan Katz, who broke the story on TikTok that her claims about a victim of sex trafficking contained significant falsehoods. The big news outlets picked up the scoop from him, making me wonder what their staffs of hundreds were doing that night.

A host of brilliant journalists young and old, have started independent newsletters, covering tech, the state of the media, politics, climate, reproductive rights and virtually everything else, but their reach is too modest to make them a replacement for the big newspapers and networks. The great exception might be historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose newsletter and Facebook followers give her a readership not much smaller than that of the Washington Post. The tremendous success of her sober, historically grounded (and footnoted!) news summaries and reflections bespeaks a hunger for real news.

[arguablysomaya]

i can't fucking believe it's literally a year out of the election, in the middle of a genocide that the whole world is watching, and I'm seeing democrats already scolding people (some of whom literally have family being killed in occupied Palestine) to vote for Biden.

are you fucking kidding me?

not only is he backing a genocide, perpetuating lies to justify this genocide, and directing domestic resources to repress people here objecting to said genocide (which should be enough already), he was also already unpopular before now, has barely done anything to counter the rising tide of Christian fascism you're all worried about, not to mention that he's old as shit and can barely get a sentence out

just from a purely logical, facts-based perspective, anyone trying to push Biden as a viable candidate right now not only doesn't care about the lives of Palestinians, but also actively wants marginalized people here to lose liberties. as far as I'm concerned, advocating for Biden is advocating for a second Trump term, because that man absolutely cannot win in the general election.

instead of wasting time scolding progressives (AGAIN) when we point out extremely valid criticisms of Genocide Joe, put that fucking energy toward canvassing for a new Dem/progressive candidate. we're a year out from the election. if you actually care about the lives of the marginalized not just internationally, but domestically as well, you have to put some fucking effort in instead of relying on the consistently-failing strategy of yelling at voters instead of demanding representatives do their fucking jobs and represent us.

[batboyblog]

https://www.tumblr.com/batboyblog/763234650399424512/the-recent-chappell-roan-thing-is-why-i-absolutely

I frankly also get the impression that a lot of these people genuinely think another Trump term will just be “business as usual” or “it’ll only hurt the people who deserve to suffer” and that they’ll just be able to hide away from the consequences for four years before someone comes along and fixes the mess for them and they get to benefit.

I don’t think they have any realization of just how bad this is gonna get the second time around, because the first time Trump was metaphorically behind a chained fence and held back by strong rope. This time he’s being let loose alongside his fascist theocratic friends.

I've puzzled about this for some time, because like do people honestly not remember what it was like? what those 4 years were like? the fear, the chaos, the national embarrassment. Every day waking up and going "oh god! what did he DO! while I was asleep!" and how often you'd wake up to some story that he'd tweeted something scary and dangerous at 4am. I believe him threatening to nuke North Korea (the "Fire and Fury" tweet) was one of those very early AM specials that we all woke up to.

I mean for people like Chappell, its hard to remember, but Trump has been the more or less national main character for 9 years, since the fall of 2015. I mean an 18 year old first time voter could have been 8 years old when Trump came down the gold escalators told us all that Mexicans were rapists and he was running for President. So for anyone under 30, Trump is normal since every election they've been able to vote in, he's been the Republican nominee. I've spent 9 years of my life, across 5 elections fighting Trump directly or indirectly. Depressing thought that.

but past that there's been a national effort to gaslight us all into thinking "yeah no it was normal" I mean I remember the media coverage of 2017, the first year or so of Trump's Presidency, every few weeks or so there'd be some "is it time for the 25th amendment now?" story about if Trump's weird behavior this time for his cabinet to step it and remove him. (A quick google turned up CNN Oct 2017, New York Times May 2017, The Guardian July 2017, and Vox February 2017) compare that to coverage today? The term "Sane-washing" has been coined where when Trump says something bonkers it gets characterized as "sometimes meandering" rather than "incomprehensible" and "worrying"

figures in the media have gone so far as to claim there's just no point to covering new Trump scandals because "they won't move the needle" which really should not be a journalist standard. And we see that they do, take North Carolina's Mark Robinson. Caught in a massive scandal, involving sex, porn, and being a Nazi, he's now down massively in the polls after nation wide coverage. Trump just had new court documents opened that showed he wanted a riot on January 6th, that his reaction to a mob threatening the life of his Vice-President was "so what?" and they he knew full well that he had lost but was going to "fight like hell" any ways. And its not much of a story, indeed I'm seeing more news about a NY Republican Congress having worn black face (new story today) than Trump's effort to over throw the government and kill Mike Pence.

past the media's gaslighting of course there's been a major and on-going campaign to effect how we see reality. I know that sounds very woo-woo, but to step back for second, most of what we know about the world is stuff people tell us, so you know Joe Biden is the President because other people have said so, most likely you've never met him or even seen him in person. Well as more and more people turn away from traditional media, and traditional media turns more and more to making of money by confirming the bias of people, it becomes easier and easier to slip things that are not real into "facts we are told". So for example "Joe Biden is President, and also in decline" there's never been any real evidence of that, but if on social media you are bombarded with it 4,000 times a day... you start to take it as understood wisdom.

people are also getting worse and worse at not just taking what they're told if it confirms biases they already have. Former Vice-President Al Gore wrote a book nearly 20 years ago now, called "The Assault on Reason" which had a ton of very interest neuroscience about the ways that moving images, TV he was talking about, by-pass the logic centers of the mind, the way we relate and trust someone talking to us in a way the written word does not. I can't help but reflect on that with the rise of TikTok and short form video as a "source of information" (lol)

any ways this is a long winded way of saying bad faith players, Republicans, left wing grifters, and agents of chaos, have been very good at flooding the zone all through the Biden Presidency with stuff "student loan debt" remember when that was SO! important SO big and Biden "not doing anything" (untrue) was the biggest deal? well yesterday his newest plan got unlocked in court and 3 out of every 4 people with loan debt will get relief.... oh you're just now hearing about that from me? huh... funny... I thought it was the number one issue and reason we should never trust Biden and the Democrats... weird....

but there have been other issues pushed up as THE! issue, its all misdirection, its all meant to get natural Democratic voters to feel frustrated, upset, and hopeless, and not to vote their interest. The world is a big complex multi moving machine, and anyone telling you that one issue either fixes every other issue or totally totally outweighs everything else and should for everyone, is most likely BSing you and doesn't have your best interests at heart.

and lets be clear, Trump is a Rapist he's a lot of things, traitor, racist, scumbag, criminal, scab, tax cheat, fraud, etc but for me any ways, I'm not gonna vote for a rapist to be President and if other people aren't gonna do everything they can to stop a rapist from being the President I don't want to hear how much they care about progressive issues.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

A near-majority of American voters willingly reelected Donald Trump. This harsh reality is a collective moral failure, but it’s also not a choice made in sound mind. Consider that voters believed Trump’s first presidency was a roaring success and Joe Biden’s only term a Carter-level catastrophe. It’s an upside-down Bizarro World view that ultimately played a key role in dooming Kamala Harris.

Trump’s 2024 platform was rooted in an obvious lie — that the nation under Biden’s leadership is a flaming dumpster fire and everyone was much better off when Trump was president. Democrats challenged this false reality with facts, but they ultimately lost the messaging war. Their best efforts were no match for the most powerful weapons in Trump’s propaganda arsenal — a timid press and a right-coded social social media environment. Greg Sargent reports in the New Republic that the Harris campaign’s own internal polling revealed an alarming trend: “Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency — even if they saw these things negatively — were his fault.” According to exit polls, Trump decisively won the questions “who do you trust more to handle the economy?” and “who do you trust most to handle a crisis?” Of course, in reality Trump utterly botched the 2020 pandemic response, which researchers concluded resulted in 40 percent more deaths than necessary. And yet swing voters are willing to risk it all again in hopes of cheaper eggs and cruelty against outgroups.

Disinformation on demand

Legacy media shoulders significant blame for their “sanewashing” of Trump’s incoherency and deteriorating mental state. Voters believed Trump could fix a steadily improving economy despite his promotion of inflationary tariffs. The media even presented Trump’s rants as cogent discussions of economic theory.

It’s worth noting, however, that an NBC poll from April revealed that voters who received news primarily from legacy media (newspapers, cable news, etc.) still overwhelmingly supported Biden. Trump owes his victory in great part to low-propensity voters of all races, including young men, and those voters don’t necessarily form their views based on mainstream media reporting. Rather, far too many are stuck in an online social media bubble where they are delivered a steady diet of rightwing propaganda. The median age of a Fox News viewer is 68, and liberals have joked about the network “brainwashing” their conservative parents. But rightwing social media content has effectively targeted and radicalized younger people, who — unlike the typical Hannity-obsessed grandpa — can vote for the next several decades. TikTok, which Trump joined in June, has 170 million users in the United States, and according a Pew Research survey, more than half of them said they regularly get their news from the platform. That’s up from just 22 percent in 2020. This is a serious concern because the far right uses TikTok to advance unfounded conspiracy theories and outright lies.

[...]

Lower income Americans, particularly young people, do spend more of their income on groceries, rent, and gas. That’s why Republicans were so laser focused on the price of eggs. Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of liberal content countering the negative vibes. Of course, explaining the post-pandemic economic recovery is complex and requires more than a punchy one-minute video can convey. Although people might idly scroll TikTok all day, consuming 60-second quick hit videos like potato chips, they will balk at reading an extensive, well-reported news article. That’s too filling a meal.

According to a University of Oregon study, 40 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans surveyed said they’d become more conservative from their TikTok usage. Half of the Democrats surveyed said they’d grown more liberal, but a lot of far-left content on TikTok is downright alienating and can sound like MAGA’s idea of a strawman leftist. For instance, one user boasted that she “didn’t care” if liberal economic and social policies “hurt the economy,” thus conceding that those policies are in fact harmful to economic progress. TikTok’s artificial “vibecession” dominated the discourse, while abortion-related content was actively suppressed even while pregnant women were bleeding out in parking lots. Users of the platform resorted to disguising the word “abortion” as “aborshun” or “ab0rti0n” in order to reach an audience. TikTok has a longstanding policy against promoting abortion services, which it classifies as “unsuitable businesses, products or services.” However, TikTok, YouTube, and Meta have allowed users to spread and monetize anti-abortion misinformation. Studies have shown an interesting gender gap in where young people receive their news on social media: For most women, it’s TikTok, while most men learn about the world from YouTube, X, and Reddit, all of which have become havens of crude masculinity.

On YouTube, 56 percent of users are between the ages of 18 and 44. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit that researches extremism, conducted a four-part research project this year that determined YouTube’s algorithm consistently steers users to rightwing and Christian content. The algorithm does this even with seemingly apolitical search terms, like “male lifestyle guru,” which YouTube reflexively associates with conservative ideology. Rightwing news content was also more frequently recommended, including anti-vaxxer videos. As far back as 2019, both YouTube and Facebook’s autofill search boxes would return content that promoted anti-vaccine misinformation.

[...]

Why rightwing content has the edge

When Kamala Harris appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alexandra Cooper told her listeners, “I do not usually discuss politics or have politicians on the show because I want Call Her Daddy to be a place that everyone feels comfortable tuning in.” Left-leaning podcasters/social media content creators often avoid politics for fear of turning off their right-leaning fans. Joe Rogan and Dave Portnoy at Barstool Sports don’t bother with such apologies when they have rightwing guests because it doesn’t compromise their brand. They are rightwing cultural influencers. Liberal podcaster Hasan Piker recently commented on the impact rightwing influencers have on young men of all races.

“There is a massive amount of rightwing radicalization that has been occurring, especially in younger male spaces. Everything is completely dominated by rightwing politics,” he said. “If you’re a dude under the age of 30 and you have any hobbies whatsoever, whether it’s playing video games, whether it’s working out, whether it’s listening to a history podcast or whatever, every single facet of that is completely dominated by center right to [the] Trumpian right. Everything they see is rightwing sentiment.”

Rogan and Portnoy might not present as overtly political as Walsh and Shapiro, but their edgy, hyper masculine personas are pure MAGA. Even billionaire CEO Elon Musk likes to present himself as a “disrupter,” an agent of change who boldly confronts the status quo. Anyone who’s seen the more popular indie films of the 1970s would realize how compelling this narrative is to young men. The subtle way that Rogan and Portnoy infuse politics into their personas presents a contrast with left-leaning social media content. The liberal TikToker or YouTuber who releases videos about home makeovers might endorse Democratic politicians during election season while wearing their “just voted” sticker, but rightwing influencers prime their audience on a daily basis. Young men marinate in a stew of rightwing sentiment and end up resenting the libs.

Stephen Robinson wrote in Public Notice a very valid case that a right-coded media environment gave Donald Trump the decisive boost to get elected, such as praising the disastrous Trump reign as a “success.”

Social media algorithms heavily favored right-coded and pro-Trump content, despite the never-ending whining about “censorship” from conservatives.

[kindwarrior]

Tucker Carlson is Outing Obama as Gay. But Everyone is Missing the Big Story. I’m Obama’s College Classmate. I’ve Been Trying to Warn America for 15 years!

By Wayne Allyn Root

I’m Barak Obama’s college classmate at Columbia University, Class of ’83. I’m also the author of the #1 bestselling hardcover book in America in 2012, “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide.”

I’ve always had Obama’s number. I understand what makes him tick. I understand his goals.

First let’s get the “gay issue” out of the way. I’ve reported on both my radio and TV shows for 15 years that my wealthy, connected friends in Chicago have always said, “Obama frequented gay bath houses and gay clubs. Everyone in the know, knows Obama is gay.”

Now that we’ve heard from Obama’s biographer that Obama wrote about his daily gay fantasies, I think it’s pretty clear my Chicago pals were right. Tucker Carlson is onto something!

But gay is not the issue. The issue here is fraud. If Obama is in fact gay, then he was lying to the American people from day one. He portrayed himself as a happily married family man with a wife and two beautiful young daughters. That’s called fraud.

If America had known the truth in 2008, does anyone honestly think Obama would have been elected president?

But all of this is small potatoes. This is not the big story.

Why does any of this matter now? Because Joe Biden is a brain-dead puppet. This is the third term of Obama. The proof is we are all reliving the nightmare Obama economy. Great for Wall Street and billion-dollar multi-national corporations. But a disaster for the American middle class and Main Street.

Second, Biden is fading fast – and everyone can see it. At the same time Biden’s cognitive health is in freefall, all of his corruption from the past is pouring out of the closet. Biden is finished. He is toast. He will never make it to 2024.

Sometime this fall Biden will have a very public “episode” and be hospitalized. Soon thereafter he (or Jill) will announce he is stepping down for “health reasons.”

Who will replace him? Either Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom. But whoever it is, Obama will be calling the shots from his nearby Washington DC mansion. That’s why this story matters.

I’ve had Obama pegged from the first day. Obama is the ultimate “Manchurian Candidate.” Gay is unimportant. What matters is he was groomed to be president by the Deep State and communist, fascist, globalist enemies of the United States. What matters is Obama is a radical Marxist tyrant carrying out the destruction of America.

Obama was tame in his first two terms. He was “boiling the frog slowly.” But Trump ruined his plan. Now Obama is trying to destroy this country as fast as he can before Trump has a second chance to undo the damage. And at the same time, Obama is coordinating the attacks on Trump to either imprison him, kill him, or disqualify him.

My guest on my show, “America’s Top Ten Countdown” on Real America’s Voice TV last week was former Illinois Governor Rod “Blago” Blagojevich. Blago’s Governor’s mansion was raided by an early morning FBI Swat team. Sound familiar?

I pointed out to “Blago” that Obama’s fingerprints were all over his frame job… and FBI SWAT raid… and long prison sentence. Obama set him up. Obama took away his freedom. I asked him to comment. Blago reported, “Obama set up the meeting that led to my arrest.”

Do you get it now? It’s the exact same M.O. as what’s happening to President Trump. The same FBI raids, persecution, frame job. The same weaponization of government to destroy Obama’s political adversaries.

I’ve always said the key to understanding Obama was his time at Columbia University.

First, there is the “Ghost of Columbia” mystery. I was a Pre Law, Political Science major. So was Obama. He had to be in all the same classes as me. But he was never in one class. I never met Obama, never saw him, never heard of him, never met anyone at Columbia who has.

Obama got in, so why didn’t anyone ever see him? My educated guess is Obama was in the Soviet Union studying communism. Columbia had a “sister school” in Moscow. That would be the only real answer as to why Obama was rarely if ever seen at Columbia. He was being groomed way back then by the enemies of America.

Secondly, at Columbia we learned a plan to destroy America called “Cloward Piven.” I’ll bet Obama spent two years in the Soviet Union at our “sister school” becoming the world’s expert. Look around. Everything happening in America today is Cloward Piven…

The open borders bringing millions of foreigners into our country, changing our demographics forever.

The explosion of welfare and bailouts.

The Green New Deal.

The destruction of our military.

The end of the dollar as world reserve currency.

The plans for pandemic lockdowns, climate change lockdowns and Central Bank Digital Currency.

The censorship, banning of dissent, and weaponization of government against conservatives and Christians. Defund the police.

The vicious criminals let out without bail.

Critical Race Theory and Transgender brainwashing.

Persecution of PTA parents.

Conservatives and Christians classified as “domestic terrorists.”

The arrest of political opponents.

87,000 new IRS agents.

It’s all about Cloward Piven and communist-level control.

Sound familiar? It’s what Obama the “Manchurian Candidate” learned in the Soviet Union from the best. This man was groomed from day one by the communist and globalist enemies of America. He was sent to destroy us.

Now he’s working behind the scenes to finish the job. He is the man who ordered the spying on Trump. The framing of Trump. Now he’s the man directing the nonstop government attacks against Trump. Just as he did to Blago.

So, Obama being gay is the least of it. America is being destroyed. Obama is at the root of every evil thing happening.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

Lamenting the state of the media recently on X, Jeff Jarvis, another former editor and newspaper columnist, said: “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media?”

These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences. This is not entirely new – in a scathing analysis of 2016 election coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election” – but it’s gotten worse, and a lot of insiders have gotten sick of it.

In July, ordinary people on social media decided to share information about the rightwing Project 2025 and did a superb job of raising public awareness about it, while the press obsessed about Joe Biden’s age and health. NBC did report on this grassroots education effort, but did so using the “both sides are equally valid” framework often deployed by mainstream media, saying the agenda is “championed by some creators as a guide to less government oversight and slammed by others as a road map to an authoritarian takeover of America”. There is no valid case it brings less government oversight.

In an even more outrageous case, the New York Times ran a story comparing the Democratic and Republican plans to increase the housing supply – which treated Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as just another housing-supply strategy that might work or might not. (That it would create massive human rights violations and likely lead to huge civil disturbances was one overlooked factor, though the fact that some of these immigrants are key to the building trades was mentioned.)

Other stories of pressing concern are either picked up and dropped or just neglected overall, as with Trump’s threats to dismantle a huge portion of the climate legislation that is both the Biden administration’s signal achievement and crucial for the fate of the planet. The Washington Post editorial board did offer this risibly feeble critique on 17 August: “It would no doubt be better for the climate if the US president acknowledged the reality of global warming – rather than calling it a scam, as Mr Trump has.”

While the press blamed Biden for failing to communicate his achievements, which is part of his job, it’s their whole job to do so. The Climate Jobs National Resource Center reports that the Inflation Reduction Act has created “a combined potential of over $2tn in investment, 1,091,966 megawatts of clean power, and approximately 3,947,670 jobs”, but few Americans have any sense of what the bill has achieved or even that the economy is by many measures strong.

Last winter, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a Nobel prize in economics, told Greg Sargent on the latter’s Daily Blast podcast that when he writes positive pieces about the Biden economy, his editor asks “don’t you want to qualify” it; “aren’t people upset by X, Y and Z and shouldn’t you be acknowledging that?”

Meanwhile in an accusatory piece about Kamala Harris headlined When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?, a Washington Post columnist declares in another case of bothsiderism: “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” The evidence that corporations have jacked up prices and are reaping huge profits is easy to find, but facts don’t matter much in this kind of opining.

It’s hard to gloat over the decline of these dinosaurs of American media, when a free press and a well-informed electorate are both crucial to democracy. The alternatives to the major news outlets simply don’t reach enough readers and listeners, though the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica and progressive magazines such as the New Republic and Mother Jones, are doing a lot of the best reporting and commentary.

Earlier this year, when Alabama senator Katie Britt gave her loopy rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address, it was an independent journalist, Jonathan Katz, who broke the story on TikTok that her claims about a victim of sex trafficking contained significant falsehoods. The big news outlets picked up the scoop from him, making me wonder what their staffs of hundreds were doing that night.

A host of brilliant journalists young and old, have started independent newsletters, covering tech, the state of the media, politics, climate, reproductive rights and virtually everything else, but their reach is too modest to make them a replacement for the big newspapers and networks. The great exception might be historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose newsletter and Facebook followers give her a readership not much smaller than that of the Washington Post. The tremendous success of her sober, historically grounded (and footnoted!) news summaries and reflections bespeaks a hunger for real news.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

[qqueenofhades]

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/02/white-house-israel-gaza-palestinian-state/677554/

i think this is a pretty decent article in general, but this is a passage i particularly want to highlight:

"The U.S. can’t force Israel to do anything it regards as anathema to its interests. All Washington can do is lay down its own markers, including open recognition of a Palestinian state and a clear warning to Israel that its rejectionism will do significant damage to bilateral relations. The bear hug of support that Biden has provided for Israel over Gaza, at times with no international backing, cannot be gratis. The U.S. has a right, indeed a responsibility, to demand Israeli cooperation on this indispensable priority. Failing that, Washington will have to reevaluate the merits of America’s special relationship with Israel.

That is unlikely to happen before the U.S. election. But Biden might be more willing to apply the full weight of American influence on Israel if he wins a second term. Historically, second-term presidents—freed from the domestic political constraints of seeking reelection—tend to take on such issues with more determination. And if Biden really believes that U.S. interests—and ultimately Israel’s future—rest on the creation of a Palestinian state and normalization with Saudi Arabia, he could act decisively."

like i can't see any scenario where Biden's re-election would make the current situation worse! idk why it's so hard for some people to get!

I mean... yeah. I literally said the other day that Biden would be much more likely to go MORE left in a second term, because he's always gone more left when he's been pushed before, he wouldn't have to face the general electorate again, and because he's already in such a precarious position right before the election (which again, NETANYAHU KNOWS and is using to his advantage in attempting to get Trump back in). There's also the fact that literally nothing, no cause whatsoever for anyone anywhere, would be helped by Trump being elected instead. But that's apparently "baseless fearmongering" for Online Leftists who resent it when reality intrudes on their glorious revolution fantasies and/or anyone points out the basic real-world consequences of their rhetoric, so...

We've already seen that Biden can be successfully pressured, in four short months, to make drastic changes to decades of long-standing US/Israeli policy. There's no reason except sheer brainrot and terminally online idiocy to think that re-electing him will make the current situation worse (and on the other hand, as noted, many reasons to think that now he will be able to act more forcefully and without the worries of being sabotaged in an election year). Yet for the Schrodinger's Imperialists who think all Western and American influence is Always Bad, but Acktually Good when it relies on being used as magical thinking to instantly solve major global/geopolitical crises with literal millennia of roots and sources, this is just really hard, I guess. GENOCIDE JOE. There, that's easier.

[hero-israel]

Can i just say I am so sick and tired of people claiming genocide. I mean with saying Israel is committing genocide on Palestinians right now. Every time I see it I want to scream. This is one of the numerous reasons why the pro palestine movement sucks. They can't just say something is bad, focus on real grievances. Instead they have to exaggerate and claim everything is the worst possible version. They can't just say "palestinian civilians are suffering," or even "excessive civilian deaths." No. they have to claim genocide.

it’s disgusting. they are appropriating terms and watering them down in the process. genocide is a very real horrific problem that is ACTUALLY happening to people right now... and they have to claim that term for their situation because why? to paint israel/israelis as the ultimate evil? to claim this issue is the worst ever and insist everyone else drop everything and only care about this? to add more emphasis on their lies and propaganda of israel being a colonial empire practicing apartheid? intentional flipping because they know Jews have been victim to genocide (we see this more explicitly when they compare Israel in this war to nazis)?

Maybe part of it is that if israel is responsible for genocide, then there’s no need to acknowledge how HAMAS and their actions play a significant role in palestinian suffering? (It can't be that hamas steals aid for civilians, no it must be 100% israel’s fault and only theirs! Also joe Biden I guess! /sarcasm)

No matter what, it’s a cynical ploy and absolutely disgusting.

In some ways it reminds me of how people online have taken terms like “trigger,” “gaslight,” and more, and completely twisted and watered down their meaning, turned it all into a joke ... except obviously much worse, here.

what really grinds me up is seeing how many people are buying into this. especially gen z. I am so done with my generation honestly. im ashamed to be associated with these people. part of me doesn't get it. im not jewish. and i try my best not to be antisemitic, educate myself. it does take work, but also it’s NOT THAT HARD to just NOT post completely unverified stuff, NOT absorb your news from social media, NOT give accusations of genocide without doing any research, bothering to learn about historical context, actually understanding what experts say and explanations why it is not genocide? And most of all actually LISTEN to jewish people when they talk about their own history and heritage?

Im not saying this to say im so great, in fact it's the opposite: what im doing is nothing special and amazing. it's really BASIC. yet SO MANY PEOPLE fail this??? what the fuck????

I understand people cannot educate themselves on literally very single topic. But then if they are ignorant, then they should just SHUT UP and not weigh on something they didn't take the work to understand. That is not hard!!!! NOT casually throwing around accusations of genocide should be the bare minimum and yet here we are.

All of the above. I am sorry you are dealing with this from so many among your cohort, and deeply appreciate your commitment as a non-Jew to resisting the new Christ-killer / stab-in-the-back mythology. It will continue to be difficult. For decades - for CENTURIES - all the wealthiest and most educated people in societies worldwide "knew" the Jews were guilty of these terrible things.

Derek Chauvin was convicted of the second- and third-degree murder of George Floyd. There were people at that time who were upset he hadn't been nailed for first-degree murder - he was obviously guilty! Look what a horrible thing he did! Get him for everything! But there actually really are different standards of evidence for different crimes and if prosecutors had tried to go for that one they would have lost.

I don't doubt for an instant that the IDF has committed multiple war crimes during this entirely preventable, entirely pointless cataclysm. But people are racing past the crimes that are clearly visible and could be supported by evidence because they want - need - HOPE for the very worst one to be true. It is a moral obscenity. And you can tell how much they are enjoying themselves, how fine it feels to be able to invoke genocide against Jews and Uno-reverse that nagging Holocaust card, by how quickly they revert to petty Internet slang to silence counter-arguments: "lol WELL ACTUALLLYYY, so you're JUST ASKING QUESTIONS rite, nice SEALIONING." It is meant to be an inherently, automatically truthful claim, one that the Jew has no right to deny.

The Disputations of our time.

And as we did in the past... we must answer, because not-answering will not help.

[heathersdesk]

I'm a Mixed Race Woman in Idaho and I'm Calling You Racist for Not Voting for Kamala Harris

It is a fact of life that most people don't actually say what they mean. And I've been struggling for almost 35 years to learn the lesson that this means, unavoidably, that most people don't actually mean what they say. They don't like being confronted on it, and will double down the second you reveal it. So I try—genuinely—not to point this out as often as I see it.

But I have to in this case. No, not have to. I get to. I get to do it in this case because it's racist. And I'm tired of pretending it's not.

I've been watching TFG and Kamala Harris are "basically the same" takes, especially when it comes to Israel, for over a year now. And now that we're less than a week out from Election Day, I'm willing to kick that hornets nest right over a fence with everything I've got.

Because that's not what you believe. Not really. At the core of that argument, you're trying to say two things, not one.

The first is that Donald Trump's only term and Joe Biden's second first term are "basically the same" when it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. That's what you mean to say. And if that's what you want to believe, I'm not going to stop you. If you want to compare those two time periods, badly, at the exclusion of all the other history since the 1940s, knock yourself out.

But that comparison (Trump 1 v. Biden 2 1) is a stupid thing to bring up in a discussion about Kamala Harris unless you also mean to say a second thing: that she and Joe Biden are "basically the same." They very much are not, and haven't ever been. And if you are uninformed enough to think that, let's take a tour through some recent history together.

Remember when she humiliated him in the 2020 debates when he bragged about being able to work with anyone, including segregationists, in Congress? And she called him out on national television for opposing school integration because he didn't support busing black kids to white schools?

She looked him and all of America right in the face and said, in accusation to him, "there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me."

She throat punched him in front of God and everyone. Go back and watch it. It was in the second debate of 2020. You can see it in his face that she snatched the air right out of his lungs, and he couldn't do anything to defend himself because he knew he deserved it. That moment was decades in the making and his bill for being a "moderate" came due. It was an incredible thing to witness, and something more moderates need to learn from.

That moment was why I was genuinely shocked that he picked her as his running mate. I still don't believe he wanted to do it. And why I wasn't at all surprised when this was the reporting that was coming out. This example is from 2021.

Joe Biden attempted to prevent Kamala Harris from replacing him, in exactly the way she ended up doing, by giving her absolutely nothing to do as a Vice President. He chose the candidate who was the greatest threat to him as his Vice President so he could bury her. He let people gossip about her and humiliate her without ever coming to her defense in any meaningful way, for years. He gave her stupid and meaningless assignments where she never got to punch at her weight, let alone above it, when she was more than capable of doing that.

People made fun of her for how she sang "The Wheels on the Bus" wrong and her "love" of yellow school buses. They called her cringey. They made fun of her laugh. They made jokes about how they needed to find someone to love them as much as she loves yellow school buses. She doesn't love school buses, idiot! You might as well say that about Ruby Bridges while you're at it.

You did all that without ever questioning whether Joe Biden putting her on school bus duty (do you see the irony now?) was the best use of a former prosecuting attorney's talents and abilities. You've already forgotten that him doing this to her was an ongoing source of conflict between them that was poorly concealed the entire first term of his presidency.

Multiple people in my family say they don't like her because they're picking up on the fact that she has a very controlled, almost artificial demeanor.

Of course she does! Did you ever stop to ask yourself why?

She goes to work every day with a boss she fundamentally doesn't respect on many levels, day in and day out, because that's what it's going to take for her to get the promotion she deserves.

We could've had her instead of him already! Israel's escalation in Palestine could've never happened if she had been president! But we'll never know now, will we? Y'all were too racist to vote for her in 2020 when she was running. You fell for the right wing nonsense that told you to call her a cop, when the exact opposite was true. But y'all don't want to talk about that now, do you. No question mark because it's not a question.

She has to watch an old man do a job she is more than capable of doing, while he's doing it very badly at times, without revealing how frustrated she is. And she had to learn the hard way to be careful who she showed that frustration to because they went directly to the press with it every time.

Could you do that? I've done my own version of that, in a very small way, with a sexist old white man. He was a mediocre veterinarian from Minnesota who loved polka music and pissing me off. I lasted a year. I was losing my mind by the end of it and quit my job when I couldn't take it anymore.

Have you ever had to do cleanup after an old white man who should've retired two decades ago? Because I have. It is some of the most humiliating work you can do. I was helping an ungrateful man make more money than I'll ever see keep his clients, despite being very bad with people, while I was being paid $12 an hour.

It's ridiculous we still make women do this. Have you ever had to do it, at a national level, with cameras pointed at you everywhere you go? No. You haven't. Shut up.

And by the way, it hasn't ended. It's still happening. He still can't get over himself, and neither can his staff. They're going to make podcasts about it one day and y'all are going to see how bad it was for her.

Kamala Harris has not put up with eight years of Joe Biden's inadequacies and petulance for you to say she's exactly like him. That's a deeply uneducated and racist thing for you to say. All it demonstrates is that you didn't see and recognize all of this when it was happening for what it was, either because you couldn't see it or didn't care. You never stopped to examine your own gender and racial biases to understand why you felt that way. A part of you somewhere genuinely believes that this was part of her job, to be a Mammy to Joe Biden, which is why you couldn't see the problem while it was happening. Those were the conditions under which you accepted her becoming Vice President.

You and Drew Barrymore both. Remember that? Drew Barrymore said what the rest of America was thinking, and has been thinking since Kamala Harris became Vice President. And now that she's been Mamala to Biden and to us for eight years, you don't want to promote her? And you want me to believe there's anything other than misogynoir behind that?

Get out of my face with that. Don't you ever say she's "basically the same" as Donald Trump or Joe Biden ever again. It makes you look incredibly ignorant and unkempt, like you've never had anyone who loves you enough to teach you how to act in public.

Kamala Harris is a Black Asian woman from California who grew up in segregation. She is more qualified to be President than Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, and Joe Biden put together before she even wakes up in the morning. She deserves respect she doesn't get, and will continue not to get even as President, and she's still running anyway with a smile on her face.

Miraculous!

The least you can do is vote for her. But if doing the bare minimum is asking too much of you, you need to sit down and really look at yourself. Why do you let the people around you tell you to hate black women, to mistrust them even as they're actively taking care of you? Why do you feel like that's okay for you to do? And why do you only stop when everyone else collectively changes their mind about that black woman?

Especially y'all who want to constantly call out white cishet nonsense. What good does it do anyone to put your mama and daddy, your grandpa, and your uncle at Thanksgiving on blast for clout if you can't even see the ugly in yourself when it matters?

Fix your face. Do it now. You have until November 5th. Go vote for Kamala Harris.

And quit expecting strangers on the Internet to do the free labor of spoon-feeding you the things you should know already—especially if you were there. Do whatever you have to do to be smarter than that. As always, I suggest reading a book, preferably from your public library.

[misfitwashere]

Ukraine and Harris

And Ukrainian-Americans and the Ukrainian Future

Timothy Snyder

Jul 27, 2024

Ukrainians have been asking me what it means for their country that President Joe Biden has decided to withdraw his candidacy and that Vice-President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. 

I think that it only means good things. 

The Biden administration now has more time for Ukraine.  Until last Sunday, Joe Biden had two jobs: president and candidate for president.  Now he has only one job: to be president.  This means more time for policy, including foreign policy.  The people on his team who work on Ukraine will find it easier to get his attention.  Aside from that: President Biden will now be thinking about his legacy.  He knows that whatever policies he wants attached to his name must be formulated and implemented in the next six months.

Though it is impossible to be sure, I would guess that Ukraine will likely as central to a Harris presidency than it was to the Biden presidency.  On a number of foreign policy issues, including Ukraine, the Biden administration began from traditional assumptions that were outdated, and then worked quickly to catch up.  I do not think that this will be the case for Harris, in part because the Biden administration has caught up.  The vice-president’s foreign policy team might well be more decisive on Ukraine than the Biden team.  Vice-President Harris made a point of traveling to Geneva for Ukraine’s peace summit when it became clear that President Biden would not attend. In fairness, we should remember that President Biden visited Kyiv itself!

All of that, though, is far less important than the main issue, which is beating Donald Trump.

Harris has a better chance of doing so than did Joe Biden.  If you are on Ukrainian social media, you are dealing with Russian bots and trolls saying that Harris is unpopular in America and can’t win.  In the United States, the Russian bots and trolls are spreading racism and misogyny.  The Russian demobilization serves the same goal: to stifle any hope for something good in both countries. 

Here are the basic facts.  Just a few days into her campaign, Harris polls even with Trump, whereas Biden was behind by several points.  Her campaign has been energetic and effective.  She has mobilized several constituencies who might otherwise have been indifferent.  Trump is obviously afraid of her (as are the Russian propagandists who support Trump).

Now, I understand that there are Republicans who maintain that Trump would have a good Ukraine policy, including people whose views on foreign policy I admire.  Respectfully, I believe this this is wishful thinking.  In some cases, Ukrainians also think wishfully, confusing a thoughtful proposal by a Republican with Trump’s own views or likely future actions.  So let me take a moment to explain why I believe that a second Trump administration would be disastrous for both countries. 

In Ukrainian terms, Trump is a Yanukovych figure, a wannabe oligarch backed by actual oligarchs and the Kremlin.  Unlike Yanukovych, he is personally charismatic and politically talented.  The essence of Trump’s agenda is the transformation of the American political order.  Whether or not this succeeds, the attempt at regime change will remove the United States from the international scene for an indefinite period.  Insofar as we have a foreign policy at all under a Trump administration, it will amount to allowing Russia and China to do what they want.

When thinking of how the United States matters to Ukraine, it is also worthwhile considering how Ukrainians (Ukrainian-Americans) will matter in this election. 

Given the strange American electoral system, certain states matter more than others.  Ukrainian-Americans are 1% of the population of Pennsylvania, and 0.5% of the population of Michigan.  If Trump wins those two states, he will win the general election.  If Harris wins those two states, then she will win the general election. 

In Michigan, the number of Ukrainian-Americans is greater than Trump’s margin of victory in the state in 2016.  In Pennsylvania, the number of Ukrainian-Americans is greater than Trump’s margin of victory in that state in 2016, and also greater than that of Biden’s margin of victory in 2020.   

In other words, the votes of Ukrainian-Americans might decide whether Ukraine continues to exist. 

[odinsblog]

I just found out about Jasmine Sherman and they look really cool. Like, the policies that they say they’re going to do? The fact that they have an audiobook option for people to listen to what the policies say on their platform? (If people don’t have JAWS or screen readers on their devices, JAWS for computers.) I really hope they get far enough in the presidential race. Although Cornel West is my next choice should he get far.

Yeah, sorry but Hell NO.

I’m all for audiobooks and JAWS readers, but I’ve never heard of Jasmine Sherman before and as far as I’m concerned, Ms. Sherman is just another throwaway vote. She has the same chance of winning the next election as a randomly picked name from a hat. Same goes for Cornel West and for 🤡 RFK Jr., and same for Marianne Williamson, and in fact, same for anyone who isn’t named (I honestly cannot believe that EYE am saying this, but here we are) Joe Biden.

Look, in 2020 I went through the same journey that I think a lot of voters are going through right now: I swore up and down that I wasn’t going to vote for Biden because he had (and still has, tbqh) a lot of conservative policies that I vehemently disagree with—LOL, don’t even get me started on Title 42, okay? But at the end of the day, I carried my Black ass into that voting booth and I begrudgingly did what I had to do.

All I know is, I do not want Donald fucking Trump in the White House. That’s it. Not “lesser evilism” not “he’s the next LBJ” not anything else, except for I’m voting for the person who has the best chance of beating Trump and keeping his racist ass out of the White House. THAT’S just about my only motivation here. Dassit. Periodt. I can deal with everything else later.

And I can live with myself with that vote.

But yeah, I’m Black and I gotta live not only with myself, but I also gotta live in this world and look other people in the eye. People who don’t even have my extremely limited level of privilege.

I’m not gonna go into detail about how a Trump presidency would make literally everything worse than it already is—and yes, sadly that includes Palestine, Ukraine, transphobia, homophobia, immigration, and whatever else is allegedly important to disproportionately ☭ white, online “leftists” 🙄 who keep telling people not to vote, or keep telling people to vote for candidates who cannot win.

As far as I’m concerned, Trump getting back into the White House is an existential threat to everything I hold dear. So no, anon, I will fucking not be throwing my vote away on some random ass person I’ve never heard of before, who has no mf chance of ever winning.

And yes, I still have problems with Biden. Like, a lot of problems. Like, a LOT, lot. But he’s the best chance we got at stopping Trump, and Trump needs to be stopped. That, plus I desperately want to see Trump pay for everything he’s gotten away with so far. Voting for Biden is the best way for me to give that a chance.

So yeah, I am deathly afraid of a second Trump term. And a big part of what is driving that fear is the fact that Joe Biden is vulnerable and super beatable. Like, his winning the next election is not a guarantee—did Hillary Clinton’s completely preventable loss teach you nothing at all??

Anyway, I’m not tryna write a book here. I think I’ve made my thoughts clear on Jasmine Sherman and whoever else is the flavor-of-the-day that can’t and won’t beat Trump. Biden is really fucking up and making himself even more beatable by unconditionally supporting Israel, and if he wins he might continue to fuck up, but I promise you that Trump will do unimaginably worse to Palestinians—and that’s not hyperbole.

Lastly, I really debated long and hard about whether or not to make this post rebloggable. PLEASE don’t make me regret that decision, OKAY??

Like, I know that a lot of people who unconditionally LOVE Joe Biden (that’s not me, btw) and the Democratic Party will be tempted to add, “VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO!” to this post, but I am begging you to please resist that urge, okay? I don’t know how to precisely put it into words, but unless you’re already convinced and have decided to vote for Biden, there’s just something about adding that braindead slogan that is incredibly off putting. It’s like an annoying ad that you want to skip and ignore on YouTube; it’s vapid; it’s old + tired; it’s lowkey offensive, and it tells people that you haven’t really given a lot of thought to anything and you’re just another insipid Blue MAGA sycophant blindly hopping on the bandwagon. Please find a better more intelligent way to express your support of Biden, okay?

ALSO, if you just search for Jasmine Sherman on Tumblr, you get a lot of anonymous asks like this

And sorry, but having lived through the 2016 and 2020 interface elections, yeah, it just smells fishy af. Chipping away at Biden votes is another way to help get Trump re-elected. And Trump supports Putin and Netanyahu

[thecurioustale]

I Think It's Time to Drop the "Drop-Biden" Faction

Using another one of my limited political credits to infuse my art-oriented tumblr with US politics. Skip this one if you don't go for that stuff.

I've had a few weeks now to take the pulse of what's happening with regard to the whole "Should Biden drop out?" thing going on inside the Democratic Party and across the left, and here's my takeaway:

The drop-Biden faction within the Democratic establishment smells of a conspiracy that lacks the confidence of conviction. Clammy hands, mumbling public statements, a malaise of cravenness, and a clear sense among the conspirators that they know they are in the wrong but are doing it anyway so their faction (or factions within the faction) can gain power inside the establishment. That's why I'm so disappointed in Representative Adam Schiff for coming out on their side of late: I have a pretty high opinion of him, and for him to join them, let alone to do it so late, smacks—to me, at least—of incredibly poor and/or opportunistic judgment.

Vice President Harris is the ONLY acceptable alternative to President Biden at this point. And I say that as someone who is not a supporter of hers. Anyone else would be a betrayal of the choice of the public during the 2024 primary season, and would smack of party insiders overturning the will of the voters. The fact that the drop-Biden faction has not been clear-throated and unified in naming Harris as the only acceptable replacement for President Biden is very telling, because it means that there is jockeying going on right now about who it would be—and clearly the conspirators are not for Harris. That, in my view, makes them unfit as arbiters and their case untenable.

Not much is more uninspiring than a conspiracy that doesn't believe in itself. On these grounds alone I would be inclined against their cause.

But there are more grounds: I have also had a chance to listen to some of President Biden's statements over the past few weeks, including the extemporaneous remarks he gave at his recent press conference. And, to get right to the point, my mild-to-moderate concerns that flared up in the aftermath of everybody and their dog having a meltdown after Biden's debate performance (which I didn't even watch at the time, lol) has been completely alleviated: Biden is not senile. He is very clearly not senile. Yes, he's old. He is uncomfortably old. Cringeworthily old. It's a very real possibility that, if he were to win a second term, he wouldn't be able to complete it. But, from where I am, he's still got his marbles. And that's the ONLY question at issue here: Is Biden mentally competent? I think he unambiguously is.

And that's the end of the dilemma for me. Am I wrong? Is he senile and I just don't see it? Maybe. But I have made my judgment. And, given that judgment, the path forward for me is clear now: You don't go against the results of a primary election if you can possibly help it. The people voted for Joe Biden. The time to replace him was across the country in the primaries months ago, not behind the scenes in July.

The drop-Biden faction says there is another, equally relevant question: Can Joe Biden win in November? There is a cynical, almost nihilistic attitude here, the idea that principles don't matter and that whichever pathway is likeliest to lead to power is by definition the best one. But I have two problems with their thinking:

First, principles DO matter. The democratic process is spelled out and we need to respect it. We spent a long time in this country fighting to make the political parties more transparent and accountable to the people in their presidential nominations. What, we're just gonna undo a primary election now? When the winner of that election says he's staying in the race and the main criticism against his fitness to be our nominee doesn't hold up to the sunlight? No, that's completely unacceptable. That's in the same vein as the authoritarian shit the Republicans have sold their souls for.

I realize that primary elections are almost impossible for an incumbent president to lose. And, yes, I realize that perhaps it would have been wiser for Joe Biden to choose not to run for reelection. I thought that was his plan, until shortly after he took office when he launched the legal process to run for reelection. But for better or worse he chose to run again, and, given that he has had the most effective Democratic administration since LBJ, he certainly had standing to do so. And consider this: The present crisis of worry about Biden is unprecedented in recent times. If there really were such a dam of worry waiting to burst all along, I think it would have been plausible for the primaries to register it. If nothing else, a hotly contested primary could have identified a second ethically viable alternative to Biden besides Harris, if the establishment and the drop-Biden faction in particular are so damn nervous about her. (This is assuming she would not have run against him herself in those primaries.)

Second, as President Biden himself has said, as well as many of his supporters, the judgment of the drop-Biden people as to who actually is the likeliest pathway to power is questionable. What is these folks' track record in wise prognosticating of this sort? What is their evidence for their case? I find these arguments lacking.

Joe Biden has demonstrated a winning electoral coalition. He was written off in the 2020 primary season and won, and won against Trump that November. He got the votes of the people. And while I think he would not have won that year were it not for the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, he nevertheless won convincingly and earned the badge of electability in the minds of everyone. Nothing says "electable" more than having already been elected president once before. Trump is a hard opponent to beat, very hard. Trump is channeling the mental virus that has overtaken the conservative movement in America. He is extremely powerful. By his charisma and his political savvy he is powerful. His enemies within the Republican Party all end up singing his praises and kissing his boots, no matter how badly he has disparaged them, or else they end up leaving the Republican Party or being booted out of it forcibly. And holding Trump to account for his many crimes is literally buckling our judicial system as we speak—a very stark indicator indeed of Trump's power. And, so, any Democratic nominee would inevitably face an unwaveringly stiff, deeply unfair and low-down campaign against them by Trump. If not Biden's age it would be Buttigieg's sexuality, or Booker's race, or Newsom's "California"-ness, or whatever. The right is always going to come up with a smear campaign. Look what they did to Hillary Clinton, a superlatively competent and well-qualified candidate. No one running against Trump this year would have an easy time of it, and that includes Vice President Harris, who is female, black, from California, from an immigrant family, and a former "cop," and who has a reputation for being hard to work with and fostering high-friction work environments (whether or not that's true, or just sexism, or some of both), all rolled into one. Joe Biden's age is literally the only personal attack against him that ever stuck: He is a white male, deeply religious, very likeable in person (so everyone says, even many Republicans, though obviously I've never met him), relatable, etc., etc. He disarms the low-level sexists and racists on the Democratic periphery and in the political middle. He makes progressivism palatable for everyone. There is a real possibility—one which I think is accurate—that Biden was the only Democrat in 2020 who could've beaten Trump. Is Biden now, really, at the very bottom of that list in 2024, because he lost his train of thought during a debate? I don't buy it.

I think there is a plausible possibility that the firestorm in the media and in party and activist politics isn't as much of an issue with the general public. The president's age may be something ordinary people disapprove of, but it isn't something ordinary people feel when they pay rent, buy groceries, or have their rights stripped away by a radical Supreme Court. Just two months ago we were talking about how profoundly unpopular Republican policies are. That's still true right now.

So, principles matter and Biden may not be as weak of a candidate as his detractors claim. Those are my criticisms of the context of the drop-Biden faction. But what about the merits of their case, such as they exist?

Well...the main argument of the drop-Biden faction in the rightness of their cause, and by far the biggest issue I haven't discussed yet, is the polls, and I am of two minds about this:

On one hand, if the polls are accurate, that probably says more about the lunacy that has overtaken America than it does about Joe Biden. Just about anyone with a pulse who isn't (ahem) a convicted felon ought to be winning against Trump in a landslide. Trump stands for the end of America as we know it and the beginning of an authoritarian regime. He stands for the reversal of generations of gains in civil rights and social welfare and the entrenchment of Christian fanatics. Not because he himself is for these things, but because his pathway to power runs through others who are. If Joe Biden is losing to that, and if the media is focused on the idea that Joe Biden is the one among these two who should drop out for the good of the country, then maybe America deserves another Trump presidency after all. Maybe we've become too corrupt and wicked and selfish and evil to keep our republic any longer. And since that collective "we" very adamantly does not include many millions of Americans who are active on the left or otherwise active in support of our constitutional system of democracy and the rule of law, maybe Biden's terrible standing in the polls is a permission slip of sorts to begin having the unthinkable conversation about dissolving the United States or else taking more radical actions to safeguard it against these domestic threats on the right—such as taking back the courts, ending gerrymandering, abolishing the filibuster, imprisoning domestic terrorists and paramilitary extremists, shutting down churches and Christian schools and propaganda outlets that radicalize people, and using the Supreme Court's newly-created office of King to eradicate the most dangerous fascists. That's assuming we ever win the presidency and Congress again, of course, which may well happen but isn't a given anymore should the fascist-run GOP decide to make good on their threats to overthrow our Constitution and lock in minority far-right rule.

On the other hand, the polls may not be accurate at all. Polls in July about an event in November are almost meaningless anyway, and, more importantly, it is very difficult in the Trump era for pollsters to weight their likely voter adjustments correctly. It is a rock-solid given that Trump's base will turn out to vote for him; they always do because they are mindless zombies who are completely predictable. The real question, which makes predictions so chaotic this year, is what the rest of the electorate will do. Since the last president election, Donald Trump has become a convicted felon, the orchestrator of a Supreme Court majority that stripped people of their constitutional abortion rights, and the instigator of one of the most shameful days in American history, January 6. Most of his former administration that aren't in prison have publicly disavowed him and are warning the public not to reelect him. These are not good people, for the most part, so imagine what that implies. Joe Biden's age doesn't change any of this. It doesn't change the current economic situation, nothing. It doesn't change the horrifically unpopular right-wing agenda. It changes nothing. If the polls say that Biden is trailing badly against Trump, then either the public is insane or the polls are wrong, and either is distinctly possible.

Maybe "insane" doesn't fully capture the spirit of it. I realize that politics as we typically define the word is largely a dog and pony show, all style and very little substance. I understand that American political discourse in the mainstream is vapid, ill-informed, superficial, and fickle. I understand that there is a possible world where Joe Biden's age really is more important to people to reject in November than the threat of the end of democracy (even while Trump's own age remains almost completely uncriticized). And if that's where we are; if we are too stupid or careless or selfish or uninvolved or, yes, even insane as a country to know any better; then it's time for America to be held accountable. It has become my refrain that we are going to deserve what we vote for in November, whatever that may be.

I remain hopeful that if the Democrats and their allies run a good ground game this season, and continue their coverage of strong ads on the airwaves and online, then there is a chance of winning in November.

I think the drop-Biden faction has had its moment. I think they came at the (now-literal) King and missed. They didn't have the goods, it shows in their behavior, and, for better or worse, Biden says he is staying in the race.

If he does reverse course in the coming weeks and drop out, I think Kamala Harris is the only acceptable alternative, regardless of my own tepid approval of her, and I will emphatically and completely support her from that moment until Election Day. But that would be Biden's choice to make, and he says he has chosen to stay in. And, by the way, I would note that Biden's core of support both during this crisis and in his original campaign for president in 2020 runs through core Democratic demographics like the black community and organized labor, and perhaps this is an opportunity for the rest of the Democratic establishment to demonstrate that they are willing to do more than pay lip service to those demographics when it comes to respecting their perspectives and positions.

And as for my personal preference, I'll say it this way, with the most primitive, self-serving angle I can muster: President Joe Biden forgave the student loans that I thought I was going to die with, and gave me thousands of dollars of much-needed support during the pandemic. No other president has ever done more for me. Now that Biden has also won the mandate of the Democratic electorate, I would be pretty damn ungrateful, and more than a little foolish, to oppose him if he decides to stay in. And he says he is staying in. So that's that.

But there is so much more behind my decision to support him than just my personal financial interest. From his startlingly (and refreshingly) liberal governing posture, to his decency and his respect for our constitutional and political norms, to his stalwart support of Ukraine and Israel against the nefarious forces arrayed against them, to his competent and capable cabinet and administration, to his excellent political negotiating skills—which have resulted in quite a bit of meaningful legislation passing through Congress despite the filibuster in the Senate and of late even despite the GOP control of the House—for all of these reasons, he is the president for me.

As I have said before, if the worst should happen and President Biden were to die or become incapacitated in a hypothetical second term, he would be ably succeeded by Vice President Harris, and the work of his administration would continue in the immediate term under the leadership of his well-qualified officers.

And, if you're wondering, part of me does wish that Joe Biden had chosen of his own accord not to run for reelection, because he really is getting old. But he didn't make that choice, and I for one respect it. And part of me would be relieved if he does drop out in the coming weeks, though another part of me would be just as nervous about any other candidate's prospects.

And, at this point, I think the drop-Biden faction is doing more harm to our prospects in November than good. I think it's time for them to stop. I have a very hard time seeing a future where anybody besides Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump is the president on noon of January 20 next year. And because of the selfishness and fear of the drop-Biden faction, what I previously thought was a solid 50:50 election prospect is now one that I think strongly favors the Republicans no matter what we do or who we put on the ticket. I consider this a self-inflicted wound, first by Biden in choosing to have a debate with a failed coup instigator and convicted felon at all, and second and more importantly by the drop-Biden faction by losing their party discipline following his bad debate performance without a strong case for breaking ranks.

Putting all of that aside, and looking at the grand tapestry of America: Maybe the winds really have shifted and Joe Biden no longer has the appeal to beat Donald Trump. But if that is true—if America really has fallen so low—then let us learn it through the honest work of campaigning to reelect Joe Biden and failing, rather than having that decision foisted on us by cowards and opportunists consulting their crystal balls behind closed doors.

And that is what I think about all of that.

[mitchipedia]

Trump threatens to jail adversaries in escalating rhetoric ahead of pivotal debate.

The Associated Press, via the Las Vegas Sun:

Trump’s message represents his latest threat to use the office of the presidency to exact retribution if he wins a second term. There is no evidence of the kind of fraud he continues to insist marred the 2020 election; in fact, dozens of courts, Republican state officials and his own administration have said he lost fairly.

Just days ago, Trump himself acknowledged in a podcast interview that he had indeed “lost by a whisker.”

While Trump’s campaign aides and allies have urged him to keep his focus on Harris and make the election a referendum on issues like inflation and border security, Trump in recent days has veered far off course.

On Friday, he delivered a stunning statement to news cameras in which he brought up a string of past allegations of sexual misconduct, describing several in graphic detail, even as he denied his accusers’ allegations. Earlier, he had voluntarily appeared in court for a hearing on the appeal of a decision that found him liable for sexual abuse, turning focus to his legal woes in the campaign’s final stretch.

Earlier Saturday, Trump had leaned into familiar grievances about everything from his indictments to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election as he campaigned in one of the most deeply Republican swaths of battleground Wisconsin.

“The Harris-Biden DOJ is trying to throw me in jail — they want me in jail — for the crime of exposing their corruption,” Trump claimed at an outdoor rally at Central Wisconsin Airport, where he spoke behind a wall of bulletproof glass due to new security protocols following his July assassination attempt.

There’s no evidence that President Joe Biden or Harris have had any influence over decisions by the Justice Department or state prosecutors to indict the former president.

…

Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika responded to his comments with a statement warning that, if Trump is reelected, he will “use his unchecked power to prosecute his enemies and pardon insurrectionists who violently attacked our Capitol on January 6."

…

As Trump was campaigning, Harris took a short break from debate prep to visit Penzeys Spices in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, where she bought several seasoning mixes. One customer saw the Democratic nominee and began openly weeping as Harris hugged her and said, “We’re going to be fine. We’re all in this together.”

Harris said she was honored to have endorsements from two major Republicans: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman.

“People are exhausted, about the division and the attempts to kind of divide us as Americans,” she said, adding that her main message at the debate would be that the country wants to be united.

“It’s time to turn the page on the divisiveness,” she said. “It’s time to bring our country together, to chart a new way forward.”

Trump held his rally in the central Wisconsin city of Mosinee, with a population of about 4,500 people. It is within Wisconsin’s mostly rural 7th Congressional District, a reliably Republican area in a purple state.

During his speech, he railed against Harris in dark and ominous language, claiming that if the woman he calls “Comrade Kamala Harris gets four more years, you will be living (in) a full-blown Banana Republic" ruled by “anarchy” and “tyranny.”

Trump also railed against the administration’s border policies, calling the Democrats’ approach “suicidal" and accusing them of having “imported murderers, child predators and serial rapists from all over the planet."

Many studies have found immigrants, including those in the country illegally, commit fewer violent crimes than native-born citizens. Violent crime in the U.S. dropped again last year, continuing a downward trend after a pandemic-era spike.

[mariacallous]

In a fighting State of the Union address, much of which could have been delivered at a campaign rally, President Joe Biden directly criticized his predecessor more than a dozen times and drew lines that he hopes will define the 2024 presidential election. He was an unabashed liberal on social policy, a populist nationalist on economic policy, and a traditional postwar internationalist on foreign policy.

Biden’s forceful delivery was meant to signal that he is not too old to serve out a second term, which most Americans currently think he is. Indeed, projecting vigor and strength was one of the main objectives of the evening. Gone was his tendency to speak in a near whisper; through much of the speech he practically shouted. He ended his speech with an argument that his age is an advantage—that through extended experience, he has learned what he needs to lead the country in challenging times.

“The state of the union is strong and getting stronger,” President Biden declared. He may well have had no choice. The fact remains that the American people don’t agree with him. In a new CBS poll, 61% of Americans described the state of the country as “divided,” 45% as “declining,” 37% as “weak,” and just 15% as “strong.” Tellingly, only 25% of Democrats saw the state of the country as strong. Biden clearly hopes that he began to change their minds and that subsequent events will vindicate his optimism in time for the election. It remains to be seen whether his decision to lean against public sentiment will reduce his credibility and make him look out of touch.

To the surprise of few, the defense of democracy against autocracy at home and abroad was a central theme of the speech, which depicted Donald Trump as a threat to both. To the surprise of many, Biden led off the speech with an impassioned defense of the need to aid Ukraine and stop Vladimir Putin from conquering Ukraine and threatening all of Europe. Quoting Trump’s own words, he accused him of bowing down to Putin and moved on to accuse his predecessor of trying to “bury the truth of January 6th.”

Biden’s defense of his economic record was lengthy and detailed, with references to massive job creation, sustained low unemployment, small business creation, a manufacturing revival, and a shrinking racial wealth gap. He appealed directly to workers without college degrees, touting his enforcement of long-neglected “Buy American” laws and massive investment in infrastructure projects. He noted the recent surge in consumer confidence and must hope that a continued shift in the public mood about the economy will help him move from defense to offense on this critical issue. It remains to be seen whether his attack on drug companies and other corporations for alleged price-gouging will help him defuse the issue of high prices, the public’s main complaint about his economic record. And while the lengthy list was impressive, it fell short of being the sort of concise narrative that could be easily understood on the campaign trail.

The case was very different when it came to freedom of choice, where there were no such ambiguities. He condemned Donald Trump and his supporters for overturning Roe v. Wade and called for national legislation to restore Roe as the law of the land. In a similar vein, he criticized the move, which started in Alabama, to interfere with access to in vitro fertilization, many couples’ only chance to have biological children, and he called for national legislation to secure access to IVF nationwide. In this context and others, he invoked the political power of women and urged them to use this power to defend their freedom.

Turning to plans for a second term, Biden presented a lengthy laundry list of liberal proposals on health care, education, housing, and taxes. Most were aimed at the high prices middle-class Americans face that prevent them from giving Biden credit on the economy. While these measures may help fire up the base, they may not appeal to undecided swing voters, let alone the Haley voters whom the president invited to join his coalition just days ago.

Still, the president did better on offense than with the issues that have put him on the defensive. On immigration, he ignored advice from some Democrats to shut the border immediately and contented himself with calling on Congress to pass the bipartisan border bill that Senate Republicans abandoned under pressure from former president Trump. Similarly, he did not go beyond traditional Democratic proposals for fighting violent crime and missed an opportunity to break new ground on the fight against the epidemic of fentanyl and other deadly opioids.

He was more innovative about Hamas’ murderous attack on Israel and the situation in Gaza, which have already cost many thousands of civilian lives. He insisted that Israel has a responsibility to minimize civilian casualties, even as they pursue a ruthless enemy that uses human shields as a cornerstone of its military strategy. He also cited an urgent need to get food and other humanitarian aid to desperate Gazans and ordered the construction of a temporary port in the sea that would permit American vessels to get this aid where it is needed without, the president promised, putting American boots on the ground. He reiterated his support for a temporary ceasefire and an eventual two-state solution, which he characterized as the only path to durable peace between Israel and its neighbors in the region. Not until November will we find out whether these initiatives will be enough to soothe the anger of Arab and Muslim Americans whose defection threatens the president’s hold on the vital swing state of Michigan.

During his speech, President Biden referred with approval to two past presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. But it was the spirit of Harry Truman’s 1948 campaign that suffused everything he said and how he said it. Biden and his advisors have signaled that they regard blunt, no-holds-barred partisanship as the best path to victory against Donald Trump, whom he trails in most polls. In a time of intense polarization, they believe, mobilizing the base is Job One. The president talked optimistically about America’s comeback, but the speech was intended to promote his own comeback as well.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Richard Luscombe at The Guardian:

Joe Biden has said it was his “obligation to the country” to drop out of the 2024 presidential election and prevent what he said would be “a genuine danger to American security” if Donald Trump won a second term of office. The US president gave his reasoning for stepping aside in at-times an emotional interview with CBS News on Sunday, his first since quitting the race in July. He explained that losing the confidence of senior House and Senate Democrats, who feared his unpopularity would hurt them at the polls in November, had weighed on his mind.

Ultimately, Biden said, it was a combination of circumstances that led him to make his momentous decision not to seek re-election, which subsequently saw Vice-President Kamala Harris taking over the Democratic ticket and catching or surpassing Trump in several battleground states, according to new polling data. “Although I have the great honor to be president, I think I have an obligation to the country to do the most important thing you can do, and that is we must, we must, we must defeat Trump,” he said. Biden said he did not take the decision lightly, and made it in consultation with his family at home in Delaware. At the time, he said, he still believed he could win in November, but events had “moved quickly” after weeks of pressure and growing unease inside his party that, at 81, he was too old for the rigors of a second term.

Those fears were heightened by his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June. “I had a really bad day in that debate because I was sick. But I have no serious problem,” Biden said, denying he was impaired by any cognitive issue. “The polls we had showed that it was a neck and neck race, it would have been down to the wire. But what happened was a number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was gonna hurt them in the races and I was concerned if I stayed in the race that would be the topic. “I thought it would be a real distraction. [When] I ran the first time I thought of myself being a transition president. I can’t even say how old I am. It’s hard for me to get out of my mouth. Things got moving so quickly. And the combination was… a critical issue for me still… is maintaining this democracy.”

Speaking to CBS News’s Robert Costa on CBS Sunday Morning today for President Joe Biden’s first TV interview since his July 21st withdrawal announcement, Biden stated that the reason why he withdrew 3 weeks ago was due to the fact that he had “an obligation to the country” to defeat Donald Trump by dropping out of the race and endorsing Kamala Harris to be his successor.

From the 08.11.2024 edition of CBS's CBS Sunday Morning: