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janamelie · 5 years ago

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LGBT+ Characters

What This Isn’t

A claim of “proof” of the sexuality and / or gender identity of any of these characters. We don’t need that or anything else to “justify” shipping.

What This Is

A reference post to collate instances in canon which could indicate LGBT+ characters. In the case of regulars, I won’t include every instance as it would simply take too long.

Rimmer

As I was saying… :p

Honestly, Rimmer is so obviously LGBT+ to me that I don’t know where to start. How about his reaction to Ace in “Dimension Jump”?

RIMMER: "Commander Rimmer!" I ask you. "Ace!" Barf city. I bet you anything he wears women's underwear. They're all the same, this type, you know, Hurly-burly, rough-n-tumble macho marines in public, and behind closed doors he'll be parading up and down in taffeta ballgowns, drinking mint juleps, whipping the houseboy.

KRYTEN: Sir, he's you! It's just that your lives diverged at a certain point in time.

RIMMER: Yes, I went into the gents and he went the other way.

KRYTEN: I assume, sir, you are making fatuous references to his sexuality. If I may point out, if --

Or how about Low Rimmer? Surely Rob and Doug could have got their point across a little less graphically?

Or if you prefer something less rapey, this passage from “IWCD”. Unlike the show, Rob and Doug had more time and leeway to explore the characters and this is what they chose to include for Rimmer:

“Rimmer began to regret his outburst. He didn’t like to see his other self upset, and he even contemplated briefly going up to him and giving him a manly embrace. But in a brief moment of homosexual panic, he thought his double might get the wrong idea. Not that he would, of course, because he was him and he knew for a fact he wasn’t that way sexually tilted; so obviously his double wasn’t and obviously his double would know that he wasn’t either, and it was simply a manly embrace meant in a sort of mano a mano kind of way…Perhaps he was tired…Two or three days in bed and he’d be his old self again…Who cared if his copy saw it as a sign of weakness? He’d suggest it anyway.” Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, Grant/Naylor, pg 233.

And this from the end of the “Better Than Life” novel, when Holly - whose IQ has been restored - comes up with a way to bring Lister back from the dead (no, not as a hologram):

“Rimmer stood in the hatchway and his face yielded to a grin, which in turn gave way to laughter. Not his normal hollow braying empty laughter, this was an altogether different noise. This was a noise his vocal cords had never been called on to make before.

It was the laughter of joy.”

Better Than Life, Grant/Naylor, pg 218.

I know some fans read Rimmer as asexual and you can certainly make an argument for that, most obviously in “Marooned” where he describes his younger self as not “particularly highly sexed”. Of course, that wouldn’t preclude him also being homoromantic or biromantic.

Lister

No-one’s denying Lister’s obvious attraction to and affection for women, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t be bisexual or pansexual. In fact, his “I’m not gay!” protestations in “Duct Soup” is a fairly common way for people attracted to more than one gender to describe themselves if they don’t feel comfortable using labels. Given that he was talking to Chloe!Kochanski to whom he’s attracted, it makes sense that he’d prevaricate like this.

And then of course, in the very next episode “Blue”, he dreams about kissing Rimmer. It’s not only the fact of this, it’s the subsequent scene drawing a direct comparison between him missing Rimmer and Kochanski missing her Dave - her boyfriend. And despite the ending of this episode, when Lister actually meets Rimmer again, he’s delighted. Until he realises it’s not HIS Rimmer and even so, he gets used to nano-Rimmer and they eventually become quite chummy.

Not forgetting the chemistry between him and Ace, of course.

Kryten

I know he's a mechanoid, but no-one has any problem reading his relationship with Mechanoid - and later Blob - Camille as romantic and Camille literally says herself that both she and her husband Hector are actually androgynous, which makes Kryten - at the very least - panromantic.

And that’s before we get to his very obvious love for Lister which he states himself in “Back In The Red”.

Holly

Holly was actually conceived as a female character and became male due to Norman Lovett’s original casting. Sources: “Stasis Leaked” by Smegazine writer Jane Killick and “The Unofficial Red Dwarf Programme Guide” by Smegazine writers Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons.

With Hattie’s replacement casting and later Norman’s return, Rob and Doug may not have intended to create a trans or genderfluid character, but that’s what they ended up doing.

Holly is also bisexual - male Holly was attracted to Hilly and female Holly to Ace.

George McIntyre

It was actually Rob and Doug’s audio commentary on the pilot version of “The End” on “The Bodysnatcher Collection” which alerted me to this possibility. I know it’s a stretch but I’m including it precisely because I’m indifferent to George as a character and it makes no difference to me whether someone believes this one or not.

During George’s speech at his “Welcome back” party, he says “I don’t want you to think of me as someone who’s dead, more as someone who’s no longer a threat to your marriages - I think Joe knows what I’m talking about!”

We see a man and a woman laughing and the woman playfully pokes the man in the arm. He stops laughing and looks a bit sheepish.

Rob and Doug comment confusedly to the effect of “Shouldn’t it be the other way round? This is one of the things we had no control over at this stage.”

Come on, Rob and Doug. Not only does this scene appear intact in the final televised version of “The End”, you also included extra background on George in “Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers”, showing the events leading up to his death. Unlike the hologram he replaces, Frank Saunders, there is no mention of George having a wife or indeed any partner, so as far I’m concerned, we shippers can read whatever we choose into this scene. We would regardless, but the way canon leaves it is particularly open-ended.

Deb Lister and Arlene Rimmer (“Parallel Universe”)

See previous entries. If their male counterparts are LGBT+ then so are they, plus I always got that vibe from the performances anyway.

Camille

Yes, everyone uses female pronouns for her as that’s how she presents to the crew, but she says herself: “We’re androgynous, but I suppose you could call [Hector] my husband.”

Noel Coward Waxdroid (“Meltdown”)

Mr Coward was gay in real life and his fictional incarnation here greets Rimmer with “Delighted to meet you, dear boy!” I rest my case.

Nirvanah Crane

And arguably the entire crew of the Holoship according to her speech: “It's a ship regulation that we all have sexual congress at least twice a day. It's a health rule … Here it is considered the height of bad manners to refuse an offer of sexual coupling … We are holograms. There is no risk of disease or pregnancy. That is why in our society we only believe in sex -- constant, guilt-free sex.”

Does that sound as though they’re fussy about the genders of their partners? It certainly doesn’t to me. So:

Captain Hercule Platini

Commander Randy Navarro

Commander Natalina Pushkin

Commander Binks

Sam Murray

From the Series V DVD booklet:

“Briefly revived in “Holoship”, it came as a surprise that Sam was male. In the original pilot script - and Series 1′s deleted funeral scene - deceased crew member “Sam Murray” is said to be dating “Rick Thesen”. Possibly Red Dwarf’s first gay couple?”

Cop (“Back To Reality”)

I’m sure it wasn’t written as such and maybe he didn’t intend to, but the way Lenny Von Dohlen plays his character’s reaction to the Voter Colonel just pings my gaydar.

Frank Todhunter (“The End”)

I know the conversation in “Duct Soup” (which also includes a reference to a gay crew member nicknamed “Bent Bob” *cringe*) where Kochanski tells Lister that the Todhunter in her dimension was gay is played off as something she made up to take Lister’s mind off his claustrophobia, but she never actually says as much. There’s nothing to say that at least part of what she was saying wasn’t true.

Ackerman (Series VIII)

In the Series VIII DVD documentary, actor Graham McTavish says he was playing Ackerman as someone who enjoys sex with women “or at a pinch, men dressed as women”. So onto this list he goes.

Big Meat (“Only The Good”)

I don’t blame you if you’ve blocked this one out as I find the scene almost unwatchable, but he’s the big prisoner who takes to the idea of being Cat’s “bitch” unexpectedly quickly.

Katerina Bartikovsky (“Back To Earth”)

Credit to @clueingforbeggs for noticing that in “Pete Part 1” Ackerman claims to have been “having jiggy-jiggy with the Science Officer’s wife” and connecting that with Katerina being a Science Officer. There’s nothing to say that the Joy Squid didn’t conjure up the image of an actual crew member.

But maybe the ship has more than one Science Officer? Well, the way it’s said makes it sound as though there is only one but in “Holoship” Kryten gives Rimmer a mind patch from two officers, one of whom is Science Officer Buchan. There is no mention of Buchan’s gender so who’s to say they aren’t also female?

Begg Chief (“Entangled”)

“We prefer the ship of green. And the sexy light man with the lady legs so long and luscious!”

Chancellor Wednesday (“The Beginning”)

Actor Alex Hardy says in Series X DVD doc “We’re Smegged” that he was playing the relationship between his character and Dominator Zlurth with a homoerotic undercurrent and you can see it subtly in his performance.

Dolphy (“Cured”)

All I’ll say about this one is that if Messalina had behaved towards Lister as Dolphy does in this episode, nobody would have doubted that she was into him.

Ziggy (“Timewave”)

Proof that LGBT+ characters in this show work a lot better when Doug isn’t intentionally writing them as such. Sorry.

Feel free to add any examples I may have missed.

@lord-valery-mimes @aziraphale-lesbian @notalwaysweak @feline-ranger @downonthepharm-red-dwarf @hologrammette @rosecathy @cazflibs

#red dwarf #red dwarf slash

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Tonight marks the fourth Democratic primary debate, and although we’ve written, as a site, that maybe the race is now just between two or three candidates … there are actually 12 candidates on the debate stage. Which kind of begs the question: How much do these debates actually matter? Are they winnowing the field? Helping voters better understand the candidates?

In honor of one of my favorite debate-style questions that seems to have fallen out of favor, a quick show of hands

— who thinks these debates matter?

galen (Galen Druke, podcast producer and reporter): I think debates can matter in primaries. But I don’t think the debates in the 2020 Democratic primary have mattered very much.

So … timid hand raise from me.

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor):

I think they have mattered.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): The DNC has used the debate qualification process to basically winnow the field — that has mattered, of course. But I don’t think the actual debates have mattered much.

galen: I don’t even think the DNC’s criteria to determine who makes the debates have mattered all that much!

The public doesn’t seem particularly interested in anyone beyond the top 3-5 candidates.

sarahf: Galen bringing the heat

julia_azari: Here’s why I’d argue the debates have mattered: 1) This field has more potential front-runners than any in recent history, with maybe the exception of the Republican field in 2016. 2) Debates offer an opportunity for front-runners to show their flaws.

It’s notable, for instance, that Elizabeth Warren has managed to get through the debates without having any bad moments so far. And with Joe Biden, his debate performances haven’t been outstanding necessarily, but his support hasn’t changed a ton either.

perry: Julia, are you saying the debates haven’t been bad for Biden?

julia_azari: Right, I don’t think they have been. Sure, the debates have showcased his flaws in a way that wouldn’t be as evident without them. (He’s slow on his feet, at times, and rambles). But the debates have also reinforced conceptions that folks had of Biden going in; namely, that he’s moderate and looking to carry on former President Barack Obama’s legacy. Entrenching the status quo still has an effect; it’s just hard to make a big show of it.

sarahf: And what about someone like Kamala Harris? Can’t we trace her highs — and lows — to the debates?

julia_azari: Harris definitely has had a series of bad debate moments, and they have mattered. She’s had lines that landed poorly in the third debate, flailed a bit on health care questions in the second debate and later faced backlash against her confrontation with Biden in the first debate.

galen: But isn’t it also true that Harris’s story is more of a reversion to the mean after her boost from the first debate wore off?

After all, she had lost roughly a third of what she’d gained in the polls by the second debate, and her fall in the polls wasn’t about debate performance.

sarahf: But her rise was!

galen: OK, sure. The debate mattered … for two weeks.

Which a nominee does not make.

sarahf: Haha, what about someone like Warren, though? Isn’t there an argument that her debate performance has helped fuel some of her rise in the polls? As Julia mentioned earlier, it is notable that she hasn’t really had a bad debate performance yet.

galen: So, I looked at this a bit before our chat, and it is clear that Warren began rising in the polls before the first debate on June 26 and 27.

And sure, you can see some upward movement in the polls in the week or so after the second and third debates. But it’s hard to chalk that up to just her debate performance because she’s been gaining steadily throughout the summer. In fact, some of her biggest gains came in the last two weeks, which was long after the third debate on Sept. 12.

perry: As Galen said, Warren has been steadily rising in the polls for months now — but I’d argue that none of the debates were big inflection points for Warren or the other candidates, for three reasons: 1) Biden entered the race with strong numbers, and he’s largely maintained his standing. 2) Sanders’s numbers have fallen, but that doesn’t seem to be tied to the debates; and 3) None of the lower-profile candidates have broken out in the debates. Pete Buttigieg’s rise, for example, happened outside of the debates.

galen: Amen to what Perry said.

The Warren story is about running a good campaign and the media loving her.

It’s not a story of owning the debates.

julia_azari: I would never argue that Warren’s story was mainly about owning the debates. But I don’t think we can entirely dismiss them either. Think of debates like vice-presidential picks: They can do a fair amount of harm, but they also rarely help.

True, this argument is more applicable to the front-runners than the other candidates — but debates are important for highlighting a candidate’s flaws.

perry: If Julia’s argument is ‘debates matter because Biden and Warren could have screwed up really bad and didn’t,’ I agree with that.

I don’t think Harris’s decline is because of the debates, but we might just disagree there.

sarahf: OK, so it sounds as if debates serve two main functions: 1) Test out the strength of the front-runners; 2) Give someone who isn’t a front-runner an opportunity to break through.

We’ve talked about the first point quite a bit, but perhaps the second point really hasn’t been borne out this cycle? Because even after Julián Castro had a stand-out performance in the first debate, or Beto O’Rourke performed well in the third debate, their numbers in the national polls haven’t shifted that much.

julia_azari: Yeah. I mean, there were brief moments where it looked like someone’s performance might shift the race, but that just hasn’t happened. And I’d argue some of the minor, yet plausible, candidates — Amy Klobuchar, O’Rourke — just haven’t had great performances, overall.

perry: Is a debate performance only good or bad if it moves the numbers, though?

Serious question.

sarahf: This feels like the old “if a tree falls in the forest” question … but yes, right??

julia_azari: I think you can talk about someone’s debate performance separate from his or her polling numbers.

Take Biden in the last debate. He got flustered when asked a question about the legacy of segregation in the U.S., and his response was a word salad in which he suggested playing a record player at night could help children be exposed to more words. It was, as Jamil Smith at Rolling Stone pointed out, a really troubling answer that underscored just how out of touch Biden is on issues of race.

But as we discussed earlier, Biden’s numbers haven’t really shifted because of the debates. Instead, I think his debate performances have staked out where he falls in a party that is increasingly split on the question of whether the party is too “woke” on issues of race, as well as whether returning to the status quo before Trump is desirable.

perry: So I agree with this, and I think the debates have shaped the contours of how the race is being discussed.

Biden’s weird comment about record players, for instance, has opened the door for people who were already against him to strengthen their case to people who might be inclined to like Biden (black voters.)

I’m increasingly convinced that I should be watching the debate for the discussions of issues, not for how the event affects the polls. So when I say the debates don’t matter, I mean in that they don’t matter in terms of affecting the horse race. I definitely think the debates matter for better understanding the divides in the party.

galen: I’ve definitely learned about the contours of the Democratic Party from watching these debates. The first debate, in particular, was interesting for showing how far to the left the candidates thought they had to go in order to win. But also …

THIS ISN’T HORSESHOES AND HAND GRENADES, PERRY!

WINNING IS WHAT MATTERS.

perry: Well, winning matters, sure. But Biden has now called “Medicare for All” too radical in several debates. That is not great for Warren if she is the nominee — since Trump and his team can quote Biden criticizing that policy.

However, the fact that the debates have all led with a discussion around health care has definitely helped frame the primary around this issue, turning the larger “electability” discussion into a policy divide (Medicare for All vs. “Medicare for everyone who wants it.”)

julia_azari: And, of course, once you’ve won the nomination, it matters what you do with your coalition. Can you keep it together? Are people disgusted with you? There’s now a whole other thing to win — the general election.

galen: I like that point, Julia, but I also think that how the eventual nominee is defined will have a lot more to do with how Republicans characterize them through campaigning than with what Democrats said about them during the debate.

julia_azari: But the debates do reveal candidates’ positions and force candidates to occasionally take firm stances.

perry: So what have the debates revealed thus far?

sarahf: That aside from Biden, no other moderate candidate has really caught on?

I continue to be amazed that no other moderate candidate has really emerged as an alternative to Biden (maybe Buttigieg).

julia_azari: Well, the revelations are limited to a degree, given the party is changing, but I’d say they include: Biden will stick to his positions on race from the early 1990s, Castro is well-versed on LGBT issues, and Beto wants to take away your AR-15.

perry: I do think the second and third debates — and the fallout from them — revealed a party that wants to move on from many of Obama’s policies, but at the same time, can’t really abide by any direct criticism of Obama.

galen: What about positions that will shape the 2020 general election?

I think, for instance, Warren’s announcement that she supports decriminalizing crossing the border — and the fact that she raised her hand in the first debate when asked if she supported it — is a 2020 attack ad if she wins the nomination. Support for decriminalizing border crossing among Democrats is also unclear. Some pollsters like NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist have found middling support (45 percent), although other progressive pollsters like YouGov Blue have found that Democrats are perhaps warming to the idea.

perry: I mean, I think Democrats will support this position and basically all of Warren’s positions if she is the nominee, although I know decriminalizing border crossings is a controversial stance.

galen: Oh, I don’t think Democrats won’t vote for Warren or support her positions, but can Democrats win a general election with only support from “get in line with the party” Democrats? Maybe. I don’t know.

perry: I tend to think that the argument that “Democrats’ liberal positions in the primary will hurt them in the general” should be tempered. After all, Trump ran a primary campaign that advocated barring all Muslims from entering the U.S. and building a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. He didn’t back down in the general, and now he’s president.

julia_azari: Right, perhaps one of the more lasting messages of 2016 is you don’t have to run to the center to win.

sarahf: OK, to wrap — it seems as if there is some consensus that the debates have mattered, at least in helping us better understand where the party stands on certain issues or what direction the party could move in. And maybe the debates have accomplished more of that — at least this cycle — than they have impacted individual candidates?

galen: Here’s a take we can all agree on (maybe): The debates have mattered for political science, though perhaps not for the actual primary race.

Actually, I have a caveat to make.

There are going to be SO MANY more debates.

And they could still change things, especially as the field winnows.

sarahf: Wow, backtracking.

galen: Haha, this isn’t a backtrack. I’ve maintained that the debates haven’t mattered so far.

julia_azari: I think we’re feeling some of what we’re feeling because people aren’t paying attention yet. For people who follow politics closely enough to watch the early debates, much of what we saw confirms previous stereotypes about who the candidates are.

galen:

Julia speaking truth.

perry: My concluding thought is that I keep thinking the debates will change the poll numbers, and they just aren’t. And that’s made me rethink some of my assumptions about politics, television and the Democratic Party.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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45news · 5 years ago

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Barack Obama’s vice-president is floundering in the Democratic primary, losing key support as vital votes loomLarry Sabato is an analyst, author and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. His students are currently embedded in various presidential campaigns. Two were working for Joe Biden in Iowa. Before caucus day, they texted Sabato to say they expected to lose badly.Sabato asked why. The answer: “No energy at all.”And so it proved. Biden, who was Barack Obama’s righthand man for eight years and long the Democrats’ national frontrunner to take on Donald Trump, trailed in fourth. A week later, he fled New Hampshire before the votes were even counted, to escape the public humiliation of finishing fifth.Now, in the words of one commentator, Biden “needs a miracle” to stay in the race. A man whose candidacy a year ago seemed to be predicated on his appeal to the white working class is depending on African American voters to rescue him from the oft-quoted maxim that all political lives end in failure. What went wrong?“I’ve watched Joe Biden since he was first elected [to the Senate] in 1972,” Sabato said. “He was full of energy and joking around and had a big personality but I don’t think anyone has associated the word ‘vision’ with Joe Biden. Democrats are looking for a vision; Biden’s vision is to go back to Obama’s policies. I understand it, but it doesn’t get you standing up and cheering.”The 77-year-old’s debate performances have failed to inspire and his rallies have drawn small crowds. His rally in Des Moines on the eve of the Iowa caucuses was in a more compact venue than Pete Buttigieg’s across the city and, while delivering a heartfelt critique of Trump, offered fewer policy specifics and generated less electricity.Sabato added: “People are charged up and incensed about Trump. But if you’re standing there talking and they go to sleep, it doesn’t suggest you’re the best one to beat Trump. People keep saying he’s lost a step or two but this is the same Joe Biden I remember from the 1970s. He’s a meanderer. Some speakers get you fired up but Joe’s not that.”> In Iowa I saw one of the most inferior ground games in politics. I have never seen anything so inept> > Moe VelaThere is a distinct whiff of déja vu. Biden’s first run for president fell apart in 1987 when he quoted British politician Neil Kinnock but forgot to credit him, prompting charges of plagiarism. His second attempt went off the rails in 2007 when he described Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”. (His third-place finish in his home state, Delaware, remains his best performance in a primary.)The 2020 effort was meant to be different story with Biden, who served with distinction as Obama’s vice-president, cast as the antidote to Trump and restorer of normalcy. But he was poleaxed by Senator Kamala Harris of California in the first Democratic debate in June, when she challenged his past views on desegregated school busing.He fared little better in a debate in September when, asked about what responsibility Americans have to repair the legacy of slavery, he gave a rambling answer that included “make sure you have the record player on at night, make sure that kids hear words, a kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there.”Debates came and went. Trump’s attacks on Biden’s son, Hunter, over his business dealings in Ukraine generated media scrutiny, both fair and unfair, that in some minds may have planted seeds of doubt. In Iowa it was clear the Obama magic, which swept the caucuses in 2008, had not rubbed off on his running mate. The blame seemed to lie with both an underwhelming candidate and a poorly organised campaign.Moe Vela, who was director of administration and senior adviser to Biden at the White House, said: “In Iowa I saw one of the most inferior ground games in politics. I have never seen anything so inept. He’s not being served properly by his campaign.”Vela, now an LGBTQ and Latino activist and board director at TransparentBusiness, added: “He had been the front runner for so long that I think the campaign staff became complacent. You got a sense they were so busy talking about electability and pitting him against Trump they forgot they have to deal with these 15 people first. You could see this rude awakening in Iowa as the night was slipping away.”In New Hampshire, where Biden called a student a “lying dog faced pony soldier”, he fared even worse. A comeback win in Nevada looks unlikely, setting up a potential last stand in South Carolina, the first contest in a state with a significant African American population – a constituency where he has consistently polled strongly. (Biden has been at pains to point out that 99% of the African American population have not yet had a say.)But even this advantage appears to have been eroded by Senator Bernie Sanders and billionaire Tom Steyer. Then comes Super Tuesday, where another billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, has spent nearly $350m on ads focused on the 16 states and territories that vote, eating into Biden’s support among moderates and African Americans. Several black members of Congress and city mayors have endorsed Bloomberg despite the discriminatory “stop-and-frisk” policy he supported as mayor of New York.Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), said: “Biden has lost half the black support that he had. It’s bled off and is now largely with Mike Bloomberg. Some of it has gone to Bernie Sanders, a little bit maybe to Elizabeth Warren, none of it to Pete Buttigieg. So he’s sitting there holding 22, 23% of the black vote now. Mike Bloomberg is behind them at what, 21?“Clearly whatever the decision-making process was that led them to run the first leg of this race the way they have has cost him dearly. They have to make up a lot of ground in a very short period of time. When you swing into Super Tuesday, you’ve got to have bankroll.” ‘If you’re saying you’re a winner, you’d better win’Is there still time to turn it around? Yes, but it will be an uphill struggle. Since 1972, no candidate from either party has finished below second in both Iowa and New Hampshire and won the nomination.Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who was an adviser to the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns, said: “For him to recover from this would be a political miracle unlike anything we’ve seen in modern presidential politics. I don’t think it’s impossible but it’s unlikely and would fly in the face of all our knowledge of political history.”Biden’s main pitch had been that in this moment of national emergency, he was the steady hand best placed to prevent Trump winning a second term. To centrists, he would be less of a gamble than progressives Sanders or Warren. But after the heavy losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, he is caught in his own electability trap.Shrum, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, said: “The centrepiece of the campaign was, ‘I’m going to beat Trump like a drum’. The public said, ‘If you’re saying you’re a winner, you’d better win’.”“Al Gore had this line: elections are not a reward for past performance. I think they are always about the future, not just the past. In Democratic primaries, you’ve got to have a future offer to people, no matter how dissatisfied they are with the Republican incumbent. Joe Biden has a lot of policies on his website but that’s not what comes over on the debate stage.”> There’s still to recover but if he’s not willing to restructure his campaign, I don’t think he can bounce back> > Coby OwensIn a small but telling measure of a campaign in a downward spiral, Biden’s press team did not respond to multiple phone and email requests from the Guardian seeking comment. The Trump, Bloomberg and other campaigns are generally far more responsive.Shrum added: “I suspect they have many pressures and I have nothing but sympathy for the candidate and the people around him. It’s hard to start at the top of the mountain and end up in the valley.”Biden’s struggles have dismayed supporters in his home state, where he remains immensely popular. Coby Owens, a local civil rights activist whose family has known Biden for years, and who is still trying to decide between Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, said: “There are a lot of people who are shocked and concerned about it and want to know what’s going on.“They have been hearing the message that he’s the most electable so they thought he was going to cruise through the first two states, which are predominantly white. There’s still a lot of room left for him to recover but if he’s not willing to restructure his campaign, I don’t think he can bounce back.” ‘Telltale signs’Biden has frequently referenced his partnership with Obama but America’s first black president has remained notably silent.Obama reportedly discouraged Biden from running in 2016 because he believed Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning. This time, rumour has it that he nudged Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, to make a late bid because again he was dubious about Biden’s viability (Patrick dropped out after a poor showing in New Hampshire).Steele, the ex-RNC chairman and former lieutenant-governor of Maryland, commented: “The telltale signs were there: the lack of interest that Barack had in the Biden campaign, the fact that the word on the street was that Deval Patrick was in the race was because Obama encouraged him to get in the race. Why would you do that with your vice-president already in the game?”While cautious about writing Biden off just yet, Steele added: “For me, just watching the Biden campaign, I get the sense that he’s kind of walked through it. I think he’s going through the paces of it. I’m not convinced at this stage that he really wants it any more. I don’t think you take the front runner status that he’s held for over a year, anchored by 50% of the black vote in a party where that is a very important and huge demographic edge, and just leave it on the table.“I’ve never seen a candidate do that the way it’s been done. Maybe there’s a little bit of hubris and you assume that you’ve got the weight to throw around to win this thing. But then again, at the same time, I think at a certain point the gas is out of the tank and you just sleepwalk your way through it.”

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morningusa · 5 years ago

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justsimplylovely · 5 years ago

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itsfinancethings · 5 years ago

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Less than 24 hours after the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump, seven Democratic candidates took the stage at the last debate of 2019 to hash out what they’d do differently if elected.

From California’s Loyola Marymount University, the candidates sparred over their campaign financing decisions, their past support of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how to best combat climate change. The debate stage was the smallest and least diverse yet, but the two women on stage — Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sen. Elizabeth Warren— had some of the most memorable moments: rebuking Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigeig for his relative inexperience compared to the other contenders, and criticizing him for his fundraising methods, respectively.

Former Vice President Joe Biden also evoked a rare criticism of the Obama Administration, pushing back on the notion that he supported the 2009 decision to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan. “I’m the guy from the beginning who argued it was a big, big mistake to surge forces to Afghanistan. Period,” he said. “We should not have done it, and I argued against it constantly.”

Here are some of the night’s other biggest takeaways:

The Democrats’ diversity problem

Seven women and men took the stage on Thursday night, and the only non-white candidate among them was Andrew Yang. Except for Yang and California Sen. Kamala Harris, who dropped out at the start of the month, only white candidates qualified for the debate. This forced the uncomfortable conversation about how the party that talks so big about including diverse voices and that depends on minority voters ended up with such a white set of candidates in a field that was, at one point, historically diverse.

Yang was asked to respond to this from stage, where he argued that if more voters had disposable income, more would donate to political campaigns, resulting in more diverse candidates. He also predicted that Sen. Cory Booker, who BuzzFeed News reported was circulating a letter to other campaigns urging the Democratic National Committee to make its qualifications more inclusionary, would be back. (Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and former Gov. Patrick Deval, the other minority candidates still running, also did not qualify.)

Sen. Sanders, asked the same question about what message that sent to voters, pivoted to climate change, though the moderator interjected to say that the question was about race. “People of color, in fact, are going to be the people suffering most if we do not deal with climate change,” Sanders shot back. Twitter was immediately alight with tweets from progressives afterwards backing Sanders, arguing that climate change was climate justice. —Lissandra Villa

Warren and Buttigieg spar, exposing fault lines in party

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg came to blows over campaign funding and what Buttigieg called “purity tests.” The exchange mirrored an internal debate in the Democratic party, between progressives who denounce the influence of money in politics and candidates who accept big money donations in the name of beating Trump. The question is whether big money is inherently corrosive: Warren (and Sanders) say yes, Buttigieg says no.

Warren, who has vowed to reject corporate donations and closed-door fundraisers, argued that “we can’t have people who can put down $5,000 for a check drown out the voices of everyone else.” Buttigieg pointed out that Trump and his allies would stop at nothing — even foreign interference — to win the election, and that Republicans had raised hundreds of millions for his re-election campaign. “This is our only chance to defeat Donald Trump, and we shouldn’t try to do it with one hand tied behind our backs,” he said.

Then Warren went for the jugular, bringing up the recently revealed Buttigieg fundraiser that took place in a wine cave. “Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States,” she said. Buttigieg hit back hard. “I’m literally the only person on this stage who’s not a millionaire or a billionaire,” he said. This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass.” He then referenced the fact that Warren used money she had raised in previous fundraisers to help seed her presidential campaign. “Did it corrupt you?” he asked. “Of course not.”

It was an exchange that illustrated the battle lines of a party at war with itself, torn between the progressives like Warren and Sanders who want to remake the American political system and liberals like Buttigieg, Biden, and Klobuchar who think that getting rid of Trump is the priority. And it’s an exchange that could haunt both Warren and Buttigieg, depending on how the race plays out. Warren’s grassroots fundraising strategy means she’s cultivated thousands of small donors, but it will be hard for her to compete with opponents (like Trump) with no qualms about raising money from billionaires. And Buttigieg’s willingness to take money from big donors — and the potent image of the wine cave — could make it difficult for him to win over the young progressives who embrace the “purity tests” he denounces. —Charlotte Alter

Biden earns his standing

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has been at the top of the Democratic field since his spring entry to the race in the spring, finally delivered a debate performance to justify his membership in the top tier. Largely spared barbs from his rivals and offering his most solid showing yet, the veteran politician was forceful, level and clear. He successfully deflected any criticism about his deep-pocketed donors by saying his average donor gave $43. He dodged a question about a Washington Post report that Barack Obama’s administration misled the world about conditions in Afghanistan. He brushed past a suggestion that he may only commit to serving one term. And he turned a question about climate change into a moment to promote an infrastructure.

Nothing, in fact, seemed to ding him hard. In one stand-out moment, Biden challenged rival Bernie Sanders over his Medicare for All plan that would spike federal spending on health care. “Now tell me, you’re going to add 84% more, and there’s not going to be higher taxes? At least before, he was being honest about it,” Biden said. In another, he used the ongoing impeachment drama unfolding on Capitol Hill to promote his calls for civility and bipartisanship. Democrats say Trump used a July call with his Ukrainian counterpart to condition U.S. aid on Ukrainian prosecutors publicly pursuing an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, who was hired by a Ukrainian energy company. “If anyone has reason to be angry with Republicans, and not want to cooperate, it’s really me, the way they’ve attacked me, my son, my family,” he said, before adding: “I know we have to… be able to get things done.” — Philip Elliott

Candidates have to talk about age — again

It’s not going away. Three of the top-tier candidates were made to reckon with their age in a question hinged on comments President Barack Obama made earlier this week, arguing that if women in charge the world would be a better place, and that it’s often old men standing in the way of progress.

Sanders, Biden, and Warren, all of whom are in their seventies, responded with quips (“I’m white as well!” said Sanders; “I’m going to guess he wasn’t talking about me,” Biden responded; “I would also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated,” said Warren) before addressing the substance of the question. “The issue is where power resides in America,” Sanders said. “The issue is not old or young, male or female. The issue is working people standing up, taking on the billionaire class, and creating a government and economy that works for all, not just the one percent.”

Biden would not commit either way when asked whether he would run for a second term if elected, even as Politico recently reported he’s been privately signaling that he would only serve one. “No, I’m not willing to commit one way or another. Here’s the deal, I’m not even elected one term yet— let’s see where we are. Let’s see what happens,” Biden responded.

Finally, Warren used the question as an opportunity to talk about her renowned selfie lines, which she argued give people who normally have not had the opportunity to substantively interact with candidates the chance to talk with her. “I believe that President Obama was talking about who has power in America, whose voices get heard. I believe he’s talking about women and people of color and trans people and people whose voices just so often get shoved out. And for me, the best way to understand that is to see how people are running their campaigns in 2020.” —Lissandra Villa

Klobuchar works hard for the Midwestern vote

Iowa will be the first state in the nation to cast ballots for a Democratic nominee, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar leaned into that fact during Thursday’s debate. “The way we take on climate change in a big way is by talking about what’s happening on the coast as I just did,” the Minnesota lawmaker said, “but also by talking about what’s happening in the midwest — where I’m from. It’s not flyover country to me, I live there. And what we are seeing there is unprecedented flooding.” In her answers, she was more determined than ever to reach midwestern and other blue collar workers, many of which have seen their farm bankruptcies increase by 25% in one year, and extreme rain increase by 50% since 1900.

Later in the night, Klobuchar garnered a rousing round of applause after rebutting Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg for their brawl over billionaire donors and the private “wine cave” donor event recently hosted by Buttigieg. “I’ve never even been to a wine cave,” joked Klobuchar. “I’ve been to the Wind Cave [National Park] in South Dakota.” Klobuchar will need the support of these middle America voters to stay in the race. Though a recent Emerson poll clocked her at 10% in the Hawkeye State, her nationwide polling average is still hovering just above 3%. — Abby Vesoulis

Disability policy makes a debut

Health care largely took a back seat on Thursday night, but the moderators asked about a related topic not often discussed on the debate stage: people with disabilities. One in four Americans has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but politicians have historically not paid much attention to disabled voters and no other Democratic debate has featured a question explicitly about disability issues. However, voter turnout surged among people with disabilities in 2018 and this time around, many of the Democratic presidential hopefuls have started to talk about the topic, with many publishing disability policy plans and hiring disabled campaign staffers.

So when a moderator told the candidates about a disabled man named Kyle and asked how they would help ensure people like him were more integrated into the workforce and their communities, disability activists were excited. Billionaire Tom Steyer answered the question first, saying he wanted to “treat everybody equally” but then quickly pivoting to talk about taxes that he would need to pay for increasing services. Entrepreneur Andrew Yang was up next, and he gave a personal answer that referenced his autistic son, who he has often mentioned before.

However, the way Yang talks about people with disabilities is controversial. “How many of you all have a family member or a friend or a neighbor with special needs or autism?” he asked. Many disability advocates see “special needs” as outdated phrasing and would prefer politicians not use euphemisms to refer to their disabilities. Advocates have also stressed that they would like to see politicians treat them as people who matter on their own, not just as family members or neighbors or friends of voters.

The most detailed person to answer the question was Warren, who spoke about fully funding the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), as well as helping people with disabilities secure housing, jobs and equal pay. But even Warren ended her answer by calling disabled people the “least of thy brethren,” a reference that many on social media saw as pitying, even if well intentioned. For Democrats’ first time answering a disability question on stage, their responses showed that they are paying attention, but still have more learning to do. —Abigail Abrams

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itsfinancethings · 5 years ago

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December 19, 2019 at 11:55PM

Here are some of the night’s other biggest takeaways:

The Democrats’ diversity problem

Warren and Buttigieg spar, exposing fault lines in party

Biden earns his standing

Candidates have to talk about age — again

Klobuchar works hard for the Midwestern vote

Disability policy makes a debut

#IFTTT #Blogger

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