If Music Could Talk

Tom Frank on holding one's nose and hoping the best of Biden: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -democrats

Ugh, so it's Harris. Of those floated in recent weeks, she probably made the most sense in the mercenary calculus of these things, but picking a top cop goon still stinks.

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2020, 4:59pm

Ugh, so it's Harris. Of those floated in recent weeks, she probably made the most sense in the mercenary calculus of these things, but picking a top cop goon still stinks.

She'll be President at some point after this.

It was the most obvious choice (obvious enough that I predicted it and my track record isn't exactly spotless) and Biden isn't one to do anything except the obvious.

Whatever. It's where the party is right now. If you're to the left of this ticket, you either take the Chomsky tact that it's 15 minutes out of your day to go vote and then it's back to spending your time on real politics or you engage in abstentionism. The veep pick was never going to change that calculus.

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2020, 5:26pm

She'll be President at some point after this.

Before the next four years isn't a bad bet.

Flex wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2020, 5:44pm

It was the most obvious choice (obvious enough that I predicted it and my track record isn't exactly spotless) and Biden isn't one to do anything except the obvious.

I figured it was either her or Rice for checking off the boxes, and Harris doesn't have the phony Benghazi distraction around her. Plus Harris surrendering her Senate seat is no problem given California.

Whatever. It's where the party is right now. If you're to the left of this ticket, you either take the Chomsky tact that it's 15 minutes out of your day to go vote and then it's back to spending your time on real politics or you engage in abstentionism. The veep pick was never going to change that calculus.

Yep. Once it was BIden, the plan should be to get him elected and then organize against him.

Akin to the "there's always a Tweet":

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2020, 4:59pm

Ugh, so it's Harris. Of those floated in recent weeks, she probably made the most sense in the mercenary calculus of these things, but picking a top cop goon still stinks.

I've seen a few Trump adds blasting Biden for being soft on crime, so maybe the Harris call was partially based on pushing back on that. I'm sure a lot of thinking went into it like attracting Asian-American voters. I'm not overly enthused by Biden or Harris, but if they can boot Trump and Pence I'm all in. This year feels like just stopping the bleeding...Biden is emergency triage until we can get better treatment for what ails us.

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:10am

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2020, 4:59pm

Ugh, so it's Harris. Of those floated in recent weeks, she probably made the most sense in the mercenary calculus of these things, but picking a top cop goon still stinks.

I've seen a few Trump adds blasting Biden for being soft on crime, so maybe the Harris call was partially based on pushing back on that. I'm sure a lot of thinking went into it like attracting Asian-American voters. I'm not overly enthused by Biden or Harris, but if they can boot Trump and Pence I'm all in. This year feels like just stopping the bleeding...Biden is emergency triage until we can get better treatment for what ails us.

He's a big dirty needle jabbing at the wound, making it worse.

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:22am

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:10am

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2020, 4:59pm

Ugh, so it's Harris. Of those floated in recent weeks, she probably made the most sense in the mercenary calculus of these things, but picking a top cop goon still stinks.

I've seen a few Trump adds blasting Biden for being soft on crime, so maybe the Harris call was partially based on pushing back on that. I'm sure a lot of thinking went into it like attracting Asian-American voters. I'm not overly enthused by Biden or Harris, but if they can boot Trump and Pence I'm all in. This year feels like just stopping the bleeding...Biden is emergency triage until we can get better treatment for what ails us.

He's a big dirty needle jabbing at the wound, making it worse.

Trump has been so destructive over the past 4 years...I struggle to recognize my own country at times. I know Biden is not an ideal candidate by any means...but the goal still has to be to remove Trump. Biden won't make it worse because it's impossible to be worse than Donald Trump.

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:55am

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:22am

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:10am

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2020, 4:59pm

Ugh, so it's Harris. Of those floated in recent weeks, she probably made the most sense in the mercenary calculus of these things, but picking a top cop goon still stinks.

I've seen a few Trump adds blasting Biden for being soft on crime, so maybe the Harris call was partially based on pushing back on that. I'm sure a lot of thinking went into it like attracting Asian-American voters. I'm not overly enthused by Biden or Harris, but if they can boot Trump and Pence I'm all in. This year feels like just stopping the bleeding...Biden is emergency triage until we can get better treatment for what ails us.

He's a big dirty needle jabbing at the wound, making it worse.

Trump has been so destructive over the past 4 years...I struggle to recognize my own country at times. I know Biden is not an ideal candidate by any means...but the goal still has to be to remove Trump. Biden won't make it worse because it's impossible to be worse than Donald Trump.

This.

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:55am

Silent Majority wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:22am

WestwayKid wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 11:10am

Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2020, 4:59pm

Ugh, so it's Harris. Of those floated in recent weeks, she probably made the most sense in the mercenary calculus of these things, but picking a top cop goon still stinks.

I've seen a few Trump adds blasting Biden for being soft on crime, so maybe the Harris call was partially based on pushing back on that. I'm sure a lot of thinking went into it like attracting Asian-American voters. I'm not overly enthused by Biden or Harris, but if they can boot Trump and Pence I'm all in. This year feels like just stopping the bleeding...Biden is emergency triage until we can get better treatment for what ails us.

He's a big dirty needle jabbing at the wound, making it worse.

Trump has been so destructive over the past 4 years...I struggle to recognize my own country at times. I know Biden is not an ideal candidate by any means...but the goal still has to be to remove Trump. Biden won't make it worse because it's impossible to be worse than Donald Trump.

I can almost guarantee that once Biden's 4 (2? 3?) years are up (which I doubt he's going to get in the first place), we're going to have another awful republican that will be back on the trump agenda. People will get complacent and the Republicans are going to put forward a candidate that can actually win, as usual. And of course Biden is going to do such a bad job that it will be easy for them to win anyway.

Kory wrote: ↑

12 Aug 2020, 12:44pm

I can almost guarantee that once Biden's 4 (2? 3?) years are up (which I doubt he's going to get in the first place), we're going to have another awful republican that will be back on the trump agenda. People will get complacent and the Republicans are going to put forward a candidate that can actually win, as usual. And of course Biden is going to do such a bad job that it will be easy for them to win anyway.

I'll once again play the unaccustomed role (in real life) of Pollyanna to counter this prediction. Another four years means more dead Boomers and Xers. Another four years means more Gen Z kids coming of age. More Latinos coming of age in places like Texas. Demographics matters. It's boring and a bit insulting to abstract and quantify things like that, but it does matter. As well, the stink of Trump isn't going to go away any time soon, and it's important to appreciate that Trumpists and Republicans are a distinct numerical minority in the US. After the Civil War, Republicans won the White House and usually Congress every election but two between Lincoln and Taft—52 years. Part of the reason for that dominance was that in the 19th c, Republicans regularly engaged in a tactic called "waving the bloody shirt," which was to remind voters that Democrats were the party of the South, the villain of the Civil War. Trump is going to be a scarlet T on every Republican for the next decade. Democrats made hay by tarring every Republican for decades after the Depression as a Hoover. It's going to be hard for Republicans to either wipe away the Trump stink or embrace it and build a winning coalition. Once again, it's worth remembering that he beat Clinton by a fluke, aided by the fact that the Democrats decided to go with a lousy candidate who was one of the most hated of all time.

As for Biden/Harris, at best I hope that the demands of the times sufficiently push them in good directions. It's a mistake to think that any politician who is elected gets to be god and bend the world to his or her will, especially in a crisis. They end up being bent more than the world and end up figures that neither they nor their supporters expected or wanted. That's not meant to be taken as a hopeful statement (necessarily), only to suggest that it is rash to think we can see exactly how Biden or Harris would govern based on their careers or campaign.

I definitely have largely given up on the idea that I can accurately prognosticate on the short term fortunes of our political parties and candidates here. The last four-ish years have been, ah, humbling in that regard. That said, I'll go out on an extremely short limb and suggest Biden has the election pretty much on lock this November (which I believe any Dem candidate would at this point). What he does with his presidency will likely be extremely underwhelming and in the service of trying to stabilize the neo-liberal consensus (and failing to do that, I'd imagine). How exactly that manifests itself, I have no confidence in predicting. If we're lucky (and work hard for these ends), maybe Biden represents a relatively benign last gasp of a certain economic and social order. More likely, something deeply ugly that currently manifests in Trumpism will continue to grow and Bidenism won't be adequate to meet the challenge. Then it's a question of what alternatives exist and are ready to fill the void that the old liberal order is vacating.

Addendum: Me, I'm going all in on Starseed-ism: https://www.gaia.com/article/am-i-a-sta ... cteristics