Democratic primary watch

[3rdside]

Before knowing the details in the article I would have just said he's really old, will probably struggle with Trump face to face, is he really the best the Democrats could do etc, but was still confident he could win. I'm not exactly reassured after reading that article.

[Nodack]

I believe Biden subscribes to a higher moral code or at least more aligned with my moral code than Trump. Biden may be slow but, he knows what he is doing. Biden will respect our allies and bring us back into good standing with NATO, WHO, Paris Trade Accord, etc., won’t spend all day insulting people on Twitter and lie about everything all day every day. He will reinstate all the rollbacks to the EPA that Trump has done and at least pretend to care about people unlike Trump.

[3rdside]

I agree with that but it's the marginal / single issue voters I worry about - as far as I know there isn't preferential voting in the USA so these marginals will effectively be choosing not to vote by refusing Trump or Biden. BigLewy has already said as much.

And there's plenty of issues, as mentioned.


From the article:

Biden has an abominable public policy record on a wide range of issues. He has a penchant for lying:

- About his role in the civil rights movement and about being arrested in apartheid South Africa.
- He continues to lie and mislead about his support for the war in Iraq, the most consequential foreign policy decision of the post-Vietnam era.
- He has been accused by eight women of misconduct, including one allegation of very serious sexual assault by his former Senate staffer Tara Reade".


On many of the key issues where Democrats could attack Trump, Biden is going to be virtually incapacitated by his own skeletons.

- “You have more allegations of sexual assault than I do, Donald,” is not a good line.
- “Your sons have profited off the presidency more than my son did off my vice presidency” — also not a winning zinger.


What we get with Trump is as clear as it is terrifying. What we get with Biden, in his current form, is less apparent. It will, without a doubt be:

- Riddled with a disproportionate number of hawkish, corporatist Democratic apparatchiks.
- An administration that does the bidding of Wall Street and believes in bloated war budgets


And Biden isn’t great on many issues that motivate young voters:

- His health care plan keeps the profit-driven system intact, and it will result in millions of Americans remaining uninsured.
- His policy to confront massive student and consumer debt is anemic.
- His climate plan is uninspiring and generally milquetoast when weighed against the severity of the crisis the planet faces
- Some of his foreign policy positions are downright disturbing, if not explicitly right-wing.

[3rdside]

Tactical voting is what I did in the recent UK election (voting for Corbyn, ughh) but I was clearly in the minority who did that, and my take is that tactical voting is the reserve of the more informed voters i.e. not the masses.

The masses vote on single issues and headlines and that's the worry here, that not voting for either Trump or Biden is seen by too many as their preferred option.

[3rdside]

We know Trump is going to play dirty as hell eking out votes wherever he can, not least in the digital space - with Brad Parscale and Facebook the villains here - so every opposition vote is going to count.

And while I imagine the real deep state (good dudes Bloomberg, Gates, Soros, Cuban etc) will counter with their own capital and digital strategies, it's going to be tight.

[Mori Chu]

We know Trump is going to play dirty as hell eking out votes wherever he can, not least in the digital space - with Brad Parscale and Facebook the villains here - so every opposition vote is going to count.

And while I imagine the real deep state (good dudes Bloomberg, Gates, Soros, Cuban etc) will counter with their own capital and digital strategies, it's going to be tight.

I just don't see how Trump wins re-election* when he is almost single-handedly the cause of tens of thousands of American deaths this year, and the cratering of our country's entire economy. All the priors one would bring into a re-election campaign indicate disaster for him. The main thing he had going for him was that he was keeping the economy going on its generally upward trajectory inherited from the prior administration, and now that's been bungled. And as more and more Americans personally know somebody who fell ill or died to the virus, folks are going to increasingly turn against this guy.


* = assuming there is no tomfoolery, election fraud, etc.

[Superbone]

He tells us he's doing a GREAT job on the pandemic. Better than anybody else. Maybe even perfect.

[Cap]

He tells us he's doing a GREAT job on the pandemic. Better than anybody else. Maybe even perfect.

All evidence to the contrary is fake news.

[ShelC]

He's not your typical politician/elected official. It's a cult of personality and his base/Rs would still rather vote for him than go with the party of Biden/Pelosi/Schumer/AOC/etc.

Besides, it's not his handling of the pandemic that's the problem or caused the crash, it's the Dems overreacting and shutting everything down that caused the crash and the blue states that need bailouts now because they themselves weren't prepared for the crisis.

[Nodack]

In Trumps defense, our economy would be wrecked no matter who was President imo. A real President might have taken it seriously and saved more lives and worked to assure Americans without lying to them and intentionally inspiring unrest in Dem run states,

[3rdside]

We know Trump is going to play dirty as hell eking out votes wherever he can, not least in the digital space - with Brad Parscale and Facebook the villains here - so every opposition vote is going to count.

And while I imagine the real deep state (good dudes Bloomberg, Gates, Soros, Cuban etc) will counter with their own capital and digital strategies, it's going to be tight.

I just don't see how Trump wins re-election* when he is almost single-handedly the cause of tens of thousands of American deaths this year, and the cratering of our country's entire economy. All the priors one would bring into a re-election campaign indicate disaster for him. The main thing he had going for him was that he was keeping the economy going on its generally upward trajectory inherited from the prior administration, and now that's been bungled. And as more and more Americans personally know somebody who fell ill or died to the virus, folks are going to increasingly turn against this guy.


* = assuming there is no tomfoolery, election fraud, etc.

In normal times maybe but these aren't normal times - he will 100% play dirty via voter suppression, foreign campaign funding, disinformation etc as he's got nothing to lose.

And he's got himself, the big personality and seriously good campaigner. Things he's said and done will be forgotten come election time and people will start taking him at face value again, matched up against the liability that is Joe Biden; it's a no contest in Trump's favour.

Joe Rogan - a liberal with +8m followers - even said he's voting for Trump because of Biden's mental decline (clip below).

So it's that in Trump's favour vs the tanked economy and his clown show virus response - fingers crossed you're right but it's definitely not a gimme.

[3rdside]

In Trumps defense, our economy would be wrecked no matter who was President imo. A real President might have taken it seriously and saved more lives and worked to assure Americans without lying to them and intentionally inspiring unrest in Dem run states,

The fascio-capitalist state the USA has become under the GOP is coming face to face with itself - and Trump is the leader of it so he deserves every bit of anger you guys throw at him personally deserved or otherwise.

[Mori Chu]

I think the following Twitter thread does a good job articulating some reasons why I think Biden has a better shot than Hillary. While her loss probably came down to Comey's untimely announcement of reopening an investigation just days before the election, she had a ton of unfavorable opinions about her among the electorate. She had decades of baggage and lots of folks disliked her for a variety of different reasons, some fair and some unfair. As Burns describes in the thread below, her "favorable" ratings were always very low, much lower than Biden's, even around this time of the 2016 campaign. Not everybody loves Biden, but way, way more people actively disliked Hillary than actively dislike Biden. I think that matters a ton heading into November.

[ShelC]

People were tired of the Clintons, HIllary's phoniness and entitlement. She also made no attempt at connecting with the middle of the country, thinking Trump was a joke and that she had it all locked up. Biden would've beaten Trump easily imo, carrying states like PA, MI and then probably FL and WI. Now I'm not so sure. I think Biden's time has past and he could just be 2020's Hillary. I also do think he's in mental decline and could be worse by November.

And again, don't put it past Trump to try and delay or put off the election:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/coronav ... ummer.html

[3rdside]

This is reassuring from The Spectator, the UK's longest running conservative magazine since 1828 and the first magazine to ever hit 10,000 editions, which it did last week. Obviously credible iow.

It likens Biden's personality to Boris Johnson and says he just needs to run a similar, over simplified campaign that Johnson used to win the general election over here: "Get Brexit Done" = "Stop the Madness".

And probably stay out of the way of the journos and media as much as he can as Boris did, who even resorted to hiding in a fridge to avoid an interview!

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Bid ... ican-Boris

[3rdside]

People were tired of the Clintons, HIllary's phoniness and entitlement. She also made no attempt at connecting with the middle of the country, thinking Trump was a joke and that she had it all locked up. Biden would've beaten Trump easily imo, carrying states like PA, MI and then probably FL and WI. Now I'm not so sure. I think Biden's time has past and he could just be 2020's Hillary. I also do think he's in mental decline and could be worse by November.

And again, don't put it past Trump to try and delay or put off the election:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/coronav ... ummer.html

I don't think he can easily do it - and if he does he'd cease to be president at a certain date even if no new one had been voted for.

Say it does go ahead in November, I guess postal voting may be more appealing to many if the virus is still hanging around, which won't play into Trump's voter suppression tactics.

[BigLewy]

Actually shocked CNN posted this, but I'm sure it will be crickets as usual, even though there appears to be much more behind these allegations than with the Kavanaugh circus. The more Biden stays silent, the worse it looks for him, IMO.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/politics ... index.html

Also:

https://www.businessinsider.com/former- ... ssion=true

I also love how Rose McGowan called out that loser Alyssa Milano for the fraud that she is. She went from "believe all women" to due process as soon as her little buddy Biden got in the news for the wrong reasons. Hypocrisy at its finest.

[Mori Chu]

I just don't know what we should do with accusations like this. It seems like with #MeToo the default is to believe all women, but I don't think it is right to just assume guilt. To me, "believe women" means to look into things and investigate them. But I still believe strongly in the burden of proof and innocent until proven guilty. I didn't want Kavanaugh to be appointed to the SC, but it was less that I was certain he assaulted Blasey-Ford and more that I thought his demeanor in the hearing was completely unprofessional, angry, and openly partisan. He yelled at the senators asking him questions, talked about alleged conspiracy plots run by George Soros and the Clintons, and implied that he would seek revenge on the Dems. That was conduct unbecoming of an SC justice.

I'd similarly want the charges against Biden to be looked into. But I believe that if there is no real evidence, there's no particular punishment to be meted out for it. Trump has allegations against him by 28 women, so it seems the electorate doesn't really consider this kind of conduct to be a deal-breaker.

[Nodack]

I have seen the allegations against Biden by this woman just about every day for the past month. I would be willing to disqualify Biden in a heart beat if the same standard was held to Trump, who has sexual assault claims against him by well over 20 women.

What about you BigLewy? Do you believe all women, don’t believe any women or is it just like everyone else and only believe women who are accusing political enemies and never believe accusers of your allies? Do you believe Biden's accuser? Do you believe the 20+ Trump accusers? Do you believe Kavenaugh’s accuser? I am guessing you believe Biden’s accuser but, not Trumps and Kanenough’s accusers. Am I right?

I say we disqualify Biden, Trump and Kavenaugh. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

[BigLewy]

I have seen the allegations against Biden by this woman just about every day for the past month. I would be willing to disqualify Biden in a heart beat if the same standard was held to Trump, who has sexual assault claims against him by well over 20 women.

What about you BigLewy? Do you believe all women, don’t believe any women or is it just like everyone else and only believe women who are accusing political enemies and never believe accusers of your allies? Do you believe Biden's accuser? Do you believe the 20+ Trump accusers? Do you believe Kavenaugh’s accuser? I am guessing you believe Biden’s accuser but, not Trumps and Kanenough’s accusers. Am I right?

I say we disqualify Biden, Trump and Kavenaugh. Sounds like a fair deal to me.

I believe women that have credible accusations, regardless of any affiliation. I will initially "believe all women" when their accusations come to light, and then let things play out. I have seen accusations of assault, only for them to eventually be proven as an outright lie. I've also seen cases of assault that were swept under the rug, when something did in fact occur. So, I like to give accusers the benefit of the doubt initially. If there was more solid evidence on Kavanaugh, then absolutely he should have been taken to the woodshed. In my eyes, there were too many inconsistencies, but that's a separate topic. I believe Trump's accusers, because there are too many of them with solid details for at least some of them not to be true. I've always thought he was a disgusting pig. And yes, Biden has less accusations, I'm not arguing that, but just like Trump, there are too many accusations out there for at least some of them not to be true.

If you think i will just blindly support someone based on political affiliation, then you're sorely mistaken. I have no issues whatsoever calling out disgusting behavior. This is why I hesitated to even post here, because now I'm being pegged as someone who basically blindly supports the conservative line. I don't watch Fox News (never have in my life actually), I don't have a Confederate flag waving in my backyard and I don't walk around in a MAGA hat.

But to your original comment Nodack, sure disqualify all three of them. I'd be happy to if they were all guilty of what they've been accused of.