Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

I mean I know where they're coming from but I despair of any chance to get through to them WHY mass incarceration is a bug and not a feature. It 100% hits all their social priorities and reinforces their position exactly where they want it.

Attendant bitterness brought to you by the number of Blue Lives Matter/pro-NYPD bumper stickers and flags I see every fuckin day while stuck in traffic.

until the police treat people like bret stephens like they treat people of color, they'll never get it

The result is a vastly safer country.

Not for unarmed, innocent black men.

i could at least have a modicum of sympathy for someone who felt this way who did grow up/live in a high-crime area, but Bret Stephens is a straight up soft-ass boarding school fuckboy.

Not for unarmed, innocent black men.

fear not, bret stephens has thought about this and has a response:

Side effects? There have been a few. There may be a case that long prison terms cripple the lives and prospects of offenders, with disproportionate consequences for racial minorities. But locking up violent offenders (whose victims are also, disproportionately, racial minorities) creates a far greater margin of safety for those who don’t disobey the law.

There are also plenty of stories of aggressive, abusive and sometimes trigger-happy policing. But there’s also mounting evidence that under-policing hits minority communities much harder than over-policing. Just look at Baltimore, city of discouraged cops, terrified residents — and a record-high homicide rate.

Reminds me of a pharmaceutical ad where all the images are of laughing, happy people while the announcer rapidly monotones the dozen awful side effects.

crime rates have dropped in all developed nations over the last 30 years regardless of whether or not their criminal justice systems became more or less draconian.

otm

But locking up violent offenders (whose victims are also, disproportionately, racial minorities)

fuck this bullshit black on black crime myth

I think my fav Biden thing at the moment is when his supporters say "oh well those things he voted for in the past were a long time ago, and people evolve over time"

and the Biden says,"i dont give a fuuuck bitch, regret nothing"

Got an NRATV ad (starring a 20-something black man) on Twitter today criticizing Biden for being bros with Jesse Helms.

Biden reminds me of my ninth grade algebra teacher, who'd massage your shoulders as "encouragement." I think my teacher eventually hanged himself in his garage, which is more honorable than running for President. pic.twitter.com/GCCKfIFCcl

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) June 1, 2019

??????? https://t.co/iC2Iqf118P pic.twitter.com/rd3nXE0bWj

— Rachel Cohen (@rmc031) June 3, 2019

holy shit what an asshole

He marched with freedom, which is also on the march

the nyt article doesn't mention him except when generically listing other candidates, but hard to shake the sense that the line biden's "testing" there is an attempted blow at jesse jackson, whose platform that year was

creating a Works Progress Administration-style program to rebuild America's infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans

reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and demand"

reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs

cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration

declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation

instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union

giving reparations to descendants of black slaves

supporting family farmers by reviving many of Roosevelt's New Deal–era farm programs

creating a single-payer system of universal health care

ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment

increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all

applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and

supporting the formation of a Palestinian state

all stuff w nothing to do w the civil rights movement of course, which was about changing attitudes, which we changed

https://youtu.be/56nHBah7mdE

whatever

attitude is the most important civil right of all

as any biden voter will tell you it's a tragedy that even this far on from the civil rights movement many black americans have not yet secured good ones

Are his poll numbers beginning to drop yet? Seeing contradictory takes on this!

he did have a bump when he announced and then they kinda regressed.

He’s still at around 35% in polls this week

His poll numbers have been dropping a bit, but they're still up from when he announced, and he's still far, far ahead.

to put this in some perspective, HRC was about 50 points ahead of sanders at this time four years ago: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_democratic_presidential_nomination-3824.html

I don't think Biden is going to be the nominee

4 years ago Bernie's campaign was 7 days old and there hadn't been a single debate

now everyone knows Bernie and he's 19 points behind Biden

biden's lead is not that big for this early and his support is really soft.

if this was another two-person race sanders wouldnt be that far behind (and might be ahead depending on how you see the distribution of non-biden support)

I'm still hoping for Biden to fall apart, but I don't think it's going to be Bernie who takes the prize

i dont either, warren gang warren gang warren gang warren gang

bring on the dancing DNA tests

I don't think I know a single person I know in Iowa who has attended past caucuses regularly who has been polled, if anecdotal evidence means anything

After getting a chair for a woman sitting on the floor, @JoeBiden brings the house down by saying “I want the press to know — she pulled me close!” #FITN #nhpolitics pic.twitter.com/UL8CMg4tpQ

— Adam Sexton (@AdamSextonWMUR) June 4, 2019

he's gonna do these bits all the way

Iirc, according to 538, Biden's lead is about where a frontrunner usually is, and a frontrunner with this kind of support get's the nomination about 50% of the time. Sanders is doing pretty badly for someone with close to 100% recognition.

if we're thinking of the same article, the analysis was very iffy imho because all their comparisons were to democratic primaries with like 2-3 contenders. not exactly apples-to-apples. so it might be best to recheck the percentages once the field has thinned out a bit.

Um, no, that's not how most Dem primaries have been? That's not how I recall it at all?

If I'm looking at the same 538 piece they use Mondale and Romney as best case for Biden, and Hillary '08 and Muskie as worst case.

As m bison says, Biden's support is certainly soft, and Its difficult to see his lead lasting past the summer , but its also difficult right now to see if there will be any particular beneficiary

this is the article i'm thinking of: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bernie-sanders-can-win-but-he-isnt-polling-like-a-favorite/amp/

... which admits that there are 19 candidates now but never attempts to address that in the analysis. their data does included crowded republican primaries like 2016 (i'd misremembered it as all dems) but still most of the contests are not comparable to the size of this field. and they later concede that they're including people who weren't even officially running, like ford in 1980. this isn't to say that bernie is going to be a dark horse champion but just that we really have no idea where all the voters currently backing 1%, 2%, 3%, and 4% candidates might end up. maybe sanders is their second choice, maybe it's warren, maybe it's harris, maybe it's biden, maybe it's spread so evenly that it doesn't really change much.

has anyone done a study to figure out which people are more likely to answer the phone when it's an unknown number, especially in the last couple years after the number of marketing/spam phone calls have skyrocketed?

I'm not saying all those people are Biden supporters, but polling organizations don't leave voicemail

There's been polls on who the voters prefer as their second choice, iirc, and Biden wins those as well. Sanders voters, especially, like Biden. And vice versa, Biden voters like Sanders.

The time to panic is now, honestly.

we're still eight months out. hold your horses

Anyone should just do what they think. Just don't wait until there's nothing to do but shout 'RIGGED' at the DNC. Again.

I'll be curious to see how aggressive other candidates will be willing to get towards him in the debates. Lord knows there's no shortage of material.

one thing he doesn't have is some golden aura where people would fear criticizing him. warren has already started that. i don't think it'll be a trump situation where the other contenders are too afraid of alienating his voters to say anything. (there may be some, particularly among the lowest tier, who are angling to be his VP pick of course.)

have a bad feeling that biden winning the primary will be the last hoorah of boomers fucking up the country bc his core constituency is 70 year olds

I'll be curious to see how aggressive other candidates will be willing to get towards him in the debates. Lord knows there's no shortage of material.

I don't see why they wouldn't be - situation doesn't seem analogous to Trump 16 at all. Don't see him lasting the debates, and there's potential big wins for whoever lands the first blows on him (especially as there's plenty of low hanging fruit to go for)