US Politics, June 2020 — You have to dominate.

Thought he was recognised to be completely evil.

― Stevolende, Tuesday, June 30, 2020 3:53 PM (eleven minutes ago)

Evil gets pretty good poll numbers in the US

.@PressSec: ‘The President does read’

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) June 30, 2020

The White House says Trump has now been briefed on what was in his daily written intelligence briefing back in February, per the NYT.

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 30, 2020

TFW you tell your boss the thing you already told him in an email and he goes 'why didn't you tell me that before'

"The president does read" for July thread title.

Has anyone pieced together what he was actually doing that day, and the following day?

he met with D1amond and S1lk in the oval office, for one thing

tipsy and roxymuzak live in TN

roxy is actually in Virginia these days fwiw.

From TN, it's always interesting to watch Kentucky. Democrats have obviously not been eliminated from serious statewide competition in Kentucky the way they have here for at least the near future. But the same kind of Booker-McGrath arguments play out among progressives here. The most recent iteration was in 2018, when a lot of Tennessee lefties bemoaned the nomination of super-old white guy moderate Phil Bredesen to run against Marsha Blackburn. When he got trounced, there were some definite told-you-so's from the left, but imo anyone farther left than Bredesen would have done worse. He did in fact rack up a good number of moderate Republican votes — which you could see in the difference between the Senate results and the governor's race — but not nearly enough to be competitive.

So my gut instinct is that in a legitimately close race in a mostly red state, a more moderate candidate is more likely to capitalize on anti-Trump disgust than a more progressive one. The trade-off is that it alienates the younger activists -- so if you don't have a really close race, if you're probably going to lose anyway, you might do better with a younger, more inspiring candidate who can energize people and build for the future. But it's a hard call.

Ahh! i had forgotten that roxy was 'gone'.

So my gut instinct is that in a legitimately close race in a mostly red state, a more moderate candidate is more likely to capitalize on anti-Trump disgust than a more progressive one.

i lean toward this view too. i had typed out a long post earlier that i think i deleted about doug jones vs roy moore, 2017 special election. in those circumstances, doug jones was a great candidate for that situation. roy moore seemed to be purposefully self-sabotaging his campaign. democrats just needed to run a non-pedophile that didn't scare anyone in alabama off with thoughts of imminent marxist revolution, and it worked.

but for the more common races in red states, where everything is so heavily tilted toward the republican candidate, i don't think it always makes sense to run a moderate - in general i'd lean toward the candidate that inspires the most ANYTHING out of left-leaning voters. mcgrath is not that candidate, booker is (imo)

but then again, i'm not your typical potential democratic voter in KY. maybe a lot of KY democrats are really stoked about mcgrath, who knows. but as a kid growing up in another red rural state, all i know is that i didn't get interesting in politics until my early 20s, after i had left missouri, and part of the reason was that i didn't encounter any inspiring state-wide politicians until i got the fuck out of dodge

/typos, sorry

in general i'd lean toward the candidate that inspires the most ANYTHING out of left-leaning voters. mcgrath is not that candidate, booker is (imo)

I get that, but my question is: is that more about inspiring people who are like, well, ilxorz (who don't live there and just want to applaud a progressive Quixote from outside Kentucky), or inspiring actual Kentuckians?

To put it more crudely, does it make sense for Kentucky Democrats to go in with the candidate that excites Brooklyn? Or the one that excites Louisville?

xp and then your subsequent post addresses exactly that so never mind

haha yeah, i realize it's way more complicated than i make it seem.

i guess to address your question, it probably makes more sense for KY Democrats to go for a fighter pilot, but they shouldn't be surprised with the persistent brain drain of their KY's most thoughtful people moving to blue states

you can move to queens and AOC will be your rep, or you can move to missouri and try to get anyone on earth excited for whoever inherited the legacy of dick gephardt

lol, i'm not making any sense. i am having a nightmare day at WFH (work from hell) and i'm taking it out on dick gephardt. this is a new low

I always take out my bad days by beating the dick

dick gephardt is a concept
by which we take out our bad days
i'll say it again

hence my turn to the writing of Ossoff slashfic

I was born in lville and lived there til I was 18, most of my living relatives are there and I have tons of friends there so I pay pretty close attention, and I gave $$$ to the Booker campaign. There is no question that Booker excited Louisville, but also he was entirely obscure until the murders of Breanna Taylor/ David MCAtee. And there is no question that a white woman is going to do better throughout the state than a black man in a senate contest. Should McConnell persist, which is more than likely, I would tend to think that Booker has a much brighter future than McGrath, who most people on this thread must know is consulted within an inch of her life and is from the part of Kentucky that is more or less part of Cincinatti, alongside the lunatic Thomas "Dr. No" Msssie and those dick kids who fucked with the native american man at the washington monument.

I went to school with and knew well McConnell's eldest daughter and knew her two younger sisters. It is clear to me that they plainly despise him and were particularly humiliated by his role shephereding Brett Kavanaugh. The middle daughter is a DC do gooder of some note.

xp I'm from Missouri and even I have no interest in defending the honor of Dick Gephardt.

In other news people are just going to shrug at and ignore, Arizona GOP official Paul Peterson pleaded guilty to selling Pacific Islander babies https://t.co/FMorZoX67P

— Jeff Yang (@originalspin) June 25, 2020

hey isn't this the shit all the QAnon folks are supposed to care about

Hey, who hasn't sold a few babies here and there

frogbs, you seem to not understand that they only care about babies who lack melanin

oh, you don't get that I was being SARCASTIC !????

Point taken, could be read as non-sarcastic, too.

sorry, my brain is totally broken by all this shit

it's one thing to see the right wing conspiracy machine get more and more insane and implausible but it's something else to see all those crazy conspiracies manifest themselves inside the Republican party and nobody giving a shit

It's like the whack-a-mole of giving a shit, because no matter which one you focus on there will be a different one popping up in a few seconds, which is 100% by design

The GOP is literally a dude pointing at an aghast bystander and howling 'MURDERER!' while actively murdering someone with the other hand.

Literally. They are literally that.

I think we may have covered that everything they accuse Democrats of doing is projection, hmm, let me see

that does ring a bell...

but despite how eternal nature of the issue, it does seem to be bad that republicans literally kill people every day by refusing to expand medicaid so that rush limbaugh won't get mad at them

gotta love those little npr segments where they lightheartedly note that a lot of people think mcconnell is really evil and that his nickname is "grim reaper" and "darth vader", then everyone does the quick short npr laugh and moves on. but actually...mitch mcconnell has the blood of hundreds of thousands of people on his hands imo

hi, i'm steve inskeep. senator mcconnell, by any measure you are a remorseless bloodthirsty murderer of hundreds of thousands of people who must be stopped by any means possible. but let's talk about your recent support of face masks...

I stopped listening to NPR about a week after the 2016 election, highly recommend

I should say, too, that NPR was a vital source of news where I was living. I just couldn't stand the equivocating nature of the programming any longer, and then their reporting on the national tragedy where a bunch of friends died sealed the deal.

(heard about that latter reporting from friends)

it's nice that this NYT bounty story gave another oppty for organic-lifestyle liberals to sound like chest-thumping cold warriors day after day.

Leon Panetta was just on BBC America and seemed confused whether such bounties would be "murder" or "an act of war." As he would be.

My wife has our car radio set to NPR and two seconds between starting the ignition and turning the radio off is easily the worst part of my day. Would honestly rather watch Fox News.

oh cmon, it can be annoying but it is not that terrible. you must have never seen fox news.

The constant he said/she said on NPR is like nails on a chalkboard.

NPR voice/editing is the worst radio voice.

I gave up on NPR after getting ragingly mad about Diane Rehm gladhanding some Bush-era monster circa 2012.

Is Terri Gross still the worst interviewer on Earth?

Is it fashionable to dislike NPR?

That honour goes to Geraldine Doogue who does Saturday morning on ABC radio national in Australia who combines a lack of preparation with a careless conservatism and an inappropriate guffaw that sounds like someone strangling a goose.

Xpost

i was on a long drive maybe 5 years ago and they were re-airing an interview Gross did with Trent Reznor and the contempt in his voice was undeniable. and he had every right because it was a laughably bad interviewing.

xpost
NPR is Fox News for people who will watch Fox News later in life, but don't watch it yet.

don't agree

maybe she lost it over the years but Gross's interview with Nancy Reagan about the AIDS crisis was great

don't listen to NPR anymore because I'm not commuting, but c'mon - worst radio voice, worst interviewer on Earth, ragingly mad, nails on a chalkboard, would rather watch Fox News - they are not that bad

I’m serious. NPR radio’s national news coverage is sonically very unpleasant to listen to, it’s politically vacuous at best, and you learn nothing from it if you’re even modestly informed. I’d rather watch Fox News.