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

I definitely like/respect Kamala. She was impressive in cross-examination during the Kavanaugh and various other hearings. She's smart and she controls the witness well, which is hard to do. I think she's smart and tough. To the extent the VP job requires a hatchetwoman she will excel.

I also get some of the criticisms of her. I wish she had a better record on police reform/criminal justice, but no one with a legit record in this area is going to get picked by Biden.

Alfred is ultimately right: the VP pick is nearly meaningless.

Did I say she is smart? At least one of us is.

re Biden's video on taking a cognitive test:
It's amusing that his instant comparison is that the TV reporter should take a test for cocaine use before coming on air.
― the pinefox

Exactly what I thought--immediately--when I watched that clip. I suppose Biden's defense would be he's pointing out the perniciousness of stereotypes--black = cocaine / old = Alzheimer's--but not a helpful comparison.

(Especially when the response was so quick that he's not consciously pointing out anything, he's just reacting.)

Harris is smart, but so are plenty of people.

It's just such a drag that in order to be a successful politician in this country, you have to shred any sense of ethics or genuine compassion for other people.

if all that seemed fine for his brain to say what on earth was he teeing up before he stopped himself??

Bill Clinton was smart. What good did that do us?

Obama seemed to project genuine empathy while ordering the drone bombing of Americans. Politicians, especially good ones, aren't jus' folks.

Who are these mythical people who are uniformly empathetic towards everyone at all times? They literally don't exist.

Exactly.

If you want to see me set fire to my empathy, eavesdrop when a student asks for a Zoom conference to discuss a paper thirty minutes into the cocktail hour.

AOC gets the closest :)

set fire to my empathy

Adele's finest

and i should say, she exudes empathy toward people who seem to deserve it, at least.
xp

Who are these mythical people who are uniformly empathetic towards everyone at all times? They literally don't exist.

no one actually asked for this AFAICT

it's me, folks. i'm that guy. and fuck you if you don't believe it.

strawmanning xp

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Treeship.

in reality though, empathy shouldn't be used as a synonym for virtue. i want a president who acts on principle and actually cares about the well-being of others, especially those who are most vulnerable in this time of pandemic and depression. whether he *really feels their pain* and can demonstrate it is secondary to what he will be willing to do for them. we're not looking for a guidance counselor here.

I'd be ok with a good guidance counselor tbh

America, show me on the doll where Trump touched you

hell, even a school nurse

define "actually"

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/PetShopBoysActually.jpg

What you guys want is an avatar, not a politician

Good politics requires empathy, but it also requires compromise and decisions that might result in some people losing out. The fact that a politician's empathy can't always be maximally extended doesn't mean that she lacks it.

What you guys want is an avatar, not a politician

actually what I want is a nice michelada

xp We can, of course, argue about the nature of those compromises and where lines should be drawn and what constitutes "the greater good."

i want a nice michelada that understands people but can also kick some ass when needed

i think those arguments are what politics should be about. what are our priorities, where are we willing to compromise, what are our bedrock principles we will never violate? that stuff seems to matter more than like, to what degree can my representative feel empathic identification with so and so group. because that is--at best a starting point--people have different ideas about what policies will be good for people!

i don't think obama lacked the capacity for empathy at all. i don't think he wanted to bomb people because he didn't care about them. i think he made a bad calculation--he thought that this was the way to preserve the american empire and weaken extremist groups, and that this serves the greater global good. (i think he also believed his primary responsibility was to be a good steward of the empire, putting americans first).

empathy doesn't enter into it. it was his positions.

xp

OTM. I get tired by the automatic assumption of malevolence.

I dream of someone looking to shrink/ramp down rather than expand american empire but I am fully aware this will never ever happen

OTM. I get tired by the automatic assumption of malevolence.

― jaymc, Friday, August 7, 2020

another example how cynicism is really sentimentality with a smirk.

sure is

and it's the "coin of the realm" on twitter. (i noticed marxists use a lot of haughty quotation marks in their writing, thinking of adopting it)

we do be like that

Defending Obama's decision to drone bomb innocent people as "not malevolent" is a laughable contortion.

the point is that what was going on in his head is 1.) not something we can know and 2.) not the most relevant thing here. what matters MORE is 1.) that it happened and 2.) what the ostensible defense was, because that's the thing you can actually resist.

it's not that it's totally irrelevant to dive into the psychology of individual politicians, it's just that they'll never be a consensus here so it's frustrating to see "empathy" as the focus.

and related to section 2, part 2, it can also be worthwhile to look into whether the ostensible defense is plausible or if they had a different reason. (in american politics, there almost always is a special interest consideration in play). but doing this you're still in the world of politics, you know

I dream of someone looking to shrink/ramp down rather than expand american empire but I am fully aware this will never ever happen

We have that now. How's it working out?

nice try

donnie and co would fuckin love to expand american empire, he and his people are just too inept and lack a cheney style competent ghoul

i mean, he wants to redefine it though, ditching the commitment to international stability/security that has traditionally justified it in the post-war era. and it's hard to envision a situation where the american empire could be as big and influential as it is while saying, "listen, we're in it for ourselves only!" the US does rely on some buy-in from others

unperson has a point in that Trump is not interested in expansionism. He wants to personally be involved abroad when it benefits him personally, but I suspect he’d be totally happy drawing all of our troops everywhere if his party consented.

He’s definitely not remotely interested in the beneficent pretexts that justify this empire.

Like he does nothing but complain about the intn’l costs of membership in organizations that enable US presence abroad.

I honestly think that Trump has done enough damage to American “prestige” abroad and to international relations that there’s no going back to the status ante quo.

Remember when he tried to buy Greenland? good times.

Trump is as much of an imperial expansionist as anyone at the upper echelon of power, he's just more afraid of looking like a loser if he can't win in a week.

Alfred is ultimately right: the VP pick is nearly meaningless.

I dunno what are the odds that a VP is going to end up taking the wheel sometime in the next 4 years if Biden wins?