"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

leftists on ilx

To reiterate for the millionth time, technically he's referring to overturning an already stalled, obscure planning rule that called for cities to allow more low-income housing in their communities. But practically he's appealing to racial bias https://t.co/5p68gx8EQk https://t.co/M7Y0fl5JkF

— Liam Dillon (@dillonliam) October 14, 2020

I have read leftists on ILX probably fifty times asserting that the Democrats are lame because they don't know how to negotiate.

They are. Moreover, Pelosi and her cohort have bad instincts and beliefs. Remember when her first move for stimulus was targeted tax credits and rolling back the SALT cap for her donors?

I don't know what the (absolutely correct) statements by "leftists on ILX" have to do with anything, I don't see where anyone has mentioned her today?

What I have seen are not-leftists not-on-ILX encouraging her to take a $1.8 trillion compromise if it's actually available because it funds unemployment and stimulus checks. Or it forces Republicans in the Senate to vote it down if Trump and Pelosi have agreed on it.

Do you think it's preferable to pray Democrats take the Senate and wait for a January 22nd stimulus?

prayers alone aren't gonna do it, you gotta have thoughts too

If this is all he's got left...

Trump in full: "So I ask you to do me a favor. Suburban women: will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK? The other thing: I don't have that much time to be that nice. You know, I can do it, but I gotta go quickly."

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 14, 2020

As I saw on Twitter, it began with 'please clap' and that's how it's ending.

The Jeb!enning

I get that Jeb is the go-to meme but that is significantly more pathetic imo

Jeb! was like a kid giving a speech to a class full of his bullies.

Trump’s is more like a kid begging their father to love them.

the median household income in Pelosi's district is $127,000. just putting that out there.

She feeds those households. She feeds them.

🐦[To reiterate for the millionth time, technically he’s referring to overturning an already stalled, obscure planning rule that called for cities to allow more low-income housing in their communities. But practically he’s appealing to racial bias https://t.co/5p68gx8EQk🕸 https://t.co/M7Y0fl5JkF🕸
— Liam Dillon (@dillonliam) October 14, 2020🕸]🐦

Please clap

"With all due respect ... you really don't know what you're talking about" -- Pelosi to Wolf Blitzer pic.twitter.com/aOTkjGZUmB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2020

Trump’s is more like a kid begging their father to love them.

Fixed.

David Roth again, in a voting zine published by some of the editors/writers fired in the right-wing, out-of-city takeover & gutting of LA Weekly in 2017. Some chunks:

All these people, whose goals and beliefs are very different, are supposed to vote for Joe Biden in November. Joe Biden is 77 years old, exactly who he is, and promises to make things feel the way they did before Trump and virtually nothing else. He will either be the next President of the United States, or Donald Trump will get another term. It’s complicated, but not more complicated than that.

...At this low national ebb, with the support of an aged and change-averse establishment within his own party, Biden has found his moment — a campaign in which simply not being his opponent looks like a winning argument. His relatively progressive official platform aside, Biden and his surrogates have spent a great deal more time and seemed much more in their element when talking about the things that they would not do if given power: pursue Medicare For All, reduce military spending, curb police abuses, or otherwise alter the balance of power in our increasingly untenable nation.

...Since being trounced in a couple of elections by Ronald Reagan’s increasingly reactionary Republican party a couple generations ago, both Biden and the most powerful people in the Democratic party — ... — seem at some point to have come to understand their jobs as fundamentally janitorial. They dutifully clean up all the blood and champagne vomit that the Republicans invariably leave behind on their way out of office and then hand over the keys when it’s time for America’s reactionaries — who have under Trump embraced an unbridled, unapologetic, deeply American fascism — to once again take their turn. One party is dedicated to making things much more unfair and sadistic; the other seems to see that collapse inevitable and now sees its job as making sure it all happens more slowly, and both less egregiously and more efficiently.

This was how the leftmost of the nation’s two political parties came to preemptively give away its leverage on policies that could have changed and saved lives — and, not for nothing, probably swung some elections — while the other party embraced its passion for ethnic cleansing, voter suppression, and spit-shined jackboots. By promising not to try to make things too much better, candidates like Biden signal how reasonable they are to a notional pool of winnable voters who, while not actively aligned with the idea of making things worse, are uneasy about the changes that would be involved in making them better. They offer nothing to the non-voters who have correctly assessed that none of this is really for them.

During their periods in power, the Democrats were reasonable and keen to compromise and prone to the clever double-bank legislative play. Republicans, for their part, started foreign wars and staffed up the state with thousands of new violence workers — the people prying the children of immigrants from their parents’ arms before disappearing both into unaccountable domestic gulags awash in disease and abuse, or pitching tear-gas at Black Lives Matter protesters in the nation’s capital when they got too close to the White House for Trump’s comfort. As President, Trump has mostly watched TV and pitched clammy fits online, but he has also hurt a great many powerless people at home and abroad and promises daily to hurt more; he’s helped the rich and untouchable become wealthier and more invincible, and installed callow young judges whose sole qualification for their lifetime appointments was that they would never allow any of the above to be undone. He doesn’t really care about any of it beyond how it plays on TV, which is both outrageous and objectively the least outrageous aspect of any of it.

National politics is what it is: shitty television for tired old people to watch, the peg for innumerable cheesy grifts, the single worst industry on earth. But politics itself happens elsewhere, everywhere, under and over all the rest of this and all the time. Joe Biden won’t change anything about American life beyond stripping the Trumpian crassness and cruelty and chaos from its day to day; this is something like the fundamental promise of his campaign. It is a shamefully, laughably insufficient response to a strident American fascism, and a breathtakingly cynical one; while the reality of that fascism is reason enough to cast a vote against it, Biden has been careful to promise nothing beyond that. They’re betting that it’s still enough to earn a vote, and on balance, it absolutely is.

I agree with the article's tone and conclusions, but I can't ignore from this remark:

His relatively progressive official platform aside, Biden and his surrogates have spent a great deal more time and seemed much more in their element when talking about the things that they would not do if given power: pursue Medicare For All, reduce military spending, curb police abuses, or otherwise alter the balance of power in our increasingly untenable nation.

That introductory clause requires a second look! That's a lot of shuffling. It's not the "relatively progressive official platform" that the Joseph R. Biden of 1988, the Joseph R. Biden of 2007, or the Bill Clinton of 1992 and of TANF would've endorsed.

I can't ignore from this remark

Words over actions. A platform means nothing unless it's aggressively pursued.

We'll know in January.

Yes, it's clear that Roth is intending to propose that Biden's platform not being substantively engaged with by Biden suggests his fundamental lack of commitment to it, but the clause does read amusingly like "what have the Romans done for us" in that dismissal.

But as Roth's continues on, making his point - you can see the actions right now in front of you, the outlining of things that will not happen, the 'progressive' advisor telling us "the cupboard will be bare," the transition team laden with financiers and Republicans, the entirety of Biden's career..

127,000 people voted in Harris County (Houston) just today, on October 13, @HarrisVotes says.

👀: that’s roughly 10% of the TOTAL number of votes cast in all of 2016.

— Taniel (@Taniel) October 14, 2020

I find the end of Roth's piece rather hopeful, actually. Biden may not be the answer, but we can (and must) continue to fight for a better future.

I still find the fatalist attitude toward Biden expressed in this thread (and elsewhere) to be dispiriting. As Alfred said, "We'll know in January." We also have the power to pressure a Democratic administration once he's in place. Nothing is settled.

i will eat my words as usual, but i'm starting to believe that "this time will be different" after biden is president. after obama was elected, it seemed like a good portion of what i thought was the progressive wing of the party sat on their ass and hoped that things would get better. i think it's different this time. that could just be me, living naively through one era and thinking that i/we have all learned a lesson to be applied to this opportunity. but i don't know, i'm pals with lots of people who are ready to push hard on biden from day 1 to change things.

What is the mechanism for "pressuring" and "pushing hard" on him after you vote for him?

your sphincter?

I think that's a legit question. Terminal incumbency + lobbies mean you get to "pressure" on the day you vote, and then...

...you go home and get your fuckin' shinebox

yes

this interview is long an unexcerptable and mostly off-topic southern california stuff, but I like it as a pretty hopeful leftist take on how to handle a Biden administration in case anyone feels like digging in (ctrl-f biden/sanders/warren) https://thelandmag.com/the-land-interview-mike-davis-jeff-weiss/

I have read leftists on ILX probably fifty times asserting that the Democrats are lame because they don't know how to negotiate.

This is obviously all the fault of Nancy Pelosi. Don't blame poor Mitch McConnell. He's doing his best.

― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Wednesday, October 14, 2020 10:30 AM (five hours ago)

They are. Moreover, Pelosi and her cohort have bad instincts and beliefs. Remember when her first move for stimulus was targeted tax credits and rolling back the SALT cap for her donors?

I don't know what the (absolutely correct) statements by "leftists on ILX" have to do with anything, I don't see where anyone has mentioned her today?

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Wednesday, October 14, 2020 11:24 AM (four hours ago)

Pelosi has been busy today tbf, also endorsing David Ryu for City Council in Central LA, in his race against a progressive challenger. Ryu is the incumbent, regarded by constituents as an absentee councillor and awful representative, who at 27 dropped out of the Peace Corps when his date found him trying to fuck a different, blacked-out-unconscious woman in the back of a car during their date and filed a complaint.

tbf i doubt she's a fan of the dropped rape charge, but she probably likes what a complete nothing go-along-to-get-along he is as a politician. this is presumably why he's piled up local LA endorsements too.

he will never make the leap to state/national politics, and pelosi likes it that way when the alternative is raman, who will be california's AOC in five years time if she gets on the council.

Is there anybody around who could replace Pelosi and be more progressive while still able to muster her party together.

I mean sooner or later both her and Schumer are going to need to be replaced.

Dianne Feinstein's a young up-and-comer from the same city as Pelosi

Pelosi has been busy today tbf, also endorsing David Ryu for City Council in Central LA

he will never make the leap to state/national politics, and pelosi likes it that way

dopey personal brand

obv doesn’t really cover it. at the end of the day it all comes down to jerking off the richest and most powerful, and I guess old school GOP leadership had no concerns about the tea party Young Gunz keeping their daddy’s happy.

contrast that with progressives under the age of 60 and how they feel about these cool guys:

https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/nancy-pelosi/contributors?cid=N00007360&cycle=2020

Please god, please please please encourage Trump to fire Barr for declining to press charges over this unmasking shit. We know he's both petty and stupid enough to do so. All it will take is one little nudge from you, god.

God shrugs.

What I hope happens is that after the election the Dem voters and activists (mainstream and well as farther left) don't take their foot off the gas and keep up this enthusiasm for every election, no matter who is president or in leadership or whatever. Just keep chipping away at the Republicans, who have gotten where they are by way of chicanery and complacency.

Ballot counted!

How do you know?

MN ballot tracker said mine has been accepted and will be counted

I voted by mail in Tennessee (cause I'm overseas innit) but I have no idea how to find out if it got counted.

Congrats and kudos to all ILX voters.
https://media0.giphy.com/media/3oKHWikxKFJhjArSXm/200.gif

xpost does this do it? https://tnmap.tn.gov/voterlookup/

or does that only track the ballot getting to you?

wtf NBC is giving Trump his own town hall? The same time slot as the Biden one that Trump backed out of? What a bunch of assholes.

Wait, competing town halls on different networks?

How hard is Trump going to piss himself when Biden's ratings are better?

Look for Trump to claim a big ratings victory over Biden after their concurrent town halls on Thursday.

The way ratings work, it's basically guaranteed. Trump's on NBC, MSNBC & CNBC; Biden only on ABC. Nielsen ratings don't include streaming. https://t.co/Ano78Pzs63

— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) October 14, 2020

lol are they really trying to push a "Biden's secret emails" story right now?

2020 is 2016 again