Chapo Trap House and the rise of the dirtbag left

hard to say
i do get the general sense from a lot of people that trump is a TV show they are sick of an they want to change the channel

but milo otm i don't think the last six months could have worked out any more to biden's favor - and to obscure his considerable deficiencies as a candidate

If we were cruising into Nov 3 with low unemployment any dem including Bernie would have a tough climb. It’s historically pretty hard to make the case for change when everything is good.

Any Dem would have had a tough climb but stronger speakers, stronger campaigners, people who centered their campaign on making a positive case for themselves and their Presidency would be in a better position than Biden's pure return to normalcy. Even Mayor Pete would have been able to contrast his youth and functioning brain with Trump's cognitive decline.

Literally absurd to suggest Mayor Pete would have done better than Biden.

I mean, say whatever you want, make up shit. Biden was and remains very popular and well-known among key democratic voting constituencies. Mayor Pete had no traction outside of specific Manhattan neighborhoods.

Like, we get it, you don't like Biden, and you wish it was Bernie. Me too. But let's not confuse preference for reality.

"Key Democratic voting constituencies" aren't the concern? Biden is not doing particularly well with Black voters or Latino voters, he's pretty much at Clinton 2016 numbers (or worse) in polling before Trump got the 'rona. Any Democrat's floor with Black voters is in the high 80s. Biden's gain has been with old people - who would not have switched without COVID - and rich white suburbanites. Who are... that "specific Manhattan neighborhood" kind of demographic you refer to.

It's ridiculous to pretend that Biden was some kind of all-conquering world beater - we all lived through the run up to the primaries and then the primaries themselves.

Yes, I'm clearly just, uh, wishcasting for Bernie by arguing that Mayor Pete would have been a better candidate than Biden in a normal summer and fall.

It's ridiculous to pretend that Biden was some kind of all-conquering world beater - we all lived through the run up to the primaries and then the primaries themselves.

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Wednesday, October 14, 2020 9:18 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Mayor Pete won zero primaries. Are you sure you actually remember them?

sorry, one primary - Iowa

and that's arguable

Then finished second in New Hampshire, then was running competitively even in the south until Clyburn's endorsement and then Obama clearing the field.

Do you think post-1968 nominees are inherently the best option from the party each election?

I think Biden is polling well above Trump right now so you're just not on the best footing to argue he was a poor choice. I think Bernie could hypothetically have done just as well. I don't understand the case for Mayor Pete other than just your own surmisings.

We're not talking about right now, we're talking about a world without COVID. A world where Biden couldn't disappear from April until August, where he would have been traveling every day actually talking to people.

Biden was and is highly popular due to his association with Obama and his being an affable old white dude, like it or not. No one except Bernie ever really got any traction against Biden. It's true that there came a time when the other candidates closed ranks around Biden and that did sort of screw Bernie. But Biden made a strong showing in primaries prior to that. Mayor Pete's supposed greater mental sharpness doesn't really make up for the fact that he is not well-liked and not well-known.

Seriously, how well do you think "shoot 'em in the leg" plays with the most important of those "key Democratic voting constituencies" you referenced earlier, if his opponent wasn't so unabashedly evil?

Biden isn't highly popular though - his positives have just started to break 50% (against unabashed evil). He's just not hated.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/joe_biden_favorableunfavorable-6677.html
these are old but up through June

somewhere else on RCP I saw the more recent numbers that are cresting 50% favorable

I'd also suggest that Tara Reade's account might have landed with more impact had it not come the same week most of the country locked down.

mighta coulda. You can beat a dead horse all you want, but passive aggressive vote withholding is not going to move the democratic party a micrometer.

Okay? (pssst, I voted for Biden at lunch today - in a state where I don't think he's going to win)

You seem to really want something to be mad at or a gotcha but as above, yes, the idea of leveraging votes has to be organized and demand concessions. No idea who you think is arguing otherwise.

counterfactuals are unprovable, but I also think any of the primary candidates that are better at talking in full sentences than Biden would have done better than him, in that alternate timeline. I think a world where Biden's record and mental acuity were the focus of prolonged media scrutiny would be bad for him

sorry, one primary - Iowa

Dem voters would have lined up behind Pete (or Harris, or etc) just as they did with Biden, noses held or not, because Trump. Doesn't seem controversial to me.

we're talking about a world without COVID

cool thought experiment bro

The party power brokers' eagerness to clear the field for a doddering centrist sex pest rather than cede ground to the left is actually pretty important to think about in terms of future left strategy, brad.

Kind of weird to go "well you can't prove this!" or "cool thought experiment" this late into a discussion that started with milo saying Biden wouldn't be winning w/o covid and others disagreeing with that.

"Like what the fuck do you think is going to happen, 200,000 leftists in key swing states are going to spontaneously express their "discontent with the rightward drift of the party" by not voting or voting third party, Democrats will lose, and then four years from now they'll say "Man, we fucked up in 2020, we'd better nominate a socialist this time." I can't even begin to parse the cloudy thinking behind that idea."

This strategy, of organised abstention, could've been tried but the militancy isn't there at the moment. This organisation is not just for an election but it also flows at the workplace and at street-level too.

That should've been the strategy at this election and maybe every election until concessions are extracted.

daniel welcome to the non-linear world of message board conversation

this whole convo started off as a non-sequitur in one of milo’s posts and is just a bunch of unprovable theorizing, which i guess qualifies this for a politics thread

i fucking hate joe biden’s guts but don’t think it’s necessarily guaranteed that he’d be losing to trump rn without covid but also we don’t live in that world and i hate this discussion

just feels less like strategizing and more like a way of shoring up superiority, the cool new bernie would’ve won

two ways forward for the left, form a worker's party or write choose yr own adventure books

or stock up on Campari.

there's a reason Trump wanted to run against Bernie and not Biden. The "Commies are coming" campaign strategy is kind of laughable when deployed against Biden. Mayor Pete would have faced a strategy of "God is angry, our values are crumbling!" Biden's main weaknesses were all zeroed out because they applied to Trump as well--groping women, old, can't put sentences together.

ah yes, noted master of 2020 campaign stratagems, Donald Trump

but seriously this is fuckin boring yall

yes, absolutely, split the left

The "Commies are coming" campaign strategy is kind of laughable when deployed against Biden.

Mayor Pete would have faced a strategy of "God is angry, our values are crumbling!"

both of which are falling flat

Because the culture war arguments of 1970 don't really work in 2020. They were going to be deployed, and fail, regardless.

Every republican and a sizable chunk of liberals are uncomfortable with socialism.

Just as we can't pretend that there are no voters Bernie would have reached that Biden can't, we also can't pretend that there are no Biden voters that wouldn't have voted for Bernie. I don't know how to quantify which category is greater.

lol i thought "oh funny there must be some left podcaster dude named tim robbins too -- oh wow like THE tim robbins"

Not a single Bull Durham joke, disappointing.

lol I had the same thought re Tim Robbins (in fact I thought "Oh wait, is that one of those repeat past guests?" probably conflating Tim Faust and some other guy in my mind)

could not get through the Tim Robbins intvw tbh

Haven't listened yet but I imagine him to be one of those guests who kind of doesn't *get* the podcast and acts like he's on Terry Gross

yeah not far off

he knows he's with leftists, and laughs at some of the jokes, but his tone doesn't match the show as much as some other actors who have appeared

The way he describes this Bobbo thing is the sort of deal they’d make fun of any other time, but it’s not very awkward except when he doesn’t believe their appreciation of “Mission to Mars.”