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

That's a terrific piece. I'm dispirited but unsurprised, especially the Defense Secretary pick (another military dude requiring a waiver?!). A quibble:

Impressions are being given that HUD and Interior are not important federal agencies but political chits to be handed out

Presidents have treated federal agencies and postings like political chits since Washington.

HUD and Interior are run by political appointees because they are politically important. The non-political expertise they need is already baked into the civil service staffing of those agencies.

Vilsack’s fuck-up re:Shirley Sherrod should disqualify him from any leadership post.

The non-political expertise they need is already baked into the civil service staffing of those agencies.

― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Wednesday, December 9, 2020 1:33 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Er, about that...

"politically important"

ffs once you have this job you *become* politically important. Is there no aspect of this utterly broken backroom order that you won't stooge for?

knowing how it's done

how it works in D.C.

s/he understands the system

etc.

like non-lifer/lobbyist candidates would just be airlifted into these jobs from way off grid somewhere

Why not appoint someone from high up the civil service chain and give them a speechwriter

ffs once you have this job you *become* politically important. Is there no aspect of this utterly broken backroom order that you won't stooge for?

ffs, get a grip. you are just knee-jerking.

politics and policy are joined at the hip. when I say a cabinet level department is "politically important" it is because that department is charged with carrying out the administration's policies. those policies can be corrupt or simon pure, but either way, the policies are political in nature.

xp I love this idea tbh, and I'm not even sure the speechwriter is required. Have YOU ever heard a speech from the secretary of agriculture? (Oh wait, yes, here in Wisconsin the current SecAg gave a speech where he said small farms were probably doomed and big agribusiness was the future, so maybe this proves even a speechwriter isn't enough)

silby otm

just this prevailing weird fetishization of "players" in the capitol like there's some rarified hermeneutics of taking campaign donations in exchange for shit legislation

Why not appoint someone from high up the civil service chain and give them a speechwriter

When you are president you appoint whoever you want. If you want a colorless functionary, you appoint one. If you prefer a hack, you appoint a hack. But the fact that the position is filled by appointment makes it political no matter how you slice it.

there's a lot of colorful functionaries out there I'm pretty sure

When you are president you appoint whoever you want

wait...WHAT?!

like poll some GS-12s for who they want as their boss

wait...WHAT?!

Are you playing games here? Cabinet level officials are nominated by the president, and are subject to senate confirmation. But the senate can't appoint anyone. Only the president can.

Sorry, yes, games. I am sometimes triggered by your relentless pedandtry.

it's pedantry

loool

I was hoping for an Aimless correction :(

haha sorry I couldn't possibly resist that

it was a meatball tbf

First you jump all over me and call me a stooge, while totally missing the point of my post. Then when I tell you what you got all wrong, I am a relentless pedant. You're an ass.

eh, go curl up w/ your West Wing box set

anyway I was making a joke, Captain Obvious

jokes usually incorporate wit or humor

have you see Kevin Hart

I can't think of a single reason why I should.

drilcorncobtweet.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZIwwf1onKM

High bitchassness quotient itt today

First you jump all over me and call me a stooge

he didn't call you a stooge, he said you were stooging.

first they came for the stooges, and I did not speak because I was not a wise guy

A friend's dad used to call the two of us "the two stooges" when he'd come home from work and find us high as kites, eating mangos, and wasting time on this stupid forum.

I wish I liked mangos. I live in a state where they're as common as cockroaches.

People worry that 'moderate' Democrats like Joe Biden are the same as Republicans. Our study suggests they may be right

Others aren’t so sure that political moderatism is a virtue. When it comes to addressing climate change, Eric Levitz of New York Magazine argued that “a major (obstacle) is the tendency of moderate Democrats to mistake their own myopic complacency for heroic prudence”. Political researcher David Adler found that across Europe and North America, centrists are the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its institutions, and the most supportive of authoritarianism. Furthermore, Adler found that centrists are the least supportive of free and fair elections as well as civil rights — in the United States, only 25 percent of centrists agree that civil rights are an essential feature of democracy.

Strikingly, in almost every case, the responses of moderate men are very similar to conservative men and women. Their level of agreement with the statements above is as much as 14 percent lower than moderate women, who are more likely than men to lean Democratic, or liberal men and women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RRyniZG0Jo

I agree with the thesis, hence my endorsement of Sanders and Warren. But the publication date is...September. So this statement:

Nevertheless, Biden’s popularity among Republicans has grown consistently in recent months.

is uh naive given what's happened since Election Day.

Also: I didn't know that by voting for Joseph Robinette Biden I'd get a president who'd nominate center-right SCOTUS candidates.

I remain agnostic on what his SCOTUS candidates would be like, but is there a reason to expect that they wouldn't be center-right?

Pub date aside, the sentence is just broad waffle anyway - dividing voters ideologically into Republican and Democrat camps is a kludge at the best of times in a two-party system, and pretty useless this year. Trump's swollen popularity is a cult of personality & marketing, not a considered commitment to either the real or stated aims of the R party, and Biden is the most profound "lesser of two evils" candidate in living memory, from a party whose wins primarily come from lesser-of-two-evils voters.

https://theintercept.com/2020/12/10/biden-audio-meeting-civil-rights-leaders/

Aggressively punching himself in the dick for Vilsack.

can't wait for Biden to get into office and enact his bold vision of bipartisan compromise with these guys

More than 100 House Republicans on Thursday signed onto an amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the election results in four swing states - Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - that handed Democrat Joe Biden the White House.

lol

For decades, nobody was harder on Joe Biden than the political left.

Then something unexpected happened: In one swoop, Biden became president and the left gained a significant foothold in Congress. And suddenly, to progressives, he doesn’t look so badhttps://t.co/YjRTA07iEc

— POLITICO (@politico) December 11, 2020

Austin got named.

Biden and Austin got to know each other during the Obama administration’s Iraq drawdown, when the former vice president led Iraq policy and Austin served as the last commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq. In that position, Austin played a key role in the surge of forces that began in 2007.

Austin’s nomination may run into trouble on Capitol Hill. Austin has not been out of the military for the required seven years and would need a waiver from Congress to become secretary of Defense.

the Biden team saw Austin as the safe choice, said one former defense official close to the transition, adding that the retired general is believed to be a good soldier who would carry out the president-elect’s agenda.

He retired after 41 years in 2016 and joined the board of directors of Raytheon Technologies, one of the largest Pentagon contractors and a potential sticking point among progressive lawmakers, who have raised concerns over appointing a Defense secretary who has ties with industry. He is also on the board of Nucor, the largest American steel producer, as well as health care company Tenet.

it's like Politico doesn't even read this thread

A snippet of audio from that meeting a few posts back: Biden shouting at the head of the NAACP.

great news though!

Today, I'm announcing key COVID-19 priorities for the first 100 days of my administration:

- Everyone wears a mask
- 100 million vaccinations
- Reopen the majority of schools

With these steps, we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 8, 2020

His poor reaction to criticism seems familiar. Like recently familiar. I wonder...

Shouting incoherent boasts about how he's the only president who's ever achieved various imaginary but absurdly specific electoral statistics? That's just presidentiality, jack.

we can have one good thing, or at least not-another-bad-thing

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-new-york-rahm-emanuel-cabinets-transportation-5cc94fa1075512b719bbff4a25e6b6a2

can't wait for Biden to get into office and enact his bold vision of bipartisan compromise with these guys

More than 100 House Republicans on Thursday signed onto an amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the election results in four swing states

This is now 126 elected members of Congress requesting that the election be overturned and Biden not be allowed to become president. He's gonna have to come up with some really big concessions to their agenda in order to achieve that unity and bipartisanship he keeps promising, like, say, seppuku.