US Politics, August 2024 -- "Unburdened By a Has-Been"

seems like he's been kinda fighting back tears this whole time

ime euphoria is best taken in small doses, spaced apart. it goes to your head something fierce, but ilx is on one today

yeah Shapiro is on fire

― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, August 6, 2024 2:46 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You got my hopes up there for a minute

Lol

In Kings of Leon voice: "Your Sapiro Is On Fy-ah!"

I'm 100% convinced that normie swing voters can be told all of the clap[trap about Walz being 'too progressive' by the usual suspects and all that shite, but when they hear him talk, with *that* accent, and they will be all like "what are you talking about? Sounds OK to me!"

OK, "Violent crime was up under Donald Trump — and that's not even counting the crimes he committed" is a line that's gonna get around.

Dropped the couch joke

“if he’s willing to get up off the couch to show up” *swish*

I love how all this Walz stuff is completely overshadowing this breaking story about a legit foreign conspiracy to assassinate Trump, which normally would have been a slam dunk for him.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/06/feds-charge-pakistani-national-in-murder-for-hire-plot-against-us-officials-possibly-including-trump.html

Former President Donald Trump was one of the potential targets of the plot by Asif Merchant, who was arrested on July 12 in Texas before any attacks could be carried out, a senior law enforcement source told NBC News.

Merchant unwittingly coordinated with a confidential law enforcement source, who put him in touch with two more undercover agents purporting to be hitmen, the DOJ said.

Trump was nearly killed at a presidential campaign rally one day after Merchant's arrest, when a would-be assassin on a nearby rooftop fired at the Republican nominee while he was speaking onstage.

At this point the prevailing sentiment among everyone aside from maybe the guy himself is that it's a pity the shooter missed. (Even the hyperfans would love it, then they could cry about their dead savior instead of having to slouch out in boredom at another rambling rally.)

dead man walking

When Walz said "You call it socialism, we just call it being neighborly" in tht news appearance, I knew that was our guy for VP

Or die of heat exhaustion

That was great--all the teacher stuff had me beaming ("We do that"). The look on Harris's face after the couch line was priceless.

whoooooooo!! waaaaaaaalllllzzzz!!!

he was great. i love the stuff about joy. felt liberating.

"You call it socialism, we just call it being neighborly"

this is incredible, please dems repeat this ad infinitum

Hard to imagine Mark Kelly pulling off a speech like this

"And like a lot of working Americans, I struggled to adjust to microgravity in orbit..."

then over time he can work up to you call it seizing the means of production we just call it being neighborly

"They call themselves a 'red state'? WE'RE the RED STATE!!" *comrade citizens start to roar*

they call it purging the antirevolutionary snakes we just call it being neighborly

they call it indoctrinating children on perennial class struggle, we just call it being neighborly

they call it seizing the means of production, we just call it borrowing a cup of sugar

I’m sure this joke has been made but … here comes a regular (guy)!

https://i.imgur.com/woO00Ln.png

Someone mentioned this a little upthread, but Tim's exhortations about the joy of the Harris campaign is something they should really lean into, imo.. it feeds into the 'black joy' movement, and paints such a start contrast with the dour, apocalyptic, grievance-based tone of the Trump campaign and also Vance's super unfunny attempts at humor

Hopefully they'll hit up some swing-state taverns and actually have a beer or glass of wine and act like somewhat normal Americans... I know Biden attempted this but it just always felt a little phoned-in

*stark contrast*

The best part is the joy dovetails perfectly with the mockery of Trump and Vance that they're clearly leaning into. They're delivering (by the standards of electoral politics) absolutely savage burns, but doing it with a smile, never seeming angry and in the process making Trump and Vance look ridiculous, which is something we already know from history Trump cannot stand. (You can already see from his Truth Social posts that this is doing him serious psychic damage.)

data point for the effectiveness of not voting

This does not happen if not for uncommitted pic.twitter.com/FesCxPrI2L

— ettingermentum (@ettingermentum) August 6, 2024

Nate Cohn has a very Cohn-brained piece up with the headline, “With Walz, Harris Passes on a Chance to Redefine Herself”

Deck: “There will be other opportunities to move to the center, if that’s a goal.”

What does “move to the center” even mean in the context of this election?

xp Happy to help (for the NY equivalent which iirc was not voting for anyone on the top line but making normal votes on the rest of the ticket).

good stuff

What does “move to the center” even mean in the context of this election?

He wouldn't be able to tell you if you asked him. Chait, either.

Yes, we posted this on Truth Social https://t.co/rmbxs1azPb

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 6, 2024

i'm glad the NYT is getting reactions from people you definitely would want to talk with about politics:

Dan Radant, 49, the owner of a trucking company, knows where he stands on the question of Mr. Walz and his record.

Mr. Radant has displayed a sign in his yard in Inver Grove Heights, a suburb of St. Paul. It features a picture of Mr. Walz wearing a dunce hat, and says: “MY GOVERNOR IS AN IDIOT.”

Mr. Radant is proud to have grown up in Inver Grove Heights. Today, he said, he has eight grandchildren in the local school system. But he sees a region in decline, and he said that Mr. Walz and other liberals deserve much of the blame — for high taxes, uncontrolled immigration, the “woke” ideology festering in schools, and the laws keeping abortion legal in the state.

yeah, I'm not sure Democrats really *want* this pivot to the center.. as I pointed out earlier, the GOP hasn't won the popular vote in twenty years.. maybe most Americans (the vast majority living in urban centers) actually *do* want improved social services, healthcare, a less toxic environment, etc etc.

“woke” ideology festering in schools
and heaven knows I'm miserable now...

radical centrism is real and its here in our backyard

Couldn't have done this with Shapiro

New merch just droppedhttps://t.co/6KI3UhFLg0 pic.twitter.com/r4jMIULDf8

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 6, 2024

they are extremely online

hear me out... https://t.co/Q7ZeBZo1tx pic.twitter.com/TOGERfCcwG

— eric (@ericziminsky) August 6, 2024

Jesus christ trying to do the math on 49 with 8 school age grandkids

aw hell yeah, when Fetterman first came on the national scene there was a cry for more Carhartt dems but this is even better, Mossy Oak™ dems

this is genuinely really cool - on the class he taught in 1993 https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/education/23education.html

“The Holocaust is taught too often purely as a historical event, an anomaly, a moment in time,” Mr. Walz said in a recent interview, recalling his approach. “Students understood what had happened and that it was terrible and that the people who did this were monsters.

“The problem is,” he continued, “that relieves us of responsibility. Obviously, the mastermind was sociopathic, but on the scale for it to happen, there had to be a lot of people in the country who chose to go down that path. You have to make the intellectual leap to figure out the reasons why.”

So Mr. Walz took his students — Brandon Bell, the wrestler; Beth Taylor, the cheerleader; Lanae Merwin, the quiet girl always reading some book about Queen Elizabeth; and all the other children of mechanics, secretaries and a town dentist — and assigned them to study the conditions associated with mass murder. What factors, he asked them to determine, had been present when Germans slaughtered Jews, Turks murdered Armenians, the Khmer Rouge ravaged their Cambodian countrymen?

“It was different and unusual, certainly not a project you’d be expecting,” Mr. Hofmann, now 31, of Phoenix, remembered recently of the class. “The biggest part was just the freedom to explore things. No matter how abnormal or far-fetched an idea might sound, you can form an opinion. Instead of just going in and having a teacher say, ‘Here’s information, learn it, know it, you’ll be tested on it,’ it was, ‘Here’s an idea, run with it.’ ”

For nine weeks through the winter and early spring that school year, through the howling blizzards and the planting of the first alfalfa on the plains, the class pored over data about economics, natural resources and ethnic composition. They read about civil war, colonialism and totalitarian ideology. They worked with reference books and scholarly reports, long before conducting research took place instantly online.

Most, like Mr. Hofmann, had spent their entire lives in and near Alliance. A few had traveled to Washington, D.C., with the school marching band. A few had driven four hours to Denver to buy the new Nirvana CD. Mostly, though, the outside world was a place they built, under Mr. Walz’s tutelage, in their own brains.

When the students finished with the past, Mr. Walz gave a final exam of sorts. He listed about a dozen current nations — Yugoslavia, Congo, some former Soviet republics among them — and asked the class as a whole to decide which was at the greatest risk of sliding into genocide.

Their answer was: Rwanda. The evidence was the ethnic divide between Hutus and Tutsis, the favoritism toward Tutsis shown by the Belgian colonial regime, and the previous outbreaks of tribal violence. Mr. Walz awarded high marks.

aw hell yeah, when Fetterman first came on the national scene there was a cry for more Carhartt dems but this is even better, Mossy Oak™ dems

If not for his desire to become Cargo Shorts Sinema post-TBI he would have been on the VP shortlist. (and immediately rejected when the research team find the story of holding a Black jogger at gunpoint is in the first two pages of the Google search)

pretty sure bernie sanders is the bernie sanders of congress, seems like their hearts just arent in it this time

McCarthy: I served with Tim. He is known for being the Bernie Sanders of Congress pic.twitter.com/jkqLAEeVO5

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 6, 2024

Trump campaign is attacking Walz for Minnesota allowing people with felony convictions to vote, which uh …

lol yeah

the driver's licenses for undocumented people will come up for sure.. but I remember Gerry Brown here in CA just saw it as a necessary practicality, i.e. they're gonna be driving anyway, let's get them licensed, registered, insured

the Republicans are going to paint even the most conservative Dem as a frothing at the mouth Antifa pedophile terrorist so night as well do whatever you want

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:yxavlmxjv2j2nwvjesmq5ogl/bafkreihq6u6omvasphwwuwe4yyitd46fbahu7z32w47pxjkxkfcq5xt7y4@jpeg

grim