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

:D

Re earlier Joe Rogan discussion

Thought this was one of the smartest points that @ezraklein made in his interview with @IChotiner five weeks ago, and it’s been completely vindicated pic.twitter.com/CYdI1oxf27

— Robinson Meyer (@robinsonmeyer) August 8, 2024

Found the lead for Heat 2:

Kamala Harris approaching reporters: Whatcha got? pic.twitter.com/baE1mFIYar

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 8, 2024

Pure Tim Heidecker:

Trump: It's possible that I won't do as well with Black women. White males way up. White males have gone through the roof. White males way up. pic.twitter.com/lPmVPjq7vF

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 8, 2024

You’d think, given that he sounds like he packed a kilo of cocaine into his sinus cavities before the presser, that he’d have been able to muster just a little bit of energy there. Cripes. Although it sounds like he’s really into white males, so.

he meant "white rails"

White Jails, Black Jobs

Harris takin' questions from the press!

Reporter: Can you comment on some the criticisms he made today?

VP: I was too busy talking to voters. I didn’t hear them. pic.twitter.com/8iERvbFNN6

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 8, 2024

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER 1: Why do you think he pulled out of the debate with you?
HARRIS: I am beyond trying to speculate about how he thinks.

UR2: Can you comment on some of his other criticisms? He made a whole litany of them today... [DO YOU FUCKING SEE?]
HARRIS: I was too busy talking to voters. I didn't hear 'em.

good stuff not too bad

it's a nice moment for sure and fun to feel the energy and optimism, but i think maybe it's easy to overlook the continuum underneath it, the fact that fundamental conditions are basically the same, or that change happens glacially and not as the intended outcome of willful events. that being said i feel like there are a few real openings appearing but like it's too early to tell how far they go. not to get all galaxy brained or anything.

― he/him hoo-hah (map), Thursday, August 8, 2024 6:20 PM (forty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

sometimes changes happens pretty fast though! I mean I do remember when Trump really started winning primaries, and then it was just him and Cruz, and when it became clear that Cruz wasn't coming back there was this feeling of "holy shit, we're actually doing this", and it seemed politics in general just turned really toxic and nasty overnight. Trump losing won't undo that but I think the quicker his base turns on him the quicker we can get to a place in US Politics that doesn't completely fucking suck

my gut reaction to the harris campaign email with the screenshot of the dril tweet was “ah shit trumps gonna win again”

it's not like she said Pokemon Go slowly backwards into hell

I don't even understand what the fuck he's talking about

“Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump said. “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not we had more.”

“They said I had 25,000 and he had a million people. And I’m OK with it, because I liked Dr Martin Luther King,” Trump said.

my gut reaction to the harris campaign email with the screenshot of the dril tweet was “ah shit trumps gonna win again”

Of all things? Ease down, m'friend.

three weeks ago flopson was confidently predicting a Trump victory, lol

the 'trump will win' containment thread is thataway, pardner

even the conservatives are getting worried, as they should

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson wrote on X Thursday, “Forget the money and ads, the Democrats’ ground game is far surpassing the GOP ground game. They’ve been registering new voters and farming for absentee ballots with paid operatives, some of whom are making up to $40 an hour. The GOP has nothing at that level.”

Trump has said some genuinely weird things lately, not even "weird" in the sense that the Dems are attacking the GOP for right now more like we're getting an unfiltered look into what's happening in his decaying brain. the more lucid showman part of his brain just isn't functioning anymore, like I bet he could barely even cut a Trump Steaks commercial right now without a teleprompter, within 10 seconds he'd be talking about how he was actually greater than Elvis, and then look at the steaks and makes a remark like "whatever happened to fish? do you ever see fish anymore?"

I started noticing that when he was doing a speech during the funeral of Diamond or Silk, he was going off on off these tangents that had nothing to do with the deceased or even really politics in general, it was a lot of weird personal stuff that nobody in the crowd could've wanted to hear. he does that way more now.

like openly fantasizing about Joe Biden surprising everyone by re-entering the race during the DNC, it's maybe not even that strange of a thought given how much he really really wanted to run vs. Biden, but actually broadcasting that to everyone is such an odd thing to do. like 2016 never would've said a thing like that out loud, I think he'd recognize that as straight loser talk, but that part of this brain just doesn't work anymore

I for one am looking forward to the complete and total GOP self-immolation that will play out over the next 3 months

tangental thinking is a symptom of some brain problems xp

I noticed it in my grandma before she started getting really bad, it was alarming because it often felt like she was being rude in a way she'd never been before and I'd never felt that way with her

yeah sucks

by "that way" I mean she'd been consistently the same person my whole life and suddenly she had this new personality trait, it broke my heart

i'm having trouble articulating this but when biden dropped out of the race it was like a fever broke and people saw, for just a glimmer of a moment, that life was not some crushing inevitability, that everything was not just on rails and trundling towards yet another dispiriting conclusion. all the smart people said this sort of thing just wasn't done, it was unprecedented, and that's why it would never happen, and they were all wrong. (i was one of these people briefly.) they said the incumbency was so valuable that etc etc. - all the conventional wisdom - and none of it mattered, he dropped out anyway, and it's like we've shaken off a nightmare, and what's funny about it is that trump is part of that nightmare. the little window of insight that conventional wisdom isn't fate, that things can change, feels like absolute kryptonite to trump, who maybe at one time represented insurgency and change but who now feels like he's woven into same fabric that's just been cast aside

a big part of it is due to what feels like a collective alice in wonderland "you're just a pack of cards!" moment, and i think that's why the "weird" line landed so well - it's like normal folks realized we can go back to treating the deranged batshit insane stuff as what it is, we can stop both siding it and we can stop debating it, giving it credibility it would never normally have. it just feels so absolutely fucking refreshing to not have to put up with the bizarro world we let ourselves to be shoved into.

changes can happen fast when somebody articulates what everybody is feeling.

yes, and that was a really great post by Tracer, also makes me think of

https://longreads.com/2018/09/18/no-i-will-not-debate-you/

yeah, I remember posting a couple months ago "How did we get to this?" and there were no clear answers

I know folks here have serious issues with Biden's Gaza/Israel policy and I get that, but his stepping aside ushered in a sea change that I think will inevitably build from here; it was truly an act of statemanship that I predict will be remembered for a long time

he didnt want to do it

true but that will wash out in the sands of time

tracer hand should write speeches for a country smarter than this one. good stuff.

i do miss his baseball face though.

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1253886352/photo/washington-dc-u-s-president-donald-trump-holds-a-baseball-bat-while-looking-at-exhibits.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=43wkfJ6xal44R3ecza5gptyXLQ287FpS1ykPgWe03CM=

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/816483824/photo/president-donald-trump-holds-a-marucci-baseball-bat-in-the-blue-room-during-a-made-in-america.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=9Zt0ANWgpwn0Qg-4V_FhsKsMS4xn7uafmbLndvfQifw=

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1224446459/photo/washington-dc-president-donald-trump-swings-a-bat-made-by-the-texas-timber-bat-co-as-he-tours.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=XteMyOibKlyh7NPzvKl3gTug9DfjAlaBr0dkglDWsiE=

https://i2-prod.dailystar.co.uk/incoming/article19559148.ece/ALTERNATES/s1227b/0_httpscdnimagesdailystarcoukdynamic122photos420000900x7381012420

https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/thewesterlysun.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/b/c3/bc3eb4d8-2ba5-11eb-bffb-f3eab0266156/5fb882d74459b.image.jpg?resize=333%2C500

https://compote.slate.com/images/ba10c89d-52ff-4c62-848f-ef240f04fd11.jpeg?crop=1560%2C1040%2Cx0%2Cy0

https://images.foxtv.com/static.fox5ny.com/www.fox5ny.com/content/uploads/2020/02/764/432/trump-pic-wings.jpg

Can't read my
Can't read my
Can't read my
No you can't read my baseball face

(Sidenote: is that a display of barbecue grills? Including an American flag kettle grill?)

true but that will wash out in the sands of time

― Andy the Grasshopper, Thursday, August 8, 2024 9:40 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i dont think so i dont think theres redemption for biden who could be bothered

it's true this is a pretty good general election pitch, very well delivered, and a lot more than she could manage 4 years ago.

Kamala Harris is like a high ceiling prospect that just never really put the results together and then languished on the bench for years, but an injury replacement puts them in the lineup and sudden they're hitting .330 and you wonder why you weren't playing them all this time https://t.co/fuuX9CGVxw

— James Medlock (@jdcmedlock) August 8, 2024

The Alice in Wonderland analogy is A+.

https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/04/22/gettyimages-148110464golf-34a90f6be59300ca55a79257f4e3ec11cbf646a0.jpg

is James Medlock clemenza’s alt

yeah really great post, I think a lot of people think "yeah it's always been nuts" and aren't realizing how progressively crazier it's gotten. like a lot of the most hysterical stuff people had been saying about him turned out to be true. he really was gonna try the Muslim ban and building a wall. he really did trash all our allies and cozy up to dictators. even telling them government secrets for some reason. he really wasn't going to ever acknowledge defeat and would refuse to accept the results of his re-election loss. he even led a mob into the Capitol and committed a ton of other crimes along the way. he stole a bunch of top secret documents and stashing them in his bedroom! now he's saying shit right out of Mein Kampf and telling his supporters if he wins they'll never have to vote again. but it really wasnt just like that overnight I think. I mean people were kinda scandalized back then that he lied about the size of his crowd during the inauguration despite clear photo evidence that it clearly wasn't the case, it was a huge story for a long time, it wouldn't even be a story at all today

scanner darkly's post is also good

we really don't need to see so many pictures of Trump, let's let him go

I reposted both of those great posts (Tracer and scanner) on FB and added:

"if I may be so bold, I think this also explains why some of the saltier friends I know on the progressive/radical/anarchist spectrum are also feeling left out, because this sea change has potentially made the Democratic party actually relevant again, as opposed to whatever performative "once every four years" fringe candidate they support, whether that be RFK or Cornel West (or, god forbid, Stein)."

and fwiw another lifelong friend of mine commented "It really is like waking up from a spell."

this fucking story he told about going down in a helicopter with Willie Brown that never happened (someone posited he confused him with Jerry Brown, Jerry Brown also said this never happened)

It was Bobby Brown.

Millie Bobby Brown, that is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoc0owSeIaw

sorry thought u meant this Bobby Brown

https://i.discogs.com/_Kbk45e4kMSnWYRixISeMDP2XWAUERUNXy-1y6ZqmZw/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:388/w:400/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQxNzA0/MjEtMTM1NzU3OTQz/NS00MzU4LmpwZWc.jpeg

Wrote about Kamala, the candidate who wasn’t there. She hasn’t done an interview, answered a tough question,has no policy section on her website, and turned a vague vision for the country into a huge polling surge. https://t.co/aSRC8Ac8fb

— kang (@jaycaspiankang) August 9, 2024

(thread has excerpts if you don't care to read the whole thing)

Bobby Brown goes down (with Trump)

turned a vague vision for the country into a huge polling su

i.e. "oh, there's another choice besides the two guys I hate? count me in!"