"The August 2020 US Politics Thread is highly thought of, but nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. That's all."

that said, between a raging pandemic, the dismantling of the post office, and all sorts of economic records being set (mostly bad ones) idk how you even project this election right now

Today in transparently false email subject lines:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfOv5wuWAAEtIRm.jpg

Hopefully his wife is near enough to ensure that they aren't impure.

kind of fascinated by the difference in how they approach fundraising emails; Dems use a lot of defeatist garbage like "it's over...Trump won....imagine waking up to that news because you didn't donate $5 + 6x match" while the GOP tends to be mostly "Strong Daddy is disappointed because you're not on his list of patriots this month"...kinda sums up the two parties honestly

mike pence locks himself into a completely masculine room before composing his emails, to avoid the chance of impurity

xps Mike's Pencées

Mike is exceedingly careful never to air his Pencées in public.

I'm starting to get almost hopeful that this USPS fuckery is going to really backfire on Trump.

Our neighborhood group email (which is 95% of the time only used by the retirees with a lot of extra time on their hands) has been really complaining about the lack of mail delivery in the past few weeks and someone shared an article about Dejoy, they are furious about their mail being fucked with. Granted, I live in a left-leaning town and there is probably 60 Biden or Sanders yard signs for every 1 Trump sign, but it's seemed to really rile up the normally politically averse.

At the same time, my mom lives in the heart of a Trump adoring rural area and she told me a lot of her friends are really getting pissed off about it too.

Some anecdotal data:

Last week a friend of mine had a small envelope mailed via USPS to him from a city 70 miles away, with tracking. The package spent 2 days in a warehouse 2800 miles away clear across the country before arriving after 5 business days.

Our nieces 400 miles away mailed us 2 stamped envelopes 3 weeks ago and they have yet to arrive.

it doesn't seem smart, given the location and demographics of the bulk of republican voters.

Banking on decades of slow/lazy/etc. mail carrier jokes making people blame the Post Office instead of Trump.

Another reason the post office mess could backfire is that it's really underscoring that people, literally everyone, needs and uses the USPS for a million reasons other than voting.

xpost that is what is happening to my nextdoor feed, which straddles mainly white neighborhoods, half working class and half rich/very rich. people have been complaining about service at the two post offices since way before this started. mostly complaints with racial overtones about clerks' attitudes. there are plenty of people who recognize it's because of trump, but also many blaming postal workers and clamoring for privatization. it's infuriating. i've had slow service at the post office but not in a way that seriously impacts my life and not worse than any private retail outlet.

Another reason the post office mess could backfire is that it's really underscoring that people, literally everyone, needs and uses the USPS for a million reasons other than voting.

Yep. A lot of stories circulating already about retirees and veterans not getting their prescriptions delivered in time. This is going to blow up in these assholes' faces in a major way.

can i cling to two truths?

1) the post office is terrible and many of the employees are outright abusive and incompetent
2) the post office is necessary and good the employees deserve our support

totally

I think that first truth is mostly bullshit

then you should try going to a post-office

The "Post Office" as a delivery service is pretty incredible - $9 to get a package from California to New York in three days, with a negligible amount of damage or loss (much less damage than FedEx, which is a complete monstrosity toward its employees).

okay, i agree with that

USPS employees are not any ruder or more entitled than any state or federal employees I run into, the majority of whom are at best courteous and helpful and at worst complacent.

IMO - USPS employees are not any ruder or more entitled than any state or federal employees I run into, the majority of whom are at best courteous and helpful and at worst complacent.

yep

xp as a former state employee and current federal employee, that is otm. have also dealt with all manner of county employees. this study has led me to conclude that a significant proportion of workers in every government (and probably non-government) agency are incompetent or rude but i'm ok with it. i would never replace any of them with a fedex.

Customer facing jobs are torture, none of them are paid enough for the misery, people aren't going to blow sunshine up your ass after they've gotten yelled at 12 times that day by a Karen, no one in that customer-facing job has enough power to effect change on the systems that are causing your misery, ie "why is my package missing?! why don't you scan it at every stop?!" or whatever.

I have never understood postal workers' reputation for hostility and/or incompetence — I've had the same PO box for well over a decade and lost/missing packages have been so rare I couldn't even give you an accurate count of how many times it's happened. Less than half a dozen. Every time I have to stand in line, yeah, service can be slow, but it's because the person in line either doesn't speak English, doesn't know how to explain what they want, is doing something wrong, or all of those, not because the clerk is incompetent. The clerks do everything they can to help. Shit, the lady who fetches my packages when I have a pickup slip knows me by name. She's great.

I've never dealt with a bad USPS employee.

maybe it's a regional thing? post office desks in the north-east became increasingly rude and inefficient about ten years ago, when the criteria for customer-facing jobs changed from suitability to seniority. branch desk duty became a sinecture for cranks.

Most customer-facing government employees in this country are treated with contempt. The good ones get promoted out of customer-facing jobs as quickly as they can.

I would not call any customer-facing government job a “sinecure” by any stretch of the word

maybe it's a regional thing? post office desks in the north-east became increasingly rude and inefficient about ten years ago, when the criteria for customer-facing jobs changed from suitability to seniority. branch desk duty became a sinecture for cranks.

I'm in a mid-sized NJ city and my PO box is at the main post office.

Perhaps I've just been incredibly lucky or have low standards but every single government-or-adjacent employee I've dealt with (aside from cops) has been fine. Building inspectors, planning departments, the workers in government buildings or offices I remodeled, DMV, etc..

Most of the USPS grousing is due more to Americans being spoiled infants who expect everything to be perfect than to any legitimate systemic issues IMVHO

"I had to wait >5 minutes for a teller at the post office or like a day longer than I expected to for that one package that one time" = "USPS is garbage and should be dismantled", basically

The mail carriers here rule. They're friendly, they work hard, they're accommodating, they're part of the community. But the people working at our two local post offices have been almost cartoonishly terrible for as long as I've lived here, so much so that I avoid going in there as much as possible. Far worse than any other government agency I ever have to deal with. I have no idea why that is the case.

regarding the USPS friends of mine that have certain dried herbs mailed to them in large quantities are happy about the recent lack in scrutiny while also being disappointed in delivery times.

love usps, they come to my house and pick up packages uncomplainingly all the fucking time, for free! and are usually really nice.

wait a second

it seems like different people, in different parts of the country, dealing with different people, are having different experiences.

nonetheless, i feel confident that my usps experience in chicago is the same as any location in the world

The systemic issues with the USPS are worker related and that they should double the workforce and make it less torture up and down the line.

reminds me of a local cashier i know at the grocery store who is awesome. it's so nice that every other cashier in the country is also awesome, or at least i figure they are based off of my local experience. hold on a sec, gotta go check on political lawn sign situation on my block to see how the rest of the country feels about biden v trump

absolutely. there are 'cost-saving' measures that don't come at the expense of employees.

please understand that this is not my hill to die on. i do not have a hankerin' to trash postal employees. i have just had a bunch of crummy and hostile encounters at my local office. so have some of my friends and family members. it has nothing to do with waiting in line for five minutes.

in general i am disposed to like postal workers. my grandpa was a delivery carrier during in WW2, because he had polio and wasn't drafted and felt guilty. he wrote limericks as he walked his route. he won the national postal workers limerick contest one year, but was disqualified the next year because his limerick was 'vulgar.' he would never tell me what it was, so i assume it was actually vulgar.

my mailman is a fucking dick who has regularly misdelivered mail for our how neighborhood for years and I wish he'd retire or get fired; but all the other mail carriers I've had in town are great, and I know someone who works for the PO is is just beloved by people on his route.

My local post office is absolutely the worst; prior to moving to this neighborhood I had no real beefs with USPS and - as my father relied on postal delivery for sales - spent hours each week waiting at USPS buildings. However, this one branch is combative (to the point of actual irregular physical altercations!), drastically understaffed and consistently antagonistic to patrons. Our delivered mail is often weeks late and is regularly dropped off (wet, torn and dirty) through a mail slot in a pile of unsorted letters for the entire building or in a pile outside the door.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/nyregion/20critic.html
https://patch.com/new-york/windsorterrace/worst-post-office-nyc-hits-another-low-resident-says
https://gothamist.com/news/kensington-post-office-the-worst-post-office-in-nyc
https://patch.com/new-york/windsorterrace/worst-post-office-finds-new-way-torment-kensington-placards

The place recently caught fire due to electrical issues:
http://brooklyn.news12.com/story/38342740/kensington-post-office-reopens-after-fire

That said, I'd rather their budget was tripled than they shut down! The place needs help!

Part of my New New Deal platform is turning the USPS into a massive jobs programs. You're going to have so many tellers at the local post office you'll never have to wait. Mail routes will be cut down to a quarter of what they are and instead of the vans, each of those four carriers gets a Smart car with a sweet sound system.

can i cling to two truths?

1) the post office is terrible and many of the employees are outright abusive and incompetent
2) the post office is necessary and good the employees deserve our support

― rb (soda), Wednesday, August 12, 2020 1:05 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is the problem with the US and its relation to government in a nutshell.

** I HAVE A PLAN TO SAVE THE POST OFFICE **

YOUNG PEOPLE: Call your grandparents and ask if they got the card you sent.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT SEND A CARD.

When they say no, you sound very sad. "Oh, that's too bad. I heard that Trump was really underfunding the post office."

— Christopher Keelty 🏳️‍🌈 (@keeltyc) August 11, 2020

wrt to regional differences, you’ll be *shocked* to find out that the GOP’s intent to destroy what’s left of the USPS in order to privatize it will do just fine down here with virtually all white people—whether old or young or poor or well-off. Every failure or inconvenience is chalked up to government & employee incompetence, and the PO is notoriously where “black ppl work” because of Civil Rights and Affirmative Action. Racist post-WW2 GOP orthodoxy is absolutely unquestioned and well into its fourth generation of cradle-to-grave propaganda.

xpost Could work!

I just asked my wife her opinion, and she thinks it may be the culture at our local post offices. So much so that people recommend going to a village or town over to other post offices for better experiences.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-attack-on-the-postal-service-is-a-threat-to-democracy-and-to-rural-america

A fact that sometimes gets lost is this: USPS must - by law - go to almost every address almost every day. And they've almost always done precisely that, for something like 200 years. Even if you don't have any stupid fucking junk mail about gutter cleaning or credit offers on a particular day, the mail carrier still needs to check to see if you have any outgoing mail.

UPS and FedEx only need to go to your address if you have a package, or if you've requested a pickup.

That is a HUGE difference in mission, and the lopsidedness of expectations is being manipulated for trumpian political gain. Fuck that noize.