U.S. Politics, November 2022: “I don’t know, you hear the same things I do”

Plus, Biden ain't budging unless he croaks.

the Democratic candidate for 2024 needs to be a wrestler. Biden will be primaried. the wrestler needs to be a new up and comer who arrives on the scene this year or early next.

and the wrestler will in exchange for his exposure promise to run on a progressive platform and also tape campaign ads in the middle of fights

because honestly I don't see how else we win, everything is backwards.

Newsom notably says in that interview that he's not running for President in 2024

politicians lie about their presidential intentions almost universally.

It's not completely up to Biden. Especially depending on the midterms, if they look as bad as they're likely to, he is vulnerable to a serious challenge. He's very primary-able already. But it would take somebody sufficiently threatening probably to make him seriously consider not running.

If the GOP does take the House, the rationale is even stronger for him to step down, because he would most likely be facing impeachment timed for early 2024. If the GOP has to try to impeach him AND fight off a different Democratic candidate for president, it at least opens up a second front.

Trump and Clinton proved impeachment is no impediment, though.

I dunno, Trump lost. Not because of the impeachment but I don't think it helped him. But it's more the divided time and energy between campaigning and defending. Plus also the impetus for the GOP to seriously pursue impeachment goes way up if they get to impeach the guy they're also campaigning against, it makes it seamless.

yeah, that's highly debatable for both Trump and Clinton. Let's not forget how much Clinton was seen as a liability in the 2000 election.

Let's not forget how much Clinton was seen painted as a liability by the press in the 2000 election.

Al Gore absolutely treated Clinton like a liability in his campaign.

otoh, what exactly would Biden be impeached for? I'm not sure that republicans can pull it off without it looking like an utter sham. Even the Clinton impeachment had some questionable acts that it could be built around.

hunter's laptop

presumably that would be the focus, but so far the actual evidence against Hunter is extremely thin, and none of it links back to Joe

Here's the angle:

Is a 25th Amendment removal in Joe Biden’s future?
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3714038-is-a-25th-amendment-removal-in-joe-bidens-future/

(it's an op-ed)

Impeached for giving speeches about democracy

You can impeach a ham sandwich with the coming GOP majority. Most likely things are mental acuity, the Afghan withdrawal or something to do with Hunter. Or maybe the Russians will helpfully turn over some damning documents, who knows. Lots of things can go wrong between January and October of next year. Maybe they'll impeach him just for failure to comply with their blizzard of investigations.

Oh, the authoritarian vaccine mandates too.

So will this fucker ever be forced to resign? Sorry for linking to politio.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/02/trump-lawyers-saw-justice-thomas-as-only-chance-to-stop-2020-election-certification-00064592

no

Al Gore absolutely treated Clinton like a liability in his campaign.

Gore was right about the environment, broadly speaking, but in a whole lot of other ways he was a fucking dolt. I'm not saying he was the lesser of two evils or anything that insipid, but he should not have been the president of anyone's dreams and he shot himself in the dick multiple times while campaigning (Joe fucking Lieberman?).

JOEMENTUM, BAY-BEE

xp

I'm not claiming that Al Gore was right or that he ran a smart campaign

Newsom is about as loathsome and slimy a motherfucker that ever crawled out of San Francisco, and trust me when I say I’ve had some slimy times in the city by the Bay.

I more or less like Newsom, but the dude has a ton of negatives and has not ever been very good at optics.

he has and he hasn't? I mean, his performative gay marriages when he was mayor were very optically savvy. ... the bearskin rug photo with Kimberly Gargoyle was optically something, though time has changed those optics.

but I also think he is probably very aware of the awkwardness of having been married to a woman who is now a right wing troll

Afaic Newsom paved the way for Lee, and both allowed/forced the best city in the country for weirdos and freaks to be taken over by a bunch of soulless suburban yuppies who know how to code. Shameful shit, I wish the absolute worst on both (tho Lee is dead, I did a happy dance that day, hope he’s in an especially heinous ring of hell)

Actually, Willie Brown literally paved the way for Newsom, so ... like, wasn't Newsom originally a Willie Brown appointee to fill a vacant supervisor position? Or am I misremembering this?

Probably not literally ;)

and going back, we can always blame Dianne Feinstein ... and uh, the creme de la creme of the SFPD, Dan White

I would vote for Gavin Newsom over anyone I can imagine the Republicans putting up.

xp - don't make me search through the SF Building Dept records to see if I can argue for "literally paving" ;)

but I think the thing with Newsom as a presidential candidate is ... there are too many people from/associated with SF that loathe him and can sling mud ... like, leftists would sling it, and the right wing would repurpose it, and we all are aware of the "Democratic Party Direction" issues between leftists and moderates

I remember when he ran against Matt Gonzales and all the SF Lefties painted Newsom as just to the right of Pinochet lol

re: newsom being bad at optics, i guess I'm thinking more recently. It was dumb for him to go to the French Laundry in the middle of the pandemic. Do I personally care? No. But it looked bad and was dumb. It was also dumb for him to send his kids to a school where they didn't mask. Do I personally give a fuck? no. But things like that 'look' terrible and shit like that bites you in the ass in ways that it shouldn't.

Shall we?

Walker hits back at Obama: "Put my resume against his resume" https://t.co/9AlNMXQos1 pic.twitter.com/evZCY5B1xM

— The Hill (@thehill) November 2, 2022

More champagne!

What the fuck hahahahaha

xp Walker to Walker

I don't know that much about Gavin Newsom, but I watched the 60 Minutes clip, and while I agree with what he said about Democrats needing to be more aggressive with their messaging strategy, he just seems kind of smarmy. That's just an immediate surface-level reaction, but I'm having trouble seeing him as the party's savior.

Should there even be one

he just seems kind of smarmy

And this is why he'll never go national... Californians are pretty much used to our brie & quince liberals, but he doesn't have the folksiness to go big time - maybe labor secretary or something like that

I'll add that De Santis is probably too unlikable to go big time either, for different reasons

Too short, for one thing.

Gavin Newsom's early support for gay marriage meant a lot to me, and I would vote for him over almost anybody else, but I agree that he would not be the best candidate. Unless someone extremely charismatic and viable pops up soon, I think Biden is the only one who can win the presidency for Democrats in 2024

My friends are also saying that they think DeSantis is too unlikeable to go big, but I don't know

a military record used to mean something for presidential hopefuls, but nobody's won off of it in a long, long time

to be fair to walker, obama has never won the heisman trophy

I remember when he ran against Matt Gonzales and all the SF Lefties painted Newsom as just to the right of Pinochet lol

― Andy the Grasshopper, Wednesday, November 2, 2022 2:30 PM (one hour ago)

lol u talking about my friends tbh

to be fair to walker, obama has never won the heisman trophy

But he did teach at the University of Chicago, the first school to ever have a player win the Heisman, so ... close enough!

Unless someone extremely charismatic and viable pops up soon

Pete Buttigieg proved that someone youngish, smart and ambitious from the lower tiers of the party can rise rapidly in a presidential race, though probably not against an incumbent president. he's probably reached his zenith as a cabinet member.

possibly. he is a surprisingly good speaker though who at times reminds me of Obama. "Pete Buttigieg" is just a really bad name though

As a midwesterner with no stakes in either state Desantis and Newsome feel like unlikeable rival brothers separated at birth who grew up to be the Florida and California versions of each other.

US Politics December 2022: Get Sick on Your Own Time

She was tasked with stopping Hondurans from invading our borders, and she failed

I find her voice a little dreary but I don't think she's that awful a speaker

Her power over Hondurans was never sufficient to succeed in that task.

Fox making a dumb statement is funny enough, but considering Fox spent $1 billion on the World Cup TV rights makes this even funnier. https://t.co/m4noXAXMlx

— Aaron Grisham (@AGrisham247) November 30, 2022

"Soccer Needs To Be More Entertaining" for December Thread Title

She was tasked with stopping Hondurans from invading our borders, and she failed

Please don’t tell me you’re being serious.

“Excuse me?” is a quality December thread title but other possibilities are strong too

"US Politics needs to be more entertaining"

Or, "They're now the working class party, man."

Sherrod Brown dripping with sarcasm when asked if GOP senators will support paid leave for rail workers.

“They’re now the working class party, man. Marco Rubio’s a populist, they’re there man, they want help workers. They’re the Trotskyite party.”

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) November 30, 2022

Maaaaaaaaaaaan

i could see post-trump republicans running into some of the same shoals as the tories in the uk, where you’ve got a new coalition of working class votes that you’ve purchased with xenophobia and culture wars, but eventually these voters will ask where’s the beef

December thread?

December 2022: Xenophobic working class warriors seek their beef

if that's the thread title, let's do it

US Politics, December 2022: "They're now the working class party, man."

I know Sherrod Brown is being sarcastic up there, but American political media and thus American political/electoral understanding is so deliberately terrible that even basic terminology doesn’t mean anything. They’re all words with various associated vibes that get tossed around, actual definition or context be damned