I mean, I agree with you, and Joe should talk about health care. But it would be a hell of a lot easier and more effective if Obamacare didn’t suck.
People may be scared of losing Obamacare but they don’t love it like SS and Medicare, for obvious reasons. We’ve been saying forever that Democrats have to deliver easily understood tangible benefits. Their failure to do so is now a big political liability.
Good Reply All on the origins of Q.
Along these lines, but I wouldn’t say a “signature policy” in general, just an ideological direction from which policies arise. Bernie was basically eat the rich and do social democracy guy, M4A is a natural focal point for that as it’s popular and urgently needed. Warren’s agenda was corporate regulation, she didn’t really have one focal policy. Biden has no agenda in this sense. Not having a signature policy is more like a symptom of having no coherent agenda. Certainly the wall and to a lesser extent M4A were symbolic of the broader agenda of their proponents. It’s not just that Biden’s campaign hasn’t picked a policy out of a hat to go hard on, he has no underlying agenda to symbolise.
Right, I wasn’t necessarily arguing that a vacuous campaign is a strategic misstep. There are obvious reasons why running the Clinton playbook again, which is what they’re doing, makes me nervous, but Biden is much less hated than Clinton and maybe that’s all you need.
My concern is I guess that the Dems manifestly don’t actually want to do anything, they’re the party of neoliberal stewardship, and this “steady as she goes” campaign style is the natural result of this rather than being some sort of well-considered strategic direction.
Right, but I don’t know that the country is in the mood for that sort of messaging and it’s not clear to me that you can run this playbook without actually being Obama, by which I mean both being an outsider candidate, or at least perceived that way, and actually having the talents of Obama as an individual.
Edit: Like I guess you could argue that Obama was symbolic of his “hope and change” agenda and that Biden is symbolic of a return to normal, steady hand at the tiller, etc. Like I said, I don’t have a clear opinion on whether or not this is the way to go, strategically.
I think there’s a little bit more to it than that, and it is an ideological commitment about the last four years. Biden stands for the opinion that what’s wrong with the US now is Trump and his illegitimate, small circle of cronies, who can simply be ejected. Those that think a Trump presidency has shone a light on deep issues in US society are wrong. Things aren’t that bad really, and you don’t actually have to confront problems that seem like tearing the country apart. It’s a pretty comforting message given the times we live in.
What did everything think of Carlin saying that he wants Trump to have an easy exit out of office rather than fear of going to jail afterwards?
I understand what he is saying but I’m not sure I agree with him.
whether you agree with him or not, the idea of trump going to jail is lol fantasyland. There are pretty good reasons for having an EXTREMELY high bar for prosecuting an ex-president, and democrats aren’t crazy enough to actually go through with it, even if Trump actually has exceeded even that extremely high bar.
Trump of course, does have such an out anyway, he can resign and have pence pardon him.
As unsatisfying as it is, I agree with Carlin on this. Make it as easy as possible for him to go away.
Latest Weeds, yet another filibuster episode, is really good.
Mitch is a scumbag but everything he’s done is entirely rational.
ok so I downloaded citations needed, what the fuck, it’s unlistenable. You’ve got these fucking eggheads who can’t even bother to look up how to pronounce weird names like “Roy Acuff” and one of them basically sounds like trump reading from a teleprompter.
ROY uhKUFF FOH
The Weeds on the debate is good.
The You’re Wrong About two-parter on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study is a good one. Not all the way through part 2 yet but learning stuff.
Wow 5-4 is terrible. I mean the content seems great but wow it’s unlistenable
The lead guy is A++++++
The sidekicks suck.
They’re fine. The problem is the production of the podcast. Terrible mixing and balancing, awkward commercial cuts, need to edit and tone down laugher. The Law Boy is by far the most polished in delivery, so he suffers the least from the awful production.
You’re Wrong About sometimes talks about how intensively produced the pod actually is. 5-4 should literally send their raw episodes to Michael Hobbes and it would be far better and more accessible to non politics junkies.
So it’s the opposite of More Perfect? Cause that’s the slickest podcast I’ve ever heard.
law boy is definitely hyperelite, his twitter is one of my top follows, but I can’t hear anything he says over the nonstop guffawing
Yeah I thought about that a lot when he said it because I’ve listened to the last two episodes of The fall of the Republic dozens of times ( lol ) and honestly it is a worry.
Would Trump really be trying to pull this off if he knew he had an easy exit where he could just grift the rest of his life? I highly doubt it. Obviously the chance of him going to jail in like 5%, but to him he probably thinks its much higher.
That said it’s really too late to change course. The wheels are already in motion.
That said I do think Trump having Rona decreases the chances they cheat. Good chance even if he recovers he’s going to be very fatigued and not in the best health until way past the election. Obviously he wasn’t going to be involved in the cheating anyways, but I feel like it will be less likely the Republicans are going to want to stage a coup for a guy who could very likely have serious health problems and die soon.
I don’t think it decreases the chance they cheat. Trump is too stupid, it’s not him putting the wheels in motion, they just run the simplest of facts by Trump because they need him to blather on about election illegitimacy but of course Trump is dumb and reveals too much.
Here’s the scary thing: The people who really want to do all the shenanigans are not the Trump people. They’re the Pence people who believe this is the will of God. I think people are sleeping on the possibility of Trump getting pushed out right now if he is really sick. Certain people are having backroom discussions about whether it would be better to have Trump removed before or after the election or just wait for him to die, and what effect removing him would have on the shenanigans in place.
Because amazingly, Trump is more popular than Pence, and he will have a larger base defending him. But Pence might do better with institutions.
I think Trump getting shoved out in the very near future is on the table. To the extent that the 25th amendment or impeachment convictions have not been on the table for Republicans, the reasons are solely political. And the variables have changed.
so I found out my 16-year-old listens to John Green (his Anthropocene Reviewed is one of my personal favorites) which wasn’t shocking, but he also listens to Scott Galloway, which sort of blew my mind.