USCE 2024: Macklemore Is The New Michael Moore

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DaveWoo: Aug 14, 2004; Fun Shoe

The obvious fallback choice would be Kamala, but somehow I don't think either the media or the folks in this thread would be happy with that.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 16:43

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 10:27

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

koolkal posted:

People are also mad at Jon Stewart for being too hard on Biden though.

The internet exists for people to be mad upon it.

The NYT by contrast exists to push the preferred narrative of capital

# ? Feb 13, 2024 16:45

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

"Party Leadership" *waves hands*

I love "party leadership" because it always somehow exists as this source of influence separate from the candidates or elected officials at the top of the party

I'm still waiting for "republican party leadership" to stop Trump

Especially since "party leadership" was the problem such that they got rid of superdelegates in 2020.

DaveWoo posted:

The obvious fallback choice would be Kamala, but somehow I don't think either the media or the folks in this thread would be happy with that.

Literally the only realistic alternative, and she would not be a good candidate. You think Gavin "I WILL be President" Newsome didn't poll a Biden challenge?

# ? Feb 13, 2024 16:48

Leon Trotsky 2012: Aug 27, 2009; YOU CAN TRUST ME!*

_{*Israeli Government-affiliated poster}

Here's kind of an interesting article from a conservative scholar at AEI who wants to promote marriage and family-oriented public policy.

He thinks political elites on both sides are hurting the institution of marriage or raising stable families because they fail to practice what they preach. I don't necessarily agree with most of his points, but some of them are interesting to note and discuss. Some of the instances he cites, especially the lack of movement on tax and government benefit policies that penalize low-income married couples from conservatives and the way that left-wing and right-wing political elites have really begun to live lifestyles that the other defends or advocates, are interesting.

Trump is obviously the ur-form of the hypocrisy of family value rhetoric vs. lifestyle, but it has been a thing for a while since before him.

His argument is:

- Left-wing political elites stress that promoting marriage shouldn't be a public policy goal and they get uncomfortable about economic studies showing that marriage leads to better economic outcomes.

Only about 30% of self-described left-wing professionals said they believed that a child raised in by two parents in a married family and stated that kids raised by single parents are no worse off than kids raised by two parents in a stable relationship, despite the data saying that is not correct.

However, these same educated elites have personal lives where they are almost always married with stable families, waited until marriage to have kids, and part of their success is likely based on these stable relationships and marriages.

- Right-wing political elites are constantly stressing marriage and stable families as important social goals, but they don't promote policies that will encourage families or marriage.

Right-wing elites seems uninterested in fixing tax code issues that penalize low-income Americans who receive government benefits or tax credits if they get married. They also want to slash all programs that could help make it easier to start a family and don't distinguish between different kinds of spending they want to cut.

Additionally, in their personal lives, many conservative elites are married multiple times, have multiple children by multiple women out of wedlock, and engage in public hypocrisy.

- The result, he argues, is that none of the political elites in the country are actually walking the walk and talking the talk by promoting family-oriented public policy, living as positive role models, or promoting the ideas of marriage/waiting to have kids until after marriage as a social good.

Studies show that one of the single largest drivers of personal happiness is a stable long-term relationship and being able to plan (financially and socially) for your children. However, during the last few decades Americans have been staying single longer, delaying marriage, and having kids before they are married.

During the same time, American's self-reported happiness in their personal lives has fallen at about the same rate.

The rest of the article cites a lot of specific instances of policy failures (and the part about how the military has an entirely different tax and benefit structure for married couples and children that is much more generous, while the general population of low-income Americans actually loses benefits in some circumstances if they get married), but is an interesting read and worth reading the whole thing even you don't agree with some of his premises or conclusions.

https://twitter.com/BradWilcoxIFS/status/1757378757906636825

quote:

The Awfulness of Elite Hypocrisy on Marriage

The privileged classes would never dream of saying one form of family life is better than another. So why are they always married?

�Is it morally wrong to have a baby outside of marriage?�

�No� is the answer I received from about two-thirds of my sociology-of-family class at the University of Virginia last spring, when I put that question to them in an anonymous online poll. The class of approximately 200 students was diverse geographically, racially, and ethnically. But on questions like this one�asking whether society should promote or value one type of family structure over another�the students I teach at UVA generally say it shouldn�t.

Yet when I asked these same students�who are almost all unmarried��Do you personally plan to finish your education, work full-time, marry, and then have children?,� 97 percent said yes.

And when I asked, �If you came home at Thanksgiving and told your parents you (or your girlfriend) were having a baby, would your parents freak out?,� 99 percent said yes.

In one sense, these answers are unsurprising. The great majority of my students, about 80 percent, report hailing from an intact family with married parents. (My class at UVA is not exceptional in this regard: 73 percent of students at elite colleges and universities nationally were born to married parents who have since stayed married, versus 51 percent of high-school seniors across the country.) At the same time, a majority of my students are liberal or progressive on many social issues�they are, at a minimum, nonjudgmental about lifestyles unlike their own.

But there�s a problem with this disjunction between my students� public family ethic and their own private family orientation, a disjunction I see regularly in elite circles. Voluminous research shows that being born into a married, stable household confers enormous benefits on children, whether the parents are rich or poor. The question I put to my students about their life plans involves a variant of what social scientists call the �success sequence.� Research clearly shows that taking three steps�(1) getting at least a high-school degree, (2) working full-time in your 20s, and (3) marrying before you have children�dramatically increases your odds of reaching the middle class or higher and minimizes the chances of your children growing up in poverty.

Yet many elites today�professors, journalists, educators, and other culture shapers�publicly discount or deny the importance of marriage, the two-parent family, and the value of doing all that you can to �stay together for the sake of the children,� even as they privately value every one of these things. On family matters, they �talk left� but �walk right��an unusual form of hypocrisy that, however well intended, contributes to American inequality, increases misery, and borders on the immoral.

Rob Henderson witnessed this strange dynamic as an undergraduate at Yale in 2016. Henderson, who recently completed a doctorate in psychology from Cambridge University and whom I came to know through correspondence on Twitter, told me recently that during his second year at Yale, a psychology professor asked the students in his class how many of them had been raised by both of their birth parents. Henderson had grown up in a working-class area characterized by lots of family instability, and his childhood had been particularly unstable: He had cycled through 10 different foster families. He knew his own family background was rare at Yale. Nonetheless it �was a shock,� he told me, when 18 out of 20 students in the class raised their hand.

This got Henderson thinking. �Why is it that these people are studying at this great university,� while many of his friends back home were in jail or working at a batting cage or strung out on drugs?

He came to believe that family structure was a big part of why some young adults had a shot at success and others did not. But he discovered that talking about this possibility at Yale was not easy. �I remember discussing my life in this class and there being this weird silence,� Henderson said, partly �because a lot of these students had never met anybody like me.�

Whenever the idea that family structure could affect life prospects came up in any way, �there was always an effort to bring it back to poverty,� he said. Most of his fellow students �retreated into ideas like �We just need to give people more money� or �economic opportunities.�� These responses, Henderson believes, were driven partly by the notion that family diversity�the idea that all family forms are equally valid and valuable for kids�is a mark of moral progress in society.

The phenomenon of people in society�s upper strata talking left but walking right is especially easy to spot at elite universities, but it extends well beyond university culture. A survey I helped lead of California adults in 2019 for the Institute for Family Studies, a think tank that seeks to strengthen marriage and family life, manifested a similar sociological pattern. Eighty-five percent of Californians with a college or graduate degree, ages 18 to 50, agreed that family diversity, �where kids grow up in different kinds of families today,� should be publicly celebrated (compared with 69 percent of Californians without a college education). But a clear majority of college-educated Californians, 68 percent, reported that it was personally important to them to have their own kids in marriage. Among those who were already parents, 80 percent were in intact marriages, compared with just 61 percent of their peers in the state who did not have a college degree.

Likewise, the 2022 American Family Survey, a national survey, found that among college-educated liberals, ages 18 to 55, only 30 percent agreed that �children are better off if they have married parents.� Yet 69 percent of the parents within this same group were themselves stably married.

College-educated elites have outsize power over American culture and politics, and on matters of family, they are abdicating it. They typically don�t preach what they practice, despite the megaphones they hold in traditional and social media, and elsewhere. Sometimes they preach the opposite, celebrating practices they privately shun. More often, they are simply silent and do very little politically or culturally to strengthen the foundations of marriage for Americans outside of their own privileged circles.

As a nation, we have not been shy, historically, about advocating for certain behaviors that typically lead to better lives for individuals and fewer problems for society. Targeted educational campaigns�in schools and the culture�have brought down the rates of teen pregnancy and cigarette smoking, for instance. But when it comes to marriage before children, or the success sequence more broadly, nothing comparable has been done at a national scale.

Social media, meanwhile, tends to send bad signals to kids and young adults. The dopamine-driven ethos that infuses much of TikTok and Instagram enriches the executives at Sequoia Capital and Meta but provides little support for anything but living for the moment, and undercuts the values and behaviors needed to sustain long-term love, not to mention marriage.

Traditional media oscillate between occasionally acknowledging the benefits of marriage and frequently praising the alternatives to it. As David Leonhardt, a columnist at The New York Times, observed, �I think that my half of the political spectrum�the left half�too often dismisses the importance of family structure.�

People with powerful voices aren�t entirely idle when it comes to marriage promotion. Over the years, they have fought, successfully, for the end of �marriage penalties� within the tax code that had made marriage more expensive than single living or cohabiting. The 1986 and 2001 tax bills, for instance, addressed many such penalties. But these laws, quite notably, were aimed at the pocketbooks of the rich and middle classes, who pay the lion�s share of federal income taxes. For poor and working-class Americans, substantial disincentives to marriage remain coded into many federal and state tax-and-benefit laws, and there seems to be little pressure to change that.

These actions and omissions are not small failures. The latest social science tells us, for instance, that children raised in single-mother homes are about five times more likely to be poor than kids raised in stably married homes. That young men raised apart from a stably married home are, according to my recent research, more likely to land in jail or prison than to graduate from college. That the biggest driver of recent declines in happiness is the nation�s retreat from marriage. And that, at the community level, the strongest predictor of economic mobility for poor children is family structure: Poor kids hailing from communities with more two-parent families have a markedly better shot at moving up into the middle class than poor kids from neighborhoods dominated by single parents.

Much of this research is well summarized in the Brookings Institution economist Melissa Kearney�s new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind. And though some people argue that the active element behind many of these findings is a stable relationship, rather than marriage per se, the social science is equally clear that American couples with kids who do not put a ring on each other�s finger are at least twice as likely to call it quits as those who do.

Some experts acknowledge the evidence indicating that marriage is good for children, adults, and communities but say nothing much can be done to revive falling marriage rates. �The genie is out of the bottle,� Isabel Sawhill, another Brookings economist, wrote in a 2014 essay titled �Beyond Marriage,� in which she noted that �college-educated young adults are still marrying before having children� but the �rest of America, about two-thirds of the population, is not.� The latter group was hit especially hard by the wave of divorces and single-parent households that began in the 1970s; since then, she wrote, the kind of family-go-round characterized by high levels of instability for couples and kids has become more of a norm.

Sawhill laments that �even some of our biggest social programs, like food stamps, do not reduce child poverty as much as unmarried parenthood has increased it.� But from her vantage point, the cultural, economic, and political forces that have been eroding our most important social institution�outside the well-guarded lives of the American elite�are too powerful to resist.

Sawhill is right that the problem is difficult. But this kind of view is nonetheless too fatalistic. If we cared to bridge our nation�s marriage divide, the more privileged among us could do more in government, business, education, media, and civil society to reinforce marriage. We could do this in at least three ways.

First, people who teach classes or write articles and books could tell the truth about marriage and family to their students and audiences. Yes, marriage is hard. Yes, some families are dysfunctional. Yes, there are poisonous partners out there. And, yes, it is of course possible to build a good life without marrying. But also � today most marriages are happy, the odds of getting divorced are now well below 50 percent, and married parents (ages 18 to 55) are happier than any comparable group. The public, especially our children and young adults, need to hear this more clearly and more often. The goal would not be to hector young people but rather to underline the ways that marriage and family life foster meaning, direction, and happiness. We can still be tolerant of individual circumstances without losing sight of the fact that not all pathways are equally likely to end at their desired outcome.

Second, to help more young Americans build healthy, stable family lives, we could push our schools to teach them the success sequence as a pathway through education, work, marriage, and child-rearing that is powerfully linked to positive economic outcomes. A 2021 survey by the American Enterprise Institute indicates that teaching it in public schools would be popular with the public across both class and racial lines�for instance, more than 68 percent of Black, Hispanic, and low-income Americans express support for teaching the sequence in public schools.

The success sequence offers an accessible framework, a compelling narrative, and a launching pad for teachers and mentors to help young adults approach family formation with greater clarity and purpose. And it is already being taught in pilot programs and local experiments�in charter schools in the South Bronx, urban public schools in Kentucky, rural schools in downstate Illinois, and more. The full results of these projects likely will be seen only over many years, but so far they have been promising. They should inspire a range of public and private campaigns. Private campaigns, led by churches and nonprofits, may prefer to use moral or religious language. Public campaigns will undoubtedly use a more descriptive model. A successful initiative to promote the sequence, modeled on earlier successful campaigns that focused more narrowly on reducing teen pregnancy, will leave room for a wide range of approaches.

Third, our leaders must tackle the economic obstacles to marriage facing too many couples. Many of our public policies�including food stamps and Medicaid�penalize marriage for a significant number of low-income families. The impact is seldom entirely straightforward�from program to program, it may depend on how poor the family is, or where they live, or how many kids they have. But these penalties tend to hit working-class families with children especially hard�some couples face penalties as high as almost one-third of their total household income.

Policy makers in Congress could tackle penalties in means-tested programs such as Medicaid and public housing by doubling the income thresholds for these programs for married parents with young children. That would be expensive. But having eliminated many of the marriage penalties facing middle- and upper-income families in the tax code, ignoring the financial penalties that many lower-income families still face is inexcusable. Uncle Sam should not be in the business of discouraging working-class Americans from getting married.

More still could be done�and arguably should be done�to encourage marriage financially. The Department of Defense, for instance, provides particularly generous benefits for married service members. Marriage in the military is a pathway to a bigger housing allowance, better health care for your partner and any children you have, and other benefits. The military does not provide these benefits to cohabiting couples, which sets it apart from the more laissez-faire approach practiced by many other federal agencies serving families. But the same incentive could be provided simply by giving bigger benefits, of various sorts, including a more generous child tax credit, to people who marry, without reducing benefits to those who don�t.

We should not underestimate the power of incentives like these. Certainly, they have helped foster a more marriage-friendly culture in the military. Almost 20 years ago, the sociologist Jennifer Lundquist found that working-class and African American members of the military married at much higher rates than their peers in the civilian world, in part because of these benefits. My own, updated analysis of the General Social Survey (GSS) indicates that this pattern continues today. To be sure, some of this is selection: The kinds of Americans who enlist in the military tend to be more marriage-minded. Nonetheless, after controlling for factors such as race, ethnicity, age, and education, the GSS data indicate that a military background among men strongly predicts being married today.

At a minimum, the military�s approach to marriage tells us that we could take stronger measures if we were interested in bridging the marriage divide that has emerged in America over the past half century. Growing up in a married home should not be a privilege reserved for the children of educated and affluent Americans.

Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Feb 13, 2024

# ? Feb 13, 2024 16:51

Tnega: Oct 26, 2010; Pillbug

koolkal posted:

I'm not really sure what this has to do with anything.

Content creators live and die by the algorithms, assuming there is no physiological reason specific types/genres of content can be created, we are left to assume that what is granted exposure by the algorithms, (and by extension encouraged to be created) is a, if not the primary determination of what content is created by sex. There may be excellent non-sexualized gaming adjacent content created by women, but it isn't being promoted. Hopefully that cleared things up.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 16:53

99pct of germs: Apr 13, 2013

Senate Cum Dump posted:

That's rather dismissive and just wrong at face value. He could resign, party leadership could pressure him to step down.

"Better things aren't possible" is certainly a take and one that I don't think will be persuasive, electorally.

I imagine the spectacle of a sitting US president stepping aside, or his party forcing him out would be catastrophic from an electoral standpoint for the Democrats. Plus RWM will just find some other angle of attack against whoever would fill that void because liberals/Democrats/leftists love nothing more than gleefully accepting their framing on every issue.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 16:53

B B: Dec 1, 2005

Biden is a historically unpopular president, but Kamala's numbers are pretty much in line with his:

I guess one thing she has going for her is that, unlike for our ancient President, there aren't any recent polls where 86% of Americans say they think she's too old for the job. The public seems generally unhappy with the job they've been doing, though, so swapping them out probably wouldn't accomplish much.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 16:55

Nissin Cup Nudist: Sep 3, 2011; Sleep with one eye open

We're off to Gritty Gritty land

I read a story that talked about how much Williamsburg (NY) has gentrified over the years. While gentrification is not great, how would one counteract the process? You can't prevent folks from moving to new places, so I guess something to do with housing maybe?

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:00

zoux: Apr 28, 2006

Nobody's numbers are doing better than Biden. There isn't some other Dem candidate or governor that's raking in the small dollar donations and packing rallies. I don't know if they're still polling other non-Biden names, but Whitmer and Newsome and whoever else weren't improving on Biden's polling at all.

Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

I read a story that talked about how much Williamsburg (NY) has gentrified over the years. While gentrification is not great, how would one counteract the process? You can't prevent folks from moving to new places, so I guess something to do with housing maybe?

Fire a single gunshot into the air every morning. (But yeah housing, areas get gentrified because they are cheaper to live in. I'm not sure that you can eliminate it, areas that get gentrified are probably always going to have cheaper housing than other areas, but as you increase housing options and decrease the price, you'd see less people get pushed out of their existing homes due to finances.)

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:01

DaveWoo: Aug 14, 2004; Fun Shoe

B B posted:

Biden is a historically unpopular president, but Kamala's numbers are pretty much in line with his:

I guess one thing she has going for her is that, unlike for our ancient President, there aren't any recent polls where 86% of Americans say they think she's too old for the job. The public seems generally unhappy with the job they've been doing, though, so swapping them out probably wouldn't accomplish much.

Not terribly surprising. And odds are, any Dem candidate would get dragged down into that same range after a few months of right-wing media coverage.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:02

Mooseontheloose: May 13, 2003

Nissin Cup Nudist posted:

I read a story that talked about how much Williamsburg (NY) has gentrified over the years. While gentrification is not great, how would one counteract the process? You can't prevent folks from moving to new places, so I guess something to do with housing maybe?

I don't want to say gentrification is a natural phenomenon but it's fairly close as you say, people want to move to a place with opportunity and affordable housing. In the US gentrification happened over time from the 70s to the 90s when white flight made city housing much cheaper. The answer for the most part is to not only preserve the housing that exists in these communities but to expand and make multi-income housing.

Other ideas you could do:
-Flipping tax
-Vacancy taxes
-expand housing options in suburbia

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:04

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

B B posted:

Biden is a historically unpopular president, but Kamala's numbers are pretty much in line with his:

Nixon, Carter, Truman, HW Bush, GW Bush, and Trump are deeply grateful that you forgot they exist.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Feb 13, 2024

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:08

B B: Dec 1, 2005

Kchama posted:

Nixon, Carter, Truman, HW Bush, GW Bush, and Trump are deeply grateful that you forgot they exist.

With the exception of Truman, Biden is polling worse than all of them at the same point in their respective presidencies. He's also trending downward both in terms of his overall approval rating and net approval rating. I think he just needs a little more time to become the GOAT of unpopular presidents.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:15

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

B B posted:

With the exception of Truman, Biden is polling worse than all of them at the same point in their respective presidencies. He's also trending downward both in terms of his overall approval rating and net approval rating. I think he just needs a little more time to become the GOAT of unpopular presidents.

Trump, Truman, HW Bush, and Carter had far worse at this time in their presidency. But you haven�t been saying �historically unpopular at this exact time in their presidency� you have been saying �historically unpopular�, which Biden is far from. And even then, the only one that leaves out is GWB because he had insane massive popularity in this first term due to 9/11. One that faded he was the most historically unpopular president we have polls for.

EDIT: What I�m getting at is that having poo poo popularity 3/4th of your term isn�t unusual, and the �non-historically unpopular� presidents usually don�t fare that much better around this time. Even Obama had a pretty bad approval rating at this point and he pretty well cruised to a second term. Biden�s approval rating is bad, but even Ronald Reagan�s polls were bad around this time too.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 17:27 on Feb 13, 2024

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:22

Nonsense: Jan 26, 2007

The New York Times is talking about Biden�s brain because he refused to take a cognitive test. One President Trump passed with flying colors while being 200 lbs.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:26

B B: Dec 1, 2005

Kchama posted:

Trump, Truman, HW Bush, and Carter had far worse at this time in their presidency. But you haven�t been saying �historically unpopular at this exact time in their presidency� you have been saying �historically unpopular�, which Biden is far from. And even then, the only one that leaves out is GWB because he had insane massive popularity in this first term due to 9/11. One that faded he was the most historically unpopular president we have polls for.

EDIT: What I�m getting at is that having poo poo popularity 3/4th of your term isn�t unusual, and the �non-historically unpopular� presidents usually don�t fare that much better around this time. Even Obama had a pretty bad approval rating at this point and he pretty well cruised to a second term. Biden�s approval rating is bad, but even Ronald Reagan�s polls were bad around this time too.

Of the Presidents you mentioned, only Truman was polling worse than Biden at this point in their respective presidencies:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/

Reagan was also above 50% at this point in his presidency. Obama was also trending upward at this point in his presidency and was hovering around 50% by the time election day came.

Biden's numbers do indicate that he is historically unpopular.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:31

Kagrenak: Sep 8, 2010

Nonsense posted:

The New York Times is talking about Biden’s brain because he refused to take a cognitive test. One President Trump passed with flying colors while being 200 lbs.

I don't see the Times mentioning this, just foxnews and the Post? Though they directly quote a briefing question response. If this is accurate it is kind of weird as a basic cognitive test is pretty standard for patients who are 65+

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:35

B B: Dec 1, 2005

Kagrenak posted:

I don't see the Times mentioning this, just foxnews and the Post? Though they directly quote a briefing question response. If this is accurate it is kind of weird as a basic cognitive test is pretty standard for patients who are 65+

KJP was asked about it during the White House briefing yesterday and confirmed that he won't take a cognitive test:

Yahoo posted:

Biden's upcoming physical exam will not include a cognitive test, White House says

President Biden will not take a cognitive test as part of his upcoming physical exam, the White House confirmed Monday.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that Biden's physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, does not believe a cognitive test is necessary. She said O'Connor believes Biden proves his cognitive ability "every day [in] how he operates and how he thinks."

Reporters pressed Jean-Pierre on the issue due to last week's report from Special Counsel Robert Hur that found Biden has significant memory issues.

"Does the White House think that the idea of the president taking a cognitive test as a part of this physical is a legitimate idea?" a reporter asked.

"I'm just gonna say what Dr. O'Connor said to me about a year ago when [Biden's physical] was released," Jean-Pierre responded. "The president proves every day [in] how he operates and how he thinks, by dealing with world leaders, by making difficult decisions on behalf of the American people � whether it's domestic or it's national security."

"That is how Dr. O'Connor sees it, and that is how I'm going to leave it," she added.

Jean-Pierre gave a more full-throated defense of Biden when reporters continued to press her on the topic. She said she has known Biden for more than a decade and continues to find him to be "sharp" and "on top of things."

"When we have meetings with him and his staff he is constantly pushing us, trying to get more information, and so that has been my experience with this president," she said.

Recent polling has found that Biden's age is a major issue for a majority of not only Americans in general, but also Democrats. A Sunday poll from ABC/Ipsos found that 86% of Americans believe Biden is too old to serve another term, including 73% of Democrats.

https://news.yahoo.com/bidens-upcoming-physical-exam-not-194607840.html

Here's the relevant part of the briefing for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/live/EyknhFs09oY?feature=shared&t=2711

Despite his advanced age and memory issues, I'm glad to see that Biden has better instincts than Elizabeth Warren with regard to taking tests a politician absolutely should not take.

B B fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Feb 13, 2024

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:38

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

B B posted:

Of the Presidents you mentioned, only Truman was polling worse than Biden at this point in their respective presidencies:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/

Reagan was also above 50% at this point in his presidency. Obama was also trending upward at this point in his presidency and was hovering around 50% by the time election day came.

Biden's numbers do indicate that he is historically unpopular.

Every single president in the past 30 years has been the most historically unpopular president than the last. They declared this about Trump, about Obama, about Bush, about HW Bush (Okay, so one escaped the curse). But the thing is, Obama and Bush won reelection. Obama�s wasn�t even close. I�ll be scared if Biden is still under 40% in September, but until then he�s nowhere near the historically unpopular president.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:44

mawarannahr: May 21, 2019

Kchama posted:

Every single president in the past 30 years has been the most historically unpopular president than the last. They declared this about Trump, about Obama, about Bush, about HW Bush (Okay, so one escaped the curse). But the thing is, Obama and Bush won reelection. Obama�s wasn�t even close. I�ll be scared if Biden is still under 40% in September, but until then he�s nowhere near the historically unpopular president.

Those goalposts look pretty heavy. Need help?

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:48

Shammypants: May 25, 2004; Let me tell you about true luxury.

We've had candidates in the last decade whose approval was better when they ran in an election and had worse overall performance in that election. We've had candidates whose approval got worse over a period of time and had better performance. Bidens performance was supposed to be a noose around Democrats neck across every phase of his candidacy and it hasn't been. It's loving tedious slogging through these posts claiming it's super relevant, or even relevant.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:52

Inglonias: Mar 7, 2013; I WILL PUT THIS FLAG ON FREAKING EVERYTHING BECAUSE IT IS SYMBOLIC AS HELL SOMEHOW

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

In the continuing trend of "literally everything becoming partisan" news, views on specific states have dramatically shifted and sorted by partisanship.

California has seen the sharpest division among partisanship. It was previously rated the most popular state for decades, but now 48% of the country says that California "isn't really part of America" and that it is on the decline.

Even the weather and natural environment, two things that basically everyone loved in California, are now polarized with large segments of Republicans says that California has terrible weather and a "worse natural environment than other states."

40% of Republicans say that there is nowhere in California that is a good place to visit and they would stay away.

Over 75% of Republicans now say they would be afraid for their personal safety if they ever went to California.

Similar, but less extreme, patterns are emerging with Democrats and Florida. Florida used to be a widely popular state, but now only about 52% of Americans say that Florida feels like it matches their values.

https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1757406392715972904

This seems like a good place to put my one joke about Florida, that joke being the only good thing about that state is the Happiest Place on Earth: Kennedy Space Center. Because it gets you off of Earth.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:52

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

mawarannahr posted:

Those goalposts look pretty heavy. Need help?

I don�t appear to be moving them. My argument is still the same. He�s as much of a �historically unpopular president� as any other in recent times, especially since others have been much more unpopular over their presidency. My point is and half been that declaring them them the most historically unpopular president 3/4th through their first term isn�t really reflective of how things will shake out. A bunch of presidents had worse polls at this time, and some people called them historically unpopular, and then they turned out to be Obama who ended up still quite popular in the end.

https://www.ussc.edu.au/obama-voted-most-unpopular-president-since-wwii

For example. This just really gets to that it�s still too early to tell how it�ll shake out for reelection (or even how Biden�s popularity will end up).

Shammypants posted:

We've had candidates in the last decade whose approval was better when they ran in an election and had worse overall performance in that election. We've had candidates whose approval got worse over a period of time and had better performance. Bidens performance was supposed to be a noose around Democrats neck across every phase of his candidacy and it hasn't been. It's loving tedious slogging through these posts claiming it's super relevant, or even relevant.

Yeah, this is exactly it.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 17:57

Inglonias: Mar 7, 2013; I WILL PUT THIS FLAG ON FREAKING EVERYTHING BECAUSE IT IS SYMBOLIC AS HELL SOMEHOW

Kchama posted:

I don�t appear to be moving them. My argument is still the same. He�s as much of a �historically unpopular president� as any other in recent times, especially since others have been much more unpopular over their presidency. My point is and half been that declaring them them the most historically unpopular president 3/4th through their first term isn�t really reflective of how things will shake out. A bunch of presidents had worse polls at this time, and some people called them historically unpopular, and then they turned out to be Obama who ended up still quite popular in the end.

https://www.ussc.edu.au/obama-voted-most-unpopular-president-since-wwii

For example. This just really gets to that it�s still too early to tell how it�ll shake out for reelection (or even how Biden�s popularity will end up).

Yeah, this is exactly it.

I personally feel that assuming the election will be an uphill climb is probably healthier than dismissing these concerns out of hand. Better to have and not need, and all that.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:03

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Inglonias posted:

I personally feel that assuming the election will be an uphill climb is probably healthier than dismissing these concerns out of hand. Better to have and not need, and all that.

I actually don�t think it is going to be an easy victory at all, but pretending that polls are predictive this far out is silly. Even September is probably a bit early, but it�ll give a lot better idea how things will be going into the election.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:05

World Famous W: May 25, 2007; BAAAAAAAAAAAA

zoux posted:

Well he can't be replaced and he can't be made younger, so there's nothing to do about it, is there

to be more precise, it's he "won't" or maybe "shouldn't" (depending on your views) be replaced. not cant.

got to be accurate here in this forum and whatnot

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:11

haveblue: Aug 15, 2005; Toilet Rascal

Biden is going to set new presidential record by winning a majority of the votes and re-election while also having majority disapproval

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:12

Baronash: Feb 29, 2012; So what do you want to be called?

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Here's kind of an interesting article from a conservative scholar at AEI who wants to promote marriage and family-oriented public policy.

https://twitter.com/BradWilcoxIFS/status/1757378757906636825

It shouldn't be a worse bet financially to be married than be single/unmarried. That I can agree with. The rest is really frustrating because it seems to be a bit of a shell game where he touts the benefits of marriage on children while actually referring to (at various points) two-parent households, lower vs. higher incomes, education, and general life/economic stability. These things generally seem to be present in stable marriages, but that doesn't mean that the institution itself was the cause of it. Honestly, how does someone throw this in their article and not realize they've given the game away:

quote:

Research clearly shows that taking three steps�(1) getting at least a high-school degree, (2) working full-time in your 20s, and (3) marrying before you have children�dramatically increases your odds of reaching the middle class or higher and minimizes the chances of your children growing up in poverty.

Turns out that ~~getting educated, working a job, and then hopping on the DINK life for a while before having kids~~marriage is the silver bullet y'all!

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:14

World Famous W: May 25, 2007; BAAAAAAAAAAAA

biden (or trump [or both :pray:

]) is going to be historical by dying from being an old man a week before the election and caus8ng the whole world to unite in laughter at the absurdity of the american empire

World Famous W fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Feb 13, 2024

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:14

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Senate Cum Dump posted:

It doesn't really matter if it's a false equivalence and Trump isn't getting covered the same way. That doesn't address the root concern which is that Biden is feeble and is perceived as such. Deflecting the issue is not going to change any voters' minds.

My point is, whining about coverage of Biden being old accomplishes nothing other than drawing more attention to Biden being old. If the Democrats want to change perceptions they need to do more than go "but what about when Trump forgets things??"

The thing you're responding to isn't the Democrats going "but what about when Trump forgets things??", it's a media outlet going "but what about when Trump forgets things??".

Which is important, because these perceptions are heavily shaped by the media. Most of our exposure to these candidates comes via media, after all, and that media exposure usually has a narrative attached.

Tnega posted:

Content creators live and die by the algorithms, assuming there is no physiological reason specific types/genres of content can be created, we are left to assume that what is granted exposure by the algorithms, (and by extension encouraged to be created) is a, if not the primary determination of what content is created by sex. There may be excellent non-sexualized gaming adjacent content created by women, but it isn't being promoted. Hopefully that cleared things up.

The reason there's a bunch of sexualized content on Twitch is because it has two dedicated sections for softcore near-porn, and the reason that this sexualized content skews heavily female is because the site's userbase skews heavily male and isn't exactly a LGBT haven.

"The algorithm" has become a convenient boogeyman, but I think people have become far too quick to pin blame on it, because the algorithm is very rarely the actual root problem. Social media algorithms tend to amplify and exaggerate problems that already exist, but it's very rare for them to actually be directly responsible for creating the problem.

B B posted:

With the exception of Truman, Biden is polling worse than all of them at the same point in their respective presidencies. He's also trending downward both in terms of his overall approval rating and net approval rating. I think he just needs a little more time to become the GOAT of unpopular presidents.

Sure, but why pin it to a particular point in their presidencies? It's not like presidential approval ratings are primarily time-based or follow consistent patterns over the course of an administration. They're heavily influenced by real-world events and conditions.

If you were talking just about the election, then yeah, comparing Biden's approval rating before the election to other presidents' approval ratings before their reelection attempt might be informative (though I think we're still a little too early for that to be useful). But when you're talking about popularity in general, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to compare across the same point in each president's term.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:15

Killer robot: Sep 6, 2010; I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it!; Pillbug

Obama's post-honeymoon poll numbers definitely suffered compared to his real-world electability under increasing radicalization of the right, the explosive growth of pervasive right-wing media, tireless laundering of the previous administration's reputation by his critics, and the difficulty of getting representative samples when people under 40 wouldn't answer their phone. For Biden it's all there or accelerated, and now it's people under 50, well into their prime voting years. It makes it hard to tell how much of it translates into actual votes against him that Generic Democrat would have won.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:16

small butter: Oct 8, 2011

zoux posted:

Nobody's numbers are doing better than Biden. There isn't some other Dem candidate or governor that's raking in the small dollar donations and packing rallies. I don't know if they're still polling other non-Biden names, but Whitmer and Newsome and whoever else weren't improving on Biden's polling at all.

This is just not true. Back in November, there was a Fox News poll that showed that the best candidate vs Donald J Trump is not Joe Biden, but Joe Manchin. Unfortunately, he was also behind Trump by 2 points.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/16/news/trump-beats-biden-newsom-harris-manchin-in-2024-poll/

For everyone worried about Biden's chances, they need to coalesce around Joe Manchin.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:19

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Also Biden isn�t going up against a fresh face who has never had the stink of being an unpopular president on him. Trump�s approval ratings aren�t much better and he�s had time out of the limelight for people to forget how awful he was.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:21

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; This does not make sense when, again, aggregate indicia also indicate improvements. The belief that things are worse is false. It remains false.

Main Paineframe posted:

The reason there's a bunch of sexualized content on Twitch is because it has two dedicated sections for softcore near-porn, and the reason that this sexualized content skews heavily female is because the site's userbase skews heavily male and isn't exactly a LGBT haven.

"The algorithm" has become a convenient boogeyman, but I think people have become far too quick to pin blame on it, because the algorithm is very rarely the actual root problem. Social media algorithms tend to amplify and exaggerate problems that already exist, but it's very rare for them to actually be directly responsible for creating the problem.

I think amplifying and exaggerating existing problems is a causal mechanism of sufficient significance to be worthy of direct blame.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:21

B B: Dec 1, 2005

Main Paineframe posted:

Sure, but why pin it to a particular point in their presidencies? It's not like presidential approval ratings are primarily time-based or follow consistent patterns over the course of an administration. They're heavily influenced by real-world events and conditions.

If you were talking just about the election, then yeah, comparing Biden's approval rating before the election to other presidents' approval ratings before their reelection attempt might be informative (though I think we're still a little too early for that to be useful). But when you're talking about popularity in general, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to compare across the same point in each president's term.

I was responding to a claim that other presidents were polling worse at this point in their presidencies that Biden at this point in their presidencies. I also pointed out that his numbers are and have been on a downward trend for quite some time. I haven't made any claims about what kind of impact that this will have on the results of the presidential election, because it's far too early for polls to be predictive. I do think that his level of unpopularity--he's more unpopular than Trump at this point, even--combined with the fact that nearly 90% of the American populace thinks he's too old to be president is not a great sign, even if it's not predictive.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:23

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

B B posted:

I was responding to a claim that other presidents were polling worse at this point in their presidencies that Biden at this point in their presidencies.

No you weren�t. I was only challenging your �Historically unpopular� because other presidents were more unpopular, period.

Kchama posted:

Nixon, Carter, Truman, HW Bush, GW Bush, and Trump are deeply grateful that you forgot they exist.

I said nothing about �at this point in their presidency�.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:26

Bar Ran Dun: Jan 22, 2006

Baronash posted:

It shouldn't be a worse bet financially to be married than be single/unmarried. That I can agree with. The rest is really frustrating because it seems to be a bit of a shell game where he touts the benefits of marriage on children while actually referring to (at various points) two-parent households, lower vs. higher incomes, education, and general life/economic stability. These things generally seem to be present in stable marriages, but that doesn't mean that the institution itself was the cause of it. Honestly, how does someone throw this in their article and not realize they've given the game away:

Turns out that ~~getting educated, working a job, and then hopping on the DINK life for a while before having kids~~marriage is the silver bullet y'all!

Yeah he (and conservatives) have got it backwards. Higher incomes, education, and general life/economic stability cause more marriages, marriages do not cause higher incomes.

The root of all this is virtue economics which is garbage and has the same problem.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:35

B B: Dec 1, 2005

Kchama posted:

No you weren�t. I was only challenging your �Historically unpopular� because other presidents were more unpopular, period.

I said nothing about �at this point in their presidency�.

You also made this claim, which is wrong:

Kchama posted:

Trump, Truman, HW Bush, and Carter had far worse at this time in their presidency. But you haven�t been saying �historically unpopular at this exact time in their presidency� you have been saying �historically unpopular�, which Biden is far from. And even then, the only one that leaves out is GWB because he had insane massive popularity in this first term due to 9/11. One that faded he was the most historically unpopular president we have polls for.

EDIT: What I�m getting at is that having poo poo popularity 3/4th of your term isn�t unusual, and the �non-historically unpopular� presidents usually don�t fare that much better around this time. Even Obama had a pretty bad approval rating at this point and he pretty well cruised to a second term. Biden�s approval rating is bad, but even Ronald Reagan�s polls were bad around this time too.

Biden's numbers are absolute dogshit, and it's laughable that he's somehow found a way to be even more unpopular than Trump. Either way, I'm happy to drop the discussion, because we're talking in circles at this point.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:35

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

I actually posted my source for that claim and it showed the worst poll they all had and at what time and those I mentioned all had worse than Biden has gotten so far. And that list is a lot worse for Biden than using the averages. Biden is not going to cruise to an easy reelection, but considering he�s going up against someone who actually had worse popularity than he did, it�s more of an even playing field than anything.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 18:42

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# ? Jun 3, 2024 10:27

Zwabu: Aug 7, 2006

So is the Santos replacement race happening today? Anyone have any news? I listened to some NYT podcast that said it was super close because IMMIGRATION and the GOP candidate being some ultra Zionist.

# ? Feb 13, 2024 19:11

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