Main Paineframe posted:

https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1267500214815985665

V. Illych L. posted:

it is trivially easy to make a non-violent protest violent unless the protesters are very disciplined, which requires organisation - and these protests aren't very tightly organised. at the moment public sympathy is with the protests, but that can change very quickly indeed. if this goes on for a week or two more and then peters out, it's good for biden. if it doesn't, he's got a real problem on his hands that he's not going to be able to solve easily

Main Paineframe posted:

evilweasel posted:

the problem, of course, is that it's a little harder to pull off this scam when the protests happen on your watch because, like you're sort of getting at, either you made it go away and i no longer worry about it, or you completely failed to make them go away and so why would i vote for you to make them go away.

evilweasel posted:

the polling in favor of the protests is slightly more favorable to the protests than the current biden-trump polling (which is a huge biden lead)

this sort of thing was definitely a big fear of his campaign - race issues cropping up again in a way that polarized the "white working class" to trump - but under the current circumstance basically everyone who isn't a trump die-hard is for the protestors, in a way that seems really historically unprecedented. that would have to change before this becomes a problem, as opposed to a benefit, to biden. which is why biden already picked a side, with the protesters, and someone posted the police unions already whining about it.

V. Illych L. posted:

biden's hedging like all hell, he's held a speech and proposed a shoot-to-wound policy as far as i've heard

give it two months of increasingly desperate riots and you'll see those polls change and the biden campaign knows it

the_steve posted:

Trump supporters are way more zealous in their belief that they are "saving" the country from the bogeymen of equal rights, black people existing, and the gays being allowed to order cakes.
They will crawl over broken glass in a way that liberals can only wish their milquetoast supporters would.
Especially with a wholly uninspiring candidate like Biden, whose entire campaign hinges on the message of "Get a load of the other guy, amirite?"

Plus, as has been clearly established, armed groups of white people can go anywhere and do anything they want as long as they're wearing a red ballcap or a Confederate flag. You'll see a whole lot of performative "freedom squads" standing by to "protect" the polling places in predominantly white neighborhoods*
*Scare off black voters

TLDR: None of this is going to hurt Trump as much as people are hoping.

Rigel posted:

No, he doesn't. His net favorability rating is a hell of a lot better than Clinton was. He's generally regarded by voters with more of a shrug and a "he's OK, I guess" feeling rather than with active dislike. Sometimes his average is a point or two positive, sometimes a point or two negative. His net favorability has been pretty steadily even all year and hasn't really moved; he is the generic Democrat.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/joe_biden_favorableunfavorable-6677.html

By contrast, Trump has been solidly negative double-digits from mid-2016 to today with a few exceptions, and Hillary Clinton was pretty steadily net negative double digits for all of 2016 through her defeat. Looking deeper, every major politician in congress from both parties is worse than -10.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/clinton_favorableunfavorable-1131.html

Rigel posted:

yeah, ok. That does not conflict with my post at all.

edit: your post shows his average at -1.5

Jewel Repetition posted:

Very true. Biden has the kind of hands-on approach that helps him get close to voters. He has a good feel for what they really want deep down. Definitely passes the sniff test.

Majorian posted:

And yet the Democratic leadership seems determined to make that spectacular political failure happen. I still think Biden has a better-than-even chance of winning, purely because the economy is going to be in bad shape by November, but boy howdy, he is trying, with all his might, to lose.

Rigel posted:

We could be pretty screwed in 2024 if he wins this year and then wants a 2nd term

Pick posted:

This is inaccurate.

quote:

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden denied Wednesday that he’s discussed making a pledge to serve only one term if elected president, rejecting a published report that it remained a consideration.

"I don't have plans on one term,” Biden told reporters between campaign stops in Nevada. "I'm not even there yet.”

Pick posted:

He's saying with words (you can read them) that he is not committing to limit himself at this time. That is not the same as your claim that he openly said he WOULD aim for two terms.

Pick posted:

I have never posted a picture of a gerbil on this website. I don't really like gerbils, so I don't intend to. However, I will not commit to the fact that I will never post a picture of a gerbil. This does not mean I'm going to post a picture of a gerbil.

evilweasel posted:

What you posted when challenged on this is a statement where he refused to commit to not running for a second term, not that he committed to run for a second term. Which is not the same thing, so Pick was right unless you’ve got a different quote.

How are u posted:

I think it would entirely depend on the type of endorsement.

If Bush came out and said "Vote for Joe Biden, he's pretty much a Republican and that's why I support him." that wouldn't be a great look, to be sure.

If Bush came out and said "Vote for Joe Biden, because Donald Trump is a failed leader and an active danger to our Democracy and he must be removed and I support a Democrat rather than another Trump term." well that would probably be just fine.

evilweasel posted:

ok i found one in under twenty seconds

V. Illych L. posted:

it really shouldn't be an issue for a politician to say that some people aren't very good people imo even if putting percentages to it is the sort of thing a massively egotistical sixteen-year-old would do

this isn't much of a gaffe

Mellow Seas posted:

Totally agree about Bush (although in just society he never would've been in office), but can you define "politically associated" here?

Mellow Seas posted:

It's a vague term, op. pk's response actually narrowed it down a lot, while still being a little vague.

Mellow Seas posted:

I don't know, I just legitimately wanted to know if he thought that like, Margaret Spelling (DOE) or Dirk Kempthorne (DOI) should be in prison, as they are "politically affiliated" with Bush, but had no role in his war crimes. I think that would be a bad and dangerous opinion. If we're limiting to people like Powell and Tenet and Rumsfeld then hell yeah, throw 'em in the clink.

Mellow Seas posted:

Literally what the gently caress are you talking about?

Somfin posted:

Would you look at that, right on schedule, a new rapist avatar. Thanks, buyer, for reminding me never to post here.

Mellow Seas posted:

I'll go on record as saying the avatar thing is loving annoying and petty and should stop.

Somfin posted:

Nah. Let them have their win. Let them kill the discussion and silence those who disagree. They paid good money for the victory and I'll see to it that they get what they want.

This thread isn't worth the consistent abuse.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

as long as we're clear Joe Biden's stance was, in fact, that you should die for him.

Jarmak posted:

That wasn't his stance, his "stance" was it was safe to vote, and IIRC his campaign never took an official position on the issue so we're picking at a couple of comments made in tv interviews at the start of the controversy that they never seriously promoted as a position.

It was a bad stance, dangerous even, but never was the stance of the Biden campaign "people should die to vote for me", that's you're opinion of the implications of his stance.

Moreover it was never reality that he actually did anything to make that happen. He had nothing to do with the decision, the opposite decision was made, and the GOP are the ones that made the vote happen.

Jarmak posted:

It's your opinion that he lied, and that's literally the opposite of what explicit means. That's not grammar pendantry, the literal point of the arguement I'm making is that it's dishonest to present implicit statements (which rely on analysis and opinion to interpret, and must be defended with evidence) as explicit (which is literally what happened and agreed upon facts).

It's also disingenuously reductive to act like there isn't a difference in something said off the cuff during an interview and the campaign explicitly pushing something as an explicit position. Particularly when talking about a politician especially famous for saying dumb poo poo because he says whatever he's thinking instead of stopping to think it through.

evilweasel posted:

could someone fill me in on the full "biden is a criminal for getting people to vote in wisconsin" theory. what was the crime; what should have been done; etc.

there's too much referencing an assumed crime everyone knows about that's not actually said. assume i know nothing whatsoever about this argument outside the single post responding to this one, even if someone suggested part of it a few posts ago.

Pick posted:

Implicit vs. explicit positions are major distinctions in an environment as sensitive as a campaign.

evilweasel posted:

this doesn't give me any useful information. what exactly is it you think was wrong; what should have been done instead. i'm actually asking because i've just skimmed over all of this and feel like actually digging into whatever crazy rabbit hole this is.

Pick posted:

Are you suggesting Sanders's blowout in Wisconsin was because he told his voters to stay home?

Jarmak posted:

This was the statement being represented as "Joe Biden said people should die to vote for him":

evilweasel posted:

is this it? because there's a major flaw in the logic. specifically, both the biden and bernie campaigns wanted bernie to stay in precisely because that election was very important: one of the wisconsin supreme court seats was up for election on the same ballot (the wisconsin supreme court had a 5-2 republican majority, and those republicans make the SCOTUS conservatives look tame) and both campaigns wanted to maximize democratic turnout in order to win that election.

which they did, and thanks to one of the remaining 4 conservatives having a tiny conscience on this specific voting rights issue it is possible that the GOP's attempt to throw hundreds of thousands of democrats off the voter rolls will be blocked (it depends on if the republicans can fast-track a decision before August 1). that offers at least the chance of helping to unfuck wisconsin in the next few years (though democrats already blew one of these seats post-trump's election).

that election was tremendously, tremendously important. it was why bernie stayed in until after wisconsin, but quit before the results were announced.

also, does this theory castigate bernie for continuing to campaign to get people to turn out and vote for him, knowing that he wasn't actually still competing?

evilweasel posted:

in order:

1) that's not what "pyrrhic argument" means (if it means anything at all), and you yourself were the one who framed this argument about do people "need" the win. yeah, as a factual matter wisconsin needed that win, it was very important. did they need it enough to ask people to vote in a pandemic? well, that is a hard, complex question. when making the moral judgements, you need to recall democrats were dealing with an intentional republican strategy to try to depress turnout to win that election, so the moral judgements on the democratic response pale in comparison to what the republicans did. the problem is, that is a tough question: how much can and should you encourage people to risk their safety to exercise their right to vote? it doesn't just come up in pandemics, of course. but when you ask that tough question this ceases being the sort of gotcha, biden bad!!!!! argument you want it to be.

evilweasel posted:

2) this doesn't make any sense at all. as best i can tell, you are trying to argue "well, what about joe biden wanting to win wisconsin???" he didn't really care, because the bernie campaign had already promised to drop out as soon as it was over. which they did.

evilweasel posted:

3) that's dodging the question. and this question is important because it's forcing you to reason through your argument with the motivated reasoning changed. wisconsin democrats attempted to move the election, and it was blocked. knowing that, knowing that the election would not be moved, bernie sanders campaigned in wisconsin and encouraged people to vote for him, knowing their votes were pointless and that he had already agreed to drop out (and deliberately withheld that information from his voters). he did so for the same reason: driving up turnout in the wisconsin election, for the purpose of trying to win that judicial race.

what is your moral judgement on that decision, and why? it's a very similar decision, but with your motivated reasoning reversed such that you want to come out with the argument it's not bad instead of you want to come out with the argument it's bad. if you arrive at "both bernie and biden were bad" that's at least consistent; i still disagree with you but you bit the bullet and accepted the results you don't like about your logic and it clearly has some internal consistency, and we can discuss from there. if you arrive at "bernie good, biden bad" there might be a good reason - but i'd want to see it, because I don't see one, and i think your rationale for why bernie is not bad in this situation would be the very rebuttal to the "why biden bad" argument

evilweasel posted:

i am pretty sure that the bolded is not at all true and is you faintly misremembering that under existing DNC rules, you need to complete your primary by june 9 (which left ample time for a delay) but given that you have made that factual assertion, please support it

edit: the NY state thing was real bad, but that was a local machine politics decision about trying to tamper with unrelated primaries (trying to assist incumbents in their primaries by minimizing turnout)

quote:

“The Delegate Selection Rules provide that each state’s first determining step must take place by 9 June. If a state violates the rule on timing, or any other rule, they could be subject to penalties as prescribed in Rule 21, including at least a 50% reduction in delegates, which will need to be reviewed by the RBC.