July 23, 2024

Remember how the "Black Lives Matter" movement swept across the nation...

...after George Floyd's murder? Yes, his killing was a horrendous instance of racism and police violence, but it was far from the first horrific instance of racism and police violence we've witnessed as a nation (nor of course the last.) We can analyze what about it triggered such a massive response at that moment in time (the video tape of Floyd's murder being one obvious reason) but it is secondary to the point I'm making:

It was a fundamental societal inflection point that triggered a massive activist response that brought millions of people into the streets, including in towns and cities that rarely if ever had experienced such wide scale activism concerning racial justice. The conditions for such an explosive reaction had been building up for decades. A spark finally set it off, and masses of people were moved to take action.

Trump and his authoritarian MAGA movement, with its blatant White Christian Nationalist overtones and it's overt appeal to a return to the way America was run in the early 1950's, when women and minorities still "knew their place", has been casting a pall on hopes and dreams ever since Trump descended down that escalator ranting about "Mexican rapists." At times it resembled an evil tide that we were virtually powerless to prevent from sweeping over us. with the 2024 presidential election contest, prior to this past weekend, taking on the feel of a slowly evolving nightmare as a Trump victory became more and more possible, even likely.

And then Joe Biden made the monumental and personally courageous decision to stand down for reelection, choosing instead to pass the torch of leadership on to a younger generation in the person of Kamala Harris. Old fears flickered for a moment; could America accept a woman, a black woman at that, as it's next president? That's a question that can't be definitively answered until after the November election. But the pessimism that question embodies could not hold up under the avalanche of hope Kamala's candidacy has unleashed.

Younger generations of voters in particular, and millions of women in America who were poised to celebrate the election of America's first female president in Hillary Clinton before Trump narrowly defeated her in the electoral college with the help of the media's obsession with "her emails", have woken to the renewed potential that the future is ours to mold, if we work for, fight for, and believe in it hard enough.

A switch has been flipped. Progressive forces are mobilizing and taking to the field of battle. Lethargy born of depression is falling away. Activism is surging. Kamala is rising.

July 23, 2024

Musk gives 45 million a month to Trump. What will it take before "X" stops being cited in every tenth thread here?

I don't need to see those video clips that badly.

July 23, 2024

DEI is a perfect term to describe one of the two Presidential candidates

Daddy's Entitled Inheritee

Everything in life was given to Trump. Talk about being born on third base and thinking you hit a triple...

July 22, 2024

Trump's Convention "Buzz" and Post Assassination Attempt Sympathy Washed Away By Hurricane Kamala

I'm trying to remember, when was it that Trump had his convention? Oh yeah. Last week. So why does it feel like that happened last year instead?

July 22, 2024

Some could try to resist Kamala's nomination. But they will be crushed if they do

It's as simple as that. I will be more than pleased if no one else steps forward to offer themselves up as an alternative to Harris for President. It''s time to show appreciation to our current President and support for our soon to be President Harris. Regardless, at this point resistance to Harris is, as the Borg would say, futile. Virtually everyone else who has in the past been mentioned as a possible Democratic Presidential candidate in 2023 has already endorsed Harris. And the delegates that the Biden/Harris ticket won in the primaries aren't going to revolt in masse against the woman they signed up for once, who the President is asking them to support. Support for Harris keeps pouring in, along with the money she will need to win.

So I could care less if this or that super Democratic donor isn't thrilled about Harris for President. They can have a few days to get over it, and if they don't we don't need their checks. They may be rich but they don't have the votes, Kamala does. And we the people have the money we need to elect her.

Of course money has too much influence in politics. Duh. But big money interests don't have the means to keep the Harris train from rolling. Get on board or stay behind.

July 21, 2024

Everyone here agrees that Trump must be defeated for the sake of our Democracy

No one here believes that Kamala Harris. or any of the other leading Democrats whose names have been mentioned as a possible Presidential candidate is a threat to our Democracy. All of them have praised Joe Biden's accomplishments as President

For the same bottom line reason why so many here have stressed how important it was to stand behind Joe Biden as President, the same applies to whoever now becomes our Democratic nominee. The stakes are enormous: the Climate, the Supreme Court, voting rights, economic justice, reproductive rights, racial equality, sexual orientation equality, stopping Russian aggression in Ukraine, the list goes on and on and on.

I had doubts that Joe Biden could win this election, but I deeply respect him, never trashed him and stood ready to work hard for him if he were our nominee. Now he has decided that he will not be. Democrats need to stand behind our nominee. i strongly believe it should be VP Harris at the top of the ticket now. But I will work for whoever Democrats run. Period. Too much is riding on this election, we can sort out our differences later.

Joe Biden is a true leader. He still has my love and admiration.

July 19, 2024

On this at least I'm certain. Either Biden or Harris must head our ticket

Conflicting cases continue to be made for why President Biden should or should not stand for reelection. Though some of course disagree, IMO it isn't a slam dunk whether it is more or less likely that Democrats will defeat Trump in November with Joe Biden as our standard bearer, as opposed to someone else. It that someone else is Kamala Harris, that is.

Democrats need to close ranks emphatically behind our candidate for President once that selection is irrevocably finalized. In an ideal world we would be unified in that choice now. Obviously this isn't that ideal world, and arguing that it should be doesn't alter reality. Casting blame here or there for a lack of consensus now won't change the fact that divergent opinions on whether Biden should run again remain, and will for a few days or weeks more at most.

There is one possible scenario though which i think would doom any real chance Democrats have of holding on to the presidency this November. That would be to first reject Joe Biden as our presidential candidate, and then pass over his currently serving Vice President as his replacement, in favor of anyone else. Yes Democrats have a deep bench, with many appealing potential candidates. Fine, if Kamala Harris is elevated to become our presidential nominee, one of them can serve as her running mate. But there is nothing that would cement the festering resentments that now potentially divide the hard core Democratic voters that we count on to propel us to victory, than swapping out the entire Biden/Harris Administration for a brand new ticket.

Some have made the point that history has not looked kindly on a political party that doesn't unite behind an incumbent president for reelection. Taft lost to Wilson when Teddy Roosevelt ran as a third party alternative to the then incumbent Republican. When disunity in the Democratic Party in part influenced LBJ to stand down, Richard Nixon ended up succeeding him. Later Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, and then Jimmy Carter in turn lost to Ronald Reagan, after both of those incumbent Presidents faced stiff opposition from within their own parties.

Yes, history could repeat itself this year, and i think it certain that it would if Democrats choose neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris as our standard bearer for the 2024 election. If President Biden should in the coming days decide, after painful continued reflection, that the time has in fact come for him to pass the torch of leadership on to someone from a younger generation, it must go to the person he has already chosen to succeed him, the woman he personally picked to be his Vice President. And Joe Biden himself would then have to bestow his personal blessing and legitimacy on to his heir apparent. The Democratic base might accept that the transition ultimately is occurring with Biden's blessing, if Kamala Harris runs in Biden's stead. Especially if Joe Biden were to nominate her himself.

Recent history, as far as i can tell, has no precedent for a one term President declining to seek reelection, and bestowing his blessing onto his Vice President instead, with the sole exception of LBJ. Hubert Humphrey did lose in 1968, but the Democratic Party was far from united behind him, and his nomination for President was bitterly contested. If Democrats fail to nominate Biden, but don't quickly unite behind Harris for his replacement, I definitely fear the worst. A smooth, uncontested, passing of the torch directly from Biden to Harris has no negative precedent, unlike what the Democrats went through in 1968.

It is Biden, or Harris, or bust, and the quicker Democrats can close ranks behind one of them the better.

July 18, 2024

I don't believe there is a conspiracy against Biden. I don't believe it's "The Elites against The Base"

There are always factions in politics. There are always rivalries, "camps", special interests and hyper personal ambitions at work behind the facade of unity that every political party would prefer to project as their image. But the Democratic Party, as an institution from top to bottom, was solidly behind President Biden, until the Presidential debate.

There could have been one or more serious primary challengers to Biden this year, but there weren't. That should not be taken as a given. Ted Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980, and Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976. Both of those contests went down to the wire, with uncertainty over the outcome up until the conventions. Yes Joe Biden won 14 million primary votes this year, and mine was one of them. I had no reason to have second thoughts over backing Biden for another term, and he had no serious opposition inside the Democratic Party.

Sure, i could have voted for a low profile back bench congressman with no national following instead, or for an inspirational author who failed to move the needle when she tried to run in 2020, but why? I believed that the man who I saw campaign against Donald Trump in 2020 could and would defeat Trump again after this presidential campaign. That was the consensus inside the Democratic Party, and despite all of the fore mentioned rivalries and factions no doubt present among Democrats, above all else Democrats wanted to win November's election. That was my mind set when i voted for Joe Biden. And the same was true no doubt for Nancy Pelosi and all of the other Democratic Party leaders who have subsequently advanced if not outright endorsed the idea of replacing Joe Biden as our nominee.

What changed? I think the honest answer is, Joe Biden. Yes President Biden remains a man of superior values, insights, instincts, and judgement. To use the baseball metaphor raised earlier today, as a pitcher he hasn't lost the strike zone, but his fast ball isn't the same as it was in 2020. Biden's team scheduled an early election debate this year for a straightforward tactical reason, to shake up the election race. Biden's team significantly outspent the Trump effort in the battleground states up until July, but Biden couldn't open up a lead over Trump. Meanwhile Democratic candidates for Senate were outperforming Biden in those same States. The reasoning was that an early debate would spark voters into making a direct comparison between Trump and Biden, focusing their attention on Trump's deficiencies. Instead it shifted the focus to Biden's deficiency. We needed one outcome but we got the opposite.

I could say that Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, Schiff, Raskin, and Obama and the like are all out of touch national elitists, but I don't really believe that. They are Joe Biden's partners in the Democratic Party, and they, like Biden himself, know how much of a disaster is will be if Trump gets elected and Republicans control both Houses of Congress. Joe Biden, along with Vice President Harris, has an excellent record in office. The public should appreciate that. Trump should be ten points behind in the race at this point. No one can, nor wants to, take Biden's record in office away from him. Whoever tops our ticket, Biden, Harris, or anyone else, will run on that record. For Democrats to win in 2024 we have to do better than we have at both selling that record and expressing opposition to the record of MAGA Republicans. That simply is a fact.

Some think Joe Biden is fully capable of still doing that. Others think not. But the clear majority of America's voters have been adamant now for over a year that they believe both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are too old to be elected President again. Unfortunately more feel that way about Biden than Trump. Those too are facts and they don't work to our advantage.

Over the last 15 years Nancy Pelosi has become my political North Star. She has her finger on more pulses than i can even imagine. Simply put i not only believe that she wants what is best for both our Party and our Country, I believe she more so than virtually anyone, know best how to navigate us toward that goal. Yes, there is politics afoot. Yes egos are involved. Yes, no one can say with absolute certainty what course of action at this critical juncture will most likely lead to victory. I trust President Biden, but he is not the only Democrat I trust. If he goes on to be nominated for a second term, he has my full support. If Vice President Harris instead becomes our nominee, she too will have my full support. But no one can say that Democrats have turned their backs on our base voters if we should run an African American woman for President.

July 13, 2024

I HATE political violence

Every instance begets three more. It literally becomes a vicious cycle. It in inherently toxic to democracy.

Waiting to hear what happened to Trump at his rally but I am feeling way more than uneasy.

July 11, 2024

The Bully Pulpit is a core aspect of the Presidency

A few individuals are authorized to pen statements officially ascribed to the President. More can make statements on behalf of "the Administration." But only one person commands the Bully Pulpit. When, and how, he or she uses it constitutes a central element of leadership. Americans listen to the voice of the President, particularly in times of crisis or turmoil, and they have done so in large numbers ever since FDR initiated his fireside chats during the Great Depression. The spoken words of the President, and his or her ability to deliver them with sufficient conviction to persuade even skeptics of their truth and wisdom, can alter the mood of the nation, and the mood of the nation in large part determines the success or failure of critical endeavors, which for this election includes the continued survival of our democracy

The current ability of Joe Biden to project strength and clarity is not inconsequential in regards to his leadership ability. It is highly relevant, particularly during a presidential election year when most voters, if only for a few months, shift their attention partially from their own individual concerns toward those of our nation as a whole. The choices for America must be powerfully articulated, and there is no one in a better position to do so than the President of the United States.

Not all great leaders are great orators. They don't need to be. Their communication skills however should be more than merely adequate, and never far short of that bottom line standard. President Biden failed in that regard during the debate that unofficially launched the 2024 presidential election contest. One can dismiss that as "one bad night" Likewise one could dismiss a stumble at the starting block in the 100 meter dash, during the Olympic trials, as "one bad night" for a sprinter, but that specific "bad night" can be all it takes to eliminate a champion from qualifying for the Olympics.

President Biden has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to effectively deliver prepared remarks using a teleprompter. But it has been 8 months since he held a full unscripted press conference. He also sat for few major media interviews during that same period. That is changing now., with a press conference being held by him tonight, and a prime time TV interview to be broadcast on Monday. i look for strong performances from our President that will allow a significant percentage of the electorate to turn their attention back from concerns over Biden's "fitness" to the dire threat posed to America by the candidacy of Donald Trump.

It is true that Democrats are less than fully united now over who we should now run for President. Whether President Biden stays in the race or ultimately steps aside we will all be unified behind our nominee soon. In the meantime we can little afford to be attacking each other now as insufficiently loyal to the mission at hand, which is to ensure that Donald Trump never sees the inside of the Oval Office again. Those who feel President Biden must run again, those who feel that he shouldn't, and those who are as yet still unsure unanimously agree on that. In a mere matter of weeks we will all be working together toward a Democratic victory in November, unless we allow bitterness generated now to undermine that effort.

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