Campaign 2020

[dws1982]

Trump's interview with Chris Wallace this weekend is devastatingly bad. Just an absolute utter embarrassment. As someone said on Twitter, "'I don't care what the military says' (about bases named after Confederate generals) isn't even in the top 10 worst moments for Trump in that interview. It's that bad."

[Sabin]

Kanye West has dropped out.

[Sabin]

OscarGuy wrote
I recently read about a poll on Kanye West's favorability and it was low double-digits (teens or twenties?) among both white and Black voters. Black voters have already shown that they favor victory more than voting for someone like them as a candidate. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris didn't excite them and neither could really pull votes away from Biden. Kanye West is too much like Herman Cain. He's an Uncle Tom and if any caricature is more offensive to Black voters, I cannot think of one. Of course, that's older Black voters. Younger ones are probably more likely to support him if they like his music, but it's unlikely they would be swayed by his anti-vaccine, anti-abortion stance. If older Black voters are more conservative, their children are far less conservative (much like young white voters). I don't think West has a lane to run in. His candidacy is as much tilting at windmills as Trump's was and why would the large majority of white racists vote for a Black man when they could vote for someone who looks like them? If he's going to sway Black voters to his side, he's gone about it the wrong way for the last few years.

I think Kanye West appeals more to white people than to black people. I really do think "The Kanye West Voter" if anyone is an idiot white guy.


NOTE: West’s family is confirming he’s having a bipolar episode and are concerned about him. I am as well — in the sense that i am concerned about everyone in this hellscape of a country right now

[OscarGuy]

I recently read about a poll on Kanye West's favorability and it was low double-digits (teens or twenties?) among both white and Black voters. Black voters have already shown that they favor victory more than voting for someone like them as a candidate. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris didn't excite them and neither could really pull votes away from Biden. Kanye West is too much like Herman Cain. His comments about slavery being a choice have been seen as utterly offensive to Black voters. Younger Black voters, however, are probably more likely to support him if they like his music, but it's unlikely they would be swayed by his anti-vaccine, anti-abortion stances. If older Black voters are more conservative, their children are far less conservative (much like young white voters). I don't think West has a lane to run in. His candidacy is as much tilting at windmills as Trump's was and why would the large majority of white racists vote for a Black man when they could vote for someone who looks like them? If he's going to sway Black voters to his side, he's gone about it the wrong way for the last few years.

[Sabin]

Greg wrote
Kanye West just called vaccines "the mark of the beast." I don't think he'll be taking too many votes away from Biden. Interestingly, Kim Kardashian is pro vaccine. I can think of one dinner table I would like to be able to listen in on.

... sigh... I don't want to have a full-on conversation about a Kanye West candidacy because I'm truly not sure this will last a week. But I thought the same thing back in 2015, so...

I think Gen Z and younger Millennials have no problem with cutting people loose but it still saddens me. Kanye West brought me a lot of happiness for years. I think the dividing line for his career was in 2009 when he took Taylor Swift's MTV Music Awards. As Obama put it, he was a jackass. But because he followed it up with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a lot of people (or maybe it was just me) gave him sort of a little bit of privilege. As long as Kanye could give us something brilliant, it was easier to make excuses for his behavior. But that was ten years ago in a different, less political world. That said, it makes me sad to see what's happened to Kanye West. He might the first billionaire I truly feel bad for. And yes, I get it, he sucks.

Kanye West is running on what could best be described as a platform of domestic cultural values rather than economic policy. The sense I get from him is that we've gone away from God and need to return. He's running on a platform that is anti-choice, anti-death penalty, and anti-vaccination. He is done with Trump but he is similarly offended by feeling like black people are beholden to the Democratic Party and was offended by Joe Biden saying "If you don't vote for me, you ain't black." -- which is at the very least very understandable.

Kanye West has talked about running for years now. It's not inconceivable that he would get a foolish idea like running for President in an alternate 2020 where we aren't in a pandemic amidst social unrest and a burgeoning economic collapse. That being said, it's hard to imagine who a Kanye West voter would be in that world. Kanye West really does have a lot in common with Donald Trump in terms of how he appeals to voters. Really, they both have one thing in common: they have an audience. But Donald Trump had an audience for a much longer period of time, building up a brand for decades, and during Obama's administration shifted it from celebrity businessman to populist race-baiter. But he was on television until what? 2015? Which means millions of Americans still knew him as a celebrity businessman until a year or two before he became the President. Ratings may have been declining but he was still very much in the limelight -- and kept himself there by flirting with politics consistently. Kanye West's real heyday was about ten years ago. Since then, he's released a steady string of pretty great music but I think his image as "Crazy Kanye" has overshadowed his music too much for his audience-appeal to hold much sway over whatever his base might have been. It would be closer to if Donald Trump ran for office for the first time now after his series had been off the air for five years.

I'm wasting a lot of ink on a very obvious statement: I don't think there is a Kanye West voter.

Again, forgive my generalizations: Older black voters are largely too conservative to vote for him. Younger black voters either came of age after his heyday and only know him as Crazy Kanye (much in the same was as I came of age after the Michael Jackson phenomenon and largely only knew him as Michael Jackson: Famous Pedophile) or have made their peace with the fact that he's Crazy Kanye and just moved on. Younger black voters are not in love with Joe Biden to say the least but I don't think Kanye West is any less problematic to them. Ironically, I think West might have more appeal to white voters then black voters. I mainly see him functioning as protest vote for idiot white people in an alternate 2020.

But this isn't an alternate 2020. This is 2020, with a recession, a global pandemic, and social unrest. The latter of which Kanye West MIGHT be able to speak to if he wasn't just as out of step with the public discourse as anyone else with his statements like "Slavery was a choice."

Here is the main impact of a Kanye West candidacy: depressing the vote. Literally. If he hangs in there, the psychic trauma of understanding that the ballot will contain Kanye West’s name might force some voters to just stay home and say “Fuck it, this country isn’t worth saving.” I mean that.

[Greg]

Kanye West just called vaccines "the mark of the beast." I don't think he'll be taking too many votes away from Biden. Interestingly, Kim Kardashian is pro vaccine. I can think of one dinner table I would like to be able to listen in on.

[Sabin]

Greg wrote
Kanye West is running for President.

The year is only half over.

[Greg]

Kanye West is running for President.

[mlrg]

The riots make it seem almost as civil war around the corner

[Precious Doll]

*Worth noting, you know who would've been a GREAT President over the last four years? Hillary Clinton. You know who would have been all over Coronavirus, demonstrating competency and empathy, regardless of the political cost? Hillary Clinton. I can't think of anyone who would've handled it better. I've had this conversation with some friends recently. We really missed out. She would've saved lives.

Back in late 1996 Bill Clinton visited Australia for 'offical business' as leaders do. Hillary as is usual protocol for spouses accompanied him and went out of her way to gather information on the workings of Australia's free universal health care system. Apparently she was greatly impressed.

I have no doubt that the US would not be in the position it is now with alarming daily growth rates of COVID-19 if Hillary was President. She is competent, pragmatic, empathetic with a genuine interest in improving the lives of ordinary people.

The US and the world for that matter lost the opportunity for great leader in November 2016.

[Big Magilla]

If he's going to bow out of reelection he needs to do it before the convention (Aug 24-27). If he's going to resign, he can do it before or after the convention, but he can wait until next January, making Pence president just long enough to pardon him for his federal crimes. I don't think he will hang around until the last minute. He will not attend Biden's inauguration.

[Sabin]

Well, the moment we've been waiting for might be upon us...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07 ... abel-looms

GOP insiders are saying it. James Carville has been saying it. This story is especially fun. Anyway, it's finally happened. After months and years of waiting, Trump has gone full-on radioactive. Nobody down-ballot is safe. It didn't happen in 2016 (BUT HER GODDAMN EMAILS*) but it's happening now. If this story is to be believed then, then: 1) Trump will bow out of reelection, 2) Trump will resign the Presidency, or 3) what? Turn on him publicly, alienating his base? Learn how to go down with the ship by going full-on culture war? The latter certainly isn't going to work. Joe Biden is just about the only Democrat who they CAN'T tie to the social unrest. I will be the first one to give the Dems credit for their choice: nobody on Earth thinks Joe Biden supports the riots. He's going to end up winning the people who support the riots as well as a ton of voters who are also uncomfortable with them. Meanwhile, there are America First T-Shirts available on the Trump Reelection website currently. And their best defense is "No, no, no, that's not a NAZI symbol. It's an AMERICA FIRST symbol. The guys who inspired the Nazis." What a legacy!

So, what's their move? Who do they run? Will the crazies show up for Pence or Kasich? Or will the moderates show up for.... gosh, I'm trying to think of someone crazy enough for the crazies. My gut tells me he's probably not going anywhere before election day but the GOP might finally be in the moment they deserve. Trump: can't win with him, can't win without him.

I don't fool myself in thinking that a Democratic landslide means a more progressive future. This election is most likely going to be a one-off. 2020 is clearly a referendum on Trump. 2024 will be a referendum on Democratic policies, which will largely be social/cultural policies, and we're going to have to try again to win the midwest with a woman (in all likelihood, a woman of color). But I'm going to rest easy knowing that the history books may very likely remember Donald Trump as 1) a quitter, 2) a bigger quitter, or 3) a loser.

*Worth noting, you know who would've been a GREAT President over the last four years? Hillary Clinton. You know who would have been all over Coronavirus, demonstrating competency and empathy, regardless of the political cost? Hillary Clinton. I can't think of anyone who would've handled it better. I've had this conversation with some friends recently. We really missed out. She would've saved lives.

[Sabin]

I live in a part of Los Angeles that is currently surrounded 24/7 with protests. We have constant curfew announcements. Last weekend, I looked out the window and saw squad cars burning a block away. It is intense right now.

It would be selfish to ask for good news, but I just got it.

With 96% reporting and the race already called, Steve King will lose his primary. By almost 10%.

[taki15]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/612511/

Trump Is No Richard Nixon

In 1968, Nixon offered a promise of peace and order. Today, Trump offers only conflict.

As riots and looting have disordered cities across the United States, many have speculated that the troubles could help reelect President Donald Trump. The speculation is based on analogy. American cities were swept by riots in the mid-1960s, and then, in 1968, Richard Nixon campaigned on a pledge of “law and order” and won the presidency. As it was then, so it will be now—or so the punditry goes.

The riots of 2020 may or may not help Donald Trump. The analogy to 1968, however, misunderstands both the politics of that traumatic year, and the success of Richard Nixon.

One thing to remember about the presidential election of 1968 is that it was a three-way race. Nixon ran not only against the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, a liberal stalwart with a long civil-rights record, but also against the outright segregationist George Wallace, governor of Alabama. Wallace would ultimately collect 8.6 percent of the popular vote and win five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Facing those two rivals allowed Nixon to run as the candidate of the middle way, committed both to civil rights and to public order.

In 1968, Nixon’s pledge of “law and order” spoke to many national agonies, not only the urban riots. In Nixon’s famous law-and-order TV ad of 1968 there appeared not a single African American face. The faces in the ad were those of student protesters, and the photos were of the brutal suppression of a student protest by Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Chicago police. Strikingly, the ad portrayed the police almost as harshly as the protesters. It showed an image of a short-haired young man helping a blood-drenched friend; of a respectably dressed person being dragged away; of smirking cops in sinister paramilitary outfits. The ad was just tough enough on the students to appeal to the white ethnic, urban Catholics who identified with Daley, and just tough enough on the Chicago police to reassure the prosperous Protestant suburbanites whose children may have been clubbed by Daley’s brutal cops. Race riots were at most a subtext of an ad that purported to address other issues entirely.

By renominating in 1968 its candidate of 1960, the Republican Party seemed to be repudiating its radical lurch to the right under Barry Goldwater in 1964—and offering a return to the civil-rights Republicanism of the recent past: Nixon had served for eight years as the vice president of that most consensus-minded of presidents, Dwight Eisenhower.

Nixon’s message of a return to calm and peace resonated because he stoked memories of a presidency that had delivered just that. In 1968, Americans remembered well that Eisenhower had promptly extricated the United States from the Korean War, which he’d inherited from his Democratic predecessor. Nixon promised to do the same in Vietnam.

Accepting the nomination that year, Nixon said, “To those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, there and here is a reply: Our goal is justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect. Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress, and so, as we commit to order tonight, let us commit to progress.”

Today, we know the Nixon of the secret tapes: crude, amoral, often bigoted. The public Nixon of 1968, however, behaved with the dignity and decorum Americans then expected in a president. Trump in 2020 occupies the place not of Nixon, but of Daley and George Wallace: Trump is the force of disorder that is frightening American voters into seeking a healing candidate—not the candidate of healing who can restore a fair and just public order. Trump on Sunday retweeted a right-wing media personality: “This isn’t going to end until the good guys are willing to use overwhelming force against the bad guys.”

The irony, of course, is that at the same time that Trump tweets bloodthirsty threats, he has turned off the White House lights and cowered in the bunker below. He joins noisy bluster to visible weakness—exactly the opposite of the Nixon formula in 1968. Trump will not repeat Nixon’s success in 1968, because he does not understand that success. Nixon joined his vow of order to a promise of peace at home and abroad. Trump offers only conflict, and he offers no way out of conflict, because—unlike Nixon in 1968—Trump is himself the cause of so much conflict.

If Trump seeks historical parallels for his reelection campaign, here’s one that is much more apt. There was a campaign in which the party of the president presided over a deadly pandemic at the same time as a savage depression and a nationwide spasm of bloody urban racial violence. The year was 1920. The party in power through these troubles went on to suffer the worst defeat in U.S. presidential history, a loss by a margin of 26 points in the popular vote. The triumphant challenger, Warren Harding, was not some charismatic superhero of a candidate. He didn’t need to be. In 2020 as in 1920, the party of the president is running on the slogan Let us fix the mess we made. It didn’t work then. It’s unlikely to work now.

[Big Magilla]

I get your anguish, but you're still looking at this from the wrong perspective.

This Tara Reade character or whatever name she is going by today, is a manipulative liar. She will turn on anybody just as she did all the nice, caring people who took her in with her sob stories, gave her money and support only to have her threaten them when they said enough was enough and it was time to move on. She is using Biden in the same way. She is not worth caring about. Worse than that, she is casting doubt on those with legitimate issues. It is she and people like her who are undermining the MeToo movement and ridiculing the horror of all those (including your sister) who went through the agony of real life assaults, not those who can see right through her.