A short while ago on The View:
JUST IN: Asked about rumors Joe Biden might consider selecting her as his 2020 running mate, Stacey Abrams tells @TheView, "I think you don't run for second place."
"If I'm going to enter a primary, then I'm going to enter a primary." https://t.co/dMeVjlPoyT pic.twitter.com/avqwLUco01
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) March 27, 2019
To recap for those who can’t watch, she’s open to running for president (or the US Senate!) and open to serving as VP for whomever the nominee is, but she won’t run for second banana. Good for her. Abrams says she’s considering all options. (“I’ve got a lot of time on my hands.”)
I like her a lot; she has that rarest of qualities among big-time politicians: authenticity.
germy
Ms. Abrams is young and she’s got many decades of public service ahead of her. She has my support, whatever she decides. I trust her judgement.
Meanwhile.
This was… interesting:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/27/gop-lawmaker-prays-jesus-forgiveness-before-states-first-muslim-woman-swears/?utm_term=.c1cb4a50c981
Ben Cisco
Naw, that wasn’t sorta.
That’s a hard NO inside a velvet glove.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Good for her.
Betty Cracker
@Ben Cisco: I say “sorta” because she said she’s open to being VP (including Biden’s), just not someone’s pre-loaded VP. But you’re right — that part she shot down unequivocally.
kindness
I would like to see Stacey run for the Senate. But Georgia……who knows?
rikyrah
Good for her. I love her. Her book came out this week. Went to Amazon to order it :)
sdhays
@germy: Re: the asshole in PA, I just saw this too. Disgusting. Why do we have prayers when the establishment of a state religion is expressly forbidden anyway?
jacy
Thank goodness.
I love Uncle Joe, but his “I wish I could have done something to help Anita Hill,” is grade-A revisionist bullshit of the most egregious sort.
I really hope she runs for Georgia Senate. The Republicans keep doubling down on destroying things and that will help.
germy
@sdhays:
And yet she’s up there moaning that “we’ll all bow down to Jesus” in front of an audience with invited Muslim guests.
VeniceRiley
Also? Good judgement! I’m sure the offer was personally tempting; but it is a bad move, and kudos to her for recognizing that.
ruemara
It’s a fucking insult to think that adding a black woman TOKEN is a sane strategy. To take her personhood, her fire and strength and attempt to use that, to make her just an accessory you have… fucking insulting. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea but they deserve to be punched.
And the fact that it’s been treated as an intriguing idea and not a horrorshow – how fucking far do we still have to go?
Mandalay
I find it so disrespectful of Biden to have floated this offer for Abrams to run as VP rather than speaking to her privately and simply asking her whether she was interested. The answer would have been yes or no, and if she had said no then that could and should have been the end of the matter.
And if that alleged offer was just BS, and absolutely nothing to do with Biden or his team, then he has had plenty of time to speak out and quash it, but he has said nothing (AFAIK).
I don’t know if the Biden team think this a cute gambit with little downside, but if so it is pretty pathetic. And good for Abrams for politely telling him to go fuck himself.
Mandalay
@ruemara: Heh – you just said what I was thinking. The Biden team were shamelessly using Abrams as a convenient stage prop.
The Thin Black Duke
@ruemara: Thank you.
the Conster
Anyone who read this article on her knows she’s not going to be anyone’s #2 token. She’s SO impressive on her own.
Ohio Mom
I’ve never sat down to watch The View though I’ve seen plenty of snippets like this one. I guess it isn’t much different than the Sunday talk shows or the old McLaughlin group, just a bunch of gasbags sitting around pontificating, except they are all women. Not my cup of tea but a victimless crime.
But I find the idea that shows like this — and late night comedy sometimes — are the venue in which politicians and other public figures make important announcements disquieting.
I don’t like having to watch know-nothings discuss whatever in order to maybe learn something important. It trivializes the idea that there are important, life and death issues, it turns everything into gossipy entertainment.
Now obviously public figures are going to go where there is an audience, and shows like The View certainly supply that, uninformed as the conversation will be there.
Now get off my lawn, I guess.
bobbo
“Authenticity.”
Please stop.
encephalopath
I keep seeing the Abrams for VP idea framed as Biden “selecting” her, as in if Biden chooses her, she has an obligation to show up and serve. Her choice in the matter keeps getting eliminated from the discussion.
Like she’s supposed to come when called or be Samuel from the OT:
“Here I am.”
Mandalay
@jacy:
Four weeks ago Biden was calling Mike Pence “a decent guy”. That wasn’t a gaffe. That’s what Biden believes.
ruemara
Side eyeing anyone who thought this was an appealing offer.
Hold those same standards you have for conservatives trotting out a minority to justify themselves, to liberals.
Mike in NC
Go away, Joe.
JPL
@Ohio Mom: It’s an ideal venue for a book tour though.
Ruckus
Good for Abrams.
First, she deserves far better than to a token for someone who will never be president.
Second, she is far better than uncle Joe.
Third, she is my choice for the job he acts like he doesn’t really want. He could be her token.
MattF
Abrams just radiates intelligence. One wonders if she emerged from the brow of some deity, but I suppose that’s a side issue.
The Thin Black Duke
Long story short, the main reason Biden wanted Abrams as VP is because he thought it would make his abysmal treatment of Anita Hill go away. Uh, no, Joe.
sukabi
lol. Not running for second place… That’s a very nice way to say “I ain’t here to hold your balls.”
WaterGirl
Do we really have to spell it out for them? Can they really not connect the dots? Isn’t part of intelligence being able learn from specific instances and then be able to apply that in other circumstances?
Black woman as a prop in a hearing in the House, by a Republican. Don’t do it.
Black woman as a prop in a potential presidential race, by a Democrat. Don’t do that either.
Hint: No woman, much less a black woman, even worse a powerful black woman should be used as a prop. While we’re at it, please leave your “one black male friend” prop at home, also. And your children? They are not props, either.
It’s really quite simple: please stop using all human beings as props.
Kelly
We scattered my mother-in-laws ashes on a nameless windy knob high above above Santiam Pass yesterday. Took off our skis and kicked steps up the last couple hundred feet. It is a spot she’d approve of. She was a bold and tough outdoors women before a lifetime of chain smoking and alcoholism broke her health. Weakened by COPD and on oxygen for the last several years the type A flu that’s been going around killed her a few weeks ago.
This is by far the closest I’ve been to someone on my better dead list. She was manipulative, charming and cruel. She beat my wife as child until she ate eat rotten meat cooked very well done when she’d drank up the grocery money. She was indifferent to her second husband’s sex abuse of my wife as a child. He’s also dying of COPD not worth the stress going after. He’s come to Jesus, acknowledged his sins privately but kinda dodges depending on who listening.
Mother-in-law’s father was a cruel and violent man from a cruel and violent family. I wonder how many generations back the damage goes.
I talked my wife into seeing a psychologist which by the way Obamacare paid for. This has been a tremendous help to both of us.
And yet my wife treasures memories of many horse camping trips in the wilderness, sleeping under her poncho. They’d be broke, come into some money, buy horses, motorcycles, an airplane, have amazing adventures, then it’d all go to hell. Over and over.
And yet my wife grieves her. She stayed in the hospital room the last night. She grieves the childhood she should of had. She repeatedly sought reconciliation that never occured. We took mother-in-law on outings she could manage. I rowed her around a beautiful lake last fall. My wife needed her mother to recognize what went on. Her mother believed herself to an exemplary mother and demanded my wife retract her “lies”. I think mother-in-law’s mind had papered over her actions long ago.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: All that did was call attention to everything that was wrong about the Anita Hill hearings and his failure there.
In fact, so much of what Joe is doing and saying calls attention to things he should not be calling attention to. A little part of me wonders if part of Joe doesn’t want to be doing this so he is sabotaging himself before he even gets out of the starting gate.
The alternative is much worse – that Joe is so totally tone deaf that he is currently unable to hear a thing. Joe, please announce that you are NOT running before you destroy the good parts of your legacy.
Mandalay
@Ohio Mom:
You have a point, though those venues still have a role in allowing politicians to chat, and possibly reveal something of their character. But I’m not sure that making an announcement through Chuck Todd or Wolf Blitzer carries any extra weight.
Trump has shown an alternative approach works just fine: bypass the chat shows and the pretend news shows, and tweet your position. There’s really no need to involve Colbert or Behar or anyone else unless you are trying to reach a specific audience. If you are sufficiently important (and Abrams is) then literally the moment after you tweet every man and his dog (Axios, Politico, AP, Reuters, NYT, FoxNews, etc) are going to be processing your message.
Ben Cisco
@WaterGirl: I can’t believe somebody, ANYBODY, hasn’t pulled him aside and said, “Look my dude, this ain’t happening!” I don’t get it..
ruemara
@WaterGirl: Amen
@Kelly: It is hard to let go of what you never had, but desired. And the one thing I can definitely commiserate with is the way adults have convenient memories about how they parented. Just be there for her. She has you & your support. And understand that lacking family in your life at a young age is like a permanent thirst that nothing completely satisfies.
Ohio Mom
@JPL: Yes, writers deserve an audience and it’s a challenge for them to rustle one up. TV is good for that.
I don’t really have a problem with politicians using Ellen or Arsenio Hall or whomever to show off their “human” side. It’s just that I don’t like the idea that the lines between serious matters and entertainment keeps getting blurred.
Back on the actual topic of this thread, I am relieved Abrams was so clear (that is, clear by political standards) in her refusal. I’d spent several days thinking, “Well if this (Biden-Abrams) is what it is going to take to get the White House back, so be it,” even as I was cringing at the thought of Biden. Now I can go on to other worries, I have a long list!
WaterGirl
@Ben Cisco: I don’t get it, either. I get why it’s not possible for Barack or Michelle to do it because the would be too fraught with possibilities for damaging friendships with even the fleeting thought that the Obamas don’t want the Bidens to have what they had. But everybody else — somebody needs to step up.
The problem is, I think, that Joe keeps looking at the polls that show him as the frontrunner — and it’s like being told you can have that thing that you have always wanted, and not being able to see that it’s not real.
Kelly
@ruemara:I do what I can but it’s utterly alien to me. I’ve lived a mostly charmed life. Growing up our house was where all the kids wanted to hang out. As a teen my buddies worked on their cars with my dad in his shop. I wish she’d known him.
glory b
@rikyrah: Does anyone else find it laugh out loud delightful that she is a published romance novelist?
West of the Rockies
@Kelly:
Grief is complicated. We are the aggregate of our experiences, beliefs, behaviors, and choices; rarely is anyone wholly evil or shimmering perfection. If I may suggest it, honor what was good in her, learn from what was bad. Heal from the injuries she inflicted (to the best of your ability). Best wishes.
sukabi
@Ben Cisco: the folks that should be telling him not to run are probably the ones that are pushing him to run.
Mandalay
@WaterGirl:
It’s even worse than that. He has been immersed in DC for so long it’s all he knows. That’s why he called Pence a “decent guy” four weeks ago. And that’s why he performed this astonishing mercenary act of treachery a few month ago, gushing praise on a Republican running for office:
Those are the most truthful words Biden ever spoke: “I don’t know what I am“.
Immanentize
@WaterGirl:
QFT
J R in WV
@Kelly:
Rough family history there. Thankfully you seem to be a great help to your wife overcoming all that grief. At least there were the adventures, not all bad.
Best of luck for you and your family going forward, thanks for sharing.
I was so lucky to have by and large a very loving family, with many hugs and much warmth. My MIL was a cold narcissist and my FIL was a very nice guy, except for when he was a mean binge drunk. But my family welcomed my wife and helped her learn what a close family could be like.
All those folks from the previous generation, good and bad, are long passed on now.
Take care of your wife, she will be hurting for a while, and whipsawed by the contradictory emotions.
Betty Cracker
@Kelly: What rue says at #32. Your wife is lucky to have you, and so was your mother-in-law, whether she knew it or not.
Kelly
@West of the Rockies: I think her death is closure. Not perfect closure but it’ll have to do. It meant a lot to my wife to scatter her mothers ashes with great respect.
Immanentize
@Ben Cisco: I think people have — those people are called Funders.
Ohio Mom
@Kelly: What a complicated inheritance Mrs. Kelly has. The good memories aren’t less real than the horrific ones, the horrific ones are not cancelled out by the good ones.
It took me a long time (and therapy) to resolve the effects of my um, less than ideal upbringing. I’ve developed some compassion for my parents, who were burdened by many forces they could not manage well, let alone overcome. Reconciliation is a two-way street and I had to learn to accept it wasn’t going to be.
May Mrs. Kelly find resolution, in whatever form best helps her move forward freely.
A Ghost To Most
Go away, Joe.
ruemara
@Kelly: She knows you. So she knows him. It will be ok, let her mourn. She’s not just mourning her mother as she was, she’s mourning an idea. I go through something like it every fucking family holiday.
Kelly
@J R in WV:
Yes this.
thanks
Ben Cisco
@WaterGirl: He’s not realizing that the sourcing on those polls are coming from a place that doesn’t have his best interests at heart.
@sukabi: Dr. Jill too? She seems smarter than that… but in the absence of any other evidence, your explanation is as good (though depressing) as any…
waratah
I loved her saying she would run for President not Vice President.
All the candidates are running for president.
zhena gogolia
Make her president tomorrow. I’m ready for it.
Immanentize
I do not think Joe will run.
Immanentize
To add, on the person as prop issue — Why didn’t Biden talk to Abrams first? Or was it his ‘people’ who floated that stinker?
Ohio Mom
@Immanentize: You are no doubt right, though it hurts to be reminded that even when I agree with them, one group or another of the ultra-wealthy are always behind the scenes, orchestrating things without any input from me (or us). It really is their world, the rest of us are more or less tenants.
Betty Cracker
More Abrams awesomeness from today’s episode of The View:
Good lordt, it will never stop grating on my nerves and boggling my mind that Meghan McCain is the most reasonable facsimile of a human being that the GOP can cough up.
Immanentize
The Dave Berry article on Biden and the Clarence Thomas hearing generally is always worth a repeat. Dave Berry, Carl Hiassen and Molly Ivins — favorites.
Ben Cisco
@Immanentize: You’re right – I had forgotten about that.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Her eye makeup alone makes me want to vomit. (that is, Meghan’s)
Immanentize
@Ohio Mom: I know a bundler here in Boston — Went in on Obama early, even when all the women she knew were fundraising for Hillary. She was also all in for Ayanna Pressley versus Capuano in Somerville/Boston. She is a great person, but she sure is wealthy and as such is not my peer. But her Democratic candidate instincts are fabulous. She has committed to Harris, and although she is friends with Liz Warren, had to tell her, “Nope.” It’s a funny kind of power.
ruemara
@Immanentize: You know black women don’t actually do things on their own without being told, right?
/s
jacy
@Mandalay:
You can love somebody, and still understand their shortcomings. His history is complicated, and I, for one, don’t want him as a standard-bearer of anything. But I appreciate the good things he’s done. Now it’s time for him to exit stage left and spend time with his grandkids.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mandalay: Wrong. Trial balloon. Looking to see if Joe’s candidacy stood to get a bounce out of that sort of action, Unfortunately it takes a lot of hydrogen to float a balloon made of lead – which before properly aloft goes down in flames in the massed incendiary fire of practically everyone in the Democratic Party.
Immanentize
@ruemara: It was such a crazy denial of agency…
Gex
@sdhays: Because per Alito these are not prayers, but prayer opportunities. And on that technicality SCOTUS permits them because no specific sect is granted exclusive access to them.
Ohio Mom
@Immanentize: That’s interesting because I am very torn between Harris and Warren.
I most of all worry that they will cancel each other out by splitting the vote that would have gone to one or the other, had the other one not run.
And then we will be left with (fill in the blank but looks safe to say not Biden).
Gravenstone
@Ohio Mom:
Entertainment is afforded a much deeper reach into the public consciousness than hard news is. So the pols go where the eyes are. Doesn’t make it right, it’s simply adapting to the realities of our current time.
Brickley Paiste
Abrams checks all the right boxes for the nominee and has a better pedigree than Harris (Yale versus some state school in California).
I think I like her more than Harris, she does seem like a more genuine person, but I’m not sure she has the absolute ruthlessness necessary. Anyone that has been following her for years have any thoughts on that?
HalfAssedHomesteader
Joe! is the new Jeb!
dww44
@kindness: As a Georgian, I hope she runs for Senate;it has been decades since we’ve had a Democrat in the Senate. Zell Miller won a special election in 2000 to finish the unexpired term for Rep. Paul Coverdell who died. I personally think that David Perdue could be vulnerable, particularly if support for Trump weakens over the next year and a half. Perdue was an early Trump supporter.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: I think it’s important to step back and really think about who wanted the Mueller report to be a kind of silver bullet. Oh sure, you and I would have welcomed it, but at the end of the day, President Pence isn’t any more appealing to us than President Trump, and we would have to do then exactly what we have to do now, which is try to elect more Democrats at every level, which is what we also want to do. You see, Meghan McCain wants to vote Republican but it chaps her hide to know that means supporting Trump. Same with Rick Wilson and many others. They don’t want to vote for Democrats and they don’t want to vote for Trump. It’s these people who really wanted Mueller to deliver the end of Trump’s presidency so they can keep clinging to Republican politics but without Trump, and without having their finger prints on any actions that they might otherwise need to take to get rid of Trump. There is also a strong whiff of careerism for many of these people.
Uncle Cosmo
@Mandalay:
Remember how many “liberal Democrats” were bleating that Scooter Libby deserved a break because he was “a nice guy” or words to that effect?
We have to stop conflating what politicians and government officials are like in their personal lives with their actions in their official (or semi-official) capacities. These people need to be held to their public actions & to answer for their consequences – regardless of whose friends they might be.
Maybe our public officials need to take their cue from the sports world. Athletes may be the best of friends off the field, but once the game begins, the goal is to defeat your opponents, regardless.
IMO anyone who stands by that lame E. M. Forster quote – “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country” – has no business in public life. Hitler loved dogs & small children, doncha know…
jl
Great response from Abrams.
I think it was pretty definitive shoot down of the idea of a premature acceptance of a VP slot with Biden as a crappy campaign gimmick.
Not that it will make much difference with the incompetent horse race touts who pretend to be political reporters and analysts for the corporate media.
Abrams could have said Biden is a disgusting smelly illiterate fool, the reincarnation of Hitler, and she’ll kick him in the balls if she ever runs across him again, and somebody (Cillizza, as an example) would find a bit of daylight for Abrams still saying yes to such a dumb idea.
But, so many of the new Democratic politicians show very sharp political and communication skills and strength, it is encouraging.
dww44
@Brickley Paiste: Abrams is a bridge builder and ran last year as a divider and not a uniter, the exact opposite of her opponent, who’s now trying to be a uniter. If he and I are ever in the same room, I will turn my back and leave. He suppressed minority voter turnout and made it way more difficult and problematic that they could vote and/or have their votes counted. She’s not a Kamala sort of politician.
West of the Rockies
@Ohio Mom:
Harris is my senator. I dig her breadth of knowledge. Both women are super poised, emotionally intelligent, intellectually extremely bright. I know Harris better and like her big-stage experience. She has my vote.
jl
@Betty Cracker: Good answer from Abrams.
I don’t understand why Meghan McCain feels she has to make such an abject and bitter fool of herself carrying water for GOP, and Trump (even as she tries to distance herself from him).
I think she is far more slavish a partisan than the other members of The View’s regulars.
Most of her doubts about FBI and DOJ was based on her ‘feelings’ that they were ‘partisan animals’. If all the members of The View’s panel talked like that regularly (and from what I see in clips, McCain does talk that way regularly), no one would watch.
sdhays
@Gex:
What an amazing assumption not supported by evidence…
West of the Rockies
Utterly OT, but I noticed I’ve not seen David Jolly on MSNBC much lately. Looking him up on Wiki, I see his mother’s name is Judith.
I would not want to go through life as Judy Jolly.
Mike in NC
Report out that PM May offered to step down to get Brexit passed.
Steeplejack
@Kelly:
A sad story. Wishing peace and understanding to your wife.
And thank you for your witness.
Ben Cisco
@Barbara: Truth, and you can add the majority of the punditubbies to that list.
trollhattan
Have they thought about Abrams as the next DNC head? I’d be all for that.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
One of these things is not like the other, Theresa. But please, #1 is a good start.
Betty Cracker
@jl: She’s just terrible — an entitled, snippy brat with no redeeming qualities who adds nothing to the conversation on that show, which is a pretty low bar. The only reason she hates Trump is that he crapped all over her father.
germy
@jl: I suspect Meghan’s husband (the publisher) feeds her talking points.
rikyrah
@Mandalay:
Sort of disagree with you. He’s always on phucking Fox….and, they always let his idiotic azz CALL IN.
Gex
@sdhays: Indeed. Just a pretense to support Christian supremacists policies. They’ll point out that Lutherans and Baptists and Methodists and so on are allowed to speak, therefore they are inclusive.
Barbara
@jl: Do you need to know anything more than the fact that she married Ben Domenech? Seriously, whatever independence of thought she might have tried to cultivated was almost certainly cut dead the day she got married.
sdhays
@Brickley Paiste: Nothing against Abrams, but fuck Yale. I’m sick of the idea that people who go to these elite institutions are intrinsically better than the rest of us. Abrams would be impressive no matter where she went to school, and Harris is an extremely intelligent and hardworking woman despite the fact that she didn’t go to one of these shitty Ivy League schools.
George W. Bush graduated Yale and Harvard. That’s all you need to know about what a diploma from these institutions means.
tobie
@Kelly: Your wife sounds so tough for confronting her demons. I hope she realizes that in spite of her justified pain and grief, love and anger that she came out of the cauldron of her childhood a strong and big-hearted person.
Brachiator
@Mike in NC:
An odd, almost empty gesture. The problem is with her BREXIT proposal, not just with her as PM.
Still, an interesting sacrifice move. Possibly, a Tory MP who strongly favors “no deal” might end up being PM and having to implement May’s deal.
And May thinks that she can get enough votes to support her deal by focusing on her own party. What a strange dance she is doing.
Amir Khalid
@Brickley Paiste:
Yale vs. state-college law school? Really? At this stage of their careers, why on earth does that still matter?
rikyrah
@Amir Khalid:
Amir,
It was someone on this blog who pointed out that part of the resistance to Harris is because she’s not ‘one of the group’.
Barack and Michelle Obama, though, I adore them both, are double Ivy League.
Harris graduated from an HBCU and then a public law school….not like what the MSM is used to.
karensky
@germy: I agree ?on Abrams’ and here in Pennsyltucky we gotta work hard for a Dem takeover in the legislature! Made progress in 2018 and an organization called Every District is again targeting PA as well as Mississippi and a couple of others.
trollhattan
@Amir Khalid:
“State school in California” you say? How very lowbrow!
rikyrah
Soledad O’Brien on Rahm’s idiocy:
Angriest I’ve seen the mayor. Even more than when unarmed people are shot and killed by police in his city. Chicago paid out 370 million in excessive force lawsuits and fees in 6 years. City has to borrow $ to pay for it. https://t.co/g5xVyx2a9k
— Soledad O’Brien (@soledadobrien) March 27, 2019
Fair Economist
@Mandalay: This whole “Abrams for VP” business is looking like another typical Biden gaffe. No real harm to anything but his campaign, but, seriously, floating somebody for pre-VP without getting their go-ahead? And in a way to make it look like he was putting a token on the ticket? Sigh.
dww44
@dww44: Oops! She ran as a uniter not a divider. Kemp was the opposite, modelling himself after his hero, DJT. There was a campaign video from one of her events where an obvious GOP supporter asked her a question designed to put her on the defensive. Her supporters proceeded to shouthe guy down and she took control of this outdoor gathering and made them shush and said that we can all disagree with one another, but that everyone is entitled to voice their opinions. Wonder how that guy voted.
germy
dww44
@West of the Rockies: Saw him on one the later shows 2 nights ago. Sane and rational, still. Was not urging Democrats to find another shiny object to pursue and forget the Mueller report. I was grateful for that.
Emerald
@Ohio Mom: Yes, I’ve been worried about that too. But I think Warren also competes with Wilmer, and Harris has a stronger base than the media is acknowledging.
Basically I like Warren’s policies, but I like Harris’ too and I think Harris has a better chance of beating Twitler. She does sharper comebacks, and that’s, sadly, one of the most important qualities in a candidate these days. Hillary had loads of great policies and the media never reported on them.
They’ll report good comebacks, though.
NotMax
@West of the Rockies
Could be worse, could be Dolly.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
It doesn’t. But some people love to stir up controversy.
jk
Biden is a desperate buffoon and I hope that Stacey Abrams does not offer him a lifeline by joining a ticket with him. Biden is too old and was on the wrong side of many issues when he was a senator. Democratic voters need to come out in full force In Iowa, NH, SC, and Nevada to obliterate Uncle Joe at the polls. Maybe if he gets sufficiently creamed in those states, it will penetrate his thick skull that he doesn’t have the support for his idiotic quest and he’ll drop out.
trollhattan
@Emerald:
Got around to watching Warren’s Colbert appearance. Think her campaign tack of going on the road and eschewing high-money fundraising efforts is putting her in the public eye better than the rest, at least for now.
It’s like trying to decide which foal will win the Preakness in two years.
hilts
@West of the Rockies:
David Jolly was on the 11th Hour with Brian Williams a few days ago.
tobie
@Brickley Paiste: I agree that Abrams is a much more magnetic personality than Harris and seems to take a longer view of things, placing specific issues within the arc of American history and in the context of democratic (small-d) principles. My dream ticket would be Abrams and O’Rourke. Both have the capacity to inspire, which we will need in spades if we are ever to recover from this darkest of political periods.
Peale
@rikyrah: Yes. But Jussie Smollet is the reason Rahm couldn’t come up with the money to pay teachers more and had to close all those schools on the South Side.
germy
One of the oddest blogs:
https://clarissasblog.com/2019/03/27/wealth-tax/
jk
@ruemara:
@Mandalay:
@Fair Economist:
This is the latest example, as if we really needed it, that Biden is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He should be grateful that Obama gave him the VP slot and stop this idiotic mission to win the nomination. His record as a senator sucks and there so many more impressive candidates in the field. Also, his public speaking skills are fucking atrocious.
The Pale Scot
Off topic, sorriez, Parliament is about to vote on whether to vote for May’s deal or no deal, the BBC is in its safe zone, treating it as a horserace. Here’s a stream of BBC News if ya wanna watch
It’s freeintertv.com,
Matt McIrvin
@Barbara: I think Mueller became a focus of hope because before the Democrats won back the House, that investigation was *all* we had–he was pretty much the only visible person in the federal government who was doing anything against Trump. Mueller likely saw his remit as relatively limited, not a quest to bring down the administration. At this point the main thing is to get the real information he collected back to Congress so they can do investigations of their own. And any effect will be mostly political.
Brachiator
@The Pale Scot:
Isn’t this just the first of a number of indicative votes? Might want to wait until the entire process is done. And then we still probably won’t know anything!!
Cheap Jim
@Barbara: It’s remarkable that Ben Domenech married McCain, rather, since there was no one who had done it first so he could copy it.
trollhattan
@The Pale Scot:
“8 different Brexit options”?!?
Yeesh.
Thanks for the freeintertv reference. New to me.
Kraux Pas
@The Pale Scot:
Theresa May give up her job to secure backing for her plan, per the NYT.
Mary G
I am so happy the Democrats have so many voices of sanity and wisdom these days and she has so much charm, charisma, and intelligence to boot. I will support whatever she chooses to do. I hoped she would give Uncle Joe the Rosa Parks treatment and am delighted she has.
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
Yeah, but! Kamala Harris went to Howard as an undergrad and to Hastings College of Law in SF. Not UCBerkley school of law. Both Historically Black schools… Excellent schools, but not Yale, where I also too did NOT go.
I have learned that education is far more what you make of your opportunities than where you go to school. No doubt I may have had more/bigger opportunities at another college than the small state U where I graduated, but I did well out of that school.
Am a supporter of Kamala Devi Harris so far !!
Kraux Pas
@germy:
Paying their fair share will suffice.
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
I don’t have a dog in this hunt, just find “Yale>state school I do not specify” quite silly, moreso when pondering that some of those state schools are harder to get into than Yale.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
When props are all they have……
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
???
UC Hastings College of the Law is not historically black.
Ruckus
@Kelly:
This is not aimed at you, just something I like to think about.
No one is perfect. Some don’t come within miles of even trying. And yet you are still with someone you love. There is no rhyme or reason to life. Enjoy the good parts, do what you can about the shitty stuff, and be the person you want others to be.
jl
@germy: @Barbara: Thanks for info. I did not know he was her husband.
OK, then. That explains a lot. Cynical explanation would be that some of it’s an act.
Or she feels she needs to circle the wagons against any attack on the current rotten GOP and its supposed representation of any kind of sane conservatism.
J R in WV
@Kraux Pas:
As if Brexit without PM May in charge of the debris field will be way better than the debris field with PM May in charge? Well, maybe so, actually. No one could be worse than the PM who destroyed the British economy, which is how I expect it to work out if the do leave the EU.
If Brexit happens, I think there will be aid convoys for food and medicine in a matter of months. Perhaps an airlift like the Berlin Airlift during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union attempted to starve Berlin into surrendering. That plan of sheer genius didn’t work either.
Sheer idiotic rascist hate in action in the UK, which will turn into England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland not long after Brexit. Racists, they’re so stupid. Wiley, crafty, but dumb.
sgrAstar
@Uncle Cosmo:
Ummm….no. Not one.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Geez. Anyone past 35 who’s still relying on which college they went to as proof of anything is saying they haven’t accomplished much since then.
ETA: IOW, what have you done for me lately?
jl
@Brachiator: Hastings has been part of UC for over 100 years. Was the practical UC law campus, as opposed to high toned theory. Maybe why Hastings if famed for expertise in nuts and bolts stuff like jurisdiction, procedure, standing, etc (from what IANAL know)
The Pale Scot
@Brachiator:
Hmm.. I didn’t read the papers this morning. But the way the heads are babbling and the way the idjiots they’re interviewing are yammering, it sounds like that this vote decides whether Parliament give yay to the WA. May is saying pass it and I’ll step down. So what will she do if it doesn’t pass.
I just like to watch Parliament argue, welding the English language like a shalalie. It’s all political maneuvering that’s out in the open now. The Boris the oaf and others are slobbering. PM has lot more power inside the party than POTUS does. They only have 15 days, here’s the stream from Parliament.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
“UC Hastings College of the Law is not historically black.”
Ok, my bad, didn’t research enough. Sorry, thanks for the correction.
Not a lawyer, barely aware of the only law school here in WV… WVU, if anyone cares. Haha!
jl
@Brachiator: And I didn’t know Harris went to Hastings. Maybe that explains her ‘I know my shit and don’t you even think about BSing me’ lawyer and DA face and tone. Which I really like about her, even though right now I am in Warren camp.
Betty Cracker
@Cheap Jim: Hahahaha!
Ruckus
@Kelly:
My house was the house that the other kids stayed away from. Neither of my parents were bad or worse, it was just not a warm place. Us kids all tried to be anywhere else ifat all possible
And yet we all had not unreasonable relationships with both parents till they passed.
zhena gogolia
@jl:
Yeah, I thought it had a great reputation. IANAL, though.
Brickley Paiste
@Amir Khalid: Heaven knows elite universities are imperfect, but they are often an useful filter.
@Brachiator: And I just looked up Hastings, its a TTT now. Not even on Berkeley’s level. But, apparently, it used to be better during the time she attended.
And this is all a testament to Harris grit and determination. She maneuvered from modest beginnings to get on the big stage. Kudos.
Kelly
@Ruckus:
That’s pretty close to my dear departed father’s view. :-)
Barbara
@J R in WV: Hastings is not a historically black university. It is the law school associated with the UCSF, and a damned fine law school in my opinion, having helped me on a tricky asylum issue. Anybody comparing candidates based on where they went to college or law school is, excuse my French, a feckin eejit.
SFAW
Since Ms. Abrams has told Biden “NFW,” I think Biden should “think outside the box,” and go for a “reach across the aisle” pick for his pre-loaded VP. And who should that be? Why, Susan Collins of course.
Barbara
@Brickley Paiste: @Amir Khalid: Per Brickley, yes they are a very fine screen for family wealth, so if you are looking to elect a person born with a silver spoon in their mouth, that Yale pedigree is definitely an indicator. Beyond that, yes, obviously, there are very brilliant people at Yale but for heaven’s sake, it’s not a one to one correspondence by any means. I just think back to who was first in my law school class the three years I was there. They came from, respectively, Tufts, Ohio University (Athens, OH) and UNC-CH.
Kraux Pas
@J R in WV:
Apparently there are going to be further stages of negotiations after an initial deal, if any, is passed. She must have perceived that other members of her party think they can do a better job. She won over Boris Johnson.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brickley Paiste:
Sure, George W. Bush is a Yale and Harvard alum and Trump has a degree from Penn. I’ll put my “State School”(UCLA) education against their’s.
Mandalay
@Barbara:
Agreed.
For a brief period in the early 1990s John Major was the Prime Minister of the UK, and Paul Keating was the Prime Minister of Australia. Major left school when he was 15, and Keating left when he was 14! It’s remarkable enough for someone to be running either of those countries without a college degree, doubly remarkable that it happened in both countries at the same time, and astounding (to me) that it happened so recently. I’m pretty confident that it will never happen again.
sgrAstar
@Brickley Paiste:
You put your cluelessness on display over and over again.
Go Bears.
jk
@SFAW:
I’m looking forward to the concession speeches by Biden and Sanders announcing their formal withdrawals from this race.
EthylEster
@Kelly: Yet another case of “Oh would some Power the gift give us, to see ourselves as others see us.” It would have to be a very strong Power because humans have a huge capacity to delude themselves.
Also, too, parents are such potent figures for their children, good and bad. I hope healing is possible in the future.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Barbara:
Hastings is an odd duck administratively, it’s not under the control of the Regents, but has it’s own board. UCSF is a health science graduate campus and is full UC campus under control of the Regents. UCSF and Hastings to offer a joint degree, as does Hastings and Berkeley(MBA-JD). So while Hastings is in San Francisco and is a UC(the first UC Law School, it’s older than Boalt), it’s not part of UCSF.
Barbara
@Kelly: There are some hurts that never fully heal. It takes an incredibly strong person to persevere in spite of those hurts. Condolences and wishes for perspective and reconciliation for your wife.
eemom
@Barbara:
I went to Yale. There was a guy in my class who took a popular course in art history taught by a famous professor and wrote a paper about the long lived, multi-talented artist named “Circa”. (I am not making this up.)
As for that law school you mentioned, the general population wasn’t exactly what you’d call a brain trust, wherever they came from. ?
Barbara
@eemom: Yes, that’s true. In fact, it was kind of shocking to meet people who had apparently excelled in college and to realize how . . . underwhelming most of them were. Maybe that included me and you.
The Lodger
@eemom: Was Circa heavily influenced by the writings of Anon?
Barbara
@The Lodger: No, but he might have been sued by Mr. Rex for plagiarism. Don’t laugh. Actual mistake made by actual classmate.
Brickley Paiste
@sgrAstar:
I understand that you feel the need to be nasty, but do you have anything of substance to say?
Are you really saying that Hastings is on the level as Berkeley? I don’t keep up with the rankings of middling schools but I just popped over to US News and they seem to think Berkeley is a top 20 school. Then there are several other state law schools, UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC Davis and then Hastings comes in at 60 or something.
But no need to worry about fact, just type another insult if that’s what makes you feel better you troll.
evodevo
@Mandalay: Maybe he should ask Pence to be his VP lol. Actually I’d like to see Abrams ask Uncle Joe if he would be HER VP. Love to see the look on his face…
eemom
@Barbara:
Nah. After all, we made it onto that rock star law journal.
The thing that pissed me off was that I got in off the wait list, at which point they told me they didn’t have any scholarship money left. So I had to borrow a shit ton. And when I saw some of the geniuses they DID give money to….well, suffice it to say I was ecstatic when their stupid basketball team lost. ?
Lo these many years later, I find it hilarious that THEY ask ME for money.
The Pale Scot
@Brachiator: You’re right, it seem like this was a advisory vote, 8 choices, all voted down, just wow. Parliament TV just crashed from the load. And still there are MP making statements that have no basis in reality. The Speaker was actually yelling “This is the reality” Great fuckin’ TV
I don’t own a TV, I rarely watch video other David Attenborough type stuff and stand up comedy, this is amazing, no commercials either
Ruckus
@Barbara:
I tutored in college. Most of my clients were book smart, so they had done well until they actually had to think, to use logic on their own. They could read and memorize, thinking was outside their box.
Barbara
@Brickley Paiste: No, you see, the level of one’s college is soon eclipsed by the level of one’s own accomplishment, such that the average level of a specific institution becomes less and less relevant in direct proportion to the number of years that have accumulated between now and when you graduated. If institutions were he measure of individuals then Bobby Jindal would be president right now. Instead, he is a big fat nothing no matter whether he went Brown and Oxford (and never forgets to tell you that he was accepted by BOTH Yale Law School and Harvard Medical School — Go Bobby, Go!!!).
Brachiator
@The Pale Scot:
Totally understandable. I’ve been watching some Parliament stuff on YouTube. Very fascinating.
Amir Khalid
@Brickley Paiste:
Useful filter for what? Lame answer.