This Fox News segment and Trump’s unhinged reaction to it tells the whole story:
Here’s are the comments @JessicaTarlov made on Fox News that set off Trump https://t.co/gNpbSBMBtn pic.twitter.com/pnFKwAwDNb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 25, 2020
To recap: a researcher for Trump’s propaganda network analyzes the data and concludes that screeching “LAW & ORDER” and performing tough guy stunts isn’t working with voters on the protest issue, so Trump needs to find a new approach and quickly. But President Oppositional Defiant Disorder hears only personal slights and a failure on the part of the Fox News staff to defend his honor. In Trump’s pea-brain, that’s the important takeaway from the segment, not the news that he’s getting hammered in the polls and why.
Trump reacts the same way when criticized for his handling of the pandemic, and it sure looks like that criticism is about to increase as exponentially as the spread of the virus and attendant economic fallout. He’s incapable of admitting error, which makes changing course in the necessary ways impossible. That’s why he will lose.
Meanwhile, in Florida, The Tampa Bay Times finds that young protesters want to get rid of Trump but aren’t completely on board the No Malarkey Express:
“Our leadership is clear that we need Trump out. But how do you do that without endorsing the other option?” Dream Defenders spokeswoman and co-founder Nailah Summers said. “People always say, ‘well it’s the lesser of two evils.’ When do we get to stop picking the evil?”
When you show up to vote every single goddamn time the polls open, my sweet summer children. (Obligatory note: Biden isn’t evil.) Sweet Jeebus, it’s frustrating to watch idealistic young people make the same dumb mistake over and over again. I guess 2016 must seem as distant as the American Revolution to them, and 2000 the Peloponnesian War.
*Okay, if he loses! A lot can happen in five months, work like you’re 30 points down, blah blah blah. Feel free to spin around three times and spit through your fingers to remove the jinx.
ThresherK
Who the hell is Dream Defenders, and how are they handpicking their “people” who say “lesser of two evils”?
Is “lesser of two evils” even a laugh-getter on a Meet the Press panel anymore?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
“Our leadership is clear that we need Trump out. But how do you do that without endorsing the other option?” Dream Defenders spokeswoman and co-founder Nailah Summers said. “People always say, ‘well it’s the lesser of two evils.’ When do we get to stop picking the evil?”
That’s the very same dipshittery my youngest was spewing at her sisters this weekend. So pure, so noble.
Thanks a fucking lot, Bernie.
japa21
Thank you for adding that Biden isn’t evil. There was a time…
Parfigliano
Idiots will probably vote 3rd party or not at all and wonder why everything is turning to shit.
clay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: This attitude was around long before anyone gave a crap about Bernie Sanders. In fact, I’d say the attitude is the cause of people giving a crap about Bernie Sanders — since he hasn’t accomplished much and remains ‘pure’, people can project whatever they want to on him.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@ThresherK:
“Biden is a rapist” polls fantastically as a disincentive to vote among the “believe all manipulative psychos” crowd.
I knew that #MeToo was preemptive weaponized ratfuckery.
Served
here come the grumps to grumble at the youth again. There is no indication that they won’t be anti-Biden in that quote, and it is perfectly fine to say “I am against Trump but don’t think Biden’s policy proposals go far enough to correct the ills of society.”
It is good to have a fed up, pissed off, youth movement, and this one is the most active, diverse, and vibrant in decades.
Baud
We owe it to the country to leave people who won’t get on board with our fight — whether young or old — behind.
ETA: They are vocal, but a small minority.
Alison Rose
Using the “lesser of two evils” argument when one of the choices is basically an actual demon is really fucking obtuse.
Kropacetic
Thanks a fucking lot, Bernie.
As someone who has had disdain for Biden since 2001*, and still plans on voting for him, Bernie got nothing to do with it.
No matter who we nominate, some segment of our electorate is not going to be happy. Whichever group shaming the other for their preferences is counter-productive. But it’s worse if the folks who got their choice do it because we still have to build a winning coalition for November.
*Basically as soon as I hit adulthood and his record from prior to that certainly wasn’t better.
Betty Cracker
@Served: I am griping about that aspect of a segment of the yoots, and I make no apologies for doing so because I’ve personally witnessed that behavior resulting in untold destruction and misery on a repeat basis. That said, I mostly find them awesome and inspiring and damn sight better than my own disreputable cohort.
Baud
@Kropacetic: Disagree partially. When someone refers to our candidate as an “evil,” you have to push back to inspire our actual voters. There are things you can’t compromise on.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
That’s a pretty broad brush. So women should stay silent?
scav
Lessor of two evils? Because sweetheart, like masks, voting isn’t just about you and how it makes you look and feel. Other peoples very wellbeing depends on it.
When faced with a headwind, having a destination in mind, learn to tack.
Joe Falco
“He’s incapable of admitting error, which makes changing course in the necessary ways impossible.”
Fortunately for him, Trump voters act the same way.
Served
@Betty Cracker: I don’t take an issue to your framing and was referring more to the initial comments that completely disregarded the first 3/4 of the post and instead went directly to their reflexive hippie punching.
clay
@ThresherK: The Wikipedia article, in its entirety:
bemused
Daily, degenerate Don says or does something that is repelling more and more people, imo. It’s also everything he is ignoring and pretending isn’t happening such as the disaster in the country, increasing covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths. He’s got 4 more months to stay on this course which no doubt he will, that makes me encouraged, cautiously, that he will lose.
I try not to imagine a massive, dancing in the streets, fuck off celebration after the election but I want that so much.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Depends on what you mean by leaving them behind. If you mean don’t invest one cent more in pestering them for their votes than is likely to generate a positive return, okay. If you mean “fuck them and their concerns,” a resounding no.
Omnes Omnibus
Less than perfect is not evil. And now I should probably leave this thread before I say something intemperate.
Lapassionara
*!#$*! Where to start! I try to imagine where the US would be today if Gore had won in 2000. It is heartbreaking that we have had so many examples of how important elections are and what negative consequences flow from Republican presidents and Republican legislatures.
We are in a fight for the future of the human race, and the purity ponies don’t want to sully themselves by voting for the unquestionably better candidate because he’s not perfect.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
The former. Their concerns are shared by people who will actually join the fight.
Served
@clay: Especially with this group, I understand the statement. Biden’s “maybe cops could just aim for people’s legs” comment was completely tone deaf. They have every reason to be unsatisfied with him on those grounds.
Roger Moore
He’s incapable of admitting error, but he is willing to give up on a dumb policy when he’s distracted by the next shiny object. That served him well during previous self-created crises, since he would eventually get bored of whatever dumb thing he was doing to make things worse and they would revert, if not to the status quo, at least to something less bad than when he was actively exacerbating the situation. That ain’t gonna work with COVID, since COVID isn’t going to get distracted by the next thing Trump decides to focus on. He doesn’t know how to fix it and he can’t just give up, so he’s out of tools in the toolbox.
Kropacetic
Full commitment to a capitalist system that is crushing most Americans and a reluctance to even consider more than minor reforms can be deemed a form of evil. Sorry, this is a lesser of two evils choice for me too, albeit FAR lesser.
And acknowledging and recognizing the validity of other people’s feelings isn’t a bad thing. It’s the first step to getting them to listen to you.
TaMara (HFG)
Hey “Dream Defenders” here’s your choice.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
I’m not going tolerate haters on the left anymore than I will tolerate haters on the right. If haters don’t want to listen to me because they value their hate, then I’ll just have to live with that.
Patricia Kayden
mad citizen
@Lapassionara: It is done, trump is done. There is nothing he can do at this point to win. He is incapable, his party is incapable. I would love it if a vaccine is available to most before Jan 20 so we could travel to DC for the phuck Republicans party, but I’m not holding my breath on that.
To your post, I wish Biden and other Dem leaders would regularly talk about having to clean up the R disasters all the phucking time, and it will take a generation or TWO to makes things right, not 4 or 8 years. Keep voting D!
With how we are dealing with the virus right now, the USA is a failed state.
Kropacetic
@Baud: Well, I’ve made some progress with my resident Stein voter. And in my mind Biden is a tougher sell than Clinton. Compassion helps.
NotMax
Turn it around on the little snots. It ain’t a choice of lesser evil. It’s a choice of more good and more important, who has capability of DOING more good.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
It’s different when you’re one on one and there’s no public audience that you have to inspire. When someone calls Biden an evil in a newspaper, it’s important for the rank and file to push back publicly (which we didn’t do enough of with Hillary). Biden however should be given space to respond as compassionately as he feels necessary.
Amir Khalid
No, don’t spit through your fingers! You’ll be spreading body fluids! That could spread the coronavirus!
Seriously, since Trump took office he has been hard at work demonstrating his bottomless awfulness as a person and as President. He’s always been a thin-skinned, pigheaded, stupid, greedy, and lazy wannabe tyrant. It’s just that thanks to recent events, he’s been exposed. There’s no looking away from what he is anymore, except for the most far gone of his fellow Deplorables. That’s why he’s polling so far behind Biden.
Who are Dream Defenders? Are they a local group in Tampa Bay?
Fleeting Expletive
Have to chuckle at “Oppositional Defiance Disorder” and remembering my son, now a 41 year old father of teen daughters, when he was a 14 year-old hellion. The description of the White House occupant is pretty apt, but he isn’t that emotionally mature, as everyone knows.
Gin & Tonic
What the fuck is the President of the US doing watching TV and tweeting about it in the middle of the day? Shouldn’t he be at work?
Yeah, I know, I know.
Baud
Part of the problem is that the media seeks out these people to quote.
Miss Bianca
@Kropacetic: Joe Biden is not “evil” in any sense of the word. So no, I am not going to “recognize the validity” of anyone’s “feelings” who says he is.
Just like I’m not going to “recognize the validity” of anyone’s “feelings” that Bill Gates and/or George Soros and/or Obama and/or the Cookie Monster wants to contaminate our precious bodily fluids with a vaccine that injects a microchip. Regardless of how anyone FEELS about these things, they’re exhibiting garbage THINKING.
Emma from FL
@Kropacetic: I recognize and respect their concerns. But I also know that for the past several elections, the “lesser of two evils” has lost to razor thin margins because a sizable enough number of voters decided to “vote their conscience,” and allowed the ratfuckers to weaponize those margins.
(added) and if you think Biden’s proposals won’t change how society works, you haven’t been paying attention.
trollhattan
@Lapassionara:
The 2000 election theft and the RFK assination are probably the two most pivotal political events of my lifetime (US-specific edition). The list of if-onlys is incomprehensibly long.
cmorenc
@Parfigliano:
True, but in the unique circumstances of this election, the drag from stupid 3P voters may actually be offset to a quite substantial extent by a different block of 3P voters who normally reliably vote GOP in presidential elections who can’t bring themselves to cross over to actually vote for Biden, but who will instead vote 3P as a way to vote against Trump. Yeah, by large % Republicans still support Trump, but the margins of his remaining potential paths to victory are so razor-thin that he cannot win if he’s leaking even 3 or 4% of support to 3P candidates from folks who voted for him in 2016.
Kropacetic
Fair enough, although I’d probably try to ignore the slight and focus on what good Biden can be expected to do.
What I’ve seen of him responding to such people, he doesn’t show much sympathy. I know he has a lot of experience with this shit, but telling people to vote for someone else doesn’t appear…great…from the outside looking in.
JaneE
You say “the lesser of two evils” but then you vote for the greater evil or not at all. How is that supposed to work?
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
But: “Teach the controversy!” =:-0
Yeah, no. Jesus did not ride dinosaurs and the earth does not resemble an LP and CO2 isn’t “plant food.”
TaMara (HFG)
@Miss Bianca: This.
BTW, blog is being very wonky today.
scav
@Kropacetic: Oddly enough, screeching eeeevvvvviiiilllllll! at people with opinions and judgements different from theirs hasn’t won them a lot of respect or candidates. So you’re right.
Brachiator
Not this nonsense again!
Sigh.
But it’s understandable, I guess. Some people can’t get out of the way of their own purity. I knew lots of super idealist folk in my college years. And the young daughter of a friend is a huge Bernie supporter. She will accept no substitutes.
And I think that just as some idiots look at liberals and only see people who would destroy wholesome white bread America, there are some lefties who reject any political leader who is not totally committed to bringing about progressive Nirvana ASAP.
Of course, the funny thing is that most of the people I know who are super purists would not be greatly affected by the worst excesses of the Trump administration. They are very comfortable in their purity.
matt
This is the problem with running government as a business. Most big businesses are run like crazy dictatorships by narcissistic leaders who develop cults of personality around them. Everyone is getting rich in them so this is accepted.
NotMax
@Miss Bianca
Well, the first three are not addicts jonesing for the next fix.
Cookie Monster, on the other hand….
:)
PaulWartenberg
trump’s idea of fixing the crisis of the pandemic is to simply stop testing – much like putting a towel over your head to avoid the Bugblatter Beast of Traal – as though the COVID virus will go “oh dear, I’m not getting attention anymore I may as well pack up and move to Aruba”.
trump’s idea of fixing the unemployment numbers is to force all businesses to reopen as though everything’s normal under HIS benevolent god-like whims, never mind the millions who will get infected when we do. We’re already seeing huge spikes in numbers this week and that’s WITH our bars and beaches reopened with lax distancing rules.
trump is the fullest embodiment of the Active-Negative personality: One that is incapable of adapting to crises, one that refuses to compromise or admit earlier errors. trump will double-down on the mistakes he’s made and will force as many people – even the Democrats opposing him – to bend to his will. Worse, trump will refuse to accept any further federal aid to go out, believing that to be an admission he is not in control.
And in the process the illnesses will spread, the deaths will pile up, the health care system will collapse and the unemployment numbers will go right back up.
By the time November rolls around, the one advantage trump will have to win the election is that too many of us will be too sick or dead to vote him out of the White House.
Citizen Alan
@Lapassionara:
You can say that about every losing Democrat going back to 1968. That, to me, was the historical moment when the conflict between Democrats and Republicans became an existential struggle between Good and Evil.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
It is great. The base of the Democratic Party is tired of seeing leaders act like patsies to try to accommodate recalcitrant people. Every time Biden stands up to them, it inspires more people.
Kay
They’re storing 200 Biden signs in my garage. I’m not there so I called my resident Berniac son and asked him to help them unload. He will do it he tells me, but only because he likes Denise, the sign lady :)
MattF
When a balloon pops, the air that was inside doesn’t stick arount, it leaves in a hurry– all of it. I think that’s what’s happening with Trump’s con, it’s in the process of collapsing, day by day. It’s not obvious what Biden should do now, but being, visibly, the opposite of Trump in every possible way, is probably the correct path.
Baud
Trump won’t be removed from office through impeachment, but you’ll know the wheels have come off the bus if the GOP ever provides enough votes to override one of his vetos.
Kropacetic
He has supported “evil” things in the past. It’s the same is the racism argument. There’s a difference between discussing the core of a person and individual actions they took.
He’s a fundamentally good person, I’ll agree. But he’s gotten behind and spoken up for some truly awful shit. Failing to recognize that isn’t going to help bring on Biden skeptics.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
Everyone is evil under that sense of the word, in which case people are always voting for the lesser of two evils.
VeniceRiley
This all day. I just blew a gasket the other day when CNN sent Van Jones on an umpteenth media Cletus safari interviewing super sincere Trump voters that were still voting Trump even though they think he is awful.
kindness
Shades of BernieBros there Betty. When a person’s premise starts with calling out someone as evil and equating them to the actual evil guy Trump has proved himself to be….I just don’t give those folks the respect they think they deserve nor do I give them any credit for idealism I fail to see.
I actually support much of what Bernie wants but Bernie & his minions stuck a knife into the back of the Democratic Party and are still twisting it. Screw that guy. We have better folk to get to the results we want.
Kropacetic
…who were already going to vote for him
Baud
@kindness: Bernie himself seems to have actually gone quiet, which is good, but ironic since the protests are the closest thing to a revolution that we’ll probably ever see.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Lapassionara: Thanks Ralph.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
But not necessarily donate as much time and money and outreach if Biden were weak.
MattF
@VeniceRiley: That continues to piss me off. In reality, the pool of marginal, ‘can’t decide’ voters is small and their significance is shrinking. I’d look at those who have changed sides and ask them what they want.
Citizen Alan
@kindness: This. Based on actually political positions, I agree with probably 95% of what the Democratic Socialists of America claim to stand for. The 5% where we disagree is on the question of whether the DSA is a legitimate political movement capable of achieving any of their professed goals or whether they’re just a stalking horse funded primarily by right wing billionaires for the express purpose of making progressivism look ridiculous while also undermining the Democrats.
Kropacetic
Clearly some people see him as having done more harm than good. I’m one of them. I’m still voting for him, but only because I see the heretofore unimaginable harm the current Pres is doing.
Let’s take a different tack on this. Say Bernie got nominated. There would undoubtedly be a vocal portion of D primary voters not happy with that and sharing that unhappiness with news outlets. Would that be OK for them to do? Would “Shut up and get in line” be an appropriate response from his advocates?
I would argue that someone lashing out aggressively at someone who disagrees with him or her appears weak.
khead
Never. The answer is never. So buck up little camper, get a sense of proportion, and recognize that your candidate isn’t always going to be a purity pony that shits rainbows and dollar bills.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
But the larger problem is that even if Trump admitted error, it wouldn’t matter because he is incompetent and totally unqualified. And he double downed on his incompetence by hiring equally incompetent subordinates.
The UK has a similar problem with Boris Johnson who is lazy and unable to pay attention to detail, but who also refuses to let his cabinet ministers have any real authority.
jc
I agree, it looks like Trump will lose, and I pray for that outcome … but he’s going to pull every dirty trick in the book first. Team Trump will see that they’re going to get beat by playing fair, so they’ll cheat like MFers. They’ll make sure that disruption and chaos reins. Trump is not going to bow out gracefully like a mature adult. I wouldn’t put it past him and Vlad to totally rig ballot boxes in several states, and other nasty business, e.g., shutting down the US Postal Service in Sept. Who’s going to hold him accountable if he wins under very shady circumstances? Biden could win by 5 million and still lose in the Electoral College.
JoyceH
@PaulWartenberg: If the virus impacts the election at all, it will be to Trump’s disadvantage. It’s HIS supporters who aren’t following safety guidelines. And that was before he said that people are only wearing masks to demonstrate disapproval of him, thereby ensuring that his devotees will refuse to wear masks lest they be mistaken for a Democrat. In the aftermath of Election Day, I expect a substantial number of lost Trump votes will turn out to be the people he killed with his rallies and science denial.
NotMax
“I was all set to vote for Achilles until I found out about that whole tendon thing.”
//
Baud
@Kropacetic:
If some moderate Dem made the same quote about Bernie as was said about Biden, it would be just as bad. The only difference would be based on my higher expectations for people who wear the progressive label.
artem1s
@Miss Bianca:
exactly – thank you. the young (and old) folk who get caught up in repeating this garbage thinking are a real problem. they are this generation’s Ayn Rand worshipers waiting to happen. they can decide to catch up with reality and become leaders and thinkers, or they can continue to blather on about the latest deep thoughts that keep scurrying around their heads until they are as old and dried up as the Boomers they hate so much.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: “The Lord of the Rings” “Atlas Shrugged”. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
Key here is fourteen. Garbage thinking is common for children. But they should stop being proud of being garbage thinkers once they hit their twenties.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: Have you said something to him yet like”Bernie Sanders has endorsed Joe Biden, what’s tje matter, don’t you trust his judgement?” Or is is still…Too Soon?//
The Moar You Know
Never. That’s how life works, and the sooner that these folks figure that out, the better off we will all be.
satby
Well said. Right there with you.
Betty Cracker
@Kropacetic: Like you, I have Biden skeptics in my life whom I’m trying to persuade to vote for him anyway. I do think acknowledging your own misgivings about Biden (if you have them — I certainly do) gives you more credibility with that type of potential voter. Pumping sunshine up people’s asses is rarely effective.
I know people who make it their mission to convert Trump voters, and dog bless them for trying! I would really suck at that. :)
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
Biden is flawed to some degree like every human ever born, but to think him evil a person would need to be completely lacking any sense of proportion. I could not take such a person seriously.
Jess
To the “why do we have to vote for the lesser of two evils?” crew: It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that a functioning democracy is by its very nature mediocre. No one is going to agree with your vision of Utopia 100%. The best you’re ever going to do is build a coalition of people who don’t actually hate what you’re doing, and then do the hard, patient labor of slowly changing hearts and minds, all the while making compromises to keep your coalition in power. You will never arrive at your perfect, evil-free society. You can only hope to encourage and empower your fellow free citizens to keep evil from taking over.
Now when the fascists gain power, they can impose whatever Utopia they want, at least for a little while. That’s why people embrace fascism. Democracy is too frustrating, messy and complicated. And always mediocre, because that’s who we are as a large, diverse group of voters. Grow up and accept that a perfect society is never an option. There’s only better or worse.
snoey
@artem1s: I more than faintly recognize my 17 year old self’s opinion of Hubert Humphrey, but I do believe that (in some ways at least) I grew up.
satby
@Miss Bianca:
And this, thank you!
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
I find them the same as any other generation. Some good, some bad. People.
Another Scott
When I was young and politically irresponsible, I first voted for John Anderson. My reasoning was that Reagan was bad and Carter was bad and Anderson had some decent ideas (the $0.50/gal gas tax (over 5 years). But, at the bottom of it all, it was a feeling that my vote really didn’t matter that much, so I could be pure and outside it all and not have to make a real choice (since it was obvious that Anderson wasn’t going to win).
So, I understand where these kids are coming from – the sincere ones (not the Russian trolls).
Kids are idealistic and really don’t want to settle when the best path is “obvious”.
But they need to recognize that:
If they stay engaged, and I think they will, then they’ll learn these lessons. And help make the country better.
tl;dr – Don’t punch down. Disillusionment helps the monsters.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed. But you would never say we should stop criticizing Trump so harshly to make their jobs easier.
Kropacetic
It’s funny, with mine one of the main arguments I keep having to push is the same one I’m pushing here to you guys. If you want to win you have to work together.
Every camp in the party has a role in this, even the largest camp.
Jeffro
Thoughts:
Don’t worry about the skeptics and the nutters. Just remind them that a 3rd-party-vote or not voting is a half-vote for trumpov, and move on.
Chyron HR
@Kropacetic:
“Shut up and get in line” was literally the official position of the Sanders campaign after he won Nevada.
Miss Bianca
@Kropacetic: Actually, “shut up and get in line” (or, perhaps, “bend the knee”) is EXACTLY what I would expect to hear from the Berners I know if the jackboot had happened to land on the other foot.
ETA: Or what Chryon HR said.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Right. Find the people who’ll work with us, fight the people who try to tear us down. Age and ideology have nothing to do with it.
Jeffro
Everyone’s on to him. Everyone’s aware of Russia. Everyone’s aware that the GOP’s trying to suppress the vote. The Biden campaign is already noting this in public and setting markers.
Trumpov drew to an inside straight in 2016 and still needed help to cheat his way to victory. It’s not going to happen this time.
MattF
@snoey: Yeah, I remember that my reason for not supporting Humphrey was that he didn’t represent my interests. My recollection is that I considered that to be rather sophisticated political logic.
Kropacetic
But maybe don’t start with a tirade about what assholes Trump’s supporters are either. Doesn’t further that objective.
Just the asshole ones. Tell me, did you find this demand persuasive?
Jeffro
I’m guessing about two degrees F cooler, on average.
…too soon?
Bruce K
Y’know, if you’re talking about lesser evils, I’ve got a good metric that’ll strip through that.
Look for who’s being actively, proudly cruel.
If neither candidate fits? Yay! If both candidates fit? Blech.
In 2020, though, there’s one actively, proudly cruel candidate, and it sure as hell isn’t Joe Biden. Biden is far from the perfect candidate, and he wasn’t my first choice, but he passes the not-cruel test that Trump fails so badly, so that makes the choice between the two easy.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
We really shouldn’t stand up to anybody lest we upset some group of people who have the legal right to vote for us.
satby
@Baud: Bernie never gave much of a shit for BLM, and he was probably sicker than he admitted when running. He’s also missed important Senate votes, though he may have been around for the latest ones.
Shalimar
@Another Scott: In retrospect, your reasoning should have been”Carter makes some boneheaded mistakes whereas Reagan actively wants to hurt a lot of people, this is not a hard choice”, but yes, I have been there too. I didn’t vote for Clinton either time and still can’t stand the asshole, but he was miles better than Bush, Dole or Perot, so that was 2 mistakes on my part.
Rand Careaga
@snoey: James Simon Kunen (The Strawberry Statement, a reference that will be lost on some of our younger readers) on then-candidate Hubert Humphrey: “I know the man is ten years ahead of his time, but his time was 1948.”
Jeffro
trumpov really has, at times, made me question my atheism. It all fits, almost too well. Fortunately I know that’s just my childhood + human arrogance (thinking there’s no way he, and his people, could be this evil) but still.
randy khan
This may be just me, but every time I see someone talking about treating the election like Biden is 30% behind, I cringe because that’s a terrible comparison People lose hope when a candidate is 30% behind – they walk away and say “next time.”
What we should do is treat the election like Biden is 1% behind. That’s when people fight like crazy for every extra vote. And that’s what we need to do.
Brachiator
@Kropacetic:
At this point, anyone who does not support Biden endorses every vile thing that Trump has done, and every vile thing that he will do if re-elected.
satby
@Kropacetic: Well, you’ve certainly shared your concerns very thoroughly.
Miss Bianca
@Kropacetic: I’ll tell you why it doesn’t even matter whether I would have found it persuasive or not: A lot of actual Democrats decided to validate my feelings that Bernie was a bad candidate, and voted for Biden instead, so I never even had to address that demand.
I entertain modest hopes that the same thing will happen this November, regardless of whether Miss Never Die Dreamer decides to do the right thing.
joel hanes
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Thanks a fucking lot, Bernie.
While I have no time for the junior Senator from Vermont, I seem to remember feeling too pure myself to vote either for Hubert Humphrey or for the forces of manifest evil.
I suspect that this kind of naive “idealism” is a part of being young, and that only some of us ever grow out of it.
Rand Careaga
@Another Scott: I also voted for Anderson, a vote I would readily take back. I was twenty-eight: old enough to have known better. The election of 1980 taught me a lesson I have never forgotten: to spurn the perceived “lesser of two evils” serves only to engorge the greater. And the evil this year is very great indeed (indeed, everything about it is great, by its own account).
Kropacetic
@satby: All I’m saying is maybe treat people with respect. Every vote counts.
danielx
Well, Ms. Summers, it’s like this….
Or, in TBogg’s deathless words:
You don’t live there. Grow the fuck up.
Jess
@Bruce K: Nice summary!
satby
@Rand Careaga: A lot of us former Anderson voters learned that lesson. Ironic.
patrick II
Biden was not my first choice either. But it would be so nice to just have some competence. Someone who had an idea about what science is, how organizations work to accomplish goals, who hires competent people instead of the dregs of capitalist carny barkers, and someone who has some respect for the law and Constitution.
Kropacetic
Standing up for oneself rarely requires attacking someone else.
Baud
@Kropacetic: It does when you are the victim of the attack.
artem1s
@Betty Cracker:
not in my experience. they are looking for a reason to be excused for their garbage thinking and votes. It did absolutely no good to be half in with Hillary. In fact, I would argue this kind of apologetic argument.cost.her.the.E.C.
jc
@Jeffro: I sure as hell hope you’re right. But power is the *only* thing to these guys. If you have it, you can get away with anything. Which is why they’ll work to keep it at any cost.
Kropacetic
@Baud: So, let’s just call everyone who shows the least bit of uncertainty whom they should vote for an idiot. That should help. Go team…
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
Fleeting Expletive
I consider every unmasked person a zombie in almost a literal sense. Any one unmasked can be fatal to your continued existence. I’m not going to decapitate them, but they are a threat to me, so I have figuratively nailed the windows and doors shut to them.
Uncle Cosmo
@Kropacetic: Just FYI, you can change your nym all you want, but many who’ve been here for awhile will see “Krope” and immediately think, Oh yeah, the Dope.
FWIW you can take that 20-year-old “disdain for Biden” and shove it up your hemorrhoidal arse, sideways. And all the WATBs on this site who feel the same are cordially invited to do the same.
NCSteve
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
In some ways, I get it. They’re young. The resistance to choosing between greater and lesser evils is resistance to the approach of the burden of adulthood itself which they sense but cannot yet accept.
The essence of adulthood is accepting that all of life is a continual process of choosing between lighter and darker shades of grey, over and over again, usually in insufficient light to be sure which is which when the shades of grey are close.
If you face up to that reality, aren’t so twisted by your experiences that the darkness look preferable, and undertake that dreary repetitious choosing, you may build a world for yourself and your loved ones that stands at least some chance of being better than it would have been had you just blown it off and refused to accept the burden of the choosing or, worse, chosen darkness. It’s hard. If you take up the burden of the endless choosing, you do it knowing that at any given moment some irresistible force from the outside can come down and render all your labor useless-war, economic calamity, death and disease, or just the failure of too many others to accept the burden of adulthood and, instead, succumb to charlatans who tell them they can have a world washed clean of drab grays if they just follow them.
Because the underlying truth is that the carbon blackness of real evil is common and powerful and always ready to overwhelm us, while pure white goodness is exceedingly rare and even more rarely up to the task of holding back the darkness. Some of us might go a lifetime without ever seeing it. And thus it is only by the additive accumulative effect of people choosing lighter shades of gray that the darkness may be kept at bay. It’s all we got.
And this is why democracy is the most adult ideology, the one form of government that demands and requires adulthood to sustain it. The emotionally thrilling, terrifying sado-tyrannies like Nazism and Bolshivism, the openly brutal police states, the kakistocracies of failed states, and the cynical, bitter sham-democracy authoritarian states are born of a rejection of the burden of adulthood.
Some kids have to accept the reality of the choosing far too soon. Others have the good fortune of being able to delay acceptance of the truth of adulthood until well past the age they are legally adults. So it goes. I don’t begrudge the lucky ones.
But the ones who hold on to it even as they approach and pass thirty, yeah, those are the assholes.
Ruckus
@ThresherK:
If you squint really, really hard, put on your 1/4 in thick lenses, stand on one foot, and snap your fingers real fast with the other fingers crossed as you say “lesser of two evils,” there is a very tiny, minuscule chance that there is a grain of truth to it. And the reason for that is that no one is perfect. No One. OK, so Joe Biden is about a bazillion miles, maybe, probably 2 bazillion, closer to perfection than shitforbrains could ever have been since his conception, and especially is now, there is that almost imperceptible, immeasurable, degree of truth to the statement, Joe isn’t as bad as shitforbrains.
frosty
@Shalimar: Sorry to say I’m similar. I didn’t vote for Carter either time (Anderson in 1980) but I learned my lesson. Yellow Dog Democrat ever since. Straight ticket.
Rand Careaga
@Chyron HR: Loomis over at LGM—not my favorite front-pager there—was gloating over the inevitability of the Sanders nomination after Nevada. I particularly enjoyed him having to eat those words.
Lee
My youngest is a bit bent about Biden. The way I’ve won her and her friends over is pointing out voting is a bit of a long game.
How did the GOP become facists? The voters voted for the Republican candidate EVERY TIME. You want more candidates like AOC? Vote for the Democratic EVERY TIME.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Jeffro: What’s even more astounding to me is how many of the “Antichrist” boxes this bastard checks off, according to the fundagelicals I was raised by. They were paranoid af about all that stuff, but along comes this racist pos, and they all worship him (another “sign). Seriously, “666”, the frog spirits, the treaty with Israel, the boastful blasphemy, the popularity with evangelicals, etc., etc., ad infinitum, it’s all stuff I was hearing preachers warn about before I was old enough to talk. But he hates “the Blacks”, so all the stuff we preached all those years gets thrown out the window like the tissue paper window dressing for racism it always was.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Kropacetic: um, wut?
Cameron
Did I vote for Biden in the primary? He wasn’t anywhere on the list of candidates I considered. Am I going to vote for him in the fall (assuming I’m not COVIDed into the next world)? Without one second’s hesitation.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Kropacetic: false dichotomy much?
Kropacetic
False dichotomy? I’m describing the behavior I am seeing right here right now. From some.
Kathleen
@Baud: The Mainslime Media’s hatred of Democratic party and their willingness to court those who demonize it has created a lucrative grift for those whose goal in life is to burnish their brands. Like Ommes I will say no more ever about politics on this blog. ETA ” Oh no” said no one ever LOL.
West of the Rockies
@satby:
I think I ended up going with Barry Commoner, me and 117 other 18 year olds.
Kent
My 17 year old daughter donated $25 to Biden out of her piano teaching earnings. She teaches piano to some kindergarten girls that her regular teacher did not have room for. She now teaches zoom lessons.
What frosts here (sort of) is that now she gets frequent emails from the Biden campaign asking for her vote. “Dangit! I can’t vote yet!! or I would!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@joel hanes:
I was a babe-in-arms during the Humphrey campaign, so I don’t know if his naive young idealists were as nasty and irritating as Sanders die-hards (many of them not so young) but the inability/unwillingness of Sanders and his sympathetic-but-not-unhinged admirers in the media (Yglesias, Hayes) to address the toxicity he inspires among supporters, both in the unhinged pro-Bernie media (apparently the entire masthead of the Intercept, Nathan Robinson person, half of Rolling Stone’s political team….) and even more so among his top staff and surrogates (Moore, Sirota, Grey) is telling about Hayes and Yglesias et al, and something I hope people notice more when the histories are written.
Uncle Cosmo
Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for the year 1968 – when a whole shitpile of longhairs decided they agreed with George Corley Wallace that there wasn’t “a dime’s worth of difference” between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon & sat out the general election. I was one of them at first (disgruntled clean-for-Gene-ie) but upon further review with a few weeks to go decided to come back over to the Democrat after all (not that it mattered as I was too young to vote). Too goddamn many people who ought to have known better didn’t come back in time. You tell me what a game-changer it would’ve been to nose out Tricky Dick that year.
Matt McIrvin
Fuck, Carly Fiorina endorsed Biden. Are there people who shouldn’t be allowed?
Another Scott
@Baud:
Obama has some advice from 2008… (0:54)
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Lee: Yeah, if they are susceptible to that argument, I’d say that’s probably the most sensible approach to take. It’s certainly kinder than my statement of the same stance: “You want Democrats to take your concerns seriously? Why the hell should they, if you won’t vote for them? That’s not how politics works, sunshine. So, show up and vote, THEN bitch. Then vote some more. Then bitch some more. THAT’s how you get what you want. Welcome to the wide, wide world of
sportsadulthood.”Baud
@Kropacetic:
We’re not talking about people who are uncertain. We’re talking about people who are hostile.
@Betty Cracker:
I was trying to make the point we shouldn’t automatically silence ourselves when people attack us simply because it might make it harder to win over some group of people who sympathize with the attackers.
Cameron
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: I don’t know exactly when American Christianity began transforming from a Mosaic to a Benjaminic religion.
Ksmiami
@mad citizen: The message should be that the GOP is A criminal organization that has stolen from And murdered the American people
kindness
My biggest problem with the purity people amongst our tribe is that the very act of calling out our own representatives as being ‘unworthy’ or ‘evil’ as in this case hypes and plays into the meme that Democrats are in dissarray and that the people who have been nominated to represent us are unworthy of support. My problem is that this plays right into the meme that our current MSM will take up and run with (see Hillary Clinton 2016 as an example). We have to rise above that in order to beat Republicans because our MSM won’t save us. They only really care about clicks and market share, not us. And I’m for ever pissed that the purity trolls among us should recognise this and stop hurting us.
Brachiator
@Kent:
But maybe she can help with get out the vote efforts, especially with older peers who can vote.
Baud
@Lee: That’s good.
Matt McIrvin
@Rand Careaga: It wasn’t so much that he was gloating–he was a Warren supporter–as that it gave him an opportunity to write yet another “all y’all SUCK” article about how hard it was going to be for the awful, sucky commenters on his blog to knuckle under and support Bernie.
Kropacetic
There are degrees of hostility and how we interact with such people can harden or soften that hostility.
Another Scott
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
More than you know.
Nero as the Antichrist.
Hmm…
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
No.
Cermet
Can’t stand these utter ass holes that want to call the dem a ‘lesser of two evils”. Lets see, over 120 K amerikans are dead and the vast majority would be alive right now if that asswipe in office wasn’t. Global warming will kill many, many millions, cause BILLIONs (!) to be driven from their homes/countries along with vast regions of land that formerly produce food; lets not forget that the person who is just a lesser than this worthless losser will do the right things and save countless lives but they are just “the lesser of two evils”! These ass holes are exactly why hundreds of thousands of Iraqi’s die were murdered and why Global warming is still out of control.
The Moar You Know
Since we’re doing some circular firing squad shit here, mostly instigated by “Biden’s done some evil shit” dude (with not one shred of an attempt to back that garbage up) I gotta ask: What were you guys who didn’t vote for Carter in 1980 thinking? I was 14 and I knew that Reagan was going to be nothing but biblical-level horror for most people in America. Just a dumb kid of 14. I didn’t even get that shit from my parents, they loved the fucker. Self-evident from day one. The guy was a monster.
Just what the fuck was so bad about Carter that y’all thought “oh, that talking Gila Monster with a pompadour” would not be the worst outcome for America? I really want to know and am trying not be an asshole about it (and failing badly, sorry, really sorry, I have Reagan issues and will until I die) so please tell me.
Gin & Tonic
My son was a Bernie stan, is still very much in the “leftier than thou” camp, but thankfully he is also a realist, who sees that if Trump wins this thing he is unlikely to be able to live together with his wife in the US until at least 2025 (and by then it may not be a place they’d want to live anyway.) That sort of thing focuses the mind.
jonas
That’s one ball I’m keeping my eye on. I’m sure some there’s some loathsome Senators like Tom Cotton or Marsha Blackburn working late at night on some scheme to defund the postal service this fall or something.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There’s a memory of mine of a (probably apocryphal) story about some SDS meeting where they were debating whether they should take the position that the infant children of the rich and powerful should be put to death because they were a continuing threat to a just society, or something.
History repeats, to some extent.
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
I watched Jon Stewart on Colbert last night. He had some interesting things to say about Biden and the race. I know some people here can’t stand Stewart, but he made the point that Biden is a decent human being who understands grief and pain and how to handle it, and right now this country’s people are in a huge world of pain and grief. They need someone who can understand that, and they’ve figured out that Trump cannot do that and will never be able to. That’s something I hadn’t thought of before. He said he thinks that’s one reason Biden is so far ahead in polls; people want someone who they think understands what they are going through right now.
And purity ponies, ugh…..I’ve got a friend on FB who’s only a few years younger than me who’s an ardent Bernie supporter, and every now and then she still posts something bad about Biden. She was pushing the Reade story until it fell apart. I don’t feel there’s much I can say to her at this point that will make a difference; I think in the end she’ll vote for Biden because she knows Trump is so, so bad.
CaseyL
The Purity Progressives’ fucking the country over used to happen roughly every 20 years (1968, 1980, 2000).
Now, like GCC, they’re accelerating: the ratfucking is every national election, starting with the PP brigade sitting out 2010 when Obama didn’t give them everything they wanted and their non-participation handed the Senate to the GOP.
I’m an old, but I remember what it felt like to be young, angry and idealistic. However, I missed the part of it where I’m supposed to stay home and sulk if I don’t get my magic pony.
Miss Bianca
@Cermet: “How dare you suggest my purity is leading to a more impure world! I WON’T BE BLACKMAILED!!”
Sadly, I only *wish* I were snarking.
MisterForkbeard
@Kropacetic: I used to have these conversations with some of my Bernie-fan friends who really loved Bernie and hated the Democrats in general as “evil”.
I explained that the problem is that Democrats are “good” but that they exist in the real world. They make compromises. They limit harm. And sometimes they fuck up. It’s a large coalition that reflects a huge part of the country, and its attitudes and positions change over time – but that overall, it’s been a massive force for good. And that if you dig into anyone’s history you’re going to find bad events and decisions that can be spun as disqualifying.
This has not had the effect I hoped for. Since Bernie dropped out it usually hasn’t been a “okay, I need to realize that politicians are people and progress is slow for a reason”, but it’s one of two other things:
1) It turns out that Bernie ALSO isn’t good enough and it’s time to turn to… the Green Party? Libertarians? Somebody else?
2) All politicians have done things I disagree with and therefore they’re all evil scumbags. No voting for any of them and am disengaging from the process.
Idealists wanna idealist, I guess.
Baud
@Kropacetic:
It can also allow hostile people to take advantage of us if we’re overly docile.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Well, she might be persuaded to put up Biden lawn signs around a nearby Gate of Hell. Could get an additional couple of votes.
Kent
@frosty: I will vote for a Republican before I vote 3rd party. In fact I actually have in the past. In the 1996 Senate campaign in Alaska I voted for Ted Stevens over the utterly unhinged Dem Candidate named Teresa Obermeyer. I refused to vote Green and this was before the 2000 Nader fiasco.
Obermeyer was this utterly unwell and unhinged woman and gadfly who would always show up at the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council meetings that I always attended as part of my job. She would go off half cocked with shrill incoherent public testimony on random off-topic nonsense like water fluoridation that had nothing to do with commercial fisheries management. Anytime there was a public forum with testimony she would show up to berate whoever was there for any random reason. She got herself elected to the Anchorage school board by GOP assholes who just wanted to shake things up and single-handidly made that body completely dysfunctional. And then won the Dem primary for senate based only on name recognition in Anchorage over a field of about 10 candidates, many of whom were equally crazy. No legit Dems wanted to run against Ted Stevens in Alaska.
She got herself jailed twice during the campaign for stalking Ted Stevens whom she blamed for her husband failing the bar exam in Alaska something like 50 straight times. The debate was surreal. Ted Stevens turned to her and said “Mrs. Obermeyer, I think you need help” It’s a youtube classic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_Senate_election_in_Alaska
https://youtu.be/MaIsLeqfwM4
Delk
On the brighter side, no convention means no televised tantrums.
catclub
@Served: 
But will they vote for improvement, or sit on their hands waiting for the perfect candidate?
The Moar You Know
@Matt McIrvin: I’ll give her a pass this once. Trump said some unbelievable, hair-curling vicious sexist shit about her during the GOP campaign. I’m sure she’s looking for a bit of payback. I think she should be allowed that.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@NCSteve: That was well written. Thank you.
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know: Yeah, I’m with you. I was 17 in 1980, didn’t get to vote, but do remember coming home from a movie on election night (it was Ordinary People, as I recall – never forget that!) and seeing the election results and thinking (for the first, but far from the only time on election night), “Oh, shit. We’re fucked.”
Kropacetic
Ok, let’s make something clear. I’m just asking people to treat others with respect. That this suggestion draws hostility is not my fault. I’m voting for Biden. No question. I’m emphatically working with difficult-to-reach voters on behalf of Biden, as I have stated on this thread and before. And I’ve made some headway.
Because I promised not too get too into the weeds about my feelings for Biden until after the election. And my argument isn’t about that. I am trying to minimize my complaining about Biden both to make and demonstrate my point. Come to people where they’re at. The knee-jerks are gonna jerk, but if I can convince one person here to cool the temperature down, I’ve done my job.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
When my fairy godmother shows up to make all my dreams come true and we ride off into the sunset on rainbow streaming unicorns. That’s when you no longer have to make hard choices in life. Until then, welcome to adulthood.
Gravenstone
@Kropacetic:
Do you enjoy regularly undermining your own supposed arguments?
lee
@Baud: There is the longer explanation that I’ve used on older folks. It is basically that if you push the ‘contest’ to the primary then it becomes a purity test (i.e. ‘I’m the better Republican’). Once that starts happening widespread you start to see the shift of the party pick up speed.
A prime example of that is the GOP: After 2010 when they gerrymandered themselves so many safe seats the shift to overt fascism really picked up. In order for the incumbents to keep their seats they had to shift. If they didn’t a brownshirt was more than happy to replace them.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: That is an unbelievably fuckin’ stupid take.
It ain’t all about your country’s fucked up presidential politics dude.
MisterForkbeard
@Miss Bianca: I am super late to this particular discussion, but you know what this reminds me of? Idiots who insisted that Hillary was “anti-feminist” because she had nominally supported and/or not stopped military actions in the past, and wars can disproportionately affect women.
It’s a stupid fucking argument. Saying Biden is “evil” because he has supported capitalism with guardrails is one of those extremely stupid arguments that has some technical truth and nothing useful to say at all or any real meaning.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kropacetic:
You’re willingness to climb on that cross is truly one of the greatest of your many admirable qualities.
How’s the view?
I’ll save you some typing and the rest of us some irritation: Nobody gives a fuck now, nobody’s gonna give a fuck in five months.
catclub
the economy in 1980 fell 5% and the hostages were still in Iran. Carter losing was baked in. No purity ponies sitting out needed.
I will note that the economy THIS year might contract about 5%.
Incumbents don’t usually win under those circumstances.
joel hanes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know if [1968’s] naive young idealists were as nasty and irritating as Sanders die-hards
We were.
Quite possibly worse. But we had to rely on leaflets and university bulletin boards, because the internet had not yet been invented.
Jinchi
I know it’s fun to kick young people, but to be clear, a lot of them aren’t old enough to have made the same mistake once, never mind “over and over” again. That was our generation, and the one before that and the one before that …..
Young people often don’t know where to vote, how to vote, how to register to vote. That’s the nature of being young, not idealistic. And it’s not like we’ve made it easy for them to figure it all out.
Another Scott
@The Moar You Know: You can get a synopsis at Wikipedia if you’re really interested.
Congratulations about being right at 14. Have a cookie.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
joel hanes
@catclub:
I will note that the economy THIS year might contract about 5%.
Fearless prediction: it will contract more than 5%.
randy khan
@Kropacetic:
Not to pile on, but, okay, I’m going to pile on anyway:
catclub
and every Republican EXCEPT Carly Fiorina was ok with that.
PST
@satby: Yet another Anderson voter here who would gladly have that vote back and who has learned an enduring lesson. I have cast other votes (not for president) that in retrospect were bad choices, but that is the only one I can think of where clearly I knew enough at the time that I should have chosen differently. I was 27 and old enough to be entrusted with adult responsibilities, so I had no excuse.
Kropacetic
I never said it would be easy. If you find fertile ground speaking with someone, great. If not, don’t turn the heat up. It isn’t good for either party’s attitude or well-being. Walk away if necessary.
The Moar You Know
@catclub: Thanks for that. Others who did not vote for Carter in 80, weigh in, please.
Yutsano
@Kropacetic: I just want to say you took a possible discussion point and have now made the conversation all about you. I don’t think that’s worth any kind of award or anything, I just had to acknowledge your work here. And we need the wood so please feel free to get down off that cross please.
Humdog
I really like the analogy, voting is not like taking a taxi but is like taking a bus. You take the bus candidate that will get you closest to your destination because there will never be a taxi candidate that can drive you directly to your door.
Brachiator
@joel hanes:
I was too young to vote or to be deeply involved in politics in 1968, but I have gone back and done some reading of the era, and was struck at how many idealists embraced Clean Gene McCarthy and were incensed that Robert Kennedy would dare swoop down and try to steal progressive voters.
Later, of course, Humphrey became the candidate, and it seemed that he was tainted by his connection to LBJ and doomed to defeat. He just could not please the idealists.
However, my history teacher and other adults I looked up to from that era were absolutely devoted to RFK, and some were crushed for a time by his death. Kennedy himself evolved from a ruthless political operator and enforcer for his brother to someone who could deeply inspire people to become committed politically. And the people I looked up to continued to be engaged politically, and they definitely helped shape my political outlook. Their idealism also came to be combined with political pragmatism, and an emphasis on always trying to get things done, as opposed to whining about the absence of perfection in the political realm.
Jess
@NCSteve: Love this. Smart and beautifully written. I’m copying it into my “Wisdom” folder.
Kropacetic
@randy khan: I don’t consider it a pile-on. I’m having a discussion with people willing to engage within normal parameters and ignoring those who aren’t.
I agree with everything you said here. The case I’m trying to make isn’t for or against Biden. It’s for outreach.
Cameron
@Humdog: In the current situation, voting for Trump is more like taking a shit…..
Miss Bianca
@MisterForkbeard: Don’t even get me started on the “voting for Bernie rather than that Clinton bitch is the REAL feminist thing to do” crowd.
moops
@Roger Moore:
Yes he can give up, and just gaslight everyone. Hence suggestions to stop testing.
Rand Careaga
@The Moar You Know: “I gotta ask: What were you guys who didn’t vote for Carter in 1980 thinking?”
Damned if I know, forty years on. As I recall, I was pissed at Carter for reviving Selective Service registration, even though I’d aged out of it by then. But mainly, I couldn’t believe that Reagan would actually win. In 1976, when the Gipper failed to wrest the GOP nomination from Gerald Ford, I remember saying to friends “Well, thank heaven we’ve seen the last of that clown.” Clearly I have never had a great read on the Teeming Millions.
That I snarkily went third party in that consequential election is a moral failure that I bear like a tattoo, one of those impulsive, drunken ones with a spelling error.
MisterForkbeard
@Kropacetic: It’s a good message. Though if someone is calling Biden ‘evil’ I don’t have a ton of respect for them. Absolutely willing to be patient and talk it through with them, but at a certain point I’m going to stop communicating because they’re just not worth the time.
Every vote counts, but you can spend your effort on more worthwhile pursuits or with voters who are willing to change their minds.
@Miss Bianca: Honestly, if Bernie had won I would absolutely be telling moderate Democrats to get the fuck in line and stop complaining. And I say that as someone who had Bernie in his bottom tier of choices (and below Biden, who was consistently not in my top 3).
ANY Democrat is going to do good things in office. They’re going to do them differently, but even Tulsi Fucking Gabbard would have put in a lot of beneficial programs and stopped most Republican excesses. Once the nominee is chosen people need to quit fucking around and help. You don’t interrupt the firefighters who are putting out the burning building because one of them cheated on wife or said something awful about black people 30 years ago.
There’s a time for that.
Kropacetic
Not sure about that analogy. Taking a shit is often quite a relief.
Perhaps hopping on a plane to the wrong country expecting it to drop you at your door.
WereBear
@NCSteve: That was a great essay.
PST
@Brachiator:
Or she can vote by mail. I hear from my RWNJ relatives that there is nothing to prevent that.
Geminid
My sympathy and best wishes to those trying to persuade Sanders supporters in their lives to vote for “the lesser of two evils.” This is an area where Ocasio-Cortez could do a lot of good. I’m not sure she will step up on this one, though. Maybe in October.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
NFL just cancelled it’s first game, slated for August 7th. Since day one of the pandemic they’ve said “nothing will stop us.”
It’s hard to see how football proceeds this year: no social distancing, no masks, everyone in hand to hand combat.
Ditto the NBA.
Baseball might be able to proceed, but it’s gonna be really hard on sexagenarian home plate umpires and first basemen.
jl
” Meanwhile, in Florida, The Tampa Bay Times finds that young protesters want to get rid of Trump but aren’t completely on board the No Malarkey Express: ”
But this person quoted does not seem completely off board either. So, seems to be room for persuasion, which we need to take advantage of.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@JoyceH:
The virus seems to be much more deadly to people of color.. our voters.
WaterGirl
Speaking of zombies, this thread seems to be turning into a little bit of hell.
Kropacetic
Saying something is less whatever value than the alternative is very explicitly not equating them.
Kent
I was 16 in 1980. I can tell you three things that soured me on Carter, even though I was too young to vote.
First, the reinstatement of draft registration so he could wave a big dick at Leonid Brezhnev and demonstrate “American Resolve” after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I, for one, was not interested in getting drafted to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan or sit in a tank in the Fulda Gap and repel a Soviet Red Army invasion of western Europe.
Second, the 1980 Olympic boycott. My HS in Eugene OR actually had two athletes make the Olympic team. One was a K1 Olympic Kayaker who was the older brother of my best friend. The other was a golden gloves boxer who made the team as an alternate in light welterweight division. He was the nose tackle on my football team and lived a couple blocks away. It was a crushing blow to ask those athletes to sacrifice their dreams to make a political statement.
Third, the Soviet grain boycott. I had an uncle who was a wheat farmer in eastern WA who was bankrupted by Carter’s soviet grain embargo. He was probably failing anyway but blamed Carter. The notion of trying to starve a people for political reasons did not sit right with a lot of people.
Yes, Reagan was obviously a conservative wacko. But people were pretty fed up with Carter and all of the symbolic shit he was trying to do that was affecting the lives of ordinary Americans but not the elite.
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: Nope, it’s not fun to kick young people, but allow me to clarify some poor phrasing on my part: the “over and over” thing doesn’t refer to the same group of young people making the same mistake because they’d hardly remain young voters from 2000 to 2020, right? It refers to the tendency of young voters (whether in 1980, 2000 or 2020) to fall for the “lessor of two evils” crap. I’m old enough to have seen it over and over.
rp
@Rand Careaga: Hey, I have a friend who voted for Nader in 2000 in Florida. So don’t feel too bad.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’ve read the title of this post several times because it makes me happy.
Betty Cracker
@jl: Agree. And the Biden campaign seems to be listening (according to the article), so that’s a good thing.
Marcopolo
Not gonna read the thread. Just enjoying the NYT polling that dropped yesterday & this morning.
I mean seriously, there are better things for all of us to spend our time on. Like doing actual activities that help win elections.
However, I did order my BYEDON yard sign today and that makes me very very happen–though it will probably not shift any votes.
Here’s the link to the store for this stuff, which is based on a Mike Lukovick editorial cartoon.
CaseyL
@NCSteve: This is really excellent. Thank you!
Baud
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Aug. 7 would be a preseason game. NFL preseason is pretty worthless (not as worthless as the Pro Bowl, but close).
piratedan
I’ve always tried to combat these kinds of set ups like so:
Are you perfect… if yes, then please run for office and help us all… if no, do you believe anyone is perfect? if yes, please convince them to run for office and help us all… if no, then you must accept that you make the best choice you can given the options available and keep working towards what you consider to be the best possible outcome. Change happens, we see it everyday and we all can have an impact, depending on how we apply ourselves.
Miss Bianca
@Betty Cracker: You even outed yourself as a Nader voter, as I recall, as a cautionary tale: like, yeah, I fucked up, but I came to my senses and I won’t be making that mistake again.
We often decry the tendency of conservatives to not think some social problem *is* a problem till it affects them or someone they care about. But they’re not the only ones who have a lock on the need to learn by painful experience.
germy
The Dixie Chicks have officially changed their name to The Chicks.
germy
I must be an outlier here.
I voted for Carter. I was disgusted at the prospect of a Reagan victory.
And when he won I felt sick to my stomach.
CaseyL
@The Moar You Know:
@Rand Careaga:
I was 24 in 1980. Disliked Carter because he wasn’t liberal enough, and also because he didn’t seem capable of doing even good things right (like the botched hostage rescue mission). Not liberal enough and incompetent, plus a bit of a mean streak I didn’t care for.
I supported Teddy in the primary. Worked on his campaign, in fact.
Didn’t for one minute think Reagan could actually win, which was quite stupid of me. I voted for Anderson, and learned a lesson I will never ever forget.
Baud
Unlike 2000 and 2016, Carter + Anderson would have have matched Reagan’s vote total, and probably not his electoral vote total (not going to calculate).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election
satby
@The Moar You Know: Yeah, Carter has grown since he was President, but it was a pretty bleak time (gas lines and “gasless Sundays” too) and Carter wasn’t accomplishing much. Scott gave you a good rundown but in my and my friends case, we all were very hopeful that Anderson really had a chance and seemed a stronger alternative to Reagan. And, we were wrong.
The Moar You Know
@Another Scott: Seriously. Thank you. Don’t want a cookie, just need to figure out in my own head how America went to shit. Nixon’s pardon has always been one of the obvious forks in history that has done incalculable damage. But that’s very easy to understand. You excuse criminal behavior because someone is highly placed, and you pretty much end up with 2020 as we’re living it no matter what.
Reagan’s election was another. But I have never understood how he got from “cranky old loon who always embarrasses the GOP at conventions” to “President of All The Assholes, Forever and Ever, Amen.” Just trying to figure it out.
Kent
@CaseyL: Carter also had a evangelical Baptist holier than thou manner that rubbed me very much the wrong way as a youngster coming out of a childhood of fundamentalist religious indoctrination. The passive-aggressive Sunday school teacher schtick rubbed this budding atheist the wrong way as it represented everything I was trying to get away from.
CaseyL
@Jinchi: Yes, young people are young.
But there have been enough of us formerly-young-and-stupid people who have tried, over and over again, to explain what happens when you refuse to accept a non-perfect candidate.
I’ve gotten into it multiple times over the years, talking about 1968 and 1980 in 2000, about 1968 and 1980 and 2000 in 2016… and now about 1968 and 1980 and 2000 and 2016. Still falls on deaf ears. “This time is different!” they say.
germy
@CaseyL:
I felt like the media (such as it was at the time) was doing its best to defeat Carter.
“Day three! Day four! The hostage crisis!”
Apparently they were warming up for what they later did to HRC.
CaseyL
@germy: Good point, and highly probable. I remember a big todo when an editorial went to print with the draft title (or so the newspaper said) of “More Mush From the Wimp.”
Another Scott
@rp: There are several Nader 2000 voters in this thread, also too.
People learn, and rationalize their decisions, at different rates. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@Rand Careaga: Thank you. That’s extremely helpful to my “process” or whatever the fuck it is I’m trying to figure out here.
Kropacetic
Yeah, if they’re obviously aggressively intransigent, don’t waste your time. But even if they’re not fully persuaded, just slightly less embittered, that’s a good thing.
germy
@CaseyL: Wasn’t there some silly incident with a rabbit that the press amplified and obsessed over?
They’d pick on every little thing. “Lust in my heart” quote taken out of context, etc.
I really felt like corporate media wanted Carter OUT.
It was my first vote in a presidential election, and I hoped he’d prevail.
But then everything went to shit.
Chyron HR
@Another Scott:
“Lots” of people wanted Bernie instead in 2016 but “lots” is not a majority. Although to be fair at least Kennedy didn’t explicitly tell his supporters to elect Reagan to teach the country a lesson.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Damn, thank you. Think I’m starting to get a better picture. This is not the kind of insight you get from history books or Wikipedia.
Kropacetic
Did Bernie do this? Do we have a quote?
JPL
@Kent: I voted against Phil Graham in the early eighties. I can’t even remember the republican’s name. I also voted against him when he switched parties.
Kent
But you can’t do the math that way. Based on all the 2-way polls, Reagan almost certainly would have won a 2-way race with Carter. Anderson pulled a lot of Republicans away from Reagan as well. Anderson was a moderate Republican after all, even though he ran as an Independent.
Reagan was going to win regardless of whether Anderson was in the race. He won 50.7% of the popular vote in a 3-way race and probably would have been closer to 53% in a 2-way race with Carter.
The Pale Scot
Nancy Pelosi Calls Jamaal Bowman To Scold Him For Winning Primary
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Archie Bunker screamed “Yer gonna get Reegan in ’80, buddy!” at The Meathead in a post-76 episode of All In the Family, and it brought the house down. His support for Ronnie was, like his nostalgia for Nixon, a sign of what a sub-literate caveman he was.
Around the same time, my father was having lunch with a business partner and their accountant. My old man always knew he was more liberal than most of his friends and associates, but when one of them said something like, “Well, four years until President Reagan”, my father looked up to offer a friendly chuckle at what he assumed was a joke, and they were both dead serious.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Betty Cracker:
I hear it cures the ‘rona.
Another Scott
@germy: If you’re ever bored, it’s fun to review contemporary FTFNYT coverage of Carter’s peanut warehouse business, Billy, etc., etc.
They’ve had a lot of practice at trashing Democratic presidents and candidates.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@CaseyL: Thank you! I am beginning to see that “nobody thought Reagan could actually win” is the one major common denominator. A feeling he was out of touch with the needs of Americans is another.
low-tech cyclist
Here’s my brilliant idea, for what it’s worth:
Come up with a nice simple list of eight or ten issues that the Bernistas care most about.
Send a mailing to everyone on Bernie’s mailing list with the Biden/Dem position in one column, and the Trump/GOP position in the other.
Maybe seeing the huge chasm between the two spelled out that plainly would get it through some of their thick heads that whatever their imperfections, the Dems are on the side of good on a metric ton of issues, while the GOP is on the side of evil on practically every issue there is.
The Moar You Know
@satby: Hey, thank you for that. I do remember the gas thing. Hit my family in all kinds of ways as of course we drove, and my dad was an airline pilot (and that fucked his industry but good).
Baud
@Kent: typo. would have = wouldn’t have. Sorry.
satby
@The Moar You Know: As much as I deeply admire Jimmy Carter the man, Jimmy Carter the President wasn’t a very good one. And the statistical analyses that have demonstrated the effect of third party voting was mostly unknown to average folks. Anderson did well, but all his votes flipping to Carter wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
satby
@The Moar You Know: No, Reagan was the favorite. Heavily favored to win.
germy
@The Moar You Know: How did he feel about Reagan’s treatment of the air traffic controllers?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Amen. I wouldn’t even put those toxic people in charge of renaming a post office, much less running the country. I don’t believe they are capable of making anything better. That was why Sanders was DEAD last on my list of preferred candidates. Had he been elected, it would have been a choice between right-wing Trump and left-wing Trump (Sanders). I would have picked Evil #2 (Sanders) over Evil #1 (Trump), because I am an adult.
Kent
In 1980, the reinstatement of draft registration was a big fucking deal to young people. Yes, 40 years later we NOW KNOW that the whole thing is a complete joke. But in 1980 we didn’t know that. It was the first necessary step to reinstating the draft. Vietnam was less then 10 years in the past. We grew up with all our older brothers and uncles and such getting drafted or going to Canada. If you lived in a remotely blue collar community then you almost certainly had family or friends who died in Vietnam, or were utterly changed by it. Vietnam vet centers were everywhere in the big cities and there were a lot of messed up guys damaged by that war. The cold war was still very hot in 1980 and the national media was showing things like “The Day After” on TV and talking about the use of tactical nuclear weapons in European battlefields.
Carter taking the fist step to draft all of us young Americans to fight the Soviet Red Army in a pointless war of planetary annihilation tended to clarify the mind. Anderson came out opposed to draft registration and supported a lot of popular liberal ideas like the ERA, increased funding for colleges and universities, increased environmental protection, protection of abortion rights, and so forth. So he was a popular alternative to Carter among college students and the young.
PJ
@The Pale Scot: Trump’s election seriously impaired the Onion’s ability to be funny.
Kropacetic
@low-tech cyclist: This is a good approach. I’ve taken to scanning Biden’s website for novel or at least under-discussed ideas and dropping them into discussions.
I also tend to tell people considering not voting, more often because we’re in a state the Ds tend to win handily, “well, every office matters. Find people you like downballot to vote for.” Even a dedicated 3rd party presidential voter may vote for some Ds for other offices.
Cameron
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You don’t even have to spread your cheeks to the sky! Just get a UV lamp and stick it up your ass…
low-tech cyclist
I didn’t vote for Carter because I wouldn’t be a Democrat for another 15 years or so. I left the Republican Party with Anderson, actually: with any other nominee but Reagan, I’d have almost certainly voted GOP in 1980.
Not all Anderson supporters were voting for him instead of Carter, not by a long shot. He may have taken slightly more support away from Carter than from Reagan, but the general consensus is: not by much, if at all.
Gin & Tonic
@Kropacetic: I, for one, have to give at least a tip of the hat to your tenacity.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
meanwhile…
the picture with the story shows seven people leaning in together for the picture, including two young women standing cheek-to-cheek, and they’re in-doors. (Full disclosure: One of the things I hate about family parties: “Everyone stop having fun and pose artificially so I can take a picture of people who’ve known each other all their lives, and will till we’re all dead!”)
“Dr Aunt Jenny says this is a really bad idea….” “Ah, she’s always been a kill-joy”
current state health standards….
Citizen Alan
@catclub:
The hostage thing really was a “for want of a nail the kingdom was lost” things. I will go to my grave convinced that if the hostage rescue mission had succeeded instead of crashing in a sandstorm, Carter would have been reelected.
Kent
Yes, we are in kind of a post-irony era. Their best work ever was all the coverage of VP Biden. That shit was classic: https://politics.theonion.com/shirtless-biden-washes-trans-am-in-white-house-driveway-1819570732
barbequebob
voted in my first presidential election in 1972, age 19. Voted then and have always voted for the Democrat, even though I have always lived in safe blue states (NY and MA). Getting half a sandwich, instead of shit-sandwich has always struck me as the better option.
Anya
I don’t understand how no one ever sat him down and said to him that it makes him and Fox News look bad when he clearly says the quiet part loud. Shouldn’t we all pretending that Fox News is not his propaganda network or have all, including Fox News stopped pretending?
Kropacetic
@Gin & Tonic: I recognize that D loyalty goes a long way here. I prefer picking one thread to push this outreach message hard just once in a while rather than piping up every time I see something that rubs me the wrong way.
Keep it contained, give people time to digest.
I’m just glad I caught myself before flaming out on any one of three people.
joel hanes
@Brachiator:
my history teacher and other adults I looked up to from that era were absolutely devoted to RFK
I envy you such people in your life, and at that time. My family was then Goldwater/isolationist/libertarian, and I lived in a conservative and politically disengaged community. I didn’t encounter an openly-liberal teacher until 1969.
So I came to my understanding of RFK somewhat later, too late to have followed as it was happening, though I grieved at his senseless assassination. That was a terrible year in so many ways ….
The Moar You Know
@germy: Every pilot was for it. Every single one. And even the ALPA union head guys were for it. I was appalled. The pilots honestly thought they were untouchable. I mean, I kinda get being mad because when the controllers went out, the pilots lost paychecks. But damn, figure it out. Reagan wasn’t going to stop with those guys. You know every one of those controllers got blackballed? They never worked again as controllers, most of them.
Of course, within twenty years the pilots ended up all losing their pensions what with deregulation and airline bankruptcies and all that shit. Most of them still vote GOP. I know only one pilot who was then and is now an honest-to-God liberal and a couple for whom McCain was a step too far and Trump has been about a mile too far, but they are exceptions, not the rule.
PJ
@Kent: worse than the lack of effectiveness of irony in this era is their writers going full Bernie Bro (“you never go full Bernie Bro!”), resulting in humorless digs at Democrats who aren’t in the DSA (they did several about Pelosi’s freezer), like the one linked to above.
Citizen Alan
@The Moar You Know:
Here’s another “for want of a nail” moment: Chappaquidick. If Teddy Kennedy had been more responsible when it came to both drink and women, he’d have won in 1976 and probably handled all the issues that tanked Carter much more skillfully.
Sab
Dog walk in the park today. Three maskless old old farts passed us, said “hello” to me and my cocker, then snarkily asked my husband why his rottmix didn’t have a mask. Sigh. Husband was too shocked to be rude back to them.
Geminid
I had a good friend who passed away a couple years who really liked Clinton and loved Obama. But he was really down on Carter because of deregulation. He was a furniture mover, a really good one with top customer relations and crew management skills. He was just entering his peak earning years and was making good money- not easy for an African American in the 70’s in Virginia. But deregulation started a race to the bottom in the industry, and for decades after Chris worked longer hours for less money. This story doesn’t really speak to electoral politics. But I’ve often wondered how much Carter’s policy of deregulation contributed to the positive environment for big business under Reagan, even as pay for airline workers and truckers eroded.
Gin & Tonic
@barbequebob:
Ronald Reagan won both of those “safe blue” states in 1980.
The Moar You Know
@low-tech cyclist: Thank you. I assumed, back then, that Anderson didn’t really make much difference one way or the other. Guess that was the case. I was always surprised (back then, I get it now!) that more people didn’t see Reagan as just simply a step too far, but here we are with Trump still polling at about 90% with Republicans.
Wish we’d had an extremist Democrat to compare to. I’d like to think that Dems would not tend to blindly stay in the boat, but that is almost certainly wishful thinking.
Jinchi
No one who would say that would be allowed within 200 feet of the White House. He surrounds himself with sycophants and grifters. Even his kids would never challenge him like that, assuming they were bright enough to realize it themselves.
Citizen Alan
@Another Scott: I voted for Nader in 2000. It was in Mississippi, where Gore had no chance anyway, and at the time, I just could not bring myself to vote for Gore-Lieberman for a lot of reasons. Nevertheless, looking back, it really is something I’m actually ashamed of today. My thinking now about 3rd party candidates is this:
Their danger isn’t that they will steal away votes from the Democrats. It’s that they will persuade enough people that there really is no difference between the two parties and so voting is pointless. I’m convinced that for every person who voted for Nader in 2000 or Stein in 2016, at least 5 people stayed home because they accepted the facile “Republicrat” framing but didn’t feel like driving across town on a Tuesday to make the utterly futile gesture of voting 3rd party.
Kay
@Miss Bianca:
I just plain nag him to vote for Biden. We’ve had all these arguments before. Now I just want to know “yes or no?” and then we he says no I just bug him – like “come ON”. Nagging works.
My middle son was also a BernieBro but he’s much more of a Democrat. He’ll vote for Biden. HE’S kind of interesting as a voter. Not that plugged in politically and a quiet person but an oddly reliable voter for a young person. He was at the house when canvassers came for Obama in ’12 and he listened to the whole spiel. Finally I yelled from the sofa- “he already voted for Obama” (true). He would have stood there nodding his head forever. They need to move on!
Rand Careaga
@CaseyL:
I saw him speak in downtown San Francisco prior to the California primary. Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that was the weirdest public event I ever saw. Kennedy would break into this bizarre mad scientist cackle every minute or so. My colleagues and I, on the way back to the office, all agreed that he might have been drunk.
The Senator’s ungracious, mean-spirited dance away from Carter on the convention stage that year did the President no favors.
joel hanes
@Kent:
Carter … had a … holier than thou manner
I reallly think this, more than anything else except the Iran hostage standoff, is why he lost.
The cardigan sweaters in a chilly White House, the slightly preachy addresses to the nation, the solar panels on the White House roof, the admonitions about fuel conservation, the 55-mph national speed limit.
Just as today with masking and social distancing, Americans REALLY HATE to be admonished, are displeased with leaders who ask them to sacrifice even the slightest bit for the common good.
IMHO, many of the other explanations for Carter’s loss are retconning.
Another Scott
@satby: Yup. It was news when Carter choked up when he was trying to put on a brave face when he cast his ballot on election day.
The surprise was that the GOP got a landslide in the Senate as well.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
MisterForkbeard
@Humdog: The only thing I don’t like about this analogy is that I’ve seen it used to justify votes for Green presidential candidates or whatever.
The fact that these folks have NO chance in the general doesn’t really dawn on people. It’s like – if you see a bus that’s scheduled to take you where you want to go but it’s on fire and only has three wheels then it’s not going to get you where it says it will.
Jinchi
I’m glad we haven’t, but I think it has to do with the diversity of the Democratic base. Republicans can enforce party discipline in a way that Democrats never could.
Citizen Alan
@low-tech cyclist: The problem with this is that the #1 issue with the hard core Berniacs is the literal abolition of capitalism. I once finally asked a friend who insisted there was no difference between Democrats and Republicans who he wanted to see as President, and to my astonishment, my friend named Eugene Pureyear of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. And I suddenly understood! There really is no difference between Dems and Republicans if your primary goal is get rid of capitalism in all forms. I wanted to ask my friend (an executive at a video game company) whether his employers knew he wanted to abolish private ownership and turn the company into a worker’s collective, but I decided against it.
senyordave
Lesser of two evils. These people should try talking to older blacks (75+) who grew up in the south. My wife takes an exercise class on Saturdays (pre-Covid-19) and afterwards often chats with Anne, a black woman who is probably in her mid-70’s and grew up in a small town in NC. I thought I loathed Trump as much as anyone, but Anne has me beat by a mile. I actually did talk to her once about voting for the lesser of two evils. She said when her parents finally were able to vote, the choice for mayor was basically between the guy who was a klan leader or the guy who just belonged to the klan. That is truly the lesser of two evils, not Joe Biden (a decent man and a good public servant) or Donald Trump (a thief, a sexual predator, and a person who truly can be said to have blood on his hands).
And her parents instilled her the belief that voting is an obligation, and you take that obligation seriously. Because for them it could affect every facet of their lives. IMO many of the Stein voters really don’t care about the results because they think they will be just fine under Trump.
joel hanes
@Kay:
he listened to the whole spiel
My mom, stuck in the house with five kids in a ’60s small-town ranch-house neighborhood, used to invite in the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses that came to the door, just to have an adult to talk to for a while.
And that’s how I came to have a working familiarity with The Book Of Mormon and The Watchtower and AWAKE
MisterForkbeard
@Kropacetic: Nah. I think the closest thing might be a lot of hints that the process (and the democratic party) was corrupt, and a number of statements early on in the process that “If I’m defeated and I try to tell you who to vote for, don’t listen to me” that got waved around a lot by people who wanted to not vote for Hillary.
Bernie gets a lot of shit here that’s undeserved and this is one bit. But he also fucked up massively in 2016, both during the primary and wasn’t that helpful in the general either – and after the election he was consistently an asshole for a year or so.
Still woulda voted for him in the general if he was the nominee, but it informed a lot of my decision-making about him in 2020
@low-tech cyclist: I’ve actually done this. It doesn’t get you far. For example: People who are absolutely convinced that M4A is the only answer and its evil to oppose it aren’t swayed by the fact that Biden would make insurance cheaper, better, and get health care to a lot more people. The fact that he would keep private insurance is the dealbreaker. :/
You see similar interactions on police reform, the tax code, free-college, and other things. They’ve decided the minimal acceptable answer is the one Bernie put forward, which means that everything else is relatively evil. And reminding them that someone is ‘evil’ just makes them dig in their heels more.
MisterForkbeard
@The Pale Scot: I can’t decide whether this is really good or really stupid.
janesays
@clay:
Indeed. 99% of the country had no idea who Bernie Sanders was in 2000, and yet the “lesser of two evils” ethos is exactly what set the stage for a shrub to be appointed president by the Supreme Court.
Rand Careaga
Another lesson I took from the 1980 results was never underestimate the potential depravity of the American electorate. Here’s something I wrote to a friend early in 2016:
barbequebob
@Gin & Tonic: Guess they weren’t “safe blue” back then after all. But my point is that you never know how close the vote will be, so because I consider electing a Republican to be the least desirable outcome, voting for a Dem is the best way to minimize the chance of a Republican being elected. Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don’t.
germy
@janesays:
I kept getting him mixed up with Barney Frank for some reason.
And it wasn’t until Bernie started criticizing Democrats that the TV networks got interested in giving him airtime.
janesays
@Served:
There is a pretty wide chasm between “I wish Biden’s policy proposals were more progressive” and “Biden might not be as evil as Trump, but he’s still evil.”
I’ve got no gripe with expressing the former. The latter is highly problematic.
mrmoshpotato
Can someone explain to me why we let toddlers vote in this country? JFC, you god-damned fucking children!
Ex-fucking-actly!
Waaaaahhh!!!!! We want all change NOW! Fuck Obama for not doing everything in the first two years! Fuck Hillary for her speeches! Fuck Biden for…..well, we’ll find a reason! Saint Bernie would’ve beat them all! WWWWWAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Barry
“When do we get to stop picking the evil?”
“When you show up to vote every single goddamn time the polls open, my sweet summer children. (Obligatory note: Biden isn’t evil.) Sweet Jeebus, it’s frustrating to watch idealistic young people make the same dumb mistake over and over again. I guess 2016 must seem as distant as the American Revolution to them, and 2000 the Peloponnesian War.”
Your Ph.D. in Philosophy awaits you.
Geminid
@joel hanes: Carter was an engineer, and he governed too much as a technocrat. Deregulation was great in terms of economic theory but it hurt a lot of people and the benefits went to big business. And when Carter picked Volcker as Fed chairman, he surely wrung out inflation, but it hurt even more people and handed his presidency to Reagan.
The Moar You Know
@senyordave: Goddamn.
My first vote was Reagan v. Mondale in 1984. I always used to joke that election should have put me off voting forever.
Won’t make that joke ever again.
germy
Half the comments in this thread are criticizing young people for being overly idealistic, and the other half are confessions about voting third party in 1980.
mrmoshpotato
@janesays:
One of those statements is from an adult. The other is from a bratty child.
Gin & Tonic
@barbequebob: Here’s what’s funny. In 1980 Reagan won Massachusetts and Vermont but Carter won West Virginia.
Gravenstone
@The Moar You Know:
To counterpoint, one of my friends in HS ( we were all too young to vote in 1980) confidently declared some time in October that it would be Reagan. Maybe the view was different in rural and conservative NW Ohio than other areas that commenters here represented at the time.
Gretchen
I voted for Anderson, learned my lesson. At the time people were saying he’d get enough votes to throw it into the House, and since Anderson was in the House, he’d win that vote. Totally pie in the sky, but I was young and dumb.
Kent
As I recall, there was also a lot of “tweedle dum and tweedle dee” bullshit going on by the media in 2000, just dismissively tossing both candidates into the “useless idiots” pile and dismissing the differences between them. I found that more enraging than the “lesser of two evils” nonsense. The complete facile dismissal of a serious and thoughtful candidate.
MisterForkbeard
@senyordave:
We’re all sort of guilty of this. One of the things I’ll always be ashamed of was election night 2016 – my wife had literally just given birth to our 2nd child and I’d kept the election results from her until after we had our daughter. My wife was understandably shocked and appalled, and she instantly said “Well, the explains why the nursing staff was crying”.
I was comforting my wife and “We’ll be okay – we’ve got good insurance through our jobs, a large enough income that we’ll be positively affected by ridiculous tax reforms, and we’re white. We just have to hold on for 4 years.”
It wasn’t WRONG but I’ve always felt awful that my first instinct was to carve us out of the larger citizenry and say “We’ll be okay”.
Another Scott
@joel hanes: Good points.
And a good word that I don’t think I’ve seen before!
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/retcon-history-and-meaning
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@Kent:
And yet, people could see the damage that Reagan had caused as governor of California. They could see how many ordinary Americans he had fucked over.
There was nothing to suggest that Reagan would be better than Carter, and much to suggest that he would be worse.
The Moar You Know
@Kent: Hillary got beaten on for far longer but for sheer magnitude of spite, I still have never seen anything like the treatment the media dished out to Al Gore in 2000.
That he’s turned out to be pretty much right about everything just makes it worse in retrospect.
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: Here’s the thing that scared the shit out of me as a young teen: Reagan was cruel, his instinctive response to anything was to be mean, and he enjoyed cruelty. It was part of his “brand” (where have I seen this recently?) but unlike the current monster in the White House, Reagan could always keep the quiet parts quiet.
JoyceH
Just have to say that this bit: “Feel free to spin around three times and spit through your fingers to remove the jinx. ” reminds me of probably my favorite line from West Wing – “Go! Do you want to risk the wrath of whatever from high atop the thing?!”
Another Scott
@Rand Careaga: rofl.
:-)
Thanks.
The saving grace this time is that we have more Democrats in charge of elections at state levels (but need more!) so he won’t be able to pull the same crap this time and squeak out a win.
He’ll try other stuff, though, of course…
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
janesays
@JaneE: This.
Even if you buy into the absurd framing that Biden is a “lesser evil”, isn’t it by all objective standards preferable to have the least evil viable option win? Anyone living in reality knows that a presidential election in this country is always a binary choice. Doesn’t matter how many names are on the ballot, the winner is ALWAYS going to be one of the two names at the top. With that in mind, if you are interested in mitigating the spread of evil, why wouldn’t you choose the person who you view as less evil? You are clearly not going to vote for the person who you view as more evil, so your choice is basically: a) vote for the person who you view as the lesser evil; b) vote for some third party candidate who you know can’t and won’t win; c) don’t vote for anybody. The latter two choices immediately increase the odds that the person who you view as the greater evil will win the election. If the more evil person wins, you have directly aided in their victory by refusing to vote for the person who you considered less evil.
So… if you absolutely insist on characterizing Biden as the “lesser evil”, whatever. I’m not going to stop you, but I will push back on that bullshit when I hear it. But if you really care about reducing the amount of evil in the world, then you still have a moral obligation to vote for the less evil viable candidate. Because one of the two candidates you consider evil will win, and if you aren’t doing your part to make sure it’s the one who you view as less evil, then you are passively helping the one who you consider the greater evil, and you own that.
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know: Also unlike Trump, Reagan could at least *pretend* to be charming and genial and have some hope of carrying it off. Because even a B-movie actor is still enough of an actor to do that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@germy: I voted for Carter too.
...now I try to be amused
Trump reminds me of two things, both biological:
bemused
@joel hanes:
My father-in-law who passed away a few years ago at 94, would love to talk to Jehovah’s Witnesses. My mother-in-law would just sigh if he let them stay too long. He, a lifelong Democrat also loved to call in to the local rightwing radio talk shows and verbally joust with the host. Friends would tell us they heard him on the radio and get a big chuckle. Of course, that outed those friends as Republicans.
Miss Bianca
@janesays: y’know, I totally agree with you on this, and I’ve even tried to articulate some version of this philosophical stance – not well, necessarily, and certainly not as well as you just did – and just got a Nigel Tufnel-like blank stare and the equivalent of, “But this one goes to 11!” (“But…but…EVIL!! STILL EVIL!”) In other words…did.not.compute.
Doesn’t mean I won’t steal this post and recycle it on an appropriate occasion.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: Billy Beer!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Cameron: What fun is that?
Kay
@joel hanes:
Funny. He’s a good check point for me because he’s a “normie”. He doesn’t get into the weeds. I was going on and on about Elizabeth Warren to him and he finally said “I don’t know who she is”. Votes though- he even votes in local elections. He voted for Sanders in the ’16 primary but voted for Clinton. He’ll be doing the same here, except Biden. I’m sympathetic to BernieBros for a couple of reasons, one of which being it is really hard to lose and they lost. I know what that’s like.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Rand Careaga:
Yup, it didn’t help at all. I also saw Teddy before the CA primary at UCLA. I still have both my Kennedy ’80 and Carter/Mondale buttons.
zzyzx
I’m fine with people in their 20s who are idealistic in that way. It’s my friends who are in the 50s who are still “BIDEN IS JUST AS BAD!!!” that I don’t understand.
joel hanes
@Kay:
it is really hard to lose and they lost. I know what that’s like.
I too have been a Democrat for a long time.
Reagan’s second win in 1984 was a very bad night for me, but not as bad as 2000 or 2004, and was a fucking delight compared to election night 2016
James E Powell
@germy:
I was a volunteer for Carter. Worked on his events in Ohio, including a number of events around the debate in Cleveland.
There were a number of forces at work that undermined Carter’s presidency.
The post WWII economic era was coming to an end. Union leaders did not recognize this and blamed Carter for whatever was happening in their industries. The leader of the International Association of Machinists, William Winpisinger, was particularly hostile. He organized a walkout of delegates at the DNC to protest Carter’s nomination. Everyone remembers that Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, but usually fails to recall that PATCO hated Carter and endorsed Reagan.
The left of the Democratic Party and the Village hated Carter and attacked him before he was even inaugurated. He was elected as a challenge to “Washington” rather than challenge to the Republican policies of Nixon/Ford. The white backlash was rising and the base of the Democratic Party was disintegrating while the national leadership apparently believed that post-Watergate they were beginning a period of dominance. I have no other explanation for why Democrats attacked Carter. Kennedy was a constant problem. He & his organized a mid term convention solely to attack Carter. This was all before the Iranian hostages and the Great Inflation. It was all just too much. I doubt anyone could have survived the events of those years. There are many times I wish Ford had won in 1976.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
That dovetails into my feelings for RFK. I thought he would have been a better president than JFK. He was more progressive/liberal and I believe had a better idea of how to get things done in the real world.
Miss Bianca
@zzyzx: right?!
patroclus
I voted for Kennedy in the 1980 primary and Carter in the general election. I’m apparently in the minority on this thread. In my view (then and now), John Anderson was a terrible candidate and was nowhere near as liberal as his then-fawning press made him out to be. I was appalled by Reagan although in retrospect, he wasn’t nearly as bad as W or Trump. In 1968, I was too young to vote but would have been for Humphrey in the general and RFK in the primary. I wasn’t alive in 1948 but would have been for Truman over Wallace and Dewey. I suppose it’s possible that I would have voted for TR in 1912 over Wilson, but I doubt it. That said, I consider myself to be an Independent; not a Democrat.
Original Lee
@Kent: Very similar to my thought processes at the time. Plus the whole contracting out federal jobs thing. There were legit reasons for reforming the Civil Service, but turning so many GS-whatever positions over to contractors was not, and still is not, a good thing.
Mohagan
@MattF: I actually supported Humphrey (very quietly) at the time because NIXON. I had sympathy but no patience with all the people who hated him because of his kowtowing to LBJ about the war because NIXON. Humphrey actually was a good man historically and I believed if out from under LBJ’s shadow, he would do the right thing. Of course this was all theoretical because none of us were 21 yet (I was a Junior in HS in 1968). The first vote I actually ever cast was for George McGovern in the CA Dem primary in 1972.
Ruckus
@jl:
Real politics is sum of reality and possible against the sum of hate and greed. It’s all degrees of these. In a fair world reality and possible world win because people would understand that the hate and greed would eat them up, no matter which side they are on. What we are in today is hate and greed snuck in the back door. OK they did announce themselves but the sum of hate and greed was up by a razor thin line.
Geminid
@patroclus: Anderson ran in the Republican primaries and was consistently beaten in the primaries. But he got really good coverage by the press and adulation from the idealistic (or the naive) and it went to his head. I thought his campaign as an independent was an ego trip. This thread has turned into quite a trip down memory lane, and I’ve enjoyed it. But I’m guessing it’s back to the 21st century in the new thread. I almost don’t want to go.
J R in WV
@jonas:
Well, you would be wrong~!!~ Because the postal service is already defunded as of September if nothing is done before they crash and burn, thanks, as you say, to the Republican party, who are prepared to steal the giant pension fund they required the Postal Service to fund over the past few years.
No public mail service, billion of dollars to steal, a perfect storm of Trumpian Republican Fascism.
Morzer
When you stop thinking in cliches and grow up enough to be embarrassed by your own triviality.
Geminid
@Mohagan: I reread Theodore White’s The Making of a President: 1968 a couple years ago. What struck me was how, despite the chaotic convention and almost no money, Humphrey almost pulled off a Truman-like victory. He’d been written off, but by the end of October Humphrey was closing in on Nixon, and with a few more days might have pulled ahead, according to White.
J R in WV
@Gin & Tonic:
And in 1980 I voted for Carter, here in W Va. Did little good, but still couldn’t have imagined the evil coming from Reagan, GHW Bush, Shrub, Trump. What a murder’s row that is !!!!
cckids
Very true. It would be excellent if the listening went both ways. I’m very tired of hearing so very many concerns about Biden, coupled with a determined refusal to acknowledge that Bernie had at least as many negative issues. When I point out that, you know, Biden got more votes, and those people’s opinions count as well, I get the tired, false “the DNC rigged it, they just chose him” bit.
different-church-lady
From the moment we all realized the horror of a Trump presidency was going to be real, there were only two ways this was going to break: either he was going to become Adolf Hitler, or he was going to turn into Larry Rhodes. And thank fucking god it finally looks like it’s going to be the latter.
Kropacetic
@cckids: For a while I had convinced myself if either Bernie or Biden or Bloomberg got the nod, I would decamp to the woods until either a bear or the environmental police cut my time there short.
SiubhanDuinne
@joel hanes:
I fear the thread is long dead, but I feel compelled to point out that the national 55-mph speed limit was enacted in early 1974, under Nixon, nearly three years before Carter was inaugurated.
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: Yep, and remember the “Bring ‘Em Back Alive!” campaign? Pretty sure that had something to do with the “Drive 55” push.
joel hanes
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks for the correction. Always glad for an opportunity to learn to be a little less wrong.
SFBayAreaGal
@germy: I voted for Carter twice. I saw what Reagan was going to do to this country.
Galahad Threepwood
Good Lord, “lesser of two evils”? If you want Trump out, then you vote for fucking Biden. Simple as. Anything else, however pure and noble you feel about it, is a vote for Trump.
It seriously makes me ill to know that there are still people who think like this in 2020. Young, idealistic, noble, and hopelessly fucking naive.
KS in MA
@NCSteve: Well said.
Tim Ellis
I dunno… I’ve been voting every election since 2000, but the world’s still on fire, my friends still don’t have healthcare, and not a single banker from 2008 has gone to prison.
I work my ass off to elect Democrats (it’s literally my job) but I absolutely get what the kids are saying and often feel the same. Its our future that keeps getting deferred and sold off.
Still gonna elect the guy.
No One You Know
@Miss Bianca: Validating vanity ifs as far as I’ll go. And that’s what I’ll validate. I think the anxiety to be seen and heard and be different drives young extremists to abandon perspective. There’s not enough life experience, let alone multifaceted strategy, to appreciate how extremism sets up future instability.