Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

This really is a full service blog.

Good luck with your asparagus.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Wetsuit optional.

Reality always wins in the end.

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

The math demands it!

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

The willow is too close to the house.

This is a big f—–g deal.

I personally stopped the public option…

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

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Excellent Links

Excellent Read(s): “Joe Biden’s Long Wait Is Over”

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A delightful backgrounder for last night:

WILMINGTON, Delaware — About five hours before polls closed on Election Day, 21 empty pickup trucks appeared in the parking lot of the Chase Center, sitting in two careful rows facing the stage where Joe Biden was supposed to address the nation in a victory speech later that evening.

The fleet of Jeep Gladiators and Jeep Wranglers, along with some Ford Rangers and Chevy Silverados, had been arranged in alternating colors of red, white, and blue, all with open backs or sunroofs, and hoods stamped with BIDEN–HARRIS decals. They were reserved for the family and friends who would be arriving with Biden to his socially distanced “drive-in” rally — the proverbial front row in a sea of other cars. Sitting opposite a freshly installed panel of bulletproof glass, US Secret Service protection befitting a president-elect, they had the clean and perfect look of new rental cars, windows darkened, paint gleaming in the sun. In the style of a tailgate, aides had placed a pair of blue folding chairs in the back of each truck.

By 11 p.m., it was clear there wouldn’t be a final result that night. Light-up foam batons, stamped with the campaign logo for guests in the parking lot, never got distributed. After midnight, when Biden finally did arrive, his motorcade sped into the parking lot of the adjacent Westin hotel, and his party took their seats in the Jeeps: There was his brother Jimmy Biden, Jill Biden’s sisters, and the former vice president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, watching from the roof of a Jeep. They had waited a long time for this night. Around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday, they finally got to see him take the stage, only to say “we’re going to have to be patient” and “keep the faith.” After three minutes, Biden waved goodbye, and headed home…

Throughout the week, his campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon hosted daily Zoom briefings, laying out projections for the outstanding vote. On Thursday, Biden published a transition website, saying he was dedicated to preparing for his possible administration and would “continue preparing at full speed.” That afternoon, he and Harris attended briefings on the economy and the coronavirus pandemic, which is deep in a deadly third wave that has brought the total number of American deaths to more than 236,000. On Friday, Biden aides believed they would finally get their call, going public with plans for a victory party, broadcast live on primetime television. The networks held off, and once again, Biden passed the stage, empty and waiting, to address reporters inside the Chase Center.

“As slow as it goes, it can be numbing,” he said of watching the numbers come in on TV. “But never forget: The tallies aren’t just numbers. They represent votes and voters, men and women who exercise the fundamental right to have their voice heard.”…

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… As the country waited for ballots to be counted, it was Biden — not the occupant of the Oval Office — who was reassuring people that this democracy was intact, that the system was working and that the center would hold. He was the voice of calm optimism in the midst of tumultuous times.

When he became president-elect late Saturday morning, he did something far more herculean than accepting responsibility for a worsening pandemic and a struggling economy. He removed a terrible, suffocating weight from the back of this nation. For the more than 74 million Americans who voted for him — and surely even for some of those who did not — Biden’s election allowed this country to laugh, to dance and to breathe. He cracked open a space where the light could shine through. Indeed, his victory caused people to weep in joyful relief as they became aware of the heaviness that had afflicted their hearts, after they’d suddenly been relieved of it…

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Excellent Read(s): “Joe Biden’s Long Wait Is Over”Post + Comments (156)

Election Watch Open Thread: Examining the Mechanics, with the AP

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If you want to look at election stories that are actually informative, the Associated Press has been doing this job for quite a long time, and they’re very professional. From Esquire:

… The Associated Press has called U.S. elections since 1848, when it used a new technology, the telegraph, to declare Zachary Taylor the next president of the United States. In our lifetime, Election Day has pretty much gone like this: visit your local polling place, vote, flip on the TV around prime time, and watch the returns come in. By the time you go to bed, the media has declared a winner. While cable networks have their own teams of experts who compile data and project winners, they rely on the AP’s reporting and data to cross-reference their work. And the AP supplies results to its subscribers, including The New York Times, Google, and myriad local newspapers. The general consensus is if the AP declares a winner, it must be true…

So, how is the Associated Press planning to call a winner in this historic election, to ensure it gets this one right despite the unprecedented hurdles, because getting it wrong could spill the country into chaos?…

The AP’s election-coverage operation is massive and complex, but here’s the simplest way to describe how it calls elections. An editorial team consisting of reporters, editors, and photographers produces stories about Election Day. A team of sixty analysts interprets data coming in from each state to declare winners in about seven thousand elections, from the White House to local races. And “a bridge” of editors, according to [Washington bureau chief] Pace, connects these two sides; she’s part of that team.

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Open Thread: Minor Campaign Diversions

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I Remember When She Was Just a Wee Lass

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Look who is going to be on TDS tonight:

They grow up so fast.

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For Your Reading Pleasure: President Obama Campaigns for Joe Biden

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Due credit from a master — “President Obama Has Set Up Light Housekeeping in Donald Trump’s Cerebellum”:

… We all know Inspirational Obama, and Devotional Obama, and Better Angels Obama, but Snarkmaster Obama is having a ball out there setting up light housekeeping in the president*’s cerebellum. If you’re going to shoot the dozens with this guy, bring your A-game. On Tuesday, he was in Orlando, and he took El Caudillo Del Mar-a-Lago downtown…

The obvious joy Obama is taking in trolling the president* makes these appearances appointment television, especially in a country subjected to two or three of the White House wankfests a day. It is excellent TV, and nobody knows that better than our favorite reality-TV president*…

Meanwhile, his predecessor shows every intention of cracking wise at his expense throughout the last week of the campaign. This, of course, violates the first rule of The Ex-Presidents Club: Thou shalt not harsh thy successor’s mellow. And one more traditional norm goes into the woodchipper. But hey, the current president* spent four years trying to erase the Obama presidency from the statute books and from the country’s historical memory. Obama is getting his own back magnificently and, hell, we all deserve a laugh.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: One More Week

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This is lovely and good — Monica Hesse on “Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and the politics of unconditional love”:

… It’s not hard to imagine what the president thought he was doing when he first dredged up Hunter’s drug use and stilted military career: that Joe Biden would be embarrassed of his son. And maybe that voters would think less of them as a family. Trump’s older brother, Fred, died of alcoholism in 1981. Friends of the family told The Washington Post last year that it was like “a dark family secret,” causing “shame” for the Trump family, for whom — as Fred Trump’s daughter, Mary, later put it — “weakness was the greatest sin.”

How strange for the president, then, to lay out all of Hunter Biden’s embarrassing failings, and to have Joe Biden’s response be: “I’m proud of him.”…

Is the goal of fatherhood to shape your offspring in your own image — the path you feel is worthiest and best — and to require respect and devotion? Or is the goal to love your son even in his lowest moments, to redefine your expectations, to take on the heavy load of unconditional parenting, even when it’s a lopsided deal?

It’s no stroke of brilliance to point out that these two philosophies mirror the relationship the two politicians have with the country. Trump, a man who loves America only if it is nice to him and loves him to his exacting specifications: “It’s a two-way street; they have to treat us well, also,” he said in March, hanging the promise of federal coronavirus relief on whether blue-state governors were appropriately deferential.

Biden, a man who loves America even though it’s sometimes self-destructive. Even though it’s beaten down, embittered, spiritually adrift, wild with anxiety. “I’m running as a proud Democrat, but I’m gonna be an American president,” he said at Thursday’s debate. “I don’t see red states and blue states. What I see is American United States. And folks, every single state out there finds themselves in trouble.”

After the first debate, several voters cited Biden’s openhearted defense of Hunter as a standout moment in the debate. It spoke to them as parents, who knew the pride and heartache of watching their children suffer and struggle through a challenge. I wonder if it also spoke to them as children, careening toward the end of 2020, longing for a reassuring presence to say they were going to make it — they had struggled, but they were all, every one of them, worthy of love.

Hunter Biden might not be the son America dreams of having. Joe Biden might be the dad.

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Open Thread: Empty Chairs

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Trigger warning: I’m fairly hardboiled, but this one got to me…

Since both my and the Spousal Unit’s natal families are widely scattered, our Big Annual Holiday Gathering for the last forty years or so has been a ‘hobbit bloat’ where the friends we made at Tolkien Fellowship / SCA / SF Society college clubs would get together, alternately in the Hoboken and Boston areas. That’s not happening this year, of course. And even though I didn’t always appreciate the sometimes forced cameraderie, it’s making me a little sad now, which puts me in the same place as… well, most of us.

From Joel Achenbach at the Washington Post, “As holidays near, the coronavirus is spreading rapidly, putting families in a quandary about celebrations and travel”:

Barbara Alexander’s Christmas tradition is to drive 2½ hours to the 40-acre farm her parents bought seven decades ago in southeastern North Carolina. It’s a big affair: 35 family members arrive by Christmas Eve.

This year, she is thinking: wait till next year. She’ll stay home in Durham, N.C., with her husband, teenage son and 96-year-old mother, Marble Dudley. As a physician and the president-elect of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, Alexander is fully aware of the risks of holiday gatherings in the middle of a pandemic and the vulnerability of her nonagenarian mother.

“Covid doesn’t care that it’s a holiday, and unfortunately covid is on the rise across the nation,” she said. “Now is not the time to let our guard down and say it’s the holiday and let’s be merry. I think we need to maintain our vigilance here.”…

The government’s top doctors have said they believe the recent national spike in infections has largely been driven by household transmission. Superspreader events have gotten a lot of attention, but it’s the prosaic meals with family and friends that are driving up caseloads.

This trend presents people with difficult individual choices — and those choices carry societal consequences. Epidemiologists look at the broad effect of a contagion, not simply the effects on individuals. Thanksgiving, for example, is an extremely busy travel period in America. The coronavirus exploits travelers to spread in places where it has been sparse or absent.

“I am nervous about Thanksgiving,” said Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Irvine. “I’m nervous because I know what happens when you multiply the risks by millions of households.”

The scientists are not telling people to cancel their holiday plans, necessarily. But they are urging people to think of alternative ways to celebrate. They do not say it explicitly, but they are encouraging a kind of rationing of togetherness…

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