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Botond173
11hr ago
I'd guess he feels Dems are more comfortable supporting Pol Pot rather than Bin Laden.
...indeed; which is precisely the reason for my question.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
In what way are the multiple interpretations of Obama different than the multiple interpretations of Trump? It was a pretty similar phenomenon.
Obama said Gay Marriage couldn't work because when a man and a woman get married "God is in the mix." Dan Savage told me, a faithful reader of his column in the back of The Onion, that Obama didn't really mean it, he was just saying that to get elected. We should vote for Obama to advance Gay Rights. Trump waves a pride flag and has famous trans friends. Evangelicals tell me he doesn't really mean it, he was just saying that to get elected. We should vote for Trump to roll back the Gay Agenda.
Obama said he was going to end wars. He didn't really mean it. Trump said he was going to end wars. He didn't really mean it.
Obama talked a lot of trash about corporations. He didn't really mean it, unless they broke woke taboos. Trump talks a lot of trash about corporations. He didn't really mean it, unless they annoy him personally.
Obama and Trump both had cults of personality in which what they said was what their fans believed, regardless of any past statements.
Rosencrantz2
11hr ago
I suppose they were just hail marying their last and only hope of stopping Trump 2 though. You can easily see she wasn't regarded as a great candidate before she was anointed.
JTarrou
12hr ago
The answer is as simple as it is impossible for the current left to even fake.
They have to value real, actual masculinity.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
12hr ago
Only until the time comes to denounce the whites.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
12hr ago
Jews are white.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
12hr ago
Even if Harris was a bad candidate, the blunder wasn't choosing her - it was allowing Biden to stay in the race for so long that there wasn't time to run a primary campaign and unite the party around a better candidate. At the point where Biden drops out, Harris is the least bad option.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
12hr ago
I think "good" or "great" is asking the wrong question. The emotions Democrats and friends were feeling in summer 2024 was driven by "Much better than 2024-vintage Biden" and, to a lesser extent "Much better than Hilary Clinton". Also the campaign was basically competent (as demonstrated by the Dems doing better in swing states where there was a lot of campaigning than they did in deep red or blue states where there wasn't), which was a pleasant surprise.
There are basically two Kamala-sympathetic stories about 2024:
- The Democrats lost the election on the state of the economy, and Harris did surprisingly well to keep the election close. People who support this view like to compare the Democrats' performance in 2024 to other incumbent parties in rich democracies, who mostly lost by landslides.
- 2024-vintage Kamala was an okay (not great - nobody ever thought she was great as far as I can see) candidate but the 2020 primary campaign had been so crazy that she had "had" to say a bunch of discrediting stuff that she didn't manage to run away from, with free sex changes for trans illegal immigrant criminals the headliner.
The result of a close election is almost always multi-causal, but I think the economic competence story holds together best. 2024 wasn't a base mobilisation election - both campaigns got their respective bases out and were always going to. The election was decided by swing voters. And when people spoke to swing voters what they heard was "The prices are too #!@# high and the Democrats don't seem to care." There were some obvious-in-hindsight unforced errors by the Biden administration which made the prices higher than they needed to be - the too-big stimulus in 2021 and the big infrastructure bill which spent a lot of money without building any infrastructure.
I also don't think that column is likely to be motivating outside a small, highly atypical tribe of politics-obsessed weirdos.
I always wonder about that kind of thing. It's certainly why I decided to kick the bastard out of my life. I've heard the same from others. But I'd never risk talking about it.
Who can know? Preference is adversarial, I suppose.
quiet_NaN
13hr ago
I do believe that Joe earnestly tried to subvert and destroy the country.
The same thing we do every night, Kamala: trying to destroy America.
I think it highly implausible that Biden was trying to destroy the USA. If his goal was to turn the US into a failed state, he did a rather terrible job. And why would he want that?
Different people have different visions for their country. Some want a capitalist heaven, or a commie utopia. Some want to support Israel, some want to support Israel a lot. Some want universal healthcare, some want Roe overturned. Some want do get rid of background checks, some want the 2A reinterpreted so it does not apply to any firearm innovations made after it came into force. Some want to turn a blind eye to illegal migration, some want to deport every last illegal (except for the ones which keep the economy running). Some want to bomb country A, others want to bomb country B.
From where I stand, the general course of US politics has been pretty consistent from Clinton to Biden. There were always big donors whose interests got special consideration beyond the interests of the American people, mud-slinging during campaign season, use of office to get a political advantage over the opposition, from photo ops to politically motivated investigations, bombing of random places. Both Trump 1 and Biden were particularly uninspired, but for the most part it was just business as usual.
quiet_NaN
13hr ago
The peaceful transfer of power is one of the greatest selling points of democracy. Trump trying to mess with that was by far the worst thing he did in his first term.
Crucially, he did not get convicted because the court system (the SC in particular) stopped it, despite the wishes of the Biden administration. Trump getting convicted would in my mind not conclusively prove a kangaroo court, but him getting immunity proves reasonably well that the courts (or at least the SC) are independent of the political Zeitgeist.
aaa
14hr ago
The Democrats lost young men to the party of, “hold still for your mugshot before you watch Riley Reid take her clothes off.”
Defending porn would actually be a good issue for Democrats to take up if they had any hope to be credible about it. The problem is that there's too much history of feminists attacking porn (don't bring up sex positive feminists, the difference between them is that sex negatives are against making porn and sex positives are against men watching porn), too much history (10 years plus) of left wingers agitating against busty women in videogames and too much history of democrats loving heavy handed content moderation.
Pornhub lost mastercard and visa in 2020 due to an article written by a journalist who wanted to use that as a springboard for his gubernatorial run, as a democrat.
2rafa
14hr ago
Even if Obama could run for a third term he would just end up becomming as insufferable as Harris.
I am absolutely convinced that Obama would win a third term if he was able to run. Polling reflects that as far as I know, by a substantial margin. Not only is he uniquely good for black turnout but he could run on a unity message to appeal to enough suburban whites, and he wouldn’t need that many, to win.
Obama’s almost unique strength was that he could be a lot of things to a lot of people in a different way than a ‘classical’ superstar politician - like Margaret Thatcher or Donald Trump - can. The latter have different audiences who interpret their personalities and political identities in different ways, but their actual brands were relatively consistent.
Obama actually didn’t have a consistent brand. He meticulously (perhaps as a consequence of his own unusual and fractured identity) cultivated multiple distinct personalities. Obama the hero for millennials, the reformer, the “change” candidate against tired old Hillary and McCain, the candidates of the financial crisis and the Iraq war. Obama the devout Black Christian initially skeptical of gay marriage who, unlike so many other successful black men, married a (dark skin) black woman, had a beautiful family, put on that slight southern accent with more than a hint of AAVE when speaking to black churches in Georgia and Alabama. Obama the technocrat, the Yale lawyer, the internationalist, the son of a diplomat, who hired all the bright young things out of Harvard and Georgetown and governed a cabinet of experts, the European Obama.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14hr ago
Fine, let's say I overstated. How many pro-Democrat posters can you find that called her a "blunder"?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
14hr ago
I think you're presenting a fringe opinion (on the motte, not in the States as a whole) as a consensus, or at least a major fraction.
Ok, hold on, this is likely poor communication on my part. I didn't mean to say or imply that, because the majority of people here rooted for the other side. I mean of the people who rooted for the Democrats, the majority thought Kamala was pretty good. Maybe "great" was an overstatent, but even that is a far better portrayal of the sentiment than "blunder".
ThisIsSin
PC is for progressive-conservative
14hr ago
The whole point of the article, weak as it is, is that
conservativesreformers are also alienating young men…but not via idpol. Their leadership is every bit as geriatric and their flagship policy is more interesting to blue-collar boomers than to 20-somethings. And, of course, there’s the economy, which just sort of shambles along.
Which is logical, because geriatric blue-collar boomers currently hold the balance of power in the US.
If you fail to get them on side or otherwise demoralize them (perhaps if an external threat is trumped up), reform just straight up loses- that's what happened in 2020 in the US. A similar dynamic contributed significantly to (if not the main reason for) a reform defeat in Canada a few months ago- just appealing to future generations' interests is not sufficient.
Trump manages to thread this needle in a way other politicians are unable; of course, being associated with blue-collar workers and the way they function and think, and having been embedded into their consciousness in the early '00s, is a massive advantage in this regard.
TowardsPanna
14hr ago
Meaning...? They secretly support the violent fringe?
SkoomaDentist
The Greater Finnish Empire
14hr ago
Even Ulyssessword came up with several as he was disproving me.
You and I clearly have a very different idea for what counts as "great". Those are the most lukewarm "great" takes I've seen in a long while.
ulyssessword
14hr ago
I remember Netstack's top level comment how the vibe shift even affected his parents.
And that wasn't about how great she is. It's about how great other people find her (and yes, how she brought the vibe shift). There were a couple real examples downthread from that, but the overall sentiment in that thread is still negative.
I think you're presenting a fringe opinion (on the motte, not in the States as a whole) as a consensus, or at least a major fraction. The threads I saw were overall negative on Harris, though some comments did contain more equivocation than I remembered.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
14hr ago
I don't think it's a good idea to chuck people into volcanoes because they didn't have PTSD when you thought it appropriate.
Certainly, a serial killer who targets children, he gets loaded into the trebuchet. But there are multiple ways to the same outcome of "not an unjustified killer of children", and "can do correct ethical reasoning when it matters" works as well as "has an innate aversion".
(I get nervous about this kind of thinking, because I've seen people call for me to get loaded into the metaphorical trebuchet over certain psychological blocks I don't have.)
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
15hr ago
Please explain.
OliveTapenade
15hr ago
I am not convinced that right-wingers responding to Klein are today are thinking about, or even necessarily aware of, a Vox column he wrote eleven years ago. I agree that the position in that column is, at best, completely daft, but I also don't think that column is likely to be motivating outside a small, highly atypical tribe of politics-obsessed weirdos. My guess is that @crushedoranges is more correct - it's not this or that column from over a decade ago, it's the way that Klein in general, in his politics and more importantly in his whole affect, symbolises a type of holier-than-thou policy wonk who calmly explains why you're wrong about everything, why your values suck, and why it all needs to be bulldozed.
That would make it very hard for them to take him seriously when he says, "Seriously, we do need to moderate and focus on practical outcomes that will benefit every American". They already think he's a liar.
Pigeon
coo coo
15hr ago
euthanasia trucks
Why is this something that "no one seriously thinks happened"?
I mean, this happens to this day.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
15hr ago
I will register for the record, as a principled libertarian, that I am not sure whether his driving was, in actual fact, "reckless". It is possible to drive safely at that speed, if you are in an appropriate car, are driving in appropriate conditions, and are an appropriately-skilled driver highly familiar with your car.
Of course, I don't have enough information to judge if this guy was the right person with the right equipment under the right conditions, and if he wasn't then that's indeed pretty reckless.
It was basically a Reginald Denny situation.
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