Democrats need to:
1. Not engage in self-flagellation about attaining moral perfection while ignoring Trump, Trumpist accommodationists, and accompanying sycophants dismantling the entire legal system that has until recently regulated corruption and conflicts of interest;
2. Not repeat false flag information, misinformation, disinformation, and wildly out of proportion and irrelevant propaganda put out by Putin, his Russian bots, and his stooges in the White House; and
3. Focus on the emergency at hand: a wannabe dictator with zero respect for the rule of law, democracy, and our troops, who is staging the gradual destruction of our constitutional system of governance.
That’s what Democrats need to do.
Who should be the nominee is a completely legitimate point of natural disagreement and competition in the primary.
I personally will support whatever Democratic candidate gets the nomination, unless it’s Tulsi Gabbard, who has a very strange tendency to accommodate Trump’s bizarre affinity for Putin.
It’s about time we, including on this blog, stop giving equal weight to truth and false-flag propaganda.,
Trump repeatedly attacks Biden as “corrupt” because that’s what all wannabe fascist dictators do — just keep repeating the same lie over and over again to distract an apathetic, tranquilized population from your own corruption.
I watched MSNBC last night as well — I understand Rachel Maddow’s point. I sort-of agree — it is certainly true that the GOP has completely killed the phrase “fake news”, and we are all the more vulnerable to a repeat in 2020 because of that.
At the same time, the plain fact is that if Hunter Biden had not taken that no-show job with Burisma at a sweet $50K/month — or the similar deal with China — this whole episode would be different.
I’m not defending anybody in Donald Trump’s orbit. I’m saying that whatever Donald Trump and Trumpists do, Vice President Joe Biden should have recused himself from anything involving the Ukraine once Hunter Biden did his deal. What Mr., Biden did instead was perpetuate an obvious conflict of interest.
Speaking of Rachel Maddow’s show last night, one of her featured guests was Michael Carpenter. In his segment, he gave a spirited argument about why all of the criticism of Joe Biden was nonsense.
Ms. Maddow did say, several times, that he was a affiliated with the Penn Biden center. What she could have and should have been MUCH more clear about is that he is a DIRECTOR of the Penn Biden center, and the Penn Biden center was created by Joe Biden.
That is a significant omission. It frankly makes the entire situation seem even more corrupt. It leaves me with the impression that not only did Joe Biden fail to do the right thing while VP, but also that Rachel Maddow is little different from any of the talking heads on Fox News.
If Rachel Maddow is going to devote a piece to showing that there is absolutely no substance at all to the criticisms of Joe Biden then she should find a guest whose livelihood literally depends on him defending Joe Biden. It really isn’t any different from Sean Hannity bringing on Kellyanne Conway to assure us that there’s no substance to any of the allegations against Donald Trump. It’s plain old propaganda, not news.
I have higher standards for Democrats, and I have higher standards for journalists. If that makes me a “purist”, so be it.,
Another related point is that while what Hunter Biden and Mitch McConnell have done with their foreign business partners is perfectly legal, it really shouldn’t be. This doesn’t change the fact that was Trump did is presently illegal and unconstitutional and grounds for his removal from office. It is, but he thrives when he can insulate his flaws by pointing out the flaws of others. I think we can best avoid that by picking a candidate without Biden’s flaws, and we have many alternatives to choose from this cycle.
You guys really beat this purity horse.
I think all of us have enough capacity to know that Trump is awful and corrupt and dangerous and all the rest while also thinking that Biden is mediocre and the stuff with his son stinks to high hell.
Here’s the problem. Some of us think we can just remove this guy and the problem is solved. But it doesn’t solve the real problems. Unless we dismantle the structures and circles that enable people like Trump, we’re going to have another Trump, except one who is probably a lot smarter and more effective. I’m not sure if any candidate for President can accomplish these changes, but at least two are moving in that direction and trying to build and nurture alternative sources of power to really solve our true problems. Biden, on the other hand, thinks we can just stop this one thing and it will all go back to normal. Dude actually thinks McConnell is going to a reasonable and helpful guy once Trump is out!
It’s depressing seeing the brouhaha with Ellen Degeneres this week about how she is friends with George W. The same guy that ruined the economy, let a city drown, and lied to get us into a war that killed a million people. But now he’s a good guy! Remember what we used to say about Bush? It’s pretty close to what you’ve written above about Trump.
We’re going to be doing the same thing with Trump as we’ve done with Bush in a few years when the next worst one comes along unless we make some real changes. And if getting those changes takes some “purity,” we should be all for it.
How is this materially different from the Hillary campaign which failed to win the Electoral College?
This does nothing about the real palpable sense of cultural and personal failure that accompanied deindustrialization and job less. For those that dismiss that as a white issue, I’d be remiss to remind you that black males lost those jobs first and in far larger numbers. We have several failed cities and failed states throughout the country, and gentrification alone is not enough to fix them.
We have a housing, education, and healthcare affordability crisis matched to flat lined wages. I think our nominee needs to have real plans that fix those problems, not run on a status quo that isn’t working and helped elect Trump.
I have a lot of real issues with Jeremy Corbyn, but I do give Labour credit for going beyond Brexit to diagnose the actual root cause of the mass discontent and xenophobia that led to it in the first place. Mainly the bipartisan austerity and privatization agenda of the two parties prior to Brexit. Now they are a party for the many, not the few. The Democrats should be the same thing.
Similarly, if Democrats are running on the same free trade and open borders playbook that Paul Ryan and Hillary Clinton failed to win with-its time to run on something else. The DC consensus on deficits, trade. entitlements, and borders was wrong. This is the swamp people elected Trump to drain.
We can run on human rights for immigrants and a compassionate approach to immigration reform if we pair it with higher wages, better jobs, and better health care for the native born. Otherwise, we look like the same old politicians who bailed out Wall Street while Main Street was underwater.
Absolutely, and only two candidates are running with plans to deal with those issues (plus a third who has identified them but also thrown his hands up and just wants to pay people to reduce their coming pain). I think one (Sanders) is better at attacking the problems and building a diverse base of long-term power, and the other (Warren) would be a better manager over the next few years.
Both, individually, represent a course change, and together could be a transformational force.
But yeah, I’ll keep going after Biden until it’s truly a race only between him and a Republican. Until then, I think he, and the politics he represents, needs to be soundly defeated.
PLEASE do not concede the swamp imagery – DC before Trump was a freshwater spring compared to what Trump turned it into!
Tell that to the voters in Rockland who still say Trump is doing good on the economy and shaking things up.
Now that article is somewhat critical of my candidate as the out of touch Harvard elitist who cannot win over places like Rockland, let alone, Macomb County Michigan. It’s why she’s taken great pains of late to emphasize her stage school education and early job as a teacher. These cultural markers matter.
People want somebody tough and outside the system. It’s hard for me to see Biden being able to play that up. Most ordinary people don’t have Vice Presidents as fathers to make (perfectly legal) business connections off of.
Those Rockland supporters of Donald Trump are not going to vote for ANY Democratic candidate no matter who the candidate is or what they say.
I can guess what the “man at Uptown’s Finest Barbershop” had to say about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry, or Bill Clinton.
I don’t think that 49-year old white male high school graduate who is either ignorant, dishonest, or both is going to vote for ANY Democratic nominee. He asserts that Ms. Warren will tax him, in the face of all the facts. He drives a car with an NRA sticker on its windshield. Is he going to vote for Joe Biden? Bernie Sanders? I don’t think so. It’s best to wish that voter goodbye and good luck and move on to the next.
The article you cite offers this explanation for the anti-Warren sentiment of Rockland:
The conclusion of that piece is also worth quoting here (emphasis mine):
I note that Rockland supported Barack Obama, 4,526 to 3,989, in 2012. Rockland also supported Hillary Clinton 4,403 to 4,313 in 2016.
I assert, once again, that trying to change the votes of the segment you’re talking about is a fool’s errand.
It is far easier, and therefore better, to overwhelm those votes with newly registered voters and with turnout from supporters.
I think we can do both/and. I definitely agree these folks are not more likely to vote for Biden, chasing that fallacy is a fools errand. I think if we focus on economics and get more of those union blue collar types who love Liz to show up in her campaign and her ads, we have a real shot. I think she’s great in Town Halls. It’s about cutting through that noise and emphasizing her heartland roots and Harry Truman style populist spirit of taking on the big corporations. People will want that.
It’s about cutting the gap in wwc support for the GOP from 2016 35% to 2020 15%. I think Hillary, like Biden, is emphasizing stability and status quo restoration. I think it’s a losing strategy. We need big structural change packaged in a way that low educated, non-culturally progressive voters can understand.
He’s shaking things up all right, but in a horrible way. He got lucky on the economy, but that nowhere near makes up for the bullying, lawbreaking, ally-shunning, definitely not making America great again actions.
I don’t disagree with that diagnosis but it smacks of the tone deaf ‘America is already Great’ approach. That we swap out blatant lawlessness and sheer incompetence for a system that bailed out bankers and left ordinary people hanging out to dry. Warren and Sanders have diagnosed the real villains-it’s not Trump-it’s the rigged system where somebody like Trump gets to inherit money, invest it poorly, get bailed out, and rinse and repeat.
Trump isn’t alone, he is right when he said everyone at that level plays by those rules. Those rules are wrong. That system needs to be destroyed. We need to get all the money changers out of the temple of our democracy. We need to hire American, make American, and take care of each other again. We need to integrate America. Not with the warped white nationalism of the far right or the anti-pluralism of the woke left, but with genuine solidarity for one another.
I like Warren cause shes the first Roosevelt Democrat to come around in a long time. Someone who recognizes the virtues as well as the vices of capitalism, and seeks to enable the former and restrain the latter.
Bush is a much better person than Trump – no room for discussion there.
1 million dead Iraqis might disagree.
I don’t care if Bush is a nicer man than Trump. The destruction he and his administration brought in this country and around the world should never be forgiven. The mindset that if someone is better than Trump, they are somehow good or on “our side” is insane. It’s been one of the most infuriating and disappointing things about the past few years. Some of the worst people to ever have power in our country are now our buddies because they don’t like Trump. Everyone, even %&*$ing Dick Cheney have been rehabilitated. Even people in the Trump WH have been rehabilitated. Spicer is on a major TV show. That piece of sh*t should be afraid to go out in public.
We had Nixon, and Reagan, and W, and now Trump, unless we really make changes (upending elite power dynamics and holding people accountable for their actions), the next one is going to be even worse.
But sure, let’s keep thinking he’s a complete aberration.
That’s like saying that John Dillinger was a much better person than Al Capone.
George W. Bush is an unprosecuted war criminal who ordered policies of kidnapping, rape, beating, torture, and murder from the Oval Office.
Bush and Trump are two clowns in the same GOP circus.
Would we have a climate denying, jingoistic, religious right kowtowing, feelings over facts political culture without Bush? I doubt it. All the seeds for Trumpism were planted by that presidency.
We Democrats took a majority in the House in the 2006 election. The evidence of crimes against humanity committed by George W. Bush and Richard Cheney was compelling. Huge, largely secret, no-bid contracts were issued to Halliburton — the family business of Mr. Cheney prior to his stint as Vice President. Similar sweetheart deals were given to Blackwater, another mercenary trafficker in violence.
Our new majority, led by newly-elected Speaker Nancy Pelosi, did absolutely nothing about any of this. The Washington Post reported in 2007 that Nancy Pelosi, along with other members of the House, was briefed by the CIA and even given a tour of its waterboarding facility in 2002 (emphasis mine):
Nancy Pelosi had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the current fight, and it remains to be seen whether she actually wants to pursue it. Her history in these matters does not give me confidence.
It is certainly true that the “seeds for Trumpism were planted by that presidency”. It is also true that those seeds were watered and fertilized by Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats of 2007-2008.
We cannot correctly navigate our future if we do not admit our past.
I did not grab the remote as fast as I could to change the channel when W came on, and still saw it as almost a civic duty to watch his SOTUs whereas I avoid Trump speeches like the plague. I did not sometimes avoid even MSNBC some nights because I could not take more news about how big a jerk my President was that day. Bush made clear we were not at war with Islam; he did not try to ban Muslims. Bush made efforts to reach out to Hispanics; he did not try to build a wall that Mexico would supposedly pay for.
It’s shocking to me how many people are already forgetting how corrupt and incompetent the Bush administration was. The Iraq War might be the single worst decision in presidential history, and I am genuinely elated that Trump has thus far successfully evaded making a similar one. It’s a low bar to be sure, but Trump is a better President than George W Bush.
Vietnam was pretty bad, Iraq was worse?
Yes, Iraq was worse than Vietnam.
As bad as Vietnam was, there are several key differences:
1. South Vietnam was not a key strategic bulwark in the region, protecting an entire region from aggression by hostile parties. Iraq was the largest secular player in the ME and was the key barrier to expansion of the religious extremists that dominated Iran and its satellites. This reality was why Saddam Hussein did not believe — literally until the invasion began — that the US would overthrow him. He knew that to do so was absolutely suicidal for US interests.
2. South Vietnam was not a reasonably strong sovereign nation and regional player invaded by the US. It was, instead, an already weak and corrupt vestige of WWII colonialism whose population was already shifting to support North Vietnam and its leader (Ho Chi Minh). Our intervention in South Vietnam was to prop up a succession of weak and submissive puppets, not to topple a strong leader who we viewed as “going rogue”.
3. The Vietnam war was not (too my knowledge at least) an excuse for a direct cash transfer of billions of public dollars to the family businesses of LBJ or Hubert Humphrey and their supporters. Halliburton alone received at least THIRTY NINE BILLION dollars from Dick Cheney, its former CEO, as Vice Presidents. Most of that was in no-bid contracts, many of them secret. I know of no counterpart in Vietnam.
The Vietnam war certainly a tragic blunder, and should certainly have been avoided. It was, however, a bi-partisan mistaken driven — in my view — by cold-war era misperceptions and insecurities rather than sheer greed and political self-interest. The South Vietnam conflict began during the administration of JFK and was greatly accelerated by LBJ. When the GOP took over in 1968 with Richard Nixon, the scale of the conflict increased (despite campaign promises from Mr. Nixon and the GOP).
Indeed, the 2003 Iraq war was FAR worse than the Vietnam conflict.
I think Vietnam was a worse war, but Iraq was a worst decision. My reasoning is that Bush had the lessons of Vietnam and disregarded them to make a war that was entirely one of choice. Vietnam in hindsight did not serve America’s interests, but it was a somewhat inevitable byproduct of Cold War geopolitics. The responsibility for Vietnam is shared by multiple presidents in multiple parties, a key insight from the Pentagon Papers. It would have been a lot harder for any Cold War President to choose to avoid intervening in Vietnam than it was for Bush to choose not to invade Iraq.
Bush is the sole decider for the Iraq War, he solely owns the Iraq War in a way the Vietnam Presidents do not solely own theirs. The Middle East has been on fire for the last decade and a half because our actions totally reshaped the balance of power in the region. ISIL, the Syrian Civil War, the Iranian-Saudi Cold War that’s rapidly going hot, the Turkish incursion against the Kurds this morning, Israel’s war with Lebanon, Egypt’s chaos, Libya’s civil war, the Arab Spring itself-all of these actions can be directly linked to the Iraq War. Removing a stable, secular, regional balancer ended up destroying the relative peace and stability the region enjoyed prior to the Iraq War. We will be living with its consequences for many decades.
Incorrectly nested comment removed.
Editors: I’m confident that the comment editor moved my reply to the wrong place with no action on my part. I saw the yellow-highlighted comment from scott12mass while I was composing my comment above on a different thread.
It appears to me that the comment editor focus was incorrectly changed to this thread as part of displaying that new comment by scott12mass.
I’m not complaining, just offering information for debugging.
Your last clause is wrong on so many levels!
Who’s last clause? Not your fault Christopher, the nesting is messed up on this thread.
@ who’s last clause:
I suspect Christopher is objecting to this:
” but Trump is a better President than George W Bush.”
I stand by that and made my case. Better person, not a better President. I give Bush credit for saying the right thing from time to time, PEPFAR, and being the last president to give the Palestinian leadership equal weight in negotiations. He did a decent non-partisan job with the financial crisis and Obama transition.
He reauthorized the Voting Rights Act and tried to get immigration reform done. His rhetoric was never racist, sexist, Islamophobic, or homophobic even if his policies were. I’m not offended when Ellen or the Bruins hang out with him, like I would be with Trump. I still say Iraq was worse than anything Trump has done, but we can at least agree that America cannot afford four more years and would have been better off under President Gore.
Of course we would have been better off under President Gore, but if my only choices are Trump and Bush it’s no contest. Iraq was not the greatest decision particularly for the time, but I’ve always been more sanguine about that than some. It was more forgivable and explainable than the mob-boss rule we are currently living under.
I think my comment got moderated out, but I would say that 1 million dead Iraqis might disagree with your statement.
But ultimately it does not matter who is “worse.” Both are so incredibly bad that they and every one who enabled them should be pariahs. We have people treating Dick Cheney like a good guy these days. Insanity!
We had Nixon, and then Reagan, and then Bush, and now Trump. The corruption, the ignorance, and the cruelty is increasing with every major GOP administration. Unless we upend power dynamics and make serious changes, what’s coming after Trump will likely be much worse (younger, smarter, more competent, but also a true believer).
TRUMP IS NOT AN ABERRATION!!!!!
Returning to a some ridiculous status quo puts us in exactly the position that allowed and championed Trumpism.
Meta note
Something seems to be causing some otherwise non-offending comments on this diary to be moved into the “pending moderation” queue. Three and counting as of 12:10p on 9-Oct-2019.
Yes. Not sure what that is. Maybe filtering out Richard Cheney’s common first name.
Jeesh, I didn’t even think of that. Let me check my pending message and see if it’s something similar.
For what it’s worth, the way good text engines avoid this kind of stupid mistake is to use something called a “bi-gram” or “n-gram”, where the term is joined to another term and the resulting pair (or n-tuple) is used for the match. It helps avoid flagging “weed the garden” as a drug reference.
Interesting. I think it might well be the reference to Mr. Cheney that caused doubleman’s two comments to be blocked. On closer inspection, I see that both jconway’s comment and mine contain links that result in paywall popups. It wouldn’t surprise me if that triggers the spam filter here.
I see the same reference to Mr. Cheney in my comment, so maybe that’s what is triggering it.
I’m not sure what is provoking the issue with the comment from jconway, it looks fine to me.
Has this been an issue before? Surely the former VP’s name has been taken in vain numerous times on BMG.
I suspect that “Richard Cheney” and “Mr. Cheney” are fine. I suspect “D**k Cheney” gets the comment moderated.
This is a comment that includes Dick Cheney, to see if it triggers the moderation filter.
I just attempted to post a comment with the following text (except that I did not sanitize Mr. Cheney’s first name)::
The attempt was moderated.
I think doubleman is correct — the filter flags the string “D**k” as sexual reference.
Maybe it’s the new platform since he was VP since that word is the name he usually goes by and thus I assume is the name we used for him.
“For all the talk about Trump and Russia, there’s also Trump and Ukraine, Trump and Turkey, Trump and Saudi Arabia, and likely elsewhere where the shadow of self-interest and corruption eclipse the clarity of our national interest.” Dan Rather
Two foreign-born criminal clients of ‘Dracula Ghouliani’ have just been arrested on campaign – finance charges.
Kurds DID help us win WWII fighting against Hitler in Albania, Italy and Greece.
Fred, why are you posting these comments here? BMG is not a news repeater, and this particular thread is a discussion of what causes certain material to pushed to the “pending moderation” queue.
FACT : The Orange Crook is using public authority to advance his corrupt personal advancement.
To the GOP Senate : History is a constant stenographer so grow a spine and do the right thing.
New Fox poll shows Treason Weasel won rural voters by 27 points in 2016 but they now back him by only 2 points over Joe Biden.
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, just entered the Capitol to give private, closed door deposition to House investigators.
Justice closes in on the Tangerine Wankmaggot as
DC Appeals Court just rejected his appeal of the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena for his financial records.
“Reality-based commentary.” Enough said.
Please, Somerville Tom, try to avoid bullying fellow commenters. That is the minimum standard I would think. If this site becomes a cul-de-sac of irrelevant or disproportate back-scratching of the angels-on-the-head-of-pin left, no one will read it.
Rome is burning. Meaning the republic is in danger of crumbling. Let’s not only talk about how the municipal Roman sewerage plant is doing. Let’s also marshall praetorian guards to protect the republic from Caesar. Shall we?
@Please, Somerville Tom, try to avoid bullying fellow commenters.:
How have I “bullied” anybody?
I asked my friend Fred why he’s posted five news items onto the end of a meta-discussion about what causes a comment to be moderated. How on earth is that “bullying”?
I agree that Rome is burning. Since we’re all on the same team, perhaps you might be a bit more cautious about using words like “bullying”.
How about letting Fred decide what he would like to write and where he would like to write it? Last time I checked, he’s very capable of making his own editorial judgments without you deciding what constitutes a “meta-discussion”.
He seems to appreciate free reign in his fellow BMGers. I simply ask that you grant him the same courtesy. I don’t see where he asked for anyone’s advice.
@How about letting Fred decide what he would would like to write and where he would like to write it?:
Indeed — I’ve known Fred for years. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s always been fully capable of speaking up when he feels attacked, threatened or bullied.
I don’t think Fred needs you to defend him. He is not a defenseless waif being pushed around.
I encourage you to speak for yourself. If you feel that I’m bullying you, then I apologize and I invite your feedback about how I might respond differently.
I appreciated Terry’s words.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask people to stay on topic. I find his style to be off-putting as well.
@bullying:
Oh, and by the way — each new comment pushes other comments off the BMG front page.
There have been times recently when the comments pane has been flooded with news clips and aphorisms, all from Fred. I don’t want to muzzle Fred or anyone else — I certainly post many comments myself. At the same time, I think the front page is improved when it has content from more than one participant (including yours truly).
An option available to Fred is to post a diary, and then update the diary with new items as desired. Fred is still able to publish everything he contributes now. At the same time, those updates would not push other contributions off the comments pane on the front page.
I’m really NOT trying to bully anybody, and I certainly apologize to Fred if he felt hurt by my question.
Trump is a Russian asset plundering our nation.
There’s nothing behind those dead soulless eyes except seething hatred and savage unquenchable greed.