Maher is at least consistent. He also defended Kavanaugh, although he assures us that he cares about the issue “in the macro.”, whatever that means.
But the harping on Reade’s blog post about Putin rings a little hollow, coming from the guy who famously got in trouble for describing the 9/11 hijackers as “heroes.”
Maher’s one of those people I’m comfortable agreeing with on some things, but not on others. What exactly are you trying to accomplish by peddling this Reade story so hard? Say she was credible – then what? Do you really entertain a fantasy that the convention delegates will drop Biden for someone else or are you trying to help Trump?
I don’t know what the convention delegates will do. I do agree with the point that has been made over and over on this blog. This is not a typical year or a typical election.
There is a lot at stake, wouldn’t you agree?
There might be a case to be made for sticking with the leading candidate no matter what . But if the price of feeling good about the nomination process is four more years of Trump, I don’t think It is worth it. It’s a problem.
Smearing Reade won’t make it go away.
I don’t see how Reade‘s story=four more years of Trump.
You got a guy credibly accused of sex predation by 17 women and caught on tape bragging about doing exactly what Tara Reade claims Biden did (after insisting last April he did no such thing).
One guy denying he did it, another guy bragging about it. The guy bragging about it is presiding over 20% unemployment and 70,000 preventable deaths. He is exacerbating both problems by buck passing to governors who are doing 50 different responses instead of a single national response to actually lock down the pandemic. No testing like South Korea.
What is there to disagree with in Mahers arguments? At the end of the day, it’s he said she said and what she is saying has been fairly inconsistent and difficult to prove. The stakes are too damn high for us to self sabotage with the same old circular firing squad that always leads to Democratic defeats.
If Democratic primary voters rejected Warren and Sanders, so will the general electorate which is even less liberal than our primary. So other than Michelle Obama, I see no figure who would be capable of uniting the party in time to prevent chaos and defeat Trump.
@I see no figure who …:
I think Andrew Cuomo might.
I think Bob is dead wrong about the Tara Reade story, OTOH, so far as I can tell the mainstream media are now happy to hype it over and over and over. We’re all familiar with if-it-bleeds-it-leads, and we now understand that fake blood sells just as much advertising as the real thing.
I also think Bob is dead wrong about Russia. I think the Russians have been pumping the Tara Reade story with everything they’ve got now that the Hunter Biden story has been so thoroughly debunked.
I think Bob is dead RIGHT about something else, though:
…if the price of feeling good about the nomination process is four more years of Trump, I don’t think It is worth it.
The fatal flaw in Mr. Biden’s candidacy is the “cognitive decline” issue. It, too, is being aggressively promoted by both the Trumpists and the Russians (is there any difference?). Unlike the Tara Reade nonsense, I think Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline is real. I don’t see how to undo it, and I think it will sink his candidacy.
I think the fur has just started flying in this campaign. I think we’re going to see more and more unprecedented abuses from the Trumpists, and I think we’re going to see an increasingly polarized culture.
Press releases and video streams from a private bunker aren’t going to pass muster. We MUST have a campaign where both the campaign and the candidate are at their best while the candidate is out and about, on-camera in unscripted and un-briefed scenarios.
Whatever his policy strengths and weaknesses, Bill Clinton was such a candidate. Barack Obama was such a candidate. Joe Biden is not.
We cannot afford to waste time defending “gaffes”. It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Biden is overcoming a childhood speech impediment — America can’t afford the appearance of confusion and bewilderment. George H. W. Bush was greatly damaged by appearing to be impressed by an “amazing” bar-code scanner in a grocery store. We can’t afford a candidate who is still talking about record players.
One reason that I wish we would stop talking about Tara Reade is that it means we are not talking about what is to me the weakest aspect of the Joe Biden campaign — the appearance and impression that he is senile and getting worse.
For whatever reasons, our primary process failed. We have chosen a nominee that I suggest will not win.
I wish I could just keep quiet and trust the majority. Sometimes the majority is wrong.
I don’t think Joe Biden can win, and I’m not going to sleep well while he’s the candidate.
I agree that re-electing Donald Trump in November will be a disaster.
What would you have me do if I am convinced that the Joe Biden campaign is leading us inexorably to that outcome?
There is a time and place for cheerleading. I expect cheerleaders to do that on the sideline, even when the team is down by four touchdowns with a minute left to play.
You’ve been a political organizer and campaign strategist all your life. There MUST have been times when you know that your candidate is behaving in a way that will make him or her lose. What do you do? When the other people on your candidate’s staff tell you to shut up, do you listen and do as they say?
When you know that your party is doing the wrong thing, does denying that help or hurt your party?
I WANT to support our candidate. I WANT our guy to win.
“There are two ways you can do in your opponent. You can dig a hole for your opponent and wait for him to fall in OR you can perch him on top of a mountain and wait for him to fall off.”
I am not against Biden just because I know he would be a bad President, I am against him (as my primary concern) because I think he will lose. That’s the disaster.
I think fair criticisms are valid. I think sour grapes are not. I have yet to see a criticism of Biden that is fair. Reade is not a very credible accuser, the cognition thing can be disproven by his debate against Bernie and the alternative he is up against in the general, and the out of step with the times thing is countered by his moving to the left on some issues after winning the nomination.
So again, how is he a sure fire loser? He won’t inspire young people to vote? Neither did Bernie. Every cycle we wait for the wave and it never comes. 2018 was the best midterm for young people in a quarter century and that’s because of Trump who is on the ballot again this fall.
How is a guy who is acceptable to a majority of Democrats and Independents, up 10 points on the popular vote, leading state polls, and up against 20% unemployment going to lose? How can he campaign differently than he has been during a quarantine?
By definition weren’t all the people who lost to him worse candidates? Again. who’s better than Biden who did not a)already lose to him or b)has better name recognition and positive rankings with the party to win. That’s a pretty small list of a man who is ineligible to run and his wife who does not want to.
@”What is there to disagree with in Mahers arguments? ”
I disagree with Maher’s argument that Kavanaugh should not have had to answer for his behavior at a high school party.
Ford was at least as credible as some of Trump’s accusers, I suspect. Do you think all 17 are equally credible? Have you checked their stories?
@”Reade is no Ford and you know it.”
Why?
And at any rate, my question is about Trump’s accusers. Do you think any of the 17 are more or less credible than the others?
I’m interested in whether you have any standards for judging credibility, or whether you’re just gaslighting..
Already asked and answered. The standard is to seek independent and/or objective confirmation of the allegations of a witness. An independent confirmation is a different witness to the same interaction that describes it in the same way. An objective confirmation is hard evidence — calendar entry, hotel booking record, etc — that confirms aspects of the witnesses statements.
Especially significant is contradictory evidence. For example, another accuser of Mr. Biden described a specific venue as the time and place of the alleged incident — Mr. Biden was confirmed to be somewhere else at that time and place. Witness dismissed.
In the case of the many accusers of Donald Trump, as in the case of Ms. Ford, both independent and objective confirmations were quickly obtained. In the case of Ms. Reade, those same efforts yielded nothing. Nobody else saw anything. Ms. Reade contradicts herself on multiple occasions.
I wonder if Bob has any standards for judging credibility.,
If that’s your standard, can you apply it to Trump’s 17 accusers and tell me which ones have the strongest case? Or for Kavanaugh’s multiple accusers? I asked J Conway because he made the broad claim that all 17 of Trump’s accusers are credible. I’d like to know how he arrived at that conclusion.
I shouldn’t be coy. My suspicion is that you and Jconway are following Fred’s lead in this. He has one standard, don’t run down Joe Biden, whatever the facts.
“Make it hurt in November. make it painful. Leave no doubt that Donald Trump and his tenure have been resoundingly rejected by the American people. His defeat needs to be overwhelming and seared in the public memory for all time.” #UNITEBLUE
While I of course agree with the sentiments of this and all the posts like it, I’m already in the choir, as it were.
I want to echo an aspect of what the Bill Maher video emphasizes — if we truly believe that “[Donald Trump’s] defeat needs to be overwhelming and seared in the public memory for all time”, then I think we need a different nominee. If we have to break some Democratic Party china to get there, then so be it.
We need the women of America to be talking about the many and blatant sex crimes of Donald Trump. We need the lawyers and judges of America to be talking about the travesty of dropping charges against Michael Flynn.
Our nominee MUST have at least as much air-time as Andrew Cuomo. I don’t see how Joe Biden does that. I think the prospect of Mr. Biden being on camera every day for at least hours a day is terrifying to Mr. Biden and terrifying to his staff and handlers.
I think we MUST push Joe Biden either out of his basement or off the ticket. A search for “andrew cuomo” on youtube gets SEVEN HITS from the last four hours. A search for “joe biden” gets at least a dozen hits about Tara Reade and her accusations, with a solitary two-day-old “virtual rally” from Florida.
I invite you to try and watch that link from through the eyes of a somebody who is not yet a supporter of Joe Biden. What do you see? The first minute is hold-music. Then comes more than TWENTY MINUTES of surrogates and hype. Mr. Biden himself makes his first appearance at 22:30! Then comes a pre-recorded segment with ZERO interaction with any audience. The chirping of a happy bird steps over Mr. Biden’s voice during his “climactic” finish. The entire piece is badly videotaped, badly mixed, and puts the viewer to sleep
This is EMBARRASSING!
In contrast, I invite you to watch Andrew Cuomo’s press conference from earlier today. If, like me, you’ve already heard enough data and statistics, then skip ahead to about 17:25..
Andrew Cuomo lays it out in terms that every voter can understand. He’s harsh, direct, and accurate. He’s speaking to a live audience. Listen to 18:00-18:30!
Why are we hearing these bullets from Andrew Cuomo?
Cuomo is just as unacceptable to the double mans of the world and was pretty mediocre before this crisis elevated his billy pulpit. Biden is on the late night shows and local news, he’s got a podcast, and he’s making appearance where he can. He must stay home on account of his age and Cuomo gets a platform for being in office and having the most cases in his state. That’ll pass when the pandemic passes and he goes back to being a mixed bag governor.
I don’t care nearly as much for the double mans of the world as I do about the tens of millions of Americans who are utterly dependent on the information they get from the media for their opinion.
I am heartened by the upcoming appearance on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show.
I don’t think scripted pieces like a podcast make any difference in what I’m talking about. Mr. Biden’s podcasts are notorious for their technical inadequacy and only supporters pay attention to them.
There are some genres of piano music that can only be performed by a pianist whose hands are large enough to span ten white keys. For a pianist with smaller hands, it doesn’t matter how hard they practice or how talented they are — they can’t perform such a number.
We need a nominee who is able to be visible and commanding between now and November 20. That’s an absolute requirement of a successful contender against Donald Trump in 2020. If Mr. Biden can do that, so much the better. If not — for whatever reasons — then he should step aside in favor of someone who can.
Yup, like the time Reade claimed to have been arrested for trying to visit Nelson Mandela.. Seriously this article is of a piece of the “A little Bit Nutty, A little bit Slutty “attack on Anita Hill
Your weasel words give it away, James. A “fairly” damning profile is “beginning to “emerge”.. Looks more to me like a hit piece has been written based on opposition research…
As Tom pointed out (but only it seems when I push back), we don’t know and probably can’t know what happened between Reade and Biden. But I’m more inclined to believe the woman who had a dispute with the people who rented a yurt to her over the guy who continues to lie about his support for the Iraq war.
I don’t see a video.
I think the thread-starter is probably referring to this.
Thanks, Tom. My tech guru, Anthony Guardia, must be having ‘technical difficulties’ with the video. 🙂
I wondered why every time you referred to a video, he is the one who actually posts it. It’s a simple matter of hyperlinking.
I wouldn’t have used some of his vocabulary, but he makes some good points.
Maher is at least consistent. He also defended Kavanaugh, although he assures us that he cares about the issue “in the macro.”, whatever that means.
But the harping on Reade’s blog post about Putin rings a little hollow, coming from the guy who famously got in trouble for describing the 9/11 hijackers as “heroes.”
Maher’s one of those people I’m comfortable agreeing with on some things, but not on others. What exactly are you trying to accomplish by peddling this Reade story so hard? Say she was credible – then what? Do you really entertain a fantasy that the convention delegates will drop Biden for someone else or are you trying to help Trump?
I don’t know what the convention delegates will do. I do agree with the point that has been made over and over on this blog. This is not a typical year or a typical election.
There is a lot at stake, wouldn’t you agree?
There might be a case to be made for sticking with the leading candidate no matter what . But if the price of feeling good about the nomination process is four more years of Trump, I don’t think It is worth it. It’s a problem.
Smearing Reade won’t make it go away.
I don’t see how Reade‘s story=four more years of Trump.
You got a guy credibly accused of sex predation by 17 women and caught on tape bragging about doing exactly what Tara Reade claims Biden did (after insisting last April he did no such thing).
One guy denying he did it, another guy bragging about it. The guy bragging about it is presiding over 20% unemployment and 70,000 preventable deaths. He is exacerbating both problems by buck passing to governors who are doing 50 different responses instead of a single national response to actually lock down the pandemic. No testing like South Korea.
What is there to disagree with in Mahers arguments? At the end of the day, it’s he said she said and what she is saying has been fairly inconsistent and difficult to prove. The stakes are too damn high for us to self sabotage with the same old circular firing squad that always leads to Democratic defeats.
If Democratic primary voters rejected Warren and Sanders, so will the general electorate which is even less liberal than our primary. So other than Michelle Obama, I see no figure who would be capable of uniting the party in time to prevent chaos and defeat Trump.
@I see no figure who …:
I think Andrew Cuomo might.
I think Bob is dead wrong about the Tara Reade story, OTOH, so far as I can tell the mainstream media are now happy to hype it over and over and over. We’re all familiar with if-it-bleeds-it-leads, and we now understand that fake blood sells just as much advertising as the real thing.
I also think Bob is dead wrong about Russia. I think the Russians have been pumping the Tara Reade story with everything they’ve got now that the Hunter Biden story has been so thoroughly debunked.
I think Bob is dead RIGHT about something else, though:
The fatal flaw in Mr. Biden’s candidacy is the “cognitive decline” issue. It, too, is being aggressively promoted by both the Trumpists and the Russians (is there any difference?). Unlike the Tara Reade nonsense, I think Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline is real. I don’t see how to undo it, and I think it will sink his candidacy.
I think the fur has just started flying in this campaign. I think we’re going to see more and more unprecedented abuses from the Trumpists, and I think we’re going to see an increasingly polarized culture.
Press releases and video streams from a private bunker aren’t going to pass muster. We MUST have a campaign where both the campaign and the candidate are at their best while the candidate is out and about, on-camera in unscripted and un-briefed scenarios.
Whatever his policy strengths and weaknesses, Bill Clinton was such a candidate. Barack Obama was such a candidate. Joe Biden is not.
We cannot afford to waste time defending “gaffes”. It doesn’t matter whether Mr. Biden is overcoming a childhood speech impediment — America can’t afford the appearance of confusion and bewilderment. George H. W. Bush was greatly damaged by appearing to be impressed by an “amazing” bar-code scanner in a grocery store. We can’t afford a candidate who is still talking about record players.
One reason that I wish we would stop talking about Tara Reade is that it means we are not talking about what is to me the weakest aspect of the Joe Biden campaign — the appearance and impression that he is senile and getting worse.
For whatever reasons, our primary process failed. We have chosen a nominee that I suggest will not win.
I wish I could just keep quiet and trust the majority. Sometimes the majority is wrong.
I don’t think Joe Biden can win, and I’m not going to sleep well while he’s the candidate.
It ain’t the criticism from people in the party that lead to these defeats. It’s bad candidates. And we got one.
Intra party criticism MUST end after the presumptive nominee is elected by primary state voters. Joe Biden won fair and square so get over it.
I respect that our people have spoken and made Joe Biden the standard bearer of the Democratic Party. You, obviously, don’t.
A question, doubleman? Did you vote in the Democratic primary and, if so, who did you vote for?
By this logic, we should not criticize an elected President either. Whatever.
I’m still rooting for the escape hatch rather than this disaster in November.
Wrong, again.
The ONLY disaster in November would be to re-elect the Evil Monster Dystopia.
Dystopia is a society characterized by human misery, disease, oppression and squalor. Also known as Trumpism.
Sound familiar?
I agree that re-electing Donald Trump in November will be a disaster.
What would you have me do if I am convinced that the Joe Biden campaign is leading us inexorably to that outcome?
There is a time and place for cheerleading. I expect cheerleaders to do that on the sideline, even when the team is down by four touchdowns with a minute left to play.
You’ve been a political organizer and campaign strategist all your life. There MUST have been times when you know that your candidate is behaving in a way that will make him or her lose. What do you do? When the other people on your candidate’s staff tell you to shut up, do you listen and do as they say?
When you know that your party is doing the wrong thing, does denying that help or hurt your party?
I WANT to support our candidate. I WANT our guy to win.
Toss me a crumb, Fred. Give me some hope.
Where is Joe Biden?
Tom, I find hope from an ancient Chinese proverb:
“There are two ways you can do in your opponent. You can dig a hole for your opponent and wait for him to fall in OR you can perch him on top of a mountain and wait for him to fall off.”
I am not against Biden just because I know he would be a bad President, I am against him (as my primary concern) because I think he will lose. That’s the disaster.
He will lose, if enough people like you continue to tear him down.
I refuse to do that.
Give him a chance to prove himself.
So yeah, as Tom has asked, the response is “shut up.”
No, DON’T SHUT UP.
Say, or better yet, DO something to help the good guys WIN.
“Any damn jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a carpenter to BUILD a barn.” Harry Truman
So guys, be more carpenter and less jackass.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/
No, you rally round the candidate before election and push him/her on policies afterward.
I think fair criticisms are valid. I think sour grapes are not. I have yet to see a criticism of Biden that is fair. Reade is not a very credible accuser, the cognition thing can be disproven by his debate against Bernie and the alternative he is up against in the general, and the out of step with the times thing is countered by his moving to the left on some issues after winning the nomination.
So again, how is he a sure fire loser? He won’t inspire young people to vote? Neither did Bernie. Every cycle we wait for the wave and it never comes. 2018 was the best midterm for young people in a quarter century and that’s because of Trump who is on the ballot again this fall.
How is a guy who is acceptable to a majority of Democrats and Independents, up 10 points on the popular vote, leading state polls, and up against 20% unemployment going to lose? How can he campaign differently than he has been during a quarantine?
By definition weren’t all the people who lost to him worse candidates? Again. who’s better than Biden who did not a)already lose to him or b)has better name recognition and positive rankings with the party to win. That’s a pretty small list of a man who is ineligible to run and his wife who does not want to.
@”What is there to disagree with in Mahers arguments? ”
I disagree with Maher’s argument that Kavanaugh should not have had to answer for his behavior at a high school party.
Ford was at least as credible as some of Trump’s accusers, I suspect. Do you think all 17 are equally credible? Have you checked their stories?
Reade is no Ford and you know it.
@”Reade is no Ford and you know it.”
Why?
And at any rate, my question is about Trump’s accusers. Do you think any of the 17 are more or less credible than the others?
I’m interested in whether you have any standards for judging credibility, or whether you’re just gaslighting..
@standards for judging credibility:
Already asked and answered. The standard is to seek independent and/or objective confirmation of the allegations of a witness. An independent confirmation is a different witness to the same interaction that describes it in the same way. An objective confirmation is hard evidence — calendar entry, hotel booking record, etc — that confirms aspects of the witnesses statements.
Especially significant is contradictory evidence. For example, another accuser of Mr. Biden described a specific venue as the time and place of the alleged incident — Mr. Biden was confirmed to be somewhere else at that time and place. Witness dismissed.
In the case of the many accusers of Donald Trump, as in the case of Ms. Ford, both independent and objective confirmations were quickly obtained. In the case of Ms. Reade, those same efforts yielded nothing. Nobody else saw anything. Ms. Reade contradicts herself on multiple occasions.
I wonder if Bob has any standards for judging credibility.,
If that’s your standard, can you apply it to Trump’s 17 accusers and tell me which ones have the strongest case? Or for Kavanaugh’s multiple accusers? I asked J Conway because he made the broad claim that all 17 of Trump’s accusers are credible. I’d like to know how he arrived at that conclusion.
I shouldn’t be coy. My suspicion is that you and Jconway are following Fred’s lead in this. He has one standard, don’t run down Joe Biden, whatever the facts.
Sorry! I was having some technical issues yesterday! Lol. Thanks for posting video already, but here it is again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju1ZFuvjzYc
Thanks, Anthony.
“Make it hurt in November. make it painful. Leave no doubt that Donald Trump and his tenure have been resoundingly rejected by the American people. His defeat needs to be overwhelming and seared in the public memory for all time.” #UNITEBLUE
While I of course agree with the sentiments of this and all the posts like it, I’m already in the choir, as it were.
I want to echo an aspect of what the Bill Maher video emphasizes — if we truly believe that “[Donald Trump’s] defeat needs to be overwhelming and seared in the public memory for all time”, then I think we need a different nominee. If we have to break some Democratic Party china to get there, then so be it.
We need the women of America to be talking about the many and blatant sex crimes of Donald Trump. We need the lawyers and judges of America to be talking about the travesty of dropping charges against Michael Flynn.
Our nominee MUST have at least as much air-time as Andrew Cuomo. I don’t see how Joe Biden does that. I think the prospect of Mr. Biden being on camera every day for at least hours a day is terrifying to Mr. Biden and terrifying to his staff and handlers.
I think we MUST push Joe Biden either out of his basement or off the ticket. A search for “andrew cuomo” on youtube gets SEVEN HITS from the last four hours. A search for “joe biden” gets at least a dozen hits about Tara Reade and her accusations, with a solitary two-day-old “virtual rally” from Florida.
I invite you to try and watch that link from through the eyes of a somebody who is not yet a supporter of Joe Biden. What do you see? The first minute is hold-music. Then comes more than TWENTY MINUTES of surrogates and hype. Mr. Biden himself makes his first appearance at 22:30! Then comes a pre-recorded segment with ZERO interaction with any audience. The chirping of a happy bird steps over Mr. Biden’s voice during his “climactic” finish. The entire piece is badly videotaped, badly mixed, and puts the viewer to sleep
This is EMBARRASSING!
In contrast, I invite you to watch Andrew Cuomo’s press conference from earlier today. If, like me, you’ve already heard enough data and statistics, then skip ahead to about 17:25..
Andrew Cuomo lays it out in terms that every voter can understand. He’s harsh, direct, and accurate. He’s speaking to a live audience. Listen to 18:00-18:30!
Why are we hearing these bullets from Andrew Cuomo?
WHERE IS JOE?
Cuomo is just as unacceptable to the double mans of the world and was pretty mediocre before this crisis elevated his billy pulpit. Biden is on the late night shows and local news, he’s got a podcast, and he’s making appearance where he can. He must stay home on account of his age and Cuomo gets a platform for being in office and having the most cases in his state. That’ll pass when the pandemic passes and he goes back to being a mixed bag governor.
I don’t care nearly as much for the double mans of the world as I do about the tens of millions of Americans who are utterly dependent on the information they get from the media for their opinion.
I am heartened by the upcoming appearance on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show.
I don’t think scripted pieces like a podcast make any difference in what I’m talking about. Mr. Biden’s podcasts are notorious for their technical inadequacy and only supporters pay attention to them.
There are some genres of piano music that can only be performed by a pianist whose hands are large enough to span ten white keys. For a pianist with smaller hands, it doesn’t matter how hard they practice or how talented they are — they can’t perform such a number.
We need a nominee who is able to be visible and commanding between now and November 20. That’s an absolute requirement of a successful contender against Donald Trump in 2020. If Mr. Biden can do that, so much the better. If not — for whatever reasons — then he should step aside in favor of someone who can.
A fairly damning profile of Reade is beginning to emerge.
OUCH!
Yup, like the time Reade claimed to have been arrested for trying to visit Nelson Mandela.. Seriously this article is of a piece of the “A little Bit Nutty, A little bit Slutty “attack on Anita Hill
Your weasel words give it away, James. A “fairly” damning profile is “beginning to “emerge”.. Looks more to me like a hit piece has been written based on opposition research…
As Tom pointed out (but only it seems when I push back), we don’t know and probably can’t know what happened between Reade and Biden. But I’m more inclined to believe the woman who had a dispute with the people who rented a yurt to her over the guy who continues to lie about his support for the Iraq war.