All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Revolutionary_Jack]

If the Pfizer vaccine is effective and the Biden administration handles the dispersal properly, that could be a defining moment and something Kamala can run with in 2024. That could be a legacy moment for the Biden/Harris administration.

Right. Obviously the GOP will try and claim credit for that (and they are already trying to do so but Pfizer has said that the vaccine development they have didn't come from any of Pence's programs) but as the saying goes, "When you're President, you get praised for the sunshine and blamed for the rain" and once Biden has the Bully Pulpit, he can draw eyes on him and get the word out.

Governing like a fox is one thing but a huge issue the democrats have in general is their inability to control the narrative of events. Basically their marketing sucks.

Absolutely. The Dems don't have their own Fox News, nor are they likely to get theirs...and in all honesty, nor should they get theirs. But Fox News isn't a deal-breaker. Obama got 2 terms despite Fox doing everything possible to whittle him down.

2022 Midterms will be a challenge for the Dems --
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...les-next-year/

Because that's when Redistricting will occur. The good news is that Redistricting isn't going to be the total bonanza for the GOP as it was last decade, because the GOP don't have supermajorities and governorships to the extent they did last time. One of the few successes in State Legislature this year was that Wisconsin State Legislature which had a GOP supermajority with a Dem Governor, just lost its supermajority. So that means if the Governor overrules the GOP drawn maps, the State Leg. can't overturn the veto. There are a lot more states with independent redistricting commissions. And PA had its redistricting plans overturned by the SCOTUS. The bad news is that Redistricting will still be pretty bad, and the Dems will have to play serious defense and offense to hold on to seats in 2022.

It's difficult, but it's not impossible.

The democrats need to find a way to streamline their message. Republicans have Fox News and social media bull horns but also one of Trump’s strengths was being blunt and creating a short and repetitive message (even if that message was a complete lie most of the time). A lot of people don’t know what the Dems even stand for. Affordable health care, environmental justice, better public education, etc should be things that are synonymous with democratic candidates. It’s amazing that they struggle so bad with something so essential.

A party not having its s--t together is a terrible thing. Because if the Dems were competent, they could have ridden out this election with a Sen. Majority and gained the House Seats. The f--ked up and f--ked up badly.

[Tami]

Local 10 News has found evidence to suggest three such candidates in three Florida Senate district races, two of them in Miami Dade County, were shill candidates whose presence in the races were meant to syphon votes from Democratic candidates.

Twitter Link

Is this what they planned for Kanye West? Actually, it's even more bizarre.

Evidence suggests several state Senate candidates were plants funded by dark money

In one of those races, District 37, a recount is underway because the spread between the Democratic and Republican candidates is only 31 votes. The third party candidate received more than 6300 votes.

That third party candidate is Alexis Rodriguez, who has the same last name as the Democratic incumbent senator Jose Javier Rodriguez. The Republican challenger is Ileana Garcia.

Alexis Rodriguez falsified his address on his campaign filing form last June. The couple who now live at the Palmetto Bay address say they have been repeatedly harassed since then by people looking for Rodriguez, who hadn’t lived there in five years.

Local 10 visited Rodriguez’s place of business Tuesday, where Rodriguez lied about his identity. Pretending to be a business partner, Rodriguez shed little light on his sudden candidacy in the District 37 race and lack of fundraising or campaigning.

A search of campaign documents filed by Rodriguez led to a money trail and campaign finance connections with other no-party third candidates in Florida Senate District 9 in Central Florida, and District 39 in Miami-Dade.

The District 39 candidate is 81-year-old Celso Alfonso, a retiree who named the woman he calls his wife as campaign treasurer. She owns a day spa, and the home where we found Alfonso Tuesday afternoon.

He, too, lied about his identity at first, and finally admitted to being the candidate.

Alfonso claimed he had a lifelong dream to be in public service. He said he filed on his own, that no one assisted him.

A comparison of candidates Alfonso and Rodriguez show unusual similarities.

Both filed as No Party Affiliated candidates, yet both had recently been registered Republicans.

[JCAll]

If the Pfizer vaccine is effective and the Biden administration handles the dispersal properly, that could be a defining moment and something Kamala can run with in 2024. That could be a legacy moment for the Biden/Harris administration.

I hope partisanship won't interfere with a vaccine distribution. I've worried that Trump's supporters won't trust a vaccine from a Biden administration.

[SquirrelMan]

Right. Obviously the GOP will try and claim credit for that (and they are already trying to do so but Pfizer has said that the vaccine development they have didn't come from any of Pence's programs) but as the saying goes, "When you're President, you get praised for the sunshine and blamed for the rain" and once Biden has the Bully Pulpit, he can draw eyes on him and get the word out.



Absolutely. The Dems don't have their own Fox News, nor are they likely to get theirs...and in all honesty, nor should they get theirs. But Fox News isn't a deal-breaker. Obama got 2 terms despite Fox doing everything possible to whittle him down.

2022 Midterms will be a challenge for the Dems --
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...les-next-year/

Because that's when Redistricting will occur. The good news is that Redistricting isn't going to be the total bonanza for the GOP as it was last decade, because the GOP don't have supermajorities and governorships to the extent they did last time. One of the few successes in State Legislature this year was that Wisconsin State Legislature which had a GOP supermajority with a Dem Governor, just lost its supermajority. So that means if the Governor overrules the GOP drawn maps, the State Leg. can't overturn the veto. There are a lot more states with independent redistricting commissions. And PA had its redistricting plans overturned by the SCOTUS. The bad news is that Redistricting will still be pretty bad, and the Dems will have to play serious defense and offense to hold on to seats in 2022.

It's difficult, but it's not impossible.



A party not having its s--t together is a terrible thing. Because if the Dems were competent, they could have ridden out this election with a Sen. Majority and gained the House Seats. The f--ked up and f--ked up badly.

That the Pfizer vaccine was developed by a Turkish-Muslim immigrant power couple in Germany is such a great story, it will be hard for the GOP to make people forget that.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That the Pfizer vaccine was developed by a Turkish-Muslim immigrant power couple in Germany is such a great story, it will be hard for the GOP to make people forget that.

The Dems need to promote that, and if the vaccine works and succeeds, invite them to the WH, have them participate (when everything is ready) in the float parades, get medals from the WH.

I hope partisanship won't interfere with a vaccine distribution. I've worried that Trump's supporters won't trust a vaccine from a Biden administration.

Biden as President has authories to invoke an act demanding industries make the vaccine and so on and direct funds for it. So this is something Presidents have power over. So Biden can do this without support from the Senate, likewise Biden has an overwhelming personal mandate in terms of popular votes.

If the vaccine works and if Biden can distribute it, it's a win for him. Trump supporters who don't trust the vaccine and so on...well if their bosses at work insist they take it or keep a job, they'll fall in line. The really extreme ones...well if they refuse it and get sick. Gonna be cold and cruel here, fewer votes for the GOP down the line.

[BeastieRunner]

Trump sucked up the anti-vaxxers.

They weren't getting the shot anyway.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

So there's a review of Obama's new memoir in NYT.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/b...18NJlgUZllPunU

It has some choice (and hilarious excerpts).

And then there are his biographical sketches, masterful in their brevity and insight and humor. Of the stone-faced Emily, a staffer on the Iowa campaign: “My charm and wit invariably crashed on the rocks of her steady, unblinking gaze, and I settled on trying to do exactly what she told me.” Vladimir Putin reminds him of the tough, street-smart ward bosses who used to run the Chicago machine. Also on Putin: “Physically, he was unremarkable.” Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh both come across as having a kind of impassive integrity. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has the manner of “someone who’s burned away frivolity and distractions from his life.” Rahul Gandhi has “a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who’d done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject.” Joe Biden is a decent, honest, loyal man who Obama senses “might get prickly if he thought he wasn’t given his due — a quality that might flare up when dealing with a much younger boss.” Chuck Grassley would “hem and haw about this or that problem he had with the bill without telling us what exactly it would take to get him to yes.” Sarah Palin had “no idea what the hell she was talking about” on the subject of governance. What Mitch McConnell “lacked in charisma or interest in policy he more than made up for in discipline, shrewdness and shamelessness — all of which he employed in the single-minded and dispassionate pursuit of power.” Nicolas Sarkozy, bold and opportunistic, has “his chest thrust out like a bantam cock’s.”

In a private meeting, Hu Jintao reads from stacks of prepared papers, so monotonous that Obama considers suggesting “that we could save each other time by just exchanging papers and reading them at our leisure.” Lindsey Graham is the guy in the spy thriller or heist movie “who double-crosses everyone to save his own skin.” Harry Reid is brusque and decent and honest. “You can win,” he tells a startled Obama long before Obama thought he could. And with characteristic Camelot charisma, Ted Kennedy tells him, “You don’t choose the time. The time chooses you.”

The rest of the review is critical of the memoir for being typical propaganda/apologia.

[OopsIdiditagain]

The UK's the 1st european country to pass 50,000 covid related deaths

[Amadeus Arkham]

Of course Republicans Are Doing This, It’s What We Are.

[Jack Dracula]

America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent

We’ve talked about this quite a bit but Trump could have taken his authoritarian regime much farther if he wasn’t such an incompetent narcissist man-baby. Having another authoritarian populist getting close to the White House isn’t a matter of if but when. We know it will happen again in the near future (possibly even 2024). So is there anything we can do to inoculate our democracy in preparation for the next wannabe fascist strongman?

So many of our political norms were shattered because our constitution was not prepared for someone like Trump. We have very little time to prepare for the next disaster. I remember so many people (myself included) saying that it couldn’t get worse than Bush/Cheney. I don’t dare say that we won’t see anyone worse than Trump in our lives.

I’d argue that the system planned for someone like Trump but not for McConnell, Fox News and social media platforms in conjunction with Trump.

[Tami]

Trump ‘plans to wreck Fox’ as revenge for Election Night coverage — and start his own media company: report

President Donald Trump reportedly wants to take down Fox News for its reporting on the 2020 election.

The president has been telling friends that he wants to start a digital media company to undermine the conservative news network, sources told Axios, as payback for calling Arizona for Joe Biden before any other outlet and ruining his Election Night party.

“He plans to wreck Fox, no doubt about it,” said one source with detailed knowledge of Trump’s plans.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I’d argue that the system planned for someone like Trump but not for McConnell, Fox News and social media platforms in conjunction with Trump.

Great point.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Trump ‘plans to wreck Fox’ as revenge for Election Night coverage — and start his own media company: report

Let's see between Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and the biggest media mogul on the planet versus Donald Trump who is *checks notes* *frowns* *puts on glasses* overseer of multiple bankruptices, in debt to a tune of $427million and many more, and is in all likelihood not even an actual billionaire.

Murdoch's a scumbag too but between him and Trump, I don't see Trump having a chance.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Obama memoir confronts role his presidency played in Republican obstructionism and Trump's rise

[mogwen]

So there's a review of Obama's new memoir in NYT.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/b...18NJlgUZllPunU

It has some choice (and hilarious excerpts).



The rest of the review is critical of the memoir for being typical propaganda/apologia.

French here! Completely agree about Sarkozy!