There is something telling somehow that the GOP oppo bits are items like these bits trying to get candidates (and in general the female ones) to defend their characters in the face of charges of no real meaning to how they would lead or the issues. The oppo idea is to try to find (or create if need be) issues that impugn character and force the D to argue over piddly shit (like this music one, or Warren and her past belief in significant NA ancestry, or Klobucher being a jerk of a boss to work for) and off items of importance to this country. The most serious way to spin these bits is as attempts to make people not “like” these candidates as authentic real people. Talk about weak sauce Swiftboating.
It’s misdirection from whatever messaging the candidates want to focus on, and just as we of the public follow the newest shiny coins that Trump’s latest tweets distract us with (away from items of seriousness) we also gawk at these trivialities.
There are also some songs that just SOUND like they’re from a certain period in one’s life. Let me give an example:
The song “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals was released in 1998. The first time I heard it, I swore that I’d heard it when I was in high school, and I graduated in 1991. I was adamant that I’d heard it years before.
I distinctly remember driving around my hometown in my first car (1984 Ford Escort - thanks, Dad) with friends, cranking that song.
But I couldn’t have done that. It’s impossible for me to have done that. But I would have sworn on my life that the memory is real.
It’s possible that Harris had a similar experience. I know I’m not the only one that’s happened to.
So it’s settled. Neither you nor Harris is fit for the presidency. Album release dates and your pot playlist are surely the most fundamental qualifications for leading the nation.
You do realize this makes just exactly as much sense as saying:
Well, actually, it doesn’t, because anyone paying attention can see that the Democrats are, in reality, moving leftwards. But you see what you want to see.
Yeah, I’m entirely baffled by the idea that she appeals to the far left. I guess people just see “woman of color” and perhaps “supports the Green New Deal” and assumes we’d stan her? Almost the universal diagnosis of her on the far left is “don’t elect cops” (yes, we know she’s not literally a cop, but the meme sticks because of her status as AG/a prosecutor). People stan Sanders, a few Yang, even Warren (with heavy reservations for all of them because, again, far left, most of them are still too far right for us), but I don’t think I’ve met anyone who wants Harris. There are at best those of us who would probably vote for her if she got the nom. The only electoral idea the far left has enthusiasm for is “whatever happens run AOC as soon as eligible” which of course is not 2020, and still not uncritically.
This place is so far from a leftist echo chamber. It is, at best, a capital-L Liberal echo chamber. Funnily enough, we have far more representation for far right viewpoints on this board than we have for far left ones. I think you, me, and one or two others are the only ones I can think of, and IMO you’re not as far left as me and at least one of the others (which is honestly hard to do, I’m some soup of weird of undecided post-leftist, post-capitalist, and ancom, the other is an accelerationist).
Though while I don’t have an issue with your protest vote, personally, I will note that getting a third party the 5% for funding isn’t, in my eyes, a particularly good strategy. The US has an electoral system that’s effectively mathematically immune to three parties on the broad national level, and I don’t just mean the electoral college, but first past the post in general. IMO there’s really no realistic path to a true left party other than trying hard to push electoral reform like proportional rep and/or ranked voting or the like.
Well, I guess if we somehow pulled off a French Revolution that stuck but at least I’m still a bit suspect of that idea.
(Completely irrelevant anecdote: During a teen support group a couple weeks ago the kids and I got to explain to a younger co-worker the definitions and usages of both “stanning” and “shipping,” with some sidebar along the way for fanfic. I felt considerably hipper than my 45 years and gray hair typically indicate.)
I thought it meant “represent” in the broader sense of “be associated with”, as someone from Chicago might say “I’m repping Chicago” if asked where they were from. But that doesn’t seem exactly right in this context.
Hmm, thanks for this. I was never for Harris, but wow does she go after the low-hanging fruit (of course, she was a prosecutor, that’s horse-trading by nature)…these establishment candidates remind me of characters from “Starship Troopers!”
So I’m really curious (since Obama was mentioned): what the hell was that stunt he pulled twice for the cameras pretending to drink Flint water???
Seriously, I can’t imagine what possible benefit there was to that. It was just so bald-faced, so patented a lie…I don’t actually know whether the water’s safe now but I do know that at most he took a very quick and very, very tiny sip – seemed like he just wetted his lips to me, really…so what was the point of that??? Like what was gained, what was the “pragmatism” all about in that stunt???
Agreed. I’m thinking we’re gonna get our Herb Hoover despite hopes for Yang’s U.B.I.
In my early days in pediatrics I went to a CME at Harvard on Child Neurology. While there they had us attend that week’s Grand Rounds presentation in which it so happened the key studies that drove legislation on lead were presented. Before these studies it was unclear if the association of blood level levels with decreased IQ measurements were on the basis of the lead or were a marker for other environmental items that travelled with SES. What they did was study upper middle class families renovating brownstones and found the associations as well, even at blood lead levels lower than previously felt meaningful. A few IQ points worth on average. Comment from the back of the room from a Harvard MD/researcher, paraphrasing from memory: “When we were all young we were all exposed to much more environmental lead than there is now, leaded gas, lead paint, it was all around. Pretty sure we were all at lead levels of 10 to 15 if not 15 to 20 …” Response - “Yes, and all of you would have been 2 to 5 IQ points smarter if you had not … the meaningful impact is at the population more than the individual level …”
So yeah a tough balance in the messaging. Letting lead levels in water get that high was unconscionable. The ideal level of lead in water is none. The harms and the immorality cannot be minimized. But the historic context is that kids in Flint then were NOT doomed to brain damage as a result. Allowing kids and parents to internalize that as an unavoidable fate when it was wrong would also have been unconscionable. In longer term context longer term policies have been effective.
So this follows themes across threads in this forum. Obama did understand science and was pretty good at helping explain it, at combating irrational fears without dismissing justifiable concerns and need for action. Explaining the balanced middle is a tough job and hard to do in a sound bite screams for clicks world.
But that doesn’t explain why he didn’t just gulp the whole damned cup down…aides could’ve sbustituted Dasani reverse-osmosis water for all anyone would know…that’s what I don’t understand – what we would now call the Trumpian incompetence of the stunt as stunt.
But it was so patently false – it’s just so absurd to not gulp the whole thing down…doesn’t it all just look sneaky, the way he so carefully and so quickly put his lips to the water and was done???