As of yesterday, we had evacuated like 38,000 people so far. The total possible would be something like 67k I believe (and that includes I believe 15k pending Visa applications, some of which likely won’t get approved, and not every eligible person probably plans on evacuating.)
It looks like the last 24 hours was a huge escalation in evacuations–21,500 were evacuated in the last 24 hours, bringing the total to around 58,000 evacuated by the United States.
By the way, a former national security aid to Mike Pence is blaming Trump Administration officials such as Stephen Miller and his allies in the Trump Administration for purposefully sabotaging the visa application process for the Afghan refugees: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/ex-pence-aide-trump-and-miller-stymied-afghan-refugee-efforts/
Thing is though, what the Benghazi thing shows is there’s no point in worrying about this sort of manufactured boondoggle.
The “but Benghazi!” people had already decided they weren’t voting for Hillary Clinton and it was just a face saving excuse they could use to justify a decision they had already made on other grounds. When you read the details of what actually occurred in Benghazi, there is no conceivable way you could reach a rational decision that it was a basis to conclude one should not vote for Clinton. Anyone who had put 10 minutes worth of effort into finding out the facts about the Benghazi incident would have reached that conclusion. Which tells you that for those who used the Benghazi excuse, you were wasting your breath if you thought reality was a relevant consideration.
The broader lesson is that those who have decided or will decide they aren’t going to vote for Biden for reasons they aren’t prepared to say in public are going to find a boondoggle that they are going to use as their excuse. If it’s not how he handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan it will be something else, down to the fact his dog Major bit two people, if necessary.
There’s no point in worrying about such people. Biden’s best approach is to try to do a reasonably good overall job and allow people to see that, and not to get down in the mud trying to defend the detail of minor fuckups.
I’m not worried about them. I’m worried about the people who’ll stay home because they think their choice is between a Republican sleazebag and a Democratic traitor/fuckup/crook/whatever.
I don’t think it makes much difference. If they are going to conclude a candidate is a traitor/fuckup/crook due to a “Benghazi” they are just looking for an excuse.
No, I don’t think that is true. I personally know a few people that didn’t vote for Hillary due to the FBI server stuff (and perhaps partially due to Benghazi as well). The attacks that labelled her a crook stuck. In very close elections these things do matter.
Really it’s an easy case of “attack your opponents strength”. The winning narrative for Biden was largely competence. The images coming out of the withdrawal from Afghanistan undercut that narrative, and that will do some damage politically. There is no real way around that.
That doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do, by the way. But there is a political price to pay for being the person/party that ends a war without victory.
I go back to–we haven’t voted for Presidents based on foreign policy in decades, I will be surprised if we start now. The right had already been attacking Biden for their typical litany of nonsense like gas prices and a “bad economy” (even though most economic indicators have been considerably improving every month he’s been in office), because they know that’s the real belly of most contests, so they have to start swinging early to try to soften him up. How well a President survives that is always going to vary based on the individuals involved, the current political climate, the current facts on the ground etc (the factual reality sadly is usually not the most important factor.)
That’s what they said to you.
Sure, but I’m not sure what else we have to go on other than voters’ stated preferences.
You seem to be saying that voters’ preferences are set in stone and no foreign policy situation can possibly change those. That doesn’t feel right to me.
There are an extremely high number of “low information” voters out there that really do vote based on the last thing they heard or whatever meme is trending at the time. In that regard, the fact that this is happening now rather than next year is a good thing politically for the Democratic Party heading into midterms.
ETA: I think I understand your point a little more clearly after re-reading it @Princhester, so if you merely mean that bullshit “scandals” like Benghazi don’t move the needle other than reinforce the preferences of folks that weren’t going to vote for you anyway, I agree with that. I don’t think we can safely say that this withdrawal is a Benghazi situation yet. It could be much, much worse than that.
I believe he’s saying most Trumpers voted for Trump because they are fascists and most are also bigots, but having nonsense talking points downloaded from OAN, Fox, NewsMax etc let them have discussions with people without having to admit they are fascist bigots.
This is Trump were talking about. He would tell his followers that he won the war and was now turning Afghanistan over to our Taliban allies.
The real risk of the withdrawal is something really bad happens to Americans. Like a terror attack on the soldiers at the airport, kidnapping of embassy staff, etc. It looks like most if not all of the diplomatic staff are now outside of harm’s way. And probably by the 28th-29th we’ll have withdrawn all the soldiers from the airport and be focusing on evacuating them (and no longer evacuating anyone else.) The political hit to potential refugees being left behind will be 0 or near 0.
How exactly does Trump campaign on that? “Biden didn’t get enough conservative Muslim Afghans into the country when he withdrew, if I was President I would have!” doesn’t exactly work for a Republican. Most other lines of attack just bog down too much in wonky/policy issues that don’t resonate with people. Benghazi was a “gift” in that Americans died. If we don’t have a similar incident here it’s going to be very hard to make people care about this in November of 2022 or November of 2024.
Well, if he’s saying that then I’m very comfortable saying he is wrong, at least with respect to 2016. I know plenty of people that are not bigots or fascists who honestly believed Trump might govern as a sort of centrist outsider who was tough on immigration and protectionist, but also not anti-LGBT or a far-right ideologue. That looks insane in retrospect but wasn’t that unusual of a stance back then (I’m sure I can dig up a cite if it’s necessary).
None of them voted for Trump in 2020 of course.
Whether any of those voters would come back to Trump if this withdrawal goes completely haywire (more so than it already has) is hard to tell. I tend to doubt it. It’s just too far away temporally and geographically. Other issues are far more likely to be telling.
Really? How many of those people would have voted for her if there hadn’t been FBI server stuff and Benghazi? How many of them do you think could explain what FBI server stuff and Benghazi actually were if you asked them?
Most of the people who are saying stuff like that had decided to vote against Hillary Clinton long ago. They just waited until Fox News and Rush Limbaugh told them what excuse they should use in public.
My personal opinion is most people that said they thought Trump would govern as a centirst were liars.
I’m not saying I know the people you know, and have vetted them. Nothing you say is impossible. But I was involved in local Republican politics including official positions in the county party structure etc for decades, have fundraised, donated, worked for numerous campaigns. I’m decently well connected with the Republican party. The vast majority of people I was personally familiar with who voted for Trump really liked that he wasn’t going to let Mexicans into the country and that he would appoint pro-life justices. I think the number of voters that genuinely cared about other things was very low. There’s a reason us Never Trump Republicans didn’t move the needle that much.
Yes, really.
Two I know for sure would have voted for Hillary if the Comey hadn’t re-opened the investigation. They told me as much on election day in 2016 (after they had voted). Perhaps they were lying, or justifying their choice. But I also know they did not vote for Trump in 2020, so it seems plausible.
Zero of them could have actually told me what Benghazi was really about or what the FBI was investigating.
These are your textbook “low information voters”. They do exist. They vote on intuition and whatever meme they saw last. They do not listen to Rush or watch OANN - these voters in particular seem to only watch CNN when I’m at their house, but in general they don’t follow the news all that closely.
They would readily believe a line of “Trump made a deal to withdrawal safely and Biden fucked it up”, particularly if that becomes the primary narrative or if Americans die.
Perhaps to provide a bit more context these are both somewhat recent immigrant families that have voted for both parties in the past and aren’t nearly as steeped in the American political culture as most, for what it’s worth.
Yeah, I agree that in general that for your “typical GOP voter” Benghazi/Server-gate/etc are just cover and ammo, so to speak.
I actually think there was a split between those that actively liked the anti-immigrant stuff and those that just didn’t care as long as the other boilerplate conservative stuff happened (basically low taxes - there are a surprising number of voters I know where that is their only issue).
The polling moved as a result of Comey reopening the email investigation. Comey pretty much handed the election to Trump.
+1 agree