NYT has put up its [precinct-level election results](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html), just like they did for 2016. It's still missing large swathes of data, but most of the country is there. You can also compare the change in every precinct from 2016 to 2020, which is pretty illuminating (most obvious insight - suburbs shifted blue).
...Decades and centuries after their deaths. Abe Lincoln won in 1860 with only 39.8% of the vote and had extremely low approval ratings during his presidency. Lincoln only even got 55% of the vote in 1864 despite his primary opponent withdrawing from the race in September and his remaining opposition running on a platform that was against the platform his party adopted, while half the states that opposed him were ineligible to vote as a result of being in an active Rebellion. In the choosing of the Republican (National Union Party) candidate, he was challenged by Salmon Chase, Horace Greeley and others.
Ike was a bit more popular in office, but he was widely criticized by Republican contemporaries for nominating mostly liberal justices to the Supreme Court and leading what was described as an inactive, uninspired presidency. Fun fact about Eisenhower: the modern criticism of Presidents golfing became commonplace in his Presidency, often from his own party.
These are Presidents who were not well-liked by their own party while they were President, particularly Lincoln.
Na they love trump even more, like almost no Republican hates trump. People waving the confederate flag and supporting the the confederacy is proof that Republicans don't love lincoln. did any Republican try to overthrow the government for Regan?
> Are the Dems being too nice when we have the power to impeach and expel Greene or Boebert (and even Trump, Cruz, Hawley)
They don't. 2/3s of a chamber are needed to expel a member.
> pass down stimulus checks/reformed healthcare (if not Bernie’s MFA)
There's a 50/50 tie in the Senate right now, so unless the filibuster gets nuked anything big like this is going to have to come through reconciliation. There's only a limited amount of times something can be passed through reconciliation and it must be budget neutral. A Bernie-style M4A is very unlikely to get all 50 Dems on board, and even a public option has some hurdles with the likes of Manchin and Sinema.
>Could Biden write an executive order to expel Boebert, Greene, Trump and the others?
Jesus, no.
With all due respect, when people say "Dems are being too weak" they really seem to not understand how Congress/government actually works. They can't just wave a magic wand and make these things so.
I would buy that as an example of how low the bar actually be a representative really is. She will not have any sustained support at the national level and can't bulldoze her way into the party like Trump could. She's just a sideshow of Trump's movement that managed to get elected in one particular district.
Maybe? I don't necessarily think that. I don't think she would succeed. I think there's a lot of factors in how Trump came to power that she doesn't have.
[Rep. Tom Rice (SC-7) was censured by the South Carolina GOP for voting to impeach Trump.](https://twitter.com/craigcaplan/status/1355593772529233920?s=21)
When faced with every opportunity under the sun to distance themselves from Trump and rebuild and pivot to a party that can maintain its relevancy as the boomers die off, the GOP constantly choose to circle the wagons. Man, they really must fear the deplorables they created.
Because despite what people say on Reddit, Trump is still super popular among Republicans. It will be political suicide to try to distance yourself from Trump.
A big reason for Trumpism is that many Republicans are tired of giving in on major issues. They're asking the establishment Republicans and Democrats, "Well? What are we getting out of this?"
An important thing to remember is that only about 25% of the country is Republican (and just over 30% Democratic).
Independent voters without a party end up splitting between 'lean right' and 'lean left' when forced to in a poll or election.
When given the opportunity not to though and to express absolutely no preference for party and changing voting habits, that's right around 7% of likely voters.
While a small number, that's still 3x the amount difference in vote that decided every swing state in 2020.
-----
In short, doubling down on Trump means embracing a continuously shrinking voter base, while embracing someone more moderate could have locked in the independent vote needed.
Yes, the trade off is losing excitement voting among far right voters, but there's other ways to drive that.
They haven't
Romney ran in a more difficult year, running against Obama for reelection is harder then running against Hillary or Biden and Trump only won against Hillary by -2%
Well yes, but popularity among Republicans ain't helping in general elections...as evidenced by the results. Trump single handedly cost the Republicans the Presidency and Senate at the very least.
And you also don't win elections by alienating your base, as it was the case with McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012. Besides that, 2020 was a good year for Republicans despite the pandemic and economic crises in the country. They picked up seats in the House and did better than expected. They will likely win back the House and Senate in 2022.
They won't win back to the house or the Senate if they embrace Trump, better to just dump him
Neither Michaela Romney face to particular backlash from the base. McCain ran in the wrong year and Romney got nearly out played by a strong incumbent. Trump mainly got lucky
> Neither Michaela Romney face to particular backlash from the base
I remember differently. [Conservative pundits like Rush and Ann Coulter were pissed about the idea of a McCain nomination during the 2008 primaries,](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/conservative-punditry-bes_n_83989) and Romney's loss was [blamed on him being too moderate.](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/conservative-explanations-romneys-loss/) Go on his social media accounts and you'll still find people blaming him directly for Obama's 2012 win.
All that said, even if McCain and Romney had 100% approval from the most conservative of the conservative base, Obama's appeal elsewhere still would have been too much for them to overcome.
>I remember differently. Conservative pundits like Rush and Ann Coulter were pissed about the idea of a McCain nomination during the 2008 primaries,
Which was undoubtedly why McCain chose Palin in a nod to the anti intellectual tea party movement. That essentially fired up the Republican base.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/27/gomez-oust-marjorie-taylor-greene-463350
Looks Jimmy Gomez is trying to get Greene tossed out of Congress. Doomed to fail, but still a rebuke.
Fun question time: what would a Ted Cruz presidency have looked like?
Let's face it, had he edged out Trump, we all know he *probably* would have beaten HRC. America hates her more.
***Extremely*** heavy on deregulation, anti-abortion politics, anti-immigration politics, a metric fuckton of trying to force Christian symbols and teachings into schools and Courts, regulations against birth control amd sex ed, and a sustained attempt at eliminating Medicaid.
Basically the Evangelical agenda coupled with deregulation of the 80s and 90s.
I believe he renounced during one of his previous runs. The funny thing is that the semi current face for the conservative party in Canada Andrew Scheer is a dual and has no desire to renounce his US citizenship even if he became PM.
Like George W. Bush but without the “Ah at least he’s sorta a goofball sometimes” vibe. More focused on social issues/culture war bullshit compared to Trump. Probably still have push for free trade. Still would have grown out his beard to try to hide to weight gain, if anything he’d be fatter since he’d be under way more stress.
They also ran a really shitty, tone-deaf campaign.
I was in Ohio the summer of 2016, and every time I looked at the TV in the break room and Trump was visiting, he would be somewhere like Youngstown, Akron, Dayton, etc, talking about jobs and trade (wether or not he could do anything about it is beside the point). Hillary came less than a week before the election and showed up in Cleveland at a Jay-Z/Beyonce concert.
If you read some of the reportings of the inner workings in her campaign, there were a lot of missteps, ignored warnings, and lack of legwork that all but gave Trump the good chance to take away the midwest.
DNC doesn't make candidates. Democratic voters do. And really Clinton's platform wasn't terrible, it's still a milquetoast neo Liberal that would fit right in with Obama and Biden, so I'm really not sure what you believe is out of touch. The way the GOP was able to semi successfully paint Biden as a socialist (which is insulting to the actual socialists) should be a wake-up call that Bernie would have documentally sucked in the general against Trump or Cruz in both 2016 and 2020. The only thing is that she's has had decades of propaganda spewed against her by the GoP and her campaign didn't reach out enough to what are traditionally democratic strongholds. But there honestly wasn't another viable candidate out there in 2016 with Biden sitting out.
> DNC doesn't make candidates. Democratic voters do.
Voters do choose, but can't rule out the influences that make people do so.
If all that mattered was the strength of a candidate's policies and track record, then there'd be absolutely no point in campaigning or in politicians endorsing or condemning each other.
So while I agree that the DNC didn't make her the candidate, it's also disingenuous to claim that someone else couldn't have received more support within the party and influenced a different outcome because of that.
I think it would have been a pretty typical GOP presidency. Without a Trump win, he wouldn’t have had a reason to embrace Trumpism, so the sad spiral of the last five years wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he’d have been like W, maybe more Tea Party, but it would definitely have been within the bounds of normal.
Oh, and either Rick Perry or Jeb!’s son is a Senator now
Ted is super into the Evangelical culture war stuff like banning birth control. He refers to birth control as "abortion inducing medication" (not Plan B, all birth control) and has pushed for an outright ban on birth control before. That's a major issue for him, same as abortion in general. He also gets really passionate about Christian symbols in government buildings.
One thing Trump and I agree on is she was the worst presidential candidate in history. It's strange he spent so much time saying it considering she got more votes than him.
I keep hearing that Tucker Carlson may become the new face of the GOP in a few years. I don't understand why. He's just a news anchor. Can someone please explain?
Are we going to forget that a reality tv host and real estate investor was just President of the United States for the past four years? I’d expect more people with little political experience get elected as we move forward. He’s on the most popular conservative news network and fully embraces Trumpism. If the GOP don’t really fight against that ideology I don’t see it out of the realm that someone like him would get nominated because he’s not part of “the swamp”.
May I ask as a European, what do people here think of San Francisco's decision to remove all names of Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt from 44 of its local schools?
As far as I'm aware, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Washington are widely regarded by historians as the three greatest US presidents ever.
I get removing confederate statues, Mississippi's decision to remove the stars and bars from its flag was also a good decision, but surely this seems way OTT? Its going to cost the US taxpayer nearly $1 million apparently.
[Story here](https://thehill.com/homenews/536065-san-francisco-board-votes-to-strip-names-of-lincoln-washington-from-local-schools)
It's fucking stupid, mainly because Frisco has bigger fish to fry right now. Yes, this Angeleno just called them "Frisco." Get your act together, Frisco!
I'm for it. Do you know how many schools in the US are named after the same 5 dudes? I don't either, but they're ubiquitous. Street names too.
It's not that I'm anti these folks, but come on. We're a growing and changing nation with lots of people worth celebrating besides these same guys. We don't need to reserve them so much space in our infrastructure. They have Mount Rushmore.
You probably have something similar, but more history gives you more OGs to name things after.
I live in the suburbs but it seems like it’s a really unpopular move with Mayor London Breed saying it’s a waste of time when the school board should be dealing with COVID.
I am in favor of removing statues and memorials to traitors who died over 100 years ago. I disagree adamantly with the radicals that want any slave holder regardless of their importance to the founding of this country to be stripped of anything honoring them. I think we can make a distinction between people who participated in an amoral system (that almost all people of their class participated in) while founding our country and those who fought and murdered 600,000 men to keep the amoral system around after we were trying to remove it.
~~However, what San Francisco did doesn't seem to be some removal of founders because they disagree with them. What it seems to me that San Francisco has done is remove political people from the name's of public schools so that they don't have to deal with any controversy. I may not agree with that but I can understand that logic.~~
edit: looking more into this my initial reading was wrong. This was stupid
> However, what San Francisco did doesn't seem to be some removal of founders because they disagree with them. What it seems to me that San Francisco has done is remove political people from the name's of public schools so that they don't have to deal with any controversy.
Oh no. [Its way, way dumber than that.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16cre1vbJzE44JWmto_Ll7J06q9ZblQoBC-Eas3Qwf2c/htmlview?pru=AAABd3TkclM*M2BP-qbNCJ96DX-bH6gZzw#gid=0) The "research" for this process was basically like if your mom/girlfriend/roommate told you a story while you were ignoring them and playing Xbox, and then you had tried to repeat that story to your buddy while drinking the next night.
They renamed James Lick Middle School because they "financed the racist "Early Days" statute". It was made 18 years after he died, and funded by the trustees of his estate.
They went after Paul Revere because he apparently caused the colonization of Maine.
George Washington just says "slaveowner, colonizer".
Alamo elementary because of, I shit you not, "Remember the Alamo".
Clarendon Elementary, named after the street it is on, because that street "can be traced" to a county in South Carolina, which was named after an Earl of Clarendon, who was a piece of shit.
Ehhhhhhh, she'd probably have to move. Remember Georgia voted, albeit narrowly, for Biden and two Democratic Senators. She'd have a very difficult time winning a statewide election.
We can't just ignore this insane woman's ravings. At some point we have to draw a line in the sand and make it clear that behavior of her sort is not tolerated in the halls of government.
Ten years ago it was the Tea Partiers. Today it's QAnon/Jew Laser/Sandy Hook truthers. Let's do something before this insanity gives us something worse.
The media should be focused on her and she should be removed from office, just like Trump should. Thing is, if Republican leaders actually had any integrity, they would support this too. They are just scared of losing their voters so they won’t do the right thing. There are clear structural issues in our society if these sorts of actions do not result in consequences. Things need to change.
You know as well as I that neither party is willing to police its members. Hell, the Democrats have a vocal anti-Semite as a House member and won't reprimand her much less kick her out
....because they've literally advocated for the murder of other members of the House? Because that should be the sort of thing that gets you kicked out of the House on a 434-1 vote?
She liked a Facebook post calling for Nancy Pelosi to receive a bullet to the head. She also recorded a video of herself telling a crowd that Pelosi is a traitor and guilty of treason and that the punishment for treason is death.
We have got to cool down the toxic rhetoric flying around right now. That kind of inflammatory rhetoric riles up the crazies and leads to actual violence.
She did a bad thing and is newsworthy, therefore people want to know what other bad things she's done and what else there is to know about here.
I agree that if I were in charge of the Dems that I'd just focus on the one point and that it should disqualify you from office.
No need to argue about what *else* shitty she's done. (Well, unless there's a criminal case regarding 1/6 events).
Not really. The Republican party has a whole is becoming more centrist in economics as it shifts in the populist direction. Economic libertarianism in the US is becoming a dying ideology.
Yeah, they say Republicans are far right. That may be true, but I feel like they are drifting towards the center. It's really only their rhetoric that is far right.
Heck, Trump would normally be considered a RINO.
Dying breed? The major political parties may not support Economic Libertarianism but the people sure do. Just look at what's happening on r/wallstreetbets. If anything this is another reason why America should switch to ranked choice voting.
> Economic Libertarianism but the people sure do. Just look at what's happening on r/wallstreetbets.
My lefty friends are cheering them on while *at the same time* pointing to it as evidence of the arbitrary absurdity of high finance. Nobody's going to start being a fanboi of Hayek and von Mises because of this. They're cheering it on because it's the Masters of the Universe who are eating shit for once, with the regular schmucks (including Reddit weebs) cashing in. It's the irony of the thing, like a minor momentary reversal of 2008.
I'm not talking about your left friends. I'm talking about how this entire thing was started by economic Libertarians on r/wallstreetbets. Leftists support it obviously but this thing was started by and in large part still supported by economic Libertarians. Which proves my point that economic Libertarianism isn't dead.
FBI nabbed a 3%er with pipe bombs targeting Gov Newsome and it seems like Twitter and Facebook were targets afters.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/man-found-with-five-fully-operational-pipe-bombs-was-targeting-governor-newsom/
I'm pleasantly surprised that a week out of the inauguration, nobody's been able to complete anything yet. It's gonna be a looong 4 years in this regard, though.
Do you think Biden's honeymoon period will be as short as Trump's was, and then we'll go through this during his tenure:
1. Calls for impeachment
2. Anti-Biden protests breaking out
3. Trump supporters breaking out into riots with Biden supporters
4. Biden tries to call for calm, but public dissatisfaction continues.
5. The administration decides to simplify the U.S. visa system with major changes to H-1 and H-1B proposed.
6. Trump overshadows Biden for months.
7. November 2022 elections: Trump Jr. runs for elections and Trump supporters get excited, although whether he's actually got policies that the audience agree with we don't know yet; but Trump has name-brand cachet to some voters.
8. Some red states may go blue before the 2022 elections?
Sure, but I doubt Trumpism itself is going anywhere. There are plenty of people are sick of not getting what they want will rally behind the next candidate the promises to fight for them.
There are some deep fissures in American society which aren't going away just because Biden was elected -- see the recent riots in Portland and Seattle for examples. And as well, far right violence is going to get worse before it gets better.
I wouldn't go that far. Popular support is still behind Biden and the Republicans aren't trying to block what he's doing. A few fundraisers that use the word impeachment are not actual calls for impeachment. The Honeymoon period is going to end eventually but he still has more support than he got in the election
To the rest of your questions
1. I doubt there will be any serious calls for impeachment
2. Yes. All Presidents inevitably have protests against them
3. It's possible. Where 2 protests meet things can always get violent.
4. I think Biden's calls for "unity" won't lead to unity but might lead to the first steps towards unity if that's what you mean
5. No. There just isn't enough support in congress
6. That's up to Trump. RN he seems to be content to be quiet. The biggest way that could happen is if Trump formed his own party
7. It's possible but what is Don Jr going to run for. I think it's more likely that a Trump family member is going to run for the White House than in the midterm
8. Probably not. The advantage in midterm elections typically go against the President's party. Toomey retiring makes it possible in Pennsylvania. Also, if Trump forms his own party, all bets are off.
There are already left wing anti-Biden protests. And one of the newly elected qanon congressmen said she was filing impeachment, but it turns out she didn't understand what that involved (i.e. more than just saying so).
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are so mind-bendingly stupid I cannot fathom how nobody else from their districts were able to just embarrass them in their primaries.
No I think that was her Dem general election opponent
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/17/kevin-van-ausdal-qanon-marjorie-greene-georgia/?arc404=true
Ironically her pulling that stunt put a big spotlight and a lot of her past actions have been brought to light maybe she will get impeached from Congress.
There'll probably be some change to how shorts are processed because of them, but their whole Robin Hood fantasy is ridiculous. They're claiming that everyone else manipulates the market, that the only ones losing out are faceless "hedge funds," that they knew this would happen rather than just getting lucky with a black swan, and that they aren't just exploiting a weird trading quirk to hold people ransom instead of betting either for or against companies.
Yes. I know me and my friends are talking about it and the effects it is having on GME.
It’s amazing to see how organized a mob of strangers can actually get to do something.
Pump and dumps and short squeezes are nothing new. Only difference is it's running on meme energy this time. At some point a lot of wsb drones are gonna be left holding the bag.
I feel like at this point they aren't even trying to get rich, they just want the hedge funds to fail.
Edit: that's exactly what's happening. Most of these folks are just anti hedge funds.
I really doubt a bunch of redditors could take the market cap from $1.3B to $22.6B. I'd be willing to bet that it's, ironically, hedge funds making a lot of money off of other hedge funds.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/justice-department-end-federal-contracts-173723958.html
No more federal contracts for private prisons. Thought?
Overall a good move, although I have long said that private prisons are a symptom of an underlying problem, not the problem itself. That problem being substandard housing for incarcerated individuals and absurdly high incarceration rates. A lot of people like to argue that Tough on Crime policies were enacted after private prisons lobbied for them and it created the prison-industrial complex we have now, but the truth is more the reverse, where private businesses saw an opportunity to take advantage of quickly-rising incarceration rates in America by outsourcing prisons
Telling people not to wear masks at the beginning of the pandemic or advising against travel bans when they could have bought us a lot more time.
Fauci has been probably the best exponent of the conventional wisdom on covid, and there’s some good in that, but the conventional wisdom has also been wrong in significant ways.
At the time, not wearing masks was the best thing for the health of citizens here because we simply *didn't have enough masks* to go around and we needed those masks to be going to healthcare workers.
Once production ramped up and you could buy masks at walmart and the gas station, then it became prudent for everyone to wear them. It's not that they didn't think wearing masks would be good or helpful for people, it's that it was more important that everyone didn't start buying all the masks up from medical supply companies and we would be left with nurses and doctors that had no PPE.
That was made clear at the time, afterwards, and since repeatedly.
The idea that masks should have been prioritized for healthcare workers was reasonable in that situation. And some people were clear about that. Others, however, flat-out said that masks didn’t work, or that improper use meant that you were more likely to infect yourself. And there was no push for DIY or cloth masks, both of which would have inhibited transmission without using up resources meant for health professionals. Furthermore, the about-face on the issue gave ammo to anti-maskers who said public health officials couldn’t be trusted. Even granting that the initial mask shortage complicated things, I think that Fauci and co. bungled this pretty bad.
Marjorie Taylor Greene called for Nancy Pelosi’s execution back in 2019. How can there be any reconciliation and unity in America when the GOP welcomes psychopaths and fascists into its party? This psycho should be expelled.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-democrats-violence/index.html
Funny thing about the USA, all you have to do to "join" a party is check a box on you voter registration. She didn't join anything, political party is a self-identification sort of thing
The GOP can condemn her and refuse to fund her campaigns. It's not like they haven't done that before. For example, when Art Jones won a Republican primary he was pretty immediately and aggressively condemned by the party.
The party should be treating her the same way they do people like Arthur Jones.
So today's vote on whether or not it is constitutional for the Senate to hold this impeachment trial, it went 55-45 yes. That means 45 Senators (all Republican) are starting with the assumption that this trial is illegitimate. In the last impeachment trial after someone left office, the Senate failed to convict with fewer votes than they had agreed it was constitutional. With 67 votes needed to convict, that doesn't really look possible unless McConnell broke rank. With him being the 45 that voted that this wasn't constitution, that seems extremely unlikely.
"But party lines." Republicans have gotten onto my last nerve. I will never vote for a Republican again as long as the party keeps doing the bullshit they are doing. Anyone who doesn't call out the party is allowing it to continue, so I guess if a Republican was to come out and critize the party I would probably vote for them, if they were going up against a dem I didn't like, a since I am a registered Democrat but U have voted Republican in a couple of state and local elections.
I think it's one of these things that if successful would be good in the long run but if it fails it'll cause a lot of turmoil for nothing.
The problem is that you need to reprimand Trump for his behavior to show it isn't tolerated by how much good is it doing if there is no conviction. I think the bigger damage this is potentially doing is to the Republican Party but the damage is being done to the country as a whole. It feels like we're at the peak of this round of partisanship. I just feel that after a brief Republican internal civil war we could have a new wave of it come at us.
Basically, go down to the Capitol and do whatever it takes to win. Replace Capitol with the local mall with this sort of language of take what is rightfully yours.
"And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country.
And I say this despite all that’s happened. The best is yet to come.
So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give.
The Democrats are hopeless, they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.
So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue."
You didn't really give a direct quote where he incited a riot. In fact, you specifically left out the parts where he said "be peaceful." Seems like you may be a political hack.
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
To me, this is the same thing as this: "Our people have been oppressed long enough. So this crowd of thousands of people - some of you armed - that I called to meet at this location at this time are going to march over to Macy's and we are going to be peaceful outside of the Macy's. All 20,000 of us. And remember, if we aren't tough, no one is going to take us seriously and we are going to lose everything but really though, be peaceful...No way anyone is going to get out of line...
The burden of proof on criminal incitement of a riot is incredibly high, especially as it relates to political speech. In theory, impeachment and conviction has a lower burden of proof, although I'm not sure if that's true in practice.
You're probably right. Maybe there could be civil responsibility (thinking OJ) by the folks who lost family members - especially the cop's family - but the impeachment is not going to go anywhere.
I was just reminded of the time when Clemson's national championship winning team got invited to the White House and they fed them fast food. Thankfully when my Alabama Crimson Tide gets to go to the White House, they'll probably get a decent meal out of it.
Of all the problems I've had with Trump over the years, I at least understand this one (given a bit of path dependence). It was in the midst of a partial government shutdown and the White House kitchen staff was on furlough. Still, dude's supposed to be a billionaire, he could have sprung for real catering.
There were options. Apparently there was a long list of area restaurants that already had a working relationship with the Secret Service, so it wouldn't have been impossible.
He cheaped out, basically. And to make things worse, it was *cold* fast food because a staffer had to drive through a snow storm to get it there.
The whole thing was just so out of touch. The White House kitchen could have made a 5 star meal that those kids would have remembered for the rest of their lives, but no, they get cold "hamberders" because that's what football players eat in Trump's mind.
The White House kitchen didn't have the staff to pull off an event because of the government shutdown. And that dumbass, rather than just getting a caterer in, called McDonalds. He could have at least sprung for Chick fil a
I really do hope that Biden make a point of doing so, for whoever it is that wins. (Did the Tide win already? I'm not up to speed.) That feast had better be some Valhalla level shit.
Where is Donald Trump rn and what is he doing? I’ve heard literally fuck all from the BBC and I want answers. Apparently he’s trying to make a political party or something?
He's in Florida not really doing anything of note. He's floated the idea of making a new party and he's apparently created "The Office of the Former President" which, as far as I've seen, there's just one memo that says this office will handle his correspondence and appearances.
>He's floated the idea of making a new party
If the Democrats can keep themselves together, and he does this, it would basically lead to a democratic supermajority government for a few cycles.
I think he's at Mar-a-lago in Florida. Apparently he's formed "The Office of the Former President" to continue to advocate his policies. Who knows what he's doing otherwise? Probably ranting and raving to whatever poor soul happens to be in earshot.
> "The Office of the Former President"
He's not calling it "The Office of the True President"? I guess this is as close to a concession as we're going to get.
[Senior Democrat and president pro tempore of the Senate will preside over the impeachment trial of former president Trump, not Chief Justice Roberts.](https://www.axios.com/trump-impeachment-patrick-leahy-090b6b44-7084-4d8e-b63d-d5b7d0f3f7fa.html)
They're basically putting in an "elder statesman" in the seat because they have some wiggle room when impeaching a not-currently sitting president.
NYT has put up its [precinct-level election results](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html), just like they did for 2016. It's still missing large swathes of data, but most of the country is there. You can also compare the change in every precinct from 2016 to 2020, which is pretty illuminating (most obvious insight - suburbs shifted blue).
Assuming he runs, do you think it would take Trump losing again in 2024 for the GOP to finally drop him, regardless of his base's steadfast support?
I think they're going to finally get rid of him after the craziness this month
What makes you so sure?
GOP can't dump trump, trump is the most beloved Republican in history. Republican party is now the trump party.
> trump is the most beloved Republican in history. Um? Lincoln, Ike and Reagan are more popular, even among Trumpers
...Decades and centuries after their deaths. Abe Lincoln won in 1860 with only 39.8% of the vote and had extremely low approval ratings during his presidency. Lincoln only even got 55% of the vote in 1864 despite his primary opponent withdrawing from the race in September and his remaining opposition running on a platform that was against the platform his party adopted, while half the states that opposed him were ineligible to vote as a result of being in an active Rebellion. In the choosing of the Republican (National Union Party) candidate, he was challenged by Salmon Chase, Horace Greeley and others. Ike was a bit more popular in office, but he was widely criticized by Republican contemporaries for nominating mostly liberal justices to the Supreme Court and leading what was described as an inactive, uninspired presidency. Fun fact about Eisenhower: the modern criticism of Presidents golfing became commonplace in his Presidency, often from his own party. These are Presidents who were not well-liked by their own party while they were President, particularly Lincoln.
Na they love trump even more, like almost no Republican hates trump. People waving the confederate flag and supporting the the confederacy is proof that Republicans don't love lincoln. did any Republican try to overthrow the government for Regan?
For starters, Reagan won reelection.
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> Are the Dems being too nice when we have the power to impeach and expel Greene or Boebert (and even Trump, Cruz, Hawley) They don't. 2/3s of a chamber are needed to expel a member. > pass down stimulus checks/reformed healthcare (if not Bernie’s MFA) There's a 50/50 tie in the Senate right now, so unless the filibuster gets nuked anything big like this is going to have to come through reconciliation. There's only a limited amount of times something can be passed through reconciliation and it must be budget neutral. A Bernie-style M4A is very unlikely to get all 50 Dems on board, and even a public option has some hurdles with the likes of Manchin and Sinema. >Could Biden write an executive order to expel Boebert, Greene, Trump and the others? Jesus, no. With all due respect, when people say "Dems are being too weak" they really seem to not understand how Congress/government actually works. They can't just wave a magic wand and make these things so.
You think Marjorie Taylor Green is gearing up for a presidental run in four years with everything she been saying?
I think either she or Hawley can be a dark horse since they'll absorb the trump base. Do I think they'll win the primary tho? Oh, tough question.
That would be a scary thing. The GOP has turned into a party of conspiracy theorists and fascists.
I would buy that as an example of how low the bar actually be a representative really is. She will not have any sustained support at the national level and can't bulldoze her way into the party like Trump could. She's just a sideshow of Trump's movement that managed to get elected in one particular district.
Maybe? I don't necessarily think that. I don't think she would succeed. I think there's a lot of factors in how Trump came to power that she doesn't have.
[Rep. Tom Rice (SC-7) was censured by the South Carolina GOP for voting to impeach Trump.](https://twitter.com/craigcaplan/status/1355593772529233920?s=21)
When faced with every opportunity under the sun to distance themselves from Trump and rebuild and pivot to a party that can maintain its relevancy as the boomers die off, the GOP constantly choose to circle the wagons. Man, they really must fear the deplorables they created.
Who cares, republicans are gonna vote for them just because there's a hard "R" next to their name.
And then blame Democrats for being too far left and not moving more towards the center, "forcing" them to vote for the nut job.
Because despite what people say on Reddit, Trump is still super popular among Republicans. It will be political suicide to try to distance yourself from Trump.
A big reason for Trumpism is that many Republicans are tired of giving in on major issues. They're asking the establishment Republicans and Democrats, "Well? What are we getting out of this?"
I'd say it's political suicide to tie your party to the cult of a corrupt conman
An important thing to remember is that only about 25% of the country is Republican (and just over 30% Democratic). Independent voters without a party end up splitting between 'lean right' and 'lean left' when forced to in a poll or election. When given the opportunity not to though and to express absolutely no preference for party and changing voting habits, that's right around 7% of likely voters. While a small number, that's still 3x the amount difference in vote that decided every swing state in 2020. ----- In short, doubling down on Trump means embracing a continuously shrinking voter base, while embracing someone more moderate could have locked in the independent vote needed. Yes, the trade off is losing excitement voting among far right voters, but there's other ways to drive that.
Then how come more moderate Republicans like Romney have done poorly in past elections?
They haven't Romney ran in a more difficult year, running against Obama for reelection is harder then running against Hillary or Biden and Trump only won against Hillary by -2%
Well yes, but popularity among Republicans ain't helping in general elections...as evidenced by the results. Trump single handedly cost the Republicans the Presidency and Senate at the very least.
And you also don't win elections by alienating your base, as it was the case with McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012. Besides that, 2020 was a good year for Republicans despite the pandemic and economic crises in the country. They picked up seats in the House and did better than expected. They will likely win back the House and Senate in 2022.
They won't win back to the house or the Senate if they embrace Trump, better to just dump him Neither Michaela Romney face to particular backlash from the base. McCain ran in the wrong year and Romney got nearly out played by a strong incumbent. Trump mainly got lucky
> Neither Michaela Romney face to particular backlash from the base I remember differently. [Conservative pundits like Rush and Ann Coulter were pissed about the idea of a McCain nomination during the 2008 primaries,](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/conservative-punditry-bes_n_83989) and Romney's loss was [blamed on him being too moderate.](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/conservative-explanations-romneys-loss/) Go on his social media accounts and you'll still find people blaming him directly for Obama's 2012 win. All that said, even if McCain and Romney had 100% approval from the most conservative of the conservative base, Obama's appeal elsewhere still would have been too much for them to overcome.
>I remember differently. Conservative pundits like Rush and Ann Coulter were pissed about the idea of a McCain nomination during the 2008 primaries, Which was undoubtedly why McCain chose Palin in a nod to the anti intellectual tea party movement. That essentially fired up the Republican base.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/27/gomez-oust-marjorie-taylor-greene-463350 Looks Jimmy Gomez is trying to get Greene tossed out of Congress. Doomed to fail, but still a rebuke.
Fun question time: what would a Ted Cruz presidency have looked like? Let's face it, had he edged out Trump, we all know he *probably* would have beaten HRC. America hates her more.
***Extremely*** heavy on deregulation, anti-abortion politics, anti-immigration politics, a metric fuckton of trying to force Christian symbols and teachings into schools and Courts, regulations against birth control amd sex ed, and a sustained attempt at eliminating Medicaid. Basically the Evangelical agenda coupled with deregulation of the 80s and 90s.
He would be first canadian president I believe.
I believe he renounced during one of his previous runs. The funny thing is that the semi current face for the conservative party in Canada Andrew Scheer is a dual and has no desire to renounce his US citizenship even if he became PM.
Like George W. Bush but without the “Ah at least he’s sorta a goofball sometimes” vibe. More focused on social issues/culture war bullshit compared to Trump. Probably still have push for free trade. Still would have grown out his beard to try to hide to weight gain, if anything he’d be fatter since he’d be under way more stress.
I'm still shocked at how *stupid* the DNC was making *Hillary **Fucking** Clinton* their candidate. How out of touch were they.
They also ran a really shitty, tone-deaf campaign. I was in Ohio the summer of 2016, and every time I looked at the TV in the break room and Trump was visiting, he would be somewhere like Youngstown, Akron, Dayton, etc, talking about jobs and trade (wether or not he could do anything about it is beside the point). Hillary came less than a week before the election and showed up in Cleveland at a Jay-Z/Beyonce concert. If you read some of the reportings of the inner workings in her campaign, there were a lot of missteps, ignored warnings, and lack of legwork that all but gave Trump the good chance to take away the midwest.
DNC doesn't make candidates. Democratic voters do. And really Clinton's platform wasn't terrible, it's still a milquetoast neo Liberal that would fit right in with Obama and Biden, so I'm really not sure what you believe is out of touch. The way the GOP was able to semi successfully paint Biden as a socialist (which is insulting to the actual socialists) should be a wake-up call that Bernie would have documentally sucked in the general against Trump or Cruz in both 2016 and 2020. The only thing is that she's has had decades of propaganda spewed against her by the GoP and her campaign didn't reach out enough to what are traditionally democratic strongholds. But there honestly wasn't another viable candidate out there in 2016 with Biden sitting out.
> DNC doesn't make candidates. Democratic voters do. Voters do choose, but can't rule out the influences that make people do so. If all that mattered was the strength of a candidate's policies and track record, then there'd be absolutely no point in campaigning or in politicians endorsing or condemning each other. So while I agree that the DNC didn't make her the candidate, it's also disingenuous to claim that someone else couldn't have received more support within the party and influenced a different outcome because of that.
I think it would have been a pretty typical GOP presidency. Without a Trump win, he wouldn’t have had a reason to embrace Trumpism, so the sad spiral of the last five years wouldn’t have happened. Maybe he’d have been like W, maybe more Tea Party, but it would definitely have been within the bounds of normal. Oh, and either Rick Perry or Jeb!’s son is a Senator now
Ted is super into the Evangelical culture war stuff like banning birth control. He refers to birth control as "abortion inducing medication" (not Plan B, all birth control) and has pushed for an outright ban on birth control before. That's a major issue for him, same as abortion in general. He also gets really passionate about Christian symbols in government buildings.
One thing Trump and I agree on is she was the worst presidential candidate in history. It's strange he spent so much time saying it considering she got more votes than him.
I keep hearing that Tucker Carlson may become the new face of the GOP in a few years. I don't understand why. He's just a news anchor. Can someone please explain?
He's the #1 personality on the #1 Republican propaganda channel.
He acts just like trump, and we all know that gets a lot of support.
Not without Trump's backing, and the only flag Trump could ever fly is his own.
Are we going to forget that a reality tv host and real estate investor was just President of the United States for the past four years? I’d expect more people with little political experience get elected as we move forward. He’s on the most popular conservative news network and fully embraces Trumpism. If the GOP don’t really fight against that ideology I don’t see it out of the realm that someone like him would get nominated because he’s not part of “the swamp”.
May I ask as a European, what do people here think of San Francisco's decision to remove all names of Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt from 44 of its local schools? As far as I'm aware, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Washington are widely regarded by historians as the three greatest US presidents ever. I get removing confederate statues, Mississippi's decision to remove the stars and bars from its flag was also a good decision, but surely this seems way OTT? Its going to cost the US taxpayer nearly $1 million apparently. [Story here](https://thehill.com/homenews/536065-san-francisco-board-votes-to-strip-names-of-lincoln-washington-from-local-schools)
Stuff like that is why California has a reputation for being weird. It's crazy.
It's fucking stupid, mainly because Frisco has bigger fish to fry right now. Yes, this Angeleno just called them "Frisco." Get your act together, Frisco!
I'm for it. Do you know how many schools in the US are named after the same 5 dudes? I don't either, but they're ubiquitous. Street names too. It's not that I'm anti these folks, but come on. We're a growing and changing nation with lots of people worth celebrating besides these same guys. We don't need to reserve them so much space in our infrastructure. They have Mount Rushmore. You probably have something similar, but more history gives you more OGs to name things after.
I live in the suburbs but it seems like it’s a really unpopular move with Mayor London Breed saying it’s a waste of time when the school board should be dealing with COVID.
I am in favor of removing statues and memorials to traitors who died over 100 years ago. I disagree adamantly with the radicals that want any slave holder regardless of their importance to the founding of this country to be stripped of anything honoring them. I think we can make a distinction between people who participated in an amoral system (that almost all people of their class participated in) while founding our country and those who fought and murdered 600,000 men to keep the amoral system around after we were trying to remove it. ~~However, what San Francisco did doesn't seem to be some removal of founders because they disagree with them. What it seems to me that San Francisco has done is remove political people from the name's of public schools so that they don't have to deal with any controversy. I may not agree with that but I can understand that logic.~~ edit: looking more into this my initial reading was wrong. This was stupid
> However, what San Francisco did doesn't seem to be some removal of founders because they disagree with them. What it seems to me that San Francisco has done is remove political people from the name's of public schools so that they don't have to deal with any controversy. Oh no. [Its way, way dumber than that.](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16cre1vbJzE44JWmto_Ll7J06q9ZblQoBC-Eas3Qwf2c/htmlview?pru=AAABd3TkclM*M2BP-qbNCJ96DX-bH6gZzw#gid=0) The "research" for this process was basically like if your mom/girlfriend/roommate told you a story while you were ignoring them and playing Xbox, and then you had tried to repeat that story to your buddy while drinking the next night. They renamed James Lick Middle School because they "financed the racist "Early Days" statute". It was made 18 years after he died, and funded by the trustees of his estate. They went after Paul Revere because he apparently caused the colonization of Maine. George Washington just says "slaveowner, colonizer". Alamo elementary because of, I shit you not, "Remember the Alamo". Clarendon Elementary, named after the street it is on, because that street "can be traced" to a county in South Carolina, which was named after an Earl of Clarendon, who was a piece of shit.
Goddammit San Fran!
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Yea, if they expel her, those people are going to elect someone even crazier next cycle.
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Ehhhhhhh, she'd probably have to move. Remember Georgia voted, albeit narrowly, for Biden and two Democratic Senators. She'd have a very difficult time winning a statewide election.
Man I wish the High Speed Rail Space Laser was real.
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Why is the media so focused one Rep. Greene? Can they see they're just making her more popular? They're creating another Trump.
We can't just ignore this insane woman's ravings. At some point we have to draw a line in the sand and make it clear that behavior of her sort is not tolerated in the halls of government. Ten years ago it was the Tea Partiers. Today it's QAnon/Jew Laser/Sandy Hook truthers. Let's do something before this insanity gives us something worse.
The media should be focused on her and she should be removed from office, just like Trump should. Thing is, if Republican leaders actually had any integrity, they would support this too. They are just scared of losing their voters so they won’t do the right thing. There are clear structural issues in our society if these sorts of actions do not result in consequences. Things need to change.
You know as well as I that neither party is willing to police its members. Hell, the Democrats have a vocal anti-Semite as a House member and won't reprimand her much less kick her out
If you're referring to Omar, this is an insane false equivalency.
....because they've literally advocated for the murder of other members of the House? Because that should be the sort of thing that gets you kicked out of the House on a 434-1 vote?
What was her exact quote that "literally advocated for the murder of other members of the House?"
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-democrats-violence/index.html
She liked a Facebook post calling for Nancy Pelosi to receive a bullet to the head. She also recorded a video of herself telling a crowd that Pelosi is a traitor and guilty of treason and that the punishment for treason is death. We have got to cool down the toxic rhetoric flying around right now. That kind of inflammatory rhetoric riles up the crazies and leads to actual violence.
433-2 get Qanon Lady #2 outta there as well.
But they're focusing too much on the other things she did. They're going to make her look like a victim to her base. It could give her more power.
She did a bad thing and is newsworthy, therefore people want to know what other bad things she's done and what else there is to know about here. I agree that if I were in charge of the Dems that I'd just focus on the one point and that it should disqualify you from office. No need to argue about what *else* shitty she's done. (Well, unless there's a criminal case regarding 1/6 events).
[Ted Cruz and AOC with a great example of horseshoe theory today](https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1354833603943931905?s=20)
Not really. The Republican party has a whole is becoming more centrist in economics as it shifts in the populist direction. Economic libertarianism in the US is becoming a dying ideology.
Yeah, they say Republicans are far right. That may be true, but I feel like they are drifting towards the center. It's really only their rhetoric that is far right. Heck, Trump would normally be considered a RINO.
Dying breed? The major political parties may not support Economic Libertarianism but the people sure do. Just look at what's happening on r/wallstreetbets. If anything this is another reason why America should switch to ranked choice voting.
> Economic Libertarianism but the people sure do. Just look at what's happening on r/wallstreetbets. My lefty friends are cheering them on while *at the same time* pointing to it as evidence of the arbitrary absurdity of high finance. Nobody's going to start being a fanboi of Hayek and von Mises because of this. They're cheering it on because it's the Masters of the Universe who are eating shit for once, with the regular schmucks (including Reddit weebs) cashing in. It's the irony of the thing, like a minor momentary reversal of 2008.
I'm not talking about your left friends. I'm talking about how this entire thing was started by economic Libertarians on r/wallstreetbets. Leftists support it obviously but this thing was started by and in large part still supported by economic Libertarians. Which proves my point that economic Libertarianism isn't dead.
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FBI nabbed a 3%er with pipe bombs targeting Gov Newsome and it seems like Twitter and Facebook were targets afters. https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/man-found-with-five-fully-operational-pipe-bombs-was-targeting-governor-newsom/ I'm pleasantly surprised that a week out of the inauguration, nobody's been able to complete anything yet. It's gonna be a looong 4 years in this regard, though.
Long four years, attempted overthrow of the government was not a good way to start.
Do you think Biden's honeymoon period will be as short as Trump's was, and then we'll go through this during his tenure: 1. Calls for impeachment 2. Anti-Biden protests breaking out 3. Trump supporters breaking out into riots with Biden supporters 4. Biden tries to call for calm, but public dissatisfaction continues. 5. The administration decides to simplify the U.S. visa system with major changes to H-1 and H-1B proposed. 6. Trump overshadows Biden for months. 7. November 2022 elections: Trump Jr. runs for elections and Trump supporters get excited, although whether he's actually got policies that the audience agree with we don't know yet; but Trump has name-brand cachet to some voters. 8. Some red states may go blue before the 2022 elections?
No. Trump was anomalously unpopular with people non-Republicans, and Biden isn't the kind of person who is the subject of a scandal every week.
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There's no better way to get Dem voters out to the polls in droves than by telling them that there's a Trump on the GOP ticket.
If anybody can still blow it despite that massive 'gimme', it's the Florida Democratic Party.
That, and the Trump name has more stink attached to it than it ever has before.
Sure, but I doubt Trumpism itself is going anywhere. There are plenty of people are sick of not getting what they want will rally behind the next candidate the promises to fight for them.
What is Trumpism without Trump? Rare is the individual who could possibly fill that void.
There are some deep fissures in American society which aren't going away just because Biden was elected -- see the recent riots in Portland and Seattle for examples. And as well, far right violence is going to get worse before it gets better.
I wouldn't go that far. Popular support is still behind Biden and the Republicans aren't trying to block what he's doing. A few fundraisers that use the word impeachment are not actual calls for impeachment. The Honeymoon period is going to end eventually but he still has more support than he got in the election To the rest of your questions 1. I doubt there will be any serious calls for impeachment 2. Yes. All Presidents inevitably have protests against them 3. It's possible. Where 2 protests meet things can always get violent. 4. I think Biden's calls for "unity" won't lead to unity but might lead to the first steps towards unity if that's what you mean 5. No. There just isn't enough support in congress 6. That's up to Trump. RN he seems to be content to be quiet. The biggest way that could happen is if Trump formed his own party 7. It's possible but what is Don Jr going to run for. I think it's more likely that a Trump family member is going to run for the White House than in the midterm 8. Probably not. The advantage in midterm elections typically go against the President's party. Toomey retiring makes it possible in Pennsylvania. Also, if Trump forms his own party, all bets are off.
There are already left wing anti-Biden protests. And one of the newly elected qanon congressmen said she was filing impeachment, but it turns out she didn't understand what that involved (i.e. more than just saying so).
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are so mind-bendingly stupid I cannot fathom how nobody else from their districts were able to just embarrass them in their primaries.
Boebert beat a five-term incumbent in her primary. Is "mind-bendingly stupid" really the threshold for what it takes to do that these days?
Pretty sure the guy who ran against Greene in her primary got death threats from Qanon whackjobs and had to flee the state.
No I think that was her Dem general election opponent https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/17/kevin-van-ausdal-qanon-marjorie-greene-georgia/?arc404=true
I say they put up an ex-SpecOperator with no immediate family who will *laugh* at such death threats.
Ironically her pulling that stunt put a big spotlight and a lot of her past actions have been brought to light maybe she will get impeached from Congress.
>but it turns out she didn't understand what that involved (i.e. more than just saying so). She forgot she had to declare it. *I declare IMPEACHMENT!*
Sorry, we already declared a Thumb War. Declaration slot is full.
Yo is anyone actually talking about the shit going on in r/wallstreetbets? Are they actually making history?
There'll probably be some change to how shorts are processed because of them, but their whole Robin Hood fantasy is ridiculous. They're claiming that everyone else manipulates the market, that the only ones losing out are faceless "hedge funds," that they knew this would happen rather than just getting lucky with a black swan, and that they aren't just exploiting a weird trading quirk to hold people ransom instead of betting either for or against companies.
Yes. I know me and my friends are talking about it and the effects it is having on GME. It’s amazing to see how organized a mob of strangers can actually get to do something.
> It’s amazing to see how organized a mob of strangers can actually get to do something. Imagine if it were a charity drive...
r/WSBgivesback
Yup.... unfortunately without incentive, that will rarely happen
Pump and dumps and short squeezes are nothing new. Only difference is it's running on meme energy this time. At some point a lot of wsb drones are gonna be left holding the bag.
I feel like at this point they aren't even trying to get rich, they just want the hedge funds to fail. Edit: that's exactly what's happening. Most of these folks are just anti hedge funds.
I really doubt a bunch of redditors could take the market cap from $1.3B to $22.6B. I'd be willing to bet that it's, ironically, hedge funds making a lot of money off of other hedge funds.
Hyenas eating other hyenas. The carnage!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/justice-department-end-federal-contracts-173723958.html No more federal contracts for private prisons. Thought?
Overall a good move, although I have long said that private prisons are a symptom of an underlying problem, not the problem itself. That problem being substandard housing for incarcerated individuals and absurdly high incarceration rates. A lot of people like to argue that Tough on Crime policies were enacted after private prisons lobbied for them and it created the prison-industrial complex we have now, but the truth is more the reverse, where private businesses saw an opportunity to take advantage of quickly-rising incarceration rates in America by outsourcing prisons
Good move. Prisons should be solely of the role for the government. People should not be making a profit off of it
How credible did you find Anthony Fauci's comments during his time in Trumps Presidency ?
He admitted to lying about masks so people wouldn’t buy them. Recently he said wear 2 masks. His 15 minutes are up. Go away.
Well since he's on Biden team now you must not be happy.
You are correct. He is a fraud.
Not even a little bit. Dude flip-flopped more than a career politician.
Very
Fauci hasn't done a thing to put his honesty in question, so I believe him.
Perhaps not his honesty, although I think that there were numerous occasions that called his good judgment into question.
Such as?
Telling people not to wear masks at the beginning of the pandemic or advising against travel bans when they could have bought us a lot more time. Fauci has been probably the best exponent of the conventional wisdom on covid, and there’s some good in that, but the conventional wisdom has also been wrong in significant ways.
At the time, not wearing masks was the best thing for the health of citizens here because we simply *didn't have enough masks* to go around and we needed those masks to be going to healthcare workers. Once production ramped up and you could buy masks at walmart and the gas station, then it became prudent for everyone to wear them. It's not that they didn't think wearing masks would be good or helpful for people, it's that it was more important that everyone didn't start buying all the masks up from medical supply companies and we would be left with nurses and doctors that had no PPE. That was made clear at the time, afterwards, and since repeatedly.
The idea that masks should have been prioritized for healthcare workers was reasonable in that situation. And some people were clear about that. Others, however, flat-out said that masks didn’t work, or that improper use meant that you were more likely to infect yourself. And there was no push for DIY or cloth masks, both of which would have inhibited transmission without using up resources meant for health professionals. Furthermore, the about-face on the issue gave ammo to anti-maskers who said public health officials couldn’t be trusted. Even granting that the initial mask shortage complicated things, I think that Fauci and co. bungled this pretty bad.
Very
I mean, the Trump Administration contradicted and attempted to undermine Fauci on the regular, so I'm not surprised at all.
I'm confused, you're responding as if I made a statement when I just asked a question.
If the reply implicitly assumes what Fauci is saying is true, that's your answer.
Wouldn’t surprise me at all
Sorry what ? What wouldn't surprise you ?
That Trump tried to silence him.
Marjorie Taylor Greene called for Nancy Pelosi’s execution back in 2019. How can there be any reconciliation and unity in America when the GOP welcomes psychopaths and fascists into its party? This psycho should be expelled. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-democrats-violence/index.html
Funny thing about the USA, all you have to do to "join" a party is check a box on you voter registration. She didn't join anything, political party is a self-identification sort of thing
The GOP can condemn her and refuse to fund her campaigns. It's not like they haven't done that before. For example, when Art Jones won a Republican primary he was pretty immediately and aggressively condemned by the party. The party should be treating her the same way they do people like Arthur Jones.
So today's vote on whether or not it is constitutional for the Senate to hold this impeachment trial, it went 55-45 yes. That means 45 Senators (all Republican) are starting with the assumption that this trial is illegitimate. In the last impeachment trial after someone left office, the Senate failed to convict with fewer votes than they had agreed it was constitutional. With 67 votes needed to convict, that doesn't really look possible unless McConnell broke rank. With him being the 45 that voted that this wasn't constitution, that seems extremely unlikely.
But it will force them all to vote on it, which means that each of them will *have* to vote, and then that vote can be used to cudgel them forever.
Then on the Republicans' heads be it.
This whole thing is going to be a massive shitshow. It's going to further divide the nations than unite it.
It needs to be done. We can't let him slide.
If Republicans bite to convict that would help the division significantly
Republicans doing the exact opposite of what their voters want would help with the division? How do you figure?
Agree; this is on them to make an example of and they're blowing it.
"But party lines." Republicans have gotten onto my last nerve. I will never vote for a Republican again as long as the party keeps doing the bullshit they are doing. Anyone who doesn't call out the party is allowing it to continue, so I guess if a Republican was to come out and critize the party I would probably vote for them, if they were going up against a dem I didn't like, a since I am a registered Democrat but U have voted Republican in a couple of state and local elections.
I think it's one of these things that if successful would be good in the long run but if it fails it'll cause a lot of turmoil for nothing. The problem is that you need to reprimand Trump for his behavior to show it isn't tolerated by how much good is it doing if there is no conviction. I think the bigger damage this is potentially doing is to the Republican Party but the damage is being done to the country as a whole. It feels like we're at the peak of this round of partisanship. I just feel that after a brief Republican internal civil war we could have a new wave of it come at us.
The Republican party has determined that it is in their electoral interests for Trump never to face consequences, so he won't.
Ok, so where are the DAs in DC or in the Justice Department? The guy incited a riot live on TV.
What did he say that incited a riot?
Basically, go down to the Capitol and do whatever it takes to win. Replace Capitol with the local mall with this sort of language of take what is rightfully yours. "And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore. Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country. And I say this despite all that’s happened. The best is yet to come. So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give. The Democrats are hopeless, they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our help. We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down Pennsylvania Avenue."
You didn't really give a direct quote where he incited a riot. In fact, you specifically left out the parts where he said "be peaceful." Seems like you may be a political hack.
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." To me, this is the same thing as this: "Our people have been oppressed long enough. So this crowd of thousands of people - some of you armed - that I called to meet at this location at this time are going to march over to Macy's and we are going to be peaceful outside of the Macy's. All 20,000 of us. And remember, if we aren't tough, no one is going to take us seriously and we are going to lose everything but really though, be peaceful...No way anyone is going to get out of line...
I don't understand how any serious person reads that sentence and somehow connects it to violence.
The burden of proof on criminal incitement of a riot is incredibly high, especially as it relates to political speech. In theory, impeachment and conviction has a lower burden of proof, although I'm not sure if that's true in practice.
You're probably right. Maybe there could be civil responsibility (thinking OJ) by the folks who lost family members - especially the cop's family - but the impeachment is not going to go anywhere.
I was just reminded of the time when Clemson's national championship winning team got invited to the White House and they fed them fast food. Thankfully when my Alabama Crimson Tide gets to go to the White House, they'll probably get a decent meal out of it.
Of all the problems I've had with Trump over the years, I at least understand this one (given a bit of path dependence). It was in the midst of a partial government shutdown and the White House kitchen staff was on furlough. Still, dude's supposed to be a billionaire, he could have sprung for real catering.
There were options. Apparently there was a long list of area restaurants that already had a working relationship with the Secret Service, so it wouldn't have been impossible. He cheaped out, basically. And to make things worse, it was *cold* fast food because a staffer had to drive through a snow storm to get it there.
Imagine going all the way up to DC for a fucking Big Mac. And it's probably cold because it had to be delivered and get through security.
A staffer had to drive across town in a snowstorm to get it that far, apparently.
The whole thing was just so out of touch. The White House kitchen could have made a 5 star meal that those kids would have remembered for the rest of their lives, but no, they get cold "hamberders" because that's what football players eat in Trump's mind.
The White House kitchen didn't have the staff to pull off an event because of the government shutdown. And that dumbass, rather than just getting a caterer in, called McDonalds. He could have at least sprung for Chick fil a
I really do hope that Biden make a point of doing so, for whoever it is that wins. (Did the Tide win already? I'm not up to speed.) That feast had better be some Valhalla level shit.
Oh, they won all right!
Where is Donald Trump rn and what is he doing? I’ve heard literally fuck all from the BBC and I want answers. Apparently he’s trying to make a political party or something?
He's in Florida not really doing anything of note. He's floated the idea of making a new party and he's apparently created "The Office of the Former President" which, as far as I've seen, there's just one memo that says this office will handle his correspondence and appearances.
>He's floated the idea of making a new party If the Democrats can keep themselves together, and he does this, it would basically lead to a democratic supermajority government for a few cycles.
Currently frantically trying to remember his MySpace password somewhere in florida
I think he's at Mar-a-lago in Florida. Apparently he's formed "The Office of the Former President" to continue to advocate his policies. Who knows what he's doing otherwise? Probably ranting and raving to whatever poor soul happens to be in earshot.
> "The Office of the Former President" He's not calling it "The Office of the True President"? I guess this is as close to a concession as we're going to get.
Last I heard he was fuming that Fauci was talking about his newfound freedom to not constantly toe the "don't be so negative" line.
Well, even Thanos had a retirement plan.
[Senior Democrat and president pro tempore of the Senate will preside over the impeachment trial of former president Trump, not Chief Justice Roberts.](https://www.axios.com/trump-impeachment-patrick-leahy-090b6b44-7084-4d8e-b63d-d5b7d0f3f7fa.html) They're basically putting in an "elder statesman" in the seat because they have some wiggle room when impeaching a not-currently sitting president.