It’s demotivating The spectacle of Democrats, hair afire, publicly second-guessing themselves to the nth degree over whether Joe Biden’s candidacy might demotivate voters is demotivating to me. I don’t want to vote for us when we act like this, and I’m a convention delegate. I wrote the other day that I haven’t heard this much magical thinking from the left since the last New Age convention I covered. This thread by David Roberts, a.k.a. Dr. Volts, expresses a lot of that same frustration: I haven’t written much about politics since the debate, mainly because I’m so overwhelmed by disgust & contempt toward this country’s media & commentariat that it has rendered me inarticulate with rage. Twitter probably doesn’t need more rage. I do just wanna make one point tho. To be clear up front: I don’t give one tiny hot fuck who the Dem nominee is. I truly don’t. Biden’s fine. Harris is fine. A warm puddle of vomit is fine.
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2024 is about more than presidential candidates As David Roberts (Dr. Volts) stated plainly on Friday, “This election is not a choice between two individuals, it’s a choice between worldviews, between futures. Do we want to continue down the path to multiethnic democracy or do we want to impose a white patriarchal Christian autocracy?” While Democratic Party elites tear their hair out over Joe Biden’s debate performance and pretty uneventful interview with George Stephanopoulos broadcast Friday night, the Biden-Harris comms team is hammering Donald Trump on social media over Project 2025. (See below.) Why and why now? Because Trump is doing his best Sgt. Schultz and running away from Project 2025. Don’t you let him. Project 2025, the published 900-page plan for turning America into a fascist theocracy, is drawing more negative attention than, in their hubris, the Heritage Foundation and its Christian nationalist partners may have anticipated. What is Trump’s internal polling showing him about ublic reaction? Look, it’s been a tough week.
I don’t even know if that’s real, but I do know that it could be.
That’s just for starters. Trump says that he doesn’t know the people involved or anything about it but he doesn’t agree with it. He’s not bright. I do believe he doesn’t know — or care — about many of the policies in that document. He has a very narrow focus on trade, immigration and fucking over his enemies and rewarding his friends. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t perfectly find with his henchmen carrying out the rest of it. He only cares about himself and since he won’t be running again (whether because he observes the constitution or repeals it) anything they want to do is fine with him. By the way:
They were LIED too! I vividly recall when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke, the media and certain self-righteous Democrats all screamed in unison that they were livid that Clinton had lied to them about having extramarital sex. “He lied to ME!,” they cried, as if that was the real crime he had committed. I would have thought that after Trump, who lies more easily than he breathes, they would realize that little conceit is ludicrous. Apparently not: President Biden has lost more than broad Democratic support since his bad debate. He has bled credibility — with the media, lawmakers, top officials and even his own paid staff. It’s not clear if — and how — Biden recovers it, top Democrats tell us. […] Axios’ Alex Thompson, the most deeply sourced reporter on the Biden beat, has chronicled, day after day, the number of longtime staff and top Democratic officials who feel deeply angry and misled. These are the president’s fans, many on his payroll. Lawmakers and top Democrats feel duped by Biden … his press office … his campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg … his top aides.
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address March 4, 1865: “Fellow countrymen: at this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends is as well known to the public as to myself and it is I trust reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future no prediction in regard to it is ventured. “On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it ~ all sought to avert it.
“Democrats have no spine” A month ago, I asked, “Who would you rather have watching your back, lackadaisical voter? Dick Durbin or Rocky Balboa?” When Democrats panic at the first sign of trouble, Ms. or Mr. Independent has got to question whether they have what it takes to lead the country. Granted, Republicans still scare-monger about communists and Marxists, etc., decades after the collapse of the Soviet empire. Ms. or Mr. Independent might insist that if they want to lead this country in the 21st century they might first try living in it. That said, steadfastness is not one of Democrats’ strong points. Hell, I don’t have warm fuzzies about voting for us right now. And I’m not the only one to observe that Democrats running around with their hair on fire over Joe Biden’s debate performance last week is a lousy advertisement for any of their candidates. Self-doubts and timidity are not confidence-inspiring. One need not be particularly savvy to know that. Stuart Stevens made the case to MSNBC that Democrats need to start projecting strength and quit the public second-guessing.
We had some progress. We’re going backwards.
He seems depressed. Meanwhile, here’s more of the GOPs ballot rigging: President Joe Biden’s Democratic allies could get a boost to keep him on the ticket from some unlikely partners: Republicans. Led by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, Republicans are currently looking to guarantee that Biden will be the Democratic nominee — and to make it so that, if Biden withdraws, it won’t be easy to replace him on ballots. While Biden’s campaign insists he has no plans to drop out, Republicans are gearing up for any and all possibilities. They’ve been preparing for this moment for quite some time. About four months ago, after special counsel Robert Hur’s report raised more concerns about Biden’s health, staffers at Heritage’s Oversight Project started researching laws in states across the country for replacing a nominee. They laid out just how difficult it would be for Democrats to replace Biden in key swing states in a memo that was compiled in early April and released last week ahead of the debate.
A friend sent this, which I’d never heard of: Gödel’s Loophole is a supposed “inner contradiction” in the Constitution of the United States which Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher Kurt Gödel postulated in 1947. The loophole would permit the American democracy to be legally turned into a dictatorship. Gödel told his friend Oskar Morgenstern about the existence of the flaw and Morgenstern told Albert Einstein about it at the time, but Morgenstern, in his recollection of the incident in 1971, never mentioned the exact problem as Gödel saw it. This has led to speculation about the precise nature of what has come to be called “Gödel’s Loophole”. It has been called “one of the great unsolved problems of constitutional law” by F. E. Guerra-Pujol. When Gödel was studying to take his American citizenship test in 1947, he came across what he described as an “inner contradiction” in the U.S. Constitution.