In contentious interview, Biden says black voters considering Trump over him "ain't black"

[TexasTiger 12,829]

24 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

just @Mikey "inner a**holenesses" coming out. 

His gets lotsa sunlight.

[I_M4_AU 7,792]

16 hours ago, Mikey said:

I think every Pubbie in America is on the Stacy for Veep train. She'll cost the Dems four or five million votes simply because of that abrasive personality. She ain't much in the brain department either. Lose by 50,000 votes in one of the the heaviest turnouts in history and claim voter suppression? LMAO! But, she's a fit for the Dems. Fits right in with the crybaby sore losers.

The one thing about Abrams as his VP candidate is there would be no doubt who would be running the country.

[TexasTiger 12,829]

17 minutes ago, I_M4_AU said:

The one thing about Abrams as his VP candidate is there would be no doubt who would be running the country.

Who’s running it now?

[Mikey 16,575]

2 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Who’s running it now?

The same one who would be running it if Abrams is Biden's running mate. President Trump.

[SaltyTiger 7,789]

50 minutes ago, Mikey said:

The same one who would be running it if Abrams is Biden's running mate. President Trump.

I think Trump will win regardless of VP pick. Joe is not interesting enough to garner any excitement to speak of. Had Michelle Obama ran would have been fun. Do find it interesting  that Joe has been told he must choose a woman and preferably "of color" to ensure needed votes. In itself eliminates a possible " best person " VP.   

[homersapien 11,362]

13 hours ago, SaltyTiger said:

Uncle Joe makes it through a 50 minute softball interview and some folks are celebrating. If elected could be the shortest presidency in history of the nation. For the votes understand he "must have a woman of color". Why not the best person available?

Sorry, what's your point?

[homersapien 11,362]

25 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

I think Trump will win regardless of VP pick. Joe is not interesting enough to garner any excitement to speak of. Had Michelle Obama ran would have been fun. Do find it interesting  that Joe has been told he must choose a woman and preferably "of color" to ensure needed votes. In itself eliminates a possible " best person " VP.   

Are you suggesting a "woman of color" could not possibly be the best person for VP, by definition?? 

Do you think Pence was a "best person" choice because he is a white male? 

[I_M4_AU 7,792]

1 hour ago, TexasTiger said:

Who’s running it now?

I’m amazed you have to ask that question.  The Democrats have blamed everything Trump does on his leadership.  He has been accused of being authoritarian and Hitler on this very board.  How can you not know who is running the country?  Was that a trick question?

[wdefromtx 3,159]

5 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Are you suggesting a "woman of color" could not possibly be the best person for VP, by definition?? 

Do you think Pence was a "best person" choice because he is a white male? 

Poorly worded, but by setting a certain sex and/or race criteria you leave open the possibility of missing a “best person” if the best choice for a particular situation is available but was automatically eliminated by the predetermined criteria. 

Same applies if white male is the criteria, you possibly missed out of a “best person.”

[TexasTiger 12,829]

15 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

Poorly worded, but by setting a certain sex and/or race criteria you leave open the possibility of missing a “best person” if the best choice for a particular situation is available but was automatically eliminated by the predetermined criteria. 

Same applies if white male is the criteria, you possibly missed out of a “best person.”

Who was the last VP you believe was the “best person” available?

[wdefromtx 3,159]

10 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Who was the last VP you believe was the “best person” available?

Probably Truman. 🤷‍♂️ 

VP is like trying to have the best backup QB. Who’s the best for it? And if they are the best, why aren’t they President? 

 

And it’s also situational, different eras require different “best person” so there’s no one size fits all. 

[TexasTiger 12,829]

3 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

Probably Truman. 🤷‍♂️ 

VP is like trying to have the best backup QB. Who’s the best for it? And if they are the best, why aren’t they President? 

 

And it’s also situational, different eras require different “best person” so there’s no one size fits all. 

So we in other words, Biden is engaging in business as usual?

[wdefromtx 3,159]

13 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

So we in other words, Biden is engaging in business as usual?

Picking someone you hope helps get you elected, yeah it’s S.O.P. 

[SaltyTiger 7,789]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

Are you suggesting a "woman of color" could not possibly be the best person for VP, by definition?? 

No. Never said anything of the sort. You understand that. 

[SaltyTiger 7,789]

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

I’m amazed you have to ask that question.  The Democrats have blamed everything Trump does on his leadership.  He has been accused of being authoritarian and Hitler on this very board.  How can you not know who is running the country?  Was that a trick question?

My same thoughts M4. Strong wind out of the east, fish not biting. Trumps fault.

[TexasTiger 12,829]

1 hour ago, I_M4_AU said:

I’m amazed you have to ask that question.  The Democrats have blamed everything Trump does on his leadership.  He has been accused of being authoritarian and Hitler on this very board.  How can you not know who is running the country?  Was that a trick question?

Dude tweets all day. No one is running the country.

[homersapien 11,362]

27 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

No. Never said anything of the sort. You understand that. 

BS.  You most certainly implied it.  Maybe you should be more considerate of what you write.

Quote: 

Joe has been told he must choose a woman and preferably "of color" to ensure needed votes. In itself eliminates a possible " best person " VP.   

 

[SaltyTiger 7,789]

Just now, homersapien said:

You certainly implied it. 

No I did not.

[homersapien 11,362]

1 minute ago, SaltyTiger said:

No I did not.

Quote: 

Joe has been told he must choose a woman and preferably "of color" to ensure needed votes. In itself eliminates a possible " best person " VP.   

 

It's no wonder you are such a Trump fan.

 

[homersapien 11,362]

28 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

My same thoughts M4. Strong wind out of the east, fish not biting. Trumps fault.

Can we stop pretending Trump is fit to be president?

By

Paul Waldman 

Opinion writer

May 25, 2020 at 10:08 a.m. EDT

At various times over the past three and a half years, many of us have asked what would happen if President Trump truly went over the edge or if his behavior became so frightening that his unfitness for the most powerful position on Earth could no longer be denied.

But the human capacity for denial is apparently almost infinite. Let’s review what our president has been up to in the past few days:

• With the death toll from covid-19 about to top 100,000, Trump has offered almost nothing in the way of tributes to the dead, sympathy for their families, or acknowledgement of our national mourning. By all accounts he is barely bothering to manage his administration’s response to the pandemic, preferring to focus on cheerleading for an economic recovery he says is on its way, even as he feeds conspiracy theories about the death toll being inflated. This weekend, he went golfing.
• In a Twitter spasm on Saturday and Sunday, Trump retweeted mockery of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s weight and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) looks, along with a tweet calling Hillary Clinton a “skank.”
• Eager to start a new culture war flare-up, he urged churches to open and gather parishioners in a room to breathe the same air, threatening that he would “override” governors whose shutdown orders still forbade such gatherings. The president has no such power.
• He all but accused talk show host Joe Scarborough of murdering a young woman who died in 2001 in the then-congressman’s district office, bringing untold torture to her family from the conspiracy theorists who will respond to his accusation.
• He has repeatedly insisted that the upcoming election is being “rigged” because states run by both Republicans and Democrats are making it easier to vote by mail, seeking to delegitimize a vote that has yet to occur, despite the substantial evidence that mail voting advantages neither party.

The truth is that Trump is not much more despicable of a human being than he has always been; it’s just that standard Trumpian behavior becomes more horrifying when it occurs during an ongoing national crisis. It is reality that changed around him, and he was incapable of responding to it.

We all know this. In public, Republicans may say that the real villain in the pandemic is China, or that all those deaths — and the tens of thousands yet to come — were inevitable, or that it is essential to get the economy moving. But they know as well as the rest of us do what a catastrophic failure Trump has been.

They must own the moral choice they now make. In 2016, they said Trump would grow serious and sober once he was faced with the awesome responsibilities of the office. There was little reason at the time to think it would happen, but it was at least possible.

No one can say that now. Not only do we know who Trump is, we know who he will always be. And we know that reelecting him will be disastrous in a hundred ways.

If you gave many Republicans in Washington truth serum, they’d say, “Of course he’s unfit to be president. Of course he’s corrupt, of course he’s incompetent, of course he’s the most dishonest person ever to step into the Oval Office. But I can live with that, because him being reelected means Republicans keep power, we get more conservative judges and we get all the policies we favor.”

That is the choice they’re making. We all know it, even if they’ll never say it out loud.

I’m not sure how I’d feel or what I’d do if was faced with a similar choice as a liberal, because it’s impossible to imagine a liberal version of Trump becoming the nominee of the Democratic Party — or even what a liberal version of Trump would look like. But we can see how Democrats grappled recently with their own questions about former vice president Joe Biden and the compromises they might have to make about him.

When a woman named Tara Reade alleged that Biden had sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s when she worked in his Senate office, the response among those who wish to see Trump defeated in November was complicated, to say the least. Some criticized Biden, some questioned Reade’s story and some remained agnostic pending further information.

And some, showing a forthrightness Republicans have not been willing to muster, said that even if they came to believe Reade’s story was true, they’d still vote for Biden, not just because Trump has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct by no fewer than two dozen women, but also because even if Biden turned out to be guilty, it would still be unfortunate but necessary to choose him over the most dangerously unfit president in American history.

In the days since, so many questions have been raised about Reade’s story that she has few defenders left; her own lawyer dropped her as a client. That has left Democrats breathing a sigh of relief, as they seem to have been excused from making a painful but necessary choice. Nevertheless, they grappled, candidly and publicly, with what it would mean for them if Reade were telling the truth.

The Republicans who support Trump have seldom done that, perhaps because there is no way to do so without acknowledging how morally indefensible that support has been. And as we approach another election, they’ll tell themselves that Trump isn’t as bad as he looks, or that Joe Biden is a monster, or that all that matters is winning.

In the future, when we look back on this dark period, we should resist the temptation to focus solely on Trump himself. To do so would be to excuse those who know exactly what he is but pretend they can work to keep him in office and remain unsullied. They cannot, and their moral culpability becomes clearer every day.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/25/can-we-stop-pretending-trump-is-fit-be-president/

[SocialCircle 570]

7 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Can we stop pretending Trump is fit to be president?

By

Paul Waldman 

Opinion writer

May 25, 2020 at 10:08 a.m. EDT

At various times over the past three and a half years, many of us have asked what would happen if President Trump truly went over the edge or if his behavior became so frightening that his unfitness for the most powerful position on Earth could no longer be denied.

But the human capacity for denial is apparently almost infinite. Let’s review what our president has been up to in the past few days:

• With the death toll from covid-19 about to top 100,000, Trump has offered almost nothing in the way of tributes to the dead, sympathy for their families, or acknowledgement of our national mourning. By all accounts he is barely bothering to manage his administration’s response to the pandemic, preferring to focus on cheerleading for an economic recovery he says is on its way, even as he feeds conspiracy theories about the death toll being inflated. This weekend, he went golfing.
• In a Twitter spasm on Saturday and Sunday, Trump retweeted mockery of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s weight and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) looks, along with a tweet calling Hillary Clinton a “skank.”
• Eager to start a new culture war flare-up, he urged churches to open and gather parishioners in a room to breathe the same air, threatening that he would “override” governors whose shutdown orders still forbade such gatherings. The president has no such power.
• He all but accused talk show host Joe Scarborough of murdering a young woman who died in 2001 in the then-congressman’s district office, bringing untold torture to her family from the conspiracy theorists who will respond to his accusation.
• He has repeatedly insisted that the upcoming election is being “rigged” because states run by both Republicans and Democrats are making it easier to vote by mail, seeking to delegitimize a vote that has yet to occur, despite the substantial evidence that mail voting advantages neither party.

The truth is that Trump is not much more despicable of a human being than he has always been; it’s just that standard Trumpian behavior becomes more horrifying when it occurs during an ongoing national crisis. It is reality that changed around him, and he was incapable of responding to it.

We all know this. In public, Republicans may say that the real villain in the pandemic is China, or that all those deaths — and the tens of thousands yet to come — were inevitable, or that it is essential to get the economy moving. But they know as well as the rest of us do what a catastrophic failure Trump has been.

They must own the moral choice they now make. In 2016, they said Trump would grow serious and sober once he was faced with the awesome responsibilities of the office. There was little reason at the time to think it would happen, but it was at least possible.

No one can say that now. Not only do we know who Trump is, we know who he will always be. And we know that reelecting him will be disastrous in a hundred ways.

If you gave many Republicans in Washington truth serum, they’d say, “Of course he’s unfit to be president. Of course he’s corrupt, of course he’s incompetent, of course he’s the most dishonest person ever to step into the Oval Office. But I can live with that, because him being reelected means Republicans keep power, we get more conservative judges and we get all the policies we favor.”

That is the choice they’re making. We all know it, even if they’ll never say it out loud.

I’m not sure how I’d feel or what I’d do if was faced with a similar choice as a liberal, because it’s impossible to imagine a liberal version of Trump becoming the nominee of the Democratic Party — or even what a liberal version of Trump would look like. But we can see how Democrats grappled recently with their own questions about former vice president Joe Biden and the compromises they might have to make about him.

When a woman named Tara Reade alleged that Biden had sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s when she worked in his Senate office, the response among those who wish to see Trump defeated in November was complicated, to say the least. Some criticized Biden, some questioned Reade’s story and some remained agnostic pending further information.

And some, showing a forthrightness Republicans have not been willing to muster, said that even if they came to believe Reade’s story was true, they’d still vote for Biden, not just because Trump has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct by no fewer than two dozen women, but also because even if Biden turned out to be guilty, it would still be unfortunate but necessary to choose him over the most dangerously unfit president in American history.

In the days since, so many questions have been raised about Reade’s story that she has few defenders left; her own lawyer dropped her as a client. That has left Democrats breathing a sigh of relief, as they seem to have been excused from making a painful but necessary choice. Nevertheless, they grappled, candidly and publicly, with what it would mean for them if Reade were telling the truth.

The Republicans who support Trump have seldom done that, perhaps because there is no way to do so without acknowledging how morally indefensible that support has been. And as we approach another election, they’ll tell themselves that Trump isn’t as bad as he looks, or that Joe Biden is a monster, or that all that matters is winning.

In the future, when we look back on this dark period, we should resist the temptation to focus solely on Trump himself. To do so would be to excuse those who know exactly what he is but pretend they can work to keep him in office and remain unsullied. They cannot, and their moral culpability becomes clearer every day.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/25/can-we-stop-pretending-trump-is-fit-be-president/

The article gets it wrong and early ...... like in the first bullet point. Did the writer donate $100,000 of their salary to help with Covid-19? 

[wdefromtx 3,159]

7 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

No I did not.

 It could have been worded better, but then again he will only see what he wants to see. 

[Gowebb11 9,314]

[homersapien 11,362]

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/25/joe-biden-was-right-about-black-people-and-trump--and-the-left-needs-to-get-past-purity-tests/

Joe Biden was right about black people and Trump — and the left needs to get past purity tests

Biden's inartful phrasing was essentially correct — and progressives must face the urgency of this situation

Chauncey DeVega

May 25, 2020 4:00PM (UTC)

My uncle, whom I'll call Roger, is a white man. He "dated" my older cousin-aunt for 40 years, although they never got married. Roger was also a musician who played bass in my father's band. Roger and my cousin-aunt were very much in love and had several children. As such, Uncle Roger was always at family gatherings and other events. Inevitably, he would have too much to drink (and smoke) and get into a loud argument with someone about politics, sports, music, books or some other topic … and then he would say something impolitic about black folks. Everyone would look at him, shake their heads, roll their eyes and then laugh. On cue, everyone would say, "That's Uncle Roger! He's just getting too familiar again!"

Uncle Roger's transgressions — and to be fair, much of what he said was actually true — became a running joke in my family and their circle of friends. It was all like some 1980s sitcom where there's one white character who loves his black family and friends but crosses that invisible line between what black folks can say to and about each other (other groups have such rules of speech and decorum as well) and territory where other people had best not venture. 

America may not have an Uncle Roger, but we do have Uncle Joe — Barack Obama's former vice president, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in this year's election. 

Last Friday, at the end of a "challenging" interview on Charlamagne tha God's radio show "The Breakfast Club," Joe Biden offered this nugget of racial wisdom:

"You've got more questions?" Biden replied. "Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."

Biden has been extensively criticized for making that comments and has apologized, saying that he should not have been so "cavalier." He concluded: "I was making the point that I never take the vote for granted and in fact, I know in order to win the presidency, I need the African American vote."

Donald Trump's supporters, especially those black conservative racial mercenaries who criticize Democrats for supposed racism while serve as human defense shields and enablers for white conservatives, are bemoaning Biden's comments.

To watch Trump defenders attack Biden for one clumsy remark — when they themselves are part of a white supremacist, neo-fascist regime — would be comedy gold if the stakes were not in fact so high.

This all-too-common dance of recrimination and apology over "racial slights" is tedious and distracting. Biden's comments are a non-controversy elevated into something important at a time when American democracy is imperiled by Donald Trump and his forces.

The most basic way to intervene against such sideshow nonsense is to ask a basic, foundational question: Did Biden say anything that is not true? The answer is not a riddle or something unknowable.

Black Americans, as a group, have interests. These can be evaluated relative to black Americans' struggles for full equality and opportunity, and a true democracy for all people on both sides of the color line (in the United States and internationally). Black people are individuals, of course. But because of a historic and contemporary experience of marginalization and discrimination, their political calculations and other decisions are often made through a lens of "linked fate."

As an empirical matter, across almost every public policy area Donald Trump and his administration — and the Republican Party as a whole — have consistently advocated and enacted policies that hurt black (and brown) people's health, safety, incomes, opportunity, civil rights and freedoms, and diminish their life chances more generally.

Even more damning, Trump is the preferred candidate of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist terrorist organizations. Infamously, Trump described the white supremacists who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 "very fine people." Trump was and remains a leading voices in the white supremacist "birther" conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimizing Barack Obama, America's first black president. Last Thursday during a campaign visit to Michigan, Trump praised and echoed Henry Ford's noxious ideas about "bloodlines" and "human stock." Ford was an anti-Semite who personally inspired Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement.

Yes, there certainly are some black people who have internalized anti-black racism and other self-hating malice, and many of them support Donald Trump. They are free to do so in a democratic society — and also free to be judged and criticized for their decision.

Excluding such pitiable people from the equation, Biden was for all intents and purposes correct in his comments about black people and Donald Trump. To complain about his inartful language is to sidestep the core truth of what he expressed.

Trump has never hidden his strategy for defeating Biden — or whoever else the Democratic Party might have nominated to be his 2020 opponent. In conjunction with voter intimidation, voter suppression, vote theft, outright lying, and inviting foreign interference, Trump and his agents of chaos will launch a sophisticated disinformation and psychological operations campaign against the American people. This strategy will consist in part of slurring Joe Biden as a racist, a traitor and a rapist, as well as a consummate politician plagued by corruption In essence, Trump and his strategists will project all the president's worst qualities onto Biden.

Out of fear of being labeled "liberal" or "biased" "fake news," the American news media will treat these charges at least half-seriously — however ridiculous they may be — and publicly litigate them, and by doing so help Trump achieve his goals.

By comparison, Trump has repeatedly violated the Constitution as president. He is a serial and apparently pathological liar. He is likely suffering from severe mental illness and poses grave danger to the American public and the world. He is illegitimate and incompetent, hates democracy and has only contempt for the American people. He is exploiting the coronavirus pandemic in an effort to secure his re-election. He has obvious sympathy for white supremacy, is endlessly corrupt and has credibly accused of sexual harassment, assault and rape by dozens of women.

At present, most polls show Biden with a significant lead over Trump. But because the Democratic Party is so skilled at stealing defeat from the jaws of victory, there are many disaffected Democratic Party voters, left-leaning independents, and others who will be suckered into not voting for Biden in November on Election Day 2020.

Even Noam Chomsky, ardent libertarian socialist, and a longtime critic of the Democratic Party and its neoliberal corporate wing, supports Joe Biden's candidacy. In a new interview, Chomsky even went so far as to issue the following warning about Donald Trump and his movement:

Hitler was perhaps the worst criminal in human history. He wanted to murder 6 million Jews, murdered my extended family, 30 million Slavs, gypsies and homosexuals and others.

That's pretty evil. But what does Trump want to do? He wants to destroy the prospect for organized human life.

In a recent conversation with Mehdi Hasan at the Intercept, Chomsky also warned that purity tests by self-described progressives risk repeating the same errors that gave Adolf Hitler control over Germany:

In the early 30s in Germany, the communist party, following the Stalinist line at the time, took the position that everybody but us is a social fascist so there's no difference between the social democrats and the Nazis. So therefore we're not going to join with the social democrats to stop the Nazi plague. We know where that led. And there are many other cases like that. And I think we're seeing a rerun of that.

Refusing to vote for Joe Biden because you object to some of his policies or views, or because you are waiting for a perfect candidate, in practice only aids and abets Donald Trump and his movement in its efforts to remain in power in 2021 and  beyond.

Sen. Bernie Sanders knows this to be true. He has significant policy disagreements with Biden but has encouraged his supporters to rally around the former vice president. 

Ultimately, American democracy is a work in progress, and this is especially true for America's multiracial democracy. Donald Trump and his movement are relentlessly, obsessively and systematically doing everything within their power to destroy. In the world that Trump and his supporters long to create, America will be a full-on neofascist, plutocratic apartheid state. That America will be all the things that Biden's detractors on the left claim to hate, made even more extreme.

Biden at least offers an alternative: We can stop this disaster, recalibrate and work through the next steps of improving American democracy so that the poison of Trumpism and other forms of racial authoritarianism can finally be purged.

Defeating Donald Trump on Election Day 2020 is all that matters. Leftists, progressives and others who are reluctant to vote for Joe Biden should recalibrate themselves around that statement of purpose. It is the only path available to save ourselves from Donald Trump and what he represents.

[AUDub 11,147]

2 hours ago, SocialCircle said:

The article gets it wrong and early ...... like in the first bullet point. Did the writer donate $100,000 of their salary to help with Covid-19? 

The irony blindness, it burns.