American Politics Thread

[zoroarctic]

Per Fox News, Biden's popular vote margin of victory now stands at 4%, surpassing Obama's 2012 margin as the second-largest this century.

Biden is appointing Neera Tanden to lead the OMB, which just feels like a deliberate insult to the Bernie wing of the party.

I don't think Biden's that online, and even if he were, I doubt it would be a major factor in his cabinet choices.

Edit: So, this happened today. (you'll have to crank up the volume, but there's no mistaking it)


View: https://twitter.com/brahmresnik/status/1333535859153440769?s=20

 

[Dorothy]

I don't think Biden's that online, and even if he were, I doubt it would be a major factor in his cabinet choices.

The animosity between Tanden and progressives is hardly an online-only affair. She's about as poisonous as Emanuel in that respect, although to her credit she has not, to my knowledge, covered up a murder.

Did out a victim of harassment at a staff meeting though!

 

[RileyXY1]

View: https://twitter.com/verge/status/1333441080247934977?s=19


Good riddance. This likely means Net Neutrality will return.

Alright. Goodbye. Not gonna miss you.

 

[zoroarctic]

The animosity between Tanden and progressives is hardly an online-only affair.

Anecdotal, but I’ve never seen or heard any criticism of Tanden outside the Very Online Left bubble. In fact, their fanatical hatred for her is the only reason I even know she exists. I don’t have any strong feelings on her, but she’s got Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren’s stamp of approval, and I’m normally inclined to trust their judgement.

 

[Volphied]

No matter her past political positions, it doesn't seem likely that Tandem will get the job as multiple senators are already on the record as calling her the worst pick so far.

Biden's outspoken nominee to run budget office deletes 1,000 tweets

Neera Tanden has criticised senators on Twitter and one says her Senate confirmation process faces ‘problematic path’

www.theguardian.com

Joe Biden’s nominee for a key economic post has deleted more than a thousand of her own tweets, some of which were critical of senators who now hold her fate in their hands.

The Daily Beast first reported the steps by Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress (CAP) thinktank who Biden has nominated to lead the federal Office of Management and Budget.

“Can people on here please focus their ire on [Senate majority leader Mitch] McConnell and the GOP senators who are up [for re-election] this cycle who enable him,” Tanden wrote in June 2019, in a tweet recovered by the Beast.

Tanden named those “enablers” as Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, John Cornyn, David Perdue, Thom Tillis “and many more”.

A tweet calling McConnell “#MoscowMitch”, a common nickname for the majority leader among liberals during the investigation of Donald Trump’s links to Russia, was also among those deleted.

Tanden’s fate may hinge on two runoff elections in Georgia in January. If Democrats win both seats – one held by Perdue – they will control the Senate via Kamala Harris’s casting vote as vice-president. That would make Tanden’s confirmation achievable – if party discipline held.

But Tanden, a former policy aide to Hillary Clinton, has also been a fierce critic of senators from the Democratic side of the aisle, for example the progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

“It’s an odd choice for Biden and his ‘healing’ presidency to bring someone in who is so combative, especially on Twitter, being that we just ended a four-year Twitter presidency,” Josh Fox, a climate activist and Sanders surrogate, told the Beast. “She causes ire unnecessarily.”

Fox also said CAP “pretends to be aligned with progressive values, but Neera Tanden seems so cynical that she attacks progressive policies like a ban on fracking, the Green New Deal and Medicare for All”.

The Massachusetts progressive Elizabeth Warren is among prominent Democratic senators who have backed Tanden.

Republicans have been quick to tell reporters Tanden will not be confirmed if their party can help it. On Monday, Cornyn, from Texas, told reporters he thought Tanden was Biden’s “worst nominee so far”.

“Her combative and insulting comments about many members of the Senate, mainly on our side of the aisle, [create] certainly, a problematic path,” he said.

The Beast said Tanden had deleted at least one tweet in support of MJ Hegar, the Democrat Cornyn beat for re-election last month.

Jen Psaki, Biden’s incoming White House press secretary, said Tanden was “a brilliant policy expert and she knows how vital funding for [government] programs is. As a child for a period her family relied on food stamps to eat, on Section 8 vouchers to pay the rent and on the social safety. Her fresh perspective can help meet this moment.”

Tanden did not comment. But she has changed her Twitter biography. It now reads: “Director of OMB nominee, liberal, Indian American, feminist, mom, wife. Not in that order. Views expressed are most definitely my own.”

 

[zoroarctic]

I think we know who's getting fired next.

View: https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/1333851919316619264?s=20

 

[Blockhead Pippi]

What's the chances of the Republican party splitting up into two separate parties -- one that aren't blind loyalists to fascism and Trump, and the other one that is -- and they'd become so divided in numbers that it'd actually give Democrats (or maybe even other progressive parties like Green) a fair shot at actually getting things done?

I guess I'm just trying to look for a positive side to all this. In reality, seeing this divide drummed up by hate and conspiracies is terrifying.

 

[zoroarctic]

Trump's team is filing lawsuits in Wisconsin to overturn the results there. And, uh, just take a look.

View: https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1333885782101286912?s=20

What's the chances of the Republican party splitting up into two separate parties -- one that aren't blind loyalists to fascism and Trump, and the other one that is -- and they'd become so divided in numbers that it'd actually give Democrats (or maybe even other progressive parties like Green) a fair shot at actually getting things done?

Probably not high. The GOP will find something to rally around once Biden takes over.

 

[Dorothy]

What's the chances of the Republican party splitting up into two separate parties -- one that aren't blind loyalists to fascism and Trump, and the other one that is -- and they'd become so divided in numbers that it'd actually give Democrats (or maybe even other progressive parties like Green) a fair shot at actually getting things done?

I guess I'm just trying to look for a positive side to all this. In reality, seeing this divide drummed up by hate and conspiracies is terrifying.

Zero. The Republican Party is the party of Trump now. Genie's not going back into the bottle. A more likely scenario, one that I would prefer to happen, is that moderate Republicans defect to the Democrats, creating a center-right party, and progressives breaking off to form a center-left party, with the Republicans as a right-wing rump. Finally have something approaching the normal ideological divide of most countries instead of this farce we have now where we have to pretend that Democrats are on the left.

 

[Our Wasted Years]

Spoiler: William Barr says there is no evidence of widespread fraud in presidential election

Barr says no evidence of widespread fraud in presidential election

The Justice Department hasn't found evidence to support allegations of widespread fraud that could have changed the result of last month's presidential election, Attorney General William Barr said in an interview with the Associated Press published Tuesday.

www.cnn.com

The Justice Department hasn't found evidence to support allegations of widespread fraud that could have changed the result of last month's presidential election, Attorney General William Barr said in an interview with the Associated Press published Tuesday.
The comments from Barr, who has been steadfast in his support of President Donald Trump during his tenure, represent the latest official rebuke from Republicans of the President's claims of widespread fraud in his loss to Joe Biden.
"To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election," Barr said.

Barr, who prior to the election echoed Trump's claims that mail-in voting wasn't secure, said both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security have looked into claims of fraud and come up empty.
"There's been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results," Barr said. "And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven't seen anything to substantiate that."
Barr's announcement came the same day he publicly revealed he appointed Connecticut US Attorney John Durham to act as special counsel investigating whether intelligence and law enforcement violated the law in investigating the 2016 Trump presidential campaign -- essentially keeping that issue alive into the Biden administration.
Trump and his attorneys are still pursuing desperate legal challenges to the 2020 election results in some key states, despite the fact that a number of them have already certified their results.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Monday that his state's elections were secure, drawing condemnation from the President.
"I've been pretty outspoken about Arizona's election system, and bragged about it quite a bit, including in the Oval Office," the Republican governor tweeted in part, praising the state's election laws and practices as secure and empowering to voters. Biden beat Trump by 10,457 votes in Arizona, the secretary of state's office said.
And last week, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia's secretary of state rejected Trump's calls for them to overturn the state's election results after they were certified. Trump has made a series of unfounded claims of fraud in the state, for which there is no evidence, and he lost the state to Biden by more than 12,000 votes. Trump has criticized Kemp for how he handled the state's recount.

Barr had previously pushed similar claims to the ones Trump has repeatedly made, including in September, when he made a number of false and misleading statements to CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview in which he condemned states using mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.
"People trying to change the rules to this, to this methodology -- which, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion -- is reckless and dangerous and people are playing with fire," Barr said at the time.

Barr's comments will almost certainly raise questions about Trump's relationship to his attorney general moving forward, especially given the fact that Chris Krebs, the official running the cyber arm of the Department of Homeland Security, was jettisoned by the President because of a statement he released saying Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud were "highly inaccurate." Barr went to the White House on Tuesday for a pre-planned meeting with chief of staff Mark Meadows, an official told CNN.

Two attorneys working for Trump swiftly rejected Barr's assessment on Tuesday, repeating their claim that they have "ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states," which they say the attorney general isn't privy to.
"With the greatest respect to the attorney general, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud," attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said in a statement.

 

[zoroarctic]

A more likely scenario, one that I would prefer to happen, is that moderate Republicans defect to the Democrats, creating a center-right party, and progressives breaking off to form a center-left party, with the Republicans as a right-wing rump. Finally have something approaching the normal ideological divide of most countries instead of this farce we have now where we have to pretend that Democrats are on the left.

I wouldn’t count on this either. As long as the electoral college exists, the two-party system is here to stay.

Besides, we already have a center-left party.

Source

 

[Dorothy]

I wouldn’t count on this either. As long as the electoral college exists, the two-party system is here to stay.

Besides, we already have a center-left party.
View attachment 137906
Source

This data is based on the Democratic Party platform, which is not the same thing as the policies Democrats pursue in practice - in practice, they remain stranded in the 90s, fretting about the deficit and desperately trying to triangulate on every issue.

 

[Volphied]

View: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1333965375839621120


Repealing Section 230 will mean all websites (including this Pokemon forum) will be legally responsible for what their users post on them. It would be the death of all social web forums and comment sections.

So, of course, Trump now wants to veto the military bill until he gets his way, and all because Twitter allowed mean trending topics about him to run.




lol

 

[Dorothy]

View: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1333965375839621120


Repealing Section 230 will mean all websites (including this Pokemon forum) will be legally responsible for what their users post on them. It would be the death of all social web forums and comment sections.

So, of course, Trump now wants to veto the military bill until he gets his way, and all because Twitter allowed mean trending topics about him to run.




lol

Keep Section 230 and defund the military? Sounds like a win-win to me!

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

Just more petty bullshit because Trump can't handle any criticism or jokes targeted towards him.

Also there's been a lot of talk about Trump skipping Joe Biden's inauguration to announce a run for 2024. Hoping his crimes catch up with him because we do NOT want a 3rd election cycle listening to his lies and petty insults.

 

[Volphied]

Just more petty bullshit because Trump can't handle any criticism or jokes targeted towards him.

Also there's been a lot of talk about Trump skipping Joe Biden's inauguration to announce a run for 2024. Hoping his crimes catch up with him because we do NOT want a 3rd election cycle listening to his lies and petty insults.

If he runs again for president, then I'd love to see which Republican politicians will be willing to face him in the primary. They'll get squashed by the unhinged GOP base just like Jeb! was.

 

[Ryoma Maser]

View: https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/1333919015174098950?s=20


I never knew how much anger could be shown through sign language, I think the translator is even more angry than the official.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

This is going to sound very callous of me, but while I certainly hope these people are safe and that the people threatening them are brought to justice for it, it's hard for me to feel especially bad for Sterling, who seems to just be reaping what he sowed.

A quick check of Sterling's twitter account shows that he's much the same as any other Republican on the subject of Trump: He criticized him heavily before he became the nominee...

View: https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/706238029694943232


View: https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/763508880815063042


View: https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/750370183223578625


And then, as soon as Trump became the nominee, threw his support behind him, even contradicting earlier criticisms of him.

View: https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/796709615488606208


View: https://twitter.com/GabrielSterling/status/797971008389050368


(In a reply to that tweet about the op-ed, someone points out that he literally says "Just because Trump was elected doesn't mean it's open season on you or the people you know")

He criticized Trump on a few things like tariffs and Helsinki, but he never went back to saying that Trump was a concern for violence. Not after Charlottesville, not after the pipe bombs mailed to Democrats and news outlets, not after the El Paso shooting, not after gassing protestors.

As long as he was a Republican in power, it was never concerning that Trump promoted violence until it happened to him.

At 0:35, Sterling says that it's "gone too far". That stands out to me. It's not that the lying about an election is a problem. It's that it went too far.

Sterling said that climate change wasn't real (x, x) "climate hysteria will hurt the economy" (x, x), that "health Nazis are trying to take your bacon" (x), that environmentalism was secretly a back door into socialism and communism (x). He said that left-leaning outlets wanted to sow election chaos in 2018 (x), that liberals are the most intolerant people (x), that "If you don't leave liberals in a sputtering rage you're not doing it right," (x), they're "for anything that is mandatory" (x).

Lying about his political opponents and telling people that the left was a bunch of awful people was never a problem before. But now that the wrath of the Trump base has turned on him, now that he's marked as part of the Soros/Chavez/Venezuela/Thunberg conspiracy because he didn't give Trump a win, now it's too far.

I hope that Sterling and those around him are safe. I hope that this is a wake-up call to him for the kind of atmosphere the Republican party has created.

But thousands and thousands of people have been angry at Trump for promoting/allowing violence for a lot longer than Sterling has. We were mad when he encouraged the Proud Boys. We were mad when he called a man in his 70s a terrorist because "he fell harder than he was pushed". We were mad when he gassed protesters for a photo op. We were mad when he tried to deflect blame for the pipe bombs and for the El Paso shooter. We were mad when he said there were "fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville. We were mad when he told his crowds to "knock the crap out of" people. Some people were mad at him before he even ran, because he called the execution of Edward Snowden. And some were mad at him even before the internet, because he posted ads calling for the execution of five innocent teens.

Sterling's fury means very little to me, honestly. Because it's not born out of principals, or out of concern for others, it's born out of selfishness. It only mattered when it happened to him.

(No anger directed at you, Ryoma Maser, this is obviously something you had no way of knowing about lol. I'm just pissed at everyone in politics these days)

 

[Ryoma Maser]

(No anger directed at you, Ryoma Maser, this is obviously something you had no way of knowing about lol. I'm just pissed at everyone in politics these days)

None taken, I'm much the same. I was just surprised, I never seen anyone in politics be that angry even it was an act.

Speaking of being surprised, I found this on my feed.

View: https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1334172311293980675?s=20

About time someone gain some sense at FOX, though it's only a matter of time before they lose all of it again I think.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

None taken, I'm much the same. I was just surprised, I never seen anyone in politics be that angry even it was an act.

Oh, very true, I didn't even think of that! God, four years of this and we just get sarcastic clapping and sketch comedies...