What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[DGuller]

To be fair, grumbler, and I don't mean to dump on you, but at least in the past you did have the tendency to go "we can all see that you're weaseling here" or something to that nature.  I don't recall you doing that in the last couple of years, however, so maybe you don't do that anymore.

[grumbler]

To be fair, grumbler, and I don't mean to dump on you, but at least in the past you did have the tendency to go "we can all see that you're weaseling here" or something to that nature.  I don't recall you doing that in the last couple of years, however, so maybe you don't do that anymore.

I still call a weaseling a weaseling.  But that's hardly unique to me (even if others might use other words). I don't pretend to speak for others, and don't call out uninvolved people as being archetypes of some bad habit.  I may say something along the lines of "I think that it's clear to everyone..." but that's clearly a statement of what I think, not a statement of fact.  That's permissible in polite conversation.

[Razgovory]

https://comb.io/QtO16K

[Eddie Teach]

Everybody generalizes sometimes.

[grumbler]

To be fair, grumbler, and I don't mean to dump on you, but at least in the past you did have the tendency to go "we can all see that you're weaseling here" or something to that nature.  I don't recall you doing that in the last couple of years, however, so maybe you don't do that anymore.

Oh, and I appreciate your moderation in this.  You and I haven't always seen eye to eye. In fact, I've been more brutal with you than I am comfortable with.

[DGuller]

To be fair, grumbler, and I don't mean to dump on you, but at least in the past you did have the tendency to go "we can all see that you're weaseling here" or something to that nature.  I don't recall you doing that in the last couple of years, however, so maybe you don't do that anymore.

Oh, and I appreciate your moderation in this.  You and I haven't always seen eye to eye. In fact, I've been more brutal with you than I am comfortable with.

[Zoupa]

I kinda take that right when it comes to Dorsey, mostly to take a dump on him since I don't really like him.

If a person asking you nicely to stop doing something isn't enough, think about the fact that the only posters who do this are you and grumbler.

I think you're too nice to the likes of Dorsey or Mono, but yeah sure, next time I take a swipe at them I'll write more accurately.

[viper37]

I don't think AR is going on about this because of his bets, he is going on about this because this is the standard way you attack Dems. They are fools, and weak, and if only they would do what McConnell wants them to do, then everything would be better.

I do think the Dems look fool and weak, in face of the Republicans, as in, they seem to cower in fear of what they do, or, simply, take punches and don't fight back, hoping, just like Rocky, that the ennemy will tire of this and they'll end up somehow exploiting that weakness before the 12th round.
But I am not a GOPtard, at least, I wouldn't define myself as such, ever since I started following US politics, I kinda rooted for the Dems, except when they were being dickheads like Bernie&Trump ranting about how evil Canada is for doing what is allowed under NAFTA while the US keeps losing arbitration trials.  But that's another matter, entirely
I just think you and most people here are a little unfair toward AR on this.  Frankly, from up here, he looks like one of the sane ones, the few left in the Republican Party.

[Admiral Yi]

I think you're too nice to the likes of Dorsey or Mono, but yeah sure, next time I take a swipe at them I'll write more accurately.

Thanks.

[grumbler]

I think you're too nice to the likes of Dorsey or Mono, but yeah sure, next time I take a swipe at them I'll write more accurately.

Thanks.

I note the response to Zoupa about accuracy but not to me.

Feel free to ignore what I wrote, but don't think that nobody sees that.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think AR is going on about this because of his bets, he is going on about this because this is the standard way you attack Dems. They are fools, and weak, and if only they would do what McConnell wants them to do, then everything would be better.

I do think the Dems look fool and weak, in face of the Republicans, as in, they seem to cower in fear of what they do, or, simply, take punches and don't fight back, hoping, just like Rocky, that the ennemy will tire of this and they'll end up somehow exploiting that weakness before the 12th round.
But I am not a GOPtard, at least, I wouldn't define myself as such, ever since I started following US politics, I kinda rooted for the Dems, except when they were being dickheads like Bernie&Trump ranting about how evil Canada is for doing what is allowed under NAFTA while the US keeps losing arbitration trials.  But that's another matter, entirely
I just think you and most people here are a little unfair toward AR on this.  Frankly, from up here, he looks like one of the sane ones, the few left in the Republican Party.

I don't think he's actually a Republican.

[alfred russel]

I don't think AR is going on about this because of his bets, he is going on about this because this is the standard way you attack Dems. They are fools, and weak, and if only they would do what McConnell wants them to do, then everything would be better.

There is the corrosiveness of not being able to criticize your team's leader without getting awarded brown stars for supporting the other side. I also disagree with the characterization that the slow progress is primarily due to republicans (on the confirmations so far at least). But whether McConnell is being an asshole here seems really irrelevant.

Me: Don't drive the lane or your shot will get blocked.
Others: Nah, it won't get blocked.
*The team drives the lane and the shot gets blocked.*
Me: They were idiots for driving the lane, I said if they did that the shot would get blocked.
Berkut: The other team had Mutumbo in the lane and he blocks everything that comes his way! You can't criticize someone for that! You should be in the Hawks fan club Hall of Fame!

No, thats not right.

Its more like saying "Hey, if you drive the lane, you are going to get fouled because they fucking cheat!
Yeah, but do it anyway, because we need to force the refs to make the call.
Drives lane, gets fouled, ref makes call, you miss the free throws
SEE I TOLD YOU YOU SHOULD JUST STOP DRIVING THE LANE!

Man this metaphor is getting complicated!

What you seem oblivious to is that the republicans haven't been generally obstructionist on the nominees (they have on some like Mayorkas and Becerra).

The republicans have agreed to expedited timing on most of the nominees. For example Garland finished his hearings on Tuesday. The process goes to him receiving written questions, and after receiving responses the committee votes. Garland committed to returning responses on Friday, and Republicans agreed to a committee vote on Monday, though by the rules they could have insisted on a week to review them.

The reason Garland has been so delayed (he is the last of the major cabinet positions) is the hearings were delayed due to Republicans fighting tooth and nail over Judiciary Committee rules, which is probably because they intend to be maximally difficult on judicial nominees.

A guy like Vilsack is illustrative of what is going on. He had his hearing on February 2 and the committee unanimously approved him the same day. Nothing was preventing Schumer from bringing him up for a vote since February 4 but that didn't happen until February 23 - when he was approved 92-7. Rouse was approved by her committee 24-0 on February 4 and is still waiting for a vote.

[Berkut]

OK, so some background on why I went off an AR so hard. Probably unfairly hard, but I think this is important.


In my view, the GOP for the last decade at least and probably longer has been infected by this cult of populism, anti-science, and anti-government pseudo libertarianism "Tea Party" bullshit. This has manifested in all kinds of shitty ways.


But specifically around how the Senate and House GOP members have chosen to govern, it means that they have embraced a form of bad faith partisanship that says that when in power, they will do almost nothing, except those things that most crassly benefits their donor base. And not much more than that. When not in power, they will take it as their mission to obstruct, sabotage, and actively destroy democratic institutions as a way to make sure that their narrative that government is universally bad and incompetent is supported, while pandering to their remaining minority base who thinks politics is now pretty much just about sticking it to the libs.


Now, the reason this should not work is that in normal circumstances, there should be a political cost to this kind of utter bullshit. Senators and Representatives have to answer to voters. And *normally* just trying to stick it to the other guy while letting the house burn down only gets you cheers from a radical fringe, and you need votes from more then just them. But today, the radical fringe is the party. There are a bunch of non-radicals, but they have bought into this poisoned narrative that the alternative are Dems intent on turning the USA into Venezuela. With a combination of legacy broken representative systems like the Senate being stupidly skewed right and the electoral college being accidently "modified" to help exactly what it was originally designed to explicitly prevent, the GOP has become a party of minority rule.


Here is the part that upsets me. McConnell and people like him know that continuing to pursue this "strategy" of embrace of minority rule while telling most American to go fuck themselves and ignoring of norms of behavior can lead, in the end, to only two possible long term outcomes:


1. The destruction of the GOP, or
2. The destruction of what remains of democratic rule in the USA.


But they have decided they don't care, because the only way they can remain in power in the meantime, regardless of either outcome, is to continue to run out the course they've painted themselves into. They don't have any way to save the GOP or American democracy and stay in power, because their political base is now so extreme, and they've pandered to it exclusively for so long, that there is no path back to sanity that leaves them in power in the process.


So what they care about is staying in power. McConnell wants to run the Senate, or barring that be the minority leader. Running America, or even saving the GOP, is a secondary concern.


His path to doing that is relying on the same things he has done for the last decade plus. He will lie, he will play the Dems, he will obstruct, he will not govern in good faith. But he gets away with this because he has convinced his base that whenever something doesn't get done, why, it's because the Dems are stupid and incompetent and fools! If there are no witnesses for Trumps first impeachment, that must be because there isn't any evidence, not because the GOP illegally denied subpoenas, and then had their GOP SC say that the redress to ignoring subpoenas was impeachment!


They key to this strategy working is that they keep their hard core base mollified with this total bullshit, and they keep a bunch of people who mostly don't pay that much attention at least kind of buying into this shallow narrative that the Dems are incompetent and lazy and probably a bunch of liars about what they claim, but cannot seem to prove. So we see 74 million people vote for more of that.


What does this have to do with AR?


He is *exactly* supporting *exactly* the narrative Mitch wants to send. He could not support McConnell any better if AR was a McConnell sock puppet. The story Mitch is selling is the story AR is repeating word for word. Don't have the trial of the President! Lets do that later, when surely there won't be anything important going on! And if you DO have the trial, why, it will just fail anyway. And golly, wouldn't it be a shame if we just could not possibly vote on those nominations in the meantime! And this is because the Dems are so dumb dumb dumb!


I am absolutely positive that if they waited three months, there would be some other "critical" business that would gee, cannot possibly get done if you want to have a trial! Which we are telling you ahead of time we won't convict on btw, so how about we just do it later maybe? I mean, Trump is out of office, so how important can it be? Don't you want a vote on those judges? And that new climate treaty? Is this really important? Oh, we aren't going to vote for that climate treaty anyway, but maybe if we pretend like maybe we will...lets unite and come together on this! <SUCKER>


And back to my earlier point - this is all in service to two possible outcomes:


1. The eventual destruction of the GOP when their minority finally implodes, or
2. The eventual destruction of what remains of democracy in America if it does not.


Obviously I prefer option #1. I think Mitch doesn't care at this point, he figures he will be gone before either happens, or that is what he is playing for - to hang onto power, as much as he can, for as long as he can, and the consequences be damned.


So yeah, I think non-fucking crazy ass Trumper/Mitch sycophants have only 1 real option, and that is to try to make #1 happen before #2. That is not a "Dem" thing, that is a not-modern GOP thing.


And I think #1 won't happen until at least some of the people willing to buy into this "story" that Mitch and the GOP has sold that when nothing gets done, why, its the Dems fault for not going along with whatever THEY want! rejects that narrative completely. Because that is the only way we will see the GOP pay the *political* cost for their actions, and that political cost is them being voted out of office in large enough numbers to destroy the modern GOP and force a new moderate party to emerge.


AR, and people like AR, are a huge part of why Mitch and the GOP are succeeding at what they are doing. They are selling the narrative Mitch wants them to sell.

[alfred russel]

OK, so some background on why I went off an AR so hard. Probably unfairly hard, but I think this is important.

Here is why you are a fucking idiot.

-There weren't just 7 approved nominees at the start of the week because of GOP obstructionism. The GOP has not been obstructing nominees, for the most part. I'd be happy to speculate as to the reasons they haven't been, but the reality is nominees just haven't gotten put to the senate floor because all the floor time has been used for other shit -- and besides recess the biggest chunk went to the impeachment trial.
-McConnell and almost the entire GOP delegation went on record as considering the trial to be unconstitutional. Delaying the trial was not their position. It was that the entire process should never take place as it was illegitimate.
-At the beginning of the Biden administration, I looked at the scenario and thought holding the trial in February was not in the interest of the Democrats, the incoming administration, or the actual trial. I bet ~$25k thinking they would follow what I thought was their best interest.  When it looked like they would hold the trial anyway, I posted that I thought it was a mistake because we were destined to end up in the scenario we are now. I was told I was wrong, and yet here we are.

Your interpretation of what has been happening in the Senate is wrong, your interpretation of my thought process is wrong, and your statement that I'm mirroring McConnell's position is wrong. You saying that I should get a brown star for my shirt is absurd.

[Grey Fox]

Why is he an idiot because the GOP delegation are obstructists liars?