What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Caliga]

Erm. This seems weird:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/06/pentagon-took-3-days-to-inform-white-houses-nsc-of-austins-hospitalization-00134176

Yeah, this is not acceptable.  If Austin intentionally hid his status from Biden, he needs to resign or be fired.  If someone else was supposed to communicate his status to Biden and failed to do so, then they need to be fired.

[Caliga]

Also, news just dropped that Secretary Austin had prostate cancer surgery and that was the reason for his absence.

[Barrister]

Saw this article on POlitico - Cali Governor Newsome vetos bill that would ban youth football.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/california-youth-tackle-football-ban-00135985

I am like "are they crazy?  Banning youth tackle football - in the US?  Darn right the GOP should go after that.

Once you get to paragraph 6 though you learn it's only banning tackle football for under 12.  To which I am like... um yeah, I wouldn't let my under 12 kids play tackle football...

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I won't pretend I'm super informed on it, but I have a few long time friends who played football in both HS and college that also coach youth football, in their circle they are strongly in favor of no tackle football before Grade 9 (they would see Pop Warner / Youth football and Middle School / Junior High football shift to variations that are either no-contact or reduced contact.) These are all Gen X football meatheads, not the typical type you would imagine being against tackle ball.

The issue is for younger kids tackle ball can be so devastating, and serves very little purpose. You can learn a lot of fundamentals of the game without full contact tackle; and for the kids who want to go to that next level they have the option to play full contact in HS, is the thinking behind it.

[grumbler]

The opposition to the ban on tackle football was built around "parental choice," which is only credible if the parents actually have the knowledge needed to make an informed choice.  I doubt that this is true.  There are lots of things that parents cannot "choose" for their children, because society has a strong interest in protecting children from poor parental decision-making (about drugs or alcohol, for instance).

The reality is that this opposition was based purely around emotional appeals and not grounded in the best interests of the parents or children at all.  I think that government should avoid creating new restrictions unless there is strong evidence and arguments in favor of them, but in this case I think that the research on CTE provides that strong evidence.

[Jacob]

I have a friend who's typically quite apolitical, but has gone fairly deep on Palestine for personal reasons. He's convinced that Biden is evil, and that he'll lose the election because of his support for Israel.

How much do you all figure the current Israel-Palestine situation is likely to affect the outcome of the US presidential election?

[Admiral Yi]

I have a friend who's typically quite apolitical, but has gone fairly deep on Palestine for personal reasons. He's convinced that Biden is evil, and that he'll lose the election because of his support for Israel.

How much do you all figure the current Israel-Palestine situation is likely to affect the outcome of the US presidential election?

About as much as 10% of Bernibots voting for Trump in 2016.

[Savonarola]

I have a friend who's typically quite apolitical, but has gone fairly deep on Palestine for personal reasons. He's convinced that Biden is evil, and that he'll lose the election because of his support for Israel.

How much do you all figure the current Israel-Palestine situation is likely to affect the outcome of the US presidential election?

Minor, but I think there is a risk that some young progressives will abandon Biden for Cornel West (or someone like him) over Israel allowing West to play a Ralph Nader style role in this election.

[Valmy]

I have a friend who's typically quite apolitical, but has gone fairly deep on Palestine for personal reasons. He's convinced that Biden is evil, and that he'll lose the election because of his support for Israel.

How much do you all figure the current Israel-Palestine situation is likely to affect the outcome of the US presidential election?

Is he under some impression that Trump and the Republicans are big supporters of Palestine?

[The Minsky Moment]

Is he under some impression that Trump and the Republicans are big supporters of Palestine?

The point of voting is not to select a leader but to signal one's own superior virtue and affiliation with the proper thinking group.

[Razgovory]

Man, I remember this back in 2000.  And all the Naderites saying "it's not our fault" for the years afterword.  I was so fucking sick of those self-righteous assholes.

[Jacob]

Is he under some impression that Trump and the Republicans are big supporters of Palestine?

I don't think he's particularly conversant in American domestic politics, but he's being subjected to a high volume of "Biden is genocide supporting scumbag" propaganda and other online discourse. I worry a bit about him, to be honest.

My point here, though, was to get a sense of the degree to which you anticipate the Palestinian conflict to influence the presidential election as I'm a bit worried about the consequences if Trump wins.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm not tremendously worried about it. But I am of a school of thought that "protest votes" and third party candidates don't really "cost" a candidate that would otherwise win. They generally reflect dissatisfaction with the system, like I don't really think Gore was going to win "if not for Nader", Nader's votes represented people dissatisfied with their choices. If Nader hadn't been an option, I suspect they still would not have cast a Gore or Bush vote, basically they are "ungettable" voters, and there's always some low level % of voters that are just outside the mainstream.

Likewise I don't think third parties or BernieBros "cost" Hillary the election, because I think they just represented a portion of the electorate that was simply unwilling to vote for Hillary. I think they would have been unwilling to vote for Hillary even had Bernie not ran in the primary--in fact Bernie's surprising robustness in the 2016 primary is almost certainly tied to general dissatisfaction with Hillary, it wasn't "caused" by Bernie or his voters.

I think 2020 showed that a lot of voters view Trump as uniquely unqualified to be President, and I doubt that someone who voted on those premises in 2020 is going to go out and vote for Cornel West or whatever. One thing to keep in mind about Biden's coalition is it was never built on enthusiasm, it was based on a "lesser of two evils" argument for a lot of people (particularly progressives, who were always skeptical of Biden.)

Biden could easily lose in 2024, but if he does I don't much think it will be because of Palestine.

[Barrister]

I have a friend who's typically quite apolitical, but has gone fairly deep on Palestine for personal reasons. He's convinced that Biden is evil, and that he'll lose the election because of his support for Israel.

How much do you all figure the current Israel-Palestine situation is likely to affect the outcome of the US presidential election?

The last two elections were all pretty close, coming down to several thousand votes in a few key states.  It's not impossible to imagine that Israel-Palestine could cost Biden a few votes.

But again - what else is Biden supposed to do?  Support for Israel is pretty strong in the US, and the pro-Palestinian side do themselves no favours with the disruptive protests they are engaging in.

Biden dumping Israel would be very much worse for him electorally.  Remember Biden won in 2020 by NOT being the progressive darling.  Progressive voters had Bernie and Elizabeth Warren to support.

[Valmy]

Man, I remember this back in 2000.  And all the Naderites saying "it's not our fault" for the years afterword.  I was so fucking sick of those self-righteous assholes.

At the time I was a Republican voter and I voted for Nader because I was protesting what Bush did to McCain in the Republican Primary. So it was my fault Bush got one fewer votes in Texas, though he managed to win by 21 points despite me being a self-righteous asshole. In my defense I was a 23 year old idiot back in 2000, so that all made sense to me at the time.

That was the last Presidential election I did not vote Democratic.