The 2020 Presidential General Election thread

I wonder what the Lincoln's projects goals are here. They don't seem to like Trump, which isn't a bad thing, but they're not fans of liberals, and their co-founder is George Conway, the wife of Kellyanne Conway, along with Rick Wilson who is another co-founder. I mean, I guess in the short term they get liberals and conservatives on board to agree that Trump is a fucking shit show, while also trolling Trump (which will win them a LOT of allies in liberal camps) but will that parlay into long term acceptance? It could, and maybe they're doing for their own reputation what happened to George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's. Both men, formerly seen as the corporate loving, lying, warmongering assholes that they were (and are) have been welcomed into the "resistance" against Trump, and by the very Lincoln Project now pushing back against Trump.

What do you guys think, as liberals and conservatives? Do you think the Lincoln Project is legitimately pushing back against fascism and authoritarianism, or is something else at work here? Maybe a little of both? I'm curious, because I sure as fuck don't trust them.

Their primary goal is to lance that humongous boil occupying the WH so that America can begin to heal, and they're putting their support behind Biden. Maybe you should pay closer attention.

Many people do pay attention and do still have questions.

@Amaris, I believe their ultimate goal is to regain control of the Republican Party and allow the Republican Party to still be relevant if trump's [cough, choke, gag] presidency causes any real change. Basically, it's a stop-gap.

True, but @Amaris has gone anti-Biden based on an allegation that has strangely gone silent for almost two months. Tara Reade, where art thou?

ETA: I'm not pro-Biden. But Tammy Duckworth seems to be the Chosen One for the VP spot, so all may not be lost.

Four more years of Der Drumpfenfuhrer, though?

I totally get @Amaris' frustration with the Biden nomination.

But, what she is asking here is, Democrats and Republicans aside (cuz they don't), are we going to have a group of politicians to actually stand up for the people. The answer is no. The Lincoln Project is lip service to conservatives who don't like trump but refuse to vote democrat. The Lincoln Project does not care about us.

Fascinating. I wasn't aware that you had the psychic power to know how conservatives plan to vote this November.

That aside, do you want another four years of Der Drumpfenfuhrer? If not, then any movement by anyone - Republican, conservative, etc. - to get that slime out of the Oval Office benefits "us," no?

Don't try to shame me into voting Biden. If and for whom I vote is none of your concern.

Their main goal is to get Trump out of office. If that happens then I’m sure the Republican members will return to pushing their republican agenda. You are right to not trust them. I don’t particularly trust Biden all that much, but we’re not voting for Biden, we’re voting for his VP pick. If Tammy Duckworth is the VP pick, I’m all for voting for Biden because we need military leadership in the White House. Hopefully they’ll be a place for people like Tulsi Gabbard or Bernie or whoever you might support and hopefully those voices get heard and some meaningful changes can happen.

While I understand this perspective, it's a very dangerous path to go down. Just because someone was not in the military, does not mean they will be unable to understand and fully comprehend the scope and responsibility of the military.

Where did I do that?

And yet you can predict how others are going to vote. As I say, fascinating.

Where did I do that?

https://wordforge.net/index.php?posts/3260497/

uh uh. Spell it out form. where did I predict how others are going to vote?

If I were doing anything other than paying attention, I would rally around The Lincoln Project and consider them an ally without question. Since I don't, it should be quite clear that I noted discrepancies in their ideological stances versus their apparent target audience. There was a time when asking questions was good. Has that time passed, or is it merely suspended like habeas corpus once was during the Civil War?

By the way, I follow Tara Reade on Twitter, and have had many conversations with her. She is a lovely person who is kind, warm, and funny. I still believe her, even if the news media has found her less than enthralling these days. I mean, we can't go by the diligence of the news media anyway, because they don't pay attention for very long. After all, the Black Lives Matter protests are still going on, police are still beating up black people, and we don't hear much about it. Does that mean that the protests are no longer valid? You get testy with me because I dislike Joe Biden, and I do, because I consider him a sexual predator, a racist, a liar, and a man who will do nothing beneficial for the most vulnerable except possibly exist. For you that is enough. For me, it's not. Be upset, I can't control that, but you won't guilt me into voting for someone whom I believe is a sexual predator, let alone all of the other reasons I find Biden to be not only morally objectionable, but truly despicable.

I pay far more attention than you think.

Thank you, and yes, that's what I was thinking. The GOP has taken a hard hit because it was once believed they generally wanted what was best for the country, just that they had different methods. With Trump, and their willingness (for the most part) to go along with what he's done, it's clear they have no interest in actually helping people, only to stuff their pockets. The same goes for a significant number of the Democrats, who have passed bills for Trump to sign that only reinforces his power. They are, at best, tepid opposition.

We've seen G.W. get rehabilitated. Mitt Romney, who was the enemy of liberal values in 2012, is now seen as a humble, good hearted man who is doing the right thing. It's not to take away from the rightness of his objections, just noting how context changes so much when it comes to the way people perceive their politics. I think the Lincoln Project is taking advantage of this "any port in a storm" kind of thinking.

While I don't agree about having more military leadership in the White House, I can appreciate where you're coming from. Tammy Duckworth would be stable leadership, which for many folks would be enough.

The Lincoln Project presumably views the Republican party as a good organization that's been corrupted by a bunch of megalomaniac assholes, while most liberals probably view the Republican party as an organization that has gotten worse under Trump, but was a negative force before him as well.

Do I trust them? It depends. I trust that they will behave in a manner that is rationally consistent with their own interests. At the moment, those interests align with mine. Presumably at some point in the future, they will not. But how should that knowledge make me act any differently now?

If we allied ourselves with Josef Stalin to defeat the Nazis, I think I can handle temporarily being on the same side as a bunch of country-club Republicans.

^This - 1,000x this.

What concerns - no, actually alarms - me is to find the same mindset among some on the left that has characteristically been rampant among the hard right... that there's some sort of loyalty oath (a tattoo in the armpit, perhaps?) requiring undying fealty to a particular party or mindset.

The TightyRighties love to cite the "Yabbut, Lincoln was a Republican!" trope, neglecting the fact that yesterday's George Wallace is today's Mitch McConnell.

No one's asking for a blood oath to the Lincoln Project, just an acknowledgment that what they're doing today is of necessity. If they do a 180 once that pustule is out of the Oval Office, then the thinking voter, unlike the reactive voter, can look elsewhere.

These are the same people who want to guilt everyone who voted for Bernie in the primaries to vote Biden in the General. News flash - it wasn't the Democratic Party for which Bernie supporters were voting.

Not a newsflash to me. I'm a No Party Preference voter.

Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast (she's the daughter of Erica Jong) do a podcast for The Daily Beast called The New Abnormal. If you listen to the podcast, Wilson frequently says that he wants to see the current incarnation of the Republican Party burned to the ground, plowed under, and then salted. Roughly a year ago, Wilson was saying that there was no way Amy McGrath could defeat #MoscowMitch, because nobody was willing to put enough money into her campaign to counteract the kind of money that he could spend. You'll notice that the Lincoln Project is now targeting #MoscowMitch.

The facts are these: What happens with the Lincoln Project entirely depends upon what the GOP does after this election. Wilson is, basically, the GOP's version of James Carville. He generally sees politics as sportsing, and the actual outcomes don't matter to him, so long as the side he's on is winning. He does, perhaps unlike Carville, have some ethics, and recognized that Trump was bad news. So, he opposed Trump, but as things have gone along, has found himself shut out being able to get work. He has had two choices as a result: 1.) Suck it up, and support Trump, or 2.) Take Trump out. To his credit, he has opted for the latter. This means that he's unlikely to get a high-paying gig until not only Trump's gone, but the party has completely repudiated Trump.

So, if after the election, not only is Trump defeated, but large numbers of Republicans who backed him, are no longer in power, and the GOP says, "We could use a man like Rick Wilson." Then, you can expect him to flip back and start helping the Republicans again. If, OTOH, the GOP decides they're going to double-down on Trump, then Wilson is going to back anyone and everyone who opposes those Republicans, because otherwise, he's not going to get any work.

As I've said before, Wilson is Stalin, and while he might be a genocidal son-of-a-bitch, at least he knows how to play by the rules. Trump, and the particular Godwin-phrase inspiring son-of-a-bitch, doesn't play by the rules, and that makes him so much more dangerous. Because while the death-toll racked up by the various Nazi death camps might be smaller than the total number of people killed by Stalin, they did it in far less time, and they did it far more efficiently than Stalin did. That's a problem. That changes what people see as the "natural order" of things. Because while you might not like Stalin, at least you know that if you follow the rules, he will too, and not a lot of people are going to die. With Clymadia Claudius, and the infamous Austrian paperhanger, it doesn't matter if you follow the rules or not, you could still find yourself sent to the showers. Personally, I prefer a situation where I know the odds, even if I might not like them. YMMV.

Do you believe I have that mindset?

(quoting both of you since your reasoning is similar)

So the general thought is that you don't trust The Lincoln Project in the long run, because they'll likely revert back to their pro-GOP/Anti-Democrat takes after the election, but in the meantime you see them as a useful ally. To use a similar metaphor to the ones demonstrated, it's kind of like how Stalin and Hitler teamed up before Hitler ended up betraying Stalin.

I'm concerned.

With RBG in the hospital again today I think it is important to stress just how important Trump not getting another one or two SCOTUS picks is for anyone who purports to support more liberal positions.

It doesn’t matter how left wing a future president or congress is if SCOTUS is going to block everything.

They do clearly want Trump gone, and would prefer Biden to him.

I think that is their primary goal, but running a very close second is the aim of making any Trump loss look like a rejection of Trump, not a wave of support for the Democrats vision of America.

If Trump is kicked out, the more traditional Republican groups like them want to be able to dust off their hands, say that was a strange four years that is done now and try to get back to business as usual.

In what way? I've explained my reasoning in the past:

• 1973 - Joe Biden considers Roe v Wade flawed, and says that a woman should not have total control over her body.
  
• 1975 - Joe Biden fights against desegregating school busing programs, setting back desegregation programs: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED167688.pdf
• 1981 - Joe Biden votes to remove rape and incest exemptions from Roe v. Wade.
  
• 1983 - Joe Biden endorses policy to deny abortion access to federal employees.
  
• 1984 - Joe Biden and Strom Thurmond author the Comprehensive Control Act, which expands civil forfeiture policies, and creates harsher penalties for offenders.
• 1986 & 1988 - Joe Biden co-sponsors the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which increases penalties for drug possession. Disparities between white offenders and black offenders widen drastically.
  
• 1989 - Joe Biden rebukes George H.W. Bush's anti-drug policy as not strong enough, pushing for more police, and tougher sentences on drug users.
• 1994 - Joe Biden helps create and pass the Crime Bill that causes a mass increase in the incarceration of black men. The U.S., as a result, has the largest prison population in the world.
• 1994 - Joe Biden writes a security bill that later is integrated into what would become the PATRIOT Act.
  
• 2001 - Joe Biden votes in full support of the PATRIOT Act.
• 2001 - Joe Biden votes in favor of S.J. Resolution 23 which supports the U.S. military invading any nation deemed culpable, in ANY way, in the attacks of September 11th, 2001.
  
• 2002 - Joe Biden votes in full support of invading Iraq.
• 2015 - The ACLU sues the Obama administration for locking kids in cages. Conditions are so deplorable that immigrant children are getting ill, and dying.

Of course it doesn't end there. Biden was in favor of the Hyde Amendment until this past year after he was called out on it by Beto O'Rourke, and Elizabeth Warren. Biden was also fully supportive of the 1994 Crime Bill right up until recently, again after he was called out on it. Some things he says he has regretted, but his old way of thinking is still there. Joe Biden wants to increase funding for police departments in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests. Biden refuses to budge from employer based healthcare, despite being in the midst of a pandemic where people can't work, and can't afford to get treated. Hell, the task force was a joke, as Biden rejected every proposal left of conservative. Even marijuana wouldn't be legalized, despite most congress persons, including Republicans, and a massive portion of the U.S. population, are in favor of it being made legal. That same old thinking from the 1970s and 1980s is still there, and black people are most definitely still paying the price for Joe Biden's positions.

(one of many sources)

That's just the policy side of things.

On the personal side of things:

Joe Biden has been caught plagiarizing speeches. He dropped out during his 1988 presidential run for plagiarizing a speech.

He has been caught in lie after lie after lie, for example:
When he claimed to have marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. He didn't.
He claimed to have been caught up in protests while trying to see an imprisoned Nelson Mandela. He wasn't.
He claimed to have graduated with three degrees on a full academic scholarship. He didn't. He was called on it.

(source)

Sound familiar?

I also recommend reading that whole article in the source link. There are a great many more lies told by Joe Biden that are explored there.

On that note, I believe Tara Reade, just like I believed Christine Blasey-Ford. We have public video of Joe Biden touching, sniffing, and violating the personal space of women and children, with parents and spouses literally mere meters away. It gets passed off as "overly affectionate," "grandfatherly," "old fashioned," and at worst usually "creepy." Look at his awful treatment of Anita Hill around that time. I don't understand how it's seen as such a stretch that Joe Biden, in his power and his prime, might say to an attractive underling "come on, man, I heard you liked me." You can argue until you are blue in the face, but I hold firm that Joe Biden is a sexual predator.

Obviously Trump is awful, but can you see how I would find someone like Joe Biden just as awful? Do you not realize you're asking me to replace a blatantly disgusting and brazen narcissist with racist and rapist tendencies for a more genteel mannered narcissist with racist and rapist tendencies?

Joe Biden says he wants to return things to normal. If you're a moderately wealthy, generally healthy, straight cisgender white person, then congratulations, back to normal, because those people he wants on his team are certainly going to make things look like they're under control, and smoothly operating once again. It might even be called a Biden era, or the second Obama era, depending upon whom you prefer more. Of course, truly horrible things happened during the Obama era, people's rights were violated, children were locked in cages, drone strikes increased by 1000% compared to George W. Bush, hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children were murdered by our bombs, but I guess it wasn't our fault those people chose to build their homes on top of our oil reserves. There will be some headlines, some concerned looks on the evening news, but things will be much better here in America, because normalcy will have been restored, and the media will make sure you know it every chance they get. Please continue being good consumers. Splurge a little. You deserve it.

If you don't fall into that category of privilege I listed above, however, then it's more suffering, and more death, because suffering and death is what passes for normal if you're not among the privileged listed above.

You can agree with this, you can disagree with it, I have no intentions of changing your mind. You will not, however, convince me that Joe Biden is a better choice for the people who aren't white, cisgender, moderately wealthy, and somewhat conservative. From where I am, and where most people stand, Trump and Biden are two sides of the same coin, and they're both going to kill us all one way or another. We could have done better, we could have done so much better, and I'm not just talking about Bernie for those of you with a Bernie buttplug up your ass, I'm talking about moving away from letting these assholes choose their leader and lying to us about who will make America great again, because they're both MAGA: You have red MAGA and blue MAGA. They use different slogans, but the meaning underneath is the same.

Oh, one final thing: SCOTUS.
Just in the past few months:

* Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted in favor of a 600 mile pipeline under indigenous peoples' territory.

* SCOTUS voted against Donald Trump's attempt to block release of his financial records.

*SCOTUS voted to support the law that says employer discrimination against the LGBTQ community was unconstitutional and illegal.

So there aren't quite as many teeth to that argument about needing to secure a liberal SCOTUS justice as it seems. They're just as ready to work in the favor of corporate interests as their red hatted colleagues.


SO, if you've read this far,

Understanding all of this in full context, I would be a fool and a hypocrite to vote for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

While I think being in a position to try and take back control over a post-Trump/hopefully more sane Republican Party is their first hope I think some of them have resigned to the fact that the modern Republican Party has killed itself. At this point they are trying to carve out a space in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party; initially to exercise influence but long term to be in position to capitalize on a split between left wing and centrist wing (which will only grow if the Republicans implode more moderates join the Dems).

Then you go right ahead and side with "most people," whoever they are.

AFAIC, Biden is a placeholder. If the Dems can take back the Senate, and if Biden chooses the optimal Vice President from the short list... if wishes were horses...

"Sometimes the only choices you have are bad ones. But you still have to choose."

You've chosen to opt out. That's your privilege. Pardon me if I continue to be concerned.

Most people in my position, not most people in general.

I haven't chosen to opt out, I just haven't convinced myself that voting is the salvation people here clearly hope it will be, and I am doing what I can to dampen the impact from either "choice."
If anything, I'm opting further in than many people who will check a box, press a button, and walk away believing they did what they could to reinstate democracy in America. You are free to feel concerned. I will continue to be angry about what people are being forced to do for a government owned by corporations that do not give a shit about them. That will not change under either naked emperor.

They sure seem to be stumping for Biden to me.

"Salvation" is not the word I'd choose. "Cure" possibly, for a disease which, if allowed another four years, will continue to kill.

As for a government run by corporations when, since Teddy Roosevelt, has it not been?