#i want to put an obvious bias in this poll to get people to want to dunk on me and answer honestly | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

greengrungeemo · 8 months

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TRIGGER WARNING: SENSITIVE TOPIC, PR*GERU BEING GARBO

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One rabbit hole I accidentally dug into after watching a YT vid of Fatt Walsh failing at playing GTA V, ranting about how video games are unenjoyable, how they rot the youth's brains, and then mindlessly blaming women A.I drivers for his own sh*t driving (it was beyond insufferable), was this. Pr****U polls.

I don't want to politically debate by any means, but what the actual f*ck.

1) Are you that pretentious and selfish to not provide a sliver of respect to others around you? If someone asks you, not demands or orders, asks politely to respect their pronouns, is your first reaction really to say no because you value your stance over them as an individual? They could already be slightly uncomfortable in getting out of their comfort zone to ask you, so can you imagine saying no when they do? I can't. Put yourself in someone else's shoes, please.

2) Men, and anyone for that matter, should be able to wear whatever they goddamn want. I started wearing crop tops because I grew more confident and happy with my body. Condemning anyone for wearing something that brings them joy, especially if it's perfectly appropriate, makes you a shit. Like an actual shit on the floor. Just because of that poll, I'm gonna buy myself a plaid skirt to wear. :3

3) The "I research my own data" is no surprise. Of course that's their answer. Ever hear about bias research? Affirming your own beliefs through biased search terms will inevitably get you search terms that are a great match to your own beliefs. I.e: "Vaccines and autism" vs. "Why vaccines cause autism". I BET you they search the 2nd example more often than not. Similarly, simply stating a proposition is true, and believing its true, and providing your own justification to it being true, does not mean it is entirely true. The conclusion? Trust scientists, the scientific method, and empirical evidence.

4) This one bothers me. A lot. They're implying not everyone deserves a LIVEABLE wage??? They really drive by homeless people and think to themselves, "A shame they put themselves in that situation" and go about their day without any empathy whatsoever? You don't know what got them there. You shouldn't ever assume anyone's unfortunate circumstance. A living wage guarantees that everyone can potentially live and function and take care of themselves and their needs. Your work and wages should be associated with your efforts, merit, and luck? Sure, but everyone should have a livable wage as a minimum. Otherwise, you accept human suffering in your own society for the benefit of the wealthier class when you should instead try to minimize suffering as best you can. We should all do our part to help one another.

5) This one still makes me contemplate it to this day. Kindness should have been the beyond obvious answer? Kindness will always be pure. A kind act will always remain as a kind act. If everyone was kind, then the world would be kind - to nature like plants and animals, and to each other. It's a very easy answer for me. Truth, however, can be skewed. It can be personally malleable from a multitude of factors. We will also never know the full, correct truth about anything and everything space and time has to offer us. The answers to this poll, I feel, seems to be what do you prioritize? Kindness or your OWN form of truth? Truth to people can be shaped based on their beliefs, morals/ethics, knowledge and understanding, culture, prejudices, and so many other things. How do you guarantee your form of truth is the correct one? What's the statistical probability that it's 100% right? I can easily admit that my own opinions, beliefs, and my own "truth" can be fallible. I used to believe that the planet Neptune was a deep shade of blue, as many others did and still do, and now recently, it has been discovered that Neptune is a pale blue similar to Uranus. Am I firm on my "truth" that Neptune will be, and will always be a deep blue? No. I trust the scientific process and change my opinion on what it currently is. A pale blue. Therefore, kindness as a value, I believe, is far better and important than truth, simply because it benefits all, it's pure and non-malleable in form, and in a world brimming with negativity, death, hatred, and evil, a little kindness can go a long way. A shame that 97,650 people think otherwise on what should be prioritized.

What bizzaro world views. Also, I promise never to interact with that anymore because I don't want to give them any more attention, just completely f*cked up how they treat/view others. Despicable.

#personal thoughts #vent

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melishade · 2 years

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Do you accept Wfc and Foc games canon to the Attack on Prime universe? There is some lore there that others like Hanji would love to hear. Such as Combiners, Dinobots, corruption of the Core (Megatron getting vibe checked repeteadly by Metroplex lmao)

The Aligned Continuity has always been extremely inconsistent when it comes to Transformers Prime. There's the Covenant of Primus, WFC and FOC, Transformers Exodus and Exile, Transformers Prime, and RID2015. RID2015 is being completely scrapped in Attack on Prime for...obvious reasons. That show was bad. But the rest of it just has some major glaring inconsistencies to the point where I really just pick and choose what gets brought up in Attack on Prime.

For example, Ratchet's retelling of Optimus and Megatron's friendship and eventual fallout can easily be subjected to his own bias towards Optimus and Megatron. An unbiased perspective would be reading Transformers Exodus where you see 'Oh yeah, Megatron might've had a point with being angry with Optimus'.

The Dinobots are a lot more complicated because in the Covenant, they were created by Shockwave, but they were with the Autobots during the WFC, but suddenly Grimlock, the leader of the Dinobots, forced in stasis lock as a Decepticon in RID2015. See how confusing that is?

My specific rule for Attack on Prime in regards to Transformers Prime Lore: if it's not explicitly mentioned in the show, I'm not really going to bring it up for consistency sake. Like Optimus and Megatron's relationship before the war, free game. Combiners, not so much. The history of Primus and Unicron, oh absolutely! The Core's corruption...maybe? Look in Transformers Exodus, it was mentioned that dark energon was used to corrupt the Core, but in the 2nd episode of TFP, they're bringing up dark energon as if Megatron and Starscream have never heard of it and this is there first time using it.

So unfortunately, that means no Dinobots, and no Grimlock in the story. And I know people really wanted Grimlock to be in the story. When I put a poll in chapter 4 on fanfiction about what other Transformers I should bring into Attack on Prime, Grimlock was a top choice. And who doesn't want to see Optimus Prime ride a T-Rex cutting the heads off of titans? But it's just not practical in the sense of consistency. Even with Emperor Kumquat's breakdown of the aligned continuity, it's still hard for me to nail it down to where it can be accepted.

Also, this extensive Transformers lore is not needed for Attack on Prime because it's not the main focus. The main focus is humans vs titans. Learning about this has no real impact on the story; it's just filler. Maybe Hanji learns about the Dinobots and Combiners in a one shot, but as a plot point, no. I also got an issue with too much lore and not enough character driven moments. Lore driven shows, or shows that focus too much on lore, ends up being a bad show because the characters are ultimately pushed to the side.

(Although Levi might actually laugh if he heard Megatron got pwned by a Transformer City. Lol)

#tfp #transformers prime #aligned continuity #tf aligned #wfc #foc #asks #send me asks #attack on titan #attack on prime #ao3 #fanfic #shingeki no kyojin

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a-froger-epic · 4 years

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About the Interview

Since I posted the interview with J - a woman who has described herself to me as one of Queen’s first “groupies” - there has naturally been a lot of discussion about the veracity of the interview, the source, and my own motivations in posting it. I fully expected that, and I will say once more that nobody (apart from a small handful of anonymous trolls) has behaved inappropriately in these discussions. I have not received any “hate” because of this. There is no “drama”. Nobody is wrong, or a party-pooper, or attacking me by expressing their doubts. I have seen some awful bile spat at people anonymously recently, and that kind of behaviour has got to stop.

Now, if you don't think I am genuine, there is obviously nothing I can do about that.

However, what I am hoping to do here is add as much transparency as I can in regard to how and why the interview happened, and also share my own full thoughts on it with you.

First things first. No unverified, anonymous source can be seen as definitive proof of anything, ever. That is my stance. I have myself been criticised for so much as suggesting that other anonymous sources tied in with Freddie’s history are not 100% proof of one thing or another. But for me, an anonymous source can never mean more than at best: this seems very likely, but we can’t be 100% certain.

Perhaps I was naive to think that what I considered to be enough of a disclaimer at the beginning of the interview, was enough. My intention was to express that while I, personally, believe J to be a) the person she says she is and b) genuine about what she remembers, that does not mean I believe everything she has told me is fact or happened in that exact way. I thought this was obvious. Perhaps I was unclear, and I apologise for that.

So let me be clear. There is nobody in the world who has perfect, factual recollections of what happened to them almost 50 years ago. Not even J herself claims for one moment that this is the case. She mentions several times that these are old memories from when she was very young, that she indulged in recreational drugs at the time, and that her views - of course - carry a personal bias. All this, I thought, would be enough for readers to know not to take everything they read at face value.

All of the above is why I kept my own thoughts and notes to a minimum within the interview, why I didn’t correct or point out obvious mistakes. I simply assumed that everybody would go away and read the interview against all the sources and information they already have, as I have done myself.

But maybe that was somewhat irresponsible of me, and I should have been the first person to dig into how J’s memories fit in (or don’t) with the information which is already out there, and how to put the two together. While I refrained from sharing all my thoughts alongside the interview (although I have fragmentally done so in response to other people since), others like @quirkysubject (here), @iwilltrytobereasonable (here), @emmaandorlando (here), @sarinataylor and @talkingismylifewrites (here) all had some very good things to say. All of them make excellent points. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SEND THEM NASTY MESSAGES. I frankly can’t believe I have to say this at all.

I found myself in a difficult position, because as the person who had spoken to J and asked her all these questions, I did not feel as though I could dissect her words as freely as anybody else. She has put a lot of trust in me, and I do not want her to think that I question her honesty and intentions. Because I don’t. If I hadn’t felt as sure as I reasonably can be that she is the person she says she is, and that her story is genuine from her perspective, if I had been in any doubt about that, I would not have made it public.

Here's the thing:

Even if you don't believe J knew the boys, her recollections of the time period alone are still valuable and incredibly interesting, giving us a glimpse of early 1970s London.

But I do believe J. Why?

Before I answer that, let me just say: I fully realise that of course the fact that it was my story J happened across, and me she decided to speak to because of it, makes me more inclined to want to believe her. However, other authors I'm friends with, as well as myself, have received messages from older people several times before. It does trigger nostalgia when a story is very strongly rooted in a time somebody has lived through. There are older people in the fandom. (I recently ran a poll and all age groups were represented even here on Tumblr.)

Now, on to the reasons why my communication with J has felt nothing but authentic to me.

1. She was never in any rush to get in touch with me or relate information to me. It took her a few days to email me after she first spoke to me in the comment section, where I begged her to please get in touch. She then sent me the same email five times, over two days, because she couldn’t quite work my email address out at first.

I ended up asking several questions more than once to get an answer because they were overlooked. The conversation went off on tangents, and we chatted about her weekend at her friend’s house (and I was presented with a beautiful snapshot of the beach), the memory box her daughter made for her, her work and other things. There were stretches of days at a time when J simply didn’t find the time to get back to me. And I may have badgered her with a few too many emails asking her to please remember to answer my questions when she has a moment. In short, it was the opposite of somebody rushing to share their story. I was doing all the rushing. (I realise that I am asking you to take my word for this, but this did not all happen in a vacuum. @plainxte, @quirkysubject, @fingersfallingupwards, @onegoldenglance and @freddieofhearts witnessed the process first-hand, as well as my excitement and some of J’s original emails.)

2. J was very trusting. I know her full name, where she lives and her place of work. She sent me current pictures of herself and her husband unprompted. At no point did she ask me not to reveal her identity, that is a call I made because I did not want to expose her to any possible harassment.

3. There were a few things in her account of what she remembered which were so obviously at odds with what we know to be true - it’s well-known John is a bit taller than Roger, for example, but J remembered him shorter, Queen went to Sydney in ‘85, J remember it as ‘84 - that I couldn’t help but think, if I was somebody who was trying to convince others of a made up story, the first thing I would surely do is make absolutely certain to get the facts which are easily findable right. Instead, J always lead with: this was all a long time ago, I’m sorry, I’m doing my best trying to remember.

I realise that a very clever hoaxer could do all this and convince me. But here the question has to be, to what end? This would be quite an act for someone to arrange, to make it seem quite so naturalistic. Nobody would go through the trouble of doing that for nothing. There’s no monetary gain. Scandal? There is nothing scandalous in the interview. Attention? J is barely an active member of the fandom. She has managed to create a Tumblr though: @since72. There is one post currently.

It also took her a couple of days to get back to me after I posted the interview.

In brief, I have no logical explanation for why somebody would go to these lengths and fool me so cleverly, with such attention to detail, when there seems to be nothing in it for them. Why then did J bother to talk to me at all? What was her motivation? Well, after I thanked her profusely for doing this, she simply said that she felt she owed me as reading my story had brought back so many memories for her.

All of the above is why I strongly feel that J is very much real and genuine. But I completely understand that it all hinges on the fact that in order to believe everything I say is true, you would have to trust me. And I know that as I am just another person on the internet, you have no reason to do that. But I’ll get to me in a moment.

Here are a few more doubts which I have seen come up with regard to J.

Why would she be reading fanfiction about people she knew? That’s weird.

To be perfectly honest, exactly that was my first reaction, too. But then I thought about it and talked to friends about it.

Firstly, J says herself that she was never a close friend. I agree that it would be far weirder to read fanfiction about somebody you knew very well. Having said that, John Deacon’s son has been known to read Queen fanfic about his father (and read it out on his YouTube channel). But I think given that it’s been half a century and J has been watching Queen in the public eye ever since, it isn’t really all that strange to read about fictional versions of them.

Secondly, a friend of mine noticed that it seems as though older people in the fandom find J overall more credible than younger people. I’m 35, and it is true that the older we get, the more we look for the things which remind us of our younger years. There is an urge to remember and re-live. You can trust me on this, or you can ask anyone over the age of 30 or 40. Nostalgia is real, and it only comes to you with age. Why would somebody who had briefly brushed shoulders with people who later became celebrities not take an interest in them later? It seems natural that she would. As J says, she never stopped being a fan of Queen’s music and came across fanfic when she looked up Adam Lambert. Is it really so strange that she would find fanfic about them entertaining? Having given it all this thought, I really don’t think so.

It’s unrealistic that she was so young.

This is something I have to disagree with. Times were different. Pete Townshend entered Ealing Art School at age 16, according to Wikipedia. My mother (currently 62) moved 600km away from home at the age of 15 to study piano at music college. I myself moved out from home at 17 (no tragic reasons whatsoever), but that’s beside the point. I have seen it framed in a way where it was said that “It isn’t realistic that a 16-year-old was hanging out with Queen who were all in their 20s”. I agree, it would be a little strange if the story was that one 16-year-old girl was hanging out with Queen by herself as their good buddy. But that is not the story. (Even though it is well-known that during the 60s and 70s, young teenaged groupies did in fact hang out with rock groups very frequently. Of course, J was not that kind of groupie.) She was simply part of a large circle of friends, by her own admission not a close friend of the band. Personally, I struggle to see how this is unrealistic in any way.

It seems super suspicious that she lost her photos in a flood.

Yes, it does. I agree. J realises that, too.

Like @quirkysubject said in her post, I don’t blame anyone who is too sceptical at this point. But there actually was a pretty bad flood in Australia in 1988.

There are mistakes in J’s story!

Yes, there are! Let me point them out to you. I already mentioned John’s height and Queen being in Australia in ‘85, not ‘84. I also think that her perception that Freddie was taller than Roger in ‘72, but no longer in the 80s, had everything to do with platform shoes. I have to say that I did ask J some questions which I knew were things which are almost impossible to remember about people you weren’t particularly close to. I knew there was no way she would be able to accurately recall their heights, but I still wanted to know what the impression was which she had come away with. I don’t for one moment think she could possibly know why and if Freddie’s nickname was really ‘Freddie Baby’ at EAS well before she went there. But I still wanted to hear what she thought of that. This is why I stated specifically that this entire interview consists of one woman’s subjective opinions and memories. That alone means you can absolutely not take any of it as definitive fact. That just isn’t how memory works.

Kensington Market and the stall:

J’s answers on this one thoroughly confused me. Not only did she say that while she saw Freddie at the market a lot, Roger was hardly ever there, but there was also some Indian man working at the stall during the week (who I don’t think could have been Freddie’s father). She saw Freddie at multiple stalls, a girl named Jill also worked at the stall… and J was under the impression that Roger and Freddie hadn’t even started the stall. None of this made a whole lot of sense to me, until somebody pointed out that the original stall owned by Roger and Freddie must have closed in the second half of 1971. (Sources: Queen in Cornwall & Queen: As it Began)

It is confirmed (same sources as above) that Freddie worked at the market until as late as 1974. I think it is therefore entirely possible that J would have seen him working at Alan’s stall, or helping out at other stalls, and the likelihood that Roger would have come to hang out with him on a weekend is fairly high, in my opinion. Later, reading about Freddie and Roger running a stall, J would have had no reason to think that this wasn’t the same stall she had seen them at. And yes, this is of course only a theory.

The gay pride march:

@rushingheadlong, who has recently done a lot of fantastic research about Tim, confirms that there’s no chance (as far as we know) that Tim could have been at the march. Did any of them really go? Is J misremembering entirely? Could it be that one of them or two of them went, and looking back, J remembers it as all of them (minus John, however) because she was used to mostly seeing them all together? Does she remember them from another protest march and got it mixed up with the gay rights march? I can’t say. The march and who exactly went is a big question mark. Even J herself is only “pretty sure” that they were all there, and I have to say, I can’t tell you who was where exactly when I think back to when I was 16. Certainly not when there was a big group of people around. And that was only 20 years ago for me.

Lastly, I’m going to try and use the guide our awesome local historian @emmaandorlando provided on how to analyse new sources. Of course, I’m not a historian (and I’m also partly the source by being the interviewer, so I can perhaps only do this impertectly), but let’s give it a go.

1. Who wrote this document?

‘Written historical records were created by individuals in a specific historical setting for a particular purpose. Until you know who created the document you have read, you cannot know why it was created or what meanings its author intended to impart by creating it’.

In this case, the answer is two-fold because essentially I wrote the interview, in as far as that I asked the questions, I gave it shape and presented it in the form in which it came, but the answers are J’s. I completely understand that this is already a big stumbling block for many, because not only am I presenting her as an anonymous source, but many of you don’t know anything about me. If you follow me on Tumblr, you will know that I have shared more with the internet than is probably wise. But still, I am somebody you know little about, presenting to you a person you know even less about. Whether you trust me or not is entirely down to your own judgement and instinct, and that will be different for everybody.

(I’ve seen it said that I’m plugging my own work through this interview. If that was my plan, I’m afraid it’s failed miserably. I looked, and DoA has gained a whopping 2 or 3 kudos.)

2. Who is the intended audience?

‘The relationship between author and audience is one of the most basic elements of communication and one that will tell you much about the purpose of the document. Think of the difference between the audience for a novel and that for a diary, or for a law and for a secret treaty. Knowing the audience allows you to begin to ask important questions, such as; “Should I believe what I am being told?”’

The intended audience is the Queen fandom on Tumblr and AO3. I have no interest in sharing this anywhere else because I’m not familiar with the other fan communities (Facebook? Instagram?) and wouldn’t know how to go about it. For J, the intended audience was mostly me, an author she likes who was very interested in her memories.

3. Why was this document written?

‘Everything is written for a reason. Understanding the purpose of a historical document is critical to analysing the strategies that the author employs within it. A document intended to convince will employ logic; a document intended to entertain will employ fancy; a document attempting to motivate will employ emotional appeals. In order to find these strategies, you must know what purpose the document was intended to serve.’

I got really, really excited. That is the reason. When J got in touch with me, I had a decision to make. I could ask her all the questions I wanted privately and share her answers only with my "inner circle” of fandom friends, or I could share everything with the fandom spaces where I’ve been very active in the last two years. I wanted to share the excitement and decided to do the latter.

I also wanted to present the interview in a way where it would be an engaging, well-structured read and not simply all of her emails to me dumped here with a quick ‘there you go’. So I tried to wrap it in a beautiful “package”, which is why I asked her for her art, for example.

4. What type of document is this?

‘The form of a document is vital to its purpose. The form or genre in which a document appears is always carefully chosen. Genre contains its own conventions, which fulfil the expectations of author and audience.’

An interview, written by somebody who has never interviewed anyone before.

5. Can I believe this document?

‘To be successful, a document designed to persuade, to recount events, or to motivate people to action must be believable to its audience. For the critical historical reader, it is that very believability that must be examined. Every author has a point of view, and exposing the assumptions of the document is an essential task for the reader.

You must treat all claims sceptically (even while admiring audacity, rhetorical tricks, and clever comparisons). One question you certainly want to ask is, “is this a likely story?” Testing the credibility of a document means looking at it from the other side.’

This is for all of you to decide for yourselves, and that was always the case. Far be it from me to be upset with anyone who straight up doesn’t believe a word I say, doesn’t believe J is real or any other scepticism. I’ll say it again, DO NOT harass anyone for expressing their opinions on this! It is NOT WRONG to discuss a new source! It’s wonderful that people are doing it!

And so, we come to that last question: Is this a likely story?

Personally, I can firmly answer that with: Yes. In my personal opinion, it is. I find J’s story very likely and there is close to nothing that makes me question that these are indeed her real memories. But given the nature of human memory, they are just as imperfect as anybody else’s and do not, and should not, supersede any factual, verified information we already have.

With that, I hope to have provided a bit more clarity and transparency, and leave you - as before - to make up your own minds.

#the interview #my thoughts #others have had their say so here is mine #in detail #long post

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space-malex · 3 years

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There's lots of back and forth on who Victor should be with, but all s1 and s2 showed me is that Victor isn't cut out to be anyone's partner at this point in his life. He did Mia dirty and couldn't even properly apologize for it in s2 and the Victor who actually prioritized Benji's happiness and tried to take all responsibility for their kiss with Derek so they can keep dating disappeared in s2. He couldn't even articulate that breaking Benji's trust was wrong with spilling his secret to Rahim, let alone understand him at any point during the season. I don't know if it's supposed to be an international character flaw to be worked on or if the writers think having everything from Victor's POV is a good excuse, but it bothers me a lot. I really thought Malex was the height of showrunner bias and uneven writing, but Venji is so much worse. Alex at least always had a POV and a well-defined personality I could easily empathize with. You can't pile a ton of trauma on a character and never explore it, especially if it's supposed to be half of your main ship. I don't know how reflective a Twitter poll is of the audience split (the one they did on Instagram was much more overwhelmingly in favour of Venji, but they also don't show how many people voted), but it's not surprising that a dynamic that was basically written to be pretty much perfect so far and a fun alternative for the main ship's drama is appealing to so many people. They could have easily sold Venji better this season as a couple. They can lay a better foundation for future romantic them if they spend real time together platonically in s3 and stop putting each other on pedestals. They can also ruin what's appealing about Vahim with drama in s3. It's anyone's guess how s3 is going to play out. All I know is if Venji is still the endgame, I don't want a redo of s1 with Victor trying to work harder at a relationship he ultimately doesn't want to be in than he ever tried to make it work with the guy he's supposedly in love with. That's a recipe for disaster. A lot of shows are guilty of never showing us an endgame ship actually working on screen before putting them back together at the end of the show. I really want better here.

A lot to unpack

Victor did apologize to Mia, said he loves her and never meant to hurt her. It’s a bit complicated because Victor never went into the relationship with bad intentions and it took him the majority of the season to come to terms with his sexuality. Yes, he should’ve ended it right away when he figured it out, and he shouldn’t have kissed Benji when he was still with her. But still, there is a fine line here because there’s only so much of an apology Victor can give without it feeling like he’s apologizing for who he is, for being gay, and that’s not something he needs to feel sorry for. I think we should also keep in mind that Mia had her little thing with Andrew at the same time and never told Victor about it. She didn’t cheat or anything (or when he kissed her she stopped it) but she had obvious feelings for Andrew that she hadn’t dealt with. Luckily they finally got resolved in s2 but they were definitely there when she was still with Victor.

Now, what is it with this Victor slander in my house? He and Benji were pretty much constantly arguing or making up, but I’ve rarely seen people apologize to someone else as many times as Victor did to Benji about things that weren’t even his fault. He spent all season apologizing for his mother, even though he has no control over what she thinks or does, but also assured Benji that she is trying and that she is getting better. And he would know that better than Benji because he knows his mother and Benji does not. Or apologizing for not being ready to come out to everyone. And then turned around and did it anyway, which was what he wanted to do, but it also felt a lot about Benji and something he was doing for him as well. Which, fine, it’s Victor’s decision and he didn’t regret doing it. But then when there were consequences that hurt him by his team being homophobic, Benji first shrugs them off and then encourages Victor to quit the team so that he’s not around homophobic people. Which okay, first of all homophobes exist everywhere but I digress. Victor was miserable after he quit the basketball team. It’s not actually what he wanted to do, and he loves basketball, and Benji had no respect for that either. He acted like basketball with some kind of leftover heteroness that needed to be expelled from Victor. And he talked shit about it with his friends right in front of Victor. In fact, every time Victor tried to express himself, he would be essentially shut down by Benji and end up apologizing. Until episode 6 with the birthday and episode 8 after Isabel caught them together.

So look, I don’t think Benji had to tell Victor anything about his alcoholism because it’s his personal business and it’s really difficult to talk about something like that and it was definitely up to him when he wanted to open up. But then he turned around and was basically pissed at Victor for knowing even though Victor found out by accident. And then he refused to talk about it. And then when Victor expressed his hurt that Benji didn’t want to talk to him, Benji responded by completely attacking Victor and straight up saying it was exhausting work being with him bc he’s got a religious homophobic mom and is newly gay. Like….what??

Benji judged Victor for 1) being a jock 2) his mother and 3) being a baby gay. Victor never once judged Benji for his alcohol problems, he was just hurt Benji didn’t share with him. He didn’t judge Benji for anything else for that matter. He definitely shouldn’t have told Rahim about Benji, even though I do understand he needed someone to open up to and he trusts Rahim, it was a violation of Benji’s trust and not okay. But that’s like…the only bad thing Victor has done all season.

As for the pov thing- it wouldn’t be such a big deal if they actually developed Benji as a character, which they have not. We get no moments of him where he’s not with Victor (except the one conversation with Isabel, which was about Victor). If you’re going to have a character not share about their life to the protagonist, you need to find another way to share it with the audience. It leads to a disconnect and lack of emotional investment in Benji for many people. The fact that I feel I know Rahim better after 5 episodes than I do Benji after 20 is saying something. But the writing has given Rahim development that it hasn’t given Benji. It’s not surprising a lot of people in the audience are feeling more connected to Rahim as a result. Polls are never the most reliable thing since it depends on who sees them and how many people (twitters was about 20k respondents iirc but no idea about ig). I see a lot of vahim shipping on twitter and ig, tumblr not so much. But I will say I’ve seen people coming around on vahim who are watching the season now, as opposed to the smaller number who immediately watched the moment it came out, went in shipping Victor and Benji and had a knee jerk reaction about the possibility of another romance for Victor.

This is not comparable to malex in any way so I have no clue why you’re bringing them up.

And personally, I was never invested in Victor and Benji’s relationship. Even in s1 I was like 🤷🏻‍♀️ And now, with or without vahim, I think Victor and Benji should break up. They’re just not a great couple and I feel like the show would do well to make it okay for your first relationship to not necessarily be right for you. Especially for a gay couple because that like…NEVER happens on tv. It doesn’t take anything away from what v*nji mean to each other. Sometimes people just aren’t compatible. I didn’t start shipping vahim bc of anything with v*nji directly, I just loved their dynamic. I love seeing Victor light up. I love seeing him comfortable instead of constantly feeling insecure and apologetic. To me, vahim connect in a way v*nji do not.

Victor did not develop feelings for Rahim just because he was having issues with Benji. Just like Benji did not develop feelings for Victor just because he was having issues with Derek. Implying that does a disservice to both relationships and kinda takes agency away from a character and their feelings. But I want him and Benji to end things for real before anything happens with Rahim. Which might mean trying to make it work for a while longer.

We will see!!

#anon #shut up kelli #vahim #ship drama #lv discourse

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your-lady-star · 4 years

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Why I’m Complicated About Female Corrin

So I’ve had two people inquire about my Fates tier list and why I had female Corrin in the “complicated” tier, something I can imagine would be confusing since I’ve been very vocal about Corrin being one of my favorite characters in the franchise. Admittedly, this is something I’ve been meaning to speak about for a while, and now is as good a time as any. It’s high time you guys learn why I refer to Corrin strictly with male pronouns.

To put it bluntly, my main issue with female Corrin has nothing to do with the character itself, that would be really stupid and completely contradictory to how I’ve analyzed Corrin over the course of the last few years, and it has nothing to do with tertiary aspects like her design and the way she’s been used. It 100% has to do with her fans.

I may not interact with the fandom that much, mainly because doing so opens up a whole can of snakes, but it doesn’t take much research to see there is a very distinct bias towards female Corrin, regardless of the context you look at her at. She consistently ranks high on CYL polls while her male counterpart consistently ranks the lowest of the lords. She’s always the first to receive an alt, the Adrift banner being the only exception, and time between their alts is noticeably long (for context, the time between their first alts was 5 months and their fallen versions a full year!). She was chosen to be the default gender for Corrin in Warriors, the male being locked behind the completion of a submap. Most merchandise of Corrin, whether it’d be official or fan-made is of the female. And people who play Smash competitively who use Corrin very often have a female skin on her. It’s pretty clear that there is clear favoritism towards female Corrin, and, normally, this wouldn’t be a bad thing, but some fans have taken it to the extreme to the point they believe that female is the canon gender for Corrin.

Which is a statement I vehemently disagree with.

I’ve never bought into this argument that the avatar characters have canon genders, mainly because it completely goes against the point of avatar characters. If they are supposed to have a canon gender, they never would have made them customizable avatars, they would have just made them that gender. I know that most people like to act that the avatars have widely different personalities depending on the gender, but outside of a couple of quirks shown in a handful of support conversations and interactions in Heroes, both genders are still the exact same characters with the exact same personalities. Regardless of what gender you pick, Robin is still calculative and supportive, Corrin is still compassionate and eager, Byleth is still resourceful and reserved. Your gender doesn’t identify you as a person no matter how much bad shows and cartoons seem to think it does.

And this brings me right back to why I say that my issues with female Corrin are due to her fans. The people who actively advocate that female is the canon gender for Corrin and actively argue for it are either guys who want to f*ck her or girls who project onto her so they can fantasize about f*cking their Fates husbando and they do not take well to people telling them that this isn’t the case or that they like the male version better. I distinctly remember one person posting about how they praised male Corrin on a forum and were almost instantly attacked by female Corrin fans telling them that they have bad taste and calling them sexist and misogynistic, and the praise in question was them simply saying that they liked his design. Not to mention that they’re reasoning for why female is the canon gender is some of the dumbest bullsh*t I’ve ever seen. I may not remember where I read it, but I do remember one person’s reasoning for why female is the canon gender is because it made Xander’s nickname for them make more sense in the context of him being in love with her. Not only is this brazenly stretching, since they’re basically saying that older brothers can’t give their younger brothers nicknames, but it’s obvious that they’re using this to justify why their ship is canon. And there is no doubt much worse sh*t than this, but I don’t have the fortitude to look for myself.

I think this really speaks to the raving hypocrisy this fandom engages in where Corrin, despite being the most infamously hated character amongst the fanbase, has received heaps of praise and love for their female form for no reason other than people thinking she’s hot. A character who’s popular for no reason other than waifuism. It’s a shame how common this is. The recent fallen heroes banner is one of the rare occasions I can point to where people were vocally praising male Corrin and saying he did something better than his female counterpart, and this really shouldn’t be case. This is why I’m complicated about female Corrin, despite that I really shouldn’t. I don’t have this problem with the other avatars in the series, but that’s because there isn’t this much of a heavy petty bias over which gender that should be. This is why, unless it’s necessary, I refer to Corrin as “he”. Call me petty all you want, but I’m being no less petty than these weirdos.

A lot of people have been hoping that Fire Emblem gets a proper anime for their game of choice, and I am definitely one of them. I would love to see an anime adaptation for Fates but only on the condition that they use male Corrin. Not only because it would be a nice change of pace from the blatant waifu bias and it would be hilarious to watch these fans throw a sh*t fit about it, but it gives them the perfect excuse to be as gay as they want with him. Corrin was the first officially stated LGBT lord and this is the perfect means to remind the audience about that. I won’t accept any Conquest anime if we don’t see Corrin being delightfully gay with his kinky boyfriend.

#fire emblem fates #fire emblem heroes #corrin #fe corrin #m!corrin #f!corrin #I'm gonna get some interesting comments because of this aren't I?

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 4 years

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BUT HIS [SON’S] [IRRELEVANT AND PROBABLY FAKE] EMAILS!

In a world where people were trying to do their jobs, this story would not make sense to anyone, now or ever. But because we live in the dumbest fucking timeline, you need to know the shape of the Trump cartel’s latest disinformation campaign against the American democratic process.

Former Vice President Biden is being attacked through his family, which means that his family’s story is the vital context here. Back in the ‘70s, when he was Senator-Elect Biden, his family was in a terrible car crash. His first wife and their young daughter were killed. His sons Beau and Hunter survived, though Hunter suffered a traumatic head injury. The boys went about 80% Parent Trap to convince their dad to marry his current wife Jill, and both grew up and went to law school. Beau became the attorney general of Delaware before dying of cancer in 2015. Hunter went on to a lucrative career in the private sector despite an intermittent struggle with substance abuse, which is a common aftereffect of psychological trauma and brain injuries.

Republicans generally believe that being a Yale Law grad with a wealthy father and a history of substance abuse qualifies someone for the Supreme Court, but for some deeply principled and intellectually honest reason, they have decided that Hunter Biden’s employment in the field of transportation and energy can only be a sign of spectacular corruption. So nefarious and sinister was the Biden family’s treachery that they managed to destroy every iota of evidence before multiple investigations by Senate Republicans could find any of it!

Obviously this little tabloid narrative was derailed when Trump went and got his dumb ass impeached over it. But it’s the middle of October, Trump’s down ten points in the polls, and he made the mistake of replacing the wildly unethical FBI director who threw the last election for him with a guy who at least knows to act professional, so he’s looking for a Hail Mary pass. In the wackiest of coincidences, some random Trumper had what he says might be Hunter Biden’s various hard drives, one of which apparently contained a backup of his most sensitive videos and text messages, in his computer repair shop. Of course this man did the only sensible thing and, uh, copied every file in the drives one at a time before bringing it to Trump’s TV lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and then the FBI. Giuliani, who was a former federal prosecutor before becoming the former mayor of New York City and current new bestie of Random Tech Store Guy, handled this situation with the assistance of someone who has a mere “50/50 chance” of being a Russian agent. (Poor old Rudy does appear to have limited communication skills beyond his personal safe space of a noun, a verb, and 9/11.) It’s unclear to me whether Giuliani or Tech Store Guy was the one who shared the hard drives with Steve Bannon, the white supremacist propagandist and former Trump campaign manager who is currently under indictment for fraud.

As with a lot of Trump trash, it’s impossible to describe without sounding like you’re exaggerating for comedic effect, but the stakes are too high for any of it to be funny.

Over the weekend, a right wing tabloid published what it said were emails from one of Hunter’s laptops. (Reporters at that particular tabloid do not believe the story.) The emails don’t show any wrongdoing by the vice president and seem fake for a lot of reasons – but never mind, the bullshit laundering worked well enough to get some supposed actual reporter to harass Vice President Biden about it, and then a bunch of other supposed actual reporters to collapse into their fainting couches when Biden responded with appropriate impatience.

That apparently didn’t have the hoped-for effect. The next day, what appeared to be a series of highly emotional text exchanges between the vice president and his son appeared. There was nothing even vaguely scandalous in these, to a point where it’s not immediately obvious why anyone would bother publishing them. My best guess is that it’s meant to throw Biden off his stride by trying to hurt and humiliate his son, though it may also be an attempt to soften the ground for an even more theatrical reveal.

A lot of Very Serious Politics-Knowers have deluded themselves that the But Her Emails debacle of 2016 was the legitimate kernel of a story that was “blown out of proportion.” But Her Emails was about people a) having some degree of misogyny, conscious or unconscious, which led to a bias against Clinton and b) wanting to tell other people and/or themselves that it wasn’t because she was a woman. They understand that the But Her Emails-ing was a) enormously consequential and b) incredibly dumb. They don’t want to think too hard about that tension, because if they did, they’d have to take responsibility for how the dumb thing became so consequential.

Meanwhile, Trump campaign insiders know better than the rest of us how much they cheated in 2016, but they’re still people and therefore susceptible to the cognitive bias that they got what they wanted because they earned it somehow. The closest thing they had to an above-board strategy was yelling “emails!!” a lot, so they expect yelling “emails!!” to be successful again. They’re just desperately throwing pasta to see what sticks – but Joe Biden is a man, so they’re throwing it at the theory of relativity instead of the refrigerator door.

There are differences between 2020 and 2016 which are significantly less depressing. Trump’s co-conspirators are resorting to ridiculous methods because so many of the key players who made the 2016 operation work are actually facing punishment for some of their crimes. Paul Manafort is under house arrest. Wikileaks guy Julian Assange is in jail. Social media companies, especially Twitter, were prepared to slam the brakes. Some mainstream reporters have refused to learn their lesson from 2016, but others were prepared to be critical. And, I cannot emphasize this last one enough, voters are more prepared for it. So Team Trump isn’t as good at doing the crimes as they were four years ago, even if they were as good at it they wouldn’t be able to use traditional and social media as effectively as they did last time, and even if they could adjust to that they’d have a harder time manipulating us. Maybe it got frustrating and boring for you to hear and talk about the 2016 attack for years on end, but the whole point of that was that we needed to be ready for exactly this scenario. So far, it seems to be working better than I would have hoped.

Obviously, this is infuriating. All else aside, putting this enormous, invasive pressure on a private citizen’s mental health and substance abuse problems is abusive and gross and genuinely dangerous. I don’t give a shit who his dad is, it’s fucking evil. We need to be ready to remember everybody involved in pushing this story – not just the con artists behind it, but the “mainstream” reporters who validated it in their behavior toward the Biden campaign or who spread what were (allegedly) entirely personal text messages of no news value.

But first, we need to win next month. On that front, I want to reiterate what I said when they first started cooking up this story late last year: it’s actually encouraging that they’re resorting to something like this, because it means they’re flailing. They haven’t been able to make FBI Director Wray abuse his power in the way former Director Comey did, despite the fact that the only real tool they had to manipulate Comey four years ago was taunting and pressure from conservative media. They don’t have a cutout like Wikileaks to launder the documents for them. Most importantly, they’re trying to influence voters’ opinions of Biden because they think voters’ behavior still matters. The only thing Trump knows in life is how to get away with a scam. If they thought they had it “rigged” they would be trying to act normal, because spending the three weeks before a heist reminding your marks of what fucking criminals you are doesn’t help you get away with it.

One last thing: this is a less obvious reason why it’s important to vote as early as you can. All these other increasingly desperate stunts depend on the ability to overwhelm everyone all at once, without enough time for them to be debunked or brought back into proportion. The more early votes are in the bank, the less effective their next stink bomb can be, and if it can’t be effective, there are a lot of people around Trump who would rather save their own asses from prison than help him throw it.

#trump russia #disinformation #joe biden #election 2020

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3l1n0r · 5 years

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My Predictions for the 2020 Election

I predict that Joe Biden will win the nomination over Bernie Sanders, the only remaining candidate at this time. He will win the popular vote but lose the electoral college, and Trump will be re-elected. Here’s why:

I believe that if Bernie Sanders had gotten the nomination he would have won. But we’ll likely never know for sure. The Democratic establishment decided, and its voters along with it, that the best we could do against Trump was Joe Biden, arguably one of the weakest candidates in the race.

Joe Biden is a far weaker candidate than Hillary Clinton before him, in a number of ways. He constantly makes mistakes and gaffes, has a history of touching women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, has a less impressive resume with fewer accomplishments, had less support from the Democratic establishment (until the 11th hour face-turn between South Carolina and Super Tuesday), and clearly has dementia. While we will probably never get an official diagnosis of this, that won’t stop the Republicans from weaponizing it against him until at least a third of this country believes it to be fact. The situation with Hunter Biden in Ukraine will be Joe Biden’s “email scandal”; a situation in which he technically did nothing wrong (except some run-of-the-mill nepotism) but will be used to taint him with the stench of corruption.

Joe Biden is perfectly poised to lose this election; we will get Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss all over again. All he really has going for him is his connection with Obama (which won’t win over the swing state voters who went for Trump), his resume (checkered with terrible decisions that will depress turnout overall) and his long-standing ties with the black community.

It is not clear to me why so many black voters support Biden, given his terrible record on civil rights and his lies about protesting with Nelson Mandela. I believe it boils down to three things:

He was Obama’s VP, and did a good job of it

They know him

They don’t want to take any risks with an outsider leftist candidate

All of these are valid reasons. However, when pundits discuss Biden’s black support, or Sanders’ Latino support, they always ignore the most obvious factor: youth. Young voters of all races go for Sanders, olders voters of all races go for Biden. While Biden may have the support of the older black people, it is not enough to rebuild the Obama coalition that sent him to the White House. Youth was a key factor in Obama’s success, but the media’s continued dismissive attitude towards young people means that their voices are not taken seriously. (Part of this is on them, as most can’t be bothered to vote.)

I think that despite all of Biden’s obvious shortcomings, Democrats will turn out for him in a desperate attempt to unseat Donald Trump that won’t succeed. They will show up, yes, but months of the Fox News propaganda machine smearing Biden will depress turnout among young people, Bernie Sanders supporters of all ages, and possibly conservative-leaning independents as well. If Fox News can send the message to independents that Biden is just as bad, or worse, that Trump in just a few key swing states, the race will go to Trump once again.

Trump has the advantages of a mass-media propaganda machine behind him, and the incumbency. It is very likely with the coronavirus outbreak the economy will be in a recession, but Trump will pretend that such a recession is not happening and many of his supporters will believe him. He could tell them that the sky is orange and they would believe him, because he has dozens of pundits on channels broadcasting across the country arguing for why he is right and shooting down anyone who dares say otherwise. That being said, it is commonly believed that the economy is what decides presidential elections.

If economy good=re-election. If economy bad=lose re-election.

Of course, it can’t possibly be that simple. Even if the economy is doing well in the macroeconomic view, if small business and average workers are struggling (and they have been struggling for the past decade), they might be more willing to take a risk on an outsider like Trump and Sanders. This is why the economy is such a wild card. If the economy is doing well on the surface but struggling internally, it will completely pass most pundits by, and we get shock results like 2016.

We are very likely to fall into a recession because of the coronavirus outbreak. So far, Trump has handled the crisis abysmally, and significant blame for the US’s delayed response, including a lack of test kits and any sort of top-down coordination, lies at his feet. This won’t deter his base, who will be getting pumped full of messaging about how Trump has handled the crisis so well. What will be harder to turn a blind eye to is the announcement of a recession, and that recession could deter some of the people who were on the fence about Trump to swing to Biden. That alone might be enough to hand him the popular vote, but not the electoral.

The frustrating part of doing any kind of political analysis is that at the end of the day it all comes down to location. I don’t just have to predict whether voters will turn out, I have to try to predict where in the country they live and if it’s a swing state, and how likely it will go for one candidate or another. This is just my best shot at trying to predict what will happen.

If my prediction is correct and Joe Biden does win the popular vote and lose the presidency, the Democratic and Republican parties are going to need to have a serious talk about whether or not they actually think the Electoral College is fair. I don’t think anything fruitful or productive will come of those talks, but it is a conversation worth having. If my prediction is correct, it will be the third time in the past six elections that the Democrats had the presidency stolen from them.

Picking Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee will have disastrous consequences for the party. Biden would be at bare minimum a better president than Trump, but he would not be a good one, and he will not fix the problems that drove millions to vote for Trump in the first place.

I haven’t even gotten to Bernie Sanders’s supporters yet in my analysis. It is impossible to tell at this stage how many will show up at the polls for Joe Biden. Given the fact that Bernie Sanders could barely get them to go to the polls for him, I doubt Joe Biden will get much of anything in terms of youth turnout, despite his belated attempt to pivot to them now ahead of the general election. A loud minority of Bernie Sanders voters are #NeverBiden, but there is a silent majority of them who will simply show up at the polls for Trump or Biden and don’t feel the need to put the DNC on blast on Twitter to make their point. Bernie’s two greatest weaknesses, in 2016 and 2020, was his vocal minority of crazy supporters and his inability to make friends and alliances. His outsider status drew millions to campaign for him, but it turned the establishment and their followers against him, and ultimately they outnumbered him.

Historians looking back on this race will probably point to Elizabeth Warren’s claim that Bernie said a woman couldn’t be president in 2020 back in a private conversation in 2018 as the turning point that ultimately incinerated the progressive movement. Prior to that point, Bernie was holding strong in second place, and Elizabeth Warren had dipped to a low 3rd, after her October high point in the polls. In a desperate attempt to gain back her supporters who abandoned her for the perceived “more electable” progressive in the race, she launched a baseless attack against him that he denied. Most egregious of all was CNN’s clear bias towards Warren, as they responded to Sanders’ insistence he did not say what he said by turning to Warren and saying, “So how did you feel when Senator Sanders said that to you?” The clip was widely mocked on social media, but Warren’s embarrassing attempt to play the gender card with her whole “the women on the stage have won more elections than the men on the stage” spiel apparently played well with the faux-woke mainstream media.

For the record, Bernie Sanders has never stated publicly, ever, that a woman couldn’t be president. A video recently resurfaced from Time of him telling a young girl, in the 1970s, that of course a woman could be president someday. All Elizabeth Warren has as her proof is the word of a few spokespeople for her campaign, in a private meeting in 2018. Instead of confronting Bernie Sanders about it in private at the time, she waited until she was falling in the polls to launch an attack on him. It completely backfired on Warren; all she did was cement Bernie Sanders as the frontrunner of the progressive wing of the party.

She should have learned from Kamala Harris before her; playing the race and gender card might play well with the pundits, but it does not win over ordinary voters. Once you’ve reduced yourself to saying “vote for me because of my race/gender/other factor completely out of my control” you’ve lost with everyone who’s not plugged into Twitter. You have to give people a reason to vote for you, and not rely on identity politics. People don’t vote for Biden because of his identity, they vote for him because they believe he is best poised to defeat Donald Trump. People don’t vote for Sanders for his identity, they vote for him because they like his ideas and think he has a shot of getting them done if elected. But because of her attack against Bernie, her refusal to shake his hand after, her accusation that he called her a liar on national TV (he did not), her refusal to drop out of the race until Biden had already consolidated his lead, and her refusal to endorse Sanders when she finally did drop out, all speak volumes to the kind of progressive she really is. If Sanders had dropped out, he would have endorsed her, no question. But she decided she’d rather implicitly back Joe Biden, whom she publicly clashed with at the beginning of her career over fundamental policy differences, than Bernie, at a time when he needed her support more than ever. She owes a huge debt to progressives all over the country, including myself, who thought she’d actually fight for real progressive change. But it was all about getting elected, and when that failed, it was all about making sure she got a spot in Joe Biden’s cabinet. Not altogether surprising, considering she didn’t endorse Bernie in 2016, but very disappointing.

So with Elizabeth Warren out of the race, you would expect progressives to coalesce around Bernie, but this did not happen, for the reasons listed above. Some Warren supporters went to Biden because a few of Sanders’ vocal supporters sent them snake emojis and that hurt their feelings. (Snake emojis were used by Sanders supporters to call Warren a snake after she called Sanders a sexist.) Others did not go to Bernie because they believed him/his supporters to be sexist due to the media narrative coming out of that debate. Others truly believed Sanders had no chance of winning because he was too far left. But had Elizabeth Warren endorsed Bernie, not only was she likely to have gotten a vice presidency offer, she would have given Sanders a boost at a critical time when the progressive wing needed to coalesce behind one candidate. But the progressive wing was deeply divided over gender politics in a way the moderate lane was not. In the end it was Biden who coalesced support and won big in the Super Tuesday states, not Bernie.

But this does not mean Biden is a good candidate to take on Trump. He is generally perceived favorably now, but that will change after the Republicans hone their attacks against him. Trump will run circles around him in the debates and it will become even more obvious he is in cognitive decline. The public discourse will be spent poring over every detail of Biden’s long tenure in public service, and not over ways to improve this country’s future. And on top of all that, Biden will not win. Hillary Clinton had a far better shot of winning against Trump in 2016. She had every factor working in her favor. She still lost, though narrowly. Biden does not have those same factors working in his favor now. He will lose, and the media will be shocked that they could have gotten it so wrong, and the people of the world will shrug and say, “I told you he’d get re-elected,” and we’ll be subjected to four more years of whatever it is Trump is doing that cannot possibly be considered a “presidency”.

I’m obviously disappointed, and I know a lot of other people are too. But I could (obviously) be wrong. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

#Bernie sanders #joe biden #Donald trump #Elizabeth warren #political analysis #my analysis #American politics #us politics #2020 elections #2020 presidency #trump reelection #if you disagree with me that's fine but please be respectful

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theliberaltony · 5 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Last Thursday, the 2020 Democratic candidates covered a wide range of topics during the three-hour debate, including health care, race and criminal justice, immigration, gun control and climate change.

But what issues do voters care most about? In our FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll, conducted using Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel, we surveyed the same set of respondents both before and after the debate to find out what issue was most important in determining their vote in the primary. And what we learned was Democrats are most concerned about defeating President Trump — nearly 40 percent of respondents said this was their top issue. For reference, the next-most-common top issue — health care — was picked by just 10 percent voters before the debate and 11 percent after.

So what issues should the candidates be talking more about? Less about? And if Democrats care more about winning this year, what’s the best way to talk about beating Trump?

A lot of Democrats really want to beat Trump

Share of respondents to the FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll who said that each issue is the most important to them, before and after the debate

Share for whom issue is most important issue Pre-debate Post-debate Ability to beat Donald Trump 39.6%

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39.6%

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Health care 9.9

–

11.0

–

The economy 8.0

–

8.7

–

Wealth and income inequality 7.9

–

8.4

–

Climate change 7.4

–

6.5

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Gun policy 4.2

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4.8

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Immigration 3.3

–

3.7

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Something else 3.3

–

3.5

–

Social Security 3.4

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3.2

–

Education 2.5

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2.4

–

Racism 3.0

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2.4

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The makeup of the Supreme Court 1.7

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1.7

–

Taxes 1.3

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1.3

–

Jobs 1.9

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1.1

–

Foreign affairs 1.3

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0.7

–

Crime 0.7

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0.4

–

The military 0.3

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0.4

–

Sexism 0.1

–

0.2

–

From a survey of 4,320 likely Democratic primary voters who were surveyed between Sept. 5 and Sept. 11. The same people were surveyed again from Sept. 12 to Sept. 16; 3,473 responded to the second wave.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): Well, to state the obvious, the candidates should be talking about their ability to beat Trump.

It’s important to a ton of Democratic voters.

And the more it goes untalked-about, the more other candidates are ceding that ground to Joe Biden, IMO.

Electability is a very fuzzy concept without a ton of data behind it, so pretty much any candidate can make a plausible argument for their “electability.”

sarahf: What are some ways candidates can do that, though?

I know Biden has leaned into his performance in head-to-head polls against Trump, but as we know … general election polls don’t really tell us that much about the strength of candidates in the primary.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I mean, it’s a little tricky. If you talk too much about electability, you raise the salience of the issue, which might work to Biden’s benefit.

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): On the other hand, the fact that electability is a fuzzy concept can also be difficult for the candidates to address directly — for example, the female candidates.

nrakich: Amelia, if you ask me, the female candidates should be trotting out the studies that show women do just as well as men when they run for office!

ameliatd: Well, but those studies aren’t about presidential candidates! Most political scientists agree that people don’t cross the aisle to vote against a woman (or for that matter, to vote for a woman) — party loyalties are stronger than gender bias. But that’s not an easy sound bite, and it also may not be especially reassuring to voters who think sexism was a factor in Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016.

natesilver: In particular, I think it’s risky (by which I mean dumb) for any candidate other than Biden to talk much about his or her head-to-head polls against Trump, because Biden still does better than any other Democrat in those polls by some margin.

sarahf: But is that what will convince voters someone is electable?

nrakich: Amy Klobuchar is pointing to her past election results, where she really ran up the score in the swing state of Minnesota, as evidence that she’s electable. The problem is that she just hasn’t gotten a lot of attention for it (although voters in our poll thought she was slightly more likely to beat Trump after the debate).

sarahf: How else can candidates talk about their ability to defeat Trump without getting into their performance in head-to-head polls?

natesilver: I thought Warren’s response to Delaney in the second debate was good. Basically, like, if you’re not running on ideas, then why are you even running?

nrakich: If you’re Klobuchar, you can also argue that a moderate candidate is better positioned to win over swing voters. Or if you’re Kamala Harris or Cory Booker, you can argue that a black candidate will have the most success increasing black turnout (which could help Democrats win back Midwestern states like Michigan and Pennsylvania and might put new states, like Georgia, in play).

natesilver: I’m not sure that the candidates themselves do a lot of good by litigating more complex points about electability with the public. Their campaigns might do it on background with journalists, but it’s probably best left there.

ameliatd: I agree with that, Nate. One recent study did show that people were more likely to rate female candidates as electable when they were first reminded about how many women won in 2018 — but I don’t think having the candidates make that pitch will necessarily work.

sarahf: But if the best way for a candidate to run is on their ability to beat Trump, how can their stances on other issues help them accomplish that? Or make them seem more electable?

Let’s start with an issue that a lot of voters also care about (it was the second most popular pick for top issue in our Ipsos poll) — health care.

Should Democrats being talk about health care more?

Less?

nrakich: Exit polls showed that health care was the most important issue to voters in the 2018 midterm elections, which obviously worked out well for Democrats. So I think that’s good ground for the candidates to focus on for the general election.

For the primary, maybe less so — it depends on their position on health care!

natesilver: I remain convinced that health care is the best issue that Sanders has going for him.

Although, according to our poll, Biden actually gained ground with voters who prioritized the issue. Warren and Harris have been somewhat stuck in the middle on health care, though, and I think it’s a real problem for them.

nrakich: But Nate, what about those polls that show that a single-payer health care system is less popular, even among Democrats, than building on Obamacare (with, say, a public option)?

natesilver: At least Sanders has leadership on the issue. True, Biden has the most popular position. But Harris and Warren got nothing.

sarahf:

Who voters think is best on health care

Among the 435 respondents who said health care was the most important issue to them in an Ipsos/FiveThirtyEight poll

candidate share of respondents Bernie Sanders 32.9%

–

Joe Biden 28.8

–

Elizabeth Warren 16.5

–

Someone else 6.4

–

Pete Buttigieg 3.3

–

Kamala Harris 2.8

–

Amy Klobuchar 2.2

–

Julián Castro 1.5

–

Beto O’Rourke 1.3

–

Andrew Yang 1.3

–

Cory Booker 0.9

–

Poll was conducted from Sept. 5 to Sept. 11 among a general population sample of adults, with 4,320 respondents who say they are likely to vote in their state’s Democratic primary or caucus

Yeah, going into the debate, Sanders had the lead among voters in our poll who prioritized health care. (But Sanders wasn’t the only candidate to gain potential supporters among voters who prioritized health care after the debate — Biden, Yang, Warren and Buttigieg all made bigger gains.)

ameliatd: Part of the challenge, too, is that people still don’t understand the details of all of these plans — for example, Medicare for All, as Sanders and Warren talk about it, involves getting rid of private insurance. That could be more and more of an issue for the candidates on the left. Warren and Sanders keep saying people don’t like their insurance — but that’s not really true.

The health care debate is hard because people want something better, but they’re also afraid of losing what they have.

sarahf: Yeah, the branding of “Medicare for All who want it” that Buttigeig and others are pushing is pretty ingenious, even if it’s just as difficult or costly to pull off as the version of Medicare for All that Sanders and Warren are pitching.

ameliatd: It is weirdly off-brand for Warren to not have a detailed plan on health care. But maybe she’s trying not to get beaten up in the fight over Medicare for All.

natesilver: It’s very off-brand. And, sure, there might be tactical reasons for it. All of which goes to my theory that Warren is more of a politician than she’s assumed to be, which you’d think is a pretty normal thing to say about someone who’s a professional politician but will probably come across as something of a hot take.

I dunno, sometimes Warren’s strategy seems predicated on the idea that she doesn’t need to throw a lot of elbows or make a lot of tight pivots to beat Sanders.

sarahf: Well, if part of the primary is to pitch voters on big ideas, it makes sense to me that Warren isn’t curtailing her vision for Medicare for All just yet.

ameliatd: I wonder also if she thinks there’s too much competition on health care. It can be pretty difficult to follow which candidate is proposing what and what the actual differences are. It’s simpler to just say she’s with Sanders.

nrakich: I do find it interesting that Warren is doing so well in the polls despite not really emphasizing the top two priorities that Democratic voters cited in our poll (electability and health care).

sarahf: In its analysis of swing voters in 2020, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that in addition to issues like health care, where Democrats have a big advantage among voters (18 percentage points), Democrats also have a whopping 38 percentage point advantage on climate change.

So … should the candidates be talking about climate change more?

(According to an analysis by Bloomberg, only 6 percent of the third debate was devoted to it.)

nrakich: I think you have to draw a line between the primary and general election for a lot of these.

As you alluded to with that poll, Sarah, I think the eventual Democratic nominee could have success by talking a lot about climate change next year.

But the differences between the primary candidates on climate change are pretty in the weeds, so I’m not sure whom it would help to talk about it more.

I also think the failure of Jay Inslee’s campaign to win on climate change showed that the issue just wasn’t a big differentiator either (although IMO he had other problems too, like not being very inspiring on the stump).

sarahf: That’s interesting, Nathaniel. So unlike health care, where there’s an incentive for the candidates to hash out their differences, maybe something like climate change should be saved for the general?

Do others agree?

nrakich: Yeah, I think there are pretty major differences between the candidates on health care. And having a nominee run on single-payer vs. a public option could be important to swing voters in the general. But I don’t think Republicans will attack a nominee any harder if he or she is trying to get the U.S. to net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 instead of 2050.

ameliatd: Well, another difference between health care and climate is that they’re both fairly technical, complicated issues, but one has a direct and personal impact on people’s health and bank accounts, while the other is more diffuse. It’s harder to get concrete on climate change, too. Which is sometimes why you end up with candidates talking about banning plastic straws.

natesilver: Also on climate — the political willpower to get things done when Joe Manchin is the median vote in the Senate is far less than any of the Democrats’ plans would like.

In some ways, I’m surprised Democrats haven’t spent more time talking about structural issues, like gerrymandering, adding new states (Puerto Rico, D.C.) and things of that nature.

sarahf: I mean, they did wade into blowing up the filibuster in the last debate.

Do you really think that’s good politics for the candidates, though?

natesilver: Oh yeah, sure. I think it’s a good way for Warren to differentiate herself from Sanders, for instance.

ameliatd: Blowing up the filibuster seems like it’s become a way for candidates to say they’re serious about passing their agenda. So it’s kind of a proxy for how far the candidates are willing to go, and how much they care about compromise.

nrakich: I think it has the potential to be good politics, Sarah. People don’t like it when they perceive the system to be unfair, and Democrats can pretty easily make the argument that the system is currently biased against urban dwellers, people of color, and others.

Gerrymandering is a good example of something that few people defend. But no Democrat is out there shouting about it from the rooftops.

Voting rights also don’t register very high on the priority list when voters are asked what issues they care about, but there is a lot of political science research that says that politicians can influence what voters care about. And I bet the issue would become more salient if a top-tier candidate talked about it more.

ameliatd: I have also wondered why the Supreme Court hasn’t been a bigger issue so far — it is more unpopular with Democrats than it has been in 20 years, and progressive activists are advocating for some pretty big court reforms, like increasing the number of justices on the bench. And if you’re talking about roadblocks for your progressive agenda — a Supreme Court with a conservative majority is certainly at the top of that list.

nrakich: Maybe it hasn’t been very salient in the primary because it’s assumed that every possible nominee would appoint pro-choice, pro-voting-rights, generally liberal justices?

ameliatd: But there are differences between the candidates on how to approach the Supreme Court — big ones! At least seven candidates still in the race are open to the idea of adding justices to the court, according to The Washington Post. And some have talked about changing its structure in other ways (adding term limits, for example) which would also be quite dramatic.

nrakich: Good point. Maybe Democrats aren’t bringing it up, then, because the issue risks activating Republican voters in the general election?

ameliatd: It is definitely true that the courts historically have been a motivating issue for Republican voters and not really for Democrats. But I think there’s potential for the Democrats to make the Supreme Court into an issue that their voters care about.

natesilver: And I think after Kavanaugh’s nomination last year, there’s still an open question about whether which party gets most motivated by the Supreme Court has shifted. In a Gallup poll just before the midterms, roughly as many Democrats as Republicans called Kavanaugh an important issue in deciding their vote.

That said, I don’t think calling for Kavanaugh’s impeachment is a very wise general election position.

ameliatd: No, I agree — a focus on impeaching Kavanaugh seems tailor-made to rile up Republicans. I think part of the issue is that there just isn’t a clear message among Democrats about the Supreme Court or the judiciary in general. Some people want term limits. Others want court-packing, or they want more talk about the type of judicial nominees the candidates would nominate.

sarahf: But what about an issue where Democrats don’t have an advantage (like the economy) and are in a weaker position among voters than Trump? In that same poll on swing voters, KFF gave Trump a 12-point advantage for his handling of economy. And in our Ipsos poll, we found that economy-focused Democrats gave candidates worse marks across the board than voters focused on four other top issues, suggesting that economy voters were maybe unsatisfied by what they heard in the debate.

nrakich: Yeah, I think Democrats could stand to talk more in the primary about the economy in the traditional sense, like jobs.

For the general election, though, that does seem to be a good issue for Republicans (for now).

natesilver: Isn’t the obvious way for Democrats to talk about the economy to talk about inequality and how the economy ain’t workin’ for some people?

Unless the economy actually goes way south, in which case you have a lot more things you can say.

nrakich: Yes, but we did offer “wealth and income inequality” as an issue in our poll, and those voters seemed to have different perspectives than the “economy” voters.

If we’re talking about the primary, I think Warren and Sanders have gotten pretty far by talking about inequality, but our poll does suggest there’s a subset of voters for whom that isn’t what they want to hear about the economy.

sarahf: And while trying to motivate voters around economic inequality sounds good in theory, in practice, I don’t think it actually moves the dial much. Although, there is evidence that voters are keen on a tax on the uber-wealthy, so maybe that’s a good tack for Democrats to take in talking about the economy more?

ameliatd: Right, talking about making the wealthy pay their fair share seems like a smart way for Democrats to approach this.

But what do you think voters want to be hearing on the economy front, Nathaniel? In our poll, “jobs” was listed as a separate option and not that many people seemed interested in hearing about that.

nrakich: Yeah, Amelia, I’m not quite sure. Given their candidate preferences (i.e., voters who prioritized the economy also liked Biden and were much less likely to be considering a vote for Warren or Sanders), maybe those are the fiscally minded voters who oppose Warren and Sanders’s efforts to redistribute wealth.

In other words, business-friendly Democrats?

natesilver: I do think Democrats need to be careful on this issue.

Socialism is still not a popular concept with swing voters. Maybe it will be once the millennials and zoomers take over. But for now, it’s a big general-election vulnerability for Sanders, for instance.

nrakich: Wait, this is the first time I’ve heard zoomers as a nickname for Generation Z and I love it.

natesilver: “Let’s get the economy workin’ for workin’ people and make the rich pay their fair share” is probably fine for a general election message. “Let’s topple the entire system” maybe isn’t.

sarahf: But as Nathaniel said earlier … this is the primary. And isn’t socialism more popular than capitalism among Democrats?

So, similar to some of the candidates being more radical on health care, isn’t there an argument to be made they should dream bigger on the economy, too?

natesilver: Well, yeah, but part of what smart candidates do is avoid driving wedges on issues where it might give you a slight advantage in the primary but a big disadvantage in the general election.

nrakich: And while it’s true, Sarah, that Democrats think more highly of socialism than of capitalism, their views of capitalism are still mostly favorable, according to the Pew Research Center. We’re also forgetting that 40 percent of Democrats think the most important thing is to beat Trump! I can imagine plenty of pro-socialism Democrats being persuaded to tone down the rhetoric (but maybe not the policies — Warren is basically doing this) in order to avoid being general-election poison.

ameliatd: Also, isn’t Warren’s wealth tax, which would be applied to rich people’s accumulated fortunes rather than just their income, be an example of Democrats dreaming big? She seems to be doing a good job of selling it as “just making the rich pay their fair share,” but it’s still a pretty radical change from the status quo.

sarahf: That’s fair, Amelia.

And to wrap, if candidates could only run on one issue — and it isn’t beating Trump, because let’s treat that as the overarching argument of everyone’s campaign — what would it be?

nrakich: I think it’s got to be health care, especially if you’re not a single-payer Democrat. Follow the playbook that worked in 2018.

natesilver: It depends on the candidate. For Biden, it’s electability. For Sanders, it’s health care. For Warren, it’s … I’m not sure, exactly? But I think probably inequality.

nrakich: Breakin’ Sarah’s rules (“and it isn’t beating Trump”), Nate …

Intriguing side question: Is it a problem for Biden if he runs on an electability argument during the primary and then doesn’t have a clear rationale for running come the general?

sarahf: What other issue does Biden have to lean into? Health care, maybe?

natesilver: Maybe Biden could adopt a signature issue — or two.

I’m not sure what it would be, though. Guns, maybe?

ameliatd: We didn’t talk about gun policy, but I’ll be interested to see if that has sticking power as the primary moves forward. That’s a big priority for voters right now, but maybe it’s also an issue like climate change where the candidates struggle to differentiate themselves.

Also, I am shamelessly dodging the question, but personal characteristics are also important to voters. A Pew survey from last month asked Democrats to name the most important factor for deciding which candidate to support, and 28 percent named something like honesty or competence. About the same share pointed to a policy. So … maybe policy just matters less than we assume?

nrakich: Great point, Amelia. We basically just did a whole chat on issues while ignoring the fact that people mostly don’t vote on issues!

ameliatd: Shut it down, guys.

natesilver: But you can still vote on the aesthetics of a candidate’s policy positions even if you don’t care about policy per se.

Like, people can like the idea that Warren has a plan for things, even if they don’t know what those plans are, exactly.

nrakich: Right, but to the original chat prompt, does it matter, then, what issues are and aren’t being discussed?

As you pointed out, Warren doesn’t have a meaty health care plan but still gets credit for being issue-driven.

ameliatd: I wonder if Warren’s focus on an overarching theme like corruption can also help with the perception that she’s honest, or something like that.

But then it does make you wonder how much the details matter, as opposed to how the issues fit into a candidate’s overall brand.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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Why Do Republicans Stand With Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-stand-with-trump/

Why Do Republicans Stand With Trump

Beneath The Hood Of Trump’s Support Base

Why Are Republicans Still So Afraid Of Trump? | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Trump’s victory in 2016 came on the back of a surge in voter turnout among white Americans without a college degree, a group he won by better than a 2-1 margin over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump won 6.5 million more voters over the age of 45, despite losing the national popular vote by almost three million.

But that “demographic blowback” which saw some older Americans cast a vote for the first time since Ronald Reagan was on the ballot, was never a long-term strategy they are literally dying off.

But they aren’t dead yet, and neither is Trump’s support base.

AP: Julio Cortez

A CNBC poll last week found 89 per cent of voters without a college degree and 74 per cent of Republicans want Trump to stay active in politics in some way. Almost half of Republicans want Trump to remain head of their party, while 11 per cent want him to break away and start his own party. It’s that final figure that probably worries Republicans more than any other.

Trump has already flirted with the idea of starting his own “Patriot Party” to rival both Republicans and Democrats, and provide a vehicle for a potential third presidential campaign in 2024.

The only time a former president tried to return to office under the banner of a new party, Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, he consigned his former Republican Party to a distant third place.

Republican Voters Arent Clamoring For Changes

It might seem odd that were only now turning our attention to Republican voters, who may seem like the most important factor in keeping the party from shifting gears. Im not so sure. We have a lot of evidence that voters tend to follow the cues of political elites . In other words, I suspect that if GOP elites, from national elected leaders to Fox News to local activists, had collectively broken with Trump and Trumpism after the Capitol riot, the percentage of rank-and-file Republican voters ready for the party to go in a new direction would have grown.;

Party elites arent completely unresponsive to popular will, of course. If, for some reason, a majority of Republican voters were positively clamoring for a new direction, perhaps elites would respond. But thats not happening. Instead, polls suggest rank-and-file Republican voters seem fairly averse to major changes to the GOP, particularly a real repudiation of Trump.

Opinionrep Justin Amash’s Brave Decision To Leave The Gop Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

So who will stand up now and help take the Republican Party in a new direction? Election season cannot go into perpetuity, at some point we must govern. Someone must lead.

I am not naive, nor do I believe that the majority of our political leaders have the intelligence or moral compass to act with the courage of Abraham Lincoln. Expecting an overnight solution to a longterm problem is a recipe for failure. And I realize that the same people who mocked me for believing that Republicans and Democrats could work together before, will likely mock me once again for believing that all hope is not lost.

I realize that the same people who mocked me for believing that Republicans and Democrats could work together before, will likely mock me once again for believing that all hope is not lost.

But what other choice do we have? Our democracy requires compromise and courage to meet the challenges that we face. We cannot afford to continue down the broken roads that have led us to gridlock. We need each other.

Like it or not, Democrats need a strong Republican Party to act a a counterweight in our deliberative process. The Framers fully intended for progress to be incremental, not overnight or all at once. A democracy absent diversity is not a democracy. This symbiotic relationship may not be pretty and certainly may not always be successful, but it is necessary to the framework that makes us a shining star on a hill.

Recommended Reading: How Many Registered Democrats And Republicans Are There

Trump Is Still A Force In The Party

After the 2012 elections, prominent Republicans sharply criticized Mitt Romney and his campaign. Democrats did the same to Hillary Clinton after 2016 and sometimes included former President Barack Obama in their criticisms, too. For a political party to change direction, it nearly always has to distance itself from past leaders.;

Or put another way: For there to be an autopsy, there has to be a dead body.

They’ll Stand By Their Man Even When Doing So Is Bad For Democracy

Former President Trump will once again make the kind of history you do not want your name associated with on Tuesday when his second impeachment trial commences in the U.S. Senate. As with Trump’s first trial , the outcome is not in doubt. But just because we know how it will end doesn’t mean the trial won’t be gripping. Members of Congress narrating their terrifying Insurrection Day ordeals will be a riveting spectacle. And just as we did in the House last month, Americans will get a quick and dirty head count of how many Republicans value democracy itself more than their own political fates.

Don’t get your hopes up on that score. While the political and evidentiary cases for GOP senators to convict Trump and bar him from ever holding federal office again are straightforward, the path to 67 votes is not. Instead, viewers should brace themselves for torturous arguments about how it is unconstitutional to impeach a former president, and some extremely “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” galaxy logic about how Trump did not incite the crowd to insurrection because he did not literally say the words “please go and lay violent siege to our national legislature.” Gathering more than one Republican in a room these days is a plain invitation to this kind of sophistry.

That they still refuse to do so says more about them than it does about Trump.

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Why The Gop Congress Will Stop Trump From Going Too Far

The coming resistance from Republican lawmakers who hate Trump, fear executive overreachor both.

This is a sneak preview;of the upcoming January/February 2017 issue of the Washington Monthly.

Could it happen here? Could a democratically elected leader come to rule us as an autocrat? Citizens of a free society can never lose sight of this question, andhowever complacent many of us have becomethe election of Donald Trump has shoved it back out to center stage.

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government, James Madison observed in The Federalist Papers, but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. These precautions are the separation of powers and checks and balances, enshrined in the Constitution. Citizens concerned about tyranny from the leaders they have elected must depend on the other branches of government to defend the republic.

In particular, the public must rely on Congress, the branch of government that Madison felt necessarily predominates, given its proximity to the people. Moreover, Article I of the Constitution vests in Congress all legislative Powers herein granted, as well as ample implied powers of oversight, and the power of impeachment should that become necessary. If a strongman government ever takes root in America, it will not be simply because we elected a president determined to establish it, but because Congress acquiesced in his designs.

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Opinion: If Republicans Dont Stand By Trump They Risk Losing Their Base Forever

The Republican Party risks exile for longer than it has endured in the modern era if, in the absence of incontrovertible evidence of actual high crimes and misdemeanors, it deserts President Trump during the campaign to remove him from office. Democrats are pursuing impeachment because they obviously fear that they cannot defeat him at the ballot box in 2020.

The advantage of talking with radio listeners and not merely lecturing readers or tweeting at followers or opponents is that you hear from people who arent among the Manhattan-D.C. media elites who overwhelmingly hate Trump. Cautioning that crowd against confirmation bias is as useless as it was to warn the Obama administration that the nascent Islamic State was not the terrorist . Awkward truths dont do well on the left. But here are some awkward truths:

First, no quid pro quo, much less an illegitimate one, has been proved about Trumps dealings with Ukraine.

Second, quid pro quos have always been a feature of U.S. foreign policy from the long-ago Louisiana Purchase to more recently President Barack Obamas sending the Iranian regime $1.7 billion in cash, which was central to the controversial U.S.-Iran nuclear deal. Quid pro quos are sometimes excellent and obvious, sometimes controversial, sometimes illegal.

That wont fly with half of the country. And that half is watching very closely.

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Why Donald Trump Is Republicans’ Worst Nightmare In 2024

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Earlier this week, amid a rambling attack on the validity of the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump said this: “Interesting that today a poll came out indicating I’m far in the lead for the Republican Presidential Primary and the General Election in 2024.”

“Trump is confiding in allies that he intends to run again in 2024 with one contingency: that he still has a good bill of health, according to two sources close to the former president. That means Trump is going to hang over the Republican Party despite its attempts to rebrand during his exile and its blockade of a Trump-centric investigation into January’s insurrection.”“Manhattan prosecutors pursuing a criminal case against former President Donald Trump, his company and its executives have told at least one witness to prepare for grand jury testimony, according to a person familiar with the matter — a signal that the lengthy investigation is moving into an advanced stage.”

House Republicans Meet With Trump To Discuss Overturning Election Results

Gravitas: US Election: Why Trump cancelled the Republican convention

Trump loyalists are planning a last stand Jan. 6.

Rep. Jody Hice tweeted after the meeting: “The courts refuse to hear the President’s legal case. We’re going to make sure the People can!

12/21/2020 10:10 PM EST

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President Donald Trump huddled with a group of congressional Republicans at the White House on Monday, where they strategized over a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results next month, according to several members who attended the meeting.

Rep. Mo Brooks who is spearheading the long-shot push to overturn the election results in Congress organized the trio of White House meetings, which lasted over three hours and included roughly a dozen lawmakers. The group also met with Vice President Mike Pence, who will be presiding over the joint session of Congress when lawmakers officially certify the Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, as well as members of Trumps legal team.

It was a back-and-forth concerning the planning and strategy for January the 6th, Brooks said in a phone interview.

In addition to the dozens of House Republicans who are committed to objecting to the election results, Brooks said there are multiple Senate Republicans who are now receptive to the effort, though he declined to name names. Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville , whom Trump has repeatedly praised on Twitter recently, has said he is considering the idea.

Sen. John Thune , however, told reporters Monday that the House GOPs effort is going down like a shot dog.

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Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

I have often been called too optimistic and criticized for my faith in my fellow American. Yet I wear those labels with pride, because at the end of the day we have to believe. We have to believe that we are part of something worth fighting for and saving.

Most importantly though, we have to believe in the goodness of each other and our ability to correct course even when it seems impossible. That has been our saving grace throughout history, our ability to turn this social experiment around and live up to our motto out of many, one.

Michael Starr Hopkins is the founding partner of Northern Starr Strategies and served on the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Republicans’ Choice: Stand With Trump Or Risk His Wrath

Trump has already informed at least two GOP lawmakers of his dissatisfaction with their defense of his racist tweets.

Sen. John Cornyn prides himself on winning a large share of the Latino vote in Texas, campaigning in the Asian American community and running ads in three languages. Its a crucial strategy for a Republican in a diverse state and one that is sharply divergent from President Donald Trumps approach.

So as Cornyn seeks reelection next year with Trump on the ballot, hes making sure that he isnt dragged down by the presidents more inflammatory politics, exemplified again this week by his racist tweets telling four liberal Democratic congresswomen to go back to where they came from.

I dont have any trouble speaking to any of my constituents. They dont confuse me with whats happening up here in D.C., said Cornyn, who has gently criticized Trumps battle as a mistake that unified Democrats. I know we are consumed by this here, but it doesnt consume my constituents when I go back home.

Its a common refrain for Republicans trying to deflect a Trump-fueled firestorm and highlights the dilemma that the party will face for months to come.

GOP lawmakers, especially those facing potentially tough reelection bids, need to create independent identities to win over Trump skeptics. But if they break too fiercely with the president, he and his grassroots supporters might turn on them, with disastrous political consequences.

Also Check: What National Policies Did Republicans Pursue During The Civil War

Why So Many Republicans Cling To Trump

Ben Shapiro got part of it right. A toxic mix of status anxiety, persecution fears, and echoes of the Civil War helps explain why they follow Trump into the abyss.

On September 17, 1862, over 10,000 Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing in a single day at the Battle of Antietam. Very few of them came from slave-owning families, so why did they agree to give their lives in defense of human bondage?

I was reminded of this question when I noticed that Politico Playbook had recruited conservative celebrity and author Ben Shapiro;to explain why the vast majority of House Republicans voted not to impeach President Trump on Wednesday for sending a murderous mob after them on January 6. Politico was slammed by liberals for opening its best-known section to a conservative whos been charged with being bigoted and intolerant. But Shapiros explanation of the rallying around Trump during his final days wasnt totally off base. He was on to something about how Republicans see the world.

With Trump leaving office within a week, defending his incitement of an insurrection doesnt seem to be in the long-term self-interest of Republican officeholders.;But the Civil War example helps explain why people sometimes do very self-destructive things out of spite or insecurity.

White supremacy was such a consensus view at the time that Lincoln felt compelled to defend it.

Like the rebels at Antietam, no one wants to die for nothing.

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Where Texas Republicans Stand On Donald Trump

The surfacing of a 2005 clip showing Donald Trump speaking lewdly about women has caused many Republicans to drop their support for their party’s presidential nominee. Here’s how the controversy is unfolding in Texas.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional comments. It was last updated Oct. 13.

The surfacing of a 2005 clip showing Donald Trump speaking lewdly about women has caused many Republicans across the country to drop their support for their party’s presidential nominee. Here’s how the controversy is unfolding among Texas Republicans in Congress and in statewide office:

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Critical Of Trump And Still Not Supporting Him

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus

Has he previously supported Trump?;No. Straus has never offered support for Trump, often saying he is instead focused on down-ballot races as the chairman of the Republican Legislative Campaign Committee.;

Where does he stand now?;Straus said in a statement Oct. 10: “I’ve had serious concerns about the nominee throughout this entire process. My focus remains on supporting Republican legislative candidates in Texas and across the country.”;

What We All Forget About The Political Career Of Bush 41

Clinton-Gore could compete

Bush’s term in office featured a short and highly successful war in the Persian Gulf and a budget deal with Democrats that would eventually reduce the federal deficit and slow the growth of the national debt. But a brief recession cost him in the polls, and a rebellion broke out on the party’s right.

Bush got a primary challenge from Pat Buchanan, a media personality who served as an adviser to Reagan and Nixon. Buchanan assailed the budget deal because it raised taxes. He conjured the spirits of Reagan and Goldwater and questioned Bush’s conservative bona fides. So did Ross Perot, an eccentric billionaire Texan who was running as a self-financing independent.

On top of that, Bush was confronted with the Democrats’ choice of an all-Southern ticket in Clinton of Arkansas and Al Gore of Tennessee. The young Democrats who could talk Southern carried their home states plus Louisiana and Georgia and all the Civil War “border states” . The region was back in play.

Clinton and Gore threw a chill into Republicans. What if Clinton served two terms and gave way to a still-vital, still-Southern Gore who could serve two more? That would be a roadblock in the White House equivalent to Roosevelt’s four wins.

Read Also: How Did President Clinton’s Impeachment Affect Republicans

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dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram · 7 years

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So I have a lot of somewhat diverging, incoherent thoughts about things you and your anons've said said, and I'll try to whip them into shape. 1) I wonder if there is a some gap between rational acknowledge and subconscious - bias (or if we're being impolite, homophobia) when it comes to these things. Of course, that can be rationalized away to an extent, but what I'm mainly talking about is the subconscious bias that Louis "reads" as gay to a majority of people and Harry does not. 1/

To use external examples, one of my favs from kpop is Zhou Mi from Super Junior M, and it’s pretty much an open secret in his fan base that he’s gay. He got a lot of flack when he and another member late-joined the group which can be attributed to overzealous fans and xenophobia, but Zhou Mi, unlike the other new group member, reads as less straight even in a non-Western context and still to this day (9+ years) gets more hate/is less popular. 2/

OTOH we have someone like Matt Bomer who is publically out, but still has a lot of straight female fans who are outright thirsty for him. They campaigned for him to be Christian Grey, and recently I saw someone describe him as “Can look, can’t touch”. To me, Bomer - and Harry (and Ziam) - doesn’t necessarily read as “straight” but more as “not-NOT straight” (the new Hollywood soft action hero) whereas Louis doesn’t get that benefit. 3/

This has very little to do with their actual sexuality, but again just subconscious bias. Unless if we’re able to acknowledge and confront our bias, oftentimes that can turn into discomfort and hate/anger, which might explain some of the over-the-top reactions we’ve seen in the past against Louis (and Zayn too - his otherness, in more obvious ways). 2) In terms of the straight female fans/queer female fans/desiring - desirability/triangulation of desire conversation– 4/

I just want to make a couple of observations (1) Queer female fans who make up a large part of L’s fanbase also include women / NB individuals who ARE attracted to men, as well as women / NB individuals who aren’t attracted to ANYONE. It felt worth mentioning to be factual and objective that actual ability to desire is not always the issue. Of the ones I follow who identify as bi/pan/other queer, a majority seem to express similar aesthetic reverence towards H and L instead of sexual. 5/

(2) I’ve seen at least one lesbian-identifying blogger recently who recently got a lesbian-identifying anon who said they would be happy to do [explicit sexual things] to Louis despite the fact she was a WLW and Louis is a MLM and the blogger agreed. So there might be something else going on there– But in terms of general fan response, similarly, over many fan polls, Zhou Mi’s fans often cited that they’d rather be his friend than date him. So it might have to do with how Louis/ZM are “read” 6/

3) In terms of your “There’s nothing wrong with a woman fantasising about Harry fucking her.” comment – I might be misinterpretting or overreading your intention with that statement, but it makes me uncomfortable for a few reasons. I respect why you’ve come to feeling this way and for other bloggers “shaming” women, but I inherently disagree because there’s other factors at play. 7/

I think we can readily agree that men vocalizing their violently objectifying and sexualizing comments towards women, especially women they don’t know, is problematic (e.g. Adam going “I’d fuck [Celebrity A]” while joking with his friends, Brad saying, “Her face don’t do it for me, but I’d take her bare on her hands and knees.”) I know that are ways in which the relationship is inversed with Harry because he is white, male, rich, privileged, in an industry where that is the peak of power 8/

That being said, you yourself pointed out that One Direction, and many boy bands, are treated the same way that females in the industry are treated – objectified, devalued for the actual talents they are selling while being told their most valuable feature is their desirability. ESPECIALLY for Harry, who has been given this role despite his vehement objections. For many larries, who are queer women, the violent objection against other [straight] women sexualizing Harry might be commiseration 9/

–as they themselves are often subjected to sexualization and unwanted advances despite their own sexuality or feelings, which is another level on top of just harassment. I want to point out that that commiseration is *empathy* with someone they perceive as a victim of systemic homophobia (also something else they experience) and not necessarily internalized misogyny against women and what they feel as a requirement for reciprocity in order to express desire for another party. 10/

I agree you can’t help who you’re attracted to, and if the fantasy is between you and yourself, then no harm done. However, in my experience on Tumblr, many straight fans of Harry do take it the next level equivalent with the Adam/Brad example I created above, in a way that treats Harry like an object for their fantasies rather than a person with autonomy, and a person who’s expressed discomfort in the past for being made into this object. 11/12

I understand if you disagree with me, but I wanted to offer another perspective that’s more nuanced than “women hate that women have desire because of internalized misogyny which is why they’re angry when women express desire”. Anyway if you read this… uh thanks!

**************

Hi Discluded - thanks so much for your asks. I think they’re really interesting. I think your idea of people being seen as not-NOT-straight is a really useful way of looking at some of the different ways celebrities are read. I think your comments will be really interesting to people who have been part of this discussion. I’m only going to respond tot he last bit, about Harry and het fans.

I’m not sure I agree that Harry has vehemently objected to being the object of desire at this point in his career. He definitely objected to being seen as someone with a huge desire for women, but that’s not quite the same thing. While he’s put some boundaries up (including literally with his wardrobe), his album gave heterosexual fans everything they needed in order to feel desired by him. I’m not saying I know how Harry feels about all this, but I am saying I’m very wary of other fans using a claim that they know Harry’s feelings as a way of bolstering their own reactions.

To your more substantive point - you end with motivations, why people might be objecting to fans who desire Harry. It’s not something I had touched on. If I was going to give a reason for why I wouldn’t talk about internalised misogyny. I would probably start with fandom dynamics - in this case Larries creating a ‘bad’ fan’ to differentiate themselvesselves from. I agree that a feeling of empathy and experiencing their own boundaries is probably a factor for queer women (although I’m not sure I think that queer women are more likely than straight women to express objection to women desiring Harry).

I think that people can have very good reasons for why they respond the way they do and still end up reinforcing existing power structures in the way they express that response (a distinction that tumblr is quite bad at acknowledging). It’s possible that queer women are responding to particular aspects of how particular women express their desire to Harry, but the easiest language to hand is language that shames women for having sexual desires.

For women who are objecting to particular articulations of other women’s desire for Harry then the way to make it clear is to be specific. To name expressions and actions that are crossing the line, rather than focusing on women’s desire.

And while I don’t think it negates your main point since I’ve been thinking about the gendered nature of desire - I also wonder about the example you used. The whole point of hetreosexuality (as like a social instituion) is that it’s not easily reversible. The language around sex gives very little option but to portray men as active and easily ignores women’s consent. I’m not sure that ‘Fuck me in that hat Harry’ in the tags is very similar to your example with Adam and Brad. I’m not sure I think heterosexuality works that way.

Thanks for your thoughts - and I’d love to hear anything else you have to say.

#discluded #I checked before I replied publicly #It really is worth reading all the parts of the ask if you haven't

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superdawge · 7 years

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FE Analysis: Female Corrin’s Popularity

Ever since it was announced that Female Corrin would be the default version of the Fates Avatar represented in Fire Emblem Warriors, it got me thinking about the rise in Female Corrin’s popularity. Where ever you look, from fan art to written works, it seems the fairer gender is given more of the spotlight. When I started considering her success in recent popularity polls, it also brought to my attention the lesser reception her male counterpart has received in comparison. But why is this? How is the difference so great when the two Corrins are essentially the same characters? Here’s my sort of thought dump on the factors leading to Female Corrin’s popularity that has made her the current poster child for the character.

To start, I think it’s important to note that Fire Emblem as a franchise, has always had a male-bias. It’s a widely accepted idea that boys play video games more than girls, so for a long time, FE games traditionally featured a male main protagonist to ensure a relatable viewpoint. Only recently with Awakening and Fates have players been able to specifically choose their character’s gender. This notion of male protagonists being more relatable, and therefore more popular and marketable can be seen in Super Smash Bros 4 where Robin was chosen to be represented by his male version on the character selection screen, in his character trailer, as well as the model for his Amiibo.

The decision from Nintendo to only produce Male Robin Amiibos was met with some disappointment that a Female version was lacking. When it was time for Corrin to receive an Amiibo, Nintendo notably made a point to include both genders. Now, this could have been in response to the criticisms towards the Robin Amiibo, but I think this also had to do with the fact that Female Corrin could not be left out because of her enormous popularity.

In the Awakening character popularity polls in Japan, both male and female versions of Robin were very popular. Male Robin ranked 3rd amongst the male cast, and Female Robin ranked 2nd amongst the entire female cast. It was this positive reception that would ensure that an Avatar character would return in Fates. However, when it was time for the Fates popularity polls, Male Corrin ranked a very good 5th place for males. Female Corrin, on the other hand, took 1st Place for females, beating out every other female in the game.

So what does this mean?

Well, in Awakening both Avatars were… pretty similarly liked. But in Fates, there is a clear difference between the two genders - something made Female considerably more popular. To cement this, in Fire Emblem Heroes’ Choose Your Legend popularity poll, Female Corrin nabbed 5th place for females in the ENTIRE FRANCHISE with 19,599 votes (9th Place overall). And Male Corrin? He managed a paltry 21st place for males (41st place overall), with 7,691 votes - almost a third as much as Female Corrin. Heck, even Dorcas beat out Male Corrin, and he got poisoned by Mutton.

You can see where this is going, right?

When you’re marketing a game, you put your best foot forward. For Robin, the genders were on pretty equal footing, so Male was the safe bet. It was the tradition - it was what came naturally to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems. Boys play video games, so make the rep a boy. But for Corrin, things were different. Nintendo could not afford the luxury of just trusting the Male version as the predictable safe bet. This time, there was a clear imbalance in who the fans like more, and who would be most well received if they were made the default version in Fire Emblem Warriors. From a marketing perspective, the obvious choice this time, was Female Corrin.

So what brought on such a large disparity in reception? What gave sway to the Female gender transcending the norm for what kind of protagonist is considered relatable and likable? The answers are rooted in a philosophy as old as time: sexism.

To understand what makes Female Corrin so much more popular than her Male counterpart, we need only look into the very essence of their characters. In Fates, Corrin is defined by their kind heart and naive idealism. Unlike traditional Fire Emblem lords that mainly fight against an outside force, many of Corrin’s problems revolve around struggling to stay true to their kind heart amidst a cynical war. Because many of Corrin’s conflicts are against family or otherwise good people, Corrin repeatedly shows mercy and goodwill during times when a general can ill afford to. Even when others pressure or try to dissuade them, Corrin holds onto their hope for an ideal world, and is often pained and deeply burdened by harsh reality.

The consequence that arises from this kind of personality is that there are certain gender roles that modern society has instilled deep in our psyche that prevails even now. One trope that you can see just about anywhere even today is Men Act, Women Are. This trope describes the notion that characters are most likable when they embody traits we associate with their gender, namely that men are defined by their achievements, while women are defined by their personalities and appearances.

From a story perspective, the narrative benefits from Corrin being female. Corrin embodies traits that are most stereotypically associated with female characters in the FE franchise - namely compassion and naivety. You can see these traits in other forefront characters like Celica, Mist and Micaiah. As modern day players, we are conditioned to admire and respect female characters who are able to pursue just ideals and embody values of peace and optimism. A female character who weeps for the loss of life and falters when a cruel act is needed is seen as loving and sympathetic. On the other hand, a male character that cries openly and hesitates during critical moments is seen as weak and unreliable. A female character who trusts easily is often seen as pure and innocent, but a male who does the same can come across as naive or foolish. On the other end of the spectrum, female characters who suppress their emotions are seen as stone-hearted and world-weary, while males who do the same appear cool-headed and mature. Basically, for the common media consumer, Corrin embodies traits that are more easily associated with femininity, and the story comes together better as a result because we are less likely to second guess a female behaving the way Corrin does. We see what we want to see.

There’s also the detail that Corrin is often “babied” and deeply cared for by their siblings. Xander constantly worries for Corrin’s safety, Camilla smothers them like a child, and the younger sisters stick to them like glue. In my personal experience, I found the story slightly more appealing when it was a Female Avatar receiving such affection because how less conventional it felt compared to the more common Male protagonist who’s the center of attention. I was able to believe young girls like Elise and Sakura would be more comfortable around and able to admire an older sister rather than a brother. A story of an innocent maiden finding her place in the world surrounded by loving family is more appealing to me than a naive young man smothered by his siblings. In traditional anime and games, women are often the ones with strong familial connections, while men are typically associated with independence. It’s a shallow sentiment, but I do believe this detail affects to some degree how some players perceive and appreciate the character of Corrin.

The next big reason is a purely aesthetic choice: Female Corrin is pretty. It’s a fact of life that visual appeal contributes to popularity with consumers. Female Corrin has a very attractive design, invoking regal feminine elegance, but also obvious warrior power. Boys are clearly meant to like her a lot. In comparison, the Male Corrin looks… pretty typical, and even a bit bland. His armor is jagged in some areas while Female’s is sleek and smooth. His shoulder sleeves look tight and restrictive while Female’s is puffy and elegant. His leggings are… leggings. Female has thighs. (＾＾)ｂ

And perhaps it’s due to generations of Fire Emblem only having female dragons, but I feel I’m conditioned to think pointed ears just look better on Female Corrin than it does on Male. I’m not sure if that’s just me. Regardless, a powerful, sexy dragon girl naturally should fair better in popularity polls than an average anime male protagonist. Boys want her and girls want to be her, such is the intention and role of the Avatar character. There’s also the fact that the Fates Avatar kind of has a more feminine fighting style, don’t you think? Graceful twirls and cartwheels are more often seen as a feminine combat style, again, better suiting the Female Corrin. Just a minor note of mine.

So what’s the main take aways from all this? What makes Female Corrin more popular than Male Corrin?

To put simply: she’s just better. From a story perspective, her gender more easily meshes with her game’s themes, plot points and interactions with other characters. Her design is more attractive, and from a superficial stand point, Female just is more likable for these reasons.

Now, does this mean Female is the “canon” gender of her games? Not at all. The Avatar is meant to be whatever the player chooses them to be, and it’s up to the player’s preference on which gender betters the story more. While both do have their merits, in my eyes, Female adds more to the story with her as the protagonist, which is enough to give her favor.

In the end, it is the numbers that speak louder than words, and with Female Corrin holding nearly three times as many votes as Male, it’s obvious who would be made the representing gender of the character in Warriors. Considering Nintendo’s track record as of late, I do believe we will be getting both Female and Male versions of Corrin in Warriors, with Female acting as the main face in the character selection screen.

While it may not seem like a big deal, there are implications to Female Corrin receiving the spotlight this time. Due to the fanbase’s appreciation for a female protagonist, this may influence the protagonist of Fire Emblem Switch to also be female, or at least encourage Intelligent Systems to continue making the protagonist’s gender selectable. We are experiencing a shift in the FE franchise in what gender best suits a protagonist is now less defined. I look forward to Female Corrin in Warriors (if it wasn’t clear by now, I like her more), and I’m excited to see how this small but important choice in Warriors may affect the franchise moving forward.

Not everything is so cut and dry and so easily labeled, however. I would like to hear your thoughts on which Corrin you appreciate more in their game and outside of it. Who do you like more?

I hope you enjoyed reading!

#fire emblem #fire emblem warriors #corrin #female corrin #kamui #fire emblem fates #fire emblem if #fe14 #mind dumping #I also realize there's a possibility F!Corrin is in Warriors simply for gender balance purposes but I'm going to ignore that

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megacircuit9universe · 5 years

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Impeachment Eve

TUE DEC 17, 2019

Yesterday’s entry was entitled, “Distant Thunder,” to describe how people seemed to be waking up to the true gravity of this impeachment... feeling it’s historic weight as one might feel the rumble of an approaching storm, and begin to worry that it might be a bit more serious than the idea of a storm seemed to be, when the skies were still mild and blue.

I’ve touched on this theme several times now, in recent entries... that it’s easy for the public, the media, and especially the GOP, to be very flippant about the impeachment, when it’s far away... but that the closer we get to that final vote, the more sober we will all become.

Yesterday, it was a little tick in the polls, showing a solid 50% in favor of both impeachment and removal, with another 10% favoring impeachment as a kind of censure to shame Trump, but feeling that removal is not called for.

So... what might cause that 10% to lean more in favor of removal? Anything?

Well, today, on Impeachment Eve, Trump sent Speaker Pelosi a six page, flaming screed... available for all the public to read... described by all who’ve read it as, “unhinged,” in which he screams at her and her party, in the poorly constructed English he is famous for on Twitter, for conducting an illegal coup because they hate the Constitution, etc.

(I’d love to read a, “de-projected” version of the letter, where every, “you,” is replaced with, “I,” to reveal the full confession...)

But at any rate, in the letter, he holds himself blameless and innocent of all charges.

So, it’s not only a ridiculous tantrum... made all the more cringe worthy because it was written on official White House stationary... but also a blatant declaration that, if acquitted by the Senate, he will proudly continue on with all the same illegal bullshit as before, and probably worse.

So, I have to believe that this will push some, if not most, of that 10% of the public who’ve been feeling like impeachment without removal would be enough to set Trump straight... into the removal camp.

It’s not gonna push anybody into the no-impeachment camp, because remember... Trump only loses followers. He never gains them. That’s been true since he took office in 2017.

But the frothing rage of hysterics that is today’s letter from our President to our Speaker, is also part of this weeks trend for those in the junta to make nakedly plain their scorn for the rule of law... not on some esoteric plane, but as it is spelled out in the original draft of the Constitution.

These Oaths in here? Fuck them. Separation of powers? Well, fuck that! Checks and balances? Fuck that too!

Fuck the truth. Fuck pretending to care. Fuck all of it... we are going for broke as out-of-the-closet authoritarians. We make the rules now. Try and stop us!

(It’s worth a mention here that all of this is happening thanks to the midterm elections, which exist as a voter check on the general elections, and in which we gave the House back to the Democrats... with a mandate to impeach... that they still resisted doing for some twenty months. So any argument that this is an illegal coup to undo 2016 is delusional bullshit.)

And I do see this as another iteration of the truth virus, touched on in earlier entries... McConnell baldly admits he’s working with Trump on the trial, and means to acquit him. Graham openly brags that he will not be an impartial juror.

And today... Trump basically screamed that he is above the law and can do no wrong... stopping just short of threats. Closest he came to a veiled threat was to tell Pelosi she will have to live with this decision to impeach him, but he will not.

Well... how will he not, unless he rewrites the history books, while she’s rotting in Guantanamo with the rest of her deposed House members?

I’ll admit that’s a stretch... with just the material in today’s letter to go by. But let’s not forget he threatened to put Hillary Clinton in jail while he was still just a candidate for President... and that this whole impeachment is based on his intention to gin up criminal charges against Joe Biden and son.

But not to fear, because these displays of bravado, by McConnell, Graham, and now Trump, this week, are all very obvious signals of fear and, in Trump’s case, a severe panic attack.

Some say this is not the behavior of the innocent, and while that it surely true, it’s more relevant right now to note that this is not the behavior of those secure in their power.

If Trump’s acquittal in the Senate were really the foregone conclusion that even the liberal media has been granting as a given... McConnell and Graham would not need to be bragging about their bias, and flipping the bird to their juror oaths in order to impress voters on the extremist fringes of the party.

They only do this because they already know such fringe extremists are their only real hope of holding on to anything in 2020. Please, please come back out of the woodwork for us! We need you! Haven’t we done everything you wanted us to do?

But the only voters who came out of the woodwork today, were pro-impeachment, pro-removal people holding simultaneous rallies across the country, from Times Square, to Chicago, Detroit, Austin, Las Vegas, Portland and Los Angeles, and many small towns in between.

The few counter-protesters on site at a few of these rallies... all displayed the ensigns of white supremacy.

Not the best optics to show that 10% who already support impeachment, but figure maybe removal is too much.

All that McConnell, Graham, and Trump with his six page, “defense,” can mobilize is a fractional smattering of racist and nazi scum, and that’s not a great look.

Early today, before most of this hit the news, McConnell did respond to Chuck Shumer’s demand to hear from witnesses with a flat out refusal, arguing, with extreme irony, that impartial jurors should not be calling for witnesses or some bullshit like that.

Trumps letter drowned that out later in the day, but I did see a couple headlines on my phone to suggest that Senate GOP members did not agree with McConnell’s stance, and were indeed interested in the possibility of hearing from new witnesses in... what, after all... is a trial... Mitch... trials do call witnesses. That’s not abnormal.

If those headlines I gleaned have any merit, then it would seem Mitch is in for a bit of a fight with some of his own party members... who are looking to Chuck Shumer as the voice of reason in this body which must pass every little detail of the coming trial with 51 votes.

That about sums it up for Impeachment Eve.

Yesterday, a bit of distant thunder.

Today... a hell of a lot of lightning!

I’m going to bed now.

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