oh god is biden dropping out? i don't know what happens then
Jesus effing Christ.
Few thoughts:
The billionaire Democratic donors got their way, apparently. All I saw was that the big-dollar donors were secretly putting pressure on the rank-and-file Democratic elected officials (i.e. House and Senate) to denounce Biden or not get any more money, and other shameful backroom maneuvering to knife Biden. I will refrain (lol, no I won't) from speculating that billionaires of any political stripe feel threatened by Biden's increasingly progressive tax/wealth redistribution policies, and saw their chance after the bad debate performance to knife him. Because until further notice, I'm going to think that was the biggest factor.
I don't know if there's an actual health condition that made Biden agree it was the best time (in fucking July) to step down, but if this was an issue, there needed to be planning last year, at the earliest, to prepare for a new successor. I don't know what's going on. This is a clusterfuck on many, many levels.
However: it is true that this does change things and not necessarily only for the worse, as long as Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee and this stupid Democrats In Disarray nonsense, which is giving the media exactly what they want, is put to a fucking end. If Harris is also swept aside and the billionaire donors try to install their preferred "Centrist!!!" candidate (lol Manchin or some shit) with an equally antidemocratic closed-door Star Chamber convention, then yes, we're fucked. Because the Congressional Black Caucus and African American voters saw exactly what the rich white man billionaires were trying to do by torching Biden and then Harris, and they are not going to play ball with some Magical White Man replacement.
If Harris is immediately confirmed as the new nominee (and to the best of my knowledge Biden has endorsed her), then she has a chance of reinvigorating the race. There were a lot of Americans who did not want either Biden or Trump. I suspect they were fucking braindead, but so be it. Harris has apparently polled pretty and increasingly well in recent days (in some cases actually better than Biden) and again, there is no remotely small-d democratic alternative to her. The billionaire donors already trashed the duly elected (by the primary process) Democratic nominee. If they do the same to Harris, then yes. We will have Trump and there won't be any more democracy in this country on either side, because the Republican big-bucks donors will gleefully pick up where the Democratic big-bucks donors left off.
Jesus fucking Christ.
The message needs to be "Harris is Joe's successor, she is younger and already has four years of experience and is the only candidate." Anything else is a fucking gift from god to the Republicans, once more getting trashed after Trump's terrible RNC speech. Maybe she can then pick Whitmer or Shapiro (both popular and effective Democratic governors of swing states, MI and PA respectively) as a running mate, but the nominee has to be Kamala. There is no other fucking choice. This is already enough of a mess.
If that can happen, and the fucking donors can refrain from fucking it up, then... okay. It's not great, but it does change things. It makes the ticket younger. It makes it historic (first Black female president beating Trump would be amazing). It could reach people disenchanted with the current two-old-white-guys setup.
This is an incredible sacrifice on Biden's part and I only wish that I could believe he did it voluntarily, rather than being forced out by a small class of rich people worrying about his policies getting too progressive.
I wish him only the best and I recognize this decision was taken under extreme pressure. If we then lose to Trump, I hope everyone who forced Biden out burns in hell.
I was a diehard Biden supporter not because I loved the guy personally, but because he was the only choice for preserving democracy in America. The essential stakes of the election have not changed, even if the billionaires just knifed us in the fucking back, possibly to nobody's surprise, because R or D, they are not our friends.
Kamala is the only choice. I will now have to defend her as hard as I did for Biden. She needs to beat Trump. There is nothing else to it. If you think she can't, then you need to work at helping her do that. There is already enough calamity and doom. We do not have a choice. We cannot lose sight of what is at stake here.
Kamala Harris/Whitmer and/or Shapiro and/or Buttigieg 2024.
The end.
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The idea just hit me: Ratio’s students are called his ducklings
He’s fully aware of it and makes no move to stop it from spreading around campus.
Being considered one of Ratio’s ducklings is kinda a big deal because those are the students who are willing to put in the effort and work to keep up with Ratio’s teaching style.
They are both terrified of him and respect him so much that all the other students are in turn terrified of them. And while the ducklings don’t get any special treatment from Ratio, there’s something special and comforting about being part of the group of students who are willing to stick with Dr. Ratio’s coursework.
This is how I see it happening:
It started during Ratio’s first few years of teaching. Not his first year because I fully believe his first few classes were really controversial and had a lot of dropouts once his personality and harsh teaching style were made known.
It took a while but after a few years, there’s finally a class with no drop outs, even if it’s super small. However, this class are also the students who are dedicated and truly want to learn and refuse to quit even with Ratio’s standards.
(They still complain and cry of course, the student life is all about pain- no this is not me projecting as a uni student, I’m perfectly sane I promise-)
And of course, like any other student who needs to understand wtf is going on in class, his students do everything in their power to create study groups and attend his office hours, which are 100x scarier in the beginning since that’s prime one-on-one time with Dr. Ratio.
At least in lecture the man is a hundred seats away from you. Here, he’s speaking directly to your face as he explains just how wrong you are and giving advice on how to fix that.
At first, due to how unused to Ratio is from having a class of students who are truly trying to keep up with him (whether they’re succeeding is up to interpretation), he only spends time with them during lecture and office hours for the first few weeks.
And then it spirals.
Around campus, you begin to see the esteemed Dr. Ratio being followed by a gaggle of students tripping over each other, constantly asking question after question and him answering each one. Even as he’s being blunt, he never looks like he’s trying to outrun them, and even stops occasionally to write in one of the student’s notes.
The ducklings nickname started out as a joke when someone made the connection of his students following him like baby ducks after lectures, and spiraled a bit more when one of the students found one of his rubber ducks in his office.
And so after finals, that first class of students got together for a nice drinking party to celebrate their freedom. A few drinks in of reminiscing about the class and how they’ll actually kinda miss Dr. Ratio, someone made a joke of buying some rubber ducks for the good doctor. Continuing on the high, an entire gaggle of drunk uni students just pull up to a craft store at 3am and start hunting for ducks. Another brilliant student laughs at the idea of personalizing each duck, and the rest of the class find the idea so funny that they buy out an entire aisle of craft supplies and get to work.
The next day, hungover but still committed to the bit, the entire class show up to Ratio’s office and each hand him a personalized rubber duck along with a terrified thank you for the class.
Ratio would give his usual denying spiel of how “it is unnecessary” and “your education is all the reward a professor could want” but this is his first ever class with no dropouts and who all managed to pass their finals.
The man is a failure at not caring, he is crying on the inside.
So he keeps the ducks on a shelf in his office.
Somehow, the duckling nickname just cements itself after that day, and each class afterwards, despite all the pain and grumbling of the students, are always referred to as Ratio’s ducklings because only the truly insane (dedicated) stick it out and follow after him.
And after each final, his little ducklings always give him their own personalized rubber duck that he continues to add to his shelf that he always had within eyesight of his desk.
(the first class of ducklings are his personal favorite, though he’ll never claim to have any)
I’m incapable of not adding Aventurine whenever I talk about Ratio nowadays, I just have to accept that I love them both too much now.
But yea, I like to imagine Aventurine finding out about the ducklings nickname first and teasing Ratio about actually having a heart and caring, which Ratio just denies and tries to justify as him being an attentive professor. But then Aventurine finds the rubber duck shelf and it’s just too sentimental for him to even think about joking.
Adding to my headcanon of Aventurine being really curious about different subjects, I imagine that when he gets comfortable, he constantly asks Ratio questions about anything and everything. Ratio happily replies and teaches him.
I like to think that one day, Aventurine would make his own personalized rubber duck to gift to Ratio as a 'thank you' for always indulging him with his questions and that rubber duck just becomes Ratio’s favorite. He gives it a little podium in his house and office and he constantly carries it around with him. He has photos of the damn thing. His first class find out about the duck and needle him about having ‘no favorites’ which he denies. Aventurine finds it both embarrassing and really cute.
(I’m kinda pulling from my own experience with one of my old professors. She was terrifying but by god did I actually learn during her class. Every one of us would complain for hours about her exams, and boy were the averages terrible, but we were all also deeply committed to attending every office hour and defending her against the other students. It was like ‘She’s a harsh and insane professor, but she’s our harsh and insane professor.’ Everyone knew you were serious if you chose to take her class instead of other professors for the same course, she was that infamous. If I take 5 seconds to psychoanalyze myself without getting depressed, maybe that’s why I really like Ratio - outside of the burnt-out gifted child thing with emotional expression issues that also hit way too close to home. He just really reminds me of one of my own professors that I still really respect to this day)
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