Democratic Candidate 2020

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secret squirrel
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by secret squirrel » Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:20 am

lpm wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:06 pm
Sanders breaks ranks with Secret Squirrel and commits to voting for Biden.
So to me, for all of those reasons and so many more, a president who doesn’t apparently has never read the constitution of the United States who believes he’s above the law. A president who lies all of the time, a president who has at least shown me that he is a racist and a sexist and a homophobe and a xenophobe and a religious bigot. I mean, for all of those reasons or more, we’ve got to make Trump a one term president and we need you in the white house. So I will do all that I can to see that happens, Joe. And I know that there is an enormous responsibility on your shoulders right now and it’s imperative that all of us work together to do what has to be done not only in this moment but beyond this moment in the future of this country.
https://www.theonion.com/undaunted-sand ... 1842759626

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by jimbob » Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:32 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:18 am
JQH wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:06 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:01 am
The planet's future habitability is not in doubt. It has been a lot hotter than the most extreme alarmist predictions and our presence here today shows life did not go extinct.
Temperatures are rising a lot more rapidly than any time in the geological past,
Really? Disprove this then: about 1,000,000,000 years ago fo a period of 200 years the temperature rose at twice the speed it has over the last 200 years, before equally rapidly falling again to its previous level.
If you resort to such a pointless rhetorical trick, its looks really bad for whatever point you think you're making.

Also, unless you have references, you're making a completely unfounded statement, when we can infer temperature from geological analyses.


And I'm sure that over large parts of the Earth, there was a very rapid rise and then cooling only 66 million years ago.

Of course that was associated with a catastrophic extinction event, but hey.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:31 pm

It always amuses me when people pretend not to understand basic climate science and its likely consequences.

Not quite enough to hit reply, but I do a little smirk before I move on with my day.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by EACLucifer » Tue Apr 14, 2020 6:39 pm

JQH wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:06 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:01 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:46 pm
But seriously, given that the planet's future habitability depends on this view being incorrect,
The planet's future habitability is not in doubt. It has been a lot hotter than the most extreme alarmist predictions and our presence here today shows life did not go extinct.
Temperatures are rising a lot more rapidly than any time in the geological past, making it even harder for life to adapt. And while life as a whole may not disappear, individual species will go extinct; the lack of trilobites proves that.
I don't think that's strictly true, actually, at least not in terms of short, sharp increases and decreases. Granted, the event I'm thinking of is sometimes called "The Great Dying"*, so we should work not to emulate that ;)


*It also finished off the last of the trilobites

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by bjn » Tue Apr 14, 2020 8:36 pm

jimbob wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:32 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:18 am
JQH wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:06 pm


Temperatures are rising a lot more rapidly than any time in the geological past,
Really? Disprove this then: about 1,000,000,000 years ago fo a period of 200 years the temperature rose at twice the speed it has over the last 200 years, before equally rapidly falling again to its previous level.
If you resort to such a pointless rhetorical trick, its looks really bad for whatever point you think you're making.

Also, unless you have references, you're making a completely unfounded statement, when we can infer temperature from geological analyses.


And I'm sure that over large parts of the Earth, there was a very rapid rise and then cooling only 66 million years ago.

Of course that was associated with a catastrophic extinction event, but hey.
I think he’s Shelly’s sock. Same bad faith arguments. Straight to ignore.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by JQH » Tue Apr 14, 2020 9:17 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:18 am
JQH wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:06 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:01 am
The planet's future habitability is not in doubt. It has been a lot hotter than the most extreme alarmist predictions and our presence here today shows life did not go extinct.
Temperatures are rising a lot more rapidly than any time in the geological past,
Really? Disprove this then: about 1,000,000,000 years ago fo a period of 200 years the temperature rose at twice the speed it has over the last 200 years, before equally rapidly falling again to its previous level.
Well, obviously I can't prove that didn't happen, any more than you can disprove the existence of a colony of invisible ant-sized unicorns living at the bottom of my garden.

What can be shown is that the temperature rises at the end of the Permian took tens of thousands of years, not a couple of centuries. Yet 70% of land species and 95% of marine species went extinct. Life will survive the current climate crisis but there's no guarantees our species will.

Mods: Maybe this set of posts should be split off and put somewhere else?
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Apr 15, 2020 11:22 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:31 pm
It always amuses me when people pretend not to understand basic climate science and its likely consequences.

Not quite enough to hit reply, but I do a little smirk before I move on with my day.
Just me, then?
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Apr 15, 2020 12:32 pm

FWIW I agree with Sanders that his supporters should vote for Biden.

The left has the opportunity to pick its opponent. Its strength is in numbers, through organisation.

It's nearly impossible to organise against a Trump administration. Every day brings a new firehose of absurd outrageous b.llsh.t that distracts the news cycle from serious issues. A Biden administration would be slower to change and more predictable in its responses, presenting an easier target for opposition.

It would also, at least in some cases, have stated goals that align with those of the left. Pressure is simply needed to shift what happens from technocratic business-friendly fiddling-on-the-Titanic to structural reform, achieving which would depend on a large component of non-political activity anyway. Empowering the working masses to help achieve that would be considerably easier with a saner public conversation, IMHO.

Staffing federal agencies would also help with with stuff like environmental protection and disease preparedness, which are important left goals. Rejoining the Paris Agreement might help get things done at a federal level, at least until the next Republicans president leaves again.

Accelerationism seems silly. Clinton losing the election to Trump hasn't helped the left, and I'm not hopeful that Biden losing would either. While I don't want to overstate how much a Biden victory would help in practical terms, at the very least I think it would create an easier environment for the struggle - as long as people remember that "back to normal" is still out of the fire and into the frying pan.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Squeak » Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:06 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 10:18 pm
NYT has finally published a piece on Tara Reade's allegation that she was sexually assaulted by Biden while working for him as an assistant.

Paywalled, so I haven't read it yet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/p ... laint.html
WashPo has a similar one. I can copy the text from either if you'd like to have a read but I don't want to spam the whole articles in here. The guts of both are similar:
  • Tara Reade has filed a police complaint, which is the hook both stories hang on. There's no indication of what police are doing with that complaint and apparently, we are unlikely to hear anything unless they decide to prosecute.
  • Both papers have spent the last three weeks trying to verify/disprove her claims and they've got fairly slim pickings but not nothing (which is unsurprising, given the length of time that's passed). They've found a friend who will corroborate being told about the alleged sexual assault at the time but who remains anonymous (can't say that I blame her); a brother who remembered being told about the general handsiness at the time, and then a few days after the interview, phoned the reporter back to say that he'd just remembered being told that Biden touched her under her clothes as well.
  • She claims that she complained to her supervisors at the time about sexual harassment but not the assault. All of them claim not to remember her complaints. It's possible that what felt momentous to her (because she was veiling an assault) seemed of little consequence to the other staffers (because it seemed like it was about an unwanted hug, which seemed minor to them). Otherwise, there's the option of lying on one or both sides.
  • She claims that she complained to the Senate personnel office about sexual harassment but they have no record of the complaint.
    She complained publicly about his handsiness (playing with her hair, rubbing her shoulders and neck) last year but didn't mention the alleged assault then.
  • Her reasons for leaving Biden's office have changed several times over the years - she got a job elsewhere, her supervisors took tasks away from her after she complained about sexual harassment, Biden fired her.
  • She recently praised Biden for his efforts against violence against women
  • She's been campaigning for Sanders and written odd hagiographic blog posts about Putin ("compassionate, caring, visionary leader") so there's a visible potential political motivation.


I can understand why major papers have taken their time on reporting this, given the oddities and the changing testimony. I can think of good reasons why a woman might not want to talk about a sexual assault and might rewrite the history around it. And I have to confess to a bit of me hoping that Biden did not assault her, simply because it would be convenient to simplify the debate around finding a replacement for Trump in the US. So, I'm trying hard not to fail the test that so many Democrats did around the allegations against Bill Clinton in the 90s.

This is an awful story and if Biden did what Reade claims, then I'm horrified (though unsurprised, given the rates of assaults on women). I don't really know how to assess the claim but I can see why mainstream media have been cautious about it. The anonymous friend has apparently been talking with several media outlets and their story seems to have been consistent, and I certainly don't blame her for wanting to stay anonymous, given the punishment other women in similar positions have faced. On the other hand did all his senior staffers forget or lie about a sexual harassment complaint against their boss? I can't imagine ever forgetting such a thing (I know that I'm capable of losing details like names or dates, the actual core event would have high salience) and there's a small-scale conspiracy needed for them to coordinate their lies, if that's what happened. If she really did file a complaint with the senate personnel office, then who deleted all records of it? The papers have also failed to turn up any other similar stories that might suggest a pattern of similar behaviour from Biden, though that could obviously change with time.

These sorts of historical sexual assault claims are inherently messy (usually no witnesses, lots of time passed) but this one seems especially messy. I don't see a way to finding any resolution, unless some other witness or alleged victim emerges. So, um, yeah. It's complicated.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Squeak » Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:18 am

secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 11:46 am
Squeak wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 8:52 am
SS, I can see why, from a policy perspective, you might view him as no worse than another Republican. In terms of acts like removing inspectors general and attacking other checks on presidential power, do you also see him as no worse than any other Republican?
Trump is certainly 'worse' in that regard, but there are some other perspectives on this. First, Trump only gets away with this kind of thing as far as it suits the Republican policy agenda to keep him around. The establishment of both parties, and the top brass of the military and intelligence services don't seem to like him very much on a personal level. If the Republicans wanted him gone, he would be gone. So while the next Republican candidate president will likely be much more presentable, I expect the attacks on inconvenient institutions to continue, or even escalate, albeit in a more subtle and insidious form.

Second, how good is the US status quo, really? I would argue that the status quo is pretty bad domestically, and extremely bad globally. In the latter half of the 20th century and beyond the USA has been a global ogre. There's a reason why protesters all around the developing world burn American flags, and it's not because they're 'jealous of their freedom'. This status quo is maintained by the current set of 'democratic' institutions. They did not prevent officials from the Bush administration failing to relinquish significant involvement with arms companies then taking the country on a tide of lies into a war where the atrocities of American troops are well documented. They did not prevent establishment Liberals from socially rehabilitating the man on whose watch this happened. They did not prevent previous administrations from supporting fascist coups against democratically elected governments all over the world. They did not prevent them from using their economic muscle to impose damaging 'free market economics' on developing countries, supposedly their allies. And so on, ad nauseam.

It has already been pointed out that 'the Left' could not expect to get anything significant done because the way the American system is organized prevents things being effectively changed from the top. This is a situation that overwhelmingly serves the Republican agenda. So while Trump attacks institutions for bad reasons, that doesn't mean they are not bad.
I have a slightly different perspective on this. Any very large and powerful political entity (e.g. the US) has lots of temptations to be a bad actor, simply because they can. And any political elite is likely to resist efforts to oversee/limit their ability to be corrupt, so things like genuinely independent special prosecutors and inspectors general are really hard things to set up and protect but really, really important for protecting the electorate from malfeasance, so attacks on those independent watchdogs are, I think, an especially bad thing because they enable so much worse.

Obviously, the oversight cannot ever be perfect and any large nation that attempts to set a higher standard on its own behaviour will be a hypocrite because individuals in that nation will screw up or will actively try to undermine the standard. But I think being a hypocrite and having some degree of oversight is better than an authoritarian regime with no higher standards and no oversight.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by secret squirrel » Fri Apr 17, 2020 10:20 am

Squeak wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:18 am
I have a slightly different perspective on this. Any very large and powerful political entity (e.g. the US) has lots of temptations to be a bad actor, simply because they can. And any political elite is likely to resist efforts to oversee/limit their ability to be corrupt, so things like genuinely independent special prosecutors and inspectors general are really hard things to set up and protect but really, really important for protecting the electorate from malfeasance, so attacks on those independent watchdogs are, I think, an especially bad thing because they enable so much worse.

Obviously, the oversight cannot ever be perfect and any large nation that attempts to set a higher standard on its own behaviour will be a hypocrite because individuals in that nation will screw up or will actively try to undermine the standard. But I think being a hypocrite and having some degree of oversight is better than an authoritarian regime with no higher standards and no oversight.
I agree in principle about the benefits of strong democratic institutions limiting the power of special interest groups and individuals. I'm not a Leninist. I think vanguardism is the Left's version of trickle down economics. But as far as I can see the institutions America currently has do a pretty bad job of stopping abuses, and a very good job of preventing reforms that might improve the situation. This is, arguably, not an accident. Abuses have to be more subtle in the American system sure (and Western systems in general), but they are still omnipresent, and not even really so subtle when you start paying attention. I don't think 'holding yourself to a higher standard' is much of a defense. I mean, the Soviet Union held itself to an extremely high standard on paper. At what point does individuals undermining the system become systematic failure?

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Woodchopper » Sun May 03, 2020 5:50 pm

Biden has gone on the record and denied sexually assaulting Reade: https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch ... 2865221937

And an interesting exchange on CNN about the Biden and Reade
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video ... e_has.html

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by lpm » Sun May 03, 2020 6:25 pm

Tara Reade is inconsistent with each telling of any story - not just this accusation but mundane stores like how she travelled to Washington DC. Being known by multiple surnames is odd as well.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Woodchopper » Sun May 03, 2020 6:42 pm

lpm wrote:
Sun May 03, 2020 6:25 pm
Tara Reade is inconsistent with each telling of any story - not just this accusation but mundane stores like how she travelled to Washington DC. Being known by multiple surnames is odd as well.
I don’t think that inconsistency in its self rules out Biden being guilty. There are lots of reasons why someone might not want to talk.

For example, not sexual assault but at one point Monica Lewinsky provided an affidavit that she had not had sex with Bill Clinton.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun May 03, 2020 7:40 pm

There does seem to be reasonable evidence that she mentioned something happening at the time, which IMHO increases her credibility somewhat. On the other hand, there certainly are undeniable inconsistencies in her account(s), but I suppose that is to be expected at least to some extent with an alleged assault that happened 27 years ago.

In terms of the 2020 race (perhaps we need a new thread, seeing as the Democratic candidate is basically selected now), it's not clear how much this will affect Biden's chances. Not many of his supporters seem to believe Reade, dismissing her as a Russian agent (which is fast becoming the "Fake News" copout of US liberals). Better-documented assaults didn't hurt Trump much in any case, so while it perhaps neutralises one line of attack the Democrats could otherwise have used, it probably wasn't their strongest one anyway. There are plenty of other was that Biden is preferable to Trump, even if they are both a bit dodgy around women (in different ways and to different extents, probably).
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Woodchopper » Sun May 03, 2020 7:49 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun May 03, 2020 7:40 pm
There does seem to be reasonable evidence that she mentioned something happening at the time, which IMHO increases her credibility somewhat. On the other hand, there certainly are undeniable inconsistencies in her account(s), but I suppose that is to be expected at least to some extent with an alleged assault that happened 27 years ago.

In terms of the 2020 race (perhaps we need a new thread, seeing as the Democratic candidate is basically selected now), it's not clear how much this will affect Biden's chances. Not many of his supporters seem to believe Reade, dismissing her as a Russian agent (which is fast becoming the "Fake News" copout of US liberals). Better-documented assaults didn't hurt Trump much in any case, so while it perhaps neutralises one line of attack the Democrats could otherwise have used, it probably wasn't their strongest one anyway. There are plenty of other was that Biden is preferable to Trump, even if they are both a bit dodgy around women (in different ways and to different extents, probably).
Yes, contemporary complaints do make it look more plausible. Biden also has a track record of pushing physical boundaries with women (though no other sexual assault allegations).

That said I can’t see how it could be proved one way or another.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Fishnut » Sun May 03, 2020 8:38 pm

I'm trying to work out how I feel about the Biden allegations. Fwiw I believe the accuser. I don't think that someone comes out and makes allegations like this without having a damned good reason. Look at Christine Blasey Ford - she received death threats, had to move several times and hire private security. Tara Reade has decided to go public while knowing all this, and while knowing the chances of it making a difference are incredibly remote given that they haven't so far. The questions I find myself asking is why she decided to put herself through this and will it make any difference?

Why she's doing this I can't answer. But I can imagine that it must be incredibly galling to see the Democrats nominate a man who is being held up as morally superior to Trump yet who also has a similar disregard for consent and boundaries. I was wondering why she didn't say anything when he was VP but times have changed a lot since then (in both good and bad ways). While the Trump p.ssy tape did nothing to harm him, and Kavanagh was still accepted onto the supreme court, we've also seen Weinstein not just fall from grace but be jailed, so there's potentially more of a feeling that speaking out will start something. There's also potentially a feeling of 'f.ck it' - that it might not make any difference but she'll be damned if she's not going to make him aware of the harm he did to her.

As for whether it'll make any difference, here I'm really torn as a big part of me really hopes it doesn't. Four more years of Trump will be so devastating as to need at least a generation to recover, so we need Biden to win. But how can we ask people to vote for someone who's sexually assaulted their employee? The majority of women vote for the Democrats but 1 in 6 women have been the victim of attempted rape or rape, so will they be willing to vote for someone responsible for a violation they intimately understand? And should we be demanding that they do just because Trump is worse?

Then I just get angry that people are being asked to chose the lesser of two evils (a framing popular when Clinton was the nominee against Trump though somehow I suspect it won't be a framing used this time round), and that the argument is essentially that Biden's better because he only has one sexual assault allegation vs Trump's 23 (so many that the have their own wikipedia page). Why couldn't the Democrats have found a nominee who had zero sexual assault allegations? There were so many people who were standing, there must have been at least one there who understands consent.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by FlammableFlower » Sun May 03, 2020 8:51 pm

Excellent post Fishnut. Good question too. I guess that a number of things need to be there - ambition, money and support. Connections in the political sphere help. Competence and a lack of a dodgy background don't seem to hold anyone back.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun May 03, 2020 8:58 pm

I agree with you, Fishnut. I wanted to comment on a couple of bits:
Fishnut wrote:
Sun May 03, 2020 8:38 pm
Then I just get angry that people are being asked to chose the lesser of two evils (a framing popular when Clinton was the nominee against Trump though somehow I suspect it won't be a framing used this time round), and that the argument is essentially that Biden's better because he only has one sexual assault allegation vs Trump's 23 (so many that the have their own wikipedia page).
I've already seen that argument being used in the wild (on reddit and on twitter). Criticism of Biden gets called out as being at least one of support for Trump or Russian-sponsored propaganda. There are hashtags like #bluenomatterwho where folk argue that everyone should vote for Biden because Trump is worse (and the same argument was made on this thread when secret squirrel said he wouldn't vote for Biden, though I don't particularly want to reboot that spat).
Fishnut wrote:
Sun May 03, 2020 8:38 pm
Why couldn't the Democrats have found a nominee who had zero sexual assault allegations? There were so many people who were standing, there must have been at least one there who understands consent.
It looked to me like as soon as Sanders started really gathering momentum the Democrats all rallied around the establishment's preferred candidate remarkably quickly. Biden has been painted as enormously electable for over a year, even though he's always been obviously a wrongun around women and girls, and even though he has been involved in all sorts of murky stuff over the years.

I think the reason that they went from an interesting and diverse field to Biden so quickly was because they panicked, and offered as many candidates as possible a VP slot in return for dropping out and endorsing Biden (Yang seems to have hinted at this). The Democrats' corporate donors wouldn't like a Sanders presidency any more than the Republicans' would.

It also is strange that nobody seemed to have seen this coming. One of the arguments for Biden was that he's supposed to have been thoroughly vetted and have no skeletons in his closet (hours of video footage of him creeping women out notwithstanding), whereas people were arguing that there must be loads of dirt on Sanders left that didn't come out in 2016.

The parallels with Clinton as a candidate are very disconcerting.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by lpm » Sun May 03, 2020 9:03 pm

Why couldn't the Democrats have found a nominee who had zero sexual assault allegations? There were so many people who were standing, there must have been at least one there who understands consent.
Any and every candidate would have been accused of sexual assault.

It's hard why to see why you jumped to conviction, when the allegation is internally inconsistent, the accuser has a track record of writing fictions, and the accuser's 180 degree reversals are odd to say the least.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Woodchopper » Sun May 03, 2020 10:53 pm

False allegations against politicians do happen. From the US over the past couple of years:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... -opposite/

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/p ... cna1000501

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justic ... ts-n929951

It looks like all the above were fabricated. They are all pretty amateurish though.

Then in the UK there’s Operation Midland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midland

Which is not to say that I think that Reade is lying. Just that it’s not easy to draw conclusions.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by lpm » Sun May 03, 2020 11:14 pm

No need to look that far. There was a false allegation against Biden today. Raised by Fox News, a plausible sounding allegation, a number of people supporting the accuser with "she told me about it at the time".

Disproved a couple of hours later.

It's spectacularly naive to automatically respond with "I believe her" in the current environment. Liars are going to lie.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Martin_B » Mon May 04, 2020 12:24 am

Fishnut wrote:
Sun May 03, 2020 8:38 pm
I'm trying to work out how I feel about the Biden allegations. Fwiw I believe the accuser. I don't think that someone comes out and makes allegations like this without having a damned good reason. Look at Christine Blasey Ford - she received death threats, had to move several times and hire private security. Tara Reade has decided to go public while knowing all this, and while knowing the chances of it making a difference are incredibly remote given that they haven't so far. The questions I find myself asking is why she decided to put herself through this and will it make any difference?

Why she's doing this I can't answer. But I can imagine that it must be incredibly galling to see the Democrats nominate a man who is being held up as morally superior to Trump yet who also has a similar disregard for consent and boundaries. I was wondering why she didn't say anything when he was VP but times have changed a lot since then (in both good and bad ways). While the Trump p.ssy tape did nothing to harm him, and Kavanagh was still accepted onto the supreme court, we've also seen Weinstein not just fall from grace but be jailed, so there's potentially more of a feeling that speaking out will start something. There's also potentially a feeling of 'f.ck it' - that it might not make any difference but she'll be damned if she's not going to make him aware of the harm he did to her.

As for whether it'll make any difference, here I'm really torn as a big part of me really hopes it doesn't. Four more years of Trump will be so devastating as to need at least a generation to recover, so we need Biden to win. But how can we ask people to vote for someone who's sexually assaulted their employee? The majority of women vote for the Democrats but 1 in 6 women have been the victim of attempted rape or rape, so will they be willing to vote for someone responsible for a violation they intimately understand? And should we be demanding that they do just because Trump is worse?

Then I just get angry that people are being asked to chose the lesser of two evils (a framing popular when Clinton was the nominee against Trump though somehow I suspect it won't be a framing used this time round), and that the argument is essentially that Biden's better because he only has one sexual assault allegation vs Trump's 23 (so many that the have their own wikipedia page). Why couldn't the Democrats have found a nominee who had zero sexual assault allegations? There were so many people who were standing, there must have been at least one there who understands consent.
+1 to this. (Fishnut's post is what I'd have written if I was more eloquent!)
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Millennie Al
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Millennie Al » Mon May 04, 2020 2:23 am

Let me pose a moral dilemma. Alice and Betty are the two candidates to lead the nation. Alice is a serial killer who has killed 47 people already and if elected will take advantage of her position to kill 94 more. Her politcal policies will result in no particular changes to the nation as she is very much a pragmatist. Betty is personally saintly. Her strong personal values mean she has never hurt anyone, nor stolen as much as a paperclip. Her political policies are such that if elected she will lead the nation into military conflict that will kill 100,000 people. Which will you vote for?

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Woodchopper
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 04, 2020 3:08 am

lpm wrote:
Sun May 03, 2020 11:14 pm
No need to look that far. There was a false allegation against Biden today. Raised by Fox News, a plausible sounding allegation, a number of people supporting the accuser with "she told me about it at the time".

Disproved a couple of hours later.

It's spectacularly naive to automatically respond with "I believe her" in the current environment. Liars are going to lie.
And here’s a link: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/eva-mu ... tara-reade

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