I really wish they’d rerelease this in 4K, the visuals are spectacular.

But between Biden’s ego and the DNC’s determination to stick with a wholly-owned establishment neoliberal hack at all costs - even if it means losing - I expected that they wouldn’t take this golden opportunity.

Biden has objectively been the most progressive president since LBJ, and the most effective progressive president since FDR. And he did it with about the slimmest possible congressional margins, a situation which would have made it very easy for an actual “establishment neoliberal hack” to say “my hands are tied” and accomplish nothing of substance. Instead we got the biggest climate reform package ever, the biggest infrastructure package since the Interstate Highway system, a child tax credit that massively reduced child poverty, the most significant industrial policy in decades (CHIPS and Science), a veritable bulldog FTC chair with an aggressive anti-monopoly stance, and that’s just for starters.

Not great when that show ended with industry collapsing the biosphere and destroying civilization.

The delivery was bad but it makes sense: A woman was murdered by an immigrant, he (Trump) went to the funeral and tries to demagogue it. Meanwhile Republicans are passing laws to criminalize abortion and prosecute women who try to travel to other states after they’re raped by people they know. So Trump and his party don’t give a shit about prosecuting rapes or protecting women, they just want to demonize immigrants and control women’s bodies.

Edit: You also left out the preceding lines where he talks about Georgia and other states legislating a six-week abortion ban, which sets up the point more clearly.

Need to call a special fact-finding hearing featuring the editors of Merriam-Webster’s, Collins, and the Oxford English Dictionary. Let’s pencil it in for three weeks from next Monday.

M O I S T U R I Z E M E

IMHO 2012 was the one that really broke their brains. The tea party types tried to get various firebrands on the ticket, but end up having to support Romney. Hey, at least he’s a squeaky-clean telegenic millionaire pushing the most severe conservative fiscal policies! Proceeds to get stomped by the Obama campaign so bad that Karl Rove couldn’t believe it as it was happening. THEN the establishment GOP flirts with moving to the center on immigration. The backlash against that on the right, supercharged by the mainstreaming of mobile social media (plus social justice protests and the looming Clinton campaign) was what fueled the rise of Trump.

If Biden wins, what do you expect to happen with all the MAGAs?

They will continue to exist, though weakened, and four more years of Democratic executive actions and appointments will steadily move the federal government further away from their position.

How would you prevent another Jan 6th? What if it succeeded this time?

Electing Democrats to critical state roles in 2022 helped a lot here. It’s also useful having the election denier as the challenger, not the incumbent, plus we’re all wise to their playbook. The multiple prosecutions of last cycles conspirators should also put a damper on things.

How will you keep Biden accountable?

Protests, op-eds, pressuring legislators, primary elections, etc.

Will you keep avoiding a fascist dictatorship every 4 years until the end of time?

Yes. Democracy requires active maintenance, from all of us, indefinitely. Giving up is how its enemies win.

It’s not a “Boogeyman” or a “scare tactic” if it actually happened. Trump did appoint three justices, those justices were significantly more right-wing than the ones they replaced, and as a result they actually did overturn Roe v. Wade and a side swath of other rights and regulations. Maybe keep that very recent history in mind when you hear the same people who warned about it then warning about him trying to end democracy in America now.

It’s a fine idea but feels like it’s maybe past its prime in terms of active maintenance? Like I checked out my old neighborhood in the suburbs of a large US city and the primary road through it (which the area is named after and has a very big visible welcome sign indicating that) was misspelled. I don’t have an account and didn’t care to learn how to edit it, but I did drop a note flagging the error. Then I browsed some of the other notes and noticed they were all multiple years old. Even Manhattan was littered with months- or years-old notes with only a handful of them marked resolved. Maybe they were just hard edge cases not easily fixed, but it gave the impression of a database that has not been broadly maintained for years.

“You know, it’s quite a strange thing. The single most common adjective applied to Mister Rogers in this and other thread is the word ‘creepy’?”

One of my all-time favorite Internet comments. Long but worth the read.