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dytonka

How to Tell If the Election Will Get Violent - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Some experts are worried that the period following this election may become as chaotic and violent as the early 1970s.
  • people are more inclined to do everything they can in order to ensure that they’re winning elections, even if that means using violence, even if that means engaging in acts of extremism,”
  • If the ballots are still being counted days after November 3, people who have any credibility with the right could try to remind people that, ultimately, we’re all in this together.
dytonka

Trump Set To Make History This Election, No Matter What : NPR - 1 views

  • To some degree, all this rhetorical excess makes it difficult to take what the president says seriously when he says serious things. Moreover, it becomes difficult to be taken seriously when reporting things that really do happen and really are unprecedented or truly record setting.
  • For starters, someone in all likelihood will win the presidency with a record number of votes, more votes than anyone has ever received before.
  • This year's popular vote is likely to be huge. With a growing population and early participation prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, the total now projects to be in excess of 150 million. So even a plurality would be over 70 million, enough to eclipse the current record of 69.5 million votes for Barack Obama in 2008.
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  • If Trump should lose the popular tally but again overcome that to reach a majority in the Electoral College, he'd set several other records worthy of note. He would be the first president reelected after being impeached.
  • He would be the oldest president to win reelection (seven months older than Ronald Reagan) and the first president to have two terms without winning the popular vote either time.
  • His reelection would also mark the first time in U.S. history that voters reelected four presidents in a row.
  • What does it mean that presidents are again being reelected so regularly? It surely does not reflect a general satisfaction with Washington or with politics as usual. But it may mean that the advantages of incumbency are at least as difficult to overcome as ever. Put another way, the national parties have struggled to nominate sufficiently compelling alternatives.
  • One distinction Trump does not want is to be the first president ever defeated by a former vice president. Nor does he wish to join the small and unhappy club of presidents who were turned out of office by the voters.
  • Biden stands to set several records of his own if he manages to reach a majority in the Electoral College. He would beat Trump's record as the oldest president ever to take the oath of office — and beat it by eight years. He would be the first president from Delaware and the first to have had so long a career in the Senate (1973 to 2009).
  • He would be the first former vice president to defeat an incumbent president and the first Democratic vice president to come back and win the Oval Office without succeeding the president he had served.
  • Not since the beginning of time has anyone ever made greater use of superlatives than Donald Trump. He has constantly been "the most" this, "the least"
  • "It's been the most unconventional and contentious election season of our lifetime."
  • And Obama, weakened by deep midterm losses of his own in 2010, was still struggling to sell the Affordable Care Act when he faced voters again in 2012.
dytonka

2020 Presidential Election: Likely Most Consequential Of A Lifetime : NPR - 0 views

  • The election is already setting records for turnout, and perhaps no two candidates are more at odds over the future of the country and the direction they want to take it in. This election is fundamentally about what it means to be an American.
  • Whoever wins could shape what America means for generations to come through social policy, the courts and by their own example.
  • This election is expected to have the highest voter turnout since 1908, north of 65% of eligible voters turning out, according to Michael McDonald, a turnout expert at the University of Florida who runs the U.S. Elections Project.
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  • So far, more than 93.1 million people have voted early. That's about 68% of the total votes in 2016.
  • Trump touts what was a strong economy before COVID-19 shocked the country, his tax cuts and trade deals, as well as reshaping the Supreme Court in a conservative direction.
  • Democrats — and many independents, according to the polls — see a president who takes pride in not playing by the rules, has inflamed racial division, is untruthful, mishandled a pandemic, damaged the country's image around the world and is an existential threat to progress and justice.
  • "No one will be safe in Joe Biden's America," Trump said this summer. "I can't even call it Biden's America — the guy doesn't even know he's alive."
  • Voters have also said consistently that Biden would be better to handle the coronavirus, race relations and even crime,
  • But bigger than what the keys are to this election, the outcome will likely have consequences for how politics is practiced and how Americans conduct themselves for generations to come.
  • For Trump to win, there would have to be an even bigger polling error than in 2016.
  • The Trump campaign had hoped Trump's chances would get better if there was news of a potential vaccine for the coronavirus on the horizon or COVID-19 cases declining in the country. But neither has been true.
  • Trump's Ban On TikTok Suffers Another Legal Setback
  • There Will Be Superlatives: Trump Is About To Make History, No Matter What Happens
  • They have warned that Trump is the only thing standing between America and"socialism," claiming Biden is too inept to prevent being taken over by a radical left that wants to defund the police and bring crime to the suburbs.
    • dytonka
       
      ugh
  • Almost every election cycle, someone on one side or the other is claiming that this is the most important election in their lifetime. Well, this one actually probably is — and it appears voters think so, too.
  • "You're the worst president America has ever had," Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a former vice president, told Trump during their first presidential debate.
dytonka

Trump tries to undermine democratic process at the end of the campaign - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • more than 91 million who already cast early ballots
  • Tuesday's moment of destiny -- and what could turn into a prolonged count owing to the crush of mail-in votes -- will decide whether Americans reject Trump after a single term or re-up for four more years of his brazen presidency.
  • The President on Sunday night hinted that he could seek to dismiss Dr. Anthony Fauci after the election after rejecting the admired infectious diseases specialist's science-based recommendations on the pandemic.
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  • Biden argues that Trump's denial and neglect of a pandemic that has killed more than 230,000 Americans and is getting worse by the day should deny the President reelection.
  • Counting in midwestern battlegrounds like Michigan and Wisconsin, where he is expecting to do well, could take longer and lead to the kind of disputed outcome that the President is threatening. Trump has already tried to discredit mail-in ballots, which take longer to count, while Republicans in Texas -- so far without success -- have been trying to invalidate ballots cast at drive-thru sites in the Houston area.
  • "We feel very confident about our pathways to victory," Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
  • Trump, while trailing Biden, also has a clear, if narrower, chance to get to 270 electoral votes that relies on him sweeping through a swath of battlegrounds he won four years ago with what his campaign promises will be a huge Election Day turnout.
  • At a rally in Florida on Sunday night, Trump's crowd started a chant of "Fire Fauci" when the President complained that everyone heard too much about the pandemic.
  • But an air of foreboding is hanging over one of the most surreal elections in modern US history. Reports of delays in the delivery of mail-in votes in several crucial battleground states deepened anxiety over the possibility of protracted legal duels between the campaigns in the event of a close election.
  • In Texas, the state Supreme Court denied a petition by a group of Republicans seeking to invalidate nearly 127,000 ballots cast at drive-thru facilities in Harris County, a heavily Democratic area that surrounds Houston. Republicans have also filed suit in federal court, which has an emergency hearing Monday morning in Houston.
  • "I think it's a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election," Trump said in the crucial state of North Carolina, which he is battling to keep in his column despite demographic changes that give Democrats hope.
  • "I think it's a terrible thing when people or states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over because it can only lead to one thing, and that's very bad. You know what that thing is. I think it's a very dangerous, terrible thing," Trump told reporters.
  • But Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said on "State of the Union" that she was concerned that Trump could try to declare victory in her state if Election Day voting tallies showed him with a lead before early and mail-in votes were counted.
  • He took part in a "Souls to the Polls" get-out-the-vote event at a Baptist church in Philadelphia and then held a drive-in rally. He called out disparities in the impact of the virus on minorities and, in the cradle of the American experiment, he painted Trump as a threat to basic American freedoms.
  • "Let's not ever let anyone take our power from us. Let us not be sidelined, let us not be silent, there is too much at stake and the ancestors expect so much more from us than that," Harris said in North Carolina.
  • President Donald Trump is casting doubt on the integrity of vote counting and warning he will deploy squads of lawyers when polls close on Tuesday, as his latest attempts to tarnish the democratic process deepen a sense of national nervousness hours before Election Day.
  • The President's maneuvering, as he fights to the last moment to secure a second term, is taking place ahead of a court hearing in Texas Monday morning on a Republican request to throw out 127,000 drive-thru votes in a key county.
  • Fears are also growing that the President might try to declare victory before all the votes are counted as he and Democratic nominee Joe Biden launch a final-day swing through the battleground states that will decide one of the most crucial elections in modern US history.
  • Biden is leading in national polls and by a narrower margin in many key states and has multiple paths to victory.
  • Trump's route to the required 270 votes is thinner but still viable, meaning either candidate could win.
  • In an extraordinary departure from American political tradition, Trump has been arguing for months that the election is "rigged" against him, has made false claims that mail-in voting is corrupt and has refused to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power.
  • It is common for some states to take several days to finalize vote counts.
  • "I think it's a terrible thing when ballots can be collected after an election," Trump said in the crucial state of North Carolina, which he is battling to keep in his column despite demographic changes that give Democrats hope.
  • Some of the most crucial battlegrounds, like Pennsylvania and Michigan, have warned it could be several days before a final result can be declared.
dytonka

The risk of violence and protests on Election Day - Vox - 0 views

  • There’s just no sugarcoating it: The risk of violence in America on or after Election Day is the highest it’s been in recent memory.
  • That’s hard to accept in the United States, a nation that every four years holds a contentious election yet manages to transfer power peacefully. A peaceful outcome is the safer bet this year, but it’s still unsettling that the odds in favor of peace aren’t overwhelming.
  • Should the worst happen — a disputed election, broad civil unrest, a candidate refusing to concede — the US will have entered a dark period of its history.
dytonka

Election Probabilities Are Emotional Nonsense - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • You’re asking if a trained mathematician has a finely tuned sense of how to feel about the difference between Biden having an 80 percent chance of victory and a 90 percent chance of victory. And I’m not sure that I do.
  • Ninety percent odds of a Biden win? Okay, that makes me happy. But 70 percent? Now I’m anxious. And 20 percent? Terrified. It’s almost as if these election-forecasting sites should express their probabilities in emojis.
  • A good mental-health question to ask yourself is: What am I actually gaining from trying to figure this out now? None of us sitting at home is going to decide the election.
dytonka

'All the red flags': Political analysts warn of U.S. election violence - 0 views

  • Asked last week to commit to conceding should the Nov. 3 election go in favor of Democrat Joe Biden, Trump doubled down on his unfounded claims about mail-in ballots leading to widespread voter fraud in justifying his reluctance.
  • The president also refused to disavow White supremacists and militia groups in his corner, telling the Proud Boys — a violent, all-male far-right extremist group — to “stand back and stand by.
  • “All the red flags that you see in other countries that have political violence are being raised in the United States right now, and you are getting extremely incendiary rhetoric from the president himself,”
dytonka

How COVID-19 can damage the brain - 0 views

  • delirium: they were confused, disorientated and agitated2
  • A similar study1 published in July compiled detailed case reports of 43 people with neurological complications from COVID-19
  • between 10,000 and 50,000 people have experienced neurological complications.
dytonka

Experts: Police brutality, racism pushing Black anxiety - 0 views

  • Some experts say police brutality, the coronavirus pandemic that has taken disproportionate physical and financial tolls on Black people, and other issues around race have increased anxiety levels among African Americans, like Hall.
  • “This idea that, for Black people, we don’t feel — currently in this country — that we have the ability to control our environment and protect ourselves and our families,”
  • For Black professionals and those in the middle class, the anxiety appears to be more pronounced, said Alford Young Jr., a sociology professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
dytonka

What We Should Know About Barrett's views - 0 views

  • If she is confirmed, she would move the court slightly but firmly to the right, making compromise less likely and putting at risk the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.
  • One area in which almost no one expects surprises is abortion. Mr. Trump has vowed to appoint justices ready to overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.
  • “None of the court’s abortion decisions holds that states are powerless to prevent abortions designed to choose the sex, race and other attributes of children,” the dissent said. It added that the fetal remains law was entirely rational.
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    Amy Coney Barrett's controversial views
dytonka

Scientists Endorse Joe - 0 views

  • We’ve never backed a presidential candidate in our 175-year history—until now
  • Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science.
  • But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules, making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances.
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  • Biden has a family and caregiving initiative, recognizing this as key to a sustained public health and economic recovery. His plans include increased salaries for child care workers and construction of new facilities for children because the inability to afford quality care keeps workers out of the economy and places enormous strains on families.
dytonka

The Pandemic's Assault on Latino Political Power - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • More than 25,000 Latinos have already died. More than 3 million are unemployed. Four in 10 Latino families with kids are going hungry, and 44 percent of Latino renters are unsure if they’ll be able to pay their bills.
  • Polling over the last seven months shows Latinos’ interest in the election fluctuating with the pandemic, and though a majority now say they plan to vote, historically more than half have sat out presidential elections.
  • Latinos are “literally under attack,”
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  • The pandemic’s resulting economic crisis has only deepened the pain. The Hispanic unemployment rate at the height of the pandemic’s first surge hit a peak of 18.9 percent, the worst rate among demographic groups, before trickling down to 10.5 percent.
dytonka

CNNPolitics - Political News, Analysis and Opinion - 0 views

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    The differences between analysis and opinion
dytonka

Where Latino voters stand on Trump, Biden, key election issues in 2020 | Pew Research C... - 0 views

  • most Hispanic voters continue to hold bleak views of the nation and its economy after months of widespread job losses and illness due to COVID-19, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 5.
  • For example, 57% of U.S. voters say they have confidence in Biden to handle the public health impact of the coronavirus outbreak, up from 52% in June
  • Four-in-ten U.S. registered voters (40%) say they have confidence in Trump to handle the health impact of COVID-19, and 30% have confidence that Trump can bring the country closer together.
dytonka

How Does Trump's Racism Compare With Past Presidents'? : Code Switch : NPR - 0 views

  • People have talked about Trump breaking norms, especially when it comes to talking about race, going as far as to say that he's the "most racist president in modern history."
  • After all, racism was baked into the founding of the United States, a country built on the genocide of Native American people and slavery; 12 of the first 18 presidents actually owned slaves.
  • different from what people are talking about with President Trump. In his case, it's his use of all that language in 2020 rather than 1964, right out in the public on his Twitter feed, in a presidential debate or at his rallies. I
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    Another article of trump's racist claims
dytonka

AOC hints at interest in seeking higher office in Vanity Fair interview | Fox News - 0 views

  • Many have speculated the 31-year-old left-wing icon may be a contender for the 2024 presidential race, as she will have reached the mandatory age minimum of 35 by then.
  • "I don't know," she said in April. "Honestly, this news cycle is so insane, who knows where any of us are going to be in 2022?"
  • Ocasio-Cortez gained attention in the Democratic Party with her Green New Deal, though whether her popularity gained by going after the Trump administration and her new progressive proposals is enough to push her through a national campaign is unclear at this time.
Javier E

Opinion | The Question of Joe Biden - The New York Times - 0 views

  • The more I covered Biden, the more I came to feel affection and respect for him. Then, as now, he could be a tough boss, occasionally angry and hard on his staff. But throughout his life, Biden has usually been on the side of the underdog. I’ve rarely met a politician so rooted in the unpretentious middle-class ethos of the neighborhood he grew up in. He has a seemingly instinctive ability to bond with those who are hurting.
  • He has his faults — the tendency to talk too much, the chip on his shoulder about those who think they are smarter than he is, the gaffes, that episode of plagiarism and the moments of confusion — but I’ve always thought: Give me a leader who identifies with those who feel looked down upon. Give me a leader whose moral compass generally sends him in the right direction.
  • But I’ve also come to fear and loathe Donald Trump. I cannot fathom what damage that increasingly deranged man might do to this country if given a second term. And the fact is that as the polls and the mood of the electorate stand today, Trump has a decent chance of beating Biden in November of next year and regaining power in 2025.
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  • Biden’s approval ratings are stubbornly low. In a recent ABC poll, only 30 percent of voters approve of his handling of the economy and only 23 percent approve of his handling of immigration at the southern border. Roughly three-quarters of American voters say that Biden, at 80, is too old to seek a second term. There have been a string of polls showing that large majorities in his own party don’t want him to run again. In one survey from 2022, an astounding 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted a different nominee.
  • I thought Biden’s favorability ratings would climb as economic growth has remained relatively strong and as inflation has come down. But it just hasn’t happened.
  • don’t find this passive fatalism compelling. The party’s elected officials are basically urging rank-and-file Democrats not to be anxious about a situation that is genuinely anxiety-inducing. Last month Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey told The Times, “This is only a matter of time until the broad party, and broadly speaking, Americans, converge with the opinions of folks like myself.” Really? Surely if there’s a lesson we should have learned from the last decade, it’s that we should all be listening harder to what the electorate is trying to say.
  • The Republicans who portray him as a doddering old man based on highly selective YouTube clips are wrong. In my interviews with him, he’s like a pitcher who used to throw 94 miles an hour who now throws 87. He is clearly still an effective pitcher.
  • People who work with him allow that he does tire more easily, but they say that he is very much the dynamic force driving this administration
  • In fact, I’ve noticed some improvements in his communication style as he’s aged. He used to try to cram every fact in the known universe into every answer; now he’s more disciplined. When he’s describing some national problem, he is more crisp and focused than he used to be, clearer on what is the essential point here — more confidence-inspiring, not less.
  • What about four or five years from now, at the end of a second term? Will he still be competent enough to lead? Biden is fit, does not smoke or drink alcohol, exercises frequently and has no serious health conditions, according to the White House
  • A study in The Journal on Active Aging of Biden’s and Trump’s health records from before the 2020 elections found that both men could qualify as “super-agers” — the demographic that maintains physical and mental functioning beyond age 80.
  • if the president I see in interviews and at speeches is out campaigning next year against an overweight man roughly his own age, then my guess is that public anxieties on this front will diminish.
  • To me, age isn’t Biden’s key weakness. Inflation is. I agree with what Michael Tomasky wrote in The New Republic: Biden’s domestic legislative accomplishments are as impressive as any other president’s in my adult life. Exactly as he should have, he has directed huge amounts of resources to the people and the places that have been left behind by the global economy. By one Treasury Department estimate, more than 80 percent of the investments sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act are going to counties with below-average college graduation rates and nearly 90 percent are being made in counties with below-average wages. That was the medicine a riven country needed.
  • it is also true that Biden’s team overlearned the lessons of the Obama years. If Barack Obama didn’t stimulate the economy enough during the Great Recession, Biden stimulated it too much, contributing to inflation and the sticker shock people are feeling.
  • Anger about inflation is ripping across the world, and has no doubt helped lower the approval ratings of leaders left, right and center. Biden’s 40 percent approval rating may look bad, but in Canada, Justin Trudeau’s approval rating is 36; in Germany Olaf Scholz is at 29; in Britain Rishi Sunak is at 28; in France Emmanuel Macron is at 23; and in Japan Fumio Kishida is also at 23. This is a global phenomenon
  • “Inflation is the reason Biden could not deliver on his core promise to return the country to normal and the main reason his poll numbers are bad.”
  • voters are looking back and retroactively elevating their opinion of Trump’s presidency. When he left office only 38 percent of Americans approved of his performance as president. Today, 48 percent do, his high-water mark.
  • Bitterness, cynicism and distrust pervade the body politic. People perceive reality through negative lenses, seeing everything as much worse than it is. At 3.8 percent, America’s unemployment rate is objectively low, but 57 percent of voters say that the unemployment rate is “not so good” or “poor.”
  • The nation’s bitter state of mind is a self-perpetuating negativity machine. Younger people feel dismissed; the older generations are hogging power. Faith in major institutions is nearing record lows. The country is hungry for some kind of change but is unclear about what that might look like. As the incumbent, Biden will be tasked with trying to tell a good news story of American revival, which is just a tough story to sell in this environment. And Biden is not out there selling it convincingly.
  • The bracing reality is that Trump’s cynicism and fury match the national mood more than Biden’s faithful optimism.
  • “They seem hell bent on nominating the one Democrat who would lose to Donald Trump,” Karl Rove told me recently. “They’ve got a lot of talent on their side, let’s not kid ourselves,” he continued, pointing to younger Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Mitch Landrieu, Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker.
  • A lot of the dump-Biden conversations are based on a false premise: that the Democratic Party brand and agenda are somehow strong and popular enough that any number of younger candidates could win the White House in 2024, and that if Biden were just to retire, all sorts of obstacles and troubles would go with him.
  • But Biden is not the sole or even primary problem here. To the extent that these things are separable, it’s the Democratic Party as a whole that’s ailing. The generic congressional ballot is a broad measure of the strength of the congressional party. Democrats are now behind. According to a Morning Consult poll, Americans rate the Democratic Party as a whole as the more ideologically extreme party by a nine-point margin.
  • When pollsters ask which party is best positioned to address your concerns, here too, Democrats are trailing. In a recent Gallup poll 53 percent of Americans say Republicans will do a better job of keeping America prosperous over the short term while only 39 percent thought that of the Democrats.
  • Fifty-seven percent of Americans said that the Republicans would do a better job keeping America safe, while only 35 percent favor the Democrats. These are historically high Republican advantages.
  • Here are the hard, unpleasant facts: The Republicans have a likely nominee who is facing 91 charges. The Republicans in Congress are so controlled by a group of performative narcissists, the whole House has been reduced to chaos. And yet they are still leading the Democrats in these sorts of polling measures
  • There is no other potential nominee who is so credibly steeped in knowing what life is like for working- and middle-class people, just as there was no other potential nominee in 2020. After watching him for a quarter-century, I think he is genuinely most comfortable when he is hanging around the kinds of people he grew up with. He doesn’t send out any off-putting faculty lounge vibes. On cultural matters he is most defined by what he doesn’t do — needlessly offend people with overly academic verbiage and virtue signaling. That is why I worry when he talks too stridently about people on the right, when he name-calls and denounces wide swaths of people as MAGA.
  • Over the last half-century, the Democrats have become increasingly the party of the well-educated metropolitan class.
  • This is about something deeper than Joe Biden’s age. More and more people are telling pollsters that the Republicans, not the Democrats, care about people like me.
  • But Democrats are losing something arguably more important than a reliable base of supporters. The party is in danger of letting go of an ethos, a heritage, a tradition. The working-class heart and soul the Democrats cultivated through the Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy years rooted Democratic progressivism in a set of values that emphasized hard work, neighborhood, faith, family and flag. Being connected to Americans’ everyday experiences kept the party pinioned to the mainstream.
  • . It grew prone to taking flights of fancy in policy and rhetoric, be it Medicare for All or “defund the police,” going to places where middle-of-the-road voters would not follow. It became more vulnerable to the insular outlooks of its most privileged and educated members.
  • And that is the fact I keep returning to. Biden is not what ails the party. As things stand, he is the Democrats’ best shot at curing what ails the party.
  • today, the party is bleeding working-class voters of all varieties. As John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira point out in their forthcoming book, “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?” Democrats have been losing ground among Hispanics for the last few years. In 2012, Barack Obama carried nonwhite voters without a college degree by a 67-point margin. In 2020, Biden carried this group with a 48-point margin. Today, the Democratic ticket leads among this group by a paltry 16 points
  • These cultural and spiritual roots give him not just a style but a governing agenda. He has used the presidency to direct resources to those who live in the parts of the country where wages are lower, where education levels are lower, where opportunities are skimpier. Biden’s ethos harks back to the ethos of the New Deal Democratic Party, but it also harks forward to something — to a form of center-left politics that is culturally moderate and economically aggressive
  • Something almost spiritual is at play here, not just about whether the Democrats can win in 2024, but who the Democrats are.
  • I also find myself arriving foursquare at the conclusion that rejecting the president now would be, in the first place, a mistake. He offers the most plausible route toward winning the working- and middle-class groups the Democrats need, the most plausible route toward building a broad-based majority party
  • But it would be worse than a mistake. It would be a renunciation of the living stream of people, ideas and values that flow at the living depths of the party, a stream that propelled its past glories and still points toward future ones.
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