Yeah, the teeth-gnashing about this is incredible. This is not even in the top 50 worst pardons in recent history nor in the top 10 worst acts by Joe Biden. Fuck him, he sucks, but this is an irrelevant footnote compared to both his own actions and the actions of other presidents.

This isn’t even “the game”. It’s not getting Democrats anything, but it’s also incredibly irrelevant and no one can credibly clutch pearls about abusing pardon powers when it’s basically been a get out of jail free card for big donors for years. It’s already broken and corrupt, and Hunter doesn’t even rank anywhere close to the previous ghouls that have been pardoned, including by the guy who’s succeeding Biden. Never mind Republicans who have been 100x worse, this isn’t even remotely as bad as Clinton’s pardons.

Democrats spent the last 4 years worrying about optics. And they have nothing to show for it.

And even if “optics” was super important, this is going to have zero optical effect. Some frankly bizarre pearl clutching now, but no elections are coming and only total fucking morons think this is somehow going to ease Trump doing worse things. No one is going to give a single shit in two or four years when Trump is pardoning Jared Kushner for personally helping Mohammed bin Salman torture and murder some dissidents.

This is very much not a trending story in the media because they want more pardons or more extreme action. It may be why you’re upset, but you’re interjecting yourself in an entirely less ideological fabricated controversy. It’s a “tsk, tsk, the norms” response.

LOL, like any of these papers give a fuck about pardoning weed prisoners. You’re right that he should be pardoning more people, but the “debate” and “controversy” is entirely separate from that.

It’s not “empathy” if it’s part of some imagined negotiation in your mind.

“Harris was a woman” is a conclusion designed to shut down criticism and doom us to failure in a state that is uniquely incapable of electing women. Many of the Latino men who supposedly just won’t vote for women come from countries who have elected female leaders without issue. “It’s not our fault, misogyny exists” is the answer if you don’t want to consider any of the other ways in which Harris and the Democrats have failed, and has no solution other than just adopting misogyny ourselves.

I’m actually kind of surprised there were states that had a plurality for a party.

9 out of 10 doctors may agree on things, but there’s always the 1 out of 10 who is happy to promote quackery to gain notoriety and political promotion.

Imagine these politicians completely denying any vaccine approvals. Even if your doctor wants to vaccinate you, they literally can’t.

Under current law they can. It’s not illegal to prescribe unapproved medicine, it just risky because FDA approval is considered a reliable standard. If the FDA goes to shit, they can look to foreign countries for more reliable guidance. Organizations need to learn to put their professional obligations over just following what the government says.

Chapter 8 is 81 pages long, if there’s a point you think is particularly insightful in dealing with conservative grievance and propaganda, you’ll need to be more specific.

This seems to assume there was a response by the center-left government that could both be pro-social and would not be attacked by conservative douchebags. They’re not going to be impressed by a finely threaded needle, they’ll just up their ask, because reducing the popularity of their opponents is the point of conservative propaganda, not the actual policy.

I highly doubt that +1700 votes is outperforming Biden. Population increases over time.

This is a very dumb read based on literally no evidence for the actions of this list of reliable quislings.

Ok, cool story. What is your point? They voted for a bill, whether other people stop it is irrelevant to their personal responsibility for voting to give Trump a tool of oppression.

What the fuck do you think happens to the powers on January 20th?

Been trying to get rid of Case for years now, but politics here is an insider club and he hasn’t had any real challengers since getting elected with a plurality in a 7 person primary where a former-Republican ran to his left. He’s been a horrible embarrassment ever since. One of the worst representatives in the entire party when you look at his district lean compared to his voting history.

I don’t even know if any mainline party beliefs are actually beliefs rather than just “is it worth it to me to support this population”. They’ll throw trans people under the bus because they’re a small population with limited engaged support. They also didn’t make a big stink about the Hatian false accusations. Sure, they’ll do a “why are Republicans bothering with this unimportant issue”, but the thrust there is that these issues are foolish, not wrong.

Support for every minority population is a calculation, not a principle. And since they’re always waiting to see whether a Republican libel is resonating before deciding their stance, there’s never any messaging to stop them from resonating in the first place. It’s “I’m in favor of social justice the moment 51% of the voting population is in favor and completely agnostic until that point”. And really the percentage requirement is probably more like 60%-70%.

That’s kind of fair, but this is also not a story that just came out of no where. They’d been telegraphing this for days. Have someone ready with a statement. Or just someone who can speak well off the cuff without running a strategy meeting and a focus group. An organization that is fundamentally partially about messaging shouldn’t be unable to get their preferred message into a news story.

I think the Peter Principle is supposed to freeze you in the first job you’re unsuited for, not just keep pushing you upward.