Everything Is Great and Amazing

[Big Magilla]

Christmas comes early in Virginia:

https://nypost.com/2017/12/20/democrat- ... gislature/

[Greg]

Report: Mike Pence Offered to Replace Trump on GOP Ticket After the Access Hollywood Tape:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... -tape.html

I wonder how Trump will deal with this news. The President has no authority to fire the Vice President.

[Precious Doll]

Sarandon probably lost the plot post Dead Man Walking - just look at the her dreadful career choices.

A year or two in the 'real' world rather than the 'reel' world might give her the heavy dose of reality she clearly needs.

[taki15]

Susan Sarandon is an even bigger fool and horrible human being that I ever thought.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/n ... -be-at-war

[Greg]

Still, Biden is not the most popular politician in America.

Sanders Is Most Popular Us Politician:

http://observer.com/2017/10/sanders-is- ... t-popular/

[Big Magilla]

I think when they say Biden "would have won" what they really mean is he would have won Pennsylvania and Ohio, but that assumes he would have won every other state that Hillary won.

Donna Brazile clarified her statement somewhat when she said on the TV talk shows what she said in her book was that replacing Hillary and Kane with Biden and Booker was one of the scenarios that went through her mind, but not something she had thought through. In reality, if Hillary had dropped out or had been forced out, the DNC wouldn't get to name her replacement. It would either defer to Kaine or a hastily gathered second convention that may or may not have picked Biden. In any case, it would have been a much bigger mess, and yes, Obama's lack of support for the DNC was a big part of the problem. Had Hillary won in 2008 and picked Obama as her VP, he would be president now and none of the nightmare of the last year would be happening, but then if wishes were horses we would all be riding one.

[taki15]

It's easy to say now that Biden would have been an easy winner. But it's one thing talking in the abstract and another one being out there, on the campaign trail, with the entire Republican machine firing at will.
Biden is a gaffe machine and the media would have had a field day with him. Sure, Trump was his opponent, but let's not forget that in their desperate quest of being "balanced" they would have hyped up any maladroit statement by uncle Joe (who is hardly a politician known for political correctness).
He would also have been by far the oldest presidential nominee ever, and considering his past health scares everybody would constantly question his ability to carry out his duties.

I agree that as an ethnic white male Biden would have probably held the line in WWC states where Clinton cratered, and thus won the election.
But it wouldn't have been the double digit cakewalk some people fantasize about.

[Sonic Youth]

I'll just sum it up.

1). If the election were held today, the lint on my shirt would win the election. But it probably would not have won in 2016, and neither would've Joe Biden. 2). Had he won the nomination, he would have been damaged by the primary. The Iraq War was one of the contentious issues during the primary. But if Hilary supported the Iraq War, Biden practically pursued it. People forget that, for some reason. 3). I don't know why people also forget that Sanders support among minorities was tepid-at-best, and if he - not only a Jew, but an atheist Jew - were nominated, the groundswell of white nationalism would have been a mountain. 4). He absolutely would have lost if Brazille (who's full of shit) had replaced Hillary with him. You really think Hillary supporters would have thought "Disappointed? Sure. But we have to support our candidate." 5). The DNC did one or two minor questionable things, but if that was rigging it was the worst rigging by anybody ever. You don't get to call a primary rigged when your candidate wins 23 fucking races. 6). There are also allegations that Obama ignored the DNC after his first election, did minimal-to-nonexistent fundraising and left the DNC in tatters, relying on a bailout from Hillary. Spit on Hillary all you want... but isn't what Obama did (or rather, didn't do) WORSE??

[Sabin]

Greg wrote
Biden wouldn't have been the scourge of the Democratic Party if Sanders beat Trump.

I fall somewhere in the middle of the “rigging” of the Democratic Party thing. But I do think that with Hillary Clinton, a lot of people within the establishment made a lot of plans and felt very confident about their futures. A Sanders Presidency would have disrupted those plans, understandably, as it’s hard to have party loyalty when you’re not part of the party.

[Big Magilla]

If the election were held today, Biden would be an easy winner. I think it likely that he would beat Trump if he were still standing in 2020, but the only way Biden would win the primary for sure would be if he ran unopposed and that's unlikely to happen. With Trump out of the picture, it would still be possible, but then his age would likely become more of a factor, so who knows.

Personally I would like to see someone younger with more energy in charge of re-building what's left of the country after Trump and his cronies finish burning it to the ground.

[Greg]

Flashback to 2015, it's entirely possible that Joe Biden could have won a primary that didn't have Hillary Clinton. But that wasn't going to happen. Had he run, he would have handed Bernie Sanders the nomination, and been the scurge of the Democratic party.

Biden wouldn't have been the scourge of the Democratic Party if Sanders beat Trump.

[Sabin]

A few thoughts on Joe Biden...

I think Joe Biden is a Democrat who is built for the general election, not the primaries. If he could have somehow escaped them, I think he would have been a better candidate to defeat Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton was. I don't claim to know the man's mind, but it seems pretty clear that he is entertaining a 2020 run for office which seems largely based on a feeling that he could have won in 2016.

So what else is new?

I've only been truly politically active for about eight years (beforehand, I was simply anti-Iraq and anti-Bush), but it seems like Joe Biden has a terrible sense of timing. He ran too soon in 1988 and bungled his campaign. I wasn't there but it's hard for me to imagine Joe Biden doing worse than Michael Dukakis. Had he waited until 1992, perhaps he could have won. Allan Litchman's formula suggests that if Ross Perot is in that race, then a Democrat wins. "Middle Class Joe" presents as a viable alternative to Herbert Walker. But that didn't happen...

I don't know why he didn't run in 2004 but I would imagine Joe Biden would have done much better on the campaign trail than John Kerry. Sure, John Kerry won a bunch of purple hearts, but he still allowed the right to paint him as a weak liberal. Maybe Joe Biden wouldn't have scared middle America off. But that didn't happen...

Then he ran in 2008 and had Obama not picked him as Vice President, his run would have been remembered for one terrible line (about Indians working at 7/11) and one excellent one ("Everything out of [Guiliani's] mouth is a noun, a verb, and 9/11!"). George Will once said that Charles Matthias had contemplated "a stroll" for the presidency, and for Joe Biden that's what it felt like.

Flashback to 2015, it's entirely possible that Joe Biden could have won a primary that didn't have Hillary Clinton. But that wasn't going to happen. Had he run, he would have handed Bernie Sanders the nomination, and been the scourge of the Democratic party. Instead, he's arguably the most popular guy they have and easily their most experienced. But put aside his age for a second. This country doesn't have a great track record of people running on blown chances.

[Sabin]

For those of you who are wondering, President Trump's approval rating is higher than Suicide Squad, but still lower than Justice League.

[Mister Tee]

In case anyone had forgotten about Russia. Good god.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ks/545738/

[flipp525]

I think we owe it to ourselves to take a moment to enjoy our wins. For the past calendar year, I have been a Debbie Downer. And I for sure thought the Donna Brazille news was a harbinger of doom for us.

Today, a transgender woman beat the architect of the bathroom bill. What's a great fucking day.

I’m taking the day to celebrate! (Internally, because still have to be in the office today.) But what a day to be thankful after the darkest of days this past year.

Congrats to my home state of Virginia for seeing through the blatant racism and dog-whistling of Gillespie’s deplorable campaign and electing Ralph Northam to its governorship.