Politics & Stuff

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

The head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, it has been revealed. Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.

Reuters

[Vesper 30,226]

The Weakness of a Violent Man

He pretends to be a strongman, but his desperation is always on display

https://www.americaamerica.news/p/the-weakness-of-a-violent-man

He attacks a judge’s daughter to stir up hate and conflict. He posts a video of the President of the United States, bound and gagged. He condemns millions of humans as poison, who, in their struggle to survive, have come to the United States to seek better lives. This is not a strong man, a man displaying his strength to lead; this is a malignant man who’s revealing his essential weakness and dangerously exacerbating a climate of violence.

Bereft of any vision of positive change, this is a man who is only capable of exploiting an aggrieved people’s worst instincts—who has figured out that he can get what he wants by stoking the fear, hatred and anger of others. He uses violence, not imagination. Conflict, not collaboration. Cruelty, never kindness. Retribution, not affirmation. These are the tools of a weak man inciting the mob to satisfy his hunger for carnage.

A man like this sells bibles wrapped in an American flag. Desperate for dollars and loyalty, he laughably claims the bible is his “favorite” book and that he has many of them. Empty and broken inside, he needs to compare himself to Jesus Christ on the holy weekend of Easter.

But this is a weak man, a narcissist in the extreme, who cannot tolerate his own failures or the painfully obvious reality that he will never get the total adoration that his bottomless pit of need seeks. This is a sad creature, utterly lacking self-consciousness. When he looks in a mirror, he never sees the truth.

We are living in complex, challenging times, in which our problems are increasingly global and often seem insurmountable. Climate change. Immigration driven by displacement. Murderous rulers set upon stealing their neighbors’ sovereignty, ending their commitment to democracy and exploiting their limited resources by undermining their allies’ commitment to support them.

In such times, we hope for leaders possessed of the necessary intellect and imagination, compassion and competence to engage the public in the arduous task of self-governance. At a time when the problems we face depend on genuinely strong leaders, capable of inspiring the public to pursue their better selves and work together, a weak man relies on scapegoating the most vulnerable among us and promising that he alone can fix our most intractable problems—and do it quick. The demagoguery is as old as the hills, only the details and the targets of hate change over time.

In less troubled times, a man like this would remain in the darkened fringes of society, limited in his ability to incite stochastic terrorism. In times like this, such a man can not only ascend to the nation’s highest office once, he has the potential to regain that office even after he’s been disgraced with two impeachments, engaged in a violent insurrection, lied more than a documented 30,000 times, and has been indicted four times and charged with 88 felony charges. Still today, his followers remain devoted to him, even after he was found guilty of raping and defaming E. Jean Carroll, as well as committing widespread tax and business fraud and facing fines of more than half a billion dollars. For Trump and his cult, rising political violence is assuredly a feature, not a bug.

Times like these make the weak man masquerading as the strong man look like a real answer for the aggrieved voters who are attracted to cruelty and brute force as a promised path to easy solutions. The increasingly poisonous hostility between parties only intensifies their dark desires.

I’ve quoted it before, but the prophetic insight and warning of George Washington bears repeating. In his farewell address from 1796, America’s first president worried about the dangers of factionalism and revenge-filled hostility between factions. “The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” he wisely said. “And sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

I have also noted before the necessary insight of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on the topic of cruelty and kindness, but this too bears repeating. “When someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society,” he told newly minted college graduates in a commencement address. “They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They never forged new mental pathways to overcome their instinctual fears and so their thinking and problem-solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades.”

The responsibility to defeat Donald Trump and the Trump Republicans could not be clearer. In another time, that may sound like a partisan urging. But this is about our commitment to sustaining America’s centuries-old democratic experiment.

Many of our fellow citizens look at Joe Biden and insist he lacks something they want. But his capacity for compassion and kindness, his commitment to democracy, and his record of competence and achievement should be more than enough for doubters to find a reason to support him.

The failure to achieve massive voter turnout can lead to a dark, fascistic future, led by a weak and desperate man who thinks he’s strong. That is a dangerous combination, which each of us has the power to help overcome.

 

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

22 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Many of our fellow citizens look at Joe Biden and insist he lacks something they want. But his capacity for compassion and kindness, his commitment to democracy, and his record of competence and achievement should be more than enough for doubters to find a reason to support him.

 

I wonder do Gazan's feel that capacity for compassion as he sells Israel the bombs which kills their children?

I think the best framing can be Joe simply being honest and saying:

"Look, Im the best the party can do right now, and I haven't been the worst president"

Which would be enough to get people out, and would be 100% true. He is, by far, the best the democrat party has to offer and has been a solid president. Until Gaza I honestly think his biggest(and only real) flub was letting his incompetent VP run the border issue, and that wasn't completely on her being chosen in the end.

 

[Vesper 30,226]

29 minutes ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

I wonder do Gazan's feel that capacity for compassion as he sells Israel the bombs which kills their children?

I think the best framing can be Joe simply being honest and saying:

"Look, Im the best the party can do right now, and I haven't been the worst president"

Which would be enough to get people out, and would be 100% true. He is, by far, the best the democrat party has to offer and has been a solid president. Until Gaza I honestly think his biggest(and only real) flub was letting his incompetent VP run the border issue, and that wasn't completely on her being chosen in the end.

 

yes, I agree he has cocked up Israel/Hamas nightmare

he needs to bring Netanyahu and the zio-loons to heel NOW

[cosmicway 1,333]

I don't understand all this hype.
In 1974 Turkey invaded and occupied Cyprus. They murdered many people and certainly all the soldier-prisoners, 2000 of them.
If Greece had the means to react -which it did n't- we would have bombed all the Turkish cities flat.
If some other enemy did the same to your country, your country would also bomb them flat and when I say bomb them flat I mean with 100% popular support.
So why not Israel ?
But I understand all the hype if, for the sake of a mental experimentation, I make myself into Putin's advocate.

[Vesper 30,226]

2024 ELECTIONS

Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden

One adviser to major Democratic donors keeps a running list of reasons Biden could lose.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/28/democrats-freakout-over-biden-00160047

A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump.

All year, Democrats had been on a joyless and exhausting grind through the 2024 election. But now, nearly five months from the election, anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects.

“You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymity to speak freely.

But Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,” he said.

“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’”

Despite everything, Trump is running ahead of Biden in most battleground states. He raised far more money in April, and the landscape may only become worse for Democrats, with Trump’s hush-money trial concluding and another — this one involving the president’s son — set to begin in Delaware.

The concern has metastasized in recent days as Trump jaunted to some of the country’s most liberal territories, including New Jersey and New York, to woo Hispanic and Black voters as he boasted, improbably, that he would win in those areas.

While he’s long lagged Biden in cash on hand, Trump’s fundraising outpaced the president’s by $25 million last month, and included a record-setting $50.5 million haul from an event in Palm Beach, Florida. One adviser to major Democratic Party donors provided a running list that has been shared with funders of nearly two dozen reasons why Biden could lose, ranging from immigration and high inflation to the president’s age, the unpopularity of Vice President Kamala Harris and the presence of third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Donors ask me on an hourly basis about what I think,” the adviser said, calling it “so much easier to show them, so while they read it, I can pour a drink.”

The adviser added, “The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone.”

On the day after news broke that Biden had trailed Trump in fundraising last month, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey raised the pressure on donors as she introduced the president to a crowd of 300.

The cluster of fundraising events Biden attended in Boston that day were expected to bring in more than $6 million for his political operation. But Healey said that wasn’t good enough.

“To those of you who opened up your wallets, thank you,” said Healey, a Democrat in her first term. “We’d like you to open them up a little bit more and to find more patriots — more patriots who believe in this country, who recognize and understand the challenge presented at this time.”

Laughter rippled through the room. But Healey’s voice turned serious. With unusual urgency for Healey, the governor implored the room of high-dollar donors and local Democratic leaders to “think long and hard” about the stakes of the election.

There have been few moments in Biden’s term as president that haven’t been second-guessed, and his aides have made sport of sneering at grim predictions, compiling dossiers of headlines and clips in which the president was underestimated. Biden campaign aides and allies point to some positive polls, including in the battlegrounds, and Trump’s comparative lack of campaigning and infrastructure in the key states, including staff, organizing programs and advertising.

A Biden campaign adviser granted anonymity to speak freely stressed that the president’s team never made any indication that Trump’s hush-money trial would help — or hurt — him. Instead, the adviser contended that Trump will be forced to defend cutting back abortion rights, attacking democracy and advancing corporate interests as president.

“Trump’s photo-ops and PR stunts may get under the skin of some very serious D.C. people as compelling campaigning, but they will do nothing to win over the voters that will decide this election,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told POLITICO. “The work we do every day on the ground and on the airwaves in our battleground states — to talk about how President Biden is fighting for the middle class against the corporate greed that’s keeping prices high, and highlight Donald Trump’s anti-American campaign for revenge and retribution and abortion bans — is the work that will again secure us the White House.”

Biden supporters who remain optimistic say they’d rather be him than Trump, before rallying around abortion and issues of reproductive rights, which Rep. Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat, called “a fundamental game-changer.”

“We have to run a campaign, where honestly, we drive home the message that Donald Trump takes us back to the 19th century. Biden takes us further into the 21st century,” Kildee said.

He did not remark on whether such a campaign is being run, or run to his satisfaction.

“A lot can happen between now and then,” acknowledged Rep. Ann Kuster, a Democrat from New Hampshire, who is retiring after the fall election. She, too, pointed to eroding abortion rights under the conservative-led Supreme Court remade by Trump. “I know a significant number of voters are going to be motivated by the Dobbs decision.”

But Democratic critics of the campaign’s approach — while agreeing that abortion should be a winning issue — said they’re challenged when pressed by friends to make the case for why Biden will win.

“There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now,” said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist who’s worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “If the frame of this race is, ‘What was better, the 3.5 years under Biden or four years under Trump,’ we lose that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

In the swing state of Michigan, Democratic state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky suggested Biden’s standing is so tenuous that down-ballot Democrats can’t rely in November “on the top of the ticket to pull us along.”

“In 2020, there was enough energy to get Donald Trump out and there were other things on the ballot that brought young people out in subsequent elections.”

She said, “That’s not the case this time. I worry that because we’ve had four years with a stable White House, particularly young voters don’t feel that sense of urgency and might not remember how disastrous 2017 was right after the Trump administration took over.”

Whatever the Biden campaign has been doing over the past two months — and it’s a lot of activity, including $25 million in swing-state ad spending, according to AdImpact — it has had only a limited effect. According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s average job-approval rating on March 7, the date of his State of the Union Address, was 38.1 percent. As of Friday, it’s 38.4 percent.

And his standing against Trump has also changed little. On April 22, the day Trump’s criminal trial began, the presumptive GOP nominee held a 0.3-point lead in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight. Trump is up about a point since then, currently leading Biden by 1.4 points in the FiveThirtyEight average.

Asked about polling, Munoz said: “The only metric that will define the success of this campaign is Election Day.”

Trump, meanwhile, has already started his incursion into safe blue states. His campaign’s psychological warfare in New York, California and New Jersey — where House districts will determine control of Congress’ lower chamber — is spiking Democrats’ already-elevated blood pressure.

“New York Democrats need to wake up,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. “The number of people in New York, including people of color that I come across who are saying positive things about Trump, is alarming.”

Biden’s weaker numbers bear that out. A Siena College poll released Wednesday showed Biden leading Trump in New York by only 9 points — 47 to 38 percent among registered voters. Four years ago, Biden won the state by 23 points. The president is under water with every demographic delineated in the poll — other than Black voters. Fifty-three percent of Latinos and 54 percent of whites reported having an unfavorable opinion of him. To that end, Biden released TV and radio ads in the Empire State on Thursday, ahead of Trump’s campaign rally in the Bronx.

Levine has been something of a Paul Revere in New York, sounding alarms two years ago when a Trump-aligned Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, appeared to be gaining on Kathy Hochul, the moderate Democratic incumbent. Hochul narrowly held him off.

“I’m worried it’s going to be a 2022 situation, where everyone wakes up in the last seven weeks and has to scramble,” Levine said of his state, which hasn’t swung to the GOP since Ronald Reagan in 1980.

This cycle, Democrats also have to contend with the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has deeply divided their ranks and contributed to a sense of chaos. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat known for his ardent defense of Israel, was similarly concerned for his party, though he pointed to the higher cost of groceries and goods that started during the pandemic and has yet to abate.

“The greatest political challenge confronting the president starts with an “i,” but it’s not Israel, it’s inflation,” Torres said. “The cost of living is a challenge that we have to figure out how to manage.”

He said Biden should focus on issues around affordability and continue to tout his success in capping insulin costs in areas with high rates of diabetes, like his Bronx district.

“The election is more competitive than it should be, given the wretchedness of who Donald Trump is,” he said. “In a properly functioning democracy, Donald Trump should have no viable path to the presidency. The fact of a competitive race is cause for concern.”

Trump has railed against blue-state officials, starting with the justice system in New York. In California, he dispatched his daughter-in-law, Lara, and one of his sons, Eric, to hold up the West Coast’s Democratic heavyweight as a cautionary tale.

“I’m sorry you have to live in communism,” Eric Trump said Wednesday at the Stampede, a country music venue in Temecula, an inland community between Los Angeles and San Diego. Trump casually dismissed California Democrat Gavin Newsom as the nation’s “worst governor.”

“Make no mistake,” Trump said, “there is a war happening in this country.”

The elder Trump is set to appear in early June at the San Francisco fundraiser hosted by tech investor David Sacks and his wife, Jacqueline, a clothing brand executive, along with venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.

Palihapitiya’s past political donations run the gamut, from Elizabeth Warren to a super PAC supporting Kennedy Jr. He also gave to the recall committee against Newsom in 2021 and briefly considered running for governor. Silicon Valley’s red pilling has brought even more unwanted national attention on issues of open-air drug use, homeless encampments and gangs of thieves who ransack retail stores across the Bay Area.

And as in New York, California Democrats are bracing for more incoming from Trump.

“San Francisco has changed with the taxpayers, the job creators, the tech CEOs who want to engage with the city and its politics,” said Harmeet Dhillon, the RNC committee member from California.

Dhillon was reflecting on her run-ins with Democrats in the city, where she spent years leading the local GOP before her law firm represented Trump in legal fights to remain on state ballots. Few Democrats are willing to confide in Dhillon about their fears, she conceded, but no one is sharing a sense of enthusiasm for Biden, either.

“The most diplomatic thing I hear from Democrats is, ‘Oh my God, are these the choices we have for president?’”

 

[cosmicway 1,333]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

2024 ELECTIONS

Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden

One adviser to major Democratic donors keeps a running list of reasons Biden could lose.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/28/democrats-freakout-over-biden-00160047

A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump.

All year, Democrats had been on a joyless and exhausting grind through the 2024 election. But now, nearly five months from the election, anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects.

“You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymity to speak freely.

But Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,” he said.

“This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’”

Despite everything, Trump is running ahead of Biden in most battleground states. He raised far more money in April, and the landscape may only become worse for Democrats, with Trump’s hush-money trial concluding and another — this one involving the president’s son — set to begin in Delaware.

The concern has metastasized in recent days as Trump jaunted to some of the country’s most liberal territories, including New Jersey and New York, to woo Hispanic and Black voters as he boasted, improbably, that he would win in those areas.

While he’s long lagged Biden in cash on hand, Trump’s fundraising outpaced the president’s by $25 million last month, and included a record-setting $50.5 million haul from an event in Palm Beach, Florida. One adviser to major Democratic Party donors provided a running list that has been shared with funders of nearly two dozen reasons why Biden could lose, ranging from immigration and high inflation to the president’s age, the unpopularity of Vice President Kamala Harris and the presence of third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Donors ask me on an hourly basis about what I think,” the adviser said, calling it “so much easier to show them, so while they read it, I can pour a drink.”

The adviser added, “The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone.”

On the day after news broke that Biden had trailed Trump in fundraising last month, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey raised the pressure on donors as she introduced the president to a crowd of 300.

The cluster of fundraising events Biden attended in Boston that day were expected to bring in more than $6 million for his political operation. But Healey said that wasn’t good enough.

“To those of you who opened up your wallets, thank you,” said Healey, a Democrat in her first term. “We’d like you to open them up a little bit more and to find more patriots — more patriots who believe in this country, who recognize and understand the challenge presented at this time.”

Laughter rippled through the room. But Healey’s voice turned serious. With unusual urgency for Healey, the governor implored the room of high-dollar donors and local Democratic leaders to “think long and hard” about the stakes of the election.

There have been few moments in Biden’s term as president that haven’t been second-guessed, and his aides have made sport of sneering at grim predictions, compiling dossiers of headlines and clips in which the president was underestimated. Biden campaign aides and allies point to some positive polls, including in the battlegrounds, and Trump’s comparative lack of campaigning and infrastructure in the key states, including staff, organizing programs and advertising.

A Biden campaign adviser granted anonymity to speak freely stressed that the president’s team never made any indication that Trump’s hush-money trial would help — or hurt — him. Instead, the adviser contended that Trump will be forced to defend cutting back abortion rights, attacking democracy and advancing corporate interests as president.

“Trump’s photo-ops and PR stunts may get under the skin of some very serious D.C. people as compelling campaigning, but they will do nothing to win over the voters that will decide this election,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told POLITICO. “The work we do every day on the ground and on the airwaves in our battleground states — to talk about how President Biden is fighting for the middle class against the corporate greed that’s keeping prices high, and highlight Donald Trump’s anti-American campaign for revenge and retribution and abortion bans — is the work that will again secure us the White House.”

Biden supporters who remain optimistic say they’d rather be him than Trump, before rallying around abortion and issues of reproductive rights, which Rep. Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat, called “a fundamental game-changer.”

“We have to run a campaign, where honestly, we drive home the message that Donald Trump takes us back to the 19th century. Biden takes us further into the 21st century,” Kildee said.

He did not remark on whether such a campaign is being run, or run to his satisfaction.

“A lot can happen between now and then,” acknowledged Rep. Ann Kuster, a Democrat from New Hampshire, who is retiring after the fall election. She, too, pointed to eroding abortion rights under the conservative-led Supreme Court remade by Trump. “I know a significant number of voters are going to be motivated by the Dobbs decision.”

But Democratic critics of the campaign’s approach — while agreeing that abortion should be a winning issue — said they’re challenged when pressed by friends to make the case for why Biden will win.

“There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now,” said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist who’s worked on multiple presidential campaigns. “If the frame of this race is, ‘What was better, the 3.5 years under Biden or four years under Trump,’ we lose that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

In the swing state of Michigan, Democratic state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky suggested Biden’s standing is so tenuous that down-ballot Democrats can’t rely in November “on the top of the ticket to pull us along.”

“In 2020, there was enough energy to get Donald Trump out and there were other things on the ballot that brought young people out in subsequent elections.”

She said, “That’s not the case this time. I worry that because we’ve had four years with a stable White House, particularly young voters don’t feel that sense of urgency and might not remember how disastrous 2017 was right after the Trump administration took over.”

Whatever the Biden campaign has been doing over the past two months — and it’s a lot of activity, including $25 million in swing-state ad spending, according to AdImpact — it has had only a limited effect. According to FiveThirtyEight, Biden’s average job-approval rating on March 7, the date of his State of the Union Address, was 38.1 percent. As of Friday, it’s 38.4 percent.

And his standing against Trump has also changed little. On April 22, the day Trump’s criminal trial began, the presumptive GOP nominee held a 0.3-point lead in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight. Trump is up about a point since then, currently leading Biden by 1.4 points in the FiveThirtyEight average.

Asked about polling, Munoz said: “The only metric that will define the success of this campaign is Election Day.”

Trump, meanwhile, has already started his incursion into safe blue states. His campaign’s psychological warfare in New York, California and New Jersey — where House districts will determine control of Congress’ lower chamber — is spiking Democrats’ already-elevated blood pressure.

“New York Democrats need to wake up,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. “The number of people in New York, including people of color that I come across who are saying positive things about Trump, is alarming.”

Biden’s weaker numbers bear that out. A Siena College poll released Wednesday showed Biden leading Trump in New York by only 9 points — 47 to 38 percent among registered voters. Four years ago, Biden won the state by 23 points. The president is under water with every demographic delineated in the poll — other than Black voters. Fifty-three percent of Latinos and 54 percent of whites reported having an unfavorable opinion of him. To that end, Biden released TV and radio ads in the Empire State on Thursday, ahead of Trump’s campaign rally in the Bronx.

Levine has been something of a Paul Revere in New York, sounding alarms two years ago when a Trump-aligned Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lee Zeldin, appeared to be gaining on Kathy Hochul, the moderate Democratic incumbent. Hochul narrowly held him off.

“I’m worried it’s going to be a 2022 situation, where everyone wakes up in the last seven weeks and has to scramble,” Levine said of his state, which hasn’t swung to the GOP since Ronald Reagan in 1980.

This cycle, Democrats also have to contend with the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which has deeply divided their ranks and contributed to a sense of chaos. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat known for his ardent defense of Israel, was similarly concerned for his party, though he pointed to the higher cost of groceries and goods that started during the pandemic and has yet to abate.

“The greatest political challenge confronting the president starts with an “i,” but it’s not Israel, it’s inflation,” Torres said. “The cost of living is a challenge that we have to figure out how to manage.”

He said Biden should focus on issues around affordability and continue to tout his success in capping insulin costs in areas with high rates of diabetes, like his Bronx district.

“The election is more competitive than it should be, given the wretchedness of who Donald Trump is,” he said. “In a properly functioning democracy, Donald Trump should have no viable path to the presidency. The fact of a competitive race is cause for concern.”

Trump has railed against blue-state officials, starting with the justice system in New York. In California, he dispatched his daughter-in-law, Lara, and one of his sons, Eric, to hold up the West Coast’s Democratic heavyweight as a cautionary tale.

“I’m sorry you have to live in communism,” Eric Trump said Wednesday at the Stampede, a country music venue in Temecula, an inland community between Los Angeles and San Diego. Trump casually dismissed California Democrat Gavin Newsom as the nation’s “worst governor.”

“Make no mistake,” Trump said, “there is a war happening in this country.”

The elder Trump is set to appear in early June at the San Francisco fundraiser hosted by tech investor David Sacks and his wife, Jacqueline, a clothing brand executive, along with venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya.

Palihapitiya’s past political donations run the gamut, from Elizabeth Warren to a super PAC supporting Kennedy Jr. He also gave to the recall committee against Newsom in 2021 and briefly considered running for governor. Silicon Valley’s red pilling has brought even more unwanted national attention on issues of open-air drug use, homeless encampments and gangs of thieves who ransack retail stores across the Bay Area.

And as in New York, California Democrats are bracing for more incoming from Trump.

“San Francisco has changed with the taxpayers, the job creators, the tech CEOs who want to engage with the city and its politics,” said Harmeet Dhillon, the RNC committee member from California.

Dhillon was reflecting on her run-ins with Democrats in the city, where she spent years leading the local GOP before her law firm represented Trump in legal fights to remain on state ballots. Few Democrats are willing to confide in Dhillon about their fears, she conceded, but no one is sharing a sense of enthusiasm for Biden, either.

“The most diplomatic thing I hear from Democrats is, ‘Oh my God, are these the choices we have for president?’”

 

Dem pundits were expressing the same type of pessimism about Hillary's chances in 2016 - and they were proved right.
One obvious thing about Biden is lacks personal charisma.
He is not a "jeune premier" like Carter - Clinton - Obama.
That's no good. The electorates everywhere love a jeune premier.
He is like some uni professors of mine who were talking to their beards - I liked some junior lecturers much more because I could understand what they were saying.

I hear Robert Kennedy jr. now polls about 10%.
That's a new Ross Perot really !
With 10% split vote you can kill the chances of even the best of dem candidates.
But the Kennedies are Democrats.
What kind of story is this and why does n't he withdraw ?
 

Edited May 30, 2024 by cosmicway

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

4 hours ago, Vesper said:

yes, I agree he has cocked up Israel/Hamas nightmare

he needs to bring Netanyahu and the zio-loons to heel NOW

He'll never do that though. He's a true believer in the state of Israel.

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

1 hour ago, cosmicway said:

Dem pundits were expressing the same type of pessimism about Hillary's chances in 2016 - and they were proved right.
One obvious thing about Biden is lacks personal charisma.
He is not a "jeune premier" like Carter - Clinton - Obama.
That's no good. The electorates everywhere love a jeune premier.
He is like some uni professors of mine who were talking to their beards - I liked some junior lecturers much more because I could understand what they were saying.

I hear Robert Kennedy jr. now polls about 10%.
That's a new Ross Perot really !
With 10% split vote you can kill the chances of even the best of dem candidates.
But the Kennedies are Democrats.
What kind of story is this and why does n't he withdraw ?
 

His family has denounced him. He'd be a bigger spoiler for Trump as they agree about things such as vaccine skepticism.

 

The Kennedy dynasty is dead politically. John John(JFK Jr) was the last who had the charisma and was bred for the high office. RFK Jr was on the political trail with his uncle 40+ years ago and came across as unlikable, out of touch, and weird. He hasn't really shaken that either as his voice has given out on him. I think their big curse is that their grandfather died before he could make them into what he made his kids. All of that generation, with the exception of the eldest daughter he lobotomized, were true stars.

Edited May 30, 2024 by Sir Mikel OBE

[robsblubot 3,595]

1 hour ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

He'll never do that though. He's a true believer in the state of Israel.

That's irrelevant tho.

He would lose support (financial too) if he did that. This is not a popular subject despite of what some news tried. Would also be a very easy target for the GOP and Trump.

Regarding the elections, I still think it's early to be watching polls; people are not even thinking about it, again, despite of what the media wants you to believe. Until then perhaps Biden will come to his sense, or lose them enough that people will get him out of the race.
Any non-Biden from the dem can win against Trump.

Edited May 30, 2024 by robsblubot

[cosmicway 1,333]

2 hours ago, robsblubot said:

That's irrelevant tho.

He would lose support (financial too) if he did that. This is not a popular subject despite of what some news tried. Would also be a very easy target for the GOP and Trump.

Regarding the elections, I still think it's early to be watching polls; people are not even thinking about it, again, despite of what the media wants you to believe. Until then perhaps Biden will come to his sense, or lose them enough that people will get him out of the race.
Any non-Biden from the dem can win against Trump.

Maybe.
Remember Dukakis ?
He was clear ahead of Bush until mid-August, September.

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

5 hours ago, robsblubot said:

That's irrelevant tho.

He would lose support (financial too) if he did that. This is not a popular subject despite of what some news tried. Would also be a very easy target for the GOP and Trump.

Regarding the elections, I still think it's early to be watching polls; people are not even thinking about it, again, despite of what the media wants you to believe. Until then perhaps Biden will come to his sense, or lose them enough that people will get him out of the race.
Any non-Biden from the dem can win against Trump.

Yea I dont think it buries him too bad, but it will hurt him

[Sir Mikel OBE 4,920]

 

Edited May 30, 2024 by Sir Mikel OBE

[robsblubot 3,595]

37 minutes ago, Sir Mikel OBE said:

Yea I dont think it buries him too bad, but it will hurt him

According to the polls, not really.

Biden issues are different. Reckon if trump gets convicted, fat chance of that, Biden could even drop off the race.

[robsblubot 3,595]

Just now, robsblubot said:

According to the polls, not really.

Biden issues are different. Reckon if trump gets convicted, fat chance of that, Biden could even drop off the race.

that did not age well at all! 🤣

The orange mobster got convicted!

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