Anyone pretending to be confused about Biden's policies based on whatever jumbled phrases he was able to insert between Trump interruptions can just ... go to his website, where all the policies are written down, in words.
The alleged confusion last night was about whether Biden supports the Green New Deal, about which he said some confusing things. A few points about this. First, there is no official GND. The term does not describe any particular policy agenda. It has become ...
... entirely a culture-war symbol. Cons project a bunch of fears on it; progs project a bunch of hopes on it. When Biden says he doesn't support the GND, it's the culture-war symbol -- particularly the ludicrous caricature the right has created -- that he's disavowing.
Sometimes he says he does support the GND, by which he means his substantive climate agenda shares the GND's ambitions vis a vis decarbonization & environmental justice. He wants to support the policy meat w/out all the distracting culture-war sizzle.
Obviously this is a tricky message to finesse -- and likely impossible to communicate in the midst of a chaotic debate with an asshole shouting on the other side of the stage. But everyone should be clear that this isn't really a policy dispute & Rs are not really ...
... requesting a policy clarification. They want to tie him to the GND, which they have fairly successfully demonized. He doesn't want to be tied to it. But he wants to communicate that his climate policies are bold & ambitious. That's what's going on here. </fin>
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Friends, let me tell you a story about the @seattlePD. 🧵
Our story begins in Tuscon, AZ, in the early 2010s. A young man named Kevin Dave is recruited into the Tuscon police. He does not do well. Several complaints are filed, including one involving a "preventable collision."
Dave was the subject of six separate investigations during his short stint with the Tuscon police -- firearm violations, avoidable collisions, and just general conduct unbecoming an officer.
This failure to meet basic standards led the Tuscon police to fire Dave. Eight months later, Dave was driving drunk, fled the police, & abandoned his pickup in an alley. When officers took him in he was belligerent & shouting that it was the police's fault for firing him.
Said it before, will say it again: in the current political/media climate, *any* Dem presidential candidate would face a fusillade of shit & quickly come to be seen among VSPs as "flawed." It is structural.
People want to think Her Emails was some unique Clinton flaw and His Age is some unique Biden flaw, but I promise you the combination of the RW shit machine & an artificially "balanced" MSM would find *something* to pin on anyone in that position.
I'll add (might as well make a wreck of my mentions): one of the dumbest pretenses re: 2016 is that the same thing wouldn't also have happened to Sanders. I promise you it would have. He would have been "uniquely flawed" before you could finish your first M4A tweet.
Think about everything this snapshot captures: Big Oil shilling for Trump, Big Oil being corrupt AF, high oil prices being about *greed* rather than any Biden policy, the need for a clean energy future, etc.
In short, an episode that seems tailor-made to advance D narratives.
The right, of course, immediately leapt to the scumbag's defense, working to establish its own narrative -- to overwrite the natural, instinctive response that any decent human being would have to this.
When elites like the publisher of the NYT call something "partisan," they mean something very specific by it. To them, to be partisan, to choose a side & fight for it, is by definition unsophisticated. Brutish. To be on a side is to surrender your rational judgment.
The smart, sophisticated thing to do is to see both sides, to grasp all the contrasting points & nuances, to understand the big picture in a way that mere partisans, down in the ditches, never can.
Now obviously, there's an element of truth there. Partisans often *can* be irrational & they often *do* use motivated reasoning to support their positions. But if you take this nugget of insight & amplify it into a full life philosophy, you end up in an odd place ...
I've vowed not to rant about Kahn & the NYT all day, but one thing I'll say: Kahn sets up a false dichotomy b/t what he says NYT is doing (fair coverage) vs. what libs want (cheerleading for Biden). But even if you accept that dichotomy, *NYT isn't doing what it says it's doing.*
It's *not* fairly covering all issues based on what voters care about. That is simply not an accurate discussion of its current practice.
Put it this way: just because partisanship *isn't* your motivation doesn't mean that laudable journalistic values *are* your motivation. There are plenty of motivations more venal, petty, & misleading than partisanship!
Polls & surveys found that most Americans were amenable to civil rights back in the early 60s, but thought that *other* Americans *weren't*. Sociologists call this "pluralistic ignorance" -- ignorance about other people's views. Now pluralistic ignorance is back ...
... around climate change. A new study found that most people are willing to act to address climate change, but believe that *other* people *aren't* willing. "Respondents vastly underestimate the prevalence of climate-friendly behaviors and norms." papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
Now here's the good news: "Correcting these misperceptions in an experiment causally raises individual willingness to act against climate change as well as individual support for climate policies."
When people find out other people are on board, it strengthens their resolve!