site note: let's not give into Chris Cillizza brain and defeatism about this stuff. is Biden likely to do all of this on his own? no! could he be bullied into it with sufficient popular pressure? yes!
take Social Security for instance. in 2011 Obama was putting massive cuts on the table to get a Grand Bargain with Republicans. but after 5 years of activism and pressure, he endorsed a benefit increase huffpost.com/entry/barack-o…
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Mugabe ended up as a fairly ruthless dictator, but he was also born dirt poor, helped lead a guerilla overthrow of an apartheid regime, and actually served as a moderate Mandela-esque figure before he turned authoritarian
Mugabe is the kind of guy who would have been a good, maybe great prime minister in a functioning democracy. but colonialism left Zimbabwe in a virtually impossible position, with weak institutions
pollsters have spent 4 years trying to fix the errors of 2016 and they got it *much* more wrong this time fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-…
the numbers aren't worth piss for whatever reason, but hard to imagine polls becoming less important. they're practically baked into the political system
how could you even conduct a campaign without polls these days? half the arguments turn on some kind of survey
Biden looks more likely than not, but boy hoping they squeak out a Senate tie. could be 30 percent unemployment come 2022 if they don't get that
my primary takeaway thus far: polls are fake, poll averages are fake, nobody knows anything, we live in hell
one more takeaway: 2008 was the biggest political missed opportunity in American history. we would be living in an unrecognizably different country but the Obama administration made sure we did not theweek.com/articles/66187…
"The first time [ @AOC ] saw a doctor or dentist in years was when she became a congresswoman." boy does that resonate lol vanityfair.com/news/2020/10/b…
last time I went to the dentist was 2016, I think. went to the ER in 2017, I believe, though can't remember the last time I got a checkup
guy who a) utterly botched the covid response b) infected himself through carelessness c) continues to mock precautions while 1k/day die ... has a steady 40% approval rating