Cont: The Biden Presidency (3)

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U.S. assistance on Monday included helping Americans link up with convoys of foreigners now attempting to make it through fighting toward safety on Sudan’s eastern border. The U.S. also is placing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets over the route from the capital, Khartoum, to the country’s main seaport, the Port of Sudan, to scope out safety threats, Sullivan said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had helped broker a 72-hour cease-fire to begin late Monday. It would extend a nominal truce coinciding with a Muslim holiday that brought almost no reduction in fighting but helped to facilitate the evacuations.

Sullivan said convoys with Americans in them were beginning to arrive at Port of Sudan on the Red Sea and the U.S. was working with neighboring countries to get them safely over the border.
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https://apnews.com/article/american...artoum-biden-8b0f91ce79f5fac2f6f6419018906934


I had an English online acquaintance who married a Sudanese diplomat years ago and was living in Sudan. I've lost touch with her. I hope she's OK. Hopefully, she left and went back to England.
 
McCarthy and Biden heading for collision. Who will waver in game of chicken?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/politics/kevin-mccarthy-debt-ceiling/index.html

After Biden announcement he is not going to cave in.
McCarthy is not the only leader whose political fate is on the line. After launching his reelection campaign on Tuesday, Biden can hardly afford the political blowback of climbing down to Republicans. And if he caved into Republican efforts to block his already enacted green energy policies, Biden would be effectively cratering his own domestic legacy in a way that could further create doubts among some Democratic voters who are cool to his candidacy.

The White House on Tuesday signaled it was in no mood to compromise.
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Aridas said:
Just because...

Bernie Sanders endorses Biden, rules out 2024 bid of his own
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Holy cow, Sanders seems to finally understand how he might have helped elect Trump: “The last thing this country needs is a Donald Trump or some other right-wing demagogue who is going to try to undermine American democracy or take away a woman’s right to choose, or not address the crisis of gun violence, or racism, sexism or homophobia,” Sanders said in an interview. “So, I’m in to do what I can to make sure that the president is reelected.”

Refusing to stop disparaging the more popular candidate even when you have no hope of winning yourself helps elect "Donald Trump or some other right-wing demagogue"? You don't say!

That said, I do wish we had someone younger, and Biden (80) and Sanders (81) both are pretty long in the tooth.
 
Tero said:
McCarthy and Biden heading for collision. Who will waver in game of chicken?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/politics/kevin-mccarthy-debt-ceiling/index.html

After Biden announcement he is not going to cave in.
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Biden has no reason to cave. Any effort by Biden to negotiate over the debt ceiling just validates the idea that the debt ceiling is something to be negotiated with, which is the opposite of what Biden wants.

The GOP has yet to come up with a plan that would pass the House in the first place so there's nothing to negotiate on yet.

If he does negotiate at this point, he will take a big hit from Democrats who are sick of the debt ceiling hostage taking.

And if it does come down to the last minute and the GOP does not cave, Biden can always go on national TV and say, "It is unfortunate that the GOP insistence on holding the economy hostage has brought us to this place, but here we are. In order to resolve this threat to our economy, I am (minting the coin/maintaining current spending/whatever) in accordance with my responsibilities under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution."

If the GOP goes to the US Supreme Court, even this Court would hesitate to blow up the economy int the face of a genuine legal argument in favor of not doing that. And if they did, that might be the impetus for Biden to say, "Yeah the Supreme Court has lost the plot. I will be ignoring their ruling on the debt ceiling."

For Biden, the only winning move is not to play the GOP game.
 
wareyin said:
Only if they, like Sanders (has now admitted he did) took obviously stupid divisive tactics so far that they hurt the country with a Trump.
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Competing in a primary is an obviously stupid divisive tactic? Tell me, if pointing out the problems with current leadership is treason, and quietly waiting for current leadership to pass the torch is entitlement, where exactly is anyone new supposed to come from?
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Competing in a primary is an obviously stupid divisive tactic?
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I see you missed the "took it too far" bit of the sentence. That's not unexpected, though.

Beelzebuddy said:
Tell me, if pointing out the problems with current leadership is treason, and quietly waiting for current leadership to pass the torch is entitlement, where exactly is anyone new supposed to come from?
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Ooh, treason now! :rolleyes:

Look, if you're happy with helping Trump or DeSantis or whoever the next "right-wing demagogue who is going to try to undermine American democracy or take away a woman’s right to choose, or not address the crisis of gun violence, or racism, sexism or homophobia" then keep on working against everything you claim to want. You do you. I'm just glad that Sanders has finally seen how short sighted and self defeating that tactic is for his own goals.
 
wareyin said:
I see you missed the "took it too far" bit of the sentence. That's not unexpected, though.

Ooh, treason now! :rolleyes:

Look, if you're happy with helping Trump or DeSantis or whoever the next "right-wing demagogue who is going to try to undermine American democracy or take away a woman’s right to choose, or not address the crisis of gun violence, or racism, sexism or homophobia" then keep on working against everything you claim to want. You do you. I'm just glad that Sanders has finally seen how short sighted and self defeating that tactic is for his own goals.
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I'm only pointing out you'd still be upset with any potential candidate, because to be a potential candidate they'd have to compete, and competition is inherently divisive. Showing that you're a better pick than Biden is going to involve saying bad things about Biden.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
I'm only pointing out you'd still be upset with any potential candidate, because to be a potential candidate they'd have to compete, and competition is inherently divisive. Showing that you're a better pick than Biden is going to involve saying bad things about Biden.
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Still ignoring the "took it too far" eh? Still not a surprise.

Competition is inherently divisive, but you have to realize that when you've lost the primary and yet refuse to stop "saying bad things" about the winning candidate that you're helping the other party. Well, you don't have to. The candidate has to. You're free to help elect the next right-wing demagogue as much as you like.
 
wareyin said:
Still ignoring the "took it too far" eh? Still not a surprise.

Competition is inherently divisive, but you have to realize that when you've lost the primary and yet refuse to stop "saying bad things" about the winning candidate that you're helping the other party. Well, you don't have to. The candidate has to. You're free to help elect the next right-wing demagogue as much as you like.
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And waiting for someone to come along and thread that needle for you is why Biden is still our only option.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
And waiting for someone to come along and thread that needle for you is why Biden is still our only option.
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Sigh.

No.

Biden is my only option because he's the sitting President and has decided to run again. Here in the real world, a sitting President who chooses to run again already has the clout and name recognition to win the primaries.

If Biden had not chosen to run again, then our options would be among the people who stepped up to run, whoever they were.

You, as always, have the option to work against Biden and thus for whoever is the next "right-wing demagogue who is going to try to undermine American democracy or take away a woman’s right to choose, or not address the crisis of gun violence, or racism, sexism or homophobia."
 
It seems worthwhile to note that in 2020, Sanders was vying for the nomination, but he did not lose the election for Biden. 2016 might be open to argument, but nobody gave us Trump in 2020.
 
bruto said:
It seems worthwhile to note that in 2020, Sanders was vying for the nomination, but he did not lose the election for Biden. 2016 might be open to argument, but nobody gave us Trump in 2020.
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One key difference is that in 2020 Sanders bowed out when it was clear he couldn't win. In 2016 he chose to stay in and continue to lob grenades.

In both years, there wasn't a sitting Democratic President running in the primaries.
 
wareyin said:
Here in the real world, a sitting President who chooses to run again already has the clout and name recognition to win the primaries.
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This is getting close to the heart of the matter. In the real world, winning the primaries is winning the primaries. Doing well enough to convince you, wareyin of the intertubes, that the primaries are pretty much in the bag already, is not winning the primaries, and not some kind of switch beyond which any lingering attempt at victory by an underdog flips from patriotic participation in party politics to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

[ETA] That said, by your own admission that Biden even being in the race means he's already won in your mind, I'll reiterate that you would be crapping on them too for being divisive. You'd argue they shouldn't be there at all.

You, as always, have the option to work against Biden and thus for whoever is the next "right-wing demagogue [yadda yadda]
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"I do wish we had an alternative to Biden provided that alternative never once had to work against Biden and thus for the GOP in the process of establishing recognition" is a self-contradictory statement.
 
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Beelzebuddy said:
This is getting close to the heart of the matter. In the real world, winning the primaries is winning the primaries. Doing well enough to convince you, wareyin of the intertubes, that the primaries are pretty much in the bag already, is not winning the primaries, and not some kind of switch beyond which any lingering attempt at victory by an underdog flips from patriotic participation in party politics to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

[ETA] That said, by your own admission that Biden even being in the race means he's already won in your mind, I'll reiterate that you would be crapping on them too for being divisive. You'd argue they shouldn't be there at all.
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Your eta is very different from your opening salvo. I would not be crapping on a younger candidate for being too divisive. I would be crapping on a candidate who was working to help the next right-wing demagogue win by lobbing grenades when (s)he could not win. And if you have recent evidence of a sitting President (of either party) losing to a contender in the primaries then by all means share it.


Beelzebuddy said:
"I do wish we had an alternative to Biden provided that alternative never once had to work against Biden and thus for the GOP in the process of establishing recognition" is a self-contradictory statement.
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Still ignoring the "continued to lob grenades after he had no shot at winning" aspect, huh? Yes, your strawman version of my point is a self-contradictory statement. Well done, you.
 
wareyin said:
I would not be crapping on a younger candidate for being too divisive.
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I'm not expecting much of the primary season next year, but on the off chance we do have someone come out of left field, you're welcome to demonstrate this sentiment.
 
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