Danny Dravot

I'm not a Trumper. If things hold as they are now, it looks like Dems will not gain the Senate. If people wanted a progressive mandate, they would have given the Dems everything. Instead, they rejected Trump and kept everything else the same. That's as "denied a progressive mandate" as a potentially sympathetic president-elect can get. Biden won because he's not Trump, not because Americans are overwhelmingly clamoring for M4A, a Green New Deal, and so on. And I'm very happy for the country with the way things turned out. He's absolutely welcome to overturn every single Trump EO. That's one downside to using EOs to do too much; it'll go away the second you leave. So chop 'em down, Joe.

To be fair, "elections have consequences" is something Obama said to Eric Cantor in 2009. I want the system to work. Mitch McConnell should hold debates on nominees, judges, and legislation. He is perfectly within his rights to block candidates who are unqualified or too extreme (this election is a win for centrism, which I think is great). Assuming the Senate holds, Biden has been denied a progressive mandate but both sides should work together on things to help this country reach its full potential. Trump's character was always a blight, and with him gone, I hope civility returns at least to our government.

I don't think that's true. The biggest issue with Trump is character. The racism, the braggadocio, the conspiracy theories, the name calling, the pettiness, etc. Additionally, this character oozes into his policies as well. I support border control but it needs to be humane. We can secure our borders while treating future illegal immigrants with fairness and humanity. We can deal likewise with illegals who are already here (reasonable pathways to citizenship, with due process abiding deportation for otherwise violent criminals). Multiple witnesses have stated that Trump actually gets off on the cruelty aspect (referencing Miles Taylor here). Some GOP congressmen and women are clowns. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Greene come to mind. But Tim Scott, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, and others have done a good job of maintaining their dignity and integrity despite idiocy at the top of the ticket. John Cornyn, for one, has worked to secure a permanent legislative solution for DACA recipients.

He focused more on entertaining his own base than on expanding it. This is why the center's important. The Proud Boys and Bernie Bros and Antifa guys will ultimately vote for the lesser of two evils, or they'll stay home. They're never going to cross over. It's pointless to try to earn their vote. If you're too far out there as the candidate yourself, the center will shift to the other guy as long as he's not an equally-out-on-his-own-side nut. I've seen some rejection of this sentiment, but until a bunch of Bernie Bros say, "hey we're tired of mainstream democrats so let's vote for Tucker Carlson because fuck you, Joe Biden", I think it's absolutely the correct reading of things.

I saw something the other day wherein 44% of Trump voters would support universalized healthcare IF Trump came out in support of it. I'm clearly open to multiple options on healthcare and would sway my thinking if convincing arguments were made that it was best for the country (or how I perceive "best for the country" anyhow), but to change your opinion because one politician did so himself is anathema to me. There were things and policies I disliked and liked about both Bush and Obama, but I NEVER could have said, "Oh, Obama supports that? Well then I fucking hate it." Totally ridiculous. I think your final sentence is hyperbolic and a bit Greg like, though. People are better than that, even Trump supporters.

Wray, FBI director. I missed this, actually. Do you have a link to a video or news article? It's so absurd and outlandish it's almost hard to believe. Edit: never mind, I found it myself: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/nyregion/bannon-lawyer-beheading.html Side note, Steve Bannon is the most schlubbish looking billionaire I've ever seen. If I bumped into him on the street, I'd buy him a sandwich out of pity.

We don't need to rehash this entire conversation from the other night, but I'm actually really excited to see Biden's cabinet picks with progressives being non-starters. I think there could be some really excellent picks.

Had to look him up. Apparently, he mixed an abortifacient into his mistress' smoothie. What a dickhead. Fire him into the sun.

I saw the Future Sox tweet about us signing Anderson Severino, so I hustled over to Baseball Reference to look him up, only to find that he is a 24 year old with a 6.97 ERA in 31 innings in A-ball. I find the Future Sox element of this signing to be unlikely.

I think it's great. I wanted Trump to lose badly and I encourage mass voter turnout. I just don't think "most votes ever" is a significant metric when you consider population growth. I think it'd be worrisome if we didn't break that record anew every four years, honestly.

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You missed my point. "Having the most votes ever", not "Trump losing the popular vote twice", is what I called meaningless. Of course Joe Biden got more votes than Truman 1948- the country has twice the population as it did then. We are going to constantly demolish this record. If a candidate in the 2060 presidential election doesn't blow Biden's vote total out of the water, I hope that candidate doesn't share my views because his loss will have been nuclear.

Political books are fine, but avoid the snarky super partisan ones from both sides that come out a dime a dozen these days. I'm currently reading Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger and it's great. A little heavy at times, but nicely rolls up so many of the interactions between states from the time of the 30 Year War to the end of the Cold War. On point 6, for as much as the news will elevate deranged freaks on both sides of the aisle, I cannot stress enough that most people are not those people. At my primary job, my closest friend is a huge Bernie supporter. I call him a commie and he calls me a fascist, and then we have drinks together. It's more likely that I get eaten by a polar bear than that I get stabbed to death by that guy in the name of the revolution. We're friends! We get along and life goes on. I'm just sick of the cowardice I see all around me. I'm sick of hearing people whine that they will never own a house because of whatever societal conditions. I'm sick of people worrying that a few rioters will turn a nation of 325,000,000 into the USSR. Stop whining and stop being scared. I forged my path to buying not just one house but two by my mid thirties. If danger comes, I'll protect my family because that's who I am, but I'm not going to let my life revolve around that imagined fear. People need to stiffen their upper lips, seize their own destinies, and carry on. I'll get off my soap box now. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Also, @greg775, I work in a super liberal city in an otherwise red state. A guy got shot at a protest a few months back. Often in the evenings, I drive those same streets where the protesting happens and where that guy got shot. Maybe I got lucky with the random dates I picked for those drives, but I've never even seen a protest, much less had my path blocked or been in actual danger. The threat that you perceive is greatly overblown.

Dude, I'm a right-leaning moderate. Black bloc/antifa and Proud Boys are both goofy extremists who do stupid and sometimes violent things in a limited number of places. I strongly disapprove of them, just like I disapprove of all extremists. But they're not about to kick down your door. The imminent election of Joe freaking Biden should probably indicate to you, if you can snap out of your hypnosis, that neither group has a terribly large influence in this country. Stop scrolling through Twitter- if you told the average person in your daily life that you like Trump, would they hack you to pieces with a sickle while humming The Internationale? No. 1,000 people marching through a business district and smashing store fronts might look freaky on TV, but that equates to 1 in 325,000 Americans. You could easily live your life never meeting a single one of these people. Buy a gun because you like guns. Buy a gun because you have training. Buy a gun because you appreciate the Second Amendment. But don't buy a gun because you're scared. In fact, stop being so scared. It's unbecoming.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JonahDispatch/status/1324714053416214530 Great movie reference.

I watched up to the Q&A, with very limited use of the fast forward button. I got four hours of sleep and am generally a much better reader than a listener, so I shamelessly hope that my effort is appreciated. I myself appreciate you sharing it with me. It’s...interesting? If I followed this all right, deficit spending is OK because the US government issues currency so it can’t go bankrupt like you or I can. As long as there’s increased productivity to meet increased currency circulation, the government can afford whatever it likes. Did I get that right? I’m not a huge deficit hawk and a lot of that is beyond my pay grade, but I suppose it’s worth considering. At the same time, and I know you concede this, Bernie would indubitably raise my taxes. I already mentioned the tax calculator I used a couple years ago. I can directly source about $4,000 annual right on his website, which is his M4A surcharge. Additionally, his wealth tax would be disastrous for the economy- what do you think would happen to stock prices and all of our 401Ks when the richest among us have to sell off millions of shares to pay the piper? There’s a reason Wall St surged when it first appeared Republicans would hold the Senate. Again, I think there’s a lot to dislike about Bernie without believing that he’s going to send people to GULAGs on the outskirts of Fairbanks.

I don’t think that at all. But picking some of the easy fruit from his own website, he wants M4A (incl elimination of current debt), college for all (incl elimination of current debt), housing for all, free childcare and pre-K for all, high speed internet for all, banking for all, and jobs for all. Setting aside that his wealth tax is unjust and wouldn’t stand up in court, this all costs money. I put my financial situation into a tax calculator before the election in 2016 and it informed me that Trump would lower my bill by about $100 a month (which proved accurate), Hillary would raise it by about the same, and Bernie would raise it about $1,000. My wife and I are middle class. I’m fine with a limited welfare state, I’m fine with Hillary-level tax hikes to prevent suffering, but Bernie is over the top, even if it’s not Stalinism.

If I can answer this too, it’s because the center is big. The Bernie bros are mostly going to vote for Biden because they hate Trump. Is Joe gonna give them everything they want? Probably not, but he’s better than Trump. The guy who doesn’t like Trump but also dislikes the far left will vote for Biden too. I can’t speak for everyone, but I would have left the top block blank if Bernie or Warren were the nominee. I would have sucked it up for Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, or Klobuchar. I don’t think anyone does better than Biden (Butt/Klo/Harris probably lose a few votes but maybe still prevail). I think Bernie and Warren get clobbered in the general. Democrats made the right choice.

As a gun owner, please don’t buy a gun.

This is fair. I did like some of his actions- tax cuts (although you need to pair those with budget cuts), moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, killing Soleimani. On the other hand, I hate much of his foreign policy. His China stuff focuses almost entirely on trade war bullshit, and not on the massive human rights violations of that regime. Withdrawing from Syria (leaving the Kurds to be slaughtered) and pulling out of Germany (even partially) were foolish moves. He is pulling us out of Afghanistan in a way that strengthens the Taliban's hand and undercuts their democratically elected government. Domestically, I support legal immigration and the curbing of illegal immigration, but the wall is an idiotic waste of money and Trump often seemed to cherish cruelty for cruelty's sake, which is absolutely un-American. His entire realm of behavior is unbecoming of anyone and especially someone who even masquerades as a Christian. People who believe in wild conspiracy theories the way he does should be lobotomized. Edit: I think it goes without saying that his COVID response has been putrid. I don't honestly believe President Biden or Hillary or Jeb would have gotten a seriously different result, unfortunately, but conservatism is supposed to be about duty. Rather than encourage that and get people to accept the slightest discomfort in wearing masks, he encouraged an absurd form of hedonism. I swear, Trump's world is one where no one volunteers to storm the beaches of Normandy.

I agree with this almost entirely. Right leaning? Eh, not sure about that, but he's not a socialist, certainly.

I lean right, I voted for Biden (for many reasons). I'm far from alone in that category. That counts as "raising a stink about it", I think. I don't like presidents going around the balance of power. I didn't like Obama talking about using his pen and his phone, I don't like Trump using interim appointments, and so on. If you are a left-wing president and you have a right-wing Senate, well, strong left-wing policies just aren't going to be your legacy. And vice versa. It's your job to handle it. I hate that we got off track and seem to do more of that now, but the past is the past. The best way to move forward is to respect our systems as they were established. I wouldn't have voted for POTUS at all if I didn't see a candidate I thought capable of that.

Just curious, but who are you thinking of? What was so bad about them? I don't pay a ton of attention to the ones beyond SecDef and SOS.

Cabinet positions are quite a bit different than SCOTUS seats. And Trump used interim appointees so often because he has terrible turnover because he's an idiot of a boss. Not because he had an oppositional Senate, which he clearly did not.