I haven’t settled on a favorite candidate for 2020 yet, and history suggests it’s way too early to get strung out about it.
At this point in the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton was at about 2 percent in the polls, and the presumed nominee was (New York Governor I’ll have to remind yungins’) Mario Cuomo.
So Uncle Joe Biden is showing a lot of early strength, based on name recognition, association with the very popular Barack Obama, and a hunger for normalcy and stability. He’s a got good communication skills, especially with disaffected blue collar Dems in key states. That’s all good.
But Joe has come under fire lately for some, perhaps not so well considered statements that sound a little to lukewarm on warming.
I get the outrage – but I’m old enough to remember “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Al Gore and George Bush”. Spoiler, turns out there was.
A big part of Biden’s climate policy mirror’s Obama’s. Not sufficient.
But given that, would I take Obama back as President right now?
In a hot minute.
Discuss.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden is crafting a climate change policy he hopes will appeal to both environmentalists and the blue-collar voters who elected Donald Trump, according to two sources, carving out a middle ground approach that will likely face heavy resistance from green activists.
The backbone of the policy will likely include the United States re-joining the Paris Climate Agreement and preserving U.S. regulations on emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency that Trump has sought to undo, according to one of the sources, Heather Zichal, who is part of a team advising Biden on climate change. She previously advised President Barack Obama.
The second source, a former energy department official advising Biden’s campaign who asked not to be named, said the policy could also be supportive of nuclear energy and fossil fuel options like natural gas and carbon capture technology, which limit emissions from coal plants and other industrial facilities.
Joe Biden may not be the most progressive candidate in the crowded Democratic primary field. But one thing is for certain: Among 2020 presidential candidates, he has the longest legislative record on climate change.
In fact, Biden has taken this title a good deal further by claiming to have pioneered some of the earliest climate change legislation in U.S. history.
“I’m one of the first guys to introduce a climate change bill, way, way back in ‘87,” Biden said during a stump speech in Des Moines, Iowa, on May 1.
We were curious if that was accurate. A review of the legislative history shows Biden is right.
What did Biden’s bill do?
The Delaware senator’s first climate change bill, introduced in 1986, died in the Senate. But the following year a version of Biden’s legislation survived as an amendment to a State Department funding bill. President Ronald Reagan went on to sign it into law.
The upshot of Biden’s Global Climate Protection Act was to call on the president to set up a task force to plan how to mitigate global warming.
Biden spoke about the bill on the Senate floor in January 1987 in terms that seem uncannily familiar to present-day warnings. He discussed, among other ills, the threat to human habitat resulting from melting polar ice caps and rising sea levels.
“Life on this planet exists only under highly specialized circumstances,” Biden said during a Senate session. “Indeed, so special are these circumstances that even a small rise in temperature could disrupt the entire complicated environment that has nurtured life as we know it.”
Relevant to the “All of the Above” strategy on climate – if you have not seen this video, do so now. 5 minutes.
This post triggered thoughts of how ideology can be its own worst enemy. So often, a positive step forward is prevented because it does not go the whole 9 yards. Hope that is a internationally clear saying. A relevant example is the people whom did not vote for Hilary because Bernie wasn’t selected. Bernie or bust, and bust is what happened! For CS, whoever is the Democratic nominee against the fw, vote for him/her, please.
Yes. What candidates say to get elected, and what they propose that gets enacted, generally has nothing to do with what they themselves think. Making a start on some compromised proposal is still a start. Being right could mean nothing in the real world. Of course, that’s assuming candidates are free to form policy decisions, and not carry out the will of their sponsors and the lobbyists.
a wise man told me, “Being right is the booby prize of life.”
It’s not about being right. It’s about civilization surviving.
Rule no. 1: No matter how fast you expect climate cataclysm to proceed, everything about it is happening faster than expected, at all times.
Rule no. 2: Anytime you doubt or lose sight of Rule no. 1, see Rule no. 1.
About 12 years ago, when I started studying climate catastrophe pretty much full time, the expected melting of the ice caps was commonly spoken of as being 500 to several thousand years away. Now the scientific consensus is that we’re a decade away from guaranteeing the total meltdown of Greenland.
In fact, it’s a tossup whether it’s already too late. Everything has been the same–climate catastrophe is happening much faster than expected, and is accelerating, making it clear we’re on the upward part of an exponential curve. By the time it’s completely clear we are and a majority have had time for a leisurely adjustment to reality, it will be too late. When the trend of being constantly surprised by being behind reality and the pace of change is not so much a trend as it is an absolute certainty, the only rational response is not to act just in time to get where you currently think you need to be at some point, but to act as fast as humanly possible at all times. The only possible reasons that isn’t absolutely taken for granted is fear and pseudo-complacency that’s an attempt not to feel the fear.
This ridiculous straw person of “Bush and Gore were different, and Clinton and Trump were different, therefore we should elect Biden” is utter coal sludge, and it’s astounding it has the slightest bit of credibility. Liberals keep falling for the Lesser Evil Gambit because they don’t have the courage to step out of it, and both right wing halves of the corporate duopoly party know it, so they keep using it. It’s a fool’s mate.
Now there actually IS something on which both halves of the party are exactly the same; we’ve delayed so long and there’s so little time left that both of their approaches to climate Götterdämmerung will lead to the end of civilization. The only approach that doesn’t is the radical progressive approach of a comprehensive emergency Green New Deal and even more radical actions, led by a progressive president and progressive members of both houses of Congress, with the rest either dragged along by popular insistence expressed in whatever way is necessary–emails and phone calls or blockading the Capitol building, or removed from office by whatever’s needed. It doesn’t matter how unlikely it is, or how hard it is, or how uncomfortable it makes people, it has to be done because the alternative is the end of civilization and the extinction of millions of species, and possibly the end of life on Earth.
HC didn’t lose because people were torn to pieces about Sanders. She lost because Trump’s message appealed more to the Rust Belt and other swing state voters than hers did, and he worked much harder at campaigning in those areas than she did. Bottom line.
She won the popular vote by a large margin. She failed in campaign strategy and messaging in key areas, and in the American electoral system, that made the difference.
Elizabeth Warren today:
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/11/warren-west-virginia-2020-1317611
All true, no worries. Also true, an unknown shed load of voters wrote Bernie or bust on their ballots or did not vote at all. Several states were close. Do they enjoy their self righteous view from their high horses?
I can’t speak for them, but the phenomena wasn’t new to that election. Plenty of HC supporters voted for McCain over Obama in 2008.
My bet is a lot of the ones you mention in 2016 weren’t going to vote for Clinton in the general whether or not Sanders ran in the Democratic nomination. They were marginal Democrats or independents, or they just disliked Clinton. Sanders got their attention in that race where Clinton didn’t. Sanders lost, and they lost their interest. It was Clinton’s job to get it back, and she didn’t.
In the end it comes down to the candidates.
All very nice. If the lesser of two ‘evils’ is not supported, the greater ‘evil’ is accepted.
It ain’t rational, but we’re not exactly known for rationality.
That said, we’re also very predictable. We build up tensions against the incumbent party over a 4-12 year period (depending on the candidates and internal tensions), and regularly vote against them.
1960 to 2019: D D R R D R R R D D R R D D R
This is why incremental change is a joke. Should be obvious. Lesser of two evils always works out to just evil in the end. The small changes get written over by the next guy, and there ALWAYS is a next guy.
The only way out of that is that pressure builds up so much that major change is called for by the majority. In climate change’s case, it might also have to be a Republican who initiates it, or one who at least keeps the increments in from their predecessor, although I don’t see either of those scenarios happening any time soon.
James William, we disagree. Have a good one.
You too.
Brent Jensen-Schmidt, that’s a false dichotomy. It’s exactly how the Lesser Evil Gambit functions, while using multiple simultaneous strategies to make people unable to see that there are other choices. One is to panic everyone so much with the right wing lunatics chosen that liberals will go for literally anyone else, including the slightly less loony-appearing right of center Democrats the oligarchy chooses for the ratchet function of the Gambit. Liberals haven’t had the courage to stop the relentless erosion of democracy and of civilization’s chances for survival that this causes. The end of both corporate duopoly parties’ agendas is the same; fascism and global ecological ruin. The only way to escape those twin disasters is to reject the duopoly and move the US to the left.
Jperson, come the revolution they can be all stood against the wall. Until then, call me BJS, requires less typing less typing.
Well, this is the absolute sheetshow that is American politics for the voter that prioritizes climate change:
First:
a) you should support the ‘electable’ candidate, the centrist, because the lefties will just alienate swing voters and lose the election. hint hint, wink wink.
b) don’t be upset when the centrist inevitably wins, even though their climate policies will lead to squat all.
Then:
a) vote for the person that will enact a handful of lukewarm policies that will lead to almost no real effect, who will probably lose the Congress in 2-4 years because dumbarse Americans want a ‘balanced’ government, and who will see their insufficient policies immediately overturned by the next Republican President.
b) vote for the person who denies climate change and will immediately overturn any policies to mitigate it, but will tick off a lot of Americans who are passionate about climate change and cause people like Ocasio-Cortez to be elected.
Also!:
a) make sure you live in a swing state, because if you don’t and you don’t vote for the favorite, your vote won’t count anyway.
b) never vote third party, even if they align 100x closer to your own political values, because that’s just wasteful and destructive. Bad citizen!
c) make sure to vote!
You have now participated in the system of American politics. Here’s a sticker! Watch the exact same choices happen every four years like clockwork. Ooooh, the drama.
Meanwhile:
https://www.co2.earth/
It’s all one can do to stay sane when the world is bleeping insane.
Another outcome influenced by Demographics . . .
lets pray it’s a positive result for the future of our planet, whoever wins., with no more power to the fossil fueled lobbyists.
“He appeals to white, middle class suburban voters and that’s great, but he’s not doing so well among young people,” Mr. NoiseCat said. “We do have a policy out there designed to build a new climate coalition. It’s called the Green New Deal and he needs to jump aboard it.”
But Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser at Progressive Policy Institute and a former Clinton White House climate staff member, praised Mr. Biden for seeking a climate plan that would appeal to working-class Americans. With Congress expected to remain divided no matter who wins the White House, Mr. Bledsoe said developing policies that can actually become law are key.
“Indulging in ideological purity is great until you actually want to solve the problem,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/us/politics/joe-biden-climate-change.html
Bernie Sanders worked to close Vermont Yankee reactor, which had at least twenty years of life left in it, and made a third of the power used in the state. After the closure, Vermont’s emissions went up 16%. Instead he promotes burning wood for power in Burlington. That makes more CO2 per watt than coal, as well as long-lived nitrous oxide, which is about 300 times worse as a greenhouse gas than CO2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/04/16/bernie-sanders-denies-closure-of-vermont-nuclear-plant-increased-emissions-the-data-says-otherwise/#47d68e0243d9
Ah, the hit pieces commence. This is one of the reasons why the liberals never get the nomination. Too much money and vested interest flows into fighting them. (Another reason being the same old argument that only a centrist can win.)
It’s certainly true that Sanders does not favor nuclear power. Take that for what you will, but that particular plant closed for economic reasons:
https://publicservice.vermont.gov/sites/dps/files/documents/2013-08-27_Entergy_News_Release_VYClosure.pdf
The Shellenberger article, and he’s hardly an unbiased source regarding nuclear, leans towards indicating that Sanders actively closed that plant. He did not. He did want it closed, but there’s a big difference there, and Shellenberger is being dishonest in portraying it that way.
Have Schellenberger, the breakthrough boys’ bag man, and Forbes, ever been anything but biased and dishonest?
Shellenberger is an idiot.
‘Shellenberger is an idiot.’
That’s a 21st century US style of discourse. In New Zealand we try to keep it civil. Is James Hansen an idiot ? ‘The future of our planet and our descendants depends on basing decisions on facts, and letting go of long held biases when it comes to nuclear power.’
Another American who gets rather vitriolic on the other side of the nuclear debate is a blogger I follow, a chemist, nom de guerre NNadir.
‘ In this century, the solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy on which people so cheerfully have bet the entire planetary atmosphere, stealing the future from all future generations, grew by 8.12 exajoules to 10.63 exajoules. World energy demand in 2017 was 584.98 exajoules. Unquestionably it will be higher in 2019.
10.63 exajoules is under 2% of the world energy demand.
2018 Edition of the World Energy Outlook Table 1.1 Page 38 (I have converted MTOE in the original table to the SI unit exajoules in this text.)
According to this report, the fastest growing source of energy on the planet in the 21st century over all was coal, which grew from 2000 to 2017 by 60.25 exajoules to 157.01 exajoules.’
I agree, j. I voted Greenman up but I don’t really think Schellenberger’s an idiot. I think he’s more like a diabolically clever psychopath, as are the rest of the breakthrough boys (cofounder, with Fnordhaus). They took the Bjorn McBorgerson road to celebrity millionaire status–call yourself an environmentalist while spewing reactionary, anti-environmental memes and frames for everything, drop FLICC techniques all over the place, write a book, play an environmentalist on TV, give cover to corporations and ultra-conservatives in media and thus warp and twist environmentalism for the purposes of the oligarchy.
If we want to talk about intelligence Schellenberger might also be described as having SISS–pSychologically Induced Stupidity Syndrome. The constellation of symptoms that defines extreme conservative ideology now–that compels conservatives to lie, deny and gaslight–stunts intelligence in certain areas and causes specific emotional disabilities–particularly a kind of autism that prevents awareness of connections, as in ecology, and larger circles of compassion.
One of my favourite blogs is called ‘ The Science of Doom’, run by Steve Carsson. I like it because he goes into a depth on climate science rarely seen elsewhere, but also because of his very strict policy on etiquette. Attribution of motive is simply deleted. From his guide to commenting policy –
‘Psychology, fascinating subject though it is, can be left for others. If you want to delve into people’s motives or assumed personality problems, insult people, or guess their politics by their scientific points of view then there are much better blogs to go to…
It’s easy to trade blows on blogs. It’s harder to understand a new point of view. Or to consider that a different point of view might be right. And yet, more constructive for everyone if we take a moment, a day even, and try and really understand that other point of view. Even if it’s still wrong, we are better off for making the effort.
And sometimes others put forward points of view or “facts” that are obviously wrong and easily refuted. Pretend for a moment that they aren’t part of an evil empire of disinformation and think how best to explain the error in an inoffensive way.’
“…strict policy on etiquette. Attribution of motive is simply deleted. From his guide to commenting policy –
“… harder to understand a new point of view.”
…
“And sometimes others put forward points of view or “facts” that are obviously wrong and easily refuted. Pretend for a moment that they aren’t part of an evil empire of disinformation and think how best to explain the error in an inoffensive way.’”
Leaving out motives is fine for a blog here and there. We need it in some places. Some people, particularly scientists, take refuge from emotion in intellectual, even over-intellectualized endeavors. Others may just be used to politeness and out of low tolerance may not want to deal with anything else. For people who can’t handle it, don’t understand it and don’t know how to manage it, that may be the best path. And I understand not wanting uneducated people to use weaponized amateur psychology to insult randomly when they don’t know the science to argue that. (It’s one of the most common responses to my use of psychological understanding.)
‘Psychology, fascinating subject though it is, can be left for others. If you want to delve into people’s motives or assumed personality problems, insult people, or guess their politics by their scientific points of view then there are much better blogs to go to…
But as your blogger seems to understand,
1. There are others, which s/he refers to
2. There are other blogs, which s/he refers to.
Without understanding the motives of denying delayalists, anti-renewable fanatics and other psychopaths and trolls–or if we don’t even understand that they HAVE motives that are inextricable from their conclusions–we’re lost. We need to understand their motives to understand their unshakeable rejection of reality and their irrational biases, and to know what to do about it.
Your point of view about renewables is hardly new. The point you made about exajoules, for example, absolutely IS part of an evil empire, and I know this because I’ve read it literally thousands of times and because of the things you left out of your attack-by-implication on clean safe renewable energy. You’re irrationally pro-nuke. You want to shade over the actual reasons for renewable energy’s low numbers, and shade over its other, extraordinarily high numbers, so you can deny that clean safe renewable energy is perfectly capable of doing the job, and we’re still capable of building enough fast enough to avoid the worst of cataclysmic climate change. You don’t want to actually state any of what you’re implying because any way you did would be easily refutable; so you do it slyly, by implication, working underhandedly at the psychology of readers. Whether you’re conscious of any of this is uncertain. We can judge the motives pretty accurately anyway, and conscious or un, the techniques are the same.
In science, there’s not much point in trying to replace one theory with another when the first one explains things very well. Here, there’s no point in deceiving about one set of energy sources when the objection applies even more to others, and there’s even less point when the argument doesn’t mean what it’s meant to imply in the first place.
Yes, wind and solar provide a small percent of the world’s electricity, But since we can’t use fossil fuels any more, and clean safe renewable energy provides more of the world’s and the US’s electricity than nukes do, and since renewable energy can be built many, many times faster than nukes, there’s no alternative but to build clean safe renewable generation as fast as possible, while we electrify primary energy and do a bunch of other stuff with equality and trees and crops and trains. With energy, the difference is even starker; nukes only provide electricity and RE supplies lots of other energy, including clothesline paradox energies like passive and active solar space and water heating and cooling, annual cycle energy systems, (often mistakenly called geothermal), solar cooking, etc.
To say RE doesn’t provide much so we better get moving is a useful thing, given all the facts. But to simply say they don’t provide much is either pointless, or very pointed in an illegitimate way. It’s either an attempt to evoke despair or turn people from RE to fossil and/or fissile fuels by leaving crucial facts out.
For more on disinformation in climate politics, people can read Cook, Lewandowsky, Kahan, the Skeptical Science website, and take the U of Queensland Denial 101 course online for free. To understand the mechanics of the Koch-Exxon-ALEC-Republican denial industry’s work and how it’s debunked, potholer54 is good. To understand the doubly recursive fury of science deniers and manipulators of the public, read “Climate Deniers Intimidate Journal into Retracting Paper that Finds They Believe Conspiracy Theories”
We can’t let intimidation—even polite intimidation through accusations of impoliteness—stop us from understanding both the science and politics of climate.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-deniers-intimidate-journal-into-retracting-paper-that-finds-they-believe-conspiracy-theories/
https://skepticalscience.com/recursive-fury.html
It is not about climate change. It is about winning the election. If Trump gets reelected not even this compromise will get into policies.
Winning the election is about climate change. It is not about anything else. If any corporate duopoly candidate gets elected we have very little chance of saving civilization and most life on Earth.
From the article: “Joe Biden may not be the most progressive candidate in the crowded Democratic primary field.”
“Joe Biden may not be a Democrat.” There. FIFY, more or less.
Comment: https://grist.org/article/joe-biden-is-running-for-president/#comment-4449877476
‘clean safe renewable energy provides more of the world’s and the US’s electricity than nukes do’
For the world as a whole, hydro makes more than nuclear, even though US greenies don’t like to count it as a renewable when they’re setting rules for renewable quotas. But in the US nuclear makes three times more than hydro, and more than all the ‘renewables’ put together. The same is true for the whole bloc of rich countries – the OECD – nuclear makes more power than hydro. Hydro and coal are the biggest power sources in the third world countries, and in a few years, it will be mostly coal, cause they’re not making any new rivers. Unless nuclear gets cheap. Indians and Africans have had it with their power failing all the time, which is what they’ll get more of with unreliables. You might be able to run your house on solar and batteries, but I’ll bet you cook with wood, but how many communities run on just sun/wind and batteries ? Even islands where fuel is outrageously expensive ? Certainly no grid of even moderate size.
Have you seen the video of the massive champion cyclist riding flat out on a bicycle generator for about two minutes to toast a slice of bread ? At the end of it he’s completely knackered, having produced 0.021 of a kilowatt hour. Currently the state of the art in batteries is the Tesla 3’s. Each of its 4,416 cells, about the size of my thumb, holds rather less power than that cyclist produced – about 0.017 kwh. A thimbleful of oil of the same volume would produce 13 times as much as the battery. A nuclear fuel pellet, more than twenty times smaller, holds as much energy as three barrels of oil, a hundred thousand times more energy than the battery cell – and the uranium in it costs less than the cell does. When it’s finished, it still has about twenty times as much energy left in it, so calling it waste is a misnomer – it can just sit in a cask till somebody builds a fast reactor on the same site.
I didn’t start liking nuclear because I’m a pathological hater of humanity, I did it because nearly all the writers who had informed me about climate change – James Hansen, George Monbiot, Mark Lynas, Stewart Brand, David Mackay, Barry Brook – followed the same logic, and came to the same conclusion. If you think Hansen is either stupid or evil, he studied climate for 46 years, ran NASA’s Goddard Institute, first adressed Congress on global warming, resigned so he could get more political, and has been arrested protesting at least twice. Heck, he even has solar panels on his roof.
I am so damned tired of debunking all the same ridiculous lies denying delayalists, arfs and all the other reprehensible trolls have been spewing for more than a decade, in service of psychotic psychopaths and the destruction of civilization and most or all life on Earth. Every single point jfon made except one was either an outright lie or some other form of the usual FLICCnocity deception.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXA777yUndQ
The single exception was my faulty memory; I’m temporarily without my notes. But with nukes declining and RE increasing, the future is obvious.
Renewable Energy Provides More Electricity Than Nuclear Power In US
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/06/27/renewable-energy-provides-electricity-nuclear-power-us/
I wrote a point by point refutation of jfon’s lies, using things I’ve said past the heads of ineducable ideologues literally ten thousand times on the net and in person, but to hell with it. S/he’ll just post more in the meta-Gish gallop being slimed all over us. I’ll trust that people who frequent this site know better because of Peter’s excellent videos.
Jeffy is really losing it here—-talking about “OUTRIGHT lies” and “FLICCnocity deception” and calling jfon names. (An aside—it is the height of absurdity, cluelessness, and irony for Jeffy to talk about anyone else’s comments being a “meta-Gish gallop slimed all over us”. Those words far better fit Jeffy’s monotonous rantings here than they do anything anyone else has said).
jfon and others of us (including Hansen et al) have only made the point that nuclear power COULD have been and SHOULD have been part of the solution to AGW, NOT that RE should not be pursued. Jeffy’s rabid rejection of nuclear power makes him sound like a whore for the fossil fuel interests rather than someone who has looked at the science.
He cites a bright-sided cleantechnica piece as some sort of evidence that “Renewable Energy Provides More Electricity Than Nuclear Power In US”, but apparently hasn’t even read the piece (or his cognitive bias caused him to miss things). In actuality, the cleantechnica piece is DIScouraging rather than encouraging even though the figures have improved since this nearly 2 year old piece was published. Some excerpts:
“….natural gas continues to lead, followed by coal, renewable energy sources beat out nuclear energy” Why does Jeffy refuse to acknowledge that fossil fuel is still THE source of most of the electricity generated in the US, and is declining too slowly?
“renewable energy providing 20.20% of US net electrical generation, while nuclear provided 20.75%”. Big whoop! We have to go out to tenths of a percent to see a difference?
“Year-over-year growth between the first third of 2016 to 2017, solar has grown by 37.9%, wind by 14.2%, hydropower by 9.5%, and geothermal by 5.3%”. Another big whoop! That fantastic growth led to solar being 2% and wind being 8% of the total.
The cleantechnica piece is nothing but an anti-nuclear screed, and the only one telling lies here is Jeffy. (Of course, he covers that by brown nosing Peter and refusing to refute the so-called lies ten thousand and ONE times—-how convenient that he got tired just now).
So you do cook with wood then ?
Does Jeffy cook with wood? He likely won’t answer that question—answering questions, especially direct ones, is not one of Jeffy’s strengths—he would much rather “slime all over us with his meta-Gish gallops” of self admiration and disrespect for our knowledge and commitment.
BTW, has Jeffy EVER really told us what specific things he has done to fight AGW and alter the politics in this country? Aside from “we need a revolution” one-note song, has he ever told us which groups he belongs to and political candidates he supports with $$$? What events he has attended? How and when he has spoken out before government bodies?
PS I think I can provide a partial answer to the question. When Jeffy and friends are occupying their yurt on the seacoast in Oregon and playing their bongos and smoking their dope, it would not be too hard to gather and use dry driftwood to “cook”. I’d hate to think that Jeffy would carry a Coleman stove down there to cook his soyburgers.
Have been away for the weekend, attending grandson #1’s college graduation. It’s 145 miles from Manassas to the College of W&M in Williamsburg, almost all of it on interstate highways, and it took FOUR hours to get there on Friday (an average of ~36 mph on highways with 70 mph speed limits), and almost as long to get home yesterday afternoon. We babble on about “politics” in the USA while we buy 17+ million vehicles a year, most of them ICE and getting bigger all the time, and proceed to drive them everywhere ALL the time. JB’s “human insanity” is indeed observable any time one takes to the roads in this country.
Back to politics—-returned to find a good discussion going on this thread, with lots of “analysis” and even some well-modulated and thoughtful ranting from Jeffy on his usual one-note argument. What I DON’T see here is any mention of the real answer to our dilemma.
Simply put, we need to elect a WOMAN as our next president. Has no one paid attention to the fact that the “disliked” HC DID win the popular vote in 2016 by several million votes? Has no one paid attention to the blue wave of WOMEN elected in the 2018 midterms? Does no one believe that a woman candidate won’t peel a lot of red state wives away from their testosterone-addled husbands, as well as energize women in the center and left and get them to turn out?
My candidate of choice is Elizabeth Warren, who has been around for a while and has been fighting the good fight all along—-she is also the candidate with the most stated policy positions on the things that matter. Let Joe or Bernie be her VP or serve in her cabinet (along with Kamala Harris as AG and AOC as Secretary of TBD).