Biden Our Time: All things Joe Biden

Yes, but in predictable fashion to the obvious pandering his administration said that they specifically want to select a woman of color. I guess we're only basing jobs on a discriminatory manner, err, in the interest of eradicating discrimination altogether. As we all know, the only way to eradicate racism and sexism is by doing a bunch of racist and sexist shit. I mean, fight fire with fire, amirite? Works for the fire department so why --- no? Oh, fight fire with water? Hmmm... Counterintuitive, but, okay."Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids." -- Joe Biden I don't think they even know. Pretty sure they were vetting Kamala Harris until they replayed footage of some pretty nasty exchanges. Everybody knows, Democrats included, that Uncle Joe's days are numbered and that he's not fit to run a senior citizen shuffleboard tournament much less the United States of America. They don't really care as long as Trump isn't reelected. They also know that if they end up picking a Sarah Palin-esque candidate, its all going to backfire and Trump will get reelected. So I think they are really being cautious about who they are picking, especially since they've stupidly narrowed down their candidate pool by basing it on race and gender and not qualification.

I'm sure there is no shortage of idiots considering voting for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump (or Howie Hawkins or Jo Jorgensen or Andrew Yang for that matter).But if your aim is to persuade me, then you're going about it the wrong way, digressing into the Clintonesque ("basket of deplorables") or Obaman (bitter clingers) style. People tend to react negatively to that: if his supporters are such lowlives, what does that say about the candidate!On the other hand, if your goal really is just being insulting then you need to work on more clever phrasing (consult Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great for some particularly juicy rhetoric).Have a nice day!

No. If somebody has even considered voting for Trump, there's no reasoning with them.

Fine, Condoleeza Rice it is That actually wouldn't be too bad of a strategy. It would probably draw over every swing voter and a very large portion of the Republican Party, pretty much sealing the coffin for Trump. If Biden picked her I'd pull the trigger for him... but you know she's a sane and rational person so that'll never happen.

Indeed? Well, the more people like you, the more likely Trump is to be re-elected, no?

Well, there's always weird possibilities in the presidential sweepstakes.Think of this, in, say, 1998, most of the people eventually to be elected President or even running for President in the next couple of decades would have been dismissed as obscure or fringe. Joe Biden fit right in with the extremely obscure Democrat mainstream, pro-Defense of Marriage, anti-Busing, political hackery.But now . . . the days of seriousness, of Roosevelt, of Eisenhower, of Johnson (dreadful, but at least serious!), of Reagan, are far in the past, so who knows what may happen in November?

If everybody was like me, Trump wouldn't get a single vote.

I would think that the ability to change his mind would be a good quality in a president.

Carried to 100% that would indeed be true. But that's not what I said, of course.I was referring to the marginal case where increasing the number of people with your emphasis on repelling possible Biden voters rather than attracting them might just decrease the number of Biden voters so much that the net result would be a loss of voters for Mr. Biden.Don't get me wrong, I can read the opinion polls and can see that Biden, four months out, is leading. And if he does win, it certainly appears he'll be a better President than any Democrat in my lifetime.But you're wasting all these opportunities to persuade me, rather than confirm the depressing image of current Biden supporters.

Oh indeed, and I am glad that he has changed his positions as he scented the direction of the wind. But he still has to run on his record in addition to his promises.

I can't make any sense of that sentence. In my lifetime, the only two decent Republicans have been Eisenhower and Ford. As I said, I wouldn't try to persuade you.

There's a difference. Trump has to run on his record as President - i.e. on real facts. Biden only has to run against innuendo.

You said

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If everybody was like me, Trump wouldn't get a single vote.

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and I agree that's true.But I was talking about having more people like you, rather than having everyone like you (a rather unlikely case).Let me break it down for you with a simple case. Suppose there were one more person like you. That would be one more vote for Vice President Biden. But if, as seems likely, that one more person were to "debate" in your style it might just persuade more than one voter to switch their vote to President Trump.Remember, President Trump is in the White House because he persuaded quite a few people who voted for President Obama to vote for him instead of Hillary Clinton. Vice President Biden has to perform a similar task if he wishes an inauguration as a belated seventy-eighth birthday present.

Innuendo? Before Vice President Biden was Vice President he did get involved with some other things, remember? Here's a quote from the LA Times

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Biden opposed school busing for desegregation in the 1970s. He voted for a measure aimed at outlawing gay marriage in the 1990s. He was an ally of the banking and credit card industries.

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He chaired the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings that gave short shrift to the sexual harassment allegations raised by Anita Hill. He backed crime legislation that many blamed for helping fuel an explosion in prison populations. He eulogized Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who rose to prominence as a segregationist. He backed the Iraq war.

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Many of Biden’s positions were well within the mainstream of the Democratic Party at the time he took them.

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But the party is now far more sensitive to discrimination against gays, sexual harassment and racial inequality than when Biden first came to Washington.

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The capital has changed, too. The Senate Biden entered as a 30-year-old in 1973 was still a bastion of bipartisan backslapping, where compromise was not a dirty word. The Democratic Party was a coalition of Southern conservatives and Northern liberals. Liberal Republicans were still a thriving political faction.

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Biden’s record, even though he has reversed himself on some issues, provides ammunition to skeptics who see him as a politician of another era a beloved figure, but one whose time has come and gone.

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I worry whether he is ready for the times, said Chris Schwartz, a Black Hawk County supervisor in Iowa who says Biden is not in his top five choices among the candidates but is prepared to support whoever is nominated. He has just gotten too many big issues wrong over the years.

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But most Democratic voters put their top priority on beating President Trump, and Biden allies say he is the best equipped to win. Polls show Democrats are still fond of Biden and seem more willing to forgive him for his past than they ever were for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Joe Biden is carrying a 20th century voting record into a 21st century political dogfight.

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Of course this article is overall quite favorable to Vice President Biden, so he may be able to persuade voters to ignore his record.

It has nothing to do with my debate style.