Biden’s Garbage Comment
For want of an apostrophe . . .
NYT (“Biden Appears to Insult Trump Supporters as ‘Garbage,’ but Quickly Tries to Clarify“):
President Biden on Tuesday denounced racist language at former President Donald J. Trump’s recent rally but appeared to insult Trump supporters as “garbage,” prompting waves of criticism from Republicans.
The White House quickly objected to that interpretation of the president’s remarks, arguing that he was instead describing the racist language as “garbage,” not Trump supporters.
The comments came as Mr. Biden was addressing Latino supporters by video. “Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage,’” Mr. Biden said, referring to a riff by Tony Hinchcliffe, a comedian and Trump supporter who spoke at the rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
Mr. Biden said Puerto Ricans are “good, decent honorable people.” Then he went on: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The White House released a transcript that showed Mr. Biden was saying “his supporter’s” demonization, meaning that Mr. Hinchcliffe’s demonization was garbage.
But Republicans seized on the seeming gaffe, comparing it to a comment by Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she referred to Trump supporters as “deplorables.”
Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, said: “This is disgusting. Kamala Harris and her boss Joe Biden are attacking half of the country.” Just one day earlier, Mr. Vance brushed off the Puerto Rico island-of-garbage comment, saying, “We have to stop getting so offended at every little thing in the United States of America.”
Mr. Biden issued a statement on social media trying to clarify.
“Earlier today I referred to the hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally as garbage — which is the only word I can think of to describe it,” he wrote. “His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable. That’s all I meant to say. The comments at that rally don’t reflect who we are as a nation.”
But regardless of his intent, Mr. Biden’s words sparked backlash against his party and effectively moved the spotlight — at least temporarily — away from Vice President Kamala Harris on the evening in which she delivered the closing argument of her campaign. Ms. Harris has tried to persuade voters that she represents change while being careful not to criticize Mr. Biden.
AP (“Biden suggests Trump supporters are ‘garbage’ after comic’s insult of Puerto Rico“):
President Joe Biden took a swipe against Donald Trump’s supporters on Tuesday as he reacted to the Republican presidential nominee’s weekend rally at Madison Square Garden, which was overshadowed by crude and racist rhetoric.
In a call organized by the Hispanic advocacy group Voto Latino, Biden responded to a comic at Trump’s rally who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Biden’s initial comments were garbled.
“Just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Well, let me tell you something, I don’t, I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know, the Puerto Rico where I’m fr — in my home state of Delaware. They’re good, decent honorable people,” he said.
The president then added: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. His demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden “referred to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage.’”
CNN’s Stephen Collinson claims, “Biden may have handed Trump a big assist with his ‘garbage’ gaffe.”
Joe Biden had largely been an afterthought one week before the election in which he’d once hoped to win a second term.
Not anymore.
The president inadvertently injected himself into the homestretch of the campaign and may have handed a big assist to his erstwhile rival, ex-President Donald Trump, who is struggling to quell a furor over his bigotry-filled rally at Madison Square Garden earlier this week.
Biden mentioned Puerto Rico, slandered as a “floating island of garbage” by a comedian at Trump’s event on Sunday night. But his clumsy defense of the self-governing American territory — and the vital swing voters in its diaspora on the US mainland — sparked a new political firestorm and distracted from Vice Kamala President Harris’ big closing argument speech against a White House backdrop on Tuesday night.
[A summary of the White House walkback]
But the damage may already have been done.
Biden’s comment drew immediate comparisons with then-Democratic nominee Hillary’s Clinton’s remark in 2016 that half of Trump’s supporters should be “put into the basket of deplorables” because of their “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” views. Her remarks became a rallying call for Trump and conservative media and remain a badge of honor for Trump fans who view East Coast Democratic elites as condescending and disdainful of their way of life.
And Trump’s campaign seized on Biden’s remarks to try to create the same kind of dynamic, claiming that the ex-president is supported by “Latinos, Black voters, union workers, angel moms, law enforcement officers, border patrol agents, and Americans of all faiths,” while his opponents “have labeled these great Americans as fascists, Nazis, and now, garbage.” The Trump campaign’s national press secretary Karoline Leavitt added: “There’s no way to spin it: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don’t just hate President Trump, they despise the tens of millions of Americans who support him.”
No one can say how this latest twist in a turbulent campaign will affect the final result. But in the vicious heat of the last week of the deadlocked presidential campaign, when even a few imprecise words can wreak significant political consequences, it may not matter what Biden really meant. Perception is everything.
Just when Harris’ team wanted to keep the attention on Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which played into her contrast message on Tuesday night, the president handed Harris a political mess. She’s now almost certain to be asked whether she also regards Trump’s backers as “garbage.” Her answer will only prolong the story. The former president is also likely to seize on the gaffe to argue that Democrats view working Americans in the heartland with contempt.
A Trump fundraising email Tuesday evening read: “FIRST Hillary called you a DEPLORABLE! THEN they called you a FASCIST! And moments ago Kamala’s boss Biden called you GARBAGE!”
His campaign has already been trying to twist fallout from claims that Trump pined for the kind of generals that served Adolf Hitler into an argument that Harris believes all of his supporters are Nazis.
Biden’s “garbage” remark may also offer Trump an opening to finally spin his way out of the backlash about Puerto Rico caused by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the New York rally. “Probably he shouldn’t have been there,” Trump said of the comedian in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that aired Tuesday evening. His earlier comments that the event was “an absolute love-fest” had done nothing to defuse the controversy.
More broadly, a Biden comment that will be portrayed by pro-Trump media as contempt for the ex-president’s supporters came at exactly the moment that Harris is trying to come across as a unifying figure to win over Republicans who are disaffected with Trump’s extremism but are not yet ready to take the leap to vote for a Democrat.
Do I find it plausible that Biden meant “his supporter’s” rather than “his supporters”? Yes.
Do I find it equally plausible that an old man with diminished capacity was simply ranting? I do.
Do I think this will have a significant impact on how those who haven’t yet voted will do so between now and Tuesday? I don’t.
Joe Biden is not running for President. While Kamala Harris is saddled with his unpopular legacy without being able to differentiate herself from his policies, it’s hard to imagine his comment meaning much. Much less anyone who isn’t a die-hard Trump voter—who was therefore already going to vote for Trump—being all that upset by it.
Astonishing how JD Vance, who was just the other day lecturing us all on how Americans have to stop being offended by every little thing” had to take to the fainting couch after hearing this.
Is there a more transparent fraud anywhere in government? I mean, aside from every other member of the GOP?
The press needs to stop letting obvious bad-faith attempts to change the topic work. It’s an obviously bullshit story, so they then try to write about how it gives the Trump campaign an opening to do something.
Plus, at this point, no matter where the apostrophe is/isn’t, I don’t think you can say Biden is wrong, just as Hillary Clinton’s statement about deplorables was accurate. Trump is running on hate. That he may win the EC, even if not the popular vote, is an indictment of the country.
Having spent the whole of this campaign being repeatedly told I’m a demonic force whose degenerate genes are poisoning the blood of America, it’s not clear to me why I’m supposed to be upset by someone calling Trump supporters garbage.
@wr: Vance is, at best, a huckster. But I imagine he’s not offended by this but rather exploiting the opposition’s gaffe to his campaign’s advantage.
@Kevin: It’s certainly the case that there are a lot of deplorables, even garbage people, among Trump voters. But the overwhelming number of them are folks stuck in a binary system and choosing their policy preferences over their personal values.
The press needs to stop letting obvious bad-faith attempts to change the topic work.
You mean like people getting hysterical because a comedian told a bad joke at a political rally?
And if Vance is a “at best, a huckster,” what does that make Kamala?
When they list the cause of death for the United States, I’m pretty sure it will read “Standards becoming something that only applied to the other side.”
That Harris rally at the Ellipse last night was something! Massive crowd. HUGE.
A reminder that the “comedian” most people had never heard of was just one of multiple Ranty McRantyfaces who spoke at Madison Square Garden’s HateFest 2024.
The crowd regularly shopping at Grievances-R-Us doesn’t get to whine about this. Nope.
While I understand the game being played, it is rather rich for the Trump campaign to be playing it. This from the campaign, and candidate, who in repeatedly calling immigrants “garbage” and calling Harris a “shit Vice President” among other things.
It is also rich that Trump supporters keep pretending like the only objectionable thing said at MSG was one joke by Hinchcliffe. Not only did he provide multiple highly offensive statements, the entire rally was filled with anger, resentment, racism, and lies.
It speaks very poorly of those who defend it.
@James Joyner: No. I agree they’re stuck in a binary system, and that’s a problem. And maybe some portion of them are unaware of the news, though I don’t know how. But after a certain point, you don’t get to say that your policy preferences outweigh the fact that you’re voting for someone who is running on a platform of hate.
(goose meme: “What policy preferences? What policy preferences, motherfucker?”)
And pretending that it was a single joke told by a single comedian is just more bad faith arguments.
Like handling the end of the pandemic and producing an economy that is literally the envy of the world. That Harris can’t run on Biden’s record is a testament to the electorate being a box of rocks, the power of FOX et al, and the fecklessness of the supposedly liberal MSM.
An example of the latter two being that a little stutter, from a guy who’s stuttered his whole life, is a national news story. Oh, and he’s 81, INFLATION.
There are always two ways to react to this-
One is to decide if a person is themselves, personally, offended by Biden’s remark;
The other, much less interesting, is to play the game of pundit, and try to divine by means of signs and symbols what the man on the street thinks and how this may affect the horserace.
So for the first question- who here found Biden’s remarks offensive? I certainly didn’t. Anyone who went to the Garden and cheered at any point of the program is, in my opinion, behaving like a garbage person.
@TheRyGuy: And if Vance is a “at best, a huckster,” what does that make Kamala?
You’re kidding, right? You really want a response? Okay, here goes:
It doesn’t make Kamala Harris anything but what she already is – the best damn candidate for president in 2024 and the exact opposite of the DT/JV ticket.
There, RyGuy, happy now? Does it feel good to keep hitting yourself in the head with a hammer?
Let’s check the Nazi Rally speaker roll:
Tony Hinchcliffe: Trump Supporter/D-rate comedian = garbage.
Rudy Giuliani: Trump supporter/pathological liar/Russian stooge/deadbeat = garbage.
Stephen Miller: Trump supporter/white supremacist/chauvinist = garbage.
JD Vance: Trump supporter/fraud/pathological liar = garbage.
Sid Rosenberg: Trump supporter/hate radio shock jock (got Imus fired) = garbage.
Elon Musk: Trump supporter/firmly attached to gov’t teat/hypocrite = garbage
Trump sons: Trump supporters/nepo dimwits/Russian stooges = garbage.
and on and on….Uncle Joe was right!
I’ll just quote one of the most prolific and missed commenters on this site:
“Shitty people with shitty values.”
Own goal by Biden, but IMO it has a zero net effect. Nobody’s switching their vote over this, and Trump voters are as enthused as they could be. The possible bump for Trump would be offset by keeping the original remarks in the news.
@TheRyGuy:
That rally at MSG lasted over 7 hours, time for many people to speak.
Please name someone who spoke at that rally who spoke without being offensive? Just one such person, can you name one.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I’d also say that Trump and Vance are pretending that it was just one joke and that it was no big deal. In Wisconsin on Monday, Vance was asked a question about “several racist jokes” and other speakers calling Harris the Antichrist and the devil at the MSG rally. He responded with his “I haven’t actually seen the joke” nonsense.
But that apparently wasn’t enough, so he went on with this BS—“Kamala Harris’s closing message is, essentially, that all of Donald Trump’s voters are Nazis, and you should get really pissed off about a comedian telling a joke.”
@gVOR10:
More “box of rocks” evidence:
A majority of the electorate are convinced that the “US is on the wrong track”
However inflation is trending down. How is that the wrong track?
Overall, grocery prices are trending downward. How is that the wrong track?
The stock market trend is upward. How is that the wrong track?
New job creation is at record levels, How is that the wrong track?
Unauthorized border crossing is trending downward. How is that the wrong track?
Makes me think WTAF?
In the alternative, causes me to wonder if the polls that insist that Americans believe that we are on the wrong track, are simply gaslighting.
Watching how the pro-life movement deals with the actual impact of abortion bans on women’s lives makes it clear that policy is just a veil for the same Trumpian lies and garbage.
Nobody, and I mean, nobody who votes for Trump has the capacity to care about anything beyond their little world. They just do not care. That’s why it’s so easy to explain all inconvenience facts and lives away.
What Biden said probably won’t matter, but if it does it’s because it’s true.
Bottom line, there is no comparison between a night full of scripted racism versus Biden’s verbal stumbling.
@James Joyner:
Or at least what they perceive to be their policy preferences. In actuality, few will be better off under Trump – but they don’t think that’s true.
Following up my comment above, @gVOR10:, on how Harris could run on Biden’s record in an honest world, NYT has a longish, but well worth watching (gift link), opinion video on the administration’s handling of immigration,
Basically they’ve treated it, successfully, as a problem to be worked, not something to grandstand on. But that doesn’t lend itself to sound bites.
Good on NYT for this. Two months ago would have been better.
@Bobert: In my little corner of SW FL gas dipped below $3.00 yesterday. Way to go, Brandon. Also, I wonder if the Saudis aren’t quietly trying to help Harris.
@Kathy: I recall Teve’s line as “stupid people with shitty values”.
@TheRyGuy: “And if Vance is a “at best, a huckster,” what does that make Kamala?”
The vice-president of the United States.
A former United States senator.
The former attorney general of California.
A former district attorney.
In other words, a woman with real, serious accomplishments.
No wonder she terrifies you.
@DAllenABQ:
Same difference.
@Eusebio: journalists really need to figure out how to ask the next question after a politician pulls the “I haven’t seen/heard that thing so I’m not going to comment” BS so they can’t squirm out. Something along the lines of “really? You are ignorant of this thing that is squarely in your field and that everyone is talking about to the point that I’m asking you about it? Doesn’t that make you incompetent?” Preferably followed by “let me play it for you then and we can get your immediate reaction”
@James Joyner:
No, they are not stuck. They are not infants. They are not choicelees. They don’t live in a war zone. They are grown adults who have multiple choices. Among those options: they can choose not to vote. They can vote for any number of third party candidates.
They actively chose — with no gun to their head — to make Trump their standard bearer for a third time because they are garbage. Not good people. In a word: deplorable. Their values and ethics suck.
They are worse than cogs in the wheel of the Third Reich, who were less sophisticated, had access to less information, were coming out of a devastating world war, and who faced violent coercion from brownshirts. Trumpers have no such excuse.
I remember these racists, homophobes, liars, snd willfully ignorant Philistines when I was growing up black and queer in Georgia. And if I just overheard and caught strays of the bigotry, then I know the white folks here have seen and heard it up close and personal, unfiltered. So cut the crap.
I agree both with what Biden meant to say, and with what Dark Brandon stuttered out. And Trump’s Nazi rally was not just about one non-joke from an unfunny non-comedian. The whole night was an orgy of hateful attacks on Jews, Muslims, LGBT, immigrants, Latinos, blacks, etc. But when your candidate and campaign are garbage…of course.
I think Atrios, quoting NYT, covers this well and succinctly:
And NYT’s article was good compared to WAPO’s.
@DK:
I’ve tried to make the point here before that it took losing a World War, ruinous reparations, loss of the Rhineland, actual communists, and the Great Depression for Germans, with little experience of democracy, to reach this state. Modern American conservatives are complete snowflakes. That, and/or, blood and soil populism is so easy to push when a Party has no platform and no morals.
@James Joyner:
No, no, no… a thousand times no.
There is no “stuck in a binary system” here. That would describe Obama v Romney or possibly Clinton v Trump (as we didn’t know who Trump was then). But, to allow that a vote for the party openly embracing authoritarianism (replete with its blatant xenophobic, misogynistic, racist Us v Them trappings) as simply normal team loyalty is to deny accountability for behavior that should be shameful. “Going along” with fascism is fascism. Blind obedience isn’t an excuse.
Trump’s supporters – all of them – are garbage because Trump is garbage. That’s how garbage works. The stench gets on everything that comes in contact with it.
@Lucysfootball: I doubt that it has any tangible effect in changing the outcome either, but what it does effect is the ability of the people who will want to blame Harris or the campaign for the outcome to point to a “smoking gun” a week or two after today.
Just yesterday, I think, Kylopod and others were speculating on what the punditocracy would be able to find to blame Harris for the loss. Biden’s speech impediment has given them their window. “[… sigh…] If only she hadn’t needed Biden’s help to become a credible candidate.”
Has the same ring as “if only she’d campaigned harder in X…” n’est pas?
It’s nice to see the usual suspects making the usual arguments, which would magically reverse if the shoe were on the other foot. Another day that ends in “y”…
Anyway, my main thought is that this is more evidence that Biden’s stepping down was the right decision. Biden should just keep his mouth shut at this point; he is—fair or not—a historically unpopular President, and that sad fact, combined with his inability to consistently speak coherently, makes him a bad surrogate for the Harris campaign.
@gVOR10: Conservatives have always been blood and soil types. It goes back to Buckley’s notion of Southern whites being obligated to keep blacks from voting. It goes back farther than that even.
@Erik:
Fully agree. And to not ask the same/similar question as another reporter a couple of minutes before.
Although I should note that the Vance rally in Wausau was not any kind of a forum for an actual interview. He took a few reporters’ questions, one at a time, including this “one more question” that turned out to be on the bigotry and insults coming out of the MSG rally. The reporter only had the opportunity to ask the question and then presumably turn over the mic, because what followed was Vance playing to the crowd with a speechified response in the form of deflections, untruths, and outright lies such as the one that Kamala Harris’s message is that all of Trump’s voters are Nazis.
@just nutha: @Andy:
Thank you for starting the ball rolling on the meme for the failure of the campaign, should it fail. (And I think you’re probably right about Biden but will note that nobody was saying that Biden should just shut up last week.)
@gVOR10:
The right has to distract and bait with terror and hate because President Uncle Joe has achieved this:
Private job creation totaled a stunning 233,000 in October, far more than expected, ADP says (NBC, 30 Oct 2024)
And this:
Third-quarter GDP rose at 2.8% rate ahead of the elections, buoying Harris (Washington Examiner, 30 Oct 2024)
And this:
America’s economy just achieved the rare feat of a soft landing (CNN, 30 Oct 2024)
Thank God for Joe Biden. Kamala Harris is lucky to have him, as are we all.
It was a faux pas, as the Democrats hardly need to reinforce their ‘professional class bourgeousie Left sneering at the labouring classes’ image that has eaten away over past decade at working class support. But minor and late in the day, not from the Candidate and largely drowned out.
An unfortunate Biden own goal. It is especially regrettable because it takes away the focus from what was said at Trump’s rally regarding Puerto Rico.
Historical judgments of presidents is not a big subject, good mostly for compiling lists now and then in the popular media.
It’s different elsewhere. In the US, there’s no president that’s near-universally hated for his misdeeds or terrible policies, not even regionally (Lincoln was loathed int eh south for a long time though). Say like Lopez de Santa Ana (lost Texas) or Porfirio Diaz (30 year dictatorship) in Mexico, or hitler in Germany (WWII destroyed the country).
All that aside, I think history will judge Biden among the top 10 or so. Me, I think he didn’t go far enough dismantling the trickle down system, pushing against gerrymandering, or reforming the judicial system. This is not necessarily bad if he more or less went as far as he could go. And if he didn’t, some of that may be a function of his very advanced age*.
Of the presidents I’ve seen in action, starting with Reagan, Biden is at the top, followed by Bush the elder.
*”Yes, children. There was a time in the distant past when a man in his early 80s was seen as too old. Check the sources if you don’t believe me.”
LOL
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2024/10/30/who-doesnt-love-a-good-dumpster-fire-every-now-and-then-n3796462
@Andy:
Can you give us an example from this election cycle, where the shoe has been on the other foot? We can take surrogates off the table (though you note that Biden is a surrogate and neither the candidate or her running mate) and focus solely on Trump & Vance. To be comparable, Trump or Vance would have said something, then claimed to have misspoke, then restated what they really meant. Extra credit for an apology.
I’ve tried to come up with an example myself and I’m coming up short. Everything I find has Trump or Vance saying something inflammatory, then either doubling down or claiming the listener misconstrued their meaning (with interpreter malfeasance inferred or called out directly).
I see double standards where you don’t apparently. What am I missing?
@Rob Robinson:
If it was a gaffe, it was a Kinsley gaffe, in that it was mistake whereby Biden inadvertently said something truthful.
We’re in a political environment where one slate can call their opponents’ supporters sick, evil, deranged enemies of the people and the other slate has to remain civil at all times. “When they go low, we go high” may not be appropriate with democracy at stake.
@just nutha:
I guess I’m nobody? 😉
This isn’t hard – Biden has a long history of gaffes and a more recent history of age-related incoherence, which makes that long history worse. He is very unpopular sitting at around negative 15 points in terms of favorability. Everyone should know – or should have known – that bringing him out for unscripted comments, given these facts, is a big risk. I do not believe that “nobody” understood that.
@Scott F.:
The point is that human psychology is what it is. We tend to excuse or rationalize away when someone on our side flubs or makes a mistake or error and simultaneously criticize the other side for “hypocrisy” for doing the same thing when the roles are reversed. This has nothing to do with which side is on the defense or offense in any particular instance or even on the merits of any particular claim – this is how people think and behave. Yes, this is all extremely hypocritical behavior, but that is the essence of tribal behavior. People who believe they are immune to this, or that their ingroup doesn’t do this, are deluding themselves.
It was a stupid comment.
Trump supporters (including our anti-anti-Trumpers) who are clutching their pearls at this when their candidate of choice regularly makes comments about Jewish Democrats as being “Bad Jews” are the definitions of snowflakes. Ditto the fact that their VP of choice wrote a glowing introduction for a book that called Democrats and other political enemies “unhuman.”
https://www.wlwt.com/article/jd-vance-endorses-jack-posobiec-unhumans-book/61843659
@James Joyner:
There’s another component, in my view, besides policy and personal values: social pressure.
David French’s NYT editorial (gift) of 24 Oct 2024 matches my observations from living in a small very conservative rural community.
An example is a neighbor who joined with members of her church to protest abortion. I’m pretty sure this is an example of policy choice over personal values, but from my experience with attending church, I know that social pressure to express your beliefs in a particular manner is very real. How everyone in the protest actually votes will only be known to the individual.
Then there is the woman who works at the local auto dealership. Her tribe is for Trump, and despite input from her family that Trump uses power for his personal gain–and not for the welfare of the American people–she will vote from Trump because her tribe will vote for Trump. I would call this person a low information voter who gets her world viewpoint from her social group.
Just re-read “The British Are Coming” by Rick Atkinson. He relates the views of a minister who muses about people being Patriots one day and Tories the next. His conclusion is that no one can possibly know a person’s true allegiance.
The one heartening piece of intelligence is the NYT article that summarizes how people in your zip code have contributed during this election cycle. Much to my surprise only 55 people gave contributions to Trump for a total of less than $5K, and 38 people gave to Harris for a total of less than $5K. I would have expected many more donors and a larger total for Trump.
And now that I think about it, there are far fewer yard signs and flags for Trump this year that in 2020.
Fingers crossed.
I mostly notice that the NYT found it important to accurately transcribe Biden’s stutter.
@gVOR10: in MY little corner of NE Ohio, I purchased regular gasoline today at 2.63/gal.
@Andy:
Criticizing hypocrisy on the part of Republicans is so 2012. Things are darker now. It’s quaint to think charges of incivility or rhetorical impurity hold any sway in the Age of Trump. “Have you no sense of decency?” would be met with guffaws if thrown at McCarthy’s heirs in today’s GOP.
Granting human psychology is what it is, tendencies are what we look at in the abstract when we want to avert our eyes from what is happening right in front of us. An overly simple scenario as an example: If we were to observe an able-bodied person standing by as his friends beat up some nebbish guy, our recognition that standing up against in-group buddies isn’t a human tendency would be of little comfort to the one being beaten and we would be right to find the able-bodied one a shameful coward at best or perhaps even complicit.
In this election cycle, I have innumerable examples of ingroup Republicans who have broken away from their tribal tendencies because they see Trump as a unique threat to the country’s future. I have Trump not being even a little coy about how he intends to rule once he is returned to power. I have Harris doing and saying all the right things about being a leader for all Americans regardless of party. I hold in contempt anyone who says they are going to vote for Trump because it’s what they’ve always done or because they don’t want to offend their buddies or because he’s the lesser of two evils. If they vote for Trump based on an affirmative case, at least they are willing to own up to how Trumpism aligns to their worldview and interests. But, you may not have seen that Steven has been repeatedly asking the OTB neighborhood Trumpers to share their affirmative case for Trump and so far nothing.
Blind loyalty to a tribe in this election is the weakest of all possible arguments to chose fascism over democracy in 2024.
@Scott F.:
Trump has introduced the need to reduce life into an experiment along the lines of watching sports, as if being a fan and losing one’s shit when a call goes against your team versus being indifferent when it’s the other way around are the salient points of human existence.
And high school too—people love to reduce differences to the arbitrary nature of kids forming cliques.
@Scott F.:
I have no idea what you’re trying to argue with me about. My point is merely that various partisan actors are reacting to Biden’s gaffe in entirely predictable ways that have played out endless times before.
@Andy:
My argument is that in this election, with what is at stake and with its specific players and their specific behaviors, various partisan actors reacting in predictable ways is unwarranted normalization of abnormal behaviors.
Biden’s use or non-use of an apostrophe is a gaffe, as evidenced by Biden’s real time clarification of his meaning. Trump/Vance’s vilification of Haitian immigrants and dark skinned citizens is not a gaffe, as demonstrated by the persistence of these talking points in their campaign rhetoric.
I don’t believe this is what we’ve seen played out endless times before. This is unique in scale, tone, and implications. The partisan behaviors have never been so starkly in contrast to each other.
Then, I am taking your point to argue that in this election, as close as it is and the stakes being what they are, that typical permission structures, such as partisan loyalty, need to be challenged passionately. Kelly, Milley, Esper, Kinzinger, the Cheneys, et al., are telling us partisan loyalty doesn’t cut it this time and we should listen to them.
@Scott F.: It is an interesting dynamic in that both Republicans and Democrats feel themselves to be aggrieved regarding perceived insults from the other side. Yet, as far as I can tell, both sides readily engage in insults, although Trump certainly has a special talent in that regard.
@Andy:
So, ‘both sides do it’ right?
Wrong. False equivalency here.
@Scott F.:
Yeah, the disconnect here is you are reading way too much into what I’m saying. Secondly, it seems you’re then making a value argument about how people should react in response to Biden’s gaffe when my point about how people do react. My counterpoint would be that I agree people ought to react differently in this and all kinds of situations, but being people, we usually don’t.
@al Ameda:
Both sides, being composed of human beings, react similarly in similar situations. To believe that one’s particular ideology or in-group makes one special and different and not subject to well-established patterns of human behavior just proves the point.
Yes, when a Republican or a Democrat commits some political gaffe, real or perceived, the reaction follows a well-worn pattern. The side that didn’t make the gaffe sees it as a political weapon and attempts to use it for political advantage. The side that committed the gaffe tries to downplay it, claim it wasn’t a gaffe, or rationalize it away to attempt to prevent the gaffe from being weaponized. Both sides engage in hypocrisy because their behavior would be the opposite if the other side did the gaffe, and both love pointing that out, seemingly unaware of the irony.
This is a general rule of thumb – obviously, not every situation fits this pattern exactly, but this particular incident surely does. If a Republican surrogate who normally wouldn’t say such things had committed the same gaffe in the same way, I’m quite confident that most Democratic-aligned people would not give them the benefit of the doubt and would weaponize it for political advantage while Republicans would be doing what Democrats are currently doing.
Now, for the record, because I’ve found that uncharitable accusations fly when I disagree with liberals here, I do not think Biden meant to say what Republicans and others believe he said. I like Biden, I voted for him, and I think he was an above-average President for the things Presidents do that matter to me (these things are different from most people, BTW). But he’s also an old man who has difficulty speaking coherently, and, like it or not, when he fucks up saying something like he did, the expected response is gonna happen. It’s foolish to pretend otherwise.
@Andy: Okay, point taken. How about nobody else instead?