American Politics

[CrowExplorer]

Yes, I know.

Really...so you're saying, that's what qualifies as a man?

If this is the case, I'm pretty sure there's another group of men, that also have an "Adams apple and dick". You know the group of men, I mean...the ones with the cool, "StoryBook Hour", book reading.

You know...the one ISG Admin, frowns us talking about. Yeah, that other group of men, with an "Adams apple and dick", that Repubs and the Christian right DON'T consider as men. Are they not still men?
*Note: Would still love to hear, "what a woman is?")

You need to work on your reading comprehension skills. I said that if I (a man) had a surgeon cut my dick off, and carve a nasty gash in its place, it would not magically make me a woman, it would make me a MAN with a mutilated dick.

It's the woke side that is confused. And believes men can have a "female penis".

Women have an XX chromosomal make up, they have ovaries, produce eggs, etc.

Now I can already see where you will take this. Yes. If a woman cannot produce eggs, she is still a woman.

Also, if a human is born without arms or legs, they are still a human, even though an average human is described as having two arms and two legs. This case would simply be a deviation from a standard. This human with no arms of legs is not magically a snake, or something non-human because of a defect. Just like a man does not become a different gender if his penis is missing.

This is very basic stuff.

And I'm not surprised at all that you think that transsexual story book hour is "cool". You probably support the wide use of puberty blockers as well. In the coming years we will have 18 year olds with the bodies of 10 year olds, and certain types of men can fulfill their sick fantasies legally.

[MarquisdeSade1]

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2...ng-aggression/

[Spidy]

... Do you honestly not know if you are a man or a woman?

Yes, I know.

Well, my Adams apple and dick are a dead giveaway. ...

Really...so you're saying, that's what qualifies as a man?

If this is the case, I'm pretty sure there's another group of men, that also have an "Adams apple and dick". You know the group of men, I mean...the ones with the cool, "StoryBook Hour", book reading.

You know...the one ISG Admin, frowns us talking about. Yeah, that other group of men, with an "Adams apple and dick", that Repubs and the Christian right DON'T consider as men. Are they not still men?

And What about?:

• Eunuchs, castrated through no fault of their own?

• Or Amputees, who are injured from an accident, through no fault of their own?

• Or Veterans, soldiers, patriots, whose dicks are blown off in combat or suffers an injury to their "Adams apple or dick" and it's, removed, amputated or lopped off?

• Or yourself for that matter (God forbid!), you get "Bobbitted", on a crazy trip while in the Philippines and couldn't retrieve your dick? For example.

• Or People born without these appendages (or mutilated at birth), through no fault of their own?

And What if, ALL the these groups of people, with said missing appendages/limbs, through no fault of their own, in their eyes and minds, still consider themselves to be men?

So ?:
By your definition of "what a man is", simply having an "Adams apple and dick", do any of these groups of people (described above, "Bobbitted" et al.), still qualify as men?


*Note: Would still love to hear, "what a woman is?")

[EihTooms]

Articles like these are why I give the NYT my $$.

Joe Biden 1942-2023 good riddance.

David Brooks.

By David Brooks.

Opinion Columnist.

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Nearly two decades ago, I tried to write a group biography about the senators whose offices happened to be on the second floor of the Russell Office Building on Capitol Hill. The group included John McCain, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham and Chuck Hagel. I got to know and study each of those senators during that long-ago-abandoned project.

The more I covered Biden, the more I came to feel affection and respect for him. Then, as now, he could be a tough boss, occasionally angry and hard on his staff. But throughout his life, Biden has usually been on the side of the underdog. I've rarely met a politician so rooted in the unpretentious middle-class ethos of the neighborhood he grew up in. He has a seemingly instinctive ability to bond with those who are hurting.

Our politics have gotten rougher over the ensuing years but that hasn't dampened Biden's basic humanity. When he was vice president, I remember a searing meeting with him shortly after his son Beau died, his grief raw and on the surface. And like many, I've felt the beam of his empathy and care myself. A year and a half ago, the day after my oldest friend fell victim to suicide, Biden heard about it and called me to offer comfort. He just let me talk about my friend and through his words and tone of voice joined me in the suffering. I experienced the solace of being seen.

He has his faults the tendency to talk too much, the chip on his shoulder about those who think they are smarter than he is, the gaffes, that episode of plagiarism and the moments of confusion but I've always thought: Give me a leader who identifies with those who feel looked down upon. Give me a leader whose moral compass generally sends him in the right direction.

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But I've also come to fear and loathe Donald Trump. I cannot fathom what damage that increasingly deranged man might do to this country if given a second term. And the fact is that as the polls and the mood of the electorate stand today, Trump has a decent chance of beating Biden in November of next year and regaining power in 2025.

Voters know both men very well at this point, so when I hear Democrats comforting themselves that people will flock to Biden if the alternative on the ballot is Trump, I worry they are kidding themselves. Biden's approval ratings are stubbornly low. In a recent ABC poll, only 30 percent of voters approve of his handling of the economy and only 23 percent approve of his handling of immigration at the southern border. Roughly three-quarters of American voters say that Biden, at 80, is too old to seek a second term. There have been a string of polls showing that large majorities in his own party don't want him to run again. In one survey from 2022, an astounding 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted a different nominee.

I thought Biden's favorability ratings would climb as economic growth has remained relatively strong and as inflation has come down. But it just hasn't happened.

So I'm emotionally torn these days, the way so many are feeling strong affection and appreciation for Joe Biden, and yet feeling gripped simultaneously by a pounding fear that a Biden-led party will lose next year, and lead to a Trumpian Gtterdmmerung. Like many Americans, I've found myself having The Conversation over and over again, with friends, sources and people who work in Democratic politics: whether Biden is the best candidate to defeat Trump, his chances of winning, if there's some better course.

Some Democrats tell me in these talks that they hope their party leaders will somehow persuade Biden to retire and open the door for a fresher candidate. Others argue that Biden needs some stiff primary competition. Most of the filing deadlines for the early primaries are approaching Nevada and New Hampshire this month, Michigan and California and more in December. There's still time for other Democrats to jump in the race.

Editors' Picks.

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But many party leaders act as if this is madness, speaking with a fervor that is loyal but also patronizing: Biden is vehement about running again, and there's zero chance he'll be talked out of it, so Democrats had better just deal with that fact. Plus a serious primary challenge would merely weaken the inevitable Biden candidacy, the way Ted Kennedy weakened Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Pat Buchanan hurt George H. W. Bush in 1992. We just have to pull this guy over the line.

I don't find this passive fatalism compelling. The party's elected officials are basically urging rank-and-file Democrats not to be anxious about a situation that is genuinely anxiety-inducing. Last month Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey told The Times, "This is only a matter of time until the broad party, and broadly speaking, Americans, converge with the opinions of folks like myself. " Really? Surely if there's a lesson we should have learned from the last decade, it's that we should all be listening harder to what the electorate is trying to say.

I've tried to set aside my affection for the man and look anew at the question of Biden and 2024: Should we really do this?

The thing that so many of us are stuck on is Biden's age, of course. On this subject I have some personal observations. I've been interviewing the man for a quarter-century, including during his presidency. The Republicans who portray him as a doddering old man based on highly selective YouTube clips are wrong. In my interviews with him, he's like a pitcher who used to throw 94 miles an hour who now throws 87. He is clearly still an effective pitcher.

People who work with him allow that he does tire more easily, but they say that he is very much the dynamic force driving this administration. In fact, I've noticed some improvements in his communication style as he's aged. He used to try to cram every fact in the known universe into every answer; now he's more disciplined. When he's describing some national problem, he is more crisp and focused than he used to be, clearer on what is the essential point here more confidence-inspiring, not less.

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What about four or five years from now, at the end of a second term? Will he still be competent enough to lead? Biden is fit, does not smoke or drink alcohol, exercises frequently and has no serious health conditions, according to the White House. A study in The Journal on Active Aging of Biden's and Trump's health records from before the 2020 elections found that both men could qualify as "super-agers" the demographic that maintains physical and mental functioning beyond age 80.

But Biden's age is obviously and understandably going to be a greater concern than it was in 2020. It seems especially to worry some White House staff members or whoever is trying to cocoon him so he doesn't make a ruinous tumble. But if the president I see in interviews and at speeches is out campaigning next year against an overweight man roughly his own age, then my guess is that public anxieties on this front will diminish.

To me, age isn't Biden's key weakness. Inflation is. I agree with what Michael Tomasky wrote in The New Republic: Biden's domestic legislative accomplishments are as impressive as any other president's in my adult life. Exactly as he should have, he has directed huge amounts of resources to the people and the places that have been left behind by the global economy. By one Treasury Department estimate, more than 80 percent of the investments sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act are going to counties with below-average college graduation rates and nearly 90 percent are being made in counties with below-average wages. That was the medicine a riven country needed.

But it is also true that Biden's team overlearned the lessons of the Obama years. If Barack Obama didn't stimulate the economy enough during the Great Recession, Biden stimulated it too much, contributing to inflation and the sticker shock people are feeling.

Anger about inflation is ripping across the world, and has no doubt helped lower the approval ratings of leaders left, right and center. Biden's 40 percent approval rating may look bad, but in Canada, Justin Trudeau's approval rating is 36; in Germany Olaf Scholz is at 29; in Britain Rishi Sunak is at 28; in France Emmanuel Macron is at 23; and in Japan Fumio Kishida is also at 23. This is a global phenomenon. As the journalist Josh Barro argued recently, "Inflation is the reason Biden could not deliver on his core promise to return the country to normal and the main reason his poll numbers are bad. ".

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Because of inflation, Americans now trust Trump to handle the economy more than Biden. As ABC News reported, voters are looking back and retroactively elevating their opinion of Trump's presidency. When he left office only 38 percent of Americans approved of his performance as president. Today, 48 percent do, his high-water mark.

Inflation also contributes to a corrosive national mood that you might call American Jaundice. Nearly three out of every four Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Bitterness, cynicism and distrust pervade the body politic. People perceive reality through negative lenses, seeing everything as much worse than it is. At 3. 8 percent, America's unemployment rate is objectively low, but 57 percent of voters say that the unemployment rate is "not so good" or "poor. ".

The nation's bitter state of mind is a self-perpetuating negativity machine. Younger people feel dismissed; the older generations are hogging power. Faith in major institutions is nearing record lows. The country is hungry for some kind of change but is unclear about what that might look like. As the incumbent, Biden will be tasked with trying to tell a good news story of American revival, which is just a tough story to sell in this environment. And Biden is not out there selling it convincingly.

The bracing reality is that Trump's cynicism and fury match the national mood more than Biden's faithful optimism. It's one of the reasons Trump is now leading Biden by 1. 2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. It's one of the reasons Trump is in a stronger polling position now than at any point in 2016 or 2020. It's one of the reasons even some Republicans are mystified by the way Democrats are standing pat behind their incumbent.

"They seem hell bent on nominating the one Democrat who would lose to Donald Trump," Karl Rove told me recently. "They've got a lot of talent on their side, let's not kid ourselves," he continued, pointing to younger Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Mitch Landrieu, Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker.

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But once you start to think carefully about whether Democrats could nominate one of those non-Biden alternatives, all sorts of other concerns rise into view. First, there is the Kamala Harris problem. If the door were open, the vice president would probably run even though her poll numbers are lower than Biden's. Her shambolic 2020 presidential campaign does not inspire confidence, and her record includes being a leading player on the administration's divisive immigration policies. People can make an all-star wish list of other Democratic nominees, but in the real world there is simply no easy way to push Harris aside.

Then there's the fact that there is no other viable candidate in the Democratic Party with a national base of support. The rising Democratic stars Rove referred to are all talented, but none have compellingly stood on the national stage. In the polling right now, possible candidates not named Biden or Harris are in the low single digits.

Plus, there are good reasons no major Democrat has so far stepped up to mount a challenge. Anyone who did throw a hat in the ring would face such vitriolic contempt from the party establishment, it would probably be career-ending. Such a candidate might also face withering criticism from rank-and-file Democrats. As a former Obama administration official, Dan Pfeiffer, has pointed out, Biden has higher favorability ratings among Democrats than Trump does among Republicans. Democrats may be anxious about the old guy running, but that doesn't mean they'the automatically warm to someone trying to take him down.

Finally, and most important, when you really start to imagine what it would look like if the Democrats didn't nominate Biden, one whopping issue becomes clear.

A lot of the dump-Biden conversations are based on a false premise: that the Democratic Party brand and agenda are somehow strong and popular enough that any number of younger candidates could win the White House in 2024, and that if Biden were just to retire, all sorts of obstacles and troubles would go with him.

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But Biden is not the sole or even primary problem here. To the extent that these things are separable, it's the Democratic Party as a whole that's ailing. The generic congressional ballot is a broad measure of the strength of the congressional party. Democrats are now behind. According to a Morning Consult poll, Americans rate the Democratic Party as a whole as the more ideologically extreme party by a nine-point margin.

When pollsters ask which party is best positioned to address your concerns, here too, Democrats are trailing. In a recent Gallup poll 53 percent of Americans say Republicans will do a better job of keeping America prosperous over the short term while only 39 percent thought that of the Democrats. Fifty-seven percent of Americans said that the Republicans would do a better job keeping America safe, while only 35 percent favor the Democrats. These are historically high Republican advantages.

Here are the hard, unpleasant facts: The Republicans have a likely nominee who is facing 91 charges. The Republicans in Congress are so controlled by a group of performative narcissists, the whole House has been reduced to chaos. And yet they are still leading the Democrats in these sorts of polling measures.

This is about something deeper than Joe Biden's age. More and more people are telling pollsters that the Republicans, not the Democrats, care about people like me.

When I think back to the glory days of the Democratic Party, the days of the New Deal and the Great Society, even to the days when Joe Biden was a young senator being mentored by the likes of Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Party was at its core a working- and middle-class party. Over the last half-century, the Democrats have become increasingly the party of the well-educated metropolitan class.

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It is not news that the Democrats have been losing white working-class voters ever since the emergence of the Reagan Democrats. But today, the party is bleeding working-class voters of all varieties. As John be. Judis and Ruy Teixeira point out in their forthcoming book, "Where Have All the Democrats Gone?" Democrats have been losing ground among Hispanics for the last few years. In 2012, Barack Obama carried nonwhite voters without a college degree by a 67-point margin. In 2020, Biden carried this group with a 48-point margin. Today, the Democratic ticket leads among this group by a paltry 16 points.

But Democrats are losing something arguably more important than a reliable base of supporters. The party is in danger of letting go of an ethos, a heritage, a tradition. The working-class heart and soul the Democrats cultivated through the Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy years rooted Democratic progressivism in a set of values that emphasized hard work, neighborhood, faith, family and flag. Being connected to Americans' everyday experiences kept the party pinioned to the mainstream.

As the party became dominated by the more educated activist and media sectors, it lost touch with some of what can be called its psychological and emotional power sources. It grew prone to taking flights of fancy in policy and rhetoric, be it Medicare for All or "defund the police," going to places where middle-of-the-road voters would not follow. It became more vulnerable to the insular outlooks of its most privileged and educated members.

This is what happened in 2020. There were moments in that campaign when it looked as if Bernie Sanders was going to run away with the race, sending the party into uncharted ideological waters. Most of the other candidates sprinted leftward. In a June 2019 debate, nine of 10 Democratic presidential candidates raised their hands when asked if they supported decriminalizing border crossings. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand were even further left than their colleagues. The year prior, both of them called for dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement. College-educated voters are less worried about illegal immigration than high school-educated voters and that influence showed.

Joe Biden was nominated in 2020 because he was the cure to this malady. He was the guy most plainly with roots in the working and middle class. He was the guy who didn't engage in the culture war and identity politics theatrics. He was the most moderate major candidate in the race. Democrats from James Clyburn on down swung to Biden because he offered the most plausible connection back to the Democrats' working-class soul and it worked. Biden gave the party what it needed to come back to life.

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And that is the fact I keep returning to. Biden is not what ails the party. As things stand, he is the Democrats' best shot at curing what ails the party.

There is no other potential nominee who is so credibly steeped in knowing what life is like for working- and middle-class people, just as there was no other potential nominee in 2020. After watching him for a quarter-century, I think he is genuinely most comfortable when he is hanging around the kinds of people he grew up with. He doesn't send out any off-putting faculty lounge vibes. On cultural matters he is most defined by what he doesn't do needlessly offend people with overly academic verbiage and virtue signaling. That is why I worry when he talks too stridently about people on the right, when he name-calls and denounces wide swaths of people as MAGA.

These cultural and spiritual roots give him not just a style but a governing agenda. He has used the presidency to direct resources to those who live in the parts of the country where wages are lower, where education levels are lower, where opportunities are skimpier. Biden's ethos harks back to the ethos of the New Deal Democratic Party, but it also harks forward to something to a form of center-left politics that is culturally moderate and economically aggressive. Aggressive in investing resources in the left-behind places, aggressive in using industrial policy to revive manufacturing, green tech and other industries, aggressive in using federal largess to bolster the care economy. His administration has put racial justice at the top of the agenda. It has moved the party beyond the technocratic centrism of the Clinton-Obama years.

It is a first glimpse, but only a first glimpse, of a future Democratic Party that could once again compete for working- and middle-class support and would once again rest on its historical values.

Something almost spiritual is at play here, not just about whether the Democrats can win in 2024, but who the Democrats are.

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As I've thought about Biden's chances in 2024, I find myself deeply conscious of all the disadvantages that he and the Democrats have as they try to retain power, and preparing for what that could bring. But I also find myself arriving foursquare at the conclusion that rejecting the president now would be, in the first place, a mistake. He offers the most plausible route toward winning the working- and middle-class groups the Democrats need, the most plausible route toward building a broad-based majority party.

But it would be worse than a mistake. It would be a renunciation of the living stream of people, ideas and values that flow at the living depths of the party, a stream that propelled its past glories and still points toward future ones.

"RIP Dirty Joe"?

"Articles like these are why I give the NYT my $$. ?

"Joe Biden 1942-2023 good riddance"?

LOL. Did you even read that article? Taking too many "meds" to comprehend what you read now, bro?

Uh. In that article you are so happy to have spent somebody's hard earned money to read, Brooks is making the case for why keeping Joe Biden as the nominee is the most winning strategy for the Dems and, ultimately, the country.

Seriously. Try re-reading it more slowly and carefully. And this time without taking whatever "meds" had been getting you through the night.

[MarquisdeSade1]

"Aw. And after Bill worked so hard to line up guests to present as much of a Dem / Biden-Bashing pro-Repub Campaign Rally as he could for his big return show last week, calculating it would be his highest rated one ever!

This accessment by Gen. Milley might serve to counter Maher's opening that show with a joke based one of his new favorite Repub talking point lies that "unlike Law and Order, Rule of Law Repubs, soft on crime Democrats have legalized shoplifting," closing with that Grand Finale about how old Biden will come off at the debates vs how youthful, robust and healthy Donald "Please, somebody help me waddle down this ramp" Covefe Trump is by comparison even after defeating Barack Obama in 2016 and brilliantly avoiding plunging us into "World War 2"!

So, you know, better for the Dems to choose another candidate that every Repub will harbor an irrational hated for anyway, right, Bill? LOL.

Gen. Milley addresses President Biden's age.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/preside...ey-60-minutes/

I hear Maher is feverishly trying to book Gen. Michael Flynn on his show ASAP in order to, you know, provide a typically fair and balanced virulently pro Repub "Bothsider" elaboration on how much younger, robust and healthy Donald "inject me with everything you've got to save my life from the virus I blatantly lied to convince the world was already disappearing without a vaccine many months ago" Trump is than Joe "fine, alert, sound, does his homework, reads the papers, reads all the read-ahead material, very, very engaging in issues of very serious matters of life and death" Biden. ".

https://nypost.com/2023/10/06/sicko-...-subway-train/

A Brooklyn sicko stood above a sleeping 22-year-old female straphanger on an and train in Greenwood Heights and ejaculated on her face early Friday before fleeing.

https://nypost.com/2023/10/03/man-ar...hooting-death/

https://nypost.com/2023/10/03/distur...on-nyc-street/

https://www.aol.com/news/philadelphi...huwYACr8EKvqao

[MarquisdeSade1]

https://nypost.com/2023/10/06/dramat...c-health-dept/

[MarquisdeSade1]

In order to achieve their classic Repub Party goal of crashing the USA economy, this time in the midst of this current Great Dem Recovery and Historic Jobs Creation, before November 2024, the Repub Pink Tinkle Majority in the House has no choice but to threaten government shutdowns every few weeks until then.

This one is just too solid across the board.

Being "better at handling the economy than the Democrats", as Mainstream Media works so hard to plant in the heads of the electorate by any means possible, the Repub Party's success rate in Doing Nothing, Knowing Nothing, wiping out millions upon millions of jobs and thousand upon thousands of businesses, skyrocketing the unemployment rate and deficit spending with nothing to show for it and shutting down the government to convince all other budding Captialist democracies around the world to immediately drop such a dumb idea is second to none.

In fact, I think it is the only political entity in any democracy on the planet that achieves that goal over and over and over again yet still somehow manages to exist. Kudos to pro-Repub "Bothsiders" like those found in Mainstream Media, here and Bill Maher for that I suppose.

Black mayors screaming finish orange mans wall.

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023...-bluff-called/

Blacks are voting orange man 2024.

[MarquisdeSade1]

"In order to achieve their classic Repub Party goal of crashing the USA economy, this time in the midst of this current Great Dem Recovery and Historic Jobs Creation, before November 2024, the Repub Pink Tinkle Majority in the House has no choice but to threaten government shutdowns every few weeks until then.

This one is just too solid across the board.

Being "better at handling the economy than the Democrats", as Mainstream Media works so hard to plant in the heads of the electorate by any means possible, the Repub Party's success rate in Doing Nothing, Knowing Nothing, wiping out millions upon millions of jobs and thousand upon thousands of businesses, skyrocketing the unemployment rate and deficit spending with nothing to show for it and shutting down the government to convince all other budding Captialist democracies around the world to immediately drop such a dumb idea is second to none.

In fact, I think it is the only political entity in any democracy on the planet that achieves that goal over and over and over again yet still somehow manages to exist. Kudos to pro-Repub "Bothsiders" like those found in Mainstream Media, here and Bill Maher for that I suppose. "

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023...racy-theories/

[CrowExplorer]

As sperto says, save yourself the trouble and add to ignore list.

What else can you do? You know that I'm right. There's no "argument" for you to win here.

As the saying goes:

You can stay silent and let people think you are an idiot, or you can open your mouth and prove it.

[EihTooms]

Sorry to hear about "the bad head ticker", old chum! Yes, please see a doctor, before you and that head of yours (explodes? and) can't take another round of good news about the resilient Biden US economy. But the real good news, as you've mentioned, is that your meds (for your stroke of course) will be so much cheaper.

Yeh, I'm sure you'd rather the money go to billionaires, as you wait for the crumbs from their pink-trickle-down economics table.

Hey you've been pontificating this for some time now. Well as the saying goes, "...even the sun shines up a dogs ass some days".

Rep.Garrat Graves (R-LO) when speaking on Good Morning Joe (05-Oct-2023):

• "I think it's absolutely disgusting, I think people should be imprisoned for actions like that..." {Referring to Rep.Gaetz (R-FL) sending out fund-raising plea tweets, requesting money, as he torpedoes parliament, the House Speaker and the economy}
  
  "Look we all know it's more expensive to do business here, from a tax, labour and environmental compliance perspective, but the one reason people continue to invest in the US, is because there is a stable regulatory governing body and a legal climate."
  
  "What Matt Gaetz, just did, was to blow-up that up. He created instability in already challenging economy and an already challenging and divisive country. This was the wrong move and incredibly selfish....The guy needs money like he needs a hole in his head. This is as "swampy as it gets". This was all done for ego and for selfish reasons."

I include this quote from Rep.Garrat Graves (R-LO), to illustrate even more profoundly what my last post was trying to impart on you. Which again, was that Joe "Biden's great US stewardship ... despite dysfunctional Repubs".

Rep.Garrat Graves (R-LO) quote, is a perfect example of Repubs, fucking things up! Meanwhile the Dems are doing their jobs, fulfilling their fiduciary duties, putting the country back in order and in good standing, for their constituency and all American people and NOT JUST the billionaires and the lunatic fringe.

So you may get yet your recession, but thank your lucky stars, the Repubs won't be in power, if happens.

BTW, is would appear you love to bet on recessions? Well if that's the case Elvis, you're own betting stats would tell you that, YOU WOULD HAVE: made more money, betting a recession would occur (or the economy tanking precipitously), when I Repub Pres. was in office vs. when a Dem Pres. as been office. That is of course, if you' re worth your salt as a betting man?

In order to achieve their classic Repub Party goal of crashing the USA economy, this time in the midst of this current Great Dem Recovery and Historic Jobs Creation, before November 2024, the Repub Pink Tinkle Majority in the House has no choice but to threaten government shutdowns every few weeks until then.

This one is just too solid across the board.

Being "better at handling the economy than the Democrats", as Mainstream Media works so hard to plant in the heads of the electorate by any means possible, the Repub Party's success rate in Doing Nothing, Knowing Nothing, wiping out millions upon millions of jobs and thousand upon thousands of businesses, skyrocketing the unemployment rate and deficit spending with nothing to show for it and shutting down the government to convince all other budding Captialist democracies around the world to immediately drop such a dumb idea is second to none.

In fact, I think it is the only political entity in any democracy on the planet that achieves that goal over and over and over again yet still somehow manages to exist. Kudos to pro-Repub "Bothsiders" like those found in Mainstream Media, here and Bill Maher for that I suppose.

[EihTooms]

Aw. And after Bill worked so hard to line up guests to present as much of a Dem / Biden-Bashing pro-Repub Campaign Rally as he could for his big return show last week, calculating it would be his highest rated one ever!

This accessment by Gen. Milley might serve to counter Maher's opening that show with a joke based one of his new favorite Repub talking point lies that "unlike Law and Order, Rule of Law Repubs, soft on crime Democrats have legalized shoplifting," closing with that Grand Finale about how old Biden will come off at the debates vs how youthful, robust and healthy Donald "Please, somebody help me waddle down this ramp" Covefe Trump is by comparison even after defeating Barack Obama in 2016 and brilliantly avoiding plunging us into "World War 2"!

So, you know, better for the Dems to choose another candidate that every Repub will harbor an irrational hated for anyway, right, Bill? LOL.

Gen. Milley addresses President Biden's age

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/preside...ey-60-minutes/

Milley, in his role as the nation's highest ranking military officer, regularly met with Mr. Biden. He said the president was "fine" each time.

"How people interpret that is up to them, but I engage with him frequently and alert, sound, does his homework, reads the papers, reads all the read-ahead material. And he's very, very engaging in issues of very serious matters of war and peace and life and death," Milley said.

"So if the American people are worried about an individual who is, you know, someone who's making decisions of war and peace and has access to, you know, makes the decisions of nuclear weapons and that sort of thing, I think they can rest easy."

I hear Maher is feverishly trying to book Gen. Michael Flynn on his show ASAP in order to, you know, provide a typically fair and balanced virulently pro Repub "Bothsider" elaboration on how much younger, robust and healthy Donald "inject me with everything you've got to save my life from the virus I blatantly lied to convince the world was already disappearing without a vaccine many months ago" Trump is than Joe "fine, alert, sound, does his homework, reads the papers, reads all the read-ahead material, very, very engaging in issues of very serious matters of life and death" Biden.

[MarquisdeSade1]

"If you want responsible Dems with a sterling record of pulling us out of Great Repub Depressions, Great Repub Recessions and Massive Repub Jobs Destruction to stop passing massive government spending bills in order to produce those sterling Recovery results you must immediately stop voting in such a way that puts Repubs in a position to produce Great Repub Depressions, Great Repub Recessions and Massive Repub Jobs Destruction.

The best way to achieve that condition is to vote Dem straight down the ballot in every election for which you are qualified to register and vote and urge everyone you know to do the same.

Not voting will not achieve that condition.

Voting for any candidates other than the Dems won't do it.

Only voting for the Dems straight down every ballot will do it.

Pass it along.

The goal should be to never have fewer than 250 Dems in the House. Never.

And to never have fewer Dems in the Senate than 65. Never.

And to never put anyone in the White House except a Dem. Never.

Then the USA will very, very likely never have a Great Depression, Great Recession, Skyrocketing Unemployment Rates, Massive Jobs Destruction, inevitable Recovery Inflation or insurmountable Deficit Spending again.

Wouldn't that be nice? You bet it would.

Voting in any other way introduces huge levels of unnecessary risk that we will suffer all the crap you are always complaining about over and over and over and over again. ".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjxFJfcrcA

[Spidy]

You are killing me Spidy. I am laughing so hard I might stroke. ... You are killing me Spidy. I am laughing so hard I might stroke. ... Gave Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices through the Inflation Reduction Act ...

Sorry to hear about "the bad head ticker", old chum! Yes, please see a doctor, before you and that head of yours (explodes? and) can't take another round of good news about the resilient Biden US economy. But the real good news, as you've mentioned, is that your meds (for your stroke of course) will be so much cheaper.

I cannot believe how many of these "accomplishments" were either taking money from citizens and spending it on worthless crap or printing up money and spending it on crap ...

Yeh, I'm sure you'd rather the money go to billionaires, as you wait for the crumbs from their pink-trickle-down economics table.

I have been waiting for this train wreck to hit. I knew it was coming with George W ... And we are here again. The stock market, which I thought had been good, is actually down outside of seven huge tech stocks. Interest rates are through the roof, and home prices once again are fucking nuts. The only thing left is the timing. Are the interest rates / inflation going to cause the recession prior to the election?

Hey you've been pontificating this for some time now. Well as the saying goes, "...even the sun shines up a dogs ass some days".

Rep.Garrat Graves (R-LO) when speaking on Good Morning Joe (05-Oct-2023):

• "I think it's absolutely disgusting, I think people should be imprisoned for actions like that..." {Referring to Rep.Gaetz (R-FL) sending out fund-raising plea tweets, requesting money, as he torpedoes parliament, the House Speaker and the economy}
  
  "Look we all know it's more expensive to do business here, from a tax, labour and environmental compliance perspective, but the one reason people continue to invest in the US, is because there is a stable regulatory governing body and a legal climate."
  
  "What Matt Gaetz, just did, was to blow-up that up. He created instability in already challenging economy and an already challenging and divisive country. This was the wrong move and incredibly selfish....The guy needs money like he needs a hole in his head. This is as "swampy as it gets". This was all done for ego and for selfish reasons."

I include this quote from Rep.Garrat Graves (R-LO), to illustrate even more profoundly what my last post was trying to impart on you. Which again, was that Joe "Biden's great US stewardship ... despite dysfunctional Repubs".

Rep.Garrat Graves (R-LO) quote, is a perfect example of Repubs, fucking things up! Meanwhile the Dems are doing their jobs, fulfilling their fiduciary duties, putting the country back in order and in good standing, for their constituency and all American people and NOT JUST the billionaires and the lunatic fringe.

So you may get yet your recession, but thank your lucky stars, the Repubs won't be in power, if happens.

BTW, is would appear you love to bet on recessions? Well if that's the case Elvis, you're own betting stats would tell you that, YOU WOULD HAVE: made more money, betting a recession would occur (or the economy tanking precipitously), when I Repub Pres. was in office vs. when a Dem Pres. as been office. That is of course, if you' re worth your salt as a betting man?

[MarquisdeSade1]

Articles like these are why I give the NYT my $$.

Joe Biden 1942-2023 good riddance.

David Brooks.

By David Brooks.

Opinion Columnist.

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Nearly two decades ago, I tried to write a group biography about the senators whose offices happened to be on the second floor of the Russell Office Building on Capitol Hill. The group included John McCain, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham and Chuck Hagel. I got to know and study each of those senators during that long-ago-abandoned project.

The more I covered Biden, the more I came to feel affection and respect for him. Then, as now, he could be a tough boss, occasionally angry and hard on his staff. But throughout his life, Biden has usually been on the side of the underdog. I've rarely met a politician so rooted in the unpretentious middle-class ethos of the neighborhood he grew up in. He has a seemingly instinctive ability to bond with those who are hurting.

Our politics have gotten rougher over the ensuing years but that hasn't dampened Biden's basic humanity. When he was vice president, I remember a searing meeting with him shortly after his son Beau died, his grief raw and on the surface. And like many, I've felt the beam of his empathy and care myself. A year and a half ago, the day after my oldest friend fell victim to suicide, Biden heard about it and called me to offer comfort. He just let me talk about my friend and through his words and tone of voice joined me in the suffering. I experienced the solace of being seen.

He has his faults — the tendency to talk too much, the chip on his shoulder about those who think they are smarter than he is, the gaffes, that episode of plagiarism and the moments of confusion — but I've always thought: Give me a leader who identifies with those who feel looked down upon. Give me a leader whose moral compass generally sends him in the right direction.

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But I've also come to fear and loathe Donald Trump. I cannot fathom what damage that increasingly deranged man might do to this country if given a second term. And the fact is that as the polls and the mood of the electorate stand today, Trump has a decent chance of beating Biden in November of next year and regaining power in 2025.

Voters know both men very well at this point, so when I hear Democrats comforting themselves that people will flock to Biden if the alternative on the ballot is Trump, I worry they are kidding themselves. Biden's approval ratings are stubbornly low. In a recent ABC poll, only 30 percent of voters approve of his handling of the economy and only 23 percent approve of his handling of immigration at the southern border. Roughly three-quarters of American voters say that Biden, at 80, is too old to seek a second term. There have been a string of polls showing that large majorities in his own party don't want him to run again. In one survey from 2022, an astounding 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted a different nominee.

I thought Biden's favorability ratings would climb as economic growth has remained relatively strong and as inflation has come down. But it just hasn't happened.

So I'm emotionally torn these days, the way so many are — feeling strong affection and appreciation for Joe Biden, and yet feeling gripped simultaneously by a pounding fear that a Biden-led party will lose next year, and lead to a Trumpian Götterdämmerung. Like many Americans, I've found myself having The Conversation over and over again, with friends, sources and people who work in Democratic politics: whether Biden is the best candidate to defeat Trump, his chances of winning, if there's some better course.

Some Democrats tell me in these talks that they hope their party leaders will somehow persuade Biden to retire and open the door for a fresher candidate. Others argue that Biden needs some stiff primary competition. Most of the filing deadlines for the early primaries are approaching — Nevada and New Hampshire this month, Michigan and California and more in December. There's still time for other Democrats to jump in the race.

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But many party leaders act as if this is madness, speaking with a fervor that is loyal but also patronizing: Biden is vehement about running again, and there's zero chance he'll be talked out of it, so Democrats had better just deal with that fact. Plus a serious primary challenge would merely weaken the inevitable Biden candidacy, the way Ted Kennedy weakened Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Pat Buchanan hurt George H. W. Bush in 1992. We just have to pull this guy over the line.

I don't find this passive fatalism compelling. The party's elected officials are basically urging rank-and-file Democrats not to be anxious about a situation that is genuinely anxiety-inducing. Last month Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey told The Times, "This is only a matter of time until the broad party, and broadly speaking, Americans, converge with the opinions of folks like myself. " Really? Surely if there's a lesson we should have learned from the last decade, it's that we should all be listening harder to what the electorate is trying to say.

I've tried to set aside my affection for the man and look anew at the question of Biden and 2024: Should we really do this?

The thing that so many of us are stuck on is Biden's age, of course. On this subject I have some personal observations. I've been interviewing the man for a quarter-century, including during his presidency. The Republicans who portray him as a doddering old man based on highly selective YouTube clips are wrong. In my interviews with him, he's like a pitcher who used to throw 94 miles an hour who now throws 87. He is clearly still an effective pitcher.

People who work with him allow that he does tire more easily, but they say that he is very much the dynamic force driving this administration. In fact, I've noticed some improvements in his communication style as he's aged. He used to try to cram every fact in the known universe into every answer; now he's more disciplined. When he's describing some national problem, he is more crisp and focused than he used to be, clearer on what is the essential point here — more confidence-inspiring, not less.

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What about four or five years from now, at the end of a second term? Will he still be competent enough to lead? Biden is fit, does not smoke or drink alcohol, exercises frequently and has no serious health conditions, according to the White House. A study in The Journal on Active Aging of Biden's and Trump's health records from before the 2020 elections found that both men could qualify as "super-agers" — the demographic that maintains physical and mental functioning beyond age 80.

But Biden's age is obviously and understandably going to be a greater concern than it was in 2020. It seems especially to worry some White House staff members or whoever is trying to cocoon him so he doesn't make a ruinous tumble. But if the president I see in interviews and at speeches is out campaigning next year against an overweight man roughly his own age, then my guess is that public anxieties on this front will diminish.

To me, age isn't Biden's key weakness. Inflation is. I agree with what Michael Tomasky wrote in The New Republic: Biden's domestic legislative accomplishments are as impressive as any other president's in my adult life. Exactly as he should have, he has directed huge amounts of resources to the people and the places that have been left behind by the global economy. By one Treasury Department estimate, more than 80 percent of the investments sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act are going to counties with below-average college graduation rates and nearly 90 percent are being made in counties with below-average wages. That was the medicine a riven country needed.

But it is also true that Biden's team overlearned the lessons of the Obama years. If Barack Obama didn't stimulate the economy enough during the Great Recession, Biden stimulated it too much, contributing to inflation and the sticker shock people are feeling.

Anger about inflation is ripping across the world, and has no doubt helped lower the approval ratings of leaders left, right and center. Biden's 40 percent approval rating may look bad, but in Canada, Justin Trudeau's approval rating is 36; in Germany Olaf Scholz is at 29; in Britain Rishi Sunak is at 28; in France Emmanuel Macron is at 23; and in Japan Fumio Kishida is also at 23. This is a global phenomenon. As the journalist Josh Barro argued recently, "Inflation is the reason Biden could not deliver on his core promise to return the country to normal and the main reason his poll numbers are bad. ".

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Because of inflation, Americans now trust Trump to handle the economy more than Biden. As ABC News reported, voters are looking back and retroactively elevating their opinion of Trump's presidency. When he left office only 38 percent of Americans approved of his performance as president. Today, 48 percent do, his high-water mark.

Inflation also contributes to a corrosive national mood that you might call American Jaundice. Nearly three out of every four Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Bitterness, cynicism and distrust pervade the body politic. People perceive reality through negative lenses, seeing everything as much worse than it is. At 3. 8 percent, America's unemployment rate is objectively low, but 57 percent of voters say that the unemployment rate is "not so good" or "poor. ".

The nation's bitter state of mind is a self-perpetuating negativity machine. Younger people feel dismissed; the older generations are hogging power. Faith in major institutions is nearing record lows. The country is hungry for some kind of change but is unclear about what that might look like. As the incumbent, Biden will be tasked with trying to tell a good news story of American revival, which is just a tough story to sell in this environment. And Biden is not out there selling it convincingly.

The bracing reality is that Trump's cynicism and fury match the national mood more than Biden's faithful optimism. It's one of the reasons Trump is now leading Biden by 1. 2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. It's one of the reasons Trump is in a stronger polling position now than at any point in 2016 or 2020. It's one of the reasons even some Republicans are mystified by the way Democrats are standing pat behind their incumbent.

"They seem hell bent on nominating the one Democrat who would lose to Donald Trump," Karl Rove told me recently. "They've got a lot of talent on their side, let's not kid ourselves," he continued, pointing to younger Democrats like Gretchen Whitmer, Mitch Landrieu, Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker.

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But once you start to think carefully about whether Democrats could nominate one of those non-Biden alternatives, all sorts of other concerns rise into view. First, there is the Kamala Harris problem. If the door were open, the vice president would probably run even though her poll numbers are lower than Biden's. Her shambolic 2020 presidential campaign does not inspire confidence, and her record includes being a leading player on the administration's divisive immigration policies. People can make an all-star wish list of other Democratic nominees, but in the real world there is simply no easy way to push Harris aside.

Then there's the fact that there is no other viable candidate in the Democratic Party with a national base of support. The rising Democratic stars Rove referred to are all talented, but none have compellingly stood on the national stage. In the polling right now, possible candidates not named Biden or Harris are in the low single digits.

Plus, there are good reasons no major Democrat has so far stepped up to mount a challenge. Anyone who did throw a hat in the ring would face such vitriolic contempt from the party establishment, it would probably be career-ending. Such a candidate might also face withering criticism from rank-and-file Democrats. As a former Obama administration official, Dan Pfeiffer, has pointed out, Biden has higher favorability ratings among Democrats than Trump does among Republicans. Democrats may be anxious about the old guy running, but that doesn't mean they'the automatically warm to someone trying to take him down.

Finally, and most important, when you really start to imagine what it would look like if the Democrats didn't nominate Biden, one whopping issue becomes clear.

A lot of the dump-Biden conversations are based on a false premise: that the Democratic Party brand and agenda are somehow strong and popular enough that any number of younger candidates could win the White House in 2024, and that if Biden were just to retire, all sorts of obstacles and troubles would go with him.

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But Biden is not the sole or even primary problem here. To the extent that these things are separable, it's the Democratic Party as a whole that's ailing. The generic congressional ballot is a broad measure of the strength of the congressional party. Democrats are now behind. According to a Morning Consult poll, Americans rate the Democratic Party as a whole as the more ideologically extreme party by a nine-point margin.

When pollsters ask which party is best positioned to address your concerns, here too, Democrats are trailing. In a recent Gallup poll 53 percent of Americans say Republicans will do a better job of keeping America prosperous over the short term while only 39 percent thought that of the Democrats. Fifty-seven percent of Americans said that the Republicans would do a better job keeping America safe, while only 35 percent favor the Democrats. These are historically high Republican advantages.

Here are the hard, unpleasant facts: The Republicans have a likely nominee who is facing 91 charges. The Republicans in Congress are so controlled by a group of performative narcissists, the whole House has been reduced to chaos. And yet they are still leading the Democrats in these sorts of polling measures.

This is about something deeper than Joe Biden's age. More and more people are telling pollsters that the Republicans, not the Democrats, care about people like me.

When I think back to the glory days of the Democratic Party, the days of the New Deal and the Great Society, even to the days when Joe Biden was a young senator being mentored by the likes of Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Party was at its core a working- and middle-class party. Over the last half-century, the Democrats have become increasingly the party of the well-educated metropolitan class.

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It is not news that the Democrats have been losing white working-class voters ever since the emergence of the Reagan Democrats. But today, the party is bleeding working-class voters of all varieties. As John be. Judis and Ruy Teixeira point out in their forthcoming book, "Where Have All the Democrats Gone?" Democrats have been losing ground among Hispanics for the last few years. In 2012, Barack Obama carried nonwhite voters without a college degree by a 67-point margin. In 2020, Biden carried this group with a 48-point margin. Today, the Democratic ticket leads among this group by a paltry 16 points.

But Democrats are losing something arguably more important than a reliable base of supporters. The party is in danger of letting go of an ethos, a heritage, a tradition. The working-class heart and soul the Democrats cultivated through the Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy years rooted Democratic progressivism in a set of values that emphasized hard work, neighborhood, faith, family and flag. Being connected to Americans' everyday experiences kept the party pinioned to the mainstream.

As the party became dominated by the more educated activist and media sectors, it lost touch with some of what can be called its psychological and emotional power sources. It grew prone to taking flights of fancy in policy and rhetoric, be it Medicare for All or "defund the police," going to places where middle-of-the-road voters would not follow. It became more vulnerable to the insular outlooks of its most privileged and educated members.

This is what happened in 2020. There were moments in that campaign when it looked as if Bernie Sanders was going to run away with the race, sending the party into uncharted ideological waters. Most of the other candidates sprinted leftward. In a June 2019 debate, nine of 10 Democratic presidential candidates raised their hands when asked if they supported decriminalizing border crossings. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand were even further left than their colleagues. The year prior, both of them called for dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement. College-educated voters are less worried about illegal immigration than high school-educated voters and that influence showed.

Joe Biden was nominated in 2020 because he was the cure to this malady. He was the guy most plainly with roots in the working and middle class. He was the guy who didn't engage in the culture war and identity politics theatrics. He was the most moderate major candidate in the race. Democrats from James Clyburn on down swung to Biden because he offered the most plausible connection back to the Democrats' working-class soul — and it worked. Biden gave the party what it needed to come back to life.

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And that is the fact I keep returning to. Biden is not what ails the party. As things stand, he is the Democrats' best shot at curing what ails the party.

There is no other potential nominee who is so credibly steeped in knowing what life is like for working- and middle-class people, just as there was no other potential nominee in 2020. After watching him for a quarter-century, I think he is genuinely most comfortable when he is hanging around the kinds of people he grew up with. He doesn't send out any off-putting faculty lounge vibes. On cultural matters he is most defined by what he doesn't do — needlessly offend people with overly academic verbiage and virtue signaling. That is why I worry when he talks too stridently about people on the right, when he name-calls and denounces wide swaths of people as MAGA.

These cultural and spiritual roots give him not just a style but a governing agenda. He has used the presidency to direct resources to those who live in the parts of the country where wages are lower, where education levels are lower, where opportunities are skimpier. Biden's ethos harks back to the ethos of the New Deal Democratic Party, but it also harks forward to something — to a form of center-left politics that is culturally moderate and economically aggressive. Aggressive in investing resources in the left-behind places, aggressive in using industrial policy to revive manufacturing, green tech and other industries, aggressive in using federal largess to bolster the care economy. His administration has put racial justice at the top of the agenda. It has moved the party beyond the technocratic centrism of the Clinton-Obama years.

It is a first glimpse, but only a first glimpse, of a future Democratic Party that could once again compete for working- and middle-class support and would once again rest on its historical values.

Something almost spiritual is at play here, not just about whether the Democrats can win in 2024, but who the Democrats are.

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As I've thought about Biden's chances in 2024, I find myself deeply conscious of all the disadvantages that he and the Democrats have as they try to retain power, and preparing for what that could bring. But I also find myself arriving foursquare at the conclusion that rejecting the president now would be, in the first place, a mistake. He offers the most plausible route toward winning the working- and middle-class groups the Democrats need, the most plausible route toward building a broad-based majority party.

But it would be worse than a mistake. It would be a renunciation of the living stream of people, ideas and values that flow at the living depths of the party, a stream that propelled its past glories and still points toward future ones.

[EihTooms]

You have one party who 8 members can vote out their leader with 210 confident votes. Another party voted as one unit. You have one side with total disfunction and can't get things together among themselves, while the other are actually writing bills that get passed and signed into law. I will agree with you on the current political environment. However, I disagree with "only" dems or repubs is the only way to solve problems for the country. I will agree that electing competent people is the way to go. Currently, you may be correct, but it is not forever because human will figure a way to be corrupt.

This is how I selected my congressman in when he was not the incumbent: How does your past experience qualify you for the job? Do you seem like a person of good character? Fairly low bars.

This is how I select my congressman when he is the incumbent: Did you write or sponsor bills that has affected me positively? Were you successful in those bills? What was the circumstances on why those bills were not successful? How many bills were you involved with during your 2 years? Higher requirements when asking for continuation of a job.

This should be applied to every election. When I go to work, I don't get to keep my job if I don't do a good job. We are too lazy to ask more of incumbents, when that's exactly how we should treat them, as employees. Primaries are great for your side if he / she wins. General elections is when you want the right person, and sometimes that's a hard decision if he / she is not your primary choice. It's funny to me that tribalism sometime trumps what you believe is right and wrong.

Your approach fits right in with a conventional assumption that voting for The Individual over Party is best.

Unfortunately, I am not aware of any meaningful historical pattern of "an individual" President, Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader staking out, proposing, fighting for, signing off on and passing legislation nor stewarding the ship in some wildly opposite direction than where his / her Party has taken it for decades.

Dems still produce every major recovery, expansion and jobs creation while Repubs still produce every major economic disaster. The former Party happens to favor policies and agendas that work very well to produce demonstrably positive results while the latter has been shown to favor policies and agendas that work very well over and over again to produce Great Repub Depressions, Great Repub Recessions and Massive Repub Jobs Destruction. Regardless how rude, crude, charming, crazy, normal, happy, sad or indifferent The Individual.

The "Party" is actually in control of what happens at crunch time regardless what "The Individual" claims he / she will do in a campaign or even what they did in their private lives. That is, when The Individual finds themselves in a position to make decisions that effect enough people to matter to a national economy and national security.