Vee

Both more interesting than Jensen Buchanan on a bad day.

If I know them - and I do, a little - they're likely being prudent. The production watched the Dugpa forums like a hawk for leaks during the show's production and run. Oh my:

@DRW50 Just deleted:

Trump is handling the morning well:

I think Warren's come back much, much stronger than I thought she would six to nine months ago. She's really impressed me with how well she can connect to people in a plainspun, straight talk way that Hillary was always too guarded to be able to do three years ago, at least not when in public view. She has a similar appeal to Joe in that way, with how blunt but also light she can be, and she's already proved skillful at taking apart right-wing-framed media questions. (Her dismantling of, I think it was, the same old 'how are you gonna pay for it?' framing at a debate from a CNN or MSNBC moderator a few weeks or months ago was a thing of beauty.) So we'll see what happens. I think she's tough as nails, and unlike Hillary she has not been built up as the Antichrist for over twenty years.

All I can say is this took many people by surprise, me included and everyone I know who is usually in the know (Twin Peaks Archive had the heads up on Season 3 the weekend before). I can't see the Hollywood Horror things jumping on nothing, but the timing is right. We'll see. The full Reddit thread in question.

A lot of the left love Warren - I count myself among the left. There's the left, which is a very big tent, and then there's the dead end, Bernie or bust, Splinter/Intercept faction. They're two different things to me. But as for the latter, they're not enough if the candidate isn't Hillary IMO. I heard a very convincing argument today that it's Warren period now, because the impeachment mess is going to drag Joe down with Trump in terms of association, which I didn't believe before. I think Joe will always be loved by a segment of the base and should be despite his flaws, but I do think all Warren has to do is sit back and let this taint Joe. Bernie is behind both of them.

Awwww. @DRW50 From Reddit, and apparently not just about a tour or anniversary special. Next year is the 30th anniversary.

If Joe pledged to serve one term and endorse the veep? It's doable. But I really don't want him as the nominee. Not because I think he can't win but because it will leave us in even more pain and strife come Inauguration Day as a big tent than we will need after Trump. It'll make the petulant left revolutions once Obama won and they couldn't complain about Bush anymore - and had to make a new Democratic president the enemy - look sedate. We simply do not have time for that shít going forward, not nationally, not globally. Also, as has been noted, Joe is a deeply flawed (if good) man who often digs himself deeper. His solutions will often be to shrug it off and try to get back to working with a GOP-choked Congress like it's 1991. FWIW: My ideal ticket is probably Warren/Castro. IMO Castro is going to be POTUS someday - I've been saying that since 2012.

That WaPo piece is another smoking gun. And impeachment approval is rising by the hour. This is moving very, very fast. I love Kamala and would generally agree with the above, but if we get Biden as the nom (please no, I want Warren) he will likely need Harris or Warren as a running mate.

Operation Grace Under Fire continues:

Wow. This is going to continue to go poorly for the Times - this is their latest response to getting ratioed over yesterday's story.

Many of them are deeply entrenched in old Beltway thinking, which leans towards worship of Reagan and center-right bipartisanship (Dean Baquet, etc). For the later generations there's also deep self-consciousness about being seen as 'elites' and not feeling masculine/genuine enough - hence, they hew towards conservative framing of the center-right being more 'true American' and Democrats being 'wimps.' They don't want to be wimps or be seen as not genuine, so they first unconsciously and then increasingly consciously adopt GOP framing of issues and disdain Democrats and liberals and their ideas. That's why everybody asks Democrats 'how you gonna pay for it??' and never the GOP - because in a lot of media's minds, the right is the 'fiscally responsible' party and Dems are just dreamy wusses. Many of them don't fully realize they're doing it. The biggest issue behind what the NYT is doing though is that it's at war with itself and deeply cognitively dissonant. It wants laurels and applause for reporting on Trump and being the proud journalistic 'resistance' - and they do have good writers doing good stories - while simultaneously desperately still trying to curry favor with conservative readers and prove they are 'bipartisan' and 'not elite' with cooked op-eds and headlines favoring right wing framing, and also still having deeply enmeshed, co-dependent, sympathetic access relationships with much of the Trump White House to do stories. This goes triple for people like Maggie Haberman, who has been covering Trump since her days with Page Six in NYC years ago and has had a symbiotic relationship with him when she was just a society journalist. They're too close for comfort. They want it both ways - they want to be seen as the elite in journalism, want praise for courage from the left, acceptance from the right, and to never have to acknowledge any liberal complaints - but don't want to admit it. Speaking of tawdry gossip: