wayfriend wrote:I respect your desire to change the topic BEFORE you even answer the question.
Don't be deliberately disingenuous, WF... or is your fanaticism so blinkering that you truly do not see the point I've been making?
Read my lips. For the record,Trump is in my book a pretty appalling POTUS. I will take that as a given. No argument.
Sure, I may disagree with you on some of the things you consider as evidencing his "badness", but there's more than enough other stuff there to result in my judgement. I've talked time and again about how low he as an individual has set the bar.
wayfriend wrote:But first, by what relative measure, is Trump --- who continuously lies about things that are so important that the public is endangered, who circumvents the Constitution when he likes because his checks-and-balances have checked out, who is actively trying to undermine elections, whom every world leader takes advantage of because of his combination of narcissism and cluelessness, and who has turned the DoJ into his political police force --- not bad?
There's only one relative measure that is at all important... and surely you must understand this? It's 5th grade logic. Here it comes... just for you:-
Do Trump and the Pubs make a
worse POTUS/admin than Biden and the Dems would?
NB... "worse"... both a relative and comparative term. And this is what nobody is hearing about.
It's actually
more important for an opposition to highlight why it would be better to govern than it is for an incumbent administration. The incumbent admin can cherrypick and point to what it considers to be positive achievements during its tenure - but an opposition cannot. An admin can point at realities, so an opposition is best-served highlighting plans.
Sadly and ludicrously, again the DNC's sole visible message, call to action and justification for such - repeated ad infinitum by both the party and the party faithful - is merely this:-
"Vote for us because we're not Trump!"
As a piece of messaging and an intended galvanising call to action, that is embarrassingly facile, overweeningly trite and pathetically incompetent. Is that seriously all the Dems have got???.
wayfriend wrote:And, yes, I can argue that a Dem president who does not do those things is subjectively better. With ease.
You do realise that you're now calling hypotheticals into evidence? Things that haven't taken place yet? You're seriously placing weight on things that Biden, if elected, may not do?
What - you mean like order the execution of an American citizen without any due process whatsoever? That sort of thing? We can bank on that, right? I mean a Dem POTUS would NEVER do that...
Again, is that all the Dems have got? How inspiring... what a beacon of positivity the DNC must be...
Let me use my simplistic analogy of viruses again. Herpes is a virus I categorically do not want to contract. I do not need people to tell me that it's a really undesirable thing and something I want to avoid, because I already know that. I do not need anyone to state the bleeding obvious to me.
But suppose in three months' time, I am told I will be forcibly injected with either herpes or the mystery contents of syringe X - I merely get to choose which one? How fucking helpful do you think it would be for a load of frothing at the mouth and swivel-eyed zealots to do nothing but yell at me that herpes is bad?
Not helpful at all - I
absolutely need to be told why the contents of syringe X are going to be
better for me. I
absolutely need that pesky relative/comparative information. Currently, given what I am being told about syringe X by its content providers (basically nothing at all, apart from the utterly irrelevant and already long-known fact that "HERPES IS BAD!"), for all I know, it contains smallpox or ebola.
One last time... "Because we're not Trump" is simply not a campaign platform. I mean, it's again literally doing nothing more than stating the bleeding obvious. I imagine that the entire US electorate already knows that the Dems aren't the Pubs... so why even bother? God you guys really are incompetent cretins if that's your strategy - and yet it's the only one in evidence.
Capisce? Now if you want to obfuscate and duck that piece of childishly simple 5th grade logic, go to it. It won't come as any surprise...