11 ms·

I grew up in Colorado, and a visit to NCAR was part of my elementary school education. I think it is so critically important to not only employ working scientis

by Kapura 7mo ago

I grew up in Colorado, and a visit to NCAR was part of my elementary school education. I think it is so critically important to not only employ working scientists, but also share that science with the public. The republican machine vehemently disagrees, I guess. I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024.

mort96 7mo ago
Yeah... "I would do nothing different from Biden"[1] probably wasn't the right message at the peak of Biden's unpopularity. I wonder who came up with that, or if it was genuine. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-view-00182883 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
- elif 7mo ago
  I don't think there was as much pushback about his policy as much as there was discontent with an economic slowdown and a somewhat ironic (considering where we find ourselves) frustration with his age.
  - mort96 7mo ago
    Well there was a lot of people, especially on the dem side of the spectrum, who weren't a fan of his public unwavering support of the genocide of the Palestinian people. Internal investigations within the party allegedly agree with this analysis. But yes, people dislike Biden for a lot of things he didn't deserve to be disliked for, such as inflation which was caused by COVID and Trump and which Biden did a fantastic job of controlling, but which parts of the public simply perceived as "inflation went wild under Biden". Still, even though it's not fair, the message "I will do nothing different from (unpopular incumbent)" isn't great campaign strategy, in my opinion.
    - elif 7mo ago
      People who did not like the situation in the middle east did not vote for trump thinking it would improve things. Because we have a true dichotomy I don't think it's reasonable to assume that trump had any sort of "policy" win there
  - qup 7mo ago
    You're confused if you think it was about his age. It was his cognitive ability.
- jahnu 7mo ago
  Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? My probably wrong understanding was that people were still angry about the inflationary consequences of dealing with the pandemic and didn’t believe it was tapering off, didn’t believe that unemployment was low, didn’t believe that real wages were increasing. How could they have combated that?
  - CoastalCoder 7mo ago
    > Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? For what it's worth, I think a lot of us Americans have realized that we don't understand the partisan dynamics either. Many of us are very confused about the ongoing support for Trump. There's clearly a huge chasm in mindsets, and personally I've made little headway in forming a plausible mental model that explains it all.
    - cagenut 7mo ago
      really? or is it just that you don't like the answer so you keep trying to find another one. what historical examples of this very common pattern did you read up on?
      - deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
    - gmac 7mo ago
      Right wingers have a whole different set of moral values that strike me (as someone more on the left) as _immoral_ values. Look up moral foundations theory by Jonathan Haidt and others. I’ve found this in one sense useful (so _that’s_ why Republicans react to ${ISSUE} the way that do!) and in another depressing (how do you _deal_ with people who think that doing what they’re told to do by an authority figure is intrinsically a moral virtue?).
    - starkshift 7mo ago
      There’s no one single thing of course, but there are themes A couple generally unifying themes: 1. People that for the most part want to be left alone and not messed with 2. People that don’t want to be talked down to
- anon7000 7mo ago
  If people payed attention, Kamala’s policies were decently well thought out and not the exact same as Biden. It’s more about how demonized the libs have been, dissatisfaction with “woke culture,” certain groups of conservatives who will never vote pro-choice, and certain populations not feeling like they have a spot in liberal dialogue. (Young men.) and partly because she’s a black woman. I would argue the election had almost NOTHING to do with actual policy or cabinet choices, because Trump should have easily lost if it was. His previous cabinet was a disaster and he can no longer attract the best and brightest due to his controversy. So, exactly as expected, his cabinet is a fucking disaster. People are attracted to the guy who will go apeshit on a system that doesn’t seem to work for them, even when stability & slow progress is actually better. (Fast progress is even better, but that’s not what Trump provides)
  - mort96 7mo ago
    Broadly speaking, people don't pay attention. The message from her campaign[1] was that she would do nothing differently from Biden. This is a mistake even if (especially if!) her actual policies are different from Biden's. The only thing Harris could come up with was, eventually: "unlike Biden, I will have a republican in my cabinet". [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-view-00182883 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
- SmirkingRevenge 7mo ago
  She was basically trying not to go negative on Biden while still in office. Biden and his team were actively pressuring her to stay onside, according to some reporting, which is indefensible. Reprehensible really. She should've burnt the bridge. But it probably wouldn't have made a difference in the end. It was all mostly over when Biden decided to run again in the first place. Kamala moved numbers in states she campaigned in, and she probably could have moved more with enough time. Mistakes were made - but most important and most blameworthy mistake came from the Republicans 4 years earlier, when they rejected their obligation to impeach and convict after Trump nearly killed them all on TV.
- afiori 7mo ago
  based on recentish interviews (or book?) it was likely genuine in the sense of not being performative, but apparently she knew it was both false and the wrong thing to say but said it anyway out of loyalty to Biden.
tootie 7mo ago
This is the classic argument of "only Democrats have agency". 99% of the problem is Republicans, but here we are wishing the Democrats did more. They ran a perfectly fine campaign. Biden passed the biggest climate bill in history. Republicans ran an utterly disgraceful and wantonly malicious campaign based purely on lies and hatred. What I wish is that people voted rationally and maintained an iota of empathy and logic.
- mort96 7mo ago
  My position is: Democrats, or someone else, needs to field good enough candidates, and run good enough campaigns with strong enough messaging, to defeat Republicans. What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?
  - linkjuice4all 7mo ago
    They already did that - the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough (especially after we already got a preview of Trump's Republican party the first time around). They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough. Most of them actually wanted the job because they believed in the mission of government, not because they personally benefited from ruining whatever office or authority they might be given. The only thing the non-Republican voters had to do was show up, hold their nose over whatever bullshit short-coming their rep had (in comparison to "perfect" and whatever it is the Republicans offer to voters), and vote for whichever jerk had a D next to their name. There were only ever two options and U.S. citizens fucked up - through either silence (mostly) or blind support of whatever it is that's happening now.
    - mort96 7mo ago
      > the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough But it wasn't. > They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough Clearly not. They lost. What's your solution? Shout on Hacker News that "it should have been enough"?
rayiner 7mo ago
> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024. No, the damage was done before that. Harris ran the best campaign she was capable of running. We know that because she ran a terrible campaign in 2019, even with all the Obama people backing her. I went to the Iowa primary campaigning in 2019. I saw Harris several times, including at a small event focused at Asians. She’s an abysmal retail politician. Warren was hugging people and taking selfies while Harris was hiding in her tour bus. Harris is obviously an introvert who doesn’t really like people. Given Biden’s age and early talk of being a one-term president, the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began. That’s a gift that will keep giving because South Carolina is now Democrats’ first primary. If Harris runs again she’s virtually guaranteed to begin the campaign with a strong primary start.
- sdenton4 7mo ago
  Harris was the vice president, and was therefore the closest thing to a small-d democratic choice amongst the available options. Otherwise... Why Harris and not Newsom? The better choice would have been Biden stepping out earlier and having a real primary, of course.
  - rayiner 7mo ago
    That’s why Biden should have picked a vice presidential candidate who could run a good campaign in 2024. It’s not like Biden’s age was an unknown factor. Biden himself floated the idea of only running for one term back in 2020.
    - mmooss 7mo ago
      Agreed. If the incumbent doesn't run (term limited or retires), the next nominee is almost always the VP if they want the job. Just look at the history: Roosevelt -> Truman (not Truman -> Barkley: the exception) Eisenhower -> Nixon Johnson -> Humphrey Nixon -> Ford Reagan -> Bush Clinton -> Gore (not Bush -> Cheney, who retired) (not Obama -> Biden, who temporarily retired) Biden -> Harris I can't fathom how a party can pick a VP who isn't an excellent future candidate. JD Vance?
julienchastang 7mo ago
> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024. The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.
- overfeed 7mo ago
  > The problem is that there was no primary. I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate; who can add a final 5-seconds stinger to the end of the many intra-party attack ads against the nominee to say "I am _, and I approve of this message".
  - afiori 7mo ago
    Intra-party elections should definitely be some variant of ranked-choice voting. To at least try to avoid the current fractal polarization.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - mmooss 7mo ago
    > I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate Ironically, that is an anti-democracy talking point. Primaries and the included competition weed out candidates who can't handle attacks. Democracy works far better than governments that aren't chosen openly by their people. It's an extraordinary strength, not a weakness.
    - overfeed 7mo ago
      > Ironically, that is an anti-democracy talking point. There's always a cost/friction between internal democratic competition and external adversarial competition. This is why the US didn't (and doesn't) have direct voting on war declaration - hell, a handful of recent presidents decided that even Congress is too slow for them. You could argue that the lack of a referendum before declaring war is an "anti-democracy talking point"
tempodox 7mo ago
The war on facts continues.
JKCalhoun 7mo ago
"I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024." Ha ha, reminds me of Murcs Law [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law
- Herring 7mo ago
  Seriously. Racism, pedophilia, assassination, war -- I'd vote for a dead cat over this. Americans can't get that, they have a major problem.

by Kapura 7mo ago

mort96 7mo ago

Yeah... "I would do nothing different from Biden"[1] probably wasn't the right message at the peak of Biden's unpopularity. I wonder who came up with that, or if it was genuine. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-view-00182883 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...

elif 7mo ago
I don't think there was as much pushback about his policy as much as there was discontent with an economic slowdown and a somewhat ironic (considering where we find ourselves) frustration with his age.
- mort96 7mo ago
  Well there was a lot of people, especially on the dem side of the spectrum, who weren't a fan of his public unwavering support of the genocide of the Palestinian people. Internal investigations within the party allegedly agree with this analysis. But yes, people dislike Biden for a lot of things he didn't deserve to be disliked for, such as inflation which was caused by COVID and Trump and which Biden did a fantastic job of controlling, but which parts of the public simply perceived as "inflation went wild under Biden". Still, even though it's not fair, the message "I will do nothing different from (unpopular incumbent)" isn't great campaign strategy, in my opinion.
  - elif 7mo ago
    People who did not like the situation in the middle east did not vote for trump thinking it would improve things. Because we have a true dichotomy I don't think it's reasonable to assume that trump had any sort of "policy" win there
- qup 7mo ago
  You're confused if you think it was about his age. It was his cognitive ability.
jahnu 7mo ago
Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? My probably wrong understanding was that people were still angry about the inflationary consequences of dealing with the pandemic and didn’t believe it was tapering off, didn’t believe that unemployment was low, didn’t believe that real wages were increasing. How could they have combated that?
- CoastalCoder 7mo ago
  > Question from a European who doesn’t deeply understand your partisan politics: what specifically should they have done differently? For what it's worth, I think a lot of us Americans have realized that we don't understand the partisan dynamics either. Many of us are very confused about the ongoing support for Trump. There's clearly a huge chasm in mindsets, and personally I've made little headway in forming a plausible mental model that explains it all.
  - cagenut 7mo ago
    really? or is it just that you don't like the answer so you keep trying to find another one. what historical examples of this very common pattern did you read up on?
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
  - gmac 7mo ago
    Right wingers have a whole different set of moral values that strike me (as someone more on the left) as _immoral_ values. Look up moral foundations theory by Jonathan Haidt and others. I’ve found this in one sense useful (so _that’s_ why Republicans react to ${ISSUE} the way that do!) and in another depressing (how do you _deal_ with people who think that doing what they’re told to do by an authority figure is intrinsically a moral virtue?).
  - starkshift 7mo ago
    There’s no one single thing of course, but there are themes A couple generally unifying themes: 1. People that for the most part want to be left alone and not messed with 2. People that don’t want to be talked down to
anon7000 7mo ago
If people payed attention, Kamala’s policies were decently well thought out and not the exact same as Biden. It’s more about how demonized the libs have been, dissatisfaction with “woke culture,” certain groups of conservatives who will never vote pro-choice, and certain populations not feeling like they have a spot in liberal dialogue. (Young men.) and partly because she’s a black woman. I would argue the election had almost NOTHING to do with actual policy or cabinet choices, because Trump should have easily lost if it was. His previous cabinet was a disaster and he can no longer attract the best and brightest due to his controversy. So, exactly as expected, his cabinet is a fucking disaster. People are attracted to the guy who will go apeshit on a system that doesn’t seem to work for them, even when stability & slow progress is actually better. (Fast progress is even better, but that’s not what Trump provides)
- mort96 7mo ago
  Broadly speaking, people don't pay attention. The message from her campaign[1] was that she would do nothing differently from Biden. This is a mistake even if (especially if!) her actual policies are different from Biden's. The only thing Harris could come up with was, eventually: "unlike Biden, I will have a republican in my cabinet". [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-view-00182883 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/08/harris-biden-the-vi...
SmirkingRevenge 7mo ago
She was basically trying not to go negative on Biden while still in office. Biden and his team were actively pressuring her to stay onside, according to some reporting, which is indefensible. Reprehensible really. She should've burnt the bridge. But it probably wouldn't have made a difference in the end. It was all mostly over when Biden decided to run again in the first place. Kamala moved numbers in states she campaigned in, and she probably could have moved more with enough time. Mistakes were made - but most important and most blameworthy mistake came from the Republicans 4 years earlier, when they rejected their obligation to impeach and convict after Trump nearly killed them all on TV.
afiori 7mo ago
based on recentish interviews (or book?) it was likely genuine in the sense of not being performative, but apparently she knew it was both false and the wrong thing to say but said it anyway out of loyalty to Biden.

tootie 7mo ago

This is the classic argument of "only Democrats have agency". 99% of the problem is Republicans, but here we are wishing the Democrats did more. They ran a perfectly fine campaign. Biden passed the biggest climate bill in history. Republicans ran an utterly disgraceful and wantonly malicious campaign based purely on lies and hatred. What I wish is that people voted rationally and maintained an iota of empathy and logic.

mort96 7mo ago
My position is: Democrats, or someone else, needs to field good enough candidates, and run good enough campaigns with strong enough messaging, to defeat Republicans. What's your stance? "We should just ask the Republicans nicely to stop"? Will that work? What happens if they just keep being evil?
- linkjuice4all 7mo ago
  They already did that - the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough (especially after we already got a preview of Trump's Republican party the first time around). They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough. Most of them actually wanted the job because they believed in the mission of government, not because they personally benefited from ruining whatever office or authority they might be given. The only thing the non-Republican voters had to do was show up, hold their nose over whatever bullshit short-coming their rep had (in comparison to "perfect" and whatever it is the Republicans offer to voters), and vote for whichever jerk had a D next to their name. There were only ever two options and U.S. citizens fucked up - through either silence (mostly) or blind support of whatever it is that's happening now.
  - mort96 7mo ago
    > the Democrats are/were clearly not the same as the Republicans and that should have been enough But it wasn't. > They already ran strong enough campaigns and their candidates were already good enough Clearly not. They lost. What's your solution? Shout on Hacker News that "it should have been enough"?

rayiner 7mo ago

> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024. No, the damage was done before that. Harris ran the best campaign she was capable of running. We know that because she ran a terrible campaign in 2019, even with all the Obama people backing her. I went to the Iowa primary campaigning in 2019. I saw Harris several times, including at a small event focused at Asians. She’s an abysmal retail politician. Warren was hugging people and taking selfies while Harris was hiding in her tour bus. Harris is obviously an introvert who doesn’t really like people. Given Biden’s age and early talk of being a one-term president, the smart choice was to nominate Elizabeth Warren, who is a fantastic campaigner. But Harris was the choice to appease the identity activists. They killed Dems’ chances in 2024 even before Biden’s term began. That’s a gift that will keep giving because South Carolina is now Democrats’ first primary. If Harris runs again she’s virtually guaranteed to begin the campaign with a strong primary start.

sdenton4 7mo ago
Harris was the vice president, and was therefore the closest thing to a small-d democratic choice amongst the available options. Otherwise... Why Harris and not Newsom? The better choice would have been Biden stepping out earlier and having a real primary, of course.
- rayiner 7mo ago
  That’s why Biden should have picked a vice presidential candidate who could run a good campaign in 2024. It’s not like Biden’s age was an unknown factor. Biden himself floated the idea of only running for one term back in 2020.
  - mmooss 7mo ago
    Agreed. If the incumbent doesn't run (term limited or retires), the next nominee is almost always the VP if they want the job. Just look at the history: Roosevelt -> Truman (not Truman -> Barkley: the exception) Eisenhower -> Nixon Johnson -> Humphrey Nixon -> Ford Reagan -> Bush Clinton -> Gore (not Bush -> Cheney, who retired) (not Obama -> Biden, who temporarily retired) Biden -> Harris I can't fathom how a party can pick a VP who isn't an excellent future candidate. JD Vance?

julienchastang 7mo ago

> I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024. The problem is that there was no primary. That really (really) hurt Democrats not only for that election cycle, but for future ones too, where candidates could have made their names known even if they did not end up getting the nomination.

overfeed 7mo ago
> The problem is that there was no primary. I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate; who can add a final 5-seconds stinger to the end of the many intra-party attack ads against the nominee to say "I am _, and I approve of this message".
- afiori 7mo ago
  Intra-party elections should definitely be some variant of ranked-choice voting. To at least try to avoid the current fractal polarization.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- mmooss 7mo ago
  > I think a primary would have led to worse results for the Dems: candidates snipping at each on the eve of an elections is a gift to the opposing candidate Ironically, that is an anti-democracy talking point. Primaries and the included competition weed out candidates who can't handle attacks. Democracy works far better than governments that aren't chosen openly by their people. It's an extraordinary strength, not a weakness.
  - overfeed 7mo ago
    > Ironically, that is an anti-democracy talking point. There's always a cost/friction between internal democratic competition and external adversarial competition. This is why the US didn't (and doesn't) have direct voting on war declaration - hell, a handful of recent presidents decided that even Congress is too slow for them. You could argue that the lack of a referendum before declaring war is an "anti-democracy talking point"

tempodox 7mo ago

The war on facts continues.

JKCalhoun 7mo ago

"I deeply wish the democrats had run a better campaign in 2024." Ha ha, reminds me of Murcs Law [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murc%27s_law

Herring 7mo ago
Seriously. Racism, pedophilia, assassination, war -- I'd vote for a dead cat over this. Americans can't get that, they have a major problem.