The 2020s - well, really any time post 2010 - is a new era of fraud. The last elements of self-restraint honor culture have vanished, and the cultishness of culture wars makes people eager to throw their money at people who will tell them the right lies.
The number of Republicans who where willing to vote for Trump in the first election but not the second cost them the second election. That’s a common pattern where electing people you don’t like ends up weakening the party long term.
I am not saying you need to love everyone you vote for, but for people who are “holding their nose” you have to consider both short term and long term effects. To use a Democratic example, Biden is likely to be dead weight going in the 2024 election.
IMO, Biden v Trump 2024 is a poison pill for the whichever party wins the presidency. Political power is about more than who’s sitting in the white house.
This isn't always possible. I would call myself left in most senses, but I value 2a, and am a campaign badge holder. I am almost always voting against my biggest interests no matter what way I may vote.
The real answer here is more parties that reflect Americans interests better than two parties ever can, imo.
The precipitous drop in readership at the WaPo and related layoffs are a hopeful sign that perhaps a correction is in the works.
Meanwhile, Biden makes false claims about his past all the time, such as how he used to drive an 18 wheeler.
Or this fun one about his use of Amtrak:
“When I became vice president, one of the Capitol Hill newspapers estimated that I had taken more than 7,000 round trips on Amtrak over my career,” Biden said. “I think that’s an exaggeration. I’m going to rely on those two conductors. … One of them was a guy named Angelo Negri.”
Biden continued, telling the audience Negri estimated Biden had traveled 1.5 million miles on Amtrak trains around his fourth or fifth year as vice president, which would have been in 2013 or 2014.
“My mom was sick, and I used to try to come home almost every weekend as vice president to see her,” Biden said. “I got on the train and Angelo Negri came up and he goes, ‘Joey, baby,’ and he grabbed my cheek like he always did. … He said, ‘Joey, what’s the big deal? One-point-three million miles on Air Force Two? Do you know how many miles you traveled on Amtrak?’ I said, ‘No, Angie, I don’t know.’ He gave me the calculation and he said ‘You traveled 1.5 million miles on Amtrak.;”
However, an obituary for Negri says the conductor retired in 1993, decades before Biden’s supposed story took place, while he was still a senator from Delaware. Biden’s mother died in 2010.
110 * 2 * 164 * 36 ~ 1.3 million miles.
My hypothesis is that an Amtrak conductor gave Biden this calculation, but his brain associated the story with a different, more colorful conductor.
[https://ballotpedia.org/117th_Congress_legislative_calendar]
What's their job?
Who's their boss? To whom are they accountable?
They appear to be doing the job they're paid to do. Despite claims that they should behave counter to their employers' interests.
> Biden makes false claims about his past all the time
My favorite was about how he was in prison with Nelson Mandela. I can only assume that due to a transitive property of the Mandela effect, Biden died in prison.
The Republican party recruited him. Same way they recruited a bunch of actors from ExploreTalent.
(1) He was a low-level finance guy, making ~55k/year, with a criminal background in Brazil (2) He got a jr exec job at a company that turned out to be a ponzi scheme (3) When the ponzi went bust, a bunch of the former execs started a new company. That company paid him between $750k-$5 million, depending which (contradictory) disclosure of his you believe. (4) Shortly afterwards, he began running for Congress
Raises more Qs than answers, but seems like the type of thing where there'll be a follow-up