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Things seem to be going quite well for Joe Biden


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What motive? What is Tara Reade gaining from this?

The first article in which she outlines her experience was March 24. (Two days later she did her interview with Katie Halper)

- Three weeks after Super Tuesday
- After Michigan, Wisconsin, Washington and on and on and on and on

The nomination was well settled by the time her accusation came forward. Can someone please explain the mechanics of how this conspiracy was supposed to work to help Sanders?

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6 minutes ago, Ghost of LL said:

But at the same time, if some guy sexually assaulted you, wouldn't you be politically opposed to him?  Wouldn't you want to time the release of your nuclear bomb on him so as to do maximum damage?

yes, you would think.  but also she was a "biden supporter" until fairly recently, which seems to work against this long-held grudge.  i'm not about to predict the behavior of any woman, let alone someone who's been through some shit, so it's not like any of it has to make sense.

given what i know of the situation, which is not very much, here is my take on a possible "true" story of what actually happened: biden and reade had an "inappropriate work relationship" that often crossed the line of both workplace and committed relationships etiquette.  maybe it was some touching, maybe it was some dirty talk whispering in the ear, who knows.  but i think whatever happened that day was an escalation of an actual relationship they were in the middle of.  not saying it was totally consensual, but also not saying that it was completely isolated.

then she went on with her day and her life.  and minutes or hours or days later, something happened (i don't know the timeline).  either she felt stupid, felt guilty, felt used, whatever.  or maybe she thought it would go somewhere and joe tamped down expectations and that set her off.  again, i'm just spitballing.  but something happened that took this from an occurrence to an assault, at least in her mind, and that's when she told people about it, and described it in the way she did.  i'm assuming she never shared other details about her relationship with him until then.  i would also assume she really liked him, even if it wasn't in a sexual way, at least until 2017.  but anyway.

all this fan-fiction is really my way of saying i mostly believe her, in that i mostly believe that something like this did actually take place.  what it meant or what it actually was are immaterial to that fact.  i don't think she just made it up.  if some version of this ^^ story came out, it wouldn't surprise me.  of course any version of this story or hearing that she actually did make it up wouldn't surprise me either at this point.

but it's out there now, and biden denied it full-stop.  which is the best way to handle it, i suppose, if you've got an election to win. 

 

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8 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

What motive? What is Tara Reade gaining from this?

i would assume this is one of those "he beat the guy i was supporting so now i want to ruin his chances in the general election" situation.  or potentially get biden to drop out over the shame of this thrusting bernie in as the presumptive nominee?

she's not a political operative and none of this seems especially coordinated or coached, so who knows.  i don't think it has to really make sense.

i'm personally not leaning too hard on the "she's doing it for bernie" angle.

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1 minute ago, washparkhorn said:

The quicker we rip off the bandaid and TPTB decide who will be the nominee (Biden or another), the better our chances in November. 

I assume the insiders who picked Biden to be the nominee in the Party have a contingency plan.

lulz, it's biden.  barring some unexpected health situation, he's the nominee.  embrace the mediocrity.

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3 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

i would assume this is one of those "he beat the guy i was supporting so now i want to ruin his chances in the general election" situation.  or potentially get biden to drop out over the shame of this thrusting bernie in as the presumptive nominee?

What about her would lead us to believe she has such a fanatical devotion to Bernie Sanders?

 

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5 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

What about her would lead us to believe she has such a fanatical devotion to Bernie Sanders?

i don't think anything.  but there are enough breadcrumbs to support this stance if you're that type of person and you squint hard enough.  like i said, if anything, it would be out of revenge, and bernie was the guy biden beat.  i was just trying to answer your question.  acting like there's "zero potential motive" is just dishonest.

again, i'm not leaning hard on the bernie angle.  that said, a 27 year old allegation coming out and gaining traction during a general election cycle isn't a coincidence.

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When Biden lost Alyssa Milano's 100% support on Tuesday, the matter was certain to escalate. 

The Reade story became heated in early 2019 - after Reade supported another Biden accuser and was savaged by Biden supporters. See - https://medium.com/@AlexandraTaraReade/powerful-men-and-the-women-they-choose-to-destroy-2f471fa1b2b2

 

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Just now, henrygandorf said:

acting like there's "zero potential motive" is just dishonest.

All I'm asking for is a rational explanation as to motivation, which doesn't seem unreasonable to me when being sold a conspiracy theory.

- I don't see any evidence of Reade having a deep devotion to Sanders.
- Even if she did, it doesn't seem rational to me that she would try to blow it up on Bernie's behalf 3 weeks after Bernie effectively lost the nomination. There was a full year of Democratic Presidential primary before that during which she could've torpedoed Joe.
- I don't see a money motivation.
- I don't see what any of this has to do with Putin.
- I don't see a position/job motivation.

Quote

again, i'm not leaning hard on the bernie angle.  that said, a 27 year old allegation coming out and gaining traction during a general election cycle isn't a coincidence.

You're right, it's not a coincidence.

Just like why Blasey-Ford waited until she did to come forward about Kavanaugh. Victims of sexual abuse largely want it to disappear but that becomes difficult/impossible when the national media is talking about their attacker 24/7. So they speak up because the din of noise about that painful memory becomes unbearable.

If we're Occam's Razoring this, a powerful and egotistical Senator with a decades-long history of sexual impropriety with women fingered a young staffer without consent, who kept as silent for decades.

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Kavanaugh's behavior when questioned was, at least for me, reason enough to oppose his nomination. The dude completely lost it and threw a temper tantrum in front of the whole world.  And the sense of entitlement was incredible. Everything about it was the last thing you wanted to see from a Supreme Court judge with a lifetime appointment. 

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Kavanaugh's behavior when questioned was, at least for me, reason enough to oppose his nomination. The dude completely lost it and threw a temper tantrum in front of the whole world.  And the sense of entitlement was incredible. Everything about it was the last thing you wanted to see from a Supreme Court judge with a lifetime appointment. 

this.  not to mention that for most of the world, this was our first real exposure to kavanaugh.  biden has been a public figure at the highest level for a long time.  credibility isn't always just about the accuser.

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2 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Yep.

Trump does and he is going to run on it all day long (with a healthy dose of Joe Biden created China market power, ergo, the Coronavirus is Biden's fault).

It is his formula for "victory" - go after the unclean hands to inoculate himself from the same types of accusations. The strategy works because Clinton and now Biden had an air of credibility where Trump never had any. They fall further when the same lens is put on one of them. That is trumper politics 101. 

Get it over with now - while Americans are in the Fog of Coronovirus. Try to install someone with credibility this time. 

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21 minutes ago, Pig Bellmont said:

No one outside Twitter gives a shit about this story from 1993. America elected Trump. Biden just has to deny and move forward to the convention 

Yup, this too. In the absolute worst case scenario, I'll still very happily and with a huge smile on my face vote for a rapey Joe Biden over super-rapey Donald Trump. And that's looking only at rapiness factors and not even starting with the absolute shitfest that is the current trump administration. Literally anyone would be better than what we have currently.

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Joe Biden is a bigger net positive to the next decade of Progressives politics than installing Bernie Sanders as the candidate. A second Blue Wave occurring in a redistricting year is all but guaranteed now while putting up Sanders would significantly weaken both this election and drawing new seats for Democrats in state legislatures controlled by D’s.

but that’s just my opinion as a Warren voter

Edited by StassneyHorn
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Has there been any polling done to analyze the impact of these allegations?  The news broke over a month ago and it seems Biden's current numbers are only getting stronger, meanwhile the only people I see online discussing it are the #NeverBiden Bernie Bros and the Trumpkins, but obviously that's anecdotal and has no bearing on the populace as a whole.

Edited by Chuckie Finster
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11 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Has there been any polling done to analyze the impact of these allegations?

Not as far as I know, and honestly the only thing I could see it doing is improving Biden's numbers as partisans harden against a perceived attack.

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4 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

maybe take 10 more seconds of research...that was her FIRST claim

First, Ford’s testimony that the assault occurred in the summer of 1982, when just 15, conflicted with both her therapist’s notes and the text message Ford sent to the Washington Post. According to reporter Emma Brown, Ford claimed she had been assaulted in the mid-1980s; and the therapist’s notes stated Ford had been the victim of an attempted rape in her late teens. But by that time, Kavanaugh was attending Yale, so Ford’s recasting of the attack to the summer of 1982 is suspect. 

Ford's story changed in key ways

Ford’s retelling of the alleged sexual assault also included several conflicting accounts of the number of individuals at the gathering. The therapist’s notes stated that four boys had attempted to rape Ford. (Ford claims her therapist confused the total number of boys at the party with the number of boys who had attacked her.) 

Later, in her July letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Ford again placed the number of individuals at the party at five, stating the gathering included her and four other individuals. But Ford then identified the four by name, and that group included three boys and one girl. And finally, during her Senate testimony, Ford unequivocally stated that “there were four boys I remember specifically being there,” in addition to her friend Leland Keyser.

Another significant change in the scenario came when Ford testified about the location of the party. She had originally told the Washington Post that the attack took place at a house not far from the country club. Yet, when Mitchell revealed a map of the relevant locations and reminded Ford that she had described the attack as having occurred near the country club, Ford backtracked: “I would describe [the house] as it's somewhere between my house and the country club in that vicinity that’s shown in your picture.”  Ford added that the country club was a 20-minute drive from her home. 

More:Don't count on FBI to clear up the Kavanaugh-Ford mess. Its record is flawed.

3 big questions hanging after Christine Blasey Ford's testimony on Brett Kavanaugh

How could both Kavanaugh and Ford seem to tell the truth? Trauma, alcohol and time.

Finally, Ford altered her description of the interior layout of the home and the details of the party and her escape.  A “short” stairwell turned into a “narrow” one. The gathering moved from a small family room where the kids drank beer (and which Ford distinguished from the living room through which she fled the house) when she spoke to the Washington Post, to a home described in her actual testimony as having a "small living room/family room-type area.” And in an obvious tell to the change, Ford suggested that she could draw a floor plan of the house.

These four points are significant. First, because Ford had waited 30-plus years to report the purported attack, a therapist’s notes from Ford's sessions with her husband countered claims that Ford had invented the assault to derail Kavanaugh’s confirmation. But the notes did not name Ford’s attacker. And the timing of the assault summarized by her therapist, whom Ford saw individually the following year, conflicted with Ford’s current claims against Kavanaugh.

The final three contradictions are even more significant because in each circumstance Ford altered her story only after Kavanaugh and Senate investigators had obtained evidence to disprove her original tale. For instance, investigators had obtained statements from Kavanaugh and the two men and one female lifelong friend of Ford’s, and they all denied any recollection of the gathering. 

These contradictions mean Ford's not credible

Investigators also spoke with former classmates of Kavanaugh, including two men who showed staffers the “party houses” near the country club during the relevant time period. And the detailed description of the home interior Ford originally provided allowed investigators to compare her story to the layout of the homes of the individuals Ford identified. But then Ford changed her description of the house’s floor plan. 

Since media leaks of Ford’s charges first broke, Kavanaugh and his supporters have stressed the impossibility of proving the negative: Kavanaugh could not prove he did not attack Ford. But Kavanaugh could prove that Ford’s story could not possibly have happened by showing that none of the individuals at the supposed party lived in a house near the country club, and that none of their houses matched that described by Ford.  Kavanaugh and investigators were poised to do so when Ford changed her story.

Open-minded Americans of all stripes should see that — emotions aside — Ford’s testimony is completely devoid of credibility: so much so, that Mitchell told the Senate this week that Ford’s allegations do not even meet the preponderance of evidence standard. That standard, which governs in civil litigation, asks whether it is more likely than not that an event occurred. 

Yes, victims must be believed. But Ford is not a victim — at least not of Kavanaugh.

Margot Cleveland is a lawyer and an adjunct instructor at the University of Notre Dame. Follow her on Twitter: @ProfMJCleveland

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/10/03/christine-blasey-ford-changing-memories-not-credible-kavanaugh-column/1497661002/

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1 minute ago, ChickenSandwich said:

maybe take 10 more seconds of research...that was her FIRST claim

First, Ford’s testimony that the assault occurred in the summer of 1982, when just 15, conflicted with both her therapist’s notes and the text message Ford sent to the Washington Post. According to reporter Emma Brown, Ford claimed she had been assaulted in the mid-1980s; and the therapist’s notes stated Ford had been the victim of an attempted rape in her late teens. But by that time, Kavanaugh was attending Yale, so Ford’s recasting of the attack to the summer of 1982 is suspect. 

That was her written statement to Congress.

"Mid-1980s" and "late teens" are not specific terms.  Casual references to time and ages in a text message and to a therapist are in no way contradictory to her testimony, but of course you know that.  Any time she has been asked to give a specific date, she has been consistent.  

Interesting that Margot Cleveland's bio omits that she writes for The Federalist, National Review, and the Washington Examiner.

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26 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Has there been any polling done to analyze the impact of these allegations?  The news broke over a month ago and it seems Biden's current numbers are only getting stronger, meanwhile the only people I see online discussing it are the #NeverBiden Bernie Bros and the Trumpkins, but obviously that's anecdotal and has no bearing on the populace as a whole.

Well it hasn’t really gotten a lot of coverage in the media to have an impact yet. I think polling after the Tara Reade interview on Sunday on national tv will say one way or the other.  

A live hearing with counsel would tell us more. We can dive into his childhood, his college life, and any other improprieties to see if Joe Biden is indeed, the sexual predator that he is accused of being.

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5 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

That was her written statement to Congress.

"Mid-1980s" and "late teens" are not specific terms.  Casual references to time and ages in a text message and to a therapist are in no way contradictory to her testimony, but of course you know that.  Any time she has been asked to give a specific date, she has been consistent.  

Interesting that Margot Cleveland's bio omits that she writes for The Federalist, National Review, and the Washington Examiner.

She lied under oath about a fear of flying....something so simple and easy to disprove...She claimed witnesses, who all denied her recollection; Tara has her neighbor, a Joe Biden supporter.

She has never been able to give an actual date, not even a month and year together..best she has is a moving year..but you can read, you know that.  You have a clear double standard, no biggie

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Just now, Hank Kingsley said:

The Democratic Party is apparently fully controlled by black people in South Carolina. 

Is this why all those candidates dropped/endorsed Joe right before Super Tuesday?

That's what we're going to pretend happened?

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I have zero issues with the inconsistencies in Ford's accounts. I can't remember exact details of anything that happened in the early 80s; I have no reason to believe sexual assault memories should be in some special category of the brain where everything is frozen in perfect detail.

Ford was 100% believable.

If I was a juror? Then no I don't convict Kavanaugh. But that's not the standard.

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4 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

She lied under oath about a fear of flying....something so simple and easy to disprove...She claimed witnesses, who all denied her recollection; Tara has her neighbor, a Joe Biden supporter.

She has never been able to give an actual date, not even a month and year together..best she has is a moving year..but you can read, you know that.  You have a clear double standard, no biggie

You claimed she didn't know when it happened.  The answer is Summer of 1982.  There has never been a claim otherwise.  Sorry if it hurts your feelings though and you feel a need to delete your original post and then bring up other points to try and distract from you being wrong.  

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13 minutes ago, Enchubben said:

Well it hasn’t really gotten a lot of coverage in the media to have an impact yet. I think polling after the Tara Reade interview on Sunday on national tv will say one way or the other.  

A live hearing with counsel would tell us more. We can dive into his childhood, his college life, and any other improprieties to see if Joe Biden is indeed, the sexual predator that he is accused of being.

A hearing for what?

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33 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

Is this why all those candidates dropped/endorsed Joe right before Super Tuesday?

That's what we're going to pretend happened?

LOL. That's exactly what happened.

Feel free to present evidence otherwise. Until then the "pretending' resides firmly in your head. 

 

 

 

 

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I think it’s pretty clear the middle of the road Dems didn’t want to see their party’s nomination hijacked by someone with 30-35% support who is toxic to independent voters as they saw three years before with Republicans. They dropped out and came out in support of Joe. That’s not shady.

 

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38 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

LOL. That's exactly what happened.

Feel free to present evidence otherwise. Until then the "pretending' resides firmly in your head. 

If it was about what black voters wanted, why did Pete or Amy ever even run? I mean that seriously, if their moves were so dictated by the will of the black voter what were they ever doing?

The coordination wasn't "shady" or unfair or illegal or wrong, but the desire was to make sure Bernie didn't win and the pre-ST endorsement parade was a coordinated effort to make sure Sanders didn't win. It had nothing at all to do with the black vote.

If Sanders had won blacks in SC but Biden had dominated anyway Pete and Amy wouldn't have gone to Bernie. Be serious.

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4 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

If it was about what black voters wanted, why did Pete or Amy ever even run? I mean that seriously, if their moves were so dictated by the will of the black voter what were they ever doing?

The coordination wasn't "shady" or unfair or illegal or wrong, but the desire was to make sure Bernie didn't win and the pre-ST endorsement parade was a coordinated effort to make sure Sanders didn't win. It had nothing at all to do with the black vote.

If Sanders had won blacks in SC but Biden had dominated anyway Pete and Amy wouldn't have gone to Bernie. Be serious.

This is precisely why Bernie Sanders should have never run as a Democrat. 

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2 hours ago, 'stache said:

Yup, this too. In the absolute worst case scenario, I'll still very happily and with a huge smile on my face vote for a rapey Joe Biden over super-rapey Donald Trump. And that's looking only at rapiness factors and not even starting with the absolute shitfest that is the current trump administration. Literally anyone would be better than what we have currently.

Agreed.  Even if Biden is a closet creep IMHO she's going to have to take one for the team (and by team, I mean the greatest country in the history of the world) and go away.  At this point there's just too much at stake.  

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3 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

As you were saying?

That “summer of 1982” contradicts her own therapist notes, then mid -80s couldn’t work because Kav was at Yale....

4 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

Agreed.  Even if Biden is a closet creep IMHO she's going to have to take one for the team (and by team, I mean the greatest country in the history of the world) and go away.  At this point there's just too much at stake.  

Think you said it all right here

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13 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

If it was about what black voters wanted, why did Pete or Amy ever even run? I mean that seriously, if their moves were so dictated by the will of the black voter what were they ever doing?

The coordination wasn't "shady" or unfair or illegal or wrong, but the desire was to make sure Bernie didn't win and the pre-ST endorsement parade was a coordinated effort to make sure Sanders didn't win. It had nothing at all to do with the black vote.

If Sanders had won blacks in SC but Biden had dominated anyway Pete and Amy wouldn't have gone to Bernie. Be serious.

wtf are you talking about?

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7 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

It says he went to a party with his friends, right?

I believe Blasey-Ford, but the calendar is only proof in an ethical/moral sense.

This is fucking stupid. Why would those 21 staffers have any knowledge of it?

Why not just say 99.9999999999% of the world's entire population had heard of it?

You don't? Think about it.

Again, this is fucking stupid.

All you liberals throwing shit at Reade? This is your ally. This is the rape culture you're actively participating in right now.

Congratulations.

I Ain’t rapin’ nobody. And I’m not sure what a “rape culture” is, but I am sure I’m not “participating in it.”

Here’s the truth, nobody knows, nor can they ever know, whether they are telling the truth because we’re talking about shit that happened back when BT was supposedly voting for Gary Hart and Ralph Nader. And you’re only promoting this crap because you are a fake dem who in fact is posting here to support trump.

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Biden's situation today has nothing to do with Sanders and everything to do with winning in November. If he is fatally flawed, we will lose again. Make the switch to whatever centrist candidate is preferred by the power elite in the Democratic Party ASAP. Find an excuse (there are plenty of reasons when he should abdicate) and have him name his successor. I don't see this going away anytime soon now that the pro-biden "MeTooers" understand the gravity of the situation. 

 

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5 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

It's May 1st.

The nomination convention isn't until August.

There's plenty of time to replace Joe if sufficient political pressure built, but that would require a liberal voterbase that didn't become Republicans the nanosecond their purported values presented them with difficulty.


i cried when they raped Christine Blasey
tears ran down my spine
i cried when they said they grabbed pussies
like they'd grabbed a pussy of mine

but Tara Reade's lying for money
she loves Bernie and Putin, that's riiiiight

so love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Nothing would make you happier than the dems to replace joe Biden because you want trump to win.

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5 hours ago, 'stache said:

Bullshit. Absolute bullshit, and you know it. Facts and circumstances matter, except for you because it helps you beat up on a candidate you hate. We're done here.

Dude is a total and complete troll. He has my total and complete troll endorsement!

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8 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Biden's situation today has nothing to do with Sanders and everything to do with winning in November. If he is fatally flawed, we will lose again. Make the switch to whatever centrist candidate is preferred by the power elite in the Democratic Party ASAP. Find an excuse (there are plenty of reasons when he should abdicate) and have him name his successor. I don't see this going away anytime soon now that the pro-biden "MeTooers" understand the gravity of the situation. 

oh, you think biden should be replaced?  why didn't you say something?

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I would say Newsom is a good candidate to replace Biden, but he is a white man and California has taken a turn for the worse, which may require him to step up enforcement. 

Cuomo is a royal dipshit and no one wants another President with Manhattan Myopia.

Warren, Kamala, or Susan Rice?

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  • immamac changed the title to Things seem to be going quite well for Joe Biden


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