Biden: “American History Is Not A Fairy Tale”

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I sense coordination between the speeches by Joe Biden in Iowa and Cory Booker in South Carolina yesterday. Biden’s speech writers honored the ideals of Thomas Jefferson and the Constitution while noting both supported slavery. A few hours earlier Booker embodied the triumph of ideals in words that rang similar to Biden’s to my ears.

Biden/Booker sounds good to me.

Ron Brownstein (CNN): “Under Trump the Republican party is making a conscious trade. They are trading bigger margins among groups that are shrinking in society for resistance and opposition in the areas that are in the groups that are growing.”

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44 thoughts on “Biden: “American History Is Not A Fairy Tale””

  2. the atlantic:  

    Cory Booker Challenges America’s Disney-fied History

     

    In a new interview, the New Jersey Senator and 2020 Democratic candidate speaks candidly about race and white supremacist violence.

     

     

     

  3. the atlantic:

    CHARLESTON, S.C.—In the basement of Mother Emanuel, Cory Booker’s eyes turned red. The New Jersey Senator and 2020 Democratic candidate had just addressed a small crowd that had gathered in the church sanctuary upstairs. “The act of anti-Latino, anti-immigrant hatred we witnessed this weekend did not start with the hand that pulled the trigger,” Booker told the room. “To love our country in this moment means that we have to step outside our comfort zones and confront ourselves.”

    But the families of the murdered that Booker has faced over and over again, first as mayor of Newark, and later as a U.S. Senator, are never interested in high-mindedness, he told me. Nobody who’s grieving wants to hear a beautiful turn of phrase. There’s nothing an exasperated TV appearance can do for their pain.

    “Your words don’t matter,” Booker told me, sitting in the pastor’s office at Mother Emanuel, one room over from where, four summers ago, a white supremacist killed nine people, including then-Pastor Clementa Pinckney. “It’s your heart, your spirit, in moments like that,” Booker told me, thinking back on the funerals and vigils he’s participated in. “There are no words that work. There’s no word that can replace the loss of a loved one,” he said. “People want this to stop, this nightmare to stop.”

    Aides tell me Booker worked through the night on the speech he delivered yesterday morning in an attempt to sound more didactic than in his usual emotional calls to action—“A reckoning with our past and present, and hope for a way out,” is how a top aide summed up the thinking on the speech to me—he wasn’t going for tears. (These aides spoke anonymously to discuss the internal mechanics of the campaign.)

    […]

    “The idea that we’re going to create some Disney-movie-version of our history is offensive to me—it diminishes who we are by not telling the truth of who we are,” Booker told me. “Knowing the bloody, violent truth of our past empowers me and encourages my hope for what we have the capacity to do in our present. But it’s not easy. It’s not. What is easy is what Donald Trump does: For short term, pitiful political gain to demonize ‘the other,’ other Americans, demean and degrade them. Politicians like this—this is a major part of our American story. I have no choice but to stay in this fight. Even if you lose, day after day, [even if you] have to go to funeral after funeral after funeral, even if you lock—as I did—lock myself in the mayor’s office from time to time and just cry, you’ve got to get up off your knees and go back into the fight. That’s what this moment calls for. And none of us can show greater courage than those people in our past, who saw more wretchedness, more violence, more hurt and more pain, but kept on going, and bequeathed to us a nation that was better than when they found it.”

    [continues]

  4. Biden/ Stacey Abrams
    Biden/ Elijah Cummings
    Biden/Gavin Newsom
    Biden/ Michael Bloomberg
    Biden/Tammy Duckworth
    Biden/Klobuchar
    Biden/Comey
    Biden/Elon Musk
    Biden/Jamie Raskin

  6. Have the Biden/Abrams 2020 bumper-stickers come back from the print-shop, yet?  I’ll take two.

  7. Bink

    Big problems for most of the tickets when trying to attract majority of voters.

    Biden/ Stacey Abrams – Solid ticket but Abrams may be too unknown
    Biden/ Elijah Cummings – Too Elderly
    Biden/Gavin Newsom – Two White men, Two Coasts
    Biden/ Michael Bloomberg – Two White Men
    Biden/Tammy Duckworth – Too White
    Biden/Klobuchar – Too White but basically okay
    Biden/Comey – Two White Men
    Biden/Elon Musk – Musk is South African couldn’t assume the Presidency
    Biden/Jamie Raskin – Two White Men, Too Coastal

  9. When you combine Warren and Sanders — out polling SayNotoJoe –maybe what we need is a Warren Sanders ticket

  10. Hey…  how about a Biden/Oprah ticket….  2 coasts, male/female, different colors and one politician/one not.  Or if you really want something different…  how about a Biden/ham sandwich ticket.  Or a Biden/hamster ticket.
     
    I’ve been gone to my annual 9-day fair.  No longer a booth holder…  but do have a space in the cooperative tent.  Have to work 2 days and have been going up there when Rick volunteers to help booth holders.  Gonna be going up there most of the weekend.  I’m tired….   how the hell did I ever do this thing as a 9-day booth holder…

  12. Other nations across the globe have the internet, video games, and mental illness, so why is America the only nation where mass shootings happen on a regular basis? We finally figured it out: it’s the guns, stupid.

  15. the guardian

    Banks hand over documents on Russians with possible ties to Trump – report

     

    Major Wall Street banks have handed over thousands of pages of documents related to Russians who may have had ties to the president.

    The material has been given to congressional committees investigating Donald Trump, and the documents relate to Russians who have possibly had dealings with him, his family or his business, people familiar with the congressional investigations have told the Wall Street Journal.

    Some banks are also giving documents related the Trump Organization to New York state investigators, people familiar with the New York investigation said.

    Firms include Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. They have reportedly recently provided the documents to congressional investigators, people familiar with those investigations told the Journal.

    The House financial services committee and the House intelligence committee are looking into potential foreign influence on the Trumps.

    Separately, Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump’s primary bank, has reportedly turned over emails, loan agreements and other documents related to the Trump Organization to the office of New York attorney general Letitia James.

     

  16. one of the many interesting paragraphs from the wall street journal article cited in above guardian story:

    Mr. Trump has filed several lawsuits seeking to block lawmakers and states from getting access to his bank, accounting and tax records. The documents being provided by the banks could give investigators some of the same information Mr. Trump is trying to block.

  17. Kgc,
    A cursory glance at each individual state’s Democratic Party primary polls has Biden running away with the nomination if everything holds- the rest of the field barely polls at all, even Warren.  Biden is even out-polling Sanders in Oregon.  Biden’s the nominee.

  19. It’ll be an epic fight if it’s Biden.  Let the two old white guys duke it out….
    Biden shows no signs of Alzheimer’s and doesn’t seem to suffer from cowardice.
    the working man and the grotesque parvenu 
     
     

  27. KGC

    Warren/Sanders – Old and older … Trying to put togeth a generation transitional ticket

    Biden/Castro – Two males but good geographic/racial balance.  Castro hasn’t qualified for September debate yet.  

     

  30. Too much coffee = headaches….uh, news?  Don’t eat bacon…eggs….now meat…don’t eat…don’t breathe. My parents smoked and ate bacon and eggs. There was no kale in the house, ever.  My mother was 97 when she died.  My father late 70’s ,and he didn’t take care of himself.
     
    Don’t eat the stuff you like and you won’t live longer.  It’ll just feel like it.

  33. SFB does not really care what you say or do.  He will be offended and launch his so called attacks because, just because.  The Dems have to create a meme that he is just a little squirt in diapers in his playpen.

  35. Andrew McCabe is  suing.  YES!  You go McCabe!  And so is Peter Strzok.  
     
    McCabe’s book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,
    was good.  I read it.  In fact, I’ve read every SFB related book over the past year. 

  36. That SFB has done SO many despicable things, large & small  one can’t keep track.  Smallish….1) How he talked to the Halloween kids in the oval office. about their parents  2) I read that Sean Spicer was a devout Catholic and SFB dangled that he could meet the Pope . And then didn’t let him. 3) How he insulted a female reporter in the Rose Garden saying,  “I know you’re not thinking. You never do.” She said, “I’m sorry?” “No, go ahead. (gah ahead)” Trump said, before a pause ensued. “Go ahead. (gah ahead).” USA Today. That last one, I’d have said, “ENOUGH” and walked out.
     
    What’s with repubes? Bush/Cheney with torture?  Trump/Miller with internment camps., etc., etc…ad nauseam.  I know their large amygdalas give them a heightened fear response. But can that be all????

  39. From San Diego on the Pacific to Brownsville on the Gulf a Lardy Curtain has descended across the continent.

  42. Didn’t know the Kochs owned the chicken farms. Tar & feather them.
     
    Interesting how the jack boots never touch the owners.

  43. Ms Tiptoe, I agree.
    If in Jan 2017 trump had hanged a dozen guys from lamp posts and shut down a dozen corporations that hired ‘illegals,’ the problem would have resolved itself immediately. 
    Why do I need to chip in $20B!LL!ON$ out of my Social Security check, when I’m not the guy causing any the trouble ? Lock the gate to Marla Ego, seize the bank accounts, and hang the owners from the nearest lamp posts. That’ll do the trick. 

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