“Wokeness:” Biggest threat for Democrats?

You don’t seem to grasp that under the current system, we have to win 1/3 more elections than the other side just to have a shot at 50% governance. In the current Fox-infused climate, that’s not sustainable. We can’t get our message out to people who have been brainwashed into thinking that we’re all socialists and that the mainstream media is fake news.

Manchin and Sinema - not wokeness,
or a center-left contingent that’s been painted as radical by Trump org - are the roadblock here. Without these reforms, it won’t matter how much further right we move or how much better we get at messaging. We will never have a meaningful ability to shape policy again in our lifetimes and probably beyond.

Congratulations you share a trait with your master trump.  In describing what you think I’m doing, you just described your actions to a “t”.

Congratulations you share a trait with your master trump.  In describing what you think I’m doing, you just described your actions to a “t”.

I agree with you there. I will just say that IMO, Obama’s big mistake was that he assumed that Rs were acting in good faith.

What she said was she didn’t trust former.  There’s a huge difference between what she said and what former did.  Her actions and that of the Biden administration far outweigh one statement of distrust of former.  Former has done so many things to undermine confidence in the vaccine, doctors and science that you fail to recognize.  This argument is really old.  Again, a false comparison and false equivalencies.  It’s not a double standard if what you’re comparing is apples vs oranges.  

And if if we’re talking about undermining confidence in the vaccine, how do you explain the fact that Democrats by a significant margin have been fully vaccinated and the Republicans are refusing?  That’s the real truth, but it doesn’t fit your narrative, so you ignore it.

You can toss out whatever dismissive BS you like, but this still remains the truth:


If you're going to apply the standard of undermining public confidence to Trump's words, you have to apply the standard of undermining public confidence to her "I won't take Coronavirus vaccine if".
You have to apply the standard across the board.


If you're going to make excuses for her "I won't take Coronavirus vaccine if" then excuses can be made for Trump's words too.
You can't have a standard that only applies where you want it to only apply.

Why not? You and so many other Trump lovers certainly have one standard for Trump and another for those YOU don't like.

And Republicans have one standard for the timing of a Republican President nominating a SC Justice, and quite another for the allowed time that a Democratic President can nominate one.

Congratulations you share a trait with your master trump.  In describing what you think I’m doing, you just described your actions to a “t”.

Because whenever anything shows your people doing/saying something that you're condemning the other side for, you just declare it not equal/similar and THINK that makes it so.
Textbook Left wing playbook 101.

Democratic party—motto, tag line and substance of the entire party has become—“disinformation central, spin, spin, spin, and lie like your life depends on it!”

Exhibit A: 3 Pinocchios for the White House trying to turn the "defund the Police Movement" back on the Republicans. 
Exhibit B: damn near ANY post YOU make.

One has to put in context what and why something was said.  Especially if it’s going to be use as a comparison with what someone else said or did. Clearly you need some work in this area.


From the Washington Post…. link

“What Andrew Cuomo and Kamala Harris said about vaccine skepticism.”

“As coronavirus vaccinations continue to pick up speed in the United States, the question is less about how many shots are available, and more about how many people will actually get them. The next big battle in the fight against the virus is against vaccine skepticism — something that’s particularly pronounced among one group: Republicans, and more specifically Republican men. I wrote this week about how Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s often haphazard questioning of the vaccines feeds into that.

Every time you write about such things, though, the pushback is similar: What about New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) and Vice President Harris?
Months ago, both made comments of questionable wisdom about the safety of the then-impending vaccines. Both indicated that they didn’t fully trust the Trump administration to oversee the process.

“The View” host Meghan McCain this week played a clip of Harris’s comments, suggesting what we’re now seeing among Republicans is basically the inverse of that, given we now have a Democratic administration. “Both sides are equally responsible for this,” McCain argued.

So it’s worth a closer look at what Cuomo and Harris said, and the apparent impact of those comments.

In September, Harris, then the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate, hesitated when asked if she would take a vaccine that was approved before the election.

“I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump,” Harris said, “and it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he’s talking about. I will not take his word for it.”

Cuomo went further, suggesting he mistrusted not just President Donald Trump, but also the Food and Drug Administration under Trump. Asked about his confidence in the FDA, Cuomo indicated he didn’t have much.

“I’m not that confident,” Cuomo said, adding: “You’re going to say to the American people now, ‘Here’s a vaccine, it was new, it was done quickly, but trust this federal administration and their health administration that it’s safe? And we’re not 100 percent sure of the consequences.’ I think it’s going to be a very skeptical American public about taking the vaccine, and they should be.”

Cuomo later announced that New York would conduct its own review of the vaccines, because, “Frankly, I’m not going to trust the federal government’s opinion, and I wouldn’t recommend [it] to New Yorkers, based on the federal government’s opinion.”

The skepticism of Trump expressed by Harris and of the FDA expressed by Cuomo didn’t come out of nowhere. Trump had spent months offering wild commentary about the reality of the coronavirus outbreak and potential treatments for it, such as disinfectant and hydroxychloroquine. There was also plenty of evidence that he had applied political pressure on the FDA when it came to things such as approving hydroxychloroquine for emergency use — a decision that was later reversed.

Trump even admitted applying pressure, which isn’t how the FDA process is supposed to be handled. While then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn downplayed that pressure early on, he said upon his departure in January that there was indeed “a substantial amount of pressure” to move faster in the summer and fall.

Harris’s comments are more easily defensible. She was asked specifically about a pre-election vaccine — a timeline that would have been faster than virtually any expert suggested was possible, and that some suggested might have indicated the vaccine would be rushed to benefit Trump’s reelection bid — and her comments were focused on Trump. She added that she “would trust the word of public health experts and scientists” such as Anthony S. Fauci, “but not Donald Trump.” (President Biden also later offered some clarification about his ticket’s stance, saying, “I trust vaccines, I trust scientists, but I don’t trust Donald Trump.”)

Cuomo’s comments were much dicier and could more understandably lead to real skepticism among people who listened to him. He threw a blanket of doubt over the broader administration and nonpartisan health officials, including at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He was criticized at the time, though not extensively.

From there, it’s about whether those comments actually did seed skepticism. But on that count, the evidence isn’t particularly compelling.
McCain said that there was equal blame to be shared on this and that the GOP skepticism is mostly a reflection of the change of power in Washington — Republicans not trusting Biden and his administration, just as Democrats didn’t trust Trump.

Polls from the very beginning showed that, despite Trump presiding over the government at the time, skepticism and reluctance to get the vaccine was already significantly higher among Republicans. A September Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed just 47 percent of Republicans said they would definitely or probably get the vaccine, vs. 77 percent of Democrats. Two months later — after comments from Harris and Biden and many from Cuomo, and after Biden had won the election — that number for Democrats rose to 86 percent. Republicans also ticked up nine points over that span.

Vaccine skepticism, Democrats vs. Republicans. (Kaiser Family Foundation)
Today, the relative gulf between the two parties remains about where it was then. One poll this month showed 11 percent of Democrats said they wouldn’t get the vaccine, compared with 41 percent of Republicans. Another showed only 6 percent of Democrats said they would probably never get the vaccine, compared with 36 percent of Republicans.

Is it possible that comments such as those of Harris and Cuomo could have created doubt beyond their own party’s base rather than in their own? Sure. But these are the people you’d expect to be most likely to listen to those leaders, and they are overwhelmingly more likely to get vaccinated.

One thing McCain hit on is undoubtedly correct: Skepticism from Republicans is more ingrained, particularly when it comes to trusting the government. There was always a steeper hill to climb in convincing Republicans to take the vaccine. Perhaps the current partisan gap owes in some part to that rather than to Carlson’s programming, Trump’s reluctance to actually promote the vaccine and other factors such as the long-running effort to downplay the severity of the outbreak.

But that makes the actions of those leaders of conservative media more important. Cuomo’s comments were certainly very questionable, but his side was already very much onboard with the vaccine, and it has become even more so since then. He’s also been forceful in recent months encouraging people to get vaccinated. There has been little in the way of a similarly concerted push among top GOP leaders, as best exemplified by Trump declining to tell people to get vaccinated until very recently and also not telling people for weeks that he himself had received one.

If the argument is that the media didn’t call out Cuomo in real time, fair enough. As I wrote in my piece on Carlson, it’s valid to ask questions about these processes — especially given the backstory detailed above — but it should always be done with the utmost care, given vaccines work best when large swaths of the population are confident enough to take them.

But if the argument is that there’s some kind of comparison between Cuomo’s actions and those who have created and affirmed the huge doubt that exists in the GOP right now — despite these vaccines having been approved under a Republican administration? That’s a much more strained argument.”


I will add that CA also put together a panel of independent scientists to review the data from the clinical trials of any vaccine the FDA approved and would require this panel’s approval before allowing the vaccine in the state.  This was done because of trump applying pressure on the FDA to speed up the approval process.  This act of CA and NY was done because of trumps words and actions when it came to the approval process of the vaccine.

One has to put in context what and why something was said.  Especially if it’s going to be use as a comparison with what someone else said or did. Clearly you need some work in this area.

Care to comment?  This was put on the Miscellaneous thread so I dug around and got the rest of the story.  You really should pay attention to context.


From BuzzFeed…link

Sen. Kamala Harris said during Wednesday's vice presidential debate that she would take a COVID-19 vaccine only if medical professionals recommended it, not on President Donald Trump's word alone.

"If Dr. Fauci, the doctors, tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it," Harris said. "But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not going to take it."









There is also a CNN story linked in the Buzzfeed story…. CNN