Althouse

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• "We appreciate any help, but everyone should understand that these are not charitable contributions that Ukraine should ask for or remind of."
• "Exhausted, confused, isolated and depressed Americans are not buying the Democratic line that things are better than they look."
• Here's a place...

"We appreciate any help, but everyone should understand that these are not charitable contributions that Ukraine should ask for or remind of." Posted: 20 Feb 2022 04:23 AM PST "These are not noble gestures for which Ukraine should bow low. This is your contribution to the security of Europe and the world. Where Ukraine has been a reliable shield for eight years. And for eight years it has been rebuffing one of the world's biggest armies. Which stands along our borders, not the borders of the EU.... And I hope no one thinks of Ukraine as a convenient and eternal buffer zone between the West and Russia. This will never happen. Nobody will allow that. Otherwise – who's next? Will NATO countries have to defend each other?... I thank all the states that supported Ukraine today. In words, in declarations, in concrete help. Those who are on our side today. On the side of truth and international law. I'm not calling you by name – I don't want some other countries to be ashamed. But this is their business, this is their karma." Said Volodymyr Zelenskiy, quoted in "Ukrainian President Makes Historic Speech in Munich (English Translation)" (Kyiv Post).

"Exhausted, confused, isolated and depressed Americans are not buying the Democratic line that things are better than they look." Posted: 20 Feb 2022 03:53 AM PST Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Can Dems Dodge Doomsday?" (NYT). Focused on helping the Democratic Party in the next election, she looks to 3 Democratic Party strategists — James Carville, David Axelrod, and Stan Greenberg. Biden's advisers are urging him just to sell harder and people will get it. Axelrod disagrees: "You cannot persuade people if their lived experience is telling them something different. We've been through hell in America and around the world."... Carville [says Democrats] should work not to seem like an "urban, coastal, arrogant party"... "People don't like you."... ... Greenberg warned Democrats not to use Obama.... "Obama did not give voice to the hurt and anger that working class voters were feeling," Greenberg wrote.... Fretting about the threat of Trumpism, given that the Democrats are bleeding working-class voters, including Black and Hispanic ones, he told me, "If they don't listen this time, we're going to end up with fascism, dammit." To sum up. Axelrod says: empathize with the people. Carville says: stop being so damned dislikeable. Greenberg says: do class politics, not race politics. ADDED: I'm reading the comments over there and it's overflowing with denial: Stop trashing Biden! I'm tired of attacks on Democrats!  One comment with over 1400 up votes ends with the poorly thought-out line: "D to go forward; R for reverse....over an endless series of catastrophic cliffs." Don't go forward over even one catastrophic cliff, because that will be the end of it all, and what lies beyond is irrelevant. If the endless cliffs are behind us, so that going in reverse would take us over them, how did we get here in the first place? Do you visualize history as a landscape? Do you think of the government as a car driving over that landscape? Does that car have an automatic transmission? When I get in my car, I don't see a "D"...

Here's a place... Posted: 19 Feb 2022 03:53 PM PST ... where you can talk about whatever you want.

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