She’s not bad for the job because she’s incompetent though. She’s bad because she’s compromised and willing to say whatever she needs to say to advance her own interests and the interests of her patrons (Trump definitely, Modi and Putin maybe).

Intelligence was lied about to get us into the Iraq War and Gabbard has been super is hawkish about the drone war. She’s going to lead to more of that, not dismantle the institution. Get ready for manufactured intelligence about how Gaza has dirty bombs built by Iran and transported through the Suez Canal for some reason.

When this fantasy of consequences comes around, they should raid his computer systems with a SWAT team like he’s a hacker.

Blago was the other guy. He pardoned him this time around. In his first term Trump commuted his sentence.

Always make them do illegal stuff and make it expressly clear they’re doing illegal stuff. It may not stop them, but it’s much worse if we just cynical ourselves into letting them do it because we’ve already decided nothing matters.

You don’t need an offshore camp with nebulous legality for deporting immigrants. There’s already somewhere to send them and you don’t care if they go free. Pretty damn useful for domestic opponents though.

I think the “freeze all federal spending” from a couple weeks ago could also qualify.

Not LLMs, self-driving cars. Ever noticed how most of the challenges are things you need to recognize while driving?

At what point was US “control” even attempted for you to reach that conclusion.

That’s not an answer to why you hold regular people to account for their actions but not the politicians and strategists actually running the campaign.

Also it wasn’t “manipulation”. The genocide actually happened.

Why do you criticize regular people about game theory and not the actual people crafting the strategy to win an election?

You really do not get how people vote if you think that’s supposed to be a major achievement of Joe Biden’s presidency. This isn’t some unfair complaint brought up by the writer, this was a point Zakaria highlighted as proof that Joe Biden was awesome for workers. When the defining trait of the economy is that people have lost ground compared to four years ago, saying “aren’t you happy I’ve been managing the economy” is a bad argument.

Zakaria’s argument is bad though. Look at the graph in that last link. It is technically outpacing inflation, but only barely and at its best point is just matching pre-COVID growth. And summed across the four years, that’s still a net negative.

I don’t know if this writer is trying to pitch a third party or a new power center within the Democrats, that’s questionable, but he’s pretty right to trash Zakaria for trying to pull “despite your feelings (and personal situation), the economy is great”. Fareed Zakaria is a self-described “centrist”, who despite centrism failing so publicly and spectacularly can only recommend more centrism. There isn’t political analysis here, just a pundit pitching the same solution they always pitch regardless of evidence or outcome.