By Ashkan
After Hillary Clinton placed half of Donald Trump’s supporters into a basket of deplorables, it should have clicked. Someone should have said: “guys, let’s not do that again!”
(more…)Tag: 2024
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It’s 11:58 and I need to press submit
By Ashkan
Deciding my vote for President has forced a profound questioning of my core values unlike anything I’ve ever experienced — my uncompromising devotion to procrastination has not wavered, though. And it never will. You have my word.
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Legacy, you might be missed? Still figuring that one out actually
By Ashkan
Few things match the awkwardness of bashing legacy admissions to someone who later sheepishly reveals “my dad went here…” Hasn’t really stopped me, though. I feast on the souls of soft-penised dilettantes who were grandfathered into what I traded my adolescence to achieve.
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I bet this will fix everything!
By Abigail
California has finally done it! After decades of bitter debates, lengthy court battles, and public mudslinging, the Golden State has finally ended inequality in higher education. Who knew all you had to do was ban legacy admissions?
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A migrant ate my clearly marked yogurt in the break room
By Ashkan
I’m currently fighting off an intense bout of déjà vu — since this week’s debate, I feel like I’ve been transported back to being my unfortunately normal-height 8th grade self, rabidly absorbing the drama of the 2016 election as my interest in politics was piqued for the first time.
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Kamala takes a stand (sort of)
By Abigail
footnotes from Ashkan
Kamala Harris has always been a sort of political chameleon. If we learned anything from her first televised interview as the 2024 Democratic nominee last Thursday, it’s that she’s finally found an environment she’s (relatively) well-suited to. That’s not to say that she excelled, by any means, when going toe-to-toe with Dana Bash while Tim Walz did a remarkable job placidly smiling and waving by her side, but she put on a performance that was more confident than anything else we’ve seen from her during the last four years.
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Shit, someone let Kamala out of the bunker
By Ashkan
footnotes from Abigail
I find it genuinely funny that the Democratic Presidential campaign strategy for the past two cycles has been to campaign as little as possible.
Do we all remember the Joe Biden COVID bunker in 2020? As Trump criss-crossed the country shaking hands and kissing babies1 (which I suppose might have been ill-advised from a #FlattenTheCurve perspective), Joe Biden sat ensconced in his impenetrable Delaware basement, conveniently untouchable by reporters who could seize on a gaffe, or, far worse, make him explain his vision for America.
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Are we doomed?
By Ashkan
footnotes from Abigail
Kamala Harris, an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal in 2019, has asked Pennsylvania voters for forgiveness. She was wrong, she says.
Despite previously advocating for a ban on fracking — the highly pollutive and relatively new process to extract fossil fuels — Kamala’s totally on board now. The Pennsylvania economy is strongly buoyed by fracking, and she needs to win Pennsylvania. It’s just basic political calculus; swing voters want their local economy functioning and no matter how pro-oil Kamala falls she won’t bleed any lefty voters to the orange man.
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Kamala turned Black: Trump is a genius
By Ashkan
footnotes from Abigail
I’ve said this once and I’ll keep saying it: Donald Trump is not stupid.
I think he is one of the most ingenious political operators in modern American history. I’m sorry, but you can’t just luck your way from joke to President. Especially without institutional support, like in 2016.
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The Veepstakes: Bad rural represenation
By Abigail
footnotes from Askhan
I don’t like JD Vance. I also remember instinctively not liking him during his libby Hillbilly Elegy days the way you don’t like people who are the same age as you but world-famous when you are not. At the time, this dislike was more grounded in the feeling that he was stealing my thunder: there can only be so many narratives about overcoming a low-income childhood in rural America and then attempting to claw your way up the tax bracket by attending an Ivy League before they go out of style.1 Now, more reasonably, I don’t like him because after his ideological shapeshifting act he stands for all of the MAGA values that I find most unappealing. But then I’m a moderate Democrat—there’s no world in which I would vote for Trump. What’s hard for me to gauge is if Vance is a hit with his target audience and whether that even matters.
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