Biden Advisers Point To ‘Access Hollywood’ Scandal as a Model for Survival

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Perhaps the most exasperating part of being President is the voters’ fast forgetting. The fleeting highs—the faux victory over the Taliban, the real death of Osama bin Laden—never linger too long. But the upside of Americans’ constant rewrite of our collective memories is that the bad ones don’t stick around, either.

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That is the optimistic outlook President Joe Biden’s allies are spinning as they near the two-week mark after a disastrous debate that raised serious questions about the President’s mental acuity and cognitive abilities. With Democrats in open despondency and unable to force Biden’s hand, there’s a very good chance that the energy at next week’s GOP nominating convention in Milwaukee will feel more like a UFC fight than a C-SPAN hearing. That collective bullying is going to do Democrats few favors as it is only likely to redouble Biden’s resolve not to have his hand forced.

Internally and out, Biden’s top advisers are treating the fallout as hypersensitivity from pols and pundits inside the Beltway, most of whom seem to have forgotten it’s only July. Voting doesn’t start until September, and there will be two nominating conventions and the Olympics to shift the conversation among the electorate. And they’re pointing to perhaps the most notorious campaign moment of this century to press that argument: the infamous Access Hollywood tape and its audio of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault.

Released within a month of Election Day in 2016, many assumed the scandal would force Trump to step aside. Instead he moved right past it and voters went along with it. On Election Day, he prevailed—winning over 64% of white working-class voters, 62% of white men, and 47% of white women.

Some on Biden’s team are pointing now to that Access Hollywood episode, which actually moved Trump’s polling down by less than one percentage point for less than three weeks; the tape aired on Oct. 7, 2016, and he was back to his normal poll standing by Oct. 25, according to 538’s polling average archive.

The analogy is, of course, imperfect. But it matches other moments that evaporate. As U.S. News & World Report’s Olivier Knox pointed out to me the day after the on-stage meltdown in Atlanta, Barack Obama’s polling bump after bin Laden’s death lasted just six weeks in 2011. Separately, when Trump contracted Covid-19 and had to be airlifted to Walter Reed in 2020, his polling dipped again by less than one percentage point.

This is one way those steeped in Biden World are reassuring themselves—and the boss—that these things that seem huge among political junkies seldom really break through to the gen pop. Word went out from Atlanta in real time as the debate continued: a 90-minute error would not define the choice voters face in November. Also, they had time. Also, while Biden’s polling has slid, it doesn’t appear to be as bad as the collapse of poll numbers that many had predicted.

Even so, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report on Tuesday moved Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada from toss-up status to leaning Republican. The analysts also moved Minnesota, New Hampshire, and a lone congressional district in Nebraska from like Democratic strongholds to merely leaning Democrats’ way. Although some polls had Biden holding steady, others had him down 6 points in some places like Georgia and nationally. For the survey of likely voters, it was a three-point swing in less than two weeks.

All of it may prove temporary, Biden’s boosters argue.

The Trump candidacy provides plenty of reasons for Democrats to wince, but one winsome lesson: nothing lasts forever, not even a terrible showing that has prompted recriminations aplenty inside Democratic circles. As further proof: 51% of voters say they now approve of Trump’s performance when he was President, a benchmark he never reached while in the job.

Biden’s team is counting on such a fickle electorate and hoping the nonstop replay of his admittedly terrible answers doesn’t stick.

“They think they can weather this, and so do I,” said one lawmaker who has heard the Access Hollywood analogy and is a close ally to the White House. “Joe Biden is the only person to have defeated Donald Trump. Why would you swap that out, even for someone as promising as the Vice President?”

The big caveat to leaning on polls from 2016 is this: Trump’s return to his previous levels still left him trailing Hillary Clinton just about everywhere. Trump’s win came seemingly out of nowhere. This time, Trump is polling ahead of Biden in every swing state, and Biden has yet to break the 50% marker in any of them.

Biden, meanwhile, remains a highly unwelcome presence on the ticket let alone as its leader. As TIME’s Nik Popli reports from Capitol Hill, there is a begrudging acceptance that Biden is likely their nominee whether they want him or not. After only a handful of House Democrats had publicly urged Biden to exit the race, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have rekindled the issue Wednesday morning by suggesting on Morning Joe that Biden should reconsider. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short,” Pelosi said, as if Biden hadn’t already made his position crystal clear for well over a week.

Biden seems like he is taking a page right from his predecessor: fake it until you make it. Trump pretended there was not a crisis until there was not one. Biden is trying to assure voters that he’s up for a task at hand for another four years, a challenge made more acute with each passing day of professed ambivalence. He told ABC News’ George Stephanopolous that he knew he had a bad night but also kindled a low-light firestorm over whether he used “goodest job” in one answer. (ABC News’ official transcript, edited at the request of Team Joe, concluded he used “good as job” in a sentence that didn’t become much more clear with the tweak.)

Plus, there’s the added bonus that no Democrats actually think there are good odds of Biden stepping aside. A YouGov poll shows 72% of Democrats think they’re stuck with Biden whether they like it or not. Biden is banking that Democrats by Election Day will forget they ever had doubts about his candidacy. Given how wait-it-out worked for others, it’s not an irrational play—and there’s clearly plenty of forgetting afoot already.

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source https://time.com/6996982/biden-trump-access-hollywood/

Republicans’ Vow to Repeal Biden’s AI Executive Order Has Some Experts Worried

On June 8, Republicans adopted a new party platform ahead of a possible second term for former President Donald Trump. Buried among the updated policy positions on abortion, immigration, and crime, the document contains a provision that has some artificial intelligence experts worried: it vows to scrap President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI.

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“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology,” the platform reads.

Biden’s executive order on AI, signed last October, sought to tackle threats the new technology could pose to civil rights, privacy, and national security, while promoting innovation and competition and the use of AI for public services. It requires developers of the most powerful AI systems to share their safety test results with the U.S. government and calls on federal agencies to develop guidelines for the responsible use of AI domains such as criminal justice and federal benefits programs.

Read More: Why Biden’s AI Executive Order Only Goes So Far

Carl Szabo, vice president of industry group NetChoice, which counts Google, Meta, and Amazon among its members, welcomes the possibility of the executive order’s repeal, saying, “It would be good for Americans and innovators.”

“Rather than enforcing existing rules that can be applied to AI tech, Biden’s Executive Order merely forces bureaucrats to create new, complex burdens on small businesses and innovators trying to enter the marketplace. Over-regulating like this risks derailing AI’s incredible potential for progress and ceding America’s technological edge to competitors like China,” said Szabo in a statement.

However, recent polling shared exclusively with TIME indicates that Americans on both sides of the political aisle are skeptical that the U.S. should avoid regulating AI in an effort to outcompete China. According to the poll conducted in late June by the AI Policy Institute (AIPI), 75% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans believe that “taking a careful controlled approach” to AI is preferable to “moving forward on AI as fast as possible to be the first country to get extremely powerful AI.”

Dan Hendrycks, director of the Center for Safe AI, says, “AI safety and risks to national security are bipartisan issues. Poll after poll shows Democrats and Republicans want AI safety legislation.”

Read more: U.S. Voters Value Safe AI Development Over Racing Against China, Poll Shows

The proposal to remove the guardrails put in place by Biden’s executive order runs counter to the public’s broad support for a measured approach to AI, and it has prompted concern among experts. Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute and former senior advisor on AI at the Federal Trade Commission, says Biden’s order was “one of the biggest achievements in the last decade in AI policy,” and that scrapping the order would “feel like going back to ground zero.” Kak says that Trump’s pledge to support AI development rooted in “human flourishing” is a subtle but pernicious departure from more established frameworks like human rights and civil liberties.

Ami Fields-Meyer, a former White House senior policy advisor on AI who worked on Biden’s executive order, says, “I think the Trump message on AI is, ‘You’re on your own,’” referring to how repealing the executive order would end provisions aimed at protecting people from bias or unfair decision-making from AI.

TechNet and a number of think tanks and tech lobbyists have railed against the executive order since its introduction, arguing it could stifle innovation. In December, venture capitalist and prominent AI investor Ben Horowitz criticized efforts to regulate “math, FLOPs and R&D,” alluding to the compute thresholds set by Biden’s executive order. Horowitz said his firm would “support like-minded candidates and oppose candidates who aim to kill America’s advanced technological future.”

While Trump has previously accused tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Twitter of working against him, in June, speaking on Logan Paul’s podcast, Trump said that the “tech guys” in California gave him $12 million for his campaign. “They gave me a lot of money. They’ve never been into doing that,” Trump said.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Even if Trump is re-elected and does repeal Biden’s executive order, some changes wouldn’t be felt right away. Most of the leading AI companies agreed to voluntarily share safety testing information with governments at an international summit on AI in Seoul last May, meaning that removing the requirements to share information under the executive order may not have an immediate effect on national security. But Field-Meyer says, “If the Trump campaign believes that the rigorous national security safeguards proposed in the executive order are radical liberal ideas, that should be concerning to every American.”

Field-Meyer says the back and forth over the executive order underscores the importance of passing federal legislation on AI, which “would bring a lot more stability to AI policy.” There are currently over 80 bills relating to AI in Congress, but it seems unlikely any of them will become law in the near future.

Sandra Wachter, a professor of technology regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute says Biden’s executive order was “a seminal step towards ensuring ethical AI and is very much on par with global developments in the UK, the EU, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and the rest of the world.” She says she worries it will be repealed before it has had a chance to have a lasting impact. “It would be a very big loss and a big missed opportunity if the framework was to be scrapped and AI governance to be reduced to a partisan issue,” she says. “This is not a political problem, this is a human problem—and a global one at that.”

source https://time.com/6996927/republicans-repeal-biden-ai-executive-order/

Irish Woman Charged With Attempted Suicide in Dubai, Sparking Questions Over UAE Law

Tori Towey, an Irish woman facing criminal charges for attempting suicide in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), will be allowed to travel home to Ireland.

On Wednesday, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald shared that the travel ban imposed by the UAE government has been lifted and Towey—who hails from Boyle, Roscommon—will travel home to Ireland. “We await her return and the end of her nightmare,” McDonald wrote on X (formerly Twitter). 

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Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs is providing consular assistance to Towey, 28, who has been living in Dubai since April 2023, and working as a flight attendant for Emirates Airlines, according to a post by the Detained in Dubai group, which provides legal help in civil and criminal cases. Towey was charged with consumption of alcohol and attempting suicide, which have historically been criminalized acts in the UAE. Within Detained in Dubai’s post about Towey, it is alleged that she was facing domestic abuse from her husband and that he physically attacked her before the incident took place. Her husband has yet to publicly comment on these allegations.

Read More: You can view the CDC’s guidance on suicide prevention here.

Towey—who survived the alleged suicide attempt—was taken to a local police station, where she had her passport destroyed. Until Wednesday’s U-turn decision, she was previously prevented from leaving the country, the Dáil, the lower house of the Oireachtas, Ireland’s parliament, heard on Tuesday.

McDonald told colleagues in the Dáil of Towey’s case and called on Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Simon Harris to intervene, The Irish Times reported. “The system over there, rather than protecting this woman who is an Irish citizen, chose instead to detain her to charge her. She’s now under the most incredible stress when I spoke to her this afternoon,” McDonald said.

McDonald also said that Towey’s mother Caroline had flown to Dubai to be with her daughter. 

Harris, who said he was not previously familiar with Towey’s case, vowed to offer any support the Irish native requires. The Department of Foreign Affairs has said it is aware of the case and is providing consular assistance to Towey. 

TIME has reached out to both the Irish and UAE governments for further information and comment on Towey’s case. 

Radha Stirling, who founded Detained in Dubai, told BBC News NI she had spoken to Towey on Wednesday morning and remarked on the momentum behind the Irish woman’s case. 

“The Irish government is certainly stepping up in record time, we usually don’t see them come together that fast,” Stirling said. “I’m expecting with that diplomatic push we might be able to get her home even before the court date next week, but of course we have to plan that it could go very badly and she could end up with a prison sentence,” she added.  

Towey’s case is set to be heard in court on July 18.

What is the suicide legislation in the UAE?

While suicide has historically been illegal in the UAE, it was widely reported that 2020 reforms to the Gulf nation’s personal status and penal laws would see landmark changes to decriminalize suicide and attempted suicide. While survivors of suicide were rarely prosecuted, the law left them vulnerable to charges and less likely to seek help. 

Alcohol consumption was also decriminalized in the same wave of reforms, which aimed to modernize the nation where expats form around 88% of the population.

However, per documents from the UAE’s Ministry of Justice pertaining to the “Federal Decree Law No. (15) of 2020,” those accused of attempting suicide can still be subjected to incarceration of “no more than six months,” a fine of “no more than 5,000 AED” ($1,361), or both punishments. The court is also given the discretion to order that the detention period be served in a “healing facility.” Meanwhile, those accused of aiding an individual attempting suicide are “subject to the punishment of incarceration.”

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider. 

source https://time.com/6996852/irish-woman-charged-attempted-suicide-dubai-uae-law/

Maika Monroe on Her Obsession With Longlegs‘ Sinister World

Like a shape-shifting specter lurking just out of frame, the title of “scream queen” has been trailing in Maika Monroe’s wake since her star-making turn in the 2015 breakout horror hit It Follows. As Jay, the unassuming teenage protagonist of filmmaker David Robert Mitchell’s indie cult sensation, Monroe cemented her place in the horror pantheon playing a young woman pursued by a lethal supernatural entity after contracting a sexually-transmitted curse. It’s a bizarre premise that initially gave Monroe pause. “This can’t be good,” she remembers thinking after reading the script.

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And she was right—in a sense. It wasn’t just good. It was a commercial and critical smash, grossing $23.2 million worldwide against a $1.3 million budget and earning acclaim as a highly original genre gem. “I don’t think any of us expected It Follows to blow up the way it did,” Monroe says. “Never in a million years.”

Nearly a decade later, Monroe, 31, is again in the limelight as the lead in one of the year’s most anticipated horror films, Longlegs, in theaters July 12. With early reviews praising it as “a disturbing descent into hell” and “the scariest film of the decade,” the new feature from writer-director Osgood Perkins (I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House) debuted with a perfect 100 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its U.S. release—a rare feat for any film, but especially a horror movie.

Starring opposite Nicolas Cage, who is Longlegs’ titular menace—a disfigured, rasping serial killer with mysterious means to his ends—Monroe plays Lee Harker, a talented and reserved FBI recruit whose cryptic psychic abilities give her strange insight into her target’s methods. “It was one of those scripts where I was like, ‘I need to be a part of this,'” she says. “I was obsessed with the world that it’s set in.”

That sinister setting, built around a series of occult murders, reminded Monroe of two iconic ‘90s titles she came to love when she was old enough to start watching horror herself, The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Se7en (1995). She recalls the visceral reaction she had watching that type of truly terrifying film for the first time. “I would close my eyes a lot, but I just love that feeling,” she says. “You don’t really get it from anything else.”

Despite her early admiration for the power of cinema, Monroe didn’t grow up wanting to be an actor. Born and raised in Santa Barbara, Calif., she spent her preteen years pursuing dance and learning how to kiteboard with her dad. It wasn’t until a local film production reached out to her dance company looking for extras that a then-13-year-old Monroe took an interest. “Funnily enough, it was a really terrible horror movie,” she says. “I just fell in love with being on set.”

From there, Monroe got a manager and an agent and began to audition. But her attention was divided. Even as she pursued acting, she was proving to be an unusually talented kiteboarder. When she was 17, she moved with her mom to the Dominican Republic to train in the sport professionally (ultimately ranking as high as 32nd in the world). But she kept up with auditions here and there. “I probably sent in four tapes during that nine-month period, and I ended up booking one of them,” she says in reference to her debut feature, the 2013 family drama At Any Price, which brought her back to Los Angeles.

Within the year, she had appeared in both Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring and Jason Reitman’s Labor Day. But it was the one-two punch of Adam Wingard’s 2014 horror-thriller The Guest and It Follows the subsequent year that linked her to the genre and carved a path forward. While Monroe has since taken on studio blockbusters like Independence Day: Resurgence, it’s her enduring success in the indie horror world—think 2019’s Villains and 2022’s Watcher—that’s built the foundation of a career.

Thanks to its somewhat reductive history, the scream queen label isn’t always a welcome one—‘80s gore-fest icon Barbara Crampton notably derided the term as implying “that you’re good at two things: howling at the top of your lungs and being a woman.” Still, Monroe says she feels “incredibly grateful” to be playing a part in the moniker’s evolution.

“I think back to some of the horror movies I would watch [as a kid] and it would be hot, blonde girls with half their clothes falling off covered in blood and running and screaming,” she says. “Then all these movies like It Follows, The Babadook, The Witch started coming out and completely changed the genre. Now those are some of the best roles out there.”

Monroe is slated to star next in Maxime Giroux’s crime thriller In Cold Light before reuniting with Mitchell for They Follow, a long-awaited sequel to It Follows that Monroe promises is going to deliver “what people want and more.”

Then, she says, she’d love to do something more lighthearted, like a rom-com. “There’s a lack of great rom-coms right now,” she says. “It’s time for another When Harry Met Sally.”

But as the buzz surrounding Longlegs builds to a crescendo, Monroe’s main (spoiler-free) takeaway from the film speaks to why she’ll always be able to return to her roots in horror: For better or worse, the pool of inspiration is bottomless. “Evil isn’t going anywhere,” she says. “That’s just the reality. There really is no end.”

source https://time.com/6994811/longlegs-maika-monroe-interview/

The Critical Role Trees Play During Heat Waves

My two-year-old is too young to know about climate change. He doesn’t understand what an “urban heat island” is either. He just knows that his papa keeps saying “No” because it’s too hot out to go to our local park in Point Breeze, South Philadelphia, which lacks the shady tree cover found in other neighborhoods. As we head home, and he’s in full melt-down, pointing over my shoulder and repeating “Pahk! Pahk!” in that plaintive voice that breaks my heart, the father and environmentalist in me deeply worries about extreme heat and how it will affect my son’s generation.  

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You may have never heard the term “urban heat island,” but you can probably guess its meaning—especially if you live in a city. Modern cities have become concrete jungles with buildings, roads, and other infrastructure absorbing and retaining heat; when these urban areas “lack nature” like trees and green spaces, residents can’t benefit from tree shade and evapotranspiration, the process by which plants release water vapor that cools the air, bringing down temperatures. Extreme heat caused by climate change exacerbates this issue, making it a public health crisis.

Read more: The Quiet Work Trees Do for the Planet

But just how much of a difference do trees make? Studies show the temperature in urban areas can differ from 12-18°F between the hottest and coolest neighborhoods—and much of that variation is due to differences in tree cover and green space. As heat waves become more frequent and intense, an increase of 18° can be the difference between life and death. Heat-related illnesses such as heat stroke and dehydration pose a serious threat to vulnerable populations like the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions. In 2023 alone, extreme heat exposure was responsible for over 2,300 deaths across the U.S., the highest in a half-century.

Dig deeper into this growing public health crisis and you’ll also find a crisis of environmental justice, with the haves and the have-nots splitting along familiar lines. Predominantly white and affluent neighborhoods tend to have more trees, while historically marginalized and underserved communities have significantly less. This disparity exacerbates inequities in health outcomes, with poorer air quality and higher heat vulnerability in areas with fewer trees. It also means higher energy costs, imposing another financial burden on already cash-strapped communities, as well as higher rates of violent crime, as higher temperatures can increase incidences of aggression and irritability.

Climate impacts have always disproportionally impacted minority populations, from Black and Brown communities that lack sufficient infrastructure and insurance to cope with increasingly frequent and extreme storms, to Indigenous tribes that depend on fish stocks threatened by ocean acidification. Extreme heat exposure is one of the most immediate and deadly impacts of climate change, however, and once again communities of color are taking the brunt of it. In Philadelphia and elsewhere, that 18° difference between neighborhoods can be linked to redlining, which has systematically denied services and investments to neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by racial minorities, leaving these areas with inadequate green spaces.

Nature can be our ally in helping people adapt to an increasingly inhospitable climate. We need to rethink how we develop our cities and the built environment. It’s not just about planting more trees; it’s about integrating nature-based solutions into our urban planning. This includes some obvious steps like creating more parks and community gardens, but it also includes innovative methods like green roofs and walls. These structures, which are partially or completely covered with vegetation, help filter out pollutants, improve insulation, reduce energy costs, absorb rainwater to reduce runoff and enhance biodiversity in urban areas. 

Local initiatives, like Philadelphia’s Beat the Heat campaign and the Philly Tree Plan, which received $12 million in federal funding for urban forestry, aim to increase tree cover in areas that need it most. Other cities, such as Miami-Dade, have appointed Chief Heat Officers to implement strategies like increasing tree canopy, creating cool roofs and developing public awareness campaigns about the dangers of extreme heat. By learning from these initiatives and scaling them up, we can create healthier, more resilient and more equitable cities.

We also need to extend protections to people who put their lives on the line in the scorching heat to keep our economy running. Those who work in construction or on farms—two professions disproportionately comprised of people of color—are many times more likely to die from heat-related illnesses than the average person. Providing basic improvements like paid rest breaks and more access to water and shade would be huge benefit to these essential workers, yet just a few months ago Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law that prevents cities and counties from doing exactly that. My message to our elected leaders is simple: a bit more empathy—and a lot more trees—can save lives.

Finally, community involvement in planning and implementation is essential, not just because it’s the fair thing to do, but because it increases the chances that solutions are effective and stand the test of time. A study conducted last year by some of my colleagues at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) found conservation efforts that incorporate the views and values of local communities result in better outcomes—for people and nature. When we take the time to build trust, recognize communities’ personal stake in the issues we’re working to solve, and tap into their wisdom to ensure that these initiatives stand the test of time, we sow the seeds for lasting, large-scale change that benefits everyone.

A few nights ago, right before I put my son to bed, we read a children’s book about the life of Wangari Maathai and how she inspired the women of Kenya to plant over 30 million trees to protect their communities. The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari encouraged us to start by planting 10 trees each and getting involved with local initiatives that help our communities. We can tackle the urban heat islands that disproportionately impact people of color. Our neighborhood’s park doesn’t have to be hotter, dirtier, and deadlier than another one just a few neighborhoods over.

By investing in green spaces and planting more trees, we help build a future where healthy, happy children from all walks of life can enjoy the simple joy of playing in the park.

source https://time.com/6996432/trees-heat-waves-essay/

Great-Grandmother Who Just Finished Breast Cancer Treatment Wins $5M Lottery Prize

A great-grandmother from Pennsylvania who recently completed radiation treatments for breast cancer won $5 million on a scratch-off state lottery ticket that she only bought because a scheduled family trip didn’t go as planned.

Donna Osborne, 75, scored the big prize last month when she bought a $50 “Monopoly Own It All” ticket while buying gas at a convenience store in Lancaster County, where she lives. Osborne said she had previously bought a $5 lottery ticket that won her $50, so she used that money to get another ticket.

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“I was at the airport with my daughter. We were on our way to see family in Florida when the flight got delayed. Well, it was delayed so many times, I decided to go home. My daughter stayed and flew to Florida,” Osborne said. “If I didn’t leave the airport, I would have never bought that ticket!”

Osborne said she scratched the ticket while she was in the store parking lot and was stunned when she realized she had won the game’s top prize.

“I could not believe my eyes!” Osborne said. “I went back into the store and said, ‘Can you please check this? Is it right or wrong?’ Well, the clerk said, ‘It’s right!’”

Read More: Everything You Know About the Fate of Lottery Winners Is Probably Wrong, According to Science

Osborne, who said she has been playing the lottery “since it began” about 50 years ago, called her daughter with the good news but “she didn’t believe me.”

Osborne, who has worked for decades providing transportation for Amish people, said she doesn’t plan to retire anytime soon. But she does have another trip in mind.

“I don’t know what I’d do with myself, I have to keep moving,” she said. “I think I’ll invest some of the prize, sure, but then go to Alaska,” she said.

source https://time.com/6996417/pennsylvania-lottery-winner-great-grandmother/

The Democrats’ Problem

As you know, my examination of history has led me to believe that there are five major interrelated forces shaping events in the world. Studying them has given me a template that I can follow that helps me understand what’s going on and what’s likely to happen within what I call The Big Cycle. Then I watch the day-to-day developments in light of this cycle. Today’s observations are about the internal order cycle in the U.S., more specifically, focusing on the Democratic Party and President Biden dealing with the question of whether or not he should remain the party’s nominee for president.

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The loss of trust in the Democratic party and next steps

To begin, I want to make clear that I respect, like, and empathize with President Biden and I get that Democrats find themselves in a difficult position. At the same time, it is logical for me and others to say that the leadership of the Democratic Party has suffered a terrible loss of confidence in its honesty and judgment because it a) hid President Biden’s weak and rapidly declining condition and then, when that condition became apparent, b) told the American people that we shouldn’t worry about it and that it will be best for President Biden to run for and be elected president. Now that this plan has gone awry, they are struggling with what to do. There are three possible plans that I see them struggling to choose from which I call “the bait and switch plan,” “the mini-primary plan,” and the “the coronation plan.”

Read More: The Coming Great Conflict

“The Bait and Switch Plan”

The plan before the public’s discovery of President Biden’s condition, which is still the plan that they are now publicly sticking with, is to assert that President Biden will be fine. However, the public’s discovery of his condition has led them to modify the picture a bit. For example, they now say that he is good between 10am and 4pm, but they haven’t addressed the likelihood that he will get worse with time. That is obviously ridiculous and an insult to people’s intelligence, so it leaves people a) with a loss of trust in the Democrats’ straightforwardness and judgment and b) without a clear picture of how leadership will work and what the Democratic Party stands for. This is important in light of the split between those of the moderate left and those of the extreme left.

“The Mini-Primary Plan” and “the Coronation Plan”

If the Democrats decide to try and switch nominees before the election, they can select a replacement by either:

 a) having debates between the fragmented group of contenders (this will happen after President Biden steps aside and the division between those of the moderate left and those of the hard left will surface), which is what I call the mini-primary plan which would probably be harmful for their chances of winning in the general elections but would allow the American people to see and choose the leader and path they would like to be on, or

 b) having President Biden pass the nomination to Kamala Harris, which I call the coronation plan, because he and others, but not the people, bestow the crown on her, which would be less messy but would leave people without the opportunity to hear the debates and through that see what the different paths forward would be like and then make their own choices of the nominee.

Next Steps: What should they do?

I look at this case like the fable of the emperor who has no clothes and I think about what happened when everyone saw that he had no clothes and the lessons the fable provides — that it’s best to recognize the truth and move on in the best possible way. I believe that leading Democrats should start by, at least, recognizing and speaking the truth, whatever that is — for example 1) that they made a terrible mistake to let this situation get to where it has gotten by hiding it and 2) that they believe running Biden and Harris gives them their best shot of getting elected and that they will deal with his condition after they win a second term because the alternatives look worse to them. That’s the real thinking behind the “bait and switch plan,” which to me is a terrible plan, any way you cut it.

More From TIME

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I think that, regardless of which plan they choose, they must acknowledge the problem–that Biden might not be able to serve out his term–and explain how they will deal with that in a detailed way, most importantly by making clear who will lead (e.g. Harris) and fleshing out what Democrats will stand for by having a very detailed platform and signaling who or which type of people she will choose as advisors, cabinet officials, etc.

I personally think the best way to get there is via the Mini-Primary Plan so that voters can see debates and the candidates’ positions and, with those stress-tested, can vote for whom they want.  Regardless of what path the leadership of the Democratic Party goes down, it should be honest and follow through with doing what they say because without trust in their truth, they will lack what people need most to get behind them.  

I get that this is difficult and messy especially if President Biden refuses to go down this path, but running government is even more difficult and messy so I view this as a good test of how well they can handle tough situations.  To me, not being afraid to and being capable of doing what is required to lead and have people follow is a requirement for leading the country.

Who will step forward and deal with this in a straightforward way?  

I am still hoping for honest, smart, strong, and ideally moderate-bipartisan Democrats (or Republicans) to step forward and make the path forward clear. I know that they still exist. Mark Warner is a possibility so I will be interested to see how he handles this situation. I would expect that if one steps forward, more will follow. In any case, stepping forward in that way is the tough and right thing to do so I hope some leader will do that. If we see that doesn’t happen, then we will see that the Democratic Party failed this important test.

As things now stand, there is no good presidential contender and no good party for me to choose from.

At this time, there is no good choice for me for the country’s leadership because there is no one who is likely to give me what I value most. What I value most is civility over disorder, a strong bipartisan middle over uncompromising extremism, respect for law and order, respect for different approaches to life including not getting involved in other countries’ internal affairs, peace over war, strength over weakness, and thoughtful disagreement and radical truthfulness. I respect all different cultures and religions and prefer the freedom of people to choose the ones that suit them best. Basically, I prefer almost any way one chooses to live one’s life as long as it doesn’t hurt other people, and I would fight for these values because my study of history has taught me that they make the world a much healthier and happier place than the alternatives. I also believe that strong education that includes teaching strong character is essential and terribly neglected. Because all these things are weakening in the U.S., I worry about the U.S. weakening despite the remarkable inventiveness of a small group of people whose ideas are fueled by vibrant capitalism.

At the same time, as I see creative capitalist vibrancy producing great advances, I worry that capitalism doesn’t put striving to provide equal opportunity as high as it should relative to striving to be personally rich and successful. As I think you know, I believe that not providing much more equal opportunity starting with early childhood education is both unfair and unsustainable because it will lead to a weaker population, great social costs, and great conflict. So, I believe that what’s needed is strong bipartisan leadership to make big reforms for the reasons that I explained, in some depth, five years ago when I wrote Why and How Capitalism Needs to be Reformed.

It is an unfortunate reality for me and about half of all Americans (46% from a recent poll) that we find ourselves wishing for a better alternative than supporting either of the existing candidates. While I personally would love to see a strong third party from the middle that can work well in a bipartisan way, that is not an option and is a topic for another time. For now, the choices I am seeing from both sides are more opposite than aligned with what I am looking for. I feel like I am faced with the choice between a strong, unethical, almost fascist Republican Party and a frail, untruthful, and enigmatic Democratic Party that is failing to make clear what they will do when their sitting president can no longer serve. I, and most others, know what the Republican Party stands for (the hard right) and who will lead it because Republicans are aligned and clearer about these things, but I don’t know what the Democratic Party will stand for or what team of people will lead it over the nearly next five years.

For these reasons, it appears to me the presidential race is now essentially a race between the devil we know, who is from the hard right, and some devil we don’t know who is from the left, though it’s not clear how far left.

source https://time.com/6996339/ray-dalio-us-election-biden-essay/