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2020 Presidential Election 3: We're Down To Old White Men...And Fucking Kanye.


GreyhoundFan

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Wow, I'm sorry that I didn't even finish sentences upthread! I know, what's important is beating Trump. I'm also just sad about probably not seeing a progressive or non-Christian president in my lifetime. 

Also, to finish my thoughts upthread - ingham; something about Bill Clinton having an interesting campaign & going on SNL and Desert Storm, but also I was like 8 so I don't really remember. 

I hope Biden chooses someone good for his VP. I thought TIm Kaine was not exactly a great choice in 2016. 

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If anyone needs a laugh, I did audibly chortle at this. 

Spoiler


Capture.JPG

 

 

Edited by nausicaa
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3 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

If anyone needs a laugh, I did audibly chortle at this. 

  Hide contents

 

Capture.JPG

 

 

Me too! I just LITERALLY laughed out loud! 

Spoiler

 

 

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1 hour ago, Maggie Mae said:

I tried to just leave the president option blank but apparently our machines require me to answer every question, even if I don't have a clue who I want. Same thing happened at a local thing when I had to choose between anti-choice anti-fluoride pro-public-zipline guy and a shitty republican with a famous last name, so it wasn't just the machine malfunctioning.) 

I'm not sure this is legal.  I think that part of the fundamental right to vote includes the option to NOT vote for certain races while still casting a ballot.  I have definitely seen ballots with some races or propositions left blank.  I'm pretty sure I've done it myself on my own ballot.

At our pollworker training for our March 3 primary our Elections officer even mentioned the possibility (unlikely yes but technically possible) that someone might want to submit a completely blank ballot, ie to opt out of each item but still want to have it noted that they showed up/participated.

Anyway I recommend you ask your pollworkers or county elections officials about this.  It sounds to me like your voter rights were compromised by not being allowed to leave a race blank.

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1 hour ago, Rachel333 said:

But a debate doesn't really mean they are participating; it's a spectator event. I just feel like at this point the candidates attacking each other (and that very much includes Biden attacking Sanders) would only help Trump.

I agree, and am pretty sure they'll be attacking each other.  So I'm not sure I see the point of another debate.  I think the differences between Biden and Sanders are pretty clear at this point.

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Remarkable how Trump amps up the name-calling and accusations the more Biden wins. He's incredibly scared of a Biden candidacy.

1. Her name is Elisabeth Warren.

2. The name is the Democratic Party

3. A route? 

4. Unsurprisingly for such a stable genius, the math does not add up

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9 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

Trump's gone, President Biden does what? 

Unlocks the cages.  Appoints justices to the supreme court who aren't Kavanaugh.

He isn't my first choice either, by a long shot, but pragmatically he cares about his image and legacy and while he won't push the kind of agenda some want, he's not going to light us on fire some more just because he can.  

Even if people see him as completely ineffective, I'll take that over actively authoritarian any day.

8 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

Also, to finish my thoughts upthread - ingham; something about Bill Clinton having an interesting campaign & going on SNL and Desert Storm, but also I was like 8 so I don't really remember

I remember Hillary being on many talk shows during that campaign in her headband with her chocolate chip cookie recipe trying to be relatable to Susie Homemaker.  

Campaigns are nothing but smoke and mirrors performed by professional liars and their teams.

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More importantly, Biden actually cares about people. This should be something expected of a presidential candidate, but is obviously something severely lacking right now.

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So a couple interesting things from the maps because I love numbers:

-Sanders only won one county in Michigan (Ingham) and that was only by nine votes. That's not nine percent, but nine actual votes. 

-55% of self-described somewhat liberal Michigan voters still went for Biden, and even 32% of self-described really liberal voters went for him. 

-I did not know that Idaho's liberal pockets were this liberal. Latah County went for Sanders by a wide margin. I'm assuming those are University of Idaho votes. Wonder how that dichotomy plays out in local politics.

-King County, WA (home of Seattle) is still nearly tied. ?

-So even among 17-29 year old Mississippi voters, 61% of them voted Biden (and 72% of 30-44 year olds did as well). So I'm not understanding the narrative I'm seeing elsewhere of "Sanders does okay with black people provided they're Gen Z or Millenials" but I'd like to see these numbers broken out by race first. 

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20 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

So a couple interesting things from the maps because I love numbers:

-Sanders only won one county in Michigan (Ingham) and that was only by nine votes. That's not nine percent, but nine actual votes. 

-55% of self-described somewhat liberal Michigan voters still went for Biden, and even 32% of self-described really liberal voters went for him. 

-I did not know that Idaho's liberal pockets were this liberal. Latah County went for Sanders by a wide margin. I'm assuming those are University of Idaho votes. Wonder how that dichotomy plays out in local politics.

-King County, WA (home of Seattle) is still nearly tied. ?

-So even among 17-29 year old Mississippi voters, 61% of them voted Biden (and 72% of 30-44 year olds did as well). So I'm not understanding the narrative I'm seeing elsewhere of "Sanders does okay with black people provided they're Gen Z or Millenials" but I'd like to see these numbers broken out by race first. 

What you’re seeing is how many people do not want 4 more years of Trump, and far less about how many more people support Biden over Sanders. Politics, gotta love it. It’s part of how we ended up with an unqualified POTUS  Trump.

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An interesting analysis: "The Daily 202: The anatomy of the Michigan win that put Joe Biden on a glide path to the Democratic nomination"

Spoiler

Joe Biden appears to have swept every county in Missouri and Mississippi on Tuesday, and he’s currently leading in 82 of the 83 counties in Michigan. The lone holdout is Ingham County, which includes the state capital of Lansing, where Bernie Sanders leads by just nine votes out of more than 52,000 ballots cast.

Four years after the independent senator from Vermont won a major upset in the Wolverine State over Hillary Clinton, beating her in all but 10 counties, Biden bested him statewide by 16 points. The decisive victory puts the former vice president on a trajectory to clinch the nomination without a contested convention.

Sanders avoided being swept by winning North Dakota, which offered only 14 delegates, the smallest prize of the six states that voted on what’s being referred to as Super Tuesday II. Washington state remains too close to call, with both candidates tied at 32 percent, as mail-in ballots are counted. Biden also won Idaho, another state Sanders claimed four years ago, which switched from caucuses to a primary.

The Michigan results recast the storyline of the 2016 election in a fresh light and undercut a central rationale of Sanders’s second bid for the nomination. The senator’s team incorrectly assumed coming into this cycle that the bulk of people who voted for him in 2016 agreed with his calls for political revolution when, in fact, many appear to have mainly been casting protest votes against Clinton. This was especially true among moderates, who wouldn’t naturally gravitate toward a self-described democratic socialist, and in rural areas.

In 2016, the exit polls showed that Sanders won 44 percent of Michigan primary voters who identified as moderate or conservative. On Tuesday, he garnered just 25 percent of this constituency, which accounted for 39 percent of the electorate, according to exit polling.

Three in 10 voters in Michigan’s open Democratic primary identified as independent. Sanders led Biden among this group by 5 points, 48 percent to 43 percent. But he beat Clinton by 43 points among indies. Meanwhile, Biden won self-identified Democrats by 22 points compared to Clinton’s 18 points.

Michigan is worthy of special attention because Sanders’s upset was so symbolically significant in 2016 but also because it was a harbinger of Donald Trump’s narrow victory that fall. Trump became the first Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988 to carry the state, and Democrats need these 16 electoral votes from the industrial Midwest in almost any realistic scenario that wins them the White House.

Here are five other notable factors behind Biden’s win in the Wolverine State:

1. Sanders’s advantage with the white working class has eroded. Biden won among voters who didn’t graduate from college by the same margin (14 points) as he did those who have degrees, according to the exits. Last time, Sanders won white voters in the state by 14 points. Exit polls show Biden led by 11 points among whites this time.

2. Turnout spiked, thanks largely to the suburbs. A key reason that Clinton lost Michigan four years ago was lower-than-expected turnout, especially in the suburbs around Detroit. In 2016, about 1.2 million ballots were cast in the Democratic primary. That rose to an estimated 1.7 million in 2020. This is among the sharpest increases in any of the 23 states that have voted over the last six weeks.

The biggest surge in turnout came in suburban areas like Oakland County outside Detroit, where Democrats also unseated a House Republican in the 2018 midterms. Biden won Oakland County by 22 points, whereas Clinton carried it by 5 points. To understand Biden’s win statewide, it’s equally important to consider that there were about 175,000 Democratic votes cast there in 2016 but more than 250,000 votes this year.

3. Women broke hard for Biden. He won among female voters by 23 points, and they made up 54 percent of the electorate. Men, who accounted for 46 percent of voters, were split more evenly, with 47 percent backing Biden to 43 percent for Sanders. The senator’s team saw this problem coming in their internal polling, and they tried to adjust accordingly. I wrote from Grand Rapids on Monday about how Sanders had sharpened his attacks on Biden’s record related to abortion rights in an unsuccessful effort to prevent women from coalescing behind Biden.

4. Biden’s firewall among African American voters held. He won black voters by 39 points, with higher turnout in urban Detroit. In Mississippi, black voters made up almost two-thirds of the electorate, with more than 8 in 10 going for Biden. In Missouri, Biden won 3 of 4 black voters.

5. College students didn’t turn out in force for Sanders. Biden beat Sanders in Washtenaw County, which is home to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Sanders held a rally there on Sunday night that drew more than 10,000 people. Since his victory in the Nevada caucuses, where he fared especially well with younger Latinos, Sanders has not been able to expand the electorate with new voters enough to offset the surge in turnout among more traditional Democrats who harbor doubts about his electability.

To be sure, Sanders won 18- to 29-year-olds by 57 points. But they made up 16 percent of the electorate. Meanwhile, Biden won voters 65 and older by 51 points, according to the same exit polling, and they accounted for 20 percent of voters. He also won 45- to 64-year-olds, who accounted for 42 percent of voters, by 36 points. Older voters tend to view Sanders leerily, especially the democratic socialism he espouses and the political revolution he promises. It remains a problem for Sanders that he has not been able to make inroads with seniors, who most reliably turn out in primaries.

Quote of the day

“There’s no sugarcoating it,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), 30, who introduced Sanders at his rally in Ann Arbor. “It’s a tough night for the movement overall.”

,

What’s next for Sanders: Hard choices about the path ahead.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus prompted local public health officials to ask Biden and Sanders to cancel their planned rallies on Tuesday night in Cleveland. Biden flew to Philadelphia, where he spoke to members of his campaign staff and the press corps that travels with him, while Sanders went home to Burlington, Vt. His decision not to speak publicly last night after his defeats raised questions about the future of his campaign and his strategy going forward. 

Andrew Yang, who supported Sanders in 2016, became the latest former presidential candidate to board the Biden bandwagon. “The math shows Joe is our prohibitive nominee,” the entrepreneur said on CNN, where he’s now a paid contributor. “We need to bring the party together. We need to start working on defeating Donald Trump in the fall.”

“The past week showcased how much the Sanders campaign is an unruly coalition rather than a tight operation, as allies voiced various conflicting theories about what he needed to do,” writes Sean Sullivan, who has been following Sanders full-time for a year. “Some said Sanders needs to show a more personal side, a recurring suggestion that Sanders has repeatedly been reluctant or unable to embrace. … The campaign has also experienced a push-and-pull over strategic decisions, debating in recent days whether to release internal polling showing a competitive race with Biden in Michigan, for example … In the end, the campaign did not release any polling data, opting not to risk setting expectations and then falling short.”

Sanders’s efforts to improve his standing among black voters have been especially awkward in recent days. “When the campaign scrapped plans for Sanders to spend time in Mississippi in favor of Michigan, it signaled to many Democrats that he was effectively giving up on black voters in the South,” Sean notes. “Sanders appeared [on Saturday night] in Flint, Mich., at an event billed as a town hall on racial justice. Yet of the 1,200 attendees, only about three dozen were black. Then the senator decided at the last minute not to deliver his planned speech contrasting his record with Biden’s on racial justice issues — because, a spokesman said, he wanted to let the African American panelists onstage speak about their own experiences. Still, the effect was to suggest that Sanders continues to be uncomfortable delving personally into issues that affect black people’s lives.” 

There are few game-changing opportunities left for Sanders. “The candidates are scheduled to face off in a two-hour debate on Sunday night in Phoenix, perhaps the last chance for a shift,” Sean, Matt Viser and Michael Scherer report. “Next Tuesday, four more states will vote: delegate-rich Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Arizona. A spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee said Tuesday there were no plans to cancel the Arizona debate, though organizers continue to speak daily with local health officials. The DNC did alter the format, however, by banning the live audience that has attended each of the previous debates.” 

What’s next for Biden: A front porch campaign?

Biden canceled a Thursday rally in Tampa. Instead, he will deliver an address on how he would respond to the coronavirus from his hometown of Wilmington, Del. The former vice president has been shortening his stump speech, which he now mostly reads from a teleprompter. His advisers are trying to limit his opportunities for gaffes and keep him as above the fray as possible. If the coronavirus outbreak keeps him off the trail, perhaps he could try to replicate the strategy of giving speeches and greeting people on his front porch that allowed James Garfield to win the 1880 election.

In a sober-minded speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, Biden praised Sanders supporters “for their tireless energy and their passion.” The remarks appeared crafted to exude inevitability, that he will win the nomination, and to convey a presidential aura. “We share a common goal,” Biden said to Sanders backers, “and together we’ll defeat Donald Trump.”

Biden’s allies are going further in trying to push Sanders out of the race. “I think it is time for us to shut this primary down,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D), who delivered a pivotal endorsement before South Carolina’s primary, told NPR. “It is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates because you don’t do anything but get yourself in trouble if you continue in this contest when it’s obvious that the numbers will not shake out for you.”

“Even if Sanders chooses to keep running far into the spring, Biden will have to begin to make a swift pivot toward the general election, with the goal of turning a campaign operation that has drawn criticism even from prominent supporters into a machine capable of waging a general election against the Trump forces,” Dan Balz writes. “He will need to scale up his operation, sharpen his message and reach beyond to voters who either shifted to Trump in 2016 or sat on the sidelines.”

 

Edited by GreyhoundFan
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Sanders is speaking soon. I really, really hope he drops out so we can focus on coming together and beating Trump, but apparently people close to him are saying that he will announce he's staying in for now.

 

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12 hours ago, Maggie Mae said:

I don't feel optimistic at all about the future. Trump's gone, President Biden does what? 

Takes a deep breath, starts filling the many high-level government positions that have been either left empty or filled with Trump's cronies, and begins the process of repairing foreign relations. Lets the heads of government agencies actually do the work they were appointed/hired to do. Works on a budget that actually funds important government agencies. Signs us back on to the Paris accord, and begins repairing the trade agreements Trump trashed for no other reason than that they didn't originally have HIS name on them.

He basically does lots and lots of repair work. It seems like major parts of the government are basically not actually functioning right now, and what they are doing is reacting to Trump's tweets. I think there is a LOT that will need to be done just to get the government as a whole back functioning the way it was intended.

Hopefully Biden will find a way to completely ignore Trump, who will undoubtedly be doing his level best to stir up as much shit as possible while keeping his own name in the news daily.

He will immediately begin saving the country hundreds of thousands of dollars a week, simply by staying in DC rather than jetting off to Florida and going golfing every single week. He will actually work, during the work day. He will actually read actual briefings, and attempt to understand what is going on in the country and the world.

And also, hopefully Biden would go for at least a week or two at a time without a major gaffe or scandal, leaving the entire country with a sense of wonder and relief. 

I don't love Biden, but he knows how government works, and seems willing to delegate to people who actually are qualified, rather than to ones who kiss his ass. It seems like he's our candidate, so I hope he wins the general election in a landslide.

I just really, really want the country to get out of constant crisis mode. 

I hope enough other people want the same thing, that Trump is not re-elected. 

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17 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

Takes a deep breath, starts filling the many high-level government positions that have been either left empty or filled with Trump's cronies, and begins the process of repairing foreign relations. Lets the heads of government agencies actually do the work they were appointed/hired to do. Works on a budget that actually funds important government agencies. Signs us back on to the Paris accord, and begins repairing the trade agreements Trump trashed for no other reason than that they didn't originally have HIS name on them.

He basically does lots and lots of repair work. It seems like major parts of the government are basically not actually functioning right now, and what they are doing is reacting to Trump's tweets. I think there is a LOT that will need to be done just to get the government as a whole back functioning the way it was intended.

Hopefully Biden will find a way to completely ignore Trump, who will undoubtedly be doing his level best to stir up as much shit as possible while keeping his own name in the news daily.

He will immediately begin saving the country hundreds of thousands of dollars a week, simply by staying in DC rather than jetting off to Florida and going golfing every single week. He will actually work, during the work day. He will actually read actual briefings, and attempt to understand what is going on in the country and the world.

And also, hopefully Biden would go for at least a week or two at a time without a major gaffe or scandal, leaving the entire country with a sense of wonder and relief. 

I don't love Biden, but he knows how government works, and seems willing to delegate to people who actually are qualified, rather than to ones who kiss his ass. It seems like he's our candidate, so I hope he wins the general election in a landslide.

I just really, really want the country to get out of constant crisis mode. 

I hope enough other people want the same thing, that Trump is not re-elected. 

Exactly. If Bernie got elected he would need to be obligated to work on bringing our country out of a crisis before he made his focus all these other things. We need calm and boring for the next couple years. The rest of the world needs to learn to view us as calm and boring. Maybe in another four years America will be ready for drastic change, but right now, we just need to go back to being a functioning government. 

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25 minutes ago, Alisamer said:

I don't love Biden, but he knows how government works, and seems willing to delegate to people who actually are qualified, rather than to ones who kiss his ass.

This is huge.  The role of President is too big for one person, really, as no one can have serious expertise in all the areas to the degree necessary so they need to be able to surround themselves with advisors who have that expertise and are ethical.

The bar is set very low right now - we have to put out the fire before we can rebuild.

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Agree with all verbalizing that back to baseline is what is important now. Filling positions that have been left vacant and departments that have basically been ignored by this admin for the last 4 years will help in that cause.
 

I do think that Bernie is approaching it right. He needs to get his strongest supporters on board, and that doesn’t happen in 1 day. He also needs to put Joe Biden on notice, that right now plenty of people in America agree with Bernie’s message, and that Biden’s current numbers are mainly based on an anti-Trump vote and not a Pro- Biden vote. Many, many people have held their noses and put their own ideals aside, to get the current resident out of the WH.

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12 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

Yep, he's staying in. FFS.

He is not going to win another state until at least May. Why the hell is he doing this?

I never agreed with the man ideologically, but respected what I thought was his integrity and desire to improve things (even if we agreed about the means). Man has he dropped in my estimation. Just zero self-reflection. 

Also, I used to think Robert Reich was smart? WTF happened to him? It's like he can't even do basic math anymore. 

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4 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

He is not going to win another state until at least May. Why the hell is he doing this?

I never agreed with the man ideologically, but respected what I thought was his integrity and desire to improve things (even if we agreed about the means). Man has he dropped in my estimation. Just zero self-reflection. 

Also, I used to think Robert Reich was smart? WTF happened to him? It's like he can't even do basic math anymore. 

Ego.  I have always had the impression he feels he was robbed in 2016 and is therefore entitled to this.  

 

 

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48 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

Yep, he's staying in. FFS.

Did he say what his rationalization is?  (I couldn't listen as am at work and people outside my door.)

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Just now, SassyPants said:

He also needs to put Joe Biden on notice, that right now plenty of people in America agree with Bernie’s message, and that Biden’s current numbers are mainly based on an anti-Trump vote and not a Pro- Biden vote.

I'm mystified by this argument.

You don't get to put anyone on notice when you take the drubbing Sanders just has and have barely any power to leverage. According to 538, Hillary freaking Clinton has a greater chance of winning the 2020 nomination than Sanders does.

The true empirical test of how many people agree with Sanders' message is how many votes he gets. Sanders lost nearly every.single.county in Michigan. He did lose every single county in Mississippi and Missouri. Biden is up nearly forty points in Florida. Sanders won Seattle by only 1.1 points. 

And an anti-Trump vote that goes for Biden is still a pro-Biden vote. People who didn't like Trump decided could choose between having Biden or Sanders instead. They overwhelmingly picked the former. And independents and Never Trumpers are just as much members of the electorate as anyone else. 

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Ignoring, discarding or minimizing  what large numbers of people and almost entire voting demographics find very important, and especially when mannnnnny Biden voters are also stating that they also support, is exactly why we have a POTUS Trump. It seems some have learned nothing-

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18 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Did he say what his rationalization is?  (I couldn't listen as am at work and people outside my door.)

He mostly focused on his ideas, saying that while they're losing the delegate race they're winning the ideological debate. He gave his stump speech and listed some of the questions he's going to ask Biden about on Sunday. It did seem like he knows that he has no chance of winning the nomination anymore. I just wish he had learned from 2016 . 

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This. So much this:

 

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4 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

He mostly focused on his ideas, saying that while they're losing the delegate race they're winning the ideological debate. He gave his stump speech and listed some of the questions he's going to ask Biden about on Sunday. It did seem like he knows that he has no chance of winning the nomination anymore. I just wish he had learned from 2016 . 

I think if the debate was more like a discussion, it could potentially be a good thing, but if it ends up being 2 old men shouting, I think it would be detrimental.

If he's staying in just so he can participate in the debate and have a real discussion with Biden, then OK I guess. He could do that privately just as well, but whatever. Maybe it could be beneficial if Bernie helps his more rabid followers understand any common ground he has with Biden, and uses the opportunity to encourage unity. 

But if he goes in attacking? My respect for him will fall dramatically. 

He's not getting the nomination at this point. He has to know that. It's time for him to work WITH Biden and work against Trump. We already have yelling and tantrums in the white house. We need people capable of civil conversations even when they disagree, and this is a chance for both Bernie and Biden to show that they can do that. 

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