South Asian diaspora group starts mobilizing for Biden-Harris 2024

With just over six months left for the American general elections, some South Asian election activists are mobilizing to re-elect U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to the White House. The all-volunteer group, South Asians for Mr. Biden, kicked off its activities for the election season with a virtual event held on April 25 that featured messages from lawmakers and functionaries of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and focused on issues such as reproductive rights and gun control.

The group, like other groups working in this space, is motivated by the idea that South Asian populations in battleground States had exceeded the margins of victory for Democrats in previous election cycles (2020 and 2021 for example). This makes South Asians, like other Asian American and Pacific Islander groups (AAPI or  AANHNPI to include Native Hawaiians ), a potential deciding factor in who wins in battleground states.

 In a close election, such as the 2020 race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,  winning swing states could be key to winning the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. However, Democrats and Republicans are focused not just on the Biden v Trump rematch this year but also other ‘down ballot’ races –  crucial Senate and House seats as well as contests for  state offices.  

South Asians for Biden had reached out to  a few hundred thousand South Asian and AAPI voters directly and via its digital and video campaigns in 2020 and 2021, according to Neha Dewan, National Co-Director of the group. Ms Dewan listed the group’s outreach in States such as Georgia and Wisconsin where Mr Biden won by wafer-thin margins ( around 12,000 votes in Georgia for example).

During the virtual event, titled, ‘Mobilizing the South Asian Community to be the Margin of Victory’, Ms Dewan highlighted the work of the Biden administration in areas she said were of importance to the community : reproductive rights (e.g., women’s access to contraception and abortion), curbing gun violence and hate crimes against Asian Americans.

“I know that the calls that were made into Georgia and into Wisconsin, were beyond the winning margin,” said Principal Deputy Campaign Manager for Biden-Harris 2024, Quentin Fulks, in a recorded video message.

The AAPI vote was 4% of the electorate in Georgia, and an important part of the margin (just under 3%) that got Senator Raphael Warnock re-elected the Senate (December 2022), Mr Fulks said. Democrats retained control (51-49) of the U.S. Senate with Mr Warnock – who initially came to the chamber after winning a partial term in 2020 – getting elected for full term in the 118th Congress that began in 2023.

“It’s going to take all of us again in 2024 to make sure that we hit 270 electoral votes,” Mr Fulks said.

The majority of U.S. born and foreign-born Indian Americans lean towards the Democratic Party (as per 2020 data), a statistic the group appears to capitalise on. One of the speakers at the virtual event, Washington (State)  Democrat, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal cited data to support the view that South Asian social and political priorities were aligned with those of the Biden-Harris platform.

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Ro Khanna, an Indian American California Democrat emphasized that South Asian voters were critical  to electoral victories  in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. Mr Biden won the electoral college votes in each of these States in 2020.

“We were key to President Biden and Vice President Harris’s 2020 historic win. We need to mobilize again,” he said.

Mr Khanna, whose constituency includes a part of Silicon Valley,  highlighted his involvement with the CHIPS and Science Act, one of the Biden administration’s big ticket policies aimed at increasing semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. (Mr Khanna was one of the lawmakers who introduced one of the  two pieces of legislation that later went on to become the Act).

“There are so many South Asians involved in creating good jobs and Arizona, in upstate New York, in Ohio, as a result of that act,” he said.

Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) AAPI Caucus Bel Leong Hong described the 2024 elections in existential terms.

“We are fighting for a place for us to be in, we are fighting to be who we are,” she said.

Democrats rallying around abortion rights and gun control

Issues important to South Asian Americans – especially reproductive rights, voting rights and gun violence – featured repeatedly through the event. This mirrors the overall approach of Democrats – starting at the top with Mr Biden and Ms Harris – to rally voters, especially women, will who would otherwise have not voted or voted for Mr Trump, to vote for Mr Biden.

Anita Somani, a physician who is a representative in the Ohio State Assembly had a message about voting officials in who would  protect reproductive rights.

Abortion and — more broadly — reproductive rights, have been a key electoral issue, especially since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a judgement that broadly protected a woman’s right to have an abortion. With reproductive rights becoming a state issue since the judgement was overturned, a number of States have enacted measures to protect these rights, with Ohio residents voting in November 2023 to do the same.  

“Imagine that kids are now the experts on how to dodge bullets while sitting at their desks are walking to the corner store,” said Shikha Hamilton,  the parent of bi-cultural Indian and Black daughter , who has worked for over two decades on gun violence prevention.

Anita Somani, a physician who is a representative in the Ohio State Assembly had a message about voting officials in who would  protect reproductive rights.

Editorial | Square one: On the 2024 U.S. Presidential election as a Biden-Trump rematch

Ballot access is an issue

Battle lines this year are also drawn around voting rights with a number of Republican governed states passing tightening access to the ballot. Last year (data as of October) at least 14 States had passed laws making it harder to vote while 23 had made it easier to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

At the South Asians for Biden re-launch, Gen Z candidate for Georgia State Senate, Aswhin Ramaswami, a former election security official, discussed the growing legislative challenges to voting in Georgia. The 24 year old is  running against State Senator Shawn Still, who was indicted, along with Mr Trump and others, for illegally trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Americans will elect the next President of the United Sates, as well as a number of U.S. Senators and Congressmen, State governors and local officials on November 5 this year.

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Biden, Trump issue dire warnings for the U.S. if other wins another term

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump warned of dire consequences for the country if the other wins another term in the White House as the pair held duelling rallies in Georgia on March 9 fresh off strong wins in Super Tuesday contests that positioned them for an all-but-certain rematch this November.

The state was a pivotal 2020 battleground — so close four years ago that Mr. Trump finds himself indicted here for his push to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn Mr. Biden’s victory — and both parties are preparing for another closely contested race in the state this year.

Mr. Biden opened his speech at a rally in Atlanta noting that Mr. Trump was across the state with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand lawmaker who has gone from the fringes of her party to the fore. “It can tell you a lot about a person who he keeps company with,” Mr. Biden said to applause. Mr. Biden noted that Mr. Trump had hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — who has rolled back democracy in his country — at his Florida club the day before.

“When he says he wants to be a dictator, I believe him,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump. “Our freedoms are literally on the ballot this November.”

Mr. Biden hosted the rally at Pullman Yards, a 27-acre arts and entertainment venue in Atlanta that was formerly an industrial site to receive the endorsement of Collective PAC, Latino Victory Fund and AAPI Victory Fund, a trio of political groups representing, respectively, Black, Latino, and Asian Americans and Pacific Island voters. The groups were announcing a $30 million commitment to mobilise voters on Mr. Biden’s behalf.

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, hammered Mr. Biden on the border and blamed him for the death of 22-year-old Georgia nursing student Laken Riley last month. An immigrant from Venezuela who entered the U.S. illegally has been arrested and charged with her murder. He hosted Riley’s family at his rally in Rome, Greene’s hometown.

“What Joe Biden has done on our border is a crime against humanity and the people of this nation for which he will never be forgiven,” Mr. Trump said, promising the largest deportation in history. “What a tremendous shame,” he said.

Ahead of his rally, Mr. Biden expressed regret for using the term “illegal” to during his State of the Union address to describe Riley’s suspected killer, drawing more criticism from Mr. Trump’s team.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally.
| Photo Credit:
AP

Mr. Trump, who took the stage at the same moment Mr. Biden was still speaking at another part of the state, skewered the president for the apology and said, “Are we going crazy?”

“I say he was an illegal alien. He was an illegal immigrant. He was an illegal migrant. And he shouldn’t have been in our country and he never would have been under the Trump policy,” he said to loud cheers.

Mr. Trump also highlighted the very things Mr. Biden knocked him for, saying that he “had dinner last night with a great gentleman from Hungary, Viktor Orbán” and praised Greene for yelling at Mr. Biden during his State of the Union about Riley, calling her “very brave.”

Also Read | Hungary’s PM Orban supports Trump after Florida meeting

Mr. Trump’s rally opened with a message asking attendees to rise to support the hundreds of people serving jail time for their roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, when thousands of pro-Trump supporters tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election by halting the counting of Electoral College votes.

The intensity of the rhetoric presaged a grueling eight months of campaigning ahead in the state.

“We’re a true battleground state now,” said U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, an Atlanta Democrat who doubles as state party chairwoman.

Mr. Trump, while repeating his lies about the 2020 election on Saturday, declared, “With your vote, we are going to win the state of Georgia in an epic landslide.”

Once a Republican stronghold, Georgia is now so competitive that neither party can agree on how to describe today’s divide. A “52-48 state,” said Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whose party controls state government. “We’re not blue, we’re not red,” Ms. Williams countered, but “periwinkle,” a claim she supports with Mr. Biden’s 2020 win and the two Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Georgia sent to Washington.

There is agreement, at least, that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump each have a path to victory — and plenty of obstacles along the way.

“Mr. Biden’s numbers are in the tank for a lot of good reasons, and we can certainly talk about that. And so, it makes it where Mr. Trump absolutely can win the race,” Gov. Kemp said at a recent forum sponsored by Punchbowl News. “I also think he could lose the race. I think it’s going to be a lot tougher than people realize.”

Mr. Biden’s margin was about a quarter of a percentage point in 2020. Warnock won his 2022 Senate runoff by 3 points. Gov. Kemp was elected in 2018 by 1.5 percentage points but expanded his 2022 reelection margin to 7.5 points, a blowout in a battleground state.

In each of those elections, Democrats held wide advantages in the core of metro Atlanta, where Mr. Biden will be Saturday. Democrats also performed well in Columbus and Savannah and a handful of rural, majority-Black counties. But Republicans dominated in other rural areas, small towns and the smallest cities — like Rome.

At Trump’s rally, at a city in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, more than 3,000 people packed inside an event center Saturday to hear the former president speak. His campaign handed out signs featuring the image of Laken Riley.

Candace Duvall, from Hampton, Georgia, wearing a white “Trump 2024,” T-shirt, a gold purse that said “Trump” and a pair of earrings that said “Never surrender” on one earring and Mr. Trump’s mugshot on the other, declared that her candidate is “going to save this country.”

She faulted Mr. Biden for fumbling the pronunciation of Riley’s name during his State of the Union speech Thursday.

“That happened right here in Georgia. That hits home for us. We know why that happened. We know why,” she said, adding that there were too many migrants coming into the country.

Ms. Duvall said she thinks Mr. Trump is winning over voters who didn’t like him before “because they see the difference now” with Mr. Biden.

“If somebody gives you sirloin and then they take it away and give you a hamburger, you’re going to want sirloin again,” she said.

But the same State of the Union address being criticized by Republicans has also been a source of momentum for Mr. Biden, who openly challenged Mr. Trump’s commitment to democracy, U.S. allies, the middle class and the reproductive rights of women.

Supporters saw his spirited performance as cooling worries about the 81-year-old’s age. Mr. Biden laid into the 77-year-old Mr. Trump for having the “oldest of ideas” as the former president has promised that a return to the White House would bring retribution to his opponents.

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Biden and Trump win Michigan primaries, edging closer to a rematch

February 28, 2024 08:22 am | Updated 08:25 am IST – DEARBORN, Mich.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump won the Michigan primaries on February 27, further solidifying the all-but-certain rematch between the two men.

Mr. Biden defeated Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, his one significant opponent left in the Democratic primary. But Democrats were also closely watching the results of the “uncommitted” vote, as Michigan has become the epicentre for dissatisfied members of Mr. Biden’s coalition that propelled him to victory in the state — and nationally — in 2020. The number of “uncommitted” votes has already surpassed the 10,000-vote margin by which Mr. Trump won Michigan in 2016, surpassing a goal set by organisers of this year’s protest effort.

Also Read | U.S. presidential race 2024: Key dates and events

As for Mr. Trump, he has now swept the first five states on the Republican primary calendar. His victory in Michigan over his last major primary challenger, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, comes after the former president defeated her by 20 percentage points in her home state of South Carolina on Saturday. The Trump campaign is looking to lock up the 1,215 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination sometime in mid-March.

Both campaigns are watching Tuesday’s results for more than just whether they won as expected. For Mr. Biden, a large number of voters choosing “uncommitted” could mean he’s in significant trouble with parts of the Democratic base in a state he can hardly afford to lose in November. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has underperformed with suburban voters and people with a college degree, and faces a faction within his own party that believes he broke the law in one or more of the criminal cases against him.

Mr. Biden has already sailed to wins in South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire. The New Hampshire victory came via a write-in campaign as Mr. Biden did not formally appear on the ballot after the state broke the national party rules by going ahead of South Carolina, which had been designated to go first among the Democratic nominating contests.

Both the White House and Mr. Biden campaign officials have made trips to Michigan in recent weeks to talk with community leaders about the Israel-Hamas war and how Mr. Biden has approached the conflict, but those leaders, along with organisers of the “uncommitted” effort, have been undeterred.

The robust grassroots effort, which has been encouraging voters to select “uncommitted” as a way to register objections to his handling of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, has been Mr. Biden’s most significant political challenge in the early contests. That push, which began in earnest just a few weeks ago, has been backed by officials such as Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman in Congress, and former Rep. Andy Levin.

Our Revolution, the organising group once tied to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had also urged progressive voters to choose “uncommitted” Tuesday, saying it would send a message to Mr. Biden to “change course NOW on Gaza or else risk losing Michigan to Mr. Trump in November.”

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia, S.C..
| Photo Credit:
AP

Mr. Trump won the state by just 11,000 votes in 2016 over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and then lost the state four years later by nearly 154,000 votes to Mr. Biden. Organisers of the “uncommitted” effort wanted to show that they have at least the number of votes that were Mr. Trump’s margin of victory in 2016, to demonstrate how influential the bloc can be, and they reached that figure not long after the first round of polls in Michigan closed at 8 p.m.

Mariam Mohsen, a 35-year-old teacher from Dearborn, Michigan, said she had planned to vote “uncommitted” on Tuesday in order to send a message alongside other voters that “no candidate will receive our votes if they continue to support genocide in Gaza.”

“Four years ago I voted for Joe Biden. It was important that we vote to get Trump out of office,” Ms. Mohsen continued. “Today, I feel very disappointed in Joe Biden and I don’t feel like I did the right thing last election. Trump is the nominee in November I would not vote for Trump. I would not vote for Trump or Biden. I don’t think, in terms of foreign policy, there will be any difference.”

Mr. Trump’s dominance of the early states is unparalleled since 1976, when Iowa and New Hampshire began their tradition of holding the first nominating contests. He has won resounding support from most pockets of the Republican voting base, including evangelical voters, conservatives and those who live in rural areas. But Mr. Trump has struggled with college-educated voters, losing that bloc in South Carolina to Ms. Haley on Saturday night.

Even senior figures in the Republican Party who have been sceptical of Mr. Trump are increasingly falling in line. South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican who has been critical of the party’s standard-bearer, endorsed Mr. Trump for president on Sunday.

Shaher Abdulrab, 35, an engineer from Dearborn, said Tuesday morning that he voted for Mr. Trump. Mr. Abdulrab said he believes Arab Americans have a lot more in common with Republicans than Democrats.

Mr. Abdulrab said he voted four years ago for Mr. Biden but believes Mr. Trump will win the general election in November partly because of the backing he would get from Arab Americans.

“I’m not voting for Trump because I want Trump. I just don’t want Biden,” Mr. Abdulrab said. “He (Mr. Biden) didn’t call to stop the war in Gaza.”

OPINION | Narrowing field: On 2024 U.S. presidential election’s Republican primaries race

Still, Ms. Haley has vowed to continue her campaign through at least Super Tuesday on March 5, pointing to a not-insignificant swath of Republican primary voters who have continued to support her despite Mr. Trump’s tightening grip on the GOP.

She also outraised Mr. Trump’s primary campaign committee by almost $3 million in January. That indicates that some donors continue to look at Ms. Haley, despite her longshot prospects, as an alternative to Mr. Trump should his legal problems imperil his chances of becoming the nominee.

Two of Mr. Trump’s political committees raised just $13.8 million in January, according to campaign finance reports released last week, while collectively spending more than they took in. Much of the money spent from Mr. Trump’s political committees is the millions of dollars in legal fees to cover his court cases.

With nominal intraparty challengers, Mr. Biden has been able to focus on beefing up his cash reserves. The Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced last week that it had raised $42 million in contributions during January from 422,000 donors.

The president ended the month with $130 million in cash on hand, which campaign officials said is the highest total ever raised by any Democratic candidate at this point in the presidential cycle.

The Republican Party is also aligning behind Mr. Trump as he continued to be besieged with legal problems that will pull him from the campaign trail as the November election nears. He is facing 91 criminal changes across four separate cases, ranging from his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, to retaining classified documents after his presidency to allegedly arranging secret payoffs to an adult film actor.

His first criminal trial, in the case involving hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels, is scheduled to begin on March 25 in New York.

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Donald Trump mocks Nikki Haley’s first name; refers to her by her first name

Former U.S. President Donald Trump has lobbed racially charged attacks at his Indian-American Republican rival Nikki Haley by repeatedly referring to her as “Nimbra”, in an apparent intentional misspelling of her birth name.

Mr. Trump’s attack against Ms. Haley, a daughter of Indian immigrants who served as his U.N. Ambassador, comes days before a hotly contested New Hampshire primary that could determine the trajectory of the party’s Presidential nomination contest.

Editorial | Early lead: On Donald Trump’s big win in Iowa caucuses

Ms. Haley, 52, whose parents moved to the United States in the 1960s, was born to Nimarata Nikki Randhawa.

The former South Carolina Governor has long used her middle name Nikki and adopted the surname Haley after her marriage in 1996.

But Mr. Trump, 77, repeatedly referred to Ms. Haley as “Nimbra” in a rant on his Truth Social account, adding her to the list of foes he has targeted with racist attacks.

He also insisted she “doesn’t have what it takes” to be President.

Reminiscent of his spurious claims about former President Barack Obama’s citizenship, Mr. Trump also last week spread a false “birther” claim about Ms. Haley when he shared a post on Truth Social from the Gateway Pundit, a far-right website that propagates baseless accusations, The Washington Post newspaper reported.

The post falsely suggested Ms. Haley was ineligible to be President or Vice-President because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born, it said.

The U.S. Constitution states that a natural-born citizen can be President, and Ms. Haley automatically became a U.S. citizen when she was born in South Carolina in 1972.

Mr. Trump’s use of Ms. Haley’s birth name comes as the topic of racism has emerged as a flash point among Republicans on the campaign trail, with Ms. Haley recently asserting that the United States is not and never was a racist nation, the newspaper said.

Friday wasn’t the first time Mr. Trump has mocked Ms. Haley’s name. After the Iowa caucuses on Monday, Mr. Trump embarked on a tirade against Ms. Haley, misspelling her first name.

“Anyone listening to Nikki ‘Nimrada’ Haley’s whacked-out speech last night, would think that she won the Iowa Primary,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social. “She didn’t, and she couldn’t even beat a very flawed Ron DeSanctimonious, who’s out of money, and out of hope. Nikki came in a distant THIRD!” DeSanctimonious is a Trump nickname for another Republican rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Ms. Haley repeatedly stated that she has always gone by her middle name, which in Punjabi means “little one,” and that she changed her last name to Ms. Haley after marrying her husband, Michael Ms. Haley.

Mr. Trump, whose mother migrated to the United States from Scotland, has a history of using a rival’s name or background as a tool in his efforts to make rivals sound like they are not fully American.

During the 2016 presidential race, he referred to Senator Ted Cruz, who was then a Republican presidential candidate, by his first name, Rafael.

He also repeatedly mispronounced and drew out the first name of Kamala Harris, now the Vice-President, on the 2020 campaign trail.

Mr. Trump also built favour with the extreme right of the Republican Party when, in 2011, he began floating racist and baseless claims about Mr. Obama not being born in the United States, and he frequently emphasised Mr. Obama’s middle name, Hussein.

Civil rights leaders denounced Mr. Trump’s remarks as a racist appeal to White people, who make up more than 92% of the population in New Hampshire, according to the latest census figures.

Elder James Johnson, head of the Racial Justice Network in South Carolina, said on Jan. 19 that Mr. Trump’s remarks are his way of saying “she is not one of us, that she is a Brown person, that she is not a White person.” By referencing the birth name Ms. Haley has not used in public life, Mr. Trump is “sending a message to white nationalists,” said Mr. Johnson, who offered that he is “not a fan” of Ms. Haley overall.

Another civil rights activist said the racism behind Mr. Trump’s behaviour is obvious.

“Why is he actually even using this name? What purpose does it serve?” asked Anthony Poore, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Centre for Justice and Equity, a racial and social justice organisation.

Mr. Poore said Mr. Trump’s record — dating back to when he and his father were found guilty of housing discrimination against Black people, to attacks on Obama’s place of birth — makes clear what he is doing.

Asked on Jan. 19 on the campaign trail if Mr. Trump’s attacks against her are racist, Ms. Haley said in New Hampshire that she would “let the people decide” what the former President means.

“He’s clearly insecure. If he goes and does these temper tantrums, if he’s going and spending millions of dollars on TV, he’s insecure, he knows that something’s wrong,” Ms. Haley said. “I don’t sit there and worry about whether it’s personal or what he means by it.” The attacks on Ms. Haley come as she has continued to defend the notion that the United States is not a “racist country” and has “never been a racist country.” “Are we perfect? No,” Ms. Haley said on Fox News on Jan. 16. “But our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.” Ms. Haley’s father, Ajit Singh Randhawa, is a professor of biology who got his Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia and later moved to Bamberg, a segregated town where Ms. Haley was born, to teach at nearby Voorhees College — a historically Black university.

Ms. Haley told Fox News that although she faced racism as a “Brown girl that grew up in a small rural town in South Carolina,” she became “the first female minority Governor in history, who became a U.N. Ambassador and who is now running for President.” “If that’s not the American Dream, I don’t know what is,” Ms. Haley continued. “You can sit there and give me all the reasons why you think I can’t do this. I will continue to defy everybody on why we can do this, and we will get it done.” In an interview with CNN, she acknowledged that America had its “stains” but said that “national self-loathing” was “killing” the United States.

“I want every Brown and Black child to see that and say, ‘No, I don’t live in a country that was formed on racism. I live in a country where they wanted all people to be equal, and to make sure that they had life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’” Ms. Haley said.

When asked about Mr. Trump repeatedly referring to Ms. Haley as “Nimbra,” Mr. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in an email to The Washington Post, “Can you tell me how [Trump’s Truth Social] post would even be construed as racist?” When provided with a list of examples of how Mr. Trump has tried to “otherize” his foes by emphasising their race or background, Mr. Cheung added, “Sounds like those who take offence are engaging in faux outrage racism. They should get a life and live in the real world.”

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