Tea leaves?

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by nosborne48, Aug 24, 2020.

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  1. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    I suppose I wouldn't discount that either. I guess we'll see in nine weeks?
     
  2. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Agreed, the main differences with 2016 election is that Biden's unfavorable ratings are much better than Clinton's. Also in the 2020 election Trump is a huge motivator for the Democratic base. Hopefully that will be enough. I'm still expecting Trump to pull a last minute upset. I don't know what he can force but he'd try to force Barr to arrest or announce an investigation into Biden. Something like this could sway the election like Comey's announcement in 2016.
     
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  3. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    I wonder what the race would look like without all the cheating?
     
  4. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    I don't think it would be an American Presidential Election without at least SOME cheating! ;)
     
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  5. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Our President has broken the law again. He told his supporters in North Carolina to vote by mail and to then vote again at the polls. Voting twice or attempting to vote twice is called voter fraud and is a felony. It is also a felony to encourage voter fraud. Barr's reaction was hilarious!
     
  6. Lerner

    Lerner Well-Known Member

    Speculation, if Biden becomes a president, for how long? Is Kamala Harris will become the first woman to be a President of the USA.
     
  7. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    I think that's part of the plan.
     
  8. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    fivethirtyeight now says Biden is "favored" to win, up from "slightly favored". We've been here before...
     
  9. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Oh for Christ's sake...
    They run a statistical model. Cut off for "favored" is 70 out of a 100. Actual numbers fluctuate as they enter new data. Falling to "slightly favored" meant it felt to 69-31 that day. Returning to "favored" - when it bounced back. I'm actually pretty sure that the page you're referring to is dynamically generated, and updates when the model spits out new numbers.

    My prediction - Biden/Harris will win, both the popular vote and the Electoral College. The country is where it is now, on Trump's watch. Besides, they simply didn't manufacture nearly as much phoney dirt on Joe over the years as they did on Hillary. Personally, I'm starting to love this ticket - a combination of a compassionate middle-of-the-roader and a talented WOC (daughter of immigrant academics, went to Howard - what can be better?).
     
  10. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Speculation? OK, I'll try. Here it is: Biden will serve a full term. Harris will get elected in 2024, to become the first woman POTUS.
     
  11. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    This is why I suspect that President Trump is going to win in November.

    [​IMG]
     
  12. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Of course you do.
    [​IMG]
     
  13. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    The former are getting headlines right now, and that's not good for Biden.

    Compassionate enough to author the crime bill, and talented enough to enforce it? I'm not going to argue with people who say that Biden and Harris are less bad than Trump and Pence, but pretending they're actually great rather than just the lesser evil is a lot more loyal than it is honest.
     
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  14. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Do Biden/Harris suffer from being too soft on "Law & Order" issues, or too hard? Which is it?

    I do not think blaming Biden for supporting anti-crime agenda that had almost universal support at the time, or Harris for doing her job as prosecutor, is very honest. This kind of purity tests exclude so called "mainstream politicians" - and look where it led us all.
     
  15. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Too hard, and my position hasn't been inconsistent. And considering that I don't accept the "you have to judge them by the time they lived in" argument for the founding fathers, I'm certainly not going to buy it for Biden and Harris.
     
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  16. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Your position hasn't been inconsistent. It is, however, incompatible with an argument hierophant implied: that Biden/Harris won't protect the public from the violence the former photo implies, so vote Trump, he'll "call in the troops". There's a lot wrong with this argument (a guy who "called troops" to kill a whole bunch of protesters right where I used to go to lunch at my first real job ended up having to run to Russia). But one of the things this argument implies is precisely that Biden/Harris are supposedly soft on crime. Which is preposterous - if anything, they are too hard. An idea that's sold here is having enough active neurons to be able to imagine guns and shock troops are not the only tools to solve society's problems = "soft on crime".

    Personally, I would much rather see real, even incremental, changes, rather than whole lots of theoretically-correct rhetoric. Libertarians and Bernie Sanders profess the opposite view; this way, you can get a sterling reputation - and get to maybe rename a post office or two. With Bernie, it's even more stark - as a Senator, he sure had some things accomplished, but when he did he worked within the system and compromised like the rest of them. Like when he scorched Clinton and then Biden for being against universal health coverage, because they do not subscribe to his M4A. Well, the only action of his that ever got anyone health coverage was... his vote FOR Obamacare, a bill Biden championed, and to the right of the Hillarycare bill. He has the same resume bullet point on health as Biden does ("helped pass Obamacare") - do you see him or especially his bros admitting it much?

    One can get some police to wear body cams, introduce anti-bias training, and get a settlement from the big banks when most of the country got nothing. To be able to do that, you have to be an Attorney General - which implies a career when you can maintain peace with the Fraternal Brotherhood of Police, most of the time. It also implies working within the laws as written, and being responsible for many, many decisions - some of them mistakes. Similarly, you can get VAWA into law - which necessitates working on the bipartisan Crime Bill VAWA is part of. And also making bunch of decisions and accepting numerous compromises - some of them mistakes. Or, alternatively, you can get 20 people praise you to heavens for your thoughtful letter to the editors of Reason. Don't need to dirty your hands much for that at all.

    ...and just to throw this out there: I felt the same about Hillary Clinton. If you strip her long career from all the bullshit they tried to stick on her, she comes out more selfless than Kamala, the Obamas, OR Joe Biden (not that any of them has any obligation to be any more selfless than they are). Not even mentioning a pathological guy like Trump.
     
  17. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    What I keep thinking is that during my lifetime the country has tended strongly to entrust the White House to each party in turn for two terms. There have really been just two exceptions. Eisenhower, GOP two terms. Kennedy/Johnson, DEM two terms. Nixon/Ford, two terms. Carter, a single term because (I think) the country realized that we simply could not risk keeping so weak a man in power. Reagan/Bush, three terms because of Reagan's amazing and enduring popularity, on a par with FDR. Then Clinton, two terms. Bush II, two terms. Obama, two terms. So is DJT really "exceptional" enough to break the usual pattern? I don't think so. Voting patterns don't usually change that much when an incumbent seeks reelection. Those who turned out to vote for Trump will do so again. Ditto those who turned out to vote for Hillary (or to vote against Trump). And ditto for those who stayed on the couch in 2016.
     
  18. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Tell me about it, I've called for the end of the drug war for decades. It's depressing how long it's taken the Overton window to shift on that when it seems so obvious that far more harm is done by prohibition than by the substances themselves.
     
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  19. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    I can see legalizing drugs on a case-by-case basis (marijuana is an obvious one, I mean COME ON already!) but would you go as far as legalizing them all?
     
  20. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Absolutely. Drug addiction is a medical problem, not a criminal one. And to the extent that addiction leads to ancillary criminal behavior, that's only exacerbated by prohibition. Not to mention that prohibition is rocket fuel for violent cartels and has led to the erosion of civil liberties.
     

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