US election 2020

[pietillidie]

They've always been outliers among developed peoples, but now Trump's fasco-protectionist Khmer Rouge Hats are willing to believe, say and do anything.

If they fist-waved all through 'the great victory' of Iraq, and now believe the Dear Leader with his 180,000+ dead, economic collapse and global disarray has delivered a marvellous win for the nation, the question is begged: what are they not willing to follow?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/opin ... virus.html

[pietillidie]

Looks like the flailing superpower is going for the full Trump/George W. disaster double after all. Failing up in the land of freedom has never been easier; just mismanage and wreck the joint and they'll elect you again in order to avoid facing the original idiocy.

It was always the money bet, but you had to hope.

[Sicks Bux]

This was pretty funny: https://youtu.be/e9gqwD1FQG8

[Jezza]

I think the Democrats are in for a rude awakening come November.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJe7tG0-Qw

[pietillidie]

I think the Democrats are in for a rude awakening come November.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJe7tG0-Qw

There's no rude awakening about it. The realisation will be that an average Democrat candidate cannot overcome a disastrous GOP candidate (backed by Citizens United, racism and the Christian Taliban). Bar a rare individual like Obama, Democrats may never win again.

If an incompetent, nepotistic, corrupt laughing stock like Trump can even be in consideration after his mega catastrophe and horror abuse of the executive, it's a hopeless case. The dual election of failed moron George W. Bush won't have been an outlier, but will instead represent the norm. Batshit destructive will have become the cultural preference of half the country, driven by a 20% fundamentalist nutter vote.

Business will be thinking it can get another Trump handout once his first debacle is paid for by social service cuts. Perhaps this time the handouts will be in the form of outright theft, as with TikTok and Iraqi oil before it, as well as the sacrificing of pristine wilderness. The first handout cost national stability, international stability, global economic growth, and environmental integrity. The bill for the current Trump collapse hasn't even come in, so imagine what that plus the next corporate handout will cost.

I actually think as the superpower they can keep printing money to fuel the fake highs as long as they suppress the global economy and cripple international competition to drive commensurate capital into the US. That all but guarantees war, though, which will excite the Khmer Rough Hats and Christian Taliban, but few others.

Trade war is always simply war, like any other war. I'm not sure when people stopped knowing this, but once upon a time it was considered basic knowledge.

[What'sinaname]

The Dems are backed by Hollywood and their DNC was a wet fish event. They are no chance of winning in November.

[David]

^ Surely nobody cares about the conventions, comedy material aside. I did enjoy the Chapo Trap House take on both of them, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DxEMLam4c8

PTID, I think far too much is sometimes made of the malevolence/incompetence of Republican candidates and not enough of how dreadfully weak their opposition has been. Kerry was a terrible candidate who offered nothing, and if the Dems win this time around one can only assume it'll be more despite Biden than because of him. The latest news is that prominent Democrats are suggesting that Biden skip the debates, which is an incredibly embarrassing admission both of his incompetence as a public speaker and of their contempt for voters (thankfully, he seems to have demurred on that suggestion):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr9x7jFNIXQ

[pietillidie]

[David]

I think Sanders definitely could have won and I think it's far from a certainty that Biden will. I also think your analysis of voting patterns is a bit pessimistic: the diehard Trump supporters are a smaller group than a lot of people think, and a lot of them are rusted-on Republicans anyway; while the trope about Sanders being painted as a communist (after "finally being vetted", as if they had any dirt on him that hadn't already been widely circulated) was always an absurd one given they do that to every Democratic candidate anyway, including Biden (except, in his case, he's being painted as a trojan horse for Antifa/socialism/etc.).

Biden is a big gamble in his own right, as it's patently obvious to anyone who hasn't drunk the kool-aid that he's unfit to be president. Not as unfit as Trump, mind you, but thus has nearly always been the metric for Democratic candidates in recent memory: vote for the candidate who's ~not as bad~ as the unprecedentedly unqualified democracy-wrecking psycho on the other side. We'll see if it actually works this time, because it's an approach that doesn't have a great track record.

[Pies4shaw]

The question isn’t who is allegedly more “fit” for high office. It’s who will do least damage. You might want a better question to be posed but, frankly, the better question isn’t an option there right now. The Republican Party has been completely unable to get Trump to act sensibly - and he has tended to sack or marginalise advisers and bureaucrats who aren’t peddling his particular forms of dangerous insanity - but we can expect that Biden will act on sensible advice. It only matters that the President is a few prawns short of a barbecue if the President prefers their own counsel to that of more or less sane, basically competent individuals on matters about which the President knows nothing.

[roar]

^^ True, but Trump offers much more comic relief.

[David]

[Tannin]

The question isn’t who is allegedly more “fit” for high office. It’s who will do least damage. You might want a better question to be posed but, frankly, the better question isn’t an option there right now.

This is what bugs me: the extraordinary ability of some apparently intelligent people to blank off and not recognise very simple facts. Why do people like David veer off into this crazyland fantasy stuff?

Two party elections - and that's the only sort the US ever has, which is a consequence of their primitive electoral system and will probably never change ...... two-party elections (and most other ones too) are won and lost in the middle ground. Always have been, always will be.

Biden has far more appeal to the middle ground than Sanders. Or Clinton for that matter. The "middle ground" in the USA, of course, is what most civilised countries would call "right wing", while the US right varies between far right and extreme right.

Picking a candidate who gets votes from the centre isn't just a smart thing to do, in these circumstances it's the only thing to do.

Now there is a die-hard fantasy that Sanders would have brought out the youth vote in a way that no other candidate ever has, and won an election without being able to bring in any sensible number of swinging votes. Who knows? Maybe it is possible! But no-one has ever, ever been able to do it in the past - especially not Sanders, who was conspicuously unable to bring out the vote during the primaries.

But some people - no-one knows why - cling to the fantasy like a baby to a dummy. Sanders himself is smarter than that. He is going balls-out to help elect Biden.

[stui magpie]

[David]