US election 2020

[stui magpie]

^

The Democrats aren't the only ones with pathological obsessions about Trump. He has lots of "admirers".

[Sicks Bux]

No more "Mr Nice Guy" from the Democrats? What have they been doing for the past three years then with impeachment, RussiaGate, enabling violence on the streets through radical organisations such as BLM and Antifa and rigging their primaries to ensure the establishment candidate wins?

BLM and Antifa have nothing to do with the Democrats. You can argue that they didn't condemn them hard enough, or whatever (much like Trump's "good people on both sides" comments about white supremacist protests), but in no way are they affiliated with the Democratic Party or acting in concert with them.

On the other hand, the Democrats were indeed dogged about impeachment and Russiagate. But note what their target was in each case: getting rid of Trump. Both were all about their pathological obsession with him and the theatre of discrediting him, and had absolutely nothing to do with scoring political victories against Republicans or actually getting Democratic policies through. When the time has come to vote on important, society-altering stuff, like Trump's massive tax cuts, they've mostly waved it through or offered the weakest possible opposition.

They even gave him a bigger boost to the defence budget than he originally asked for.

[Sicks Bux]

"As Joe Rogan's Platform Grows, So Does the Media & Liberal Backlash. Why?"

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/22/as- ... klash-why/

[David]

^ Good piece, SB, thanks. I've never listened to Rogan's show (apart from some short clips of discussions on YouTube), but I have found the antipathy that some on the left hold towards him puzzling.

[roar]

^^ It's because he will listen to people from both sides of the political divide and likes to discuss things openly. This does not sit well with the new left that want to stifle conversations that do not suit their agenda..

[stui magpie]

[David]

Yes, that's the one that stood out most to me, too. A lot of this dislike is, basically, class snobbery.

[think positive]

if nothing else good comes out of it, at least it might kill the royal family off completely!!get a job!

[pietillidie]

One of the problems now Biden has a *perceived* lead is that he's going even more conservative to maintain it. The advantage of someone without a perceived lead is they have to throw more at it to make a dent.

The idiocy of having two parties so close regardless of the situation wrecks serious policy yet again. There needs to be more variation, and not of the purposefully chaotic and dysfunctional Trump kind.

[Sicks Bux]

[watt price tully]

Brief but good article by Waleed Aly

"Winning isn’t everything: how you win matters, too"

"....If I had to distil this into a principle, it would go something like this. If we want reforms in our politics to be durable, and we want our society to emerge from them intact, we must always consider how they look from the losing side. In political debate we should only use weapons we'd be happy to see used against us. Because one day, they will be.

You might be comfortable with your side of politics, say, using the school curriculum to impose a particular view of the world, or replacing independent public servants with partisan appointments. But when the other side does the same to you, whatever discomfort you feel will be the symptoms of a corrupted political culture....."

https://www.theage.com.au/world/north-a ... 55ysv.html

[David]

Agreed, WPT. Summarises the issues well.

[stui magpie]

Do unto others etc. who'd a thunk that.

[Sicks Bux]

First presidential debate of 2020 will be at 11:00 am - 12:30 pm on Wednesday. Please let it be everything I hope it will be.
It'll be telecast live on the ABC News channel.

[David]

^ It’ll probably be boring and lame. Best case scenario in terms of spectacle (and worst case in terms of real-world outcome) would be Biden glitching out. But honestly I think people are being unreasonably optimistic to expect any fireworks.