All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Robotman]

Hmmm, I'll respectfully disagree, I don't know much about your source, but I generally trust Pew Research & to a lesser extend the New York Times to validate the general consensus that the pollsters got it wrong in 2016. (though I'm always open to having my opinion changed)

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...ed-their-mark/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/u...out-trump.html


Trump polled the same as Romney with the white vote, with the exception of one major difference. He increased the white working class vote in the rust belt states, particularly in Pennsylvania. This is the phantom vote that was not accounted for in the polling.

There is an article (I wish I could find it) that shows how Trump dramatically increased the white working class vote in Pennsylvania by quite a large margin, which offset Clinton's gains in Philadelphia. It makes me nervous. If anyone in this forum is a Pennsylvania democrat, my advice would be to start helping your local Democrat get elected in November.

All that being said, I still think Trump will lose, but if he wins, it will be because he won Florida and Pennsylvania.

Biden is currently up by 3 in Georgia. Carrying that state would be huge! If Biden somehow wins Georgia, Trump could have Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania and still lose.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...mp-in*********

[WestPhillyPunisher]

In case anyone hadn't heard this on CNN in the aftermath of Tuesday's debate:

[Mister Mets]

That'd be reversing the trend, you're describing George W. Bush - someone who is a moderate in the Republican party . That's how off the rails Trump and his successor would be. All Trump did was exaggerate all the horrible things W. did, which is impressive considering how much of a monster W. was, and is from the Far Right of the party - the faction who wants to publicly connect themselves with the Proud Boys. The next Trump will be more like Bolsonaro or Duterte.



Sanders is a strange case as a politician, in that he's both someone whose on the more extreme then the moderate wing and how he uses language evokes popularism, however, he's just not as successful at changing the Democrats as Trump was for the GOP. Trump had an audience for that, Sanders didn't. The GOP itself crated that audience long before Trump got elected, all he did was activate them and the Democrats aren't as vulnerable to being overtaken. They respect rules and decorum.

Sanders got 43 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary in 2016. Trump got 45 percent of the vote in the Republican primary in 2016.

One of the differences is that Trump ran in a crowded field, and Sanders ran in a race where most of the party had united around one candidate.

If Trump loses 2020, Trump will go down in the annals as a "one-term president" and the Republicans themselves, thanks to their scapegoating of Jimmy Carter have made "1-term" a badge of shame in American politics. That's why Bush I and his relatively more moderate Presidency is never invoked (he lost to Bubba Clinton), nor Gerald Ford (never elected to start with, lost to Carter), nor Richard Nixon (his own party forced him to quit).

So if Trump loses in 2020, then I don't think "Trump 2.0" happens. Remember, the issue with Trump 2.0 is that Trump is in essence Reagan 3.0 (Dubya being 2.0) and Reagan himself was Barry Goldwater 2.0 as well as Nixon 2.0 in some respects. Reagan remember in his campaign used slogans like "Make America Great Again" as well as "Drain the Swamp" (no seriously look it up). The Republican party in its contemporary version is Reagan's creation. The entire reason the Republican Party became such a hotbed of dog-whistle Civil Rights revanchists is because Reagan became such a successful president, and also a popular and well-liked President (even if he wasn't actually a very good President). Nowadays American media uses Richard Nixon as a comparison to Trump and the reason they can do that is Nixon is anathema to the American mainstream in a way Reagan, unfortunately, is not (this is also why Alan Moore used Nixon as a the bad president in the comic rather than Reagan). Reagan taught the Republican party that if you are telegenic, charismatic and can belt out catchy slogans and titles you can get away with anything. Remember that Reagan had the record for the most corrupt administration before 2016. More than 150 officials were indicted and imprisoned from his administration, likewise you had Iran Contra, Able Archer and other crises of his regime. Reagan also had a major public health crisis in his time, AIDS, and his administration did nothing and more or less leaving the LGBT people to die (with Anthony Fauci alone doing his best to make something happen).

So yeah, Trump's presidency resembles Reagan more than Nixon. What made Reagan dangerous and terrible for American politics was a) his genuine popularity, b) his political success (two successful terms, high approval ratings).

Anyway, that's why I think if Trump loses in 2020, I think he'd be removed from the stage. For one thing, he has a ton of debt coming real soon. Trump's base has been radicalized of course and they will continue to fester for a while, and the aftermath and damage done by Trump will endure unfortunately but I think he himself is a political dead end. For one thing, no Republican politician can claim Trump's unique figure...someone who never held political office before. His trampling of decorum and civility gave him a novelty that other politicians can't quite recapture, certainly no one in the party at present (Tom Cotton often prepped as a candidate in future is a military veteran and is going with that angle which El Capitan Bone Spurs didn't do).

I really hope Trump either removes himself from the stage, or loses if he reemerges politically (there's some speculation he might try run again in 2024.) But Ford & HW don't show much precedent for that. Another George Bush won the nomination within a decade of papa's blowout loss, and Ford was almost on the ticket with Reagan.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...if_i_lose.html

For Trump to win the election he must do three things.

1) Hold the traditional red states. If he loses Arizona or South Carolina (just one of those states) he's done.

2) Win Florida. If your watching the election and he loses Florida you can start celebrating; he's done.

3) In addition to winning Florida, he must hold onto one of the blue wall mid west states other than Ohio (Which he probably will win) preferably Pennsylvania. If he doesn't he's done.

Be wary of the fact...despite COVID, he still polls well in Florida
Last election there was a major white working class phantom vote in eastern Pennsylvania, particularly Pittsburg, which is why he took the state
Finally, like last time the polls severely unrepresented the Trump vote, because many voters who vote for Trump, do not publicly endorse him.

All that being said, do I think he will win....I still lean to no.

https://www.270towin.com/

Arizona is in a different category than South Carolina. Biden often polls better there than he does in the three rust belt states Trump won by less than one percent (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan.)

However, if Biden flips Arizona and Pennsylvania, Trump still wins the election.

If Biden flips Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, it's an electoral college tie. That will go to the House, where Republicans have a slight lead in the category that counts (state delegations.)

Biden currently leads in the swing states, so it probably won't be that kind of outcome, but there's a reason 538 gives Trump a one in five chance, especially if something happens in the next month to change the narrative.

[InformationGeek]

Got another for you WBE. Meet Derrick Van Orden, running to unseat Ron Kind in Wisconsin. He's a special one...

In a chapter of the co-authored book, titled "Out of the Cold — Rabbit Holes," Van Orden writes that after a training involving poison oak, he and a male lieutenant were receiving medical treatment at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego for their "weeping sores."

He writes that during the training, the officers were camped out "inside poison oak for a week," and that the oak caused "strange things" to happen to their bodies.

"Your eyes swell shut, and you can't breathe very well. But probably the oddest thing I noticed was that your scrotum swells to immense proportions. I can just see a bunch of dudes running out to look for poison oak right now," Van Orden wrote.

While waiting for medical attention at the naval hospital, the lieutenant sat with a towel between his legs covering the genitalia, and Van Orden writes that he spots low-level female officers that he describes as young, cute girls.

"Here's this lieutenant sitting behind a little curtain, spread eagle, ball sack huge as a cantaloupe, and his eyes swollen nearly shut," Van Orden writes.

"That's when I spotted two (officers), who happened to be young girls in their early twenties," he said.

"'Excuse me,' I said to the two cute girls, approaching them. 'Could I ask you something,'" Van Orden wrote.

"After walking them over to the outside of the lieutenant's location, I whipped the curtain back. 'Have you ever seen anything like this?' I asked. They gasped in horror as they saw the LT in all of his glory. I'm sure they never wanted to have anything do with a man ever again," he said.

Him going on about voter fraud.

Derrick Van Orden, Republican candidate for the 3rd Congressional District, said he stands with the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision to sue over absentee ballots at the annual Lincoln Dinner on Saturday.

"You have to make sure that ballot is going to the person that has requested it," Van Orden said. "You need to verify that the voter gets the ballot that they requested and that we don't just randomly send these ballots out. The mass mailing of ballots is a recipe for voter fraud."

Seen him complain about defunding the police, illegal immigrants, and such. Worth keeping an eye on the guy.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I feel it's going to take multiple consecutive defeats (presidential and congress) to actually change Republican party. So even if Biden wins, even if Democrats keep the House and win the Senate, I don't expect Republicans to change much by 2024. Oh sure they might not run a Trump again, but their policies (and lack there of) won't change a bit.

Now if by some miracle they stayed out of national power (meaning no house, no senate, no presidency) 8 years. That might do it, but anything less than that won't do the trick.

It’s going to take a prolonged period as a minority in the Senate and House along with not holding the Presidency. People don’t really remember this but Republicans rarely has control of the house for a 60 year period from the 30’s to 90’s. Republicans only held the House for 4 years and the Senate fir 10. Basically Ronald Reagan in the 80’s and the rise of the neo-liberal in the 90’s started a spiral of a more right wing house. The thing is the Presidency was always back and forth so there was always a path to some power for them

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Hmmm, I'll respectfully disagree, I don't know much about your source, but I generally trust Pew Research & to a lesser extend the New York Times to validate the general consensus that the pollsters got it wrong in 2016. (though I'm always open to having my opinion changed)

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...ed-their-mark/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/u...out-trump.html


Trump polled the same as Romney with the white vote, with the exception of one major difference. He increased the white working class vote in the rust belt states, particularly in Pennsylvania. This is the phantom vote that was not accounted for in the polling.

There is an article (I wish I could find it) that shows how Trump dramatically increased the white working class vote in Pennsylvania by quite a large margin, which offset Clinton's gains in Philadelphia. It makes me nervous. If anyone in this forum is a Pennsylvania democrat, my advice would be to start helping your local Democrat get elected in November.

All that being said, I still think Trump will lose, but if he wins, it will be because he won Florida and Pennsylvania.

538 is a poll aggregate site. All they do is study and look at poll modeling. WBE is right.

If you looked at the polls the week of the election two things were true.

1. Nationally Hillary had a little over a 1% lead. They translated to her winning 2 million more voters

2. While most battleground states leaned Hillary, there were enough in a 3% margin of error that Trump could win them. There were enough states like that to give Trump a path. Hence why 538 and many other poll aggregate sites gave him a 25%-33% chance of winning.

Most people just don’t understand polling. The national poll means nothing in deciding the election. The margin of error exists for a reason. Once it’s in there, it’s effectively rolling dice. Even if it’s leaning Hillary, there’s enough uncertainty for Trump to win.

There were about 5 states where if you rolled dice Trump would have needed to get a 1 or 2 and Hillary could have got 3-6. That’s why Hillary had better odds. The reality was, most of those states ended up going for Trump. Particularly in the Midwest where he won 3 states MI, WI, and PA that were crucial to his path and of Hillary won then she wins

He won PA by 44k and less than a percent
He won MI by 10k and less than 0.25%
He won WI by 22k and less than a percent.

So less than 100k in 3 states that have a total combined population of nearly 30 million gave the election to Trump.

[Tami]

3 Killed in Fresh Wildfires in Northern California

LOS ANGELES — California’s famed wine country, already suffering an economic blow brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and covered in smoke for weeks, is on fire again.

The state’s losses were mounting on Monday as two new wildfires burned out of control, killing three people in Shasta County, the sheriff said. And in wine country, the famous Chateau Boswell winery was gone, a community of tiny homes for homeless people has burned, and an untold number of houses were feared lost.

For residents, still haunted by fires that tore through the area three years ago, destroying thousands of homes and killing dozens of people, the wildfires that exploded on Sunday were as familiar as they were terrifying.

“We’ve evacuated and we are watching the news and watching my district burn again,” Susan Gorin, a Sonoma County supervisor, said Monday morning from a hotel in Novato where she had evacuated to. “I fear that it’s heading into those areas that lost homes and were rebuilt, and I fear they will burn again.”

[Tami]

False G.O.P. Ad Prompts QAnon Death Threats Against a Democratic Congressman

Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey, is facing down death threats from QAnon supporters after the House Republicans’ campaign arm falsely accused him of lobbying to protect sexual predators.

QAnon supporters began targeting Mr. Malinowski, a first-term congressman, on Tuesday, after he led a bipartisan resolution condemning the movement, which spreads a baseless conspiracy theory that President Trump is battling a cabal of Democratic pedophiles.

QAnon believers seized on an advertisement released last month by the campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, that falsely claimed that Mr. Malinowski, then a lobbyist for Human Rights Watch, worked to block a provision in a 2006 crime bill that would have expanded registration requirements for sex offenders.

Death threats and other harassing messages have since poured into Mr. Malinowski’s office in Washington. In an interview on Wednesday, he called the threats “a direct result” of the advertisement, noting that the calls his office had received cited its central accusation.

[Tami]

Trump Officials Seek to Push Social Conservative Values in International Agreements

Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination marks a potential turning point in the decadeslong conservative crusade to roll back abortion rights inside the United States. But Republican social conservatives have for decades been steadily chipping away at abortion rights on the global stage, stacking key foreign-policy agencies with anti-abortion advocates and paring back U.S. assistance if recipients provide abortion advice or services.

In the past four years, the Trump administration has taken this battle to international organizations on an unprecedented scale, going further than past Republican administrations to try to stamp out references to sexual and reproductive health, family planning, and other phrases that they argue condone abortion—as well as new norms on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The administration’s offensives are playing out now in a battle at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, where Trump administration officials have worked to redraft chunks of a strategy document on combating gender-based violence, stripping out such phrases as “sexual orientation,” “gender identities,” and “health services”—referring to them as red lines for the administration.

An internal draft of the document with proposed edits by the U.S. side highlights the extent to which the Trump administration is trying to export its socially conservative stances to international organizations. The push, according to people familiar with the matter, will likely put the United States on a yet another collision course with European countries advocating for international efforts to combat gender-based violence.

The battle at the OECD isn’t the only one. The United States is currently seeking governments to co-sign a declaration to be read by foreign ministers on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly session in Geneva in November asserting that “there is no international right to abortion” and that “in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning.” The draft declaration also excludes any reference to rights for transgender people. It has the backing of Brazil, Hungary, Egypt, Indonesia, and Uganda.

[Tami]

Belligerent Trump debate performance stokes fears among Republicans about November

The aftermath of the first presidential debate between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden triggered a reckoning among Republicans on Wednesday about the incumbent’s incendiary remarks on white supremacy and his baseless claims of electoral fraud, with GOP officials privately expressing alarm about the fallout with key voters as the president’s allies argued that he electrified his core supporters.

Biden, who launched a train tour through the battlegrounds of Ohio and Pennsylvania, continued to pitch himself as a champion of working-class voters and saw Democrats rally around what they view as Trump’s threat to American democracy.

But few Republicans voiced outrage in the wake of Trump’s norm-shattering spectacle in Cleveland on Tuesday, including his statement that the extremist Proud Boys, a male-only far-right group known for street violence, should “stand back and stand by.” Responses ranged from silence to muted criticism, reflecting how the GOP remains convinced that an alliance with Trump and his voters is crucial for its survival.

“This election is drifting toward what feels like a blowout [victory for Biden], and there needs to be some type of event that changes that. The debate was a chance to change the direction, and while it might be too early to be seen, there is no real reason to believe it was a game-changer,” said Brendan Buck, a former top adviser to the past two Republican House speakers, Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and John A. Boehner of Ohio.

Former senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a Trump critic who stays in touch with former colleagues, said the private alarm in Senate GOP circles “is palpable.”

“People are voting already, so they know it’s going to be tough to put forward a new narrative,” Flake said. “They’re more than a little worried because it feels like even if you go in a different direction, it’d be too little, too late. That’s devastating.”

[Tami]

Misinformation about Biden’s health spreads after debate

False stories about Joe Biden’s health continued to spread on social platforms the day after the first presidential debate, including misleading Facebook ads by the Trump campaign and a viral video on TikTok.

A false story about Biden wearing an earpiece that emerged on Tuesday continued to get traction on Facebook after the debate. The Trump campaign ad, which encourages people to “Check Joe’s Ears,” and asked “Why won’t Sleepy Joe commit to an earpiece inspection,” was viewed between 200 to 250,000 times and marketed primarily to people over 55 in Texas and Florida. The implication of the ad, the content of which originated from a tweet by a New York Post reporter who cited a single anonymous source, is that Biden needed the assistance of an earpiece so someone could pass him information during the debates.

And on the video platform TikTok, four grainy videos alleging that Biden was wearing a wire to “cheat” during the debate racked up more than half a million combined views on Wednesday, according to research by the left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters. One of the videos shows a still of Biden with his hand inside his suit, while another overlays an arrow over Biden’s tie, but neither video shows any visual evidence of Biden wearing an electronic device of any kind.

[Tami]

That's my reading list for this morning.

[Joker]

There are a lot of points to respond to here.

The main one was "Why do you still support the Republican Party?" but that's the one you didn't answer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[babyblob]

Start of a rant!

I wish I could say that his debate was a game changer. And yea there may be some Republicans who are speaking about how bad it was in private but how many Republicans have called him out in public? All I hear was he was well prepared and would not have gone off the rails if Biden and Wallace did not attack and bully him. When asked or when they talk about him not calling out white supremacy? "Well Biden didnt call out Antifa."


I am sick of these so called Republican outsiders with knowledge of the party who here things inside the party who say "Well there are so many who are not happy with Trump." Call him out in public, make a damn stand. Dont hide behind you back room doors and office phone calls with other members who are too scared to make a stand. I hear from too many people that Trump does not represent the whole party. There are those who dont agree with him.

Mitt voted to impeach then said he would vote for his SC Nominee. So yea way to make a stand against a man you clam to hate and disagree with so much.

So yea talk privately. But in public support Trump and encourage people to vote him. What the Hell does it change?

I hear talk of them being scared of retaliation. Lets be real the only retaliation GOP law makers fear is losing their seat. That is why they dont speak up and tow the line.

I am sure after the election if Trump loses we will have a few Republicans come and talk bravely about how they never supported Trump and how they are glad he is gone. But only after the chance of losing face with the voters and his hardcore bass has passed.

Sorry for the Rant. it is just this election and living with a hardcore Trumper and having a Republican friend who keeps saying Trump is not he party every day is starting to get to me this morning.

[Tami]

The main one was "Why do you still support the Republican Party?" but that's the one you didn't answer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You can't expect all Republicans to suddenly flip and say 'I need to be a Democrat or Independent'. Some have, but for many there are good reasons to stay Republicans even if they oppose Trump.

Its kind of like how I feel about being Catholic. At it's best it provides a very good moral foundation and spiritual support system, at its worst ... :sigh:

Instead of switching religions, I'm waiting to see if it can change from within. I'm not a practicing Catholic, more of a realist (or maybe a cynic, not sure), but still I am hoping for the better.

Many Republicans may feel the same way, instead of switching political parties, they are waiting to see if it changes from within. Some are actively trying to do that.

I don't fault someone for being Republican. I'd be more concerned if they say they are Republican and still support Trump.