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

[numberthirty]

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Does that include Arizona? Colorado? Where Dems dislodged GOP. What about the Squad who not only got relected but saw more progressive Reps that they endorsed, join the House?

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When they gave seats right back elsewhere?

Yes. That obviously includes Arizona and Colorado because, as of yet, those two states do not have some magical trump card that will change the bigger picture that actually happened last night.

[kingaliencracker]

Your argument rests on what happens if a) the world-changing historic pandemic did not happen, b) if the conditions of January and February (where I might add Trump both knew about the pandemic and already started lying about it and informing wall street folks about it) continued indefinitely...

The word "objectively" went out the window when you start with that.

No it doesn't. If you're objective you can take a historical event, such as a pandemic, terrorist attack, war, assassination, etc. and make a logical conclusion based on the events leading up to that event as well as what happened after as to where we likely would have wound up as a country without said event. Now, it doesn't mean your conclusion is right and of course there's no way to ever truly know. But if you're asking me if I believe had Covid-19 been postponed a year and it was a Biden/Trump election still this year, that Biden would have won? No, sorry I don't.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think that proves my point more than anything. A conservative New Yorker would likely never see a conservative president voted into office if all the elections focused on were New York, California, and Florida because chances are the former two states will always vote liberal while Florida will swing back and forth.

Ronald Reagan took NYS, CA, FL in 1980 and 1984. Not that he should have of course since he was pretty much Competent!Trump but he did do it. And he won the popular vote. A bad candidate and a bad president can legitimately win the popular vote and the electoral vote. It has happened and it can happen.

Fact is that electoral maps aren't destiny. A state being liberal or liberal leaning doesn't mean a conservative can't win over with the right campaign and vice versa. In Germany, Angela Merkel is popular and beloved genuinely so and she's a classic small-c conservative who preserves norms, institutions, and laws while honoring and respecting the electorate (hence on taking office she didn't overturn Social Democratic gains).

So conservatism isn't something without a future. The current form in which the Republicans have it, yeah that won't last.

The electoral college prevents states from monopolizing the presidential election.

The EC does nothing but create monopolies of the President Election. What do you think a "swing state" is if not a voting monopoly?

Jeez.

I mean, I know it was 344 years ago but are forefathers were kind of brilliant guys who thought ahead about these things.

a) It wasn't 344 years ago.

b) They didn't think ahead of these things.

c) I'd say about 1 or 2 were brilliant, some others had talent, but by and large they were a generation of really rich landowners and mediocre political hacks who would not have amounted to anything had it not been for the American Revolution (which was a spontaneous event that most of these FF joined after it went into motion rather than planning and setting out from the start).

[worstblogever]

Again, I don't think anyone should take this as a glowing review of the Democratic Party. They got no ground gained in Congress and if Biden holds on to win (which I think he will but it's still not a guarantee), then it's going to be by the skin of his teeth.

This is incorrect. They have, at the very least, gained one Senate seat already. When the counting's over, both GA Senate seats will go to runoff. NC is still too close to call. So they gained a seat in the Senate, if they get two of these three, they gain control outright.

In the House, it's still unclear if they've gained or lost seats. But they're still counting. It looks like it might be a wash... but they've won virtually all the seats that could be won with the current gerrymander. You can't improve much with a map out of your favor when you're already +41 with that stacked deck.

[kingaliencracker]

Ronald Reagan took NYS, CA, FL in 1980 and 1984. Not that he should have of course since he was pretty much Competent!Trump but he did do it. And he won the popular vote. A bad candidate and a bad president can legitimately win the popular vote and the electoral vote. It has happened and it can happen.

Fact is that electoral maps aren't destiny. A state being liberal or liberal leaning doesn't mean a conservative can't win over with the right campaign and vice versa. In Germany, Angela Merkel is popular and beloved genuinely so and she's a classic small-c conservative who preserves norms, institutions, and laws while honoring and respecting the electorate (hence on taking office she didn't overturn Social Democratic gains).

So conservatism isn't something without a future. The current form in which the Republicans have it, yeah that won't last.



The EC does nothing but create monopolies of the President Election. What do you think a "swing state" is if not a voting monopoly?

Jeez.



a) It wasn't 344 years ago.

b) They didn't think ahead of these things.

c) I'd say about 1 or 2 were brilliant, some others had talent, but by and large they were a generation of really rich landowners and mediocre political hacks who would not have amounted to anything had it not been for the American Revolution (which was a spontaneous event that most of these FF joined after it went into motion rather than planning and setting out from the start).

244 years ago. My apologies. I did actually know that since I live in Colorado which is the Centennial State.

And how do you know they didn't think about these things? Were you alive? Do you have recorded conversations with them?

You make the statement that there's no way to predict what may have happened without the pandemic, yet you make a bold claim that highly educated scholars at the time didn't have the foresight to see certain things that may come up down the line, and didn't have a certain level of experience dealing with similar or even identical problems back then.

[Iron Maiden]

Not entirely sure what to make of this

Regardless of why this moving truck is in front of the White House - just atrocious optics for the current occupant.

Is it legit? If so, what do you suppose it means?



Some on Twitter think that Trump is going to loot the White House.

He did help himself to some artwork at the American Embassy in Paris but they turned out to be replicas. This is the same visit where he cancelled a trip to visit a cemetery that had the graves of some U.S Marines and allegedly said they were losers anyway. Nothing like doubling down on the being abhorrent.

[worstblogever]

??

Trump is only behind in the popular vote by 3 million. That's not a substantial or abnormal difference and in fact was about the difference between him and Hilary in 2016.

Again, this is not going to be the final tally. Trump is down, as of right now, 3.7 million.

They're going to be counting heavily-weighted towards Democratic votes for the next several days. By the time California has all its huge total counted, Trump will have lost by, at minimum, 5 million votes. Perhaps by as much as 8 million.

That's a pretty substantial difference between what Hillary got in 2016. It's going to total 10-15 more million votes than she got, and nearly double the total she won by.

[worstblogever]

Not entirely sure what to make of this

Regardless of why this moving truck is in front of the White House - just atrocious optics for the current occupant.

Is it legit? If so, what do you suppose it means?



Some on Twitter think that Trump is going to loot the White House.

I'd be more worried they're removing evidence.

[kingaliencracker]

This is incorrect. They have, at the very least, gained one Senate seat already. When the counting's over, both GA Senate seats will go to runoff. NC is still too close to call. So they gained a seat in the Senate, if they get two of these three, they gain control outright.

In the House, it's still unclear if they've gained or lost seats. But they're still counting. It looks like it might be a wash... but they've won virtually all the seats that could be won with the current gerrymander. You can't improve much with a map out of your favor when you're already +41 with that stacked deck.

By ground, I mean actually being able to implement policy as they were under Obama during his first term. That won't happen with Biden in his first two years at least.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

When they gave seats right back elsewhere?

The Dems have lost the seat in Alabama which was expected. They kept the seat in Michigan which was closer than it should have been granted (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...-peters-winner). They didn't gain the high profile senate seats but they did increase by 1 seat.

No it doesn't. If you're objective you can take a historical event, such as a pandemic, terrorist attack, war, assassination, etc. and make a logical conclusion based on the events leading up to that event as well as what happened after as to where we likely would have wound up as a country without said event.

If you focus on a narrow set of parameters for sure. Without 9/11 for instance, a bunch of people would be alive from the terrorist attack...we wouldn't have the TSA, airport security might not be what it is now, America wouldn't have gone to war in Afghanistan. But if you extrapolate from that to claim say that without 9/11, the Iraq War wouldn't have happened (when again that war had nothing to do with 9/11) or that Bush would have won/loss a second term and so on, that's when it becomes impossible to imagine.

Your claim that without Pandemic Trump would have won implies that the conditions of January or March would have stayed the same when economically a recession was forecast at the time without the Pandemic.

Now, it doesn't mean your conclusion is right and of course there's no way to ever truly know.

Thank you, that's all I needed to hear.

[kingaliencracker]

Thank you, that's all I needed to hear.

I never claimed my assessment of what the election would have been like without Covid-19 or the civil unrest was absolute. I believe that if Trump only had to worry about a possible recession at some point in the year and not a global pandemic or mass protests across the country due to his administration's perceived inaction on both fronts that it wouldn't have been enough for him to lose an election to Biden.

[numberthirty]

The Dems have lost the seat in Alabama which was expected. They kept the seat in Michigan which was closer than it should have been granted (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...-peters-winner). They didn't gain the high profile senate seats but they did increase by 1 seat.

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In what is as close to a "Worst Case Scenario..." year as their opposition will ever see.

It's like walking into a fight where your opponent just took a beating, and you barely get out of him stomping a mudhole in you.

[worstblogever]

If there wasn't "Trump lying about a pandemic and helping spread it with rallies"...

I think there would have been more movement on the Russian bounties scandal and his taxes. But I don't think that would have been enough.

[The Cool Thatguy]

If there wasn't "Trump lying about a pandemic and helping spread it with rallies"...

I think there would have been more movement on the Russian bounties scandal and his taxes. But I don't think that would have been enough.

They really should have hit ion that more

[Revolutionary_Jack]

And how do you know they didn't think about these things? Were you alive? Do you have recorded conversations with them?

The burden of proof is on those who make the claim "they thought about these things". That's how historical documetation works. The Founding Fathers in the 1700s lived at a time of Newtonian physics, and Pre-Germ Theory medicine, Pre-Darwinian biology, and at a time when Euclid was the last word in mathematics. To make the claim that these gentlemen somehow were able to anticipate the direction of America 244 years later is absurd...and the one who does that need to present strong evidence for that. The Electoral College was a concept borrowed from the Holy Roman Emperor and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it's not something in the British Parliamentary tradition. It was created to accommodate an economic system at the time called slavery which is now longer operational.

The founding fathers were for the most part not innovators in their mode of government or ideas of republicanism. They drew ideas from stuff before them, codified and streamlined a lot of that in some respects. In terms of modern democracy -- universal suffrage, anti-racism, laws of minorities, abolition of slavery -- you need to look at the French Revolution. They were the real innovators in terms of codifying and defining democracy as the world knows of it today.

In US history, Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republican parties, ought to be credited as the true founders of American democracy. Lincoln was greater than all the founders put together.

You make the statement that there's no way to predict what may have happened without the pandemic,

That's correct. Without the pandemic we might have gone into war with Iran, which was on the cards for a while owing to Suleimani's death. Without the pandemic the economy might have gone into recession before the election much in the same way it did in 2007-08 where the economic crash pretty much finished McCain's candidacy since he couldn't run on a platform of continuity with Dubya Bush (who made no appearances whatsoever on the campaign trail).

...yet you make a bold claim that highly educated scholars at the time didn't have the foresight to see certain things that may come up down the line, and didn't have a certain level of experience dealing with similar or even identical problems back then.

Because again that's not how history works. You are engaging in historical projection...not looking at it from the perspective of documents, contexts, and the way things meant differently then as to now. The latter is the only way we can actually know the past, the former is just speculation.