US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4057

On August 31 2023 19:44 Uldridge wrote:
Now flip it on its head and think how Republicans are looking at your metaphor:
The carefully built houses are being set on fire one by one. The Republicans are desperately trying to either rebuild their old manors, or trying to put out the fires asap and fix the damage.

So let's make it a bit more nuanced where houses are continuously being built and parts (or entireties) are set on fire. This applies to both parties. Now each side puts effort into preventing the fire from happening or by repairing the damage asap.
Because saying GOP is just burning and Dems are just building is just another way of polarizing the conversation. It's all apples to apples, you're just looking at apples and saying they're oranges because you don't like the taste.

I'm basically in the Dems camp (factually I'm far left leaning though). I'm just making an effort here to be the Devil's advocate, probably not really succeeding, because my logic may be flawed at times.


The argument is that the guy without a match can either sit back and watch the guy with the match burn the house down or he can try to prevent the guy from lighting it on fire. I'm saying not enough prevention is happening, in fact, there's a passivity occurring which almost tends to look like complicity.

On August 31 2023 23:00 Uldridge wrote:
They are a monolithic group. They call themselves the Democratic Party. And the strange thing is, while they do make up a variety of political thought, they need to be under that monolith to wield any sort of political agency. They will need to yield at least some of their beliefs to be able to do what they do. Fall in line or be ousted.
I'm pretty sure that's how it goes with well oiled machines like that. They tend to shackle you to their rules and whims.

On August 31 2023 22:57 Sadist wrote:
What the hell are you talking about? How are they going to "prevent them" . The democratic party is a group of individuals that have a huge spectrum of people in the tent. We live in a democracy. People have to vote and elect people. This isnt China. The party doesnt run the country. A group of individuals do.

I dont think you have any idea how this works. Previously you mentioned the DNC nominating Hillary and its their fault Trump won. Hillary was elected by VOTERS in a primary.

What would you like them to do? Where do your votes come from? How do you convince people to vote for your policies? Do you realize there is a huge swath of the country that hates any idea proposed by a "D" ? Even if the concept on its own is popular, theyll never vote for it because "lol Democrats"

You have been fooled into blaming democrats for Republicans decent into Madness. Its mind boggeling.

On August 31 2023 23:20 Uldridge wrote:

I commend your naivety with how campaigning for presidential election works. It's all "you get what you see" guys. They are transparant to a tee. No foul play, no propaganda, no coercion, no extortion, no negotiations, none of that. It's the VOTERS. Let alone the delegates can still pick whom they choose to.
I don't know the stats. It's possible Hillary got enough people behind her who voted for her. It's possible not enough people were interested in voting for her. It's possible she did Sanders one dirty through whatever channel she could muster.
I know the game is played dirty. Not that I know how it's played, because I've never been in the position. Money and power make people do many things. Showing your hands is not one of them.
I'm not blaming Democrats of anything other than not showing up. They have no identity and no spine. If AOC tries to become a president, though, she had my full support. If Hillary tries again... hell, Biden is almost a stretch too far imo. Dude is 80+, how crazy would it be to have an active president dying of a heart attack.

On August 31 2023 23:25 Sadist wrote:
Cool story. Now you wont primary because you cant win. You wont even ackknowledge hillary won the primary.

Its pointless discussing this anymore with you. You dont even understand Voters vote and we actually fucking count them in our country.

On August 31 2023 23:36 JimmiC wrote:
Trump is 77 and super overweight with a horrible diet. He is pretty much in the same boat for chances of dying if not higher. I pulled some actuarially tables earlier but its difficult to do it exactly without more medical information. But there is a pretty decent chance that at least one of them (hell even bother though I wouldn't bet the parlay) die before the end of the next term.

The big difference is if Biden dies his supporters will blame his age as will the reps. If Trump dies his supporters will blame the dems and the others will blame age and diet. Hmmm who is more realistic?

On September 01 2023 00:20 Uldridge wrote:

Hillary won. Sure, I acknowledge that. I'll drop my batshit ramblings for now. Let's say I disagree with the people who voted for her. Did you agree with her as a nominee?


Of course. The insanity and cognitive dissonance exercised by the Republicans is something to behold. Mental gymnastics at its finest. Biden dying in office is just worse PR than it is Trump dying. Just watch how they'll spin it into something grotesquely favorable for themselves instead of mourning a dead president.

On September 01 2023 00:04 ChristianS wrote:
I hate to fixate on horserace coverage and mundane details of polling – it’s something I used to do way too much in this thread, and I think the whole national conversation does it way too much. But since GH started all this off highlighting head-to-head polling showing Trump leading against Biden in a hypothetical general election, its worth saying:

“Head-to-head” polling is well-known to be almost meaningless. They’ve been doing it for ages, and during primaries supporters of this or that candidate are constantly holding up head-to-head polling to say “see? our candidate would win in the general!” But since they’ve been doing it for ages it’s not hard to check how well it lines up with actual election results.

If you need to forecast a general election this far out for some reason, you’re better off looking at special election results, or just extrapolating from an economic forecast, or fuck, trusting your gut for that matter. Head-to-head polls are simply not a good way to predict general elections.

Now, does it matter? Personally I’m of the belief that if Trump was in the lead to win another term, people should vote against him. I’m also of the belief that if he *wasn’t* in the lead to win another term, people should vote against him. I believe this because a fascist takeover of the US government would have atrocious consequences for billions of people, and if you had the power to stop that and didn’t, I think you might be a fucking monster. Elections in the Weimar Republic were never going to be the mechanism for bringing about a socialist utopia, but things still went a lot worse for just about everybody because it went the one way and not the other way.

I mean, I think GH and I are in agreement that the US electoral system simply won’t allow things he would deem absolutely necessary (e.g. abolition of private property) to happen. Doesn’t matter who you vote for, or whether you vote at all, that’s simply not how this elected government is going to work. There’s other people in the thread that might think if they apply sustained pressure to the Democrats hard enough for long enough with just the right primary candidates, they can make it happen; if that’s your goal, you might have some difficult decisions about when to support the Dem candidate and when to refuse (in an effort to pressure them further left).

But if that’s just not in the cards, I just don’t see what yelling at people not to vote accomplishes. Whether you’re trying to save the world with mutual aid and building dual power, or you’re trying to form a Revolutionary Vanguard that can lead the popular overthrow of the republic, it just doesn’t matter to those efforts how people vote in the meantime.

On September 01 2023 01:50 Sadist wrote:
What do you mean "agree" with her as the nominee? I voted for Bernie in the primary twice and he lost. I put on my big boy pants and voted for the Democrat in the general election because anything else is a vote for a Republican. I voted to cancel one of their votes out.

On August 31 2023 23:36 JimmiC wrote:
Trump is 77 and super overweight with a horrible diet. He is pretty much in the same boat for chances of dying if not higher. I pulled some actuarially tables earlier but its difficult to do it exactly without more medical information. But there is a pretty decent chance that at least one of them (hell even bother though I wouldn't bet the parlay) die before the end of the next term.

The big difference is if Biden dies his supporters will blame his age as will the reps. If Trump dies his supporters will blame the dems and the others will blame age and diet. Hmmm who is more realistic?

edit: So yeah at 77 you life expectancy is 9.32 years and being over weight costs you 2-4 years. at 80 its 7.74. So they are basically the same. Each year there is like a 5-9% chance of each one of them dying.

On September 01 2023 04:05 oBlade wrote:

If Trump dies, we will blame whoever shot or exploded him. His "horrible diet" of diet coke, not drinking alcohol or smoking or doing drugs while taking statins long-term aside, it's apparent he's in better health than Biden was when he was 77, compare their levels of activity and ability to speak and move and be active while having their wits about them. His father lived close to 100. Biden falls asleep, can't speak, and does what he's told. If he dies in office, we won't be blaming his age but a gust of wind. The reason it's more relevant in his case is his VP lacks the basic competence you'd expect of a high schooler. Republicans have to actually be competent to a higher standard in order to have any chance against a machine of people who vote D no matter what without talking or thinking about any issues, because everyone else is doing it and the media lockstep guides them to vote that way. That applies to Republicans' VPs also, they can't afford to put people as incompetent as Harris on the ticket because they won't just get voted for anyway.