Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
Biden/Harris are currently doing a victory lap for Biden's executive actions earlier this year significantly reducing border crossings. Apparently they are unable to realize the contradiction of taking credit for the reduction in border crossings through executive action while simultaneously saying for 3 years prior that their policies have no effect on border crossings and their hands were tied because only Congress could take action on the border.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
I am also really worried that Trump will win again. I am so fed up with that guy, I can't stand his face nor his voice, and it is a true disgrace that he still has so much support after everything he has said and done. What an eventual Trump win tells about the US might be even worse than Trump himself. How can they be the "leader of the free world" and elect that terrible human being as their principal international representative, twice?
What he will be able to actually do as president is a very different question. The Democrats will still have a lot of money and power, and even Trump has to answer to people, especially ones in rich, important industries. As I have understood the US, individual states make most decicions affecting people's everyday life, and making all of them submit to true, central fascism is probably impossible.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
I am also really worried that Trump will win again. I am so fed up with that guy, I can't stand his face nor his voice, and it is a true disgrace that he still has so much support after everything he has said and done. What an eventual Trump win tells about the US might be even worse than Trump himself. How can they be the "leader of the free world" and elect that terrible human being as their principal international representative, twice?
What he will be able to actually do as president is a very different question. The Democrats will still have a lot of money and power, and even Trump has to answer to people, especially ones in rich, important industries. As I have understood the US, individual states make most decicions affecting people's everyday life, and making all of them submit to true, central fascism is probably impossible.
The mental gymnastics required to go from "Even Trump's generals know he is a fascist that will destroy US democracy and genocide way harder if he wins, so we have to be willing to support genocide to protect democracy" to "actually US democracy will be fine if he wins, so we should focus on the next election" would give a rational person whiplash.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
I am also really worried that Trump will win again. I am so fed up with that guy, I can't stand his face nor his voice, and it is a true disgrace that he still has so much support after everything he has said and done. What an eventual Trump win tells about the US might be even worse than Trump himself. How can they be the "leader of the free world" and elect that terrible human being as their principal international representative, twice?
What he will be able to actually do as president is a very different question. The Democrats will still have a lot of money and power, and even Trump has to answer to people, especially ones in rich, important industries. As I have understood the US, individual states make most decicions affecting people's everyday life, and making all of them submit to true, central fascism is probably impossible.
If that happens I may stop using TL to discuss politics and go to one of its weird sub-threads like the ones about Starcratt.
The man himself, the absolute bollocks equivocations and excuses made for him by others genuinely viscerally irritate me. I dunnae know if I can mentally handle another term of the cunt.
Equal to that it’s just one of those things in life, like the latest balance patch, how to make oneself appealing to women that will perpetually confuse me no matter how much grey matter I exhaust unpacking it.
It’s this sort of confusing miasma of this deification of a man with no principles, who’s an idiot and who’s also an asshole.
I mean I can understand various combos of competent asshole, or a principled idiot whose ideals align with yours etc etc, but he’s going 0-3
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
Yeah, I guess I thought you had said other stuff since then that implied you thought it was pretty much over. Whatever, however I got the wrong impression I obviously did.
I can certainly see an argument that she's pivoted to the kind of centrist Clinton "even moderate Republicans think you should vote for me" argument and that's been a mistake. I've hated to see it, anyway, and it has the fundamental flaw that if there's one group more universally hated than moderate Democrats, it's moderate Republicans. I'm not even sure the moderate Republicans like moderate Republicans.
That said I bet it hasn't mattered very much. The thing that has been kind of shocking to me in the last month or two is just how little immunity to low-grade Trump bullshit everyone seems to have built up over the last decade; he throws out such lazy bullshit like "they're eating the pets" and somehow it still seems like a sizable percentage of the voting public thinks "Wow, that's terrible! I'm sure he wouldn't say that unless there was some truth to it..." The racism doesn't shock me but the gullibility of it still takes me by surprise. With easy prey like that I'm not sure what anybody was supposed to do about it; it seems like every news cycle for the last month has been some bullshit like that from Trump that has absolutely nothing to it, and everybody should have learned to shrug that sort of thing off by the end of the 2016 campaign, and yet here we are arguing over whether Trump is justified to want to call in the military to suppress the radical leftists that are planning to oppose him on election day.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
If there's any way for Harris to win, it'll be through a reverse Clinton where she slips through and wins MI/PA/WI (or NC I guess) because of opposition malpractice. The narrative makes sense to me, particularly in PA where GOTV infrastructure has been shifted to perpetual grifter and Dunning Kruger victim Elon Musk.
Realistically she should be losing way more than she currently is so kind of small blessings there. Actual disciplined conservatives in other countries have been turfing out incumbent parties with huge swings and obvious polls predicting those swings.
Either way, America is completely cooked. This MSG rally is probably the most cooked thing I've seen, this is not a very healthy country. Gosh I love watermelon jokes with absolutely zero set up and twist are coming back in vogue in 2024, the height of comedy right there.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
Yeah, I guess I thought you had said other stuff since then that implied you thought it was pretty much over. Whatever, however I got the wrong impression I obviously did.
I can certainly see an argument that she's pivoted to the kind of centrist Clinton "even moderate Republicans think you should vote for me" argument and that's been a mistake. I've hated to see it, anyway, and it has the fundamental flaw that if there's one group more universally hated than moderate Democrats, it's moderate Republicans. I'm not even sure the moderate Republicans like moderate Republicans.
That said I bet it hasn't mattered very much. The thing that has been kind of shocking to me in the last month or two is just how little immunity to low-grade Trump bullshit everyone seems to have built up over the last decade; he throws out such lazy bullshit like "they're eating the pets" and somehow it still seems like a sizable percentage of the voting public thinks "Wow, that's terrible! I'm sure he wouldn't say that unless there was some truth to it..." The racism doesn't shock me but the gullibility of it still takes me by surprise. With easy prey like that I'm not sure what anybody was supposed to do about it; it seems like every news cycle for the last month has been some bullshit like that from Trump that has absolutely nothing to it, and everybody should have learned to shrug that sort of thing off by the end of the 2016 campaign, and yet here we are arguing over whether Trump is justified to want to call in the military to suppress the radical leftists that are planning to oppose him on election day.
I think it would make sense from a strategic standpoint for Harris to own her centrist or even right of center positions. It disarms the "radical left wing" talk, which is silly. And many Republicans (including people here) hate to be called far right, and don't identify as far right, even though that is exactly what the parties positions are.
To your point on his lying, I just read the fact check from the Rogan interview. And many of them are just pure stupid. Like how can you stand behind someone that lies to blatantly and stupidly. Half of them are not even political and just vanity lies. He is so damn unlikeable, I really don't get why people love this spoiled, entitled, rich kid, who got everything from daddy and grand daddy.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
Yeah, I guess I thought you had said other stuff since then that implied you thought it was pretty much over. Whatever, however I got the wrong impression I obviously did.
I can certainly see an argument that she's pivoted to the kind of centrist Clinton "even moderate Republicans think you should vote for me" argument and that's been a mistake. I've hated to see it, anyway, and it has the fundamental flaw that if there's one group more universally hated than moderate Democrats, it's moderate Republicans. I'm not even sure the moderate Republicans like moderate Republicans.
That said I bet it hasn't mattered very much. The thing that has been kind of shocking to me in the last month or two is just how little immunity to low-grade Trump bullshit everyone seems to have built up over the last decade; he throws out such lazy bullshit like "they're eating the pets" and somehow it still seems like a sizable percentage of the voting public thinks "Wow, that's terrible! I'm sure he wouldn't say that unless there was some truth to it..." The racism doesn't shock me but the gullibility of it still takes me by surprise. With easy prey like that I'm not sure what anybody was supposed to do about it; it seems like every news cycle for the last month has been some bullshit like that from Trump that has absolutely nothing to it, and everybody should have learned to shrug that sort of thing off by the end of the 2016 campaign, and yet here we are arguing over whether Trump is justified to want to call in the military to suppress the radical leftists that are planning to oppose him on election day.
I think it would make sense from a strategic standpoint for Harris to own her centrist or even right of center positions. It disarms the "radical left wing" talk, which is silly. And many Republicans (including people here) hate to be called far right, and don't identify as far right, even though that is exactly what the parties positions are.
To your point on his lying, I just read the fact check from the Rogan interview. And many of them are just pure stupid. Like how can you stand behind someone that lies to blatantly and stupidly. Half of them are not even political and just vanity lies. He is so damn unlikeable, I really don't get why people love this spoiled, entitled, rich kid, who got everything from daddy and grand daddy.
In combination is why I think this recent pivot of sorts is something of a mistake, we shall see.
It doesn’t disarm the radical left wing talk, or if it does, I’d imagine among a quite limited cohort.
On the flipside you’ve the left wing of your own party already not super enthused, that you need to drive turnout amongst. The traditional economic left ofc. But also many Americans, including Arab/Muslim Americans for who Israel/Palestine is becoming a wedge issue. I can’t see there being much enthusiasm for ‘hey look Dick Cheney endorsed me’, considering the role he played in that post 9-11 time where (IIRC) the very term Islamophobia was coined.
On a functional level, it’s also somewhat not all that pragmatically useful down the line. You’re building bridges across the aisle, and trying for bipartisan governance, hey I think that can be a laudable and desirable goal. However, the other side don’t wish to do that, to the degree anyone not blowing the Donald becomes a de facto exile amongst their own party.
You’re building bridges with folks whose own clan have tossed them over the bridge already.
Hey, I hate being wrong but I do hope I’m wrong. I just don’t know if this is the play.
I’d rather things be less tribalistic and myopic than they are, in an ideal world. But it feels that genuine floating/undecided voter is becoming that much rarer, and you’re best keeping your tribe/coalition’s fringes on side
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
If there's any way for Harris to win, it'll be through a reverse Clinton where she slips through and wins MI/PA/WI (or NC I guess) because of opposition malpractice. The narrative makes sense to me, particularly in PA where GOTV infrastructure has been shifted to perpetual grifter and Dunning Kruger victim Elon Musk.
Realistically she should be losing way more than she currently is so kind of small blessings there. Actual disciplined conservatives in other countries have been turfing out incumbent parties with huge swings and obvious polls predicting those swings.
Either way, America is completely cooked. This MSG rally is probably the most cooked thing I've seen, this is not a very healthy country. Gosh I love watermelon jokes with absolutely zero set up and twist are coming back in vogue in 2024, the height of comedy right there.
I dont think there is a way for Harris to win, I stated it rather openly when she replaced Biden. Imo it was election ending choice for the Democrats.
On a side note, I saw two Biden clips, one in MAGA hat, and one where he says I am back in, and I was wondering where was this dude during his campaign. He came across funny, with healthy self distance and likeable. Few more clips like this and debate with Trump would never had to happen. Oddly Democrats decided that literally most powerful white men in the world warning people about dangers of white supremacy would be better...
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
Yeah, I guess I thought you had said other stuff since then that implied you thought it was pretty much over. Whatever, however I got the wrong impression I obviously did.
I can certainly see an argument that she's pivoted to the kind of centrist Clinton "even moderate Republicans think you should vote for me" argument and that's been a mistake. I've hated to see it, anyway, and it has the fundamental flaw that if there's one group more universally hated than moderate Democrats, it's moderate Republicans. I'm not even sure the moderate Republicans like moderate Republicans.
That said I bet it hasn't mattered very much. The thing that has been kind of shocking to me in the last month or two is just how little immunity to low-grade Trump bullshit everyone seems to have built up over the last decade; he throws out such lazy bullshit like "they're eating the pets" and somehow it still seems like a sizable percentage of the voting public thinks "Wow, that's terrible! I'm sure he wouldn't say that unless there was some truth to it..." The racism doesn't shock me but the gullibility of it still takes me by surprise. With easy prey like that I'm not sure what anybody was supposed to do about it; it seems like every news cycle for the last month has been some bullshit like that from Trump that has absolutely nothing to it, and everybody should have learned to shrug that sort of thing off by the end of the 2016 campaign, and yet here we are arguing over whether Trump is justified to want to call in the military to suppress the radical leftists that are planning to oppose him on election day.
I think it would make sense from a strategic standpoint for Harris to own her centrist or even right of center positions. It disarms the "radical left wing" talk, which is silly. And many Republicans (including people here) hate to be called far right, and don't identify as far right, even though that is exactly what the parties positions are.
To your point on his lying, I just read the fact check from the Rogan interview. And many of them are just pure stupid. Like how can you stand behind someone that lies to blatantly and stupidly. Half of them are not even political and just vanity lies. He is so damn unlikeable, I really don't get why people love this spoiled, entitled, rich kid, who got everything from daddy and grand daddy.
I mean that’s almost certainly the reasoning behind it, and I don’t think it’s a totally implausible strategy. Whatever his faults, I think Biden’s biggest strength was that it was just kind of impossible to convincingly label him as some far-left radical. They still tried, but it was just kind of fundamentally weak as a rhetorical strategy because, I dunno, look at him?
That said, the Democrats are very prone to this strategy and it hardly ever works. Like, back in the day they’d get labeled unpatriotic draft-dodgers every cycle, and then they’d nominate John Kerry specifically because he’s a war hero, and it doesn’t even really slow the Republicans down. Fundamentally, the attack was a lie in the first place, so changing the truth is of limited value in combatting it.
That’d be my diagnosis here – Harris was never some far-left radical, and promising to have an advisory panel of Republicans to combat the attack doesn’t help very much because it already wasn’t true. Meanwhile it does play into a criticism a lot of people already suspect about the Democrats, which is that they’re spineless power-seekers who believe in nothing and will say whatever their polling says they’re supposed to say in order to win. That doesn’t exactly change the lesser-evil calculation but it does just make them off-putting and uninspiring to people whose political sympathies should make them reliable Democratic voters, maybe hurting them on turnout more than they gained in persuading anybody who was worried about them being radical leftists.
But again, I also don’t think it was probably all that consequential either way.
While Trump's recent rally (and previous presidency) mocked and diminished Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, this is Harris acting the way a real leader should:
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
If there's any way for Harris to win, it'll be through a reverse Clinton where she slips through and wins MI/PA/WI (or NC I guess) because of opposition malpractice. The narrative makes sense to me, particularly in PA where GOTV infrastructure has been shifted to perpetual grifter and Dunning Kruger victim Elon Musk.
Realistically she should be losing way more than she currently is so kind of small blessings there. Actual disciplined conservatives in other countries have been turfing out incumbent parties with huge swings and obvious polls predicting those swings.
Either way, America is completely cooked. This MSG rally is probably the most cooked thing I've seen, this is not a very healthy country. Gosh I love watermelon jokes with absolutely zero set up and twist are coming back in vogue in 2024, the height of comedy right there.
I dont think there is a way for Harris to win, I stated it rather openly when she replaced Biden. Imo it was election ending choice for the Democrats.
On a side note, I saw two Biden clips, one in MAGA hat, and one where he says I am back in, and I was wondering where was this dude during his campaign. He came across funny, with healthy self distance and likeable. Few more clips like this and debate with Trump would never had to happen. Oddly Democrats decided that literally most powerful white men in the world warning people about dangers of white supremacy would be better...
Biden was toast the second that debate happened, there was just no way he could carry the electorate after that. And even if hypothetically that debate had never occurred, I can’t see some other similar disaster not occurring over the intervening months.
If not Harris, what would your alternative approach have been?
I will say that I think a younger Biden reasonably comfortably bearsTrump, or at least has a much better shot than Harris. Aside from his age the biggest milestone around his neck is was his Presidency as well though. Or more specifically, the perception of the impacts of things that occurred on his watch, regardless of them being within his power to influence all that much.
On the inverse see Trump’s consistent polling reputation for being stronger on the economy.
In a hypothetical world where term limits weren’t a thing, I think Obama of the Barack would cake Trump. But the Dems, if they have an Obama equivalent in the ranks, they haven’t come forward.
I couldn’t quantify it, I have read a lot on the subject but couldn’t be arsed googling again, perhaps in future I need to use bookmarks… people aren’t necessarily honest about these things either, if they are even aware but I do also think Harris being a chick may be a negative on her chances. As it was for Clinton, although obviously she had other flaws too. I think the corresponding uptick in female enthusiasm for a female candidate may have been achieved anyway by the galvanising effect of the repeal of Roe vs Wade
I must stress I find this a regrettable state of affairs, I personally think it is a factor too.
On October 28 2024 10:19 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: While Trump's recent rally (and previous presidency) mocked and diminished Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, this is Harris acting the way a real leader should: + Show Spoiler +
https://youtu.be/7aBzFcXwA1g?si=iNR9zfo1LDi8RguZ
She makes it sound like her current office isn't in the white house and Trump's the incumbent lol.
Feels weird not to mention the issue with US citizens living in Puerto Rico not having federal voting rights. Particularly when you're running on 'democracy'.
On October 25 2024 05:00 Ryzel wrote: Good lord, I was 30 pages behind a few days ago and just binged to catch up hoping I’d find something of substance. Man was I sorely mistaken. DPB and Introvert’s discussion was OK, and I think Uldridge tried his best like 10 pages ago with a particularly good question, but I can’t even remember what it was anymore because it’s been drowned in a quagmire of bullshit and bad faith discussions. Bless your heart DPB but if your intent is substantive discussions with people like the avatar of the outrage machine and a guy cosplaying as a lib normie radicalizer, you’re wasting your time.
ChristianS, farv, how much do you guys charge per 1k+ word insightful post? Is it hourly? PM me rates. I wish there was a conservative IgnE for people to engage with in good faith. Introvert is alright but I understand it’s exhausting for one person. DPB deserves better.
I appreciate the shout-out, somehow I missed this the first time. Not sure whether you’d count my recent back and forth with BJ as “insightful” though. Honestly I’ve had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life the last few months that has somewhat constrained my time (and greatly constrained my motivation) to post in the thread.
I do also think, though, that it’s a tough political moment to say anything particularly useful. Seems like we’re pretty decently likely to elect Donald Trump president again, despite his platform consisting almost entirely of promises to commit crimes and atrocities.
I’m not as confident as, say, GH that he’ll win – seems maybe 60-40 or so right now – and it seems a bit premature to start the eulogy or post-mortem.
Supposing Harris wins on Election Day, we can look forward to whatever legal and extralegal maneuvers the Trump folks will try to get into power anyway. They’ve spent a lot of time worming their way into various election administration roles in the last few years, and just generally purging their ranks of anyone who isn’t on-board with stealing the election by any means necessary, so we’ll see if any of that bears fruit. Surely they’ll do a bunch of court cases again, maybe we’ll get a test of the state legislature theory. Maybe there will be another showdown over certifying the election results on January 6th, or even another attempt at forcing a conclusion through mob violence. Maybe all of the above. Republican rhetoric has gotten pretty “Day of the Rope” this cycle, it’s hard to imagine them just standing down with an “aw shucks, better luck next time.”
But hope springs eternal, maybe we get through all that with minimal constitutional crises and a new Harris administration starts. The world is looking, uh, pretty rough. The war in Ukraine, regardless of its conclusion, makes pretty clear that the international order can’t actually stop your powerful neighbors from invading you, and at best can offer money and equipment if your citizens are prepared to pay the high price of fighting off invaders. And even that version of the international order is so much weaker now, with its moral foundation so deeply undermined in Palestine. The immediate consequences are horrific for both Ukraine and Palestine, but the medium-term consequences are maybe even worse if governments all over the world take this as a signal that conquest is back on the menu.
War and desperation create refugees and asylum seekers, which fuel right-wing authoritarian movements, which create more war and desperation, all while climate change destabilizes systems that might otherwise have withstood the war and desperation. We’re not on track for a good 21st century, and I think there’s a real possibility for it to see even worse atrocities than the 20th. But for the moment there’s not a lot to say or do except watch Pennsylvania for who is gonna squeeze out a couple thousand vote margin, because this election still has quite a lot of significance for determining which cliff we’re going to fall off first, and how soon we’ll reach it.
Well, this is what I last said, but I'd agree on roughly 60-40 favoring Trump at this point. It's sort of a silly thing to say though. Just because if the trends hold for the next week or so it could be 90-10 Trump. Then Harris could still inexplicably win and it wouldn't invalidate a theoretical 90-10 prediction for Trump
Huh, I guess I misunderstood you. I kinda figured you were already at maybe a 90-10 or so. + Show Spoiler +
And I mean, yeah, of course, any one outcome can’t prove what the probabilities are going in and we only get the one outcome, but I’m also not a Nate trying to earn credibility on my predictions so that doesn’t matter very much. Happy to concede my 60-40 prediction is not based on anything particularly rigorous or systematic and can be freely disregarded.
I don’t really buy the trendline thing though. I think people have way too automatic an impulse to predict a linear trendline on a graph and assume that’s probably what’s gonna happen even when the system you’re looking at has no reason to behave linearly like that, and in fact you can easily look at past data and see that it almost never does.
But also none of what I just said matters much, I want to resist the impulse to have horse-race discussions about whether it’s 60-40 or 55-45 or whether Trump has “momentum” or not. I’d rather argue with oblade about whether we should care that John Kelly or Mike Pence think Trump’s a fascist (and I don’t particularly want to do that either).
I said
To me the data screams Harris is on track to lose, but even I still lean towards her winning currently.
Pretty tough to understand that to mean 90-10 Trump.
Linear or not Harris is slipping and didn't knock Trump off track, so the numbers cited in my previous post have only gotten worse for Harris (except she has 1 of the top 4 buckets).
Clearly her leaning into appealing to Republicans touring with Cheney didn't stop the bleeding and could end up being a catastrophic error in the final days of her campaign. Could end up costing her what should be an easy win and deliver the end of US Democracy by personally welcoming a fascist into the whitehouse.
Yeah, I guess I thought you had said other stuff since then that implied you thought it was pretty much over. Whatever, however I got the wrong impression I obviously did.
I can certainly see an argument that she's pivoted to the kind of centrist Clinton "even moderate Republicans think you should vote for me" argument and that's been a mistake. I've hated to see it, anyway, and it has the fundamental flaw that if there's one group more universally hated than moderate Democrats, it's moderate Republicans. I'm not even sure the moderate Republicans like moderate Republicans.
That said I bet it hasn't mattered very much. The thing that has been kind of shocking to me in the last month or two is just how little immunity to low-grade Trump bullshit everyone seems to have built up over the last decade; he throws out such lazy bullshit like "they're eating the pets" and somehow it still seems like a sizable percentage of the voting public thinks "Wow, that's terrible! I'm sure he wouldn't say that unless there was some truth to it..." The racism doesn't shock me but the gullibility of it still takes me by surprise. With easy prey like that I'm not sure what anybody was supposed to do about it; it seems like every news cycle for the last month has been some bullshit like that from Trump that has absolutely nothing to it, and everybody should have learned to shrug that sort of thing off by the end of the 2016 campaign, and yet here we are arguing over whether Trump is justified to want to call in the military to suppress the radical leftists that are planning to oppose him on election day.
I think it would make sense from a strategic standpoint for Harris to own her centrist or even right of center positions. It disarms the "radical left wing" talk, which is silly. And many Republicans (including people here) hate to be called far right, and don't identify as far right, even though that is exactly what the parties positions are.
To your point on his lying, I just read the fact check from the Rogan interview. And many of them are just pure stupid. Like how can you stand behind someone that lies to blatantly and stupidly. Half of them are not even political and just vanity lies. He is so damn unlikeable, I really don't get why people love this spoiled, entitled, rich kid, who got everything from daddy and grand daddy.
I mean that’s almost certainly the reasoning behind it, and I don’t think it’s a totally implausible strategy. Whatever his faults, I think Biden’s biggest strength was that it was just kind of impossible to convincingly label him as some far-left radical. They still tried, but it was just kind of fundamentally weak as a rhetorical strategy because, I dunno, look at him?
That said, the Democrats are very prone to this strategy and it hardly ever works. Like, back in the day they’d get labeled unpatriotic draft-dodgers every cycle, and then they’d nominate John Kerry specifically because he’s a war hero, and it doesn’t even really slow the Republicans down. Fundamentally, the attack was a lie in the first place, so changing the truth is of limited value in combatting it.
That’d be my diagnosis here – Harris was never some far-left radical, and promising to have an advisory panel of Republicans to combat the attack doesn’t help very much because it already wasn’t true. Meanwhile it does play into a criticism a lot of people already suspect about the Democrats, which is that they’re spineless power-seekers who believe in nothing and will say whatever their polling says they’re supposed to say in order to win. That doesn’t exactly change the lesser-evil calculation but it does just make them off-putting and uninspiring to people whose political sympathies should make them reliable Democratic voters, maybe hurting them on turnout more than they gained in persuading anybody who was worried about them being radical leftists.
But again, I also don’t think it was probably all that consequential either way.
I don't mean so much in acting, I mean that when acting like this they should own it and say it. I think the part that pisses off the left is they pretend to be like them instead of simply the closer of the two.
But either way I'm sure you are right on it not being consequential.
Harris had a left wing voting record in the senate and the primary. Just because she's pretending that didn't happen now doesn't make it not true. At *best* you could say she's unprincipled. And it shows in her flailing around. How can you be asked twice how you are different than Biden and not have an answer? She doesn't think she should have to work for it
I still think Harris beats Trump. I think Walz would easily beat Trump. Or Pete Buttegieg or Gavin Newsom or basically any Democrat politician without a bunch of baggage. The Harris honeymoon ending is making people remember about the “Harris problem” they had forgotten about. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that someone chosen for their sex and race and not their merit is turning out to be a terrible candidate. Hopefully the”not Trump” vote is enough to carry her through. I’m actually thinking about placing a bet on her now that the betting odds are favoring Trump more and more.
EPT
