TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Sure, it was a relative win since his opponent self-destructed a lot harder than he did. But the 2016 Trump I remember would have at least had a coherent story to follow, and would be better at selling himself than... whatever the heck was onstage last night.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I remember Jeb being derided as low-energy back in 2016, and I used to laugh along with everyone else when Trump smacked him in his smug face. The days when I supported Trump seem so distant now, but rewatching some of those debates brings back lots of memories.
But nowadays, bring back 2016 Jeb! and he would wipe the floor with either of the candidates as they presently stand.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Avoiding questions never looks good. Politicians do it when they know they have no good answer. Usually they can get away with 1 or 2, but it seemed like Trump did it 4-6 times, and he pivoted very awkwardly every time.
Even when he wasn't clumsily dodging questions, Trump's answers were just bad. Again, watch some of his debate performances in 2016 compared to this one, and the evidence is pretty stark.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Yeah, I agree with that article. Anyone who knows anything about politics knows that debates as they ought to be (the issues) are a farce. They're just two simultaneous press conferences, and voters care about amorphous "vibes" more than anything. Nobody can really predict what the definitive vibes will be even shortly after the debate, and in the end they usually don't matter much anyways (e.g. Romney's first debate in 2012).
For Trump's debate performances, I generally agree but will add nuance that I think 2016 > second debate 2020 > 2024 > first debate 2020. The second (non cancelled) presidential debate of 2020 Trump did... fine? I can't remember much about it. At least he didn't blatantly shoot himself in the foot like he did in the first one.
For current odds of Biden's victory, I peg it at around 25% now, with a 15% chance the Dems switch candidates and win, and a 60% chance that Trump wins.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I agree Trump has never been a great debater, but he generally held his own in 2016 against both the Republican challengers and against Hillary. I encourage anyone who doesn't see the difference to watch some clips from 2016, and then watch some of his responses from tonight right after. The difference is quite stark.
I don't disagree that the Dems have some tough choices ahead for them. If they try to nix Biden, that's unprecedented and causes chaos and is undemocratic. If they don't get rid of him, he'll probably lose. Trump would probably even get to 47% and beyond in that case (he didn't in either of his previous elections).
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This was by no means a good debate for Trump, at least in terms of his individual performance. He blatantly refused to answer some questions, and they were the pretty important questions involving stuff like Putin and J6. Others were bad for different reasons, e.g. "will you accept the results of the election" with his response being basically "not if I lose". Worse than any of that though is that his responses were just incoherent. It's like if a lobotomized chatGPT was told to act like Trump, and it spewed a random collection of things that individually sounded like something Trump would say, but without any coherent structure or chain of logic. Trump has always had a meandering speaking style, but compare his performance tonight to the debates in 2016 and there's a world of difference. He's pretty clearly suffered a substantial age-related mental slowdown since then.
Of course, Biden's performance was way, way worse so it'll likely just be forgotten.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
There was no real or serious attempts by the Russians to get Manchurian candidate Trump into office
This is incorrect, or as you would hyperbolically put it, "extremely" incorrect. Trump wasn't a total puppet, but Russia was definitely helping him. The activities of the Internet Research Agency are now public knowledge after Prigozhin died in a fireball after missing his shot at the king. Campaign staffers such as Papadopoulos met with RU intelligence agents to arrange for embarrassing email leaks from people like Podesta, lied about it several times, and was sentenced to prison. Many other individuals such as his campaign manager(!) had suspicious links to Russia, and there has been plenty of additional evidence that Russia was trying to influence the election. Some of it was just to delegitimize democracy, while much of it was to prop up Trump. Is this really hard to believe? Russia has been interfering in US elections since the Cold War, and history has shown how much friendlier Trump has been to Putin compared to Biden or Hillary.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Democrats stormed the White House
The capitol riot could probably be considered a de-escalation since they didn't burn the Capitol building to the ground.
What are you talking about? When did Democrats ever storm the White House? I vaguely recall "sieging" federal buildings during the 2020 protests, but when did major left leaders ever support such violent measures?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
If you think I'm presenting bad evidence, the solution is to present better evidence, then we can make a comparative evaluation.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The SCOTUS protestors had nowhere near anywhere near the level of support for their actions. Some leftists may have supported their cause (rejecting Kavanaugh), but no major political figure egged them on for their methods. For contrast, Trump egged on J6, and only stopped supporting it once he realized it was a PR disaster. He also still claims the 2020 election was stolen.
‘Muh J6’ is a convenient rhetorical point for democrats
My point isn't to prove that the Democrats are justified in anything they do, it's to argue against Rightists who are chugging the negative-partisanship Koolaid by the gallon, pointing at Leftist transgressions, some real, many exaggerated, and pretending the Right isn't doing stuff that's on-par or even worse.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I don't have to dance to your tune.
It's because you can't, because there's going to be novel legal theories somewhere, because that's how common law systems work and this entire line of argument is silly.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
This response is functionally unfalsifiable. It's like saying "If I'm right, I'm right; If I'm wrong, there's a coverup".
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Please link the court case.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I feel your pain. It reminds me of the Please Drink Verification Can copypasta. The new captcha's I've been facing have been particularly annoying, requiring me to click images that slowwwwwly reappear in a way designed to infuriate humans more than to ward away bots.
The problem with online anonymity is that it's only valued by a handful of libertarians, and millions of bots, pirates, scammers, and other unsavory individuals. Since most normies don't care about being anonymous, the vast majority of companies don't care either, and only see it as problem.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
It's a novel argument because whether the president is an "officer" hadn't come up in this context. If you disagree with this, feel free to cite the court case that specifically argues this point in an identical context.
You're effectively arguing that lawyers should never be allowed to make new arguments even if the situation is different.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Did you read my original source? It covers this:
"The Secretary of State's Office opened an investigation into the incident at State Farm Arena. Our investigation revealed that the incident initially reported as a water leak late in the evening of November 3rd was actually a urinal that had overflowed early in the morning of November 3rd, and did not affect the counting of votes by Fulton County later that evening."
The affidavit also states, in part, that "observers and media were not asked to leave. They simply left on their own when they saw one group of workers, whose job was only to open envelopes and who had completed that task, also leave," the affidavit said.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Where are the republicans inventing new legal theories
Lawyers arguing in new ways to new situations is just standard legal practice, e.g. when Trump's lawyers argued the presidency is not "an officeholder of the United States".
Where are the republicans using partisan organizations assessments of their ideological opposites as a justification to enact a domestic spying program?
The origin of the Trump-Russia investigation is shrouded in bias, just like the investigation into Biden's son was. But in both cases it was clear that there were actual problems there. Not problems that reached up to the highest level, but problems nonetheless.
I'm not a fan of plenty of the things Dems have done in regards to their woke crusade, but in terms of concrete escalation, storming the capital and trying to overturn a legitimate election due to being sore losers was far worse and more blatant.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
The Georgia incident wasn't a water main break, it was a leaking toilet. Nobody was instructed to leave the ballot counting area. No ballots were impacted. This has been documented already.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
So the Democrats have a whole bunch of riots, then steal an election
Once again, there's no evidence the election was stolen. Just an endless gish gallop from Trump, and his supporters motte-and-bailey'ing him with vastly weaker claims when pressed (e.g. "the election was stolen because the media is biased against Trump") before going right back to assuming the strong claims were true when they weren't being pressed.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
None of this is unique, unusual, or dangerous. Leftist NGOs and Democratic governors/AGs preparing for a potential second term of Trump. Sinister-sounding quotes like "controlling the flow of information" and "democracy-proofing our institutions" but nothing actually out of the ordinary in terms of real actions. I'll remind you that the vast majority of the actual escalation has come from Republicans. Remember J6? Remember "the election was stolen!!!" 70% of Republicans still believe that crap.
Trump will try some hamfisted executive orders, which will get massacred in the courts like much of his EO's did in his first term. He'll declare victory anyways, and the base will love him because they desire the appearance of "owning the libs" more than any actual substantive policy changes.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Good post. It's crazy to me how disorganized and fragmented France can be sometimes. On the one hand this could be the sign of a healthy democracy, on the other hand this level of fragmentation is part of what led France to being shattered so easily by the Germans in WW2.
Leon Blum that instituted paid leave, the 40h work week and led France into its WW2 capitulation.
Small correction, it was Reynaud that led France at the time of its capitulation.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
Control of the executive has swapped between the two parties with nearly metronomic frequency across all of American history. If Republicans don't win in this election then they'd win in the not too distant future, at which point they'll wish they had passed the bill.
I feel like you were arrogant and just need to take the “L” here.
This is a pretty goofy response when I explicitly addressed this scenario before it even happened, and is almost certain to go exactly as I said it would have. This article has some good quotes:
The new policy could also soon be blocked in court. In a court filing in Washington on Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union led a lawsuit with several immigration organizations against the Biden administration seeking to end the executive action.
The lead attorney for the lawsuit, Lee Gelernt, said Biden’s policy is “near identical” to one enacted by Trump that the ACLU was successful in blocking.
“We’re filing this lawsuit because this ban is patently illegal. The Trump administration enacted a near identical asylum ban. We sued over that. We won. We hope to win again,” Gelernt said.
A bill is just a piece of paper but who is going to enforce it? Paper plus Biden without an election hanging off his head was and is worthless. No paper plus Trump solved a lot of the issue. A good bill plus Trump would be amazing.
A bill would at least pave the way for Trump to take tougher action. No bill + Trump was no better than Obama. The chances of Trump actually passing a more stringent bill are quite low (although not zero).
I have no idea if you sincerely hold your beliefs or just fell for the lefts trap.
In the entire previous thread nobody could say how it was a "trap" other than vaguely sneering at their outgroup.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
2yr ago
I already addressed this in the post actually. Here's the relevant bit:
The issue with this idea is that even if Biden were to reimplement all of Trump’s executive orders, they still amounted to little more than a bandaid on a bullet hole. Critics of the bill are technically correct in pointing out that there was less blood before Biden ripped off the bandaid, but it’s ludicrous to then assume that the bandaid was all that was ever needed. US immigration law and border enforcement is fundamentally broken in a number of ways, and this bill would have gone a long way in addressing the worst problems. Recall that Trump himself tried to go after asylum laws directly, but his efforts mostly fizzled in the courts.
I doubt Biden will reimplement all the things Trump tried to do with EO's, and even some of the more moderate stuff he does will likely get gummed up in the courts. Better "something" than "nothing", though, I guess. Still, it really would have been better to just pass the dang bill. Even if Biden refused to implement it, it would have cleared the way for Trump to not get his EO's mangled by the courts if he becomes president.
It can certainly be good, but there's lots of drawbacks. You'll typically have some heighted level of respect from people which can lead to perks, both explicit and implicit. Famous people can try to leverage their fame into money, usually with mixed success. Others might find value from spreading their ideas in a way that an unknown person wouldn't have access to.
For the negatives, the novelty of being noticed in public wears off after the first half-dozen times or so, and then is just annoying. People will try to pry into your personal life and form a weird parasocial bond with you. You'll be held to a much higher standard than strangers would.
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