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As someone who likes watching US presidential elections as if they were a sport, this has been by far the most boring election season we've had since I started watching in 2008. Primary season plus the ensuing general election used to guarantee at least a year and a half of interesting coverage, with the primaries in particular being full of drama, ups-and-downs, and upsets.
In 2008 we had Obama vs Hillary, a classic for the ages. The R side wasn't that bad either, with McCain's come-from-behind victory.
In 2012 was the most volatile primary we've had, with the polling frontrunner changing no less than 11 times as Romney's weak lead was tested by Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and Santorum before they all imploded one after another.
In 2016 was the rise of Trump, another classic for the ages. The frontrunner didn't actually change that much, but the sheer ridiculousness of Trump's unprecedented run made it hard to turn your eyes away. Hillary vs Sanders was also somewhat interesting, albeit far less so than Hillary vs Obama 8 years earlier.
In 2020 things were somewhat less interesting with Biden's lead enduring for most of primary. But at least that lead felt tense, like the floor could drop out with a few missteps, which is indeed what happened when Biden lost Iowa and New Hampshire, although it became obvious that he would win after Super Tuesday. This election also featured the worst (best) presidential debate in US history when Biden faced off against Trump for the first time.
By comparison, what does this election season have? Biden is running as an incumbent with no credible challengers. That only leaves the Republican side, which isn't much better. Trump's lead is commanding, and that doesn't show any signs of changing. The most credible threat is DeSantis, but he's been far too timid at attacking Trump. The pitch he should be making is something like "Trump's ideas and energy were great, but he lacked the follow-through to enact lasting change and was easily distracting by people like Kushner". Alternatively, he could have done something like Hanania suggested and challenge Trump to a boxing match. Instead, he's barely attacked Trump at all, creating the bizarre situation where a man is running to be president but refuses to directly tell us why we should prefer him over the frontrunner. In the end, it might not have mattered in any case. Negative partisanship is the driving force in American politics more than anything else, and Trump's ability to make liberals seethe apparently earned him so much goodwill that Republicans will vote for him no matter how many elections he loses.
It seems like Trump isn't going to appear at the Republican debate, which will likely turn the thing into an irrelevant snooze fest. Christie will probably attack Trump and the other candidates will likely rush to his defense, which will only further solidify the current dynamics. At this point the most interesting thing that's happened is Ramaswamy's mini-surge to third place which really shows how boring this whole affair is. Him, Scott, and and maybe Haley are essentially just running to be vice president, while other candidates like Pence, Christie, and the rest are doing the old presidential-campaign-as-glorified-press-conference thing, or have too much of an ego to see they have no shot.
The only thing that could make the current race entertaining is if Biden or Trump randomly drop dead, or if Trump is convicted of sufficiently serious crimes. Those would certainly be shockers, but the ramifications are hard to forecast before they actually happen.
I've seen what is claimed to be the Republican primary list and it's a mix of the "oh boy" and the "literally who?"
I have no idea of Mike Pence's chances, but I feel it will be the reverse of Biden riding on Obama's coat-tails to the presidency; being the ex-VP for Trump is going to lose him votes all round (he's tainted for the never-Trumpers and he's a traitor to the Trumpists).
Ron DeSantis - I honestly don't know. I think he is the Republican version of Gavin Newsom in this race, if that makes any sense; his chances have been talked up (and certainly there are people on the left having panic attacks about his evilness) but I think there's less there than meets the eye.
The rest of them realistically don't have much chance (c'mon Doug, what are you thinking?) and while I kinda like Nikki Haley I don't think she has the base or the support for this.
I suppose just wait and see the first debates and if anyone goes full-on crazy?
The difference between DeSantis and Gavin Newsom is that DeSantis has shown himself to be competent at governing. Things have been going pretty great for Florida in material terms during his tenure, while California is more of a basket case than ever (that 2021-2022 Florida was the fastest growing state in the union for the first time since the 50s, while California lost population over the last two years says a lot).
On the other hand, being a competent governor doesn't mean that you can run a competent presidential campaign. We'll see what happens when the primaries start, but as a DeSantis supporter I've got a bad feeling about his chances.
Why I compared him to Newsom is "being talked up by his own side, is young in political terms, but what has he really done?" Newsom at least demonstrated that he has the national party at his back when they pulled out the stops to help him during recall. DeSantis doesn't have that same level of support that I can see.
Both of them, this is a bad election if they're going to run. Newsom I don't see as potential anything, yeah he's Governor of California, has a very good close friend in the Getty family and has the national party willing to run interference for him, but outside of that as president I struggle to think what policies if any he has in mind (apart from the general liberal-progressive Dem stuff).
DeSantis, I think this is the wrong election for him. It's still Trump-Biden fallout needing to be cleared away, and getting in the middle of that risks relegating him to the also-rans. He's done a lot more than Newsom as a governor of a state, and I do think he should wait it out, win his fights with Disney (where I think he has a good chance of victory) and wait for the anti-woke backlash (if it really exists) to mature then ride that wave in 2028 as a strong, credible Republican candidate.
But right now? Trump is still casting a shadow, and it's Biden/maybe Harris on the Democrat side. I think there would be just enough "no to DeathSantis" sentiment to get Joe a second term, especially with the usual scaremongering about abortion, LGBT* etc., and not enough pro-DeSantis on the Republican side to get him anywhere. Going as a failed candidate ('couldn't even beat a geriatric Sleepy Joe') in 2028 would, I think, hurt his chances even more.
*The travel advisory is side-splitting:
Oh no, you have an accent? The Gestapo will haul you off to the Florida deathcamps the second you open your gob! Meanwhile, in my own country, there's travel advisory about "be careful in Dublin because you're liable to be hospitalised by feral little scumbags robbing tourists in broad daylight on main streets".
Why not make your will, make sure you are in a state of grace, and arrange your funeral before you go, while you're at it? 🙄
Indeed, there's two of them, the latter about "don't be black in Florida".
But don't worry, immigrant queer Black and brown persons, God is gonna get him!
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I think the big difference is that Newsom is handsome and - provided his remarkably low intelligence (and I mean that in a non-political way, he really does seem stupid) is kept away from the public - relatively charming. DeSantis is none of those things. Newsom could 100% make it to the White House; he might well not, each generation has many also-rans that never quite do it. But he isn't as handicapped as DeSantis is by the fact that the GOP base seems to just not like him.
He does have a talent for brown-nosing the wealthy which would certainly stand him in good stead with the Democratic Party donors (unlike Hillary at the dinner for the wealthy gays, I don't think Gavin would make a faux-pas about the baskets of deplorables and less deplorable, he knows how to be less direct in his flattery):
See? Stroke the ego of potential patrons about their artistic talents, let them play Medici lord to your grateful client self.
He may not be very stupid, allegedly he has severe dyslexia:
His father was a childhood friend of Getty and (as I understand it) since Gordon's sons are all failures (two have already died of drug overdoses, another had an acrimonious divorce and did nothing with his life etc) Gavin became more of an adopted son to Gordon. At least that seems to be the perception in California. He's essentially a Getty heir, just not biologically.
I know about the father being a Getty staff member, and I have a lot of doubts about the potted bio in Wikipedia (either dear old dad was a son of a bitch of the first water who neglected his ex-wife and kids leaving them in what passed for genteel poverty, or there's some gilding the lily going on about Gavin's tough upbringing with not even a present at Christmas while his mother was also taking in foster kids).
I doubt Getty Patriarch sees him as an heir (certainly not for inheritance purposes anyway) but as a loyal retainer in succession to his father, and one has a certain noblesse oblige to the son of the old servant. While he may be happier with Gavin trotting around as a substitute for his, er, interesting biological family, make no douibt that he sees him as anything more than a client.
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Why do you think so many of the recent aristocratic scions have been utter failures?
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I think there's got to be a twist. They wouldn't give us two great seasons in a row and then bomb the third entirely.
There is a writers strike going on now, so even if they had the story plotted out the can’t do any rewrites or punch ups.
It's the perennial problem with sequels: do you stick to the tried-and-true formula and give the people the same thing as before, which runs the risk of them getting tired of the same old thing, or do you try something new, which runs the risk of "they changed it, now it's ruined"?
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I mean, the twist is obvious isn’t it?
Trump wins a majority of pledged delegates in the primaries. He then gets handily convicted of multiple felonies, and is sentenced to what amounts to life in prison right before the Republican National Convention. Hilarity ensues.
A felon President would certainly challenge the principles of those agitating for the restoration of voting rights to felons!
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I agree that that's a big twist. An even funnier development would be that a red state governor offers Trump sanctuary and has the state guard 'protect' Trump from the FBI, such that a standoff occurs.
To be honest, my guess is that even that would be anticlimactic. Trump would spend the rest of the campaign in red states that would refuse to execute the arrest warrants of other states. The wheels of the justice system would turn deliberately slowly. Even then FBI and US Marshalls don't want a shooting war with some red state national guard and police, that's actual civil war shit, so they would agree to some kind of 'delay in enforcement action' until February 2025 or something. If he won, he'd pardon himself from federal charges and order the secret service to physically prevent his arrest. His presidency would then amount to some weird game where the NYT claims he's surely going to be arrested next time he steps into New York but never is.
Surely the Secret Service cannot lawfully follow orders to break they law. They are after all a law enforcement wing and sworn to uphold the law above all else. I can’t imagine there not being something explicit like “if the president orders you to break the law you must refuse”.
And putting all that aside for a moment: the Secret Service are, what, several dozen guys in suits with handguns? If a state police force truly wants to arrest Trump I don’t think trying to “physically prevent” it would end well for the Secret Service.
...Pretty sure there's more of them than "several dozen", and they have a whole lot more than handguns.
Well regardless, there’s at most hundreds or let’s even say thousands. Like, there are major cities with 10 times as many police officers. And all tacticool swat team style weapons, armored vehicles, etc.
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It would be politically impossible for red state governors to renege on a deal for trump to get sanctuary, so only one who expects to get away with it indefinitely will ever offer.
I mean the whole exercise is academic because trump has been voluntarily turning himself in this far- didn’t Florida declare it wouldn’t extradite trump and then he turned himself in to New York?
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More likely we'd see Biden activate the Insurrection Act and send the actual no-shit military in to deal with the recalcitrant red states. It's happened before. And if we're going to have a third world election, no reason not to go whole hog.
Here's what would actually happen:
US Marshalls show up with an arrest warrant for Trump.
State police physically prevent US Marshalls from getting to Trump.
US Marshalls then arrest said state police officers for obstruction of justice under 18 U.S. Code § 1509 using the authority to make probable cause arrests granted to them by 18 U.S. Code § 3053
No, Step 3 doesn't happen, at least not without a direct order from the (political) Director of the Marshals Service. And that order won't be given if the director doesn't think it will be obeyed, US Code or no US Code. And if the marshals think the state police are serious, it won't happen until they have overwhelming force, which brings us back to the Insurrection Act.
The federal government has lots of options besides a direct firefight. Federal courts can issue injunctions against state officials personally when they violate federal law. If the governor blatantly violates an injunction, he can be arrested. Maybe Trump is willing to hide out in a compound for months, but is Greg Abbott willing to do that? Is his security detail loyal enough to him personally to risk being arrested? I doubt it.
It’s politically impossible for Greg Abbott to back down vs the federal government. Of course he’s smart enough to not get into that situation to begin with, but ‘arresting the most moderate(yes, really) statewide elected official in the second most populous state in the union that makes up 25% of the military’ is a bluff he’d be willing to call if he did.
I mean we should also note that trump doesn’t seem interested in sanctuary, either.
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Yes, they can issue all the injunctions they want. If the state has already decided to fight, someone has to enforce the injunctions.
You think you can have Feds arrest a state governor for a political crime and not escalate a constitutional crisis? Not a chance. A standoff at the governor's mansion or office is not going to result in quiet submission if the governor has already decided to fight (which is the sticking point, but if the state police are refusing to allow the arrest of Trump, you're already there). If they do a snatch-and-grab it's an even worse descent into banana republic (or Eastern European country rhyming with "Prussia") territory.
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Yeah and then it turns into a farce of a pushing game because US marshals simply aren’t going to open fire on state guard or police for standing in a ring around Trump’s hotel or whatever. Everyone knows this and that’s why it wouldn’t happen. A judge would rule that the extraordinary nature of the case delays interstate extradition by a few months (which might not even be necessary because extradition takes time even normally).
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If that happens, honestly, I think we get a civil war. There’s no way they can let the government send in the troops to arrest the GOP nominee and not call up the guard or something.
It's called the Insurrection Act for a reason. It'd be a very short insurrection though; faced with the military the state police would back down, Trump would be arrested, and the US's transition to banana republic would be complete.
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I don't think Biden sends the military to arrest Trump. I think the Pentagon would veto it, or would very strongly discourage it. And in any case, it's not hugely urgent because Trump would be on the ballot anyway and being jailed would do nothing to affect his popularity in a negative way. The only way Trump can be barred is if SCOTUS rules against him on the 14th amendment re. insurrection, and that's unaffected by whether he is or isn't in jail.
The Pentagon, during Trump's term, showed every willingness to go along with the left (and against their titular CINC). This won't change because Biden is in office. Removing him from the ballot would come after, likely using that 14th amendment provision people were talking about earlier (not about J6 about about resisting arrest). Whether it would come down to troops on Maryland Avenue I don't know, but SCOTUS can be managed too.
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I feel the situation is more, as others have alluded to, a bit of a camera issue.
The Hunter Biden stuff and the J6 Trump stuff are wild from a lot of angles. But it seems like the cameras get turned off every time something wild breaks. Similar to European football games where the cameras are turned downward every time someone runs into the field naked or there is a fight in the stands.
Alternatively it's a bit like watching Eurovision the year after Russia invaded Ukraine. There was only going to be one winner and everyone knew it was Ukraine. American politics feel a bit like who is going to get 2nd kind of thing, since everyone knows the big issues aren't affected by the election. As Trump, the ultimate outsider underdog extraordinaire showed.
I haven't really kept up with the Hunter Biden stuff. My surface-level understanding is that Hunter himself has been involved in bad shit, but there's little proof it goes up to the president himself. I heard Hunter got a suspiciously good deal at first, but again this doesn't really implicate Joe.
The J6 stuff has just been glacial legal drama.
Not sure I get the analogy to Eurovision. The president absolutely does matter quite a lot in the US's system since he has a ton of power concentrated in his hands. Some of it is sapped by Congressional deadlock and much can be reversed by a successor, but it's still very important. The fact that Trump barely did anything lasting besides SCOTUS stuff is more of an indictment of him than it is of the institution.
Not only is the evidence quite good that Joe was involved, but Joe doth protest too much. He said he's never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings.
That beggars belief. What non-estranged father and son never discuss the son's work? They didn't talk about this even when Joe was leaning on the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor that was causing trouble for Burisma, where Hunter was a board member? A board position that paid Hunter up to a million dollars a year? Who had another board member get a White House visit with a presidential meet shortly after putting Hunter on the board?
Do you have a link from a neutral source about that?
NYP has done the most thorough reporting AFAICT. Congress also releases things from time to time, like this: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/HSGAC_Finance_Report_FINAL.pdf
And this: https://oversight.house.gov/the-bidens-influence-peddling-timeline/
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I have to be honest I don’t understand people like you as it seems to be more Joes involvement in Hunters deals has been obvious since 2016. They had Hunters business partner say he was involved at the 2016 debates. There have been wire transfers, request to Hunter to talk to his dad and him making phone calls, emails directly to Joes burner email, shared office space between Joe/Hunter/CCP member, dinners between Joe/Hunter/Business partners. I feel like anyone who spends time in online spaces would be familiar with these things. The left media which probably includes most of the msm likely repeats the no linkages part. They might be right that he could beat a criminal charge but there is a lot of evidence Joe was fully involved.
Perhaps, we just live in a world where repeating a narrative works.
I dunno, I think the "cash for access" (dinner with business partners) is the usual sort of political transactions we see everywhere, and I imagine everyone agrees that no company ever hired Hunter for his business acumen but solely because his surname was "Biden".
So that level of petty corruption? Sure.
But Joe knowingly taking bribes and cuts of his dodgy dealings? I remain to be convinced; after all, Hunter is about as reliable as the four-faced liar and I wouldn't take as Gospel anything he may have said about "I need more money for the cut for Dad" since that would be just as likely him trying to extort/deceive more money out of 'business partners'.
I think Joe is being deliberately blind to exactly how fucked-up Hunter is because he doesn't want to know and doesn't want to believe that his only surviving son is such a mess and should be written off.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/yes-they-were-being-bribed-fired-ukraine-prosecutor-corroborates-biden-corruption
Prosecutor who was fired now says they are guilty.
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What? Cash for access? No that’s 100% illegal and nobody does that. Not to your PERSONAL bank account. Campaign donations sure.
Anyway there is evidence Joe was directly taking the bribes. Hunters communications atleast twice dad was getting paid and Hunters business partners testimony.
Whatever Joe was or wasn't getting to an account, I don't place much credence in either Hunter or his crooked partners. Get something solid and sure, I'll believe it. But I have no doubt Hunter would sell out Joe if he thought he could do so and get better treatment for himself, so complaining that he wasn't getting enough vigorish/he had to hand over a cut seems more like him trying to squeeze more juice out for himself.
That’s literally the point of a bag man. You need Hunter to flip to get anything. But of course his dad has pardon power so why would he flip?
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Do you have a link from a neutral source going over Joe Biden's connection?
A neutral source won’t exists. No media entity is “neutral” anymore.
But here’s a partial list. More have been discovered since and I’ve forgotten 90%.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/06/heres-a-dozen-times-joe-biden-played-a-role-in-hunters-deals/
I don’t see why the reporter matters. If things are verified their verified.
"Neutral" was probably the wrong word. "Not right-wing" would be better. Really just anything established that's not on the same tier as Infowars or Breitbart. NYP is... alright I guess.
Almost all of this list is Hunter himself selling access. I don't like it, I wish it wouldn't happen, and Joe should probably kick Hunter to the curb over this stuff. But the access seems pretty limited (typically just a meeting), and Kushner was absolutely doing this sort of thing during Trump's tenure way more egregiously. Major policy decisions actually came from Kushner's doings. If you ever wondered why MAGAworld seemed weirdly obsessed with Israel to the point of exhausting lots of political capital on the topic, that was basically just Kushner.
The one area where this exceeds "just a meeting" would be if Joe got money from one of these deals, as that would skirt close to "bribery". There was the thing over "payments for the big guy" but I've never heard of much evidence supporting it, and it hasn't gone anywhere.
The trouble is, in these polarised times, no source that is not right wing is going to cover this story, or not as anything other than "it's all lies, black ops and false flag to discredit the only threat to Trump".
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I honestly hate talking about this subject now. I’ve done it on Reddit and it always just ends the same 30 messages disagreeing with each other. Or somewhere on the right every agreeing and nodding their heads.
My guess is Joe knew how Hunter was making money, helped him some, and most likely received a cut (emails/plus Bobulinski). No clue if he changed policy to help Hunter or how much.
It’s 100% politically important. It’s probably never provable on court unless Hunter rolls over since I think they kept Joe protected.
Also think McConnells profited off influence. And perhaps as shady as Biden. But I do like his politics.
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There was holding ten for the big guy, and then there was Hunter in his texts crying about everything he does for his family, including giving half of his salary to "pop": https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/hunter-biden-frequently-covered-family-expenses-texts-reveal/
Given that Hunter quite literally spends like a drunken sailor on hookers and blow, were I his family I'd be holding as much of his salary as I could extract from him in order to make sure there was something left to cover the ordinary expenses of life and that he wouldn't be left literally destitute. Unless it can be demonstrated Joe took his money and spent it on himself and the rest of the family, and not on covering Hunter's debts, obligations, or saving it for him, I'll take the tears as crocodile.
I don't see Hunter as the responsible son fulfiling filial obligations to support his parents, I see this as the family having to step in and make sure he doesn't lose every cent he earns as though he's a kid who can't budget his allowance.
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Wasn’t that pretty transparently because every dollar Hunter has ever made fell through his hands and Joe wanted him to pay his debts, save his money and leave something to his children?
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In theory the president matters a lot. In practice it has managed to not matter all that much in recent years. You can blame Trump or you can blame the deep state or whatever, it's still irrelevant to the point that in practice it hasn't mattered. The big issues stay the same no matter who gets in there.
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Finding out/voting the winner of the contest is just one (arguably minor) part of why people watch Eurovision, though.
No, no, the voting is the best part of Eurovision! First you have to see who gets nul points or near to it, then there's the perennial disappointment of the UK that they lost again and why didn't anyone vote for them, then there's the political voting - which countries will reliably give douze points to each other (Greece and Cyprus) and which countries wouldn't piss on your smouldering corpse if you were on fire, you bastards, we still remember 1623!
Then there is the recent divide between the jury votes (they voted for who?? an outraged public asks Europe-wide) and the public votes, which often diverge dramatically.
Granted, the past couple of years it has been "Ukraine. Ukraine will win it" but that's not the whole of it.
I phrased myself unclearly, I meant that the actual winner is a minor part, not that the voting is a minor part.
Ah, right. Yeah, ABBA are about the one big Eurovision success story, other winners either already have established musical careers or end up one-hit wonders.
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Man, at this point I'm hoping Trump will randomly drop dead.
Well hoping is a strong word. I don't wish anyone dead, I don't think Trump deserves to be dead, I would be horrified and outraged if somebody killed him. It's just that I'm a Republican and I want to win. Trump seems to me to be just about the only Republican running who could possibly lose to Biden. A huge chunk of the country hates the man, and while he has a passionate fanbase a significant section of Republicans are tired of the Donald. I've never voted for a Democrat in my life and I'm not sure I'll vote for Trump if he ends up the nominee (not that I'd vote for Biden, I'd just throw it away on a protest vote for DeSantis or leave it blank). I voted for Trump in 2020 but all the talk of the election being stolen without the goods to back it up has soured me significantly. I want Republicans to win, but you don't rock the boat of democratic legitimacy like that. You could break America that way. I think a lot of Republicans feel the same way.
The way things are going Trump is probably going to be the nominee. And if he is then I think he's more likely to lose than not. The only way I can think of that would change the outcome is if Trump keeled over. It doesn't seem likely though: he may be old, but he's certainly spry. According to the SSA Actuarial Tables a man Trump's age only has a 4.9152% chance of dying in the next twelve months anyway.
It's funny, a few months ago someone said that this election is a simple rock-paper-scissors of Trump > Desantis > Biden > Trump. We'll probably not get to test the Desantis > Biden part, but it certainly seems plausible.
I agree with the main sentiment of your post. I liked the anti-woke bent Trump brought but he was far too scatterbrained and ineffectual to get almost anything done. Now Republicans seem destined to sleepwalk into another defeat since Trump has developed a cult of personality around himself that means he'll be almost impossible to dislodge.
Describing the enthusiasm for Trump as a personality cult I think misses why he's popular.
He's hated as are his supporters by blue tribe. That he's hated by his supporters opponents makes him attractive. The red tribers that hate him get labeled as RINO, uniparty would likely be a better description.
Voting for Trump is the protest vote for those wanting to see the Uniparty burn.
I mean, in the top post I said the following:
"Negative partisanship is the driving force in American politics more than anything else, and Trump's ability to make liberals seethe apparently earned him so much goodwill that Republicans will vote for him no matter how many elections he loses."
This gets at your point. I'd say it's basically a personality cult built around maximizing outgroup hatred.
He was this in 2016, but the landscape has shifted since then. It'd be great to have someone who's against the Uniparty with words on Twitter like Trump was... but also who'd follow through with actual policy actions.
Its not maximizing outgroup hatred. Its establishment hatred.
There are tons of people who switched to supporting Trump who would have backed Ron Paul, or Bernie Sanders despite the three not overlapping in policy at all.
OP said he was worried Trump would "Break America" There are tens of millions who are just voting for whatever they think will make America break.
Lots of Americans would support basically anyone to rule the US as long as the first thing they did was put DC to the sword and Harvard to the torch.
This is a distinction without a difference. Trump's base (and many others!) hates "the establishment"... because they think it's controlled by their outgroup.
Agree on the "many Americans want to put DC to the torch", but that's simply because negative partisanship and media negativity bias creates a picture of a terrible amorphous political class that people love to rage against without concrete proposals for how to make it better.
Put DC to the Sword is a concrete policy proposal, dissolve the Union, destroy the political class, and make America 50 independent states.
Balkanization would be terrible, as it would almost certainly lead to foreign meddling and violence breaking out between states like it was a jumbo-sized Yugoslavia.
No reasonable person thinks this would be a good idea. It's shortsighted toxoplasma in its most extreme form.
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Sometimes I day dream about a politically hyper-competent Trump winning in 2016.
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Yeah. Hell, I don't even mind whatever election fraud bullshit is going on on both sides, as long as there's a kind of...gentleman's agreement to only cheat so much and in certain ways, and it's for the most part kept under the rug so most of the peasants like us think it's mostly legitimate.
Yeah. I think there's dodginess rife but it's likely to just about even out on the aggregate
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This is basically the bike cuck comic except replace “bike” with “election” and “happiness” with “legitimacy”.
I’ll take an actually legitimate election over deep state vs. controlled opposition volume 24, thanks.
The optimal level of bike theft isn't zero, given an environment with bike thieves. Legitimacy is also a continuum, as well...a "candidate" that wins in a 99% landslide isn't exactly stealing an election, he's robbing it at gunpoint along with a bunch of voting booths, election officials, and the whole damn building. The threat of civil unrest or worse - much worse - keeps a lot of politicians "honest". We'd both prefer an actually legit election. But like the bike dude: are we willing to get in a gunfight with the thief over it?
Explain yourself.
Totally eliminating risk generally creates enormous costs that outweigh whatever risk you want to prevent.
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The cost of enforcing zero bike theft is generally higher than allowing a few thefts.
I believe the phrase is "millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute".
I wouldn't go quite that far; there are probably circumstances under which we have to tolerate bike theft because the cost of preventing it is too great. But the tipping point is not "where the cost of preventing it exceeds the cost from losing the bikes".
And the reason for that, of course, is incentives. You pay off one bunch of Libyans, and sooner rather than later every two-bit bunch of pirates who can slap together a boat is going to demanding tribute, and the first bunch will be increasing their demands. It's not quite as simple as never paying the Dane, but you should definitely be biased against it.
And so "given an environment with bike thieves" is an error. The environment will contain more or fewer bike thieves depending on your efforts at enforcement.
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Given that time I had my purse robbed by some little bitch of a thief in a shopping centre, leaving me literally penniless with no way home, I am quite happy to spend more on enforcing zero X theft than just 'allowing' a few harmless 'victimless' thefts.
If Bike Cuck Guy is so happy about being robbed, let the happy thieves take everything he owns down to his last penny, then see how content he is about the level of happiness in the world being greater than the loss. Only someone who can comfortably afford to lose a certain amount of money or goods, which means little to no ill-effect on himself, would express such an attitude.
Maybe St. Francis of Assisi would rejoice in a thief taking the few pence he possessed as being in greater need than he, but those of us who can't afford to laugh off a loss of something that cost a couple of hundred quid (depending on the price of the bike) aren't so saintly and are more vengeful.
Fair enough, but even in the Wild West - where horse thieves were hanged when caught - petty theft was treated differently. During the California Gold Rush, petty thieves were flogged and released.
I don't think I've got the stomach to shoot someone over a bike; I might feel differently if that bike was what stood between me and homelessness...if it was as important to me as a horse was for a cowboy in the Old West. And law enforcement wouldn't throw me in prison for it.
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Are you engaging with what "zero X theft" actually means, though? That's not "vanishingly small number of X thefts," which could possibly be accomplished by scaling up the current enforcement mechanisms by a few factors or a few orders of magnitude. That's zero theft of X, which for purses or bikes would likely mean something like having full coverage surveillance of all public areas (and most private areas) at all times, and furthermore those policemen or security guards would also need full surveillance to prevent corruption, bribery, etc. Of course those people also need surveillance to prevent corruption as well and so on and so forth. On top of all the regular training needed. We'd probably need to commit a substantial majority of our population just to law enforcement. Even after all that, I'm not sure that zero X theft for something like purses or bikes is a likely outcome. It's really difficult to build a truly perfect system with literally zero failures in anything but the most trivial circumstances, and society-wide theft is very far from trivial.
If we call for anything short of that (and possibly even if we do call for all that I described above), that means we are fully admitting that we are completely okay with and accepting of some nonzero level of X theft in our society, even if each and every individual occurrence of such theft is an injustice that we seek to prevent.
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When we increase cop power to the extent that they can enforce 0 purse thefts, are you so certain that this power won't be used to enforce other things you might disagree with?
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Fair.
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A vote for Trump is a vote for such a gunfight. I would not personally shoot the thief stealing my bike only because I would get lawfared to death over it (look at Trump, the analogy gets even better). Though I personally have no issue with the thief being killed or the election fraud enablers being thrown in jail/removed from their posts/pilloried in the town square.
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The legitimacy is legitimately valuable! Even if the election was stolen from you, you gracefully accept defeat unless you have the receipts.
Yeah. Basically, "They cheated me out of it, fair and square". It's a lot like doping in the Tour de France. People weren't pissed at Lance, King of the Dopers, because he doped, they were mad at him for being full of shit about being clean.
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As another politics as sports fan, it seems a bit early to decide it's already boring. At this point in 2007 Obama was a plucky upstart who was still formulating a strategy to pick up early momentum in Iowa and the political world was still reacting to Biden's clean and articulate quip. The drama started in spring of 2008 as Obama started to capture more and more primary delegates and the question was about whether he could maintain a large enough lead to offset her advantage in likely superdelegates.
In the summer of 2007 McCain was downsizing his office and his campaign only started picking up momentum later in the year.
In 2012 all those changes happened in 2012.
In 2016, Trump was fairly active in 2015, but his famous elevator ride was in June of 2015.
While there's a debate tonight (and there were similar very early debates in 2007) the real action seems like it will be December through maybe March to June depending on how close the races end up being.
Your 2008 examples are true, but by this point in 2012 and 2016 there had already been quite a bit of action. Bachmann had flamed out and Perry was ascendant by this point in the 2012 cycle, while Trump was already the frontrunner in 2016. Also, Obama never dipped below the mid to low 20's in 2008, whereas support for Desantis has dropped to as low as 10% in some polls, with all of that going to other candidates who also look unlikely to pose a serious threat to Trump.
The season isn't over yet of course, but the first few episodes have been really boring with few signs that things will get better.
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What in the world are you talking about? We have a guy out on bail vs a guy at death's door, who's fending off credible corruption allegations. anything could happen. You talked 'tension' in 2020? This blows that out of the water
I predict there's a very high combined chance that it is not Biden vs. Trump by the time we get to election night.
Yep. You don’t have mundane horse racing on which GOP guy will be typical GOP guy. We have death match. Win and you become President. Lose and die in jail.
Georgia seems serious. Should get poor people mug shots soon. I wouldn’t be shocked if Trump gets perp walked in an orange jumpsuit with leg chains.
This is Americas first third world election in centuries.
Pardon season for any outgoing político should be interesting. I assume pardon lists will be growing to the tens of thousands just in case.
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The accusations will basically be irrelevant until after the primaries are done at the very least. Moreover, after all the hype of the Mueller investigation and not one but two impeachments doing nothing but waste everyone's time, I don't view legal issues as imminently threatening. They probably are the most likely scenario for a curveball, but in any case watching the legal system slowly grind along at a glacial pace doesn't make for particularly entertaining viewing.
The "Biden is a zombie" meme is overhyped since he's always had a verbal tic that makes him seem befuddled, which Republicans like to claim is dementia when it's actually just a pre-existing condition.
Watch Biden's VP debate against Paul Ryan from 2012 back to back with any current Biden speech. It's not a pre-existing condition. The dude's old, and has lost more than a few mph off his fastball.
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Biden dies, everyone blue holds their nose and votes for President Kamala.
I'm convinced she's probably going to end up Pres by default. Now, that will be boring, in an awful, Nicola Murray sort of way.
Do the blues dislike Kamala? She didn't do well in the primary but I figured that was just a lack of name recognition.
Progressives really dislike her but the bigger deal is that nobody seems to like her that much. She has no base.
She was wrecked in her home state, it's not just name recognition. I honestly wonder if she'd be VP if Stacey Abrams was capable of winning an election outside of Star Trek.
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She has a near lizard man’s constant approval rating, so even if they don’t hate her, they like her a lot less than joe.
Not sure where you're getting lizard man's constant from. Her gross approval rating hovers around 40%, way higher; her net approval rating is steadily in the negative 10%-15% range. And among blues (well, Democrats) in particular her net approval rating is huge.
Americans as a whole only like her a little less, and they also dislike her a little less; his net approval rating is in the same ballpark.
I can't seem to find aggregated multiple-source data for Harris' approval among Democrats in particular. Biden still has a net approval rating of nearly 60% there. If I look for specific polls ... Here's one from 2022 with details: in their metrics she was 82/18 favorable/unfavorable among Democrats, vs Biden's 86/14, or if we count the "lean towards" answers as neutral, that left her at 67/9 vs him at 71/6. 7 or 8 points difference might not be just statistical error but I wouldn't call it "a lot".
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Hardcore progressives disliked that she was tough on crime in 2020, but the climate has changed on crime anyway.
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Tulsi Gabbard decapitated her on stage by pointing out what she was doing as a prosecutor, when BLM was at it's peak.
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