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The remaining primaries and convention at this point serve as little more than a coronation for the inevitable Trump nomination. It was discussed last week the unlikely circumstances in which Trump is prevented from running. The questions now are:
The likelihood Trump wins? Betting markets put the odds between 40-60%, which is not that useful but is what I would expect. The election will be very close and come down to the usual swing states like in 2020 and 2016. Biden's approval ratings are precariously low for an incumbent, especially given that the Electoral College works to Trump's advantage.
What will a second Trump term be like? My guess is much like his first term. A lot of hollow populist gestures to his base but not much happens. I still don't understand these people who are otherwise centrist or middle-left like Matt Yglesias and Noah Smith, who predict or expect a foreign policy crisis if trump wins , but always fail to articulate what this entails. I guess they have to keep toeing the 'orange man bad' line even though he was not that bad, and the economy and other metrics did well under his presidency (until Covid, which was out of his control anyway). Key alliances were strained much, as commonly feared in 2016-2017. The leadership of allies like Germany and France begrudgingly accepted Trump, and not much else happened.
Roughly speaking: he is far to likely to jump to extremes that are not good solutions. Say what you want about Biden but at least he is not going to ask for missile strike on Zelensky/Putin/Ali Khamenei.
Or other outrageous stuff.
With Trump? Hopefully will not happen, but risk is much higher.
I can't take this position seriously when the Biden administration is (or was) dancing dangerously close to escalating a war with Russia.
It is not doing that. It's sending lots of money to a corrupt shithole that wants to fight to the last man against Russia, but that's not the same thing as escalating a war; it's well within "the rules" of proxy warfare.
Proxy wars have never been fought with such a serious risk to the homeland of one of the big powers. Also never so close to nations that could trigger NATO's mutual defense provisions.
If Russia gamed out that there was a 97% chance that Ukraine will seize control of Moscow, then what? Russia would have refused to use its most powerful weapons out of respect for international norms?
Then whoever gamed it out is a bunch of cretinous idiots detached from reality. In what kind of insane scenario Ukraine could occupy Moscow?
Ukraine having actual biolabs producing mutant supersoldiers powered by comic-book level tech? All rumours about Putin having 19393 different cancers and nuclear missiles being made of cardboards and Russia having less than 100 working tanks in storage and out of missiles being actually true?
some of mottizens wrote that they saw possibility of Ukraine conquering Moscow. I guess they are cretinous idiots?
They may be merely uninformed and being aware about what happens there from CNN headlines. Though making strong predictions in such case is also pretty silly.
If someone spend significant time on learning about this war and thinks that Ukraine seizing Moscow is likely - then they are cretinous idiots or trolls. It is event that is technically possible but in epsilon levels of probability, in class of events like "literal aliens invade Earth" or "do_something account is run by president Joe Biden" or "Putin died in early morning of 2024-01-27".
If someone is responsible for gaming out results, as professional government job, for critical purposes such as deciding whether nuclear weapons should be used - and would reach such results. Then they are cretinous idiots (or someone else in decision chain is, I guess). And being troll in such case is being a cretinous idiot.
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If that were true it would change the calculus. It isn't true, so it doesn't.
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Russia has not gamed that out, because there’s not even a .97% chance. These people are a corrupt and paranoid militaristic oligarchy, but the motteizean neurotic doomerist panic mode thinking is something I’ve never seen any sign of from them. Ukraine won’t seize any Russian territory even in its maximally delusional war aims unless you count crimea.
what if say, civil war breaks in Russia and Ukraine wants to have some pieces by itself?
Assimilating a whole bunch of ethnic Russians would severely change Ukraine's politics, which those currently in power don't want. And ethnic cleansing is mostly out because of the West not being big fans of that. So it's not all that attractive to Kiev.
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