domain:streamable.com
ares
1yr ago
I have not seen that poll; could you link to it? I know New Jersey showed a dead heat recently (amazingly), but from what I've been able to find, Colorado is still firmly in Camp Biden if he and Trump were the only options. I'd love to see something to the contrary.
Supah_Schmendrick
1yr ago
I mean, he didn't seem like a tired corpse.
Only to someone without a clear memory of what he was like in 2012.
DradisPing
1yr ago
2, but it's less heirarchal than you're thinking. A chunk of prominent insiders have decided to see if they can push out Biden. They are getting the press to run damaging stories and contacting other Dems to rally support.
So there are a lot of people who know what's going on, it's not just their close friends.
Michelle Obama's name always comes up on these things because she's one of the few prominent people that the Dems could unite behind easily. I don't think she wants it. Her current life involves hanging out with celebrities and the super wealthy who all tell her how awesome she is. Then she gets paid to give talks to people who tell her how awesome she is.
There's nothing in her history that suggests she'd rather go to Michigan and listen to the problems of the hoi polloi. Or that she's particularly interested in having to make decisions about geopolitics.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
Did I hallucinate that time when he threatened a journo with his Beretta, or did it actually happen? Not what I'd call "a tired corpse", if so.
curious_straight_ca
1yr ago
There's been a lot of reporting over the past few days on what Biden and his team and donors and congress are thinking, people in the house calling for him to drop out, and polls continue to coming out clarifying what voters think of Biden's performance. Just today
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are considering signing a letter demanding President Joe Biden withdraw from the race, a senior party official said, as panic mounts that he’ll cost them control of Congress. Biden is rapidly losing the support of Democratic lawmakers and candidates concerned the 81-year-old’s continued candidacy would lead to a Republican sweep of Washington and an unchecked Donald Trump presidency.
So information is leaking, but it's public information leaking via the media
gattsuru
1yr ago
Trivially, trans stuff is going to come to a critical head soon one way or the other: social conservatives has been focusing most heavily on minor transition, but Kincaid v. Williams is the other shoe dropping for Bostock, can't be put off another four years, and it's... hard to overstate how broad of an impact it would have. In addition to the direct regulatory impact, it would likely (given the recent EMTALA example) result in the feds overriding every remotely anti-trans state law under a Dem admin. And the next President has non-trivial chances of replacing the two names on the dissent from denial of cert in Kincaid. I don't think Trump particularly cares about trans stuff, but I don't think you can staff a Trump admin without anti-trans activists precipitating out of the woodwork even if he did care.
There's a lot of active encouragement of at-least-gray immigration under Biden. It's possible that most of that escapes scrutiny in a Trump administration, but at least some of it won't survive, for better or worse, and I'd expect it to be a serious target as this decade's version of 'self-deport'.
There's an increasing set of broad policies that the Democratic party is looking to get through over a wide variety of infrastructure goals for their political movement: regulation on charter or private schools, post-Janus encouragement for unions like banning right-to-work states, reparations-likes for (certain) minority groups. Trump obviously would be strike against any of those going anywhere, but progressive seem him as likely to do reversed version. Again, I'm not sure Trump cares, but a Trump administration will near-certainly bring people who do.
((Conversely, I think Paxton talks a much stronger talk than he actually walks.))
UwU
1yr ago
Exhibit 0: Biden himself talked about his debate the next day. Are we supposed to be impressed about telling right from wrong? That he knows how to do the job he's been in for four years? These are not reasons to be elected President again, they are basic pre-requisites. For that matter, "speaking smoothly" and "walking" might actually be core requirements as well.
While that may be true. It’s clear he was contrasting himself with his opponent. He’s saying Trump doesn’t satisfy these basic requirements but he does.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
England was a trading empire long before coal and textiles. It was already very rich by Euro standards before the industrial revolution. It wasn't the coal and the textiles. It was the people and the culture that developed in a place that could only be reached and lived in with some expeditiousness.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
1yr ago
1 and 3 wouldn't work. The bet sizes you're allowed to place are not large enough.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
I often have the same reaction. But to add some nuance, you don't need to budget for market-rate housing. You do need to budget for below-market-rate housing. Of course, it's probably a lot more cost effective to fix the regulations so market rate is lower so there's a lot less need for below-market-rate housing.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Michelle Obama's name always comes up on these things because she's one of the few prominent people that the Dems could unite behind easily.
Looking at the "Career" section of her Wikipedia page, while Michelle Obama has been involved in politics plenty, she's never even run for an elected position herself. I really can't see the Democrats going for her, in addition to her being pretty clear about not wanting the job.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1yr ago
I don't know about football, but in normal business, "full support of the board" is typically followed after a short cooling off period by "resignation to spend more time with one's family".
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
Not necessarily. I've seen multiple commentators assert that Kamala is the only possible alternative. They might be wrong, but it's not unreasonable the betting markets might buy that.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
1yr ago
But the world did not literally end because he typed the wrong number into a computer terminal like in LOST
As president, Trump literally fired the guy whose job that was and we did have a worldwide catastrophe.
Some not-bare links, words, and a Scott watch.
1 a. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing
First, a Scott post on Biden, debate, and a personal accounting of The Big Reveal. The curtain drawn across the stage to lay bare Biden's cognitive decline for the world to see. This is the common framing and narrative, anyway. He writes:
Many people on Twitter are asking “how could anyone possibly have been stupid enough to not realize that Biden was senile?”
I was that stupid. I didn’t say it openly, because I’m at least smart enough to have a high threshold for giving my opinion on political things I don’t know much about. But I thought it in my heart. So in case the people asking “how could anyone have been that stupid?” actually want an explanation, here’s my former reasoning.
Republicans have been accusing Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now. Before the 2020 debates, they were excited that this was when they could finally prove once and for all that Biden was senile. Then Biden did fine, and they retreated to “well he’s senile but”....
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence. Even if liars are saying something for their usual liar reasons, it can still be true. For twenty years, people spread false rumors that Castro was on his deathbed, but this didn’t make Castro immortal. In the same way, I should have figured out that even if I couldn’t trust any particular claim that Biden was senile, the prior for an 81 year old becoming senile was still high.
He then suggests Biden drops out, dropping Kamala as well, and throwing in some "purple-state Governor". Like Scott, this seems rather late in the game to me. There is still plenty of time to the election, as I'm sure the Biden loyalists are also telling themselves, so anything can happen. Who knows, maybe Biden gets a war? Wars are good for incumbents.
1 b. https://eigenrobot.substack.com/p/come-on-man
Eigenrobot, Twitter poaster extraordinaire, has some good thoughts looking at the same theme, but with regards to the media. He lays some groundwork with articles speaking of Biden's potential decline as an elderly gentleman some dating back to 2017.
My tentative conclusion from all of this is just that everyone here was socially or otherwise imprisoned and so prevented from putting two and two together even privately. All of the evidence was plain to see; or at least enough to not be shocked by what happened last Thursday. What was wanting was the capacity to perceive it.
There are some beliefs held for utility, and some load-bearing for survival; if they were to be abandoned, one would have to surrender their convenience, their security, or an identity. These are real costs.
Finishing with something that's been mentioned here many times:
The secret is my God I mean Biden was coming up on eighty years old! Have you ever met or known eighty year olds? Even if they don’t get a diagnosis, even if their minds aren’t totally lost to us, the fact is octogenarians are just in a phase of their lives where they are meaningfully slowing down both mentally and physically.
Biden is old! This reaction with CNN anchors exclaiming, "how could the Whitehouse aides forsake us" is funny. Journalists have gotten worse at their jobs, that's how. There was space and time to talk about Biden's age and its potential impact it may have on the election. All well within the Overton window, even. Some journalists did write about it-- even those in Respectable Publications. That this idea was pushed into right-wing meme territory is an apparent, notable, visible failure for journalists. Not only do they feel lied to, they feel inadequate that they allowed themselves to be lied to. An outrage!
- https://youtube.com/watch?v=_sZU0tQkwnQ&t=3382 - Mistake theory strikes again
I listened to this Q&A with Scott and Nate Silver at the allegedly controversial Manifest conference that happened in June. There's some interesting tidbits in there if you're interested in prediction markets, Nate Silver+election models, AI risk, and so on. Perhaps not anything new for your ears that these two haven't written about.
The time stamp shows Scott answering a question about AI and how that may play into the risk of future wars. He first says that wars between great powers have a good chance of going nuclear and that is bad. However you want to define "good chance", fine. Then he goes on to say how it is his impression that "often [wars between great powers happen because] everybody was trying to do brinksmanship and made a mistake".
Scott is answering questions off the cuff in an informal, impromptu format. He's not some foreign policy wonk and neither am I. Brinkmanship is a thing. Some conflicts may escalate to unwanted, outright hostilities due to brinkmanship, political grandstanding, or get accidentally'd into full blown war. My impression is that escalation is usually not a mistake, though. Ukraine is not some exception as Scott suggests.
Escalation can be a proactive, reactive, or provocative measure to induce war. Escalation can be seen as a deterrent by one side, then used as a provocation to the other, sure, but I don't think it's fair to call these things mistakes. They are realities. Over stepping, going a little to far, these things can happen between states as they do people. Maybe he means a war that led to nuclear exchange would be considered a mistake. Which is probably true if it happens.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
1yr ago
sex pest who was showering with his daughter according to her diary...
Link?
UwU
1yr ago
I don't understand. If a scenario of murdering multiple candidates is asinine then surely the scenario of Biden murdering Trump is also asinine and the Supreme Court opinion doesn't matter?
If there's a complete break down of order that Biden is able to murder Trump without any major repercussions except some electoral issues in November then he can also do it to two or three other politicians that step up after Trump. I just took your scenario and expanded on it. If you have problems with the "if he's the only option left" part, that is not meant to be taken literally. As in, he's not literally murdering everyone who disagrees with him, just that no one of value will have time to establish themselves to challenge his presidency after the first few are gone.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1yr ago
In my mind it's The Dog That Didn't Bark situation. The backlash hasn't come. Biden hasn't done anything to flex back. People aren't defending Biden very aggressively. A week has come and gone with no organized resistance. That's probably more important than the debate itself.
Compare that time Hillary collapsed at an event and got thrown into her limo like a side of beef. Really bad, but immediately her surrogates (essentially the entire establishment media) were out there fighting it hard and within a few days she was doing appearances where she was shaking it off.
The lack of response might be more indicative than the initial crash.
nopie
1yr ago
Scott Alexander needed years to realize that yes, Biden is on his path to dementia. Maybe it is just that now more bettors have finally realized what is going on.
With the public information we had strong priors that Biden shows signs of likely dementia and if true, it will be progressing. Recently we saw how much it had progressed. Now we can estimate how much worse Biden will be in 1 month, 2 months, 4 months etc. with quite narrow confidence intervals.
As Anatoly Karlin says – it is all programmed. Previously people just refused to believe these bad news.
Similarly it was with effectiveness of masks in preventing covid. I didn't see any prediction markets but many people wanted to believe them to be effective despite all the evidence. When it was all reviewed and Cochrane review was published many still refused to believe that the evidence for any benefit is non-existent. Politicians are especially resistant to negative scientific findings but eventually they will be forced to accept reality in one way or another.
Stingray3906
1yr ago
They don't really have anything to lose, with two major party candidates that are unpopular, despite people saying they will still vote for one of them.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1yr ago
So we had one less guy to call us racist for pointing out something odd was going on in Wuhan?
I.e., not even Austin's deputy was told. She was vacationing in Puerto Rico and had to be emergency bum-rushed back to DC when someone noticed that there wasn't anyone in charge at the Pentagon.
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