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US election 2020

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Who do you hope wins the US Election?
Trump
39%
 39%  [ 9 ]
Biden
39%
 39%  [ 9 ]
Don't Care
21%
 21%  [ 5 ]
Total Votes : 23

Author Message
Wokko Pisces

Come and take it.


Joined: 04 Oct 2005


PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 3:51 pm
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In the dichotomy of US politics you have Democrats on the left and Republicans on the right. Within each group there are those that bleed into the other side ('Blue Dog Democrats, Never Trump RINOs), those that are more extreme (Bernie the Squad and other Socialists, The Tea Party libertarians) and everything in between (Liberals like Obama, Neo Cons like Bush).

Overall it makes conversation easier to refer to each side in the broad brush left & right. If I was speaking to a US audience I would probably use liberal and conservative but left and right would still convey the same meaning. I could be totally pedantic every time and reference the niche of specific politics but it would be long winded and unnecessary.


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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto

PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:17 pm
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That's a very detailed graphic Shocked
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Tannin Capricorn

Can't remember


Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania

PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:34 pm
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It would make good sense, except that by the standards of any civilised country in the world, Bernie Sanders is not remotely left wing. He's a centrist who supports free enterprise with a few basic protections like health insurance - way, way less "left wing" stuff than we all take for granted in countries like Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, and pretty much anywhere else in the civilised world.
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Pies4shaw Leo

pies4shaw


Joined: 08 Oct 2007


PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 6:42 pm
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^ That's the problem with the US, of course - it's an unsophisticated political backwater full of ignorant people who have no idea at all what might be good or bad for them as individuals or as a collective and consequently run straight into the arms of an actual moron who doesn't represent their interests at all (no matter how many of them are silly enough to vote for him).
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Tannin Capricorn

Can't remember


Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania

PostPosted: Fri Mar 27, 2020 7:02 pm
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Now now, don't underrate Mr Trump. For all his faults, he is at the core an honest politician. He stays bribed.

(Which is just as well. Otherwise, Putin would have to find another stooge, and they broke the mould when they made the Orange Disaster.)

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Mon Mar 30, 2020 9:32 am
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https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/tv-hosts-joe-biden-sexual-assault-allegation_n_5e80bc97c5b6cb9dc1a206d3?ri18n=true

Quote:
The next day, Biden sat for an hourlong, live town hall hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Though the event was primarily focused on the ongoing pandemic, some viewers criticized the network for not including at least one question about the allegation.

“How does CNN host a town hall with Joe Biden and not ask about the former senate aide who has publicly accused him of sexual assault?” tweeted journalist Michael Sainato.

On Sunday, Biden appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” a weekly political talk show where host Chuck Todd often takes Trump administration officials to task.

“Just consider all that’s happened since the last time we had former Vice President Joe Biden on ‘Meet The Press,’” said Todd, pointing to Biden’s numerous primary victories, the spread of the coronavirus nationwide, and the surge of Americans filing unemployment claims as a result.

Todd made no mention of the sexual assault allegation, however.

[...]

In response to Reade’s allegation, Kate Bedingfield, the communications director for Biden’s campaign, said in a statement that “women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims.

“We encourage them to do so, because these accusations are false,” she said.


I'd respect these outlets more if they actually did that (i.e. provided evidence to demonstrate that Reade's testimony is untrustworthy, and asked Biden to refute the allegations). But at the moment their approach just seems to be ignoring the allegations and hoping that they go away. Time will tell if that actually works.

Here's another piece on Biden's general weaknesses that brings up the sexual assault allegation:

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/democratic-presidential-election-andrew-cuomo-biden-trump-20200329.html

Quote:
The Cuomo talk only persists because the guy that Democrats hooked up with in a wild four-day February-March fling, Biden, looks increasingly weak. That growing perception seemed confirmed by a stunning new ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Sunday morning that revealed just 28% of Biden’s supporters are “very enthusiastic" about voting for him. That’s the lowest in 20 years of this question, which means he’s doing worse than 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton, whose unpopularity cost her the Electoral College to President Trump.

[...]

What’s the matter with Joe Biden? The rapid change in circumstances — the pause on the remaining primaries, the end of in-person campaigning — has created a massive challenge to keep Biden, who unlike Trump or Cuomo, isn’t a current officeholder tasked with fighting the virus, before the voters and looking like a leader for these times. The things that he’s tried — like a CNN town hall on Friday night — are like those incessant cell phone ads on TV …"just OK." Biden’s best quality — his empathy — can shine through at times and present a real contrast with Trump’s narcissism. But the Cuomo Effect just isn’t there for the 77-year-old and sometimes-rambling Biden.

And things could get worse for Biden soon. After the former vice president seemingly dealt with several allegations of handsy, inappropriate behavior around women when he launched his campaign in 2019, Biden now faces a much more serious — and worthy of further investigation — allegation of a straight-up sexual assault from an aide who worked for him in 1993. Tara Reade alleges that Biden cornered her and digitally penetrated her, and although she told two people contemporaneously, she’d been hesitant to go public before now. Team Biden strongly denies this.

I do not know if Reade’s allegation is true, but I do believe that it’s credible enough that we should listen to her, and investigate fully. For now, I’m even more troubled by the inconsistency of those who posted the #BelieveWomen hashtag when the accused was Supreme Court Justice (sigh) Brett Kavanaugh or other powerful men in politics and the media, but who are suddenly going all Sherlock Holmes in dredging up irrelevant details about Reade’s politics. To me, #BelieveWomen means we should listen to women — something society didn’t do for 3,000 years — and verify. Until proven otherwise, we should listen to Tara Reade.


Personally, I have no idea whether Reade is telling the truth, and I have my doubts. But I felt similarly about the Kavanaugh accusations, and, as the piece above points out, a very different standard is being applied right now, both by the Democratic Party and media outlets friendly to it. (Though, see article below for previous examples of the mainstream media ignoring sexual assault claims against a presidential candidate.)

https://www.mediamatters.org/sexual-harassment-sexual-assault/forty-three-new-women-came-forward-describe-assault-and-harassment

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 9:30 am
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The race is officially over – Sanders has dropped out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/us/politics/bernie-sanders-drops-out.html

I don't pretend to have any idea what's going to transpire from here, but I have a strong feeling Biden is going to get creamed. He's a truly terrible candidate, and I'm not only saying that because I supported Sanders – any of him, Warren, Buttigieg, Harris, Klobuchar or even Hillary Clinton, for that matter, would have stood a much better chance of beating Trump than Biden (only Bloomberg would have been a clearly weaker choice, imo). If the head-to-head polls don't currently bear that analysis out, just wait until the Republicans go all in on the inconvenient fact that has been treated as taboo throughout the entire Democratic primary: that Joe Biden obviously has dementia and is not in any way fit for the job. (The sexual assault allegation won't go away either, even though I remain a little more sceptical about its veracity.)

It's 2004 all over again, essentially: they've gone with the least inspiring candidate possible in the hope that playing it safe and capitalising on widespread hostility to the sitting Republican president will get him over the line. Well, we all know how that went last time.

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Tannin Capricorn

Can't remember


Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania

PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:10 am
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^ Sour grapes and nonsense. Biden is squarely in the centre of the conservative, moderate ideal that most Americans hold dear. The fact that he is a bit senile is irrelevant. The main thing is that he is competent. Americans don't mind senile; they elect senile leaders regularly and seem to like them better than the lively ones. (Think Regan, of course, and both the Bushes.)

Biden is a massive contrast to Trump, and exactly what America needs.

(Me, I'd like to see Elizabeth Warren in the job, but Americans don't like Presidents who actually do anything. Biden is perfect.)

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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:35 am
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It will be interesting to see what the excuses are when Trump wins his second term.
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swoop42 Virgo

Whatcha gonna do when he comes for you?


Joined: 02 Aug 2008
Location: The 18

PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:12 pm
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Despite his woefully inadequate and slow response to the COVID-19 threat this pandemic will likely and perversely benefit Trump and become his best hope of winning a second term.

If history is any guide then during times of war or crisis people will generally stick to what they know when it comes to elections.

Trump himself is already looking to exploit the situation and likening himself to a wartime President in his press appearances. Kind of sickening really given his lack of urgency in dealing with the pandemic will lead to many more dying that otherwise could have been prevented.

This time though who knows what the response will be from the voting public as the body bags of the American dead wont be piling up on the shores of some foreign land while mass mourning at the loss of life should be more powerful than the emotional response to the GFC.

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thesoretoothsayer 



Joined: 26 Apr 2017


PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 3:24 pm
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Pies4shaw wrote:
^ That's the problem with the US, of course - it's an unsophisticated political backwater full of ignorant people who have no idea at all what might be good or bad for them as individuals or as a collective and consequently run straight into the arms of an actual moron who doesn't represent their interests at all (no matter how many of them are silly enough to vote for him).

United States:
Put a man on the moon over 50 years ago.
Roughly 3 times as many Nobel Prize winners as the next nation.
Consistently invests more in R&D than states like the EU, China or Japan.
Home of Silicon Valley and the epicentre of the digital revolution that has transformed the world.

I think the place is a bit more complex than your generalisation suggests.
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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda

PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:09 pm
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Tannin wrote:
^ Sour grapes and nonsense. Biden is squarely in the centre of the conservative, moderate ideal that most Americans hold dear. The fact that he is a bit senile is irrelevant. The main thing is that he is competent. Americans don't mind senile; they elect senile leaders regularly and seem to like them better than the lively ones. (Think Regan, of course, and both the Bushes.)

Biden is a massive contrast to Trump, and exactly what America needs.

(Me, I'd like to see Elizabeth Warren in the job, but Americans don't like Presidents who actually do anything. Biden is perfect.)


Biden offers nothing but misplaced nostalgia. He's provided no vision for the future, no empathy for people who are struggling and no panacea to the many social ills that led to Trump's election; just an idea that the country can magically return to the golden era of the Obama years (despite the rather less glamorous reality of its many failures and compromises). Warren and Sanders were hardly utopian novelty candidates; they were recognising serious dysfunctions in the country and proposing urgently needed remedies. The Democratic establishment and voter base, sadly, seem to have turned their back on that and focused solely on the juju of electability (a science that ought to be consigned to the same category as phrenology and astrology).

Simply warming the seat, overseeing a more or less functional administration (via the VP, I guess, given his own imminent incapacity) and not being a 24-karat psycho may seem like an improvement on Trump, but it's a long way from enough on its own. At this point, even if he gets in – and that seems unlikely at this point – he'll just be massaging the country's decline.

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stui magpie Gemini

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.


Joined: 03 May 2005
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:34 pm
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^

David, I tend to agree.

Trump will beat Biden which means the Democrats will have 4 more years to try to figure out what they stand for and what their policies are other than just focusing on not being Trump and beating Trump.

The thing is, I'm not sure the Democrats can morph into the centre left party the progressives want it to become. The USA has 2 right wing major parties to chose from at the moment and minimal recent history of taking on board progressive ideals.

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Tannin Capricorn

Can't remember


Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania

PostPosted: Thu Apr 09, 2020 8:45 pm
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If decency, some sort of honesty, and basic competence is "misplaced nostalgia", I'll take it.

This is not the time for "vision", or any other foolish fancypants notion.

"Simply warming the seat, overseeing a more or less functional administration ... and not being a 24-karat psycho" is EXACTLY what this is all about. This is NOT the time to faff about with idiot idealism or moronic ideological purity fetishes. This isn't just another election. This is a fair-dinkum emergency. It isn't just a good idea to get rid of Trump. It is vital, as vital as it was to get rid of Hitler and Tojo. This is not the time to buggerise about.
\
FIRST fix the worst problem the USA has faced since the Civil War. (His name is Trump.)

THEN, at the following election, go for something more ambitious, if you wish. But first, STOP THE BLEEDING. Triage 101.

If you don't see that, then, frankly, you simply haven't been following the horrendous damage of the Trump administration in all its horrible detail.

But for starters, consider just one factor: four more years of Trump means a hopelessly stacked Supreme Court (if you think it's stacked now, you ain't seen nothing yet), and that means an end to civil rights, including the right to vote. Already, the Republicans have rigged the electoral system such that it is very, very difficult to unseat them, and they are quite openly planning to do more.

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David Libra

I dare you to try


Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:20 am
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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read this argument. And you know what its fundamental error is? Nobody can tell me that Biden has a better chance of beating Trump than Sanders did, because nobody can possibly know that. US political history is littered with failed centre-right Democratic candidates who were put up because of this idea that people – specifically, these "moderate Republicans" who are apparently just crying out for the opportunity to vote blue (spoiler alert: they never will) – just won’t vote for anyone who offers anything exciting and radical. So you get Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry and, who can forget, Hillary Clinton. And progressives are told again and again to suck it up and vote for the lesser of two evils this time, and that they’ll get to vote for meaningful change next time (yeah, right). Any wonder nearly half the eligible voting population in America gets disillusioned and doesn’t engage with the process at all?

Sanders, with his massive ground game of volunteer door-knockers and phone-bankers, offered the opportunity to engage with those non-voters for the first time in forever – with poor Latin American migrants, for instance, who turned out in huge numbers for him in the primaries. And yes, perhaps even with some Trump voters who didn’t necessarily agree with the current administration’s right-wing ideological obsessions but just wanted to see the table tipped over. It was a different strategy, and I’m not saying I know for sure it would have worked. But it would have brought an energy and drive to this general election that hasn’t been seen since Obama swept to power in 2008. Instead, thanks largely to being beaten over the head on a daily basis with the exact same argument you’ve expressed above by media networks that have a material interest in opposing Sanders’ candidacy, most Democratic primary voters – many of whom are otherwise entirely supportive of Sanders’ policy agenda – dutifully got in line behind the guy the party apparatchiks wanted. One has to wonder how many times they need to do the same thing with the same result before the penny drops.

You and I have a different perspective on all this given that we (thankfully) don’t have to live in the country, and only ever suffer indirectly as a result of its consistently terrible foreign policy decisions. But it’s so disheartening to see the same script play out again and again around the world. Look at our hollow shell of a Labor party, or UK Labour’s re-embrace of Blairism in their recent leadership ballot. The conservative parties get more and more outrageously right-wing, and everyone thinks that they can’t possibly win this time, but they do, because they understand that the idea of winning elections by hewing close to the "sensible" centre is a myth. That’s because a) the centre is unstable and constantly shifting, and b) voters are far more likely to be won over by a compelling narrative. I mean, honestly, after Trump’s victory in 2016, we shouldn’t even need to be having this conversation, right?

I’ve always thought that, given Trump’s widespread unpopularity and obvious incompetence, the drover’s dog would have a decent, say, 50% chance of beating him this election. So maybe Biden will win. But here are some danger signs: he has little to no organisation behind him that will help get out the vote; many, many Sanders supporters and others outside the system will not vote for him; nobody is enthusiastic about him as a candidate; and he has no compelling pitch other than not being as bad as the other guy. Plus, he has serious weaknesses as a candidate that will be weaponised. So I can’t shake the feeling that he’s leading his party straight off a cliff. And if that happens, well, so much for "electability".
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