UPDATE #13, 11:00 AM EST on Saturday. Joe Biden has won Pennsylvania and (apparently) the Presidency.
- Trump is holding on in North Carolina, and that will not get updated for about a week. Looks safe for Trump.
- Georgia is already planning a recount because the race is incredibly tight. It does appear that Biden will hold on to the state, but it can’t be called.
- Although Fox and the AP called Arizona for Biden, Trump may prove them wrong and win there, because he gets closer every time they count another tranche of ballots. Biden is only ahead by 20,000 with 125,000 left to count. It will go down to the wire.
UPDATE #7. Donald Trump will get more votes than any American has ever previously received in a presidential election – but will lose by at least five million votes. Obviously that means that the voter turnout was immense on both sides. People were very involved and passionate in this election, but it also means that a vast number of Americans love Donald Trump, whose vote total will exceed Obama’s in 2008! Of course, that direct comparison is inappropriate in that Obama got about ten million more votes than his opponent, but the 2020 vote count still reflects Trump’s immense popularity, as well as his immense unpopularity. I disagree with Biden’s claim that America has given him some kind of mandate. The GOP gained seats in the House. The presidential vote was purely a referendum on Trump. We simply rejected an asshole, so Biden’s only mandate is not to be an asshole.
I’m pretty sure the love for Trump and the hate for Trump are self-evident. His ardent followers are definitely passionate about him, and he exercises power over them much akin to that of a cult leader. Even the Republican leaders have become his cult, as evidenced by the impeachment vote that would have installed the perhaps even more conservative Pence into the Presidency. It would have been to their advantage to get rid of Trump, but they would not risk offending his cult members.
Just like the followers of Jim Jones, they drank the Kool-Aid for him, except that their preferred beverage consisted of his rallies with no masks and no social distancing in the middle of a pandemic. Same thing, just slower-acting.
I agree with you on Biden. Very few people love him or hate him, except the extremely stupid who bought into the “crime family” nonsense. Nobody much gives a crap about Biden either way. Those votes were pro-Trump and anti-Trump. Biden’s role was to stay under the radar, speak in platitudes and truisms, and remain as insipid and uncontroversial as possible.
A vast number of votes doesn’t mean Americans “love” either Trump or Biden. Those who voted for Trump may not like him; they’re just afraid Biden as Pres will mean $4 gas again, and equal rights for races or genders they hate, and more food stamp money for the poor, and other far left tendencies. Those who voted for Biden may not like him; I did, but I’m not a big fan. He’s a dull speaker with an outdated, old-fashioned personality; he repeatedly uses stale platitudes to try to show us how he’ll fix basically everything for everyone. He excessively brings his family & hometown into speeches when there are far more important topics to be talked about. It seems he learned everything he knows from his grandfather, and he wants to drive that home endlessly; who gives a shit? But he got my vote because despite his flaws he’s a normal, rational, reasonable, experienced, well-respected politician. I suspect many people feel that way, without necessarily seeing him as some sort of Savior or even an interesting guy. He ran against a deranged, rabid cockroach so the choice was easy for 74 million. Trump got a lot of votes probably from many people who can’t stand him, but they feared what Biden brings to the table politically, or they’re just too dumb to see through his facade of toughness and see the mindless insect he truly is. It’s like voting for Frank Booth from “Blue Velvet” vs. some guy off the street. No one would like Frank or give much of a shit about the other guy, but they’re either gonna go with Frank’s brutal fascism because they admire his maverick methods & he’ll keep the races they don’t like out of the country , or they’ll simply pick the boring guy because he’s not Frank.
Skimming through the big prize is potus, as always. Dems losing seats in the house is a plus i.e. they can’t pass any extreme legislation. Ditto senate where nothing will get done even if Dems miraculously win the two senate run-offs.
And will not be surprised if scotus upholds ACA, gay marriage and abortion rights i.e. if overturned a plus (big campaign issue) for Dems in the mid-terms, 2024 as public opinion is on the Dems side.
And if Reps/McConnell are total obstructions that will be a plus for Dems moving forward also.
Did I mention winning potus is the big prize! 🙂 carry on …
I would love to hear these examples of ‘extreme legislation.’ The warped propaganda of the right wing the past 40 years has fucked every sense of what center actually is. If tax rates were set to what, say Eisenhower had in effect, that would be considered socialism now. I guess the guy who led the Allies in WWII was a socialist?
The Rand corporation put out a study if the actual amount of fair pay was distributed equally compared to work effort, a person making $50,000 in the 70’s would be making $95,000 now.
“According to a groundbreaking new working paper by Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards of the RAND Corporation, had the more equitable income distributions of the three decades following World War II (1945 through 1974) merely held steady, the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is an amount equal to nearly 12 percent of GDP—enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.
Price and Edwards calculate that the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality had grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020. That’s $50 trillion that would have gone into the paychecks of working Americans had inequality held constant—$50 trillion that would have built a far larger and more prosperous economy—$50 trillion that would have enabled the vast majority of Americans to enter this pandemic far more healthy, resilient, and financially secure.”
The past forty years of extreme right wing policies are the ones that need to be undone. Even setting it level starting NOW would only be moving to the center. It’s a bullshit lie, and always has been that there are extreme far left policies.
Set the same damn income as it has been in the past – THATS ALL. That’s not far left, extreme legislation its putting it back to where it was when all these shithead boomers got to build their own career.
I’m with Indy on this one. Now the Republicans will be able to boast that they prevented radical Democratic legislation (that never actually existed on the the Democrats’ agenda, because the idea of radical Democrats is Republican propaganda). That is not a good thing for Democrats. Basically, shiloh is AGREEING with Republican propaganda in that respect.
Republicans over the years basically have moved the goalposts 90 yards, and say meet in the center at the 5 yard line next to the goal line afterwards.
Then it’s both sides off of that, and it’s just pathetic are too uneducated to see it.
Yes, I agree with how the Republicans have worked like switch engines to redefine American politics. The US does not have a left-wing party. The Republicans are right wing (more so all the time), and the Democrats are centrists. Yet many people believe they are Socialists! Good work, Fox News.
Right now, I think that most people pay as little attention to politics as I do to cars and automotive technology. Cars don’t interest me a lot, I don’t understand the changes of the past 20 years or more, and I tend to buy based on habits and ideas that are long out of date. Yet I use a car almost daily, it is is the biggest single financial decision I make (I don’t own my own home) and affects me for years after each choice. What I do is dumb and lazy, really.
At least I hope that explains why so many people voted Republican in 2020. I would rather believe that many people are uninterested and voting out of habit and ignorance than that they are awful people.
What are the concepts involved in these things, and how do they demonstrate Republican hypocrisy?
Austrian School economic theory, such that it really is a theory on this is based on the concept that low interest rates prop up what they (and others as well to be fair) refer to as ‘zombie corporations.’ That’s fine to be concerned about per se, keeping zombie corporations afloat can be an inefficient use of money depending on whether or not they can become viable again, however, their obsession with this is based on completely religious arguments: Good economic times create a drunken hangover and recessions are necessary to provide a cleansing. I don’t know much about the founders of Austrian economics, but it wouldn’t surprise me if many of them were Calvinists.
Mainstream economists are followers of Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of Creative Destruction (Schumpeter’s ideas on monetary policy are regarded today as Monetarist, he wasn’t an Austrian School adherent though he agreed with them on some things.) Creative destruction is the process whereby new inventions displace old inventions. For instance, Apple and Google’s inventions have displaced the old products from Microsoft and IBM.
One result of this, though not in the cases of Microsoft and IBM, is that creative destruction MUST lead to zombie corporations. At all times in a vibrant economy there will be companies that are growing and companies that are declining to the point where they are no longer going concerns. This is not only normal, but is absolutely essential to realize economic growth.
So, yes, zombie corporations are a downside to economic growth, and financial institutions need to wean off lending to them to most efficiently provide for transitions in the economy, but these transitions do occur during a vibrant and growing economy, and no recession is required to ‘cleanse’ the economy of these zombie corporations.
Hrm, I needed to split this into four comments. This is even worse than George Lucas with Star Wars and much worse than Quentin Tarantino with Kill Bill.
What is the importance of the concepts involved with Republicans essentially arguing ‘inflation doesn’t matter’ when a Republican is President?
There can be, I appreciate, for many people some appeal to Austrian School economics in the idea for recessions as a ‘cleansing,’ though I don’t know how many people actually support such a thing, because many people are religious and believe in religious ideas.
However, I don’t think many people fully appreciate the incremental upsides of sustained economic growth.
It is true that the economy was slow to recover from the Great Recession. It took until about 2014 for Real GDP (meaning GDP net of inflation) to recover to the point where it (Real GDP) was higher than before the start of the Great Recession. From that point of view, the Great Recession was at least half as long as the Great Depression, though it did not approach the severity of the Great Depression, as bad as it was.
From another point of view though, the economy starting improving again somewhere in 2009 and did not decline until the Covid in 2020. This is around 11 years of sustained economic growth.
Contrary to the concerns of the Austrian School over ‘zombie corporations’ (as valid as the problems of zombie corporations can be) there is no question that the aggregate benefits of sustained economic growth greatly outweigh the costs.
When people credited Donald Trump for the economy, and for their job situation getting better and for the lowest quintile of the population actually seeing their wages going up (in real terms) and for increases in the employment rate among blacks and other marginalized communities, Donald Trump had nothing to do with it, the sustained economic growth led to these things.
Sustained (or long-run) economic growth provides people the opportunity to increase their productive potential (not saying everybody does that) , it provides businesses the opportunity to make investments in research and see their innovations through to development, it gets more people involved in the economy through continued expansion that requires more workers. In short, economic growth feeds on itself by providing the potential for further expansion.
It is important that this economic growth be real, that is, that it can’t be based on bad lending decisions that led to the Great Recession. The lending and other spending that sustains this long-run economic growth needs to go to genuine innovation and other genuine useful tangible assets.
But, that aside, contrary to the Austrian School argument of the need for recessions as a cleansing, sustained economic growth is possibly the ‘greatest benefit to mankind.’
And contrary to the Republican demands on the need to have increased interest rates when Obama was President, the way Republicans and their economists acted when Trump was President, shows that they also recognize the benefits of sustained economic growth.
One other point. There is, finally, a growing if not now universal appreciation from everybody rational (so, not most Trump/Republican voters) that the Republicans are dishonest cynics when it comes to their fiscal policy: they support deficit spending when a Republican is President and cynically posture as being concerned about deficit spending when a Democrat is President.
But, less appreciated (or understood) is that Republicans play a similar dishonest game with respect to monetary policy.
When Barack Obama was President, Republicans and Fox Business News (not that there is any difference) were calling for the Fed to hike its Fed rate because the low rates were going to usher in hyperinflation. This especially included Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow (he of Fox Business News.)
Once Trump became President, no leading Republican was calling for the Fed to raise its Fed rate, and, when the Fed did raise its Fed rate later in an attempt to normalize the rate (meaning to have the Fed rate higher than the rate of inflation/CPI), Peter Navarro, Larry Kudlow and Fox Business News all echoed Trump’s scream for the rate to be lowered back down. They happened to be correct, which shows the fragility of the economy, but the cynicism was stunning.
I wish I understood more about that. I have assumed that the rock-bottom interest rates available at banks for savings for the past 20 years (with a brief exception during the mortgage bubble) were due to there being no productive uses for capital in the United States. Is that not the case?
If that were the case, there would have been no economic growth, and that hasn’t been the case.
The Fed has largely been able to keep low interest rates over the last 20 or so years (closer to 25) because it has gotten very good at monitoring inflation and raising interest rates when needed to stifle inflation.
I think the primary cause of the lack of rising inflation even though the Fed rate is below the inflation rate since the Great Recession is the increasing globalization of the economy. Manufacturing especially has steadily shifted to lower wage economies to prevent rising prices. For instance, even China has been losing manufacturing jobs to Vietnam as wage demands increased in China.
There has been some debate in economics, and I believe I’ve presented some of it here, whether U.S innovation through research and development is slowing down or speeding up and the causes for that, but there have been tens of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars spent by corporations on research and development over the last 20 years.
One thing though that may lead to the perception of a lack of productive uses for capital is that research and development is considered by many corporations to be discretionary spending, so when the economy slows down or goes into a recession, it’s often one of the first budget items cut by many corporations. I think that’s often short sited but I also like to think they know much more about how to run their specific corporation than I do.
Of course, given the severity of the Great Recession, it’s not a surprise that R&D spending took a hit, and I think this was reflected for a few years after that in the decline in innovation.
Thanks for explaining that, Adam. The decades long slump in interest on savings baffled me, since even during the Great Depression of the 1930’s, people could get 3% per year on savings accounts.
These low interest rates on savings, with very high rates on credit cards, seem to me to be another example of things being arranged for the benefit of banks and the detriment of individuals.
I decided to split this into three comments because they each have different points and they’re lengthy enough by themselves. (Think of this as a trilogy. 😉 )
Essentially Republicans on the monetary side behave as Monetarists at best and Austrian School adherents at worst when a Democrat is President, and ‘inflation doesn’t matter’ supply siders or some non economic school when a Republican is President.
At best, this suggests simple cynicism, which is bad enough. At worst, demanding that the Fed rate be increased when Obama was President was a deliberate call for the Fed to bring on a recession in order to increase the odds a Republican would win the White House in 2016. This is not only cynical, but is disgusting and contemptable, and, if true, no person should ever vote Republican again.
I disagree that Biden and the Democrats don’t have any mandate.
1.Senate majority is based on the way the majority of states go, not the majority of votes and, at this point in time, there are slightly more states that favor Republicans than Democrats. This is evident in how few people split their tickets these days (Maine being a notable and now rare exception, and Maine has always been a very independent minded state, it even has an independent Senator, though a former Democrat who caucuses with the Democrats.)
There are now just five states left that have opposing party Senators: Maine, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and I think it’s clear Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester are popular based on their ‘legacies’ in their states. (Montana may still be somewhat independent minded though.)
In regards to the House, yes the Democrats did end up losing seats when it was expected they would make slight additional gains, but the Democrats still have the majority and when all the votes are counted, they will have won a plurality if not a majority of the aggregate house votes.
Beyond that, when Trump won in 2016 with less votes than Clinton, there was no argument from Republicans (or from most Democrats) that he lacked a majority. As Republicans and others argued when George W Bush became President with less votes than Al Gore, the President is the President and derives their mandate from that, irrespective of their share of the vote. They have no more or less authority based on the margins they won the election by.
Obviously a large amount of popular support is better for an incoming President, but in terms of their ability to act, it depends on the durability, or in economists terms, the elasticity of their support. For instance, we seem to see in Florida that the Republicans barely win the governorship, for the last 3 elections they’ve won it with about 51% of the vote. But since this 51% seems to be entirely inelastic, meaning it’s an unchanging 51%, for all intents they can govern as if they won 100% of the vote.
The Democrats win of the popular vote for the House along with Biden’s win suggests a good deal of the Democratic Party support is also increasingly inelastic. I’m not arguing that Biden or the Democrats have a mandate to implement medicare for all for instance, but Biden did not seek that mandate either.
This was something I just realized when I saw his second post election comments in which he simultaneously called for all votes to be counted while claiming victory while claiming that he wasn’t claiming victory.
I had long thought that Biden was semi incoherent and rambled and I thought this was especially the case post 1988 when he suffered his mini strokes.
However, I now think it is beyond a reasonable doubt that his seeming incoherence is deliberate and strategic. He is staking out ground while providing a retreat for himself if necessary.
He has demonstrated a repeated pattern of doing this, as I showed above being one example. Other cases:
1.The so-called Biden rule. At one point in that speech in 1992 he did, in fact say that President Bush should not be able to nominate a Supreme Court Justice in the final year of his term. However, 10 minutes later he directly contradicted himself. His whole speech seemed rambling and semi incoherent, so it was hard to know what he was calling for, but he did, in fact, stake out arguments to advance the issue while providing a retreat for himself in case the advance went nowhere.
2.For those who ‘remember’ the debate where Julian Castro said to him “don’t you remember what you just said?” Castro was both right and wrong on this, and so was Biden. In fact, Biden had said what Castro called him out for ‘not remembering’ but, the problem for Castro here, is that about two minutes prior to that, Biden had said the exact opposite.
I believe I had one more example of Biden taking contradictory positions at the same time, but I can’t remember (maybe I’m starting to suffer from dementia) however, I want to add this is not the case of ‘on the one hand vs on the other hand.’
“On the one hand, vs one the other hand’ is making contradictory arguments over the premise of a conclusion, what Biden does is make contradictory arguments over the conclusion: In conclusion, there should be a ‘Biden rule’, and in conclusion, there should not be a ‘Biden rule.’
I think this is quite cynical but I think there is no question it is also quite strategic and it also does not provide evidence that Biden has dementia.
Congratulations to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The election was much closer than I thought it would be, but he won. I agree with Scoopy that Biden didn’t exactly win a mandate from the voters. But he is the next president. He is speaking of conciliation and going forward with bi[artisanship. I hope that he is able to do that.
As for Donald Trump. Who ever thought that we would miss the much more honorable Republican president Richard Nixon? Nixon did many bad (and illegal) things in office. But in 1960, when he narrowly lost due to (in many people’s opinion) voter fraud in Texas and Illinois, Nixon refused to contest JFK’s victory. He felt that contesting the election would have been bad for the country. Trump has the right to demand recounts in certain states. But the chances that he could reverse Biden’s victories in enough of them are exceedingly small. Given that, I think the honorable thing for Trump to do would be to concede and congratulate Biden. That would be the best thing for the country. But as we all know Trump really only really cares about what is best for him. The best we can hope for (though I expect to be disappointed) is that while Trump’s legal team make their cases in various states, Trump tones down the rhetoric and stops claiming the election was stolen. If there is evidence of fraud, his lawyers should present it. Otherwise, he should wait for the challenges to play out and a winner to be certified. Well what he should do is concede, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Good riddance to the slimy bastard. But we’re not out of the woods yet. He might never concede and concoct his own version of the Stab in the Back myth which will be swallowed whole by his clown following. Thank God our institutions are stronger than the Weimar Republic’s. Or worse he could call out “the Tough Guys”. His moronic oldest son and some goober in Georgia are already talking this sort of crap.
Btw most in his circle are convinced he’s going to try to come back in ’24. Am wondering if some of the hysteria Junior is venting comes from the realization that he can’t run in that case.
But there’s one bigass silver lining here: that $421 million in personally guaranteed, most of it to Dirty Bank, debt coming due in the near future. The Orange Buffoon has to figure out how to deal with that little problem first. Go on Hannity’s show and do a Miss Lindsey( Graham)? And also the loss of his legal immunities.
Now I just wish all these people honking up and down Connecticut Ave would go off somewhere else and find a good party. Shit gets old after an hour.
President Biden.
Now Chief of Staff Meadows, who’s been driving the bullshit conspiracy theories for Trump, has COVID. Appropriate finale for this shit administration, karma is a bitch.
Santorum was praising Republican wins earlier and how well it would help with remaking congressional districts in the future. He was interrupted, you mean gerrymandering? Wait, Democrats do it too in California! Then a response that a commission was actually provisioned there to undo it, and he quickly pivoted to nevermind, besides the point.
Just get ready for the same old bullshit once again from trying to attempt middle ground here. The purity tests aren’t coming from progressives – it’s the bullshit propaganda of even moderate conservatives that its always both sides equally, no matter what. If you’re a jaywalker, that’s the same as a mass murderer, because both broke the law and it’s equal! Therefore I’m going to vote for the mass murderer on my side because its the same as your jaywalker, so I’m just going to vote the party line. That’s the version of events of conservatives say who they don’t like Trump, but voted for him anyway in this election. You will never change that ignorant uneducated point of view in conservatives. Biden unified nothing in the vote, turnout was purely anti-Trump, and much of it driven by progressives and minorities to take one for the team to help him.
Give it two years, it will be the same shit as it were under Obama, and progressives who actually drove new voters will be once again proven right. Stop taking corporate money, stop thinking sinking money needlessly into shit states like South Carolina that was wasted to try to get Graham out was doing anything.
You’ll never get a reasonable negotiation out of conservatives, because one, they’re too stupid to think beyond labels of calling something socialism and actually looking at the fundamental points of the argument. And two, they’re too busy deep throating the wealthy under the pretense of fake civil liberties.
Maybe when these conservative cucks decide to stop bending over any taking it from the Walton family, and initiatives like China’s Foxconn disaster in Wisconsin as your ‘prize’ trickle down failure that’s cost the tax payers hundreds of millions for absolutely nothing in which jobs the state could have created THEMSELVES for itself people, then maybe there’s some negotiating ground. But I highly doubt that will EVER happen. The greedy will continue to be pieces of shit, and the uneducated will still be easily led by them shooting off their own foot.
I disagree with you on cause and effect. As you present it, the conservative leadership creates a narrative and the stupid masses blindly follow it. I think it’s the other way around. The “leadership” sees the kind of power that can be obtained from pandering to the stupid masses, so they determine their positions accordingly. I believe that racism is the engine that transports the masses, while the leaders are simply the conductors on the train.
The leaders do, of course, enhance the narrative to drive the stupid masses even further into their caves, but it seems to me that the inherent power of religious fanaticism and white grievance is the driver, not the driven. Trump didn’t make them oppose abortion, for example. He saw that they did, recognized the power of evangelical religion, and altered his position accordingly. Dumb as he is, he always knew that Obama was born in Hawaii, but he also saw the power of tapping into that virulent racist strain in the body politic.
The leaders of the Republican party, as a general rule, are not stupid. They are power-hungry hypocrites. The leaders are not running the movement. They are run by it. Trump’s impeachment vote is the perfect example. Every person in the Senate chamber- EVERY one – is smart enough to know that (1) Trump did exactly what he was accused of and (2) that was certainly an impeachable offense. There wasn’t even a contradictory argument presented. Yet they all (save one) voted to keep him in office. The reason? They feared the wrath of the deplorables, knowing they would be primaried out of office for doing anything to the Dear Leader.
As for the false equivalency argument, I take it even farther with my famous syllogism:
fact: Republicans always lie
fact: Republicans say that Democrats also always lie …
therefore: —————
The great unwashed masses are incapable of the deductive reasoning necessary to complete the syllogism, and the rest of us are just baffled as to why that is so. The deplorables love to argue that both sides are equally bad, and when I ask them for examples of Democrats being equally bad, they always offer the usual nonsense: Benghazi, Vince Foster, Uranium 1, Crowd Strike. They can’t even come up with one single example that is both real and significant.
Somebody with greater knowledge than I would have to explain to me why there is such a large corps of Americans who are ignorant and proud of it. But there’s no doubt that corps of racists and/or religious fanatics exists, and that it drives the positions of the Republican leadership.
It’s the combination of fundamental flaws of human beings, tribalism, and the lack of education and most definitely Republican’s can point that narrative the way they want.
For example, loss of jobs in rural areas. I believe Democrats are absolutely horrible in framing there, but if there is someone to blame for it – why is it the free trade Republicans and the CEOs that profit off of outsource jobs that are not the target of it?
The strategy could go either way, but its very clear Republican’s benefit greatly either through power given to them by the upper class, or their own vested greed involved, so they very clearly did not want to make THAT the target of rage.
Also there’s decades of conditioning that anything with words like socialism or regulation are bad. That didn’t just come out from thin air from the bottom up. It’s very clear socialistic policies like Medicare and Social Security would be political suicide to cut, and people like them, as long they’re not actually CALLED socialism. People like for the FDA to create regulations so their food doesn’t have listeria in it, or like the FDIC regulations so a repeat of the Great Depression doesn’t occur with the complete wipeout of bank accounts – but don’t call it regulation.
While Democrats absolutely could use better framing, which I don’t understand why they fail so miserably at, its fundamentally easier for Republican’s to break the system and say it doesn’t work and create the narrative. The narrative is LITERALLY government doesn’t work, so lets give all control to the ultra wealthy.
Then they’re inside of the system itself to break it saying, ‘see! the system doesn’t work, we told you!’ It’s like saying cars won’t work when someone is constantly cutting your tires and putting sawdust in your gas. It’s much, much easier for them to create the narrative to get people to follow it when they just as easily could make it something else for people to blame for their problems. It doesn’t come out of thin air, there are people to manipulate who are angry with their own confusion.
I’m not going to say by any means that all Democrats are intelligent, but I think it’s pretty clear that one reason the Republicans are better at framing/messaging to their voters is that a very large percentage of their voters are idiots who believe everything the Republican leaders tell them and this equivalent pool is much lower on the Democratic side.
That POS Lindsay Graham has already started the always predictable Republican pivot to ‘fiscal responsibility’ work over the next term.
Will that include going back and tracking down all the corporations that funneled billions in into stock buybacks and the executives that pulled their own compensation out of the market once the stock increased due to it after the Trump tax breaks? Will that include all the pharmaceutical companies that came out with hands out for corporate welfare to create jack shit of value to overpay or waste taxpayer money, like Regeneron or Moderna? Will that include paying millions for Northrup Grunman to put a coat of paint on a jet fighter?
Nah fuck it. It’s clear Pelosi might give some Mexican immigrant $50 a month, we can’t have that. Clearly that’s the decline of society, as all income inequality studies clearly show the bottom half of world wealth is clearly too much, and the only true way to even it out is just to create some trillionaires for the benefit of everyone else.
The traditional obstructionism will come back, and then once again the ‘conscientious objector’ conservatives of Trump will be back to the same old tricks. Which basically is still fuck everyone over that isn’t wealthy, but do it in a nicer tone, and maybe start a war or two.
To me it’s clear that to get to a position of power in politics and business, one can’t be handicapped by any notion of empathy. These are people whose only concept of right and wrong is defined by what’s legal or illegal. Truly despicable examples of humankind. Where is the God of the Old Testament now that we need Him so much? Instead of pillars of salt, He could turn them into puddles of tar: stinking, filthy, and good for trapping vermin.
Basically agree Indy, but let’s not forget the role of the suckhole “Blue Dog” Democrats – Manchin, Hoyer, even Pelosi sometimes. There will be a tight vote and one of them will have a crisis of “conscience” – oh, I’m basically for the people but I just can’t get behind this one thing this time. And they take turns with this bullshit, so overall any one guy’s (or gal’s: as Zappa said, ladies you can be an asshole too) record looks good. They all get re-elected nothing gets done. Rs are evil but you got to admit they know what solidarity is.
Oh well, at least Peterson is gone.
LOL. Senescents such as myself don’t always pick up on Emoji.
He’s really up on his geography too. I’m going to guess the Atlantic is 50+ miles away.
One very stable very genius.
🙁
Even Trump deserves to be treated fairly here. I was making a joke. The comment about the Atlantic Ocean being next to Philadelphia was a reference to his comment (that he really did say) about some state being east of either North Carolina or Virginia.
In more normal times, that comment by Trump would probably be remembered by many more people, but with Trump it all just gets lost in the haze.
I did use the 😉 so I didn’t think anybody would think Trump really said that.
I can certainly see Trump saying it and believing it though.
Re: Update #7 – Eh, by that logic Biden is even more loved than Trump, and by a pretty staggering margin.
Very few ppl are passionate about a Biden Presidency. But we recognize the incredible danger posed to our Democracy by leaving this band of criminals, bigots, & fascists in power.
So yeah. Vote totals should be viewed relatively, and within all relevant context re: the candidates. It’s kind of a risk assessment more than anything, and has less to do with love or popularity.
I don’t believe anybody feels very strongly about Biden at all. He’s just the guy running against Trump. The vast majority of the votes represent love-Trump and hate-Trump, and the high voter turnout is because of the passions involved in that, either way. Trump is perhaps the most loved and most hated President in our memory. He’s The English Patient of Presidents.
Yeah that’ s about the size of it. He clears the low bar of harmless adequacy that Hillary just couldn’t clear. Now watch him hand the keys to Kamala and go spend more time with his family.
Wait, someone loved The English Patient?
With Trump it was a limbo bar. And he could go some kind of low.
Biden and Harris feels strongly
Doubt it. I can picture him looking in a mirror & going “Meh. I’m OK, I guess.”
Pretty sure it would have never crossed Biden’s mind to run this time if it hadn’t been against Trump.
An interesting comment from Trump regarding the latest ‘dump’ of votes in Philadelphia: “All of these votes were for me, but they were dumped in the Atlantic Ocean right outside of Philadelphia!” 😉
I saw a live feed yesterday from Nevada where an elderly woman in a nursing home said that her and another woman’s mail-in ballot had disappeared. Apparently there are other similar accounts being relayed. I would first suspect the cleaners tidying up and throwing them out, or elderly being elderly, but if it turns out that the ballot has been filled out and mailed in by someone else, that would be significant.
Just read a followup, she’s denying she ever filled it out, and officials are saying it’s her signature. Elderly being elderly…
Biden is now up in Georgia by 817 votes. I now agree with Trump that the vote count in Georgia should be stopped immediately. 😉
917 sorry. My arithmetic skills are usually better than that.
Thanks for the hi-res updates. Adam, & y’all.
“We do the doomscrolling, so you don’t have to.”
1,300 (or so) more votes came in in Georgia and Biden closed the gap from 1,267 to 665. So, that’s about 950 additional votes for Biden and 350 votes for Trump or 73%.
Apparently there are still 9,000 early votes left to count. So, Biden had a gain of 538 votes from the 1,805 gap with an additional 3,500 votes counted. However, apparently included in that was the last or among the last of the Trump counties. So, virtually everything left to count is in the Atlanta Metro area.
Heavily Democratic Clayton County is voting 84% for Biden and there are apparently 3,600 votes there still to be counted.
Georgia is now 1,267 votes apart. Not sure how many votes are still outstanding, but it does show how quickly the gap can close.
Georgia is now 1,805 votes apart with about 12,500 votes outstanding. On the one side that looks bad for Biden, but on the other side, it removes one of the handful of areas favoring Trump at the cost of just 30 additional votes for Trump and approximately 1,500 less votes left to be counted. About 90% of the remaining outstanding votes are in the Atlanta Metro area.
Biden needs about 65% of these remaining votes to tie it up, but a small cushion would be helpful for the up to 9,000 overseas military and expat votes
though it’s far from certain they’ll benefit Trump.
I think Biden should easily surpass the 65% needed, but count the votes.
Unclescoopy,
“The popular vote totals now make it clear that Donald Trump will get more votes than any American has ever previously received in a presidential election”
That is an utterly depressing fact, as if last 4 years and Covid weren’t bad enough. What I learned from the election is that the country deserves way better informed voters who love their country more than one person, one party, if her system were to thrive and prosper but I don’t think it is happening anytime soon.
It is inconceivable to me that a normal person with a normal range of intelligence, somewhat informed about current events can bring him/herself to vote for Trump much less there’d be close to 70 millions Trump voters.
I hope tomorrow will be a better day. I hope tomorrow we learn that we will have a new adult president who will start cleaning up the mess, start healing the nation.
I very much agree, BurmeseDude.
In regards to Georgia, Donald Trump is doing considerably better throughout the U.S than the Republicans did in the 2018 midterms, yet, he is likely to win or lose the state by a couple thousand votes whereas Brian Kamp officially defeated Stacey Abrams by about 55,000 votes.
I think this provides even more evidence that Kamp cheated to defeat Abrams.
Ya think? He did certify his own election. Guy must be Trump’s hero.
All those voters that Kemp purged had 2 years to re-register. It could also be that Georgia’s current SoS isn’t a piece of shit.
I realize Scoopy posted that on Pennsylvania a few hours ago, but I made a note early in the day wondering if by the time Biden got to 3 million votes that Trump would be at exactly 3.2 million votes (I love that sort of kind of symmetry.)
Anyway, Trump was actually at 3.196 million when Biden was right around 3 million.
The totals now are 3.264 for Trump and 3.2 million for Biden.
So, these additional votes have been 200,000 Biden and 68,000 Trump or an average of just under 75%. 58% in the rest of the state is more than likely.
I feel like Leslie Neilsen in Airplane
… good luck, we are all counting on you…
Biden is about to overtake Georgia, and is a furious run in Pennsylvania.
We’re in the endgame now. Trump flailed up there like the loser idiot he is.
He’s gone, and there’s not an absolute damn thing him and his cult can do about it.
Bye bitch.
Possible headline tomorrow?
‘Armed Republicans take over thousands of city halls and media outlets.’
Before the election, I thought that Biden would probably win, but that Trump maybe had a 40% chance. Two days after the election, I think exactly the same thing. I voted for Joe Jorgensen but I am pretty sure she won’t pull off an upset.
It looks like the Republicans will have a small majority (52-48) in the Senate. If Biden wins, that will prevent the more extreme wish list of the left (court packing, DC statehood) from being enacted at least for now. If Trump wins, he’ll be able to get judicial nominations confirmed for 2 years. But the Democrats will almost certainly take over the Senate in 2022 because it will be a midterm election in a president’s second term and a president’s party almost always loses seats under those circumstances. Perhaps more importantly, the Republicans will be defending 22 seats and the Democrats only 12. If Biden is the president, the GOP may be able to hold the majority but the Democrats may still be favored. But even if they do lose the Senate, the GOP would probably be favored to retake the House as the Democratic majority will be slim and the president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections in their first term as well.
I don’t think the Senate Republicans will be quite as obstructive of Biden as they were with Obama. First, because Biden is likely to seek out bipartisan agreements where he can. That’s partly because he was known for reaching across the aisle as a senator and partly because he won’t have a choice. But that’s also because the GOP majority is so small. With VP Harris to cast a tie breaking vote, it would only take 2 GOP senators (Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski?)
to pass a bill through reconciliation.
As many people have noted, Republicans only seem to care about budget deficits when there is a Democratic president. But of course these are not normal times. Hopefully, if Trump loses he will still sign a new Covid relief bill. The sad thing is that Pelosi would almost certainly have been able to get the Senate Republicans to agree to a significantly larger bill prior to the election because Senate Republicans would likely have given Trump what he wanted. But hopefully a new relief bill can be the first agreement in a new era of bipartisanship that will lead to comprehensive immigration reform, healthcare reform and other compromises. A man can dream.
A man can also have nightmares. What would be the most 2020 way for this year to end? If somehow Trump won both an electoral vote from Maine and all of Nebraska’s votes (unlikely in the extreme) I think it would be possible for the election to be an electoral tie 269-269. That would throw it to the House to decide the president. But each state only gets one vote and the GOP has the majority in the majority of state congressional delegations. But that would mean that even though Biden won the popular vote and the Democrats have the majority in the House, Trump would still win. That wouldn’t exactly be a recipe for public confidence in our democracy.
With the caveat that Trump could still win AZ & hang on, if Biden’s in, Harris becomes Pro-Tem PoS. In which case, a detail like the diff betw 52-48 & actually 50-48 kicks in. 1 defector, be she Collins or Murk, can trigger a tie & Ds win. Needless to say, the fact of runoffs says we should presume toss-ups, not 2 R seats. If they split, Rs do control. Unfortunately, the pivot role of the 2 women probably only means they can’t “defy” Mitch with his tacit OK–so they’ll have to strictly toe the line.
The Senator from PA is clarifying the 370,000 vote left. That is not including some Philly precincts, mail in coming in today, and provisional ballots. I can’t imagine that’s a gigantic amount, but add that in.
Also, the remaining mail in is in Philly and Pittsburgh, areas where Biden has been coming in 75% to 25%. That’s why the assumption is it won’t be close. But I guess if at any point these remainder counts are just flat out wrong and corrected, then everything is off.
Georgia is going to be down to a few thousand either way, Arizona will tighten based the trend, but apparently it depending on what came in and when, and so on.
It’s pathetic when the actual will of the people person for person even has to come down to this because of ridiculous archaic rules set in the constitution, but it is what it is. Biden will win the popular vote by 4-5 million people, yet its coming down to a few thousand in very specific states. What a screwed up country this is fundamentally.
Yep. One hopes it does not have to literally be leveled to the ground to reform it.
Biden is already ahead by about 4 million in the popular vote and there are still about 6 million outstanding votes in California, which is going for Biden 2-1, so you can add another 2 million.
Biden and Trump’s totals presently add up to 142 million, there are approximately another 2 million that voted for third party candidates and there are likely another 2 million other non Presidential voting ballots that have been processed.
(In the 2016 election, roughly 136 million voted for President, but 138 million voted overall. There is always somewhere over 1% of ballots that for the Presidential vote are spoiled, rejected or left blank as those people vote in the down-ballot races.)
That adds up to a total of 148 million ballots already having been counted/processed, but maybe 160 million voted overall. I’ve already pointed out that probably have of those are in California. The other, I’m assuming 6 million, are the heavily Democratic outstanding votes in Pennsylvania, the votes remaining to be seen in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and in the other states. In normal elections, these late counted votes tend to be in heavily Democratic big cities which tend to be underfunded for elections, but this time the lean of those other voters likely depends on whether they’re postal votes or election day votes.
Overall though, I wouldn’t be surprised if Biden wins the popular vote by at least 7 million, a higher than 4% margin.
Ah, reactionary- one of my favorite mangled words. Perennially used as a synonym for conservative (it isn’t). It has somehow made it into the semiliterate realm of football commentary as a negative term where defenses are being too “reactionary” (the Metternich Defense?) rather than properly aggressive.
To be fair to myself, I didn’t use it as a synonym for conservatives. I used it as a synonym for far right conservatives. The type of people who believe that everybody to the left of them are ‘socialists’ or ‘communists.’
However, and this is supported by evidence so I’m not being contradictory, the vast majority of Republicans these days are reactionaries.
For instance, I saw Kansas Senator-Elect Roger ‘Doc’ Marshall in his victory speech saying “we defeated socialism.”
Roger Marshall is one of the more moderate U.S House Republicans and his Democratic opponent for the U.S Senate, Barbara Bollier, is a conservative Democratic state senator who was a Republican until a few years ago.
You’ve got the distinction down. I would say the current breakdown in my old party is about 2/3 reactionary, with the remainder being split between conservatives who have become Trump fellow travelers (if Trump knew any history he might call them “useful idiots”) and a shrinking number of holdouts who would be better off leaving. When you think about it what could possibly be more reactionary than MAGA? But even people who know better (like Marshall) recite that “socialist” drivel to sound cool to the base. Not one functioning testicle among them.
To give myself credit I’ve never thrown “socialist” and “communist” around, perhaps because most of my friends have tended to be left of the center line and and because I read actual history by the shitload. Admittedly I do have trouble getting a precise peg on “Liberal” vs. “Progressive” sometimes.
Given that most politicians haven’t studied economics, I can see that some of them don’t explain their positions all that well.
I would argue that Liberals are neo-classicists who believe in supply side economics, that is, the driver of long run economic growth is through increasing productive output.
Progressives are Post Keynesians who argue that increasing consumer spending is the driver of long run economic growth. A number of Post Keynesians are Chartalist Modern Monetary Theorists, but I can’t really get a handle on which elected Democrats believe that.
This might sound like a meaningless academic distinction, but it makes a difference in supporting or opposing tens of billions in spending by governments. Progressives, believing that getting more money into the hands of consumers is the way to grow the economy long term believe that government spending pays for itself, liberals believe in the equimarginal principle: there is a declining marginal benefit to increasing government spending and an increasing marginal cost.
These are actually distinctly different economic schools, but politicians being politicians, many elected Democrats have been trying to blur the difference.
Adam, 1. That’s not how it works. If you use it & I get it, it’s a word. “Not in the dictionary” is an obsolete methodology. The fact of which simply hasn’t penetrated our conventions yet.
revolutionary -> revolutionized
reactionary -> reactionized
I don’t think that flies. I do think your construct (coinage/neologism) is a better option.
2. I’d recast your conjecture about Latinos as, immigrants tend to polarize along the same lines as the natives, IOW the in-group. Even if they’re largely outcast & mistreated, they imitate the in-group & try to blend in. That is, they assimilate in the hope they’ll eventually be let in.
3. I appreciate this particular post because it mostly sticks to reporting salient facts.
4. I appreciate you & all the regulars in this venue for your interesting food for thought. Which mostly means I largely agree with the opinions, but also, I learn quite a bit. That said, we here, including me, sometimes veer away from, let’s say, principled/practical objectives, into somewhat wild speculations about the future that none of us can reliably predict.
One thing about the election, in addition to the large swing of Miami-Dade County Latinos for Trump and the Republicans, the exit polling showed an increase in Latino support for Trump from about 27% in 2016 to around 33% in 2020.
The explanation for this based on stereotypes is that some Latinos identify with Trump’s ‘Machismo.’ I think there is generally some truth to many stereotypes, so I accept that probably was a factor, but I suspect the biggest factor is the reaction of some in the Latino communities to many younger Latinos embracing Bernie Sanders’ ‘progressivism.’ Many South and Central American nations are polarized between the left and the right, and I think this embrace of ‘socialism’ by many younger Latinos has reactionalized other Latinos.
With thousands of votes outstanding, AOC herself has so far seen her share of the vote drop from 78% in 2018 to 69% in 2020. The Democrats also failed to pick up a rural Latino majority U.S open district in Texas they were expected to gain, and a number of Latino U.S House Democrats in the more rural ridings, saw their share of the vote decline from previous elections.
To be sure, the Republican who ran against AOC raised around $10 million.
…There has been some focus on the money wasted by Democratic donors on the South Carolina, Texas, Kentucky and Maine U.S Senate races, but Republican donors also sent $10s of millions to absolute no hope candidates like Laura Loomer in Florida as well as challengers to Ilhan Omar (her opponent also raised over $10 million), Maxine Waters, Rashida Tlaib and Adam Schiff.
This was all the more unfortunate for them since the Republican challenger to New York Democratic Representative Antonio Delgado raised under $200,000 while Lisa Scheller, the Republican challenger to Pennsylvania Democrat Susan Wild did not even file campaign finance reports and both will likely end up losing with over 45% of the vote.
Interesting, it seems ‘reactionalized’ isn’t a word. A friend of mine told me that those on the far left are ‘radicals’ while those on the far right are ‘reactionaries.’ If ‘radicalized’ is a word, I think ‘reactionalized’ should be as well.
Arizona is tightening, so Trump isn’t dead yet. However, assuming a Biden victory, this is what I think the next two years will look like. Of course, China may try to invade Taiwan, North Korea has nuclear weapons and who knows what will happen between Iran and Saudi Arabia
1.Some Covid relief, probably around $2 trillion. Mandatory mask mandates to the extent the Federal Government can mandate that (Mitch McConnell recognizes the reality of Covid.)
2.Areas of joint agreement if the Republicans don’t obstruct just for the sake of obstruction, which is entirely possible:
1.Infrastructure spending. Included in this, throwing a bone to the sainted manufacturing workers and to populism, is more comprehensive if not 100% buy America provisions for federal government procurement. Canada and maybe other nations will challenge this under free trade provisions.
2.Focus on taking on China, but in a more strategic way: rejoining TPP and placing sanctions on China. This could include removing hundreds if not thousands of Chinese citizens in the U.S, especially diplomats, who are *likely* spying on behalf of China and intimidating Chinese American citizens. I’m not sure if the tariffs will remain. Biden certainly won’t remove them right away.
3.McConnell will provide tacit support for any new agreement Biden can negotiate with Iran, just as he did with Obama.
4.More criminal justice reform including taking up Tim Scott’s legislation as a starting point for negotiations.
5.Possible regulation of the internet/tech sector. This seems to be in general agreement on both sides, but since Democrats and Republicans have very different reasons for supporting this, legislation may not happen. Of course, even if legislation emerges, the tech companies will tie it up in court for years.
6.Some legislation to promote natural gas/fracking as a ‘transition fuel’ away from coal, though McConnell might try to tie that up.
7.Some agreement on protecting those with pre-existing conditions, but not through bringing the ACA penalty back.
8. There might be legislation to allow some agency of the government to negotiate prescription drug prices.
9.Republicans see the writing on the wall, and agree to legalize marijuana at the federal level for states with legal marijuana.
3.It’s been said long enough, but with all the government fiscal deficit spending and monetary money creation, inflation finally rears again after Covid eases leading to higher interest rates.
This will push Biden to become President Clinton 2.0. Tax increases are impossible except for maybe raising capital gains and dividend taxes, so Biden will become the austerity President. Since Republicans with a Democratic President will claim to be concerned about government deficits again, both sides will agree to jointly argue that cutting spending will lead to a return to lower interest rates which they will argue is the best way to stimulate the economy.
Biden will throw a bone to the progressives by insisting that banks have to increase loans to minorities.
So, nothing on legislation on illegal immigration, no medical for all or even the ‘public option’, nothing else done on global warming at the federal level except for possibly transitioning away from coal to natural gas, although some of the infrastructure spending may be on ‘smart buildings’, nothing done on gun control, nothing done on college tuition and any plans Democrats have to help the ‘working class’ through government programs will continue to be blocked in the Senate.
(Among other things, this means all the Democratic Presidential debates were a complete waste of everybody’s time.)
(Some states will address global warming as best they can, especially since Biden will likely reverse the regulations preventing states from doing so and the private sector will continue to address college tuitions with firms increasingly willing to considering hiring people who have certifications rather than college degrees.)
In my opinion , if Biden could accomplish these things over a 4 year term, along with undoing a lot of Trump’s executive orders, that would be a pretty solid agenda, though since it wouldn’t satisfy the ‘progressive’ voters, or the ‘working class’ voters, it probably would be seen as a failed term.
More like Tiny Bubbles (which our Hawaiian drill sergeant made us sing while I was in Basic). Blue Tiny Bubbles specifically.
Never thought I’d ever be pissed off about Democrats not doing better. But this gives McTurtle the opportunity to pull the same crap on Biden (fingers still crossed) he did on Obama.
At least we will get rid of Barr and Trump’s other Cabinet members.
This could work out well for guys like me who have a lot of conservative inklings, but find the present administration deplorable.
1. The Turtle will keep Biden and Pelosi from turning the country into the Oprah show. (You get a car. YOU get a car.) That will also put and end to the court-packing controversy. I don’t think Biden had his heart in that anyway.
2. Biden doesn’t need the turtle to fix the EPA, Interior, Agriculture and Justice. The Executive branch can pretty much protect federal parks and forests on its own. Even if Mitch blocks confirmations, Biden can follow Trump’s lead and fill the jobs with temporary heads.
3. I think Biden and Turtle are actually fairly close on foreign policy. I think the days of sucking up to dictators should be over and Trump’s trade wars can be replaced with sensible negotiation.
4. I will not be surprised to see Biden bring some Republicans into his circle in an effort to unite the country. He may also pardon Trump for the same reasons. (Which is OK, because NY State and Manhattan will not be affected, so Trump may still get his comeuppance.)
5. Although it will be late in the game, somebody may actually consider how to deal with COVID scientifically.
Give me a break. I don’t like neo-liberalism but with neo-cons its not ‘you get a car’ .. its ‘you get a country’ ..’s worth of GDP more if you’re Jeff Bezos, the Walton family, an oil baron, and so on.
In the primaries before coronavirus, it was Medicare for All can’t work! Then all of the sudden the fed and corporate welfare flowing out everywhere with money flowing like wine out to every single profit center if they put a business plan on a scrap paper – no matter if they had any idea of how to deliver a solution. All the money that just isn’t responsible just flowing out in an infinte manner with NO checks under conservatives.
As always, the myth of the conservative negotiation will go on again. McConnell will obstruct, anything that isn’t freely flowing to the rich to hoard, store and manipulate will come under the guise once again of ‘fiscal responsibility.’ Free flowing money to executives to manipulate the stock market instead of actually creating jobs or raising wages is completely fine, but someone getting a couple hundred dollars a month is a fiscal disaster somehow. He’ll block every single bill the same he did under Obama, and use the same tired lines as before.
I’m glad the executive branch of the country is coming back under control, and I do think the Democratic party really needs to restructure to the working class and Pelosi and Schumer and others need to move out of the way – but I expect no improvements. I’ll take just not being able to have to worry about a nutjob starting a nuclear war overnight, which is a pretty pathetic limbo bar at this point.
And for all the boomer Trump’ers, they need to take a good long look in the mirror in what they’re doing to future generations. Seriously, these people are at the twilight of their life to be honest, but they STILL insist on holding that control of resources.
What are you going to do with all of this – bury it with you? The reaper comes with us all, and kids being born today are going to have hell unleashed on them eventually based on pure science of what will happen with climate mass migration and scorching of fresh water supplies in areas.
Conservative boomers are so dyed in the wool brainwashed, they’re readily and happily willing to fuck over their own grandchildren’s future just to prevent someone from getting something – unless it’s an extremely wealthy person.
The world isn’t going to improve until the populace flat out understand up front and in the face consequences of actions going on now, and luckily for the boomers they’ll be long gone and got theirs out of life before they have to live with the misery they left for their grandchildren and great grandchildren to suffer through.
I don’t really think the leadership of the Republican Party has any interest in uniting the country, UncleScoopy, so I think any effort Biden makes in that direction will be fruitless at best. I think they feel that creating division and inciting rage has served them well.
And I don’t see any point to pardoning Trump. The Republicans will find something to enrage their base no matter what Biden does or doesn’t do. Might as well set an example of justice for the future.
I guess I agree with Indy a lot, but the election has shaken my faith in the American public yet again.
Illinois is the least corrupt state in the US. Why?
Because they keep throwing their corrupt governors in prison.
It would be great if the rest of the nation would follow their example.
So much for the Blue Wave. Graham, Collins, Cornyn – all still employed. In Minnesota, Jim Hagedorn, who looks like a thumb, beat out a fairly sharp ex-military guy. (Seriously, I think Feehan could have beat him with the slogan “I am not a thumb”.)
But it will be delicious, after all we’ve put up with from Trump, to watch him cry and whine and try work the refs.
Not that Biden’s any prize, but at least the mail will keep coming and data will determine covid policy, instead of Herr Scheisskopf pointing his tiny finger at his alleged brain.
I am very disappointed. The fact that so many Americans voted for Trump and other Republicans shows that there is a lot I do not understand about Americans. I can’t explain why they did, at least in such large numbers. And I do not want to hear the “explanations” of our Trump cheering section.
After four years, I think must of us know shit from Shinola. It’s just that Trump has his flock so trained that it’s like that scene in The Jerk –
Dad: See, Navin, this is shit. And this is Shinola.
Navin: Shit, Shinola. Got it. {stands up, steps right into the shit.}
I guess many Americans just recognize that he is the honest, warm, giving, brilliant man we need to lead us.
Trumps a Buffon. But the Biden/Harris ticket is also extremely scary to many people. Had a more centrist or moderate candidate been nominated on either side they would have had the landslide that the media was predicting.
Biden probably could have had it if he had picked a more moderate running mate. Since many people believe that sleepy Joe’s running mate will be the actual president before long with his perceived health issues. Harris is just too far left for what most people want. I believe that a lot of people only voted for Biden ticket to get rid of Trump. (understandable) Not because they thought Biden was a good candidate. I believe that the same can be said about Trump. I believe that a lot of people held their nose and prayed for forgiveness as they voted for Trump out of concern for some of the policies that they expected Biden/Harris to try and push through. I think both campaign’s focused on the radical fringe. And totally missed the majority of America. I think the election results showed that. The best thing that can happen is the spit house and senate to keep radicals on either side from digging the hole, we have to dig out of, any deeper. Then hopefully in 4 years we learn our lesson and nominate some candidates on both sides that are more representative of the masses. Hey a guy can dream. More likely we will have a civil war or break into two countries. Until then I going to keep reading Other Crap, looking at boobs and social distancing.
Is “Far Left” the new racist dog whistle?
Harris is a centrist bank-friendly Democrat much like Biden. Your alleged moderates don’t like her because she’s a brown girl from California.
Say what?
Harris would have been considered a liberal Republican a few decades ago, when there really was such a thing. She’s an ambitious former prosecutor and DA with a soft spot for the banks. I like her because she understands that crime is real and dangerous, that police are necessary, and that the state can’t slack off on legitimate concerns about law and order.
And Sleepy Joe is the most moderate, middle-of-the-road guy in either party. He makes liberal Dems nervous because he fails their usual bullshit purity tests. I won’t be surprised if he brings some Republicans into his administration. In the past he compromised with segregationists and bragged about it. He helped engineer the infamous (to liberals) 1990’s crime bill.
(I consider those positive indicators that he is willing to compromise in the interest of progress rather than to hold steadfast to unrealistic “all or nothing” ideals. But the liberals do not agree with me.)
Neither seems to have the intellect of Elizabeth Warren or the purity and consistency of Bernie, but they are both decent human beings who want what’s best for America. God knows that’s better than what Trump has to offer.
As far as I can see, the only reason the right fears those two is because she is not white and he has a very influential black friend.
I think your last statement is exactly right.
If, God forbid, something happens to Biden, the right will absolutely lose their shit when Harris becomes President It will be the anti-Obama Klan politics all over again.
No red wave either, honestly the corruption and censorship hurt both sides
I honestly expect to see bombshells yet, either proof of the corruption claimed or all of DC’s dirty laundry will be on full display.
Going to be a show either way.
Really it’s the incompetence.
Daddy Bush had enough on the ball to run the CIA back in the day. Sonny was a straight C student, but at least he knew to say the quiet part quiet, usually.
Then comes Trump, all covfefe and bleach injecting.
I think there were just enough racists who maybe admired the Muslim ban and the kid-caging, but realized that Trump was going to kill every last American before he was done.
Well, two things you have to like about Trump:
(1) his corruption is not secret at all, but right out in the open;
(2) there really can’t be any bombshells because it’s hard to imagine how he could do anything else that would be worse than the endless litany of what he’s already done. He has completely raised the bar. With any other President, the Roger Stone pardon would have resulted in an instant impeachment, but that was probably a below-average day on DJT’s corruption meter. With Trump, it wasn’t even among the worst 100 things he’s ever done. It barely made it through a single news cycle.
Let’s imagine that he steps down on January 1 and Pence issues him a blanket Nixon-style pardon. That would be outrageously corrupt – yet nobody would be even the slightest bit surprised! Schmucks like Hannity would even defend it as necessary to shield a great American from unjust liberal witch hunts.
The ultimate statement about Trump is that he is completely incapable of surprising us. Suppose he said tomorrow that if we don’t allow him to remain President, he will order the air force to bomb the blue states. Absolutely nobody would be surprised to hear him say that. We expect him to be that bad. Most Americans would be horrified, but not surprised. (And a depressingly large crowd would cheer him on.)
UncleScoopy said: “The ultimate statement about Trump is that he is completely incapable of surprising us.”
PLEASE DO NOT TAUNT THE DYNAMITE MONKEY.
If Trump ever concedes he’ll make Johnny LaRue’s concession speech look statesmanlike.
Not gonna put up the Young Turks? Heh heh heh