Biden was a slight favorite on Aug 31. Trump was a slight favorite on Sept 2. Biden is a slight favorite as of this minute. (Sept 6 AM)
Biden had been a heavy favorite as of July 31, but … shit happens.
60 thoughts on “How do bookies view the Presidential election?”
Comments are closed.
“Most of them simply believe it will be solved by technology and not a bunch of pussies riding around in a Prius.”
Yogi Berra lives!
C’mon. Yogi was actually pretty damn bright.
And was not a nasty drunken oaf like the guy in centerfield.
Steverino said: “Ok Roger. Your ridiculous stereotypes are “completely accurate”. You are basically wearing black face and complaining about the tint.”
A) Thanks for admitting I’m right, Steverino!!!
B) Steverino’s analogies are becoming more and more confusing to me. Can anybody unpack this one?
To give Steverino his due, his tax bracket idea sounds like a good one to me. I wish people here who understand the complexities of such things would comment on it.
I see Bill Deecee has already made one remark about it.
I don’t know if I’m one of the people here you’re referring to or not, but the top federal tax bracket is 37% starting at income of $518,401 for a single filer. Not all states have income taxes, but for states that do, the combined tax bracket at that level is around 50%
As far as I can tell, Joe Biden wants to reduce where that starts from $518,401 to $400,000.
The discussion beyond that is really nothing new.
1.There are concerns that increasing the top tax bracket from beyond 50% discourages people from working and there is some evidence that backs that up.
2.The wealthier do pay a lot of income tax, but my understanding is that at the $25 million level where Steverino suggests the 75% tax bracket, most of the people who earn that are owners and not employees and they structure their earnings so as to receive income in the form of dividends or capital gains, where the tax rate is much lower.
I agree that these people should pay more in tax and that changing the tax rates on dividends and capital gains to the ‘normal’ rate is the way to do that.
I’d be surprised if Steverino wasn’t aware of how the wealthiest structure their earnings, so, I’d put down his suggestion of very high tax rates on super high incomes as more dishonest trolling.
Steverino said “The evangelicals aren’t running anything. They are a vocal minority and the liberals want you to think they are in charge. They are the AOC of the right.”
A) Comparing a voting bloc to a congressional representative is an analogy I don’t understand. You are stressed out, Steverino.
B) The evangelicals aren’t running things, but on the particular issue (say, abortion) or issues (abortion, gay marriage and trannies in the bathroom) they care about, the Republicans do what the evangelicals want, or at least promise to, because they want those votes. Same deal with the NRA and gun issues. They are calling the shots on the issues they care about as far as Republican Party policy is concerned. So the liberals are NOT wrong. And I cannot see how AOC has that power. You right wing people are OBSESSED with her. It’s sick.
BTW, a valid argument would be that the Republican Party is now just Trump, and its policies are just whatever he wants today, but that doesn’t seem to keep the evangelicals or the NRA from supporting the Republicans, so that doesn’t seem to matter. Maybe they are deceiving themselves too much to figure that out.
PS – I should have mentioned school prayer and creationism being taught as “creation science” or whatever they’re calling it now as other examples of stuff the evangelicals care about, and which therefore the Republicans at least pay lip service to, and once in a while actually put into effect in the deep red parts of America.
Wait and see. The Eves will demand that their boy Pence (or whoever) be the nominee in 24. The Cultists will probably want Donnie Jr. Schism time quite possibly. The Eves are the most coherent bloc in the Party right now and one of the only two along with the Gunnies that Trump ever bends over rumpwards to keep placated. And of the six members of the “Brain Trust”, three are Eves – Pence, Pompeo and Meadows.
If you want a shining example of how strong the evangelical vote is for the GOP you don’t need to look farther than Mike Pence. He was specifically chosen to capture their vote. His vote for Betsy DeVos to lead the Department of Education was him maintaining his allegiance to them.
AOC has some power because she understands how to use celebrity to her own ends. She’s good at social media but she also attracts a lot of negative attention. She’s harnessed both. She would be less effective if the GOP just ignored her.
She’s still much less powerful than any number of extremely wealthy evangelical conservative families who regularly contribute to the GOP. The DeVos family is one of the more famous ones because of their infamous daughter in law but they’re not alone. Given the secrecy of election spending within the US its difficult to determine how widespread the problem is.
In regards to sensationalist media and political stereotyping:
1.I was in the chat room again where Doja Cat had her ‘issues’ and I made some comment about politics and primaries and one person, I presume a regular Fox ‘News’ viewer said ‘nobody in New York City likes AOC any more.”
I replied, ‘the New York State primaries are today and AOC so far has 71% percent of the vote in her district.’
That person then left.
2.In regards to the ‘left wing’ takeover of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party won 235 U.S House districts in 2018, the pro Trump, Anti American traitor Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey quit the Democrats and joined the Republicans and the Democrats lost the special election in the California 25th district caused by the resignation of Katie Hill.
Of the 233 other Democrats, 10 did not seek reelection including John Lewis. Of the 223 remaining, 220 were re-nominated, nearly 99%.
Of the three who lost
1.Dan Lipinski in Chicago was regarded as a social conservative. When he was first elected in 2004, his district was largely comprised of socially conservative leaning Catholics of Eastern and Central European descent. The demographics of his district changed. I think there was also a lingering resentment of how he first won the Democratic Primary in 2004. For those not familiar, his father, Congressman Bill Lipinski announced his retirement about 1 day before the filing deadline but gave his son a head’s up. Only Dan Lipinski had the time to get in the needed number of signatures to make the ballot.
2.Eliot Engel in New York had represented the district (with boundary changes caused by redistricting) since 1988. I think the desire for change and demographic changes caught up with him.
3.Bill ‘Lacy’ Clay in St Louis had represented the district since 2000 and his father William Clay represented it before that going back 1968.
Lacy Clay was already among the most ‘progressive’ Democrats in the U.S House. His defeat seemed to be more of ‘time for a change’ and that his opponent, Cori Bush, sold her as a local activist while calling Lacy Clay a do-nothing member of the U.S House. If Lacy Clay becomes active in the St Louis community, I could see him running in 2 or 4 years time as a local activist while calling Cori Bush a do nothing member of the U.S House.
I’ll contradict myself slightly in claiming that 3 Congressional primary incumbent losses aren’t necessarily evidence of a shift in the Democratic Party, to suggest that one Congressional result that may be significant is the open Washington 10th Congressional district.
1.Washington state is a heavily suburban state. Of its 10 Congressional districts, 7 of them are suburban based. 6 of them are Seattle inner and outer suburban, and one is outer Portland Oregon suburban, this includes the city of Vancouver, Washington.
The other 3 districts are most of the city of Seattle itself, the rural central and heavily Republican district in an area known as the Okanagan and the eastern mostly rural district near Idaho that also contains the city and metro area of Spokane.
2.As a heavily suburban state, Washington favors what I term as liberal, ‘good government’ pro-business, Democrats. Never mind the contrary evidence from the city of Seattle, possibly the most left wing big city in the United States, most of Washington State politics is pro business liberal.
Joe Biden’s state of Delaware, heavily influenced by banking and incorporation interests is another state I would define as a liberal, ‘good government’ pro business state.
3.Washington state, along with California, uses what are known as ‘jungle Congressional primaries’ meaning that all the candidates in a primary race run together and the top 2 vote receiving candidates face off in the general election, irrespective of party.
In this Congressional district, both of the candidates to emerge from the primary are Democrats: The establishment liberal former mayor of Tacoma Marilyn Strickland, who is so pro business she is the former CEO of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and the ‘progressive’ State Representative Beth Doglio.
If a ‘progressive’ Democrat wins in the Seattle suburbs, I think that would be evidence of a leftward move for the Democratic Party. One thing that might hurt Marilyn Strickland is that most of the city of Tacoma is not in the Washington 10th Congressional district.
I’ve said to people in various forums before, people in the rest of the world don’t realize how extreme the Republican Party is. One person replied to me “people in America don’t realize how extreme the Republican Party is.”
I hope this is okay to post here. This is a comment from a guy named Mats Andersson in Sweden on Quora. I think this is a very accurate assessment of the modern Republican Party.
How far right is the Republican party by European standards?
Some 20 years ago, the Republicans would have been seen as quite far to the right, but still well inside the normal spectrum; somewhere around the more mainstream Christian Democrats in most European countries.
Since then… well, if you see the political spectrum as a sort of board game with various slots ranging from left to right, with the parties represented by different markers… then the Republicans fell off the board and their marker is now in my jar of coffee beans. Their current signature policies are simply not identifiable on a political scale anymore.
Their fiscal policies are somewhere around the populist extreme left wing: completely irresponsible, but where the European far left can say whatever they please, safe in the knowledge that their policies will never encounter harsh reality, the Republicans actually implement theirs. Their perpetual increases to defence funding, at a point where the US is already spending approximately as much as the next 12 biggest national defence budgets combined, is a prime example of this. Especially since 9 of those are your allies.
Their adherence to “trickle-down economy” is seen as analogous to believing in Santa Claus: it’s seen as the belief that rich people suddenly become generous if they are given more money.
Their adoration of a healthcare system which is otherwise basically only found in the poorest countries in Africa, and which those countries desperately want to improve upon, is seen as just plain bonkers. Batshit crazy. Sorry, but it’s true. It’s easily demonstrated that the US pays twice as much for inferior service.
Their views on gun ownership is… a discussion I’d rather not go into, but it’s not one found anywhere else on the planet, so it’s not considered “right-wing” by any definition of the word.
Their views on immigration is close to the European neo-Nazis. That’s primarily where the “far right” label comes from, as it’s something that’s easily explained and identifiable.
Their denial of climate change is regarded as only marginally more sane than Flat Earth, Hollow Earth, or the end of Men in Black where the Earth is a marble for an alien child.
Their insistence that creationism is taught in schools is seen as considerably less sane than teaching astrology in schools.
Their fixation on who goes to which bathroom is simply not anything that’s considered an issue that politics could ever address; if it were possible to regulate, it would be seen as a complete over-reach by the authorities in a place where they had no business being.
Their presidential hopefuls actually stood, in public, and debated the size of their respective penises. For real. In public. And the entire nation did not die of shame. It’s… look, if you don’t understand immediately what’s wrong with that picture, there is simply no chance that any amount of explanation will help.
So, really, it’s only the first two items on this list that could even remotely fit into a European political left-right discussion. And there, they don’t really have a European counterpart.
Excellent!
You just described a republican “boogeyman”. You could do exactly the same for the democrats. You created a straw man with every radical position of the right.
I don’t know a single conservative who doesn’t believe in climate change. Most of them simply believe it will be solved by technology and not a bunch of pussies riding around in a Prius.
I don’t know a single conservative who wants “creationism” taught in school. You are talking about the evangelicals.
Their view on immigration and pretty much everything else is that we have laws in this country that should be followed or you should be punished. If you don’t like the laws then we have a political system to change the laws but people don’t have the right to simply ignore them. That’s how a civil society works.
As a Jewish American, I’m tired of the nazi comparisons. When 6 million legal (or illegal) citizens are gassed and robbed of all their possessions, you can make a comparison.
The idea of trickle down economics has nothing to do with deciding to give away money. It has to do with those who create jobs and power innovation employing more people at better wages based on supply and demand. I’ve already made the argument that tax brackets should continue to go up the more you make up to the point of 90% for all income over 100m. The issue isn’t the lawyer making 400k a year. The issue is the person making 50m-1b a year.
As for guns, that is hardly a republican only issue. Plenty of Dems own guns. Again, if you don’t like the law then change it if you can. Personally I can’t stand the liberal perspective of community. If I own an Arsenal on my private property and have all the right permits, then it’s none of your business. Get off my lawn.
As for separate bathrooms, regardless of how liberals want it to be, there are two biological sexes. Call yourself whatever you want and do whatever you want in your own home but use the proper bathroom in public. I don’t need to see a transgender gay man staring at my balls.
I don’t care what a European thinks. I don’t care if conservatives in the US look differently than conservatives elsewhere. I don’t care if the rest of the world hates me. I don’t care if you hate me. If you want to truly understand the collective mindset of the majority of the modern conservatives, then recognize that we want a safe, secure place to live without others taking our money. I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t need you to like me. I need you to get your hands out of my pockets and stop trying to dump trash, homeless, drug addicts and criminals on my front lawn. Low taxes. No illegals. No looting and rioting. Strong national defense to keep the rest of the world in check. That’s it.
Note to self: For Steverino, “boogeyman” = “completely accurate description, which he admits is true in a mass of self-justifying verbiage and then lashes out at”. Good to know!
Ok Roger. Your ridiculous stereotypes are “completely accurate”. You are basically wearing black face and complaining about the tint.
If there are any present-day Republican “conservatives” (most of the people using the term nowadays are actually reactionaries or ignoramuses of no principles – like their hero) who believe in human caused climate change, I’ve never run across any other than yourself. During the this Administration the solution has been the Senator Snowball (Inhofe) approach: “Let’s start shoveling shit into the sky again”.
I’m not seeing any attempted application of technology to a problem they don’t believe exists. Can’t cite the 2020 Platform because that is simply “Hail Trump” but the 2016 backs that up.
Or maybe they’re taking the Roxy Music approach: “Divine intervention always my intention so …. I…. take ……my…. time”.
Or one might just call it shitting on your descendants.
As for the evangelicals they’re pretty much running things in the Party in case you haven’t noticed.
Btw, I do know one environmental scientist. He used to play nose tackle. You might want to watches that pussies in a Prius stuff.
The evangelicals aren’t running anything. They are a vocal minority and the liberals want you to think they are in charge. They are the AOC of the right.
Ummm… a Prius is technology to address climate change…you’re fake macho.
I’m talking about technological revolutions. Not saving gas mileage. Small minded people like you are the ones who think that the Prius is actually going to make a difference when China and India create 90% of the environmental damage. Keep driving your sissy car though.
Steverino…get a clue instead of wallowing in ignorance. The U.S. has 30 percent of the world’s automobiles, yet it contributes about half of the world’s emissions from cars.
Except they don’t create jobs. This has been studied and reported on:
“A new Congressional Research Service report finds that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act had little measurable effect on the overall US economy in 2018. And, no, the tax cuts didn’t come remotely close to paying for themselves by turbocharging the economy as President Trump repeatedly promised. This was a surprise to few, since most independent analysts predicted more than a year ago that the law would have little economic impact.
The authors estimate the one strong effect of the TCJA was its deep cut in effective corporate tax rates, from 17.2 percent in 2017 to 8.8 percent in 2018. And, they found, multinational corporations repatriated $664 billion in foreign earnings in 2018—more than the previous three years combined—after the TCJA cut taxes on repatriated overseas earnings.
If effective corporate rates were cut in half, and firms had new access to $664 billion in overseas income, yet they didn’t spend that extra cash on wages or investment, where did it go? CRS confirms what was well-reported at the time: Much of it went to $1 trillion in stock buybacks.”
Republican’s create criminals and drug addicts with their own policies. They say they back the police, but allow weapons unchecked into the hands of dangerous criminals. People like you bitch about criminals and addicts, but then will block legislation on minimum wage or reasonable healthcare so those that are born into this world without the luck of Donald Trump or wealthy parents don’t even get a chance if they’re in a broken household or a gang area.
Look how well just being more authoritarian works out in human history. That great Republican policy of the War on Drugs sure turned out great. That strong military in Iraq sure turned out great – to cause ISIS to fill the vacuum. Those tax breaks for the rich turned out great for job creation or a rise in wages, huh?
Republicans have the greatest hand in US history in self created recidivism. They rig the game at the top, and then five steps down while they’re fine dining with lobbyists and contributors, regular citizens have to deal with societal ills. And then roughly half of the populace is stupid enough to believe just being a little bit more authoritarian will fix the problem, since human history has such a great track record with it.
Your authoritarian utopia already exists, it’s called China. Feel free to move there to live your dream.
You keep seizing on minor points. Nobody has responded to my proposal of increasing tax brackets. 50% over 1m, 75% over 25m, 90% over 100m. Whatever. The issue are the people worth billions, not those making 400k who Biden is going after.
Ok Steverino. Let’s talk tax brackets.
One party wants to steepen the tax brackets.
One party wants to flatten them.
Which do you actually favour? We’ll let your answer determine your political allegiance.
I don’t have a problem with those tax brackets, which is why I backed Bernie. Do I think maybe these brackets need to be a little more intelligent based on cost of living? Sure. But then again when you give an inch with the ultra wealthy, they take a mile. Some CEO will just find a way to say, declare their earnings as a vacation home in Montana, or retire there to get out of it, so you can never win with these things.
Biden going after over $400,000 earners is a little bit ridiculous. He’s pushing to put the tax rates back to 39.6% over 37%. I mean seriously, I’m not going to shed a tear for someone making half a million dollars having to pay $2,600 more now. If someone making half a million is going to sink or swim at $2,600, they have other problems. And lets be honest, at that point are the hundreds of loopholes and deductions probably protects even that amount.
You’ve mentioned cost of living and other things, but let me ask, who’s mainly responsible for causing these situations in the first place? Allowing states to fight with one another so corporations get a nice kickback to come to a certain place. Huge corporate tax cuts, so if there is a potential middle ground competitor somewhere not in a major city, they’re absorbed. Big banks, big tech, a handful of major retailers left. These are cornerstones of Republican policy.
Then the private equity firms or private investors buy up homes and apartments, especially after the crash, as ‘investment properties’, and you end up in this mess. Certain jobs, in certain areas, with absolutely no supply left for living – it all floated to the very top to make everything except the oxygen you breathe a profit center. I’m not going to vote to make this worse, for what’s essentially pennies being thrown down the chain while they attach billions in cash flow to the top.
Steverino, I find it hard to believe you’re not a troll. You’ve shifted your positions more than enough times for me to doubt your sincerity.
The only rebuttal I care to make to you is to point out that you shifted the topic of the discussion in an attempt to deflect:
In regards to conservatives not supporting creationism being taught in schools, I don’t believe you’re correct, but the post I quoted was on the modern Republican party, not on modern conservatives and their is no question that pseudo Christians are a major part of the modern Republican party coalition.
90% has been tried. Harold Wilson (his dial went up to 98). Didn’t work real well. Biggest achievement was pissing off a songwriting Beatle.
Hmm, now what about capital gains?
Totally true. But nonetheless it is giving Trump oxygen.
The stuff from Portland which seems to be increasingly more about white mischief than about BLM is not helping Biden one bit.
It pales in comparison with Trump’s remarks about the military and his other crimes and misdemeanors. People need a sense of proportion.
It is appalling to me that the race between Biden and Trump is this close. I understand that the Electoral College is a form of gerrymandering that enables Trump to win the election while losing the popular vote, as he did in 2016. But I do not understand why so many people still support Trump. What do they believe about him? I just do not know, and people like Brobonk, redlion, Steverino, and Midwest Conservative only provide reasons like stupidity, hatefulness, spite, and simple greed. That does not seem like enough. What is going on?
I say the very same thing to people, unfortunately, and it’s pathetic grown ass adults support such a petulant uneducated sociopath that they would drop in a second if they had to deal with in doing business with, or in the workplace.
Basically, they start with the premise that Trump cannot possibly be wrong or doing something adverse to the country, and then warp their worldview from that starting point. If it’s something bad reported not on record, it’s a lie. If the person is on record, they’re a bitter opponent who’s lying. If they do get Trump on record, it was out of context or joking, and he meant something else. And if it wasn’t, well they deserved it all anyway, or Obama is to blame in some way.
Then the propaganda machine is there to find any instance to say both sides, or some anecdotal video of a garbage fire somewhere on a city block with people, to say cities are burning down and everyone’s at danger. Reminds me Germany blaming the invasion of Poland on barbarism of German families in Poland.
It’s a cult, no better way to say it. It’s no different that trying to convince a Scientologist that L Ron Hubbard was an insane fraud.
1. Racism. You can throw in misogyny and homophobia if you like.
2. Tax cuts. Real or perceived money.
3. Religion. Real or perceived belief.
4. Team GOP. “Me, my family and friends have always been GOP/Conservative/Libertarian. That’s who I am.”
I could blame Fox News or right wing talk radio for partisan hardening but you won’t have to look very hard to find shitty propaganda from allegedly objective media going back decades. As bad as Fox is they never started a coup.
I have no argument with what Indy and playgroundpyschotic say. It is just stunning to me there are so many people who can be described this way. I have not had a wide circle of experience, I guess, nor have I made an accurate picture of the way many people really are. I always knew there were some such people, but the quantity of them amazes me.
I especially used to agree with playground’s reason #4 (“Team GOP”) and blamed the baneful influence of professional sports. (I was never athletic and was always bored by sports.) But really, both team loyalty and party loyalty beyond all reason are aspects of the same flaw in human nature.
I also blame, as does Indy, the well funded right-wing propaganda machine. Many people believe lies because they never listen to anything else, but they find listening to, say, PBS, as painful as I find listening to Fox “News”. Passing off lies as truth in mass media is highly destructive, yet I have no idea what to do about it that would not also be destructive of free speech.
I would say, Indy, this phenomenon is far too big to be a cult. I apologize for nitpicking, but one definition of a cult is “a religion that lacks political power”. That is very much NOT the case here. If these people effectively worship Trump or what they think he stands for, it is more like a religion. Calling it a cult tends to trivialize it, IMO.
Thanks for your answers, Indy and playground. I would be very interested to hear from people who intend to vote for Trump, but this is probably the wrong place to find them.
Things can change over time. The modern GOP has largely been the party of big business but they didn’t used to be the party of racism or religion. I’m not sure what might cause a drift in each party’s platforms or voters but I suspect it will eventually happen.
Maybe, maybe not. The GOP has been the money party for decades and has accelerated the concentration of wealth in the US. The inequity in the distribution of wealth in this country today is appalling. 10% of the people in the US now control 70% of the wealth. Look it up and compare it to 1968.
Harding, Coolidge and Hoover are considered to be pretty poor Presidents. They were corrupt, clueless plutocrats who inflicted a great deal of economic suffering on the US.
However, all three were progressive on racial issues. That’s different from the modern GOP who enact racist policies on top of their shitty economics.
Just pointing out that times change and the GOP will have to change at some point as they have done in the past.
Hoover was not corrupt. He was a very able man, and saved many lives in Europe, when starvation loomed in the wake of the First World War. But he became a mental prisoner of Republican dogma, and failed to deal with the effects of the Great Depression on the American public. This was based on the Republican idea that keeping people from suffering is somehow bad for them. Ask Midwest Conservative to explain why; I think he knows.
Herbert Hoover was a victim of the dogma of balanced budgets and that recessions/depressions (formerly known as panics) would solve themselves if left alone.
However, Hoover abandoned this dogma as the depression persisted but it was essentially too little, too late.
In doing this however, FDR ran against him pledging to return to balanced budgets.
The interesting thing is, on the fiscal side, from the ‘progressive era’ from 1933-1980, U.S governments especially were reluctant adherents of Keynesian economics. It was more on the Monetary side where the embrace was more complete.
The irony is the so called conservative Monetarist era produced much large government budget deficits than the Keynesian era ever did (excluding the World War II period, of course.)
Trump has exploded once and for all the myth of American Exceptionalism, the idea that there is something superior in the national character. The US has profited from been blessed with vast national resources (which they cultivated with slave labor) and many years of geographical isolation from most of whatever tomfoolery happened to be going on elsewhere. But 35-40% of the population is as lacking in intelligence, morals, and ethics as any other place on the planet.
I cannot argue with you, fwald. I would like to, but I can’t. Especially now.
For me, realizing that the dark heart of America is an enlarged one, encompassing some 35% of the body politic, has been the worst part of the Trump presidency. I was living in a dream world in which crazy, racist greedheads were maybe 10% of the population at most, while the vast majority of Americans were generous souls with a live-and-let-live attitude.
I was wrong about that.
I think of myself as pragmatic and skeptical. I’ve certainly never considered myself naive.
I was wrong about that as well.
And I don’t like finding out just how wrong I was.
Since Trump took office I have learned way too much about my old friends from school. For years we have all gotten along and our politics seemed fairly similar. Unlike some of you, I am a conservative at heart. But there’s a big difference between being a conservative and a racist scumbag, and I wish I had never heard some of the things my old friends have said out loud since Trump took charge. Obviously, they always were that way, but it’s like Trump has suddenly given them all permission to expose the ugliest thoughts of their inner selves.
Very true, and what gets me about this is in no other situations would a person ever be so dogged about so many hateful, ignorant, or unintelligent actions in real life.
Could you imagine how many people would sit in a doctor’s office and have someone suggest some sort of ultraviolet light or bleach inside the body as a cure to something? How about some random off label use with no evidence for its use?
Imagine a weatherman using a marker to add something on the doppler radar to tell you you’re going to get hit by a tornado? Imagine a commanding officer putting your son in danger while he was sitting at dinner and decided to get your son killed because its the opposite of what the last commander did, while he’s fine dining and making this decision?
It really is a cult. When you see things like this, it reminds me of things you see in WWII documentaries on the level of propaganda. I remember in the ‘World at War’ documentary a German citizen returning home from Britain before the war, and seeing how hysterical the propaganda machine was there.
Trump and his followers deal in lies, authoritarianism, and hysteria and the whole cult is 100% no matter how far they have to bend objective reality to fit it.
I’m guessing that the odds are so close because of how clear it has become recently that Trump will stop at nothing to cheat his way into reelection.
Even though the battleground state polls are significantly closer than the national polls, Biden is still favored to win the the majority of the swing states’ electoral votes based on the existing polling (and, as you have pointed out numerous times, the polling in 2016 was quite accurate, so it should be assumed that they are not far off this year either).
538’s computer model has Biden winning 71% of simulations, so that does leave the door open to Trump winning legitimately, but it still favors Biden. And since both Trump’s favorability has seen very little movement in the past few years, there is probably nothing he can do to increase his popularity enough to become a sure favorite.
It seems pretty clear that Trump sees reelection as his only way of staving off state and federal prosecution once he leaves office, so expect nonstop electoral shenanigans and October surprises along the way.
I would be shocked if Trump actually gets prosecuted for anything. The DNC just wants a return to normalcy with their chosen senile, old, pro corporation donors/anti working class, dude at the top (still way better than Trump, obviously). Any cases will just be dropped. Nothing ever happens to former presidents regardless of suffering caused.
If nothing happens to Trump AND his co-conspirators, people who voted for Biden and other Democrats will become disgusted with them and the whole Democratic Party. There will be a feeling that everyone is corrupt. This kind of thing led to the collapse of the Third Republic in France, and could lead to something similar here. Or at least a rebirth of both conservative and liberal parties. Or something much worse.
I agree with that. In 2016 his options were to win or to get a new TV contract. His 2020 options are quite different. If he loses, he could find himself behind bars. Thanks to his criminal behavior while president and candidate, he needs the immunity of the presidency to avoid criminal prosecution, so he will be desperate, and will consider nothing off-limits.
If he does lose, and can’t come up with a sufficient justification to challenge the results, I would not be surprised to see him make a final visit to Russia just before inauguration day, and to see Air Force One return empty. He could continue to live his sybaritic lifestyle in Russia, with no chance of extradition. His other option would be to step down about a week before inauguration day, with Pence then pardoning him. That is a less attractive option because, although totally legal and constitutional, it only gets him out of federal charges, therefore leaving both the Manhattan and the New York State DAs on his tail.
I’ve also ruminated on the possibility of him defecting to Russia , and what would be the downstream consequences.
Would Melania go with him? Wouldn’t that allow the US to seize whatever Trump assets remained behind? What would happen to Uday and Qusay? How would the cult (and Mitch and Meadows and Barr) defend that? (you know they would)
I think it’s far-fetched. But still fun to think about.
Is it REALLY out of the question that both of these useless old pukes get destroyed (preferably in some way that involves a wheel of rotating knives) and we get someone good to vote for?
“Good to vote for” and “Republican” are now mutually exclusive terms, Nature Mom, unless you are a billionaire or Nazi-wannabe. I would like a more progressive Democrat than Joe Biden, but apparently he is as progressive as a lot of people can stand. Maybe it is because of billionaires who realize they have burned down the Republican house, and are now buying the Democratic one?
Trump just needs to do ANYTHING positive a week before voting day and it’s a coin flip
Well, last election the media made the mistake of “predicting” a landslide victory for Hillary. They don’t want to repeat that mistake, so they’re tempering their predictions this time in hopes that people will bother voting this time. And maybe Biden pulls off the upset.
Not media or polling organizations, but actual bookmakers with their own money on the line.
To be fair, these are prop bets, which many times have a limit and don’t make a whole lot.
And lets not forget, just like sports, the line can be bet down. Chances are, that was what happened with who’s ‘favored.’ For what it’s worth, Biden is -115 and Trump is -105 on Bovada.
Trump’s cult seems a lot more likely to go all in on Trump rather than any random bettor trying to get likely limited action in this thing, or some Democrat willing to bet period.
Too bad, I would bring it up to Trump to liquidate everything he’s got to put on Biden and then tank the election, he would probably like the idea.
Four days ago, Biden was -105 and Trump -115! Three days before that, it was Biden -115 and Trump -105.
Studies have repeatedly shown that Vegas-style odds DO NOT reflect a balancing of the betting. On football, for example, the amount of the bets is almost never balanced. People almost invariably place 65% of the money on the favorite. What bookies actually try to accomplish with the point spread is not to balance the betting, but to set the odds so that underdogs win 50% of the time, even though they only attract 35% of the money bet.
A study of this some years ago found that:
1) Bookmakers are very good at setting the point spread so that the favorite wins 50% of the time
BUT
2) Bookmakers are not very good at setting the spread so that the betting is balanced 50-50. Although the oddsmakers pick the “correct” spread (measured by the fact that favorites cover almost exactly 50% of the time), about 2/3 of people still prefer to bet the favorite. In fact, there is a counter-intuitive oddity in this. Bookmakers find that when there is a vast imbalance between the teams, the greater the difference between the teams, the more likely bettors are to wager on the favorite, irrespective of the spread! If Alabama is favored by 50 over Woffard, more people will bet Alabama than if Alabama is a 30-point favorite. What can you say? People are emotional, and easy to manipulate. That’s why bookmakers often get rich and gamblers do not.
From 538:
(In another study):
Bookies do have to do some balancing of the spread when betting goes crazy one way or another, but the betting is almost never balanced 50-50. The total amount of the bets is almost always heavily off-balance in favor of the favorite, and the bookies are trying to determine which odds will gave the favorite a 50% chance of winning, NOT which odds will cause people to wager on the favorite 50% of the time.
Therefore, I use the odds as a convenient surrogate to reflect the general attitude of the bookies (and the bettors) about the relative strength of the sides, and not as their attempt to balance the betting.
I think you Fallen and can’t get up excuse could not resist the pun.You are wrong on both counts it was never predicted Clinton would win in a landslide and if Biden wins it would not be an upset.If a monkey was running he would also beat Trump and that would not be an upset either.Sadly the monkey would probably beat Biden too but that’s who we got so it should be Biden
Also, the people who actually paid attention to the polls gave Trump about a 30% chance which is pretty reasonable.