2020 US Election

[Silent Member]

Didn't we already figure out it was technically impossible to join the race this late?

[President Squidward]

kanye is a funny meme and all and makes good ass music but i fear that if people took him seriously, we'll forever be stuck with having every celebrity run for president, not like any of the actual politicans are good people anyway. we're fucked either way

[dingformung]

Just align with the sacred geometry of the cosmos and there will be no friction, everything will fall into place

[Silent Member]

Like Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan you mean?

[dingformung]

Just now, dingformung said:

Just align with the sacred geometry of the cosmos and there will be no friction, everything will fall into place

 

Just now, Gocab said:

Like Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan you mean?

Yes, exactly

[ignatius]

[zero]

25 minutes ago, ignatius said:

well to his credit, that was almost 2 years and many, many manic episodes ago. his brain's been reprogrammed since then by the jesus lady, who's put him back on track to complete and total mental stability.

[ignatius]

 

[goDel]

Was just reading some analysis over at 538 about the enthusiasm people have for the 2020 candidates and there was a WTF moment when comparing to Hillary 2016:

Quote

What’s especially notable here is that Biden’s net enthusiasm rating is near zero, which is similar to most major-party presidential candidates’ ratings from 1980 to 2012. Trump’s current score of around -20, on the other hand, has only one historical comparison other than his own campaign four years ago: Hillary Clinton in 2016.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-trump-not-biden-might-have-an-enthusiasm-problem/

If you're interested in the summary: you've probably heard that potential Biden voters are less enthusiastic about Biden than Trump voters are enthusiastic about Trump. Well, 538 basically takes it one step further and calculated the net enthusiasm (Biden voters are very very anti-enthusiastic about Trump, while Trump voters mind Biden a bit less). In short: based on these net numbers, Trump is in a tough spot. 

In other words, Trump seems to be the new Hillary. ;D

[ignatius]

Flol.


https://nypost.com/2020/07/27/sanders-co-chair-voting-for-biden-like-eating-half-a-bowl-of-s-t/


A co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign vividly described how she feels about choosing between Biden and President Trump — likening it to only having to eat half a bowl of excrement.

“It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of s–t in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still s–t’, ” Sanders co-chair Nina Turner told The Atlantic.

[bendish]

26 minutes ago, ignatius said:

 

 

Flol.


https://nypost.com/2020/07/27/sanders-co-chair-voting-for-biden-like-eating-half-a-bowl-of-s-t/


A co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign vividly described how she feels about choosing between Biden and President Trump — likening it to only having to eat half a bowl of excrement.

“It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of s–t in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still s–t’, ” Sanders co-chair Nina Turner told The Atlantic.

Very difficult to be enthusiastic about an incoherent senile old man tied up completely with decades old dem establishment - the policies of which can be arguably blamed for the rise of another obviously far worse incoherent senile old man.

Edited July 28, 2020 by bendish

[Squee]

Congress is gonna sound like the Springfield Retirement Home.

 

[ignatius]

11 hours ago, bendish said:

Very difficult to be enthusiastic about an incoherent senile old man tied up completely with decades old dem establishment - the policies of which can be arguably blamed for the rise of another obviously far worse incoherent senile old man.

i think most people agree w/you on that point. 

i think the enthusiasm is in getting rid of trump and disallowing his policies to continue which are horrible. also, whoever the next president is will get at least 1 more supreme court judge pick when RBG steps down.

hard to imagine biden going more than one term if he wins. 

[bendish]

Thought this was nice sum up:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/26/trump-us-president-white-supremacy 

[ignatius]

1 hour ago, bendish said:

Thought this was nice sum up:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/26/trump-us-president-white-supremacy 

seems probability is high that if he doesn't get re-elected he'll start his ultra right network that caters to his base and spouts all kinds of insanity keeping the toxic vibe alive.  they're already trying out the template w/hs view-like talkshow for his campaign. 

and his base racists is activated now so they'll hold on to him for dear life whatever happens. maybe we'll get lucky and some other fate will unfold for trump and the US but not gonna hold my breath. 

 

 

[bendish]

This is great https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/28/trump-president-diplomats-ambassadors 

seriously though other than wanting trump the fuck out why would we be enthusiastic about Biden? 

Edited July 29, 2020 by bendish

[Candiru]

Stay smart and be politically active while a better ratio in congress and better president/admin are in charge. Have a good plan though. 

[caze]

2 hours ago, bendish said:

why would we be enthusiastic about Biden? 

because he had the best platform of any of the serious candidates? and even if you wrongly preferred Bernie's platform, there's still plenty in Biden's which will pretty radically change a whole host of US social policies, and his climate change policies were far better to begin with; and as long as they also flip the senate they have a good chance of accomplishing far more than they did under Obama 2nd term, which was fucked because of republican intransigence.

he's not suffering from dementia btw, he seems to be showing a pretty normal level of non-pathological age related cognitive decline (in addition to suffering from a stutter); in contrast to Trump who full-on displays numerous pathological psychological and neurological issues.

 

[dingformung]

He will save the planet.

[bendish]

46 minutes ago, caze said:

because he had the best platform of any of the serious candidates? and even if you wrongly preferred Bernie's platform, there's still plenty in Biden's which will pretty radically change a whole host of US social policies, and his climate change policies were far better to begin with; and as long as they also flip the senate they have a good chance of accomplishing far more than they did under Obama 2nd term, which was fucked because of republican intransigence.

he's not suffering from dementia btw, he seems to be showing a pretty normal level of non-pathological age related cognitive decline (in addition to suffering from a stutter); in contrast to Trump who full-on displays numerous pathological psychological and neurological issues.

 

I'll take those contributions. What will he do with foreign policy? More war? Obviously against medicare for all which I consider an inevitability at some point. How will he deal with inequalities and structural racism plus the cops? Will he continue the terrible immigration policies of Obama and Trump? Shame he destroyed any posirive legacy of metoo with his blanket dismissal of all his accusers setting yet more precedent for people like Trump and Kavanaugh. His voting history is terrible. His previous views on social security, the Clarence Thomas disaster...crime, welfare reform, glass-steagall, affirmative action, abortion, collective bargaining rights etc 

I think you're too easy on him Caze.

 

[luke viia]

Yeah,  Biden isn't exciting. Here's the thing: democrat voters chose him. Particularly black voters. So we're going with what we've got. Talking him down right now isn't helpful - we have a legitimate fucking menace to remove. Remember: you're voting for a Biden administration, not just Biden.

[sweepstakes]

Honestly, at this point, if he does well on these points, I'm pretty stoked:

• Environmental regulations, protections, and incentives - this should really be top priority, ahead (a ways) of COVID imo. We are going to get fucked HARD (starvation, bad air & water quality, violence, mass death, flooding, extinction of thousands of species) if we don't take action STAT.
• Managing public health (COVID, health care funding, prescription prices) properly and not being a gigantic politicking douche about it
• Fixing the public education system which Betsy DeVos and the right have been eviscerating for 2+ decades
• Reducing military funding so we can have nice things
• Closing loopholes, tax breaks for megacorps so we can have nice things
• Listening to and implementing policies based on expert advice (i.e. what god damn nearly every other president in history has done)
• Bonus points if he can bat his eyelashes at things like UBI in a way that doesn't turn repubs into screaming gorillas. See also: IP/copyright/patent trolling (i.e. chilling effects), privacy, other things that help small businesses

But yeah the foreign policy stuff too which I'm honestly a bit stupid about.

I realize much of these decisions are more congressional, but having a president that can enable them or just get the fuck out of the way and let them do their job would be huge.

[caze]

1 hour ago, bendish said:

What will he do with foreign policy? More war?

He's not much different to Bernie in terms of foreign policy, who was far more hawkish than most on the far left, not someone who fell for the one-eyed Chompskian 'anti-imperialist' bs that's so rampant there (e.g. he voted for every Iraq war vote aside from the final one, his only problem in the end is that it didn't have UN approval, so he would have probably been fine with the Libyan intervention too - that didn't require a vote). Not that I can imagine Biden starting any wars any time soon, certainly less likely than Trump.

1 hour ago, bendish said:

How will he deal with inequalities and structural racism plus the cops?

He released a, very long, post about this the other day:

https://medium.com/@JoeBiden/the-biden-plan-to-build-back-better-by-advancing-racial-equity-across-the-american-economy-66ceb43d2a72

Less about police reform than other things affecting racial disparities in the US, though those things are probably more important than police reform anyway (social deprivation and criminality are the real problems here, not police prejudice), the federal govt is also somewhat limited in what it can do there due to how policing is structured. There are some good criminal justice related things in there though, like ending cash bail and helping people expunge their criminal records (which is a big problem with ex-cons finding employment).

Other criminal justice policies he's talked about elsewhere: decriminalization of marijuana use (and expunging all convictions), ending mandatory minimums, fixing sentencing disparities (e.g. crack vs cocaine convictions), favoring treatment over custodial sentences for minor drug offences (a Portugal-style total drug decriminalization plan would be better, but I doubt America is ready for something like that yet; full legalization of weed would be better too, but decriminalization is a good start).

1 hour ago, bendish said:

Will he continue the terrible immigration policies of Obama and Trump?

You can't compare the immigration policies of Obama and Trump, wut?!? Obama wasn't as pro-open borders as me, most people aren't, but most democrats are on board with pretty liberal paths to citizenship, even for illegal immigrants. Obama mostly deported people with criminal convictions and people who were caught illegally entering the country (he also deported more people than Trump, but that's just because there were more people coming in, immigration from the southern border of the US has been in steep decline for a while now), whereas Trump has had ICE patrolling the country looking for people to deport, and isn't going to be offering a path to citizenship to any of these people.

1 hour ago, bendish said:

Shame he destroyed any posirive legacy of metoo with his blanket dismissal of all his accusers setting yet more precedent for people like Trump and Kavanaugh.

 

 

 

There have been no serious allegations against him, so not sure what your problem is here. The only thing that came close was the one from that nutjob who's story was shown to be obviously false in every major aspect.

The other stuff you mention focuses on stuff he voted for in the distant past, not sure what the relevance for all that is. Politics change, people change, doesn't matter if he wasn't on board with the right policies years ago if he's on board with them now, ideological purity is irrelevant, getting results is all that matters.

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2020 by caze

[dingformung]

1 hour ago, sweepstakes said:

Environmental regulations, protections, and incentives - this should really be top priority, ahead (a ways) of COVID imo. We are going to get fucked HARD (starvation, bad air & water quality, violence, mass death, flooding, extinction of thousands of species) if we don't take action STAT

I think the main problem with climate change - in the US and everywhere else on the planet - is that the time dimension is so large that our human brains can't really grasp it. We can maybe rationally grasp it but not really feel it. It's much more dangerous than Covid-19 but happens over a longer period of time so - psychologically - it always seems as if there is still plenty of time left while it isn't. Chomsky is right when he says that climate change could in the worst case scenario mean the end of organised humanity. I hope caze is right in that Biden can save the planet with his environmental plans, which I seriously doubt, to be honest. The US American political establishment never in its history has done any decision that's against the agenda of the military-industrial complex. Another aspect is that national governments have only limited possibilities to regulate what international corporations do on the larger scale. It's why multilateralism is so important. As it looks Biden isn't opposed to multilateralism unlike Trump, so there is a shimmer of hope.

1 hour ago, sweepstakes said:

Fixing the public education system which Betsy DeVos and the right have been eviscerating for 2+ decades

From what I know the education itself -  at least on average (the dispersion might be large) - is at a fairly high standard in global comparison (even ranks above Canada in the Education Index, which of course is only one perspective and not definitive [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Index#2015]) but it's the access to higher education that's flawed and the student loan crisis that's a problem. But global comparison doesn't really stand when the education systems globally are bad. And yes, creationism & religion in general needs to be kept out of schools in a secular country.

Edited July 29, 2020 by dingformung
in average / on average ???

[sweepstakes]

Totally agree on the hooman-brain-too-tiny aspect of environmental problems, but just actively trying to do something about it, even if it's just research, would be a big improvement over literally working against it by doing things like dismantling the EPA and promoting Big Coal like it's 1970s. I could be a bit misguided on this but I think in the long term, clean energy is cheap energy, so hopefully the market can help there.

As far as education - yes, the loan crisis is huge. Also, a large portion of my IRL friends and family work for state (as in, not national, but the S in USA) universities and they are all dealing with budget cuts (especially to non-STEM departments), layoffs, top-heavy administration, and increasing prices of student services. On top of that, I think young people weighing their post-high-school options are starting to lose faith in the "go to college to get a better job" narrative that my generation's Boomer parents drilled into us, and with classes being online now, the quality difference between commercial or even free online courses is a bit questionable. It's not necessarily the government's sole responsibility to solve those problems, but it sure sucks, individually and for the economy, to leave a bunch of formerly government-employed teachers out of work.