US Election 2020

[rainbow]

Most aspects of the US political system seem irrational to me...

As Don might've said:
So bye-bye, Miss American Pi

[Tero]

Well, it was not the primary perpose, to be democratic. Though it was a good step toward that in 1770s. It was a process to keep the states together against common enemies: a united states! Most of the power was to stay in the states.

[pErvinalia]

Well it is undemocratic to start with.

Like the EU.

[laklak]

Most of the power was to stay in the states.

And our history since then has been a struggle against the power-grabbing, totalitarian Federales. We need to go break up this God-Cursed "union". Fuck New York.

[Svartalf]

Yeah, these godforsaken new englanders know nothing of gracious livin'.

[NineBerry]

With the invention of fast traveling and transport and the internet, more and more stuff becomes a matter of interstate commerce. So more and more needs to be regulated on the federal level.

We have that problem in the EU. If the nations will continue to prevent having a unified social security system and unified taxation, the union will run into major problems.

[JimC]

The innate tribalism of hominims creates difficulties for all forms of modern technological societies. I blame Darwin.

[Brian Peacock]

Nevada: We're going to vote by mail. Tweetolini: It's a coup! I'm going to sue Nevada to stop them voting by mail!!!

'Nevada lawmakers pass bill allowing automatic mail ballots, Trump slams move'

Nevada state lawmakers passed a bill Sunday that would add the state to a growing list of U.S. states that will mail active voters ballots ahead of the November election amid the coronavirus pandemic.

...

President Donald Trump called the bill’s passage “an illegal late night coup” in a tweet Monday morning. He accused Sisolak of exploiting COVID-19 to ensure votes in Nevada would favor Democrats.

“Nevada’s clubhouse Governor made it impossible for Republicans to win the state. Post Office could never handle the Traffic of Mail-In Votes without preparation … See you in court!”

A general election is not about 'making' one side or the other win Donald.

[JimC]

He's clearly worried about erections elections...

[Scot Dutchy]

I just don't think Trump will leave quietly.

[JimC]

It would make an interesting news grab, seeing him dragged kicking and screaming from the White House by federal agents...

[Scot Dutchy]

If only it was that simple. A Dutch saying: A cornered cat makes strange jumps. He is planning something.

[Tero]

Newt Gingrich sees things a little differently. Gingrich, who lives in Rome, where his wife, Callista, serves as Trump’s ambassador to the Holy See, said he has been rereading campaign books from the 1960s and ‘70s and is convinced Trump can reverse his fortunes. Trump, in his view, is still using Richard Nixon’s strategy of 1968, when he was an outsider, but he needed to adopt Nixon’s strategy of 1972, when he was the incumbent president running for reelection. It’s not a great analogy because Nixon benefited from a good economy. But the gist is for Trump to stop emphasizing that the country is in chaos. (Why would voters reelect the person presiding over chaos?)

Gingrich recently fired off a memo — he writes a lot of memos — to Trump officials arguing that the Trump of February doesn’t work in July, given the catastrophically changed circumstances. “I think it took several months to realize that all the tools that worked brilliantly for four years were not in tune with where the country was,” Gingrich said.

“What do you mean by strategy?” said a person close to the president when asked about Trump’s recent conduct. “I don’t think Donald Trump wakes up and says, ‘Here’s my strategy. Let me tweet out something.’ I don’t think there’s a political strategy there. He believes the way he interacts and communicates is what got him elected and he’s going to continue to do that.”

TRUMP ZUCCHINI
The Great Zucchini is known as a genius when it comes to connecting with and
entertaining small children. But he has a very narrow range of people to whom his tricks appeal: kids 3 to 7. He knows what it’s like when a trick he’s been performing no longer works. Recently a parent insisted that The Great Zucchini come perform for his 8-year-old, who had the magician at every birthday party for the past five years.

None of the tricks worked anymore. “I was struggling to get a laugh,” said the magician, whose real name is Eric Knaus. “I bombed. It was crickets. These kids had outgrown the show.”

Republicans fall along a spectrum of opinion about Trump’s current predicament from cult-like optimists akin to Giuliani who barely acknowledge any problems, to realists like Gingrich who see the obvious but believe Trump can adjust, to hardened skeptics like the GOP congressional aide who believe Trump is the political equivalent of the Great Zucchini performing at a sweet 16.

snip
Somewhere between Gingrich and Stevens was one prominent conservative broadly in line with Trump’s views who also scoffed at the idea that Trump’s problem is about staff.

The core problem, according to this person, is that Trump “doesn’t have control.” He doesn’t have control over the pandemic. He doesn’t have control over the economy. He doesn’t have control over cities experiencing unrest. Trump’s supporters refuse to admit this, according to this view, because it exposes him as incompetent. And his fiercest critics don’t always acknowledge it because it suggests he’s not as scary and authoritarian as they insist he is.

“He’s weak, passive and ruled by his insecurities,” he said. “We have all fallen for the oldest ruse in the book: The more insecure the person is, the more narcissistic he is.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/0 ... du45fPZaAE

[Tero]

Those maps of states put Mi as undecided, but it never looked like he was going to win it again. IOr was it wisconsin?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epoll ... -6761.html

Wisconsin looks the same:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epoll ... -6849.html

Wisconsin called as tossup
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/03/89720235 ... -270-votes

[Scot Dutchy]

Trump will win. Simple. In a land that is so corrupt, easy peasy.