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La france bonapartiste wrote:Isn't that what insurance is for?

Not everyone has it, those who do have it still often have copays, and job losses remain an issue.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

This is just extremely sexist and chauvinistic thinking. Against both women and men. Men and women are equal, and should share equal responsibility. I think it's false to say that one wants to engage in sexual intercourse more than the other.

Equal does not mean identical-obviously not, given that men and women literally have differences in genetic makeup, those differences lead to differences in hormone production, and for men, that means a stronger sex drive, something virtually universally attested to.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15327957PSPR0503_5

Across many different studies and measures, men have been shown to have more frequent and more intense sexual desires than women, as reflected in spontaneous thoughts about sex, frequency and variety of sexual fantasies, desired frequency of intercourse, desired number of partners, liking for various sexual practices, willingness to forego sex, initiating versus refusing sex, making sacrifices for sex, and other measures. No contrary findings (indicating stronger sexual motivation among women) were found

It's not 'sexist and chauvinistic', it's biology. Men and women are plainly different in a number of different ways, and this is one of them.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Wrong; mutual mistake of fact is a defense plainly distinct from fraud.

I won't pretend to be the expert on the minutiae of those definitions, but it should be quite obvious regardless of what terms are used that your examples of outright lying about something in a contract are far different from accepting the known risk of pregnancy.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

This is also clearly false. Men don't always go in with no warranty. Often they have every assurance to the contrary. Not always--sometimes it's just assumed--but oftentimes they ask and get an answer that turns out to be false, unbeknownst to both parties.

There's no universal assurance that can be given. Even assuming that a large number of cases involve false assurances, and I would put those at a distinct minority, even if she says "I'm on the pill", you're still going in with the conscious risk of a failure of birth control, and assuming that risk by proceeding.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

You're once again acting like you've never met another, living-breathing human being before.

Self-justifying teenagers aside, I don't think most living and breathing human beings would say, if they're being honest with themselves, that getting to the amnesia level of blackout drunk is a responsible decision.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

That is the legal definition of an accident, yes.

No, but intercourse and conception are two completely different (if sometimes interrelated) processes. It is perfectly common for conception to be both unintended and unexpected.

No, they're really not. You can't get conception without intercourse, and all intercourse (by the reproductive definition) carries the possibility of conception. Far from being completely different, they are inextricably tied together, about as closely as you can get.

Horatius Cocles, Phydios, and Lagrodia

La france bonapartiste wrote:And this is why I think it's foolish to count Trump out before the contest has even started. National polls mean nothing, and state polls are wildly inconsistent. In a state-by-state contest in the electoral college, with high turnout on his side and lowish turnout for the anti-black Biden/Kamala ticket, I think you can't just look at Trump's twitter account and assume he's the underdog. He's got incumbent advantage, money out the wazoo, a combative campaigning style, a strong ground team built up over four years, and a team of opponents unintentionally doing everything in their power to help him. Trump on the campaign trail is much stronger than Trump in a press conference arguing with reporters over face masks.

National polls should be lightly weighed at this point, but are not useless, and the inconsistency in state polls still shows a clear trend towards a Biden advantage. Turnout in 2018 was almost unimaginably high (really something that I think is worthy of more discussion, it went from 36 to over 50, compared to 40 in 2010), and that was for Trump as a spectre rather than the man himself, I think it's self-delusion to think that people will not be pouring to the polls to vote against him. Even if one wanted to take things to an incredible extreme, and say that every single Democratic black voter stays home, the turnout boost among other races alone would still see the Democratic turnout in 2018 midterms swamp any other year in recent history.

I expect that the gap will start to close, but Trump has been the single most consistently unpopular President in modern American history, and has had the economic strength that was really his main hope for survival utterly destroyed by COVID. Whether or not one blames him or outside forces for that does not matter, blaming the dismal approval ratings on a hostile media (and it certainly has been hostile) does not mean that media coverage will turn to flowers and butterscotch. Wherever the finger is pointed, what matters is what it is pointing at, that the Trump administration has by all indications failed to win the support of near enough of the American people relative to those who despise it to have anything more than an outside chance.

United massachusetts

Roborian wrote:Of course it's Kamala.

Uggggggghhh.

Worst timeline.

He should have picked Tammy Duckworth.

United massachusetts wrote:He should have picked Tammy Duckworth.

Ugh, technically better, but not a fan. Have had plenty of experience with her and not much of it puts her beyond largely self-serving politicking in my opinion.

I have a particular animus towards people who try to spin up political favor out of military service (Applies to the GOP as well), most particularly when it is used for a plainly-stated lie, as she has in decrying "Assault rifles"-and now just going out of her way to double down on lies 'even the military doesn't provide our troops with automatic weapons.' Any sympathy you get for service gets flipped into the negative category if you use it to make deliberately and knowingly false claims for political purposes. Politicizing it for self-promotion is one thing, using it to lie when you know you're lying is quite another.

She'd still be better than Harris, hard to be worse, and at least she makes overtures to moderacy, but I wouldn't clap for that pick either.

Phydios and Lagrodia

La france bonapartiste

Roborian wrote:Equal does not mean identical-obviously not, given that men and women literally have differences in genetic makeup, those differences lead to differences in hormone production, and for men, that means a stronger sex drive, something virtually universally attested to.

The law is blind. It cannot recognize such distinctions.

Roborian wrote:I won't pretend to be the expert on the minutiae of those definitions, but it should be quite obvious regardless of what terms are used that your examples of outright lying about something in a contract are far different from accepting the known risk of pregnancy.

Mistakes of fact are not lies. They are mistakes. Just because someone gave you a warranty that turned out to be false does not mean they did so knowingly.

Roborian wrote:Even assuming that a large number of cases involve false assurances, and I would put those at a distinct minority, even if she says "I'm on the pill", you're still going in with the conscious risk of a failure of birth control, and assuming that risk by proceeding.

I'm not sure I agree with that assessment; I think reasonable minds can disagree to what extent a man knowingly encounters a foreseeable risk when he is told, point blank, there is no risk. Words have to have consequences.

Roborian wrote:Self-justifying teenagers aside, I don't think most living and breathing human beings would say, if they're being honest with themselves, that getting to the amnesia level of blackout drunk is a responsible decision.

Responsible and possible are two different things.

Roborian wrote:No, they're really not. You can't get conception without intercourse, and all intercourse (by the reproductive definition) carries the possibility of conception. Far from being completely different, they are inextricably tied together, about as closely as you can get.

Except they're not. You can have sexual intercourse and have 0% chance of impregnation. That doesn't sound like inextricable to me. If that were the case, birth control would be worthless.

La france bonapartiste wrote:Yes, but nowhere to post it, unless I make a dedicated factbook on my country. I also wanted to get a few more people on it, because right now it's just 3.

I still have the old RTL one on my country page (although the image links have expired). There's no reason not to make one on yours, and you at least can make the thread on the offsite forums. If it's a province map, I want to see the provinces I can request, and how many we are allowed to have.

Right to Life Main Roleplay Map:

Right to Life World Province Roleplay Map:

To request regional map space, please Linkmake a request on this thread to Cartographer Imperii Ecclesia and Founder Culture of Life. If they both find your request to be reasonable and if you have been a member of Right to Life's offsite forums for at least one month, your nation will be added, and ₤5 will be charged to your regional bank account. You may view our previous regional maps here: Stellonia and Mandatory Fun.

Read factbook

La france bonapartiste wrote:The law is blind. It cannot recognize such distinctions.

I'm aware that you oppose this policy, but policy absolutely does take into account differences between the sexes, exemplified best in the basic fact that men have to register for the draft while women do not, Rostker v. Goldberg. I'm certainly up for having a more philosophical debate on that question, but going back to the whole matter of what practically is the case, the law has had its eyes open to sex throughout American history.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Mistakes of fact are not lies. They are mistakes. Just because someone gave you a warranty that turned out to be false does not mean they did so knowingly.

I feel like most people aren't oblivious enough to knowingly sell a house without insulation while claiming it has it. Regardless, in both examples, whether with intent or without, we've got situations in which the buyer is doing a pretty bad job of 'measure twice, cut once' in blindly stumbling into purchases.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I'm not sure I agree with that assessment; I think reasonable minds can disagree to what extent a man knowingly encounters a foreseeable risk when he is told, point blank, there is no risk. Words have to have consequences.

In a vacuum, I could agree with that, if we're talking about entering into a situation with no foreknowledge, but we're talking about something that virtually everyone in America has at least basic knowledge of, that sex is reproductive, and that no birth control is universally effective, you'd really have to hunt pretty far and wide to find someone living under a rock who's unaware of those fairly basic pieces of knowledge.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Responsible and possible are two different things.

Oh, absolutely possible, I don't disagree with that, I was just saying that if you've gotten yourself into that situation, you've been making mistakes that are on your own head.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Except they're not. You can have sexual intercourse and have 0% chance of impregnation. That doesn't sound like inextricable to me. If that were the case, birth control would be worthless.

No, you can't. There is literally no form of birth control with a perfect success rate. Obviously it's not useless if it is not perfect, it simply mitigates the risk rather than eliminating it, same as basically every kind of safety feature or precaution.

La france bonapartiste

Roborian wrote:[. . .]and the inconsistency in state polls still shows a clear trend towards a Biden advantage.

Not when you weigh the sampling data honestly; and even then, that generalization is a few weeks out of date.

Roborian wrote:Turnout in 2018 was almost unimaginably high (really something that I think is worthy of more discussion, it went from 36 to over 50, compared to 40 in 2010), and that was for Trump as a spectre rather than the man himself[. . .]

As I've said before, it's illogical to think that Trump's presidency was worse than people expected, and after four years, I think the anecdotes of people who voted for him the first time and now won't are overstated, just like they were with Obama. Him being an unknown quantity was a disadvantage, one that has now been replaced by the incumbent advantage.

Roborian wrote:[. . .]I think it's self-delusion to think that people will not be pouring to the polls to vote against him.

And I think it's self-delusion to think that people won't be pouring out to vote for him. Everything Trump has predicted about the left, from the police and law and order, to wokeness in sports and corporate politics, to foreign policy, has proven true. People who are angry about the lockdowns and riots are not going to vote for Biden. Trump is their only outlet. As people begin to realize who exactly Biden is (or rather, who he isn't), you're going to see those numbers for Biden fake. Very few if any contenders maintain their spring/summer advantage; the race always tightens up the closer you get to the election.

Roborian wrote:Even if one wanted to take things to an incredible extreme, and say that every single Democratic black voter stays home, the turnout boost among other races alone would still see the Democratic turnout in 2018 midterms swamp any other year in recent history.

This is statistically false. Trump is already outperforming his own record high numbers in 2016 with blacks and latinos.

Roborian wrote:I expect that the gap will start to close, but Trump has been the single most consistently unpopular President in modern American history[. . .]

According to polls which are controlled by his enemies and oversample Democrats.

Roborian wrote:[. . .]and has had the economic strength that was really his main hope for survival utterly destroyed by COVID.

Yet according to those same polls you love so much, a majority of Americans do not blame him for the downturn. It's true it's a big advantage he lost, but he's gained others in its place.

Roborian wrote:[. . .]that the Trump administration has by all indications failed to win the support of near enough of the American people relative to those who despise it to have anything more than an outside chance.

This is so incredibly off-based you don't even know. Even though you acknowledge the media is biased, you've let it poison your perspective, and I think you will be surprised how wrong you were. Unfortunately with someone who has their head this far buried in the sand, I can't really argue facts, I'll just have to wait for you to be proven wrong. But you sound like Bill Kristol or George Will 2.0. One of these sanctimonious "true conservatives" who are so out-of-touch with real people that they cannot even begin to understand Trump's appeal. I am more confidant today in my predictions than ever. The worst person Biden could have put on his ticket was Harris.

La france bonapartiste

Imperii Ecclesia wrote:I still have the old RTL one on my country page (although the image links have expired). There's no reason not to make one on yours, and you at least can make the thread on the offsite forums. If it's a province map, I want to see the provinces I can request, and how many we are allowed to have.

Right to Life Main Roleplay Map:

Right to Life World Province Roleplay Map:

To request regional map space, please Linkmake a request on this thread to Cartographer Imperii Ecclesia and Founder Culture of Life. If they both find your request to be reasonable and if you have been a member of Right to Life's offsite forums for at least one month, your nation will be added, and ₤5 will be charged to your regional bank account. You may view our previous regional maps here: Stellonia and Mandatory Fun.

Read factbook

That's an interesting map, looks vaguely like HoI2.

I will try to upload a map asap. Unfortunately the 12,000 province map I had made was lost, and there are too many provinces for me to fill in for me to remake it, so I'm using a simpler one.

La france bonapartiste

Roborian wrote:I'm aware that you oppose this policy, but policy absolutely does take into account differences between the sexes, exemplified best in the basic fact that men have to register for the draft while women do not, Rostker v. Goldberg. I'm certainly up for having a more philosophical debate on that question, but going back to the whole matter of what practically is the case, the law has had its eyes open to sex throughout American history.

As I mentioned earlier, this is an outdated and sexist rule that is likely (or at least hopefully) to be resolved soon. The problem is that the draft is not active and therefore there's been little opportunity for it to be adjudicated.

Roborian wrote:I feel like most people aren't oblivious enough to knowingly sell a house without insulation while claiming it has it.

You have such forgiving view of mankind I'm tempted to call you Montesquieu.

Roborian wrote:Regardless, in both examples, whether with intent or without, we've got situations in which the buyer is doing a pretty bad job of 'measure twice, cut once' in blindly stumbling into purchases.

The law still favors people who are in an inferior position of knowledge. You can't always necessarily inspect a house thoroughly before you buy it (though it's considered good practice, you also don't have to and you'd be surprised how often people don't), and you can't exactly "inspect" someone to see if they're really on birth control or not. At some points, you just have to take the "expert's" word for it.

Roborian wrote:In a vacuum, I could agree with that, if we're talking about entering into a situation with no foreknowledge, but we're talking about something that virtually everyone in America has at least basic knowledge of, that sex is reproductive, and that no birth control is universally effective, you'd really have to hunt pretty far and wide to find someone living under a rock who's unaware of those fairly basic pieces of knowledge.

People know that "birth control isn't 100%" but they also don't know that doesn't always mean it's just 99% effective. Again, I think you're giving most people too much credit. Not to be dismissive to the Average Joe, but remember the average IQ is 100.

Roborian wrote:No, you can't. There is literally no form of birth control with a perfect success rate. Obviously it's not useless if it is not perfect, it simply mitigates the risk rather than eliminating it, same as basically every kind of safety feature or precaution.

(Jack Sparrow voice): "*finger to chin*...I've heard of one...supposed to be very effective, nigh infallible...the pull-out method."

La france bonapartiste

Right to Life map

by La france bonapartiste

Read factbook

I don't know how to make it bigger; as to the quality, remember that it's a work in progress.

La france bonapartiste wrote:Not when you weigh the sampling data honestly; and even then, that generalization is a few weeks out of date.

It's not as if there is only one organization conducting all of these polls, even groups such as Rasmussen, which tend to show more conservative outcomes, are showing a Biden advantage.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

As I've said before, it's illogical to think that Trump's presidency was worse than people expected, and after four years, I think the anecdotes of people who voted for him the first time and now won't are overstated, just like they were with Obama. Him being an unknown quantity was a disadvantage, one that has now been replaced by the incumbent advantage.

I'd challenge that claim-when running following a two-term President, the newcomer tends to have an advantage, not a disadvantage, H.W. Bush was the only guy to win a third term for his party since FDR's nonsense. I do agree that incumbency does tend to be an advantage, but I would not rate it any higher than the edge Trump already had in 2016, more Presidents have lost after one term than parties have taken the White House for three in a row.

I don't think the reason he's likely to lose is people moving away from him in any case, I generally agree that those anecdotes are somewhat overstated, I think it is primarily going to be people who skipped out on Clinton's lower-turnout campaign in 2016 and are coming back to vote in 2020.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

And I think it's self-delusion to think that people won't be pouring out to vote for him. Everything Trump has predicted about the left, from the police and law and order, to wokeness in sports and corporate politics, to foreign policy, has proven true. People who are angry about the lockdowns and riots are not going to vote for Biden. Trump is their only outlet. As people begin to realize who exactly Biden is (or rather, who he isn't), you're going to see those numbers for Biden fake. Very few if any contenders maintain their spring/summer advantage; the race always tightens up the closer you get to the election.

Unfortunately, hitting the nail on the head in predicting where your opponents are going to go does not always translate to the political advantage that it ought to. During the debates around the time of Obergefell conservatives were consistently predicting, correctly, that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to Christian businesses facing government action and loss of conscience rights. It happened just as predicted, but following the tendency of slippery slopes, it did not change anything, as the line changes from "That'll never happen" to "Well, you deserve it." Just look at how seamlessly the line changed from "No one wants to take your guns!" to "H*ll yes we're going to take your AR-15!", constantly predicted, nothing changed. Trump absolutely was right about things like statues and who the headsman was coming for next, but the tide has not shifted, rather miserably, being right in politics doesn't help much when one does not control the narrative, that's not Trump's fault, but it hurts him all the same.

The race will tighten somewhat, I don't doubt it, but I think the idea that voters en masse are going to 'see who Biden is' is a fantasy. Most have either already rationalized his failings, or are so against Trump that they'd be willing to pull the lever for a reanimated Stalin, or they just aren't paying enough attention to his failings that are so little reported-on. COVID had given Biden the insane advantage of simply being allowed to disappear without consequence, Americans aren't going to get to see who he is before the election because they aren't going to get to see him before the election.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

This is statistically false. Trump is already outperforming his own record high numbers in 2016 with blacks and latinos.

Those numbers aren't dependent on Trump's polling, unless you're actually going to argue that he's going to win a majority of the black vote.

Also, "record high"? Trump's numbers with black voters were literally the lowest in modern GOP history for any candidate not running against Obama. W. beat him, Dole beat him, H.W. beat him both times, including a three-way race, and so did Reagan and Ford.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

According to polls which are controlled by his enemies and oversample Democrats.

Is Fox News really an 'enemy' of Trump?

I'm assuming you might say that elements within it are opposed to him, at which point you get to the point where the conspiracy argument against him (conspiracy, not conspiracy theory) means that it does not even particularly matter if the polls are slanted, because there is such fundamental opposition to him among all corners that he's no chance of actually breaking through with his message regardless.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Yet according to those same polls you love so much, a majority of Americans do not blame him for the downturn. It's true it's a big advantage he lost, but he's gained others in its place.

And a substantial majority disapprove of his handling of COVID. He can try to pin riots and radicalism on Biden, but it's hard to spin the pandemic as something that has not hurt him, most polls still show majority support for the protests/riots, which is his only real area for growth when he's taking hits from both the economic downturn and the pandemic itself.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

This is so incredibly off-based you don't even know. Even though you acknowledge the media is biased, you've let it poison your perspective, and I think you will be surprised how wrong you were. Unfortunately with someone who has their head this far buried in the sand, I can't really argue facts, I'll just have to wait for you to be proven wrong. But you sound like Bill Kristol or George Will 2.0. One of these sanctimonious "true conservatives" who are so out-of-touch with real people that they cannot even begin to understand Trump's appeal. I am more confidant today in my predictions than ever. The worst person Biden could have put on his ticket was Harris.

I can never meet enough 'real people' to get a representative idea of how the country is going to vote, and it's the rare person that's spending their time flying from Florida to Ohio to Arizona to Pennsylvania to suss out how the real people think around there. I don't deny that Trump has appeal. I understand some of it, I don't claim perfection in being able to explain all of it, but that he has a base that's eager to vote for him isn't something I deny-rather, the matter is that the bulk of the people who are eager to vote against him is a larger one. George Will and Bill Kristol are jumping ship to try to sweep Democrats into power. I very much want to see the GOP win, I would love to have your confidence-I just don't see it happening.

I heard the same kind of lines before the 2018 midterm, that the polls were out of touch with the real people, that a silent majority supported the President, that the caravan would swing a red wave, that it would be like 2016 all over again. It didn't happen, and people scrambled to pin blame on someone besides the President who still has, across four years, never managed to break through 50% approval, first President since we started polling for that to happen. I'm sure there'll be plenty to lay blame on in 2020, but I can't say I see something different happening.

La france bonapartiste wrote:As I mentioned earlier, this is an outdated and sexist rule that is likely (or at least hopefully) to be resolved soon. The problem is that the draft is not active and therefore there's been little opportunity for it to be adjudicated.

I assume you're aware of this, but it does have a federal court ruling against it as of last year, which is interesting.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

You have such forgiving view of mankind I'm tempted to call you Montesquieu.

Hey, I rather like Montesquieu!

Though I have to say that this is the first time in a while that I've been called out for not being cynical enough rather than the opposite (as the other discussion shows)

La france bonapartiste wrote:

The law still favors people who are in an inferior position of knowledge. You can't always necessarily inspect a house thoroughly before you buy it (though it's considered good practice, you also don't have to and you'd be surprised how often people don't), and you can't exactly "inspect" someone to see if they're really on birth control or not. At some points, you just have to take the "expert's" word for it.

Agreed, but as I have said earlier, even if one knows for a fact that the other person is on birth control, they are still taking a definite and accepted risk.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

People know that "birth control isn't 100%" but they also don't know that doesn't always mean it's just 99% effective. Again, I think you're giving most people too much credit. Not to be dismissive to the Average Joe, but remember the average IQ is 100.

Oh darn, and here I thought I was real impressive because I got a perfect 100 as my score!

-

I do think that there are a fair number of people who overestimate the effectiveness of birth control, but that they are mentally minimizing a risk does not mean that they are not accepting it, any more than people who convince themselves that they'll never get lung cancer while smoking a pack a day.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

(Jack Sparrow voice): "*finger to chin*...I've heard of one...supposed to be very effective, nigh infallible...the pull-out method."

Maybe a suboptimal source for well-reasoned decisions.

I find it odd people call Kamala Harris a "female Obama." She really isn't. Every time I watched the debates her personality grated on me more than anyone else's, and that's saying something. Obama is likable even when you don't like him. There's a reason she polled badly in the primaries.

Lagrodia

La france bonapartiste

Roborian wrote:It's not as if there is only one organization conducting all of these polls, even groups such as Rasmussen, which tend to show more conservative outcomes, are showing a Biden advantage.

Statewide polls are a totally different animal, and often use less effective methodologies, often run by smaller polling firms, and often use smaller sample sizes. At least two of these apply to Rasmussen state polls, which usually partner with local polling firms and use very small sample sizes (~750). I haven't gone through the machinery of Rasmussen polls to know what their methodologies are like.

Roborian wrote:I'd challenge that claim-when running following a two-term President, the newcomer tends to have an advantage, not a disadvantage, H.W. Bush was the only guy to win a third term for his party since FDR's nonsense. I do agree that incumbency does tend to be an advantage, but I would not rate it any higher than the edge Trump already had in 2016, more Presidents have lost after one term than parties have taken the White House for three in a row.

That would seem to run against your argument though, since how often (Carter, I guess?) does a party win the White House, and then immediately lose it?

Roborian wrote:I don't think the reason he's likely to lose is people moving away from him in any case, I generally agree that those anecdotes are somewhat overstated, I think it is primarily going to be people who skipped out on Clinton's lower-turnout campaign in 2016 and are coming back to vote in 2020.

Yes, because people who didn't vote for Hillary are TOTALLY excited about Biden/Kamala...

Roborian wrote:Trump absolutely was right about things like statues and who the headsman was coming for next, but the tide has not shifted, rather miserably, being right in politics doesn't help much when one does not control the narrative, that's not Trump's fault, but it hurts him all the same.

The difference being same-sex marriage does not impact people's lives the way that roving bands of rioting statue-toppling bandits do. The total mayhem of the 1972 election definitely helped Nixon and his "law and order" platform, and Nixon was not very controversial also.

Roborian wrote:The race will tighten somewhat, I don't doubt it, but I think the idea that voters en masse are going to 'see who Biden is' is a fantasy.

He's been hiding in a basement for 5 months, to think they know anything about him, when he was mostly ignored and denigrated in his own primary, is laughable.

Roborian wrote:Most have either already rationalized his failings, or are so against Trump that they'd be willing to pull the lever for a reanimated Stalin[. . .]

I really don't think such an assessment is based in fact. He's been in hiding and his numbers are already starting to come down. Give it time. He's not ready for prime time, and as the conversation shifts from Trump's handling of the coronavirus to the election, people are going to be giving him a lot more scrutiny. And remember, as I said, it's about turnout, not popularity. As much as you think people will vote against Trump, that didn't happen in 2016 when he was basically painted as the Boogeyman. Now he's just some guy that people think is either a) dumb or b) annoying. That's hardly a reason to go out and vote. The only way that Biden can win is if they mysteriously "find" votes in unmarked vans as they so often do in big cities.

Roborian wrote:Those numbers aren't dependent on Trump's polling, unless you're actually going to argue that he's going to win a majority of the black vote.

He doesn't need to win. Biden just has to underperform.

Roborian wrote:Also, "record high"? Trump's numbers with black voters were literally the lowest in modern GOP history for any candidate not running against Obama. W. beat him, Dole beat him, H.W. beat him both times, including a three-way race, and so did Reagan and Ford.

An eight year record is still a record, especially considering that, if what you say is true and Trump is such an evil boogeyman for anyone, how could he possibly have higher numbers than McCain or Romney. Second, the Democratic coalition is much different than it was even during the Bush era. The Democrats have abandoned rural and working class voters and have fled to the cities, which is a losing strategy. They are more reliant on the minority vote now than they ever have, and Trump is outperforming his contemporaries on this front, largely because of historically low minority unemployment and his strong immigration platform, which is popular with minorities, even latinos despite the media's blatantly racist portrayal of latinos as all pro-mass migration.

Roborian wrote:Is Fox News really an 'enemy' of Trump?

I would put "absolutely" in all caps, but I feel like that wouldn't really get the point across. Not are they one of his biggest enemies, I would argue they are the biggest enemy he has. And why? Because they represent a group of people with even more incentive to see him lose than the Democrats: establishment Republicans. The GOPe desperately wants to reclaim control over its party, whereas Democrats can campaign and grow rich off of the constant anti-Trump coverage. Fox is the one-stop pro-free trade, pro-infinite migration, anti-worker network.

Roborian wrote:I'm assuming you might say that elements within it are opposed to him, at which point you get to the point where the conspiracy argument against him (conspiracy, not conspiracy theory) means that it does not even particularly matter if the polls are slanted, because there is such fundamental opposition to him among all corners that he's no chance of actually breaking through with his message regardless.

Not true, because he controls the news cycle in ways that benefit him, as he has for 5 years. When they try to hurt him, they overplay their hands and end up hurting themselves. For instance when he said Baltimore was filled with vermin, and they shamelessly tried to play a race angle on that comment, until they sent a news reporter to Baltimore to report on what people there thought about his comment, and a rat literally ran across the street behind him, proving Trump's point. The media only knows how to step on rakes. The only instance where he has hurt himself is coronavirus because he's indecisive and hasn't figured out what message he wants to focus on: is it a hoax or is he doing the best job ever? If he had just focused on one it would have been more effective, and people are in a panic, so they're going to listen to arguments he's not doing a good job, even though he's doing more than he should.

Roborian wrote:And a substantial majority disapprove of his handling of COVID. He can try to pin riots and radicalism on Biden, but it's hard to spin the pandemic as something that has not hurt him, most polls still show majority support for the protests/riots, which is his only real area for growth when he's taking hits from both the economic downturn and the pandemic itself.

The polls do not ask people "do you support the riots?" and they say yes. Coronavirus is a fading story, one which the Democrats will desperately try to keep alive, but in their desperation I think their masks will slip--like when Biden people warned people against taking the vaccine. It will become too obvious too quickly what this whole charade has been about.

Roborian wrote:[. . .]rather, the matter is that the bulk of the people who are eager to vote against him is a larger one. George Will and Bill Kristol are jumping ship to try to sweep Democrats into power. I very much want to see the GOP win, I would love to have your confidence-I just don't see it happening.

Votes where people vote against someone else don't work (see 2016). You have to vote for someone and it's not going to happen for Biden. Only a truly spectacular catastrophe could keep Trump from winning. All the models based on primary turnout and enthusiasm which have been correct in every modern election predict he will win, one model by an even wider electoral model. You may not be rooting against him, but you are too pessimistic. You have to look at voting as a dispassionate science; although you may think my confidence comes from bias, the reality is that I'm at least 10x more worried than you are because I haven't given up hope, and I'm more invested. I always look at things critically because I don't want to be bamboozled. Despite my initial reservations, however, everything that has happened over the past few weeks has almost completely reversed my own fears. My confidence is based in logic and not emotion. I'm not saying he's going to sweep, it's definitely going to be a hard-fought contest, but I do think that all objective indicia point towards his victory. I don't go by media hype, I don't go by polls, I also don't rely on the so-called "silent majority", even though I think it exists. There are certain factors which have reliably and consistently predicted the electoral college winner, and that's where the real vote is. If we had a popular vote, it would be a completely different ball game.

Roborian wrote:I heard the same kind of lines before the 2018 midterm, that the polls were out of touch with the real people, that a silent majority supported the President, that the caravan would swing a red wave, that it would be like 2016 all over again. It didn't happen, and people scrambled to pin blame on someone besides the President who still has, across four years, never managed to break through 50% approval, first President since we started polling for that to happen.

Well, you didn't hear those lines from me. I knew the House was on the line, but I also knew that the polls were wrong (which they were). There was no "blue tsunami" and the Democrats' majority is not that large. Apart from the 110th Congress (2007-2009), you have to go back to the 50s to find a majority as small as what the Democrats have now. The Republicans had their largest majority since the 40s. To try and paint the midterms as some sort of landslide victory, when it was really the result of an unprecedented number of anti-Trump retirements handicapping the House race, is ludicrous. And while you may ding Trump for not being very popular, he's also far from the least popular president: both Bushes, Carter, Nixon, Johnson, and Truman all had lower approval ratings than he did at one time or another. Trump's spread is very tight and stable, which is a lot more important a measure of a president's resiliency than how high he can get, and his worst day is no than Reagan was at his nadir. Trump's spread is the tightest since Kennedy, and his "underwater" margin is better than the Bushes, Carter, Nixon, and Truman.

La france bonapartiste

The Gallant Old Republic wrote:I find it odd people call Kamala Harris a "female Obama." She really isn't. Every time I watched the debates her personality grated on me more than anyone else's, and that's saying something. Obama is likable even when you don't like him. There's a reason she polled badly in the primaries.

She literally joked on the radio about doing something she incarcerated 2,000+ people for. And they think her and the guy who helped craft the 90s crime bill is the dynamic duo to run in the year when anti-police riots are wracking the country.

Phydios and Lagrodia

La france bonapartiste

Roborian wrote:I assume you're aware of this, but it does have a federal court ruling against it as of last year, which is interesting.

I had heard of it, yes; that's the case I had in mind.

Roborian wrote:Though I have to say that this is the first time in a while that I've been called out for not being cynical enough rather than the opposite (as the other discussion shows)

There's always someone out there a shade more cynical.

Roborian wrote:Oh darn, and here I thought I was real impressive because I got a perfect 100 as my score!

Cue the sad Spongebob ukulele music.

Roborian wrote:I do think that there are a fair number of people who overestimate the effectiveness of birth control, but that they are mentally minimizing a risk does not mean that they are not accepting it, any more than people who convince themselves that they'll never get lung cancer while smoking a pack a day.

I guess this gets down to the difference between the average person and the reasonable person; but I still feel like your reasonable person is too reasonable.

Roborian wrote:Maybe a suboptimal source for well-reasoned decisions.

Considering Jack Sparrow, on the issue in question, also said "I've never actually been that drunk," I think he's more reasonable a decision-maker than you give him credit for.

Slavic lechia wrote:I have seen the light and I believe now... It's been a long way of pain, but in the end Jesus is the only thing which makes it all make sense... At one point I started reading The Bible and had many questions to Jehovah's Witnesses which they didn't answers accordingly... I turned to Judaism, but was not satisfied with them. In the end I looked into the East, first at Islam which also didn't make sense to me and then to Orthodoxy and it just made sense... It just did... I read some Dogmas on the internet first, then I asked the local priest for conversion but he said "not so quick" and get me in contact with a lesser priest (the lowest in hierarchy, but still clergyman) who is from US interestingly and he gave me some books... I am now in the middle of one of them and many more to go.

I like that Orthodoxy doesn't try to magically connect random prophecies like JWs but rather focuses on their original meaning and on real Christian practice. When I learned the emperor who ordered heretics killed, rather than converted was excommunicated and was the leader of Iconoclasts... I was surprised... Hearing that Saints are what JWs call anointed, but you become a Saint in Heaven and not on Earth by never doubting the teachings also illuminated me. In the end:

I believe in One God, The Father, the almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages.

Light of light, true God of true God, begotten not created, of one essence with the Father, through whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from the heavens and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man.

He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried.

And he arose on the third day according to the Scriptures.

And he ascended into the heavens and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

And he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, as he has spoken through the prophets.

In One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen!

Amen!

Blessed be God forever! I prayed very hard for a long time for you to see the Light of Christ in the Orthodox faith, especially since I was just Confirmed myself last year. Have you been received into the Church yet?

Horatius Cocles and Slavic lechia

La france bonapartiste wrote:The problem here is that all of this is aspirational. In a perfect world, maybe. But that's not how real human beings act in practice. You're not going to be able to go into a pulpit and convince everyone in the world to desist from premarital intercourse and contraception. It's just not going to happen. Even in the most conservative and/or historically Catholic countries in the world (like Ireland, once upon a time) it doesn't happen.

Your argument was that sex/procreation/family life are private acts. I refuted that basic premise, saying that such a mindset inhibits a pro-life position because the "right to privacy" is how legalized abortion got started. You haven't given any counter-point here. Contraception is a major stumbling block because it provides a false aura of risk fee sex, no strings attached. This will always be a failure for the woman esp. since its her body that will bear the physical consequences of such an action, not the man (whether that's STI's, pregnancy, etc.). If the law provides any "bias" towards women, it's in view of the clear biological fact that the burdensome toll of reproduction falls on the woman alone. Physical male contribution towards pregnancy is basically insemination, something that sperm banks and artificial reproductive technology can handle fine. There isn't any "liberation" for men or women with contraception, it's just a nice back up for him to drive her to the abortion clinic after the fact, a nice "cut and run" as mentioned before. And aside from a major contraceptive revolution, most of the older forms (Pill, condom, etc.) are heavily user-dependent therefore prone to real world failure. Condoms can and do break, assuming a man doesn't forget one in the heat of the moment. Same goes for the Pill, actual daily usage is usually spotty on average. So, yes, even in 2020, sex still carries the "risk" of pregnancy as a consequence of sex, since that's the purpose of the act itself.

La france bonapartiste wrote:She literally joked on the radio about doing something she incarcerated 2,000+ people for. And they think her and the guy who helped craft the 90s crime bill is the dynamic duo to run in the year when anti-police riots are wracking the country.

Hence why progressives aren't rallying for the Biden ticket, at best they'll hold their nose so Trump can finally leave in November. Even back when the primaries were in full swing, progressives were ripping into the whole "progressive prosecutor" shtick. Progressive actions aren't natural for Biden, he's much better when projecting himself as a cross the aisle dealmaker, willing to stick to centrism over ideological purity. Only by pushing and shoving from progressive activists will Biden and the aging leadership wake up to any real change, which is desperately needed. Harris' pick is a conventional choice in a way: She's decades younger, isn't a fire-brand progressive like Warren, and benefits from being female and non-white in a Party that is supported greatly by women and non-whites.

The Gallant Old Republic wrote:I find it odd people call Kamala Harris a "female Obama." She really isn't. Every time I watched the debates her personality grated on me more than anyone else's, and that's saying something. Obama is likable even when you don't like him. There's a reason she polled badly in the primaries.

I wouldn't say she's a female Obama at all, though I admit that likability isn't something that works in female politicians' favor. The whole warm/must be unintelligent or cold/competent stuff. Heck, Warren had to be called "schoolmarmish" and Hillary became "Shillary" every time she landed her punch against an opponent. So, I'm not going to give "likability" that much weight. Plus, this is a conservative region by and large, the Democratic ticket would be a tough sell here regardless of VP pick.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

He's been hiding in a basement for 5 months, to think they know anything about him, when he was mostly ignored and denigrated in his own primary, is laughable.

I really don't think such an assessment is based in fact. He's been in hiding and his numbers are already starting to come down. Give it time. He's not ready for prime time, and as the conversation shifts from Trump's handling of the coronavirus to the election, people are going to be giving him a lot more scrutiny. And remember, as I said, it's about turnout, not popularity. As much as you think people will vote against Trump, that didn't happen in 2016 when he was basically painted as the Boogeyman. Now he's just some guy that people think is either a) dumb or b) annoying. That's hardly a reason to go out and vote. The only way that Biden can win is if they mysteriously "find" votes in unmarked vans as they so often do in big cities.

He doesn't need to win. Biden just has to underperform.

An eight year record is still a record, especially considering that, if what you say is true and Trump is such an evil boogeyman for anyone, how could he possibly have higher numbers than McCain or Romney. Second, the Democratic coalition is much different than it was even during the Bush era. The Democrats have abandoned rural and working class voters and have fled to the cities, which is a losing strategy. They are more reliant on the minority vote now than they ever have, and Trump is outperforming his contemporaries on this front, largely because of historically low minority unemployment and his strong immigration platform, which is popular with minorities, even latinos despite the media's blatantly racist portrayal of latinos as all pro-mass migration.

Coronavirus is a fading story, one which the Democrats will desperately try to keep alive, but in their desperation I think their masks will slip--like when Biden people warned people against taking the vaccine. It will become too obvious too quickly what this whole charade has been about.

Votes where people vote against someone else don't work (see 2016). You have to vote for someone and it's not going to happen for Biden. Only a truly spectacular catastrophe could keep Trump from winning. All the models based on primary turnout and enthusiasm which have been correct in every modern election predict he will win, one model by an even wider electoral model. You may not be rooting against him, but you are too pessimistic. You have to look at voting as a dispassionate science; although you may think my confidence comes from bias, the reality is that I'm at least 10x more worried than you are because I haven't given up hope, and I'm more invested. I always look at things critically because I don't want to be bamboozled. Despite my initial reservations, however, everything that has happened over the past few weeks has almost completely reversed my own fears. My confidence is based in logic and not emotion. I'm not saying he's going to sweep, it's definitely going to be a hard-fought contest, but I do think that all objective indicia point towards his victory. I don't go by media hype, I don't go by polls, I also don't rely on the so-called "silent majority", even though I think it exists. There are certain factors which have reliably and consistently predicted the electoral college winner, and that's where the real vote is. If we had a popular vote, it would be a completely different ball game.

Biden still maintains good ratings in the Democratic base, and he's popular enough for most mainstream Dems. I think the idea that people don't know about him is silly, the former veep has plenty of name recognition. I also think you're discounting Biden quite a bit, people will be voting for Biden and not just against Trump. Granted, hard core progressives might see it as an anti-Trump vote primarily, but progressives aren't the only voting bloc in the Party. Plenty of people would like to see a Biden agenda enacting over Trump's. That said, our system is totally geared for gumming up the works and stopping structural change from happening (Hello Senate, filibuster and electoral college!) There's definite enthusiasm for Trump to be gone in November, even if Biden is an imperfect vessel for that enthusiasm, he's what we have to work with here and now. Sure, working class votes aren't the easiest thing for the modern Democratic party to get, but advancing a pro-worker agenda like Bernie's or Elizabeth's would sure help.

Coronavirus is lived reality, not a fading story. I don't know what it's like where you are, but here, the ICU's are overflowing, going to work isn't a piece of cake, infection rates are rising and Fauci is still trying like mad for everyone to take this seriously. The idea that the vaccine will be a magic bullet that will let us all come back to normal only shows how people don't understand how long it takes for a reliable and tested vaccine to be a reality. It's certainly not Russia's vaccine, which isn't even in phase three, has no clinical data to back it up, and isn't verified by any medical testing that it works and won't gravely sicken people instead.

Phydios and Lagrodia

La france bonapartiste wrote:Yes, but failing that, I'm the only one who seems willing to address the inequality by giving men a similar eject button. Somebody earlier said that with no promise of financial support that would just encourage more abortions, but that doesn't work for 2 reasons: 1) adoption exists and invalidates all economic or personal excuses for abortion; 2) perhaps if women knew that they had no promise of financial support, they wouldn't put themselves in the positions of becoming unintended mothers in the first place. You say having that on the table makes men more cautious, well the opposite is also true, that it must logically make women less cautious, so it cancels itself out. Only the alternative that is fairest, therefore, is viable.

This actually happens all the time in contract law. If you're selling me a house, and you tell me the house is fully insulated, and I buy it and find out, wait, no, it isn't insulated, then your mistake of substantive fact absolves me of my obligation to you. Likewise if you tell me that the a/c works in my car, then I find out it doesn't turn on. I'm taking that car back to the dealership.

Not if he doesn't remember the event in question, or he was assured she was on birth control. Accidents happen. "Sex makes babies" doesn't really cut it. This isn't the Stone Age.

1 and 2. Adoption requires that the birth mother be willing to go through nine months and labor/delivery. Not always the case. Plus, the cost of adoption is prohibitive, which is why forcing the cost to go down would actually help reduce abortion rates.

https://www.adoptuskids.org/adoption-and-foster-care/overview/what-does-it-cost#:~:text=Other%20types%20of%20adoption%20usually,the%20prospective%20adoptive%20parent's%20income.

Aside from foster care adoptions, here's an excerpt: "According to Child Welfare Information Gateway, working with a private agency to adopt a healthy newborn or baby or to adopt from another country can cost $5,000 to $40,000. Some agencies have a sliding scale based on the prospective adoptive parent’s income. The cost of working with an attorney and not involving an agency may range from $8,000 to $40,000 and averages $10,000 to $15,000."

Compare that with the average abortion cost in my state (Texas): https://www.aclutx.org/en/know-you-rights/abortion-in-Texas#:~:text=The%20cost%20of%20an%20abortion,%241%2C500%20for%20a%20procedure%20abortion.

"The cost of an abortion varies depending on several factors including how far along you are in your pregnancy and which abortion provider and method you choose. The cost in the first trimester is between $300 and $800 for a medication abortion and between $300 and $1,500 for a procedure abortion."

It's relatively easier to get that kind of money rather than assume people have thousands of dollars sitting around for potential adoptions. Also, re: "financial support" plenty of married couples get abortions to, and two-income situations are the norm as it is. So, financial support would be there in that case, there's other reasons for why they would be wanting an abortion.

3. If the guy doesn't remember the event, he's likely way too intoxicated and opening himself up for possible legal charges as well, depending on the consent for sexual activity on both sides. If you're that drunk, should you really be trying to have sex at that point? As mentioned in previous post, contraception doesn't fully eliminate risk, it can only reduce the likelihood of the natural consequence of sex. This also ties in that BC is solely on the woman's shoulders (you didn't mention the guy needing a condom or anything else here), expecting that every woman would like to be/should be on BC, is willing to accept the side effects, etc.

Slavic lechia

Rosa-gallica wrote:Amen!

Blessed be God forever! I prayed very hard for a long time for you to see the Light of Christ in the Orthodox faith, especially since I was just Confirmed myself last year. Have you been received into the Church yet?

Not yet. I am recieving catechism for now and the priest tells me to be patient, so I am...

Thank you for the prayers! I have a small problem as Jehovah's Witnesses shun their members who leave and I am facing loosing contact with all people I knew that are JWs including friends and falimy... So that's a problem... Other than that I believe in the apostolic faith and I can't pretend to be a JW qnymore like I did since last year...

Horatius Cocles and Rosa-gallica

Slavic lechia wrote:And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of life, who proceeds from the Father

and the Son

;)

Lagrodia wrote:and the Son

;)

lol, though our fellow Eastern Catholics pray the Creed that way too.

Horatius Cocles wrote:lol, though our fellow Eastern Catholics pray the Creed that way too.

Indeed, the difference between proceeds through and proceeds from a single source.

United massachusetts wrote:He should have picked Tammy Duckworth.

Louis Armstrong is not a dead traitor.

The Gallant Old Republic wrote:I find it odd people call Kamala Harris a "female Obama." She really isn't. Every time I watched the debates her personality grated on me more than anyone else's, and that's saying something. Obama is likable even when you don't like him. There's a reason she polled badly in the primaries.

Horatius Cocles is right that “likability” works against women. But I think this particular point is correct. Obama could be funny, regardless of what side of the aisle you were on. Kamala Harris’ sense of humor is racist stereotypes of her heritage that her own father has to distance himself from.

I don’t find it’s as much of a problem with Republican women (although Carly Fiorina tapped into Amy Klobuchar energy with her suburban mom jokes), but I find very few Democrats funny in the first place. Even Bernie, who I like, is not remotely funny (although I don’t think he’s so serious he can’t laugh at a good joke).

Obama at least used to be a very good politician. He was so charismatic he could always mask his true intentions. The Democratic Party, by and large, has abandoned even that facade. They’re just blatantly donor-driven and corrupt.

The Gallant Old Republic wrote:I find it odd people call Kamala Harris a "female Obama." She really isn't. Every time I watched the debates her personality grated on me more than anyone else's, and that's saying something. Obama is likable even when you don't like him. There's a reason she polled badly in the primaries.

I expect she'll give Obama a run for his money in the kind of media fawning she'll receive, especially if she takes over the big seat.

La france bonapartiste wrote:Statewide polls are a totally different animal, and often use less effective methodologies, often run by smaller polling firms, and often use smaller sample sizes. At least two of these apply to Rasmussen state polls, which usually partner with local polling firms and use very small sample sizes (~750). I haven't gone through the machinery of Rasmussen polls to know what their methodologies are like.

That's to be expected, but it also does not necessarily help. Less consistent methods and smaller sample sizes means you're more likely to see a lot of variance, you may end up with a disproportionately Trump sample, for example, when you're not bringing in as many people, and if the race was quite close, one would expect to see at least a handful of polls showing Trump winning big, but those haven't come about.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

That would seem to run against your argument though, since how often (Carter, I guess?) does a party win the White House, and then immediately lose it?

Carter, yeah, and I would count H.W. towards it, though obviously his situation is obviously a little weirder. It's either 1-to-1 for second-term-loss vs. third-term-win, or 2-to-1.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Yes, because people who didn't vote for Hillary are TOTALLY excited about Biden/Kamala...

They don't need to be, they just need to be ticked off about Trump who, though this feels like a fever dream a lifetime ago, has still been impeached. Whether or not you think that was valid (I actually do not) is ultimately irrelevant, the prime factor is how most Americans saw it through the media lens, a lens that rather heavily one-sided, a huge percentage of Americans still believe in Russian collusion even post-Mueller after three years of wall-to-wall coverage. Anti-Trump Americans are much more motivated against him in 2020 then in 2016.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

The difference being same-sex marriage does not impact people's lives the way that roving bands of rioting statue-toppling bandits do. The total mayhem of the 1972 election definitely helped Nixon and his "law and order" platform, and Nixon was not very controversial also.

I don't know if that was a typo to say that Nixon was not very controversial, but it isn't especially wrong. He was polarizing like most any politician, but very much unlike Trump he kept an approval rating consistently over 50% for basically the entirety of his first term-it never even dipped into the high forties until 1971, and was back up above fifty pretty quickly after. Trump would love to see an approval spike into the high forties.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

He's been hiding in a basement for 5 months, to think they know anything about him, when he was mostly ignored and denigrated in his own primary, is laughable.

That's exactly my point. Right now, Biden is primarily "That guy who was #2 to Obama", and Obama is still popular. As long as Biden can be "That old dude that Obama liked" and not "A senile man trying to beat up voters in between not putting sentences together", he'll win. He wants voters not to know anything about him.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I really don't think such an assessment is based in fact. He's been in hiding and his numbers are already starting to come down. Give it time. He's not ready for prime time, and as the conversation shifts from Trump's handling of the coronavirus to the election, people are going to be giving him a lot more scrutiny. And remember, as I said, it's about turnout, not popularity. As much as you think people will vote against Trump, that didn't happen in 2016 when he was basically painted as the Boogeyman. Now he's just some guy that people think is either a) dumb or b) annoying. That's hardly a reason to go out and vote. The only way that Biden can win is if they mysteriously "find" votes in unmarked vans as they so often do in big cities.

I'm not sure how you can see Trump as somehow being painted less negatively in 2020 than in 2016. In 2016 he got plenty of flak for being controversial, but there was still a fair amount who saw the 'outsider' bit as a possible 'shake things up' chance as you'd expect after two terms of one party, just look at someone like Joe Scarborough playing rather nice with him for much of that year compared to today. In 2020, he's not a blundering businessman, he's (portrayed as) the guy who rigged an election with the help of evil Russia and had to be impeached for doing it again with Ukraine and who will break the entire democratic system of the United States if his corruption is allowed in again.

You acknowledge the media's effect but don't seem to see it. Trump in 2020 doesn't have the "Hey, let's give him a shot" appeal that he had in 2016, and the conception of him among doubters and opponents is undeniably more negative. I don't know how you can say that the left only thinks of Trump as "dumb or annoying", they literally think of him as poised to destroy American democracy.

On Biden, as I said earlier, I think it is wishful thinking that he will get much more scrutiny. Some, sure, and the polls will narrow to some extent as they always do, but the media that actively favors him has little interest in exposing his flaws after their belief that they made Hillary lose by actually occasionally reporting on her scandals, and I expect them to keep pushing out coronavirus news as long as they can. There may not even be debates at this point, Biden is not going to get even a significant fraction of the scrutiny that he would in a normal election year.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

He doesn't need to win. Biden just has to underperform.

Biden doesn't just need to underperform, he needs to somehow follow up the highest midterm turnout for his party in modern American history with numbers coming in below the most consistently unpopular President in modern American history. Underperfoming is not going to cut it, he needs to actively self-destruct and blow up his own campaign. That is possible, especially if we actually have debates, but it's not something to break on.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

An eight year record is still a record, especially considering that, if what you say is true and Trump is such an evil boogeyman for anyone, how could he possibly have higher numbers than McCain or Romney. Second, the Democratic coalition is much different than it was even during the Bush era. The Democrats have abandoned rural and working class voters and have fled to the cities, which is a losing strategy. They are more reliant on the minority vote now than they ever have, and Trump is outperforming his contemporaries on this front, largely because of historically low minority unemployment and his strong immigration platform, which is popular with minorities, even latinos despite the media's blatantly racist portrayal of latinos as all pro-mass migration.

McCain and Romney ran against the first black guy ever to be President, Trump against Hillary and cornbread Kaine. It really is silly to ignore the opponent when, again, every single Republican who ever ran against a white person did better with black voters than Trump.

Minority unemployment is the highest it has ever been since the Great Depression. That's a talking point that doesn't fly anymore. Not that it was not a good one, it had some merit to it-but it's gone, and the forefront of the image of Trump among black voters is now his opposition to taking down Confederate statues and the endless media narrative looking to portray him as racist.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

I would put "absolutely" in all caps, but I feel like that wouldn't really get the point across. Not are they one of his biggest enemies, I would argue they are the biggest enemy he has. And why? Because they represent a group of people with even more incentive to see him lose than the Democrats: establishment Republicans. The GOPe desperately wants to reclaim control over its party, whereas Democrats can campaign and grow rich off of the constant anti-Trump coverage. Fox is the one-stop pro-free trade, pro-infinite migration, anti-worker network.

I feel like we've seeing two vastly different versions of Fox, because the network that I see is one that has been deeply Trumpified over the last few years. Seriously, the face of Fox News today is Tucker Carlson, and I don't know what you're imbibing if you think he's the bastion of pro-infinite migration, the guy is getting sponsored pulled from his show because of anti-immigration comments. Follow that up with Laura "Democrats want to replace Americans with migrants" Ingraham and I don't know where you're coming from.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Not true, because he controls the news cycle in ways that benefit him, as he has for 5 years. When they try to hurt him, they overplay their hands and end up hurting themselves. For instance when he said Baltimore was filled with vermin, and they shamelessly tried to play a race angle on that comment, until they sent a news reporter to Baltimore to report on what people there thought about his comment, and a rat literally ran across the street behind him, proving Trump's point. The media only knows how to step on rakes. The only instance where he has hurt himself is coronavirus because he's indecisive and hasn't figured out what message he wants to focus on: is it a hoax or is he doing the best job ever? If he had just focused on one it would have been more effective, and people are in a panic, so they're going to listen to arguments he's not doing a good job, even though he's doing more than he should.

No-one every sees the correction or the counterpoint, only the initial. If you went around asking people, I'd just about bet money that more had heard about his 'vermin' comments than saw a rat on camera in a follow-up. The media steps on plenty of rakes if you're very politically involved and paying close attention. The overwhelming majority of voters are not.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

The polls do not ask people "do you support the riots?" and they say yes. Coronavirus is a fading story, one which the Democrats will desperately try to keep alive, but in their desperation I think their masks will slip--like when Biden people warned people against taking the vaccine. It will become too obvious too quickly what this whole charade has been about.

A Newsweek poll that literally referenced the burning of the police building in Minneapolis in protest and then asked if they were justified had 54% of people say that they were either fully or partially justified, only 38% said they were not. On both riots and the lockdowns, the numbers in support really grind on me, but they seem to pretty consistently be there.

That the coronavirus shilling did not collapse with the millions of unmasked marchers in the streets shows that it is plenty durable to keep surviving at least through the election.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Votes where people vote against someone else don't work (see 2016). You have to vote for someone and it's not going to happen for Biden. Only a truly spectacular catastrophe could keep Trump from winning. All the models based on primary turnout and enthusiasm which have been correct in every modern election predict he will win, one model by an even wider electoral model. You may not be rooting against him, but you are too pessimistic. You have to look at voting as a dispassionate science; although you may think my confidence comes from bias, the reality is that I'm at least 10x more worried than you are because I haven't given up hope, and I'm more invested. I always look at things critically because I don't want to be bamboozled. Despite my initial reservations, however, everything that has happened over the past few weeks has almost completely reversed my own fears. My confidence is based in logic and not emotion. I'm not saying he's going to sweep, it's definitely going to be a hard-fought contest, but I do think that all objective indicia point towards his victory. I don't go by media hype, I don't go by polls, I also don't rely on the so-called "silent majority", even though I think it exists. There are certain factors which have reliably and consistently predicted the electoral college winner, and that's where the real vote is. If we had a popular vote, it would be a completely different ball game.

2016 is proof that voting against someone else does work, mate. Trump won that election not from support from the people who liked him, only 32% of people said he was "qualified to be President" compared to 46% for Hillary, but because voters who disliked both him and Hillary broke overwhelming for him, he won 66% to 15% among voters who said that neither candidate was qualified. In 2020, that's reversed, and voters who dislike both Trump and Biden are heavily backing Biden. Trump absolutely needed those people to win the election in 2016, and now he does not have them.

I would be interesting to see some of the confident models that you're referencing.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

Well, you didn't hear those lines from me. I knew the House was on the line, but I also knew that the polls were wrong (which they were). There was no "blue tsunami" and the Democrats' majority is not that large. Apart from the 110th Congress (2007-2009), you have to go back to the 50s to find a majority as small as what the Democrats have now. The Republicans had their largest majority since the 40s. To try and paint the midterms as some sort of landslide victory, when it was really the result of an unprecedented number of anti-Trump retirements handicapping the House race, is ludicrous.

Bringing up that the Republicans had their largest majority since the 40s undermines your claim that 2018 was not a banner year for Democrats. Their majority is small because the previous GOP majority was a big one-in terms of the actual number of seats lost, 2018 was the single worst year for the GOP since 1974.

La france bonapartiste wrote:

And while you may ding Trump for not being very popular, he's also far from the least popular president: both Bushes, Carter, Nixon, Johnson, and Truman all had lower approval ratings than he did at one time or another. Trump's spread is very tight and stable, which is a lot more important a measure of a president's resiliency than how high he can get, and his worst day is no than Reagan was at his nadir. Trump's spread is the tightest since Kennedy, and his "underwater" margin is better than the Bushes, Carter, Nixon, and Truman.

I very much disagree with that line of argument, that a tighter spread of approval ratings is somehow better. In a one-on-one election, your ceiling is far more important than your floor. In modern-day America, you're not ever going to see any candidate's vote share fall below the low forties, even if their party nominated a corpse, because there is an immense number of voters on both sides in America that are fundamentally unwilling to vote for the other side no matter who they put up. Trump having a stable approval rating in the low forties does almost nothing for him, he was never going to fall below that number even if he or any other Republican President "shot someone on 5th avenue." Bush's approval fell into the twenties-but if he had run again, he would have broken forty regardless, it's how polarization works.

What the ceiling indicates, higher spikes in approval, is the willingness of people who may not be consistent fans to vote for you, which is particularly important for an incumbent. An approval that fluctuates between, say, 25% and 55% is giving you the indication that up to fifty-five percent of people are at least willing to consider giving you a shot, while the twenty-five is just going to leave you with a grumpier low-forties. The guy with the consistent 40% approval has the same average as the one with the swings, but they don't have the potential for growth, and that potential is at the heart of incumbency advantage. Incumbency advantage is "Eh, I don't know if I like that guy or not, but I'll stick with him."

That's what lets someone like Obama, who had 43% approval at this time in 2012, to win re-election, because well over half of Americans could say that they had approved of him at at least one point, and "sure, let's give him another chance." Trump does not get that, does not have that crucial block of people who at some time or other supported him and might do so again, because he's been so tied to a solid but little-growing number that's well below a majority. With the economy shot, a wholly negative media cycle, and Biden escaping scrutiny, incumbency advantage is the last real hope Trump has got, and Trump's lack of a spread in approval means he does not even get that.

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