US Election 2020 (3 Viewers)

[Unicron]

Think Biden will squeak it out. Nevada, Wisconcin ad Michiganto get him over the line

 

[Cormcolash]

Even if clear majority of Americans vote for Biden,
and even if Biden manages to win the presidency despite the weird electoral collage bullshit,
and even if the Dems win The House,
if the GOP wins only The Senate: they can prevent virtually anything from happening for the foreseeable future.

That means that the GOP can then go back to their message of: Dems can't get anything done, and start hammering away behind the scenes, actively sabotaging everything they touch.

I mean, yeah, the fact it's close at all implies you need to remove the US from every equation it's possible to, but by any sane voting system at all the Dems would win. And yet even if they manage to do actually win via rules the seem to derive from Calvinball, the Dems likely still won't be able anything done.

The Dems want to get shit done as much as they want to have Bernie Sanders as president

 

[Cormcolash]

Monsoon/Heenan are definitely taking PA

 

[Lili Marlene]

Ignorant question, have the Dems blocked everything by the Republicans since they won back the House in 2018? Has Trump been living off running on executive orders?

 

[Kermit McDermott]

Trump derided Obama’s executive orders as ‘power grabs.’ But in each year of his presidency, Trump has surpassed Obama’s total over the same time span.

Trump has so far issued 130 executive orders. By comparison, Obama issued 108 in his first three years.

www.chicagotribune.com

 

[Anthony]

It's as clear as day. Everything the Rs throw at the Ds is just them saying what they're doing.

 

[Lili Marlene]

It's as clear as day. Everything the Rs throw at the Ds is just them saying what they're doing.

Due to the declassification of lots of files there's been a fair bit of reporting recently about how this is how the Cold War went, as in, every time someone said the Soviet Union and Cuba were doing a thing they almost always ended up doing it themselves or were already doing it themselves. It's an interesting psychological phenomenon (I mean that genuinely).

 

[ann post]

people tend to project

 

[magicbastarder]

i hope biden's heart can take all this excitement.

what'd happen if a winner dies before inauguration day? the opponent, placed second, would take their place?

 

[flashback]

Which, forgive my cynicism, suits the business-as-normal leaders of the Dems down to the ground.

So that's the thing... I tend to think the current Democratic Party is this very wide coalition of people from Old School Tories, all the way to fairly progressive. And they're all kind of fighting to some extent among themselves, and in a normal situation wouldn't be aligned. But the lunacy and popularity of the GOP, combined with FPTP voting, is so frightening that even far left people feel they have to put up and shut up.

At the moment the US is on the edge of full-on authoritarianism. Extreme right militia merging with, and becoming, police forces, open racism, extreme nationalism, removal of democratic systems, and so on. The US is inches away from that, it's closer to that than anyone would like to believe as demonstrated with this election.

For anyone who's not aligned with authoritarianism, it's paralyzingly frightening. You could argue that the Dems are this bunch of ineffectual tossers, who are suited very well with nothing ever happening, and I'd say that's part of the party. But the Dems seem much less like the monolith that the GOP is, and there's a large section of the party who'd be keen to get things done.

The problem is that the GOP are now so extreme, and able to exert so much power, that simply keeping religious fanatics and fascists from marching in the streets and overrunning the place is by itself a difficult task. Even keeping the status quo is hard, everything is on a knife-edge, and the consequences of any more fuck ups are so serious that inaction can feel like the safest option. This paralysis and inaction is obviously not the best action, but any action requires some bravery.

The GOP on the other hand can say and do anything at all, their extremism will only get rewarded. That's just the reality of the US today.

 

[Cormcolash]

The rise of extremism is fuelled by growing inequality. The Dems haven't tried to change that in any way for decades. The growing extremism in the US has been as much caused by them as it has by the Republicans, it's just the Republicans are brazenly okay with it.

 

[magicbastarder]

how the hell are the college votes allocated?
virginia has over four times the population of west virginia - but only two and a half times the electoral college votes?

 

[flashback]

The rise of extremism is fuelled by growing inequality. The Dems haven't tried to change that in any way for decades. The growing extremism in the US has been as much caused by them as it has by the Republicans, it's just the Republicans are brazenly okay with it.

Agreed. They haven't. And this is their reward.

 

[Lili Marlene]

@flashback interesting, what do you think of this argument against that:

The Republicans are incredibly weak, their voter ceiling is very low and lowering every year. They are clearly unable to win an election without massive voter disenfranchisement, verging on straight up fraud. They're already collapsing with actual Republican Presidents openly voting for the other team and huge swathes of them spending millions trying to get the Democrats to win. If Trump loses all hell will break loose, they will fall apart and have to rebuild with a new coalition, probably one with the Latino vote (largely abandoned by the Democrats) and conservative leaning African Americans, and yeah, working class Americans in general.

The Dems may win, they may lose, but they will absolutely not move away from their model of appealing to the interests of the wealthy and educated, trying to peel off moderate Republicans, and telling anyone to the left of Nixon that there's nothing here for you. I've seen a lot of chatter about how every person of color in California is fuming about Kamala Harris, who is hated by anyone there who isn't rich, and especially POC. Could of course just be chatter.



edit: of course it might actually just be an argument in agreement with what you said.

 

[Cormcolash]

how the hell are the college votes allocated?
virginia has over four times the population of west virginia - but only two and a half times the electoral college votes?

I believe the answer to your question is "On the basis of absolute LOL"

 

[Unicron]

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[Cormcolash]

LOLectoral College

"We still use a system that was just made up 200 years ago, everything is fine"

4 years ago 3 million more people voted for Killary than for Trump, but Trump still won

 

[flashback]

how the hell are the college votes allocated?
virginia has over four times the population of west virginia - but only two and a half times the electoral college votes?

again, to generalize wildly:

the average American believes The Bible is correct, in all aspects, it is the literal truth, and it's sacred. Apart from the bits about stoning, although... maybe? A little light stoning? Anyone?

And they believe the their Constitution, along with pretty much everything that gang of lads did, is a half a step away from being Biblically perfect. They WORSHIP the Constitution, in the way we grew up in Ireland worshiping crucifixes, only it's more pervasive. Pictures of The Constitution are holy. It's drilled into every child, relentlessly. Every action these cunts took, every fucking horse ride they went on from The River to Barry's Field that one day, it's all worshiped.

So, if it's old, and political, it's roughly speaking: The Word of God. It's correct. And the fact that those gang of lads decided the Electoral College was grand, and kept the Southern States quiet after they got their slaves taken off them and they were a bit grumpy about that and wanted a treat, is good enough, and how dare you criticize it.

 

[ann post]

Pricks.

 

[Cormcolash]

again, to generalize wildly:

the average American believes The Bible is correct, in all aspects, it is the literal truth, and it's sacred. Apart from the bits about stoning, although... maybe? A little light stoning? Anyone?

And they believe the their Constitution, along with pretty much everything that gang of lads did, is a half a step away from being Biblically perfect. They WORSHIP the Constitution, in the way we grew up in Ireland worshiping crucifixes, only it's more pervasive. Pictures of The Constitution are holy. It's drilled into every child, relentlessly. Every action these cunts took, every fucking horse ride they went on from The River to Barry's Field that one day, it's all worshiped.

So, if it's old, and political, it's roughly speaking: The Word of God. It's correct. And the fact that those gang of lads decided the Electoral College was grand, and kept the Southern States quiet after they got their slaves taken off them and they were a bit grumpy about that and wanted a treat, is good enough, and how dare you criticize it.

By the way, flashback's point about the Southern States is that when they came up with the electoral college system, it appointed electoral votes according to state population. This population included black people, so Southern states got bigger electoral college appointments; however, black people weren't actually allowed to vote at the time, so the Southern States were particularly delighted with the system, as it meant that rich white landowners in those states had a vastly disproportionate influence on the election. You know, just like they still do.