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2020 US Presidential Election Day - Discussion Thread
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We have a thread here in ~news that's more focused on articles and events, but I also want us to have a more conversational space to process the day. Consider this an open forum for your own thoughts and feelings.
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I just got off the phone with my mom. She voted early, and voted Trump. It pains me. I just don't understand it (I do, but, you know...). I know that my mother is a very compassionate, smart lady. And yet she chose this charlatan sleezeball.
She didn't want to delve into it, but her short answer when I asked why was that Trump may have a foul mouth, but he's a businessman and not a politician. My dad had a similar response when I talked to him a few weeks ago. My brother is willing to debate and listen, but he and the rest of my family are religious and live in a deeply red state, so I have no illusions about their votes affecting the outcome of the election.
I just.... It's incredible. It's like taking to family and then they look at a cow in a field and tell you it's a duck. And you know that they've seen a duck before. It's such a disconnect that the mere thought of the amount of disinformation you'll have to unwind to try to get them to understand the depths of their mistake is so overwhelming it feels like it's crushing me.
I try to console myself on one level by remembering that their state is going red no matter what. Beyond that though, at this point it's more about trying to get them to understand how much they're being used by Trump. We can believe different things and advocate for different policies, but Trump is exploiting them, and I hate it.
A really really hard conversation I had to have with myself was reconciling "my parents are compassionate people" with "my parents are voting Trump". It was certainly made easier for me when they got more racist (historically only my aunts/uncles/grandparents were racists while my parents sat silently). Kat Blaque made two videos: video 1 and video 2 that really hit me. I would urge people to watch all of both because Kat is honestly one of the youtube leftists who is most willing to give people a chance to grow and redeem themselves and is pretty against "cancelling" people. The focal point of the videos is about YouTuber's, but there is a whole lot of really good bigger and more general ideas and thoughts. The part of the video that I want to hone in on is here from video 2. In video 1 she discusses leeway and how when people do racist things what they are then given is the leeway to grow. You can't force growth, but you can give them time and space and help to grow. Then the timestamp in the last link is to a point in video 2 where she discusses leeway and how that leeway affects your friends in marginalized groups. I wish I could do justice to the points she makes but I can't, so if you don't want to watch 40 minutes of youtube I understand, but at least give the timestamped section (about 5 minutes) a listen. It made me realize how narrow my definition of "compassionate" was and how both my parents actions as well as my reactions to my parents are viewed through the lens of the victims. At the root of the 5 minute video are very difficult and uncomfortable conversations. Trust me, I know. I'm in the middle of these conversations right now.
Edit: Rewatching the video to give timestamps and make sure I was linking to the right video I found one of the lines that hit me hardest when watching and really kickstarted my gears turning. So I'm typing out two short quotes here, but more thought and context is in the video:
To zoom out a bit: I know it can be argued that voting for trump and being racist are different. But to say there isn't a correlation there would be disingenuous. Yes, there is racism in the dems. Yes, it can be argued that not all Trump supporters are consciously and loudly racist. I'm not going to make any statements about your mom as a person because I don't know her. But I do think its worth watching the 5 minutes of the kat blaque video and spending time reflecting on the questions she asks and the points she raises.
EDIT2: Since posting this, youtube has since suggested this Kat Blaque video to me titled "Friending and Forgiving Racists | Kat Blaque" which I have never seen before but feels obviously related enough to add here.
EDIT3: After watching this at 1.25x holy shit this was an incredible video. I'm going to post it as a topic honestly. Adding an additional quote from this video that hits like a truck:
Great comment.
The actual quote is this:
Which I think puts a much sharper point on things.
It's quite uncontroversial that children are very likely hugely biased in favour of their parents, and that's at play when you see quotes like these:
A hard conversation or some soul searching is certainly in order.
Good catch!! Also shoutout to people who make closed captions. It was hard as hell to type as fast as the video and obviously I had mistakes.
He's not even a good businessman!
The idea that anyone would want their country run like a business in any way is absolutely baffling to me. Citizens are not employees. You can't fire them.
It’s unclear what people mean when they say this. It doesn’t seem like it should be taken literally, and it’s also a slogan that tends to be repeated without thinking much about it.
But a charitable interpretation might be that they want government services to be as efficient as they might be if they were done by a well-run business?
Along those lines, it’s quite difficult to fire civil service employees, for good reason. But Trump has been trying to make them easier to fire. Yet another thing to worry about.
That's kind of how I've always interpreted it. And in certain aspects it does make sense. If you look at the job of the president, they're supposed to oversee and lead an organization of thousands of people. What's a comparable job to that? Leading a company of thousands of people. And I do think good leadership skills would translate fairly well. Once you dig past that superficial comparison though, there's a huge number of differences.
Other problem is Trump isn't a good leader, he's a salesman, and a shitty one at that.
I really need to see more people say this kind of thing. I love my parents and they are genuinely good people...except for their fondness of Trump. And that's really hard for me to reconcile.
Not trying to plug my own comment too much but I wrote a post above about my current attempts and links to some Kat Blaque videos that ask some really tough questions that I think anyone who claims to be anti-<prejudice>ist while still having Trump supporting family/friends need to sit down and ask themselves, and I say that not as someone who claims to have the answers, but as someone who is going through this process themselves.
Every time I hear someone argue for putting business people in politics, I think of that Robert Goulet skit from SNL:
You wouldn't let a clown fix a leak in the john, so why do you let these hooligans tear down the biz?
I'm with you. I really thought COVID was going to be his downfall. He politicized a pandemic, actively fought against its mitigation, let it get out of control nationwide, and ended up falling ill to it himself just weeks before the election. It's hard to imagine a more incompetent handling of the issue. Meanwhile, more than seemingly any other issue, COVID is negatively affecting nearly every single American voter. The whole country is fatigued by this plague which hasn't let up in months and isn't going to any time soon. While I've been managing my expectations regarding this election for a long time, I genuinely did think that we would see his support drop because of it.
Turns out I was wrong. I think it put into perspective one of the few very solid truths Trump has ever told: "[he] could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and [he] wouldn’t lose voters.". Quite the contrary, actually. 200,000+ dead from COVID and eight months into a still unchecked pandemic he helped enable, and he's gained voters.
Trump isn't the problem, he's just a symptom of a toxic culture spreading to more and more Americans.
As much as I can't bear the thought of another 4 years of Trump, maybe America hasn't been through enough yet to make real change to ensure this can never happen again. In much the same way that many people only make significant positive life changes after hitting rock bottom. It would appear that this isn't rock bottom for America.
We should hope for an alternative, because rock bottom might mean millions dead.
I'm certain it will.
But without meaningful change to systemic and cultural issues, America is left with around 50% of its population actually wanting another Trump, who will do even more damage next time.
Don't confuse 50% of the electorate with 50% of the population. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement are designed to keep Republicans competitive despite their agenda being broadly unpopular.
Also California hasn't actually released it's raw totals yet. Once it does Biden is likely to hit a 54% popular vote lead or higher. The only reason this isn't done and dusted is because the electoral college is a byzantine and irrational institution that rewards rigging and gamesmanship and amplifies the effects of random contingent events, like a riot breaking out in Maricopa county or a pipe bursting in a warehouse outside Atlanta.
None of that really matters to this particular thread. Whether it's 49% or 45% or 30%, the fact that a huge portion of the American populace still voted for Trump after the last 4 years is a massive problem for the nation.
I find myself facing some rather depressing thoughts given these numbers. I don't want to become even more jaded, because I often feel like I'm already too jaded, but how is it possible that 67 million Americans came to the polls and made this choice? We have a lot further to go than I thought. Education is a bigger problem than I thought. Racism is more problematic than I thought. My outlook on the future is bleaker than it's ever been. I'm not sure what to do with this information.
The thing I keep coming back to is information. There is such an incredible pile of things that make Trump unfit to manage a duplex, much a country. But it's all been downplayed, ignored, gaslighted, or otherwise obfuscated by various aspects of the media. And I'm sure there's a dose of foreign influence in there as well. And on top of that, they have managed to paint Biden as the coming of the apocalypse for every sacred value Republicans hold.
I don't think Biden is the perfect candidate, far from it, and I certainly don't think he's a perfect human being. He is however, at the very least, someone who can pretend to give a shit. And that's how fucking far the bar has been lowered. As @Gaywallet says below, I'd just like a president who isn't aggressively incompetent and openly hostile.
Beyond the current election though, we have a massive problem with the way information is disseminated in this country, and probably world wide. This disinformation problem is only seems to be getting worse, and I have no idea what to do about it, and it terrifies me.
Have you read Manufacturing Consent? If not, highly recommended to help get an idea of how information produces and persists certain political realities.
I haven't, but I'll add it to my ereader right now.
I haven't had time to properly research this, but I've partly come around to the idea that the mass die-off of the boomer generation is the crucial political period of this century. The Republican party does absolutely abysmally with the youth, like record-setting levels of low support. Thus, the state of politics in 20 years will be largely determinative of the rest of the century. If the planet has devolved into fearful eco-fascism (or close to it) and the middle aged population has somehow followed their parents and split along neoliberalism-vs-ethnonationalism lines, we're in all sorts of trouble when Climate Change really gets bad in 2100.
Today's 20-40 year olds need to start culturally and politically preparing for the inevitable disasters coming their way, and keep safe an emerging new 'fat-middle' of society that is full of solidarity, equality, and democracy.
To link the above with your comment better, fixing education is a generation-long project. It is very hard and very expensive to educate a population, just as it was very hard and very expensive to make the USA this stupid. Racism is also massive problem, both for the interests of domestic minorities but also poorer nations abroad . It's crudely but basically true that the entire story of the USA democratic project is one of democracy vs white supremacy.
Is the problem that boomers vote republican, or that old people vote republican? The share of old people is projected to increase for the foreseeable future.
The problem is that old boomers are very right wing, partly because they came into early adulthood and middle age during Reagan's political dominance and were subsequently bombarded with right-wing propaganda for decades.
Young people are markedly more left-wing than boomers, and it's likely that they'll keep their politics mostly intact as they hit middle age. Sure, then political-centre will move around them and they may become tomorrow's right-wing, but that's basically always happened. It is mostly untrue that people go from left-wing to right-wing as they age.
There's generally a huge societal problem of old people not changing their beliefs and politics as they age and society changes, but that's not realistically solve-able. It is true that today's old people are at least not openly savage to black people and homosexuals, as yesterday's old people used to be, and that's progress. Tomorrow's old people will hopefully have improved to a point where they stop climate devastation.
Wait people are voting to change the system? I'm just trying to vote for someone who won't actively kill people through gross mismanagement, make us look terrible to the rest of the world, roll back climate protections, line his own pockets, focus on corporate rights over the rights of Americans, not separate children from their parents in ICE detention centers, not attempt to actively repeal women's rights, the right to abortion, trans rights, and countless other issues which are direct violence on minorities. I can't even imagine having faith that we could have a representative government anytime soon.
They think it’s not worth the economy to save lives. They think it’s fine for “the weak” to die.
I'm not even from the States, but all I can think of saying at this point is "Thank christ"—everyone's nerves are frayed and I don't know a single person who doesn't want this to be over.
There's a part of me that is anticipating some relief, but there's another part of me that is expecting tomorrow to merely be the beginning of a much darker period -- and that's saying something considering where we currently are. I hope the former part of me is right, but I'm honestly bracing for the worst. I do not believe Trump will concede even if the outcome is definitively against him. And if the outcome is less definitive and is at all murky, then I believe he is going to exploit that uncertainty for anything and everything he can get from it.
I hate to be a downer but I do believe in managing expectations: I don't know that this will all be over as soon as we'd like it to be.
I'm anticipating both of those things.
Trump has already started legal proceedings in some states. He knows he can't win. That's why the Republicans went back on their sworn and solemn promise about appointing someone to the Supreme Court.
It feels calculated at this point. Every election now must be some existential threat to 'our way of life'. It would be ignorant to not knowledge that this is being pushed from both the left and the right. Vote or Die has become a permanent mantra.
Everyone I know had an overwhelming anxious feeling. We want this to be over. We want things to go back to the 'way they were'. But no matter the outcome, I don't believe that is possible. There are no longer any undecided voters*. Now there are just unmotivated voters . So then the theory becomes you need to motivate your base to get them out and vote. There are a lot of ways to do that. Either through holding rallies, so the crowd can watch the crowd and motivate each other to go out and vote. (Trumps polling has gone up as his rallies have increased). Fear is a great motivator. Hope is also another motivator. But the take away shouldn't be which is the better motivator. The take away is that politicians now know there are levers that they can pull to motivate people to vote. Those levers are not going away. Politicians will continued to be pull on those levers, to enrage, pester, annoy, encourage,discourage, cheer you on to vote. While not ever lever is designed for you, know that ever lever is designed for someone. You might think a certain lever is an obvious or obnoxious manipulation, that does not mean the other guy or gal will.
* undecided voters just wont/don't vote, so why try to motivate them to go to the polls
I’m tired of it too, but that is kind of the point of democracy. The losing side accepts the results in part because they can try again later.
But I’m hoping we will get a bit of a respite next year.
My very offline roommate just came to my doorway in a towel and said the absolutely sublime sentence "if anything happens at any point in the day, just scream and I will do the same"
This sounds like an excellent roommate relationship the two of you have.
I just read that and I couldn't agree more. Having a binary, two party system makes it so much more "all or nothing" than it should be. It needlessly pits people against each other.
Hey, I don't want to come off as argumentative, though I am curious why you feel prospects are so bleak in the U.S.
I'm currently 27, and am reasonably content with my prospects in life. Yeah we don't have some booming "war-time-esque" economy, but I generally try to compare our situation to, for instance, what it would have felt like to be a 27 year old during the great depression. Somehow, in retrospect, those people got by. Similarly, if I can momentarily take off my consumerist glasses, I realize life's not so bad, and being around friends and family are the most important things that can bring me joy.
I have no clue what it feels like to have young children to care for, but what do you think constitutes a "full life" that they somehow wouldn't be able to achieve? The future will likely contain certain paradigm shifts that are strange to us, but you know, if they find some kind of work, some kind of hobby, and maybe someone to love, then what else can you want?
Maybe I'm being naive here (it's very possible!). I always thought the whole "flee the U.S." thing was a bit of a meme.
I think that if you have enough resources at your disposal the US is a great place to live. However, the key is that you have your own personal support structure to fall back on. If something goes wrong and you end up down and out you're basically on your own compared to other countries. So for the most risk adverse among us, it makes sense to move to a place with a stronger social safety net.
Nevermind that "those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable". Yeah, you're content and well-enough off now. But there's a lot of people right now who justifiably aren't and it looks like Trump will put more of a squeeze on them if you let him. Now... that works all the way until it doesn't. How easily the situation can change... well, George Floyd showed you what it took. And if that happens just a little bit bigger, it might not be pleasant for anyone.
What do you mean by this? That Kiwis didn't want to date Americans, or that they weren't particularly interested in dating at all? Do you mean it was more of a hookup culture vs a relationship culture?
I don't blame you one iota, and in most situations I'm usually in the solidly optimistic "we can fix it" camp.
I've considered leaving myself, though I don't know where I'd go. I know where I'd like to go, but that's different from what's feasible.
I do wonder if it was easier to get out of the US (geographically speaking, as we only have 2 direct neighbors), how different all the demographics would be.
I'm also a bit curious about this. I feel like travel in European companies is a lot more fluid than the US. Although I'm not sure that translates directly to actually emigrating/immigrating.
On a country by country basis I think you're right.
Travel itself is pretty easy (not counting pandemics), so visiting Canada or Mexico is as easy as driving there and showing your driver's licence. (I say this as a white male, so there's that)
Moving is different. Canada has some strict immigration rules and limits, so there's a cap there. Mexico I haven't looked to closely at, but if you have American income I suspect you can live quite well there.
I believe that you once again require a passport for travel between the US and Canada. At the very least, I need a passport to enter the USA from Canada now - a driver's license is not sufficient.
Yeah, it used to be just a driver's license was sufficient, but they changed to passport years ago.
Fun story, we went to Canada a few years ago and thought we had the "enhanced" drivers license that allows for easy travel to Canada/Mexico. Got to the border, Canada checkpoint said "yea.... that's not an enhanced license. ...... have a nice day" and waved us through. On the way back, the US border guard looked at it and said "....and they let you through?". Asked if we had anything to declare, we showed them a receipt for all the candy we bought, they rolled their eyes, gave us a pamphlet about the importance of "proper documentation" and waved us through.
....Meanwhile our friend 5min behind us with proper passports got his car searched.
Do you know what country you might want to move to?
I've been looking for jobs overseas for awhile, but without much luck.
Same please! I found out recently they actually have a website/portal specifically for people coming for work. I'm a software engineer so I believe I qualified for one of their "in need visas". Unfortunately they've locked pretty much everything down due to COVID.
I'm not trying to be mean here but you know there are oppressed people and democrats in red states... right? I ask this because I see this and similar rhetoric all the time about how "Democrats should just cut off red states" or look at pandemic numbers and are like "Ha fucking dumb red states" and I just feel like I'm taking crazy pills trying to explain that just because a state is red doesn't mean its mostly white racists. (an argument for a different time is that it shouldn't matter if it is marginalized groups or white racists making up the majority of a state we still shouldn't celebrate these things but for the sake of today's discussion lets skip that and focus on "there are a lot of not trump-supporters living in these places"). Like Kansas City, Missouri can't become #1 in hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people if there aren't any members of the LGBTQ+ community living there. The largest populations of Black people occurs in red states in the south. The people searching that are likely people seeing DT election numbers and going "Holy shit my life is in danger because I'm a minority in a Red State get me the fuck out of here."
Maybe its because people don't understand how insanely badly gerrymandered red states are? Or how impossible poverty makes it to move out of your hometown, let alone to a different state where you likely wont have a job, money, or a support network? I don't know. Maybe it is because I grew up in a "red" state (yeah yeah yeah "ohio is a flip state". after 2 decades of living there I call bs) and have a large network of friends in the LGBTQ+ community who are unable to leave for various reasons and so I benefit from experiences that make these things feel obvious to me when they aren't.
I don't know when my edit vs your comment came in, so I am adding this as a second comment. I realized I was exasperated with a different class of a similar thought and tried to update accordingly:
That's actually a really interesting stat!
Man, this would be hardest for me for moving right now. I heard some story of a vet who moved to NZ around April or May and she had to quarantine in a hotel and couldn't leave. I get it, but as someone who has a run streak of over 1400 days and sees my daily run as a great way to de-stress, I'd struggle with sitting in a room doing nothing right now.
That's at the top of my list as well, I've heard it's really really difficult to get in though.
Along those lines
EMERGENCY VOTING INFORMATIONS FOR WOMEN OF US&A! - Borat
Continuing the lighter side a bit:
Vegas Election 2020 betting line/odds and odds in swing states.
Not significant at all, but kind of funny: Dixville Notch, New Hampshire reported their results at 12:15 AM last night, with Biden/Harris receiving 5 votes, and Trump/Pence 0.
This is the first time they've had a sweep of the presidential vote since 1960, when Nixon took all 9 votes.
I love quirky electoral stuff like this. Reminds me of the Caucuses in the Caucasus from earlier in the year. Someone held a satellite caucus in Tbilisi, Georgia and was the first of all the Iowa caucuses.
New York Times Election Distractor
Small interactive bits you can click through like an interactive slideshow. Some serene nature scenes, factoids, a hot chocolate recipe (with secret ingredient!), all very calming.
You're a goddamn hero.
Takeaways so far:
The polls are, again, useless. This is way too close for the 90/10 Biden/Trump odds given (and the senate races) and since excuses were made over and over again in 2016, this needs to be the year the pollsters should be knocked down a peg or ten.
The widely held belief that greater turnout equals greater dem votes needs a close review. At present there are 8M more votes than there were in 2016, they are split 4M each way. There's still time for all the votes to be counted, but a near perfect split in the votes is seriously challenging this notion.
I take issue with your first point. Just because it is likely that Biden will win does not mean it is likely that Biden will win by a large margin. The current result seems right in line with 538's predictions, the only surprise for 538 was Florida which was a tight race to begin with but also has a large impact on the winner. I don't know about the rest of American coverage but a tight election that hinged on pennsylvania is what 538 and my local (Canadian) media predicted.
There are of course pundits on all sides who say stupid things, they are the ones who are really useless.
A chart with all possible outcomes has a result on the chart. Amazing.
Are we just going to ignore that the vast majority of the simulations are showing an utter landslide?
Except they're wrong about Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Pennsylvania along with races much closer in other states than predicted.
No 538 gave Biden a 29% chance of winning a blowout (defined as double digit margins), you can see it's one of their highlights of their forecast here. Look at the chart I just shared again you can see the biggest hump, the one that is most likely, was at around 413 electoral votes, a blowout. however, recall that the area under the graph represents the probability that any of those events take place. Which has a higher probability, the area between 200 and 350, or the area between 350 and 500?
Georgia, Pennsylvania and NC are still very much in play.
The votes have not finished counting yet.
They simulated polling errors in both directions, which means at least half of those simulations are even more wrong than the polls. The point of the chart is that the results are still in the fat part of the chart. This is a pretty wide range, so it's not hard to hit, but it means they hedged correctly.
But a chart like that is not that useful, if what you want is certainty.
I think you're right that polls and the probabilities based on them are less useful than they might sometimes seem, if you want to know the future in a time of uncertainty. They don't give us that.
But I'd guess that campaigns will still find them useful sometimes.
I am not sure how much clearer they could be that things are uncertain. Nate Silver wrote an article just before the election saying "I'm here to remind you that Trump could still win" and I think it still holds up. And it's not like any other method of prediction has a better track record.
Why does this happen? The only rational thing to do, if you want to know the future but don't have any decisions to make, is to do something else until it's over, and then you'll know. But we aren't good at living with uncertainty and suck at waiting when the stakes are high.
Pretending you know stuff is a way to avoid a feeling of powerlessness, because not being in control is hard to live with. It seems like a lot of modern pathologies come from not being able to live with the idea that we have very little control over important events, because the world is big and diverse and there are many billions who don't think like us.
I don't think the fault lies with the models like 538. In general, there's no way to gauge the accuracy of a model we only get to test with N=1 events -- they do their best to estimate but the uncertainty is high.
Polling however, was remarkably precise. If we are sampling 1000s weekly and converge on the same number and miss by 3+ points -- something is broken.
Yes, though to some extent 538 tries to account for systematic error. You could interpret the 10% chance they had for Trump being about the likelihood of polling error and how that might interact with the electoral college.
But systematic polling error isn't something you have data about since it's different each time. (Assuming the people running polls learn from the mistakes of the previous election.) Having a system only goes so far. It changes what you're guessing about, but there are still guesses as part of the model.
I think the hardline MAGA people have basically weaponized polling by refusing to answer or lying about their voter intentions. Pretty sure they can account for this, just takes time for the model to price it in.
Without data to back it up, that's just speculation. I find it difficult to believe that there's an organized right wing effort to throw off polling. I'm willing to be proven wrong.
Absolutely it's speculation in terms of impact, but it's certainly a popular refrain in Trumpland.
Clearly something is causing Trump voters to be routinely under-sampled. The odds of there being a "natural" polling miss this consistently in two elections is basically nil -- the samples are off or misrepresenting themselves.
What causes someone to be polled in the first place? I don't answer calls from numbers I don't know, and I've never heard of pollsters going door to door. Could be Trump voters are increasingly distrustful of numbers they don't know.
Response rate to telephone polls continues to decline and it seems the industry is gradually moving to online polls.
They can and do correct for variation in response rates, but that means there are judgement calls as part of their systems.
I've read that actually can't do a great job accounting for variant swathes in any study that also gets cross-sectional demographic data, because it causes your error bars to explode in magnitude as you start trying to adjust against various historical reference tables.
How do online polls work? I def. wouldn't respond to some random poll I received in my inbox either.
In one case, they recruited people via US Mail:
Also:
https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/u-s-survey-research/american-trends-panel/
That need not necessarily be at odds. I think it's probably fair to say that among non-voting people, the democrats are at an advantage currently. The republicans are good at mobilizing their base, and their base is very motivated. Democrats might well hold more goodwill among the non-voting population due to them being more reasonable, more status quo; while also being unappealing but the lesser evil to lefties. Those people need to be mobilized and it doesn't always work.
Which is to say, the numbers this year don't contradict that notion necessarily. It could well be that both parties increased turnout independently. The republicans increased turnout from their base, while democrats can benefit from just mobilizing anyone they can find. Maybe.
But I also see the problem that polls might be off systematically. A trump supporter seems less likely to admit to being one. This if course makes it hard to study whether the described effect even exists after correcting for that. Which also isn't helped by trump's love for disinfo. With how anti-intellectual his base is, I can well imagine some of trump's voters not participating because the polls in 2016 were so off (lying pollsters blah blah stick it to them blah) or even going so far as to lie about their intentions.
Trump has also declared himself the winner and demanded counting be stopped. Fuck that guy. I hope he gets kicked out of the WH and then dies in prison, I'm about done hearing him talk. If only the US constitution had a section designed to stop tyranny...
If only this wasn't exactly what the Republican party and its voters want
If you are referring specifically to the second amendment, let it be known that I was being extra sarcastic and did in fact refer to the entire constitution as designed to stop tyranny.
Thanks for linking this. It's the best dashboard I've seen with key info.
Appreciate this. Would make a great GIF with timestamps when it's all done.
Something off in the Pennsylvania numbers. 2M votes counted, Trump's lead stays at 400k.
Just jumping on this morning. It's now at a 135,704 lead.
Yeah, I see that now as it's updating. Seems like the "Votes left to count" doesn't sync with the margin column as the former has been pretty steady (just dropped another 100k), while the margin has been dropping regularly.
Having a virtual poll viewing party with a bunch of friends tomorrow, should be a lot of fun. We've got Biden voters, Trump voters, someone voting downballot but not for president, and at least one third party voter, so it should be a ball.
On top of that we are will be playing Call of Cthulhu, using the Cthulhu for president set: https://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu-for-president-the-game-pdf/
Got sent this tweet by someone today, and while it's funny on its own, it did make me genuinely thankful for all the people here on Tildes from Canada and elsewhere who are sources of support for us here in the US. Thanks for being friendly neighbo(u)rs, caring about our issues, and treating us with kindness -- especially when we do things that make us undeserving of that kindness. I genuinely hope that my country can do better by everyone in the future.
With AZ and NE-2 looking likely to go to Biden, I am very optimistic that the Democrats will pull it off. That being said, that it isn't a landslide is hugely disappointing, and we may not get the Senate.
I've done a quick CTRL-F and I can't find a question like this here, so here it is:
As someone from the UK not very familiar with US politics, how is it that either candidate can decide to challenge the result in the supreme court? From what I've seen about 2000 I'm guessing it is challenging the legitimacy of how some ballots were cast or counted to swing the balance nationally slightly in their favour? I know Trump wants to do this but what is Biden's plan? He says he's got lawyers ready too.
Ugh. There's several possibilities. The most prominent being what you mentioned, a situation resembling what happened in 2000 in Florida. Basically, the margin of victory was so close (only a few thousand), recounts where required, and then a court battle started about the legitimacy of those recounts that was eventually appealed all the way up to the US supreme court. The decision of the court is what decided the election and made Bush the winner.
Both candidates have a literal army of lawyers ready to file paperwork to challenge an election result in all 50 states, or to counter the challenge of their opponent. The outcome could be either a recount of a particular local election, or declaring some number of ballots as invalid due to some procedural reason. The pandemic has caused dramatic change in the way that everyone conducts their local election, so there are a whole bunch of new opportunities to file legal challenges to try and invalidate ballots in places where an opponent is winning.
And the overarching thought of all this, is that Trump has been able to appoint a total of 3 of the Supreme Court justices during his term, all of which area conservative, and all of which where involved in the Republican efforts of the 2000 election dispute. So their there's some very good reasons to think that they may have some bias on the matter. In particular when they issue opinions like this one, echoing a lot of the president's bullshit about not counting votes after election day.
I'm massively disappointed in the Senate but thankful we're just going to beat Trump. Trying to count what blessings we have. This is something to celebrate before gearing up for the next election (run-off for GA senate) even if it has been closer than we expected and not the strong rebuke we hoped for.
Beating Trump is certainly something to be grateful for, but the margins are embarrassing. The Senate results are even worse - effectively cements nothing getting done for at least two more years.
2022 is like 2016, mostly Dem senate seats up for grabs. 2024 is when you have mostly GOP seats in play.
Oh, great, four years of congressional bullshit. I can already see the 2024 ads: "Barron Trump 2024 - vote for me, Biden got NOTHING done".
Like I said, I'm trying to count what blessings we have. The margin is incredibly upsetting, but I'm taking it as motivation rather than being discouraged. We have a run-off in GA to win.
Trump is currently calling states for himself and pushing voting fraud conspiracies on Twitter.
If Trump loses (which is thankfully looking increasingly likely), I seriously hope twitter finally just straight up bans him. It's unlikely they will, I know... but goddamn would that ever feel incredibly satisfying and cathartic.
This topic is almost 3 days old now and getting a little cumbersome to keep continuing. I'm going to start a new one and will move some of the most recent top-level comments and replies from this thread into that one. Please hold.
FBI IS INVESTIGATING REPORTS OF ROBOCALLS ACROSS COUNTRY ATTEMPTING TO SUPPRESS VOTE - HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIAL
U.S. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION'S ENFORCEMENT BUREAU IS AWARE OF REPORTS OF MISLEADING POLITICAL ROBOCALLS -- FCC OFFICIAL
Michigan officials warn of robocalls meant to mislead residents in Flint.
Fucking hell. Stop picking on Flint you assholes.
PSA before tonight: CME changed futures limit rules. There's now a "dynamic circuit breaker" if stocks move 3.5% within an hour. The hard limit stands at 7% (up from 5% before)
*Reminder: Last election The Future Markets went limit down and then limit up that night
Let's remind ourselves that the government hasn't done a single thing to seriously mitigate election interference while Trump has been president, and Trump has exploited or weaponized the office for political gain at every conceivable opportunity. We live in an era of extreme misinformation through social media with a cult figure president who can effectively rally an already rabid base. That situation has been festering for 4 years. It is impossible to quantify, but the competitiveness of this presidential race may be a reflection of those factors as much as any failure in campaign strategy.
Also, let's not forget the historical reliability of US voters supporting an incumbent, even an unpopular one.
What do you mean they did nothing? There are pretty big differences in voting procedures this year. I can't find the numbers but I think it's about 100 million voting early or via absentee ballot?
Also, it seems like a lot of attempts at invalidating votes or intimidating voters failed, since turnout is at a record high.
Should have clarified that I was referring to this admin. I know states have taken funding and updated Election Day procedures.
Nothing has been done to prevent the spread of misinformation on social media that influences how people think, feel, and vote. Trump has also repeatedly used government for political gain - illegal rallies on the White House lawn for campaign PR, enlisting the troops as a prop in military parades or at the border, a laundry list of Hatch Act violations, fabricating entire conspiracy theories for cable news regurgitation, etc. All of these abuses of the system are having some impact on the election results, and they've only gotten worse in the last 4 years.
From 538 in their live blog:
The difference between this comment and the expected votes% from AP is admittedly a bit weird.
EDIT: They've made a new post with a bit more guessing where those uncounted votes will go.
(I'm gonna make this an informal thread for stuff from the 538 live blog I or anyone else find interesting.)
...Where is this coming from? I'm not finding anything related to this. Currently NPR/AP puts him at over 100,000 votes ahead.
...Oh, so that's where it comes from.
...So it's not that the Democrat is about to get more votes the Republican incumbent, its that the that incumbent has just fallen under a simple majority.
Anyway, the implications of this are actually pretty big. Quoting 538 about 80 minutes earlier:
Democratic Senator Gary Peters has been reelected by a margin of 60,000 votes
That's a really tight reelection. The only way for Democrats to take the Senate and get the trifecta is to win both NC (47%D, 49%R, 93% estimated reporting) and the Georgia runoff election.
Edit: his lead is now up to 88k votes.
Edit: or push the other Republican incumbent below 50% and subject him to a (apparently winnable) runoff too. That'll do too, I guess.
Double edit, 5 months or so later: Hooray!
Very relieved about this one, he was down a few percent earlier in the day, glad the blue shift carried him. Still annoyed that both that race and the presidential race where so close. Was really hoping for a blowout, between COVID, Trump fighting with Whitmer, and the kidnapping thing.
Share your prediction maps here!
Here's mine: https://www.270towin.com/maps/pAd2L
Why I think this: I think Florida's voter suppression tactics will be successful and the state will be very close, but still go to Trump. Both Georgia and Texas are seeing historic turnout, which I think will lead to slight blue wins there. I'm not sold on Ohio or Iowa going blue.
Same on both counts.
It's not a battleground/swing state until it can be proven to actually turn blue, and people have been saying it'll turn purple for decades and yet Dems never get out of the low 40% of the vote.
Repubs tend to be closer in first term, spike in second term (Bush 1.0 being the exception), the only year they see big drops are when there's a legitimate threat from a 3rd party/candidate (*above are Perot years). Dems are always low-40% unless they're in the 30% range.
I want it to happen as much as the rest of us down here, but I'm also not delusional. "Texas will turn purple this year" is a mantra echoed every single election cycle.
I don't know... Maybe! I'm hopeful. But more Texans have voted early than voted in all of 2016!
Here's my "most likely" scenario.
FiveThirtyEight also has a similar visualizer that I've been playing around with that does a bit more on the probability side, with predictions that update to account for which way you predict individual states to go (equivalent map).
Out of FiveThirtyEight's "key states" I really don't think Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, or Wisconsin are going to go red, or Ohio and Texas go blue. I can see Biden loosing Arizona, North Carolina, Florida but still winning with Pennsylvania.
As someone not up on Arizona politics, can anyone tell me why they're seen as a swing state and blue in both your and @autoxidation's map (along with the predictions)? I didn't check actual voting counts, but looked at the presidential election maps all the way back to 1980 and it's always red.
I lived in AZ for a decade. The historical reason for red is that there is a very high percentage of elderly people there, who commonly go there to retire because of the climate. Sun City if you're middle class, Scottsdale if you're rich.
However the percentage of the the state that identifies as Hispanic has been steadily increasing for several decades. AZ became a minority-majority state somewhere around 2015. However isn't as clear-cut as Hispanic==Democrat, as a lot of Hispanics are deeply religious (specifically Catholic) which means that while they have a vested interest in the immigration reforms that the Democrats offer, they also have a few key social views in common with the Republican platform. 538 also has some analysis on this topic that points out some additional factors including the rapid growth of urban vs rural populations (it's a state with a lot of empty uninhabited desert, so people cluster in cities a lot).
Because the polls say so. At this point 538 is basing their predictions entirely on polls, not history. (But really, they are saying it’s very close.)
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/arizona/
And yet one side always gets 44.7% (± 0.4%) so it seems like the polls are wrong, again.
They actually voted blue in Clinton's reelection of 1996, but that's probably the state I'm least sure about.
The election director for Fulton County (which covers a lot of Atlanta and has the highest number of votes in the state) told CNN he expects to report all outstanding mail votes between midnight and 3 AM.
So far the votes in that county are 72.4% Biden and 26.5% Trump, it's extremely tilted and could close almost all of that gap on its own.
According to the NYT's "Paths to Victory" thing (which I think is neat), if Biden wins Georgia it's no longer possible for Trump to win. Even if he wins every other outstanding state, it only results in a tie.
A Jason Schreier tweet from earlier today:
Yeah, it's absolutely infuriating that a clear lead of 3.6 million votes is currently playing out like a photo finish.
Down to 23,000 now with 95% counted. Super close.
Down to 18k with 96% counted as of 5min ago (6:30am ET), with the majority of uncounted votes being in the greater Atlanta area, which is skewing Biden by a pretty large margin. So it's definitely possible Biden may yet eke this one out by the time the counting is actually done.
Possible, but is it likely? Is anyone doing projections? At this time the math should be fairly simple, no?
The CNN analysts are predicting Biden will probably take Georgia by the time the count is done there, but there is also a distinct risk he might lose Arizona at the same time since the latest counts from there that were released at 2:55am were slightly in Trump's favor (59%), which decreased Biden's lead there. They said PA, NV and NC were all too close to call right now as well, so it's basically still a bit of a toss up who will actually win in the end. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Isn't Georgia (or PA, or NV+AZ) enough for Biden to win at this stage? Georgia has 16 EVs, so that brings the total to 269 which I think is a tie that Biden wins given he won the house.
Yeah, winning PA would be enough for Biden to definitively win, but none of the others would be enough on their own. Biden is currently at 253 electoral votes, and Trump is at 213, with 270 required for the definitive win. So Biden needs to either win PA (which is worth 20 electoral votes), or any 2 of the other remaining States to achieve that. But Trump needs 4/5 of the remaining States to get there.
p.s. https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president if you want to look at the numbers yourself
p.p.s I just looked it up to make absolutely sure first, and it looks like you're also correct about what would happen in the case of a tie; it would go to the House to decide. So if Biden prevails in Georgia but no other remaining States that would still be enough for him to win. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_election
The whole conversation started based on the idea that one of the electorate goes rogue, and because of the nature of the house voting as states, it's entirely possible that this year hits peak chaos and the house vote goes to Trump.
I am pretty over this year and all the politics that came from it. I'm in my mid 20s and view myself as someone in the middle of politics. Fiscally I am conservative, don't raise my taxes, don't take my rights, and the law should apply to every single American citizen (that also included those in power like politicians. Qualified immunity is fcking stupid). Socially I lean to the left. I think investing into communities to help them grow infrastructure and community projects will benefit many generations.
Politicians have this narrow mindset that they need to make change while in office without looking at the future. Yes we should address immediate concerns but we should also plan for 10, 25, 50, and 100 years down the road. Reminds me of a quote "wise men plants tress whose shade they know they will never enjoy".
In regards to Trump/Pence, I agree with some of Trumps policies. I don't like him as a person but I cannot argue that he has done some good. He's done a lot of bad but in the current world we live in you need to take the few wins you can get.
Biden/Harris, I am not a fan of Biden or Harris. I don't agree with Biden's Vice Presidential nominee. Kamala is a terrible human being that incarcerated thousands of minorities for low level drug crimes. I am absolutely not voting for Biden because of how much suffering Harris brought to the people of San Francisco.
Don't get me started on the people we have in office. Nany Pelosi and Diane Fienstein are terrible politicians for California. Pelosi has ruled over San Francisco for decades and has only made the city worse.
The way I see things is that most Republicans will lie, cheat, and steal to accumulate more power and wealth. They are open about it and are not afraid to show it.
Most democrats, will take away constitutional rights from the people in the name of safety and security. They show off like they are a party for the people but they are the same as Republicans they just refuse to admit it.
I hope that once the baby boomer politicians leave office a third party will gain traction in Congress. I really hope an middle party gains popularity. A party that does not impede on your rights, doesn't raise taxes, is fiscally responsible, will stand up to bad practices, and will only flex their power when it is absolutely necessary.
One final thought, we need to revoke the power of the Executive branch again and the Supreme Court. The only people that should have the power to make or change laws should be Congress.
The supreme court should only interpret the Law.
Ex: Roe vs Wade, lets say SCOTUS look at it again and decide to remove or rule against it. That ruling should not change the law. It should mean that it gets move to the house who vote and then it moves to the Senate and finally the resolute desk.
I hate how the SCOTUS and POTUS are given so much power in this country.
Ok rant over.
...
What do you think funds investment in communities?
It's perfectly reasonable to say that the government already takes in plenty of money, but that said money is misallocated.
I don't think that makes one fiscally conservative, if we mean conservative to indicated right-wing views on the economy. Many liberals and leftists agree that funds are misallocated: defense funds should be reallocated to social safety net programs.
If we mean "conservative" to mean budget-conscious, I don't think the GOP fits this bill either; when the GOP controls Congress and the Presidency, there has historically been unchallenged runaway spending, largely on blank checks for the defense industry.
This is true.
Proper state, county, and local budgeting. Not allowing police departments to buy hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for weapons of war.
California is a great example, we are what the 7th largest economy in the world yet we are always throwing money away.
Can I ask what you've heard of Pelosi doing to rule over or hurt San Francisco? I live nearby and it's not at all part of the local narrative that she has any particular pull or pet projects for the area.
She does not use her position to her advantage she lets Mitch walk all over her.
She leads the house of representatives that held a majority in the house for four years.
She also voted for bills that I am against. Ex S. 139: Rapid DNA Act of 2017 which expanded the use of DNA to law enforcement. I value my privacy in the real world and virtually.
Any person that says yes to taking away the privacy of american citizens is bad news for me.
How does that translate to her ruling over San Francisco and making the city worse? I agree that privacy is valuable, but what are some tangible examples of her rule and degradation of San Francisco in particular?
Out of curiosity, do you make more than $400k/year?
I make just south of that. My issue on taxes is more at the state and local level. Bidens tax plan is more for the wealthy that make most of their income from salary.
I see this a lot and I'm always curious about it. I'm assuming this was while she was AG, but the AG doesn't make the laws right? She's just in charge of enforcing them?
A lot of what I've seen is that while her record as AG is iffy, her record as a senator is way more Progressive. So you could argue that while she operated within the law as AG, she then became a senator so she could change the laws herself.
Again, not really sure, I haven't looked too closely at her history, just what she's been doing more recently.
Prosecutors have a huge amount of leeway in how they seek justice on behalf of the state, and I've even seen prosecutors pleading down penalties with a judge on behalf of unrepresented persons. I personally haven't seen any evidence to suggest that Harris has an overwhelming amount of zeal when it comes to pursuing the state's justice, but the bar for how hard prosecutors pursue drug trafficking offenses in the US is pretty high in the first place.
I don't think anyone would tolerate this defense of any individual's participation in a manifestly racist system throughout history. From those interning Japanese, to 19th century slave-catchers, to riot cops in Birmingham, AL, we would never say "well, participation in these systems were justified, as these individuals didn't write the laws which enabled their actions."
Once "history has been written" everyone feels comfortable confronting these systems and those who willingly participated in them, however there always feels to be this fog of ambiguity in the present where folks are far more likely to view currently existing systems of racial oppression as legitimate.
That's a good point. "Just following orders" should never be a reason to do wrong.
Doesn't a more recent history of a willingness to change also matter though?
I'm absolutely baffled as to how you've come to the conclusion there's a recent history of willingness to change.
What standard would you apply to determine whether an internment guard, a slave catcher, or a riot cop has had a change of heart? Certainly nothing I've seen from Harris comes anywhere close. I'd wager that occasional, weak and unactionable pandering to progressive voters from time to time (esp in the context of running an election where progressives are key to your victory) wouldn't fit the criteria of "a willingness to change" for most people.
She announced a bill to decriminalize marijuana federally in 2019, she co-sponsored Bernie's Single-payer healthcare bill (albeit she ran her presidential campaign on a different healthcare plan.) Additionally she has come out in favor of banning fracking (again, ignoring that the Biden/Harris campaign may not be.) She has also co-sponsored bills to ban offshore drilling.
The first bill she introduced in the Senate was one to make sure that people detained by Customs & Border have access to legal representation.
After/during the George Floyd protests she helped craft the bill to address deadly police force and has said that if elected they will ban choke holds.
Again, I'm absolutely not trying to argue that she's "the most liberal senator" that was lauded in the press when she was announced as VP, but I think it's important to acknowledge when people can change their stances on things.
All things done while she's trying to get elected as dem presidential nominee.
She ran in California as a hardline cop, she needed to change position for the national stage, so she did, I've seen nothing but the same pandering that they all do. There's already been a very long thread about how she's full of crap, says one thing and does another, and is an overall ineffective leader.
Precious few in any system of racial oppression have the power of discretion, the ability to return the Japanese to their homes, the ability to liberate the slave, however Harris was in that very position. She used her position to needlessly destroy the lives of countless people of color in her tenure. She has contributed more to human misery as AG than just about any individual racist cop has on their own.
She isn't the "mayor in wartime." She had the ability to make meaningful change, and rather than using it to combat oppression, she used it to compound it.
That is precisely and un-controversially what the result of her actions were. What do you think people are talking about when they discuss institutionalized racism? Thinking that people of color should be stolen away from their families and locked up for years or decades isn't simply a matter of "what you agree with personally" anymore than one's position on Japanese internment or slave catchers is "just a matter of personal opinion."
She willingly and eagerly participated in a system of racialized violence and leaned into the violence.
It's not even not changing the status quo. Like, yes I would say that not working to change it while in a position with that kind of power is disgusting. But this case is actively enforcing the bad thing, not just looking away.
Yes it was during her time as AG of San Francisco. She fought endlessly to bar evidence that would free an innocent man.
Her time as senator is better I admit but as someone that falls in the middle I still do not agree with most of her policies.
The second amendment is a big one. I am in no way a gun nut I am just an average citizen that enjoys shooting from time to time and the ability to protect my friends, family and property.
Open carry in california is illegal. The laws they have been putting on gun owners is pretty silly. Like micro stamping, magazine capacity, adjustable stocks.
Ok, but now you've downgraded from "removing the Second Amendment" to "silly rules about tracking and gun type". There can be (and are) real issues to discuss about what Democrats are doing in this country without needing to dive into massive hyperbole regarding their actions.
Accusing /u/nulledzero of "massive hyperbole" is completely misrepresenting what the guy was saying.
NulledZero specifically mentioned open carry being illegal in California. The second constitutional amendment says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Bear, as in carry the weight.
Depending on your interpretation of the second amendment, California could indeed have removed constitutional rights from Americans in favor of safety and security.
I personally think it's absurd to have a constitutional amendment on gun rights that doesn't allow states to regulate what is and what is not permissible.
And I think the second amendment is very clear that guns should be well regulated. Historically, that has been the case. It still is, too. I can't open carry nukes.
But while I think /u/nulledzero is totally and utterly mistaken, I don't see any hyperbole. In fact, I respect the fact that /u/nulledzero is participating in a dialogue with a bunch of people who have opposing views.. while still remaining calm.
If your argument had any basis, California would have already been sued to overturn said laws. I am not a constitutional scholar, but I feel very sure the NRA would have picked that fight. As such, I'm comfortable saying that anyone claiming that California is overturning the second amendment with their gun control laws is absolutely being hyperbolic.
The constitution is just words, man.
It doesn't matter what the words say.
What matters are the people interpreting the words.
(Just look at all the religious beliefs stemming from the exact same religious text.)
The NRA isn't going to pick that fight until they feel like they have the right people in place.
Because when it comes to the supreme court, precedent still matters. (Or at least, it used to.)
Come on, be honest. Constitutional amendments should be for things like voting rights. Having a vaguely worded constitutional amendment protecting the right to bear arms should be overturned and left up to state or federal law.
To be fair, he stated "Dems want to take away rights" while the question took that out of context and went straight to "what have they taken".
The democratic platform has consistently campaigned on gun control, I doubt they'd oppose a full revocation of the 2nd amendment.
I think that's a very big stretch to claim that campaigning on gun control means a desire for full revocation of the second amendment. That'd be like saying that because republicans attempt to restrict the right to vote they'd want to revoke the 15'th and 19'th amendments... well, maybe you have a point.
Isn't that a question of HOW the second amendment is ment to be interpreted?
Personally I can see the appeal in a way, although tbh I don't see why someone wants to lug their guns around - its a bit like me wanting to lug my (soon to be arriving, yasssss) motherboard and processor around my neck when going to the shops.
I think the complexity of the gun debate in the US is fascinating. I mean I guess I can have that luxury seeing it from afar. So much is attached to each side and the cultural connections to it as a symbol is really interesting.
Where I live you can happily own a fully automatic machine gun. The "lying down with a belt feeder" thing that sprays a gazillion dollars worth of lead a minute. Sure you have to a have a license, and you are expected to follow correct protocol when storing, transporting and using it. (Unless there's an actual war on, you can't just take it down to the corner shops when buying smokes on a sunday)
If someone steals it, and it turns out you DIDN'T have the correct protocol (like having an actual gun safe, with firing mechanism in one end, ammo in another one) - for starters you don't get to own machine guns any more. And will most probably spend some time in jail for your incompetence.
I have a friend of my mums who grew up near Longyearbyen where open carry is a must at times (polarbears) - and even then you don't bring your gun IN to the store. You give it to the cashier to handle. And you don't lug it around town for funsies (no polarbears in town or the shops so no need).
At the same time: guns are FUN. A heavy little deadly thing in the palm of your hand that just screams out an invisible object that smash in to something leagues away the effect of which is replicated up your arm like a small shock wave? I'd be lying if I didn't say that the first time I shot a gun I didn't turn back and go "whooaaah", smiling.
The point is that its not as fetishized as in the US (Using "fetishized" not as a pejorative, but as the best word I could think of that fit) - its a tool, or a hobby. Not a twitter-bio.
And I really get why if you feel unsafe a gun is basically "a fighting chance" against perceived threats. A good friend in the US wants a gun, his husband does not. My friend is black and his husband white - my friends argument was "the cops aren't coming to help me, they are coming to get me" which... well its not much you can say about that tbh. The thin blue line seems firmly wrapped around the neck of a lot of brown people these days.
At the same time in the news here (surrounding the US election) they interviewed a middle aged white lady who was training other white ladies in the fine art of close quarters combat gun use because she was certain that "Antifa" was coming to kill them all after the election if Trump didn't win - she lived in a small midwestern community. In the interview she showed how to snatch-grab at her pistol in an open holster, while pushing back an assailant and just blasting that assailant away within a second. And I couldn't grasp where she thought she was: Kabul during the war or Johansonville, Wisconsin at election times.
She seemed happy though, so that's good I guess.
Guns seems to have such a clear cultural meaning in the US too. I'm trying to find an analogy with us here - but I can't because its either kind of meaningless or insulting which isn't cool.
It's like cars maybe? Depending on where you grew up, a sign of something more when you have it that gets the weight of that first impression of freedom from childhood lumped in to it. It's more than the tool it actually is. You could use it to go from point A to B, or you could drive around at night, playing music, with the windows open just feeling the night air of empty country roads waft over you.
Stripping it from you might then feel like having the very first sensation of youthful liberty taken from you while at the same time being possible to formalize as taking a valuable tool or a sensation you loved as a young person from the next generation.
After a while any concession to that, when the threat against that object is formalized, might feel like a slippery slope and you start arguing about drivers licenses next...
Maybe pot is the better analogy? What if the US decided tomorrow to ban pot? It's a drug, you don't HAVE to have it. We all know the annoying "Legalize!" people or the ones who can't stfu about all the things you can do with hemp, who have stickers with little leaves on it, or who claim its a magical medicinal plant.
I dunno - this got really long - my point was that I think oversimplifying @nulledzero 's point or want is a tad cruel.
I really enjoy guns, myself. I enjoy shooting them, I enjoy what cool pieces of machinery they are, I can appreciate the value of them for defense in extremis, and I can understand them as a fundamental part of a proper life's experience even if I don't have that.
But OP wasn't talking about any of that, they were just saying "Democrats want to take our constitutional rights, specifically the second amendment." And that's not in basically anyone's platform, I don't hear anyone talking about it. Even more mild gun control is way down most people's priority lists right now. It's a bugaboo to scare the right, as opposed to an actual held position. The whole rant was full of them, which is why I also asked about Pelosi and her theoretical tyranny over San Francisco.
Like, I can have understanding for someone who has fundamentally different ideas about what makes for a good life and what is a good society, but most of the fears mentioned are not based on different beliefs that grew from common fundamentals but coming from a completely different understanding of the nature of the world.
And I don't know how to engage with that. I live near SF, and it's not a hellhole dominated by Pelosi. As far as I can tell she mostly stays in DC doing DC stuff and doesn't get into local politics. California has gun control laws, but I haven't heard anyone pushing for removal of guns. Where do I start when our experience of the world is so different?
Good points but I think there is a slippery slope logic there too. I mean take ... take articles like "The Rise of Fascism in America" etc - its not about Fascism being there already but signs that it is being implemented. Maybe that is the same logic - a set of signs leading towards a dangerous change?
As for different experiences - thats just part of who we are. I mean... you live in the US, went to school there right? What do you remember of the lessons about the Vietnam war? I grew up in Sweden and I am in my 40's. My parents met, like a lot of my generations parents, at the FNL demonstrations. The first chapter in my history book about the Vietnam war was led by that photo of little kids running on a road after being burned with Napalm while a soldier looks at them bored. It took a long time for me to get that Americans aren't blood thirsty murderers (and a lot of other things).
Or say 9/11. I worked in a shop and when it happened the electronics shop next to me called us over - everyone ran there to look at the TV screens. Next to me was an old dude of Middle Eastern descent crying while the planes hit the towers saying over and over in Swedish "The Americans will murder us all for this".
There is a sign in LaGuardia Airport with neon lights saying "God Bless Our Troops". My husband and I took photos of it fascinated. The phrase is as outlandish to us as ... for example "May the emperors divine right strike down our enemies" would be to you on a neon sign. The first time I heard someone go "Thank you for your service" like a mantra to soldiers I thought it was an anti-war protest with too many layers of irony.
We're different. The view we have of our world is sometimes absurdly divided. Our job as humans, if we are both willing to invest that time and effort (and we can and should be able to say "no" to that too) our job is to find the human in the other. Start at that and build upward. And we're smart enough, empathic enough to do it too.
So in his case - the issue for you and me (to whom his worldview is foreign) should be to figure out how he could get there but always assume that he is a intelligent and full human in the process.
I think we can do it :)
To add on to the slippery slope argument there, or maybe take away from it: The difference between a fascist doing a proto-fascism and a democrat doing a gun control is that in one case there is a slippery slope (fascist things pave the way for more fascist things and inhibit the leverage of anti-fascists.) while in one case I fail to see the slope. Demanding gun control in its various forms does not directly lead to more gun control. It is perfectly valid and effective to control guns a bit more than they are today, and then stop there. Add to that that trump's fascist tendencies have no beneficial purpose in and of themselves - brutalizing peaceful protesters does not help prevent property damage for example, it just makes the protests violent.
The problem with slippery slope arguments is that the slope is often improperly defined. You want to see a clear feedback loop that emboldens or otherwise amplifies the behavior in question. Otherwise, Slippery Slope is just a different phrase to express "I don't like having to compromise".
Absolutely! I mean good points all around - specifically slippery slope ideas which are just a tad heavy on the assumptions and drama.
I was just trying to get in to the mindset
I just want to point out that the OP originally said they will take away constitutional rights, not that they want to. I don't think the two are equivalent.
Correct, I meant to say "will"; which was still misconstrued in the follow up question.
That's what I get for coming here on my phone. I thank you for looking out and the correction.
Current plan is to try and deal with the stress by ignoring news as much as possible today, reminding myself that the odds are pretty good and there's nothing else I can do to affect anything today. So focusing on self-care, and work. Because work is something I have direct control over and can accomplish positive things today.
Took tomorrow off though, because one way or another, I will be emotionally and physically hung over (and so might the electoral college).
I feel that. I'm taking a break from work and I timed it to end after tomorrow for the exact same reason.
Listening to one of my favourite podcasts in Swedish (ping @mycketforvirrad btw (you speak/is Swedish right?): Flashback Forever and todays episode which focuses on the group of people who where pro trump here (less than 20% here like Trump and the overlap between that group and voters for the nationalist extreme right, or neonazi right is basically a one to one).
It starts with betting, the amount of cash a lot of people here won on betting for Trump last election (the odds where great 2016 and now, not so much but a lot of people here have betted for Trump), and then about Trump ("Yay he's against the Jews/Muslims etc etc") and then how he collapsed in their view a bit a few years back and some of the weirder ones claim he's replaced by a robot/clone or mindcontrolled by the CIA.
Trump has lower odds or comparable in several betting sites here it seems btw.
Its pretty fun/fascinating - I mean it would be DAMN more fun if Trump was a fictional character but wtf.
Anyone else filled with an uncomfortable amount of nervous energy?
I'm trying to just tune out the numbers and reporting right now since I can't affect the outcome and we won't know for a while, but that still isn't alleviating the palpable anxiety.
My constant ABV level is keeping my nerves from fraying. That and playing AmongUs/Codenames with a bunch of friends in Zoom. We've all agreed that nobody is allowed to discuss anything about politics. So far so good.
Hah no probably not. We are actually sticking to the "no politics" rule. Normally it's a fine topic to bitch about, but we all agreed we needed some escapism this evening.
Yes. I can barely sit still, leaping to my feet to pace about the house. Then I sit down again to try to distract myself, but it only lasts a few minutes before I'm pacing again.
With the way things are falling out, we will not know the results tonight, unless Biden pulls a miracle in TX
Yeah, I know that. It doesn't stop my body from needing to move.
Here's an election call tracker that shows which news outlets have called each state so far.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/how-single-person-could-decide-election/616995/
If Biden does top out at 270, and one of the Democratic electoralate flips, it would certainly be a thing that could happen.
Holy hell, this is a nightmare scenario that my anxiety did not need to read right now.
This is not a criticism of you for posting it, by the way -- that's just my nerves talking. It's actually a very insightful and, depending on how things pan out, potentially relevant read. It just hits particularly hard right now -- I feel like it's kicking the stool out from underneath me as I stand on a very wobbly, very shaky hope.
On the positive side, if it does happen, it makes it even more likely we'll have some ammunition to finally get rid of the racist institution known as the electoral college.
How is the electoral college racist?
I believe they're referring to the 3/5ths ratio compromise that was done to appease the slaver states at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.
The 3/5ths compromise isn't directly related, as it was drafted after the electoral college was agreed upon.
When the electoral college was created, this wasn't the case by definition. Everyone who could vote was white.
Sure. Plenty of things weren't bad in the past and yet have negative consequences now. The fact that at some point in the past it was fine doesn't change what it is now.
What would you say the electoral college is now, that makes it so harmful? I view it as a pretty useful construct to hedge against federal centralization.
How does it do that? From what I can see, it mostly provides a distortion to the vote, making it such that the popular vote doesn't make someone the winner. How can anyone say that there's equal representation when more people vote for one candidate and the electoral college causes the other candidate to win?
Why is it necessary and proper that the federal executor be elected by the populace of some minority of the federation? This is a direct assault on the sovereignty of the states who happen to have less people, as if their state is somehow less valuable to the whole of these United States.
(In the end, we compromised - The states get some due weight, and the populace of the whole federation is respected as well, in fact we respect the people about four times as much as we respect the sovereignty of the states)
Yeah. It's quite likely that I haven't thought through the repercussions, but I don't think that when it comes to electing the president that the individuals within the states should have varying levels of influence upon selecting the executive. If we're all voting for the president individually, why are the states standing as a filter in the way? If it actually should just comes down to the state's decision, why is there an individual vote at all? Why not have the governors or some other section of the state's governments make that vote? It feels like the compromise is the worst of both worlds.
Part of it stems from the absolute failure that was the American Confederacy, and the desire to amend and build a better nation the second time. The anti-federalists thought that the confederacy of states was largely fine, except for major monetary and military gaps. The federalists wanted to form a true federation, which ended up being the end result, with many concessions given to the anti-federalists.
The compromise came about because the confederation was untenable, but at least 9 of the states had to ratify the new constitution, and politically, 4 of states were going to have to be VA, PE, NY, and MA.
The problem is that the electoral college is delegated in a FPTP (first past the post) way, which enforces the 2 party system the US has now, because if 50% of the vote gives you everything, the ideal way to do politics is to have 2 parties at 49 and have them compete for the 50th percentile. That makes any other parties spoilers and means that your vote is orders of magnitude more important in a state with that 49/49/2 split, not to mention the implications of crushing the entirety of politics down to 2 opposing political parties.
That problem is unrelated to FPTP though, a pure popular vote or NPVIC effective popular vote is subject to the same follies that cause spoiler effects. Sure, I personally might get a hell of a lot less mail in a popular vote system with the elimination of battleground states, but the focal math problem remains the same: one executive position, N # of candidates, one vote cast per position, per voter.
Do you know the history of the electoral college? The 3/5ths compromise? It's founded on racist ideals.
Article I was in large part already decided upon - the electoral college was to be the system of executive election with or without an answer to the question of whether or not to count slaves as a part of a state's population. The college, too, was a compromise between the federalists and the anti-federalists, who sparred over whether or not the president was elected by the people, or by the states.
Went to vote early today in MN, there was a line around the block. I counted five pickups drive by with obnoxious Trump decals and flags, driving through a primarily black neighborhood. ::think::
NYTimes has three needles this year
Your link appears to be missing a prefix, which is making it relative instead of absolute.
Working link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/upshot/needle-election-forecast.html
The NYTimes will start updating the needles at 7 p.m. Eastern.
What election trackers / live news outlets are yall following this time around? I usually fall back to TYT because I appreciate their energy when they're targeting the right people. Otherwise I'm thinking maybe NPR liveblogs. Does Democracy Now do live coverage? I've never understood their broadcast setup.
I intend to follow probably the only group that seems to care about accuracy above immediacy. So I'll be follow the Associated Press.
I've been following NPR and FiveThirtyEight for live coverage.
Anyone know what happened in Florida?
It looked like it was tilting towards Biden then the polls suggest it swung hard towards Trump in the last few days.
I don't believe that even the staunchest stupid Republicans deserve Republicans.
I don't disagree, and I have the luxury of being in a whole other country and the lemmingstupid isn't having as direct an impact on my life, so I've been ruminating on how the stupidity is almost more unfortunate for the actual people who are stupidly and proudly clinging to a man whose actions are literally killing them in droves.
It's mind boggling, pathetic and interesting, and serves as a dire warning for populism in Canada as well.
Wealthy, White Cuban doctors are not in store for any impoverished suffering under Trump. They can pass well enough and they don't like Guatemalans or Mexicans or Salvadorians any more than any other White person.
I found this interesting “It’s been really, really bad”: How Hispanic voters are being targeted by disinformation
This election is going to be talked about for years. Just insane to live through really.
On a similar vein to this comment, does anyone have an idea why is Nevada being such a close state this election? Biden seems to have performed a percentage point or two better than Hillary in most places but he's winning by like, 7000 people (half a percent) in Nevada?
From what I've read, Vegas has gotten hit hard economically by covid shutdown, for obvious reasons, and so there's quite a bit less work available due to the entertainment focus of the city. The casinos have a pretty strange work culture overall, in that a lot of folks are well paid compared to the rest of the country, but with little to no career growth, had a friend who dealt in one of the major casinos before he went back to school for accounting for that reason. Outside of Vegas I don't think much has changed since 2016.
EDIT: New data has finally come in, his lead is up to 12k now, and it doesn't really seem to be under too much risk.