Total posts: 934
Ironically, Pete Buttigieg's lack of high level experience is also kind of acting like a shield against pointed attacks from other candidates.
By not ever holding a high level position like Senator or Governor or Attorney General, Buttigieg has effectively not done anything outrageously questionable in the time he has been in politics since he has never held a position of high importance. Warren catching flack for attacking Buttigieg's fundraisers kind of highlights this because there's not much else you could attack him from outside of individual political stances, which are far easier to defend then specific actions taken in the past since any candidate can draw on knowledge of an issue to defend a stance they take on it.
However, Buttigieg was in line to get broadsided during the debate now that he has become the frontrunner in Iowa and New Hampshire. Its always the leading candidates who draw the most fire because them losing ground means someone else can claim the top spot. Biden caught tons of fire the first several debates since he was the frontrunner, then when Warren briefly eclipsed Biden she got attacked in debates as well before beginning her slide into 3rd place. Now that Buttigieg has established himself as the 4th candidate in the top tier he was also going to receive attacks, but his lack of experience shielding him from any outrageous actions makes those attacks at him look like petty overreactions, not genuine causes for concern.
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@ethang5
1) Do you think the dems who voted against impeachment will be punished by the dem party?
I doubt it. There were only 2 who voted against both articles of Impeachment, and 1 of them was Jeff Van Drew from New Jersey who is switching parties to the GOP anyways. Tulsi Gabbard voted 'Present' for both so she technically abstained, but her district is in fuckin Hawaii which will be safe Dem territory for probably the next 30 years as far as I can tell. That leaves maybe 1 or 2 holdouts at most who will probably have their fates decided for them in 2020, I dont see Pelosi or any high ranking Dem going out of their way to take action against the 2 that didnt fall in line.
2. Which dem do you personally like, and who is the dem you believe is most likely to beat Trump if they got the nomination?
I think I've mentioned in the past that I actually am the most impressed by Klobuchar the most out of all the Dem candidates, but in terms of nomination I think Biden has the best oddsof beating Trump in the general election... Sanders and Warren I think are too far to the left to win centrist independent voters (Sanders especially), Klobuchar is at 3% and likely wont even make it far into the primary let alone win the nomination, and while Buttigieg isnt incompetent he is sorely lacking in respectable experience to be able to claim he could manage the job, hes a mayor ffs.
While Biden absolutely has his drawbacks and causes for concern, based off the 4 top tier candidates in terms of polling (More like 3 and a half cause I doubt Buttigieg's popularity in polls), I think he would be the biggest challenge.
3A. Will the impeachment help or hinder Trumps chances of a 2020 win
It wont do a thing..... Everybody who has an opinion of Trump made up their minds about him long before any of this Impeachment stuff even started getting talked about, let alone passed in the House. Dems hate him, GOP loves him, Independents are kind of 50-50, this wont move the needle at all I dont think, especially since the average lifespan of any story about Trump lasts maybe a month at the most due to the frequency of them.
3b. The dems chances of keeping the house?
If Dems lose any seats they gained in the House in 2018 it will because the GOP now knows those seats were at risk in the first place, not because of anything relating to Impeachment. Going into 2018, the GOP knew they were going to lose ground and so they would have to play defense to hold on wherever they could. Seats would be flipped from Red to Blue, but nobody 100% knew which ones they would be and had to spread around money almost at random to try to guess which places were at risk of being lost.
Now they know for 2020..... The results from 2018 shows which seats the GOP got whipped in, which seats the GOP held onto, and which seats the GOP only barely slipped away. Now that it is revealed which seats are still contestable and winnable, the GOP will likely be able to win a few of those back now that they know where specifically they need to focus.
I don't think they will be able to flip enough seats to take back the entire house. Dems have almost a 40 seat advantage, if the GOP flips 20 to 25 of them they will still be the minority party
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@Vader
Kylo Ren I initially liked as a villain just because he seemed so bat-shit unstable and unpredictable that you had no real idea what he would or would do in certain circumstances. A lot of previous Star Wars villains were these very uptight, ultra-well trained fighters with cunning intellect and soft spots for monologuing, Kylo seems like he would kill Rey just because he doesnt like her face.
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Snoke I think was respected as a character mainly because he had so much mystery and potential as a villain in the Star Wars Universe, not because of what he actually did in the movies. His death scene in TLJ is arguably the most asinine plot choice made in that movie (Which is an impressive feat) due to how many questions were left unanswered. What was his overall goal, where is he from, how did he get to the position he is in, his true feelings of Kylo as an apprentice, Rey as a possible candidate for the dark side, etc.
Rey is the most blatant example of a Mary-Sue character I've ever seen and I dont find her interesting at all (poor writing, not poor acting). I cannot see why people would genuinely think she is a well-written character, but I can fully understand why people cut Snoke some more slack since he had potential whereas Rey arguably does not.
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There's no point in summarizing how we got here or what happened recently, we're all pretty up to speed with that and the forums made to talk about it predictably descended into partisan bickering regarding things that anyone could have predicted months ago when the Ukraine story first broke:
- Dem voters think he is guilty and massively corrupt, no one can change their minds
- GOP voters think he is not guilty and did nothing wrong, no one can change their minds
- House Dems would vote in favor of impeachment
- House GOP would vote against it
- Senate Dems would likely vote in favor of impeachment
- Senate GOP would likely vote against impeachment
- Due to GOP majority in the Senate, Trump likely would not be removed from office
- Its possible that Trump loses re-election anyways and makes the whole thing irrelevant by this time next year
The main issue though that everyone is missing is regarding who benefits the least from the impeachment trial in the senate itself. By rule, all sitting senators have to attend the proceedings, all of them, vote accordingly at the end of the trial, and THEN return to what they normally do in their other time. There are FIVE Dem senators running for president right now who would have to attend the entirety of the impeachment trials if they take place: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennet.
In a primary as tight and packed as this one, every day and even every hour counts in terms of campaigning. Candidates who cant be out campaigning lose our on fundraising, giving speeches, meeting with voters, the critical parts of running for president right when the primaries are about to begin.....
For Senator Bennett: He can't even qualify for debates since he polls at <1% so his candidacy is pretty fucked regardless
For Senator Klobuchar: While she is doing better than Bennett, she still only averages 3% in polling and isnt far from the bottom herself
For Senator Booker: He's at around 2.5% so he is about as equally irrelevant and out of luck as the other two
For Senator Sanders: He has repeatedly stayed amongst the top 3 candidates and would be somewhat harmed by being absent from the campaign trail, but he has a bit of a fallback option to resort to: AOC. The highest profile endorsement of Sanders, is a member of the House and could certainly get attention and maybe even voters for Bernie if he gets stuck in DC. Considering how rock solid steady his support has been over the campaign (He's stayed between 15% to 20% for almost the entirety of the primary so far), Sanders could actually weather the storm of being off the campaign trail and still be doing good in polls when the time to vote rolls around.
For Senator Warren: She's fairly fucked. After a slight bounceback from a month-long slide in the polls from 26% down to 14% ( https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html ) She has ground she needs to make up if she is going to position herself as the representative for the liberal electorate in the Dem party to try to rival Biden. Not only does she have ground she needs to make up, she doesnt really have a high profile endorser to step up for her. Warrens biggest endorsement so far has been Megan Rapinoe, the star US Womens team Soccer Player who got into the news by butting heads with Trump.
Rapinoe, in no way shape or form, could step in as a campaigner for Warren the way AOC could for Sanders. A lacking of high-profile endorsements with a fragile voter base combining with forced time away from the campaign trail could very much fuck over Warren, especially if the Impeachment trial drags out for a lengthy amount of time. Short of Hillary or Obama themselves endorsing Warren and being willing to campaign for her, Trump Impeachment could end up dooming Warrens future in politics the most.
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Great Britain's election recently resulted in a large majority for the Conservative Party headed by Boris Johnson, a pro-Brexit party, where Brexit itself was the defining issue in the election that caused people to vote for certain parties accordingly. With this majority and the failure of the Labor Party to secure a similar size of the government, Britain is now almost surely ready to proceed with Brexit
However, results from Scotland and Northern Ireland have shown almost the exact opposite reactions. A majority of the seats up for grabs in Northern Ireland went to Irish Nationalist parties, the first time that has happened since 1921, where the region voted heavily in favor of staying with the EU while Britain voted to leave. https://www.yahoo.com/news/first-irish-nationalists-overtake-unionists-070759388.html
In Scotland, the SNP party (Scottish Nationalist Party) OVERWHELMINGLY swept the area with 48 out of 59 seats going to this minor party. The SNP is very pro Scottish independence and also in favor of remaining within the EU. https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50789131
With Great Britain decisively voting into power the Conservative Party that will bring about an exit from the EU, while Scotland and Northern Ireland going in the exact opposite direction in wanting to both leave the UK and remain part of the EU, should these areas be granted independence, be granted the opportunity to hold referendums to decide independence, or should remain with the UK on its way out of the EU?
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@Dr.Franklin
Really cool fuckin city actually in terms of history and current architecture. Biggest drawback as a Floridian is the fuckin weather. Rainy and sub 60 a lot of the year, yech
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TLDR: Basically data from Jan of 2016 shows there is an idiocy anomaly where people who dont know shit about politics substantially favored Trump more than Hillary, where these voters were assessed based on knowledge of common entry-level facts that are taught in a typical middle school rather then their highest level of achieved education..... This idiocy anomaly continues to persist to this day, was NOT a present factor between the Obama and Romney race in 2012, and shows no signs of going away despite the charges and accusations levied against Trump
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The Washington Post has a limit of the number of articles a person can access from a device so Ill go ahead and post the relevant parts of the article here:
1 - Many commentators have noted what Thomas Edsall has called the “great democratic inversion,” where voters have become more polarized by education, with less-educated voters gravitating to Trump. But focusing only on education obscures another key factor: whether voters have lower levels of knowledge about politics and less interest in using ideas to understand politics. These attributes do not simply reflect voters’ level of formal education.
2 - We define low-information voters as those who do not know certain basic facts about government and lack what psychologists call a “need for cognition..... Those with a low need for cognition, on the other hand, find little reward in the collection and evaluation of new information when it comes to problem solving and the consideration of competing issue positions. They are more likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts, such as “experts” or other opinion leaders, for cues.
3 - We measured knowledge of government based on a question asking 1) how long senators’ terms were and 2) a question on which of four policy areas the government spends the least (the answer was foreign aid; the other options were Medicare, national defense and Social Security). We focused our analysis on whites because nonwhites were not supporting Trump in sufficient numbers...... we found that people who did not know either of these questions about government evaluated Trump 20 points more favorably than Clinton, compared with those who knew both of those questions. This was not true in 2012: Knowledge of politics had little relationship with people’s views of Mitt Romney and Obama.
4 - These data are from January 2016, and Trump’s support may well have shifted. He has lost ground among women in particular
5 - People have many good reasons for being mad about how the established political leadership has failed them, whether it is on trade deals, jobs, inequality, health care or other issues. Trump appeals to many of the disaffected. Nonetheless, a core part of his base is made up of low-information voters who appear more susceptible to Trump’s appeals based on race and religion and less prepared to challenge his misstatements and untruths.
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TLDR: His endorsement of Biden matters because Kerry didnt endorse someone else, which would have caused MASSIVE problems for Biden had he done so
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With John Kerry giving his endorsement to Joe Biden yesterday afternoon, there are now two high-profile democrats who have endorsed someone early in the race, AOC and the Squad being the clear big one and now Kerry being second on the list. While Kerry has been overall irrelevant among the political news junkies, his history in the Dem party still puts him leagues above most other possible endorsements
Former nominee for the Dem party in 2004
Secretary of State for Obama from 2012 to 2016
Former Senator from 1984 to 2012
Short of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi, Kerry is still one of the higher ranking Dems in the entire party based on resume and televised exposure. Its quite tempting to dismiss Kerry as a now irrelevant has-been, but his endorsement of Biden does have one particular ramification: It shows the limits of how far Buttigieg can lure voters
Sanders and Warren voters likely dont give a flying fuck what Kerry thinks or who he endorses. You can easily put him in a group with Biden and Hillary as 'establishment' Dems who have spent decades in public service and want to use the system to make changes to it, rather then overhaul the system entirely. Kerrys endorsement of Biden may only convince them more to back Warren or Sanders if anything.
But consider this. What if Kerry didnt endorse Biden, and instead endorsed Buttigieg? Or Klobuchar? Or Bloomberg? Had Kerry endorsed someone outside of Biden that was in the moderate/centrist faction of the party, it would be a MASSIVE vote of no confidence in Biden as the potential nominee, and cause a lot of Biden supporters to reevaluate their support for him. Kerry and Biden's political resumes are almost identical if not parallel in terms of the positions theyve held and how far theyve gone and how they have served the white house directly after failing to win it themselves. For Kerry to have endorsed someone else other than Biden, THAT would have been noteworthy.
By endorsing Biden, Kerry is not going to convince many people who werent already leaning towards Biden to switch over, and overall the endorsement will probably have little effect on overall polling (compared to AOC, whose endorsement of Bernie over Warren was so high profile that now Sanders is leading Warren in most major polls). The effect his endorsement DOES have on the race is less conspicuous. It lowers the ceiling on how high candidates like Buttigieg or Klobuchar or Bloomberg can go in trying to show they are a viable replacement to Biden for those who are more moderate and dont quite like Sanders and Warren.
Harris dropped out of the race due to campaign funding issues, others like Booker, Castro, Gabbard, and Klobuchar are likely on their way. Buttigeig can rely on his massive fundraising to keep him around, while Steyer and Bloomberg can continue to try to buy the nomination themselves, but Kerry's endorsement shows that these other lower tier moderate candidates have effectively run out of time if they are still in the single digits at this point.
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@Username
In fairness, the Native Americans were fucked long before the colonies even gained independence. If US Presidents spared them and offered them decent protections, the Spanish and British crowns would have fucked them into oblivion instead. Spain used slave labor of natives to mine for precious metals throughout the Americas while England led to the downfall of entire tribes by utilizing the fur trade in their own favor.
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@Username
California and Texas not becoming part of the US when they did would have fundamentally altered the entire course of US history, and world history by extension.
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@Vader
While Washington set the country up for success going into the 1800's, Theodore Roosevelt set the country up for success going into the 1900's which is when the US became a true superpower..... 9 out of 10 times I do consider Washington as the better, but every once in a while I warm up to Teddy again and think he was the best, which is why I have those as my interchangeable top two
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Top 2 that are interchangeable
- George Washington (Rejected kingship, established the two-term standard which was fucking tremendous)
- Theodore Roosevelt (Anti-trust president that brought an end to the negative effects of the Gilded Age and kickstarted the creation of the Middle Class)
3 through 5 that are also interchangeable
- Lincoln (Handled the Civil War about as well as it could have been handled)
- JFK (Pretty good on Civil Rights given the time period in the 1960's, handled the Cuban Missile Crisis beautifully, Legit aimed for the moon)
- James K Polk
^ Look into what he did during his presidency and its pretty fucking remarkable. Secured Oregon and Washington territory form the British without causing a war, annexed Texas, took a fuckton more territory in the Mexican American war that went handily in favor of the US and achieved the whole 'Manifest Destiny' goal of expanding the US to the Pacific, returned the US to an independent banking system rather than the government run Bank of the United States that controlled everything, and he did all of this in ONE TERM because he DECLINED to run for a second term.
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@HistoryBuff
Beat me to it XDAll 3% of them?
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@HistoryBuff
Well everyone was some sort of idiot in college, I highly doubt that that behavior would persist unchanging for the next 40 years or however old he is now. The fact that Supreme Court judges are damn near impossible to remove from service outside of retirement or death also gives them a solid shield to act and judge however they desire, so anybody Trump picked to be an ultimate 'yes man' has full power to do what they believe is right instead with zero risk of backlash.
Partisanship is another thing. I fully believe that justices are being picked based on how far they lean, especially since Congress is now retarded enough to allow justices to be picked by a majority vote, rather then the 60 vote threshhold used in the past, making it open season on stacking the Supreme Court with any extremist that one political party could force into confirmation with a majority vote. Could Gorsuch swing to the right and vote based on his political beliefs? Absolutely, but I highly doubt he would do so because of blatant unprofessionality. Again though, they have full immunity to do whatever they think is right, and there have been times where justices broke ranks with ideology and voted for the other side.
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@Greyparrot
Not really... The majority of 6th grade students I have worked with on average can articulate thoughts better and more clearly than Trump can....
Actually Im pretty certain that an iPhone auto-fill text function could formulate a speech that is almost on par with what Trump comes up with if you give it the first three words to get things going.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
Considering that Trump can barely plan out a tweet on twitter correctly, I highly doubt he is even capable of masterminding a grand scheme to use his own impeachment talks to his favor, let alone actually doing it and somehow succeeding.
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Fun fact: Nixon had appointed 4 of the 9 judges on the Supreme Court by the time they had to rule on whether or not the White House could withhold self-incriminating tapes about the Watergate scandal. Hypothetically, all 4 of those judges he appointed would only have to convince one other judge to let it slide and allow Nixon to remain in office for the remainder of his second term.
Instead, 3 of the 4 voted against Nixon while the fourth abstained, resulting in an 8-0 ruling that effectively doomed Nixon as president.
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Did i fuckin miss something? I havent really been keeping up on the 'running primary poll' thread cause ive had a lot of shit going on in real life, but checking the usual site I go to it shows Warren has slid down nearly 10 points since mid October where she peaked at almost 27 points.... Ever since, she has slowly been losing fairly noticable chunks of support to Sanders, Biden, and now even Buttigieg based on recent trends, who is now within FIVE POINTS of overtaking Warren in NATIONWIDE polling.
Here's how I know something is up: Prior to this point in the race, the only times that Warren ever sank to 15% in national polling were in polls conducted by TheHill/HarrisX, which repeatedly put her at 15% when all other polls had her at least up in the 20's.... Now though, 4 of the last 5 polls have Warren at 15%, and none of them are polls by TheHill/HarrisX..... What the hell caused this though? There hasn't been any massive policy shift on her part that im aware of that could have caused her to lose voters, Sanders Buttigieg and Biden havent really done anything to suddenly sway voters more their way, and the only high profile endorsement (AOC + 'The Squad') that went against Bernie happened a month ago and knocked Warren from 25% to 20%.... Now though she is quickly approaching 15% from November 18th onwards
Anyone know anything on this?
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If yall really wanna learn about a cover up look at the 1952 Democratic Presidential Primary
Candidate Estes Kefauver won 80% of the primaries and 60% of the popular vote in the primaries, but because this was when most states still had state bosses order delegates to support particular candidates, the nomination went to Hubert Humphrey instead
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@Greyparrot
The offer still stands where you can join and be a part of things if you want
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@Dr.Franklin
So far yeah, havent even once come close to eating any nuts
the key is to masturbate everytime you think about it so that you stay focused
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Has he made it through No Nut November though?
Congrats btw ;D
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So we have:
3 votes for McConnell and 1 who is half opposed (Dissenting vote did say he should be executed but voted for another candidate instead)
1 vote for AOC and 1 who I believe is opposed (There was an argument made in her defense)
1 vote for Beto O'Rourke (We could hypothetically make lots of money off of this which I am a fan of)
None for Mitt Romney since in the eyes of the council he is beyond irrelevant now (A fair argument to make)
Ted Cruz is a candidate we could also evaluate since he does arguably have the most punchable face in Congress, and unless I missed something there havent been any other proposed ShitPiss Piñata Mascot of Shame (I will keep changing the name of it until I find one that is sufficiently hilarious)
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@3RU7AL
@TheRealNihilist
@bmdrocks21
@Dr.Franklin
Be advised of the previous post
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The first meeting of the Grand Politics ShitPiss Society Forum is called into order, I wish to thank the wealthy lords of the realm for attending, I know that your horse carriages must be quite worn from the distances you traveled through the countryside hills in order to get here.
Our first order of business is more of a festive formality than anything of substantial importance. In order to symbolize our distaste for the peasant class of citizens who occupy our lands and consume resources while not contributing anything of their own to the greater good, it has been ordered that a grand Piñata is to be constructed of a US politician to make a mockery out of them, and that all other piñata's in the realm can only showcase the face of the person we select. The point of this is to remind the peasants in our lands of who really holds the power in this realm, and that those they look up to who promise them things they cannot deliver are to be mocked and derided rather than respected and considered.
So, we must select a US politician we consider to be the bane of existence in modern politics, and make them the official punchline of the realm. Due to the somewhat sensitive nature of this kind of discourse, the person we select should be someone we ALL agree is terrible, rather then a majority vote that could lead to conflict and division among our ranks.
I propose 3 candidates to be our shame mascot Piñata thingy
1 - Mitt Romney, since he is unfortunately still relevant as a Utah Senator, and I think everyone Republican or Democrat has at some point wanted to shit in his mouth
2 - AOC, since she literally holds no power or influence as a House Representative yet somehow is fueling the discourse between Dems and Reps alike almost entirely just by existing
3 - Mitch McConnell, since he is a diseased turtle with no regards to tradition or custom and sets an alarming precedent.
If someone wishes to propose their own candidate for Shame Mascot Piñata you may do so, just try to make it someone who is relevant TODAY, as in they still are a player in US politics and not some has-been with no real influence anymore
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@Ramshutu
But a glass of water is also not something blatantly related to the movie Frozen or anyone in it. Completely out of context a glass of water will be seen by average lookers as just a glass of waterA glass of water vs Elsa is not even close to something one could consider abusive. If I had, for example, had a picture of a bench being sawn in half, that’s where we get closer.
What Im saying is if someone had their profile pic be something deliberately Anti-Frozen, like FROZEN SUCKS in capital letters or a picture of Elsa with the words OVERRATED painted over it, could that technically be illegal now since my profile pic as Elsa has always been that and therefore makes the anti-Frozen pic a mocking/derogatory dig at me?
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@3RU7AL
Im fairly certain anyone who knows anything about me for longer than 4 minutes could probably interpret the sarcasm in the first half of that comment
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@Ramshutu
Okay one, GO *#(% YOURSELF
;D
Two, and in actual seriousness, that could be interpreted as just an 'Anti Ice' picture, which technically makes it an immigration stance since ABOLISH ICE is an actual thing, not just a dig at Frozen
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Cant think of a better reason to update this thing than to show that Buttigieg has somehow found the lead in Iowa, so here we go:
1) BUTTIGIEG LEADING IN IOWA
Monmouth polls, one of the better and more accurate polls out there, recently had Buttigieg not just in the thick of the race among the top tier candidates in Iowa as he has been since early October, he has managed to clinch an outright LEAD in the state, polling at 22% overall right in front of Biden (19%) and Warren (18). Sanders is down to 13%, no other candidate apart from Klobuchar is north of 4%
This does not reflect any national trends unfortunately (for Buttigieg). Despite polling well in Iowa, nationwide he still polls at a paltry 7.5%, just a hair in front of Kamala Harris at 5.5% and well behind Sanders (in 3rd place) at 17%. Buttigieg has been dumping a lot of his money into the state of Iowa which has reflected his immense rise in that state while other states leave him behind.... If you go through the primary states, Buttigiegs polling drops almost like clockwork
Iowa = Buttigieg is at 22%
New Hampshire = Buttigieg is at 15%
Nevada = Buttigieg is at 7%
South Carolina = Buttigieg is at 9%
California = Buttigieg is at 10%
Texas = Buttiegieg is at 6%
It's not that any one candidate is losing their base to Buttigieg, he simply seems to be the one candidate who is succeeding at the thing that every other non-major candidate is trying to do: Dump all the money they have into early primary states to try to win support and justify their campaigns. A large share of other lower-tier candidates going all in on Iowa are losing the fight to Buttigieg in their quest to claim justification in the state, while the more major candidates are waiting out the storm and focusing on other states later in the primary where there is less competition and dollars buy a lot more for less.
2) WISCONSIN IS A DOGFIGHT
The other bit of news to come out is that the NYT released a half dozen state polls of the Dem primary in states that are not early primaries: North Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania
Biden leads in a majority of them, not really a surprise. Florida, NC, and Arizona are all in the south where Biden polls very strong, and in Michigan a lot of them may still have good will towards Biden thanks to the auto bailouts Obama authorized during the 2009 recession which would explain his lead there.... In Pennsylvania he also does well but I want to focus on Wisconsin, because it's the one state Biden does NOT clearly have in his pocket.
While a Marquette poll strongly implies the state is Biden's to lose, the poll is somewhat misleading since it appears to have asked voters to make a choice of the candidates presented. The NYT polls on the other hand show what percentage of respondents are still not sure, with every poll having about 20% to 35% of voters still not sure.
With this information, we can kind of extrapolate data from Wisconsin about which candidates have rock-steady support, and which candidates are a little shaky. Comparing the Marquette poll and the NYT poll, Warren and Sanders supporters are with the candidates no matter what, as their numbers have not changed even when the 'Dont Know' option is included as an answer.... For Biden though, only about 2/3rds of people who supported him in the Marquette poll are steady in his corner, the other 1/3rd only picked him when required to pick someone to support.
Whether this means undecided voters in the state are leaning towards Biden or if Biden supporters are leaning towards being undecided is up for others to decide. An opposite conclusion could almost be reached with Warren and Sanders, where either undecided voters in the state are either not inclined to back either of them, or Warren and Sanders have totally won their bases in the state and can continue to bank on their support. Of all the states in the batch of polls though, Wisconsin is the one where the lead is the smallest for candidates near the top, and that state will likely be the bigger battleground in the Dem primary compared to other states mentioned in the polls
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Out of morbid curiosity, based on the no-mocking-profile-pictures rule, does that technically make it illegal for anyone to have an anti-Frozen profile picture since I could argue that it is mocking me since I have only ever had this Elsa pic as my profile picture?
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Favorite candidate to me is Klobuchar, she seems like someone who could do the best in un-fucking the gridlock of partisanship in politics while also being smart enough and calm enough to satisfactorily address a lot of national concerns that could come up during a presidency.
Most likely to win for me is Biden. He does very well in the southern states, among old people who vote the most reliably, and does decent enough in enough states outside the south to stay competitive. Also Warren and Sanders are going to start fighting over the far-left base while no one else is really challenging Biden for the moderate/centrist vote (Buttigieg is kinda doing well in Iowa and NH but outside those states he polls at 4% with all the other non-major candidates)
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I tend to drift towards NFL and NBA debates as long as they are brief enough. For a while I was considering a NFL debate of my own where I argue that the Malcom Butler Interception is the greatest football play of all time, and part of me still is once I get a decent period of free time to go for it
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An opponent only posting two lines of text for their entire argument, neither of which being a source.
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Bob Steyer: (Spends tens of millions of his own wealth to get to 0.9% in polls nationally)
Bloomberg: "I like his style!"
On a more serious note, Bloomberg has almost no base of support to draw from since moderate voters already drift towards Biden or Buttigieg while more liberal voters drift towards Sanders or Warren, he is damn near out of time to build any sort of following in the primary states before the votes start coming in, and keep in mind there are still well over a dozen candidates in the field, a majority of whom are spending every cent they have into Iowa or Nevada.
Even if Bloomberg puts a billion dollars on the table to fund his own campaign, at this point its still too little too late
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I lean more towards a combination of other things:
- Lowering the interest rates on student loans from 8% to more fuckin sensible levels such as 2% to 4%
- Student loan forgiveness for students who have already paid 150% of what was originally owed (A student borrows $10k, already has paid $15k, but due to interest still owes another 10k, they will have their loans forgiven since theyve already paid much more than they borrowed)
- Student loan forgiveness for students who hold majors in STEM fields (Engineering, Medical, Science fields that are incredibly hard to succeed in in the first place)
- Raising Awareness that college isnt a necessity + certain 'hacks' that can save tons of money (Top example: Go to community college for two years, get credits, transfer to a university, spend remainder two years there... You get a degree from the university itself at half the cost, graduate schools only look at last 60 semester hours or so which never goes further back then 2 years, and allows for increased flexibility to figure out what you want to do since many students change majors multiple times in college)
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The recent Iowa polls suggest Biden might come in 4th. New Hampshire polling suggests he may come in 3rd. If he gets beaten badly in the 1st two primaries
That's mainly because every candidate in the race who is in the bottom tier is spending fuckloads of money in Iowa to try to get a strong showing for the rest of the race. Kamala Harris and Julian Castro have basically pulled out of other states to focus operations entirely on Iowa to try to justify staying in the race, making the state just a money pit. https://news.yahoo.com/look-out-below-which-democratic-candidate-will-drop-out-next-161843916.html Buttigieg in particular has been spending big on Iowa while doing pretty shit everywhere else, but has been having the most success of the lesser candidates who have been trying to accomplish the same thing https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/us/politics/pete-buttigieg-2020-campaign-iowa.html
So while Biden has certainly been doing iffy in Iowa, it's because 80% of other candidates are spending every nickel and dime they have on the state to try to muscle their way in to the top tier. It almost makes more sense to not spend money on the state and instead focus on other early primary states where there is substantially less pressure and competition in terms of advertising and being heard by voters.
New Hampshire also has the exception of bordering the states both Bernie and Warren hail from (Vermont and Massachusetts).... Candidates get a huge bump in states that are their home state, and that sort of also applies to nearby states that share a border. Losing in Iowa is excusable from how much candidates are betting all-in on the state, losing in NH is also excusable to a degree since 2 of the 3 best polling candidates have home states near NH in the first place.
The Nevada polls say that one of the highest priorities was someone who could win. If Biden gets beaten badly in the 1st two states that could convince some people he isn't the guy who can win.
True, absolutely, but how bad does one have to shit the bed to make your campaign not viable? If we go with a double digit loss being the benchmark for losing badly, then that means someone would have to fall into the single digits in Iowa due to the number of candidates who are running right now. I dont see Biden nor Warren nor Sanders nor even Buttigieg doing that since theyre all pushing 20% individually. The four of them are all neck and neck while the rest of the pack can't even hit 7% more than once, so even putting up 12% to 15% could be considered close since we have a 4 way tie for first at the moment.
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@Barney
Im glad I did it at the time I did it (in college when I had fuckloads of free time) because there's just no way I would be able to do something similar today. The site is still fairly inactive compared to DDO during its hey-day when the Weekly Stupid aired, and even though it was only twice a month there still was a big time requirement of looking for stupid and recording and filming things that I just dont have the time to do anymore.
I might be able to do another movie type of feature where I whittle away at it over time until I have something put together, but I cant commit to a bi-weekly production that is fairly effort-intensive that chews up a lot of free time I might not even have from week to week
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How in the actual, literal fuck, did Democrats win the governor race for Kentucky?
I could see this happening in a state like Arizona or Georgia which is a little bit blue, BUT KENTUCKY????
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Fuckin finally got some new state polls which actually hold the highest importance at this point compared to national polling
1) BIDEN HAS NEVADA ON LOCKDOWN
Last polls taken from just the state of Nevada were conducted in late September, well over a month later, not one but two polls just for the state have come out, and they both show Biden with a massive lead.
The two polls have Biden at 29.5%, Warren at 20.5%, and Sanders at 19.0%...... Previously it could be believed that Biden would not get his first solid win until South Carolina (the 4th primary right after Nevada), but new info putting him up 10 points in the state indicates he will likely walk away with the state in his pocket barring some major fuckup that torpedo's his support base.
2) BETO'S BASE WILL DECIDE WHO WINS TEXAS
A Texas poll conducted late in October was released yesterday showing that while Biden's lead in the state is down to 5 points (previously he averaged a 10 point lead in the state), who Beto's base will switch to will decide who wins the state. Texas, as Beto's home state, averaged 14 points prior to him dropping out at the end of the month, so the 14% base listed as his supporters will almost certainly decide who wins the state.
Warren here has a slight edge. 3/4ths of all Beto supporters would be satisfied with Warren as the nominee (75%) while Biden and Sanders only averaged 2/3rds the satisfaction (67%) https://www.businessinsider.com/beto-orourke-dropped-out-who-gains-2019-11
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New Zealand when i went there on a vacation was fucking terrific. As a Floridian im a bitch when it comes to low temperatures, and everything in Australia scares the shit out of me so I lean towards New Zealand.
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@bmdrocks21
Gaddafi was hardly the worst dictator in Africa and actually leaned pro-privatization of many industries after swinging hard socialist earlier in the 70's, but at the same time he absolutely was a dictator and had questionable ties to terrorist cells. (For example, the two men responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 were from Libya, and Gaddafi refused to hand them over). At many points the US both liked and disliked Gaddafi, the Russians liked and disliked him, and many Arab/Islamist groups liked and disliked him.... He was all over the place and never clearly someone to rely on to do the right thing, but would get it right every now and then.
Whats interesting to note is that a large chunk of Europe gets its oil from Libya. After Russia and Norway, Libya was the third biggest exporter of oil to Euro nations. It is very possible to assume that European nations supported anti-Gaddafi troops because they thought they could sweep in and prop up their own pro-European government in the country to try to wean themselves off of energy dependence to Russia. The Arab Spring was doing the hard work in actually removing Gaddafi from power by force, which made the prospect of intervening that much more interesting.
Had we known what would have eventually happened to Libya in the years following his death though, I think some Euro countries would definitely have preferred to have left Gaddafi in power and try to appeal to candidates who could be his successor rather then let it become the lawless shitfest it is today
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@bmdrocks21
I think the furthest we went was enforcing a no-fly zone over the whole country, which did kinda fuck over Ghaddafi since a lot of Libya is open desert and a functioning air force would have MASSIVELY tipped the scales in his favor
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@bmdrocks21
in fairness Libya was fucked no matter what could have been done to try to stabilize things..... The Arab Spring movement took down so many North African despots who had held power for upwards of 40 years that a few countries were going to be overlooked as other nations got attention. Egypt and Iraq I think were the big winners of international attention during the thick of it since Egypt had substantial power compared to all the other nations that were severely impacted, while Iraq's instability from the movements helped lead to the rise of ISIS.
Libya automatically got bumped down into at least third place as a result, which is just below the threshold of what the media largely considers important enough to report on a repeated basis and keep the public informed.
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Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders all get on a plane together
Due to a maintenance hiccup, both engines and wings fall off the plane and it crashes into the side of a mountain, killing everyone on board.
If you had to support a candidate from the remaining candidates running for President, who do you pick and why?
DEMS:
Pete Buttigieg
Kamala Harris
Andrew Yang
Amy Klobuchar
Corey Booker
Tulsi Gabbard
Bob Steyer
Julian Castro
(All other Dem nominees still in the race at this point are irrelevant)
REPS:
Mark Sanford
William Weld
Joe Walsh
Mike Pence (Assumed to be running since as VP he is now President)
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The formal DART awards are a little too stuffy, the Dark Dart Awards keep getting locked
Come with me, and you'll see a world of fairly forgettable meh
Nominate people for Grey Dart awards here!
Site Most Average Member
A recent member
Okayest Forum Post
Most Mafia Game that indeed did happen
Thread with Replies
Debate with only 1 vote
Forum
Profile with blandest profile pic
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@TheRealNihilist
Everyone else in the politics forums already rent out houses on lands we own. They pay a 100% tax rate to us so the handful of us have all the wealth in this forum there could possibly be
(If you want to go spam the misc forums to bump up your forum count, which leads to $100k per post, then there is nothing stopping you from doing so)
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