2022 midterm polls

[pbrower2a]

(08-06-2022, 03:37 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-06-2022, 12:35 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: It will look better in print. It will sound better in someone else's voice. That will matter in 2024.

It sounded good from his voice too. We don't have anyone else to replace Biden. We need to support him, and prod him to move a bit faster.

What will matter is if anyone else is nominated. Then we are almost certain to lose!

Biden came back and beat the other Democrats and Trump for a reason. And it is not just because he won one primary election. He will come back again.

President Biden is not in campaign mode. He has other concerns, and if he fails at them he should not be re-elected. Trump always was in campaign mode, and he was terribly ineffective as President. Even if one likes Trump's agenda as much as I abhor it one must recognize Trump as a failure. His one lasting achievement is to have nominated three Justices to the US Supreme Court who passed the vetting of a shadowy organization on the political fringe and gotten them past a bare GOP majority that failed in the role of "advise and consent". The first decision of the Supreme Court that he shaped has created legal chaos. Stare decisis exists to prevent such chaos by ensuring that legal precedents remain valid.  The alternative is to scrap English common law for European-style civil law, which establishes all rights by statute. If one starts from nothing, both the French-style civil code and the Anglo-American common law are equally valid. The transition from one to the other is chaotic. 

The legal chaos involves abortion, and all that matters is to some is that the Will of God (really, natural consequences of any reproductive activity) is to be honored no matter how horrible.  The logic behind the revocation of Roe v. Wade is analogous to saying that if it is God's Will (really "fate") that someone gets sick from a bacterial infection, then safe and effective antibiotics that would interfere with the "Will of God" must be denied. It is not up to any person to decide what the Will of God is except on moral law. In that case one can in no way excuse rape as the Will of God because rape is an abomination.

I can only imagine what other mischief is possible with stooges of the John Birch -- excuse me, Federalist -- Society. People who insist on owning everything and allowing others who own nothing to live solely at their whim are the sorts of political leadership that has typically created the mass misery that precedes a proletarian or at least Jacobin revolution. 95% of the people suffering for a 2% who contributes nothing but legal and administrative bureaucracy (about 3% of the people in any society, like senior military officers, police administrators, college professors, physicians, dentists, CPA's, and creative people can thrive under any order) describes Imperial Russia or the plantation order of the Old South. Imagine an America without contraception, in which women and minorities cannot compete with white men for the jobs that white, Anglo-Saxon,  "Christian" men want, in which K-12 education that is not a sick joke is a privilege only for those that the politicians deem worthy, in which workers have no rights to contest the despotic management of bosses and owners, in which everything that can be so treated is privatized to monopolistic profiteers, and in which industry pollutes to its heartless content. So far as I can tell about the current GOP., which might as well be the John Birch Society. he who owns the gold makes the rules for the rest of us. Such is either feudalism or fascism, and under either we are f---ed.

We need a New Birth of Freedom. as Abraham Lincoln put it, even at the expense of self-esteem and conspicuous consumption.

[pbrower2a]

Democrats can win on abortion.

Quote:5. Thinking about this November’s elections, if one candidate favors keeping abortion legal and
available and the other candidate favors limiting abortion except to protect the mother’s life,
which candidate would you be more likely to support?


The candidate who favors keeping abortion legal and available 49
The candidate who favors limiting abortion except to protect the mother’s life 27
The abortion issue would not matter in my vote 22
Skipped 1

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/file...022%20.pdf
In fact there is a more extreme position, one in which even the life of the mother is not a consideration. That position should be a sure loser. 
An abortion ban -- creating orphans, wrecking women, and making a mockery of sound medicine.

[Eric the Green]

A number of polls are saying Democrat by 4-6 points now, but 538.org keeps the Republican ones (Trafalgar and Rasmussen) in the mix, which may be a good idea since there may be some Republicans who think polls are from the Deep State or something and don't answer them. Their latest estimate is Democratic +0.5.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ic-ballot/

538 also weighs the poll numbers according to their own evaluations, which real clear politics does not, so the latter has a consistently more-Republican slant, since it also includes Trafalgar and Rasmussen. Still, I see Real Clear now shows the generic House numbers shifted Democratic, +0.2.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/2020/

[Eric the Green]

It should be clear to everyone that Democracy is on the ballot. To vote Republican is to deny free and fair elections and insist that a president should just stay in office because he wants to.

[pbrower2a]

I look at the polls for the US Senate and I see Republicans losing Senate seats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and not picking up any seat from an incumbent Democrat. Their nominee for the US Senate in Ohio is a disaster. Herschel Walker is a sick joke.

Republicans can lose seats in Iowa (its incumbent R Senator has rigor mortis of the mind), Florida (Rubio typically wins narrowly, but a shift can flip that), and even Texas, a state rapidly becoming more like America as a whole. Those might be long shots, but wave elections cause long-shots to win. I don't know enough about North Carolina to say anything.

Trump still casts a huge and vile shadow over this electoral cycle. The usual defeated nominee for President gets off the political scene and does not allow his weaknesses as a campaigner or administrator get in the way of the nominees of his Party. There aren't that many low-hanging fruits to go from D to R.

2022 is still a reflection of the R Senate wave of 2010. Republicans elected plenty of extremists who entered the Senate, and Democrats failed to make much headway in 2016. In the House, gerrymandering still gives Republicans an edge, but no more than the edge that they have held for ten years. Democrats can hit R pols on abortion and the Capitol Putsch.

[Eric the Green]

(08-17-2022, 07:42 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I look at the polls for the US Senate and I see Republicans losing Senate seats in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and not picking up any seat from an incumbent Democrat. Their nominee for the US Senate in Ohio is a disaster. Herschel Walker is a sick joke.

Republicans can lose seats in Iowa (its incumbent R Senator has rigor mortis of the mind), Florida (Rubio typically wins narrowly, but a shift can flip that), and even Texas, a state rapidly becoming more like America as a whole. Those might be long shots, but wave elections cause long-shots to win. I don't know enough about North Carolina to say anything.

Trump still casts a huge and vile shadow over this electoral cycle. The usual defeated nominee for President gets off the political scene and does not allow his weaknesses as a campaigner or administrator get in the way of the nominees of his Party. There aren't that many low-hanging fruits to go from D to R.

2022 is still a reflection of the R Senate wave of 2010. Republicans elected plenty of extremists who entered the Senate, and Democrats failed to make much headway in 2016. In the House, gerrymandering still gives Republicans an edge, but no more than the edge that they have held for ten years. Democrats can hit R pols on abortion and the Capitol Putsch.

I have seen no polls on the Iowa senate race, but I found one:
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/...062297002/

The geriatric senator Grassley still leads by 8 points, and Iowa voted for Trump by 6, so it looks doubtful. North Carolina polls are tied, so a flip there is more likely than in Texas or Iowa.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...-carolina/
But Ohio Republicans nominated a new Trumpist extremist candidate and moderately-liberal Congressman Ryan is leading by 1 point, down after one poll from 4 points; a flip is more likely there than in Texas and Iowa which have very conservative but not extremist incumbent candidates. Knocking out Rubio in FL seems unlikely, but he has a strong opponent Val Demings. She has been behind, but a new poll reported by The Hill gives her a 4 point lead. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/36...ubio-poll/
But that seems to be the only poll giving Demings a lead so far: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...2/florida/

Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and New Hampshire have close races, but are likely to stay Democratic unless a Republican wave develops. The Democratic gain in PA seems a done deal, and it would seem like Wisconsin is a good bet for a flip too. Democrat Mandela Barnes leads most polls narrowly, but 538 has not given an overall estimate yet.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...wisconsin/

[pbrower2a]

Wave elections are those in which pols of the Other Party who had been long-shots often win even without the Other Guy saying something stupid (like "legitimate rape") or being caught in a scandal. Many are reverse-waves that take out the unlikely winners of the previous election who have proved mediocrities or worse or are bad matches for their communities. That is one way to practically ensure that one does not get re-elected.

So, what would a Republican wave look like in 2022? Democrats would lose fifty or so House seats, and Republicans would win practically all open Senate seats and pick off some surprises. Those surprises are the long-shots.

We start with the assumption that most incumbents (aside from the appointed variety who never showed that they were electable) win. Most incumbents connect with their constituents, don't get enmeshed in personal scandals, aren't corrupt, and are reasonably competent. Most know enough to leave when they are no longer up to the job. Most show in the next election why they got elected the previous time.

So far, so good. Obviously, demographic change can change the environment; a state hemorrhaging reliable Democratic voters due to the decline of one or more industries (West Virginia used to be Safe D because or the powerful United Mine Workers' Union), making the state by default more rural and less urban and suburban. (Iowa and Ohio may be going that way). On the other hand, the growth of the Mexican-American component of the electorate has made California, Illinois, and New Mexico into Democratic bastions and put Colorado and Nevada on the brink of such, and transformed Arizona into a swing state from a solid-R state. Texas, you are next. Virginia was a strong R state from the 1950's until about fifteen years ago when it no longer was because people from Northern states moved there for the booming economy and brought their liberal values with them. North Carolina and Georgia are less so. But unless a really-large state is in question, those effects are often a wash.

2016 should have been a wave election for Democrats in the Senate, but wasn't. 2022 is the next chance. Republicans began with a 50-50 split of the Senate with few reasonable chances of flipping some Senate seats from D to R. They threw away their chances in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire, so there won't be an R majority in the Senate unless something catastrophic happens to the Democrats. Time is running out for that.

So peel away the chances of the Republicans keeping a tie in the Senate one by one. Start with Pennsylvania. Pat Toomey, someone who believes that no human suffering is excessive so long as corporate profits arise from such, chose to leave after two terms. His intended R successor has proved less than effective at winning an open seat. Ron Johnson is an extremist in a moderate state. He barely got re-elected when Trump won the state. If he goes down, then that is 48.

Republicans have an open seat in Ohio to fill, and the person that they nominated is a political disaster. Few could have foreseen that a year ago, but so it is. 47.

Beyond that, the Republicans have Senators who looked like nearly-sure things to win re-election in 2022 a year ago. What looked like Democratic longshots aren't such long-shots any more. Maybe the horse-track gets a new surface and horses that had 200-1 odds against them become more like 10-1 shots.

[Eric the Green]

Considering one of your posts above, Mr. Brower, isn't it interesting that Joe Manchin votes to put 3 extreme reich-wing Federalist-Society judges on the Supreme Court, using repeal of the filibuster by the repug party to do it, but won't vote for voting rights reform that he himself sponsors because he would have to bypass the filibuster to do it.

We really need 52+ Democrats in the Senate, to make up for 2 phony ones.

PA seems like a done deal, with the Democrat having an 11-point lead, and narrow majorities favor keeping 4 Democrats at risk in swing states. Voters in Wisconsin and Ohio will have the chance to give Democrats a real working majority, or else put fascist extremists in their senate seats instead.

[pbrower2a]

Here is something to contemplate. This is a copy of something I posted on an election forum  three years ago,

Quote: As a rule I do not predict polling results except to expect more of the same. I am at least as much concerned with disapproval as with approval.

Now how important are leads with time? Close to Election Day, electoral leads of even 1% can give the leader nearly 2/3 of a chance of winning the state. Leads that may not look 'that bad' for the nominee behind in polling can go from troubling to ominous to politically lethal over a year even if the lead remains the same.

...(From) Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise (why so many predictions but some don't) I get this revealing chart. It relates probability well, and as I have suggested, being up 5% in a binary election a year before means little, being up 5% a month before the election is huge. It is from 2012, and it relates much other than elections (like sports, poker, and even chess). What it says of electoral leads as a campaign approaches its conclusion is telling.

On page 63, Figure 2-4 shows the probability of a Senate candidate winning (1998 to 2008) with a certain lead (1, 5, 10, and 20 points) at one year, six months, three months, one month, one week, and one day. Because statewide races for President are much like statewide races for the Senate -- with the qualification that Presidential nominees do not usually make appearances where they see themselves losing -- unless they really are losing nationwide.

Time to election  |1 point|5 points||10 points|20 points|
one day............. |...64%|....95%|.....99.7%|.99.999%|
one week........... |...60%|....89%|.......98%|...99.97%|
one month......... |...57%|....81%|.......95%|.....99.7%|
three months..... |...55%|....72%|.......87%|........98%|
six months..........|...53%|....66%|.......79%|.......93%|
one year.............|....52%|...59%|.......67%|.......81%|

(I am going to put this back in my "electoral theory" section because it will remain relevant.

So what conclusions can I draw? You might be surprised that a five-point lead one month before Election Day is no less significant than a twenty-point lead one year before the election. Thus one hears things like Democrats saying "We have a chance of winning West Virginia if everything goes right" and Republicans say that they have a chance of winning Massachusetts... yadda, yadda, yadda. Or is it "Yabba, dabba, doo!" Likewise, being one point ahead on the day before the election is worth almost as much as being five points ahead six months before the election or even ten points ahead  a year before the election.

Comment on this:

Polling may be more stable than you expect. Personalities of adult politicians do not change much over time. Political cultures and demographics of an electorate can change, but not that fast. If you wonder about breaking scandals, then consider that the political journalists generally have a good idea of who the crooks are and stay clear of them as if those politicians had contagious diseases that would wreck journalists' careers.  Scandals typically break for politicians with bad polling. Maybe those pols have some signals such as being unusually defensive and less ebullient than the usual optimist.

What of earth-shattering events? Even a 1929-style economic crash takes several months to show that it is big trouble. Wars? Those take time to sort out, and if anything the rally-around-the-flag effect comes into play (probably intensifying the effect of the limitation of time). 

So look at the dynamics. A year before the election, even a 20-point lead by an incumbent against a generic opponent may be too slight to hold up. The political climate may not have consolidated, and nobody knows who the opponent will be. That could be a strong opponent or a weak one. A weak one ends up doing as one expects, serving as nominal opposition who gets the partisan hacks on his side and nobody else and ends up losing 60-40 in a state or district that the incumbent fits well. Defeating an incumbent who leads Generic Opponent by 20% happens about 19% of the time, so giving 4-1 odds in favor of just about any incumbent a year before the election if there is no clear opponent isn't preposterous. If you would have asked me whether Democrats had a chance of winning the Senate seat in Iowa or Ohio in 2022 back in November 2021 I night have given something like 6-1 odds against it. 

Six months later the primary contest is established, and if an incumbent is running for re-election he gets to establish whether he is up to the task. If not, then his polling will show that. If the opponent is unusually strong, then the early edge can completely disappear and then some. By May the likely opponents have surely grafter their messages, and anyone who must change the message after that is in deep trouble. Voters generally dislike flakes. 

Three months? Opposing sides have set their agendas, and most of the campaigning is about getting a positive image in public appearances or demonizing an opponent (basically, the Other Guy is against prosperity because he does not believe that those who own the assets should have absolute power over everyone else if he is a liberal facing someone with support from the economic elites).          

Time limits what one can achieve in a campaign, and as time runs out, campaigning reduces to getting the right ads in the right times in the right TV markets, making fitting campaign appearances, and trying to avoid catastrophic gaffes. 

If one is down 1% according to the polls on the day before the election, then one has one's best hope in expecting the polling data to be wrong. 

 .

[Eric the Green]

For the first time in a while Trump's approval numbers are lower than Biden's
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ald-trump/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/bid...al-rating/

Thank goodness for small mercies. To me it seems like Trump should have 99% disapproval.

[David Horn]

(08-22-2022, 11:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: For the first time in a while Trump's approval numbers are lower than Biden's
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ald-trump/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/bid...al-rating/

Thank goodness for small mercies. To me it seems like Trump should have 99% disapproval.

True, but then again, we don't marinate in Fox News like so many do.  I have good friends who honestly don't know real facts because all they get are the fabricated ones.  We discuss politics rarely and non-politics 99% of the time.  At some point the veil will fall, but, as I've learned through experience, that can't be forced.  They have to arrive on their own.

[pbrower2a]

In practice, however sleazy FoX News is in most of its output, its polling is usually quite accurate.

[Eric the Green]

538.org found some polls that push the Democrats' lead in the generic ballot to 2.0
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ic-ballot/

Lagging behind is the more-conservative Real Clear Politics average, now at Democrats +1.3:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls...-7361.html

[pbrower2a]

(09-22-2022, 12:42 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: 538.org found some polls that push the Democrats' lead in the generic ballot to 2.0
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ic-ballot/

Lagging behind is the more-conservative Real Clear Politics average, now at Democrats +1.3:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls...-7361.html

Long shots can win. 2-1 isn't even a long shot. 

Usually at this time (a month and a half before the election) three things are happening. One is that the President's Party is in trouble in a midterm. The enthusiasm for the recently-elected President fades due to disappointments with political reality. Aside from 2002 (still under the influence of the 9/11 attack) the President's Party has been losing Congressional seats. This has nothing to do with the quality of the President. It was true similarly with Barack Obama in 2010 and 2014 and with Trump -- Obama arguably the best President since at least JFK, and Trump quite possibly the worst since at least Harding. (This is not a liberal-conservative distinction. A conservative who acts much like Obama would be a good President even if one dislikes his agenda, and a liberal as unprincipled and reckless as Trump would also be a disaster). Figuring that Joe Biden is most likely to be in the 'average' range.. and the 'average' President is still quite good as a person -- the Democrats should be losing almost every contested seat in an R wave this year.

Do you see any R wave this year? 

Second, those who have leads can usually squeeze an advantage out of running out the clock.  Small leads that might not be decisive in May are much more decisive in September. If one did not make one's case in the spring and early summer, nothing offers a chance to make the same case in the autumn. A 5% lead in May is trivial. A 5% lead in October is usually crushing. 

Usually electoral seasons force both sides into cruise control whether they want it or not, and someone who has cruise control and a lead for the same destination on the same road who is set at 70 will outpace someone set at 66.

Yes, I know. The fellow doing 70 could have a flat tire or decide to take a turnoff leading to an interesting side trip. A few years ago my brother and I were driving a car cross country in February from Michigan to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I kept reminding him "Petrified Forest National Park, so and so miles".  That did slow our journey. To say that it was a worthy diversion is an understatement. 

Still, nobody is going to do something to slow the progress to winning. Note well: there can be the equivalent of flat tires on the journey such as disclosures of conflicts of interests or of shady behavior in the past (spouse abuse, DUI arrests, sexual misconduct); these can disrupt the progress to an election and give the opponent a chance.  If it happens late enough it can grab defeat from the jaws of victory. Such is rare! Breaking scandals rarely decide an election. The pol who lives in fear of one of those emerging in the news already has a big problem, and the news media are going to avoid giving favorable news coverage, and most likely has chosen to retire rather than risk being exposed. 

Third, Dark Money often emerges, and since the 2010 election this has typically favored Republicans. The people behind the Dark Money want politics to serve only their rapacious, ruthless, plutocratic selves. These people want wealth and property to decide elections, and they can usually churn out ominous ads that tell people that if they know what is best for them (like holding onto their jobs) then they had better vote for the elitist pols who hold that those who own the gold make the rules for everyone else and that no human suffering or offensive inequity is ever in excess in the name of prosperity -- with the assumption that the only people whose prosperity matters are those who own the shares and manage the corporate bureaucracies*. If they had their way America would be the sort of place in which 95% of the people suffer for 2% of something analogous to an aristocratic clique such as slave-owning planters of the Old South or Junkers of Wilhelmine Germany.  Dark money campaigns exist to create doubts among voters who might have a bit of shakiness. 

I wish this were not so, but Citizens United is unlikely to be overturned. Prosperity that depends upon the savage mistreatment of the millions is itself questionable.

*I have met people like them, and I have always hated them. I hate cruelty in any form, and such people are economic sadists. They are the economic equivalent of wife-beaters, but they can be extremely effective in telling someone who has a minimum-wage job that the best way to get opportunity is to ensure that people like that plutocrat or executive have the freedom to crack the economic lash even harder, a lash to be administered in the best interests of those who experience its sting. Those who suffer the most and show their love for their suffering get the privilege of survival. Few dare tell them "F---you!" or "Roast in hell!" even if they feel such a desire.

Such people are the best argument for Marxism-Leninism; they are far more effective than wayward college professors and left-wing demagogues at making that point.

[pbrower2a]

We are a month and a half away from the election, so I can interpolate how an advantage works at a month and a half. Linear interpolation (barring the possibility of division by zero) is a good approximation except for the divide involving chances for someone with a 20% lead at this point.

(Here is the) probability of a Senate candidate winning (1998 to 2008) with a certain lead (1, 5, 10, and 20 points) at one year, six months, three months, one month, one week, and one day. Because statewide races for President are much like statewide races for the Senate -- with the qualification that Presidential nominees do not usually make appearances where they see themselves losing -- unless they really are losing nationwide.

Time to election |1 point|5 points||10 points|20 points|
one day............. |...64%|....95%|.....99.7%|.99.999%|
one week........... |...60%|....89%|.......98%|...99.97%|
one month......... |...57%|....81%|.......95%|.....99.7%|
three months..... |...55%|....72%|.......87%|........98%|
six months..........|...53%|....66%|.......79%|.......93%|
one year.............|....52%|...59%|.......67%|.......81%|

Interpolation on 9/22:

1 and 1/2...........|...56%|....78%|........93%|.......99%|

For a 5% lead at a year, one has about 3/5 of a chance of winning. At that point one might have no idea of who the primary challenger is. The economy could go haywire, ore there could be a military or diplomatic debacle to the disadvantage of anyone in campaigns with the President's Party. Cultural or demographic change might sink a marginal campaign, but that might not then be evident. There might be a challenger from inside one's party that exposes one's vulnerabilities in a forthcoming general election.

So one gets through the primary, and challengers usually show why they are the challengers and not the incumbents. Soon after the primary is over the incumbent usually gets to define himself through his achievements and define the challenger as inadequate or at the least out of touch with his community. That is what usually happens. If that is how things remain after May, perhaps a 5% disadvantage goes from having one chance in three of winning to having one chance in five in early October, one chance in ten on the last Wednesday in October to one chance in 20 on Election Eve. Even with so little as a 5% lead the leader can tear off dates on the old calendars often used for showing the running out of days on a movie prop. Those ahead usually do nothing risky, but those behind or leaders in incompetence can do crazy things most likely to lead to an electoral blowout or throw away a lead.

[Eric the Green]

The poll result I posted is not probability, but just the % of what the current average is that these two websites find of the margin. +2.0% Democrats lead in the generic House vote on 538.org, +1.3% on Real Clear Politics. 538.org also provides their estimate of chances, in some places on thsir site, but I don't go by chances.

[Eric the Green]

(08-23-2022, 10:21 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-22-2022, 11:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: For the first time in a while Trump's approval numbers are lower than Biden's
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ald-trump/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/bid...al-rating/

Thank goodness for small mercies. To me it seems like Trump should have 99% disapproval.

True, but then again, we don't marinate in Fox News like so many do.  I have good friends who honestly don't know real facts because all they get are the fabricated ones.  We discuss politics rarely and non-politics 99% of the time.  At some point the veil will fall, but, as I've learned through experience, that can't be forced.  They have to arrive on their own.

The numbers are back to being virtually tied between Biden and Trump approval ratings.

A true indication of insanity in the USA. Will people in the USA become sane again, on their own?

[David Horn]

(09-23-2022, 12:29 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-23-2022, 10:21 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-22-2022, 11:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: For the first time in a while Trump's approval numbers are lower than Biden's
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ald-trump/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/bid...al-rating/

Thank goodness for small mercies. To me it seems like Trump should have 99% disapproval.

True, but then again, we don't marinate in Fox News like so many do.  I have good friends who honestly don't know real facts because all they get are the fabricated ones.  We discuss politics rarely and non-politics 99% of the time.  At some point the veil will fall, but, as I've learned through experience, that can't be forced.  They have to arrive on their own.

The numbers are back to being virtually tied between Biden and Trump approval ratings.

A true indication of insanity in the USA. Will people in the USA become sane again, on their own?

I'm staring to wonder: do we have to endure our own Mussolini Moment™ just to survive into the next phase?  Are we that shallow a people?

[pbrower2a]

(09-23-2022, 06:20 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-23-2022, 12:29 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(08-23-2022, 10:21 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-22-2022, 11:22 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: For the first time in a while Trump's approval numbers are lower than Biden's
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pol...ald-trump/
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/bid...al-rating/

Thank goodness for small mercies. To me it seems like Trump should have 99% disapproval.

True, but then again, we don't marinate in Fox News like so many do.  I have good friends who honestly don't know real facts because all they get are the fabricated ones.  We discuss politics rarely and non-politics 99% of the time.  At some point the veil will fall, but, as I've learned through experience, that can't be forced.  They have to arrive on their own.

The numbers are back to being virtually tied between Biden and Trump approval ratings.

A true indication of insanity in the USA. Will people in the USA become sane again, on their own?

I'm staring to wonder: do we have to endure our own Mussolini Moment™ just to survive into the next phase?  Are we that shallow a people?

Fascism was a political novelty a century ago. Mussolini acted like a normal politician at first before replacing service with power as an objective. He promised Big Government without telling quite what that meant. In time people found out, only they found out too late to stop the bad stuff. It's when the salami tactics start that democracy dies .

Trump never succeeded at the salami tactics. He needed to get support from the Democrats to achieve anything other than his three Judicial Stooges appointed and selected. He showed his desire, but Democrats stopped him. He purged the GOP, but he could not purge the Democrats.  Thank God that one of our main political parties is genuinely democratic and operates on the principle of internal democracy instead of the sort of 'democratic centralization' (an oxymoron if there ever was one) of a Communist party. This time a once-democratic Party that was simply more consistently pro-business than the other adopted Commie methods. Fascism usually comes about in one of two ways -- from recent leftists like Mussolini, Goebbels, Doriot, or Quisling scrapping everything Marxist except terror or when the reactionary elements adopt Bolshevik techniques to make their conservative agenda harder as a line.  

We need re-examine and acknowledge old principles that we have compromised for various reasons. We need contemplate how we can inculcate character into more young adults and more ability to resist demagogues. John McCain all but plagiarized Herodotus when he said that character is destiny. Part of good character is knowing enough to back off when one's abilities fall short of one's responsibility. Part is recognizing the need for some sacrifices of personal convenience.  Part is recognizing that conspicuous consumption (often with the word luxury)  is for schmucks. 

The Multiversity must go, as it leaves far too many gaps in learning for what young smart people need if they are to enter the fast track of economic responsibility and success. A generally-accepted canon of liberal arts was once the norm, and most of that (with some tweaks to adapt to social and technological change over the last half-century) existed for good reason. Just consider teaching: teachers need know what things children must learn, and the liberal arts teach precisely that. I am satisfied that someone with the temperament, solid knowledge of the liberal arts, and perhaps a "ninety-days wonder" course that applies that learning to pedagogy is adequate for elementary teachers. Teaching is one of the largest professions in sheer numbers, and we need do this well.

[Classic-Xer]

(08-17-2022, 02:58 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: It should be clear to everyone that Democracy is on the ballot. To vote Republican is to deny free and fair elections and insist that a president should just stay in office because he wants to.

You're right, democracy is clearly on the ballot for both sides. Keep in mind, we aren't the side that's interested in doing things that changes America from a relatively free country into a country that functions more like the former Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. Like I said, I don't really care which one (the fascists or communists or some other quasi socialist group) ends up taking over and killing idiots like you. Based on what I've seen of the two parties so far, I'd say voting Democratic pretty much guarantee's you'll be living under a LW dictatorship of some sort. Heck, the majority of them already do so the transition from one to the other shouldn't be all that hard for them or all that violent or dangerous for the regime that takes power.