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(04-30-2019, 10:32 AM)David Horn Wrote: (04-30-2019, 09:00 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (04-22-2019, 11:41 AM)David Horn Wrote: (04-20-2019, 11:39 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The fault with Donald Trump is obviously not in his stars, as the Mueller report shows. We have no Presidency with this level of known scandal, but also no precedent for the consequence of so many and so pervasive scandals.
He got elected with the aid of electoral misconduct in which he is complicit. Close as the 2016 election was, Trump may have little legitimacy as President except for the legal presumption that electoral results are valid even if they prove wrong after the fact.
Scandal only counts if people can be scandalized. Trump has managed to make scandal into a social game by playing it in the press as theater with lines that change at every performance. 10 years from now, we may look back and be embarrassed. But, for now, hoi polloi thinks it's all fun and games.
Perhaps. Or perhaps more accurately, PBR only sees what he wants to see and believes only things that he wants to believe like everyone else does.
It is a fact that Mueller found nothing on the President worthy of further investigation. He couldn't find much dirt on his cronys either (and yes all presidents have those--don't let PBR try to persuade you otherwise) other than a ten year old money laundering charge (that cost more to investigate than they will ever recover) and he hired a dumbass as a lawyer once, oh and his tenants might have some scandals (seriously do we drag the local slum lord out and try and lynch him cause his tenants are smoking the crack in the stair well? No.).
Mueller did what he was supposed to do: he investigated interference by the Russians, and referred the rest to other offices. That hardly qualifies as an exoneration. Several career prosecutors have stated unequivocally that they have successfully prosecuted others with much less than the incomplete info in Mueller's report.
Yes. And Muller found nothing because it is virtually impossible for a foreign power to hijack the decentralized system the US uses. Exactly how Obama said it couldn't be hijacked before the first Tuesday in November in 2016. Since it can't be both hijackable and not hijackable either Obama lied or he told the truth until it became politically expedient not to.
And yet there aren't any indictments. Personally I don't care what some random prosecutor has to say; unless they are directly involved with they don't know the details and thus do not know what the situation is.
Quote:Kinser Wrote:I would argue that the President is able to "play the press" the way he does because he knows how the Lame Stream media ticks. He's been playing them for years. Indeed if one really wants to know what the President is doing, saying or thinking one would be better servedjust following him on Twitter.
Not to be missed: POTUS TV, also known as Fox News, is no longer the most followed. Now it's MSNBC. I suspect that's telling.
It really isn't telling us anything other than much of the Silent Generation has died out. I occasionally do glance at MSDNC...er...I mean MSNBC. I find it telling that most of their commercials are for denture cream and bathtub replacements for those with mobility conditions most often associated with advanced age.
In short it tells us only that Boomers watch MSNBC--since you guys are the oldies now. Across the board cable news viewership skews old and except for the very few GIs around and the slightly more numerous Silents that means that Boomers are still watching the Tee-vee. Everyone else gets their news from other sources.
Quote:Kinser Wrote:Indeed if one simply sits back and observes the Democrats they are defeating themselves at every turn.
There's is truth here. The Dems have a genetic death wish that seems to emerge when things are looking brightest for them.
I would say it would take a miracle on their part for Trump to not be re-elected. Lets see how many of the keys to the White House he has currently.
Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
Not really relevant. Most Presidents lose seats in Congress during their first mid-term. This key should be removed actually because it isn't a key at all--rather I'd argue that Congressional Mid-term elections largely are based on the locality in question and do not reflect on the chances of any Presidential candidate. Incumbent or otherwise.
Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
There is some rando attempting to run on the Republican Primary. I've forgotten his name because that is how important he is. He will be no challange to the President. Unlike say when then Governor Reagan primary-ed Ford.
Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
Donald Trump is the current President and baring him being assassinated, or dying in next year he will be running for a second term.
Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
The only third party that is significant at the moment is the Green Party and they are threat to the Democrats and not the Republicans.
Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
The economy is not in recession now, and indicators look like 2019 will be another good year economically. But a year is an eterity in business and politics.
Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Over Trump's term mean GDP growth has been fairly good. As long as the GDP continues to grow at 2% or better per year the economy will not be sputtering.
Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
The President has spearheaded deregulation (which is good for the economy), and made headway in foreign affairs with powers that are usually antagonistic to the US's interests. The other, and most important change in national policy is currently being twarted by Congress but that should change soon.
Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
The only social unrest in the country is coming from the antifa type and other assorted groups of radical leftists acting like the terrorists they are. It makes the Democrats who are pandering to the Left look bad.
Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
The Present Administration doesn't have any real scandals. Russia-gate was a giant nothing burger. Now Schiff wants to investigate the President's taxes. What a big scandal it will be when the IRS reports that he paid them. Seriously the man is a billionaire and gets audited every year (because he's a billionaire). If he was cheating on his taxes the IRS should have found out about it by now and if they haven't then they all should be fired and replaced.
The only scandals in the White House happening right now are in the fevered mind of the lamestream media and the congress critters who have a D after their name. Everyone else knows that they are just witch hunting.
Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
There hasn't been any military failures yet, unless you count not completely pulling out of Syria a failure. But that can be blamed on Congress because they won't vote the money to repatriate the troops. On foreign affairs the President has a consistant winning streak. Mr. Kim has been pretty quiet since he and The Donald had a sit down. I wonder if it is because he appreciates the President's business style. It also works with Mr. Xi and Mr. Duarte as well, even if it does piss off the likes of Macron and Merkle. But what are their options? NATO is run by the US and NATO protects them from that big bad Soviet--er I mean--Russian Bear to the east that is oh so threatening.
Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Making deals with Xi and Kim. More than enough but he has at least another year for more winning. And Xers like winning, since the world is composed of winners and losers and if you aren't a winner, you are a loser by definition.
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
The President is very charismatic. I would argue that becoming president without being charismatic is impossible unless we're talking about a person who becomes president due to unfortunate circumstances. Ford for example.
Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
I've looked at the Democrat roster....Biden is the best they have and he's neither charismatic nor a national hero. His sons might or might not be but the Biden I'm talking about is Creepy Uncle Joe who makes #MeToo jokes on stage with children after sniffing their hair.
Quote:Kinser Wrote:Kinser's Prediction for 2020: Donald Trump will be re-elected (with the Popular and Electoral vote) defeating any Democrat that the DNC manages to come up with.
Possible but not likely.
From where things sit now the Democrats have to find someone who isn't Sanders, isn't Biden, isn't Fauxahantas--er I mean Warren and isn't a rabid leftist. Patrick Francis O'Rourke might be charismatic (to somebody) but he can't even beat Greaseball--I mean Cruz in Texas. The rest of the country will have even less time for his antics.
Kinser Wrote:And it will likely be Biden--who was Obama's Gaffmaster and is seen by many who aren't true blue Dims as "Creepy Uncle Joe".
This isn't even the pot calling the kettle black. This is the cesspool pointing fingers at the swimming pool for not being crystal clear.
[/quote]
I don't know about you but I've yet to see the President sniffing the hair of children while making #MeToo jokes, or being chided for swearing on the Senate Floor by the sitting US President. As for his own affairs, I personally don't care if he fucks every whore in Washington (just like I didn't care with Bill Clinton) provided he's running the country right.
So is he?
Well Employment is up. Welfare is down. Wages are rising. My retirement fund never looked better. And the wars are winding down and the US is slowly extracating itself from those entangling alliances that President Washington warned us about. So yes he's is running the country right.
At most those that complain about the President either simply don't like his style (He's an unreformed New Yorker and acts like it) or his personal tastes (which is very nouveau riche--Trump's tastes seem to be less what rich people like and more what trailer trash thinks rich people should like). There is no accounting for style, taste, or the lack thereof.
Personally I'm glad he's President and not say my interior decorator.
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(04-30-2019, 12:28 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: (04-30-2019, 10:32 AM)David Horn Wrote: (04-30-2019, 09:00 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (04-22-2019, 11:41 AM)David Horn Wrote: (04-20-2019, 11:39 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The fault with Donald Trump is obviously not in his stars, as the Mueller report shows. We have no Presidency with this level of known scandal, but also no precedent for the consequence of so many and so pervasive scandals.
He got elected with the aid of electoral misconduct in which he is complicit. Close as the 2016 election was, Trump may have little legitimacy as President except for the legal presumption that electoral results are valid even if they prove wrong after the fact.
Scandal only counts if people can be scandalized. Trump has managed to make scandal into a social game by playing it in the press as theater with lines that change at every performance. 10 years from now, we may look back and be embarrassed. But, for now, hoi polloi thinks it's all fun and games.
Perhaps. Or perhaps more accurately, PBR only sees what he wants to see and believes only things that he wants to believe like everyone else does.
It is a fact that Mueller found nothing on the President worthy of further investigation. He couldn't find much dirt on his cronys either (and yes all presidents have those--don't let PBR try to persuade you otherwise) other than a ten year old money laundering charge (that cost more to investigate than they will ever recover) and he hired a dumbass as a lawyer once, oh and his tenants might have some scandals (seriously do we drag the local slum lord out and try and lynch him cause his tenants are smoking the crack in the stair well? No.).
Mueller did what he was supposed to do: he investigated interference by the Russians, and referred the rest to other offices. That hardly qualifies as an exoneration. Several career prosecutors have stated unequivocally that they have successfully prosecuted others with much less than the incomplete info in Mueller's report.
Yes. And Muller found nothing because it is virtually impossible for a foreign power to hijack the decentralized system the US uses. Exactly how Obama said it couldn't be hijacked before the first Tuesday in November in 2016. Since it can't be both hijackable and not hijackable either Obama lied or he told the truth until it became politically expedient not to.
Obama was wrong for once. Maybe he did not want to create a panic, and maybe he did not want to kick the hornet's nest. He believed that
(1) Trump would lose,
(2) by supporting Trump, Putin put himself in a position in which he would have to be 'rescued' by the Hillary Clinton administration
(3) the accusation that a nominee for President would collaborate with a foreign power was impossible even for him to convince Americans of its possibility.
Yes, I know Vince Lombardi's saying
"Winning isn't everything -- it's the only thing"
-- but at least Lombardi was not known to cheat. He didn't drug the opponents' water supply. He didn't cut the telephone line from the opposing coach to the press box. He was a step ahead. The only advantage that he seemed to have was supposedly the brutal weather around Green Bay -- but that was so only in November and December, and his Packers usually played the Detroit Lions, Chicago Bears, and Minnesota Vikings -- all of whom faced brutal winter weather before they played in domed stadiums. (Chicago and Green Bay still play in open stadiums). Keeping the game credible so that it is something other than a sick spectacle is even more important.
Quote:And yet there aren't any indictments. Personally I don't care what some random prosecutor has to say; unless they are directly involved with they don't know the details and thus do not know what the situation is.
What???????
Quote:Quote:Kinser Wrote:I would argue that the President is able to "play the press" the way he does because he knows how the Lame Stream media ticks. He's been playing them for years. Indeed if one really wants to know what the President is doing, saying or thinking one would be better servedjust following him on Twitter.
Not to be missed: POTUS TV, also known as Fox News, is no longer the most followed. Now it's MSNBC. I suspect that's telling.
It really isn't telling us anything other than much of the Silent Generation has died out. I occasionally do glance at MSDNC...er...I mean MSNBC. I find it telling that most of their commercials are for denture cream and bathtub replacements for those with mobility conditions most often associated with advanced age.
News programs have always had rather old audiences. Series television is made for people in the 18-49 age group, as people over 50 have usually either established their brand-name loyalties or are so capricious that they never will establish brand-name loyalties. Over 50? If one is in an upper-income group one might be a market for large-volume life insurance policies, brokerage services, long-distance travel, and high-end automobiles. That explains why golf is on television despite small audiences. No other television audience has people who would think of buying million-dollar insurance policies or going on a second honeymoon to Vienna -- and I don't mean Vienna, Virginia. Golf is not where one advertises detergents, mass-market beer, fast food, or sodas -- let alone used cars, payday loans, or rip-off vocational schools.
Quote:In short it tells us only that Boomers watch MSNBC--since you guys are the oldies now. Across the board cable news viewership skews old and except for the very few GIs around and the slightly more numerous Silents that means that Boomers are still watching the Tee-vee. Everyone else gets their news from other sources.
Older people are more likely to have their residential mortgages paid off, are more likely to have investments, and make bequests to charities, colleges, etc.
Quote:Kinser Wrote:Indeed if one simply sits back and observes the Democrats they are defeating themselves at every turn.
There's is truth here. The Dems have a genetic death wish that seems to emerge when things are looking brightest for them.
Quote:I would say it would take a miracle on their part for Trump to not be re-elected. Lets see how many of the keys to the White House he has currently.
Quote: Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
Not really relevant. Most Presidents lose seats in Congress during their first mid-term. This key should be removed actually because it isn't a key at all--rather I'd argue that Congressional Mid-term elections largely are based on the locality in question and do not reflect on the chances of any Presidential candidate. Incumbent or otherwise.
Most Presidencies lose here. There usually is some disappointment.
Quote: Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
Quote:There is some rando attempting to run on the Republican Primary. I've forgotten his name because that is how important he is. He will be no challenge to the President. Unlike say when then Governor Reagan primary-ed Ford.
His name is William Weld. He was Governor of Massachusetts a couple decades ago. Because most Presidents are current or former Governors or Senators, Vice-Presidents, or Cabinet officers, I consider him a serious challenger. I do not consider him a joke. Primary challenges indicate significant dissent within his party, and the opposition party can usually exploit such dissent.
Quote:Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
Quote:Donald Trump is the current President and baring him being assassinated, or dying in next year he will be running for a second term.
I consider this a solid key for the GOP because even if the Grim Reaper should pay a visit to your idol, Mike Pence would be the incumbent and I would reasonably expect him to run for re-election. The last three Presidents got re-elected, which demonstrates that incumbency is an asset.
Quote: Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
Quote:The only third party that is significant at the moment is the Green Party and they are threat to the Democrats and not the Republicans.
Libertarian, Constitution, Reform, Taxpayers'... I can easily see an anti-Trump conservative running on such a Party or forming his own. The point is that a significant Third Party or Independent nominee draws off people who might ordinarily vote for the candidate of their Party. I consider Perot, Anderson, Wallace, and Thurmond significant since WWII, with Greens playing a role in razor-tight elections in 2000 and 2016.
I can imagine many usual conservatives disliking Trump for hurting their economic interests (farmers and ranchers are a significant bloc in some states). Sure, Trump gave farmers and ranchers a piddling tax cut but gave them a trade war that reduces their income (cuts to income taxes do not compensate for lost revenue) and tariffs that make much of what farmers buy more expensive. Tariffs are taxes. Trump's foreign policy is unconventional, to say the least -- and even reckless.
Quote: Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
Quote:The economy is not in recession now, and indicators look like 2019 will be another good year economically. But a year is an eternity in business and politics.
That is what people were saying in the summer of 1929, too. The leading indicators aren't so great now -- increases in inventory stock and an inverted yield curve.
Quote: Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
Quote:Over Trump's term mean GDP growth has been fairly good. As long as the GDP continues to grow at 2% or better per year the economy will not be sputtering.
It is hard to outdo the economic growth coming out of a recession that threatened to become a full-blown depression. I thought that Trump had no chance to make a positive out of this, and even if he has been lucky so far, he cannot get faster growth than what happened under Obama.
Quote: Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
Quote:The President has spearheaded deregulation (which is good for the economy), and made headway in foreign affairs with powers that are usually antagonistic to the US's interests. The other, and most important change in national policy is currently being thwarted by Congress but that should change soon.
Lichtman does not judge what those changers are. This key would be positive if the President successfully outlawed homosexuality, undid the 1964 Civil Rights Act, gave the Interstate Highway system to foreign profiteers, nationalized several industries, or started a persecution of people for their religion. Foreign policy is in another key.
Quote: Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
Quote:The only social unrest in the country is coming from the antifa type and other assorted groups of radical leftists acting like the terrorists they are. It makes the Democrats who are pandering to the Left look bad.
Lichtman explains that polite dissent such as the Tea Party Movement is not the sort of social unrest that topples a Presidency, and I would say the same of the Women's March on Washington, Black Lives Matter, and many other anti-Trump causes. The Long Hot Summers of the 1960s and anarchist or Bolshevik violence going into the 1920 election are.
I draw the line on repeated terrorist activity associated with causes. Isolated terrorism may suggest a lone
kook or cell, as with Ted Kaczynski or with the KKK violence associated with "Bombingham". Racist violence has resulted in deaths in Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, and Poway (note well: antisemitism is racist above all else). One Trump supporter was caught mailing bombs to Democratic political figures and Democratic-friendly celebrities.
The Trump administration has not handled these events well.
Quote: Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
Quote:The Present Administration doesn't have any real scandals. Russia-gate was a giant nothing burger. Now Schiff wants to investigate the President's taxes. What a big scandal it will be when the IRS reports that he paid them. Seriously the man is a billionaire and gets audited every year (because he's a billionaire). If he was cheating on his taxes the IRS should have found out about it by now and if they haven't then they all should be fired and replaced.
The only scandals in the White House happening right now are in the fevered mind of the lamestream media and the congress critters who have a D after their name. Everyone else knows that they are just witch hunting.
This is the most corrupt Presidential administration in American history. Ulysses S. Grant ousted the shysters, and Warren G. Harding was insignificant in contrast to this awful President. This is an administration that even cheated to get elected. Case closed! This is by far the strongest key against the President.
Quote: Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
Quote:There hasn't been any military failures yet, unless you count not completely pulling out of Syria a failure. But that can be blamed on Congress because they won't vote the money to repatriate the troops. On foreign affairs the President has a consistant winning streak. Mr. Kim has been pretty quiet since he and The Donald had a sit down. I wonder if it is because he appreciates the President's business style. It also works with Mr. Xi and Mr. Duarte as well, even if it does piss off the likes of Macron and Merkle. But what are their options? NATO is run by the US and NATO protects them from that big bad Soviet--er I mean--Russian Bear to the east that is oh so threatening.
America's usual allies hold this President in disdain.
Quote: Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
Quote:Making deals with Xi and Kim. More than enough but he has at least another year for more winning. And Xers like winning, since the world is composed of winners and losers and if you aren't a winner, you are a loser by definition.
Neither of which I trust. Just see what John Xenakis has to say about China.
Quote:Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
Quote:The President is very charismatic. I would argue that becoming president without being charismatic is impossible unless we're talking about a person who becomes president due to unfortunate circumstances.
Ford for example.
He could be an emotional wreck in the autumn of 2020. Definitely not established.
Quote: Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
Quote:I've looked at the Democrat roster....Biden is the best they have and he's neither charismatic nor a national hero. His sons might or might not be but the Biden I'm talking about is Creepy Uncle Joe who makes #MeToo jokes on stage with children after sniffing their hair.
Not established.
Quote:Quote:Kinser Wrote:Kinser's Prediction for 2020: Donald Trump will be re-elected (with the Popular and Electoral vote) defeating any Democrat that the DNC manages to come up with.
Possible but not likely.
Quote:From where things sit now the Democrats have to find someone who isn't Sanders, isn't Biden, isn't Fauxahantas--er I mean Warren and isn't a rabid leftist. Patrick Francis O'Rourke might be charismatic (to somebody) but he can't even beat Greaseball--I mean Cruz in Texas. The rest of the country will have even less time for his antics.
Trump is doing what he can to ensure that he be a one-term President.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(04-30-2019, 05:40 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (04-30-2019, 12:28 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: (04-30-2019, 10:32 AM)David Horn Wrote: (04-30-2019, 09:00 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: (04-22-2019, 11:41 AM)David Horn Wrote: Scandal only counts if people can be scandalized. Trump has managed to make scandal into a social game by playing it in the press as theater with lines that change at every performance. 10 years from now, we may look back and be embarrassed. But, for now, hoi polloi thinks it's all fun and games.
Perhaps. Or perhaps more accurately, PBR only sees what he wants to see and believes only things that he wants to believe like everyone else does.
It is a fact that Mueller found nothing on the President worthy of further investigation. He couldn't find much dirt on his cronys either (and yes all presidents have those--don't let PBR try to persuade you otherwise) other than a ten year old money laundering charge (that cost more to investigate than they will ever recover) and he hired a dumbass as a lawyer once, oh and his tenants might have some scandals (seriously do we drag the local slum lord out and try and lynch him cause his tenants are smoking the crack in the stair well? No.).
Mueller did what he was supposed to do: he investigated interference by the Russians, and referred the rest to other offices. That hardly qualifies as an exoneration. Several career prosecutors have stated unequivocally that they have successfully prosecuted others with much less than the incomplete info in Mueller's report.
Yes. And Muller found nothing because it is virtually impossible for a foreign power to hijack the decentralized system the US uses. Exactly how Obama said it couldn't be hijacked before the first Tuesday in November in 2016. Since it can't be both hijackable and not hijackable either Obama lied or he told the truth until it became politically expedient not to.
Obama was wrong for once.
Only once? I think Obama was wrong about a lot of things. The unhackablity of the US election isn't one of them, unless somehow Putin managed to trick millions of people to vote for his guy. Interestingly most of the ads the Russians bought were not so much for Trump as opposed to Clinton (who was grossly unpopular anyway with anyone who wasn't a committed Dimocrat anyway--that is to say someone who would vote for the Dem even if they ran Adolf Hitler).
Quote:Maybe he did not want to create a panic, and maybe he did not want to kick the hornet's nest. He believed that
(1) Trump would lose,
(2) by supporting Trump, Putin put himself in a position in which he would have to be 'rescued' by the Hillary Clinton administration
(3) the accusation that a nominee for President would collaborate with a foreign power was impossible even for him to convince Americans of its possibility.
I'm not in the habit of attempting to read the minds of retired politicians. I suggest you not get into the habit either. The only person who knows what Obama was thinking at the time was Obama himself.
That being said...Many thought Trump would lose but those same people don't seem to understand the Presidential election is more like the world series than any game of that series. Its the number of games you win not the number of runs in each game.
As for Putin needing to be rescued by a Clinton administration that is hilarious. She was openly calling for war with a nuclear power. I'm unsure if she is deranged or if that passes for red meat for the Dims these days now that Russia is run by a non-communist.
Three is the most likely because it is the most believable and also true. The election system in the US is run and administered on a local level. So if one was to high jack a congressional district (but why would you want to?) a few thousands ballots stuffed into the box could do the trick. On the Presidential level, you'd need agents in every county of every state of the country.
BTW I don't give a shit about Vince Lombardi he's not relevant to the topic at hand and doesn't demonstrate any point what so ever. I suppose you're attempting to appear to be intelligent again. Why bother? I already know you aren't.
Quote:Quote:And yet there aren't any indictments. Personally I don't care what some random prosecutor has to say; unless they are directly involved with they don't know the details and thus do not know what the situation is.
What???????
Some random prosecuter being a talking head on the tee-vee doesn't know anything more than the Congress critters do. Simple as that. And you can get a jury to convict anyone of anything if you're persuasive enough. Honestly the trial by jury is perhaps one of the worst systems of justice imaginable--well except the others that have been tried.
Quote:News programs have always had rather old audiences. Series television is made for people in the 18-49 age group, as people over 50 have usually either established their brand-name loyalties or are so capricious that they never will establish brand-name loyalties. Over 50? If one is in an upper-income group one might be a market for large-volume life insurance policies, brokerage services, long-distance travel, and high-end automobiles. That explains why golf is on television despite small audiences. No other television audience has people who would think of buying million-dollar insurance policies or going on a second honeymoon to Vienna -- and I don't mean Vienna, Virginia. Golf is not where one advertises detergents, mass-market beer, fast food, or sodas -- let alone used cars, payday loans, or rip-off vocational schools.
Did you naturally miss my point or did you have to work at it? My point being that the only people that actively watch that drivel on the cable news are old and largely irrelevant. Younger people consume news as well but they do so using other mediums. It would be akin to complaining about the conservative news papers if you're Truman right when Television comes out.
Quote: His name is William Weld. He was Governor of Massachusetts a couple decades ago. Because most Presidents are current or former Governors or Senators, Vice-Presidents, or Cabinet officers, I consider him a serious challenger. I do not consider him a joke. Primary challenges indicate significant dissent within his party, and the opposition party can usually exploit such dissent.
He isn't a current politician--hint "A couple decades ago". He is a joke and he won't hold the South which the Republicans absolutely must hold to win. Probably because he's a Blue State Yankee and yes that still matters. You should see my arguments there not being a unified American culture. Being from Mass-of-two-shits might not mean anything in Michigrim, but in Georgia it very much does. Hell in Florida it does even with our tons of transplanted Yankees down here. (Hint they are mostly New Yorkers and Jersians and can't stand New Englanders).
Quote:I consider this a solid key for the GOP because even if the Grim Reaper should pay a visit to your idol, Mike Pence would be the incumbent and I would reasonably expect him to run for re-election. The last three Presidents got re-elected, which demonstrates that incumbency is an asset.
Incumbancy is an absolute asset. Typically the incumbent is re-elected unless they seriously mess things up. Since Trump isn't, and Pence isn't likely to should something unfortunate happen to Daddy 2020 is shaping up to be a red wave that will sweep away the blue wave of 2018.
Funnily enough I saw bigger blue waves in a Tampax commercial than in that election.
Quote:Libertarian, Constitution, Reform, Taxpayers'... I can easily see an anti-Trump conservative running on such a Party or forming his own.
If you see that then you must be taking LSD. Trump was a member of the Reform party himself and has carried a large part of their platform to the GOP. The LP is a joke. If you can see an actual conservative forming his own party then who is it? I'm not seeing that pop up.
Quote:I can imagine many usual conservatives disliking Trump for hurting their economic interests (farmers and ranchers are a significant bloc in some states). Sure, Trump gave farmers and ranchers a piddling tax cut but gave them a trade war that reduces their income (cuts to income taxes do not compensate for lost revenue) and tariffs that make much of what farmers buy more expensive. Tariffs are taxes. Trump's foreign policy is unconventional, to say the least -- and even reckless.
Trump's foreign policy is unconventional but it is getting results. Good results--IE China shaping up so the WTO (of which the US is a major contributor will list them as a Market Economy so they can have full membership finally), and pushing the Koreas into negotiations so we can finally draw down waste of tax payers money.
Are tariffs taxes? Yes. Will it be good for the country? Yes. We're already seeing import substituion happening and that is good as it does provide other people with decent jobs so they can buy those products that the farmers and ranchers would otherwise sell abroad. The US is self-sufficient now and historically has been unless you count bananas and coffee/tea.
I wonder if I mention his name if he'll show up, but Rags has often called or Artarky in this country. I'm not so extreme, but at minimum I would say tariffs and quotas are necessary so as to ease the tax burdens on the working people who actually pay the income taxes.
Quote:That is what people were saying in the summer of 1929, too. The leading indicators aren't so great now -- increases in inventory stock and an inverted yield curve.
I'm going to require sources for this. The Labor Department is convinced that we have nearly fully employment unless the workforce participation rate increases substantially.
Quote:It is hard to outdo the economic growth coming out of a recession that threatened to become a full-blown depression. I thought that Trump had no chance to make a positive out of this, and even if he has been lucky so far, he cannot get faster growth than what happened under Obama.
Obama said that the days of 4% GDP growth were over. Every year since 2017 when Trump took office GDP has been in the 3.5-4% range. Twice the rate of Obama's 1-2% growth yields.
Simple fact. Deregulating and cutting taxes works. Just ask Hayek.
Quote: Lichtman does not judge what those changers are. This key would be positive if the President successfully outlawed homosexuality, undid the 1964 Civil Rights Act, gave the Interstate Highway system to foreign profiteers, nationalized several industries, or started a persecution of people for their religion. Foreign policy is in another key.
Outlawing homosexuality would be a return to the status quo ante...nothing new really, and also unenforceable without creating a totalitarian state which Americans simply don't have the stomach for. The rest is just nonsense that wouldn't happen here. It goes against the long standing traditions of Americans generally and their sensibilities have to be taken into consideration given we're a representative republic.
Quote: Lichtman explains that polite dissent such as the Tea Party Movement is not the sort of social unrest that topples a Presidency, and I would say the same of the Women's March on Washington, Black Lives Matter, and many other anti-Trump causes. The Long Hot Summers of the 1960s and anarchist or Bolshevik violence going into the 1920 election are.
Antifa is not polite dissent. They aren't just holding signs they are causing riots wherever they go. But they are rioting in Blue States and in the Blue Cities of those states and represent the furthest left segments of those Blue Cities in those Blue states. The egg is on the Democrat's faces for their actions.
Quote:I draw the line on repeated terrorist activity associated with causes. Isolated terrorism may suggest a lone
kook or cell, as with Ted Kaczynski or with the KKK violence associated with "Bombingham". Racist violence has resulted in deaths in Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, and Poway (note well: antisemitism is racist above all else). One Trump supporter was caught mailing bombs to Democratic political figures and Democratic-friendly celebrities.
Are there racists on the right? Yes. Are their kooks and terrorists on the Right? Yes. Are they organized? No. Antifa is organized and is a real threat to American Democracy.
Quote:The Trump administration has not handled these events well.
I didn't realize that local law enforcement was the responsibility of the President. I thought that is what we had sheriffs for.
I'm not going to continue with the keys with you because you simply degenrated into your usual sillyness and I have more pressing matters to attend to...like a Hot Ham and Cheese sandwich.
Quote:Trump is doing what he can to ensure that he be a one-term President.
We'll see about that come 20 January 2021. Remember it was also said he'd never be president either.
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I see Trump getting somewhere between 41% and 45% of the popular vote unless his approval ratings get to the middle 40s by January 2020. Doing so will be difficult in the extreme.
A majority of Americans distrust him. He hurts people as a way of consolidating support in his base. I concede his base much as I assume that certain people will never like classical music. (It takes patience and the willingness to listen to music with the most generic of titles. String Quartet in G-Major, K.387, anyone? 33 minutes, and you get to listen to something about 225 years old. Two violins, a viola, and a cello make all the sound. That takes some learning). Is it worth it? I say it is. Many would never dare listen to this.
Well, I despise just about everything about Donald Trump -- his demagoguery, his contempt for legal precedent, his willingness to toss rhetorical kerosene onto an overheated debate, his recklessness, his inveterate lying... OK, some people found that attractive at first so long as he promised what other politicians would never offer. He either could not achieve his promises (because they contradict, which I expect from the communications of a liar or fool) or what he offers is itself suspect. I need music of this type to help me forget how ugly American politics have become.
If Americans did not give credit to Obama for getting America out of the worst economic meltdown in 80 years, then why should they give such credit to Donald Trump? Maybe Bill Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" does not apply once one realizes that the economic activity is mostly the result of putting the screws to most people on behalf of economic elites.
I have seen footage of Trump rallies and Castro rallies -- and they have similarities. Everybody cheers at the same canned lines. People who disagree with the Great and Glorious Leader are depicted as enemies. People whose concordance with the message is suspect are escorted away.
With Donald Trump I see a great debasement of what made America great -- or at least on the path to genuine greatness. That means people recognizing that someone else's misfortune is not cause for delight. That means that the leadership does not divide and conquer. That means that people communicate clearly and honestly, making only promises that the can reasonably expect to deliver. That means that one shows due respect for expertise (some of it is wrong, but it takes some wisdom to distinguish which expertise one can follow) instead of rejecting it as 'intellectual' and thus suspect. Above all that means that business dealings and government actions come with a thick sauce of integrity.
Maybe I need remind you of what J. Edgar Hoover said of criminals (and, yes, Donald Trump is a shyster) -- that in all of his years in law enforcement he has found one thing in common among all criminals -- that they are all liars. Crooks must lie because they must hide what they are. Honest people know enough that they can get away with little. Find the liar with a connection to the crime, and you find the crook.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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PBR...The popular vote is irrelevant. The President is elected by the electoral college which was outlined in the Constitution a long ass time ago. I suggest you read it. The document is pretty clear.
But to make it simple enough for anyone who thinks you have a point besides the one on your head...the Presidential election is like the World Series. It matters how many games (states) one wins not how many runs (popular votes) one scores in any one game. Whoever the Dim is, they can get 20 million more votes in Commiefornia or New Hades York each and both states would have the same number of electors.
It boils down to five states really. Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. All five states that a Leftist will lose (meaning only Biden stands a chance there) and all five states where Trump is relatively popular.
As for the rest of your latest post it is nothing more than the same talking points you've been using since 2015. I don't think you've convinced anyone to your point of view by repeating it ad nausium. Simply put you probably have never seen a truly charismatic person in action. Trump is truly charismatic as is absolutely vital for him to be God-Emperor.
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(05-01-2019, 08:45 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: PBR...The popular vote is irrelevant. The President is elected by the electoral college which was outlined in the Constitution a long ass time ago. I suggest you read it. The document is pretty clear.
The People do not elect the President; the States do. The Electoral College ensures that the biggest states do not get to gang up on the smaller states and (before 1965) a state does not get particular credit for getting 90% of the vote because it disenfranchises a large part of its population, as in the former "Kukluxistan".
But -- a nominee who wins the popular vote by a 70-30 margin in Maryland gets only one more electoral vote by winning that state but loses Tennessee 49-48 splits twenty electoral votes evenly, as both states have ten electoral votes. If there is no question of the integrity of the vote in either state, then we have a distortion as an example. One good effect is that no state governor has any incentive to induce machine pols to flood the electoral system with fabricated votes, so if somebody wins California by 40 million votes (which is larger than the total population of the state) then such makes no difference in the electoral college.
A movement exists for states assigning their electoral votes in accordance with the national popular vote. The problem is that the states that have signed on so far vote reliably Democratic in Presidential elections or are likely to do so, and the number falls short of 270, with the mandate not applying until states with 270 or more electoral votes join the mandate. One more Donald Trump who wins the Electoral College despite losing the plurality of the popular vote by about 2% and being a sick joke as President will make such possible.
Quote:But to make it simple enough for anyone who thinks you have a point besides the one on your head...the Presidential election is like the World Series. It matters how many games (states) one wins not how many runs (popular votes) one scores in any one game. Whoever the (Democrat) is, they can get 20 million more votes in Commiefornia or New Hades York each and both states would have the same number of electors.
Most of the States are artificial entities created by Congress. That a vote counts as much in California as in Mississippi is an expression of the principle of one man, one vote -- an essential characteristic of democracy.
(Which ones aren't artificial entities created by Congress? the Thirteen original colonies, Vermont, West Virginia [seceded from Virginia during the Civil War], and Alaska and Hawaii [obvious contiguity]). If America had to reorganize on a state basis, then most states would not form as they are. California and Texas, and probably Florida, would obviously be split into multiple states, and I could easily see several of the states entering the Union in 1890 (which stretch from the Olympic Peninsula to Fargo and Sioux Falls) forming as one state.
Quote:It boils down to five states really. Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. All five states that a Leftist will lose (meaning only Biden stands a chance there) and all five states where Trump is relatively popular.
Relatively popular compared to California, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York State, which isn't saying much.
Here is a composite map of approval and to some extent disapproval of Trump nationwide:
![[Image: genusmap.php?year=2012&ev_c=1&pv_p=1&ev_...&NE3=0;1;6]](https://uselectionatlas.org/TOOLS/genusmap.php?year=2012&ev_c=1&pv_p=1&ev_p=1&type=calc&AL=2;9;7&AK=4;3;1&AZ=1;11;2&AR=2;6;7&CA=1;55;7&CO=1;9;5&CT=1;7;7&DE=1;3;5&DC=0;3;9&FL=1;29;2&GA=1;16;5&HI=1;4;7&ID=2;4;7&IL=1;20;7&IN=2;11;5&IA=1;6;2&KS=2;6;5&KY=2;8;7&LA=2;8;5&MD=1;10;7&MA=1;11;7&MI=1;16;5&MN=1;10;5&MS=2;6;7&MO=2;10;5&MT=2;3;5&NV=1;6;5&NH=1;4;5&NJ=1;14;7&NM=1;5;5&NY=1;29;7&NC=1;15;5&ND=2;3;7&OH=2;18;5&OK=2;7;7&OR=1;7;7&PA=1;20;5&RI=1;4;7&SC=2;9;5&SD=2;3;7&TN=2;11;7&TX=2;38;2&UT=2;6;5&VT=1;3;7&VA=1;13;7&WA=1;12;7&WV=2;5;7&WI=1;10;5&WY=2;3;7&ME=1;2;7&ME1=0;1;5&ME2=0;1;5&NE=2;2;5&NE1=0;1;5&NE2=0;1;5&NE3=0;1;6)
Trump, net approval positive -- raw approval
55% and higher
50-54%
under 50%
tie (white)
Trump, net negative approval -- raw approval
43-49% with disapproval under 51% if approval 45% or higher
40-42%, or under 45% if disapproval is over 51%
under 40%
Ruling out a rigged election, tell me how he wins. In 2012, Obama won no state in which a reputable poll ever had his disapproval rating above 51% at any time. (He once got a disapproval rating of 51% in Ohio, and he barely won it). (The colors are inverted, but I got this map from a website that analyzes all American Presidential elections -- and for a very long time, Democrats were in red and Republicans were in blue on most electoral maps. As I showed somewhere else, all of the states that Obama won in 2012 and all but one state that Obama won in 2008 were Eisenhower wins in both 1952 and 1956.
Donald Trump is not as adept a politician as Obama is, and he offends far more Americans at this stage. This map suggests that every state in maroon will be a double-digit loss for Trump -- 194 electoral votes (I do not assign ME-02 against Trump) because approval is under 40% and disapproval is over 55%. 101 electoral votes are in states in a medium shade of red, and those have approval under 43% (43% is the range at which winning a state is possible for an incumbent Governor or Senator with a competent and spirited campaign), but I project any state in which the President's approval is 45% or lower and disapproval is 52% or higher -- that is 101 electoral votes altogether in that category alone -- will be a loss. Donald Trump stares at a Democrat winning 295 electoral votes even if wins all the states that I have in pink or ever project as a tie in approval or disapproval. Any state in pale blue is a possible loss for him. Should he lose Texas he stares at a Democratic win of 400 or more electoral votes. That is how bad things look for his re-election.
How else is his prospect of re-election at this point? His approval ratings are behind every President since Truman at the same stage of his Presidency:
Average presidential approval ratings through this point in term via ABC/Post and Gallup polling:
Kennedy 73%
W Bush 71%
HW Bush 70%
Johnson 69%
Eisenhower 67%
Nixon 58%
Truman 56%
Obama 55%
Reagan 55%
Carter 52%
Clinton 51%
Ford 47%
Trump 38%
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8:14 AM - Apr 27, 2019
Not only is he in last place -- he is way behind second-to-last (Ford). Ford made the 1976 election close, but he was near the level of approval in which he could win if he were a savvy campaigner and ran a competent campaign (he started getting his act together late in the electoral season -- but too late). Of the presidents on that list, only three gained from their approval level to the percentage of the popular vote -- 1% (Ford), 2% (Nixon), and 3% (Reagan). Second-to-last on the list is 1% closer to a typical liberal favorite (Obama) and a typical conservative favorite (Reagan) than to Trump.
Trump offends sensibilities that he dare not offend if he wants a second term. Got an IQ over 120? He baits you on behalf of the "low-information voters" for which he professes love. Love? Trump? He loves only himself, and everybody else is an accessory in the sense that a laptop computer or an umbrella is. Donald Trump is the fictional Charles Foster Kane with underworld connections.
Quote:As for the rest of your latest post it is nothing more than the same talking points you've been using since 2015. I don't think you've convinced anyone to your point of view by repeating it ad nausium. Simply put you probably have never seen a truly charismatic person in action. Trump is truly charismatic as is absolutely vital for him to be God-Emperor.
It's ad nauseam. Truth is boring because it is consistent. Except for New jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, I have been on the whole of Interstate 80 and I could tell you much about it. Such would be insufferably boring. The only way in which to keep truth from being boring is to select it carefully for entertainment value.
God-Emperor? You must be joking!
Here's a God-Emperor for you:
![[Image: 220px-Gaius_Caesar_Caligula.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Gaius_Caesar_Caligula.jpg/220px-Gaius_Caesar_Caligula.jpg)
Caligula, who brought about many unhappy endings -- and met an untimely death for whom few mourned. He is still reviled.
![[Image: 250px-As-Nero-Ara_pacis-RIC_0562.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/69/As-Nero-Ara_pacis-RIC_0562.jpg/250px-As-Nero-Ara_pacis-RIC_0562.jpg)
Let's put it this way: Elizabeth II of the UK may be mysterious and secretive, but she has never claimed divinity. Her reign has been far less troublesome than that of Nero, and her images have been on perhaps more coins than any other then-living person. Nero had a short stay on Roman coinage. I saw an image of a bust of him, but I am not sure that the nose broke off by deliberate deed or by accident.
![[Image: 220px-Commodus_Musei_Capitolini_MC1120.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Commodus_Musei_Capitolini_MC1120.jpg/220px-Commodus_Musei_Capitolini_MC1120.jpg)
Ah, the delightful Caligula, who styled himself as a god and thought himself invincible in the sadistic games of Roman times. Remember Caesar, thou art mortal! He is not one of the immortals of history. He took the stable system of his well-regarded father Marcus Aurelius and made it permanently unstable.
Obama at his best is charismatic. Reagan was, too.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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Quote:A movement exists for states assigning their electoral votes in accordance with the national popular vote.
There have been movements to destroy or otherwise manipulate the electoral college since 1800. All of them have failed, and failed with good reason. Their "solutions" would ultimately destroy the republic.
Quote:One more Donald Trump who wins the Electoral College despite losing the plurality of the popular vote by about 2% and being a sick joke as President will make such possible.
I doubt that. However, for the sake of argument lets suppose you are right on this (I'll call it playing devil's advocate). That means then that because of the three largest cities are in three blue states that a civil war will become inevitable because on the national level the smaller states will have no chance at representation. What will be the inevitable result of this? New York, Chicago and LA will be crushed because those smaller, rural states control the food and resource production.
If you really want to see the country rend itself apart I say go ahead.
Quote:<snip> Polls </snip>
I've told you before I don't care about your polls. Here I'll let Styx explain why.
Quote: God-Emperor? You must be joking!
No actually I'm not. BTW, yeah people still don't care for Caligula..but Augustus is pretty popular to this day too. I will agree with you that Reagan was charismatic. Obama was a stuttering communist who managed to get elected twice because McCain selected someone unsuitable to be a 72 year old's heart beat away from the Presidency and Romney was just simply too weird to be President.
Obama got lucky in running against the two weakest GOP candidates in generations.
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(05-02-2019, 03:31 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: Quote:A movement exists for states assigning their electoral votes in accordance with the national popular vote.
There have been movements to destroy or otherwise manipulate the electoral college since 1800. All of them have failed, and failed with good reason. Their "solutions" would ultimately destroy the republic.
Quote:The other efforts failed because they require a Constitutional amendment. Some states might want power over the Presidency (again, it is the States and not the people who elect the President -- and 2016 was a freak unlikely to be replicated.
Quote:Quote:One more Donald Trump who wins the Electoral College despite losing the plurality of the popular vote by about 2% and being a sick joke as President will make such possible.
I doubt that. However, for the sake of argument lets suppose you are right on this (I'll call it playing devil's advocate). That means then that because of the three largest cities are in three blue states that a civil war will become inevitable because on the national level the smaller states will have no chance at representation. What will be the inevitable result of this? New York, Chicago and LA will be crushed because those smaller, rural states control the food and resource production.
...and we end up with a political system that dies much as the Soviet Union did -- as a country with a brain drain that becomes technologically backward, in which crony capitalism makes the formation of small business nearly impossible. That sort of order has a proclivity for starting wars that it loses, as is so of most fascist regimes.
Quote:If you really want to see the country rend itself apart I say go ahead.
Such will happen after I am dead.
Quote:<snip> Polls </snip>
I've told you before I don't care about your polls. Here I'll let Styx explain why.
Quote: God-Emperor? You must be joking!
Trump's approval ratings are remarkably stable. Styx is saying things that are technically possible, but unlikely.
Quote:No actually I'm not. BTW, yeah people still don't care for Caligula..but Augustus is pretty popular to this day too. I will agree with you that Reagan was charismatic. Obama was a stuttering communist who managed to get elected twice because McCain selected someone unsuitable to be a 72 year old's heart beat away from the Presidency and Romney was just simply too weird to be President.
Obama got lucky in running against the two weakest GOP candidates in generations.
The three emperors that I showed were Nero, Caligula, and Commodus, prime examples of what is potentially dangerous about an Emperor who pays too much attention to his claims to divinity.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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Since you somehow managed to break the tags PBR...
Quote:...and we end up with a political system that dies much as the Soviet Union did -- as a country with a brain drain that becomes technologically backward, in which crony capitalism makes the formation of small business nearly impossible. That sort of order has a proclivity for starting wars that it loses, as is so of most fascist regimes.
Except that isn't how the USSR was socially organized at all. Moscow and Leningrad got everything they wanted, the rest of the country got nothing. Furthermore crony capitalism arises not under laissez-faire but under strict regulation. The rural population rather than the urban is more reluctant to let government bureaucrats regulate everything. Finnally the warrior class comes overwhelmingly from red and rural states most of the people there prefer our traditional isolationism.
Given you have gotten everything backwards I have to question if you actually thought about this or are just spouting some canned response someone gave you. Given your propensity for the latter, it probably is the latter.
Quote:Such will happen after I am dead.
Nope such would happen immediately after the Electoral College is abolished or effectively abolished. We have been having a cold civil war for a number of years now, like the Cold War itself it can go hot at a moment's notice and for little provocation.
Quote:Trump's approval ratings are remarkably stable. Styx is saying things that are technically possible, but unlikely.
Styx's track record is far far better than yours or for that matter Nate Silver's. But then again he's not a paid shill for anyone. He's a rather smart citizen merely speaking his mind--or as the left calls them these days a "conspiracy theorist".
Quote:The three emperors that I showed were Nero, Caligula, and Commodus, prime examples of what is potentially dangerous about an Emperor who pays too much attention to his claims to divinity.
The left can't and doesn't meme. Boomers that are leftists--like you are--are particularly poor at meme-ing or understanding memes. And given the Memetic nature of the internet, which is the main form of communication these days they will continue to lose until they start learning how to produce and distribute good memes. But that is unlikely...the left likes central planning too much and memes are by their nature free market because forced memes never ever go viral.
That is probably why the left is calling for political correctness and censorship most strongly on the largest current social media platforms. Ultimately this will destroy those platforms and they will be replaced. Minds is already bigger than Twitter and Gab will replace Facebook.
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The odds slightly favor Trump. If we want to get him out, it will take a big effort by everyone who wants him out to beat the odds and put Biden or Sanders in, the ONLY ones who can beat him. If Biden wants to win, he'd better recapture some of the youthful idealism and some of his support for the younger generation when he represented the younger generation in the 1970s, and when he was elected senator because of the boom in political participation by boomers like me in 1972.
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(05-02-2019, 11:41 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The odds slightly favor Trump. If we want to get him out, it will take a big effort by everyone who wants him out to beat the odds and put Biden or Sanders in, the ONLY ones who can beat him. If Biden wants to win, he'd better recapture some of the youthful idealism and some of his support for the younger generation when he represented the younger generation in the 1970s, and when he was elected senator because of the boom in political participation by boomers like me in 1972.
That, frankly, is the wrong concern. The real concern should be the never-ending Presidential candidate list that draws great Senate candidates into a fruitless battel for the top job. Without the Senate, any of the Democrats will be President without power: no court appointments, no progressive laws of any kind, no reversal of the idiotic tax cut.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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(05-02-2019, 04:35 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Since you somehow managed to break the tags PBR...
Quote:...and we end up with a political system that dies much as the Soviet Union did -- as a country with a brain drain that becomes technologically backward, in which crony capitalism makes the formation of small business nearly impossible. That sort of order has a proclivity for starting wars that it loses, as is so of most fascist regimes.
Except that isn't how the USSR was socially organized at all. Moscow and Leningrad got everything they wanted, the rest of the country got nothing. Furthermore crony capitalism arises not under laissez-faire but under strict regulation. The rural population rather than the urban is more reluctant to let government bureaucrats regulate everything. Finally the warrior class comes overwhelmingly from red and rural states most of the people there prefer our traditional isolationism.
One difference is between state ownership in which bureaucratic elites took on aristocratic ways, and competition with economic behemoths was outlawed as 'capitalism', and crony capitalism changes the tax laws and regulatory environment to favor giant enterprises with monopoly or cartel power over any small businesses that would exploit the interstices of failure in crony capitalism. Another difference is that the Soviet military system itself became a bureaucratized order in which the senior military got to live extremely well while conscripted soldiers even faced food insecurity, which is how things were in the tsarist era.
As for the soldiers, many come from minority groups whose proletariat has no stake in crony capitalism. If you want to find the communities that most look like America as a whole in ethnic mixture, then look at towns near military bases -- and not such places as college towns. White soldiers come heavily from depressed areas with few opportunities (like farm labor, roadside services, maybe industrial sweatshops) The military has its attractions -- opportunity to get away from communities that one easily identifies as economic wrecks, continuing education and vocational training, the opportunity to see more of the world, and the discipline that a chaotic world does not offer. Add to this, the military is not a good place for those who seek to assert ethnic superiority (such is contrary to military discipline) or for people to do any political proselytizing.
Quote:Given you have gotten everything backwards I have to question if you actually thought about this or are just spouting some canned response someone gave you. Given your propensity for the latter, it probably is the latter.
if it does not come from a book, it is my own thought. If what I express sounds like some pundit to the Left of "Daddy" on economics and to his Right on foreign policy, then such is coincidence.
Quote:Quote:Such will happen after I am dead.
Nope such would happen immediately after the Electoral College is abolished or effectively abolished. We have been having a cold civil war for a number of years now, like the Cold War itself it can go hot at a moment's notice and for little provocation.
Major changes in the political system through Constitutional amendments are rare, happening either as subtle refinements or in the wake of catastrophe. Think of how long the abolition of slavery took and the circumstances under which slavery disappeared. Think of how long the time was between the first women started seeking the vote and women getting the vote. If we are ever to see a fundamental change in the political system, including the way in which we elect the President, then such will happen only in the wake of a catastrophe. Just because a parliamentary system seems to work better today in Canada than ours does now does not mean that we will go parliamentary. In a parliamentary system, members of the majority or the leading coalition in parliament select a Prime Minister and have every cause to select well. A parliamentary system has the vote of no confidence, which is easier and more effective than impeachment. The prospect of losing a parliamentary election is a good reason to vote out an incompetent or corrupt Prime Minister.
So why do we not have a parliamentary system? Because the one parliamentary system that our Founding Fathers knew well was grossly inadequate because it was unrepresentative (full of the King's flunkies) due to what passed as an electoral process. We have a census to establish representative districts that honor state boundaries and generally fit proportions of the population. (OK, it is not perfect due to gerrymandering which reflects political hacks in the states, and on the margin between two states of similar population, one state [Montana] may have one representative and another [Rhode Island] may have two. Montana is likely to end up with two Congressional Representatives and Rhode Island with one after the 2020 Census, but that is a side story).
Quote:Quote:Trump's approval ratings are remarkably stable. Styx is saying things that are technically possible, but unlikely.
Styx's track record is far far better than yours or for that matter Nate Silver's. But then again he's not a paid shill for anyone. He's a rather smart citizen merely speaking his mind--or as the left calls them these days a "conspiracy theorist".
Anyone who believed that Donald Trump would be elected President was betting on a long-shot. Long-shots occasionally win horse races, which makes horse racing attractive to people who attend it so that they can wager on which Equus caballus and jockey riding it will win. Add to this, Trump broke many of the unwritten rules of normal politics and got away with things that no prior elected President got away with. In 2020 people will vote on whether they like the results -- and the personality -- of a reckless demagogue who has used the Presidency to force a political culture upon people who still think his style and agenda alien.
So you bet $50 on a 200-1 long-shot and your horse won. Congratulations! You now have $10K net of the income taxes and any costly celebrating that you did. Unless you know something about the horse that the handicappers don't.. well, some people apparently make a precarious living betting on 'bargains' -- long-shots that have 40-1 chances instead of 200-1 chances.
I didn't see it coming -- but Trump won by debasing American politics into something objectionable and loathsome. People accustomed to better often decided not to vote or somehow forgot to vote. America ended up with the worst federal leadership that it had had in a long time. The people still committed to vote included the people who liked Trump's style and agenda, and the people intent on establishing a pure plutocracy got to prevent losses in the House and Senate.
Every country that is not 'socialist' has some clique that believes that no human suffering can ever be in excess so long as that clique gets what it wants (gain, indulgence, and power) -- and that clique got the sort of legislature of its dreams while Donald Trump would govern as befits his class interests. The problem isn't that I use a Marxist model to fit Trump; the problem is that a Marxist model fits him as well as the uniquely-American practice of government by corporate lobbyist. Remember: a nominally free-market system is preferable to Marxism-Leninism to the extent that the social and economic order does not fit a Marxist stereotype. Farm laborers on the brink of starvation in an area of rich harvests have no stake in preserving the aristocratic agrarian elite, and toilers in sweatshops whose owners and managers resemble Henry Clay Frick have little stake in the authoritarian, inequitable capitalism that they know. Capitalism saved itself from proletarian revolutions by giving workers a stake in the system, at least where the capitalists acted upon such wisdom.
A good system either makes a clique of economic sadists irrelevant -- or a bad one puts itself at risk of a proletarian revolution. I see Marxism-Leninism as a special case relevant under circumstances best avoided through democracy and humanism.
Quote:
Quote:The three emperors that I showed were Nero, Caligula, and Commodus, prime examples of what is potentially dangerous about an Emperor who pays too much attention to his claims to divinity.
The left can't and doesn't meme. Boomers that are leftists--like you are--are particularly poor at meme-ing or understanding memes. And given the Memetic nature of the internet, which is the main form of communication these days they will continue to lose until they start learning how to produce and distribute good memes. But that is unlikely...the left likes central planning too much and memes are by their nature free market because forced memes never ever go viral.
That is probably why the left is calling for political correctness and censorship most strongly on the largest current social media platforms. Ultimately this will destroy those platforms and they will be replaced. Minds is already bigger than Twitter and Gab will replace Facebook.
Did I say that I trust memes? OK, maybe I lack the imagination with which to create them, or perhaps I create them without knowing that I do so (or do so independently of someone else). Memes are intended to be accepted without being understood, which makes them suspect.
Central planning? Did I say that I think it a good idea? It is a failure because it substitutes bureaucracy for a market. A market ensures that people do not raise pigs to be fed to other pigs so that people can get pork. A market can make sense of such basic reality as the second law of thermodynamics as a bureaucracy might not.
I fault you for failure to criticize stock phrases such as the ludicrous "Make America Great Again". Maybe life was easier at some time, especially when the population was smaller and a workingman might be able to afford a single-family house even in San Francisco. But the ease of a world of short commutes and cheap real estate is no more. We are not going back to that.
You identify as black and gay. Some people think that America was better when Southern blacks were consigned to farm labor and domestic service on behalf of an elite that had the ethos of European aristocrats. Surely you don't miss that. As a gay man you probably remember when homosexuality was criminal conduct, and people outed as gay such as Alan Turing and Peter Tchaikovsky committed suicide or quasi-suicide when they were exposed. Heck, as a straight male I remember being threatened with a beating for being a f****t for not exuding exaggerated masculinity (an aside -- in those days, I thought that exaggerated masculinity looked like one possible expression of homosexuality). That's when I started supporting gay rights; given a choice between law and order and homophobia I chose law and order. That's right -- I used a conservative attitude to defend a major change in American political and family culture. Nobody chooses homosexuality, but people can choose to not beat others up.
Make America Great Again? Now that is one of the most specious memes that I can imagine. I remember seeing film clips of fascist Italy in which banners read "Restore the glory of the Roman Empire"... sure. Gladiatorial games and feeding Christians to the lions? Mussolini might not have brought back the obscene spectacles that the ancient Romans actually saw as examples of civic virtue (don't ask!) but he did churn out legions of cannon fodder for aggressive warfare that culminated in the most impressive conquests of Rome ever:
The Sawdust Caesar loses his capital to troops under the nominal leadership of a cripple. So much for restoring the glory of the Roman Empire.
Memes are great for conveying simple ideas, as in advertising slogans. You know those -- "Like a good neighbor, (insurance company) is there!", "You deserve a break today!", "It's the real thing (soft drink)", "Fly the friendly skies of (airline)"... "Packard -- ask the man who owns one", or "Rheingold is my beer, the dry beer!" Or maybe public service, as in "Only you can prevent forest fires", "Don't be a litterbug!" or "Just say NO to drugs!" They are great also for pushing bad political causes, as in " Sieg heil!", "White Power!", "Put THEM in their place!", "God hates f@gs", "Let a hundred flowers bloom!", or "Smash the running dogs of capitalist imperialism!"
The commercial slogans are benign because they involve consumer choices in a confusing world of brand competition, and anyone who lets one of those slogans pick one over the other is going to get fleeced one way or another. Buying something or avoiding trouble by avoiding a menace is usually not a bad choice. The realities of political life rarely reduce to a three-word stock phrase without debasing politics.
Good politics requires complex thought.
We hold these words to be self-evident... that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
is much wordier than the usual stock phrase of the would-be tyrant. It is also more complete -- and honest. Far better the complete thought than a meme.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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05-04-2019, 03:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-04-2019, 07:21 PM by pbrower2a.)
28% definitely vote for Trump
14% consider voting for Trump
55% will definitely not vote for Trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010...inl_manual
Bad news for Trump. He has done nothing to reassure voters who did not vote for him, and he cannot hemorrhage any support that he had in 2016 and still win. 55% voting against him means that at the most he gets 45% of the vote. At an analogous times in 2003 and 2011:
Quote:55% of respondents to a Washington Post / ABC poll said they "definitely would not" vote not re-elect Trump next year. At this point in 2011, 38% of voters said they'd definitely vote against Obama; in May 2003, 31% were definitely opposed to Bush. https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-conten...mp2020.pdf …
Even if all of those who do not say that they will definitely not vote for Trump end up voting for him, Trump is getting a maximum of 45% of the vote. Not since 1988 has any Democratic nominee for President gotten less than 45.65% of the vote (that was Dukakis in 1988) in a basically two-way race for President.
I do not predict a Democratic landslide. I project instead that someone other than Donald Trump will pickup a huge number of conservative votes as an independent or third-party nominee. Not even Obama could breach 53% in 2008 in the backdrop of a foreign war starting to go badly and an economic meltdown that had many Americans in fear of another Great Depression. I can not imagine America in a similar predicament in 2020. I see conservatives getting about 48% of the popular vote in 2020, which would be enough to defeat the Democratic nominee for President in 2020 with an electorate like that of 2016. But Trump will need at least 45% of the popular vote to win re-election even if the Democratic gets a majority by simply running up the vote in a few states of medium-to gigantic states like California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.
Dubya barely got re-elected in both the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2004, and Obama was close to bare re-election in the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2012. A shift of 74K votes in Florida from Obama to Romney makes the 2012 Presidential election close in the Electoral College.
I see no reason to believe that the rules of 2004 and 2012 do not apply this time. Neither Dubya nor Obama relied upon a last-minute surge in support to get him over the top and take his re-election bid out of the jaws of defeat. Trump is far behind both Dubya and Obama at analogous times. The last time that an incumbent President seemed to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat was Harry S. Truman in 1948. The war started going better in Korea, and Dewey ran a complacent campaign against Truman. But that is already 71 years ago.
Trump must undo much of the disapproval that he already faces just to get a chance of getting re-elected. The good news for him is that he has enough time if he does everything right. The bad news for him is that he seems unlikely to do so due to flaws of his personal character. He is old and rigid, and that bodes ill for him learning from his mistakes.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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(05-04-2019, 08:44 AM)David Horn Wrote: (05-02-2019, 11:41 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The odds slightly favor Trump. If we want to get him out, it will take a big effort by everyone who wants him out to beat the odds and put Biden or Sanders in, the ONLY ones who can beat him. If Biden wants to win, he'd better recapture some of the youthful idealism and some of his support for the younger generation when he represented the younger generation in the 1970s, and when he was elected senator because of the boom in political participation by boomers like me in 1972.
That, frankly, is the wrong concern. The real concern should be the never-ending Presidential candidate list that draws great Senate candidates into a fruitless battel for the top job. Without the Senate, any of the Democrats will be President without power: no court appointments, no progressive laws of any kind, no reversal of the idiotic tax cut.
Both are the right concerns. Republican senates and Republican white houses block progress and maintain the current 40-year regression.
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The latest info on the insults with which Drumpface is tagging his opponents.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/44...-democrats
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(11-12-2018, 10:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The Lichtman test, as you may recall, consists of thirteen keys for predicting who wins result of the next Presidential election.
Update due to three recent events: the fanatical Trump supporter who sent bombs to Democratic politicians and celebrities, the murder of eleven people in a synagogue (one key covers those two), and of course the huge number of Republican seats in the House of Representatives (one key!).
The Keys are statements that favor victory (in the popular vote count) for the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote; when six or more are false, the challenging party is predicted to win the popular vote.
Code: red -- favors Democrats without ambiguity.
blue -- favors the Republican (Trump, or in case something happens to him, Pence)
green -- yet to be decided
-- ambiguous and subject to interpretation.
1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
1. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. We now have a definitive answer on November 6, 2018. The GOP not only lost seats in the House of Representatives, but also its majority. This is usually a negative for practically any administration. This was green (pending) until a week ago.
2. There could be, but that is yet well enough into the future that we can't say anything. Talk and speculation are not enough to establish such. If a significant Republican starts setting up a campaign apparatus, we may have something. Let there be so much as a contest in an early primary, and this goes negative. We are a year and a half away from knowing this.
3. A Republican will be President in 2020 and the incumbent will be running even if something happens to President Trump. Pence would run for re-election.
4. I think that there will be, but that is too far into the future for any discussion yet.
5. Way too early to tell. Ask again in August or September 2020. Because the only bubble is valuation of stocks, I see no pervasive meltdown likely.
6. The Obama economy had a growth rate unusually high, as it was a recovery from a nasty recession. This will be impossible to meet.
7. He hasn't yet. The tax bill is it. I expect more efforts at deregulation of industry, union-cracking, and privatization even if those prove unpopular. This is a positive key even if the changes are widely unpopular.
8. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. Sure, the President did not directly inspire one of his supporters to send bombs to Democratic politicians and celebrities, but he consider himself lucky that none of those bombs blew up a target. Donald Trump may be no antisemite, but the creep who mowed down eleven Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue did so out of a concern that the specific Jews had been supporting immigration of non-white people. Worse, he has bumbled in his response. The frequent polite demonstrations from the Women's March on have not been unrest, but they can certainly call attention to his awfulness and aid in organizing an electoral opposition.
President Trump's political image is being hit by both polite and civilized opposition (which is more effective) and by politically-charged violence *which is not so effective in forcing change, but is effective in discrediting the President.. He has offended thoughtful people who are organizing against him while his supporters and people that he has stirred up with his vituperation against immigrants and Islam. The polite and civilized opposition is far stronger than was the Tea Party against Obama, and politically-charged violence of any kind that people can trace to his rhetoric disgusts average people. Lichtman dismissed Tea Party protests, and Women's marches, marches for science, Black Lives Matter, and anti-gun protests get similar treatment from me. When one of the President's loud supporters mails pipe bombs to Democratic politicians and to celebrities, or someone mows down Jews in a synagogue service in response to the President's rhetoric against a different group of people, then we have more dangerous unrest than the usual detraction that every President faces. This has gone from 'ambiguous' to 'solid negative' against the President. Worse, the President has bungled his response which solidifies the negative.
Brotherly love will not suddenly break out with this President.
9. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. This is the most systematically and severely corrupt Administration in American history. The legal problems keep piling up.
10. Likely but it has yet to happen. I do not trust the deal with North Korea, and this President is insulting so many of America's traditional allies that something will go bad. The tariff is a disaster waiting to happen. He even bungled the memorials of the centennial of the end of World War I. If Trump had been wise, he would have deputized Barack Obama to do the job. Then again, this President knows about as much about scuba diving, which is nothing.
11. The nuke deal with North Korea? There is no enforcement in place. The President would need China and ideally also Russia as an enforcer, and ignored both. It turns out that the North Korean leader has dismantled some obsolete nukes while building more effective ones. Maybe the situation does not implode in the next two years. Let us all hope that this key does not turn negative. I prefer that South Korea fit the description "I have seen the future -- and it works".
12. Trump already seems much less charismatic now than in 2016. He still has as solid support as ever from his cult.
13. We have no idea who the Democratic nominee will be.
One clear blue, four red, seven green (has not happened yet but still can), one purple (ambiguous). He has room for only one going red.
Is there some reason you have put Republicans in blue and Democrats in red? Everyone else does the opposite. Doing this your way makes things difficult to read. Just saying.
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(05-18-2019, 04:53 PM)carecare7 Wrote: (11-12-2018, 10:18 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The Lichtman test, as you may recall, consists of thirteen keys for predicting who wins result of the next Presidential election.
Update due to three recent events: the fanatical Trump supporter who sent bombs to Democratic politicians and celebrities, the murder of eleven people in a synagogue (one key covers those two), and of course the huge number of Republican seats in the House of Representatives (one key!).
The Keys are statements that favor victory (in the popular vote count) for the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote; when six or more are false, the challenging party is predicted to win the popular vote.
Code: red -- favors Democrats without ambiguity.
blue -- favors the Republican (Trump, or in case something happens to him, Pence)
green -- yet to be decided
-- ambiguous and subject to interpretation.
1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
1. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. We now have a definitive answer on November 6, 2018. The GOP not only lost seats in the House of Representatives, but also its majority. This is usually a negative for practically any administration. This was green (pending) until a week ago.
2. There could be, but that is yet well enough into the future that we can't say anything. Talk and speculation are not enough to establish such. If a significant Republican starts setting up a campaign apparatus, we may have something. Let there be so much as a contest in an early primary, and this goes negative. We are a year and a half away from knowing this.
3. A Republican will be President in 2020 and the incumbent will be running even if something happens to President Trump. Pence would run for re-election.
4. I think that there will be, but that is too far into the future for any discussion yet.
5. Way too early to tell. Ask again in August or September 2020. Because the only bubble is valuation of stocks, I see no pervasive meltdown likely.
6. The Obama economy had a growth rate unusually high, as it was a recovery from a nasty recession. This will be impossible to meet.
7. He hasn't yet. The tax bill is it. I expect more efforts at deregulation of industry, union-cracking, and privatization even if those prove unpopular. This is a positive key even if the changes are widely unpopular.
8. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. Sure, the President did not directly inspire one of his supporters to send bombs to Democratic politicians and celebrities, but he consider himself lucky that none of those bombs blew up a target. Donald Trump may be no antisemite, but the creep who mowed down eleven Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue did so out of a concern that the specific Jews had been supporting immigration of non-white people. Worse, he has bumbled in his response. The frequent polite demonstrations from the Women's March on have not been unrest, but they can certainly call attention to his awfulness and aid in organizing an electoral opposition.
President Trump's political image is being hit by both polite and civilized opposition (which is more effective) and by politically-charged violence *which is not so effective in forcing change, but is effective in discrediting the President.. He has offended thoughtful people who are organizing against him while his supporters and people that he has stirred up with his vituperation against immigrants and Islam. The polite and civilized opposition is far stronger than was the Tea Party against Obama, and politically-charged violence of any kind that people can trace to his rhetoric disgusts average people. Lichtman dismissed Tea Party protests, and Women's marches, marches for science, Black Lives Matter, and anti-gun protests get similar treatment from me. When one of the President's loud supporters mails pipe bombs to Democratic politicians and to celebrities, or someone mows down Jews in a synagogue service in response to the President's rhetoric against a different group of people, then we have more dangerous unrest than the usual detraction that every President faces. This has gone from 'ambiguous' to 'solid negative' against the President. Worse, the President has bungled his response which solidifies the negative.
Brotherly love will not suddenly break out with this President.
9. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. This is the most systematically and severely corrupt Administration in American history. The legal problems keep piling up.
10. Likely but it has yet to happen. I do not trust the deal with North Korea, and this President is insulting so many of America's traditional allies that something will go bad. The tariff is a disaster waiting to happen. He even bungled the memorials of the centennial of the end of World War I. If Trump had been wise, he would have deputized Barack Obama to do the job. Then again, this President knows about as much about scuba diving, which is nothing.
11. The nuke deal with North Korea? There is no enforcement in place. The President would need China and ideally also Russia as an enforcer, and ignored both. It turns out that the North Korean leader has dismantled some obsolete nukes while building more effective ones. Maybe the situation does not implode in the next two years. Let us all hope that this key does not turn negative. I prefer that South Korea fit the description "I have seen the future -- and it works".
12. Trump already seems much less charismatic now than in 2016. He still has as solid support as ever from his cult.
13. We have no idea who the Democratic nominee will be.
One clear blue, four red, seven green (has not happened yet but still can), one purple (ambiguous). He has room for only one going red.
Is there some reason you have put Republicans in blue and Democrats in red? Everyone else does the opposite. Doing this your way makes things difficult to read. Just saying.
I appreciate your concern.
I also post at a site, Leip's Election Atlas, whence I took this data that I post here. David Leip discusses elections going back to the early years of the United States, and for many decades, Republicans were in blue (serving blue-blood interests?) and Democrats were in red (associated with socialist causes, Democrats long being closer to social democracy than Republicans are. Only in the last two decades has red stood for Republicans and blue for Democrats.
I do not argue with Leip's color scheme on his site. But I cross-post some of my contributions on his site over here.
In any event Republicans now deserve the color red for being closer to totalitarian ideologies such as fascism (fascists saw themselves as"true" revolutionaries as opposed to the Bolsheviks) and Communism.
But maybe I can update this:
The Lichtman test, as you may recall, consists of thirteen keys for predicting who wins result of the next Presidential election.
Update due to three recent events: the fanatical Trump supporter who sent bombs to Democratic politicians and celebrities, the murder of eleven people in a synagogue (one key covers those two), and of course the huge number of Republican seats in the House of Representatives (one key!).
The Keys are statements that favor victory (in the popular vote count) for the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote; when six or more are false, the challenging party is predicted to win the popular vote.
Code: red -- favors Democrats without ambiguity.
blue -- favors the Republican (Trump, or in case something happens to him, Pence)
green -- yet to be decided
-- ambiguous and subject to interpretation.
1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
1. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. We now have a definitive answer (as of) November 6, 2018. The GOP not only lost seats in the House of Representatives, but also its majority. This is usually a negative for practically any administration. This was green (pending) until (the 2018 midterm election).
2. There could be, but that is yet well enough into the future that we can't say anything. Talk and speculation are not enough to establish such. If a significant Republican starts setting up a campaign apparatus, we may have something. Let there be so much as a contest in an early primary, and this goes negative. We are a year and a half away from knowing this. William Weld, a former Governor of Massachusetts, offers a primary challenge to Donald Trump. Because he has experience as a Governor and is not ridiculously old, I must consider him a serious primary challenge to Trump. Reagan challenged Ford in 1976; Ted Kennedy challenged Carter in 1980, and both incumbent Presidents lost re-election bids.
3. A Republican will be President in 2020 and the incumbent will be running even if something happens to President Trump. Pence would run for re-election.
4. I think that there will be, but that is too far into the future for any discussion yet.
5. Way too early to tell. Ask again in August or September 2020. Because the only bubble is valuation of stocks, I see no pervasive meltdown likely. (A trade war might cause economic disruption without compensation, but I do not judge that yet).
6. The Obama economy had a growth rate unusually high, as it was a recovery from a nasty recession. This will be impossible to meet.
7. He hasn't yet. The tax bill and his tariffs count as an achievment. I expect more efforts at deregulation of industry, union-cracking, and privatization even if those prove unpopular. This is a positive key even if the changes are widely unpopular.
8. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. Sure, the President did not directly inspire one of his supporters to send bombs to Democratic politicians and celebrities, but he consider himself lucky that none of those bombs blew up a target. Donald Trump may be no antisemite, but the creep who mowed down eleven Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue did so out of a concern that the specific Jews had been supporting immigration of non-white people. Worse, he has bumbled in his response. The frequent polite demonstrations from the Women's March on have not been unrest, but they can certainly call attention to his awfulness and aid in organizing an electoral opposition.
President Trump's political image is being hit by both polite and civilized opposition (which is more effective) and by politically-charged violence *which is not so effective in forcing change, but is effective in discrediting the President.. He has offended thoughtful people who are organizing against him while his supporters and people that he has stirred up with his vituperation against immigrants and Islam. The polite and civilized opposition is far stronger than was the Tea Party against Obama, and politically-charged violence of any kind that people can trace to his rhetoric disgusts average people. Lichtman dismissed Tea Party protests, and Women's marches, marches for science, Black Lives Matter, and anti-gun protests get similar treatment from me. When one of the President's loud supporters mails pipe bombs to Democratic politicians and to celebrities, or someone mows down Jews in a synagogue service in response to the President's rhetoric against a different group of people, then we have more dangerous unrest than the usual detraction that every President faces. This has gone from ' ambiguous' to ' solid negative' against the President. Worse, the President has bungled his response which solidifies the negative.
Brotherly love will not suddenly break out with this President unless as resistance to him.
9. GIGANTIC NEGATIVE. This is the most systematically and severely corrupt Administration in American history. The legal problems keep piling up. I expect Democrats to hammer the Trump Presidency for this. Should Donald Trump go down to defeat in 2020, then this will be the key theme for historians. American voters have shown little tolerance for corruption for Governors like Rod Blagojevich and Congressional Representatives like William "Cold Cash" Jefferson (the only incumbent Democrat in the House who lost a re-election bid in the Obama rout of 2008. We have yet to see how that works for the Presidency, but I expect such to apply to the Presidency in 2020.
10. Likely but it has yet to happen. I do not trust the deal with North Korea, and this President is insulting so many of America's traditional allies that something will go bad. The tariff is a disaster waiting to happen. He even bungled the memorials of the centennial of the end of World War I. If Trump had been wise, he would have deputized Barack Obama to do the job. Then again, this President knows about as much about scuba diving, which is nothing.
11. The nuke deal with North Korea? There is no enforcement in place. The President would need China and ideally also Russia as an enforcer, and ignored both. It turns out that the North Korean leader has dismantled some obsolete nukes while building more effective ones. Maybe the situation does not implode in the next two years. Let us all hope that this key does not turn negative. I prefer that South Korea fit the description "I have seen the future -- and it works". (addendum: we have yet to see the effects of the President's saber-rattling against Iran will have, so this is still ambiguous).
12. Trump already seems much less charismatic now than in 2016. He still has as solid support as ever from his cult.
13. We have no idea who the Democratic nominee will be.
Two clear blue, six red, four green (has not happened yet but still can), one purple (ambiguous). He has room for only one going red. If six of the keys turn against the President, then the President's Party loses the popular vote (and usually the electoral college as well).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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05-19-2019, 06:40 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-19-2019, 06:55 PM by Eric the Green.)
Let's see what I think about the keys so far. Switching the colors to contemporary legend.
The Keys are statements that favor victory (in the popular vote count) for the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote; when six or more are false, the challenging party is predicted to win the popular vote.
Code: blue, false -- favors Democrats without ambiguity.
red, true -- favors the Republican (Trump, or in case something happens to him, Pence)
green -- yet to be decided
purple-- ambiguous and subject to interpretation.
1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
5 false, 5 true, 3 undecided.
Comments as needed:
2. Weld has virtually no support in the polls yet, and the Republicans are solidly behind their mob leader. No credible primary challenge exists. Subject to change, but unlikely at this point.
4. There is no 3rd alternative who has stepped up yet, except someone who would take votes away from Democrats (Schultz). Subject to change, but unlikely. Advantage red/Trump.
6. Advantage Trump; the economy equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. I cannot credit Trump with any policy changes, as defined by Lichtman. He said it's an advantage if the president gets passed a major piece of legislation that changes the country or solve major problems. Trump has done nothing. The tax cuts were nothing. Immigrants have increased. His tariff wars have solved nothing so far, and the agreement with Canada and Mexico made no substantial changes to NAFTA. Nothing is likely on the horizon; Trump has no skills in policy.
10-11. Nothing notable either way yet. Trump has pulled out of treaties, but will escape the consequences in the current term for this.
12. Lichtman did not credit Trump as charismatic, so why should I?
13. The best Democratic candidates declined to run. The only two who have any chance are only somewhat charismatic at best; certainly no better than Trump.
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(05-19-2019, 06:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Let's see what I think about the keys so far. Switching the colors to contemporary legend.
The Keys are statements that favor victory (in the popular vote count) for the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party is predicted to win the popular vote; when six or more are false, the challenging party is predicted to win the popular vote.
Code: blue, false -- favors Democrats without ambiguity.
red, true -- favors the Republican (Trump, or in case something happens to him, Pence)
green -- yet to be decided
purple-- ambiguous and subject to interpretation.
1. Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
5 false, 5 true, 3 undecided.
Comments as needed:
2. Weld has virtually no support in the polls yet, and the Republicans are solidly behind their mob leader. No credible primary challenge exists. Subject to change, but unlikely at this point.
4. There is no 3rd alternative who has stepped up yet, except someone who would take votes away from Democrats (Schultz). Subject to change, but unlikely. Advantage red/Trump.
6. Advantage Trump; the economy equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. I cannot credit Trump with any policy changes, as defined by Lichtman. He said it's an advantage if the president gets passed a major piece of legislation that changes the country or solve major problems. Trump has done nothing. The tax cuts were nothing. Immigrants have increased. His tariff wars have solved nothing so far, and the agreement with Canada and Mexico made no substantial changes to NAFTA. Nothing is likely on the horizon; Trump has no skills in policy.
10-11. Nothing notable either way yet. Trump has pulled out of treaties, but will escape the consequences in the current term for this.
12. Lichtman did not credit Trump as charismatic, so why should I?
13. The best Democratic candidates declined to run. The only two who have any chance are only somewhat charismatic at best; certainly no better than Trump.
-- l beg 2 differ point 13. Bernie is a he'll of a lot more charismatic than the Donald
 my 2 yr old Niece/yr old Nephew 2020
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05-19-2019, 09:40 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-19-2019, 11:53 PM by Eric the Green.)
Bernie is great, and he has some charisma. But I differ with point 13 as brower stated it. "13. We have no idea who the Democratic nominee will be." The horoscope scores and the status levels of the announced candidates are definitive that none of them can beat Trump except Biden and Bernie, and those two are a crap shoot too. The scores also indicate that Bernie and Biden are not more charismatic than Trump. I like Bernie's ability to articulate issues and to come across as honest, courageous and thoughtful as a potential president. That would be a welcome alternative to Trump for potentially a majority of the voters, despite his left-wing views and his "socialism" with which Trump will hammer him.
But Trump cannot be under-estimated. That is a point that you and brower don't seem willing to concede. He is a talented speaker, and appeals to a base that's potentially big enough to win in our rigged system, as he did before-- against an admittedly somewhat-weaker general election candidate than Bernie OR Biden would be. The astrology indicators and the keys alike may give Trump the advantage again though, as much of a crying shame it would be if he is re-elected. Never overestimate the intelligence of Americans, especially since they include the folks in Dixie and much of flyover country. They returned Dubya to office after he started an unnecessary war that killed 400,000 people.
If Trump is re-elected though, I don't give him long to survive in office. His ego and hubris would go wild and likely make himself impeachable and convictable quite early. The Democrats need to make gains in some senate races, at least in Iowa, Colorado and Arizona, in order for this to happen, and perhaps, if Roy Moore runs again, keeping the Alabama seat. This is also needed to defeat future Trump/Pence Supreme Court nominees.
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