Politics & Stuff

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney called Donald Trump an “unrecoverable catastrophe” on Sunday and urged fellow Republicans to vote for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in November’s election.

[Vesper 28,763]

54 minutes ago, IMissEden said:

Democrats have held 20 of the last 24 years in USA.

You cannot even get basic facts straight.

Year - Winner - Party

2000 Bush R

2004 Bush R

2008 Obama D

2012 Obama D

2016 Trump R

2020 Biden D

[ZAPHOD2319 4,476]

6 hours ago, Vesper said:

Texas is RW and larger in terms of population than New York.

The Electoral College is a vestige of slavery and racism.

Unless you live in one of the 7 or so swing states, you have no say in the POTUS elections. THAT is the Electoral College's actual impact.

Your 80% statement makes no sense. If there was no EC, then a Republican voter in CA, or Democratic in Texas, etc etc, could still impact the election. The EC now completely disenfranchises them in terms of POTUS. 

 

 

Those swings states change every election cycle. Georgia has been a red state for 100 years, but it switched to blue the last two cycles. The EC forces candidates to go to all states. You never know when a state will swing. Pennsylvania and Florida are swing states this cycle, but they have not been in years past. With a country as large as the US and a population that is always in a constant change due to migration for better jobs, it is easy to over simplify the effects of the EC, but the main effect is all states remain important, not just the large populated states.

[IMissEden 20]

3 hours ago, Vesper said:

You cannot even get basic facts straight.

Year - Winner - Party

2000 Bush R

2004 Bush R

2008 Obama D

2012 Obama D

2016 Trump R

2020 Biden D

I was being facetious (look it up) to emphasise that the democrats have held the majority of power, for the majority of modernity. A clickbait hook. Why would I care to know the exact split when that’s a moot point. “Basic facts” pertaining to what matters are fine here. 
 

Since 1990 — 

Bill Clinton - 1993 - 2001. 8 years

Obama - 2009 - 2017. 8 years 

Biden - 2021 - 2025, 4 years — they want 8  

20 years looking 24  

same time span for Republicans - 

Bush - 2001 - 2009. 8 years 

Trump - 17-21. 4 years. 
 

12 years. 
 

Double the time in power, which lines up with the “point” of what I said - the democrats have held power longer, and monopolised it - yet find “the others” to blame for their own policy failures. They show track record of, and signal for more, dishonesty as well as monopoly with that dishonesty. Democracy is what is at stake here. 
 

Nobody typically cares, rightly, about what doesn’t matter pertaining to the point. That, would be how left, and right, tend to roll. Miss the forest for looking at trees, ignore the point, go aha over a twig. Re “well actually!” from you there. Pointless insertion. Ignore the point, try a Gotcha! as is typical with most who comment on politics. It’s lifted from how left x right communicate. Both are stupid sides that bring out stupid traits in people. You’re either centrist looking at the full picture or divisive and backing sides to go against Others. Not wise 

Edited September 9 by IMissEden

[cosmicway 1,318]

Be365 gives odds for indivudual states as well.
Most states are virtually decided and the chances of them changing hands are either infinitessimal or very small.
For example it says for California 26.00 rep - 1.01 dem and for Florida 1.12 rep - 6.00 dem.
Only six states seem to be contested. With rep price first they are:

Arizona 1.61-2.20
Georgia 1.53-2.37
Michigan: 2.37 - 1.53
Nevada: 1.83 - 1.83
North Carolina: 1.53 - 2.37
Pennsylvania: 1.83 - 1.83

So it's one dem likely win (Michigan), two dead heats (Nevada - Pennsylvania) and three go Trump's way.
Looks favourable to Trump I 'm afraid.
What do you make of it ?
If Harris wins Pennsylvania and Nevada plus Michigan as expected does she win ?

Edited September 9 by cosmicway

[cosmicway 1,318]

In Nevada and Penn Harris seems to have the narrowest of leads right now.
Bigger lead in Michigan.
Would it be enough for her if she clings on to those ?
If not it's Trump.

Edited September 9 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,763]

1 hour ago, IMissEden said:

I was being facetious (look it up) to emphasise that the democrats have held the majority of power, for the majority of modernity. A clickbait hook. Why would I care to know the exact split when that’s a moot point. “Basic facts” pertaining to what matters are fine here. 
 

Since 1990 — 

Bill Clinton - 1993 - 2001. 8 years

Obama - 2009 - 2017. 8 years 

Biden - 2021 - 2025, 4 years — they want 8  

20 years looking 24  

same time span for Republicans - 

Bush - 2001 - 2009. 8 years 

Trump - 17-21. 4 years. 
 

12 years. 
 

Double the time in power, which lines up with the “point” of what I said - the democrats have held power longer, and monopolised it - yet find “the others” to blame for their own policy failures. They show track record of, and signal for more, dishonesty as well as monopoly with that dishonesty. Democracy is what is at stake here. 
 

Nobody typically cares, rightly, about what doesn’t matter pertaining to the point. That, would be how left, and right, tend to roll. Miss the forest for looking at trees, ignore the point, go aha over a twig. Re “well actually!” from you there. Pointless insertion. Ignore the point, try a Gotcha! as is typical with most who comment on politics. It’s lifted from how left x right communicate. Both are stupid sides that bring out stupid traits in people. You’re either centrist looking at the full picture or divisive and backing sides to go against Others. Not wise 

you leave out the 3 consecutive terms for Republicans right before Clinton

1980 Reagan

1984 Reagan

1988 Bush the elder

and 

you said:

Democracy is what is at stake here. 

Of course it is. Trump winning may well end it in the US (or at least seriously damage it in ways not seen sinced the US Civil War) and could unleash global forces that may spin up into horrific regional conflicts (China/Taiwan, Russia taking out Ukraine and then making moves for the Baltics and/or Poland, with Trump already saying he might pull out of NATO and directly telling Putin to quote 'Do whatver the hell he wants' unquote.

ZERO hyperbole there.

 

[Vesper 28,763]

[ZAPHOD2319 4,476]

This debate about the EC has been going on my entire life. The party that is not winning the popular vote will always oppose a Constitutional Amendment because the EC provides them with a path to winning. Two thirds votes in the House of Representatives will never happen without the minority party voting for it. It has outlived its original purpose of EC representatives needing to travel by stage coach to deliver the votes from that state. It now serves a completely different political purpose.

[Vesper 28,763]

3 hours ago, ZAPHOD2319 said:

Those swings states change every election cycle. Georgia has been a red state for 100 years, but it switched to blue the last two cycles.

No, on balance they do not. every cycle.

You do have some movement, but it takes multiple cycles to pull a state from 'swing' to either pretty solid Dem or Rep.

Former swing states that are now fairly blue:  Colorado and (to a point) Virginia

Former swing states that are now solid red: Ohio and Iowa, and now likely Florida

Georgia has NOT been a Republican state for the past 100 years, not even close. You are forgetting that the southern former Confederate slave states were Democratic (Dixiecrats) until it started to change with Nixon's 'Southern Strategy' in 1968. That process was vastly accelerated with Reagan, but you still had some southern states with Democrats in power up until the 1990s and even the early noughties (at state level or US Senators).

Georgia (Carter was a native son in 1976 and 1980) has, until 2020, only voted for one Dem post 1980, Bill Clinton, in 1992, BUT, look at its history post civil war:

Almost non stop Democratic until Reagan's 1984 landslide:

The main exceptions (all racism-driven) were the 3 elections from 1964 to 1972, ie the Nixon landslide in 1972, the Segrationist 3rd party George Wallace in 1968, and 1964, where they went for Goldwater due to (like the other 2) racism, anti-civil rights.

 

Edited September 9 by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,318]

5 minutes ago, Vesper said:

No, on balance they do not. every cycle.

You do have some movement, but it takes multiple cycles to pull a state from 'swing' to either pretty solid Dem or Rep.

Former swing states that are now fairly blue:  Colorado and (to a point) Virginia

Former swing states that are now solid red: Ohio and Iowa, and now likely Florida

Georgia has NOT been a Republican state for the past 100 years, not even close. You are forgetting that the southern former Confederate slave states were Democratic (Dixiecrats) until it started to change with Nixon's 'Southern Strategy' in 1968. That process was vastly accelerated with Reagan, but you still had some southern states with Democrats in power up until the 1990s and even the early noughties (at state level or US Senators).

Georgia (Carter was a native son in 1976 and 1980) has, until 2020, only voted for one Dem post 1980, Bill Clinton, in 1992, BUT, look at its history post civil war:

Almost non stop Democratic until Reagan's 1984 landslide:

The main exceptions (all racism-driven) were the 3 elections from 1964 to 1972, ie the Nixon landslide in 1972, the Segrationist 3rd party George Wallace in 1968, and 1964, where they went for Goldwater due to (like the other 2) racism, anti-civil rights.

 

Yeah ok.
Ohio too used to be dem and it was the main swing state in the Carter-Ford election in 1976.
Now it's Trump's, locked.
What about the three states I mentioned ? Are they enough to give Harris the victory ?

Edited September 9 by cosmicway

[Vesper 28,763]

1 hour ago, ZAPHOD2319 said:

This debate about the EC has been going on my entire life. The party that is not winning the popular vote will always oppose a Constitutional Amendment because the EC provides them with a path to winning. Two thirds votes in the House of Representatives will never happen without the minority party voting for it. It has outlived its original purpose of EC representatives needing to travel by stage coach to deliver the votes from that state. It now serves a completely different political purpose.

It's original purpose was systemic slavery/racism. Same as the Three-Fifths Compromise. (The Three-Fifths Compromise was reached among state delegates during the 1787 Constitutional Convention. It determined that three out of every five slaves were counted when determining a state's total population for legislative representation and taxation.)

The Electoral College’s Racist Origins

More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/electoral-colleges-racist-origins

Is a color-blind political system possible under our Constitution? If it is, the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 did little to help matters. While black people in America today are not experiencing 1950s levels of voter suppression, efforts to keep them and other citizens from participating in elections began within 24 hours of the Shelby County v. Holder ruling and have only increased since then.

In Shelby County’s oral argument, Justice Antonin Scalia cautioned, “Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get them out through the normal political processes.” Ironically enough, there is some truth to an otherwise frighteningly numb claim. American elections have an acute history of racial entitlements—only they don’t privilege black Americans.

For centuries, white votes have gotten undue weight, as a result of innovations such as poll taxes and voter-ID laws and outright violence to discourage racial minorities from voting. (The point was obvious to anyone paying attention: As William F. Buckley argued in his essay “Why the South Must Prevail,” white Americans are “entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally,” anywhere they are outnumbered because they are part of “the advanced race.”) But America’s institutions boosted white political power in less obvious ways, too, and the nation’s oldest structural racial entitlement program is one of its most consequential: the Electoral College.

Commentators today tend to downplay the extent to which race and slavery contributed to the Framers’ creation of the Electoral College, in effect whitewashing history: Of the considerations that factored into the Framers’ calculus, race and slavery were perhaps the foremost.

Of course, the Framers had a number of other reasons to engineer the Electoral College. Fearful that the president might fall victim to a host of civic vices—that he could become susceptible to corruption or cronyism, sow disunity, or exercise overreach—the men sought to constrain executive power consistent with constitutional principles such as federalism and checks and balances. The delegates to the Philadelphia convention had scant conception of the American presidency—the duties, powers, and limits of the office. But they did have a handful of ideas about the method for selecting the chief executive. When the idea of a popular vote was raised, they griped openly that it could result in too much democracy. With few objections, they quickly dispensed with the notion that the people might choose their leader.

But delegates from the slaveholding South had another rationale for opposing the direct election method, and they had no qualms about articulating it: Doing so would be to their disadvantage. Even James Madison, who professed a theoretical commitment to popular democracy, succumbed to the realities of the situation. The future president acknowledged that “the people at large was in his opinion the fittest” to select the chief executive. And yet, in the same breath, he captured the sentiment of the South in the most “diplomatic” terms:

“There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”

Behind Madison’s statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. Because of its considerable, nonvoting slave population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system. The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president, one that could leverage the three-fifths compromise, the Faustian bargain they’d already made to determine how congressional seats would be apportioned. With about 93 percent of the country’s slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South’s congressional delegation by 42 percent. When the time came to agree on a system for choosing the president, it was all too easy for the delegates to resort to the three-fifths compromise as the foundation. The peculiar system that emerged was the Electoral College.

Right from the get-go, the Electoral College has produced no shortage of lessons about the impact of racial entitlement in selecting the president. History buffs and Hamilton fans are aware that in its first major failure, the Electoral College produced a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his putative running mate, Aaron Burr. What’s less known about the election of 1800 is the way the Electoral College succeeded, which is to say that it operated as one might have expected, based on its embrace of the three-fifths compromise. The South’s baked-in advantages—the bonus electoral votes it received for maintaining slaves, all while not allowing those slaves to vote—made the difference in the election outcome. It gave the slaveholder Jefferson an edge over his opponent, the incumbent president and abolitionist John Adams. To quote Yale Law’s Akhil Reed Amar, the third president “metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.” That election continued an almost uninterrupted trend of southern slaveholders and their doughfaced sympathizers winning the White House that lasted until Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860.

In 1803, the Twelfth Amendment modified the Electoral College to prevent another Jefferson-Burr–type debacle. Six decades later, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, thus ridding the South of its windfall electors. Nevertheless, the shoddy system continued to cleave the American democratic ideal along racial lines. In the 1876 presidential election, the Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but some electoral votes were in dispute, including those in—wait for it—Florida. An ad hoc commission of lawmakers and Supreme Court justices was empaneled to resolve the matter. Ultimately, they awarded the contested electoral votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote. As a part of the agreement, known as the Compromise of 1877, the federal government removed the troops that were stationed in the South after the Civil War to maintain order and protect black voters.

The deal at once marked the end of the brief Reconstruction era, the redemption of the old South, and the birth of the Jim Crow regime. The decision to remove soldiers from the South led to the restoration of white supremacy in voting through the systematic disenfranchisement of black people, virtually accomplishing over the next eight decades what slavery had accomplished in the country’s first eight decades. And so the Electoral College’s misfire in 1876 helped ensure that Reconstruction would not remove the original stain of slavery so much as smear it onto the other parts of the Constitution’s fabric, and countenance the racialized patchwork democracy that endured until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What’s clear is that, more than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern whites, the Electoral College continues to do just that. The current system has a distinct, adverse impact on black voters, diluting their political power. Because the concentration of black people is highest in the South, their preferred presidential candidate is virtually assured to lose their home states’ electoral votes. Despite black voting patterns to the contrary, five of the six states whose populations are 25 percent or more black have been reliably red in recent presidential elections. Three of those states have not voted for a Democrat in more than four decades. Under the Electoral College, black votes are submerged. It’s the precise reason for the success of the southern strategy. It’s precisely how, as Buckley might say, the South has prevailed.

Among the Electoral College’s supporters, the favorite rationalization is that without the advantage, politicians might disregard a large swath of the country’s voters, particularly those in small or geographically inconvenient states. Even if the claim were true, it’s hardly conceivable that switching to a popular-vote system would lead candidates to ignore more voters than they do under the current one. Three-quarters of Americans live in states where most of the major parties’ presidential candidates do not campaign.

More important, this “voters will be ignored” rationale is morally indefensible. Awarding a numerical few voting “enhancements” to decide for the many amounts to a tyranny of the minority. Under any other circumstances, we would call an electoral system that weights some votes more than others a farce—which the Supreme Court, more or less, did in a series of landmark cases. Can you imagine a world in which the votes of black people were weighted more heavily because presidential candidates would otherwise ignore them, or, for that matter, any other reason? No. That would be a racial entitlement. What’s easier to imagine is the racial burdens the Electoral College continues to wreak on them.

Critics of the Electoral College are right to denounce it for handing victory to the loser of the popular vote twice in the past two decades. They are also correct to point out that it distorts our politics, including by encouraging presidential campaigns to concentrate their efforts in a few states that are not representative of the country at large. But the disempowerment of black voters needs to be added to that list of concerns, because it is core to what the Electoral College is and what it always has been.

The race-consciousness establishment—and retention—of the Electoral College has supported an entitlement program that our 21st-century democracy cannot justify. If people truly want ours to be a race-blind politics, they can start by plucking that strange, low-hanging fruit from the Constitution.

Edited September 9 by Vesper

[robsblubot 3,497]

I keep hearing a republican when referring to Trump... is he? a former registered Democrat and party donor, Trump was never really about any of the so called republican values throughout his life. Him being a Republican leader is as much of a transactional marriage as his real one.

"Trump warned he will jail election officials he considers cheats; is complaining Pennsylvania’s voting is a fraud; vowed to pardon January 6 rioters; railed against women who accused him of sexual misconduct; and spent hours in recent days on sometimes incoherent rants that raised questions about his state of mind."

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/trump-debate-prep-analysis/index.html the media has already normalized how batshit crazy he is, but personally, none of this matters; all you need is Jan 6th.

Edited September 9 by robsblubot

[Vesper 28,763]

3 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

Yeah ok.
Ohio too used to be dem and it was the main swing state in the Carter-Ford election in 1976.
Now it's Trump's, locked.
What about the three states I mentioned ? Are they enough to give Harris the victory ?

here is an EC map that you can adjust

https://www.270towin.com/

IF Harris wins the Midwest Blue Wall (MI, PA, WI, plus the solid Blue IL and MN, but Trump retains all the states (NC is the only one really at risk for him) he won in 2020, and flips GA, AZ and NV, then the election comes down to a nightmare possibilty.

2 states split their electoral votes, Blue Maine and Red Nebraska. Trump will very likely win Maine Second Congressional district, so takes 1 EV from a Blue state.

NE 2nd district went narrowly for Clinton and Biden in 2016 and 2020, but it is a dead heat atm.

IF Trump wins it

this will be the map (based off all of the above)

I have been warning about this ever since late 2020, early 2021

 

I said nightmare because if it is a 269-269 tie, the US House (even if the Democrats win control of it back in Novemeber) will elect Trump (due to illegal gerrymandering in WI, NC, FL making it impossible to pull the Rethugs under 26 State delegations).

Each state delegation gets ONE vote, no matter how big their population, and 26 votes are needed to elect.

Harris will win the popular vote by millions and millions, yet lose the POTUS due to 18th century arcane systems and procedures, one of which (the House delegations) has been illegally gamed by the Rethugs (again, by the illegal gerrymandering in WI, NC, and FL).

Nationwide violence will unfortunately very likely ensue, and Trump will be even more crazed and incentivised to try to go full dictator when he seizes the levers of power on January 20, 2025.

 

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

''Fears of all out war in the Middle East were growing today after Israel launched deadly air strikes on a number of military sites in central Syria, killing at least 16 people.

The Syrian state news agency Sana cited a hospital director as saying that another 43 people were wounded in the attacks'' Reuters

Israel seems determined to start World War 3, bombing and killing all its neighbours and drag the US into attacking Iran

[Vesper 28,763]

2 hours ago, cosmicway said:

If Harris wins Pennsylvania and Nevada plus Michigan as expected does she win ?

No, not if Trump wins the other swing states (WI, AZ, GA, and NC) and retains all he won in 2020 (NC being the main one at risk)

I even gave Harris NE-2

She will lose if that above happens

 

 

[Vesper 28,763]

5 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

''Fears of all out war in the Middle East were growing today after Israel launched deadly air strikes on a number of military sites in central Syria, killing at least 16 people.

The Syrian state news agency Sana cited a hospital director as saying that another 43 people were wounded in the attacks'' Reuters

Israel seems determined to start World War 3, bombing and killing all its neighbours and drag the US into attacking Iran

Bibi wants the chaos to aid Trump, as Trump will give him a free hand to take all the Palestinian land and mass ethnic cleanse and/or genocide

[Fulham Broadway 16,825]

Two women who say they were raped and strangled by the controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate have spoken to the BBC about their experiences.

Another woman has alleged, for the first time, she was raped by Mr Tate’s younger brother, Tristan - also an influencer with millions of followers.

The Tate brothers, aged 37 and 36, currently face charges in Romania of human trafficking and forming an organised group to sexually exploit women. Andrew Tate is also charged with rape.

If found guilty, the two men could be jailed for more than 10 years