snafu

A significant number of moderates may vote for Biden, but they also may be put off by the fact that his running mate is in the top ten most left-leaning Senators (#8 by "progressive punch", #1 by "non-partisan" "yougov"). Especially this election, when Biden's age is an openly discussed factor.

Right on!

See this is interesting. Just because Obama did these things doesn’t make them good things to have done. Every President does good things and bad things. You chose three of the worst.

Don’t sneeze while peeing. It can get uncomfortable.

I will go back and read the other responses, I'm sure that I'm likely repeating what others have said already. (1) I don't think Trump has lost voters from his base. Maybe picked up as many people who believe that he can do the job when they didn't believe it before 2016. But he's probably lost as many voters who can't take his personality and think he blew it with his Covid-19 response. (2) I don't think the MSM was lying in 2016 about Clinton. I think everyone was completely on cruise control with Clinton as a shoo-in. (3) I think Trump haters who didn't vote for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Biden in 2020. Trump won't lose too many voters. But Biden will pick up those complacent voters that didn't turn out for Clinton. If Biden picks up enough in the swing states, then Biden wins. Feels to me like Trump "maxed out" his votes in 2016, and even if he repeats his numbers, there's a lot of people who sat on the sidelines in 2016 that regret it and won't make that mistake again. It really depends on where those people live.

None of what I said was about Trump’s achievements or lack thereof, or intended to be so. None of it. And you actually add to my point. At least Trump, and every other candidate for President I’ve ever seen, has said what they would do in office. Whether they got their platform accomplished is not the issue. I’m talking about going into office with a clear picture of what a President wants to do. I’m talking about voters agreeing with those policies and voting because of those policies. Without that — and coupled with “he’s not that guy”, I’m asking whether Biden actually has a mandate to govern? I say he wouldn’t. I also recognize that voters like you don’t seem to be bothered by this.

No, what I’m getting at is the fact that people are voting for Biden as anyone but Trump. Biden has a platform on his website, but he won’t commit to an environmental plan. He won’t commit to anything other than a public option for healthcare. He won’t commit to not packing the Court. If nobody knows what he actually stands for then what are they voting for him to actually do? Then once he’s in and does stuff, where’s the public support for it? That’s not a mandate. You describe the power of the office, but power comes from the governed, it isn’t foisted upon us.

Simple question, because a lot of people give this exact reason for voting for Biden (because he’s simply not Trump): If that’s the primary reason to vote for Biden and he wins, do you think he has a mandate to govern?

I think Cal Cooledge used to go through the federal budget line by line. I like that, though it probably wasn’t 14,000 pages long back then. More like a phone number on a cocktail napkin.

You lost me at #7. He should have donated it if he were a true patriot.

Yeah, I got your point. You're still mistaken.

Not at all. Not everything is about you. Did I? Can you find that? If I did, it wasn't intentional. And even so, it may have been buttressing a larger point I was making (like in the post you just quoted). But you probably couldn't figure that out (like your post just now). As you like to say: carry on.

Brennan has made a lot of statements about Trump. I wonder what he would have said about Clinton if she had won. Fortunately, we will never know.

Throw some thin sliced radishes in there. A very nice addition.

Okay.

Uh huh.

Apologies, I took you for a Communist. So if you're not a Communist, you won't take it personally. You may not be, but once that slide to the far left starts there will be people (perhaps not you) who will want to slide all the way. I started off by saying that this is my opinion and that I hope I am badly mistaken.

(1) you've got proof of your first two sentences? (2) don't put words into my mouth or motives into my head. I won't do that to you -- follow? I'm not using Soviet-style Communism as a lazy slur. I'm using it as an active slur. You do realize that your positions are fringe, yes? Why would the fringe of this country have control over the vast majority of people who don't agree with them? You could go find a Vermont or Colorado commune to join your like-minded folk. Nobody will bother or begrudge you.

My point was and is that people like to twist the stupid things Trump says into signals for his non-existent, fiction of the mind, storm troopers to beat his political opponents into submission. I hear what he says. I shake my head and say, "that was stupid". WhoTF takes his stupid quotes as a call for action?

You just agreed with me. The only people hearing dog whistles are not Trump supporters. And if you ignore stupid things Trump says, you won't hear the dog whistles too. And if nobody hears dog whistles, then what?

I'm not sure your background, but for the past 20 or more years I've worked in a Brooklyn Neighborhood that's chock full of former residents of a certain East Bloc country under the communist boot. You could learn a lot from their experiences and what they think about Communism. I've got a Romanian friend who described to me what it was like in the early '90's when the Communists fell out, very interesting stuff. It sure looks to me like Biden has had to embrace the far progressive left to build a coalition within the Democrat party. Those progressives are going to want a voice in a big way, and they seem (at least to me) to see a Biden Presidency as the first in many steps toward fulfilling their agenda. This is my opinion and I hope to be wrong. Funny to me how the only people who hear Trump "dog whistles" are Trump haters.

Trump is promoting riots? You have an example of this? There have been riots and unrest under just about every President. Have those Presidents promoted those? And you know that the unemployment rate is under 8% during an enforced shutdown of the economy, right? You think Trump wants to continue having high unemployment? You're not making sense. There are reasons to not vote for Trump, but what you cited are none of them.

Do you let your 4 year old kid have the lollipop in the store when he's throwing a fit? That's not a good reason to vote against Trump. There's lots of reasons, but that's not one. That's actually one (for me, at least) to vote FOR Trump.

Who's promising these things and why?

I've never read a page of that thread. You did and you voiced your dissent. At what point did you think that you were going to change DR's point of view? When you realized that you weren't going to change anything, then why did you keep on it? Why not just chalk him up to a lost cause? These are honest questions. There are a couple time when I tried engaging someone who posted inaccurate facts (I'm not talking about conspiracy theories). After a few tries, I eventually realized that even showing them how they were incorrect didn't change their conclusion. At that point I knew what I was dealing with and adjusted myself.