shoshin

He tweeted a billion times yesterday. Trump losing with dignity is unlikely.

Huge mistake. This could not help Biden more.

They are pulling out of swing races to focus on what, CA and NY? When even Rasmussen shows Biden up by 9 nationally, there's a reason Trump is running out of cash.

Yesterday he pulled pack on ads in Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. Pulling back ads in swing states is not the strategy of a winning campaign. The debates are about his only chance (super limited) of any reset.

I’ll quibble on one point. 40% of the country is in the middle and is not a base. They decide the election every four years. But even this time they are decided. Give Trump credit for one thing: I expect a big turnout because a lot of people have a strong opinion.

If you do that state by state, the differences are even more striking.

Big differences between those 4 years and I was commenting on what Biden’s strategy is. Way more undecideds back then. Very few now. Polls this time show chasm gaps in even swing states...last time Clinton was not in victory formation with swing states super tight and Clinton was campaigning her ass off in them right to Election Day because she knew it. I don’t care a lot about who wins but the signs this time are very different. We will know in a few weeks so poll debating is kind of a bore. Given that the commission took the Trump campaign at its word on testing last time because they refused to get there early for tests and on the heels of that, had the big outbreak that is ongoing and this time you’re exposing citizens in the town hall format (usually the best “debate” IMO), the admin put the commission in a tough spot. It’s not unlike Bills Titans actually.

Yup. Biden is in victory formation for 3 weeks. Just needs to handle the snap on first and second down. He can only lose in a debate.

Good series of charts on economic growth. Hopefully unemployment follows. https://mobile.twitter.com/Trinhnomics/status/1313657386758930432

Trump could have won with strict message discipline on reopening but he’s undisciplined and focuses on himself and how personally piqued he is 99% of the time so his attention hits that topic for the duration of a squirrel’s (or a TV news scroll). If he loses as bigly as it appears he is headed, the Rs will rue the day they put so much faith in a guy with an ideological compass pointed at himself. For Biden it’s a referendum on Trump and healthcare. It’s so clear that’s what they talk about. For Trump it’s the media just wronged me and the suburbs are going to get overrun by antifa and Russia today and Pelosi’s mask and the media is so mean and Kim Jun Un is a great guy and polls are fake and Hunter Biden and Barrett and even Fox News is mean and someone just said something nice about me on Twitter and Joe is on drugs and Something Obama and taxes and oh the pandemic and no stimulus and oh my bad yes stimulus and the media just attacked me unfairly and moms of suburbia zombie apocalypse if (Sleepy) Joe gets elected and what’s a good insulting name for someone and the polls again. And that’s in 2 hours and misses 10 retweets an hour. Then rinse and repeat.

Seriously, how can you harshly judge a guy for raping women and enslaving his own children until you walk a mile in his shoes?

It is serious but not for most. We can't shut down the country for a disease with its current risk profile. We need to get back to life. Covid added about 2.5 deaths per 1000 in this. Substantial, but brings the deaths per 1000 back to about 1990 levels temporarily. And the worst of the death spike is long behind us. Can it go up? Yes. Will it return to April levels. Not likely barring the highly improbably mutation.

I'm not disputing that he was a good president but that he's overvalued by many because of he was such an impressive guy. If you look at presidents in roughly quartiles, the top 10 presidents undergo quite a drop from the top 2 to the next 8 and even within that 8, you will see a substantial drop from the guys vying for #3 like Jefferson/FDR/TR to whoever is at #10: the likes of Johnson/JFK/Madison. Beyond that, you can relegate some to the disaster bin and there are a lot in the middle who are not particularly distinguished. For all the bluster of "this is the most important election ever" every 4 years, we do not tend to elect the best and most memorable folks!

I am a huge fan of the person Teddy Roosevelt and his awesome life, and in a time of more turmoil, he could have been a top 3 president. But not a lot happened on his watch as president compared to many others. I think he gets overly credited as president for having such an interesting life.

You do realize that you made the first personal attack in this thread and now inflamed it. You could make it stop by not responding then the civility continues apace. It’s not easy to not respond (trust me I know) but when you don’t take the bait, you quench the incivility. Dead. Like on the spot. Out goes that fire. If 20 people did that and focused on the arguments and debates here, you’d change this board. Change this board and you might change another place. Just a thought. I struggle with it too!

I thought the guy who listed Obama (who I’d put as a middling president) was the one trolling to be honest.

Yep I’ve been saying let’s be open since late March, though admittedly back then I was more concerned about the trajectory of this thing. The crap we are doing now with mandatory and voluntary closures is terrible. That doesn’t mean I’m back to the rave scene but I’m meeting clients who are willing, eating out where possible, and living life while following and respecting all the rules and requests of others. I’m a season ticket holder. How pissed am I to be watching this year from the couch?!?

Keep what up? There’s a good downwards trend mostly and we have tons of hospital capacity but it’s noteworthy that there is a trend shift after so long in the right direction. There isn’t one thing that should have been closed since April 1 (and at that only in a few metro areas like NYC) and only older folks and larger gatherings should be careful and avoided, but not at all regulated. We should be wide open everywhere. So what do you want me to not “keep up?”

I wouldn’t have if not for the call and especially the Covid circumstances. I don’t think anyone is being disenfranchised of their vote this year more than any other (especially pre 1950!) but with all the inflamed rhetoric, it’s important that things get done right this year and it’s not fair to have seniors doing it in Covid. Whoever wins, wins and hopefully there’s no reason for debate and the loser concedes with dignity.

Totally against the tearing down. People are complicated. Jefferson the rapist who enslaved his own children (!) is for sure a top 10 or maybe even 5 president in almost anyone’s opinion. His presidency was critically important and his role in the founding large, if sometimes overblown. Trust me that at my daughter’s school they tore them down plenty, so much so that her classmates look on the founders as people to revile almost unequivocally. It is a pendulum swing too far and in the rush to judge (guilty as charged on this many times and many ways), we make iconic people into demons instead of just sympathetic imperfect humans, which would give us all a more compassionate view of everyone that we all benefit from.

He either (1) threatened vaguely on the internet to make SDS hurt (some kind of site attack or whatever), or your and others’ theory, (2) He wanted to hurt SDS by convincing a handful of posters in a politics subforum on a football site to quit. Ouch the pain, the pain. Occam’s Razor says maybe you’re right and he was just really full of his self importance in #2. I asked him and he never clarified so who knows but I will go with you on this. Maybe he can also sue me for defamation of his anonymous username.

Not a watcher. I don’t know what that is other than a party “witness” sort of thing. Yes inside. Verifying sign ins. Dealing with something we have in PA called provisional ballots. Handling surrendered mail in ballots. Maintaining machines. Etc. Each major party has a few positions allotted to them in every precinct and those people run the show inside. I assume some people in here do this given how invested they are in politics. Wondering what their experiences are.

He did. Owning slaves was a struggle for him to justify through his later life. It haunted him.

Off by a letter as well on a more serious truth. Rapist. And enslaved his children. He wrote the Dec but its ideals were those of them all—he was just an the best writer of the founders and they knew it. Jefferson had a brilliant mind but was an intellectual mess. I love Adams but he was an ineffective president. Love Truman too but also not as effective as he could have been. Reagan was smart politically but his ability to pry the Dixiecrats to the Republican Party killed the Republican ideal of small government since his presidency. It was a deal with the devil. Grant is underrated as president. Talk about a divided time to be potus and he navigated it perfectly. Tops Lincoln. No one can compare. He kept us united. Washington. A complicated guy but he was first, could have easily been King George and wasn’t. Owned a divided cabinet and country and managed it. Had slaves but also freed them and understood it was a plague. He was the model of a dignified American president. A third would be a big drop to anyone else.

Deaths way down. Really Good for a Tuesday. Hospitalizations up 11 days in a row. Hospitalizations up 20% in PA off their low a month ago. Still manageable but I’d like that trend to stop.