Dr. Jack
Dr. Jack's JournalStop believing what Trump says!
After all these years I still can't believe that so many people haven't figured trump out yet. He's not a brilliant political mastermind. He's not a strongman or a dictator. He's not going to steal the election through state legislatures or declare himself president for life. He's a con man. He's lies. Everything he says is bullshit with nothing to back it up. That's why he never built his stupid wall. That's why he never repealed the ACA. That is why he never eliminated the national debt. That is why he never released his tax returns. He's a con artist! He knows he can't steal the election. He knows he can't become president for life. He wants you to believe that he can do it if he wants so you get discouraged and don't vote. His lies only work if you believe in the version of him that he is projecting. That's his secret, he's fucking lying.
Let me say it again: STOP. FUCKING. BELIEVING. WHAT. TRUMP. SAYS.
Don't panic. Vote
We live in scary, uncertain times. I don't deny that. But the United States can and will survive Donald Trump. We have survived an onslaught by the largest empire in world history, twice, a civil war, the greatest economic downturn modern world history, defeated the fascist powers in WW2, and beat the Soviet Union in a nuclear arms race. We can certainly survive a functionally illiterate, geriatric gameshow host who can barely walk and who paints his face orange. Trump is nothing. He is politically impotent, isolated and loathed, and has few powerful allies. He has no plan, no brilliant strategy to win the election or to say in power. He's a cornered animal, lashing out and screaming, hoping to scare enough of us into giving him what he wants. He can refuse to accept the election results. He can threaten to cancel the election. He can sue every single person who didn't vote for him. He can threaten protesters and say he won't leave the white house. It doesn't matter. He's just an old man, alone and afraid. He will be leaving the White House one way or another in January. How that happens is up to him.
So don't panic. Don't believe his bluster and lies. Don't let him intimidate you. Just vote and have faith in the United States.
I'm worried we aren't depressed enough
The world has gone to shit. Nothing matters anymore. Trump will steal the election and no one will do anything about it. It doesn't matter that Biden is up by close to double digits nationally, Trump is an Uber genius who will close the gap in the coming weeks. It doesn't matter that Biden has about $100 million to spend every week for the rest of the election and Trump can't afford to run ads anymore. Voter registrations and early voting is way up for Dems this year but it doesn't matter. Be cynical. Those votes will all be thrown out. And if Trump doesn't get us, the Russians will. People don't care about coronavirus. They don't care about the shitty economy or the abuses of power. And I worry that there is still too much optimism about the future among Democrats. If we are optimistic then the universe will plot against us. We will jinx the election. Depression is key. Be anxious, be sad, let the feelings of hopelessness wash over you. The fact that each and every one of you isn't depressed and anxious should make us all depressed and anxious.
That's how some Democrats sound right now. Stop it. It's god-damned irritating. For the love of God please stop with the pity party. And that's my rant for the day. Get out there and kick the bloated orange fat ass out of the people's house and back to his bed bug infested shit hole golf course. Remember, nothing wrong with a bit of hope.
Trump is in a horrible electoral position
We are 6 weeks from the election and the overall state of the race is about the same as it has been since.... probably spring 2019 when Biden announced his candidacy. Like all of you I read the daily articles about what Trump can do to win or how this event is making a loss more likely. But in the end, when you think about everything that has to happen for Trump to close the gap with Biden, something he has been completely unable to do for some 520 days in a row now (not an exaggeration, that is how long Bidens streak has been leading in the national polls), and everything that is working against him, his reelection seems nearly impossible.
In fact, Trump's best hope is to pull close to even and then win by razor thin margins. That is his best scenario. But think about all of the events that would need to happen and issues he would have to overcome in less than 6 weeks. Again, something he has been unable to do for over a year and a half.
1. He has to steal a lot of voters that have been backing Biden for over 500 days. Based on the polls and previous elections that is winning over millions, even over 10 million Biden voters in the next few weeks. Or there would need to be millions of "secret Trump voters" that aren't showing up in polls or voter registration data
2. He needs to overcome the massive Democratic advantage in early voting by having almost unheard of election day turn out
3. He has to also hope that the polls are very, very wrong. People point to 2016 but even then they were only off by the margin of error. And pollsters now weigh trump leaning voters heavier than they did in 2016. So even though polling methods are more favorable to detecting trump support, not less than in 2016, the errors need to be way, way, way larger in Trump's favor in 2020.
4. Any Russian interface and voter suppression they may be counting on needs to be orders of magnitude more effective than in 2016. And that would have to overcome how hyper aware people are to such problems in 2020.
5. Trump needs to somehow close this huge polling gap with almost no money while Biden has about $100 million he can spend every week until the end of the election
6. You can also add in issues of Trump and Trump campaign incompetence, the unpopularity of the supreme court fight, the increasing threat of an immanent COVID spike and economic collapse.
All of these things need to go Trump's way, somehow, and even then his best chance is winning by one of the closest electoral vote margins in American history. If they aren't terrified over at Trump HQ then they are clearly delusional.
The Dems should play the long game
With the Republican power grab with the Supreme Court, the Dems are free to make a power grab of their own, with little to no consequences. But instead of going balls to the wall and doing everything at once here is what I think their best plan is.
The Dems best move would be to eliminate the filibuster in the senate and then add DC and Puerto Rico as states. That would make Republican majorities in the House and Senate far more difficult to achieve and add quite a few likely Dem electoral votes from Puerto Rico. They could also potentially expand the size of the House, although that is probably the least pressing issue. It would be easy for them to do but not 100% required. Then bide their time, wait for Thomas to exit, which is likely not too far off, and ram through an ultra liberal justice to balance things out. If the conservative Supreme Court is fucking around too much, stack the courts. The first thing the Dems need to do is conslidate power where they can and play the long game. There are two conservative justices, Roberts and Gorsuch that are reasonable enough to know to not press their luck too much. Secure the White House and Senate to prevent Trump and McConnell 2.0 from ever coming to power and then fix the federal judiciary.
If they do too much at once, the backlash could hit the Democrats and we could end up with a choatic situtation where more states are trying to be added and the Republicans potentially retaking power in a few years and expanding the courts even further. The dems need to prevent a tit for tat retalation just a few years down the road. Their power grab should be securing the Senate and White House, or at least making it way, way harder for someone like Trump to win the presidency without the electoral vote, or for a hard right Senate to come back into existence. Learn lessons from McConnell. He has been planning this for likely 15 years. We need to strike hard but then bide our time and pick our battles.
Why not expand the number of House seats too?
If we are looking to fix all of the problems with the Republican power grabs from the last 20 years, getting rid of the fillibuster, adding Puerto Rico and DC as states, stacking the courts are all ideas I have heard thrown around. Those are all good ideas but one I haven't heard anyone mention is expanding the size of the House of Representatives. Like the Supreme Court, there is no set number of House seats. It has been close to 100 years since the House increased the number of members, which it can do at any time. One big issue is Republican gerrymandering. So why not combat that by expanding the size of the House as well?
6 weeks out, what is your election predicton?
I'm tired of talking about the Supreme Court right now. So instead, let's talk about something that has recieved little coverage this year, the election. It's 6 weeks away, so what do you think the final results will be?
Here is mine.
Biden 353
Trump 185
Biden: 52.7%
Trump: 45%
Other: 2.3%
Do you think Trump realizes that McConnell is sacrificing him for his own goals?
Anyone who has been paying attention to Senate politics for the past decade knows that McConnell's ultimate goal fill the federal judiciary with as many conservatives as possible. Very little else matters to him, including his own political future. Now we are seeing polls showing McConnell's move to ram through a replacement for RGB and all of the other hypocrisy surrounding the Supreme Court are very unpopular. We also have seen the Democrats raise an absolutey unheard of amount of money in the past few days. Overall this move is likely going to have severe consequences for Republicans in November. I feel like McConnell is aware of that, he just thinks it worth it, as do the Republican senators who were bound to go down in flames this year anyway. But one key Republican, a very orange, bloated Republican who can't drink from a glass of water, is still unaccounted for. And that does make me wonder, does Trump have any idea that McConnell is likely sacrificing Trump to the wolves? Ramming through a new justice is all that matters to McConnell. His final goal has been acheived and Trump has outlived his usefulness. McConnell is basically sending Trump on a suicide mission and I get the very strong impression Trump is 100% unaware of this and is 100% unaware that he is not the powerbroker in the GOP. I wonder if he is ever going to figure it out?
Republicans likely handed the Dems an electoral landslide
Sure, there are a lot of people screaming online right now how Trump can now steal the election with impunity and the Supreme Court is just going to say "yup, you're a dictator now, congratulations". However I think those people are....talking out of their asses, to put it politely. The situation is bad with the supreme Court but it's not "the United States is dead and Trump is now Hitler" bad.
Regardless, the election is still coming up despite some people's fears that it somehow isn't, and it seems that the Republicans have handed the Democrats a landslide victory. Really though if you're McConnell or Trump you don't have any good options here when it comes to the election. Trump has been staring down a very likely defeat for months if not years now and the Senate is looking increasingly likely to end up Democratic. They could be honorable (obviously was never going to happen), likely lose the white house and Senate, and the Dems replace Ginsberg. Or they can shit all over everything, ram someone through, and lose anyway. Logically they are going to go with ramming someone through. Their days are numbered regardless.
I have heard some people automatically assume that this whole situation somehow benefits Trump and the Republicans electorally. But that really doesn't make since. The biggest reason why, as Harry Enten pointed out on CNN today, Republicans voters are already maxed on enthusiasm and Republican candidates are largely maxed out on support from Republican voters. They have been playing to the base and only the base for so long, that well is already dry. They can't squeeze anything else out of their base. So replacing a liberal justice with a conservative one doesn't help Trump or the Republicans.
But it does massively piss of Democrats and liberals, 5 weeks before the election. Maybe even some independents and swing voters who see the Republicans making a morbid power grab and being dishonorable. Look at the $100 million the Dems raised in 1 day. Biden was already putting up big numbers against Trump even though Democratic "enthusiasm" was pretty mediocre. What the Republicans have done is turbocharged the Democratic base at the exact right time for them to slaughter the GOP at the polls.
I know pessimism seems to be reining supreme right now so it is hard to believe but the Democrats have very likely been handed an landslide victory in November, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades.
Is a new balance coming?
Nate Silver brought up an interesting possible scenario on how this supreme Court fight and election plays out. Let's say McConnell rams through a new justice, therefore making the federal judiciary very conservative. Due to that, the democrats win the white house and Senate, because of democratic anger. The democrats get revenge, not by packing the courts, but by doing away with the filibuster and making DC and Puerto Rico states. And then we would probably settled into a new balance. The addition of DC and Puerto Rico as states means the Dems will have a significant advantage in the Senate, it will add some solid democratic seats in the house, and it will shift the electoral vote in favor of the democrats. So Democrats dominante the presidency, Senate, and to a lesser extent the house. While the Republicans dominate the judiciary. Neither side will then want to make any more moves for fear of losing their new advantage, at least not for quite awhile.
Possible? Likely?
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Member since: Fri Jan 20, 2017, 02:43 PMNumber of posts: 675
