Mega-Thread: 2020 United States General Election

[cubby]

So we are left with the pathetic truth that you are posting this stuff to get some kind of morbidly disgusting circle-jerk of validation.

You're the only one bringing that topic up, remember:

I can just imagine the drool dribbling down your chin....

But hey, whatever floats your boat.


Meanwhile, for the adults in the room, Trump is trying to keep the evangelical votes clinched, and it's not working.

[beanman12345]

When the desire for a national health service arises, first thing out of Biden's mouth is concerns for cost and how to pay for it. Tha's Edge- 's favorite diversionary tactic for that topic too. Are we having trouble paying for the military complex? How about the bipartisan $4 trillion giveaway to Boeing, the airline industry, lobbyists, etc? Remind me again how the Dems are so different from the GOP in terms of these pandemic looting bills? Sure it doesn't respond to the actual illness that quietly spreads, but sure let's screw the taxpaxer out of $4 trillion in the name of the pandemic and then give them nothing in actual fact.

People are reeling from pandemic, unprecedented job losses, lack of health insurance (or healthcare for that matter)...suddenly they are supposed to be super lucid about political concerns when they can't even feel gravity or know which way is up?

People vote against their own interests in the U.S. all day and night - the powers that be count on it. You folks talk about it all the time. The elite use the confusion of the electorate in circumstances like these to consolidate power and wealth. Now it's a question how it happens?

This is so damn true, it's a great question, so why don't we get the answer straight from the horses mouth so to speak. Why do people like you vote against your own interests?

[Louisa Bannon]

This is so damn true, it's a great question, so why don't we get the answer straight from the horses mouth so to speak. Why do people like you vote against your own interests?

And a vote for Biden is not against your own interests?

Pot, kettle, something...something...

At least I know what to still fight for, you've already stopped trying to fight for anything worthwhile except pointless, incremental changes that are easily undone all over again by the next leader of group in congress.

You don't vote for someone that actually has your full support, you've already compromised from the first. You voted for who you thought was electable. A complete dud vote if there ever was one.

Want nothing. Get nothing. Achieve nothing.

[Elegiac]

And a vote for Biden is not against your own interests?

Pot, kettle, something...something...

At least I know what to still fight for, you've already stopped trying to fight for anything worthwhile except pointless, incremental changes that are easily undone all over again by the next leader of group in congress.

You don't vote for someone that actually has your full support, you've already compromised from the first. You voted for who you thought was electable. A complete dud vote if there ever was one.

Want nothing. Get nothing. Achieve nothing.

Are you sure this is what you want to be saying to black voters.

I mean, not like they have a long, long history of political activism in the face of oppression or anything. /s

The utter caucasity of it all.

[cubby]

And a vote for Biden is not against your own interests?

How are you still walking down this dead-end street? How have you not heard at least one of the several people explain to you the basics of voting and the outcome factors for this November Presidential election?

Why do you still apparently want Trump to win?

Want nothing. Get nothing. Achieve nothing.

This indeed seems to be your mantra. It's also been called "[s]he just wants to watch the world burn". I guess we know your true colors now.

[beanman12345]

And a vote for Biden is not against your own interests?

Pot, kettle, something...something...

At least I know what to still fight for, you've already stopped trying to fight for anything worthwhile except pointless, incremental changes that are easily undone all over again by the next leader of group in congress.

You don't vote for someone that actually has your full support, you've already compromised from the first. You voted for who you thought was electable. A complete dud vote if there ever was one.

Want nothing. Get nothing. Achieve nothing.

Ahh yes your fight to to make sure nobody gives a fuck about you or your positions by willingly throwing your vote away and not caring at all about the direction of this country. You are prime example of someone voting against their own self interest.

[Edge-]

When the desire for a national health service arises, first thing out of Biden's mouth is concerns for cost and how to pay for it.

And voters, too. Because again, while the idea of M4A enjoys widespread, majority popularity (around 70%), the numbers start to crater once you get into specific plans. Because people like the idea, but don't understand what it actually entails.

Tha's Edge- 's favorite diversionary tactic for that topic too.

Literally not. That's a part of why I argue that M4A isn't going to happen soon, for purely practical reasons, despite my support for M4A even with the high price tags.

I'll thank you kindly to not misrepresent my arguments.

Again: I've been working with a few groups on and off over the years to push for M4A in my state (CA). Are you doing anything beyond moaning about it online?

[Louisa Bannon]

...That's a part of why I argue that M4A isn't going to happen soon, for purely practical reasons, despite my support for M4A even with the high price tags.

But we can afford bailouts that do literally nothing toward the pandemic for which they are supposedly directed.

So we can't do the one thing that would help (create a unified healthcare approach to fight a pandemic thereby creating millions of jobs with tracers, administrators, and other healthcare professionals - and that saves money versus the current nonsense approach), but we can do the shit that does nothing at all like giveaway $4 trillion to people that don't even need the money.

Noted. Is that the official Democratic position? Or more of a "watch what they do, not what they say" thing?

Because I watched the bailouts, bipartisan all the way.

[Edge-]

But we can afford bailouts that do literally nothing toward the pandemic for which they are supposedly directed.

Very different things, and you assume that I'm in love with the way the bailouts have been handled, which I'm not. However, I do understand that Republicans would never pass a bailout bill that wasn't a windfall for corporations, and their votes are needed, and Democrats have to keep donors happy until they can push through campaign finance reform, so compromises are needed.

What we got was far better than what we would have seen if Republicans still held the House.

So we can't do the one thing that would help (create a unified healthcare approach to fight a pandemic thereby creating millions of jobs with tracers, administrators, and other healthcare professionals - and that saves money versus the current nonsense approach), but we can do the shit that does nothing at all like giveaway $4 trillion to people that don't even need the money.

Again, you're basically trying to compare potatoes to a cruise missile. Money is involved in both, but they're extremely different things. Bailouts were needed now, and we're in agreement that far too little money went to individuals and actual small businesses and far too much went to corporations that used their tax break to give themselves bonuses and buy back their stock.

However, money spent to head off a depression in an emergency is different than new money that would need to be raised to pay for a massive social program that would upend an entire industry and dramatically change the level of care that well over 100M Americans have access to.

Again, you can't just flip a switch and "boom, M4A is live y'all!". There are years worth of logistical and legal work that needs to be done to shift our current insurance and payment system over to a M4A style system, ranging from dramatically expanding the staffing of the program at the federal level and creating new procedures and programs to support it to figuring out ways to transition tens/hundreds of thousands of former health insurance workers (as private insurance will either entirely disappear or be the realm of the elite) so you don't end up with a massive unemployment spike, to staffing and processing within medical facilities.

The way leftists talk about it you'd think this was a positively simple change.

And you think trying to do that all in the middle of a fucking pandemic when medical professionals don't even have sufficient PPE and are resorting to trash bags is a good idea? Hell, even if Sanders was president now and not Trump and we had sufficient PPE and were more prepared, you wouldn't find a single actual person working in those fields that would agree and say, "Ya, this is a good idea."

That's some latte socialism nonsense.

Because I watched the bailouts, bipartisan all the way.

They have to be to get passed right now given that Democrats and Republicans control the two branches of the Legislature.

[arandomuser]

some bad polls today
trump +4 in pennsylvana
+1 in arizona
they are outliers but the few outlier polls leading up to the general in 2016 turned out to be very consequential so hopefully biden pays attention and re focuses on arizona and pensylvania, plus i imagine this civil unrest probably hurts biden with dems being seen as the social justice party and responsible for it
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
oddly the fox news polls seem to be the best ones for democrats
i think they probably use tricky weighting to create the perception of democrats leading by a wide margin in order to increase GOP turnout in fox polls- or am i being crazy here?

[Endus]

Bernie Bros say shit like this about black voters and then wonder why he lost about South Carolina. No, Karen, black people are not politically ignorant because we don't have Medicare for All.

So I'll ask again: why do the majority of black people support a supposed segregationist?

I guarantee, absolutely guarantee that their confusion about why black voters largely support Biden stems in no small part from them never actually talking to black voters, to ask them why.

Because they don't actually care about the interests of black voters. That's a cover. All they care about is slandering Biden. "Biden is such a racist" is just an attempt to drive a wedge between Biden and a group that tends to support him. It's an attempt to use black voters, as a tool, against their own interests.

Rather than, y'know, treating them as thinking, feeling people, who have ideas of their own that you might want to get in touch with before claiming to speak on their behalf.

Which I'm not even going to attempt to do, because I haven't made that outreach either. Which has way more to do with the fact that I'm Canadian. I've definitely reached out to various interest groups in other policy work I've done, for exactly this kind of reason; I don't try and speak for others, at best, I try and pass along their needs and interests, on their behalf, as they have communicated them to me for that purpose.

[Felya]

But we can afford bailouts that do literally nothing toward the pandemic for which they are supposedly directed.

You better have given your bail out check to someone that would consider it something. My gf is on unemployment right now and the extra 600 per week means a lot... as in... one week covers a month of COBRA. But, I guess not everyone has to worry about healthcare.

So we can't do the one thing that would help (create a unified healthcare approach to fight a pandemic thereby creating millions of jobs with tracers, administrators, and other healthcare professionals - and that saves money versus the current nonsense approach), but we can do the shit that does nothing at all like giveaway $4 trillion to people that don't even need the money.

On what planet would Trump sign any of that? It’s dead even if it hits his desk, which I doubt, due to Congress. The only vote that gives even a chance of this happening, is Biden.

Noted. Is that the official Democratic position? Or more of a "watch what they do, not what they say" thing?

Because I watched the bailouts, bipartisan all the way.

I’m sorry, but with Trump as president, they don’t have a choice, but to sign off helping wallstreet... otherwise Trump wouldn’t have signed either support for healthcare workers or unemployment. This is why 4 more years of Trump is pure insanity...

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some bad polls today
trump +4 in pennsylvana
+1 in arizona
they are outliers but the few outlier polls leading up to the general in 2016 turned out to be very consequential so hopefully biden pays attention and re focuses on arizona and pensylvania, plus i imagine this civil unrest probably hurts biden with dems being seen as the social justice party and responsible for it
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
oddly the fox news polls seem to be the best ones for democrats
i think they probably use tricky weighting to create the perception of democrats leading by a wide margin in order to increase GOP turnout in fox polls- or am i being crazy here?

Fox polls are rated very accurately and claiming that Trump is losing support, goes against their narrative of the greatest president ever.

[Elegiac]

I guarantee, absolutely guarantee that their confusion about why black voters largely support Biden stems in no small part from them never actually talking to black voters, to ask them why.

Because they don't actually care about the interests of black voters. That's a cover. All they care about is slandering Biden. "Biden is such a racist" is just an attempt to drive a wedge between Biden and a group that tends to support him. It's an attempt to use black voters, as a tool, against their own interests.

Rather than, y'know, treating them as thinking, feeling people, who have ideas of their own that you might want to get in touch with before claiming to speak on their behalf.

Which I'm not even going to attempt to do, because I haven't made that outreach either. Which has way more to do with the fact that I'm Canadian. I've definitely reached out to various interest groups in other policy work I've done, for exactly this kind of reason; I don't try and speak for others, at best, I try and pass along their needs and interests, on their behalf, as they have communicated them to me for that purpose.

An excellent point, my friend. So then, let us ask black voters why they didn't vote for Bernie.

Black voters opted for Biden because they have no faith that white voters will do the right thing and vote for a true progressive.

Hmmmm...how topical. Let's continue.

What explains that? What explains the fact that the oldest black voters, the elders in our community who have a living memory of oppression and violence that I’ve only read about, voted in overwhelming numbers for a rickety white guy who occasionally thinks he’s in a John Wayne movie?

Some people on Twitter, including people who weirdly think of themselves as part of Bernie Sanders’s coalition, chalked up Biden’s win to “low information voters” in South Carolina. The argument would be offensive if it weren’t also so dumb. Older black voters in South Carolina have a lifetime of education and experience dealing with the most persistent threat to their safety and rights in this country: white people.

My read of the South Carolina vote is that black people know exactly what they’re doing, and why. Joe Biden is the indictment older black folks have issued against white America. His support is buttressed by chunks of the black community who have determined that most white people are selfish and cannot be trusted to do the right thing. They believe if you make white people choose between their money and their morality—between candidates like Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (who somehow finished fifth in South Carolina, behind Pete Buttigieg) and candidates like Biden and Michael Bloomberg—they will choose their money every time and twice on Election Day.

Underlined for emphasis, because it underscores what I have said repeatedly about why European progressivism is not equipped to address socioeconomic problems in a society where one of the central pillars of its law and culture is racial animus.

So "being colorblind" and bitching about "identity politics" is in fact, Bernie Bros, why you lost.

[TexasRules]

https://twitter.com/TheBGates/status...37942888587270

Here's more of the segment, though still trying to find the full segment. Though this alone presents additional context that the conservative media jumping all of this shit this morning intentionally omitted.

Nobody believes you, or conservative media, give a single shit about Biden, Charlamagne, or black people and the issues that face them.

I got that quote from a yahoo article, which you now claim is conservative media. I find that hard to believe, but if you think yahoo is conservative, I need to know what is liberal?

So, just to clarify. You say I give no shit about Joe Biden and the issues, and it appears to bother you. Half the people on this board could give a shit about Joe Biden, they just do not want Trump....so it's okay. There are multiple multiple posts saying people do not like/hate Joe Biden or will vote for him because that is their preferred "only" choice. So you are angry at the reason I do not give a shit, not the reason they do not give a shit. So you believe in conditional caring about someone nobody likes. Got it, bad for anyone who doesn't support the democrat party to rag on Joe Biden, okay for anyone who will vote for him to rag on him.

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How are you still walking down this dead-end street? How have you not heard at least one of the several people explain to you the basics of voting and the outcome factors for this November Presidential election?

Why do you still apparently want Trump to win?

Can you be voting for Joe Biden to lose? I am on that side. You guys are voting against Trump, not for who you like. I can vote against Biden, not for who I like. It's the same thing, you just hate the man Biden is running against. But I can vote the same way you do.

[Elegiac]

Can you be voting for Joe Biden to lose? I am on that side. You guys are voting against Trump, not for who you like. I can vote against Biden, not for who I like. It's the same thing, you just hate the man Biden is running against. But I can vote the same way you do.

Cool, and we can call you anything we like because regardless of Joe Biden's personal qualities not a single one of his policies is any worse than Donald Trump's.

Proof? Look outside.

[TexasRules]

I was going to make a pithy comeback but honestly this is much better than anything my weed-soaked brain can muster right now so, hats off to you sir.

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Because it's fairly typical for popular past presidents to make public gestures in support of the current candidate.

Also it could be because he's, you know, the first black president at a time when black issues are central to the national discussion and wants to be an active presence.

It's also fairly typical of Presidents to not criticize the man that supersedes them. In recent times Bush did it, Clinton did it...but not Obama? And how did these"black issues" go under the great uniter? Did they get better, or did the administration foment hatred in places like Ferguson or allow black panthers to not be prosecuted for voter intimidation? Wasn't Obama supposed to heal the nation and make it better? Explain why it got worse under Obama? Explain why Ferguson was exploited and then just swept away.

[Edge-]

I got that quote from a yahoo article, which you now claim is conservative media. I find that hard to believe, but if you think yahoo is conservative, I need to know what is liberal?

Yahoo syndicates a lot of other outlets, but I'm not seeing anything there at all about it.

I didn't know it was from Yahoo, but I did know that when I googled the quote every one of the top 10 results was a conservative media outlets or aggregators.

[TexasRules]

Show us the visuals of the last President who ordered the active military to tear gas citizens so he could stage a photo op at a church. When was the last time again?

How can you be so obtuse when it comes to the actual issues? Why are you making things up and lying, all the while passively-aggressively shrilling for Trump?

Link proof that tear gas was ordered or used please. I need evidence since at the press briefing today it was stated numerous times to not be used. Pelosi wouldn't even say it, but let's see that proof.

[Elegiac]

Link proof that tear gas was ordered or used please. I need evidence since at the press briefing today it was stated numerous times to not be used. Pelosi wouldn't even say it, but let's see that proof.

Are you really gonna argue with an Episcopalian bishop and an Australian news crew and use Kayleigh McEnany, known chronic and habitual liar, as evidence?

Lol. Clownery.

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It's also fairly typical of Presidents to not criticize the man that supersedes them. In recent times Bush did it, Clinton did it...but not Obama?

Man, it's almost as if Trump is unusually bad.

And how did these"black issues" go under the great uniter? Did they get better, or did the administration foment hatred in places like Ferguson or allow black panthers to not be prosecuted for voter intimidation? Wasn't Obama supposed to heal the nation and make it better? Explain why it got worse under Obama? Explain why Ferguson was exploited and then just swept away.

Better question: Why do you give a shit? You've stated you're voting for Trump who is actively hostile to people of color. Why am I obligated to entertain questions about black welfare from someone who clearly does not care about it?

[Felya]

Link proof that tear gas was ordered or used please. I need evidence since at the press briefing today it was stated numerous times to not be used. Pelosi wouldn't even say it, but let's see that proof.

AP FACT CHECK: Trump denies tear gas use despite evidence
https://apnews.com/2aa7979e6fb88948895407f127e5e5b6