2020 Election

...well...that...and there is nothing left to argue about

Forget about the forums, in the real world, watch them totally dump on Biden in the coming months, and it won't be just Republicans / Trump supporters that do it

Democrats should have come up with a far better candidate, it's as simple as that

 

In the real world, Biden so far seems to be holding his own. It's a binary choice, and he'd have to go some to be less desirable than Trump! Even some of my MAGA hatted friends concede he seems harmless. In our present Brave New World, harmless isn't so bad.

 

Imagine still being a Biden supporter working damage control right now....

 

Very true. I second that. And I liked Robert Pirsig back during the 1970s. I also liked the English writer who wrote The Seeds Of Change.

 

Imagine still being a Trump supporter working damage control right now!

 

I was talking about the hippie on the street, who probably never heard of those dudes. Emerson, Thoreau, Hesse, Wilde, Huxley, Rachel Carson, etc. may have been kindred spirits, but a little early for the "true hippie" label Why not throw in Jesus, the Buddah and Socrates? There are plenty of true hippies around right now, about to head off for the Idaho Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes to give each other Covid-19. I think I'll sit this one out.

 

This may initially seem off topic, but bear with me

This appeared on our main (newscorp) news site today, a site that has been towing the government line for the most part the last couple of months.

It contains two things; an obvious deviation from the majority opinion that schools shouldnt re-open, and the articles main focus; an experiment by a think tank on testing how genuine facebook has been on handling fake news.......

"And so how did the most vital role of society – that of raising and educating its next generation – get arbitrarily shut down or suspended on the basis of no hard evidence nor top-level medical advice.

How is panic and fake information spreading so far and wide? How do we have supposedly educated people demanding the shutdown of educational institutions with no evidence to support it? And how do we have genuine concerns about the impact of such shutdowns likewise overtaken by lunatics who believe coronavirus is a myth altogether? Or caused by the 5G network? Or a conspiracy engineered by Bill Gates?"

Facebook’s fake news fail

I quoted the parts about the reversal in logic to get the schools to re-open. Have a little browse through the story for the details of the facebook experiment


My main point being there is a third player nowadays that isnt aligned to right or left politics, but the almighty advertising dollar, and not just facebook, tik tok is one where the vast majority of adults have no clue whats actually going on inside, who is getting influenced by whom

The three main curveballs coming up to the election are

1: As Restrictions get eased and disaster doesnt strike, you will have a hell of a lot more people asking why drastic lockdowns were necessary in the first place. And they will be blaming those that pushed the lockdowns the most

2. Is anyone actually in tune at the moment to what most young people are thinking?

3. Come November, you will still probably have 10% unemployment, up to $40 trillion public debt ( we still have a lot of bailouts t? o come), you really believe Biden is going to be the lesser if two evils in that situation? When his comrades are holding back bailout money to save the trees and will probably start talking about identity politics again

 

Yep. At the risk of repeating myself, Trump is the incumbent, and if previous patterns of voting behavior over the centuries continue to hold, he'll get blamed for a bad economy just as he took credit for the previously good one.
Two Reasons for Trump to Worry About November
Trump’s Reelection May Hinge On The Economy — And Coronavirus
If they don't, and reelect him, they'll fully deserve the devastation that will befall them.

 

Voting behaviour over the centuries?

Lets not get too ridiculous, lets just stick to the last 50 years, how many times in the last 50 years has a President not won a second term during economic downturns?

I want to see what you are basing these "previous patterns" on

 

@Tishomingo I think what might happen is the problem with the economy won't necessarily be blamed on him. And he will deflect any responsibility and blame it on the Chinese like he already is. Can we see through it? I think so, but that will not effect most of the republican electorate. They will find it very easy to turn a blind eye so long as he can keep up the storyline. If there's a narrative to repeat, some people are probably going to repeat it.

This election also has the potential to get extremely sophomoric with accusations of sexual assault, and rehashing of impeachment. We have a lot riding on the election, but to be an honest American isn't really working if all they do is sling mud. I don't have any attention span for it. Politics aren't worth it if the people running the show are ruining our public image by behaving like children calling names.

I find it absolutely abhorrent and cannot/will not ignore it. The democrats need to be the adults in the room. If we can't manage that (it seems really fucking simple) then my perspective goes to shit & I don't have a good move. I can't steer the narrative anywhere but on to something else if they can only belittle each other and there is no sign of mature debate anywhere in sight.

The economy is terrible because of coronavirus lockdowns which republicans have made clear they are against. Democrats are for the health of the American people and are willing to change the shape of economics for the foreseeable future to protect them.

I see two ways forward: 1) Reopen any old time and let people die, or 2) reopen later, and spend in the interim with a plan to pay it back through taxation. (hint: it's a false dichotomy...)

Ok, so there must be some kind of middle ground there somewhere that we just need to sort out. But I'll be honest. I prefer that we extend the quarantine/lockdown/stay-at-home for until there's a vaccine. If the government can't fix this, nothing can.

 

Well, G.H.W. Bush ("It's the economy stupid") comes immediately to mind. He had been wildly popular after Desert Storm, but an economic downturn did him in. How many economic downturns have their been? Carter lost in 1980, during the "double dip" or W-shaped recession. Obama won re-election during a rocky period in 2012, but the economy was on the upswing after the recession inherited from G.W. Bush. If we go back farther, of course, there was Hoover and the Great Depression. In fact since the Civil War, only one president has won re-election during a recession occurring in the later part of their first term: McKinley (and he was assassinated six months into his second term by a man who had lost his job). The other four presidents who ran for a second term during an economic downturn— Taft in 1912, Hoover in 1932, Carter in 1980 and G. H.W. Bush in 1992--didn't make it. Truman in "48 may be another exception, but that recession was just starting in November when Americans were going to the polls. It's arguable that Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt were exceptions, but both were vice presidents who took over from an elected incumbent and ran for a second term on their own. If you include all presidential elections ( not just presidents seeking reelection), the party in power has lost 13 of the last 19 races in which there was a downturn. Maybe Teflon Don will defy the odds once again, since he's a miracle worker and a man of destiny. Maybe not.

 

He'll certainly try, as usual! The Republican electorate alone isn't going to re-elect Trump. Unlike most Presidents, he has concentrated on his base and hasn't tried to broaden his appeal beyond that. Polls indicate he's losing to Biden in the battleground states. https://www.usnews.com/news/politic...eground-states-as-coronavirus-wears-on-voters

But we'll have to wait and see. He tends to cheat, so there's that.

 

Any format like this; messageboards, the main currency is site traffic; ordinary members / users. They are always the boss

13 out if 19, with other factors to take into consideration, hardly a slam dunk in the argument that there is a pattern to the incumbent being blamed at the polls for a downturn

 

Lolz:


May 20, 2020
"Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said that leaked recordings of phone calls allegedly between Joe Biden and former president Petro Poroshenko would be investigated by the country’s law enforcement agencies, adding that their contents might be “perceived, qualified as treason”.

The remarks prompted an angry rebuttal from Poroshenko, who said that the Zelenskiy administration may have played a role in their release and should be investigated."


Ukraine to investigate leaked calls between Joe Biden and ex-president

 

lol. When you check the weather forecast and it says there's an 70% chance of rain, do you say;"hardly a slam dunk" and expect a sunshiny day?

 

Hippies were the first to question cultural norms, and the first to openly question authority. Conservatives have always been taught to toe the line, and not question anything. That's why conservatives don't like science. You see, science is not black and white. Science forces one to question theories, data, etc. Science also forces one to question their beliefs. That's one thing we know that conservatives don't like to do.

 

You're throwing all the eggs in one basket..

 

Away up in the high and lonesome thar will come a dark and over-cast evening , and we will
have a song for the snowflakes . This gathering shall be for healing .

 

Tishomingo, them ain't true Hippies -- according to me -- Just going to a Rainbow gathering don't make you a hippy. And just going to do drugs don't make you a hippy. Hippies were always tolerant of these activities but did not use them to define Hippy. You need to go back to the first days of Hippy-ness to see what defines a Hippy. I'm with MeAgain on this one. The philosophical and political thinking is what defined it. The collective of works like Siddartha by Hesse, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, And Silent Spring by Rachel Carson caused the new Hippies to look inward at their own souls. True Hippies then evolved into a people who placed a higher value on that which is good, over that which brings monetary profit. Fifty years ago credit cards were introduced as a replacement to cash. Hippies started calling them "plastic money" because they were just a square of embossed plastic. Then Hippies started referring to fake Hippies as plastic people, because they dressed in modern Hippy casual -anti establishment clothing, and did some purple micro-dot … but stood for little good. Now I'm thinking today's non-conformists are not truly Hippies, because they have lost that connection to morality, to what is good, to the quality of Hippy-ness.

We the real Hippies need to remember we are the guardians of the Earth, and the forests, and the animals who live on it. We need to remember that the birds and animals have spirits like we do, and need us to do our part in saving the Earth from the corporations which seek to destroy it for money. And that is a very different kind of human being than what the Republicans use to defame Hippies. Republicans always give as an example the image of an air head "soy boy" with little or irrational understanding of America's economy, or their right to keep and bear arms. The Republican interpretation is intended to defame.

The way I see it, Hippies have a deep understanding of the world. They disagree with the corporate slaughter of animals for meat. They know every one of these animals has a spirit. The Republicans who want to get rich say these are just stupid animals. They say their Christian Bible says God put the animals and the trees and all other things on earth for their benefit. The Hippies point out that when the tree cutters take all the trees from a hill, everything will be lost during the next rain storm. So, a Hippy stands for what is good and right and for what makes good sense.