That doesn't mean that all conservatives are fascists. Some Trump supporters may be, but that doesn't mean we all are. If I can see the light that means I'm not alone...
Not all conservatives are fascists of course, you aren't.
Look at this administration though, I'm flabbergasted how people can support it conservative, libertarian, american, anyone. How can you support this administration?
Here's video of the police gassing voters on their way to the polls in NC
Sometimes it is important to remember that we are just caretakers of this world. Someone, someone’s child that is possibly living today, will one day have to put it all back together again. For their children and their children’s children. When did we start living for GOP or Brexit... or an election instead of our children’s future? Has it always been this way? Have we always been so selfish. If so maybe we are the virus, maybe the thing that needs to be cured is us.
Sorry, just hitting the 80s cds tonight and it kind of felt relevant. Pay no attention to the crazy lady.
I don't know if I can continue to continue to analyze numbers anymore for the next two days. I've looked at everything from everyone I trust up, down, around and sideways. It is very likely (basically 90%) that Biden wins this election. Everything points to it, from the fundamentals of what we are going through right now, to the poll numbers, to the obviously sky-high turnout.
I'm not gonna get better than 90%. It's not high enough for me, because Trump is THAT bad, and as long as the GOP is in his throes, they are too. 90% is 10 balls in a paper sack. 9 of them are blue, one of them is red. It's not at all likely when you reach into that bag you will pull out the one red ball. But it's not inconceivable. But that's just reality. Biden should win. It's not a guarantee. We aren't going to get a guarantee. That's just where we're at.
We won't likely find out on Tuesday either. I doubt I can resist watching the debacle though. God knows I wish I could...
I think odds are we will. The tipping point states are not likely to be close which will allow the press to project Biden as the winner in key spots like Pennsylvania. It's not a guarantee. But I think we're actually going to see a relatively drama-free election night, a la 2008.
It's not over until the electoral college casts their votes on December 14th. Even if Trump badly loses I think we're going to see this get dragged out, see even more votes get thrown away, etc.
Well, Johnson has finally decided to bite the bullet and England will have a new 4-week national lockdown starting next Thursday. It's 6 weeks since SAGE formally advised this, as the evidence of a growing second wave was already so clear at that time. The government has responded with steadily growing measures, but none have been able to stop the growth in the virus.
I remember quite a while ago saying to @Balrog99 that a second wave was coming in Europe, but it wouldn't be allowed to grow as far as the first wave as countries would take action to stop that. Well, not for the first time I was a bit optimistic . The level of infections now in England is probably still slightly short of that in March, but not by much.
Looking at some charts for the UK you can see the issue. The first of those shows the growth of diagnosed cases. Even though there is far more testing than there was in March, this is of course well short of the real number (on the basis of the random population testing now done, the true level of cases now is probably approaching 100,000 a day).
It does though give a good view of how quickly cases have been growing since the start of September. Prior to that cases were trending up, but very slowly. The government thought they could manage more social interactions, but have been unable to do so. A particular trigger was behavior in young adults, with high growth in cases there - much of that linked to the reopening of universities and the new school year. Those increased numbers in that age group could be seen feeding through into older age groups in the following weeks until by the end of September many scientists were advising that existing measures would not be sufficient and there was no option, but a national lockdown to prevent a second wave being worse than the first.
The number of deaths has been growing for a while as well, but the lag between cases and deaths means that it's still not that far up the peak.
However, significant additional deaths are already baked in as a result of the rise in cases that's already happened - probably to around 600 a day (still better than the first wave, though only because treatments have improved and the mortality rate reduced by around half). In itself though, I don't think this is what has forced Johnson's hand.
The real trigger I suspect is the rise in hospital admissions - up well over 10 fold in the last couple of months. One of the worst effects of the first wave was the way other NHS services were reduced and the government had said they would not let that happen again - but it has already started to do that. On the current trajectory, hospitals would be full in many areas in just a few weeks time and even the Nightingale facilities (constructed in the first wave, but barely used) would be overwhelmed soon thereafter - and that's if they could find staff to put in them, which is by no means guaranteed.
As I've said before, there are no good options in dealing with Covid-19. However, I find it hard to believe that a country which is so clearly responding to events rather than predicting and planning for them is selecting the least-worst option. It's not that the UK is at all unique in its position - there are a fair number of European countries with higher incidence of the disease and Belgium, France, Italy and Germany among others have all announced some variant of a national lockdown in the last few days. I do worry though that so little seems to have been learnt from the first wave. Once more many countries are only reacting when the situation has become grave. I suspect that is largely because they're concerned there would have been a public backlash if actions were taken before everyone could see there was a need for those - but that is a failure of public leadership. We're no longer in March when information was far scarcer and people generally knew little about the potential harms from the disease. It should absolutely have been possible to lead a national conversation explaining what would happen if no action were taken and why earlier action would ultimately cost less for everyone (in economic as well as health terms).
One country I'd point to where that seems to have happened to a far greater extent than the UK is Germany. They escaped the worst of the first wave as a result of locking down at an earlier stage of the epidemic. Since then they've monitored the situation closely, provided good advice and coordinated properly between local and national authorities. And now they're going for a lockdown to try and prevent the worst effects from a growing epidemic, rather than reacting to that. This map illustrates the issue - Germany is surrounded by countries with higher levels of infection and I don't think that's a coincidence ...
It's good to hear that it's at least obvious from the outside. Acceptance for lockdown or other restrictions is decreasing here in Germany precisely because infection levels are lower than among our neighbours. You can't win popularity with good prevention, because if it works, it looks like it was unnecessary or exaggerated.
Also, Germany has more ICU beds per population than any other European country https://www.oecd.org/health/ (scroll down to see list), and that keeps us from getting into "which one of those patients can I try to save?" situations. For now.
It was planned to decrease the number of hospital beds in general and specifically intensive care beds for economic reasons. Hopefully the current situation has taught us why that wouldn't be a good idea. It's bad enough to lose patients who have been treated with everything we have. I'm glad we don't have to decide who gets a respirator and who doesn't.
As long as capacities allow it, some German university hospitals are taking critically ill patients from Belgium and the Netherlands. I'm just hoping people understand that the quick restrictions were what kept the worst from us until now. I don't have data to support this, but while most people still verbally support the restrictions, more of them apply different rules when it comes to behavior in the supermarket or private visits and birthdays, to name a few.
This is a multiplayer no-reload run with unknown difficulty setting, so we need to keep our wits and be very careful.
This whole thing is a farce. Trump needs to lose really, really badly because if he only barely loses, the GOP will remain a harbinger of this attitude for years to come.
The tweet has a ‘Manipulated Media’ link for a reason. Click it to see how this clip was taken out of context.
Well, Johnson has finally decided to bite the bullet and England will have a new 4-week national lockdown starting next Thursday. It's 6 weeks since SAGE formally advised this, as the evidence of a growing second wave was already so clear at that time. The government has responded with steadily growing measures, but none have been able to stop the growth in the virus.
I remember quite a while ago saying to @Balrog99 that a second wave was coming in Europe, but it wouldn't be allowed to grow as far as the first wave as countries would take action to stop that. Well, not for the first time I was a bit optimistic . The level of infections now in England is probably still slightly short of that in March, but not by much.
Looking at some charts for the UK you can see the issue. The first of those shows the growth of diagnosed cases. Even though there is far more testing than there was in March, this is of course well short of the real number (on the basis of the random population testing now done, the true level of cases now is probably approaching 100,000 a day).
It does though give a good view of how quickly cases have been growing since the start of September. Prior to that cases were trending up, but very slowly. The government thought they could manage more social interactions, but have been unable to do so. A particular trigger was behavior in young adults, with high growth in cases there - much of that linked to the reopening of universities and the new school year. Those increased numbers in that age group could be seen feeding through into older age groups in the following weeks until by the end of September many scientists were advising that existing measures would not be sufficient and there was no option, but a national lockdown to prevent a second wave being worse than the first.
The number of deaths has been growing for a while as well, but the lag between cases and deaths means that it's still not that far up the peak.
However, significant additional deaths are already baked in as a result of the rise in cases that's already happened - probably to around 600 a day (still better than the first wave, though only because treatments have improved and the mortality rate reduced by around half). In itself though, I don't think this is what has forced Johnson's hand.
The real trigger I suspect is the rise in hospital admissions - up well over 10 fold in the last couple of months. One of the worst effects of the first wave was the way other NHS services were reduced and the government had said they would not let that happen again - but it has already started to do that. On the current trajectory, hospitals would be full in many areas in just a few weeks time and even the Nightingale facilities (constructed in the first wave, but barely used) would be overwhelmed soon thereafter - and that's if they could find staff to put in them, which is by no means guaranteed.
As I've said before, there are no good options in dealing with Covid-19. However, I find it hard to believe that a country which is so clearly responding to events rather than predicting and planning for them is selecting the least-worst option. It's not that the UK is at all unique in its position - there are a fair number of European countries with higher incidence of the disease and Belgium, France, Italy and Germany among others have all announced some variant of a national lockdown in the last few days. I do worry though that so little seems to have been learnt from the first wave. Once more many countries are only reacting when the situation has become grave. I suspect that is largely because they're concerned there would have been a public backlash if actions were taken before everyone could see there was a need for those - but that is a failure of public leadership. We're no longer in March when information was far scarcer and people generally knew little about the potential harms from the disease. It should absolutely have been possible to lead a national conversation explaining what would happen if no action were taken and why earlier action would ultimately cost less for everyone (in economic as well as health terms).
One country I'd point to where that seems to have happened to a far greater extent than the UK is Germany. They escaped the worst of the first wave as a result of locking down at an earlier stage of the epidemic. Since then they've monitored the situation closely, provided good advice and coordinated properly between local and national authorities. And now they're going for a lockdown to try and prevent the worst effects from a growing epidemic, rather than reacting to that. This map illustrates the issue - Germany is surrounded by countries with higher levels of infection and I don't think that's a coincidence ...
It's good to hear that it's at least obvious from the outside. Acceptance for lockdown or other restrictions is decreasing here in Germany precisely because infection levels are lower than among our neighbours. You can't win popularity with good prevention, because if it works, it looks like it was unnecessary or exaggerated.
Also, Germany has more ICU beds per population than any other European country https://www.oecd.org/health/ (scroll down to see list), and that keeps us from getting into "which one of those patients can I try to save?" situations. For now.
It was planned to decrease the number of hospital beds in general and specifically intensive care beds for economic reasons. Hopefully the current situation has taught us why that wouldn't be a good idea. It's bad enough to lose patients who have been treated with everything we have. I'm glad we don't have to decide who gets a respirator and who doesn't.
As long as capacities allow it, some German university hospitals are taking critically ill patients from Belgium and the Netherlands. I'm just hoping people understand that the quick restrictions were what kept the worst from us until now. I don't have data to support this, but while most people still verbally support the restrictions, more of them apply different rules when it comes to behavior in the supermarket or private visits and birthdays, to name a few.
This is a multiplayer no-reload run with unknown difficulty setting, so we need to keep our wits and be very careful.
While I think it should be obvious, that doesn't seem to be the case. In Europe we don't have much in the way of recent previous experience of other epidemics, so I'm not surprised it took a while for most countries to decide on action in the first wave. However, I would have hoped more lessons could have been drawn from not only the impact of delaying on some individual countries, but real-world experience of the benefits in others (in terms of the economy and social stability as well as health outcomes) where you don't delay so long.
This map shows how few sections of the country actually matter in regards to their vote totals. How this is preferable to everyone having one vote, or even how this supposedly makes sure the needs of people in Wyoming and Idaho are addressed, is beyond me. It's been this way for 20 years. Every election comes down to a few counties in PA, MI, and FL. We're adding a couple this time (AZ, NC) and a couple that used to be very important aren't anymore (VA, OH). In either scenario, 90% of the country is basically irrelevant to the outcome:
I don't know if I can continue to continue to analyze numbers anymore for the next two days. I've looked at everything from everyone I trust up, down, around and sideways. It is very likely (basically 90%) that Biden wins this election. Everything points to it, from the fundamentals of what we are going through right now, to the poll numbers, to the obviously sky-high turnout.
I'm not gonna get better than 90%. It's not high enough for me, because Trump is THAT bad, and as long as the GOP is in his throes, they are too. 90% is 10 balls in a paper sack. 9 of them are blue, one of them is red. It's not at all likely when you reach into that bag you will pull out the one red ball. But it's not inconceivable. But that's just reality. Biden should win. It's not a guarantee. We aren't going to get a guarantee. That's just where we're at.
We won't likely find out on Tuesday either. I doubt I can resist watching the debacle though. God knows I wish I could...
I think odds are we will. The tipping point states are not likely to be close which will allow the press to project Biden as the winner in key spots like Pennsylvania. It's not a guarantee. But I think we're actually going to see a relatively drama-free election night, a la 2008.
No matter what happens things will get worse.
If Trump wins outright he has a hitlist of government officials he wants to replace with corrupt unqualified yes men making America worse. We won't have any more fair elections and we will move on in the shadow of post-truth lies, evangelical christianity and no rights for workers.
If it's close and Trump cheats with the help of his corrupt Judges then we the people will be pissed and not accept the results. He will call for violence and locking up Americans. Expect to see torture and extrajudicial killings become common.
If Trump loses either in a landslide or in a close election many of his most brainwashed supporters may decide they don't accept that their god-king has lost and either revolt or perform random terrorist attacks. A lot of these people are already acting violently.
I'm not confident that election night will be as quickly decided. 538 has a nice piece on how the returns in Pennsylvania will come back, and it's pretty extreme. If the race is reported at the same clip and in the same fashion as the primary was - Trump could be up by as much as 16 points at 3 am on election night in PA.
One issue with calling races early is: It's my understanding that the AP (and other news desks) typically use a combination of priors and exit polling to help expedite the call. I'm assuming that exit polls will not be useful this year simply because I dont know how you do a representative exit poll if the GOP is going to dominate the E-day vote (just as the Democrats are supposed to have dominated the early vote).
Basically. It's my opinion that the only way this thing is called on election night is if Florida goes to Biden. Maybe also if both Georgia and North Carolina go to Biden, that would also hasten the end of the night.
I think there's a very real chance that at 3 am, Trump could have narrowly won FL, NC, GA, TX and be up[ by 10 points or more in PA. Those numbers would look like a Trump victory (even if we believe that the Democrats would pull ahead after mail in voting is fully counted in PA on Wednesday-Friday).
You gotta love how EVERY one of these stories frames legal votes being counted as a "win for Democrats" rather than "a win for a functioning democracy". Once again, the media sucks, but not even remotely for the reasons the right believes:
These headlines also give the game away. The underlying subtext here is that the AP is well aware the GOP doesn't want votes counted, but are too chickenshit to say so. Thus, the idea of "counting votes" gets ingrained as a "partisan decision for Democrats". This isn't the first time it's been pointed out. They keep doing it anyway.
It still galls me that we're at the point where we're arguing about whether or not votes should be counted.
We're going the wrong way as far as Democracy goes in this country. The GOP has been the party of voter suppression and disenfranchisement my whole life but 2020 is the first time they've gone so far as to be saying things out loud like "well maybe not every vote should count, it might swing the election" or actually saying "Democracy is not the objective" which a Republican senator actually said.
I think it was. I've always been interested in renewable energy and even in a relatively cold place like PA solar panels are not uncommon. I want to place a few around a stationary RV I park on some country land I will eventually own, make a nice little camping spot. Dreams upon dreams.
With China finally making concessions and drafting long term plans to cut carbon emissions, most of the recent environmental news has been positive.
I think it was. I've always been interested in renewable energy and even in a relatively cold place like PA solar panels are not uncommon. I want to place a few around a stationary RV I park on some country land I will eventually own, make a nice little camping spot. Dreams upon dreams.
With China finally making concessions and drafting long term plans to cut carbon emissions, most of the recent environmental news has been positive.
I've just been mulling over a quote for solar panels on our roof. My local council (as others have been doing) recently organized a competition to get the best deal for residents. The information provided is pretty good (as commercial quotes go) and the deal looks reasonable (better than you would expect to get negotiating individually). There are no longer any government subsidies for solar, but the reducing installation prices even at household level means it can still pay for itself financially in the long term - before you add in the benefit of carbon savings. I would have accepted it tonight, but my wife likes to take a bit longer to think things through ...
I'm not confident that election night will be as quickly decided. 538 has a nice piece on how the returns in Pennsylvania will come back, and it's pretty extreme. If the race is reported at the same clip and in the same fashion as the primary was - Trump could be up by as much as 16 points at 3 am on election night in PA.
One issue with calling races early is: It's my understanding that the AP (and other news desks) typically use a combination of priors and exit polling to help expedite the call. I'm assuming that exit polls will not be useful this year simply because I dont know how you do a representative exit poll if the GOP is going to dominate the E-day vote (just as the Democrats are supposed to have dominated the early vote).
Basically. It's my opinion that the only way this thing is called on election night is if Florida goes to Biden. Maybe also if both Georgia and North Carolina go to Biden, that would also hasten the end of the night.
I think there's a very real chance that at 3 am, Trump could have narrowly won FL, NC, GA, TX and be up[ by 10 points or more in PA. Those numbers would look like a Trump victory (even if we believe that the Democrats would pull ahead after mail in voting is fully counted in PA on Wednesday-Friday).
It's being reported that Trump intends to declare victory if he leads at some arbitrary point on election night. The moment he goes on TV and does this, 30% of the country will then believe any other result is a stolen election. They are telling us this IN ADVANCE. The game-plan is to play into the civic ignorance about election results for public opinion, and use the courts for the legal ones. I think this is pretty great stuff from Josh Marshall:
You’re probably tense. I am too. We’ve noted in our reporting the cloud of tension that appears to be resting over the whole country as we move to within 48 hours of election day. Some of this is natural. A national election is high stakes. In 2020 the stakes feel and are uncommonly high. That puts everyone on edge.
But these sources of anxiety and tension don’t really make for more than a small portion of what people are feeling. The cloud of tension and menace hanging over the country stems from the specific fact that the President and his party are making an all out press to limit voting, slow vote counting and now toss out literally hundreds of thousands of bonafide, legally cast votes. On top of this, related to this, the President has quite intentionally left open the possibility that he won’t accept defeat but will try to stay in office – likely with the connivance of the corrupt Supreme Court, but perhaps in some unknown way only he knows.
We could end up with any number of nightmare scenarios. But what it is critical to understand is that even if few votes are thrown out and even if the President doesn’t act on any of his coup threats that the entire exercise has amounted to a vast campaign of psychological warfare against the American people – one that has already deprived us of a free and fair election.
So again, elections are tense. There’s a lot on the line. That’s normal. That’s the pageant of democracy. This is different. The President has used the powers given to him to act on behalf of the American people to plot against them, to load onto the normal structure of an election a campaign of psychological warfare meant to put his opposition off-balance and at a disadvantage because we don’t know if the votes will be counted and results respected.
Do a thought experiment.
Imagine your experience of this election cycle if there weren’t a full court Republican press around the country to throw out lawful ballots and if the President made clear – as all 44 presidents before him always repeatedly did – that of course he would respect the result of the election.
You’d still probably feel on edge, yes, because the stakes are high. But I’d imagine your experience of the whole process would be dramatically different. Knowing that the votes would be counted – in the admittedly imperfect way they always have been – and knowing the result of the election – whatever it is – would count and be final you’d likely be focusing on giving money, knocking on doors, voting. You’d be doing all the stuff politically committed citizens do in an election.
But the President has layered a whole additional layer of work and tension on top of that with this campaign of psychological warfare. Will the votes be tossed out? Will the postal service be allowed to deliver them? Will the result be respected? Will Trump have to leave if he loses? How much activism and mental energy have you expended over the last six months on contesting an election and how much have you expanded on grappling with the President’s war on the election? The stress and cognitive load between the current situation and the alternative reality I sketched out is the price imposed by Trump’s campaign of psychological warfare against the American people, the republic and the state.
It is a grievous crime against the people even if he follows through with none of his threats. It’s mind-games, psychological warfare, a crime against every last one of us.
I'm not confident that election night will be as quickly decided. 538 has a nice piece on how the returns in Pennsylvania will come back...
I do think the nightmare scenario where Trump narrowly sweeps the swing states he needs and then it all comes down the PA is possible. But by the same token, the modal outcome in 538's projections is a staggering Biden landslide of 400+ Electoral Votes.
That's still a scenario that has a less than 50% probability according to them, but it's also a scenario with much much higher odds than this nightmare scenario, which is pretty much the only narrow path to a Trump victory. Look the polls were awful for Republicans in the 2008, and they lost the House with a popular vote margin of 8.6% for the Democrats. They had plenty of motivation to cheat on behalf of the prez then. One of the best polling results in this closing week for Trump was in Iowa, where he was up 7%. He won Iowa by 9% in 2016.
I just think if we take an honest, dispassionate look at the data, it's telling a pretty compelling story. And that's a scenario where Trump is losing at least four states that he won in 2016, and Biden winning a convincing Electoral College total.
I'm not confident that election night will be as quickly decided. 538 has a nice piece on how the returns in Pennsylvania will come back...
I do think the nightmare scenario where Trump narrowly sweeps the swing states he needs and then it all comes down the PA is possible. But by the same token, the modal outcome in 538's projections is a staggering Biden landslide of 400+ Electoral Votes.
That's still a scenario that has a less than 50% probability according to them, but it's also a scenario with much much higher odds than this nightmare scenario, which is pretty much the only narrow path to a Trump victory. Look the polls were awful for Republicans in the 2008, and they lost the House with a popular vote margin of 8.6% for the Democrats. They had plenty of motivation to cheat on behalf of the prez then. One of the best polling results in this closing week for Trump was in Iowa, where he was up 7%. He won Iowa by 9% in 2016.
I just think if we take an honest, dispassionate look at the data, it's telling a pretty compelling story. And that's a scenario where Trump is losing at least four states that he won in 2016, and Biden winning a convincing Electoral College total.
To be clear - I totally agree. There are a huge number of outcomes where Trump is sufficiently far behind or has lost states that are key for him to win reelection, and election night goes smoothly.
If the polls were off by exactly as much as they were off in 2016, Biden still wins Florida, AZ, NC and maybe even GA at this point. So it'll take a pretty big miss.
However, if we wake up on Wednesday and FL,NC,GA have all been called for Trump by less than a point, I dont think many people would be shocked, even if the polls suggest he should lose each of those states. Add in PA's slow returns and I think there could be anxiety on election night.
I'm not confident that election night will be as quickly decided. 538 has a nice piece on how the returns in Pennsylvania will come back...
I do think the nightmare scenario where Trump narrowly sweeps the swing states he needs and then it all comes down the PA is possible. But by the same token, the modal outcome in 538's projections is a staggering Biden landslide of 400+ Electoral Votes.
That's still a scenario that has a less than 50% probability according to them, but it's also a scenario with much much higher odds than this nightmare scenario, which is pretty much the only narrow path to a Trump victory. Look the polls were awful for Republicans in the 2008, and they lost the House with a popular vote margin of 8.6% for the Democrats. They had plenty of motivation to cheat on behalf of the prez then. One of the best polling results in this closing week for Trump was in Iowa, where he was up 7%. He won Iowa by 9% in 2016.
I just think if we take an honest, dispassionate look at the data, it's telling a pretty compelling story. And that's a scenario where Trump is losing at least four states that he won in 2016, and Biden winning a convincing Electoral College total.
To be clear - I totally agree. There are a huge number of outcomes where Trump is sufficiently far behind or has lost states that are key for him to win reelection, and election night goes smoothly.
If the polls were off by exactly as much as they were off in 2016, Biden still wins Florida, AZ, NC and maybe even GA at this point. So it'll take a pretty big miss.
However, if we wake up on Wednesday and FL,NC,GA have all been called for Trump by less than a point, I dont think many people would be shocked, even if the polls suggest he should lose each of those states. Add in PA's slow returns and I think there could be anxiety on election night.
I'm sure I'm projecting here.
At this point, I feel like Biden could just as easily take Texas as Florida. He seems more likely to win NC and AZ than GA and FL at this point. Iowa seems gone now, but the absolute freak-out last night over one outlier poll in a state Trump won by 9% last time was just ridiculous, especially when the same people dismissed a Biden +16 result in Wisconsin last week for being similarly outside the recent norm.
Nothing has tightened regarding the polling math. COVID-19 is now objectively worse than at any time during the pandemic. Trump's approval rating (which the right-wing pollster skeptics were touting in the article someone posted about a week ago) did NOT reach the 46% they were saying to watch for. It's somewhere between 42-44%. The raw vote total has already EXCEEDED 2016 in many parts of the country. Exactly NONE of this points in Trump's direction. The PTSD from 2016 is very, very real, because it doesn't appear that any amount of data can shake the nagging feeling that Trump has special powers to come out ahead in any situation no matter how badly he has fucked it up.
Let me put it this way: liberals (in general) believe Trump is going to win out of fear about what happened four years ago. Conservatives seem convinced he's going to win based on nothing much but bravado (because nothing else points to it). The left can't accept good news at the moment, and the right can't even contemplate the idea they will receive bad news.
For me, the more likely drama is whether Democrats can win enough Senate seats for a majority. And even on top of that, the size of that majority will matter for how the government responds to our current very deep crisis.
Collins losing in Maine isn't guaranteed. The Georgia races look like they're going to runoffs. North Carolina is still a toss up. Democrats need some those.
Failure to win the Senate will almost guarantee a strategic gridlock by Republicans, ensuring, at best, an anemic response to the health and economic issues that are hurting millions. Trump losing isn't enough, imo.
The chance of the Democrats taking EVERYTHING in these elections could be 99%, and I'd still be sick to my stomach with stress. I've been convinced that we live in the worst possible timeline for about 2 years now.
The chance of the Democrats taking EVERYTHING in these elections could be 99%, and I'd still be sick to my stomach with stress. I've been convinced that we live in the worst possible timeline for about 2 years now.
If Trump wins, there is absolutely no telling just how bad the COVID-19 situation is going to get. I mean, getting him off the campaign trail in and of itself will bring down cases (I wish this was a joke). The proximity to election day has obscured the fact that the virus is now completely out of control, and it's MOSTLY in rural areas now. Even if he loses, we are still faced with nearly 3 months of a government which refuses to address the situation in any way whatsoever. I still can't quite come to grips with the idea that this guy, who has been basically working FOR the virus for the last 6 months, has even a puncher's chance of pulling this out.
Can we acknowledge the right wing coup going on courtesy of Trump supporters yet? The armed supporters and terrorism caravans are a coup right?
Also Trump commits to firing Fauci if he gets re-elected. There will be no one left except yes men if Trump wins, no science, no reality, only the whims of the mad king.
Nobody with an education or intelligence will be allowed in his second term.
Anticipating more state police riots and police violence, Reuters is equipping journalists covering the U.S. election with flak jackets, helmets, and gas masks.
Anticipating more state police riots and police violence, Reuters is equipping journalists covering the U.S. election with flak jackets, helmets, and gas masks.
Comments
Not all conservatives are fascists of course, you aren't.
Look at this administration though, I'm flabbergasted how people can support it conservative, libertarian, american, anyone. How can you support this administration?
Here's video of the police gassing voters on their way to the polls in NC
Sometimes it is important to remember that we are just caretakers of this world. Someone, someone’s child that is possibly living today, will one day have to put it all back together again. For their children and their children’s children. When did we start living for GOP or Brexit... or an election instead of our children’s future? Has it always been this way? Have we always been so selfish. If so maybe we are the virus, maybe the thing that needs to be cured is us.
Sorry, just hitting the 80s cds tonight and it kind of felt relevant. Pay no attention to the crazy lady.
I think odds are we will. The tipping point states are not likely to be close which will allow the press to project Biden as the winner in key spots like Pennsylvania. It's not a guarantee. But I think we're actually going to see a relatively drama-free election night, a la 2008.
It's good to hear that it's at least obvious from the outside. Acceptance for lockdown or other restrictions is decreasing here in Germany precisely because infection levels are lower than among our neighbours. You can't win popularity with good prevention, because if it works, it looks like it was unnecessary or exaggerated.
Also, Germany has more ICU beds per population than any other European country https://www.oecd.org/health/ (scroll down to see list), and that keeps us from getting into "which one of those patients can I try to save?" situations. For now.
It was planned to decrease the number of hospital beds in general and specifically intensive care beds for economic reasons. Hopefully the current situation has taught us why that wouldn't be a good idea. It's bad enough to lose patients who have been treated with everything we have. I'm glad we don't have to decide who gets a respirator and who doesn't.
As long as capacities allow it, some German university hospitals are taking critically ill patients from Belgium and the Netherlands. I'm just hoping people understand that the quick restrictions were what kept the worst from us until now. I don't have data to support this, but while most people still verbally support the restrictions, more of them apply different rules when it comes to behavior in the supermarket or private visits and birthdays, to name a few.
This is a multiplayer no-reload run with unknown difficulty setting, so we need to keep our wits and be very careful.
The tweet has a ‘Manipulated Media’ link for a reason. Click it to see how this clip was taken out of context.
While I think it should be obvious, that doesn't seem to be the case. In Europe we don't have much in the way of recent previous experience of other epidemics, so I'm not surprised it took a while for most countries to decide on action in the first wave. However, I would have hoped more lessons could have been drawn from not only the impact of delaying on some individual countries, but real-world experience of the benefits in others (in terms of the economy and social stability as well as health outcomes) where you don't delay so long.
No matter what happens things will get worse.
If Trump wins outright he has a hitlist of government officials he wants to replace with corrupt unqualified yes men making America worse. We won't have any more fair elections and we will move on in the shadow of post-truth lies, evangelical christianity and no rights for workers.
If it's close and Trump cheats with the help of his corrupt Judges then we the people will be pissed and not accept the results. He will call for violence and locking up Americans. Expect to see torture and extrajudicial killings become common.
If Trump loses either in a landslide or in a close election many of his most brainwashed supporters may decide they don't accept that their god-king has lost and either revolt or perform random terrorist attacks. A lot of these people are already acting violently.
I'm not confident that election night will be as quickly decided. 538 has a nice piece on how the returns in Pennsylvania will come back, and it's pretty extreme. If the race is reported at the same clip and in the same fashion as the primary was - Trump could be up by as much as 16 points at 3 am on election night in PA.
One issue with calling races early is: It's my understanding that the AP (and other news desks) typically use a combination of priors and exit polling to help expedite the call. I'm assuming that exit polls will not be useful this year simply because I dont know how you do a representative exit poll if the GOP is going to dominate the E-day vote (just as the Democrats are supposed to have dominated the early vote).
Basically. It's my opinion that the only way this thing is called on election night is if Florida goes to Biden. Maybe also if both Georgia and North Carolina go to Biden, that would also hasten the end of the night.
I think there's a very real chance that at 3 am, Trump could have narrowly won FL, NC, GA, TX and be up[ by 10 points or more in PA. Those numbers would look like a Trump victory (even if we believe that the Democrats would pull ahead after mail in voting is fully counted in PA on Wednesday-Friday).
These headlines also give the game away. The underlying subtext here is that the AP is well aware the GOP doesn't want votes counted, but are too chickenshit to say so. Thus, the idea of "counting votes" gets ingrained as a "partisan decision for Democrats". This isn't the first time it's been pointed out. They keep doing it anyway.
We're going the wrong way as far as Democracy goes in this country. The GOP has been the party of voter suppression and disenfranchisement my whole life but 2020 is the first time they've gone so far as to be saying things out loud like "well maybe not every vote should count, it might swing the election" or actually saying "Democracy is not the objective" which a Republican senator actually said.
I think it was. I've always been interested in renewable energy and even in a relatively cold place like PA solar panels are not uncommon. I want to place a few around a stationary RV I park on some country land I will eventually own, make a nice little camping spot. Dreams upon dreams.
With China finally making concessions and drafting long term plans to cut carbon emissions, most of the recent environmental news has been positive.
I've just been mulling over a quote for solar panels on our roof. My local council (as others have been doing) recently organized a competition to get the best deal for residents. The information provided is pretty good (as commercial quotes go) and the deal looks reasonable (better than you would expect to get negotiating individually). There are no longer any government subsidies for solar, but the reducing installation prices even at household level means it can still pay for itself financially in the long term - before you add in the benefit of carbon savings. I would have accepted it tonight, but my wife likes to take a bit longer to think things through ...
https://patch.com/new-jersey/holmdel-hazlet/videos-show-convoy-trump-supporters-blocking-parkway-traffic
Looks like the fascists got new voter suppression tactics, block traffic.
It's being reported that Trump intends to declare victory if he leads at some arbitrary point on election night. The moment he goes on TV and does this, 30% of the country will then believe any other result is a stolen election. They are telling us this IN ADVANCE. The game-plan is to play into the civic ignorance about election results for public opinion, and use the courts for the legal ones. I think this is pretty great stuff from Josh Marshall:
You’re probably tense. I am too. We’ve noted in our reporting the cloud of tension that appears to be resting over the whole country as we move to within 48 hours of election day. Some of this is natural. A national election is high stakes. In 2020 the stakes feel and are uncommonly high. That puts everyone on edge.
But these sources of anxiety and tension don’t really make for more than a small portion of what people are feeling. The cloud of tension and menace hanging over the country stems from the specific fact that the President and his party are making an all out press to limit voting, slow vote counting and now toss out literally hundreds of thousands of bonafide, legally cast votes. On top of this, related to this, the President has quite intentionally left open the possibility that he won’t accept defeat but will try to stay in office – likely with the connivance of the corrupt Supreme Court, but perhaps in some unknown way only he knows.
We could end up with any number of nightmare scenarios. But what it is critical to understand is that even if few votes are thrown out and even if the President doesn’t act on any of his coup threats that the entire exercise has amounted to a vast campaign of psychological warfare against the American people – one that has already deprived us of a free and fair election.
So again, elections are tense. There’s a lot on the line. That’s normal. That’s the pageant of democracy. This is different. The President has used the powers given to him to act on behalf of the American people to plot against them, to load onto the normal structure of an election a campaign of psychological warfare meant to put his opposition off-balance and at a disadvantage because we don’t know if the votes will be counted and results respected.
Do a thought experiment.
Imagine your experience of this election cycle if there weren’t a full court Republican press around the country to throw out lawful ballots and if the President made clear – as all 44 presidents before him always repeatedly did – that of course he would respect the result of the election.
You’d still probably feel on edge, yes, because the stakes are high. But I’d imagine your experience of the whole process would be dramatically different. Knowing that the votes would be counted – in the admittedly imperfect way they always have been – and knowing the result of the election – whatever it is – would count and be final you’d likely be focusing on giving money, knocking on doors, voting. You’d be doing all the stuff politically committed citizens do in an election.
But the President has layered a whole additional layer of work and tension on top of that with this campaign of psychological warfare. Will the votes be tossed out? Will the postal service be allowed to deliver them? Will the result be respected? Will Trump have to leave if he loses? How much activism and mental energy have you expended over the last six months on contesting an election and how much have you expanded on grappling with the President’s war on the election? The stress and cognitive load between the current situation and the alternative reality I sketched out is the price imposed by Trump’s campaign of psychological warfare against the American people, the republic and the state.
It is a grievous crime against the people even if he follows through with none of his threats. It’s mind-games, psychological warfare, a crime against every last one of us.
I do think the nightmare scenario where Trump narrowly sweeps the swing states he needs and then it all comes down the PA is possible. But by the same token, the modal outcome in 538's projections is a staggering Biden landslide of 400+ Electoral Votes.
That's still a scenario that has a less than 50% probability according to them, but it's also a scenario with much much higher odds than this nightmare scenario, which is pretty much the only narrow path to a Trump victory. Look the polls were awful for Republicans in the 2008, and they lost the House with a popular vote margin of 8.6% for the Democrats. They had plenty of motivation to cheat on behalf of the prez then. One of the best polling results in this closing week for Trump was in Iowa, where he was up 7%. He won Iowa by 9% in 2016.
I just think if we take an honest, dispassionate look at the data, it's telling a pretty compelling story. And that's a scenario where Trump is losing at least four states that he won in 2016, and Biden winning a convincing Electoral College total.
To be clear - I totally agree. There are a huge number of outcomes where Trump is sufficiently far behind or has lost states that are key for him to win reelection, and election night goes smoothly.
If the polls were off by exactly as much as they were off in 2016, Biden still wins Florida, AZ, NC and maybe even GA at this point. So it'll take a pretty big miss.
However, if we wake up on Wednesday and FL,NC,GA have all been called for Trump by less than a point, I dont think many people would be shocked, even if the polls suggest he should lose each of those states. Add in PA's slow returns and I think there could be anxiety on election night.
I'm sure I'm projecting here.
Edit:
Definitely shy voters.
At this point, I feel like Biden could just as easily take Texas as Florida. He seems more likely to win NC and AZ than GA and FL at this point. Iowa seems gone now, but the absolute freak-out last night over one outlier poll in a state Trump won by 9% last time was just ridiculous, especially when the same people dismissed a Biden +16 result in Wisconsin last week for being similarly outside the recent norm.
Nothing has tightened regarding the polling math. COVID-19 is now objectively worse than at any time during the pandemic. Trump's approval rating (which the right-wing pollster skeptics were touting in the article someone posted about a week ago) did NOT reach the 46% they were saying to watch for. It's somewhere between 42-44%. The raw vote total has already EXCEEDED 2016 in many parts of the country. Exactly NONE of this points in Trump's direction. The PTSD from 2016 is very, very real, because it doesn't appear that any amount of data can shake the nagging feeling that Trump has special powers to come out ahead in any situation no matter how badly he has fucked it up.
Let me put it this way: liberals (in general) believe Trump is going to win out of fear about what happened four years ago. Conservatives seem convinced he's going to win based on nothing much but bravado (because nothing else points to it). The left can't accept good news at the moment, and the right can't even contemplate the idea they will receive bad news.
Collins losing in Maine isn't guaranteed. The Georgia races look like they're going to runoffs. North Carolina is still a toss up. Democrats need some those.
Failure to win the Senate will almost guarantee a strategic gridlock by Republicans, ensuring, at best, an anemic response to the health and economic issues that are hurting millions. Trump losing isn't enough, imo.
If Trump wins, there is absolutely no telling just how bad the COVID-19 situation is going to get. I mean, getting him off the campaign trail in and of itself will bring down cases (I wish this was a joke). The proximity to election day has obscured the fact that the virus is now completely out of control, and it's MOSTLY in rural areas now. Even if he loses, we are still faced with nearly 3 months of a government which refuses to address the situation in any way whatsoever. I still can't quite come to grips with the idea that this guy, who has been basically working FOR the virus for the last 6 months, has even a puncher's chance of pulling this out.
Also Trump commits to firing Fauci if he gets re-elected. There will be no one left except yes men if Trump wins, no science, no reality, only the whims of the mad king.
Nobody with an education or intelligence will be allowed in his second term.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/10/what-caused-the-u-s-anti-science-trend/
https://theweek.com/speedreads/947279/reuters-equipping-journalists-covering-election-flak-jackets-helmets-gas-masks
Definitely the sort of thing you do when you're reporting on a totally fair and free democratic election...