"But even aside from that, I don’t think the right will accept Biden after the full document dump about what he did in 2016"
This is a misconception I've heard more often from libs.
The politicians or their base, don't have to "accept" or "concede" anything. It's a mistake to pretend there's a veto point in a situation where there isn't one.
There's a procedure that's going to be followed. The states will count the votes, Biden will win the states, the states will appoint his electors to the EC. The EC will vote. The Senate will open the votes and count them. The Senate will certify Biden as President-Elect. John Roberts will administer the oath of office to Biden (or to Trump if he wins).
This is all going to happen under its own steam. At no point are any of these people going to ask the Proud Boys or whoever if this is all kosher with them.
"... and we’re pretty sure that all the polls are undercounting Trump support by 3 to 6 points because a huge percentage of Trump supporters admittedly lie to pollsters."
I don't believe this either. One thing you should bear in mind is the extent to which, contrary to narrative, the polls were actually accurate in 2016. The national polls converged around a 3 point margin for Hillary and she ended up at +2. The thing the polls didn't anticipate was the demographic shift inside that margin that carried Trump over the top in a few key Rust Belt states.
I don't think that's especially helpful for Trump any more, because he's already gotten whatever EC advantage there is to be had. At this point, any EC flukes are likely to be in Biden's favor.
Ok, now I think I'm starting to get your pov, which I think is misplaced in several respects.
"But it gets much worse. Trump has just declassified all the documents regarding Obama, Hillary, and Biden rigging the 2016 election. Brennan’s hand-written meeting notes detail that he briefed Obama on Hillary’s plan to deflect from her e-mail scandal by framing Trump with colluding with the Russians. That’s from Brennan, CIA director who briefed Obama, in his own hand written meeting notes."
First of all, nobody is going to care about any of this. They didn't care about it when the Demos and the Deep State were trying to pin this on Trump. They're not going to care now.
Without particular reference to any of the above, Trump has legit been dirtied by the Deep State. Libs won't ever believe it and the American people don't care.
They cared about Hillary's emails. They don't care about this.
That's right. It's not like that fan or that coach is wrong even. That's the situation you're in, that's the way you have to take it, and that's the way it feels.
That is, if you take it as a given that you are that fan, or that coach. My point is, there's no reason for us to take that as a given. If we can see that's the way that particular train is heading, and we should, we should refuse to invest ourselves in that situation instead of trying to make up an 11 point lead with 5 minutes to play.
Yeah but that's bullshit. You can make some kind of methodological quibble about one poll, but there's an NBC national poll with Biden having a 14 point lead, and a couple others with double digits.
Trump is losing badly, and he's had a horrible week.
I just don't seen any percentage in trying to body English Trump into an extra point or two when it wouldn't help him any if he got them.
Let me ask you this. What are you hoping for regarding your support for Trump. And if he loses, will you view anything differently then?
Do you view yourself as being in a Flight 93 situation? I don't find that to be tenable. 2016 was the Flight 93 election, and Trump won. Given that Trump won, and we're nearly four years on, we have to be able to think about the best interest of the American people beyond a spastic panic.
I don't think we can do that under Trump's leadership.
I think you're slightly misunderstanding me, which to be fair is understandable since people might be using the the same words to mean different things.
What I am saying, broadly speaking, is that the GOP message is fine and the Trump message is fine.
The problem is Trump the person and his histrionics and his Twitter feed. And his capacity to force such an overwhelming part of Right American politics to get sucked into his dramas.
Sort of. If the race is 60-40, polarization doesn't matter. If it's 50-50, it has to matter (that and who gets lucky in which state, who rallies in a state but doesn't win it, etc).
My point is, everybody is obsessed with the quirks like the EC, mail in ballots, lawsuits, the "Trump vaccine", polarization, etc, but still the main driver is going to be the national percentage Biden wins over Trump, and there's a lot of variance there that hasn't been accounted for.
And that goes for the partisans of both teams, especially ours.
"Oh, I don’t think he’s going to take New York, which would require an 11.5 point shift. But that Democrats have even discussed the possibility, in private conversations, paints a completely different picture of how this election might go."
Yeah, I gotta wonder what this is supposed to be for.
On the one hand, you have this huge Demo bloc who's demoralized and might not be motivated to vote. On the other hand, it's not enough and Trump will still lose NY anyway.
It seems to me this is a very bearish set of circumstances for Trump, but you seem to believe this is bullish for Trump instead. Why?
Yeah, that is certainly their fear. But as things stand, I'm not sure that should be the most relevant thing to be afraid of.
It would be interesting to see how such a move would be packaged. It would also be interesting to see how the President reacts. I don't think any part of this is necessarily determined.
"I suspect the difference would be that Biden by 9% and the Democrats also gain control of the Senate. Biden by 4% and they don’t."
You would think so at first glance but I'm not sure it has to be that way. One of the dogs of this election that has not barked at all is any kind of triangulation for the Senate GOP against the libs on one side and Trump on the other.
But just because it hasn't barked yet doesn't mean that it will stay quiet. And if it does wake up, now is as good a time as any. So far this week, we've had Trump's assholic performance at the debate, Trump getting sick from the virus and infecting a bunch of people in a way that reinforces the negative fallout from June through August. And, you've also got at least one poll that shows Biden ahead by 16 points nationally.
You would think that Joni Ernst and Thom Tillis could start cutting ads to say, "Don't give Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders a blank check." I think they did this in 1996 when Bob Dole was not competitive at the top of the ticket and IIRC it worked.
Reagan v Mondale was a 20 point win though, that's why it doesn't feel like that. Biden could very easily win by 4 points, or 6, or 9, or 11 and it still feels the same to us.
The lawsuits thing, that's mostly a thing for the anxious, jumpy libs. Or to be more precise, Never Trump Deep Staters and ex-Republicans. If Biden wins by 4% he wins, or he gets some really bad breaks in the swing states and loses. I don't think lawsuits are going to matter.
Assuming Trump loses, what happens then? A lot of that is very much in play, and a lot of partisans, especially Team Red partisans, haven't thought through it at all.
There's an important but overlooked dividing line splitting those who want Trump to be the center of American politics and those who don't. Here, there are jumpy, anxious libs who are thinking outside the box trying to shut the door on weird Trump scenarios. There are the Trump fans who are desperate to believe the race closer than it is. There are also the media who are institutionally inclined to view everything through the lens of a horserace.
The Trump scenarios aren't entirely ridiculous, but the media and the voters are clearly underweighting the possibilities of a comfortable Biden win, and the implications from that. Eg, what's the difference between Biden by 4% and Biden by 9%? I don't know for sure but I have to think it's relevant, and for now at least it's passing beneath notice.
I'm pretty optimistic on that front. I just don't think Chamber of Commerce types or would-be GOP voters will have the problems with Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley that they do with Trump.
When Trump is gone, everybody's going to exhale and there won't be as much motivation for hostility.
I'm expecting Biden to win, and how that will play out in terms of governance is largely up in the air. I do think the fighting on the Left is going to be worse than that on the Right.
One strong possibility is that people like you are going to be pretty happy. There will be tremendous relief that Trump is gone, and you won't have a whole lot of particulars against President Biden.
The nastier radicals are going to be more upset. President Biden isn't going to make them especially happy, and there's not going to be nearly as many allies for hating on Republicans and conservatives as there are now.
For the Right, it's going to be pretty easy. Just blame Trump for everything. Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton and the like might not be affected very much.
I can easily see Biden walking away with this with 307 electoral votes. “How did we ever doubt it?”, we can snicker.
I can see Biden winning 330-380 EVs. In fact I suspect a lot of the prognosticators are underweighting that outcome. The optimism for Trump depends a lot on a "shy Tory" vote. And tbh, I think that has some credibility as well. How much, I don't know. I suspect not enough.
Shy Tories or otherwise, Trump needs some actual poll movement in his favor. I see basically one possible avenue for that, which I mentioned in the prior comment.
The main point is, whether Biden wins by a little or by a lot, there's going to be a lot of reevaluation that's basically unpredictable from here. For example, criminal justice reform, or qualified immunity in particular. There's a lot of slack there in terms of how important it is, who supports it, maybe most interesting, how the various factions making up the lib-left feel about it. That sort of issue is especially unpredictable because most of the movement is necessarily below the federal level, if in fact such movement occurs.
In any event, the world will look very different as soon as Trump is no longer President, so I don't think we can extrapolate much from here, where Trump still is President.
I get the sense that Trump is drawing slim, but not quite dead. Even where Trump's issues are or ought to be gaining traction, eg, law and order, there's nothing that I can see with enough escape velocity to get away from Trump's black hole.
The American people are holding their breath and waiting for Trump to go away. And after he goes away, if he goes away, they are going to stick their heads up and look around and make some substantial reevaluations. And we can guess at those evaluations, but I think for the most part they are unpredictable.
Even this latest Supreme Court thing might not have much effect. Basically, after the nomination the President is no longer one of the main actors in the drama. Even if the Republicans were going to win that particular episode, Trump's narcissism is going to screw it up somehow.
The one chance Trump does have is the earlier line of attack, "Sleepy Joe is old, senile and stupid." Even if that got no traction before, there's some chance it could work in Trump's favor now. Things look different now. Just like Trump's ignorance and sleaze didn't matter when the libs were agitated about Russia and Ukraine, it turned out they mattered a lot when it came to the virus. People might tolerate less out of Joe when it comes to dealing with the police and the riots than they would for the sake of getting rid of Trump. Even there though, I like Joe's side of things. Even if that is a possibly losing issue for Joe, the bar to clear is pretty low, and I think he'll clear it.
(Btw apologies for dupe comments if more than one of these is published)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Maybe Just Bet Chalk This Time, I Tell Myself Again”
"But even aside from that, I don’t think the right will accept Biden after the full document dump about what he did in 2016"
This is a misconception I've heard more often from libs.
The politicians or their base, don't have to "accept" or "concede" anything. It's a mistake to pretend there's a veto point in a situation where there isn't one.
There's a procedure that's going to be followed. The states will count the votes, Biden will win the states, the states will appoint his electors to the EC. The EC will vote. The Senate will open the votes and count them. The Senate will certify Biden as President-Elect. John Roberts will administer the oath of office to Biden (or to Trump if he wins).
This is all going to happen under its own steam. At no point are any of these people going to ask the Proud Boys or whoever if this is all kosher with them.
"
"... and we’re pretty sure that all the polls are undercounting Trump support by 3 to 6 points because a huge percentage of Trump supporters admittedly lie to pollsters."
I don't believe this either. One thing you should bear in mind is the extent to which, contrary to narrative, the polls were actually accurate in 2016. The national polls converged around a 3 point margin for Hillary and she ended up at +2. The thing the polls didn't anticipate was the demographic shift inside that margin that carried Trump over the top in a few key Rust Belt states.
I don't think that's especially helpful for Trump any more, because he's already gotten whatever EC advantage there is to be had. At this point, any EC flukes are likely to be in Biden's favor.
"
Ok, now I think I'm starting to get your pov, which I think is misplaced in several respects.
"But it gets much worse. Trump has just declassified all the documents regarding Obama, Hillary, and Biden rigging the 2016 election. Brennan’s hand-written meeting notes detail that he briefed Obama on Hillary’s plan to deflect from her e-mail scandal by framing Trump with colluding with the Russians. That’s from Brennan, CIA director who briefed Obama, in his own hand written meeting notes."
First of all, nobody is going to care about any of this. They didn't care about it when the Demos and the Deep State were trying to pin this on Trump. They're not going to care now.
Without particular reference to any of the above, Trump has legit been dirtied by the Deep State. Libs won't ever believe it and the American people don't care.
They cared about Hillary's emails. They don't care about this.
"
That's right. It's not like that fan or that coach is wrong even. That's the situation you're in, that's the way you have to take it, and that's the way it feels.
That is, if you take it as a given that you are that fan, or that coach. My point is, there's no reason for us to take that as a given. If we can see that's the way that particular train is heading, and we should, we should refuse to invest ourselves in that situation instead of trying to make up an 11 point lead with 5 minutes to play.
"
Thanks
"
I think my prior comment just got ate by the database/moderation gremlins. Can somebody go rescue it?
"
Yeah but that's bullshit. You can make some kind of methodological quibble about one poll, but there's an NBC national poll with Biden having a 14 point lead, and a couple others with double digits.
Trump is losing badly, and he's had a horrible week.
I just don't seen any percentage in trying to body English Trump into an extra point or two when it wouldn't help him any if he got them.
Let me ask you this. What are you hoping for regarding your support for Trump. And if he loses, will you view anything differently then?
Do you view yourself as being in a Flight 93 situation? I don't find that to be tenable. 2016 was the Flight 93 election, and Trump won. Given that Trump won, and we're nearly four years on, we have to be able to think about the best interest of the American people beyond a spastic panic.
I don't think we can do that under Trump's leadership.
"
Nominations, Obamacare and taxes aren't why Trump is 16 points in the hole according to the latest CNN poll.
"
It would, except that as things stand, the GOP is too closely tied into Trump's personal dramas, eg, George's comments elsewhere on the thread.
That's what has to be broken, or at least finessed.
"
I think you're slightly misunderstanding me, which to be fair is understandable since people might be using the the same words to mean different things.
What I am saying, broadly speaking, is that the GOP message is fine and the Trump message is fine.
The problem is Trump the person and his histrionics and his Twitter feed. And his capacity to force such an overwhelming part of Right American politics to get sucked into his dramas.
"
Ok fine, but that is George's thesis. It's also pretty clear that Trump is George's horse, at least for now.
My question is why.
Clearly, at least for some conservatives, there is still an inclination to engage in coulda woulda shoulda speculation in Trump's favor.
Just for myself, I'm not playing that game any more. I'm not seeing the point in it, even if I were to "win".
"
It all depends on execution.
I don't think you're allowing for the likelihood that the GOP has the winning message, that's being obscured by Trump the person.
Eg, I think Trump's message wrt the riots and BLM basically works. It's just not cutting any ice because of Trump the person.
"
Sort of. If the race is 60-40, polarization doesn't matter. If it's 50-50, it has to matter (that and who gets lucky in which state, who rallies in a state but doesn't win it, etc).
My point is, everybody is obsessed with the quirks like the EC, mail in ballots, lawsuits, the "Trump vaccine", polarization, etc, but still the main driver is going to be the national percentage Biden wins over Trump, and there's a lot of variance there that hasn't been accounted for.
And that goes for the partisans of both teams, especially ours.
"
"Oh, I don’t think he’s going to take New York, which would require an 11.5 point shift. But that Democrats have even discussed the possibility, in private conversations, paints a completely different picture of how this election might go."
Yeah, I gotta wonder what this is supposed to be for.
On the one hand, you have this huge Demo bloc who's demoralized and might not be motivated to vote. On the other hand, it's not enough and Trump will still lose NY anyway.
It seems to me this is a very bearish set of circumstances for Trump, but you seem to believe this is bullish for Trump instead. Why?
"
Yeah, that is certainly their fear. But as things stand, I'm not sure that should be the most relevant thing to be afraid of.
It would be interesting to see how such a move would be packaged. It would also be interesting to see how the President reacts. I don't think any part of this is necessarily determined.
"
Are you talking about the vote by mail ballots or something else?
I think the Demos shot themselves in the foot with that.
"
"I suspect the difference would be that Biden by 9% and the Democrats also gain control of the Senate. Biden by 4% and they don’t."
You would think so at first glance but I'm not sure it has to be that way. One of the dogs of this election that has not barked at all is any kind of triangulation for the Senate GOP against the libs on one side and Trump on the other.
But just because it hasn't barked yet doesn't mean that it will stay quiet. And if it does wake up, now is as good a time as any. So far this week, we've had Trump's assholic performance at the debate, Trump getting sick from the virus and infecting a bunch of people in a way that reinforces the negative fallout from June through August. And, you've also got at least one poll that shows Biden ahead by 16 points nationally.
You would think that Joni Ernst and Thom Tillis could start cutting ads to say, "Don't give Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders a blank check." I think they did this in 1996 when Bob Dole was not competitive at the top of the ticket and IIRC it worked.
"
Reagan v Mondale was a 20 point win though, that's why it doesn't feel like that. Biden could very easily win by 4 points, or 6, or 9, or 11 and it still feels the same to us.
"
The lawsuits thing, that's mostly a thing for the anxious, jumpy libs. Or to be more precise, Never Trump Deep Staters and ex-Republicans. If Biden wins by 4% he wins, or he gets some really bad breaks in the swing states and loses. I don't think lawsuits are going to matter.
Assuming Trump loses, what happens then? A lot of that is very much in play, and a lot of partisans, especially Team Red partisans, haven't thought through it at all.
"
Yeah, Saul is right and the OP is right too.
There's an important but overlooked dividing line splitting those who want Trump to be the center of American politics and those who don't. Here, there are jumpy, anxious libs who are thinking outside the box trying to shut the door on weird Trump scenarios. There are the Trump fans who are desperate to believe the race closer than it is. There are also the media who are institutionally inclined to view everything through the lens of a horserace.
The Trump scenarios aren't entirely ridiculous, but the media and the voters are clearly underweighting the possibilities of a comfortable Biden win, and the implications from that. Eg, what's the difference between Biden by 4% and Biden by 9%? I don't know for sure but I have to think it's relevant, and for now at least it's passing beneath notice.
On “First Presidential Debate Topics Set for Tuesday”
I'm pretty optimistic on that front. I just don't think Chamber of Commerce types or would-be GOP voters will have the problems with Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley that they do with Trump.
When Trump is gone, everybody's going to exhale and there won't be as much motivation for hostility.
"
I'm expecting Biden to win, and how that will play out in terms of governance is largely up in the air. I do think the fighting on the Left is going to be worse than that on the Right.
One strong possibility is that people like you are going to be pretty happy. There will be tremendous relief that Trump is gone, and you won't have a whole lot of particulars against President Biden.
The nastier radicals are going to be more upset. President Biden isn't going to make them especially happy, and there's not going to be nearly as many allies for hating on Republicans and conservatives as there are now.
For the Right, it's going to be pretty easy. Just blame Trump for everything. Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton and the like might not be affected very much.
"
I can easily see Biden walking away with this with 307 electoral votes. “How did we ever doubt it?”, we can snicker.
I can see Biden winning 330-380 EVs. In fact I suspect a lot of the prognosticators are underweighting that outcome. The optimism for Trump depends a lot on a "shy Tory" vote. And tbh, I think that has some credibility as well. How much, I don't know. I suspect not enough.
Shy Tories or otherwise, Trump needs some actual poll movement in his favor. I see basically one possible avenue for that, which I mentioned in the prior comment.
The main point is, whether Biden wins by a little or by a lot, there's going to be a lot of reevaluation that's basically unpredictable from here. For example, criminal justice reform, or qualified immunity in particular. There's a lot of slack there in terms of how important it is, who supports it, maybe most interesting, how the various factions making up the lib-left feel about it. That sort of issue is especially unpredictable because most of the movement is necessarily below the federal level, if in fact such movement occurs.
In any event, the world will look very different as soon as Trump is no longer President, so I don't think we can extrapolate much from here, where Trump still is President.
"
I get the sense that Trump is drawing slim, but not quite dead. Even where Trump's issues are or ought to be gaining traction, eg, law and order, there's nothing that I can see with enough escape velocity to get away from Trump's black hole.
The American people are holding their breath and waiting for Trump to go away. And after he goes away, if he goes away, they are going to stick their heads up and look around and make some substantial reevaluations. And we can guess at those evaluations, but I think for the most part they are unpredictable.
Even this latest Supreme Court thing might not have much effect. Basically, after the nomination the President is no longer one of the main actors in the drama. Even if the Republicans were going to win that particular episode, Trump's narcissism is going to screw it up somehow.
The one chance Trump does have is the earlier line of attack, "Sleepy Joe is old, senile and stupid." Even if that got no traction before, there's some chance it could work in Trump's favor now. Things look different now. Just like Trump's ignorance and sleaze didn't matter when the libs were agitated about Russia and Ukraine, it turned out they mattered a lot when it came to the virus. People might tolerate less out of Joe when it comes to dealing with the police and the riots than they would for the sake of getting rid of Trump. Even there though, I like Joe's side of things. Even if that is a possibly losing issue for Joe, the bar to clear is pretty low, and I think he'll clear it.
(Btw apologies for dupe comments if more than one of these is published)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.