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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Honestly, I think because of our fucking stupid electoral college and the lies Agent Orange told about abortion we'll probably be getting four more years of Trump. A lot of people in just the right areas are stupid and unfortunately many stupid people have more of a vote then people who didn't vote for a white supremacist as President.
Some possible good news:
GOP warning about socialism not resonating with many voters
https://apnews.com/ca0309e344da4f539366c5992ecb5ea6
“That’s not what government is or what it should be,” he told about 200 Alamosa County Republicans at a barbecue fundraiser in a National Guard armory. “We have to stand up and fight. Are you going to join me in this fight?”
For Gardner and other Republicans making the same pitch , including President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mc Connell, the key question is whether it will attract moderate voters, not just their conservative stalwarts. Based on interviews with over three dozen Coloradans last week from Denver’s suburbs south to this town in the flat San Luis Valley, the argument has yet to take root, though the GOP has 18 months to sell it before Election Day 2020.
Few volunteered a drift toward socialism as a major worry, with health care and living costs cited far more frequently. Several said capitalism was too embedded in the U.S. to be truly threatened and Republicans were using socialism to stir unease with Democrats by raising the specter of the old, repressive Soviet Union and today’s chaotic Venezuela.
“They’re preying on fear,” said David Kraemer, 67, a financial adviser who’s not registered with a political party and lives in the Denver suburb of Westminster.
Yet when asked directly whether socialism was a concern, many expressed a wariness of injecting more government into people’s lives. Rather than naming policies that troubled them, many mentioned two self-proclaimed democratic socialists: Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who’s seeking the Democratic presidential nomination , and freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. The comments suggested that Republicans might be tapping into unease over letting either party go too far.
So, on a lark, I went to Politifact and decided to rank some of our politicians on a "Truthfulness" scale. Just seemed like a neat idea. Politifact assigns categories of "True", "Mostly True", "Half True", "Mostly False", "False", and "Pants on Fire" to statements made by a person on a scorecard.
I took that scorecard and gave it a point value. 5 points for True, 0 for Pants on Fire, with the spectrum inbetween. Here's what I got, keeping in mind that 2-3 is the barrier between Half True and Mostly False.
For context:
- Former President Barack Obama - 3.3 Truthfulness.
So, with that in mind, I ran the 2016 candidates.
- Donald Trump - 1.9
- Hillary Clinton - 3.3
And from there moved on to our current slew of Democrats, sticking mainly to the ones who have recognizable enough names that I could remember them off the top of my head.
- Bernie Sanders - 3.2
- Elizabeth Warren - 3.6
- Joe Biden - 3.3
- Kamala Harris - 3.1
Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 29th 2019 at 8:07:35 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I have to wonder if that scale is weighted more towards lies because Politifact only examines statements that are contested. I mean, do they score every single statement that Obama ever made publicly? If he says, "good morning", do they rate him as True because it is, in fact, morning? Less pithily, if he says, "Today I asked Congress to X," do they evaluate it factually? What are the criteria?
Edited by Fighteer on Apr 29th 2019 at 10:07:11 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"That is a good question, the answer to which would totally affect the stats here.
But so far as what we have on the scorecards, it's interesting, at least. Strictly in terms of political honesty (as influenced by the potential margin of error noted above), Biden and Clinton both represent a return to form to the days of the Obama administration. Sanders is slightly less honest than the three of them, with Harris trailing behind him.
Elizabeth Warren, however, is a bit more reliable than any of them. And Trump just sucks.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 29th 2019 at 8:10:17 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.It's also worth noting that it only goes back so far. I tried to do a point ranking for George W. and found that he doesn't actually have a scorecard on account of him having very few statements recorded on Politifact.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Four of the twenty
people running for the Democratic nomination have yet to meet the requirements for debate participation: Eric Swalwell, Seth Moulton, Wayne Messam, and writer Marianne Williamson.
The other sixteen have qualified under either one or both of the requirements set by the party to qualify, with the most popular candidates being in that both category.
Edited by Parable on Apr 29th 2019 at 7:35:34 AM
He spearheaded an embarrassing effort to stop Pelosi from becoming speaker again for being too liberal and is adamant to let primary voters know he's not a socialist, but a democrat (?).
To all four of those, I say, "...wait, who is this now?"
I think, before the debates, we should take a poll across America and the ten or so people with the highest "Who dis?" score automatically get cut from the list.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Seth Moulton has been described above.
Eric Swalwell served on the House Intelligence Committee. Like Inslee or Yang, he is something of a single-issue candidate, for gun control.
Wayne Messam is a mayor of a city in Florida, don't remember which one.
Marianne Williamson is...an author, I guess? I don't know much about any of these people, sorry.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerWe'll, I did the research for you.
There were in fact nine presidents who lost the election while incumbent. That's exactly a fifth of all presidents. You'll understand why I phrased it that way when you see the list:
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
Martin Van Buren
Grover Cleveland
William Taft
Herbert Hoover
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
George H. W. Bush
Edited by tclittle on Apr 29th 2019 at 11:41:21 AM
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
X5 The current criteria is only for the first two debates, from the third debate onwards the criteria will be different and has been said to be tougher and result in there being fewer people on stage.
If we're currently allowing 20 people I expect it to be in single digits by the last debate, after Iowa and New Hampshire we should hopefully be down to five at most.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranYeah, it's implausible rather than impossible.
And considering that Trump is historically unpopular.... If anyone could be a one term President it's him
I would attribute the incumbent effect to the psychological fact that most people are much more afraid of losing what they already have than they are excited to gain something, even when the two options are statistically identical. So your average, mildly apathetic voter is more afraid of a new president making things worse than they are excited for a new president to improve their lives.
Edited by Clarste on Apr 29th 2019 at 10:41:33 AM

I think Hillary Clinton's loss is one of those things people keep trying to treat as a Riddle for the Ages. The fact it elected Kefka (the best fictional equivalent I can think of for Trump) to the Presidency is probably the reason why because you'd think no sane person would vote for him.
However, the fact was she lost by a very small amount and there were hundreds of tiny things going against her. Worrying about any single one of them is silly.
Is it weird that many white women found Trump more appealing than Hillary Clinton to vote for? I don't actually think so. A lot of people assumed that a rising tide raises all boats but I think for a lot of women, it was no different than why people would assume men would vote for a man over women. They didn't see a female President as a massive change in power dynamics the way Obama was for many.
(translation: White women can be racist to the exclusion of other motivations too)
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 29th 2019 at 5:05:14 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.