Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I remember John Oliver did an episode all about Kushner and Ivanka early on in the presidency and basically shot down the theory that they would be able/willing to temper Trump's wilder/most controversial ideas. People really wanted to believe A) That Trump could be power checked by advisors and/or Congress, and B) That his closest advisors (save Bannon) didn't believe the same deplorable things he did.
...Yeah, so much for both of those.
I mean that's technically happening right now with Zeta?
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."I think it'll at least upstage any possible developments with that Hunter Biden laptop story.
Though I don't know how many people took that seriously to begin with...
No beer?! But if there's no beer, then there's no beef or beans!Which is why we need to vote them out.
Biden at this point is clearly more popular, but he needs the right states in order to win. It might be close in the electoral college, close enough that Trump might try to use the courts to give himself the victory. I hope that doesn’t happen, and it might not, but if it does, then what?
While technically true, it's a bit misleading to say that Biden need the right states in the Electoral College to win.
That's far more a problem for Trump, and while I get hatred of the electoral college in general, the narrative that Trump somehow has more paths to victory strikes me as a bit alarmist.
Yeah, basically for every path Trump has to victory, Biden has two paths where he wins Texas and crushes Trump in an epic landslide.
Obviously there is always going to be some uncertainty, and it's not over until it's over.note , but Biden is the clear favorite as things stand.
Edited by Falrinn on Oct 28th 2020 at 11:41:06 AM
Barring fanfiction worst timeline scenarios where "the supreme court just hands trump the election", the GOP needs a lot of things to go right in order to win. They either need to win in multiple swing states that are polling well for Biden and or/ close races in republican controlled swing states that they can feasibly steal. Like Septimus pointed out earlier, if Biden wins Winsconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania then trump can win every other swing state and still lose, including florida and texas.
2016 has been traumatic to the point people have trouble accepting good news. To be honest it genuinely wouldn't surprise me if Biden actually overperforms in certain races.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Oct 28th 2020 at 4:03:21 PM
On Biden’s idea of a bipartisan group to explore Supreme Court reform, remember that a bipartisan group that still be formed such that it gives a particular kind of recommendation.
If a bipartisan reform group recommends something similar to court packing as a reform then Biden can implement it with much less public pushback.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranFor the Republicans to win would require a perfect storm working in their favor. But as this year has shown, the storm is against them, heavily. COVID-19, which should have been an easy sail to re-election should they had handled it responsibly, has become the bane of the party in how much worse it has gotten, how many lives it has ended, and how its now attacking the heads of the Republican Party. It has helped destroy the appearances that the party is anything but evil, anything but incompetent, anything but existing out of sheer malice for the American people.
And the people have noticed. States that have never thought to be anything but Republican strongholds are now appearing to be possible to flip. They've turned hard red states into possible purple states, something that wasn't thought to be possible just 4 years ago.
Edited by ScubaWolf on Oct 28th 2020 at 3:09:23 PM
"In a move surprising absolutely no one"It doesn't help that armed pockets of "militias" (aka "armed domestic terrorist groups") made entirely of Trump's cultists, has begun popping up like weeds ahead during this week in order to "prepare for when the democrats stages their coup against our CHOSEN ONE!" and walks out in the open with automatic rifles whenever peaceful democratic counter-protesters shows up...
For real.
![]()
That's the thing that gets me most, Skewed Priorities though it may sound.
Had the government handled COVID reasonably and responsibly, they could have sailed to reelection and looked fully deserving of doing so.
It's like Trump's inability to denounce nazis. It's such a no- brainer yet they can't grasp the basic logic.

Well, what were you expecting from Kushner? He's basically the living breathing personification of both class/birth-based privilege and the Dunning-Kruger effect, with a bit of sociopathy added on top for good measure.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman