I agree with this. The people in play right now are those Upper Middle Class white people and I think they will decide the election. At the moment Trump is losing them but that could change with if they start perceiving that crime is getting out of control and that the Democrats are abetting it.
You're the guy who says it's 2016 all over again I say it's really not similar at all - all salient factors are very different! And even the strict empirical data shows a very different pattern - even if you exclude those intuitive factors! You say - how do you know, you don't have a time machine! /Picard face palm
Karens will be looking over their shoulders for sneaky doxxers before they vote in the booths. Meanwhile, Biden has a 1 in a billion chance to pick a veep that won't offend someone or some group.... Just pick Oprah even if you have to drag her kicking and screaming. Wait... that didn't sound right.
Once again who is saying the race is essentially over? You keep saying that and I have seen nobody saying that. Can you point me to these post?
Yes I get this, but my point is that him winning in states like Michigan and PA is going to be harder this time around not because of his poll number only but because of the following factors: 1. Democrats are far more energized 2. He's not running against a polarizing candidate like he was against Clinton 3. A lot of people who were willing to "give him a chance" may not be willing to do so this time around. He barely won in the midwest, when you factor the three items above AND take in consideration his poor performance with the virus, the race relations, and all the scandals and he has a very very tough road. To me it's not just about winning though, you can't just beat Trump, he needs to be crushed. The Republican party needs to be taught a lesson for history. They must not just lose the Senate, but they need to lose state races as well. The Party should be crushed for defending him to the bone and putting Party over Country. We'll see how it unfolds, but my sense is that this will be a rout. Still, it's important everyone goes out there to vote and takes nothing for granted.
You're a good guy but this is trash logic Do some reading about what IS happening rather than what you suppose or fear COULD happen but is most definitely NOT happening and the window for which to happen is slamming shut. For example: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/biden-leads-trump-polls-clinton-2016.html
Why is this posted In the election thread. The virus has no bearing on Trump. He has zero impact on anything regarding how this has been handled. If Clinton or another Republican were President 400000-500000 would be dead now. Trump has done everything right. And anything that has gone wrong has not been his fault. something like that
You are the one saying that you're comparing the whole 2016 election cycle with a partial 2020 cycle. That is an incomplete comparison because we don't know how the whole 2020 cycle will play out unless you actually have a time machine that tells you how the whole 2020 cycle will play out. Consider in June of 2016 would anyone have been able to predict Comey's letter or the Grab em by the p***y" video? The one thing the last four years should tell is that things change and they change quickly. Picard face palm is fitting because Picard has traveled through time. Although the Temporal Prime Directive would prevent him from telling us how the 2020 election cycle will play out.
And I largely agree with Saletan. I'm not sure you really understand logic. If I we're to bet on the election I would put money, and have, that Biden wins. I think the reasons presented by Saletan are salient. That said a logical process would also consider evidence that might go the other way and also consider temporally and otherwise relevant examples. Only limiting yourself to just assessing views that support your assumption is the definition of confirmation bias though and one of the biggest problems with logical debate that we have.
If I were to put percentages on the election I would say at the moment there is 60% chance Biden wins and out of that 60% chance 20% is a Biden landslide. I don't think it is possible that Trump wins a landslide and I expect him to lose the popular vote by a larger margin than he did last time. That said my argument is that we cannot discount the possibility of Trump still pulling it out in the Electoral College. I agree it's a very difficult road to Trump but the problem I see with all of those declaring the window to be shut are ignoring evidence to the counter. As I've said repeatedly we should be well aware of how many things changes suddenly. This is a chaotic time and this is a chaos Presidency. That can work both ways. Even without the possibility of the unpredictable there are still factors that can swing in Trump's favor with only minor changes. My own view is that the situation regarding law and order is the biggest one. I understand while people like yourself and Sam Fisher are vehemently arguing against me because there is a vested interest in seeing Trump defeated and as such don't like to consider how he might still win. I certainly want Trump to be defeated but as someone who believes in Sun Tzu it is very important to understand how the battle could go the other way.
CLINTON VS TRUMP You can see when you look at the electoral map excluding states that were statistically tied that it was a closer race throughout the fall. Yes Come emails probably sunk Clinton but even before that she never was "safe". I never understood why people were so sure she was going to win when you can see she rarely had a commanding lead in the electoral college that was statistically significant. Before the DNC she was well short of 275 and only crossed it in Aug for a few weeks. Keep in mind that neither Clinton nor Trump was an incumbent so Clinton couldn't capitalize as much on the economy and had a lot of baggage with the Comey emails hitting right before the election. It's just a very different election than 2016 in so many ways, so I don't get how making a comparison between this year and 2016 makes a lot of sense.
If you look at that graph were it was in June of 2016 it looks remarkably similar to where Biden stands in June of 2020. This is the point it was a close race in the Fall but not in June of 2016. We're not in the Fall of 2020. Saying that this race is now is totally different than 2016 is an incomplete comparison. It is like talking about the Astros 2019 World Series run versus the 2017 run and drawing a definitive conclusion after game 2. Now as an Stros fan I certainly believed that they would win 2019 like they did 2017 even after game 2 but a lot of unpredictable stuff happened later in the series and a lot of stuff we couldn't predict such as the decision to pull Greinke in game 7 and the in ability of the Stros bullpen to get it done.
Regarding why I'm pressing this debate. I don't expect Clutchfans posters to really make a difference in the election but the position that the election is essentially over is very important. Again looking back on the 2016 the Obama Administration and DOJ made many decisions that were based upon their view that Clinton was going to win the election. Many of those decisions such as not publicly revealing that Trump's campaign was under investigation, not pursuing Russian interference in the election, had major implications both to the election itself and the subsequent Trump presidency. This is issue is deeper and more profound than just arguing about whether my side should win and I very much hope that the Biden campaign, Congressional Democrats and others who want to see Trump removed consider the factors that could lead to Trump still winning.
I think you're attributing thoughts to me that aren't there. I stated Trump would win in 2016 so I definitely consider how he could win. My disagreement with you is that the law and order approach will prove effective as a pathway to victory. In 2016 he won because the election was more about Clinton and her negative factors than it was about Trump and his - he was an unknown quantity. Now he is not unknown - in fact, Biden is actually more unknown as a leader than Trump. But Biden is familiar. It's very hard to alter Biden's favorability because intrinsically Biden is likable. He's friendly, folksy, and calm. He's not like Clinton in personality at all. Law and Order didn't win it for Trump in 2016. It was a combination of Trump's anti-immigrant stance, his trade rhetoric, and Clinton's email debacle that hung around her neck. Now Trump is looking like a lost dog who can't handle multiple crisis - he has the record. He's the known quantity. His ONLY path to reelection is on the economic front. If he can somehow make the economy hum by Nov, then yes, that is a path to victory. But that is a very huge turnaround. Economic damage has been done. Jobs have been lost, and now things are getting hit with a double whammy of a global slowdown combined with extended period of people being unemployed. To turn all that around in 4 months isn't likely given historical patterns in the economy. My argument with you isn't not that Biden is a shoe in, I never stated that and if you read my posts you can clearly see I stated he wasn't. I'm jsut saying you are being overly pessimistic. I think the odds are as follows: 60% it's a landslide 30% it's a close Biden victory and the Senate is a nail-biter 10% Trump squeeks it out and probably holds on to the senate as well.
"Bill Kristol lays out how he thinks Trump could reverse the presidential polling tide": https://theweek.com/speedreads/9224...trump-could-reverse-presidential-polling-tide excerpt: Bill Kristol, a neoconservative and Trump critic who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, told The Guardian in an interview that "it's conceivable that the reluctant Trump voter from 2016 who's become a reluctant Biden voter in 2020 goes back to being a reluctant Trump voter" by the time the election rolls around. He thinks that could happen if Trump and his campaign implement tactics like suppressing minority voting, "colluding" with foreign governments, or spreading allegations of corruption against Biden and his son Hunter. "The special circumstances with Trump are his total abandonment of any constraints and even more important, perhaps, his having people around him who've abandoned any constraints on the way in which they'll use the federal government, the executive branch, to say things, do things, pretend to do things," he said. Lawrence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, added that he could also envision Trump bringing a surge of voters back around by announcing "without any basis at all" that a coronavirus vaccine has been found shortly before the election and then "pressure" the Food and Drug Administration "to approve it." Read more about how Kristol, Tribe, and other experts think Trump could reverse the polling tide at The Guardian.
