EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
With respect to the lawfare, I'd point you to this article from two or three days ago: Dems say they will certify a Trump victory — even the ones who think the 14th Amendment disqualifies him. So I mark it down as unlikely. Seems to be little appetite for it even in private. If they follow through and don't contest, I think that's actually pretty decent evidence in favor of what I've been saying all along -- that regardless of some lefty rhetoric, they honestly do not intend to actually make a constitutional issue out of things like this.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
So here's the language voters see, and I've bolded the most problematic parts:
Should the Utah Constitution be changed to strengthen the initiative process by:
- Prohibiting foreign influence on ballot initiatives and referendums.
- Clarifying the voters and legislative bodies’ ability to amend laws.
If approved, state law would also be changed to:
- Allow Utah citizens 50% more time to gather signatures for a statewide referendum.
- Establish requirements for the legislature to follow the intent of a ballot initiative.
The impression is clear: a voter who trusts the descriptions to be accurate would get the impression that the initiative process is currently weak, and that the legislature doesn't have to follow ballot initiative intent. In reality, the exact opposite is true!
Again I note that the issue is not that there was a few ballot initiatives that failed miserably. Most of the ones that make it to the ballot at least in Utah are typically just fine or even good -- the amendment that made them mad was literally an anti-gerrymandering one, which most all regular people agree is a good idea. It would be something else entirely if there were any cases of actual disasters or actual foreign influence (even proponents admitted this had never happened).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
To be clear I do quite like the option of in-person voting, if for nothing else to give an opportunity for a theoretically-coerced individual to overrule their mail-in ballot, just in principle. Seems to me to be the best of both worlds if in-person is still available but the system is set up for and encourages mail-in ballots as the primary method. But if most people end up voting party line straight down that strikes me as fairly problematic. It's not uncommon for there to be at least one bad egg in a party-line bunch, as it were.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Interesting but makes sense. Do you think most in person voters do this?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
A typical ballot contains anywhere from 15 to 25 positions/questions, and anywhere from 20 to 40 candidates (not exact, totally spitballing based on previous experience). That's a lot of names. Hard to keep them all straight, yes?
Are you deliberately abstaining because you view yourself as not sufficiently educated, or are you not bothering because it's not practical to retain all of that information between when you roughly decide and the actual voting booth? I'd say the former is fine, even if I disagree, but the latter is exactly proving my point -- you could have contributed to the democratic process, but didn't, largely because you didn't have a paper ballot to consult at home with plenty of time to consider your options.
As an additional note, if ranked choice/IRV is implemented this becomes an extra important point -- because now you can potentially concern yourself with previously ignorable decisions.
How do you in-person voters... remember anything meaningful? Grew up in Oregon and opted for a mail-in ballot even here in conservative Utah purely for the convenience. I actually love being able to dedicate a little time one evening to reviewing the mailers I've set aside, the websites of a few candidates, and making sure I could remember the background behind things. Do you just quickly Google stuff? That sounds kind of dangerous as the #1 result isn't always a holistic or accurate portrayal.
Which (voting by mail) was almost incredibly useful this year. I don't know how much y'all may or may not have heard about this, but the Utah Legislature tried one of the most blatant and anti-democratic power grabs in memory, trying to give themselves power to effectively ignore or rewrite ballot measures even after they pass -- which isn't great IMO to start with, but the wording they put on the actual ballot measure/amendment to give themselves this power was an EGREGIOUS misstatement of the actual content of the measure (basically, a bald-faced lie). This happened with not one but TWO measures, both struck down by courts for being misleading to voters (though the second was less overt) -- but weirdly, this decision came too late to reprint the ballots, so votes on both will not be counted but will still appear. (Even worse, the whole thing wasn't prompted by anything understandable -- it was specifically because an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure passed that the legislature didn't like and got caught ignoring)
My point? Although the system worked in this case, if the courts hadn't managed to rule in time, or dropped the ball, a ton of voters right there in the booth may have been confused which one out of the four was the lie, which one was the exaggeration, which one was the one everyone likes, and which was the one that is probably useless (formalizing the election of county sheriffs, which... is already the case?)
But if you take home the ballot, and get to research as you vote, this becomes much, much easier. Professional politicians, hot take, take unfair advantage of voters, even well-informed ones, when voting in person. Vote by mail!
It doesn’t make sense to look at and functions better as part of a more broad “error rate” (somewhat organic inherent noise). First of all in aggregate an error like this is typically symmetric, ie does not “bias” results. Second, on a basic level it’s like asking how many people fill out their gender wrong to what they intended? I’m imagining quite low. I honestly don’t think it’s ever happened to me at least. But if you want to ask the related question about how many people mistake one name for another, well then you’re taking about name ID, which is studied, and better treated as its own thing. Or if you look at bias towards the first name appearing on the ballot, again that is studied and is its own thing.
Edit: However I should add that a pretty close analogue is the debate about whether an online poll should or should not provide a “back” button. I don’t have any literature on hand, but some say a back button can provide greater accuracy, but IIRC most people use the back button to rethink an answer as opposed to fixing an error, although one potential trade off is that this can lead to more bias (some claim and I agree) because “motivation” to click the back button can vary, potentially/in theory, by response. But most post election polls are not this type anyways and pollsters are more worried about deliberate lies to pollsters because they are inherently biased in a statistic sense (again are plausibly non symmetric)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
16d ago
The over/under from the pros is basically Saturday as when we will know. Usually actually “calling” a state is based on some decent statistics, not infallible but a state being “uncalled” is typically rare.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
22d ago
You can see that he is getting a bad audience reception and gets nervous and it makes everything worse (he even does the risky thing about commenting on the cold reception). Allegedly, there’s some background about the islands trash collection being bad or something, but I watched the set and it just comes off as mean and punching down (plus even if that was the connection it’s not well enough known to make for a good joke). As do about half the jokes overall. Just bad vibes all around. It doesn’t even have any lead in!
Making jokes at a political rally is always a little dicey (especially since on possible pillar of comedy is an element of transgression) but there’s absolutely such a thing as being too mean and he was absolutely in that zone, to my judgement. I only chucked once.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
22d ago
Unfortunately this kind of media attention (itself an extension of Trump’s own bad faith arguments) is often a self-fulfilling prophesy similar to the nature of mass shooting coverage leading to copycat shooters, I predict.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
22d ago
The arguments against election fraud can be summarized as there being no election fraud
What a lazy, dishonest, and incorrect summarization.
Also akin to painting Trump’s efforts as “regarding election integrity” — even most posters here, however truculent and to the best of my recollection, seem to often concede that Trump’s personal and individual efforts were manifestly not grounded in any kind of honest concern.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
22d ago
Both The Hill and my personal favorite Politico do it much better than WaPo, which is stuck in an awkward spot where their demographic target is more The Atlantic/New Yorker types, but in a NYT format that tries to also do everything, IMO to its detriment.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Actions speak louder than words is the test. It’s disappointing but within the realm of expectations for losers to be whiny, sad but occasional for a low-status politician to actually flail around in denial for a bit, but something else entirely when the top takes actions that are demonstrably motivated by impure motives and backed by hot air.
Look. If you ask Trump — and many have! — how exactly he lost, he refuses to answer. Even if you hold up someone like Stacey Abrams, who infamously refused to concede the Georgia governor race, if you asked her why… she will fucking tell you! It’s absolutely incredible that Trump will not do the same.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Yes, we do assume Hillary was being bitter, because action wise she didn’t do jack shit about it. For anyone paying attention, you might notice that not very many Democrats followed her rhetoric either.
You shouldn’t read into Florida’s subsequent results. 9/11 happened pushing a major Bush wave… and then Obama won it twice again. Being red is recent. This should set off warning bells in your brain about personal bias that you’d even mention Florida like that, and be so flagrantly and factually wrong.
There’s some merit to the general pattern of “Democrats break X tradition for allegedly noble reasons, Republicans then see it as fair game and break X+1 tradition harder and more effectively”. Absolutely. But there’s a level of equivalence here that is just absurd.
For example. Yes. Riots in DC. Not the same as literally occupying the seat of government. These two riots are not the same. Likewise. Faithless electors your own link is talking about, uh, celebrities advocating for doing so? The whole thing was pageantry anyways as it seemed to pretty much every legal scholar everywhere that individual electors can’t actually go rogue. Contrast the Pence convincing effort or the alternate slate effort which had a (still not crazy high but not zero) chance of creating a more real crisis. It’s insane to me that you refuse to see this. At some point we moved from random House reps doing protest votes to actual, organized attempts to submit alternate electoral slates based on a sum total of zero evidence and a “throw literal shit against the wall and see if anything sticks” approach to evidence. Not. The. Same! At least hanging Chads were, you know, real.
Now note that I’m really not reading too deeply into Trump’s every word either. When he said that we wouldn’t even need to have more elections if he won it was obvious he was simply exaggerating how effective he would be about fixing problems. But new evidence about his activities in the aftermath clearly show he is ultimately corrupt in motivation and self-serving in action.
And of course with all that said, why on earth would I have a problem with the system if Trump were to win? He can and probably will get a ton of votes, all legitimately. The voting system broadly works.
As an example unless you are a gutless loser like that Georgia governor candidate, even if some halfway shady shit happens in state elections (fights about voting on the margins of the rules, like induced turnout related stuff) the typical reaction has almost always been “well let’s try harder to win more state gov’t seats next time”.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
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Spying is an overblown talking point. They spied on like, one guy? Maybe a second, and neither of them big deals?
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The campaign didn’t get meaningfully “bogged down” by any investigations, not anything special counsels don’t normally do
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Russiagate actually did fade pretty quickly after the Mueller report in the news and from Democratic politicians
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They tried to impeach him over something almost explicitly a quid pro quo - you could argue that some presidents get a pass for that kind of thing (Nixon sure as hell did it but that wasn’t what his impeached for) but it’s still, um, bad. And note that after the effort failed in Senate vote, they dropped it. You don’t see Kamala whining about it on the campaign trail
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If you think that was abnormal lawfare you have not been paying attention to politics the last several decades
Scope and scale matter. My point stands.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
When Trump was first elected President, one common meme was for people to say and post, "NOT MY PRESIDENT." Hillary Clinton called Trump an "illegitimate President." Would you say that Democrats "accepted the results of the election" in that case? Because my read is that they very much did not, indeed still have not. Why didn't they accept the outcome of that election? What could the government have done, to nudge them toward greater acceptance?
There’s a fundamental difference between being bitter about an election result and actually thinking the result was actually illegitimate. I will of course grant you that occasionally the language can appear superficially similar, but the difference is real and very important. Democrats absolutely accepted the result of the election. The process was not in question, and this was telling in the actual actions taken: they thought Russia meddled a bit too much and so the solution is policy to stop it happening again.
Hell, even after 2000, Democrats still by and large accepted the result despite some very potent arguments that they had been robbed by some uncontrollable aspect of the administrative state (broadly). Sure, you had a decent chunk of individuals who continued or even still continue to believe the election result was rigged or undemocratic or whatever, but this didn’t translate to the political class, and it didn’t lead to a fundamental dispute of elections more broadly, and in the actions, Florida got its shit together and fixed a lot of the issues for subsequent elections.
The immediate reaction of Trump and his allies was not merely bitterness but action that should be disturbing to all. They tried both literally and rhetorically to do an end run around the actual election and legal processes to corruptly (mens rea according to the evidence we’ve seen) subvert the actual election, irrespective of fact.
Do you see the difference? “Let’s fix it” is of a fundamentally different character than “let’s change it”. The former recognizes that setbacks happen in politics — even unfair ones! And it recognizes that there will be other chances and that the system is more important than ego. But the second, oh boy, it’s shortsighted and selfish and threatens the whole thing. It’s kind of like a marital fight. There is a line between some things you might say to your spouse in anger, and some things which should literally never be said, because they can’t be taken back and might threaten the entire marriage. With the assumption that the marriage is a good one - here, the assumption that the system of democratic elections is a good one.
It’s not at all clear what kind of system Trump would put in its place, which is PLENTY worrying in and of itself, but I have a very hard time imagining it being better than our current one, and I likewise have I think very good reasons to believe that even if you think for example that the Justice Department needs reform and fairness, Trump is probably one of the worst people to actually do so. That Trump’s personal motivations largely aligned with the country’s in his first term wasn’t an accident but was at least in some sense lucky - but I’m not convinced this can be taken for granted in a second term to the same degree.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
You’re not alone in thinking this, but it’s probably wrong. Exhibit A being of course Obama’s attempt at a “reset”
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
I mean it’s very clear that people who move through the psychology or sociology pipeline have borderline statistical illiteracy that many programs seem to think one-off crash courses will fix. This is, of course, wildly incorrect.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
There's also the dimension of political boogeymen and a common enemy are nice unifying forces. Iran is going through a rough time domestically, in part due to the West, in part not, but having someone to blame and to criticize is useful.
Plus, there's also some bad blood dating back to the Bush years, when Iran felt backstabbed by Bush including them in the "axis of evil", a missed era of rapprochement as far as I'm aware (IIRC, things were very slowly on the mend but there might be some other issue I forget about). No accident Ahmadinejad becomes president in 2005, who presided over a classic period of "death to America" and I believe some heightened Israeli hostility too.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
It seems to me the main risk for Israel is getting dragged into another ground war that ends in a stalemate like 2006, or even a loss. Think Iraq insurgency. Probably why Hizbullah hasn't done too much in response in order to goad them to do such a thing (well, also because they are paralyzed with fear and communications issues). But I don't think either America nor Israel want Americans to physically show up. What the US just did, which is move another carrier nearby, is all Israel actually wants from us (other than maybe more weapons, but those are already flowing, and to not be too critical/pushy, which the admin is mostly doing). Not even Iran actually wants to duke it out -- they thought (wrongly, whoops) that Hizbullah would be enough of a deterrent or proxy.
So yeah. Experience says that the most likely result is more of the same. But if I were an Israeli military planner, and I weren't haunted by my constant skirting around in the rough neighborhood of war crimes (they are toeing the line more than my personal ethics allow but less than genocidal) I would be to avoid going in on foot if at all possible. Politically, it's a bit tougher because of the ~60k semi-permanently evacuated from border regions.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Probably true. He's out there retweeting quite a lot of partisan stuff. Maybe he was pent-up from being (for Elon) relatively circumspect for a few years before? Surprised me still though, because the tweet wasn't just off the cuff in the sense that it's seven (twitter-sized) paragraphs long (!!)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
And in fact slightly nicer grocery stores (and fancy ones) both currently still exist and at least appear to be doing well for precisely this reason! Hard to separate out the geographic effects, and I do have an admittedly suburban bias, so can't say that the tradeoff you describe is for sure the reason why, but seems reasonable despite that.
I still opt for the line almost every time though. Scanning, let alone bagging, really does feel like work to me, so if someone will do it for free? Sign me up. I'll wait a little longer in line, no problem (though shorter would be better, and long lines do actually drive some people away -- my mother hates WinCo for this reason)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
There's at least some loose relationship between voting patterns and the truth, though. The GOP is only able to be painted as Nazi authoritarians because some actual authoritarians do hang out with them, just like the Dems are only able to be painted as out-of-touch, gender-obsessed ideological warriors because they exist and Dems also commonly hang out with them.
Most of the Hispanics I've talked to however tend to be disillusioned with communism and general leftism and actually like the GOP rhetoric (this was Miami though, the Southwestern trends I'm a little less familiar with) and the financial policies too (lots of Trump fans for economy alone I've seen). GOP sticking points tend to be other issues. Like someone brought up Prop 187, which was raising specters of racial profiling and practical, daily QoL hits on actual Hispanic citizens. That, arguably, wasn't really propaganda. And of course Hispanics in general are much more traditional-family focused and religious, both traditional GOP wheelhouses.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Don't know why the downvotes, we've seen this quite a lot. People are people at the end of the day. The wants and needs are usually pretty similar. And vote-buying in a macro sense is only mildly effective, to the extent that in many cases (not all but many) it doesn't even make sense for the ruling politician or party to pursue it. Plus, in my opinion many ethnic voting blocks are fundamentally temporary, not structural. Okay, fine, sure, worldview does play a part in politics, even a major one. But like, if we're talking about Mexican-Americans for example, there's no actual fundamental reason they'd be Democratic voters instead of Republican ones. And at risk of being over-broad, polling data seems to support my view.
I predict he develops some kind of noticeable health issue in the last two years, but not one serious enough to incapacitate him (more like we'll slowly see him slowly reduce his working hours Biden-style but for more of a physical reason). Odds maybe 70%.
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