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
14d ago
You're the one who told me to "get lost" so don't act all persecuted. If you're here just because you can't be casually sexist somewhere else that's a bad reason. There's a massive gap between the woke police watching every comment for wrong-think, and regular users and mods simply wanting to keep the place from devolving into a reddit one-liners. I only ever responded because you wanted to die on the hill of wanting to keep your shitty one-line jokes instead of just moving on.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
On the most basic level a joke needs to be either funny or insightful or failing either, at least clever to count enough as an "acceptable joke" and not just being mean. We all know, I assume, about the social thing that happens sometimes with jokes where they are either too frequent or not actually funny enough that they are used as a form of bullying, or are opportunities to say what you "really think" but then hide behind "just a joke bro" when challenged. So that's the context I'm coming from: the forum-equivalent of bullying or "just a joke bro" are both forbidden by the rules and for good reason! They both tend to be long-term extremely toxic in a poison-the-well sense for forums, doubly so for those that aim to 'optimize for light not heat'.
By contrast, a joke that is, on the spectrum, more on the side of clever or insightful or all in good fun is fine (or even laudable if an AAQC) in the sense that it probably doesn't contribute to that kind of generalized toxicity. Thus even a short joke can be plausibly seen as at least medium effort in the way the first kind of joke fundamentally is not, and "low effort" is its own rule, however subjective. I hope this explanation helps you understand I'm not actually attempting to move goalposts or anything -- they exist roughly as outlined above, to my mind (not a mod).
While it's obviously difficult to quantify a joke as I noted, since it's highly subjective and even context-dependent (moods of crowds in comedy clubs a well-known confounder of the funniness of a joke itself along with delivery), Scott Adam had a proposal I subscribe to that a joke needs to contain at least one but ideally two or more of the following [to be funny]: Unexpectedness, Exaggeration, Incongruity, Relatability, Absurdity, Reversal. I would probably add in Transgression as its own category, though there's overlap. Since you clearly want to analyze it further, at least to me your joke doesn't contain any of these in any meaningful sense. Nor does it say anything clever. Nor does it contain any special insight. It isn't relatable, it isn't much of a reversal, it isn't absurdist, it just lives in a sour mediocrity and thus is best represented as pure sexism and disdain and dismissal of women. Or, it was just a quick thoughtless one-off that didn't land, I'm not trying to do some actual character assassination or judgement here -- you were totally free to respond in any number of ways other than digging in and claiming it's somehow "good natured ribbing".
I. My understanding is that would not be a workaround, and the legal system isn't really set up to answer questions in advance like that, even if it would be helpful.
II. Honestly we're partly there. REAL ID requirements for drivers licenses at least in theory required proof of legal status, and is mostly implemented across the country as of next year, though still with some mixed enforcement in some states. I don't have enough specific knowledge to make a claim about the exact effectiveness. It's a good building block, but not totally there. About 85-90ish percent of legal US adults have a driver's license, so if that is used as a starting point it could be pretty effective.
However, if you're building a system from scratch, it suddenly becomes very difficult. We've relied on Social Security numbers as de-facto identifiers even though they never were intended to be for too long, and there's a lot of people who aren't very careful with their documents. The bureaucracy is also very, very bad at handling some of the current difficult cases, in many areas getting snarled up for years.
Remember that to survive a legal challenge, the success rate of the system has to be very, very high. So it's not totally clear to me that the first approach of simply building off of driver's licenses would be sufficient to avoid legal issues. After all, "the government was annoying" is often more than sufficient for a judge to rule in favor of a plaintiff who wants to vote, as a rough oversimplified principle.
You also have to consider things beyond voter ID. A national ID card might easily suffer from mission creep and be used for more things. That's bad from a strictly voter ID perspective, because for example the more incentive to have one if you don't deserve one, the more fraud happens. If it's simply a voter ID and nothing else, history suggests fraud wouldn't be too high. Example: an illegal immigrant might
III. The game changes a bit here. It's my rough understanding, could use more light if someone knows, that while the default goes to the state in actually executing the election, so a state voter ID law would work even for federal elections within the state (when combined as they always are), if there exists federal legislation the interferes, the federal regulation usually takes precedence -- but only for certain relevant cases. I'm not certain if there are currently federal laws that would actually prevent a wide scale voter ID drive from a state. The interaction is complicated.
Either way, we reach a conclusion: a fight to implement voter ID is a 5-10 year process no matter how well you implement it. You have to consider that as a given no matter which route you go. On a specific state level you might be able to pull it off closer to 5.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
It's tough. Zelensky has been clear about not wanting to concede Ukrainian territory but it's obvious to everyone that that particular ship has sailed. It's hard to know if he will secretly be happy to be "forced" to accept a compromise, or if he's a true believer. I also don't think a compromise will be nearly as easy as Trump says, because Russia does seem like it's gearing up for another 1-2 years which Ukraine might not be able to hold. So your scenario is plausible for sure. Execution matters, though. Let's say a cease fire lifts a lot of Russian sanctions. In that case, it's totally conceivable that Russia is able to use that money and tech access to come back to the table better equipped than before.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
I consider myself pretty well informed politically but I have literally no idea what the immigration follow-through will or won't look like. I'm pretty sure he'll be convinced to stay in NATO but not nearly as sure as I'd like to be given how long-term horrendous that would be for American power. Tariffs and chinese crackdowns seem obvious, I think he's going to bring back Lighthizer and he was pretty clear about his goals, but a Taiwan conflict I also have no idea about. Tax cut seems a lock. The degree of bureaucratic downsizing is also unknown -- will he really put Elon in charge? RFK will clearly have some role but would he be in charge or just some consulting schtick?
That aside however, I'm mostly asking about the revenge stuff because I remember seeing some very strong opinions one way or the other about whether people on the list above do or don't deserve punishment, and another accompanying but sometimes different set of strong opinions about whether Trump would actually do so or not.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Low effort one liners are perhaps not explicitly against the rules, but they are pretty close to it, last time I checked. If you want a joke forum maybe you should consider reddit yourself? Thanks for pointing it out, I've reported both comments. They add nothing to the conversation and only increase hostility and boo-outgroup feelings, again, explicitly against the whole idea. Did you re-read the copy-pasted message at the top of the CW posts recently? I know it might come across as sour grapes, but keeping low-effort punching-down rare is at least in theory a fundamental part of what I perceive to be the goal of the site.
Also, jokes are of course widely subjective and I know that jokes often trade explicitly on being a little transgressive. But to me, it's not even a funny-mean joke, nor particularly inventive; it's just mean.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
He wouldn't simply because it would likely end up robbing a future Democratic candidate of the title and prestige, since Dems have a slightly better collection of prominent women politicians.
My odds the day before were 60% Trump 40% Harris. In retrospect perhaps 70% would have been a better figure, but no higher. The fact is that there were a lot of unknowns going on (such as weirdness about polling reliability) so I feel my mental modeling is still fine.
Odds on failing to assume power I concur at placing around 1%, with heart attack being the leading cause, assassination more of a distant second somewhere hovering around a successful 14th amendment or legal challenge.
Doing some super lazy math, I think I still feel good about that. 2-4ish percent annualized heart attack chance at 78 for those who haven't previously had one, upweighted due to his bad diet and overweight status, downweighted for them not normally being lethal, upweighted slightly for the chance he'd step aside if the aftermath was severe enough, downweighted for being only a quarter year, lands me somewhere in the upper region of a single percentage point, and filled out by the other random unpredictables, sounds about right.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Well, as a prior, he actually didn't spend a whole lot of time actually governing near the end of his term either so that seems like a pretty reasonable baseline. I predicted downthread that the Cabinet will matter a LOT, but also that by the second half of his term he's going to be in some kind of physical decline and reach Biden levels of activity, though mostly physical (mental is too unpredictable to say).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Because they are ultimately backed by statistical analysis, and those analyses are often sufficiently (and explicitly) tuned to avoid mis-calls. While there's some mild pressure at TV networks to call states "first", there's some strong pressure to avoid making a mistake. And the people actually doing the calls are actually somewhat competent at their jobs.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
That line where she couldn't name anything different was absolutely killer. However, didn't happen in a vacuum! I called that specific aspect back in ~August when she missed the window to roll out an actual set of policies, especially important given that a second debate did not happen... she filled the void of news with a grand total of one singular policy (at-home medicare).
Interestingly enough, guess who she actually performed pretty well with? Yep, the 65+ crowd. The data's not strong enough to draw a straight line but it's still suggestive. Personality matters. Policies matter. Money only provides a nudge, it can't replace these two aspects.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
At 98.5% much later the next morning, it looks like it's Harris +5. So she didn't actually need Walz. Should have gone with Shapiro as a purely strategic question/factual matter, but wouldn't have been enough by itself to win either.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
I wouldn't characterize it as a "choice" but it's certainly to some extent preventable (and speed of counting isn't a great proxy for no-fraud, but FL as a whole does deserve props for reform after the 2000 debacle). I think the bigger issue is that it often takes a determined effort to run a clean election, and motivation seems to vary greatly -- even within each political party, and of course by state. Of course it depends on how expansive your definition of "fraud" is, but 1-2% is far, far higher than the data suggests. I will say and have long said that despite this, more urgency is needed to clean things up, but this isn't purely partisan nor is it nefarious. Inaction is simply put the norm. For example many states and local municipalities are reluctant to spend money to actually buy good equipment, this has been well documented for decades.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Notably, (caveat about hindsight 20/20 of course) it doesn't currently appear as if Pennsylvania alone would have delivered Harris the presidency, so this is a moot point. Shapiro vs Walz was only ever going to deliver a single state at best, VP picks just don't do anything beyond that.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Trump didn't talk legislation because he didn't have to. Lingering economic goodwill from his 4 years was plenty for him to campaign on.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
The Senate control looks to be, while not quite best-case, pretty darn good for the GOP, but it's not totally settled. This is actually a very, VERY big deal. We might be in the weird situation where the House margins are way more tight -- all eyes are going to be on Johnson for the next few years (assuming he even survives)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
I saw an article that was hoping Trump would win the popular but lose the electoral vote, because then both parties would have been burned and potentially feel motivated to change it.
Personally, however, though I'm totally open to going by popular vote, I don't think the compact as-is would survive a constitutional challenge.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
It's definitely abnormal, usually they say a few quick words. We haven't seen her personally really lose a race other than 2019, which was handled via a letter to supporters on social media, not a video, and well after the writing was on the wall and her campaign had been full of infighting, so that seems roughly on-brand personally despite not much to go on.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Honestly I can't parse this comment as anything but overtly sexist, and plainly adds nothing either. Do better.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
I think one of the most interesting lessons people often miss is that money in politics doesn't actually matter as much as most people think. People have the perception you can buy wins, and that's just... not true, broadly speaking. There's still plenty of room for more reform, but it's not a corrupt hellscape where only money talks.
With the priors a lot of people I talk to, and the cash advantage the Dems had pretty consistently, you would have seen a Harris victory.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Democratic attitudes definitely play into it, but the candidate herself completely failed in the second half. I think many people might find this video about Buttigieg interacting with 25 undecided voters very interesting. Pete himself is great -- but a LOT of the voters totally drew blanks when it came to Kamala's actual policies, which is so telling, and for good reason. She didn't talk about them a lot, and didn't have a full set of them to start with! She leaned on the Hillary "Trump bad" playbook instead of the Biden "do things" playbook. Even good old Mayor Pete's response to a question about why Harris wasn't being very outspoken (people noticed) was met by a kind of "well it's awkward when your boss is still President" -- he didn't actually challenge the perception, because it was accurate.
In an alternate world she could have released an actually ambitious set of changes and altered the narrative. Talk about what she wanted to actually DO. That's worth maybe a 2 point swing in swing states -- almost exactly the amount by which she lost.
I ACTIVELY follow politics and I can only name maybe TWO actual policies she proposed and actively promoted, and one of them was bad: a harebrained anti-scalping scheme, and an at-home medicaid expansion. That's literally it. That's all that comes to mind. And I'm a news junkie. That's horrific.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
Exactly exactly. Women in the House do just fine, though how often they emerge from the recruitment process varies greatly. I honestly don't think gender matters a whole lot anymore. Sure there are some double standards still, but also some advantages for a woman (though fewer), but overall it just doesn't move the needle a lot.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
15d ago
So, I'm curious: predictions about what, if anything, Trump will do for his "revenge list"? A lot of people here said that he was just talking a big game but wouldn't actually do anything too crazy, because he didn't in 2016, but then again he probably feels more strongly about it due to his legal troubles post-2020. Potentially, these people or organizations he's made noise about include:
Biden, Harris, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Pelosi, NY AG James, Judge Engoron, Liz Cheney, Jack Smith, DA Bragg, former CJCS Milley, former FBI director Comey, Hunter Biden, Fauci, former FBI agents Strzok/Page, Rep Schiff, Zuckerberg, former attorney Micheal Cohen, various journalists, any of the major news networks.
There are two things in play. One, there's no clear Trump successor who can fully capture the populist appeal as it currently exists. However, there IS a template for it, so we might see someone replicate his style of "say whatever and people won't hold it against me" but not for another 10 years or so. Part of this is his personnel decisions are somewhat unpredictable. So my certainty level on what exactly replaces it is low. Watch his cabinet picks carefully, and their reception, which will be a bellwether for 2028. We probably will see a continuing trend of corporate to politics pivots, to mixed success. For specifics on the other end, I could honestly see a Mark Cuban 2028 campaign. Appeals to working class people and a message in economics is probably here to stay for the next 5-10 years for the GOP, but how well Trump's economy actually does will play a role, because the rhetoric and think-tank support isn't super well defined for Trumponomics at the moment. That kind of "intellectual cover" is often the glue that makes a movement something lasting vs ephemeral (think Reagonomics which had intellectual influence well into the Bush years).
The second thing in play is how the Democrats respond, which determines how contested the middle, moderate, everyman vote is. They have some decent historical DNA for a return to their working class roots and appeal, but have a GIANT millstone around their necks -- the college educated crowd. There's a huge bubble among the college educated that we've seen over the last 10 years. It's (probably) slowly popping especially as Millennials age, and to a lesser extent the younger Gen X, but it's hard to get a sense for how fast that's happening. If the Dems do a better job with the working class, that changes the whole picture quite a lot. But if they stay in liberal la-la land, that leaves a ton of space for the GOP to solidify their gains into the gap.
Edit: removed polling specifics as I need to look at some more crosstabs. Good news for moderates: looking at NBC's "key states" exit polling (includes TX, FL, OH in addition to the swing states) a full and healthy 34% of the electorate say "independent or something else" about their political identity. That's pretty good from a moderate perspective. People themselves are still open despite the strong two-party machine.
You know, that's completely fair. It just happened to be the thing that stuck in my head over the years when talking about humor.
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