HaroldWilson
6d ago
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1182/vote_118_2_00048.htm
Is Trump stupid enough to give them a chance once more?
I think Trump has lost a lot of leverage. In 2026 there's probably going to be a lot more mileage for Republicans in distancing themselves from Trump, not sticking to him.
HaroldWilson
6d ago
I mean the last two charismatic nominees the Democrats put up won two terms and by pretty handy margins in all four cases.
HaroldWilson
6d ago
A much worse echo chamber than I remember
An odd criticism to make on here of all places. Pots, kettles etc. Not that there isn't lots of disagreement on here, but you'll find that on places like /r/neoliberal too - but in both places it tends to occur within pretty narrow confines.
HaroldWilson
6d ago
If we're going down that road of calling things stolen you can call any election stolen if you were so inclined. 2016 was stolen by Comey reopening the emails investigation, 2004 was stolen by the swiftboat lies (ok that one probably didn't tip the balance but probably neither did the Hunter Biden laptop), 1856 was stolen by Democrats claiming Fremont was a Catholic and would a lead a slave rebellion, etc. etc. 'Stolen' is a pretty extreme word that I think in common parlance would only apply if you thought there was something nefarious about the election/voting process itself.
HaroldWilson
6d ago
Not because of that, just that she is pretty far off the reservation as far as apologia for Putin, Assad etc. goes, even relative to Trump, having blamed America for the invasion of Ukraine. Seems unlikely the more hawkish Republicans are willing to swallow this one.
HaroldWilson
7d ago
Seems a bit of a moot point as there is surely no way she gets through the Senate.
HaroldWilson
9d ago
There’s nothing inconsistent in thinking that those laws exist for a reason, and seeing the Trump case as a good example of why those laws exist, noting that they clearly aren’t having the desired deterrent effect, and then saying we need to do something about that.
Fine, that's a legitimate point (which I completely disagree with but let's leave that for one second), but it's still probably a bad idea to have a sitting President be the one to make that case. If there is one person with reference to whom we probably ought to err on the side of freedom of speech as regards libel, it is the President. If libel laws really should be broader, it should be very easy to make that case without having to centre it around a politician who dislikes what his media opponents say.
What accusations/lies against Trump from mainstream media figures do you think Trump is currently prevented from taking libel actions against that he ought to be able to if and when an 'opened' libel regime took effect (and that represents some higher/more sinister plane of lying that any previous President did not have to deal with)?
HaroldWilson
9d ago
No, your story breaks the laws of physics and anatomy
Not sure what you mean by this.
but we will just change your testimony to 'fingers' instead of 'penis' and then pretend that doesn't have implications on the reliability on the rest of what you said.
In the first place she did testify that Trump penetrated her digitally - yes, as you say she also testified as to penetration by his penis, but there was other evidence presented in the trial such that the jury might have been able to be confident of the former but not the latter. I can't see into their mind nor know what was presented and how, but it isn't ipso facto an absurd conclusion. Plus, I don't think their judgement means they don't think he did rape her, just that the evidence there presented was insufficient to prove it, so it needn't hurt her overall credibility.
It's not semantic to say that there is a crucial standard of evidence lacking that would have been required in a criminal conviction.
True enough, the semantic point is how you use the word 'proven', and whether it applies to the standard of proof here (a preponderance of the evidence) or only to the criminal standard. I'm agnostic on the matter but in common parlance I can definitely see that one might use the word 'proven' to describe the former standard.
The explanation is part of the denial. It shouldn't be libel to provide an alternative explanation when someone is accusing you of something.
Sure but this is totally irrelevant to the logic of the jury, because they found that his denial was false in the first place, so his 'alternative explanation' was by extension wrong and, further, defamatory and malicious. If they had found that he had not sexually abused Carroll, they presumably would have not awarded any damages
HaroldWilson
10d ago
This is a pretty revealing answer, since it indicates that the real grievance isn't actual libel, it's the overall hostile media landscape, and it's pretty chilling for a President to suggest that laws be changed in order that he can lash out against media outlets that don't like him. If he's that sensitive to partisan or negative coverage, he shouldn't be in politics.
HaroldWilson
10d ago
A federal abortion ban (not going to happen)
I agree this almost certainly won't happen now because the margins in the Senate and House probably don't allow for it, but in the world in which Republicans made a more convincing sweep of both chambers it wasn't off the table, surely. Certainly, had a ban reached Trump's desk I doubt he'd have had the guts to defy most of the Republican party by vetoing it.
HaroldWilson
10d ago
Most liberals take this libel suit as evidence that Trump has been proven of rape in court.
I suppose this depends on the semantics of 'proven'. But the jury did in fact find that Trump had sexually abused Carroll (though not raped her), so in that sense he has been proven of sexual abuse (and of actual malice in his statements) in (a) court.
https://www.scribd.com/document/644110955/gov-uscourts-nysd-590045-174-0-1
But if I was also publicizing a book at the time, then you could reasonably infer that I made up to sell the book.
If you want to make the case that Trump was reasonable to accuse her of lying, fine, but that's not the argument @WhiningCoil was making, who said that Trump had merely denied the accusations and that counter-accusation of lying was merely something people had read into his initial denial, not something he had explicitly done himself. However that would be merely a critique of the factual findings of the jury, not of their logic or of that of the trial/libel laws/judicial system themselves.
HaroldWilson
10d ago
Likewise, libel and slander laws exist. Why shouldn't Trump avail himself of them same as people have against him?
He doesn't just want to use existing laws, he said he wants to 'open up' libel laws. It's also just pretty pathetic - did Obama ever threaten to sue Birtherists for libel, much less threaten to 'open up' the laws to get at them?
HaroldWilson
10d ago
for denying he raped a woman
Only in the most tortured interpretation of events. He actually lost the case for calling Carroll a liar, saying she was only accusing him to get publicity for herself and sell books, implying that she was working for the Democrats and/or that she was paid and suggesting she should 'pay dearly' for her accusations. It wasn't some legal trickery by which his denial was construed as implying she was a liar, he literally said she had made it up to sell books.
HaroldWilson
11d ago
(The popular cope is that the markets were reacting to a decisive result, not nessesarily to Trump himself. This is cope.)
If this 'cope' isn't true, why did Biden get a similar boost in 2020?
HaroldWilson
11d ago
In all the exit polls the economy and 'state of democracy' dominated top issues, with abortion and immigration important secondary issues and small slivers for other things like foreign policy. Transgender issues didn't feature anywhere. Could have been an ancillary issue for some? Very possibly, but it's odd that if it was an issue of even secondary/tertiary significance to many voters that it would have appeared nowhere in all the exit polls.
HaroldWilson
11d ago
His big brag in 2016 was ultimately that he had herded towards 50/50 harder than anybody else.
That isn't what herding means. Herding doesn't necessarily imply putting the finger on the scale towards a close race, it implies marshalling your results towards the average of other pollsters. After all, if everyone else is predicting a blow-out win and you predict a close race, you still look not only stupid , but exceptionally stupid if it is in fact a blow-out, whereas if you follow the crowd and predict a blow-out you only look as bad as everyone else if it turns out close.
Nate was doing the opposite of herding, if anything, in 2016. If Hillary wins that election very easily, Nate (possibly unfairly) looks stupid for constantly warning people about the significant possibility of a Trump victory. He looks good from 2016 precisely because he didn't follow the crowd of other modellers and gave Trump better odds than anyone else.
HaroldWilson
11d ago
Everyone on the left seems to call it for their guy with high confidence every election
Plenty of right-wing figures do this too, and got resultant egg on their faces in 2018, 2020 and 2022. It's hard to quantify but there are definitely a lot of left-wing pessimists and I don't think partisan boosterism is more prevalent on one side compared to the other.
In fact on twitter there were a lot of big right wing accounts predicting a Kamala win (legitimately or otherwise) shortly before the election.
HaroldWilson
11d ago
He admitted well before E-day that anything more than a very crude real time projection needed far more resources than he had - he borderline told people to just go and look at the NYT needle, and probably only did his thing because it wasn't known until the last minute whether the needle would be active.
HaroldWilson
11d ago
As it stands the government can dictate through federal funding that roads be marked for bike lanes
What's the alternative here? That the federal government be banned from attaching any conditions to any funding given to states? How would that even work?
HaroldWilson
14d ago
The main point that underscores all of this is that the demographics are pushing the country towards third world norms. If people care a lot about whatever third world hole they live in being controlled by people labeling themselves "Republican" instead of "Democrat"
Odd thing to comment on a thread explicitly about the electoral prospects of the Democratic party. Not every post is an invitation to kvetch about immigration.
HaroldWilson
14d ago
Would this result in bipartisan support for tougher immigration policies or less resistance in enforcement of border security is to be seen.
It may but I think the pendulum can swing really fast on this one if Trump overreaches and tries to indulge the 'mass deportations now' crowd. Being tough at the border but generous to people once they're established and resident in the country, even if illegally, seems a winning triangulation position.
Maybe the trans issue has been pushed too far.
I would be very surprised if this made any difference to the election outcome.
HaroldWilson
14d ago
you can't expect the West to be able to defeat Russia in every proxy war context.
This isn't even a symmetrical proxy war. The West is fighting only as a proxy against full Russian involvement. Feels a lot like Russia's Vietnam, even if in the long run Russia might eke out a points victory - a major power thwarted by a minor nation backed by opposing major powers, except even less flattering for Russia because at least Vietnam was half a world away and not bordering America.
HaroldWilson
14d ago
why I shouldn't take Biden's anomalously high vote count in 2020 as evidence of fraud?
Well, Democrats generally were more worried about Trump this time round given all of his post-2020 election denialism, so if 'they' had the ability to rig it last time, why didn't it happen this time round? After all while it wasn't 'close' this year, the actual number of votes needed to flip the election wasn't even particularly high given that only 3(?) states would need to change hands. I've heard the figure 120,000 in a few places. If you're alleging that fraudulent votes numbered in the millions in 2020 (otherwise what's the relevance of the disparity in total vote), could really have been that hard to find 120,000 votes this time round. My prior for election fraud was already non-existant, but if anything this should lower it even further. Covid also throws in huge uncertainty - boredom driving political engagement, anger at Trump's non-existent/incompetent response (except warp speed, which he then couldn't talk about because of his deranged supporters lol), world-wide anti-incumbent feeling (which we see again here).
It just doesn't pass the smell test that there were ~15 million people who were that excited to vote for Biden
If this is your argument then it implies the number of fraudulent votes must have been at least well over 5 million (after all there wouldn't be that much difference in plausibility between 10 mil above the last two cycles and 15 mil above), which is a truly extraordinary claim that would require commensurate evidence.
HaroldWilson
14d ago
Arguably true for Tulsi (though I'd like to think she feels sufficiently strongly about her broader progressive economic outlook that she would never be compatible in the long run with a Republican administration), but the other two can just go back to whatever they were doing before a/two/three year(s) ago. Neither of them really needs party politics.
Well good television (and possibly all storytelling) thrives on conflict and problems - there are a zillion films and television shows set in wars, whether real or fictional, but that doesn't mean we all love war and want more of it, it's just a compelling backdrop for engaging media. Troubled families are simply more interesting than 'intact, loving and competent' ones.
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