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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   8112 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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For those watching the Presidential election, things have been looking very bad for Kamala lately, with national polls tightening, and Trump ahead in several key states. Although it remains too close to call, Trump's odds have shot up to 57% according to Polymarket.

Harris's 1.4% lead in national polls is cold comfort given that, at a similar point in the election, Biden was up by 9.4% and Clinton was up by 6.7%.

Democratics are panicking about Trump's support in the black community, which has traditionally voted 90/10 in favor of Democrats. While Trump will still lose the black vote by large margins, his style is more appealing to black voters (especially men) then previous Republican candidates like Mitt Romney. Democrats have responded by trying to shame black voters. Recently, Barack Obama was even unearthed to chastise black men for not wanting to vote for Harris.

Enter the latest vote-buying scheme, which I think is the most naked attempt to buy votes I've ever seen in recent US politics, even more than college debt forgiveness.

https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1845993766441644386

Harris-Walz have proposed a 20k forgiveable loan for up to 1 million Black (capital B) entrepreneurs to start a business. The fact that the loan is forgiveable means that this is essentially a gift to any grifter who wants to take advantage. But most importantly, it's explicit racial discrimination against the 86% of the country who isn't black.

Personally, I think this appeal is likely to backfire as most swing voters are sick of handouts to people who aren't them.

Will Trump counter with some asinine scheme of his own? Probably.

For those watching the Presidential election, things have been looking very bad for Kamala lately, with national polls tightening, and Trump ahead in several key states. Although it remains too close to call, Trump's odds have shot up to 57% according to Polymarket.

And I still don't see how people can take any of that seriously. Meanwhile, I'm just trying to prepare myself for how much worse things are going to get under the inevitable eight years of Harris.

But most importantly, it's explicit racial discrimination against the 86% of the country who isn't black.

What's new about that? If you were the sort to care (negatively) about that, weren't you already highly likely to vote Trump? What's one more such thing on top of the many that already exist. And for liberal whites, you've got their whole pro-outgroup feeling thing.

Personally, I think this appeal is likely to backfire as most swing voters are sick of handouts to people who aren't them.

Aren't most "swing voters," particularly these days, the politically "checked out," who don't pay attention to any of this, and thus are unlikely to hear about this particular proposal?

I know very little about prediction markets, so can someone explain to me how likely it is that Trump's surge on for example Polymarket is the result more of speculative behavior than of people rationally trying to predict the winner of the election? I don't really see any reason to currently view the race as being anything other than pretty close to 50-50. People might say well, if I believe that then why not try to make some money on it? And maybe that's fair. But that does not necessarily mean that the betting odds on Polymarket are actually an accurate guide to the likely election outcome.

Other countries have let people bet on politics for a long time and no, they’re far from always accurate. Right before Brexit, the betting market hugely favored remaining in the EU for example.

The prediction markets, if anything, seem to be underselling Trump's chances right now.

I'd check out RealClearPolitics, which does a good job of aggregating all the polls. Trump is ahead in 6 of 7 swing states right now. Based on current polling averages, Trump wins 302 electoral votes. More importantly, polls are moving in his favor each day:

https://www.realclearpolling.com/elections/president/2024/battleground-states

Another data point. At this point in the campaign 8 years ago, Hilary was up by over 6.7 points nationally. Biden was up by 10 points. So we'd expect the polls to undersell Republican support on average. If the 2024 campaign follows the same trajectory as previous ones, Trump wins the popular vote by 3% and an electoral college landslide.

So, absent other information, I'd put Trump's odds at 70-80%. But I also know that I'm lacking information and fallible. I trust that the prediction markets are likely to be a truer reflection of the current state of the race than my opinions. There's actually a decent amount of liquidity in this particular market, with over $1 billion gambled, and a small bid ask spread of just 0.1%.

The prediction markets, if anything, seem to be underselling Trump's chances right now.

As much as I think the "Trump campaign is in disarray! They were not prepared for Kamala! Coconut-couchfucker-joy!" offensive was fake, I'll keep repeating "it's not over until it's over". Someone else also pointed out back then that relying on pollsters' past bias might be risky, because you never know when they might decide to correct for it.

You make it sound as if pollster bias is just a simple matter of them deciding not to correct for them, rather than them trying repeatedly to correct for it but reality being surprising in various ways.

Protect cryptocurrency investments so Black men who make them know their money is safe.

...what? I'm sure men are more involved in crypto than women, but why black men?

And what does "protect cryptocurrency investments" even mean? Providing a price floor for them? Making them more regulated? How?

My bias is that crypto is speculative gambling for the mass public, though I believe there are valid use cases for it. What's next, subsidies for Amway to protect women-owned small businesses?

I watched a Sagaar/Crystal Breaking Point show on the topic, and to me it seemed funny that for some reason none of them mentioned the potentially most important reason: crypto has been historically used to protect money from various actors, including garnishing the income due to child support or other such obligations. If you have irregular or under the table income, you can store it even using cash such as with bitcoin ATMs or peer-to-peer trading, there are also other methods. Sending signals that the government will be easy on these practices may be very important for black men specifically.

I thought it meant regulate cryptocurrency investments so Black men don't gets scammed. Not sure if these policies are fleshed out in more detail elsewhere. Possibly, there is no intention to give specific details so people can just fill in the blanks with their preferred policy.

That's probably a good idea. But black men who are into crypto presumably don't want regulation to "protect" them from it.

The issue with the ambiguity is that people really into crypto are as likely to fill in the blanks with things they're worried about as things they're hopeful about.

My guess is that they have some sort of internal polling to try to figure out what the common factors are amongst black men who support Trump, and they came up with buisiness ownership and cryptocurrency investments.

And then stopped right there and treated them like the wider cohort instead of tailoring the message to who they are targeting.

This is fucking amateur hour.

Like how does one suck at marketing so bad that they try nanny state patronizing on the libertarian leaning business owners? It genuinely feels like being talked down to because you're black.

Okay wait, am I reading this right? Is 1 million times $20,000 actually TWENTY BILLION?

Good Lord, well I guess if you're going to give a naked bribe don't go small. But still. That is an INSANE amount of money to just casually throw out to a small part of the populace...

isn't that only 0.3% of the US federal budget. it's just a rounding error :)

I had the same thought at first, but if you read carefully, the language implies that these "loans" will be available to others. Which others, it doesn't say--all entrepreneurs? Racial minorities? Women? Who knows? But it is a sneaky bit of rhetoric--"we will be giving $20 billion to black men and others!" allows her to make the same claim to several groups separately while only actually committing a single pile of $20 billion.

Not that it's a small amount of money even then. This is why cases like Citizens United were always straining at gnats and swallowing camels. When it comes to buying votes, no corporation in the world can outspend the U.S. government.

This is why cases like Citizens United were always straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

What do you mean by this? What camels did it swallow?

While we're doing a campaign thread, I can't get through the ALCS without seeing ten of these fuckers, so y'all need to as well: How does everyone feel about this ad?

You may be wondering what's the difference between Bob Casey and me on abortion. We both believe in exceptions for rape incest and the save the life of the Mother. We differ on the third trimester. I support Pennsylvania's limits on elective abortion in the last months of pregnancy. That seems reasonable. Bob Casey supports late term abortion and tax dollars to pay for them. Senator Casey has the more extreme position. I'm more middle of the road and. looking for common ground. I'm Dave McCormick I approve this message

I generally think it is smart and well produced, except for the use of the term "Trimester" which is obfuscating for most people who don't think about abortion much, I think it would be more clear to say "after six months." I'm sure there's a focus grouped reason not to do that. Every time I talk to an abortion activist, pro or anti, they always talk in trimesters or weeks, instead of in months.

This represents a pretty major change from the messaging I, as an involved Republican, had been getting from the McCormick campaign for years now, which went something like "Pro-Life" or at the most liberal "Leave it to the States (Does Not Support a Federal/National Ban)."

This is McCormick directly advocating for a policy of elective abortion through six months of pregnancy, with exceptions for Rape etc. Though he does not indicate an intention to introduce national legislation on the matter, that is implied by the context of the ad when he's running for Senate, though limited by supporting "Pennsylvania's" laws on the matter. I suppose you could maybe weasel what he says here into supporting abortions for reasons of rape, incest*, life of the mother through six months; but it seems like the obvious meaning of his phrasing is that he's in favor of elective abortion through six months and exceptions later. This would, in my mind, be very hard to flip-flop on later; though of course we've seen worse.

My first thought is that this is the polity healing itself. Now that the legislated-from-the-bench forced compromise of Roe v Wade is behind us, Americans and their politicians are getting down to horse trading and finding a reasonable political compromise on the issue.

But of course this is dependent on McCormick winning using this strategy. If he gets back more votes from squishy pro-abortion voters than he loses from strident pro-lifers, then the compromise has been accepted and succeeded. But if he loses because pro-life voters are now watching him on TV every day say that he supports six months of abortion-by-choice, well then we might see a hardening of positions after this election.

Of course, my biggest frustration with McCormick remains that he refuses to talk about his best achievements. Every ad, every day, talking about how he grew up in Bloomsberg, went to West Point, wrestled. That's it. Nothing about his PhD from Princeton. Nothing about running one of the world's largest hedge funds. I only know these things about him from outside newspaper articles and wikipedia. According to McCormick's own campaign, he sorta went into stasis after the Army. By outside qualifications he is probably the smartest politician I've had the chance to vote for since Romney, and he refuses to bring any of it up. Sad commentary on modern politics.

*I've never understood why incest gets its own heading on the list. All the examples pro-abortion folk use to talk about incest are just rape-by-family-member which would obviously fall under the rape heading; and it's not clear to me that voluntary adult incest leading to pregnancy leading to abortion is a common enough situation to even need an exception drawn for it, or harmful enough to require one.

and it's not clear to me that voluntary adult incest leading to pregnancy leading to abortion is a common enough situation to even need an exception drawn for it, or harmful enough to require one.

It's not common, but it's also not terribly smart for a civilization to knowingly and intentionally bring into the world babies with such severe deficiencies. I understand horrible things happen by accident all the time and we should have grace and charity to those cases, but incest is taboo for a good reason ...

Nothing about his PhD from Princeton. Nothing about running one of the world's largest hedge funds.

Sound decisions, both. It's almost certainly bad for his campaign if voters think he's one of "the elites", and hedge funds have a morally questionable reputation amongst the commonfolk (see also: Romney, Mitt).

I generally think it is smart and well produced, except for the use of the term "Trimester" which is obfuscating for most people who don't think about abortion much, I think it would be more clear to say "after six months." I'm sure there's a focus grouped reason not to do that. Every time I talk to an abortion activist, pro or anti, they always talk in trimesters or weeks, instead of in months.

I would imagine that most people don't actually know how long a trimester is. I don't actually know myself, but from context I assume it is three months?

Abortions after six months sounds extremely late to me, given that a pregnancy is nine months long (usually). I would suppose that using "six months" also sounds very late to most people who aren't familiar with pregnancy. Meanwhile, a trimester could be anything to the common person. Three days? Three weeks?

So using "trimester" probably keeps timelines ambiguous, and "weeks" sounds a lot shorter than months (how many weeks are in a pregnancy? I think most people couldn't answer that without calculation).

So using "trimester" probably keeps timelines ambiguous, and "weeks" sounds a lot shorter than months

I've heard that the trimester language started being used because of the abortion debate and trying to make convenient bright lines, but I don't know how true that is. Pregnancy isn't really 9 months but rounding generously gives you the three-part structure.

(how many weeks are in a pregnancy? I think most people couldn't answer that without calculation).

Anyone that's been pregnant or close to someone pregnant should know it's (roughly) 40 weeks; appointments tend to be scheduled by weeks rather than months. Outside of the pregnant and adjacent, I'd be surprised if many people get the "right" answer even if they calculate.

Vance is probably in the category. Yale JD. VC.

Hill dawg by qualifications as well.

What are some examples of Republicans trying to implement overtly - not systemic - racist policies? The best example from Republican's I can think of are ant-ABS laws on behalf of Israel.

I’d personally count the Trump travel bans, but I understand that’s contentious.

North Carolina gerrymandering. Pretty explicit. Appealing to the VRA was a fig leaf; the easiest way to satisfy it would have been to draw reasonable districts.

If you’re willing to go back a generation, the cadre of former Southern Democrats provided plenty of examples. Thurmond and Byrd held on into the 2000s, even!

North Carolina gerrymandering. Pretty explicit. Appealing to the VRA was a fig leaf; the easiest way to satisfy it would have been to draw reasonable districts.

That's actually an interesting question. It's not clear to me from first principles (I understand Gingles makes it clear what SCOTUS thinks the VRA requires) whether packing minority voters into majority-minority districts or diluting them across other districts are both/either/neither to be found discriminatory.

I think you're right that some combination of pack/crack can be overtly discriminatory, but it just seems weird to me that the opposite actions are discriminatory. There's no clear 'arrow' nor is it manifest whether it's the voters in the packed or cracked districts are discriminated-against -- and surely it can't be both concurrently.

[ And as a normative factor that I think is irrelevant to the discussion, I think majority-minority districts are probably bad on net because to win them, politicians needs to take extreme positions which are (a) bad in themselves and (b) prevent those politicians from appealing to wider (e.g. statewide) office and are a kind of weird glass-ceiling kind of thing. ]

TBF to Byrd, the man turned it around so much he got a glowing eulogy from the NAACP, including mentioning his involvement in the VRA.

My mistake. I conflated him with Harry Byrd Sr., who never made such a pivot, but also died much earlier.

The Byrds of Virginia and Robert Byrd of West Virginia are not related. Strange but true.

Harris-Walz have proposed a 20k forgiveable loan for up to 1 million Black (capital B) entrepreneurs to start a business.

It says 'for Black entrepreneurs and others'. It's not illegal, it's just false advertizing and empty promises. Granted that this even actually happened, this weasel language is certainly there to pretend its something specifically for Blacks, but wouldn't really be.

If it's for "anybody but whites" it still illegal, fits right into the memeplex it's invoking, and fulfills the promise.

"This won't actually happen" is a poor argument. If you don't want to be criticize for your proposals, don't make them.

"This won't actually happen" is a poor argument. If you don't want to be criticize for your proposals, don't make them.

Oh, don't misunderstand. That's not a defense. I'm saying it's probably even more shitty and weasely than just brazen racism.

It is brazen racism though. The "others" doesn't change it. Maybe it will include other so called people of color, but that doesn't change the facts.

Er...

Young men at highest risk of schizophrenia linked with cannabis use disorder

Adolescents who frequently use cannabis may experience a decline in IQ over time

Now, before y'all @ me with "correlation is not causation," I don't have any strong feelings about marijuana either way. I'm just mystified by the idea that Harris is so certain that young men, especially young black men, would benefit from greater availability of recreational marijuana, that she has made it a highlight of her campaign. Legalized recreational drugs are the ultimate act of privatizing profits while publicizing losses (in the form of negative community externalities), and the tax revenues rarely measure up to expectations. This sounds like a recipe for the exacerbation of a negative trend in the lives of young American men (of whatever color).

I'm just mystified by the idea that Harris is so certain that young men, especially young black men, would benefit from greater availability of recreational marijuana, that she has made it a highlight of her campaign.

This feels like it rhymes with the argument that because most gun deaths are suicides, it's net negative for my own well being to own a gun.

It may be statistically correct, but it doesn't justify restricting my liberty to make my own choices.

It may be statistically correct, but it doesn't justify restricting my liberty to make my own choices.

Of course it may justify it, there are situations where your choices are limited exactly on these grounds - like with myriads of other illegal drugs and many other illegal activities, that limit your liberty to make many choices. What are you talking about.

If Harris had simply said she would decriminalize marijuana, I might agree with you. But what she appears to actually say is that she wants to both legalize (a step that implies greater government endorsement than mere decriminalization) and also see to it that young black men are maximally empowered to profit from slinging dope.

For the gun analogy to hold, you would need a candidate promising not only to make gun ownership easier, but also to ensure profitability and a free flow of inventory for aspiring arms dealers seeking to do deals that are currently illegal.

Perhaps legalizing marijuana would have an impact on modern reefer madness rates if there was more of a free market to allow for non-insanity-inducing weed?

To point towards the gun analogy, the market has space for everything from wood-stocked single-shot shotguns and .22-caliber plinkers, all the way to semi-auto .50-caliber rifles and ATF-baiting niche products. Who's to say that the weed market cannot also sustain a range of products with different enough CBD levels to make things safer?

Now, granted, you might still be right that a thorough decriminalization might be enough to achieve this, but we must consider the possibility that the market may have an unaddressed demand for healthier product.

I have had this thought too. If weed was fully legal but THC was capped at where it was in the black market in the late 90s rather than the ultra-potent strains we have now, most people would just buy what was legal rather than relying on the black market.

Guns have valid uses, recreational drugs have less of a claim

In b4 “but what about alcohol” yes that’s also bad but much harder to restrict given yeast and fermentable carbs are omni-available

Alcohol has a pro social use as well.

And cannabis is just a plant you can grow. Easily in fact. It even requires fewer tools and resources than making alcohol.

It even requires fewer tools and resources than making alcohol.

This is definitely false, you can make an alcoholic drink by blending fruits/berries and letting them sit for a few days. No need for seeds, soil, fertilizer, regular watering, sunshine, waiting for the plant to flower, etc.

No need for seeds, soil, fertilizer, regular watering, sunshine, waiting for the plant to flower, etc.

How exactly do you get fruits/berries without seeds, soil, sunshine, rain, waiting etc?

You buy them from the supermarket. Obviously.

Recreation is not a valid use? Why? We have a long list to go through if we just start crossing off anything that's not at the bottom of the Maslow pyramid.

Yep. The last thing the black community (or any community) needs is more drug use.

Let's also not overlook how bad the optics are here. "We heard that you black guys like smoking weed". Maybe they should throw in some benefits for 40 ounce malt beverages and scratch offs while they're at it.

The idea is that since drug dealers are disproportionately black, they must have some special expertise that will give them an edge in legal cannabis sales.

Of course, most drug dealers' comparative advantage is in willingness to risk prison and engage in violence to defend their turf, neither of which are particularly useful in sales of legal products.

Surprising no one who gave it five minutes of thought in advance, neither black nor Latino people have, in fact dominated legal cannabis retailing.

Either she didn't get the memo, or she's alluding to some sort of program that privileges black-owned (i.e. mostly white-owned with black figureheads) cannabis businesses.

The idea is that since drug dealers are disproportionately black, they must have some special expertise that will give them an edge in legal cannabis sales.

I think it’s more the idea of reparations. Given the war on drugs has hit blacks harder. They should profit more from the repeal of unjust drug laws, so as to heal their communities from these laws. Or something. I dunno it just feels like more racial welfare giveaways. But that’s the spin.

Yeah she’s alluding to the NYC program that limited licenses to people convicted of weed dealing, but just led to the proliferation of various gray market stores.

Not a fan of marijuana, but I think that Harris is banking on claiming that these young black men will have the economic benefits from legalization.

I would support a law that people who were convicted of marijuana offenses during prohibition have the exclusive privilege of owning legal marijuana businesses now.

For what duration? Eventually they’ll age out of the business. Or is this just a sneaky attempt to reenact prohibition in a few decades’ time?

I'm just mystified by the idea that Harris is so certain that young men, especially young black men, would benefit from greater availability of recreational marijuana, that she has made it a highlight of her campaign.

I don't think either Harris or Trump or any particular politician that's running for office has any reason to care if policies they propose would actually benefit anyone. I think the implication of Harris making this a highlight of her campaign isn't that young black men would benefit from greater availability of recreational marijuana, but rather that pushing for greater availability is more likely to cause young black men, as well as people who believe that young black men are disproportionately likely to go to prison for marijuana use, to giver her their votes.

It was a common mode of speculation so far back as high school as to whether smoking a lot of pot made you stupid, or whether the stoners were dumb to begin with.

It makes you stupid. I have seen people who recover all right after years of heavy use. They become snappier.

I can’t speculate on whether it makes you permanently stupider, but in my experience it takes me at least a few months of total abstinence after heavy use before I’m back to my usual intellectual level.

Aside from the egregious, aggressive, absolutely blatant 14th Amendment violation that makes this anti-constitutional, the most glaring thing to me is how incoherent the idea of a "forgivable loan" is. That's not what a loan is. Per Merriam-Webster, a loan is:

an amount of money that is borrowed, often from a bank, and has to be paid back, usually together with an extra amount of money that you have to pay as a charge for borrowing

If you're informing someone up front that you don't expect the money back, you are extending them largesse or patronage, or perhaps you are providing them a fee for service, but you are not offering them a loan. There were many things that were terrible about Covid spending policies, but this might have been the absolute king of them. The PPP "loans" were never really intended to be paid back, they were always a handout to keep things moving and allow businesses to skip out on doing actual commercial transactions. Framing them as "loans" was intended to attach a couple strings, but these were mostly just helicopter money dispersed with the knowledge that there would be a huge amount of outright fraud and even more casual fudging of the program to collect money. Maybe that was a good idea, maybe it wasn't, but these weren't loans in any meaningful sense. Nonetheless, because they were called loans, now everyone that just took a totally normal loan with a totally normal expectation that they would pay it back thinks that PPP loans being treated that way justifies "forgiving" their loans too.

I could see this becoming a more frequent tactic, just calling handouts to fake businesses, affinity groups, and other favored constituents "loans" that are explicitly designed to never be paid. Really, it's a brilliant tactic, because the recipients don't even feel like they're just welfare cases, they feel like they've received a totally valid loan that they have met the terms of. I do wonder if there's an exploitable tax loophole here - no direct payments for me, thanks, I'll just take the money as a loan with no required payments until June of 2250.

Maybe the loans could be structured such that, while there's no serious obligation to pay it back, if you do, then...something happens. Not sure what, but that could make such a loan more than just helicopter money.

I do wonder if there's an exploitable tax loophole here - no direct payments for me, thanks, I'll just take the money as a loan with no required payments until June of 2250.

The IRS has been wise to that sort of thing for a long time and will classify such "loans" as income. If they're not coming from the government of course.

Her official policy release on the plan is wild. It’s specifically only for black men. “Black men” occurs 70 times in nine pages. “Black women” occurs zero.

Black women already vote solidly Democrat

Black men overwhelmingly vote Democrat, but now around a quarter of them prefer Trump. This is trying to pander to them.

This obviously reads like they hired one of those charlamagne tha god guest black guy hustle bros to pen a scheme and he shrugged and said this is what it’s gonna cost you and they decided they didn’t have any better ideas. We’ll see whether it works, personally I think a Trump II administration will be kind of like Clinton II, pure vibes and maybe a slow motion financial crisis toward the end. I doubt he has another sex scandal in him, but there were those Laura Loomer rumors…

Will Trump counter with some asinine scheme of his own? Probably.

Trump has mostly resisted the urge to engage in explicitly ethnic spoils, other than the obvious problems for certain Hispanics in certain places in an environment of mass deportation, which is priced in at this point.

Trump has mostly preferred, in the "asinine scheme game," stuff that sounds great if you don't think about it too hard. "No tax on tips;" "no tax on Social Security;" "X% Tariffs on everything in the world" etc.

WSJ Economists rated Trump's economic proposals worse than Kamala's, but also rated hers as terrible. Unfortunately, in this election I'm left hoping that the winning candidate is not able to implement their policies.

Did they double blind the proposals? How do they even know what the proposals are?

Trump had a Platinum Plan in 2020 where he was offering about half a trillion for blacks. Who knows if he ever intended to follow through on that or what exactly he meant but he absolutely plays the ethnic spoils game...

If you vote Republican over the next four years, we will create three million new jobs for the Black community, open 500,000 new Black owned businesses, increase access to capital in Black communities by $500 billion. This includes investing in community development, financial institutions, and minority depository institutions. Build up peaceful and safer urban neighborhoods with the highest standards of, and you know this, of policing. We want the highest standards. We have to have highest standards of policing. Bring even greater fairness to the justice system. We did criminal justice reform. We remember that. Even greater.

Trump's big tent rhetoric definitely makes the rising tide that happens to do all this interpretation somewhat reasonable. But Kambala's talking about straight up giving helicopter money and other benefits to black men at the explicit exclusion of others.

Oh man I forgot all about that. Good pick.

Yeah, both candidates have bad proposals. I believe that, in both cases, the proposals are meant to be taken "seriously, not literally". So what does that mean?

Trump cares about working people while Kamala cares about racial spoils.

Unfortunately, in this election I'm left hoping that the winning candidate is not able to implement their policies.

For the last 3 presidential elections I've explicitly been hoping for partisan legislative Gridlock as the only real check on bad policy. Granted, partisan gridlock tends to produce even worse policies, but at least its fewer of them.

With the added bonus this time around that the Supreme Court has managed to hamstring and will possibly continue gutting Administrative agency authority, I'm REALLY hoping for gridlock now.

I'll take credit for a decent prediction back when she became the candidate:

I continue to be near certain she ends up dragging in the polls when the honeymoon period ends and she actually makes public appearances."

I could not have anticipated this specific string of bad news, but "Kamala finally does unscripted interviews and comes across HORRIBLY" is exactly what I expected. Bad Product with good marketing. A fucking TAYLOR SWIFT endorsement didn't even help Harris! Granted, if Swift actually lent her muscle to the campaign itself it might have nudged things.

"JD Vance, an attorney with a YALE LAW SCHOOL Degree outperforms Walz in the VP Debate" was also on my bingo card.

I have to admit I was wrong on my prediction for the Trump-Harris debate.

I think I reasoned correctly with regard to the candidates, but did NOT foresee it becoming a 3 v. 1 with the Moderators basically carrying Kamala over the line, and thus the subsequent increase in her polls.

But she is precisely what she's always been, and I don't think it is possible to rehab her public image any further at this point. I do not know what affirmative action (heh) she could take to goose her polls, and it is extremely unlikely that Trump does something that actually hurts his standing much, or any new revelations come out that actually hurt him.

Also, several of the various legal cases against him appear to be imploding. Even the one where he was already found guilty.

I say this with pun slightly intended: The Dems appear to be mostly out of ammo. The one thing that is still out there is the extent to which they CAN get out the vote and/or the extent that election fraud does actually occur. I make no specific claims, this is OBVIOUSLY still a close election.

However I also expect that given the intense scrutiny on election integrity, some affirmative steps at securing the elections that some states have taken, and the fact that we're not in the same weird world that was Covid-Addled 2020, the fraud factor will be much lesser this time around.

I think the affirmative action that Democrats are still relying on is having a corrupt Eastern European dictatorship assassinate their political opposition for them. I hope and pray that doesn’t work, lest the country turn into Syria for the next ten years.

Time is running out for that expediency. Its been three months since the one that came within an inch of working.

I say this with pun slightly intended: The Dems appear to be mostly out of ammo.

They spent it at the right time. Michigan voters are already returning ballots in huge numbers. Remember, elections no longer happen on the first Tuesday of November, they happen over the course of five or six weeks and then take another week or so to actually count (or a month in California).

Correct, but overall there are WAY fewer mail-in votes.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/01/politics/election-2024-early-voting-data/index.html

https://nypost.com/2024/10/11/us-news/early-voting-is-down-and-the-numbers-hold-bad-news-for-democrats/

Goes to my point, we aren't in Covid Times. There's probably less room to hide any efforts to fudge numbers.

did NOT foresee it becoming a 3 v. 1 with the Moderators basically carrying Kamala over the line

Was this really not foreseeable? It was the only thing I would have given 90%+ certainty to.

Mostly about the degree. I wasn't expecting 'neutral' moderators, but the live and direct fact checking allowed them to speak for Kamala so she didn't have to risk a gaffe with her own responses.

So basically they mitigated a major risk by reducing Kamala's need to speak for herself, and THAT I hadn't foreseen.

These bribes are the inevitable result of having racial voting blocs. It’s a literal racial spoils system with a race to the bottom. I wonder how much they offend swing voters actually though. I also wonder how serious the Dems are about it, or if it’s just an electioneer promise that will evaporate once any opposition starts.

The Dems know it won't happen. This is a plus for them. The proposal, if passed, would be a major embarrassment and result in massive fraud.

Better for the Dems would be for Republicans to block it proving they are racist or whatever.

most importantly, it's explicit racial discrimination against the 86% of the country who isn't black.

It says "and others". So it sounds like its available to all, she's just spinning it. In the same way that someone might say "this bill will create hundreds of jobs for welders and others" if trying to get a union vote.

I look forward to the day when politicians will promise spoils for "whites, and others" and people will say it's no big deal.

Her message is flat out racist.

Come on, now. It's a fig leaf. If Trump proposed 'A Muslim ban and others' everyone would still call him racist.

If Trump said ‘the sky is blue’ everyone would still call him racist, so this doesn’t prove much.

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