El Zen

My EC guess is 308-230 in Biden’s favour, which wouldn’t be too far off most predictions.

Things looking promising for Biden in Georgia. I can’t see Trump winning the EC without Georgia.

I’m feeling good about Biden winning in Wisconsin, and if he does, Michigan and Pennsylvania as well. I’m not sure this is playing out too differently from what the polling predicted, but the amount of mail ballots and early voting makes it a weird election night.

The office of president does have independent powers, including (limited) veto powers over Congress. But, yeah, having a united Congress against you makes the presidency far less effective. Which is kind of the point of the system. American democracy is incredibly slow moving by design, and some would say hopelessly outdated.

Excellent recommendation regardless.

This is the classic defence of the EC, but I don’t buy it. It over-estimates the power of the presidency, imo, and is arguably a conceptual misunderstanding of federalism and American democracy. The office of president of the USA doesn’t represent any single state, quite the opposite, and state representation shouldn’t come into play in elections to said office. The illegitimacy of a non-popularly elected president is a far bigger threat to American democracy than urban/coastal dominance, which is entirely kept in check by the senate anyway.

To flip this around, I believe Biden is roughly as likely to win Texas (!) as Trump is to win Pennsylvania and roughly as likely to win Ohio and Iowa as Trump is to win Florida. Not exactly, but comparable. Texas and Ohio would have Biden comfortably over 400 votes. While there is a plausible chance Trump could win the electoral collage, there is an equally plausible chance of him being completely swept off the map.

Polling firms are very aware of this though, and are weighting likely Trump respondents up. In other words, polls could just as easily be overrating Trump’s chances as underrating them.

Available polling data right now gives Biden roughly 350 electoral votes. Of those, Florida, Arizona and Georgia are close and Trump could carry all of them. That still gives Biden 295 electoral votes. Next in line is Pennsylvania, which has been consistently polling in favour of Biden but is still close enough to plausibly flip. That still leaves Biden with 275 votes. Trump would then have to carry either one of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota or North Carolina, neither of which seems very likely to happen given the available polling. Biden really doesn’t have to outperform Hillary Clinton by much at all to win, in terms of total votes. A few thousand votes in the right places is all he needs. Right now, a Trump reelection looks unlikely, but not entirely impossible.

They scored 4 from 6 chances. We scored 3 from 10. Incredibly frustrating how we gifted them goals from lapses in concentration, but we can also reasonably put part of that result down to rotten luck.

Probably years of disappointment and failed expectations. Understandable, I suppose, but completely counterproductive.

But how quick we as a fan base are to question the manager and the players is kind of infuriating and hysterical.

How on earth to you come to that conclusion when they’ve not created anything from open play? To score two direct free kicks in one half is extremely rare. Literally everything has gone in for them.

3-0 isn’t at all a fair reflection of the game, but we’ve been seriously lacking in concentration. Almost inexplicably so.

So f***ing sloppy with the marking.

Ezri is looking very shaky.

Why? He’s offside.

I should, in the spirit of fairness, concede both points without further argument

I keep hearing/reading this. It’s puzzling, for many reasons. 1) I don’t think anyone, having learned our lesson four years ago, is ruling out a Trump win. I’d say the mood is more anxious than it is confident. 2) It seems to be based on very little evidence. All evidence says Biden is likely to win, and will almost certainly win the popular vote by more than Clinton did in 2016. The argument seems to be that «the polls were wrong in 2016, so they’ll be wrong again» which is a flawed argument. The polls weren’t that wrong in 2016, and they’d have to be more wrong now to give Trump reelection. 3) It seems to be said in anticipation of an «I told you so» in case Trump wins, which is bizarre. Not necessarily true for you, Dem, but for many. What’s the point? Predicting a Trump win given the available evidence doesn’t make you a genius, it makes you a pessimist. Congratu-freaking-lations!

I’d vote Biden because he’ll make a better president than the alternative, and it’s not even close.

Score first, as we really should have, we probably win that and everything looks peachy. Our complete capitulation after their opener is frustrating and disappointing, but let’s not pretend it defines this Villa team. Let’s not be so freaking defeatist and pretend this means we’re suddenly shit again, «typical Villa» and all that crap. For all bar 30 minutes of football, we’ve been a really good football team this season and we have some really fine players and a really competent coaching staff in charge of them. Teams have collapses. This was our turn. Learn from it and be better next time.

Oh, stop it. Watkins has been excellent all over. A really fine player.

That’s not really true. I mean, we should have been ahead before they even scored. After that, we’ve been awful though, but let’s not pretend it’s been like this the whole game.

Our body language is awful.

He’s had a terrible game. Nowhere near his true self.