Vancvillan

12 hours ago, villakram said:

I would hope the Dems are a little more circumspect than the time Reid got rid of the fillibuster on nominees in Obama's years. Though Reid has emerged from the wilderness to push for abolishing the fillibuster altogether in recent weeks.

All decisions have consequences, some short term, some long term.

My understanding was that Reid pushed this through as Mcconnell was preventing appointments to the DC appeals court on the basis that it was underworked. I was never for SCOTUS nominations.

Obviously once Reps controlled the WH, Mcconnell allowed votes on DC Appeals court nominees and applied the nuclear option to SCOTUS nominees too. 

It's easy to say "the Dems started it", but that implies that Mcconnell isn't driven by a cynical lust tor power - which is something I don't think even he would deny.

If Dems win the house, senate and WH and stack the Supreme Court, I guarantee there will be zero National Review articles saying "well that's what you're allowed to do when you're in power", which has been their verbatim stance on McConnell's SCOTUS actions.

4 hours ago, Davkaus said:

The nightmare has to end next month, surely.

2 hours ago, avfcDJ said:

Probably not. Sadly.

Tump will very likely lose the election, but you're right in that this doesn't end in 2020.

On 12/10/2020 at 03:05, villalad21 said:

Not until we've secured 38 points

So vs. Baggies on December 19th by my calculations.

46 minutes ago, villakram said:

Not quite.

So what Trump would need is:

1.  Biden suffering something as devastating to his numbers as the Comey letter

and

2. The same polling error as in 2016.

Which was the second option @HanoiVillan gave.

1 hour ago, ml1dch said:

I think the hope is that Florida is called for Biden - they count all their early ballots quickly and if the on the day voting margin is wide enough to call it for him (and unless it's 2000-style close then it should be known within a day of the election) - then I think that problem goes away as there isn't really a viable route for Trump, regardless of how long other states take. 

If it's called for Trump or goes to recounts, then that will be a trigger for a shit-show across numerous other states and probably the Supreme Court getting involved. 

For at least the last twenty years I've uttered the phrase "**** Florida" at some point during every election.  They've managed to (administratively) **** up every election in living memory, so I wouldn't count too heavily on them.

8 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

I’d guess he has played about three times that on the left. It’s a bit like Ashley Young, he could play in either side but was always more effective on one.

Crazy to think they picked him up for less than £2m only two or three years ago.

I’d love us us to find a bargain like that from abroad.

 

SJM says hi.

On 06/10/2020 at 01:56, mjmooney said:

Christ, is Douglas only 22? He plays with the assurance of a much more experienced player. 

This is by far the most shocking thing for me in this thread.

Absolutely worldy of a signing.

46 minutes ago, villakram said:

Obama was the king when it came to perception vs reality.

It's funny imho (in that kind of way), how people criticize Trump's base in light of the obvious contradictions like above and then in the very next sentence go on to eulogize Obama. Pot and kettle, though of course the pot is evil and the kettle is good. Good old post-modernism.

I agree that there are plenty sticks to beat the Obama administration with, but I think you'd be better served by mentioning a couple if you want to compare and contrast.

14 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

@Vancvillan - to be clear, I'm not suggesting it was some great intervention, or commenting on the societal value of doing it. Just that it was a big PR win for him, and that getting PR wins that related to keeping jobs for blue-collar workers would have been a more effective tactic than publicly embracing the McConnell/Chamber of Commerce agenda.

@HanoiVillan - didn't mean any of that to sound like a critique of you personally or what you said, just that it was great evidence of an insidious problem. The bit I was hoping to focus on was the fact that Trump talks a lot, and what he says usually has an element of truth. Where he's had a surface-level win, 99.9% of people will remember the win in absolute terms, rather than what actually happened days, weeks or months later as a result of that decision.

Human beings are generally terrible at taking a long view on anything (we're just not geared to think that way) and we tend to view a lot of actions in a very transactional way that doesn't take into account downstream effects (Mexicans out = more jobs for Americans!).  It's really not helped by a 15 minute news cycle and social media where anything can be made more exciting, more sensational - and context or nuance are boring. 

I honestly don't know what the answer is - at this point I'm just a guy shaking his fists at clouds - but if I could put a button next to every Facebook post, Tweet or news story that Googled "what the post says" + "hoax" I would.

25 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I've been meaning to leave this post until after the election, but since you mention it anyway . . .

One episode I've been thinking a lot about recently is when some air conditioning unit company in Indiana announced they were going to outsource loads of jobs to Mexico during the last campaign, and then Trump was immediately on Twitter haranguing them about this, and then he and Mike Pence had negotiations (I think?) with the company, and they ended up keeping some of the jobs, and it was all a big deal? I just keep thinking about it because it really was an alternative approach he could have taken. It would still have been shit, but I can imagine that badgering unpopular bosses on Twitter to keep jobs in the country and give people pay rises or whatever, when combined with bashing immigrants, would have been a pretty potent political force. But instead he just adopted Mitch McConnell's unpopular policies wholesale, and all he's done is the unpopular stuff of giving rich people tax cuts and appointing judges who will allow big companies to pollute rivers and stuff.

Maybe he was always going to do that, but if you get elected essentially through a fluke of having fewer voters but who are better distributed geographically, you might think it would be a good idea to expand your support base, but he hasn't done that at all.

This is classic Trump mythology - he says a thing with an element of truth and it gets remembered as fact.

Carrier were going to move approx 2100 jobs to Mexico. Trump and Pence stepped in and "saved" around 800 of those jobs in return for approx $7 million in government subsidies.  Carrier also agreed to invest around $15m in the facility - but a lot of that is being invested in automation. Apparently morale at the plant is now at a rock bottom because employees see the writing on the wall - they'll either be replaced by robots or the plant will just shut down in the next few years.  Unless the Government subsidize Carrier to keep employing humans, those jobs are going away.

It's like the coal mining industry - it employees less than 60,000 people in the US (Walmart employs 1.5 million to put that in perspective) and is an industry that not profitable or heading that way in almost all cases. But Trump "digs coal" and is here to save it apparently - to the tune of $4b per year (approx $67,000 per job) in government subsidies.  

Propping up an industry with a ton of government money vs using that money to invest in retraining and infrastructure projects is insane (and socialism by proxy!).  People want to work - giving them a job that relies on government subsidies (and thus the political winds) is very short term thinking - which unfortunately can be tactically smart given that elections happen every four years.

I can't believe I'm being the Darren Downer, but we should keep in mind it's been one game. It was a good performance on a day when everything clicked for the team as a whole. 

His speed on the ball and general physicality definitely add something that was missing in our midfield, but I'm not yet concerned about another team swooping in at the end of the season.

The next few games might show he still needs time to settle and we should be prepared for that. He's also going to have his off days.

I know this probably sounds miserable after our best performance in recent memory, but I also remember Guilbert's debut (see around page 23 in his thread) and plenty thought that him and Jota were the keys to our future success. Barkley is a cut above Guilbert, but he's also a long way from a 60m move to PSG.

2 hours ago, Sulberto21 said:

Even if he doesn't score between now and the end of the season he is an asset. He bullies defenders creates space for others and is always a threat. The ball in behind is on for us because of him.

There are people on VT who will burn effigies of him if he doesn't score again before the end of October...

4 minutes ago, TheMightyVillans said:

Really wish we could get another forward and a backup CB. Then look at addressing LB in January.

Came in to post exactly this,though I'd address LB now.

That said, it looks like we are a million miles from where we started last season, so if we have to wait for Jan for another signing or two then so be it (but I don't see the point in waiting - we all know where the gaps are).

16 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

The individual news stories are irrelevant, the very manner in which he carries himself (Trump) and the way in which he communicates should tell every single person everything they need to know about the man.

Its just so blatant, you don’t need to go scrambling around trying to find bad things said about him or biased news stories, it’s there in front of you every time he makes an appearance or opens his mouth - he’s a total moron, I’ve said it before but I honestly think there is a genuine chance he has an IQ in the 90’s, and that’s not a dig, I truly believe there is a good chance of it.

In terms of the audience he taps into its people like him and people with a chip on their shoulder that life’s not worked out as they hoped, same as here in the UK with our recent elections and referendums.

Then of course there’s the rich arseholes who see him (and those like him) as a way to stay rich, and get richer.

They are very relevant in the way in which they are told.

If you grew up in a red area, surrounded by lifelong conservatives, you actually don't hear those stories (or you hear them in a completely different context). If you want to dispute that then I'm not going to try and convince you.

However, if you're willing to accept the fact that the stories people hear are different based on where they live and who they are surrounded by, you can see that they might have an opinion of Trump as a fighter, an astute businessman, someone who wants the best for all Americans but doesn't want jobs shipped overseas.  I'm not saying there's an ounce of truth in any of that - you can feel warm and fuzzy inside that you're "right" all you want - but I also don't think that telling those people that they're deplorable is the way to claw back the soul of a nation.

As a side - I live in a city with the pedestrian right of way law. I'm over-simplifying, but let's just say if you hit a pedestrian with your car, you are at fault.  Now a pedestrian can go out at night when it's raining, dressed in black, put in their earbuds and cross the road without looking. They are "right".  However:

1. Would they have still crossed the road if they knew the person driving along the road had a baby in the back that was going through a seizure?

2. Would they rather be right or alive?

That's the crux of the problem right now - so many people are absolute that they are unwilling to bend even slightly to the idea that someone might think differently to them and have formed that opinion via what is a legitimate and understandable journey rather than must being a moron.  Those same people are also so focussed on being "right" that their end goal can only ever be division.

@villakram question because I'm genuinely interested - and I recognize it's a tough one since there'll be no perfect or maybe even good answer for you.

If you had to pick the next president from the field of challengers from both the Dems and Reps in the last four years (so you can have HRC - haha), who would you choose?

13 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

But the alternative is a compulsive liar who is borderline mentally retarded.

I don’t know how anyone can compare the two people and have Trump come out on top, in fact, I’d honestly struggle to think of anyone who could be a worse human being than Donald f*****g Trump and that includes your Hitlers and the like.

He is the total embodiment of everything that is wrong with the world, it just blows my mind people can’t or won’t see this.

Let's put aside the boat people, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Boys, the malitias, etc.  They're not for turning in this election.

Instead look at either conservative independants or right-leaning low information voters.

There are two things here:

1. Party vs leader - as an example, for some people of faith the Democrats kill millions of babies per year, so voting for someone they see as unsavoury (but who does a small percentage of the bad things he says he might do) is the least of two bad options.

2. You know he's a compulsive liar, but you get your news from specific places. Hold on the argument of how that's a valid decision for you to do that - we'll get there.

For #1 you really have to get into a personal conversation to take that forward if the goal is a Dem vote. For #2 let's play this out... 

Democrats are unlikely to fact check something bad about Trump if it comes from a trusted source.  Trusted source could be NYT, Al Jazeera, CNN, MSNBC, The Intercept - they all fall somewhere on a line of how good their sourcing standards are and how much editorial vs reporting content they run.  Let's say some of them aren't perfect and make mistakes, and have run negative stories on Trump that turn out not be true.

Someone else gets their stories from different sources - let's ignore Fox / OAN / etc and go with say National Review.  Their readers will have seen some negative Trump stories, but more of a focus on negative stories on the Dems (which often do not made it to the lead sections of NYT, etc - and you could make a fair argument it's because they are not as important as other stories running), as well as a highlighting of whenever NYT / AJ / CNN / etc got it wrong.

I'd bet you'd be more likely to fact check a bad story about Biden (or another politician you support) if it came from what you perceived as a conservative news source - people who on the Rep's side are the same but in reverse.

So what we have are people who mentally check out when they see a story from what they perceive as an "enemy" source about their candidate. 

The answer isn't simple - but if the end goal is to reach an understanding it has to involve keeping an open mind to listening to people who think differently. I'm not saying the type of people who have stars and stripes facial tattoos and hate brown people - but there are a lot of moderate-ish people who once you talk to them in person and treat them with respect, are willing to listen.  I would even go as far to say that they are willing to change their mind over time.

I personally think that the wedge of independent / undecided voters are worth a lot of time, energy and patience right now.  As I've said before - if they bring their senate votes with them, this could be one of the most consequential elections of the last 40 years, because you can bet your ass that McConnell won't let the Dems get anything done if he's still holding the gavel in 2021.

46 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

As for the rest of your post, in some ways I think you have fallen afoul of your own criticism. You are suggesting that Biden is associated with green new deals and banning cows in the minds of voters. Only people who are politically engaged, followed the primaries and read twitter would know that he has said some things to appease the more diverse populations more to the left in his party. The average person won't associate him with those things and he's smart enough to not bang on about them now he's in the middle of an election. Trump may shout about it but if Biden ignores it it's just more angry noise from Trump.

I'm not suggesting that right-leaning low information independent voters live in a vacuum. I've been in enough environments with a bunch of people who don't care about politics but have heard things from that guy who listens to Rush Limbaugh. So they here bits and pieces and it kind of sticks.  It doesn't take much to make it unstick in a lot of cases, but it takes something.

I also don't think Biden has ever said that he supports the Green New Deal, a wealth tax or (more obviously) banning cows. My point is that while there is some seed of fact in a claim that he has, right wing media just lie and blow it up (Rush being on of many). If you live in a red zone, you'll hear this second hand whether you want to or not, and the brain worm finds a home.

What I'm saying is that there are plenty of people who have heard that kind of nonsense but can be swayed back - and that's a demographic worth fighting for.

41 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

One of the main reasons the DNC rallied around Biden is because that blue collar worker is exactly the kind of voter he connects with. The miners from his home town of Scranton Pennsylvania for example.

Yeah, he wasn't my top choice by any means but strategically it's hard to argue with for any number of reasons.

That said, picking him was the first step - getting those blue collar workers outside of Scranton to understand that he's not all wealth taxes, green new deal and banning cows is the real challenge.

I just don't think that telling people who aren't yet committed to voting for him that you don't have strong enough language to describe how shitty they are is both bad politically, and is also myopic if the end goal is any kind of unity.

14 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

If you're willing to hold your nose and vote Trump due to party loyalty, I think you're part of the problem, and I don't have language strong enough to describe my feelings.

The United States has never had an enemy as great a danger to its future as President Trump. 

It's not that black and white.  Let me play out an example:

A gas drilling worker who has a family with two kids who rely on their salary to pay the mortgage, bills, etc. They live in an historically red area so a lot of their day-to-day interactions are with people who have voted Republican for years / decades. As far as they know, a vote for Biden is a vote for the end of fracking, and thus the end of their job. Are you honestly saying you can't see why someone who spends very little time reading about politics (and zero time on Twitter), and who's livelihood hangs in the balance might just stay at home instead of voting for Biden?

That's a very noble standard you set, but I think you're being incredibly unrealistic.  If I were part of the DNC, those would be exactly the kind of voters that I'd be trying to reach as they could be swayed, and they could end up being (as white working class people once were) a part of the Democratic party for years to come.

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

At this point, an "undecided" voter is a Trump supporter looking for justification. When you call a spade a spade on issues like Trump, you get people saying "Ah well, you don't win them over by being mean", well **** it. There's no winning them over at all. If anyone could have watched the last 4 years and thought "Well, I'm just not sure which of these is better", they're a **** stupid piece of shit and there's no point debating them. Day after day, lie after lie, scandal after scandal. Nobody can claim to not know what he stands for, or what kind of man they're considering lending their vote to. 

I've got less respect for fence sitters than I have for people who will at least admit they like Trump.

I think that's an over-simplification. There are a decent number of people who haven't yet made the decision on whether to vote for Biden or not to vote at all.

They are not a monolith - but are typically centre-right or right leaning and dislike the leader but traditionally identify / see themselves as Republicans / Conservatives.  They come from small pockets such as oil and gas workers who have heard that Biden will ban fracking, people who due to religion or personal ethics disagree strongly with late-term abortion, people who think Biden is "just another career politician" - the list goes on and there are a lot of these pockets. A lot of the uncertainty is based on not knowing Biden rather than not knowing Trump.

These aren't the kind of people you see at Trump / Pence boat parades with flags flying out of every available hole, they are less politically engaged (in terms of consumption of politics news - they are likely just starting to tune in now) so will decide later and make decisions based on things that are very personal to them.  They are likely ex-Trump voters who the Dems could sway from just staying home, and if they bring their senate votes with them could make this a victory of three fronts.

I think anyone who is interested in the Dems taking back all three branches does the cause no favours by writing off anyone who isn't a nailed on Biden voter as "stupid pieces of shit".

10 hours ago, A'Villan said:

Biden's support are apparently less likely to vote if they think Trump will win anyway. That's being passed off as factual I'm quite confident.

With commentary like, "We'll have to see about that" when responding to the question of whether or not he will hand over power peacefully, and recommendations from his fellow republican Roger Stone to declare martial law if he loses the election, it makes you wonder if it's equally about Trump deterring voters from opposing him, as it is about him inspiring confidence in the population. Fear rears its ugly head to play a role in this, and Americans are full of it, they are united by it.

I'm not making any predictions, as I don't know.

I don't think that Trump saying that he might act like a dictator and then having a convicted felon saying martial law should be declared is going to motivate anyone to stay at home.

There's a lot of this kind of commentary on Twitter, but Twitter isn't (even remotely) representative of the thoughts on the minds of a lot of the voters who are going to matter in this one. 

Yes, Trump shouted louder and interrupted more. Sure, he really riled up his base with nods to QAnon, OAN and the Proud Boys. But that's not a win for him. If he stayed on the topic of the economy (and being the one to rebuild) he could probably gain a couple of points since it's the lowest-hanging fruit, but he doesn't have the discipline.

He's like the high school pitcher who turns up at job interviews ready to toss a ball. Sure, he might have good instincts for very specific things, but they are completely the wrong tools for what he needs right now.

And for what it's worth, I don't think Biden is a great candidate - I just think that Trump and Hillary are / were historically bad, so Biden being average is enough right now.

1 hour ago, A'Villan said:

A playground fight goes down when the adults are nowhere to be seen. If that's what it's come to, and Trump wins it, and people vote for him based on that..

Are we really letting a schoolyard bully run the most influential power on the world stage at present? Aren't grown ups anywhere to be seen with half an ounce of sense?

Trump looked like a child, not a bully - and a lot of adults were at home watching.

50 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

It's a President who refused to condemn white supremacists in a live televised debate.

It's a President who believes racial awareness training is racist.

It's a President who said "I don't want to pay tax" in a live televised debate.

It's a President who said that he shouldn't invest in Green energy because it's too expensive.

It's a President who used "pocohantas" as an insult on a live televised debate.

It's a President who told a white supremacist group to "Stand back and stand by" in a live televised debate.

 

And there's talk he'll win; that he's what America wants.

 

 

He's at an almost historical low in the polls for an incumbent, and I'm not just talking popular vote.

"Winning" for Trump tonight meant appealing to more than his base and bringing back some of the small percentage of undecided / non-registered voters who currently lean heavily towards Biden. The kind of people who held their nose because the other choice was Hillary, or who voted for him last time because he wasn't a politician and he promised to shake up the establishment. He has neither of those two crutches to lean on this time.

I'm not saying Trump can't win, but the signs do not look good for him at all, and that debate did nothing to improve his standing where he needs a bump in support.

On 24/09/2020 at 13:40, dont_do_it_doug. said:

This is the player he can be, even at Premier League level, especially against the likes of Fulham. 

He did more than enough to keep his shirt tonight, but he also now knows he has to perform. 

This is called having a squad. 

I'm familiar with all those words except the last one.

I think the (sad for us) reality is that he's been found out at this level. He's an excellent Championship winger, but doesn't have the attributes to step up to the prem. I say that with a heavy heart since I think most Villa fans thought he'd make the step up, but while he's a useful enough squad player, he shouldn't be near the starting 11 on a regular basis.