U.S. Presidential Election 2020

[fruitvilla]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

Thank you. As @Xela also mentioned he seems to have genuinely generated a lot of jobs which may underpin a lot of votes, especially the additional ones. 

If you look at the actual data it is not so clear

https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cps_charts.pdf

[chrisp65]

21 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

But did Trump actually do anything? We can say he did not screw up the economy ...  Here is a review I wrote last year, based on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources.

 

4 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

Has he really? I'm yet to see an actual report that ties a policy made by the administration directly to the creation of jobs for US workers. However I'm happy to be proved wrong.

He has ridden the coat tails of Obama's economic recovery for 4 years. The economy was flying then he juiced it even more with a massive tax cut for the rich (taxes for middle class people actually went up.) It was completely unnecessary at the time but it was the only piece of major legislation he's managed to pass and it took Pence to break the tie. It was also Ryan's wet dream the absolute weapon that he is.

His tax cut made the market even more unstable IMO with massive daily swings.

 

So, just to make it clear, I’m not here to defend Trump, he’s a pig.

But he didn’t have to actually understand macro economics and he didn’t have to have specific policies that genuinely built swathes of real jobs. He had to have enough good PR and good luck to stand in front of for the story to look real. A lucky General, and all that.

Again, to compare with here, Farage doesn’t need to provide good quality jobs, he needs to talk a good game against the people and parties allowing the steel industry to decline. Then a bit of luck, some Chinese car battery firm sets up a factory in Peterborough screwing together things made in China: get your face in front of it, a cheesy thumbs up photo op and a portion of society thinks you are the messiah.

My nipper was in Arizona for a year. Spent a lot of time in gun free coffee shops having organic ground coffee and dairy free chocolate brownies. Absolutely no Trump supporters in that coffee shop in 11 months. Doesn’t mean there weren’t dozens of them across the road in the sports bar. 

[choffer]

Not sure if this has been posted already but it appears that one of Guilliani’s star witnesses outside the sex shop by the landscaping place is a convicted sex offender and a resident of NJ so extremely unlikely to have been witness to count fraud in Philly. 
Link

Quote

The first person Rudy Giuliani, the attorney for President Donald Trump, called up as a witness to baseless allegations of vote counting shenanigans in Philadelphia during a press conference last week is a sex offender who for years has been a perennial candidate in New Jersey.

“It’s such a shame. This is a democracy,” Daryl Brooks, who said he was a GOP poll watcher, said at the press conference, held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Northeast Philadelphia. “They did not allow us to see anything. Was it corrupt or not? But give us an opportunity as poll watchers to view all the documents — all of the ballots.”

 

[TheAuthority]

2 minutes ago, choffer said:

Not sure if this has been posted already but it appears that one of Guilliani’s star witnesses outside the sex shop by the landscaping place is a convicted sex offender and a resident of NJ so extremely unlikely to have been witness to count fraud in Philly. 
Link

 

It's illegal to be a poll watcher in a county you are not eligible to vote in.

[fruitvilla]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

 

So, just to make it clear, I’m not here to defend Trump, he’s a pig.

But he didn’t have to actually understand macro economics and he didn’t have to have specific policies that genuinely built swathes of real jobs. He had to have enough good PR and good luck to stand in front of for the story to look real. A lucky General, and all that.

Again, to compare with here, Farage doesn’t need to provide good quality jobs, he needs to talk a good game against the people and parties allowing the steel industry to decline. Then a bit of luck, some Chinese car battery firm sets up a factory in Peterborough screwing together things made in China: get your face in front of it, a cheesy thumbs up photo op and a portion of society thinks you are the messiah.

My nipper was in Arizona for a year. Spent a lot of time in gun free coffee shops having organic ground coffee and dairy free chocolate brownies. Absolutely no Trump supporters in that coffee shop in 11 months. Doesn’t mean there weren’t dozens of them across the road in the sports bar. 

He inherited an economy that was steadily improving ...  he did not screw that up. 

Chinese battery company? Is it a lead battery? If so I bet a good chunk of that lead came from an Alaskan mine and a Canadian company. We live in an interconnected world.

[HanoiVillan]

Re 'why do Trump voters vote for Trump', I think this is the correct point:

The first point - 'he was the Republican candidate, and they identify with the Republican party' - explains more than 90% of the vote immediately on its own.

Of the small proportion not covered by Republican identity, abortion, judges or racism, it's probably the case that the excellent pre-virus economic situation is a major factor.

But at the end of the day, the revelation that a roughly similar proportion of Americans that said they approved of him also voted for him is not a major shock. There are lots of really conservative people, watcha gonna do

[HanoiVillan]

On the economy, it really was good. Trump appointed Jerome Powell as Fed chair, and he reduced the inflation hawkishness and targeted higher employment. That led to benefits for lots of people, especially low-income people, and some of those marginal gains in vote share may just be affected by that.

Like @chrisp65 says, you don't have to be good to be lucky. Trump complained about what Powell was doing after he appointed him, and presidents don't have all that much control over the direction of the economy one way or the other. But liberals sometimes make themselves look a bit foolish by denying the obvious, which is that the pre-covid economy was going really well.

[villakram]

1 hour ago, TheAuthority said:

It appears you are incorrect on that one 

 

Plagiarism, Joe rubbing off on you some

To repeat: game the system --> 21 days to correct. This can quickly start to run into important electoral dates and all through incompetence, what luck!

 

[villakram]

58 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

 

So, just to make it clear, I’m not here to defend Trump, he’s a pig.

But he didn’t have to actually understand macro economics and he didn’t have to have specific policies that genuinely built swathes of real jobs. He had to have enough good PR and good luck to stand in front of for the story to look real. A lucky General, and all that.

Again, to compare with here, Farage doesn’t need to provide good quality jobs, he needs to talk a good game against the people and parties allowing the steel industry to decline. Then a bit of luck, some Chinese car battery firm sets up a factory in Peterborough screwing together things made in China: get your face in front of it, a cheesy thumbs up photo op and a portion of society thinks you are the messiah.

My nipper was in Arizona for a year. Spent a lot of time in gun free coffee shops having organic ground coffee and dairy free chocolate brownies. Absolutely no Trump supporters in that coffee shop in 11 months. Doesn’t mean there weren’t dozens of them across the road in the sports bar. 

You are not allowed to disrupt the echo chamber with cogent arguments commie scum. Orange man bad!

[maqroll]

4 hours ago, DCJonah said:

Prime example of Trumps impact on the world. 

This morning I overheard a 9 year old girl in my class, tell her friend that she can't wait till Trump is gone. 

Mad that an intelligent 9 Yr old in Solihull, England would care that much about a politician in another country. I can't imagine that happening with anyone else but Trump. 

These last 4 years have been a real shit stain, which will require a long time to get rid of. 

As an American, I am deeply ashamed and sorry that we have foisted this imbecilic demagogue on the rest of the world. Trump is so diabolical that he is like a vortex, sucking us all down into his madness. He's a historical villain for the ages. 

[maqroll]

Cold comfort, but Trump is the first U.S. Presidential candidate to lose the popular vote twice. 

Edited November 10, 2020 by maqroll

[bickster]

3 hours ago, villakram said:

Plagiarism, Joe rubbing off on you some

To repeat: game the system --> 21 days to correct. This can quickly start to run into important electoral dates and all through incompetence, what luck!

 

To repeat, if competence was abound, they'd have filed later

[TheAuthority]

3 hours ago, villakram said:

Plagiarism, Joe rubbing off on you some

 

Not sure what you mean? Was this already posted?

If you 're talking about plagiarism surely you mean the whore from Slovenia who doesn't give a shit about children in cages?

[sne]

Love this picture  

[KenjiOgiwara]

The fact that Fox news suddenly are having moral qualms about the Trump's (camp) factually unsupported accusations is rather cute. 

It's been fine peddling the lies and the vitriol racist bullshit for years, but the second he lost the election they have standards. 

Utter despise that channel and everyone associated with it. 

[LondonLax]

8 hours ago, Genie said:

Thank you. As @Xela also mentioned he seems to have genuinely generated a lot of jobs which may underpin a lot of votes, especially the additional ones. 

Blue collar jobs in rural areas have been moving off to places like China for a couple of decades. In place of that there has been an opioid addiction crisis with all these unemployed people becoming addicts. 

The Democrats have not really worried about this much because globalisation makes people richer in places like New York and Silicon Valley. 

Trump however actually rattled China’s cage, (and Mexico’s) with his ‘trade wars’. At the same time his tax cuts and the Fed’s fiscal policy had the economy running hot. Unemployment was at its lowest for decades. 

The guy is an awful person and represents everything we liberals hate but there were tangible benefits for conservative people in rural areas that go beyond the usual banal analysis that ‘they’re all redneck racists!’  

[HanoiVillan]

59 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

The fact that Fox news suddenly are having moral qualms about the Trump's (camp) factually unsupported accusations is rather cute. 

It's been fine peddling the lies and the vitriol racist bullshit for years, but the second he lost the election they have standards. 

Utter despise that channel and everyone associated with it. 

'they' are not even really having qualms - as is often the case, people who are desperate to declare 'even fox news say you're wrong' are highlighting one clip from the least Conservative commentator, and ignoring that the channel as a whole is absolutely full of Trump campaign people being given space to air their theories that the election is being stolen. 

people want to assume that one fifteen second clip they like is representative of days of output, when of course it isn't (to be clear, I fall into this trap as well - wanting to believe the bad guys can be redeemed is a powerful force) 

Edited November 10, 2020 by HanoiVillan

[LondonLax]

The whole Trump / Brexit can really be boiled down to the single issue of Globalisation. 

If you are cool with Globalisation and think it brings benefits to your life you are likely a Labour/Democrat voter living in an urban metropolis. 

If you are worried about Globalisation causing problems in your employment sector or neighbourhood you are likely to vote Republican/Boris Johnson’s Brexit Tories. You probably also live in a more rural area. 

All the discussion about racism etc is background noise to the underlying discussion about whether you approve of the changes taking place around the globe. 

[HanoiVillan]

27 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

The whole Trump / Brexit can really be boiled down to the single issue of Globalisation. 

If you are cool with Globalisation and think it brings benefits to your life you are likely a Labour/Democrat voter living in an urban metropolis. 

If you are worried about Globalisation causing problems in your employment sector or neighbourhood you are likely to vote Republican/Boris Johnson’s Brexit Tories. You probably also live in a more rural area. 

All the discussion about racism etc is background noise to the underlying discussion about whether you approve of the changes taking place around the globe. 

It definitely can't, and I think you're mistaking 'an electorally significant minority of support' for 'the majority of support'. It's certainly true that there is a deep density divide in American politics, but it is absolutely not the case that all rural or small town areas have done badly out of globalisation, either in the US or here. The notion that Trump supporters are unemployed steel-bashers while Democrats are upper-middle-class well-to-do's is a stereotype that is based on nothing more than some of the former group being a key demographic switching parties in 2016. The bulk of conservative coalitions looks the same from election to election everywhere - the retired, farmers, small business owners, people who work in law enforcement, people with reactionary social views, the wealthy.

[LondonLax]

7 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

It definitely can't, and I think you're mistaking 'an electorally significant minority of support' for 'the majority of support'. It's certainly true that there is a deep density divide in American politics, but it is absolutely not the case that all rural or small town areas have done badly out of globalisation, either in the US or here. The notion that Trump supporters are unemployed steel-bashers while Democrats are upper-middle-class well-to-do's is a stereotype that is based on nothing more than some of the former group being a key demographic switching parties in 2016. The bulk of conservative coalitions looks the same from election to election everywhere - the retired, farmers, small business owners, people who work in law enforcement, people with reactionary social views, the wealthy.

The demographic switch you refer to has been key to someone like Trump/Brexit getting up instead of a traditional Republican/Tory. 

The way the Democrat’s ‘Blue Wall’ has considered voting Republican and U.K. Labour’s ‘Red Wall’ voted for Boris Johnson is the reason why these people got into office. 

Edit: I don’t disagree with your post above but there has definitely been a shift with moderate Republicans voting for Biden and traditional blue collar workers voting for Trump. U.K. Labour is going to try and do the same thing by getting moderate Tories to vote for Starmer. 

Edited November 10, 2020 by LondonLax