The 2020 Presidential General Election thread

Clearly, you believe some things about Biden that I don't. But if you do believe him to be not substantially better than Trump, then you have to believe that the United States is over. If you truly believe that, your dreams about voting Green and changing the party system and all that are irrelevant. Yet you took the trouble to write several paragraphs on it. I think you're compartmentalizing.

Assuming the polls are correct, you’re probably right, but I am unwilling to trust the polls.

I have trouble imagining a scenario where Florida goes for Biden and Wisconsin goes for Trump. Unless it's an outgrowth of the Trump-DeSantis team clusterfuck on COVID ...

The way our electoral system is set up (plurality single-winner elections for single-member districts with public polling), this is impossible without a full-scale realignment, which is impossible without (both, but especially the) Democratic party becoming significantly more ideological. So what are you doing about that? I'm working to fix that (I have a ballot proposition that I was planning to submit this year, but can't collect signatures during COVID), but it takes time. Time we might not have if Trump is reelected. So right now, working to fix that means stopping the existential threat. Democrats, for all their faults, are not opposed to pro-democratic electoral reform. It's hardly a priority, but if it gets on the ballots, it'll be approved.

You're going up a sheer smooth cliff face with barely any tools when there is demolition equipment nearby. There's a maniac that has to be stopped, and only a scumbag around to do it.

A party needs a platform. There is pretty much nothing, except possibly electoral reform, that any population larger than the GOP or Democrats, among the people who don't currently vote, agree on. Otherwise it would have happened already. The GOP is smaller than it's been for decades. But your principles are not shared among non-voters and Democratic voters to a greater degree than the size of the GOP. If you continue to ignore the fact that the table itself keeps you from having a seat at the table, in favor of thinking that it's those seated there doing so, you will get nowhere. Neither want you there, true, but one won't stop you (or me, rather) from gathering enough support to alter table, and the other is trying to destroy the table.

That's anti-democratic, and would certainly take a Constitutional amendment which would never be ratified, but okay, whatever.

Yeah, no.

It's the disparity between final polling and electoral results in 2016, and assuming it will be similar this year (but with 2012-level 3rd party effects). Trump somehow overcame a 6% deficit in WI, winning 99.3% of the undecided voters that voted for a major party*. In FL it was only a 1.3% deficit, and he got only 68.5% of the undecided voters. I will assume no less in either case and be happy if my model turns out to be pessimistic.

* if any conspiracy theory about election tampering turned out to be true, it would be in Wisconsin. 99.3%! You only otherwise see levels above 95% in deep red states.

Easy to correlate the spike to the brief moment he took it seriously.

there is no hope left for this country without radical love on a Jesus scale.

Amaris keeps articulating that, even if he doesn't invoke the faith he's discarded, and none of you will listen because he's sick of just kicking the can another four years down the road in hopes that the establishment will accidentally let in someone who actually will do something substantive for the little people.

I've just caught up on the thread, and I do agree with a lot of what you're saying.

You need to consider outcomes of your choices rather than how they make you feel. You can want all of the nice things like Medicare for All, environmental reform, fairer taxation and legal pot and you can recognise that Biden is unlikely to be the one to deliver them. It is certainly worth doing the legwork to build alternatives inside and outside the Democratic party (and most importantly not just as part of a general election campaign). It is certainly worth voting for alternative candidates in states on which either the Democrats or Republicans have a lock in order to build up a base.
But - none of these have any chance of winning the Presidential election in 2020. If you live in a swing state, voting for a third party candidate under the current voting system is a vote for Trump. And there are real and significant differences between Trump and Biden that make the former worth voting against.

The previous administration is one of the last steps to how we got here. Some of the things people dislike about Donald Trump were inherited directly from the previous administration. Donald Trump is obvious, the previous administration was much better at hiding it.

No, you asked for ideas. I'm not voting green party. I was offering the idea that even if you wanted to stay within a party system, a third party was feasible because there are more than enough people to dismiss the GOP and Dems and take their own path. The problem is that people feel locked into the two party system because they grew up in that system. I wouldn't doubt there are people who believe the two party system was established with the Constitution.

As I said before, I understand why people are voting for Biden. Fear is a powerful motivator. In this case, while feelings always matter (don't discard your personal feelings over a candidate if you don't trust them), my issues with Biden are based on his decades of allying himself with the wrong side of history. My desire to help people does not stop at white, middle class people. That's why Joe Biden is evil. He doesn't seem that bad if you're a white, middle class person who is upset by the theatrics and mannerisms of Donald Trump. If you're not a white, middle class person, then Joe Biden's deficits become far more and abundantly clear. Put it this way: there are kids locked in cages who were there when Joe Biden was the VP, when the ACLU sued the Obama administration for neglect in defense of those children. That's an emotion, to be angry, but if I discard that emotion, then I'm just doing for Joe Biden what Trump voters did for Trump.

Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky talked about voting for Biden, that even though he's the absolute worst candidate the Democrats have to offer, they believe he's marginally better than Trump. I understand their reasoning, even if I don't share it, and that's where I stand on it. Honestly, I think I've pretty much covered as much as I like on the whole thing, and can only keep doing what I'm doing to soften the brunt of either administration and hope all of you know what you're doing.

Also, quick shout out to @NAHTMMM. *hugs*
Thank you for having enough faith in me to know I'm not trying to tear things down, that I want to build people back up.

Why don't you share it? Would Biden be running the shitshow that Trump is with regard to COVID-19? Would he have cut taxes so precipitously for the rich? Would he be trashing environmental regulations so much?

It’s encouraging that many on the far left are lining up behind Biden, even though he was far from their (and my) first choice. Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren have been pretty vocal about the need to support Biden and depose Trump. Those on the far far left are either going to vote Green Party or do what they do best: bask in their privilege of not voting for anyone.

I don't share it because I don't agree with their analysis of the cost/benefit equation when it comes to Joe Biden.

Biden tried to cut Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid three times. He refuses to curb fracking. In the midst of a pandemic, he refuses to even entertain the notion of medicare for all, instead opting for a healthcare system that is tied to employment.

See, here's the thing: when the president was only oppressing black people, the LGBTQ community, the poor, immigrants, and people overseas, it was a concern, but something that had to take patience to resolve. Maybe in a few years we can do something about it. Now, however, Donald Trump is starting to affect white middle class people, and like the drug war until it openly came to the white, affluent suburbs, the media, and white public opinion were all too happy to watch drug users (read: poor black people without adequate representation) get thrown in jail. Now, like the drug war, it's at middle class white people's door, and suddenly everything is upside down. Look at what the police are doing! Has anyone ever seen such violence before?!

Gee, let me think, who could have seen that kind of violence before?

Federal agents are kidnapping people in Portland! Who would do such a thing but Donald Trump?!

Obama ordered the assassination of a U.S. citizen without trial. Then killed his 16 year old son.
Trump killed his 8 year old sister: https://theintercept.com/2017/01/30...emen-trump-just-killed-his-8-year-old-sister/

Philadelphia police bombed a black neighborhood in 1985.

Black people, indigenous people, Latinx people, the LGBTQIA+ community, they've seen this shit before. It has been an ever present narrative in modern America for them. Now the average, middle class white person is feeling it, and suddenly something has to be done immediately. Right now. To do less is to be privileged, right @Damar? Suddenly it matters to get rid of an oppressive force that destroys lives, and to do so we have to go with this man who will protect our white, middle class way of life. How dare anyone not vote for him.

She won’t admit it, but we’ll be lucky if she makes it to the inauguration.

My money is on her dying after the election and the Repubs forcing a replacement through.

Sorry, I was unclear. I meant ideas you think are good. In fact, I specifically asked whether you have any hope left. The ideas you named will very likely become impossible if Trump wins. They won't if Biden wins.

I have no hope. I fear our system is so corrupt and elections so grossly unprotected from fraud, that trump will be re-elected.

Even if Biden wins, it's only putting off the inevitable - that this country is doomed.

I'm kind of in the position @Jenee's in. I am an optimist at heart, always have been. I'd have to be and still want to live considering how shit the first 1/2 of my life was (and this half ain't anything to brag about, either). To quote a tired expression, I hope for the best and prepare for the worst. I think the U.S. has some severe fundamental flaws that, if anything, Trump has managed to suss out and bring to the surface. Remember, I think he's a symptom, not the cause of the disease. The United States has a culture of ignorance, and like the spores of a fungus, that culture has spread around the globe due to our exceedingly popular media. I WANT people to reject both parties, because neither party seeks to actually address real problems, only talk about doing something, or taking half measures when full measures are absolutely essential. As long as people listen to those two parties and think of them as the only viable options, that is the way it will be.

So I guess you're asking do I have hope that people will shake themselves free of our mindset and choose better? Heart says yes, brain with all of its context regarding our history and the culture shifts that have taken place the past 200 years says no.

No, no, no. This is not a mental block. I used to think it was, too, as late as 2017 (I knew about other better systems before that, but I didn’t realize just how bad the game theory was for the current system). “If only people knew they could just vote for someone else!” But that’s not it at all. It’s a mathematical block, which most people intuit as “the way things are”, but the experiments in RCV in Maine and San Francisco show people “getting it” as soon as the electoral system changes. Turnout goes up, even for local elections, and that’s with a very limited improvement in the voting system.

The voting system is broken. Completely and utterly. It has all the traits necessary to create a two party system ex nihilo. It’s not quite 100% guaranteed. There is still one human element required: at least one party must not be ideologically rigid; it has to go with what’s popular. If you get one or especially two (the Democrats, and, decreasingly so from 1980-2017 and then falling off a cliff, the Republicans), you’re doomed to a two-party system by the math. Without that, you can get regional parties and legislatively irrelevant parties as well (see Canada), but that’s hardly an improvement, except on the surface. The regional parties replace one of the big ones locally (see Dixiecrats), and the legislatively irrelevant ones are, well, irrelevant.

So if you were to banish every Republican and Democrat and every “believer” in a two party system to the phantom zone for a while, odds are you will end up with a two-party system again within 2 elections. That’s just how the math works out. And what’s worse? They’d probably look a lot more like the Democrats and pre-Trump Republicans than like Greens and/or Libertarians (even if they’re called that), because that’s where the median voter is, and it’s hard to leave the median voter on the table and win. The people are not the problem. The game theory behind the electoral system is. Plurality winner-take-all elections (and particularly, single-winner single-member legislative districts) with public polling and non-ideological parties must be destroyed for there to be any hope of breaking the two-party system. Destroying public polling or non-ideological parties would be massive freedom-of-expression and -assembly violations, so the rest of it has to go instead. To bring this back home, I am seriously concerned that if Donald Trump wins in November, it will become impossible to ever do so peacefully in the future, sometime in the following 4 years. It’s not guaranteed he will make it so, but it’s nonzero existential risk, and it must be taken seriously. No matter how bad Biden is, there’s no chance that will happen under his watch.

...by November, yes. Because that's pretty much the time you have left. Seriously.

Probably not. I think people have decided they're going to settle for the "lesser evil," and believe that we'll manage to make some kind of room for improvement out of that.

If you have a rat infestation, causing damage everywhere, you call an exterminator. But if one of the rats chews through your wiring and that causes an electrical fire, you fucking put out the fire first. See the fire, dammit!

ETA: you’re either ignoring that the rats have caused a fire which needs putting out before it destroys the house, or you think the fire’s been burning and Trump is only the surface flame, in which case you’re not an optimist at all.

So the people settling for the lesser evil are literally your only hope at this point.

I"m an optimist. Just not in this situation.

Rats. Fires. Disinformation. no one knows what to believe. ....

No. I hope they change their minds and reject the forced duopoly placed in front of them. If they don't reject that, then there is no hope for them, and I have no hope for them because they chose the path that will bring them "comfort" and "normalcy," and they'll ride it all the way to the bottom of the Atlantic.

And do what? By this November?

Or you realize the house is fucked and let it burn. If you are talking about a rat situation it may be the house itself is so infested with crap because the owners were shitting everywhere. Sometimes you let the condemned house burn because you just cannot fix it.

When I look at it the diseased and crap people are infesting every part of america. The idea the left is better is a load of crap considering they are backing a racist, sexist, rapey dude because he has a D next to his name. I realized they were a huge problem when they brought bloomberg out. You cannot have good things because you have too many shit people.

It would be one thing if people were holding their nose to vote for Biden, but no we have to pretend biden is saint biden the almighty. We have to lick his boots and kneel before him instead of remembering what a completer immoral asshole he is. The dem establishment is just as terrible as the republicans. The only difference is the republicans elected a halfwit who cannot keep shit hidden.

The house is not on fire because of trump. The house is on fire because of the democrats and republicans are bought and sold by corporate greed, racism, sexism, and human scum.

And if they don't, but enough in key states do that Trump wins, what will you have to work with?