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5, because I am excited to see if his inability to tackle the manifold crises the country faces will further along a true left opposition, radicalize more people, spur mutual aid/dual power, etc. I actually am optimistic that this will be easier under Biden than Trump, simply because a lot of people need to be shown that the Democrats are not, as an institution, there to help them. That said, it's gonna be a rough road ahead. The Senate GOP will ensure that very little of value gets done, and Biden's record is one of austerity policies at home and interventions abroad. I'm glad Trump's gone, but Biden/Harris is probably gonna suuuuuuuck.
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Nov 9, 2020 09:08
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Still Dismal posted:A venn diagram of the people who confidently predicted Biden would never win the nomination, then confidently predicted that he would lose to Trump, and are now confidently predicting he will be terrible in office. Without the Deus ex Machina of COVID he would have gotten flattened.
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Nov 9, 2020 09:20
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Still Dismal posted:Not really. [Generic democrat] was polling well ahead of Trump well before COVID, and if Biden is anything at all, he's that. The polls turned out to be absurdly wrong, though. Biden barely squeaked out a win. Without COVID, it wouldn't have been close - Trump would have skated to reelection. quote:but I think pretty much any of the serious candidates this cycle had a good shot even if someone in Wuhan never had an unfortunate encounter with the local wildlife. 
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Nov 9, 2020 09:31
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Fojar38 posted:This isn't a falsifiable statement. A similar statement could be made about any theoretical challenger including those further on the left. True, but the poster I was responding to said this: Still Dismal posted:A venn diagram of the people who confidently predicted Biden would never win the nomination, then confidently predicted that he would lose to Trump, and are now confidently predicting he will be terrible in office. Obviously no one can definitively foretell the future and say whether or not Biden will do a good job. But saying, "Well, you were wrong about Biden's chances of being elected, so what do you know?" is a little disingenuous when A, Biden won by a pretty thin margin, and B, he was, without a doubt, helped by COVID. Seven Hundred Bee posted:Without the influence of Klaartu, Demon Lord of the 9th circle, Donald Trump never would've survived past age of 15, therefore. Are you really meaning to suggest that COVID is a made-up thing that had no effect on this election? Because that's what it sounds like you're suggesting.
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Nov 9, 2020 20:56
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Seven Hundred Bee posted:I'm suggesting that unfalsifiable counterfactuals are not particularly useful. There is no difference in saying "Biden only won because of COVID" and "Donald Trump only exists because of his parents having sex and him surviving childhood". It doesn't matter. Donald Trump was born and Joe Biden did win, and the reason for Biden's win is far more complex than "just COVID" - but even if it was "just COVID", things are path dependent, so... who cares? I never said it was "just COVID," though. I said it was necessary for his win, which, given how close it was, it probably was necessary.
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Nov 9, 2020 21:02
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Still Dismal posted:COVID also helped incumbents all over the world! Ehhhh, but few elected incumbents all over the world mishandled COVID as catastrophically as Trump did.
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Nov 9, 2020 21:14
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punk rebel ecks posted:Parties that handled COVID badly got the boot. Those that didn't were reelected. Right, and Trump narrowly got the boot, while Republicans kept the Senate and made gains in the House. So again, it's not hard to imagine that Trump probably would have done better without COVID.
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Nov 9, 2020 21:18
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Kalit posted:A lot of that comes from people who were most likely already going to vote for Biden. But when it comes down to it, more people still rated the economy as a higher priority than the pandemic: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/21/only-24-of-trump-supporters-view-the-coronavirus-outbreak-as-a-very-important-voting-issue/ Sure, but the nature and depth of the ongoing economic downturn has been pretty dependent on the pandemic. The economy still would have been bad without the virus, but probably not "incumbent loses reelection for the first time in almost 30 years" bad.
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Nov 9, 2020 23:12
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Crumbskull posted:No, in real life I expect higher order mamallian life to be all but completely extinct by the end of this century. An interesting hypothesis, but this probably isn't the thread for it.
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Nov 10, 2020 19:15
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The Oldest Man posted:Broke: we can't make Klob the VP because she let killer cops go! I strongly doubt they'll do that for the reasons you mention here, particularly since Jones is the obvious choice. But still, yuck. At this point, if people want to argue that Biden will make police reform a priority, the burden of proof is on them. (I say that without my IK hat on; that's just my personal belief as a poster)
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Nov 10, 2020 19:22
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Byzantine posted:0. Nothing will fundamentally change. Would you delve into that a bit? I know that's a thing he said verbatim, and we're probably in complete agreement, but still, I'd like to know which things you think are important that won't fundamentally change. The Oldest Man posted:I've got a dollar on Klob because the "she was unfairly criticized for letting killer cops go BECAUSE SHE'S A WOMAN" narrative on blue MAGA twitter was really hot for a while, she's done no worse than Kamala, and making her AG would be a solid first step in following the Kasich Plan For Democrats, but even vetting her is a sign that they don't take stopping cop murder as a priority in any way. I wonder if Klob would be in a better position for AG if she had ducked out of the race earlier, like Harris did. I know the news about her not prosecuting killer cops hit after she had ended her campaign, but it was close enough to where she was still somewhat in the spotlight. If she had ducked out earlier, I wonder if that news wouldn't have hit her as hard. Marx Was A Lib posted:How hype for coups are you? Hoo boy, given Harris' ties to Silicon Valley and Elon Musk outright admitting that Big Tech loves its coups...yeah, the next four years are gonna suck for Latin America. I'm just glad MAS retook power before our own election. Majorian fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Nov 10, 2020 |
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Nov 10, 2020 20:35
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Marx Was A Lib posted:I honestly don't give enough credit to this particular gremlin - it's so easy to lose focus and tunnel-vision into the Kopmala bit that I forget it's far from the only skeleton in her closet. Yeah, and given that Prop 22 just passed in her (and my!) state, backed to the hilt by Big Tech, I'm...not optimistic about what that portends for replicating that horrific law throughout the country.
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Nov 10, 2020 21:16
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ted hitler hunter posted:What can you say about a Biden presidency that never takes place. What does this mean, exactly?
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Nov 11, 2020 09:17
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Fister Roboto posted:Worth noting then that posts like "everything is going to be great, it's like my cancer went into remission, 10/10" are also hyperbole. Nobody likes having sunshine blown up their rear end. That's very true. I think we should all endeavor to use hyperbole somewhat sparingly, no matter what we're arguing. Hyperbole, if used well, can make your argument more illustrative and vivid. I like this use of it, for example: empty whippet box posted:I am on the edge of my seat for the heroic roll out of the Biden Harris covid relief program which offers tax credits for patients who test positive three times in a hospital setting and can prove any treatments they received were due to covid and not any pre existing condition who open new businesses in historicallt disadvantaged communities within three months of recovering from covid-19. I am so excited. I am ready to build back better Everyone who knows even a little bit about the subject of Democratic health care initiatives can see it's a slightly-over-the-top caricature of means-testing. Saying that Kamala Harris is TERF, on the other hand, is A, probably inaccurate, and B, distracts from the real problem with her, which is that her horrible record w/r/t trans inmates is part of a broader pattern of her throwing vulnerable groups under the bus for her own political advantage.
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Nov 11, 2020 19:54
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GreyjoyBastard posted:I do not agree about the constructiveness of that post, there's no such thing as a constructive disagreeing response to it. The closest you can come is something like "actually i think their coronavirus response will be good", either following up with either more factual-research predictive effort than whippet box offered, or just leaving at that. The second one makes whippet box angrier and contributes not much content to the thread, the first one makes the person putting forth the effort irritated that the exchange was extremely unequal. Obviously as a mod i would prefer to encourage no-effort-met-with-effort over no-effort-met-with-no-effort but I feel like there's a third moderation choice there. Fair enough, that probably wasn't the best example I could have picked. But I think everyone should be able to grasp my point: use hyperbole as sparingly as possible, and ask yourself if it really helps your argument. Otherwise, going off on a tangent of, "Is Joe Biden REALLY a cannibal or is that just poetic license?" isn't going to help one's argument.
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Nov 12, 2020 00:23
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paternity suitor posted:I am very excited for President Biden, and you should be too! Why? Explain why you're excited, and why you think others should be excited as well. Stairmaster posted:You are all hopelessly optimistic. Same with you; why do you think people are being hopelessly optimistic?
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Nov 12, 2020 01:01
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We'll see, one way or the other. Let's hope for the best but prepare for the worst. (unlike what leftists did with Obama, which was just...prepare for the best)
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Nov 12, 2020 07:22
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