2020 Presidential Election

[Don Giovanni]

Bloomberg has dropped out!

https://apnews.com/4b7a6e2de46b8d9594a55833f8061094

Steyer (another billionaire), Kloubachar, and Buttigieg were all out too before Super Tuesday. Warren is now assessing her options. Biden and Sanders are way ahead of everybody now. I think Biden will win the nomination.

[Don Giovanni]

Warren dropped out. Biden is likely to win and I think of the candidates who ran in that field, he's the most likely to support Greece and speak out against Erdogan. Sanders too has been favorable, but he's not going to stand up to Erdogan. Trump will assuage Erdogan, much like Obama did. Note that Obama spent part of his formative early years in Muslim Indonesia and has sympathies towards their faith. Biden shares no such sympathies and sees Erdogan for exactly what he is, an unscrupulous dictator who only understands power. And the Pentagon is behind him on that.

[aek66]

ahhh, the issue that was the spark for this website.

the bat-shit crazy democrats doubling down on identity politics even after their 2016 fiasco and the goof tweeting from the white house. not much of a choice.

[aek66]

Bloomberg has dropped out!



Steyer (another billionaire), Kloubachar, and Buttigieg were all out too before Super Tuesday. Warren is now assessing her options. Biden and Sanders are way ahead of everybody now. I think Biden will win the nomination.

i watched super tuesday coverage on cnn and fox. enjoyed the cnn panel and jake tapper.

the cnn panel told us:

- if it wasn't for a black congressman from south carolina (jim clyburn), joe biden would have been finished.
- the former governor of virginia, mcauliffe, told us that african-americans are the heart and soul of the democratic party.
- van jones told us that black women 'get it', because they are burying their sons.

- the young blonde was someone who helped take down the new york state attorney general. looks like he was somewhat lecherous. then i looked up her age and there was a 27 year difference in age when they went on a date. daddy-complex or looking for some type of 'transactionary' relationship??

jake tapper told us that sexism probably played a role in warren's poor showing. i guess he forgot that hillary was the nominee only 4 years ago. warren complained that no people of color or women are left to carry on the democrats' identity politics torch.

this is why trump won in 2016 and will likely win again.

[LoneHorseman]

^^^^^
Great post, I too watched the cnn panel on super tuesday, must of been a masochist in a previous life. Agreed about the insufferable identity politics the democrats and their cohorts in the media are promoting and now Warren is going to explain to us why sexism is to blame for her pathetic campaign, when women make up 60% of all democratic primary voters. Wasn't the fact that she stated that she had Cherokee lineage to further her academic career or couldn't explain how she would pay for her version of a single payer plan, or asking a 9 year old trans kid's input on the selection of her future secretaty of education, noooo, those couldn't be the reasons why she faltered. IT WAS SEXXXXIIISSSMMM!!!!!!!!!

[Don Giovanni]

Gentlemen, well stated. Biden should take the nomination. I think both Trump and Biden will name women VPs.

Trump looks likely to win again, but Biden at least has a chance.

The problem with Bernie is his socialism. With the economy being as it has been under Trump, it will be hard for him to stand any chance of election. His ideas would win if the economy hits another major crisis. I can't see him winning any other way. Beyond that, the establishment would sooner throw him under the bus than Trump and Sanders doesn't have the will to fight the powers that be. That said, young voters heavily favor socialism and Sanders will represent a grandfather-like figure to the next generation of voters.

Identity politics is a disaster. I think it forebodes the balkanization of electoral politics. We will go from a more minority-majority to mobacracy type Democracy.

[aek66]

agree with both. the mantra that poor people shouldn't go to jail has predictably backfired - sometimes, with tragic results.

democratic mayors who have have taken immigration law into their own hands by refusing to cooperate with ICE has also backfired - again, sometimes with tragic and outrageous results.

i was never one to point fingers at the media for blatant manipulation of the news, but the usa has turned into a lebanon-light, with the media basically being propaganda arms of political parties. what's next, grass-root military arms of the political parties??

[Soprano76]

I think it is a given that the Democrats will win the popular vote, as they have in 6 of the past 7 elections. However we have an antiquated electoral college system in place, so it will be interesting to see who can win the swing states.

Thinking about Trump's term in office:
1. Economy: arguably the strongest talking point about Trump's presidency that falls apart when you realize he inherited a strong economy from his predecessor. The USA experienced a record # of months with consecutive economic growth under Obama. in fact, job growth has been slower for Trump that it was for Obama.
2. Health Care: Trump and the Republicans failed to repeal the ACA, a piece of legislation that provided coverage to Americans with pre-existing medical conditions. What's even more telling is that Republicans have yet to offer up a replacement plan.
3. Foreign Policy: America is viewed worse now than it was under Obama. Trump was laughed at while speaking to the UN and other foreign leaders were caught on mic making fun of him as well. Not to mention his impromptu retreat from Syria that destabilized the region and a deal with the Taliban that has already fallen through. I guess it's worth to mention why he got impeached, namely holding back pre-approved military aid to Ukraine in exchange for the announcement of investigations of Hunter Biden and Burisma. This was admitted by Mulvaney in the White House press room, by the way.
4. Climate change: climate change is real, and Trump has done nothing to combat the issue. Its effects are being felt today and will only worsen in the future.
5. Infrastructure: what's going on here? Nothing? Ok.
6. Coronavirus: labelled by Trump as a Chinese hoax, the COVID-19 strain of the coronavirus is spreading throughout the USA. The administration is slow to respond to this issue and will lead to more deaths. Valuing the stock market over American lives, go Trump!
7. Immigration: wall? What wall?

All this goes without mentioning his pardons of absolutely corrupt folks like Blago, Arpaio and others. Should we talk about that Russia thing too?

Democrat identity politics are not my cup of tea, but those are small peanuts when there's an incompetent narcissist with cognitive impairments on the other side. This seems to be a conservative-oriented forum, so sorry if I ruffled some feathers. However, it's pretty clear to me that Trump does not deserve another term. Biden's obvious cognitive decline is very worrying though.

[aek66]

i don't disagree on some of your points, obviously you are not for trump. i have never agreed with most republican economic talking points, but trump does deserve a bit more credit than you give him. maybe if obama did not compromise on his stimulus, obama's economy would have been stronger and you can state with certainty that trump inherited a super economy and that cooled off under trump's watch? otherwise, you sound like elizabeth warren and 2016-now has been an economic disaster, which didn't resonate with democratic voters. obviously, not true and trump's economy and wealth creation is his strongest card in an election year.

trump has also done well with china. up until the stage 1 deal, trump was ridiculed in the media and we saw article and commentary after article and commentary telling us that china would win and the usa was losing jobs and losing the tariff war. after stage 1 was accomplished, the same people told us; "well, the agreement is a give and take and each side got some of what they wanted". right. ok.

ok. ok. we need trump out so more guatemalans can illegally cross the border and pay reparations to american backs. i get it.

the alternative is chinese intellectual property theft and currency manipulation. on to important stage 2. finally, someone standing up for what actually trickles back down to americans (intellectual property and tech). hillary wanted to sign the tpp.

i also back trump's stance on immigration, legal and illegal. pandering to hispanics was good for democrats for over two decades, until court cases finally made it to the supreme court and 5-4 has been a winning number for those wanting immigration law to be observed. it's also exposed one supreme court justice who has gone public with her lament about hispanic illegals. what if a usa supreme court justice of greek descent voted on issues purely from a greek point of view??

obviously, trump is nowhere near a statesman and not even a politician. he's a CEO, a strong-man..an executive who makes decisions. what the democrats have to offer is absolutely pathetic in the sense that a trump can win the presidency and could retain the presidency.

[Don Giovanni]

The majority of states wouldn't want a union if California, New York, Texas and Florida counted for a third of the vote.

1. The economy was heading towards nearly 1% GDP growth when Trump took office. AEK66 nails the rest. Also both presidents have been papering over serious cracks that exist in the US economy, meaning we're not out of the woods from the problems that resulted in the 2008 financial crisis.
2. I don't see ACA getting repealed anytime soon. There was a time when people acted out of goodwill and charity--that's about as much a replacement plan I would want to see.
3. Trump should leave Afghanistan exactly as he did from western Syria. Just pullout. There's never going to be a "right time.' The impeachment charade was just another smear attempt to paint the president as a Russian agent/dupe. It is a charade, primarily meant to cynically impede his agenda. Also there are better reasons to impeach the president, like when he launched the missile strike against Syria without Congressional war authorization or when he murdered Soleimani.
4. Yes, the earth has warmed up, but then the carbon dioxide levels kept rising while concomitantly the temperatures didn't. Obviously the "settled" science is missing something, but then again these are the same scientists and experts who think a child should be able to choose their gender. Nor has this deterred the eschatologist who insist we only have 12 years to abandon our comfortable lives in order to start living like communal serfs. They can take their Goldman Sach's "carbon" credit scheme back to their drawing board too.
5. Democrats now have the house and they prefer to launch investigations against the president rather than figure out a compromise on things like infrastructure. You can't just blame the president on this front.
6. China did lie about the virus initially and were covering up how bad it was in order to protect their economy. That said, I do think the president has been behind the eight ball and he hasn't done a good enough job on this front.
7. He's trying. But again the US has a lot of jurists, bureaucrats, and politicians, both Republican and Democrat alike, who think we shouldn't have strong border protections and that's why he can't get it through. The president is not a dictator.

Identity politics is not small peanuts. It rules the roost in American politics now. You can't advocate a position anymore without being labelled some kind of bigot.

I agree that Trump is a problem, but you take all your talking points from corporate media and seem to think of the president as some sort of cartoon character. I hate to break it to you, but not everything he does is a failure or shortsighted, ego-maniacal act of self-perseverance and profit. He ran on ending wars, manufacturing, and preventing illegal immigrating. Those are positions every politician should hold. Unfortunately, Trump has achieve similar results to his predecessors. Nothing has really changed in America since he took office. He's just another "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" type president.

Biden is a classic politician mired by tolerable levels of corruption and controversy. The only value he has as far as I'm concerned is as it relates to Greece in foreign policy. So long as he takes a hard line with Erdogan and makes it clear that there are boundaries to what Erdogan can do in the region, he's fine by me. If he can make Trump look weak here, it might get him to get tough with Erdogan for a change. Let's hope Biden makes this campaign issue.

[Soprano76]

If California, New York, Texas and Florida have 1/3 of the nation's population then they should count as 1/3 of the overall vote. Smaller states have neither the economic nor political will to secede from the USA, either. Why should a voter in Wyoming have a proportionally greater impact than a voter in California or Texas? The electoral college is especially outdated when you take into account the overriding influence of the federal government and disproportionate populations between states in modern times.

I would ask you to refrain from implying that I am some robot that is regurgitating corporate media talking points.

1. Re the economy: the main point I am trying to make is that Trump inherited a good economy from Obama and touts it as his own doing. In reality, his economy has grown at a slower pace than Obama's with respect to job creation (https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjo.../#6a1688a46ba6). I did not once imply that the current economy is a disaster either.

2. I'm not sure what you mean by goodwill and charity. One of the major parts of the ACA was providing health coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions (cancer, heart failure, etc etc). As of Feb 2020, the ACA as a piece of legislation has a 55%/37% favorability rating (https://www.kff.org/interactive/kff-...aRange=twoYear). Republicans tried to repeal the popular ACA, failed, and have yet to come up with their own replacement healthcare plan.

3. The impeachment attempt was not a "charade." Trump and Mulvaney both admitted to it on live TV and their statements were corroborated by several witnesses. But you're right, there's plenty of other things the Democrats (+ folks like Amash and Romney) should have nailed him for. They probably only advanced 2 articles of impeachment to the Senate to keep the investigation more focused and digestible for the American public. I'm not arguing the merits of pulling out of Afghanistan, rather pointing out a treaty with terrorists was violated just a few days later. As far as the USA's international standing, well I guess this will do: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...t-in-9-charts/.

4. The Earth is warming and humans are the major cause of it. This is corroborated by several major scientific organizations. If we do not change our living habits, we will suffer major consequences as a species. Climate scientists have been getting their predictions mostly correct (https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/s...ections-right/). I should mention that the researchers studying the climate are not the same people who take care of transgender folks; for someone who decries identity politics, you sure are fixated on it!

5. There are over 300 bills passed by the Democrat controlled House that are just sitting on McConnell's desk because he refuses to bring them for a vote (https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...-dead-on-mitch). Also, the Dems proposed their own infrastructure bill a couple of months ago: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...re-plan-108801. This is a funny little website I found of how often Trump is going to his golf clubs with a comparison to Obama. This gives a nice perspective on how frequently Trump is skipping out on duties in Washington (https://trumpgolfcount.com/). A side discussion could also be had on how he is gouging the American tax payer by having his secret service pay for rooms at these resorts. So much for donating his Presidential salary!

6. I'm glad we can agree. After all, wonderful folks like Ted Cruz are now in self-quarantine after coming into contact with a COVID-19 patient.

7. I don't think open borders are a major policy position by any mainstream politician, left or right. The wall would be an expensive investment that the American taxpayer would be stuck paying and would not be an effective deterrent. I do not support open borders at all and very few in America do. What I do support, however, is legalization and a path to citizenship for the so-called "Dreamers."

I will not speak to trade deals or manufacturing jobs as I am not well read enough about those topics to form an opinion.

This long of a post with very little mention of his obvious mental decline and series of lies. Well, I'll part with this:

“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.” -- Very Stable Genius

[Don Giovanni]

You chumps banned us at Phantis and now you come running back to argue with us here? I said you have a cartoonish view of the president and it's your habit of watching MSNBC and the like that informs that childish opinion, but you're free to think I called you a robot.

1. When Trump went into office, the economy was not forecasted to grow beyond 2%. GDP growth was heading to 1% growth. He didn't inherit the great economy you think he did.
2. Ask not what you're country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Everyone wants something for nothing. That's not a good policy. And they don't have to come up with a replacement plan. We're not the Soviets. We have a market economy.
3. The impeachment effort was a charade, just like the impeachment of Bill Clinton over a blowjob was a charade. You're brainwashed!
4. The earth has warmed, but then as the carbon dioxide levels kept rising, the temperatures didn't rise with them. What explains that? And yes, the same politicians and scientists who are argue climate change is the greatest threat of our lifetime are the very same people who claim children can pick a gender. Again, you're brainwashed.
5. Rolls of toilet paper is what they've put on McConnel's desk. There are no efforts to actually the cross the party divides and negotiate bills. The Democrats prefer to think they remove the president from office and prevent his agenda wholesale. They won't give him anything and they'll keep pushing lies about the president being a Russian agent/pawn in order to achieve it.
6. I don't agree with you. You think the president has totally blown it. There is no pandemic yet and there might not be one. And all this media hype may prove be totally overblown in the end. That said, I do think it's better to be safe than sorry and the president would have been imprudent to have acted with more care earlier.
7. Of course you favor those things. It means bringing in more Democratic voters to tip elections and more people to do all the jobs you don't want to do. It's why you want to do away with the electoral college. And in the end, you'll get that and more, a broken up country when a good many states decide they have had enough. Smaller states don't have the will to leave? Only if you Bolsheviks keep up this insane conquest mentality that you can rewrite the US constitution. As far as I'm concerned, my head is already in succession mode. Got it. The sooner I can break with you people and your vision of the country, the better. You're talking to someone who favors secession. Keep your third worlds and paper tiger economy that because of the coronavirus is seeing millions lost on the stock market because practically everything is made in China.

I think Trump's unfit because he kills the second highest ranking member of Iran's government and very nearly got us into a hot war with Iran. When it comes to Iran, he's dangerous and I don't want a war with them.

[Don Giovanni]

Dow sinks 2,000 points in worst day since 2008, S&P 500 drops more than 7%

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/08/dow-...us-stress.html

Like I said before, there are inherit problems with the economy and there's nothing to actually prevent a new financial crisis if we face another major shock. I don't think it will get to be that bad, but Trump isn't crazy. The media is fueling this idea that a pandemic is inevitable. It's not.

[Soprano76]

Lol yeah dude, I'm a Bolshevik. You are literally living in a fantasy land. Also, you're so sure my thinking is heavily influenced by external forces. What about you? You're just a free thinker no doubt.

The electoral college has outlived its purpose. Why should a party who nabs a minority of the votes get a majority of the governing power? Makes no sense. BTW, the Constitution has this thing called Amendments that allows for it be changed. Nobody is trying to throw the entired thing in the garbage.

Moving the goal post with each response.. first the Dems weren't legislating any bills, then they were but those bills were "paper tigers."

If the "blue" states broke away and created their own version of the USA, the "red" states would be fucked. They rely on funding from these blue states in the first place. Not to mention where these states rank in education and healthcare, among other things.

[Don Giovanni]

The Democrats only care to pass their own agenda. They think they can get a majority in the House, the Senate and the presidency when Trump is out. They have launched investigation after investigation to bog down his administration, using lawsuits to intimidate people so they don't got to work for him. They're pulling every stop to illegitimize the president's agenda. You know damn well how disproportionally negative the media's coverage of Trump's presidency has been, but you are too brainwashed to see past any of it. To you, the president is some sort of Disney-like villain, just like how Americans see Saddam Hussein or the other dictators they topple.

At least I can support a president and then not be a total drone in support of him afterwards. In case you failed to notice, I don't support Trump anymore, but you're too delusional to see past Obama's failings and frankly you're too delusional to even recognize Trump's actual failings.

You see the problems facing Greece today? Obama is largely at fault for our current crisis. Trump hasn't helped, but it was Obama who overthrew Ghadaffi and tried to remove Assad from power. He used jihadis, al-Qaeda in Syria and ISIS, to accomplish that goal. That's a fact. That's why in Syria now Erdogan is there fighting alongside al-Qaeda in Syria. Got it chump!

And more to my point, Ghaddafi's son is allied with Hafter fighting Turkish forces in Libya. Assad is at war with Erdogan. In Egypt, Obama backed Muslim Brotherhood, a movement Erdogan backed to advanced his neo-Ottoman goals, was forced out of power by El-Sisi. Everything I just wrote in these two last paragraphs are probably complete news to you. So when I say you're brainwashed, it's because you are! You're brainwashed!