American Politics: Discuss and Debate (Page 26 of 57)

The Daily Beast has a (paywalled) article pondering why Donald Trump Jr. is so obsessed with Hunter Biden, constantly calling him a "crackhead" and accusing him of being in Vladimir Putin's pocket. The projection is obvious: Trump and Trump Jr. accuse others of that which they are guilty; Trump Jr. tweeted about Biden's sexual harassment which only serves to remind people of Trump having over 20 assault accusations. Trump Jr. claiming Putin bribed Hunter Biden only reminds people of the Mueller investigation and the Trump impeachment.

But Trump Jr. is so singularly fixated on Hunter Biden himself -- and Molly Jong-Fast at TDB suggests that Trump Jr. is jealous. His father, for all his many, many, many flaws, does not use intoxicants. Trump may eat 5 - 10 hamburgers in a meal, but he reportedly doesn't drink alcohol or use recreational drugs and looks down upon people who do, considers them weaklings and losers. In contrast, Trump Jr. is clearly intoxicated in numerous videos of his public appearances. Trump Jr. was arrested for public intoxication and was reportedly an alcoholic in college. And I'm sure that his father addressed this with his usual belittlement, abusiveness, mockery, cruelty and savagery and their relationship today is based on Trump using Trump Jr. as a surrogate and spokesperson. That's it. That's all.

Trump has no love for his son, only expedience and contempt. To be an addict is to be weak, Trump says, and I've no doubt he's said that to his son and that's why Trump attacked Hunter Biden at the debate and brought up Hunter's cocaine addiction, viewing Hunter with the same disdain Trump has for his own son. But Biden responded, "My son, like a lot of people, had a drug problem. He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him. I'm proud of my son."

Trump would never be proud of his son for battling addiction, would never maintain any love his son even if he had a addiction, didn't love his son even before the addiction. His children are props to him; he uses his daughter to distract men in business meetings, he uses his sons to repeat his own rhetoric. Jong-Fast wonders if Donald Trump Jr. is jealous that Hunter Biden could share some of his failures and still be loved by his father while Trump Jr. is unloved by his own.

CNN has statements and commentary. The White House says Trump is doing well. This simply isn’t true: Trump’s being treated with drugs to increase severely low blood oxygen and lower inflammation, drugs that also suppress the immune system and would only be prescribed if the patient were in such dire straits that they need to be kept breathing now so they can fight off the virus later. It’s bad and while I don’t care about the well being of this deranged superspreader, I care about the country and a sick US President is a problem for everyone.

**

Biden stopping any negative ads against Trump is a courtesy to a sick man. But I can’t help but think it’s also practical. Why bother to spend any more money on making the case against Trump? His lax pandemic response and flagrant disregard for safety with superspreader event upon event has put him in the hospital. Trump has put himself his place and Biden might as well put the money towards sanitizer and masks for voters.

Trump has no chance if the election is even vaguely fair.  Most models have him getting blown out.  Just about all of them have Biden at 270+ before you even get into the real battleground states (with more and more red states turning purple with each poll).

Trump can only win with funny business.  And the only funny business he can logistically pull off is based on mail-in voting.  Vote in person.  Encourage everyone you know to vote in person.  No one is predicting that the election will be over on Election Night, but our best bet for a peaceful transition is for it to be over on Election Night.  The win needs to be evident to enough republicans that Trump won't be able to do anything about it.

The key states on Nov. 3 will be Ohio and Florida, because they count ballots as they arrive, so their figures at night will be quite full.  If Biden has either of those called for him, it's over.

Trump is promoting https://www.armyfortrump.com/ which is a ridiculous moniker.  It's nothing but voter intimidation squads.  And yes, we already have a fucking Army in this county.  It's called the United States Army.

The White House is in total turmoil, the worst since probably when Reagan was shot.  You have Mark Meadows supposedly lying to reporters, and Trump is furious with him.  There are reports Trump and the SECRETARY OF DEFENSE Mark Esper have not spoken to each other in MONTHS!  MONTHS!!!  Likely since Esper threw him under the bus for the upside down Bible photo op.  Meanwhile the Vice President Mike Pence is NOT quarantining, traveling around the country doing campaigning, and intends to do a debate in Utah.  There's not a shred of common sense among them.  Pelosi continues to pass CV relief packages that McConnell won't even debate on the floor.

28 positive WH-orbit #COVID19 cases

Donald Trump
Melania Trump
Kayleigh McEnany
Hope Hicks
Kellyanne Conway
Chris Christie
Sen Mike Lee
Sen Thom Tillis
Sen Ron Johnson
Ronna McDaniel
John Jenkins
Bill Stepien
Nick Luna
1x WH jr staffer
3x reporters
11x Ohio debate staff

If I was Biden, I wouldn't debate Trump.  Covid can be the excuse.  The rules can be the excuse.  It doesn't help Biden to do it.  He's up by anywhere from 5-14 points, and that number is rising.  Trump is DOA, and only some sort of Biden gaffe can make this interesting again.  If I were Biden, I'd spend all my time in Pennsylvania.  He made big gains recently there, now up more than 6%, and there's just not a legitimate path to victory if Trump doesn't win Pennsylvania.  And instead of debate prep, I'd be working on making sure that people vote early and vote in person.  The Biden team's attention needs to be on making sure that polling places are safe - both from the virus and the Republicans.

Trump decided to tell the American people that he's going to hold the stimulus package.  Which is one of the dumbest things that I think he could've done.  More than 70% of Americans are in favor of another stimulus, and the media narrative was that the Democrats were holding it up (or at least that was most of the narrative).  Pelosi's numbers were down.  And then Trump goes out of his way to say "nope!  I'm the one holding your money."  As Nate Silver said, the economy was Trump's one way back and he's trying to knock that one off the board.

This is what's really interesting
https://news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-jr- … 13470.html

I wonder how much of this is true.  If it's true that the Trumps are massively in debt and Trump is doing some really bizarre things...I could see this being the case.  Trump is losing big, and anyone who looks at the data (any source) would know that it looks really bad for him (he's down to 18% on 538's election forecast, well below the number he was at in 2016).  I don't know if Don Jr wants his dad to stay in politics, but if Don Jr wants to go into politics, he's going to need his dad to stay popular.  And if Trump is truly only listening to Ivanka and Jared, he's going to make terrible decisions.

Report on the Kamala Harris/whatshisface debate:

Couldn't stay awake. It was probably fine. Admittedly, that's what I said about Season 4 of SLIDERS before I actually saw it.

It was a much more traditional debate in that both sides went through their talking points, nothing was learned, and no minds were changed

Pence was a talk radio host for years, so yes, he's mastered the art of communicating.  However, he interrupted and ignored the moderator most of the night.  Women judged his performance with great disdain.

Biden hasn't answered the Court question because I don't think he has decided on it.  Hell, even I haven't decided if I approve of adding justices.

This makes some sense.  I've been listening to a lot of FiveThirtyEight's political podcast recently, and they speculated that Biden should pull a "you made me do this" with the Republicans.  Saying they won't stack the court if they don't proceed with their nomination.  That 4-5 may be preferable to 7-6.  But maybe he can't say that because it would make the senate races worse.  Maybe someone like Lindsey Graham wins their race because Republicans know they can't lose the Senate and the White House.

****

It sounds like they might agree to an in-person debate for October 22.  I think that would make some sense, but if I'm Biden, I don't see the point.  He debated Trump.  His VP debated Pence.  I don't think there's a ton of room for this race to get much more lopsided than it already is.  I think there's only room for it to get closer.  There's no point in risking it.  The debates aren't adding anything to the race, and there's just the risk that Biden says something that either loses moderate voters or far left ones.

I'm sure Biden doesn't want to besmirch the process, and I'm sure he doesn't think he can ruin it.  But we're really close and Biden's both winning over new voters and strengthening his lead.

Every time I see an article about crazy people in Michigan trying to kidnap the governor, I wonder if Informant were among them.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/0 … gan-427953

Every time I see an article about people catching COVID after they went to a Trump rally without a mask or social distancing, I wonder if Informant is one of them.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/0 … ses-428425

Every time I read about poll watchers trying to intimidate voters, I wonder if Informant has enlisted among them.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/0 … ing-427008

This is probably true and that's sad.

Yeah I mistyped I guess.  I don't think he'd kidnap a governor or intimidate voters.  But I could definitely see him not social distancing and not wearing a mask at a rally.

I think we're probably worse off, conversation-wise, without someone from the other side (we're all at least left-leaning I think), but I think too far in the other direction is a bit toxic.

Voted!  Very nice to finally get to do that!

The issue isn’t left wing vs right wing. It’s about critical thinking versus cult thinking. Informant is incapable of questioning Donald Trump even when Trump is actively trying to kill him and embraces proven frauds and liars so long as they reassure him in his Republican identity. He is too invested in his cult. If he were still here, he would post falsehoods. He’d say the pandemic is a hoax. That masks don’t protect people. That superspreaders aren’t real. That people aren’t getting sick and dying. That he can deliberately get infected to become immune. That voter fraud is massively proven and people should vote twice. Even Twitter won’t tolerate that level of life threatening deceit from Trump anymore.

Transmodiar and Temporal Flux don’t identify as Democrats. They don't support Joe Biden. But they are capable of criticizing both conservative and progressive positions. Transmodiar called Biden a senile bully and Obama’s presidency a ****show and described Trump as an inept idiot. Temporal Flux called Obama’s message of hope and change “bunk” and also renounced the Republican Party after it chose Trump to represent them while still warning that imbuing all political power with Democrats is simply cult behaviour under another a blue flag instead of a red hat.

While I may disagree a little or a lot, they are exercising critical thinking. They are not closed books to new data. They amend their ideologies to match new information. They don't amend information to match their ideologies.

They might not agree with you or me, but they wouldn’t lie to us or encourage us to believe untruths that could get us or others sick or arrested for voter fraud.

Critical thinkers welcome new information and questioning. Cultists repeat and rephrase what they’ve been told by a narrow set of sources chosen by ideology rather than veracity. I may be supporting Joe Biden in this election, but after he wins, I will be as critical of him as I am of Donald Trump and if he tells me not to wear a mask during a pandemic, I'll turn against him.

Oh, I agree.  But I still like to hear the far right insanity.  Maybe because I feel like I'm immune to it.  But I think hearing the crazy helps me center myself with the sane.

Classic villain origin, I know.

Yeah this was the crux of the article I posted.  If Biden wins Florida, there's a chance he's at 270 before Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or Michigan are even counted.  And, honestly, it really isn't even that big of a stretch.  That's Biden winning Arizona (where he's up fairly big) and Florida.  Trump could win Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Georgia, *and* sweep Wisconsin/Michigan/Pennsylvania and Biden still wins.

And there are still so many paths to victory for Biden if he doesn't win Florida, but any notion of Trump pulling funny business ends if Biden gets Florida.  Which we should know election night.

(Everything that I said would also work, obviously, if Biden gets Texas - which I still view as a fair longshot - I'd agree with 538's guess that it's around 30% - but that's still higher than their prediction that Trump wins at all)

God bless you, Rob.

Current estimates are that we may see 150-160 million votes, well above the 137 million that voted in 2016.  Enthusiasm from likely voters is through the roof.  Meanwhile the Supreme Court once again stopped census takers, and the GOP proceeds with its cabal to pack the federal courts.  If those estimates remain, turnout would easily exceed 60% perhaps as high as 65%.  60% has not occurred since Kennedy/Johnson, while 65% hasn't happened since the days of Teddy Roosevelt!  I cannot possible see how that benefits Republicans nationally, as they traditionally get trounced in high turnout elections.  In fact, the % of likely voters who say that the outcome of the election is very important is higher than it's been in decades.

While I can't pretend to have a wide or comprehensive grasp of the full range of human behaviour, declaring that Trump supporters lined up for 10 hours means that all people in America who line up for 10 hours must be Trump supporters is... isn't that like saying that cars are in garages, so anyone standing in a garage is therefore a car? And why would it be a surprise that most voters you've seen personally are Trump supporters? Don't you live in a Republican state?

As for predictions, I don't see much merit in PrimaryModel.com, a model that declares Trump has a 91 per cent change of winning the presidency while also declaring, "This forecast is unconditional and final; hence not subject to any updating. It was first posted on March 2, 2020 on Twitter." Any model predicting the results of a November 2020 election and declares itself "unconditional" and "final" in March 2020 is suspicious, to put it mildly.

If we're going to take any model for predictions, it should be a model that is open to being updated based on new information based on something more current than projections finalized eight months before the election with some accounting for the pandemic, mail-in ballots, high turnout, voter suppression, electoral fraud, voter registration laws, ballot receipt laws. A model like https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 … -forecast/ which is perpetually ranking the quality of its data, cautioning that its metric could be off due to the pandemic, suspicious of convention bounces and other expectations that may not apply and open to being reworked with Biden at one point having a 67 in 100 chance of winning. And Five Thirty Eight also pointed out in 2016 that Trump was only a normal polling error behind Hillary and might actually be ahead. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/tr … d-clinton/

In the primaries, 18 million people voted for Trump, 454 thousand voted for Bill Weld. 35.7 million people voted in the Democratic primaries, 19 million of those votes for Biden, 9.6 million for Sanders, 2.8 million for Warren -- and I don't think it should be surprising that 18 million Trump supporters wanted to try to keep their unstable cult leader in place to curtail any effort from Republicans to replace him.

And it's true that Helmut Norpoth's Primary Model predicts Trump's 2020 victory and has only been 'wrong' twice since 1912, but Norpoth only started his model in 1996, so he has only ever used it in six actual elections predictively; his accuracy rate merely indicates that (a) he found a model that averaged out the results from 1912 to 1996 and (b) he was right five out of six times at predicting binary scenarios where his prediction had a 50-50 chance of being correct anyway. It's either a Democrat or Republican victory. Norpoth claims he's been predicting elections since 1912 (when he started 84 years later), so his model is inflated by 500 per cent. His model is closed to new information. And his model for predicting history may be superb, but for the future, he may as well be flipping a coin. His model isn't going to warp the laws of probability and reality.

Reality is that Trump's surprise victory in 2016 came after he'd closed the polling distance between him and Clinton to 2.7 points. That he was only a 3.3 per cent polling error from being ahead. That America disliked Hillary Clinton more than it disliked Donald Trump -- a distance Trump has since closed with his bullying persona and non-existent pandemic response and actively trying to get his own voters sick. Reality is that Trump is now in Clinton's situation; he's ahead in Republican strongholds like Texas, Iowa and Maine by a mere 3.1, 1.2 and 0.4 points respectively, a lead that's within the margin of error, tied with Biden in Georgia (!!) and Biden's leads in safe Democratic states is 183 Electoral College votes, 29 in likely Democratic states and 78 in lean Democratic states for a total of 290. Trump could win all 85 toss-up states and still be short of 270. Trump is losing.

At least, I think he is. Look, I'm not a pollster. I'm not even an American. I could be wrong.

And if I'm wrong, I will fly out to visit Temporal Flux when it's possible and buy him dinner at the Olive Garden. In addition, I will write a seventh installment of SLIDERS REBORN for EarthPrime.com. A script entitled "Redemption." Featuring Rembrandt confronting Colonel Rickman. A story which Transmodiar will be obligated to review, edit, comment on just when Transmodiar thought he was finally free of having to ever deal with SLIDERS REBORN again, possibly the most obnoxious and irritating creative project upon which he has ever been forced to labour (and he quit six times and kept coming back and lost two years of his life on it).

If Trump wins, Transmodiar will be forced to endure, at minimum, another four weeks of agonized exasperation over SLIDERS REBORN. He barely survived it in 2015 - 2016! He might end up in a mental ward this time!

And Temporal Flux will get all the pasta he can eat at Olive Garden after we've all been vaccinated.

I have to say -- while I do not subscribe to the Primary Model or the idea of silent Trump supporters, this has been absolutely fascinating because in looking up more on electoral modelling, I read a lot of informative articles. I can't pretend to understand all of it, but it was so interesting.

**

After the 2016 election, an economics professor built an election prediction model based on the Election Day weather in Bozeman, Broken Bow, Burlington, Caribou, Cody, Dover, Elkins, Fargo, and Pocatello that accurately 'predicted' every election between 1980 to 2016. As Professor Gary Smith explains: any 10 results can always be mathematically predicted perfectly by a model with nine imperfectly correlated explanatory values. That's not magic or prediction; that's a mathematician knowing the answers in advance.

Smith also notes that the Primary Model has actually been retrofitted repeatedly: prior to 1952, it used all presidential primaries. From there to 2004, it used only New Hampshire. After that, it added back South Carolina. The Primary Model can't be said to be infallible in its method if its method keeps changing. When a model is revised, Smith explains, it's because it predicted the past more accurately than it did the future.

There's another limited data model from Alan Lichtman whose 13 Keys Prediction predicted a Trump victory in 2016 and a Trump defeat in 2020 based on 13 true/false questions that has 'accurately' predicted eight elections. Professor Smith points out that Lichtman's model is utter BS as well because several of its true/false questions are largely vague to the point where the response could be subjectively true or false (Was there major policy change? Is the challenger charismatic?) and the 13 questions have been repeatedly revised, meaning it's another model that has had to be rewritten to fit the results and is hardly predicting them in advance.

Professor Arturo, I think, would look at Norpoth and Lichtman and declare that both the Primary Model and the 13 Keys Prediction are stories from the same genre; they are fairy tales cloaked in the guise of mathematics, both operating on the magic of statistics; the magic is that you can make statistics mean whatever you decide they mean. Quinn would point out that no one ever failed to solve a mathematical mystery when they started with an answer and then created the question. Wade would say the future isn't written in our models, but in our choices and actions and we can't try to skip to end of the book. Rembrandt would say he doesn't understand anything we just said, but we gotta get our butts out there and vote and we also need to bring along all our friends.

If you listen to Nate Silver talk about his model, he seems to go overboard in discussing the faults of the model itself and all of the systems that were put in place to make it as "fail-proof" as possible.  I've been listening to their politics podcast while I feed our baby, and I'm not sure which one it was...but the host asked him about how the model works.

He essentially said that if you look at the polls and trust that the polls are correct (that the data is correct, that people are giving honest-enough answers, that the sample and sample size are correct, etc) that Trump's chances are probably lower than the 13% chance that he's getting now.  The model anticipates that the race will tighten towards the end, and it anticipates that something could happen.  A vaccine could come out.  Biden could have a major gaffe or a negative October surprise.  Stuff like that.  The model is also trying to account for the idea that there could be voter suppression at historic levels, and/or that Trump could do things to "steal" the election.

But what's interesting to me is that he said that, even if Biden expanded his lead nationally and in key states, the model would almost never kick back a result much less than 5% for Trump.  Because he's admitting that the model will never be perfect enough to 100% predict no matter what the polls say.  I find that interesting.

****************

I didn't watch either town hall.  I can't imagine that such a format helped either candidate.  I'm sure Trump got more viewers and will brag about it, but it won't matter.  The viewers were either his devoted base or people watching the car wreck.

On Transmodiar's Thoughts:
That's an interesting perspective and it has much validity. Fundraising is vital to the Democratic National Convention and the Democratic Party. But I'm not sure why it wouldn't be. Without money, the party has no resources to acquire political power.

Joe Biden is not the progressive white knight many people wanted. But the Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warrens and Andrew Yangs of the world never draw the turnout needed to win them the White House. Bernie got 9 million votes in the primaries, Warren got 2.8 million and Andrew Yang got 160,231. Andrew Yang is a genius. But with 160,231 votes, Andrew Yang does not have enough voters to lead a majoritarian party.

With 160,231 votes, Andrew Yang is leading an ideological cult of strong talking points that is utterly devoid of political power and also without any money to fund their wishes. Without power and without money, the Democratic Party cannot do anything for anybody. Joe Biden, despite his uninspiring bromides, is someone that progessives, centrists and non-Trumpist conservatives can (to my astonishment) apparently tolerate. So be it.

This is not the first time you have declared that the presidency doesn't matter and that the race doesn't matter and issued your expectations of the future. Now, I don't expect you to be able to defend or uphold an opinion given four years ago nor would I find fault with you for not being precognitive.

But your worldview — which should not be discounted — has proven ill-matched to the moment. Your expectations of President Trump's America have proven wrong across the board. The United States under Trump has been unable to manage any kind of crisis whatsoever. Government has not been unable to run itself. A crazy reality show star who spent most of his life living in a blue state was not less crazy when running into the White House from enthusiasm fostered in red states and did not tone down his catastrophic, random, egotistical savagery. A demented bully did not stop himself from actively trying to kill people up to and including his own voters to satisfy his need for crowds and attention. And a desperate, terrified sham of a world leader who is running scared from 500 million in debt to foreign powers and tax evasion charges was not a "master showman" who could "run rings around Joe Biden."

A worldview should not be dismissed just because the opinion doesn't lead to psychic ability. It doesn't make your concerns unworthy of concern. I admire that you see through what you call static and observe the cycles of money and power. But I don't think what you're dismissing as static is as irrelevant as you claim given the obvious and immediate results the US Presidency and this moron in that role has had on everyone's day to day lives. Your suspicion for Democrat candidates and Democrats pursuing money is something we should all take part in every day. We should all follow the money. But I don't think we should see it as the only story.

I am sorry that Andrew Yang only got 160,231 votes. Andrew Yang is sorry he only got 160,231 votes. But he's not disengaging and dismissing the world with contempt and disdain. He is doing his part.

On the Primary Model and Campaign Finance:
You know, I think we should all be very interested in (a) how money is a factor in these campaigns and (b) how primaries reflect the ground level enthusiasm of the electorate. I don't think we should be evaluating the world or even just the election on ONLY fundraising or ONLY primary participation. I definitely don't think we should be trusting mathematical models based on these factors. But we also shouldn't pretend they are not highly relevant to the state of our planet.

On Trump's Town Hall:
Just watched Trump's entire town hall. God, what a lunatic. A pathetic, whining child incensed that a female reporter would ask him follow up questions and ask him to deny that the Democratic Party is a Satanist conspiracy. A fool saying that people shouldn't  wear masks because his personal manservants seem uncomfortable in them. A liar insisting that ballot fraud exists because it threatens his status. Completely unsuited to public service of any kind. He couldn't / wouldn't even specify if he were tested for COVID-19 before the first debate with Biden.

His contempt and indifference to the town hall participants asking him questions was palpable as he boasted that everything he did was "tremendous." It's clear he sees his job as sitting in his bedroom tweeting about all the work he isn't actually doing. That the presidency is an ivory tower of luxury he doesn't want to leave. This person couldn't run a cash register at a gas station. I think it might be time to end debates and just have reporters hammer at candidates relentlessly.

In terms of viewers: Trump's town hall got 13.5 million viewers. Biden got 14.1 million. If we need to pick a winner, it was Biden (by 4.25 per cent).

Anyway. From Biden's town hall:

Biden On Packing the Supreme Court

Biden On What He Does if He Loses:

Biden gave an empathetic, polished, gaffe-free performance. Full transcript here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics … r-BB1a4RLG

Carson City, NV Trump rally today.  Totally insane.  We need this election to END already before he's infected the whole country.

It's all about his ego, yes, he needs to be given his daily affirmation of worth.  He's THAT insecure.

http://politicaliq.com/2020/10/19/never … the-polls/

Scott Rasmussen finds 4% of the electorate is likely to be Never Trumpers supporting Biden, a percentage which reversed would result in a tie.  Further evidence that Biden's center-left "I'm Trump's opposite" strategy, that has cost him some on the fringe of the African-American/Latino vote, has picked up more than enough white college, seniors, women to win this.

Politico notes that a Trump victory is still possible. Voter suppression could work. Swing state polls could be off and results could be close enough to be contestable. It's possible for Trump to win much in the same way it's possible NBCUniversal will order Season 6 of SLIDERS -- in that such an occurrence is not likely but would not violate the laws of space and time and the restrictions of the natural world or the binds of gravity and energy.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/1 … ion-430013

I don't see how going to war with Fauci helps him in *any* way.  Isn't Fauci, while unpopular with MAGAs, mostly popular?

I just want to be crystal clear on something: Trump is a boob. I am not voting for him and I do not support him.

That said, I disagree that my comments are "ill-matched to the moment." From my perspective, I have three choices next month:

• I can vote for Trump.

• I can vote for Biden.

• I can vote for someone I ideologically align with.

Under the second term of a Trump presidency, the United States could very well implode. A Trump presidency could also be the wakeup call the Democratic Party needs to understand that the country rejects its policies and compromise candidates, and that it offers nothing to the overall health of the country as a whole.

Under a Biden presidency, the United Staes could very well "heal". Alternatively, it could also fracture further as all of the smug, entitled shitheads that permeate the Democratic Party see this as confirmation of their agenda and not a refutation of Trump's policies. (That will really calm down the alt-right turds propping up Trump.) It empowers hypocrites like Pelosi to continue their own sad business-as-usual nonsense for four years, and it destroys the chances a real progressive candidate will run on the Democrat ticket in 2024.

I'm not interested in civil war. I'm also not interested in status quo. We desperately need something to happen to move the needle on our national discourse. Biden won't do that.

Trump's behavior doesn't matter. His inability to lead in crisis or act like a sane adult does not matter. The hand-wringing on display by all of the various Democratic leadership does not matter. At the end of the day, it is ALL theater.

• Republicans fight dirty. They recognize that's what you need to do in politics. Is it ethical? Of course not. But there's no one out there to call them on their BS and fight back. The opposition party just silently adopts their tactics until the Republicans dream up new ways to shaft the system

• Democrats love the righteous indignation. It makes them money. It also makes them feel better about themselves because they can't point to Trump's failures and say, "hey, that's not us!" Except when it is, like when they prop up bad bills, or give up Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court because they figured RBG's replacement would come under a Clinton administration, or when people like Biden ram shitty legislation through Congress for decades and just ignore it ever happened during an election cycle.

• The parties benefit from the chaos. This isn't the goddamn "West Wing" - the parties aren't staffed up with noble political warriors who will do what's right when the time comes. They're filled with self-serving assholes who love it when the masses focus on stupid partisan issues.

I refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils. If that means Rome burns, so be it. As you mentioned further up in this thread, my station in life hasn't been impacted by Trump and his mind-boggling policies/actions. I still have a job, I still have a home. But I would gladly give up some of that safety if it meant this nation moved toward something that ensured basic freedoms for people. For a nation that gave one iota of a shit for the vast majority of people that are not comfortable. The federal government is not designed to care. It is designed to insulate the wealthy from everyone else. It's worked in that respect for a long time. It needs to change. That is very much of this moment.