And his position has changed and will give much more to the student than they will ever get from Trump.

And now regrets and wants to change it. But he did something wrong once, so he must be burned as a witch.

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Once? Come on. Crime bill, Iraq, there has been a lot of major issues Joe Biden has been wrong about in his career.

The argument for Biden is that he has empathy (or can act like he does). That he'll hopefully put in place competent people instead of family and grifters. This should be enough for most people against Trump. Lets not re-write history and pretend he didn't spend decades in the Senate sucking off every bank and credit card company that crossed his path.

The thing about the Crime Bill which I find interesting is that people on the left generally get quiet when it's noted that than Congressperson Bernie Sanders also voted in favor of the Crime Bill (and the Congregational Black Caucus was for it).

A big mistake but let's not pretend Biden was terribly alone in that decision on the left.

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I think it was bad that Bernie and others voted for it too.

Credit to Vic, here.

I was a bit skeptical, but this is apparently, once again, The Most Important Election Of Our Lifetime. The President himself says so.

Minnesota polls not looking as good for Biden of late and he is behind where Hillary was in battleground states at this point.

This "scare the suburbs" stuff is good and effective... in related news, people are awful

More scared of dark people than a virus, as long as they time the scare right?

SI

Just reading 538 and that they expect the election night results and polls to overwhelmingly be pro-Trump due to the mail-in vote split they are seeing polling Dems vs Republicans, no matter what the overall election result ends up being.

This isn't going to end up going well, is it? Not that it ever was, but the howling if Trump is (unofficially) over 300 EVs at midnight on election night and then Biden wins it a few days later. It's going to be an absolute shitshow and it's going to make Bush vs Gore look like child's play.

If so, I think that makes the news services analyzing the results more interesting. If we have a good handle on the % of people voting by mail, how does that affect how long they wait before calling a state? Could see a much bigger split than usual potentially between news sources in terms of when they have the confidence to do that.

2016 felt like it took a /long/ time to call some states as they were really wary about what they were seeing.

Then again, if Fox does one thing and, say, NBC does another...


SI

Ugh, that makes sense, and I'm not at all looking forward to it.

But the election is still so far away. I can't imagine Kenosha will be the thing even by the time of the first debate. In November we'll be looking back at the end of August as a golden age of peace and naivete.

I am not doubting you, but where are you seeing that?

RealClearPolitics - Election 2020 - Minnesota: Trump vs. Biden

RealClearPolitics - Top Battlegrounds (2020 vs. 2016): Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona

Biden with a good response:

Biden: 'Burning down communities is not protest' | TheHill

I think this scare the suburbs stuff tends to not work well that well against Joe Biden and "she's a Cop" Kamala Harris all that well.

Thanks for sharing. I knew things were looking less rosy for Biden over the last few weeks. I did not realize that he had dipped below Clinton's pace.

I will note that 538 still had Biden at 69% of victory (which is a bit less than July true) and that bakes in some of the lessons from 2016

2020 Election Forecast | FiveThirtyEight

Yeah, and a lot of those battleground changes on RCP are driven by polls by one particular R leaning group, who are consistently at least 5 points more red than the others (including presidential and senate races I looked at). It's possible they are ahead of the curve but far more possible it's just a poll that strongly leans one way.

Don't get me wrong. I'm driving the "polls are going to miss again and Trump will win" bus for a while now, but I don't think the doom meister is necessarily accurately representing the picture right now.

There are only 3 polls in MN since July, all by different pollsters, so it's hard to know how much of the difference is methodology and how much is real tightening. The small numbers of state polls really make it hard to know what's going on.

Re: Shy Trump Voters.

FWIW, I was walking the dog today and consciously paying attention to signs in yards/windows/etc., and my impression is that there are more Trump signs and more Biden signs than there were either Trump or Clinton signs last year.

Also, there were more non-candidate political signs (Black Lives Matter, etc.) than I have ever remembered seeing before.

The conventions are over, and we have a month before the first debate.

I hope that the high-quality pollsters get out there in a couple of weeks and give us a good pre-debate snapshot.

Biden gave a good speech today but I really think they can't keep letting Republicans drive the narrative. Can't keep talking about protests every day and having to denounce constantly.

He should get up every day and tweet the number of deaths the day before from Covid and list the death tolls in other countries. Show the world how incompetent this country is and how much preventable death is happening.

I know that obsessing over daily poll movement is not healthy.

But, man, I am obsessing over daily poll movement. And Biden keeps creeping down the 538 predictor. Point by point.

Distressing.

Hopefully you feel better today as Biden has increased a point ;).

Repeat after me:

"My life is not determined by who wins elections. My life is not determined by who wins elections. My life is not determined by who wins elections"

I still think he needs to hammer home these Covid numbers every single day. It is insane we have 1000 people dying while other countries are in single digits. I saw Iowa has more deaths a day than the entire country of Germany.

Tell that to 200,000 dead folks.

It appears Biden-Harris campaign raised more than $300 million in August, which shatters the previous record of ~$200mil in a month when Obama ran in 2008.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/u...gtype=Homepage

That should buy a lot of ads.

I find the whole campaign finance system profoundly depressing.

Millions of Americans die every year and it's not knowable how many of those 200k would have died if someone else had been President, or how many more/less would have died based on their actions/inactions on other issues. We can guess at it, but we don't really know. Meanwhile those 200k constitute less than a tenth of a percent of the population. The average person will go on living their life much like they have been regardless of who wins.

Perspective is my only point here. The election matters, elections have consequences, but society & life will go on regardless of the outcome. We aren't so fragile that a single president can break the country.

Life will go on is a pretty low bar. Right now we have 10% unemployment. 200000 dead and who knows how many with long-term health consequences. A devastated restaurant industry. Schools and colleges unable to open. Protests and riots in cities all over America. Kids are in cages if they are lucky and permanently lost and separated from their families if they aren't.

Life will go on, but lots of real people are suffering and the executive branch of the federal government plays a role in a lot of suffering.

I completely agree with JP. In terms of Covid, there would have been lots of folks impacted regardless, but a President that reacted sooner could have potentially mitigated a lot of that impact, we just don't know.

One huge reason this election is matters is the impact this President has on the social climate of America. There has never been a President in my lifetime anywhere remotely close to Trump in sowing division among the citizens he was elected to serve.

Basically, if you are not in his base, he could give two fucks about you. The presidency is a game to him and all he cares about is winning, so his massive ego can fed by his adoring masses. The way he emboldens the unstable factions on one side and infuriates those same factions on the other is just plan dangerous.

If he wins in November I fear 2020 is going to end in a much darker place than it is now.

Sure, but you have to play the game you are in, not the one you wish you were in. For months and months there has been a fear of Trump's massive warchest. Biden has seemingly powered past him.

Actually we can tell how many excess deaths happen under a President. And that number is unsurprisingly close to 200,000 for the year. For a country that spent like $7 trillion to avenge the deaths of 3,000 people, I'd consider it significant. Plus it isn't exactly slowing down.

I guess if your view is that 200,000 people dying, millions coming down with an illness (with many suffering greatly), tens of millions out of work, and kids falling behind in school is no big deal, it's tough to have a discussion. How many people need to die or see their lives affected before we can care? Is World War 2 casualties not a big deal now too?

Kennedy sure burned his career down quick.

I believe Brian meant how many deaths would have occurred under a different president during this same timeframe with COVID, ie. how many deaths would competant leadership have saved.

Thanks a bunch, "Citizens United."

We can look at every other first world country on the world and see.

Then why am in Ohio and not seeing any of these ads?

His team needs to get on this, chop chop.

I'm sure Ohio is coming. I've seen Biden ads in Georgia (though they could be national ads on CNN - which Trump also runs ads on interestingly enough).

Another point up today ;).

Basically, don't obsesses over daily poll movement :).

I hope Biden's team is spending a lot on Facebook ads. That seems to be Trump's source of strength.

Lord knows I can't open up Facebook without seeing one

SI

I'm getting plenty of Trump text messages asking my opinion on riots / China. Any way to stop them?

Say you love rioters and hate law and order. And that we should cozy up with China.

They need to find and target the "persuadables" like Trump's campaign did in 2016.

Actually we can't, because there is a wide variance between them. We don't know if it would have been the Italy plan, the Germany plan, the Belgium plan, the UK plan, the Sweden plan, the Norway plan, the Spain plan, the South Korea plan, or something else entirely that would have been followed. The calculus also has to include the excess deaths caused by economic restrictions, as uncomfortable as that is.


That's not my view and it's not what I said. The school and people out of work issue were happening to a large degree no matter who was president; those comparisons to other countries demonstrate that as downturns have happened the world over regardless of demographics, ideology, etc. The differences are only in degree. I literally said elections matter and have consequences; you quoted me saying it so I really don't understand what it is you are objecting to.

I was attempting to provide some balance vis a vis obsessing over daily polls movement in the worlds of another poster. I want Trump to be defeated. I'm not going to let politics control how I view life in general though, or afford it a place of primacy in my emotions/thoughts as compared to other aspects of life. That was, and is, my point.

Just..."a" plan. Pick a plan, any that involved doing anything or acknowledging the virus. That would have been better.

Whenever I see a Biden ad, the voice over by John Doman always throws me a bit. I'm like, oh, Rawls from The Wire is endorsing Biden.

I think when we're being compared more to the Russia plan and the India plan and the Brazil "plan", it's safe to assume we're in the bottom tier of responses.

And the calculus involving economic restrictions should definitely include how most other countries are more open than we are now because they have it down to a few isolated outbreaks rather than still having a /100K rate that's higher than most other countries as their peak even though it's "improving" here.

I know we can't double blind this with some alternate universe scope and see how a different President acts differently. But it's hard to see our response as anything but towards the bottom.

SI

Whatever deaths there may be from economic restrictions have to be small. We know the total excess deaths and we know how many of those are linked to COVID.

I've seen this getting a ton of play in conservative circles arguing that we're doing more harm than good with the restrictions.


Revolver Exclusive Study: COVID-19 Lockdowns Over 10 Times More Deadly Than Pandemic Itself - Revolver

That's fucking rich. Their argument, as I understand it, is that all of the economic consequences are the fault of government restrictions, and the result of those consequences will lead to many people dying earlier than they would have otherwise.

They also argue that dying 7 to 17 years sooner than expected, as they say is true for almost all COVID deaths, isn't something we should shut down the economy for.

And then there's the whole problem with assigning all of the blame to the government, and not even attempting to figure out what the lost years cost might be without any restrictions.

But all that's hard to explain, while more people died because of the shutdown is pretty easy to say. I have no doubt it will be coming to my Facebook page.

That site is something special.

All those countries are doing better than us. Even the ones that fucked up early on.

3 debates (1 town hall like) and 1 VP debate.

I will watch the VP debate because of Kamala, want to see her in action on the big stage. Interested in the Presidential town hall debate but not the other 2 (assume traditional format).

Joe needs to be prepped (Hunter, sexual harassment etc.), focused and hopefully get a better make up team. IMO he also needs to find a way to get under Trump's skin early somehow.

if you need to watch a debate to make a decision here, good luck.

The Trump team is upset because they didn't get their choice of moderators. Chris Wallace of FOX is the possible closest and Trump isn't a big fan of him.

If you don't think a poor Biden performance (e.g. dementia like symptoms) and a good Trump performance won't make a difference, you are kidding yourself.

But no, I don't need to watch the debates. I do enjoy a good town hall and Kamala is an unknown to me.

JFC. THERE IS NO DEMENTIA!

There is no doubt as people age they have some sort of cognitive decline.

I did not say he has dementia but as I posted somewhere else/earlier it's not clear to me the difference between senility and dementia so I can't definitely discuss either or (and probably neither can you) unless we have a panel of experts that certify one way or another (and not like the Trump gimmick).

It is absolutely fair for US public to judge for themselves in the debates if Joe's (or Trump's) amount of cognitive decline causes them concern. How candidates present themselves (e.g. can they answer questions without being confused etc.) especially in a stressful situation is a valid reason for people to view the debates ... even if one's mind is pretty much made up.

I think it would be a lot more fair if the bar were equal. In one corner we have "covfefe" and in another we have a guy who might ramble a little like grandpa because he's forgotten more about policy than most people will ever know. But totally comparable situations.

SI

Sure, Biden is getting a raw deal vs Trump in the "cognitive decline" discussion. No one in their late 70's and 80's is going to be as sharp as in their 40's and 50's.

However, Trump's cognitive decline symptoms is mixed in with his narcissism, BS, outrageous conduct, sexism, racism etc. If Biden screws up, it's because he is senile or has dementia. Because he is a pretty straight shooter (other than being an oblivious sexual harasser earlier) what else can people attribute his mistakes to.

Part of the problem is the left-wing media hasn't been successful in sticking the cognitive decline on Trump (there were so many other shiny objects to report on). The right-wing media is going to make this one of the pillars of Trump's strategy and going to pounce on it if Biden screws up somewhat often.

There is literally no evidence of dementia. It's a lie to say there is evidence. The best way for it not to be an issue is to use your eyes and ears and recognize that there is no evidence of dementia.

I'm tired of treating outright lies as savvy campaign tactics that we have no control over. Stop spreading lies and the tactic won't be so savvy. If you do spread the lies, you're a liar.

So you don't believe there is any evidence of "cognitive decline"? (vs senility or dementia which I have stated I do not have a good definition for).

Because that is what we are discussing now.

One guy asked about injecting Lysol to cure a virus.

Biden is in mental decline but come on. If people don't see Trump's brain as a bowl of pudding, then they are stupid.

Almost certainly less than the average for a man that age.

But it's a bullshit argument because you keep saying senile and dementia. You've been saying that long after you've been called out on it, so I can only assume you're comfortable lying.

Ignore button very effective guys. Just saying.

Not that effective when everyone keeps replying to him.

Truth. That would be a great feature that this board needs.

Ignore should be pretty easy to do when you have wet sticky hands already.

My response to this post
Was the below:

I can see how you believe I said Biden has dementia but my response was to why people would still want to watch debates to see how both performs onstage. The e.g. means "for example" and not i.e. "in other words"

Also, regarding being called out for using senile & dementia? I agree on senility as that is a normal progression of aging but on dementia (where I think you have the big beef on) I think you are thinking of someone else? See below from Mar 11. I think I'm the first person to use "cognitive decline".

See Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - 2020 Democratic Primaries Thread

I do think everyone believes there is something "off" (not necessarily "dementia") about Trump but when they do the calculus of the other candidate and policies, what has Trump done for me, what they have seen in the past 3.5 years etc. they don't see a pile of pudding. They see Trump being Trump and it being "normal" now because it's been going on for the past 3.5 years, we are numbed to Trump's antics and it's not "big news". This is the 38-42%.

Whereas for Biden, he has not been in the spotlight as much vs Trump. He's been stable, hasn't done anything crazy etc. So when a negative like symptoms of cognitive decline shows up, it's "big news".

Bottom-line to me. Both Biden and Trump have cognitive decline (it's inevitable). Both are getting senile (by the standard definition meaning loss of cognitive functions due to normal aging). The real question to me is not who has it more, it is does it prevent them from doing their Presidential duties.

A hypothetical scenario of a bumbling, confused Biden during the debates against a half-way decent Trump would certainly raise a concern with me. This is getting back to the original question and my answer on why people should watch all/some of the debates even if their minds are made up.


BTW - glad to reengage with you and have discussions. I think we've been doing a pretty good job of ignoring each other recently (even without an ignore button). I would like to continue other discussions but let's both of us keep it civil and not resort to direct or indirect insults. If you don't want to be constrained by this, let's continue to ignore each other.

To me, the Trump mental thing is a double-edged sword for him. On the one hand, if he's diminished that's obviously not good, but OTOH, if this is him perfectly lucid and with no issues whatsoever... I think I'm more concerned!

you act as if Trump currently performs his presidential duties

You may interpret it that way because I voice support for some of Trump's policies and I evaluate pros & cons of each, but I have consistently said I would vote for Biden.

I have voiced concerns about Biden's make up team, and also progress/degree of his senility (which my definition is normal as one ages, not dementia) but he is the best transition candidate that we have for "normalcy" and moderate policies until the next gen takes over.

Senility is not normal. Senile has a strong negative connotation. Senile isn't a medical diagnosis outside of Alzheimer's. Most people die without significant mental decline.

Worries about Biden's senility are lies, plain and simple. I doubt I get you to stop, but you should at least get called out.

You completely missed my point.

Not sure what your definition of "significant" is but most people that die in their 80's plus probably did die with significant cognitive decline.

A layman's definition of senility.

Another definition
Definition of Senile

I'm perfectly okay not using dementia and won't use senility as its not a medical term but more layman's.

Let's settle on "cognitive decline" which is normal as one ages.


Did you find a quote from me where I said Biden had dementia? I noticed you dropped it from the above accusation.

Sure, okay, np.

Sure, okay, np.

On the top bar, click search. Whn that page loads, type your user name into the box on the top right and in the box on the top left type dementia. Scroll to the bottom and click search.

That should show you all instances of you using the word dementia in your posts.

The discussion is obviously regressing with no productive end in sight. Let me know when you find me saying Biden has dementia.

USA Today poll shows 47% expect Trump to win the debates vs 41% Biden. It just drives home the line of thought that the Trump campaign has made a huge mistake in lowering expectations for Biden.

That does seem crazy. Joe has sounded real strong lately in his big-ticket appearances, while we're all still waiting for Trump to complete his first full sentence. Go figure.

Should I just rename this thread to the "2020 General Election Thread"?

Yes, Nobodyhere.

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By what measure? If you mean deaths and cases right now, then yes. But if that's your measure, it inherently absolves Trump of what happened earlier. I certainly don't think that's the proper approach. If you mean death rate over the course of the pandemic, then no. We're doing badly, but Belgium, Spain, Italy, and the UK are among those doing worse. In terms of testing we're actually pretty near the top - though as always those numbers are a poor comparison because contact tracing matters, testing regimes and standards are different, the better you do at containment the less testing is required, etc.


I don't think we know that at all. There are many factors and a lot of them overlap. Not having many deaths from the economic factors would fly in the face of research from past recessions etc. That doesn't mean that isn't true, but for example the hospitalization rate from the flu is up slightly over last year but deaths are far down. A lot of the time we don't know if someone died due to COVID or the flu. There are many categories of deaths such as these where we just plain don't know - the numbers we have are our best guess.

As I've said since pretty early on, it will be years after a effective vaccine is fully deployed until we really have as good a handle on the impact as we are going to get, and even at that point with a ton more data and analysis than we have now it will still be pretty uncertain with a lot of 'give' in the numbers. The global health care infrastructure was simply not nearly ready enough for something like this to give a better result than that. We just plain don't really know.

Your comment above was re: Excess Deaths. I get you saying some of the excess deaths may be caused by the recession etc. but I'm thinking that's a relatively small % of the excess deaths.

It's estimated to be 8-12% and there is a graphic in the article to show a big spike in April (presumably before any significant economic/recessionary impact).

With that said, the 8-12% excess deaths which most we attribute to the coronavirus doesn't seem excessive. It's definitely more deaths that we should count towards coronavirus when it's all said and done, and gives us an indication how good our tracking is. The 8-12% undercount seems acceptable/reasonable to me based on all the confusion and not having our act together earlier.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th...ted-2020-08-13

We've had a very short recession at this point. If there were tens or hundreds of thousands of extra unexplained deaths, we'd notice. It would be a tremendous shock to happen in such a short time.

One way we can measure doing a shitty job with COVID is that we never really dropped below 20000 cases a day and we decided that was good enough so now we're plateauing at 40000 cases a day. The flare ups in other western countries aren't anywhere near as bad as our daily normal.

And we're going to pass Italy in deaths per capita soon, because we're still losing 1000 people a day.

Also, as some of the more right leaning folks here like to remind us we live in a country made great and a envy of the world. That being trolled at it is true we are the most advanced and richest country likely in the history of the planet so we should be far ahead of everyone in any measure of success and leading the way for a cure which I am not sure we are.

There's no doubt the US could have done a better job. I do believe Hillary would have been better than Trump in our response but do also think there would still be a lot of miscues etc. where Hillary would also have come under a lot of criticism.

IMO "far ahead of everyone in any measure of success" is too high of a bar. However, "leading the way for a cure" is pretty fair if you account that China probably had 1-2-3 months head start (and had patient near/zero which according to WWZ movie is very important!). Looking at a list of vaccines in phase 3 clinical trials, there are 3 - UK/Sweden, China & US.

Your underlying point that US coulda/shoulda/woulda done better is fair. Where we greatly failed was leadership. Deaths may still have been relatively the same/less but the lack of competent leadership to reassure that everything possible is being done, coordinated well, helping friends and also cooperating with friends etc. is definitely a gap.

You obviously can't say what Hilllary would have done, but unlikely she wouldn't have gutted the CDC pandemic team and the playbook. That alone would have had us way ahead of the game. Then factor in all the things Trump did that were so simple for him NOT to do. Trump downplayed it for a long time, and actively fought a mask mandate. Pitted states against each other, tried to profit off the resale of PPE. Touted fake remedies, etc...all those add up to tens of thousands of deaths that likely could have been avoided.

*But can you PROVE that harmed the response* sarcasm

Hell, if we only had 30k dead in a Hillary administration, the GOP Congresspeople would be calling for hearings and how terrible the response was.

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Fixed that for you.

Literally nobody here is arguing that it didn't. The question is about how much, and even more fundamentally the appropriate level of concern about the number relative to other realities.


Certainly. I think the excess deaths is a good estimate of what we've had so far. But we don't know how long of a tail those will have - in other words, how much longer we will have excess deaths after the deployment of a vaccine. That will be an important point of information. There's also a lot of question as to how we should categorize the excess deaths we do have. Trying to nail down the current situation is like trying to predict what things will look like when we're in the endzone while standing on our own 30-yard line.