2020 Presidential Election thread

[swordfish]

[Muda69]

The Case Against Trump: Donald Trump Is an Enemy of Freedom

https://reason.com/2020/10/04/the-case-against-trump-donald-trump-is-an-enemy-of-freedom/

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We do not view Lyndon Johnson's presidency through the lens of the Texan's legendary vulgarity; the Great Society and Vietnam War loom much larger on his scorecard. Nor do we judge George Washington's generalship by the Continental Army's autumn 1776 squandering of New York—every leader of consequence has bad days or weeks in the face of unprecedented challenge.

So before assessing Donald Trump's worthiness to receive a second term, let us set aside the two cudgels wielded most often by his media and Democratic tormentors: the 45th president's polarizing personality, and his administration's scattershot response to a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Focusing on Trump's deeds, instead of words, from Inauguration Day until just before the first reported U.S. death from COVID-19 on February 29, is a clarifying, even liberating, exercise. At a time when so much of American discourse is about symbolism instead of policy, adjectives instead of nouns, feelings instead of facts, this approach waves away the toxic political fog and drills down into the bedrock of this presidency. What has the Manhattan real estate developer actually built in Washington; how has that already impacted the lives of his constituents; and what lasting changes are likely if his job performance is ratified by the voting public in November?

Working through those questions will produce different answers for everyone, but here's a preview of mine: On the broad federal issues I care about most—limiting the size and scope of government, protecting individual liberties, allowing for peaceable exchange between willing partners, and contributing to international peace and human flourishing—Trump has been not just passively suboptimal but actively malign. Rewarding his record will cement bad policy and complete the Republican Party's transformation into a vehicle for big-government nationalism that's openly suspicious of free markets and perceived enemies.

The Trillion-Dollar Tax

"Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending," economist Milton Friedman famously said during the Carter administration. "Because that's the true tax."

Under Trump's signature, even before the coronavirus, the sticker price on that annual levy was jacked up by almost $1 trillion.

The Constitution tasks Congress, not the president, with initiating all federal expenditures. The Budget Control Act of 1974 further instructs the legislature to pass a dozen specific appropriations each year by certain deadlines. The last time those deadlines were met was in 1994. This is a "broken system that Congress has created," Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) says.

Instead of budget deliberations with debates and amendments and votes, there are closed-door negotiations between House and Senate leadership that typically produce either last-minute continuing resolutions to keep the federal apparatus functioning or must-pass omnibus bills that no member has enough time to read. But if the core blame for our budgetary dysfunction rests squarely on the shoulders of those choosing to fritter away the legislative branch's prerogatives, that should not let this or any president off the hook.

Congressional terror at making recorded votes on issues of potential controversy consciously offloads decision-making responsibility onto the executive. Which means that presidents have real power to shape legislative behavior. When asked in September 2019, for example, about taking up a gun bill that had been passed by the House of Representatives, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) sounded more like a White House spokesman than the leader of a co-equal branch: "The administration is in the process of studying what they're prepared to support, if anything."

.....

Industrial Policy Making

Donald Trump in 2016 became the first GOP presidential candidate to successfully campaign on trade protectionism since Herbert Hoover. And though he doesn't have a Smoot-Hawley tariff on his ledger, the president has made consumer goods more expensive, export markets more difficult to access, and government subsidization of industrial sectors more likely, both here and abroad.

Republicans during the Obama presidency made great hay, and rightly so, over the $11.3 billion the federal government lost in its post–financial crisis takeover and restructuring of General Motors. Trump's trade wars have topped that number three years running on agriculture bailouts alone—$12 billion to compensate for the retaliatory clampdowns on export-market access in 2018, $16 billion in 2019, and $19 billion in 2020 pre-COVID.

"We now have a huge $20 billion-plus farm subsidy program that most experts are worried is never going to disappear," says trade lawyer and Cato Institute analyst Scott Lincicome. "There's nothing so permanent as a temporary government program. That old Milton Friedman line is certainly true in the case of farm subsidies."

The president has expanded the latitude for his successors and America's trade partners alike to use bogus justifications for erecting tariffs. In March 2018, Trump exercised the little-used Section 232 national security exemption to the 1962 Trade Expansion Act in order to enact a 25 percent tariff on imported steel and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum. This despite the fact that his own military rejected the security argument, that six of the top 10 foreign suppliers of steel are NATO allies, and that two months later the president himself tweeted that the tariffs were in response to a Canadian tariff on dairy products.

.....

Immigration Cruelty

On his eighth day in office, Trump signed an executive order asserting that "whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate."

First up for suspension were all travelers—including, during the first 48 hours, a half-million legal U.S. permanent residents—from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen, plus any refugee from anywhere on earth. College students, green-card holders, and people who had finally gained admission after years of waiting for permission boarded flights under one set of conditions, only to discover upon landing in an American city that the rulebook had changed and they had to turn back. The move caused chaos and anguish at airports and in immigrant communities all over the country.

The travel ban was challenged and rewritten several times, but in 2018's 5–4 Trump v. Hawaii decision, the Supreme Court codified the chief executive's power to select which foreigners can and cannot enter the country, including based on factors (such as religion or political beliefs) that if applied to legal U.S. residents would be deemed unconstitutional.

.....

Crisis Management

In considering Trump's presidency through February 2020, it is fair to ask what he did to prepare for a crisis such as the one now crippling the country. Because no matter what or when or how, the crisis always comes.

Here the president's erratic temperament comes into play. He has proven an alienating figure in the international arena, repeatedly insulting America's traditional allies while cultivating a more dodgy and less powerful band of cronies in places like Hungary and Saudi Arabia. Pandemics require urgent global cooperation; instead the president has spent precious time dubbing COVID-19 the "China virus" and doubling down on supply chain–damaging trade wars.

"Let's face it—we've pissed off almost every other country in the world at a time when global collaboration for a vaccine or a cure is most needed," Lincicome says. "And that type of action has consequences. If a vaccine is developed outside of the United States, and it's developed in a country with which we've had pretty hostile trade and economic relations, will Americans be disadvantaged in terms of access?"

.....

Republican voters will flatter themselves this fall by imagining that they're striking a blow against socialism and doddering old men. And it's true: The Democrat in this race looks a few cards short of a full deck while sitting atop a party desperate to fulfill generations' worth of big-government fantasies.

But we don't need to conjure up an erratic authoritarian to fight off. He's sitting right there in the Oval Office.

Indeed he is.

 

[swordfish]

This is a "broken system that Congress has created," Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) says.

Which is why this country desperately needs term limits for both legislative houses......

[DanteEstonia]

9 hours ago, swordfish said:

This is a "broken system that Congress has created," Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) says.

Which is why this country desperately needs term limits for both legislative houses......

... among other things. 

[psaboy]

On 10/2/2020 at 4:23 PM, swordfish said:

The 2020 election is Americans' vs Democrats. I'm thinking the silent majority is bigger than most know. 

[Muda69]

Voter fraud is rare. 2 Indiana cases demonstrate how unusual it is.

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/06/voter-fraud-indiana-cases-show-rarity-voter-fraud/3586956001/

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Experts say visions of corrupt political party bosses plotting to steal elections still persist in American culture, making claims of widespread voter fraud easier for some to believe, despite its rarity.

And as millions of voters plan to cast their ballots by mail amid the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump has repeatedly fought to discredit the practice, claiming vote-by-mail is ripe for fraud. 

His claims have been routinely debunked or deemed half-truths, but many voters don't believe the experts. According to a Pew Research Center poll published earlier this month, 25% of adults say voter fraud has been a "major problem" in voting by mail in presidential elections, and 20% weren't sure. 

Election experts told IndyStar widespread voter fraud is a myth, and available data supports that. Here's what else we learned, including what two Indiana examples show about the likelihood of voter fraud impacting a presidential election. 

...

All three experts who spoke to IndyStar said voter fraud is rare. Marjorie Hershey, a political science professor at Indiana University Bloomington and author of political textbooks, said voter fraud has been studied for 80 years, with little evidence of widespread problems. 

"So these are really partisan complaints, not real complaints," Hershey said.

Hershey noted a number of security measures, including ID requirements for in-person voting and steps like signature matching for mail-in ballots. In Indiana, bi-partisan teams review signatures, and ballots are held unopened in a secure room until Election Day. 

Lorraine Minnite, an associate professor of public policy at Rutgers University and author of "The Myth of Voter Fraud," said she agrees with FBI Director Christopher Wray who recently testified that there is no historical evidence of any "coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election."

Hershey and Gerald Wright, chair of Indiana University's Department of Political Science, both referenced the days when corrupt politicians would stuff the ballot box and, as Wright said, "count the graveyards."

"That’s much harder these days," Wright said. "Citizens won't put up with it and it's pretty hard to hide." 

...

The Indiana Secretary of State's office does not track voter fraud cases, and the Indiana attorney general's office directed IndyStar to the secretary of state for voter fraud data. Locally, the Marion County Prosecutor's Office said no voter fraud cases have been prosecuted since 2008, though there was one case of voter registration fraud in which 12 people were charged.

Two databases give some insight into the frequency of voter fraud in Indiana: the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and News21, a national reporting initiative of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Neither database is exhaustive. 

According to the Heritage database, there were at least 43 instances of fraud between 2003 and 2017 that resulted in criminal convictions. The News21 database counted 62 voter fraud cases between 2000 and 2012 and included pending cases.

For perspective, more than 2.5 million votes were cast in Indiana alone in the 2008 presidential election alone.

Thirty of the 43 instances listed in the Heritage database are connected to a single case: the 2003 East Chicago Democratic mayoral primary.

....

 

[swordfish]

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-joe-biden-black-woman-stocking-shelves-covid-1536577

"And they say, 'Well, why in the hell would you say that Biden? You just talked about all these difficulties.' Well, I'll tell you why. Because the American public, the blinders have been taken off. They've all of a sudden seen a hell of a lot clearer.

"They're saying, 'Jeez, the reason I was able to stay sequestered in my home is because some Black woman was able to stack the grocery shelf. Or I got a young Hispanic out there, these DREAMers are out there, 60,000 of them acting as first responders and nurses and docs'," he said.

Rating: Mostly true

It is true that Joe Biden said that quote, but the viral clip of the full speech removes important context and falsely implies the former vice president made racially insensitive remarks.

So now Newsweek is a "Fact Checker" for the former Senator and Vice President?  They get to decide what is "racially insensitive" or not?  In the exact same context of these statements, if the President had uttered those words would they have had the same conclusion?

 

 

 

[TheStatGuy]

20 hours ago, psaboy said:

The 2020 election is Americans' vs Democrats. I'm thinking the silent majority is bigger than most know. 

I'm a Democrat and I was born in America and have lived here my whole live. So.. Your point is invalid. 

Edited October 6, 2020 by TheStatGuy

[TheStatGuy]

On 10/2/2020 at 4:23 PM, swordfish said:

At the moment, Biden is teaching a master class on letting your opponent's candidacy self-destruct. Its so great to see. 

[Muda69]

13 hours ago, TheStatGuy said:

I'm a Democrat and I was born in America and have lived here my whole live. So.. Your point is invalid. 

Being an American and a Democrat are two different things.  You "point" makes little sense.

Have you been a Democrat your entire life?

 

[Muda69]

The VP Debate Is Mike Pence’s Final Audition for 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/vice-presidential-debate-mike-pence-final-audition-for-2024/

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...

On Wednesday night, Pence will once again go to bat for Trump in a debate with the woman vying for Pence’s job, California senator Kamala Harris. As of Tuesday morning, the Trump campaign’s prognosis is bleak. The RealClearPolitics average has Biden up by a little more than nine points. FiveThirtyEight’s pegs it at just under nine. The latter has him up in Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, and Ohio, and up by six or more points in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Trump won all seven of those states in 2016; he won Ohio by more than eight. Moreover, there exists a gap in favorability between Biden and Trump that will make it much more difficult for the president to play catch-up the way he did with Hillary Clinton. At the moment, Biden is at +3.3 while Trump sits at -13.2.

 

Because of the long odds Trump-Pence 2020 faces, Pence may be approaching the vice-presidential debate more worried about laying the groundwork for Pence 2024. It’s no secret that Pence harbors ambitions of occupying the Oval Office one day, and typically the VP debate’s effects on the larger campaign are negligible. If there’s a comeback to be made, it will depend on the strength of a much better and more disciplined effort from Trump, as well as a devastating series of miscalculations from the Biden campaign. On the other hand, how Pence performs could be extremely important for his own prospects four years from now. In 2016, 37 million Americans tuned in to watch Pence and Virginia senator Tim Kaine’s bout. That number should be higher this year, given the age and health concerns at the top of both tickets.

2024 speculation commenced long ago — four Republicans are eyeing a run in Florida alone — and Pence doesn’t fit as cleanly into a “lane” as many of the other candidates do. Josh Hawley, Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton, and Marco Rubio will all likely be running in what could be called the refined-populist lane. Ted Cruz, Ben Sasse, and Nikki Haley, as well as Rick Scott and Tim Scott will probably run more traditional, fusionist campaigns. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will throw his hat in the ring as well as a potential Trump heir. Tucker Carlson, should he run, will do the same. If, God forbid, Donald Trump Jr. wants to give it a go, his name alone will make for a strong claim to that title as well.

As Trump’s vice president, Pence would seemingly fall into the last category, but he is the least Trumpy in affect of any of them. His politics prior to his association with Trump would suggest that Pence would join those running as fusionists. But that’s the group most prone to seeing association with Trump as a drawback. Pence finds himself straddling a solid yellow line between two very different lanes. Wednesday may give us a clue as to which he plans on merging in to.

Make no mistake, Pence will be effusive in his praise for Trump — the man and the administration — at the debate. He may even carry greetings or a message from his friend at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But there will be more subtle ways by which Pence could show his hand. Will the message he delivers be focused chiefly on the president or the accomplishments of his administration? How much will we hear about Trump’s stamina, courage, and convictions? Will Pence speak of Trump’s “broad-shoulders” and “big heart,” as he has in the past? Or will it be a results-oriented presentation, and if so, what results will Pence highlight: the more Trump-centric ones such as the USMCA and declining crossings at the border, or typical GOP fare such as tax cuts and the appointment of originalists to the federal judiciary?

How well Pence performs under the lights will of course also be important. If he does become a lame duck on November 3, this will have been his final chance to showcase his abilities prior to the 2024 primaries. Should Pence embarrass Kamala Harris in front of tens of millions of people, GOP voters might be much more likely to embrace Pence — he may even enter the race as the front-runner. If he can’t soundly defeat the mistake-prone Harris, what is the case for Pence, a capable campaigner who nevertheless lacks the star power of a Haley, Rubio, Carlson, or Tim Scott, and who will begin his campaign without an obvious lane?

Wednesday’s debate is not without stakes for 2020, but it likely matters even more for 2024. In a December 2019 poll measuring support for potential GOP candidates, Mike Pence came out on top with 40 percent of respondents indicating that he would be their first choice. That’s certainly welcome news for the VP, who benefits from his accumulated Trump-world cred and from evangelical support. But he assuredly loses sleep remembering that Jeb Bush led the Republican pack as late as June 2015 before dropping out after the South Carolina primary with no top-three finishes. Pence’s blandness and lack of solid footing in any one lane no doubt worry him further. To establish himself as the clear front-runner and to attract the early attention of voters and donors, Pence needs a solid, if not a dominant performance. Without one, his most treasured friendship may not have been worth it all.

I may watch this debate.  There shouldn't be the foolishness that occurred in last week's Presidential debate.

And I wonder should Mr. Trump lose in November what will Mr. Pence do for the next four years?  Campaign?

  

[swordfish]

[Muda69]

Mike Pence Showed Trump How TV Debates Are Won

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mike-pence-showed-trump-how-tv-debates-are-won/

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At some point during last night’s vice presidential debate, perhaps about 20 minutes in, it became clear that Susan Page wasn’t moderating the debate. Mike Pence was. 

He obviously knows how to use this medium well. Hardly anyone remembers the moderators’ questions after these debates are over. The only clips that have anything more than an evening-long afterlife are those of the candidates’ soliloquies. The whole point of televised debates is to generate a few of these clips and then fire them around social media and the news networks like a pinball. 

Vice President Pence, moreover, generated his own string of debate highlights last night more or less entirely on his own terms. When asked a question, he used the first portion of his time to reply to whatever Kamala Harris had just said before moving on to address the question at hand. Once he ran out of time, he often just kept speaking, though not in the whiny, aggrieved, confrontational manner in which the president treated Chris Wallace last week. Pence simply killed the moderator’s objections with polite deference while continuing to make his point all the while until Page’s protestations ceased. 

He would not be rushed and he would not be herded or corralled by the moderator. On the one occasion on which Page put her foot down and forced the debate on to the next topic, the vice president simply waited his turn and then continued where he left off.  Throughout the debate, he managed to provide himself with enough time to say everything he wanted in response to Harris and get off most of his own points as well. For all intents and purposes, he was the timekeeper. 

Of course, Pence was also helped by the fact that whenever Harris addressed him directly, she came across as a haranguing second-grade school teacher: “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking. I’m speaking. Okay?” Self-control is not an attribute that American voters have come to associate with the Trump administration, but the vice president showed such a superabundance of it last night that it seemed to spill over out of his own person and envelop the entire debate. 

It remains the case, however, as my colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty has pointed out, that none of this matters now. Trump’s monumental personal shortcomings have already vandalized his own chances at re-election beyond repair. But it was still edifying to see Pence treat a television debate the way it deserves to be treated. These are fundamentally unserious affairs. No one can learn anything consequential about either party’s platform in ten-minute segments split into two-minute subsections. How voters are supposed to get a firm grasp on each party’s foreign policy on China in a shorter time than it takes to listen to Bohemian Rhapsody once through is beyond me. When faced with constraints as absurd as these, the best thing a politician can do is precisely what the vice president did: Treat them with polite, statesmanlike contempt and try to orchestrate as many useful soundbites for himself as possible. Until we can get Joe Rogan involved, this, I’m afraid, is the best we can hope for.  

 

On a final note, it seems increasingly clear that Republicans have a lot to look forward to if Harris wins the Democratic nomination in 2024. It’s not for nothing that the Biden campaign has been hiding her away under lock and key until last night. She inspires no affection, trust, or sympathy whatsoever. It’s not at all clear that she can past the instinctive “I like this person” test in many places across the country outside of the Bay Area. You’d think that the Democrats might have been able to see that coming given how she performed in her own party’s primary, but alas. 

Even more concerning from a Democratic perspective is that Mike Pence isn’t anywhere near the top of the GOP’s talent pool in terms of raw political talent. In spite of this, he still managed to beat Harris handily last night. A presidential debate in four years’ time between Kamala Harris and, say, Tim Scott, could turn out very badly indeed for the Democrats. 

 

[Muda69]

Media buzz over fly is proof Pence won debate, critics say: https://www.foxnews.com/media/pence-debate-fly-head

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he mainstream media was abuzz over a fly on Wednesday night.

The pesky, now-viral insect landed on Vice President Mike Pence's head during this election's only vice presidential debate and some pundits made huge leaps to tie the bug to the debate’s results.

CBS News’ Gayle King managed to link the fly to Pence’s comments on systemic racism.

“I think it’s very interesting timing that a fly would land on Mike Pence’s head at that particular time when he said that there really wasn’t systemic racism,” King said. “You saw the fly basically going, ‘Say what?’...a memorable moment.”

Over on MSNBC, Steve Schmidt took it a step further when he snarked the fly is “the mark of the devil” during a conversation with host Ari Melber.

“Not for nothing, I don’t think it’s ever a good sign when a fly lands on your head for two minutes. That’s a sign all through history of sin and historically, biblically... it’s only safe to say this, Ari, after midnight but a fly, he who commands the fly has been seen historically as the mark of the devil,” Schmidt said with a straight face.

Melber laughed and asked if he was joking.

“The fly could have landed on anyone,” Melber pointed out.

“Yes, but it didn’t. It landed on Mike Pence and it says something karmic about the status of the campaign as it implodes,” Schmidt maintained.

Melber then joked that he couldn’t confirm if Schmidt’s "moral reckoning” theory about the fly connoting evil is true.

Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor said liberal pundits are focusing on the fly because their preferred candidate lost.

“The best proof that Pence won the debate is how much the major media are talking about the damn fly. These so-called serious journalists demand we focus on policy and then when their candidate gets crushed on TV they want to talk about nonsense,” Gainor told Fox News.

“Journalists have always snarked among themselves about news events. But now they turn that into news stories and call it analysis,” Gainor added. “It's not analysis, it's like a 10-year-old’s vision of what journalism should be.”

Gainor isn't the only critic who feels liberal pundits have an agenda by focusing on the insect.

“Pence won decisively. That's why everyone wants to talk about the fly,” Spectator USA’s Amber Athey wrote.

"Pence dismantled Harris. So the entire media will talk about pinkeye and a rogue fly," Ben Shapiro added.

But the media aren’t the only ones focused on the fly, as even Joe Biden tweeted, "Pitch in $5 to help this campaign fly," along with the link "flywillvote.com" which redirected to iwillvote.com.

Typical that Mr. Biden would use a fly to try and make a quick buck or two.

 

[Muda69]

Jo Jorgensen Beating the Polling Spread in 4 States; Each Voted for Trump in 2016

https://reason.com/2020/10/07/jo-jorgensen-beating-the-polling-spread-in-4-states-each-voted-for-trump-in-2016/

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Four weeks before Election Day, third-party presidential candidates continue to lag in the polls compared to the spike year of 2016, when 5.7 percent of the electorate went nontraditional for POTUS. In the RealClearPolitics average of the last five national polls, Libertarian Jo Jorgensen sits at just 2 percent, while the Green Party's Howie Hawkins is at a temporarily high 1.4 percent that will revert closer to 1 once the next poll rolls over. (Also, if Hawkins, in the face of near-fanatical Democratic voter motivation this year, tops 2016 nominee Jill Stein's 1.1 percent, I will eat a Dodgers hat on live television.)

Still, there remains potential yet for Libertarians and even Greens to be labeled "spoilers" depending on how this high-intensity election plays out. Jorgensen is polling higher than the gap between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden in four key states, each of which Trump won in 2016: Ohio and North Carolina, where Biden currently leads, and Iowa and Georgia, where the incumbent retains a tiny advantage.

Here are those state races, ranked by the percentage-point distance between the third-party candidate and the margin between the top two.

1) Ohio, +2.3

Polling percentages: Biden 45.5, Trump 44.5, Jorgensen 3.3, Hawkins 0.8, other/not voting/undecided 6.5 (four polls)

Forecast: Rated a toss-up by 12 out of 14 prognosticators, with the other two leaning Trump. "Ohio looked like a red state a year ago," noted Cleveland.com last week. "Heading into the presidential debate, it's clearly a toss-up."

2016 results: Trump 51.7, Hillary Clinton 43.6, Gary Johnson 3.2, Jill Stein 0.8, Richard Duncan 0.4

2) North Carolina, +1.0 

Polling percentages: Biden 45.8, Trump 44.6, Jorgensen 2.0, Hawkins 0.6, Constitution Party nominee Don Blankenship 0.4 (in eight polls), other/not voting/undecided 6.2 (17 polls)

Forecast: 13/14 toss-up, with one leaning Biden. "Most every political veteran in North Carolina, Democrat or Republican, is expecting a close race," reported The New York Times on September 26. "Each of the last three presidential races in the state has been decided by less than four percentage points….[And] a number of people in the state have already voted: Absentee ballots began going out to the state's voters three weeks ago."

2016 results: Trump 49.8, Clinton 46.2, Johnson 2.7, Stein 0.3

3) Iowa, +1.0

Polling percentages: Trump 45.8, Biden 44.8, Jorgensen 2.0, Hawkins 0.7 (in 3 polls), other/not voting/undecided 6.8 (five polls)

Forecast: 9/14 rate it a toss-up, with five leaning Trump. Reports CNN this week: "Trump's campaign canceled its planned television advertising in Iowa and Ohio this week, focusing its spending on states where Trump is behind even as polls show he is neck-and-neck with Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the two Midwestern states."

2016 results: Trump 51.2, Clinton 41.7, Johnson 3.8, Evan McMullin 0.8, Stein 0.7, Darrell Castle (Constitution Party) 0.3, Lynn Kahn (New Independent) 0.1, Dan Vacek (Legal Marijuana Now) 0.1

 

4) Georgia, +0.6

Polling percentages: Trump 46.6, Biden 45.1, Jorgensen 2.1, Hawkins 1.0, other/not voting/undecided 5.6 (11 polls, four with Hawkins)

Forecast: 12/14 toss-up, with two leaning Trump. "In a wild 2020 election shaped by pandemic, protests and polarizing politics," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote last week, "suburban women could well determine the fate of Georgia's presidential race, two U.S. Senate elections and down-ballot contests. And both parties have sharpened their pitches to win over the once-reliably Republican bloc."

2016 results: Trump 50.4, Clinton 45.4, Johnson 3.0, Evan McMullin 0.3

Bonus state: Alaska, +/- ?

That's a question mark because for some foolish reason POLLSTERS AREN'T INCLUDING THIRD-PARTY CANDIDATES IN ALASKA, NOT EVEN ONCE. This is a particularly unwise tactic in the Last Frontier since voters there are as likely as any in the union to vote against the grain—a combined 12.2 percent for non-Dems/Repubs in 2016. Ralph Nader got 10.1 percent of the vote there in 2000; Ross Perot got 28.4 percent of the vote in 1992.

Forecast: 13/14 prognosticators peg this race as likely or leaning Republican, and fair enough—Alaska has voted for the last 13 consecutive GOP presidential nominees, and by at least 14 percentage points for the past six. "Alaska's values are the values of the Libertarian Party," Jorgensen told the Juneau Empire last month. "We believe in the individual, we believe that people have the right to make their own decisions and we shouldn't be bossed around by the people in Washington. The federal government is too big, too nosy, too, bossy and the worst part is, they usually end up hurting the very people they're trying to help."

2016 results: Trump 51.3, Clinton 36.6, Johnson 5.9, Stein 1.8, Castle 1.2, Reform Party nominee Rocky De La Fuente 0.4

 

[Muda69]

Trump Calls on Biden and Obama to Be Charged With Crimes, Says Bill Barr Will Go Down in History as ‘Sad’ if Not

https://www.mediaite.com/news/trump-calls-on-biden-and-obama-to-be-charged-with-crimes-says-bill-barr-will-go-down-in-history-as-sad-if-not/

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President Donald Trump is calling for former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be charged with crimes — and said his Attorney General, Bill Barr, will go down in history as “sad” if he fails to bring charges.

In an interview on Fox Business Thursday, the president railed about about 1,000 pages of documents declassified by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe pertaining to his probe on the origins of the Russia investigation. The declassified documents were previously rejected by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, with Democrats bashing the material as Russian disinformation. DNI Ratcliffe said that the unverified documents showed Clinton personally tried to “stir up a scandal” against Trump by “tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee,” and that Obama was aware of her actions.

Trump, in the interview, called on his attorney general to indict every presidential nominee from his opposing political party since 2008.

“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes — the greatest political crime in history of our country — then we’re going to get little satisfaction,” Trump said. He added, “And that includes Obama, and that includes Biden.”

...

Sounds like Mr. Trump is getting pretty desperate in the last weeks of the campaign.

 

[Muda69]

Why Can't They Both Lose?

https://reason.com/2020/10/12/why-cant-they-both-lose/

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They say if you don't vote you can't complain. They're wrong. Complaining is prior to voting. It is deeper and more powerful than voting. It is the original act of politics. Before there was democracy, there was sitting around the campfire complaining about the way the headman allocated the shares of mastodon meat. Bellyaching about the boss is more than a political right. It is a human right.

And so, in Reason's 2020 election issue, we are here to complain. The candidates from the major parties are subpar. They display troubling authoritarian tendencies. Their records in office—one long, one short—are underwhelming and frequently self-contradictory. Their actions consistently fail to match their rhetoric. If they agree on one thing, it is that they have the right, and perhaps even the obligation, to tell you what to do in the bedroom and in the boardroom, in the streets and in the sheets. If they agree on a second thing, it is the necessity of spending ever-larger sums of taxed and borrowed money in pursuit of ever-vaguer goals. They helm parties that are similarly compromised and hypocritical.

Even if, by some miracle, you fully agreed with a set of principles and plans as articulated by one of the candidates in a particular campaign speech or policy paper, you could not reasonably have a shred of confidence that those principles would be carried through into consistent governance—something President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have repeatedly demonstrated.

The fact that many voters in 2020 believe they must nonetheless actively support one of these two deeply flawed characters is a testament to the brokenness of the system that produced them. The fact that those voters feel like they only have two choices in the first place is a criminal failing in a country with such blooming, buzzing diversity in our commercial, social, and cultural lives.

Every presidential election of my lifetime so far has been "the most important election of my lifetime." If you squint, that might even be true this time around. The executive grows more powerful with each passing term, and there's no denying that 2020 has asked a lot of the occupant of the Oval Office. But it doesn't follow logically that, because an election is important, you must hold your nose and go out of your way to vote for the candidate you merely hate the least.

Replacing your toilet is an important choice, and you'd be absolutely furious if your plumber told you that, despite the existence of numerous makes and models, due to the way the toilet selection system works you must pick right now between one that leaks and another that has a broken seat. The more fundamental something is, the angrier and more vocal you should be at being asked to choose between bad options. You do not have a moral obligation to talk yourself into the idea that a damp bathroom floor is OK, no matter what people are saying in your social media feeds or on your family phone calls.

We understand that many of our readers will be voting for one of the two major-party candidates, and may even feel some connection or loyalty to that candidate or the party he represents. We understand that those readers may find the notion of giving equal airtime to the failures of each candidate an abhorrent exercise in false equivalency and whataboutism. We disagree. We think the records of these two candidates are troubling enough that both deserve to be laid out in the weeks before the election. Reason is not here to attack your tribe or shame you for the way you choose to vote (or not vote). But we hope you agree that it would be preferable to live in a world where the stakes of any given election are lower and where there are more electorally viable tribes.

Here are a few things we are not saying in this issue of Reason:

We are not saying the outcome of this election doesn't matter. Elections matter. The next four years will be different in important ways for many, many people depending on who is president. Different wars will be waged. Different taxes will be levied. Different laws will be passed. Different judges will be appointed. Different bureaucracies will be empowered. Different research will be funded. Elections matter. That's why we're so disappointed at the low quality of the available options.

We are not telling you how to vote. As we do every four years, we will ask Reason staffers to share who they're voting for in the presidential contest and post the results online in October. We do this because we think it's important for people who subscribe to our magazine and read our website and watch our videos and listen to our podcasts to know where our writers and editors and producers are coming from. More publications should consider this form of disclosure, especially those who claim to primarily be purveyors of fact and not opinion or analysis. But telling you how we vote is a very different thing from telling you how you should vote.

We are not telling you whether to vote third-party. In this issue, we tackled the candidacies of the two people who could plausibly win the presidency. We know Libertarian Party nominee Jo Jorgensen exists. We have covered her campaign and will continue to do so. But the vast majority of the country views this as a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. There are many structural reasons that it's hard for Jorgensen (or Kanye West or the Green Party's Howie Hawkins, for that matter) to get purchase in American politics, from the difficulty of ballot access in the 50 states to collusion between the two parties that keeps Libertarians and others off the debate stage. Those barriers should be removed, but acknowledging that they exist is not an attack on third parties.

Changing the American political system is hard and depends on many variables outside of your control. Reason can and will come back to the technical questions of reforms that might mean American voters someday have more and better choices. But as a chaser to the rap sheets of the major-party candidates, we wanted to offer you something more immediately useful in this issue: a case for changing your relationship to politics instead. Philosopher Christopher Freiman argues that simply choosing not to engage as much with politics would be better not only for you but for society as a whole. Freiman describes the ways in which our partisan identities are swallowing the rest of our identities, a doubly bad sign when partisan identities are increasingly built around cults of personality and the personalities are neither principled nor predictable.

At the beginning of 2021, barring one last wildcard from 2020, one of the major-party candidates will be inaugurated as president. They can't both lose. Your choices at the ballot box are limited and limiting. But the world outside of politics—even in the constrained circumstances of 2020—remains varied, interesting, and worthy of your attention.

So complain about your choices, think about ways to get better ones next time, recognize that you owe nothing to the two men at the top of the tickets or the parties that put them there, and then seriously consider turning it all off and doing something pleasant and useful instead.

 

[TheStatGuy]

On 10/7/2020 at 8:13 AM, Muda69 said:

Being an American and a Democrat are two different things.  You "point" makes little sense.

Have you been a Democrat your entire life?

 

You have been talking to DT too much. 

My point is clearly valid. 

I'm an American and I'm a democrat. 

He said this is America vs Democrats. He is implying that me and other Democrats aren't americans. 

Get better muda. 

[Muda69]

35 minutes ago, TheStatGuy said:

You have been talking to DT too much. 

My point is clearly valid. 

I'm an American and I'm a democrat. 

He said this is America vs Democrats. He is implying that me and other Democrats aren't americans. 

Get better muda. 

That depends on your point of view, and your definition of "American".

Members of the uni-party like yourself just want to grow the size of and scope of government until it controls virtually everything, along with a national debt that will cripple the futures of our children and grandchildren. 

 

[Muda69]

No, Joe Biden, Cops Can't Just Shoot People in the Leg

https://reason.com/2020/10/15/joe-biden-townhall-cops-shoot-in-the-leg/

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During ABC's town hall event with former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party's presidential candidate provided a garbled response to a question about criminal justice reform. In particular, he wrongly suggested that when police fire their weapons at suspects, they could shoot to wound instead of shooting to kill.

"You can ban chokeholds, but beyond that you have to teach [the police] how to de-escalate circumstances," said Biden. "So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg."

This was just one line in a very long, rambling answer to a question about police violence—but it stuck out for its sheer absurdity. The suggestion betrays a total lack of understanding about how guns work.

Note that it was not some slip of the tongue: Biden has previously proposed this exact idea. Contrary to the former veep's repeated assertions, neither the cops nor anyone else—except perhaps James Bond—could plan to shoot people in the leg as a matter of routine practice. It would take an expert marksman to accomplish that feat consistently. Unless a target is at close range, standing perfectly still, it's very difficult to hit a specific location on the body. In reality, people are often moving during shootouts, which means that legs and arms can be the hardest part of the body to hit.

"An average suspect can move his hand and forearm across his body to a 90-degree angle in 12/100 of a second," wrote Bill Lewinksi in a paper for the Force Science Institute. "He can move his hand from his hip to shoulder height in 18/100 of a second. The average officer pulling the trigger as fast as he can on a Glock, one of the fastest- cycling semi-autos, requires 1/4 second to discharge each round."

If an officer's life is actually threatened, hitting the suspect in the leg is no guarantee the threat will be neutralized. People who have been hit in the leg or arm are not immediately incapacitated, which is why the police keep firing until a suspect is down. Real life is not like an episode of 24, or a Mission: Impossible movie!

It's true that some police officers are too eager to fire their weapons in the first place, and idiotic police tactics—like no-knock raids—place them in situations where overreactions are likely to occur. But the public policy intervention needs to occur before the shooting starts. Shooting to wound is not a realistic tactic in the vast majority of cases, and it's embarrassing that Biden doesn't know this.

 

[Muda69]

The Feds Have Doled Out Record Farm Subsidies To Save Trump's Campaign

https://reason.com/2020/10/17/the-feds-have-doled-out-record-farm-subsidies-to-save-trumps-campaign/

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With the presidential election now just over two weeks away, President Donald Trump has mounted a frantic effort to ensure America's farmers, a key Trump voting bloc, will support his flagging re-election campaign. In short, he's shoving piles of cash their way.

The New York Times details the "gush of funds" Trump has promised U.S. farmers—with more on the way. Some say total farm subsidies could top $40 billion this year. The Times says the figure may be as high as $46 billion. Either figure would be a record.

Generally, it appears Trump may see this sort of "massive pre-election stimulus" as his best hope for reelection.

Critics have seized on the manner in which the Trump administration is subsidizing farmers—mostly outside of the traditional (though also lousy) programs funded under the five-year Farm Bill. 

"[T]he bulk of USDA payments to farmers since 2017 have flowed through stop-gap programs created by the Trump administration, with payment limits far larger than those that apply to the traditional farm program," Successful Farming reported in August.

The combination of farm subsidies included in the current Farm Bill and subsidies doled out under Trump's executive order means, the Times reports, that two out of every five dollars American farmers receive this year will come directly from taxpayers.

Critics, including many Democrats, argue the funds are being doled out as political favors. They appear to have a point. Last month, for example, during an election rally in Wisconsin, Trump announced additional payments to farmers totaling $13 billion.

Non-partisan observers have also labeled them political handouts. "The Government Accountability Office found last month that $14.5 billion of farm aid in 2019 had been handed out with politics in mind," The Week reports. The Times, citing the same GAO report, also highlighted by some Democrats, shows farm subsidies last year appeared to be directed to "big farms in the Midwest and southern states," mirroring at least some segments of Trump's farm base.

That same base has been hit hard by tariffs championed by Trump. In 2018, I predicted (as did many others) that Trump's international trade tariffs would spur retaliatory tariffs and harm U.S. farmers and consumers in the process. They did just that.

But because Trump's tariffs hurt U.S. farmers, and because he wants them to vote for him again, he's sending them cash. That cash even has a name. Last year, one farmer NPR food-policy writer Dan Charles spoke with says he and his fellow farmers have taken to referring to the tariff-induced subsidies as "Trump money."

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture simply sent [the farmer] a check to compensate him for the low prices resulting from the trade war," Charles explains.

Most of Trump's subsidies have gone to large producers.

"Despite the record amount of farm welfare payments doled out by this administration, the smaller struggling family farmers get next to nothing while wealthy landowners and massive, highly profitable agribusiness hoover up most of the federal dollars," says Don Carr, a senior advisor with the Environmental Working Group, in an email to me this week. "I'm old enough to remember when a Minnesota millionaire qualifying for a puny food stamp benefit was a scandal, yet few feathers get ruffled when rich land barons collect million-dollar government welfare checks."

All of these payments are wrongheaded and unnecessary—whether to big or small producers—as I detail in my book, Biting the Hands that Feed Us.

In a Chicago Tribune op-ed this week, Wisconsin farmer and advocate Danielle Endvick explains that while the record farm subsidies are "deeply appreciated," taking buckets of "Trump money"—she notes federal farm payments have "nearly tripled since 2017″— "feels just a little bit dirty" during the election season.

She's right. Everything feels dirty during the election season. But Trump's taxpayer handouts to farmers just feels a little bit dirtier.

 

[DE]

I was driving not too long ago.  I decided I would count Trump and Biden signs.  Along the way I realized Biden was coming in 4th.

1st-Trump

2nd-Pumpkins for Sale

3rd-Hay for Sale

4th-Biden

🤣

[DanteEstonia]

1 hour ago, DE said:

I was driving not too long ago.  I decided I would count Trump and Biden signs.  Along the way I realized Biden was coming in 4th.

1st-Trump

2nd-Pumpkins for Sale

3rd-Hay for Sale

4th-Biden

🤣

You also live in rural Indiana...

[DE]

16 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

You also live in rural Indiana...

Did I say where I was driving?

[DanteEstonia]

5 hours ago, DE said:

Did I say where I was driving?

It’s presumed based upon the demographics of this website.