What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Berkut]

Give me a break. Those folks could vote third party, not vote, vote D and advocate for changes within the party etc.

You do know that if those folks vote third party or not vote, that's half the effect of them voting for R, right?

Yes I know that. My point is very few people do.

Come on guys, are we really going to compare the extremes of both parties here? So Tlaib says something dumb, and people are going to vote for the party of Gaetz and Taylor-Greene?

Yes. That is exactly right.

They won't look at it that way, of course. They will look at it like "Well, sure, Republicans have some weirdos, but those Dems want to actually abolish the fucking police!"

And again, as Carville said, it isn't about convincing all of them. If you can convince just a few percent of them, we would see a tidal wave of change. Right now the GOP is hanging on to power by being a *minority* party. A very small shift in voting would result in a huge change in numbers.

And again, we are not talking about the hard core here - we are talking about the middle. It is often commented, but there were a LOT of people who voted for Obama, then voted for Trump. It makes no fucking sense to me, but whatever.

I don't know how many of the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump are reachable. But it has to be a decent chunk. Getting just a few percent to switch would make a crushing difference.

[Berkut]

I'm not sure what we're arguing at this point. I'm not in favour of abolishing police, hence yes I think that idea is stupid. I'm not defending her statement/idea, not sure where you got that.

<boggle>

That has been the subject of this entire debate.

That her tweet was stupid. Not just from the standpoint of the idea itself, but from the standpoint of it being politically damaging to progressive efforts. And from that example, the observation that Dems (and this is something that has been observed long before she strolled into the picture) kind of suck at this part of the political game - they (as a group) lack political discipline and say stupid shit that own goals them.

I think the quote "Dems like to win arguments, and Republicans like to win elections" is like....30 years old.

This problem, IMO, really has almost nothing to do with race at all. The current topic they are fucking up on is around race, yes - but the issue is not the subject, it is the way it is handled.


And honestly, if you can have Trump in office for four years being as spectacularly bad at everything that he is, and STILL manage to almost lose to him....something is wrong. And yeah, you can say "The something that is wrong are those fucking stupid voters!" And you know what? You would be right. Congrats! You won the argument! Here is a gold star. You are a winner!

Hey....how did we end up with 6 Supreme Court justices from the Tea Party when we won that damn argument so convincingly! How is it that the Senate is half fucking Trump troglodytes when we keep winning our argument so thoroughly????

I want to win elections. Fuck the arguments. That is hard while also holding true to the ideas that we want to win elections in order to actually effect. Some might even call it exhausting. But there it is.

[alfred russel]

Hey....how did we end up with 6 Supreme Court justices from the Tea Party when we won that damn argument so convincingly! How is it that the Senate is half fucking Trump troglodytes when we keep winning our argument so thoroughly????

You only win arguments in your own mind. You lack self reflection, launch deeply insulting and unwarranted insults against people, and pound out walls of text that are basically substance free.

[The Brain]

[Habbaku]

The irony is thick today.

[alfred russel]

So the first round of the Texas special election are in. As a baseline it was a Trump 51% Biden 48% district.

No one got a majority so it will go to a runoff. Since the first two vote getters were republicans, it is going to be a republican vs. republican runoff.

The combined republicans got 61.95% of the vote and the combined democrats got 37.28%.

I guess they heard about Rashida Tlaib's comments down in Texas. 

[alfred russel]

The irony is thick today.

There are different types of arguments. There are those ultimately rooted in values, for example whether abortion should be legal, which you can't really be proven right or wrong by future events. You can't really win such an argument--there isn't a reason to go beyond polite discussion.

But sometimes arguments cross into facts and predictions, which can be shown to be correct. For example when someone says that Alabama is going to have a lot more deaths per capita than New York, or someone posts fatality rates that are now understood to be too high, or someone projects fatality numbers that don't come to pass. I'm more than happy to admit when I'm wrong on those, but I'm going to spike the football really fucking hard if you are and you refuse to admit it.

I'm confident I can see both sides of arguments. In my time here I've had alt accounts that have had a wide variety of politics. I really just like the arguments. I'd be happy to take up the politics of AOC on the forum, or the policies of Trumpland (I don't think I can defend the personalities). About the only issue in my life I've felt extremely passionate about are the covid lockdowns being abusive in the early stages.

[Valmy]

We have to stabilize the political and economic situation then balance the budget.

He has proposed tax increases to the eye popping levels of the Clinton presidency!

They would pay for his proposed programs.

I wish they were that high. We need to return tax levels to the 1990s.

[Valmy]

So the first round of the Texas special election are in. As a baseline it was a Trump 51% Biden 48% district.

No one got a majority so it will go to a runoff. Since the first two vote getters were republicans, it is going to be a republican vs. republican runoff.

The combined republicans got 61.95% of the vote and the combined democrats got 37.28%.

I guess they heard about Rashida Tlaib's comments down in Texas. 

Yeah and what was the turnout? These off-year elections can be weird.

[Valmy]

What does that have to do with anything? People are going to do all kinds of things that are stupid but since we know people do dumb things, we should not note that they are dumb and suggest that perhaps we ought to do less dumb things?

Just what I said. That your goal is impossible. There will always be things the right can use to scare people, and if there aren't they will just make some up anyway. If there are no politicians saying scary things they will find somebody on Twitter or TikTok saying them.

[alfred russel]

So the first round of the Texas special election are in. As a baseline it was a Trump 51% Biden 48% district.

No one got a majority so it will go to a runoff. Since the first two vote getters were republicans, it is going to be a republican vs. republican runoff.

The combined republicans got 61.95% of the vote and the combined democrats got 37.28%.

I guess they heard about Rashida Tlaib's comments down in Texas. 

Yeah and what was the turnout? These off-year elections can be weird.

78k versus 338k in the November election.

[Valmy]

Yeah that is going to make a difference. Besides there were about 20 candidates in that race, some of the Republican candidates might have appealed to Biden voters.

Still not a good result in a suburban district.

[Sheilbh]

I get the feeling this line of inquiry makes you very uncomfortable.

Not at all It's interesting and makes me think which is good. To be honest I can't think any chat about a political issue that would make me uncomfortable

Yes, trials are great.  But we have people saying that the results of certain trials (or the decision to not press charges at all) was immoral and unethical.  So just leaving it to trials doesn't absolve us of the moral responsibility to judge for ourselves.

But I mean you were talking imposing harsher penalties than is fair - and I wouldn't support doing something that's unfair. I think politically it could be an argument for it from a sort of pour encourager les autres approach, but that's not a good general approach.

I think the bigger issue, as you say, is whether the current approach delivers fair results and I think that's a social question - not about whether we individually think individual incidents were dealt with fairly, but whether there is a perception that they were dealt with fair

The same applies to the second part, which you sort of stumbled into with your comment about the rules being too lax.  If you think the rules are too lax, you need to make a moral judgement about what rule would be just right.

Isn't the point you look at the results of the rules as they are and ask if, in general, those are the right results? If not then we need to make a change.

So for example my understanding is the US rules on whether police killings are broadly the same in all states and very similar to the UK. There's some differences for other approaches but it's basically the same standard as self defence - so it's whether the police had an "honest belief" that they or another person was in immediate danger. I wonder if actually for the police the standard should be a little bit higher - perhaps an objective reasonableness standard. From what I've read the big difference from the UK and US on this is that the US allow the use of force if a suspect is evading capture and they think they may go on to commit other crimes - again I wonder if that's a little broad.

Then separate to that there'll be the internal rules and training of that police department - and I think that should be far stricter than the legal minimum of a lawful killing.

The problem, of course, is history.  There is a large body of evidence that the system has not treated persons of color fairly over the past century (and more), and so while the people who have not been treated badly do not see systematic problems, for those who have there is always the undercurrent of "cover-up" and "two systems" at play.

Yeah - but even away from race that's true. I cannot think of a controversy or a killing involving the Met where the initial investigation and public statements have not later turned out to be false - it happened with Ian Tomlinson, de Menezes, Mark Duggan etc. And, as I say, there don't seem to be consequences for that. The gold commander during the de Menezes shooting is now the Met Commissioner.

It may be different in the US. But one change I would make within police forces is zero tolerance for false statements - a one strike and your fired approach. Because they are utterly corrosive to public trust and they do lead to lots of attempted or successful cover-ups.

I have to be honest, I have no idea WTF you're saying.  We have rules under which police can kill people, but if police do kill people, then these rules are too lax?     This sounds very confused.

Soz - I should not post after going to a friend's birthday drinks

Basically my point was asking whether the rules are functioning in the way they're intended to, or are they actually drawn too broadly or applied too laxly by police and prosecutors investigating themselves? Is this working as intended or are there issues with it? Part of that may be the factors who they're recruiting, internal training and guidance etc - but I think another part of it is whether the rules around when the use of force and killing is lawful are perhaps too broad?

[Admiral Yi]

I think the bigger issue, as you say, is whether the current approach delivers fair results and I think that's a social question - not about whether we individually think individual incidents were dealt with fairly, but whether there is a perception that they were dealt with fair

What is a perception other than an amalgamation of individual thoughts?

[Admiral Yi]

I'm not sure what we're arguing at this point. I'm not in favour of abolishing police, hence yes I think that idea is stupid. I'm not defending her statement/idea, not sure where you got that.

Fair enough.  But by the same token I think you are trying to do damage control.