What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[DGuller]

The real world really need a white peace timer mechanic.  After enough time, if you still can't project the power to take the last bit of enemy territory, you just have to auto-peace out, take the territory you're occupying, and move on.

[The Minsky Moment]

What was the reason for the ambiguity in the first place?  Did China interpret ambiguous guarantee as a committed guarantee, thus giving us the deterrence value of the guarantee without the guaranteed entanglement?

As Jacob said, plus it was a face-saving compromise.  The US pretended that Taiwan was part of China and would peacefully rejoin at some point, which satisfied China.  The US avoided basically saying that it would take sides in what would be, legally, a civil war.  But it also avoided saying that it would not, thus not incentivizing a Chinese invasion.  China got what it wanted de jure but not de facto, and the US got the de facto outcome it wanted.

PRC also got de facto what it wanted at the time: full recognition from the US as "China" and a diplomatic alignment countering the threat from the USSR, which had erupted into armed clashes only 10 years earlier.

[Solmyr]

The real world really need a white peace timer mechanic.  After enough time, if you still can't project the power to take the last bit of enemy territory, you just have to auto-peace out, take the territory you're occupying, and move on.

PRC has no war exhaustion, so they can continue the war indefinitely.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Article talking about how the Democratic efforts to campaign against Republican abandonment of democracy seem to fall short. My personal belief is this is because the Democrats are still arguing policy and facts, they need to make emotion-laden appeals that get people angry. You cannot compete with emotional rhetoric with policy statements.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/23/democratic-attacks-gop-missing-mark/

Opinion  Are Democratic attacks on the GOP over democracy missing their mark?
By Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman

May 23, 2022 at 6:18 p.m. EDT

Another set of GOP primaries takes place Tuesday, most notably in Georgia, where incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp will likely hold off a challenge from former senator David Perdue, whose campaign is largely based on the idea that Kemp failed to help President Donald Trump steal the 2020 election.

But in the race for secretary of state, Trump-backed Rep. Jody Hice could win, and could end up overseeing the 2024 election in this vital swing state. And in other secretary of state primaries Tuesday, such as in Arkansas and Alabama, Republicans might nominate Trump loyalists who pose a genuine threat to our ability to conduct fair elections and have our votes counted.

Yet Democrats have yet to convince the public to take the threat seriously enough.

A new set of focus groups run by Democratic pollster David Binder from May 10 to May 12 illustrates the point. The research raises a question: Are Democrats getting their criticism of the GOP abandonment of democracy right?

Binder conducted four focus groups in Georgia and two in Michigan, mostly with suburban voters, independents and moderates who have voted for candidates in both parties. The groups were commissioned by the Democratic-aligned voting rights organization IVote to determine what voters want to hear from Democratic candidates for secretary of state.

The results are worrying when it comes to democracy — but also suggest a way forward for Democrats.

For instance, according to a summary of the results of all six focus groups provided to us, they found that most of the voters surveyed appear conflicted about rhetoric that calls out Trump's "big lie" about 2020 and frames all discussion of it around his efforts to overturn his loss.

On the one hand, most of these voters agree with the substance of those claims. On the other, most of them tend to interpret it as partisan rhetoric.

The focus groups do find that voters understand the need for a secretary of state to talk about 2020. But the research concludes that voters want to hear an emphasis on nonpartisan procedural improvements, and that, above all, they want to hear discussion of "proactive measures" a secretary of state will take to "ensure transparency and fairness in future elections."

"When we talk about the 'big lie' and Trump, it looks to them like you're looking backwards and getting partisan," Binder told us. "They want a secretary of state to say, 'I am going to make sure that everyone has the right to vote in a nonpartisan way.' "

Importantly, the focus groups show strong voter support for removing measures that make it harder to vote. Yet, at the same time, they show that these swing voters don't tend to see voter suppression as an effort to "subvert democracy."

All of which suggests several possibilities.

One of them is galling: Republicans have largely treated congressional efforts to probe Trump's effort to destroy our political order as an illegitimate partisan exercise. This may be successfully recasting the dispute over what to do about it as a conventional partisan one.

The second possibility might be that if Democratic candidates for secretary of state want to warn about the threat posed by would-be election saboteurs, they need to make this case in a more urgent fashion.

Talk about the "big lie" sounds backward looking, smacking of an effort to relitigate a past outcome. By contrast, highlighting the specific ways Republicans are gearing up to steal the next election might sound more relevant.

"We cannot be quiet in the face of Republicans saying they're going to change rules in a way that will sabotage future elections," Binder told us. "Do it in a way that looks forward."

In truth, the backward-looking and forward-looking arguments are two sides of the same coin: When a GOP candidate announces his conviction that Trump won in 2020, that's strong evidence that they will try to steal the 2024 election for him (or another GOP loser). But it can be hard to prove this, because the rhetoric of even the most deranged election saboteurs is clothed in high-minded claims about "transparency" and "integrity."

Nevertheless, if voters are more interested in the future than the past, then they are focusing in the right direction. Many Trump loyalists seeking positions of control over election positions — especially governor and secretary of state — accept the presumption that only Republican victories are legitimate, and if voters decide to elect Democrats then they must simply be overruled.

Which is something all voters should be worried about. And if they aren't, Democrats have a duty to make sure they understand the true stakes we face. In future elections.

[Berkut]

Such a great example of how lies are so much easier to sell then the truth.

[alfred russel]

In a two party system, if one of the two parties have abandoned democracy, i'm not sure the logical answer is to get the population emotionally charged up to vote for you. It seems more sensible to get them emotionally charged up to launch the revolution before the other side gets a chance.

You aren't a real democracy if only one side wants to be, and that side is likely to be in the minority if inflation goes up a few percent.

[crazy canuck]

That's it. I'm not hiring Viper as my labour lawyer.

Well, if you were an employer you would be in a lot of trouble if you followed his advice. 

[grumbler]

I'm wondering if the best Democratic strategy might be to mock the whole "election was rigged" movement as a bunch of cosplayers pretending to be buffalo shamans trying to save the world from supervillains.

The right is likely to lean into that description, given the whole popular QANON movement, but the mainstream has to laugh at that shit.

[The Brain]

General comment, not aimed at anything or anyone in this thread: I've mentioned before what the Democrat message might be to GOP voters who are unlikely to ever vote non-GOP. It's good to remember that even if someone will never vote for you, your message to them is still important. I can think of several different possible messages to them, and they are all in their way legitimate. But it would make sense to me to frame a message around two things: that there is a place in a Democrat-run state for them, but only if they behave, and that if they don't behave then the state will smite them Yehovah-like.

[CountDeMoney]

I'm wondering if the best Democratic strategy might be to mock the whole "election was rigged" movement as a bunch of cosplayers pretending to be buffalo shamans trying to save the world from supervillains.

The right is likely to lean into that description, given the whole popular QANON movement, but the mainstream has to laugh at that shit.

Thing is, that only plays into their whole OMG TEH ELITES narrative;  I think we've seen that the right, as kooky as they are and as deserving of mockery as it is, really hates being made fun of. The sneering over "clinging to their bibles and guns" and casting them as "deplorables" only pisses them off more and feeds into their pathology.

Granted, policy papers don't work either, because they can't fit on bumper stickers.

Face it: "the mainstream" is not interested in policy. They're interested in culture wars, and we know which way that wind often blows.

[Josquius]

Yeah, I've noticed a thing about alt right populist types to outright fish for people calling them stupid so they can go off on one about arrogant metropolitan Liberal elites.

[crazy canuck]

I think we have to stop calling them the alt right. The alt right has become the main stream right.

[Jacob]

Yeah, I've noticed a thing about alt right populist types to outright fish for people calling them stupid so they can go off on one about arrogant metropolitan Liberal elites.

Yeah.

I've revised my opinion from "stupid" to "mean".

[grumbler]

Thing is, that only plays into their whole OMG TEH ELITES narrative;  I think we've seen that the right, as kooky as they are and as deserving of mockery as it is, really hates being made fun of. The sneering over "clinging to their bibles and guns" and casting them as "deplorables" only pisses them off more and feeds into their pathology.

Granted, policy papers don't work either, because they can't fit on bumper stickers.

Face it: "the mainstream" is not interested in policy. They're interested in culture wars, and we know which way that wind often blows.

If the Democratic strategy deranges the right, so much the better.  The more insane the right looks, the more motivated the apathetic middle is to vote to keep them away from the reins of power.

[Eddie Teach]

The trick is to make them look deranged rather than yourself look smug and arrogant.