Trump & Greenland

[ramlaen]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

I don't think he'll be the Democratic nominee. Nor do I think Trump will win re-election.

Neither of those statements has anything to do with the fact that I think Trump's mental condition is deteriorating. The public doesn't want to believe its president is as crazy as Trump is, so if it becomes a campaign issue, it will be dealt with sotto voce.

I agree that the public does not want a president with potentially incapacitating health issues, which is why if Trump actually were to display a mental deterioration it would be a valid talking point in the 2020 election cycle.

That being said, when Biden wins the Democrat primary I expect his mental condition to be a (hypocritically) taboo subject.

[SeijiSensei]

It's the "Democratic" primary, and Biden's mental capabilities have already become an issue.

Only Republicans use the noun "Democrat" as an adjective. That's because they don't want voters to think the Democrats are actually "democratic."

Trump's mental state has been an issue since he took office, but it has become more widely discussed as he becomes more and more deranged.

[coded321]

Here's some extremely disturbing, dangerous news. A federal appeals court has ruled that electorals, the people of the electoral college who cast the actual votes that elect the president, cannot be forced to vote for the winner of their state's popular vote. Effectively, electorals can vote for whoever the f*ck they want, people's will be damned.

[mangamuscle]

I am not really afraid of Trump going senile because that would mean the 25th amendment can come into play. What I am really afraid is that trump might just be a moron (someone that loses $1 billion in a decade would qualify as king of morons imo), an scared moron that knows he will be the first POTUS to go to jail the moment he leaves the white house. That is the reason I think he has become more unhinged as time goes by, is like the person that sold his soul to the devil and knows his time is running out.

Originally Posted by coded321

Here's some extremely disturbing, dangerous news. A federal appeals court has ruled that electorals, the people of the electoral college who cast the actual votes that elect the president, cannot be forced to vote for the winner of their state's popular vote. Effectively, electorals can vote for whoever the f*ck they want, people's will be damned.

lol, are you serious? I must be whiter than you, because even I understand that was the idea all along, if someone deemed "unamerican" (whatever that means) ever became elected president, the electoral college was created to prevent him from becoming POTUS. Depending on who you ask, the electoral college has already proven to be futile (republicans will think but not say out loud it failed when a person of color became one, everybody else will say it failed when they let the manchurian candidate took the reigns of the executive).

[Guardian Enzo]

No offense, but to argue that the electoral college has already failed because of callous political calculus to prevent an unfit candidate from being elected, and then turn around and suggest there's a chance in Hell of the 25th amendment being invoked seems pretty silly to me.

Trump was fond of saying he could "shoot someone on 5th Avenue" and his supporters would never abandon him. Well, he could do just that and still never face having 25 invoked on him. Never gonna happen.

[Toukairin]

At one point, someone will have to breach the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center vault/database to retrieve the original results on Trump's most recent psychological evaluations and then spread them all over the internet. Whatever is the diagnosis in those, there must be some serious shit that can be worth applying the 25th Amendment.

[SeijiSensei]

Invoking the 25th Amendment requires the support of the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet. That's unthinkable in the current situation. Moreover, Trump's appointments of "acting" officials who have not been confirmed by the Senate raises the constitutional question of whether they could be considered the same as cabinet members for purposes of the Amendment.

The only way Trump will be removed from office is by losing the 2020 election. (Impeachment will never get a majority in the Senate even if the House passes the requisite bills of impeachment.)

[mangamuscle]

I still think even if difficult, the 25th would be feasible if trump became dangerously senile. But there is the other option. Trump has made the republican brand toxic to the point where voter suppression will not be enough to get the white house again in a generation. But if he gets shot like Lincoln, he would become a Martyr! Suddenly it would become bad manners to speak ill of donald trump. No, I am not advocating for him to get shot (even though I loath him), I am saying that republicans inside the government might decide that is the best course of action and in a country where anyone can get firearms, getting a stooge to be the fall guy *cough*Lee Harvey Oswald*cough* isn't rocket science imo.

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

The only way Trump will be removed from office is by losing the 2020 election.

And I'm not convinced about that one. It implies none of the following happen:

• Russian vote manipulation being unsuccessful
• Trump not moving to cancel the election if he's certain to lose
• Trump simply refusing to leave office and declaring the results invalid as a result of "voter fraud"

If you look at the playbook Trump is following, it's hard to imagine he''ll ever go voluntarily. Especially as it's a given he'll be in prison for the rest of his life if he does.

[SeijiSensei]

If he loses, I believe the Secret Service would remove him physically from the White House should it come to that. That's where the professionalism of the bureaucracy matters.

Russian manipulation remains a possibility, but I think the margins of victory for the Democrat even in competitive states would be large enough to overwhelm any vote rigging. Also, while Russian attacks are routinely discussed among national politicians, state election officials have been quite diligent over the past few years at hardening their systems. I don't think Russian meddling is as big an issue as national Democrats make it out to be.

I don't see Trump winning more than 45% of the national popular vote. (He won 46% in 2016.) Third-party interventions like Stein and Macmullan are not as likely this time around either. Trump will have a hard time carrying Michigan and Pennsylvania like he did in 2016, and there's an outside chance he could lose one or more of Florida, North Carolina, or even Texas. Had Texas voted Democratic in 2016, and everything else remained the same, Clinton would be in the Oval Office. Without the Longhorn State, flipping Arizona, North Carolina, and Michigan would be enough for a Democratic victory. Or swap Pennsylvania for NC, and the Democrats still win.

Arizona seems a likely Democratic pickup because of general demographic trends, and because of the Senate race. There former astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of shooting victim former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, stands a good chance of taking the seat from Martha McSally, who was appointed to replace the retiring Jon Kyl after she lost to Kyrsten Sinema last November. The latest poll shows Kelly with a lead among both men and women in AZ, perhaps the only Democratic candidate for whom that can be said.

Michigan voted out its Republican governor (who had presided over the Flint water crisis) and other GOP state officials last fall. Democrats now hold all major state-wide offices there. Pennsylvania has an extremely active and electorally successful Democratic governor (disclaimer: a grad school colleague) who also won re-election last November. I don't think the Democrats will be caught with their pants down in these states like they were in 2016.

I've left Wisconsin out of the picture. It could swing blue again if blacks vote in anywhere near the numbers they did in 2012. Black turnout in 2016 fell by about 90,000 voters; Trump won the state by fewer than 30,000 votes.

Only once in recent elections has an incumbent President had as poor a net approval rating on election day as Trump has now, George H.W. Bush. He lost.

https://www.politicsbythenumbers.org...trump-recover/



That graph comes from January when Trump's net approval was especially low because of the government shutdown. It stands at -13 today. Still none of those Presidents won re-election with an "underwater" net approval rating.

[mangamuscle]

@SeijiSensei
You are forgetting the elephant in the room, the principal reason Clinton and Obama got elected in the first place, yeah it is the economy! Both Bush and Bush jr. wrecked the economy so people voted democrat or abstained. Yeah, I know atm the economy is ok but for a year at least it has been sending signals it will tank and it is no surprise the Koch brothers have shifted gears, they know getting republicans elected next year (after the economy tanks) will be hard, so they are now supporting center right democrats.

So unless something no one could foresee happens, donald trump is set to loose bigly, I only hope they remove the nuclear codes from his chicken stained fingers before the secret service hauls him out of the building.

[SeijiSensei]

I expect economic factors will express themselves in Trump's general approval rating. In 2018 he was eight points behind where the historical relationship between approval and changes in real per-capita disposable income would predict. That accounted for about half the swing to the Democrats last year. I'm not sure we'll see a recession in 2020, but general economic conditions are not that favorable now, nor does the Administration have a lot of tools at its disposal, nor a competent team of advisors, to give the economy a boost.

[Ithekro]

I am fairly certain, that if the Democrats had run anybody else but Clinton, Trump would have lost. She has just enough baggage to upset enough swing voters and the few progressive republicans that still exist to vote third party or Republican. Plus Trump was kind of the outsider then and people wanted to rock the boat (so to speak).

[coded321]

^that's exactly what happened. If the dnc and corporate media hadn't f*cked over bernie, bernie would have completely kicked trump's a$$ in the 2016. In some ways, FOX NEWS of all media outlets actually treats Bernie BETTER compared to how CNN treats him.

[Guardian Enzo]

The above post exemplifies the true reason Clinton lost (and she still won the popular vote by almost three million). And it’s why I worry for 2020, because Sanders is going to get wiped out in the primary campaign and we’ll likely see that same sort of attitude even if the nominee is a progressive like Warren.

[mangamuscle]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

And it’s why I worry for 2020, because Sanders is going to get wiped out in the primary campaign and we’ll likely see that same sort of attitude even if the nominee is a progressive like Warren.

I think it is a safe bet that Warren (so another Simpson's prediction becomes true) will pick Bernie as her VP

The sad part IMO is that no matter who wins (trump or anyone else), there will be gun violence either because the far right thinks it is ok to reinstate KKK practices in the second term or because they think the election was stolen (and there wont be another republican president in 8,16 or maybe even 24 years).

[ramlaen]

Originally Posted by mangamuscle

I think it is a safe bet that Warren (so another Simpson's prediction becomes true) will pick Bernie as her VP

The sad part IMO is that no matter who wins (trump or anyone else), there will be gun violence either because the far right thinks it is ok to reinstate KKK practices in the second term or because they think the election was stolen (and there wont be another republican president in 8,16 or maybe even 24 years).

Ignore that the far left also commits mass shootings (the most recent one in Ohio for example) and is ever increasingly radicalized and violent, which will only get worse in Trump's second term.

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

It's the "Democratic" primary, and Biden's mental capabilities have already become an issue.

Only Republicans use the noun "Democrat" as an adjective. That's because they don't want voters to think the Democrats are actually "democratic."

Trump's mental state has been an issue since he took office, but it has become more widely discussed as he becomes more and more deranged.

Superdelegates my friend, the Democrat primary is less democratic than the Republican. And I'm not talking about the DNC screwing Bernie in 2016.

Opinion pieces in openly adversarial media outlets are as reliable as polls that told you Hillary had a 10%+ lead.

[Eisdrache]

In that case, what are you talking about?

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by mangamuscle

I think it is a safe bet that Warren (so another Simpson's prediction becomes true) will pick Bernie as her VP

There's absolutely no chance that Warren or any other Democrat will pick 79 year-old Bernie Sanders as their VP. But I'm sure that won't stop Bernie bros from using it as a reason to stay home or "protest vote" again.

[Toukairin]

Originally Posted by mangamuscle

I think it is a safe bet that Warren (so another Simpson's prediction becomes true) will pick Bernie as her VP.

Nah, nah, nah. That would be a very poor move if Warren were to get the nod; it would be pure redundancy.

In this context, it would make more sense to get someone like Buttigieg as the running mate since the key here is to get someone who gets young people and who shows a certain promise for the future.