US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Actually:

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Then why did he made himself look like a troon?

 

[Sithis]

.....I... I think I need to do a lap.

Cheney was someone whom was so visibly malicious during his time in office that most of the GOP establishment was fucking terrified of him, that the Democrats routinely talked about charging for war profiteering until Obama took office, and now they're bandying about this endorsement as a win.

I spent over a decade working for the DNC and none of this makes sense to me. I feel like I just played Extreme Meatpunks Forever again.

For the love of god, someone please help me make sense of this or distract me with something autistic, I DO NOT CARE WHICH.

It becomes easier to reckon with when you realize that the American political system has been fucked for years and is not divided by party but by those in the club who want power and those allowed in to maintain the precious illusion. The illusion is slipping and they are starting to go more overt to try and snap it back, and some of them seem to have written off the American experiment and are looking to loot the coffers before abandoning ship.

 

[Harvey Danger]

Unfortunately the web being what it is these days I don't know where I would get a good unbiased overview of those events. Anyone want to give me the TL;DR of Bush's election that year? It's a damning indictment of the world that this forum is one of the most best sources of truth I know.

I'll skip the state-by-state breakdown, except to note one thing: Gore lost his home state of Tennessee. All the real drama comes from the contested ballots in Florida, where Bush won by a few hundred votes.

Spoiler: Florida Man does democracy

When the election night counting was done, Florida was so close nobody could call it. They had to wait a week for absentee ballots to come in and be counted (actual overseas military/expat ballots, not the bullshit mail ballots from 2020). This was critical because the Electoral College count was also so close, whoever got Florida's 25 EC would be tipped over the 270 threshold to win the election. In fact this was the first Presidential election since 1888 where the winner won the EC but lost the popular vote.

Bush officially had a small lead, just under 300 votes, and it slightly grew while the absentee ballots trickled in and results were being made official. That's when the recounts began, first an automatic one due to the margin, then specific ones in controversial areas. And that's when all the physical ballot problems started causing real drama.

Gore requested recounts in the 4 most Democratic counties in Florida, for obvious reasons. (The fact that he didn't ask for a full recount tells you everything you need to know about the Democrats' supposed "count every vote" credo.) Recounts happened but they had a deadline, and while Gore picked up some votes he didn't erase Bush's lead.

Legal deadlines were reached, then extended, then the extension overturned by the court. Bush was officially certified the winner, Gore sued, the FL Supreme Court ordered more recounts, then SCOTUS basically smacked down the entire state and said STOP RECOUNTING YOU MORONS. Through all of that Bush held on to a lead, between 200-1000, fluctuating each day and inspiring dramatic cable news graphics and a running tally in the corner of the screen. His official final win margin was 537 votes.

TBH I think that constant positive margin was the only thing that saved the country from real turmoil. If Gore pulled ahead in the official count at any time, we would never hear the end of it. It's hard to complain about a premature court ruling changing things when Bush was always ahead at any given point in the lawsuits.

The memes came from physical ballot controversies. There were state laws about what counted as a completed ballot, what could be recounted as a complete ballot if a machine had rejected it as incomplete, etc. This is where you got the "hanging chad" meme from, where recounters examined paper punch cards to see if 2 corners of a box were punched out or 3, and argue over whether it should count as a real vote.



(speaking of memory holes, there's a famous picture of a guy going cross-eyed staring at a ballot, but I can't find it now. Fuck modern search engines, I hope they all die.)

Then you have the "but Gore would have won IF..." freakouts. The big one was in Palm Beach County, where a Democratic official made the "butterfly ballot" to help seniors read it better. This wound up being confusing enough that Pat Buchanan allegedly got 3000 extra votes that should have gone to Gore, because his punch was 2nd down the list while Gore was 3rd.



I don't think voters who can't follow an arrow to line up a hole deserve to be voting at all. Democrats never seem to give a good answer when you ask them why their voters are too dumb to vote.

There's a lot more "what if" scenarios having to do with theoretical rules, theoretical expanded recounts, additional deadlines, etc. Multiple newspapers and news channels put together consortiums and studies to second guess the whole thing. Wikipedia has a great summary of the Democrat talking points if you're interested in 24 year old coping and seething.

What all those coping summaries leave out is that Bush-heavy counties didn't do the same kind of recounts that Gore-heavy counties were doing. If the state had ever done a full recount using the standards proposed by Gore and the media, Bush probably still would have kept his win.

There was also the controversy of the networks calling Florida for Gore early, before the polls closed in FL's western "panhandle" region. The bulk of the state runs on Eastern time, but the panhandle is in Central time; the call for Gore happened after the Eastern polls closed but before the Central closing time. This allegedly discouraged Bush voters in the panhandle, as well as several other western states where Bush narrowly lost.

Personally I think that's Republican cope. I don't know who is watching the news at 4:50 PM on Election Day to decide whether to vote. But I guess it's possible, especially with margins so thin in 2000.



But it humbled the networks and made them scared to call states too early. For 20 years, at least, until they decided to start calling it early again to attempt to defeat Orange Hitler.

TL;DR Bush won under the existing state laws, standards, and deadlines in place on Election Day.

The only thing that kept Democrats from going full schizo conspiracy theory was that Gore was never ahead in any official count. The only way he got there was by throwing out every existing standard to let journalists guess at voter intentions. Democrats concluded it wasn't a steal, it was just a dumb process, and (both sides) started pushing for electronic voting.

The Bush vs Gore SCOTUS suit that finally halted the recounts did immensely piss off the left, however. That's why they broke tradition and started the judicial filibuster in Bush's 1st term. They couldn't rely on individual justices being activist and caving to their policy agendas, they realized they needed partisan courts that would back their raw power grabs too.

 

[I Hate The Disabled]

This. Biden was an easy target in the debate this year, but if Trump can stick pouncing only when necessary as he did this should be an easy W for him because Harris isn't a very effective puppet off the leash.

A wet paper bag couldve beaten Biden on that debate stage.

Regardless, if you just look at Trump's performance, the rules of the debate (no audience, muted mics, etc.) that were placed as to give him a handicap actually helped him. He showed he could debate in a linear way. This is why the Harris campaign is shitting their pants about this Tuesday. Because without her girl boss "I'm speaking" moment, she really has nothing.

Trump's biggest problem is if he goes off topic during the debate.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I was at ground zero for all that. Republicans weren't trying to stop votes from being counted, they were trying to prevent partisan arbiters from being allowed to divine the intent of ballots that were previously disqualified because the intent was unclear. For example, a ballot that had both candidates for Pres marked (both Bush and Gore marked), Miami-Dade wanted their "vote checkers" to be allowed to declare that ballot was meant to be cast for Gore and add it to his tally like a month after the election. It was really brazen. The 2000 election was decided by about 500 votes in a single state (Florida). Bush won it legitimately although by a razor thin margin. Multiple independant hand-recounts that took about 18-24 months to complete at the time confirmed that. Anything saying otherwise now 24 years later is revisionist.

[Edited for shitty typos]

Didn't at least one of those recounts end up helping Bush and increased his lead?

 

[Nuns with guns]

The Trump campaign + Tulsi and RFK have been silent about the Cheney stuff. I wish they had the balls to say “Fuck Dick Cheney, this proves Trump is the candidate of peace,” but the RNC probably has them shush about it.

 

[Francis York Morgan]

A wet paper bag couldve beaten Biden on that debate stage.

Regardless, if you just look at Trump's performance, the rules of the debate (no audience, muted mics, etc.) that were placed as to give him a handicap actually helped him. He showed he could debate in a linear way. This is why the Harris campaign is shitting their pants about this Tuesday. Because without her girl boss "I'm speaking" moment, she really has nothing.

Trump's biggest problem is if he goes off topic during the debate.

Four years later and Harris still has no response to any of her actions as a prosecutor. Trump could actually repeat the same 50 second soundbite Tulsi had at the time and it'd leave her stumbling.

 

[Harvey Danger]

his is why the Harris campaign is shitting their pants about this Tuesday. Because without her girl boss "I'm speaking" moment, she really has nothing.

She's still going to try to pull it off. Trump will mutter something or shake his head while muted, and even though she wasn't interrupted, she'll leap at the opportunity and go "I AM SPEAKING!"

 

[Overly Serious]

@Harvey Danger I regret that I can but give you post a single .

Not only did you give me a concise and thorough overview, but some nice little footnotes such as implications for their view on partisan courts. This has long been a gap in my political knowledge I meant to go back and fill sometime. I hope a few others benefited from the retrospective as well. Thanks for taking the time to write all that out.

 

[Nuns with guns]

She's still going to try to pull it off. Trump will mutter something or shake his head while muted, and even though she wasn't interrupted, she'll leap at the opportunity and go "I AM SPEAKING!"

We do have to consider that the time she used that line with the Queers for Palestine crowd it REALLY backfired. She thought it was a girlboss moment and it was suddenly used in propaganda AGAINST her. The libs I know immediately stopped shilling for Kamala afterwards lol, they’re still voting blue but they’re not being vocal about it.

It’s also why Kamala was literally shaking the second time the protestors (or rather, the lone protestor) broke in. She couldn’t use that line anymore.

I know that when it comes to TDS, everything’s game. Kamala could call Trump a retard and shit on stage and the language police would say she’s being empowered against the Orange Man. However, Kamala has shown from time to time that she’s the typical insecure person that, once given a bit of power, is horrible towards her employees, yet a timid mouse when it comes to authority.

I sincerely believe that she’ll be shaking when on stage with Trump.

 

[Dog-O-Tron 5000v5.0]

Maybe you're not being serious (although I've seen people say this before) but why would Trump need Tulsi to prep him? Just because she took out Kamala before doesn't mean she's some kind of senpai. As long as Trump controls his Trumpiness and lets Kamala reveal herself he'll be fine.

I don't think he needs Tulsi per se, but every candidate has someone practice debate them.

The main point is the contrast between Tulsi and a corporate antitrust lawyer is stark and says a lot.

 

[Sithis]

I sincerely believe that she’ll be shaking when on stage with Trump.

I hope she's dumb enough to try to sneak a little sip or eight of booze to calm her nerves and we get 2 hours of her cackling and talking nonsense.

 

[namelesstacotruck]

A wet paper bag couldve beaten Biden on that debate stage.

Regardless, if you just look at Trump's performance, the rules of the debate (no audience, muted mics, etc.) that were placed as to give him a handicap actually helped him. He showed he could debate in a linear way. This is why the Harris campaign is shitting their pants about this Tuesday. Because without her girl boss "I'm speaking" moment, she really has nothing.

Trump's biggest problem is if he goes off topic during the debate.

The debate topics are viewed as being favorable to Trump. The real issue isnt him going off topic but the moderators deciding to bring up the non agreed upon topics.

 

[Harvey Danger]

Thanks for taking the time to write all that out.

If there's any place to let my political autism run wild, it's here.

Didn't at least one of those recounts end up helping Bush and increased his lead?

Yes, near the end, and it's probably what finally pushed Gore to accept the SCOTUS ruling and concede.

Actually I think there were multiple recounts that slightly increased Bush's lead, especially when focused on military absentee ballots. But finding the details 24 years later is difficult. Too much analog reporting at the time, and too many old archives have been removed from news sites.

It’s also why Kamala was literally shaking the second time the protestors (or rather, the lone protestor) broke in. She couldn’t use that line anymore.

I think when under pressure, she'll fall back on what she knows. Her own side was sympathetic to the protesters, which is why it didn't work then. Trump is exactly the kind of target that staged feigned outrage is designed for.

I predict she does it and gets the Prosecutor Shuts Down Felon astroturfed cheering from the usual suspects.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

I think when under pressure, she'll fall back on what she knows. Her own side was sympathetic to the protesters, which is why it didn't work then. Trump is exactly the kind of target that staged feigned outrage is designed for.

I predict she does it and gets the Prosecutor Shuts Down Felon astroturfed cheering from the usual suspects.

The problem Kamala is facing is that he HAS to have wargamed that exact thing out. I'm hoping Trump has a linguistic kill shot ready for her when she tries.

 

[John Badman]

Those Colorado Venezuelan gang members were arrested! And released on $1,000.

 

[Necrosan]

Minor news, I don't expect much to happen regarding Hunter and Joe but this particular picture made me laugh for reasons I can't understand. It's not an edit, it's actually a giant printout of their Whatsapp conversation.



The impeachment is live here. Again, I don't expect much from it.

 

[Overly Serious]

The Trump campaign + Tulsi and RFK have been silent about the Cheney stuff. I wish they had the balls to say “Fuck Dick Cheney, this proves Trump is the candidate of peace,” but the RNC probably has them shush about it.

Dick Cheney was at one point so politically powerful that he shot someone and the person apologised for being shot. I daresay he still has a few friends. Well, friend might be a generous term but you know what I mean.

 

[SaidNoOneEver]

The only thing that kept Democrats from going full schizo conspiracy theory was that Gore was never ahead in any official count. The only way he got there was by throwing out every existing standard to let journalists guess at voter intentions. Democrats concluded it wasn't a steal, it was just a dumb process, and (both sides) started pushing for electronic voting.

I'll tell a fun story while trying to be vague so as not to dox myself. Probably won't work though since the number of people in my field at the time would probably fit in a school bus.

Remember the whole "Butterfly Ballot" controversy that became a rallying cry meme to kick off the Florida recount demands two days after the election? That was me. I did that.

Spoiler

So I was working for a political technology firm whose bread and butter at the time was producing the most accurate voting lists in the world. We took lists of registered voters provided by states and curated them for accuracy. This has been perfected to a science today, linking voters with social media profiles, shopping habits, etc. It wasn't that way in 1999 but it was still the best in the world for the time. We took state's data and matched against the Post Office's NCOA system (Nat'l Change of Address) via their FastForward system (OS/2 Warp for the win!). States rarely remove anyone from their databases and candidates, especially local, don't want to waste money sending shit to people who moved, etc. You get the drift.

The most valuable asset for any candidate is their voter list. That's who they send mailers out to, raising money, rallying volunteers, etc. Basic Get Out The Vote stuff. We sold that data and ours was the defacto standard in the industry. Candidates could get lists of registered voters for free from their state but would still pay for lists from us. Say you're running for County Commissioner. You call us and request a list of ever Registered Democrat in your county who votes regularly, say 7 out of the last 9 elections and we'd provide that list for a fee. The data wouldn't say who they voted for but does say which elections you voted in. Match that to party registration and 999 out of 1000 times you know who they voted for.

The day after the 2000 election, Bush was declared winner. I get a call for a rush job. A client wanted a list of every registered Dem voter older than 55 in West Palm Beach County in FL who basically never missed an election. That's pretty odd I think since the election was yesterday. West Palm Beach County was predominantly wealthy retirees. Also predominantly Jewish. A few SQL queries later we produce the list and it's delivered to the client. Which turned out to be the DNC. Twelve hours later every news channel has Breaking News chyrons with the breathless reporting about a confusing ballot down in West Palm Beach that tricked a bunch of Jews into voting for Pat Buchanan instead of Al Gore. The DNC had called every person on that list we compiled who had a Jewish-sounding name, told them they had voted for Pat Buchanan and then called their allies in the media to give them the big "scoop". 1000% contrived bullshit. Was it enough to flip the election? No, of course not and everyone at the DNC knew it. Was it going to make Florida hold a new election? No, of course not. The goal was to buy them some time. That bullshit news cycle was enought to give another 48 hours to assemble the legal team, get them down to Florida and start filing lawsuits about everything else. Whatever it took to delay certification of Florida's results. It worked. Turned my entire life upside-down.

The day after it blew up on the news I'm drinking beer with a buddy at the bar and we're telling our war stories from the past week. This was the Thursday after the election. I tell him about this butterfly ballot we're seeing on the news and my list. He worked for the RNC. 6 hours later THAT'S on Drudge. 12 hours later I'm fired and lived in my car for the next year.

 

[I Hate The Disabled]

We do have to consider that the time she used that line with the Queers for Palestine crowd it REALLY backfired. She thought it was a girlboss moment and it was suddenly used in propaganda AGAINST her.

People even started a Trump chant at one of those rallies, and you can see her fight back tears. If that wine drunk bitch starts to cry on the debate stage because she's stumped on a soft ball question, or Trump after Trumps rebuttle I am going to laugh so hard.