President Kamala Harris.

[Princess Arabia]

7 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

@Princess Arabia

@Jodistrict

More detail than you would ever want on exactly what kind of person RFK Jr is, from the excellent Behind the Bastards podcast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok. Forget that guy. Food industry still approves poison. 

[Nemra]

@DocWatts

Thanks for sharing.

I think we need to have a thread with a list of high-quality podcasts and YouTube channels.

[Princess Arabia]

1 minute ago, Nemra said:

@DocWatts

Thanks for sharing.

I think we need to have a thread with a list of high-quality podcasts and YouTube channels.

High-quality?. I couldn't even get through 3mins.

[Leo Gura]

Very very bad news.

[Something Funny]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Very very bad news.

what is?

[Raze]

I think as of now Trump will win. The polls are neck and neck, but Trump over performed polls in 2016 and 2020, plus RFK will give him a small boost. In 2020 from this point the dems polling didn’t change that much and I think the dems were in a better position campaigning then.

I think Kamala can win, but she has to think outside of the box. Two possible ways would be a hardline ceasefire position on Gaza which most Americans including a very dedicated minority of voters support, and making a segment of the campaign about men and boys issues which taps into a underserved demographic democrats are losing. I doubt democrats are willing to do either though. It seems like democrats are getting overly confident which is a really bad sign as they did that in 2016 and just kept virtue signaling to their base and alienating other groups they needed.
 

If Trump was a mad genius what he should do is refuse to debate Kamala but only debate Jill Stein, this will shine a spotlight on her and make him look more moderate and Jill will absorb Democratic votes.

Edited August 23 by Raze

[Leo Gura]

39 minutes ago, Something Funny said:

what is?

RFK endorsing Trump.

[Something Funny]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

RFK endorsing Trump.

I see, thank you. 

[DocWatts]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Very very bad news.

While it's not good, the bump that Trump is actually going to get from his remains to be seen. 

On the surface, it looks bad, since RFK has been polling around %5. A few things to keep in mind however. 1) Not all of those supposed RFK supporters  will even bother to vote.  2)  Not all of them will vote for Trump 3) Kamala and the DNC have been knocking it out of the park with consistently good decisions since Biden dropped out.

A more realistic assessment is that Trump probably gets a %1 to %2 bump from this, that he's able to sustain into the actual election. Again, not good, but it doesn't do anything to shift the underlying momentum and enthusiasm towards Harris and away from Trump. 

Also, it's worth keeping in mind that events have been moving so fast that an RFK endorsement may not mean nearly as much as the election gets closer. Trump's criminal sentencing is in a few weeks, it's not out of the realm of possibility that he gets house asset, or even spends time in prison due to violating the terms of a potential parole or suspended sentence.

Pundits were declaring that the race was over when Trump got shot, when in reality after a few weeks nobody outside of the MAGA cult really remembers or cares all that much. Quite the contrary, as it doesn't really seem to be having an noticable impact at all in fact.

It may have gotten closer, but this is still a VERY winnable race for Dems if they keep up their good decisions going forward.

Edited August 23 by DocWatts

[HelluvaGuy]

Considering how close the margins are in the electoral college, yeah, this could be bad. But it's far too early to get all gloomy and doomeristic. Trump was shot like a month ago and everbody was talking about how "oh this totally changes the race now trump will win" and then the polls barely moved. 

 

44 minutes ago, Raze said:

Trump over performed polls in 2016 and 2020

Fair enough, but since 2020 it's the democrats who have been overperforming the polling expectations, whetever it be the 2022 midterms which went relatively well or other special elections held around the country. Hopefully, this is good omens for the presidential election. 

[LSD-Rumi]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

RFK endorsing Trump.

Is he that morally bankrupt or deluded? Or is he ready to do anything to gain some fame to get elected in the future?

Some personalities are strange.

Edited August 23 by LSD-Rumi

[Raze]

3 minutes ago, HelluvaGuy said:

Fair enough, but since 2020 it's the democrats who have been overperforming the polling expectations, whetever it be the 2022 midterms which went relatively well or other special elections held around the country. Hopefully, this is good omens for the presidential election. 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/2022-generic-congressional-vote-7361.html
 

republicans slightly over-performed polls in 2022

[DocWatts]

As of August 23, Five Thirty Eight is currently giving Harris 58 to 41 odds of winning against Trump.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/

(Make of that what you will. Not sure offhand if this factors in RFK dropping out of the race).

[Leo Gura]

23 minutes ago, LSD-Rumi said:

Is he that morally bankrupt or deluded? Or is he ready to do anything to gain some fame to get elected in the future?

Some personalities are strange.

It's the same anti-mainstream brain-rot that half of the country is afflicted with.

These days people will blindly vote for anything anti-mainstream. Today, people would vote for Hitler just because he goes against CNN. That's the level of politics we're at.

Edited August 23 by Leo Gura

[LSD-Rumi]

15 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It's the same anti-mainstream brain-rot that half of the country is afflicted with.

These days people will blindly vote for anything anti-mainstream.

Endorsing Trump after the whole 2025 thing should immediately grant him a golden Olympic medal in stupidity.

I swear the intelligent stupid people are actually the most stupid ones.

Edited August 23 by LSD-Rumi

[Nemra]

5 minutes ago, LSD-Rumi said:

I swear the intelligent stupid people are actually the most stupid ones.

Who are they?

[DocWatts]

12 minutes ago, Nemra said:

Who are they?

The Dunning-Krueger effect seems relevant here.

Classic example is all of the big brained 110 IQ pseudo- intellectuals who supposedly know more about COVID than an epidemiologist, because they listened to a Joe Rogan podcast. 

(Actually Joe Rogan himself is an excellent example of this).

 

Edited August 23 by DocWatts

[Hardkill]

2 hours ago, Raze said:

I think as of now Trump will win. The polls are neck and neck, but Trump over performed polls in 2016 and 2020, plus RFK will give him a small boost. In 2020 from this point the dems polling didn’t change that much and I think the dems were in a better position campaigning then.

I think Kamala can win, but she has to think outside of the box. Two possible ways would be a hardline ceasefire position on Gaza which most Americans including a very dedicated minority of voters support, and making a segment of the campaign about men and boys issues which taps into a underserved demographic democrats are losing. I doubt democrats are willing to do either though. It seems like democrats are getting overly confident which is a really bad sign as they did that in 2016 and just kept virtue signaling to their base and alienating other groups they needed.
 

If Trump was a mad genius what he should do is refuse to debate Kamala but only debate Jill Stein, this will shine a spotlight on her and make him look more moderate and Jill will absorb Democratic votes.

I think the polls are now underestimated Harris's strength. They've been underestimating the strength of Democrats in the polls since 2022 and have been overestimating the strength of Trump and the GOP since 2022. Trump did much worst than expected in the 2024 GOP primaries.

Besides, what most people don't realize is that polls months or weeks out from an election have no predictive value in the grand scheme of things because they've always been affected by too much change and too many errors. 

Edited August 23 by Hardkill

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

It's the same anti-mainstream brain-rot that half of the country is afflicted with.

These days people will blindly vote for anything anti-mainstream. Today, people would vote for Hitler just because he goes against CNN. That's the level of politics we're at.

This does resemble the hyper-partisan media environment that the US had during the late 1800s (Gilded Age), which was a big factor why the country back then was extremely polarized. 

We desperately need some kind of way to put a major check on all of these media echo chambers that have kept propagated extreme idealogical talking points, particularly from those on the right-wing.

Edited August 24 by Hardkill

[Nemra]

@DocWatts 

That makes sense.

@Princess Arabia 

Do you think that high-quality people would share only low-quality stuff?

If a discussion is not organized the way you like, that doesn't mean it's low quality.

Edited August 24 by Nemra