American Politics Discussion Thread

[Commodore]

Briefly appearing in this usually-muted thread to post a timely rant about Grover Cleveland:
https://x.com/bkgibsonwrites/status/1854652577503494161

[T-hawk]

So, do they put two copies of Trump in the hall of presidents at Disney?

And re Cleveland - it's pretty well set that he's numbered both 22 and 24, and so Trump will be both 45 and 47. Which has the interesting curiosity that every presidential numbering that's a multiple of 23 got bracketed by someone's nonconsecutive terms. Extrapolating from that, it also means that 69 will get it from both ends

[darrelljs]

So, do they put two copies of Trump in the hall of presidents at Disney?

Grover is only their once.

Odds Musk runs for President in 2028?

Darrell

[greenline]

Musk, as a 1st gen immigrant, can't run. But I would think he'll be heavily involved in the next R administrations and campaigns, barring any seismic shifts when Trump retires / dies.

[T-hawk]

Vance is by far the natural candidate to run in 2028. He or any R won't win since nobody else energizes Trump's base like Trump, and because people will still feel bad economically because they spend poorly but the media will make them believe it's the administration's fault and no administration can really fix prices anyway. The question is who beats Vance or maybe Desantis, and right now I'd guess either Newsom or Mark Cuban.

[Mjmd]

As long as the next president just doesn't do much to rock the boat (which Trump sounds like he may want to), the US economy is probably going to be fine going forward and whomever wins can just take credit (assuming no major global events). I've said it before but the infrastructure act is going to benefit the next few presidents regardless of party. As far as what Kamala has over promised to do, a most likely Republican senate will probably make that difficult. A lot of the "moderate" R senators are also on there way out, which doesn't bode well for compromise bills even.

Again, I think under most circumstances whomever ended up president would be fine economically. If Trump just follows his first term playbook of takeover a growing economy and then do corruption and unpaid for tax cuts it would be fine. Not the right thing to do, but the economy would be fine. But it sounds like tariffs are very much part of the plan and depending on HOW they do those that could certainly rock the boat.

[BING_XI_LAO]

Just read some comments complaining that I was being too psychopathic about the Ukrainians. This is a civilised place so I'll try to improve my behaviour, starting with a more cheerful PfP.

Does Trump's election even matter that much? I feel like he won't do the 60% China tariff. He'll get spooked by inflation threat and end up doing 30% or whatever.
He and Vance were already talking about "deporting criminals" which is a rhetorical way to limit the scope of the deportation they intend.
And they want to increase legal immigration, to the benefit of Elon and the like (corporate employers).

On the Ukraine war (as a stark example) Trump can't give up on the place, because that triggers RussiaGate 3.0. And I doubt that Biden was sitting on his hands so badly that there's much room for further practical escalation. So Trump can neither escalate or de-escalate, and he can't propose a worthwhile peace because sides would expect it to lead to a continuation war after a few years, in which case you might as well keep fighting the current one. So Trump's policy will end up being a continuation of Biden's policy.

Maybe cutting the Department of Ejdumacation is good, maybe DOGE with Elon and Ramaswamy will be good for the US. The rest seems bland.

Oh, and they're a bunch of crazed Zionist anti-Iranian warmongers of course.

[BING_XI_LAO]

- Pollsters may be encouraging pro-Trump or "keep it close" results in intentional or unintentional ways (Nate Cohn gets at this in his article below, and NYT Times/Siena is a rather important poll). Iowa doesn't have much of a polling basis to compare to, and Trump +4 was Selzer's earlier result in Iowa.

No offense, since you took them seriously, but this once again demonstrates that the polling industry are utterly incompetent subliterate apes. Nate Cohn should be cleaning my toilet.  

Richard Baris of BIG DATA POLL got it right, but most of them are fake intellectuals. Uneducated, don't have what it takes to do their job. Possibly deliberately lying as well as being incompetent. Fraudsters. Selzer got it wrong by 16 points LOL!!!!!  This shit is why total paranoia is justified in politics. Basically everything is a lie.

"War is deceit" - prophet Muhammad

[greenline]

If Trump only attacks illegal immigration and leaves the legal side untouched that will be a massive disappointment.

There are some staffers influenced by Hanania's book that might look at curtailing Title IX or further nasty parts of Civil Rights law. If that goes through successfully it would be the only other long term win I could foresee from the next four years, but it is an even bigger ask.

Uncontrolled legal immigration, though bad, still compares a little better to completely uncontrolled immigration of all kinds, which was the Biden policy up until the election...

[T-hawk]

No offense, since you took them seriously, but this once again demonstrates that the polling industry are utterly incompetent subliterate apes. Nate Cohn should be cleaning my toilet.

It's popular to bash on the pollsters this week... but what were they supposed to do? People were obviously supporting Trump but simply refusing to say so... how is a pollster supposed to know that their audience is outright lying to them? If any pollster had applied a correction as large as the result turned out to be, they would have been slagged for outrageous bias.