American Politics Discussion Thread

[darrelljs]

We’ve shown we’ll elected demented Presidents, so it doesn’t matter much.

Darrell

[Cyneheard]

I may be biased, but Trump’s issues seem much more obvious - and Biden’s are also people confusing a stutter issue with age, and making up nonsense about how long he’s in public or how many events he’s doing. Like Bernie cancels a rally because of coronavirus, then Biden cancels a rally, and Twitter says he’s doing it because of age - there’s a LOT of BS floating around here and this year is going to require the American people to actually pay attention to things.

[Charriu]

I have to agree with Cyneheard. A lot of people forget that he fought his stutter and I would argue he still fights it. Read it in an article:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatla...le/602401/
Very good article and worth a read even if you don't like Biden.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well it looks like nd is the only state sanders will win not caused by vote-splitting (or in the case of nv caucuses favoring sanders by reducing turnout and being able to guilt-trip people. nd is technically a caucus but it's just now a party-run primary) … Perfect victory denied! Hetikamp endorsed Biden and he lost anyway but attacking her now is beating a dead horse

[Charriu]

And Tulsi Gabbard got her second delegate. Did she forget to drop out or is she planning on being second place, because everybody else dropped out 

[Mardoc]

What merit does the Biden has dementia trope have in the opinion of the Americans here?

The videos I've seen looked pretty bad, but I've seen anything else from him, so maybe it doesn't weigh if you're more exposed to him? Can it be managed when it comes to the general election and gloves are off? Does he appear more or less confused than Trump, or does it not matter anyways because everyone just thinks the guy from the other team is retarded (but there has to be a however slim population of swing voters who can be persuaded one way or the other)?

Speaking as someone who will not be voting for him: you can make anyone look like an idiot if you have them under cameras all the time and get to do selective editing.  Conversely you can also make anyone look quite a bit smarter than they are.  Just as equally, no one with personal access to the candidates is going to be neutral enough to be trustworthy.  So we can't really know, but at a minimum he's got enough coherence that it's selective clips not all speeches.

I'm sure dementia is a risk, all the remaining candidates are definitely in the age range where they not only could have it now, they could develop it over the next four years.  But at the end of the day that's why we have a VP and the 25th amendment. It's hardly the only risk they're subject to.

[Cyneheard]

And Tulsi Gabbard got her second delegate. Did she forget to drop out or is she planning on being second place, because everybody else dropped out 

Candidates keep their district-level delegates even when they drop out (statewide get redistributed) - I'm not going to pretend to explain why that's the system, but that's the system.

So Tulsi won't be in second place unless she somehow gets to 15% of the vote in a bunch of states and that might not be enough.

Bernie is like 80% to drop out by next Wednesday - he'll go through the debate, try to push Biden to the left some, and then get crushed in Florida, Illinois, Ohio and possibly even in Arizona, and concede. But he'll still have most of his delegates (~55-65%? District delegates are most of the delegates actually).

[Charriu]

Thanks I didn't know that.

[Gustaran]

Can someone explain to me how in the world Trump's approval numbers are actually going up right now?

- Trump disbanded an NSC pandemic unit
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show...l-n1160301

- He was warned in January about Coronavirus, but declined to act for 2 months
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/20/polit...index.html

- Even worse, he caused people not to take it seriously by calling it a "Democrat's Hoax"
https://www.businessinsider.com/five-tim...?r=DE&IR=T

- He declined to use the WHO approved test invented by German experts (but let the CDC develop a test that was faulty at first and took way too long to be ready)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/m...e-trump-us

- Due to this, the US has horribly low test numbers. As of last week, the US apparantly tested as many people in two weeks as South Korea did per day.
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/...a-america/

The latest thing I read is that Trump tells people about his "feelings" about what drugs to use to combat Coronavirus
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/20/trum...a-feeling/


I have to say it is really strange that a country which features the greatest universities, best scientists and incredible experts elected such a moron as president. But it is really difficult to understand that in the current situation with rising infection numbers causing massive economic damage he's not held accountable by the majority of voters.

[DaveV]

Because a lot of people watch Fox News, which relentlessly pushes the message that Trump is doing a great job. They turned on a dime from "media hoax to take down the President" to Trump being absolutely on top of the "China virus" from the outset, and people are apparently swallowing this gaslighting. Trump may well be reelected, even though this crisis is a case study of why he is such a terrible president: he absolutely refuses to do his homework, surrounds himself with sycophants and toadies who are afraid to disagree with him or tell him the truth, stubbornly refuses ever to admit he made a mistake, and undermines our institutions in search of the absolute power he craves.