Flynn was not some hero working against the agencies behind the scenes dude. He was actively lobbying with foreign countries for massive piles of cash after retiring from a place of high power within the government. He's literally the unstoppable elites you are referencing.

That's the weirdest thing. You guys see the problems, and then you think a deeply entrenched billionaire from New York and his cabinet of washington elites is gonna make real change.

Leftists rail against Biden harder than they rail against Republicans. Whereas you guys lick boot and pretend if we just elect the same people the boomers want even harder next time you'll get change.

Right on! Now that's a mantra I can support.

Let's start with Pfizer and Moderna

I'd prefer real consequences for the Sacklers first. They're the architects of the opiate crisis and they're going to get off with making less in payments than the market return on their profits from doing so. In 20 years when they pay off their fine they'll be wealthier than they are today when they should be in jail.

If it can be substantiated that Pfizer did something illegal then rake them across the coals too. There's no reason to do one or the other first. All pharma should be held to a higher standard.

First, it is inadequate to describe Trump's economic platform as "just bernie-style economic populism" when Trump has publicly espoused the exact same hawkish stance on China, free trade and all that since the 80s.

Second, I think it is just not true to claim any kind of certainty that Bernie would have defeated Trump in 2016. The coalitions on both sides would have looked different. Yes, Bernie would have energized progressives more and held some swing voters who ultimately broke for Trump when the alternative was Hillary. But at the same time, there were a lot of upscale suburbanites who liked the GOP of Romney/Ryan and ended up sitting the election out or voting for Hillary. I think it's very plausible that this type of voter swing which worked against Trump would not have happened with the alternative to Trump being an equally populist guy who's also an unabashed socialist.

Third, Trump's strategy in 2020 was not even that bad. By 2020, he had consolidated the voters he drew in four years earlier with the way he talks about immigration and race. This was of course assisted by the Dems going fully woke and having become completely toxic to these kinds of voters. Since any kind of appeal to the nativists and white identitarians always came at the cost of repelling suburbanites and college-educated voters, and since Trump had the vote of these groups in the pocket anyway, it was the correct strategy for him to tone down these issues and stop talking about race and immigration.

He definitely didn't lose 2020 because he wasn't draining the swamp enough or was too much like the old ruling class. Turnout and enthusiasm among his base were still super high. 2020 was not a turnout election, it was an election about persuasion. Trump had been working very hard for 5 years to convince a small but crucial slice of the electorate that he was unbearable as president; Biden happened to be the right man to pick these voters up. This decisive slice of the electorate definitely didn't turn on the GOP because Trump didn't stay true to himself, they turned on them precisely because Trump kept being Trump. And even then, it still took the double-whammy of a once-in-a-century pandemic and sustained race riots which supercharged turnout among Dem-leaning constituencies to finally defeat him. Basically, if Chauvin wasn't such a despicable, incompetent piece of shit, chances are that Trump would be president right now.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 9 2022 01:45am

@ the bold - If Bernie is an unabashed socialist, then Germany is full on socialism. Bernie advocates for the type of system you literally live in right now.

I think you're selling short what Bernie brought to the table. Trump was very unpallatable to those suburbanites who always vote, and they would have almost certainly not voted for Trump over Bernie. Similarly Bernie massively energized the base, and that's what matters for Democrats.

His 2020 strategy was ass. At least admit that much. His whole argument was "but Biden's a communist!". He didn't talk about holding the elite accountable. Didn't talk about reforming important issues. Didn't talk about economic policy. When you don't talk about economic policy it becomes a toss up on culture war bullshit, which works on state level but works less so for the presidency.

The pandemic definitely erased Trump's incumbent advantage. I agree that without Covid Trump likely would have won. However, with Covid he wasn't down and out. He just did... everything wrong on both messaging and policy.

I cant fix your brain man. You need to stop watching Cenk wigger.

I can't help if you think the solution to our problems is electing billionaire Washington insiders.

Bernie is always framing his ideas in an offensively revolutionary tone and given the historical aversion of Americans to anything labeled "socialism", his rhetoric would have caused a lot of the suburban, well-off swing voters to get cold feet.


I think you're deluding yourself if you think Bernie had this overwhelming base support. If a clear-cut majority of the Dem base had wanted him to become the nominee, no amount of manipulation and underhanded tactics could have thrown the primary to Hillary.
You are also wrong when you claim that Trump was unpalatable to those suburbanites. In 2016, he still held a crucial part of formerly Republican-leaning suburban voters and college-whites that he later lost (2018 and on). I don't see any reason to assume that these types of voters he was able to hold against Hillary would have flipped to Bernie of all people.




I probably didn't communicate my point well enough: we really have to distinguish between two questions:
1.: did Trump run a good campaign in 2020? The clear answer is "hell no, he ran a god-awful campaign!"
2.: was the Trump campaign making the correct strategic considerations at the beginning of 2020, given the conditions at the time? My answer to this one is "yes".

I already explained why it was strategically the right call for Trump to stop talking about race and immigration all the time. Given his unpopularity and his tendency to polarize the electorate in a way where he riles up slightly more voters against him than for him, it was the right idea at the start of 2020 to seek depolarization and ride a booming economy and the enthusiasm edge of his base to reelection while trying to stay clear of controversy. This plan of course flew out of the window when the pandemic hit, shredded the economy, caused emotions to run even higher than before, brought Democrats' strongest policy issue (public health/healthcare) to the forefront and brutally exposed his flaws and shortcomings. When the conditions changed, his governing style or his campaign strategy would have needed to change accordingly, but he was unable to do either, instead flailed around aimlessly and helplessly as the clock kept ticking down against him.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jan 9 2022 02:12am

China just replicated the *core* of the sun. The surface is ~5500°C, and the core is ~15M°C. The Chinese fusion project sustained ~70M°C for 17 minutes.

Dang, they just 1-upped us hard.

You're making microchips? We just made a sun in a box.