My list was actual things discussed/mentioned during the debates and matter to people. Yours is just 'i'm obsessed with Trump' Vice-esque headlines.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Oct 1 2020 10:28am

I'm not obsessed, I'm stating that Trump asks question in what did you call it "Vice-esque" type questions. And you want answers.
Flipped. Not valid questions.
hmmmmmm

This so much. Biden knows that his coalition is deeply divided between the leftist and progressive activists on one side and the moderate or never-trump-y suburbanites on the other side. Any position he takes on court packing, the filibuster or the Green New Deal risks depressing enthusiasm and turnout of one half of his coalition.



Like some pundit said after Biden nominated Harris as his VP: "now, Wall Street finally has the ticket it wanted all along".

It should be noted, though, that this is not a new development and goes back far longer than 2016. Big Tech and Big Finance have supported Democrats over Republicans for at least 5 cycles. By contrast, the donor base of the GOP have always been the industrial parts of the economy, the companies which produce physical goods - big oil, petrochemicals, big pharma, retail, real estate, arms manufacturers and so on.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Oct 1 2020 10:51am

I don't remember saying that, but if I did, it was because I was still a massive consumer of Foxnews. I drank the Karl Rove kool-aid.

Court packing yes, GND no. I think court packing is a binary position whereas the GND is more of a spectrum. Biden will likely deny supporting the GND when dealing with Republicans and stick with canned lines about high paying jobs and technology. When speaking with Democrats he'll probably say something along the lines of "we need to support ideas like the GND here's my plan."

I think everyone knows that Biden doesn't support court packing and it's not popular in the Senate either. I think you'd need about 60 Democratic senators in order to even attempt that. The correct answer is, "The Republicans owned us and there's nothing we can do about it" but that's not really something you campaign on haha.



-Yes, he dodged packing the court. To the informed population, I think the obvious answer is "not going to happen." I think they are still trying to navigate messaging regarding the death of RGB. If I were him, I'd focus on two things:
1) the raw exercise of power by the GOP and why the Dems need the Senate
2) How the GOP is attacking a woman's right to choose
Making the conversation about tactics seems like it's missing the big picture. Frankly, I'd rather him give an unequivocal no. I don't really see much downside to that answer.

-Regarding violence, were we watching the same debate? I feel like he always condemns violence/rioting and I'm pretty sure he did that at least twice.
-I mean, you could just go on his campaign website and find out yourself? Read the DNC platform? To me, it's not nearly as ambitious as the GND but that was nonsensical anyway. Biden's plan is probably doable to an extent but I imagine not even half of it will make it through Congress.
-It's smart to dodge it because there's nothing there that's out of the ordinary. Trump doesn't know how to effectively attack him on the issue because he's using the shotgun approach. In addition, he's completely misrepresenting the facts which causes fact checkers to just say "false." If you want to land an attack it needs to be TRUE (and there are some things he could say that ARE true!) so that you make Biden the liar. At the end of the day though, the American people don't care. There's at least 10 other issues that YOU probably care about more and you're firmly in the Trump camp.
-From the debate, I believe he wants more funding for small businesses and schools so that they can be open/be in compliance.

Ultimately, based on Trump's behavior, I don't think you're going to get much discussion on policy. The American people know that. Trump is trying to force Biden into a gaffe and that should be pretty obvious.

I think the GND/climate/fossils is the most problematic issue for Biden. An overwhelming majority of the Dem coalition wants bold action on climate change, perhaps not going as far as the version put forth by AOC/Bernie/Markley, but definitely bold and resolute. The overwhelming majority of his backers want fracking gone, most want a clear end date for coal and fossils. But these positions are absolutely toxic to the swing voters in the Rust belt that he crucially relies on to win this election. If he's positioning himself against coal and fracking, against cars with combustion engines and all of that, then he can kiss Ohio goodbye and gives Trump a huge opening in Pennsylvania and Michigan. It's the one policy complex where Biden risks losing the EC while winning the national popular vote by 6+% if he's not careful with what he says.

Biden doesn't support a ban on fracking but I think he recently said that he doesn't support "new" fracking. I'm not exactly sure. Are ICEs actually an issue that rust belt people care about? Ford is going pretty hard on battery tech with their F-150 so I'm not exactly sure why that'd be an issue. At the end of the day, Biden needs to make a convincing argument that the new jobs created will be better than their old jobs. If he can't do that, then he's either a poor candidate or they can't be convinced anyway.

I'm not exactly worried about the left not voting...I think they learned their lesson. I think you have some bad faith actors like ink, but "orange man bad" is probably good enough for them by a substantial margin. It'll be more important in 2024.

The bolded wont work. Even if he makes a compelling case that the new jobs will be better, UAW members and similar groups will know that they do not have the qualification for those jobs, and are too old to obtain them. These new jobs might be better than their old jobs, but they'll know that these new jobs are for someone else, not for them. They will know that a forced, rushed transition from cars with fossil engines to electric cars would leave themselves as the big losers. On top of that, it has to be assumed that the number of "old" union jobs lost will exceed the number of those "new, good jobs" created in the electric car industry.


I cant really make an informed prediction about turnout on the left. You're probably right on that one, although a "this race is totally over, Trump is done"-narrative in the media could still undermine it.

Maybe that's true. If that's the case, it is what it is and they'll be left behind I guess. Trump may have been able to take advantage of the EC disparity in 2016 but 2020 is a REALLY important year. If the Dems overperform (which they seem highly likely to do), they can push back on some of the institutional advantages that the GOP created for itself (voting rights, independent commissions for district drawing, etc.) There will come a time where you can say "too bad so sad" and I think that time is coming. IMO, sometimes it's better to see the writing on the wall and move on (like the GOP did regarding gay marriage).

The media will never do that. If anything, they'll say that "anything can happen" because they want people to watch their content like a sporting event.

Banning fracking at this point is kind of dumb anyways. This industry is organically dying with oil so cheap and fracking actually being one of the more expensive ways to extract oil. Why ban it when EV is taking over and if you look at most oil companies are already shutting down uneconomical wells?

we've been over this. Him saying 'i condemn all violence' is weasel politician talk, that's actually not condemning violence. Literally no one cares about this canned politically safe response. You think those benzo'd out part time Starbucks baristas in Portland are going to stop because old Uncle Joe condemned all violence? Like lets be honest, that is the issue and he's been skirting around it, and he will continue to skirt around it because he doesn't want to lose the dumb fuck left. In reality Joe probably wants to send in the national guard and stop that nonsense but he won't do it because he knows what it'd mean for him politically.