Yes, all electricity is evil and must be boycott. Should adhere to the Amish model. The induction cook tops seventh layer of hell.

In all seriousness, electric stove and water heaters kick ass. Electric heat for whole home is stupid though. Need gaa with electromechanical therm, or timeless wood stove.

Gonna strongly disagree with you on the stove, A gas stove is infinitely better for responsive temperature controls.

I don't watch Trump give 60-90 minute speeches, I consume commentary and highlights of it. If he's actually talking about policy, it's not breaking through.

Why have Megyn Kelly, Kellyanne Conway, Nikki Haley, and Peter Navarro gone on tv/radio in recent days talking about how Trump needs to stop the endless ranting/personal attacks and instead focus on policy? I guess when you look at Trump this cycle you see a serious guy focused on substantive policy, but normal people see an angry old man doing the same boring shtick he's pulled for 8 years. It's sort of the same with your Hillary 2016 ideas about her not running a policy focused campaign, while I could easily dig up policy papers and plenty of speeches where there's substantive policy. Your political perspective influences the "vibes" you feel, and they don't necessarily match what most people think.

If the question is what voters wanted, Biden wasn't it. Large majorities of Democrats wanted someone else after his horrendous debate performance. Democratic politicians/elites were the ones who ignored public opinion until it became clear that the guy could not beat Trump. What happened is a sign of the health of the Democratic party as an institution.

There's not a bunch of Democratic voters angry about what happened... it's Trump voters who are mad that now there's a real race, and they are stuck with an incredibly flawed candidate.

This post was edited by IceMage on Aug 16 2024 01:53pm

imo from looking this a lot this week its both true that trump rants too much AND that he has more concrete policy than harris by a good margin.

this is a gaffe for both. trumps most clear path to victory is hammer the border issues and inflation, as well as decry the biden administration for the fiscal policy that has pulled home ownership from the grasp of millions of americans. harris most clear path to victory is to set her potential administration apart from the biden administration in a pivot direction she'd like to take, admittedly a far tougher task by an order of magnitude, and likely why she's doing more an emotional appeal strategy. trump is allowing her to do this, because he's too light on policy, shes only come out with platitudes on border security and offering a tax exemption for tip earners which was just matching trumps offer to do so.

as to optics of the democratic party the general consensus is biden was pushed out against his will, and they've done little to change that narrative. im still swayed by the idea that he only dropped out because they threatened impeachment.

There were literally studies on the 2016 campaign which showed that Hillary was the one running an unusually negative campaign focused on personal attacks against Trump, while Trump was focusing on policy like a normal politician:


Likewise, in 2020, Trump won a clear majority among voters who prioritized policy over personality:





That's a highly disingenuous talking point. In reality, Biden's decline had already been evident for many months, but Democrats and their media allies circled the wagons around him and tried to drag his corpse across the finish line. When Republicans or conservative media figures pointed out his obvious decline, the Democrats and the MSM denied, downplayed, stonewalled and gaslit.




This is only true from a cynical perspective under which the sole purpose of a political party it is to gain and retain power. Democrats tried to stick with a rapidly declining Biden until the very last moment, until it became clear that doing so would cost them power. That's when they unceremoniously dumped him.

At no point did they consider the damage and risks America was exposed to from having a decrepit leader and commander-in-chief who's no longer up to the job. Nor did they consider the damage to the democratic process from forgoing the primaries to determine Biden's successor and instead simply anointing Kamala without any input from rank and file Democrats.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Aug 16 2024 02:17pm

You know we have a democracy, right? We have elections to determine who the people want, to find the healthy path for an institution. Public opinion isn't polled by Pew or Morning Consult, its polled by a primary system, by ballots and caucuses

Millions of voters were disenfranchised.

Couple things: if we're simply basing it on presidential ads, I would understand the talking point. But that's only one part of a campaign.

The personal qualities/positions on issues polling is not evidence that Trump ran a policy-centered campaign... it's the opposite. Many who voted for him knew he was an asshole, as did the many who voted against him.

On the next point, I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with? Your point seems to align with my point. They circled the wagons around him while public opinion showed people wanted a different choice.

The purpose of a political party is to win elections. I don't agree that it was always obvious Biden was as elderly and mentally incompetent as he appeared in the debate... I think his decline has accelerated this year. And parties are going to have a status quo bias for the incumbent president. But after it was blatantly obvious that he couldn't beat Trump, Democrats made a course correction, and that's something the Republican party is not capable of because it's a personality cult.



The point of political parties is to win elections. A political party is not supposed to be a suicide pact... Democrats understand this and Republicans do not. That's why the Democratic party is healthier than the Republican party.

The election happens in November. 155 million people voted in 2020. 14 million people came out to support Biden in the primary, then he shit the bed and revealed the extent of his age and mental incompetence. And since the point of a political party is to win elections, the party pressured him to drop out. They didn't use some weird mechanism to do it, they applied public and private pressure and Biden voluntarily stepped down, which aligned with the vast majority of public opinion. His endorsement(and the VP on his ticket) quickly won the support of the politicians/elites and, based on polling numbers and enthusiasm, the voters.

That's democracy and institutions working how they should.

This post was edited by IceMage on Aug 16 2024 03:31pm

If two months ago Trump walked outside in a diaper and said the n-word multiple times, would it be an insult to democracy for Republican politicians/elites to pressure him to step aside?

This post was edited by IceMage on Aug 16 2024 03:33pm

Two months ago you were saying Joe Biden was going to win the race. Two months ago Joe Biden was saying Joe Biden was going to win the race. Two months ago Joe Biden had won the nomination by securing the required share of delegates in primary elections.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-biden-won-enough-delegates-to-become-the-presumptive-democratic-nominee
https://apnews.com/article/biden-presumptive-nominee-election-president-democrat-63b66006d4bc45354343228e323e3baa

Democracy and institutions work by reflecting the will of the people through lawful, publicly held and publicly scrutinized elections. If the results of elections get thrown away because some billionaires in a smoke filled room demanded it on a whim, you have no true democracy. That's not "working as it should". Its hard for me to wrap my head around how you could call January 6th such an unthinkable attack on democracy when some chuds strolled through the capitol, but the (d) party just threw out the results of an election and disenfranchised the voters in all 50 states, DC & Guam

14,465,519 people cast votes for Joe Biden already this year that were disregarded. The vote was 87.1% Biden, 4.3% Uncommitted (+1 from me), 3.2% Dean Phillips, 2.8% Marianne Williamson, 0.1% Jason Palmer and 0.00% Kamala Harris. There were 3905 delegates pledged to Joe Biden, 37 to Uncommitted, 4 to Dean Philips, 3 to Jason Palmer, 0 to Kamala Harris.