caga tio wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 7:03 pm

Frankie99 wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 12:44 pm

eephus wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2024 12:02 am

No. She is not.

Thinking Trump will be as bumbling and incompetent in office the 2nd time around is a mistake.

They had their dress rehearsal.

Running for president is extraordinarily difficult for the candidate. Almost no one has the skill and ability to dissemble necessary to truly front a campaign. Reagan, Clinton, and Obama are the only great presidential candidates of the last fifty years.

The campaign, in the absence of someone with real star power, is what wins it--props up the candidate as best they can and instills enough excitement, fear, and rage in their constituencies to get them to vote.

Trump has star power. Also the morals of an alligator. All that combined with his complete ruthlessness makes him as skilled a demagogue as has ever run for the office. But the Biden campaign in the last general was extremely well-run, and they beat him. So whatever. I don't care how old he is or about anything else really. He's not Trump, and he's going to be the alternative.

If Haley gets the nomination, I'll be marginally relieved. I'll definitely be less worried about her sure-to-be-terrible presidency than if Trump got back in there.

Gonna disagree, which is why I said she's just as dangerous in different ways. She can put through actual legislation with the help of a sympathetic congress (should that be the case). Her people will know how to get things through the works in ways that Trump's peeps clearly do not. His people are ham fisted and foolish. They will remain ham fisted and foolish, but might have learned from their previous mistakes.

I think it's short sighted to give her more leash simply because....well, I don't know why. But she's def. a better legislator and has more brains than he does. it is not that I think he's *less dangerous* because of his first term per se, and I'm not counting on Trump being a complete buffoon a second time, but I'm not going to look past her ability to carry out the same policies, just with a little more polish while doing it.

IOW, he'll hold a press conference saying all the terrible shit he will do before doing it, cause a ruckus, get people riled up, etc. She will pursue the same objectives he would have, and has a better grasp on what it takes to get that done.

IOOW, I don't trust her any more than I do anyone of the fuckos trying to get elected under the guise of conservatism, including Trump. They're lying at all times.

I agree both are varying levels of terrifying, but I am not willing to say that one will be a relief over the other. Either one, we're pretty fucked, but we'll be fucked differently.

I get what you're saying, but Nikki Haley's tenure in South Carolina should dissuade you a little from thinking that she has the knowledge and skill for deft political maneuvering, or even that she has the ability to surround herself with the right people to govern in the way you describe. She ran out of steam and quit before the ride was over and then was thrown a table-scrap of a job as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She's kind of a dud Romney-type that the current Republican Party has little use for. She’s got dark money from the “anyone-but-Trump” bet-hedging super-rich and is centrist bait electorally for sure, but she has no pull within the party’s dominant faction. I could see her getting Kevin McCarthy-like pushback the first time she tries to balk at or water down an extreme policy proposition. She still kind of believes in the function of government which means she's slightly boxed in by its gentleman’s-agreement-style rules and traditions. That don’t fly with the MAGAts. If we are talking about Haley and the people she would bring into to the administration vs. Trump and the people he would bring, I think she would be, marginally (oh so slightly), a bit of sand versus Trump’s 3-in-1 lubricating oil to the gears of total destruction. Remember, Trump already has people like the Heritage Foundation (and jebus knows who else is lurking in the grass) planning for maximum effect on day one with things like Project 2025.

Frankie99 wrote: I read all the replies - I still think that all the R's are flavors of fascism, as I said. I appreciate all of the responses, but I still find the smiling fascist as scary as the screaming one. Y'all may disagree, and that's fine, but I've watched the fascists in action down here first hand, and I'm rattled. She represents the same people to me as those in charge here in TX, and that's a terrifying thing to me becuz I think she will achieve similar outcomes with a different path to get there.

The fascists here are outlawing pregnant people driving on roads, keeping people from re-entering the state post abortion, have put out literal bounties on abortion and trans care providers, are putting up walls with other states to keep migrants out, and have put fucking razor wire in the middle of a fucking river to kill migrants coming in. These things have already happened here in the post Trump world. This will happen under her as well at the federal level.

We have our plans to get out of this state as soon as it's feasible with our family situations because of the war on non cis white people here.

Maybe you're right and he will tear apart the country at the seams more than she will. I dunno. I mean, I suppose what I'm saying is she's the palatable fascist, and gets a pass for that affability. Which is, IMO, undeserved. The only difference I see is that once in power, he will try to use the government as a weapon, and she might not.

They both scare the fucking life out of me.

Frankie99 wrote: Fri Jan 05, 2024 9:26 amIt's also based on recent polling to determine people would rather have Haley, which should immediately raise an eyebrow. Polls are stupid flawed now, and have been for some time.

nate silver wrote:There’s no hard-and-fast rule for when general election polls become meaningful, but the best heuristic is that you should start paying attention to polls once the matchup is locked in and voters aren’t treating it as a hypothetical. Biden trails Trump in polls now, though his standing has improved over the past several weeks. But if voters’ mindset is LOL, they’re not really going to nominate Trump and Biden again, are they? — those polls might not mean so much. When Trump wins Iowa on Monday, the reality might finally start to set in.

washington post wrote:Alaska’s special election in August 2022 for the House of Representatives was heralded as a triumph for ranked-choice voting, because MAGA favorite Sarah Palin, a personification of polarization, could not attract enough second-choice votes from moderate Republican Nick Begich’s supporters to win.

That’s true. But the way Alaska uses ranked-choice voting also caused the defeat of Begich, whom most Alaska voters preferred to Democrat Mary Peltola, the candidate who ended up winning.

This anomalous outcome, contrary to the principle that the majority’s preference should prevail, would be easily remedied by one small change.

The key to ranked-choice voting is that a voter lists the candidates in order of preference, starting with their favorite, rather than naming just that favorite. The problem in Alaska — and other ranked-choice systems now in use, from Maine to San Francisco — is the rule for eliminating candidates when no one gets a majority of first-place votes. By tweaking this rule, Alaska’s system would become more palatable to Republicans and Democrats alike, and more likely to be adopted across the country.

Begich was eliminated because he had the fewest first-place votes. That seems logical at first glance. But the flaw in this outcome — and why Republicans have reason to be resentful — is that a majority of voters would have favored Begich had the race come down to a head-to-head matchup against either Peltola (52 percent to 48 percent) or Palin (61 percent to 39 percent). He lost only because it was a three-way race.

Here’s how to fix the flaw. If Alaska eliminated the candidate with the fewest total votes, rather than the fewest first-place votes, the ranked-choice system would be sure to elect a candidate such as Begich who defeats all rivals in one-on-one matchups.

Call it a “Total Vote Runoff.” A candidate’s total votes in such a system would be determined by the number of other candidates he or she is ranked above. For example, when a candidate is ranked first on a ballot in an election involving three candidates, then this first-choice candidate is ranked above two other candidates and gets two votes from this ballot.

When that same candidate is ranked second on another ballot, the candidate is favored over only one other candidate and would receive only one vote from that ballot.

A candidate ranked last on a ballot, or not ranked at all, is not favored over anyone and gets no votes from that ballot.

Calculating the number of votes that a candidate gets on each ballot — two, one or zero — and adding up the candidate’s votes from all the ballots yields the candidate’s total votes.

Using this method, we can identify the number of ballots on which each of Alaska’s three candidates was ranked first or second and then calculate each candidate’s total votes (there were only three candidates in the House special election):

Palin had the fewest total votes, so she would have been the first candidate eliminated in a “Total Vote Runoff” tweak to RCV.

With Palin eliminated, the race would have been between Begich and Peltola. Because a majority preferred Begich to Peltola, he would have been elected. Total Vote Runoff captures the will of the majority more accurately than Alaska’s current elimination system does.

Texas "physically barred" Border Patrol agents from trying to rescue migrants who drowned, federal officials say.

Curry Pervert wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2024 6:49 pm RE: Texas.

Texas "physically barred" Border Patrol agents from trying to rescue migrants who drowned, federal officials say.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/3-migrants ... er-agents/

Curry Pervert wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2024 6:49 pm RE: Texas.

Texas "physically barred" Border Patrol agents from trying to rescue migrants who drowned, federal officials say.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/3-migrants ... er-agents/