Bedinsis said:
You have my attention. Can you state something that will happen in US politics within the next 12 months that is non-obvious enough that there are professionals that would argue against your prediction(if they would care about what is said on gaming focused website's forums)? A "bold prediction", if you will.
Easy Prediction List (if I'm wrong about these, you got me):
1)Joe Biden is not going to win the nomination. He never was. He got his numbers by name recognition and "electability", so as soon as other candidates gain notoriety and the media questions Biden, he's toast. He never had a chance, even I honestly don't know much of his policy proposals because nobody talks about it and nobody cares.
2)Elizabeth Warren takes down Bernie Sanders to win the nomination. Her campaign was built to take down Bernie from the start. She's hijacking as many of his policies as she thinks the American people can stomach, and she's branding herself with the sentence "I have a plan for that", which is a bullseye on Bernie's head, as he has all the ideas and has implemented almost precisely nothing in his political career. Her goal is to shape herself to be like Bernie but effective, so she can clean up when Biden fails to be a contender.
3)Democrats move for impeachment in the lead up to the election. On the off-chance Trump is ousted, they win big. But on the much more likely chance the Senate doesn't remove Trump, they use the "failed attempt" as a rallying cry to push voter turnout expecting a win that way.
Bold Prediction List (if I'm right about these, I expect you all to make me famous):
1)Close polling between the two candidates in the general election causes great concern, and the ongoing impeachment process convinces some state-level Republicans in swing districts to try and ally themselves with Democrats instead of Trump. Along with existing momentum for the idea, this gets the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact to pass through state legislatures in enough swing states to pass the majority threshold just in time, making 2020 the first direct democracy Presidential election.
2)Partisan demographics shift slightly. The male/female divide between Democrats and Republicans widens slightly, but the racial divide slightly weakens as specifically young men in racial minorities vote more for Trump than 2016. This results in a slight boon for Trump when all combined.
3)Because of that bump, Trump actually wins the popular vote. And at the same time, the combination of better strategic campaigning by Warren and Trump getting votes out of blue states he didn't before, Warren actually would have won in the traditional electoral college. A perfect flip from the previous election, except this time the aforementioned compact hands the election to Trump, causing the single greatest election controversy of all time as states try desperately to break the compact and an electoral free-for-all ensues, ultimately necessitating a Supreme Court case, and making John Roberts effectively deciding vote on who's president in 2021. Not even I'm going to guess that man's opinion.
Palindromemordnilap said:
Says guy who insisted that Republican party president Donald Trump was in fact a Democrat
Exactly. I understand what all of you don't. The other day, either Trump himself or one of his team basically said [paraphrase] "Democrats could be working with us on gun control or the cost of medicine if they weren't so busy with this crap". The man wants to sign some Democratic proposals, but they're not even trying to make that happen. It's not a bluff, he genuinely does. That's the right perspective that makes his actions understandable. I think it's safe to say that none of you who hate Trump understand the man in the slightest, and it's because you think things about him that aren't true. I know what's up.
Seanchaidh said:
Predicting impeachment is hardly some great feat considering the amount of chatter about it.
You'd think that, but there were plenty of people on the "it's all talk, they'll never do it side", and I was like "yo, just wait, it's coming eventually."
Eacaraxe said:
Other than the fact I literally pointed out protest-by-abstention voters in the very first sentence of that entire post, which you yourself quoted?
Low turnout universally benefits Republican candidates;
I don't think I've ever seen someone defeat themselves in so few words. I try and remind you that people can choose not to vote, and you say "I know that! But not Republicans!" Like, come one.
You don't seem to understand that Trump fans and Republicans are not a single-circle venn diagram. But even assuming for a second that every bit of your logic is sound and Trump people show up to vote in huge numbers in protest of his removal, that doesn't mean they're going to vote straight (R). The can show up in force, and then place their vote for... wait for it........ Donald Trump
Agema said:
Dude, seriously: he's asking Ukraine to investigate the Trump-Russia probe. The cybersecurity company he's talking about was involved in the DNC hack. This subject should be "dead", in the investigative sense, because the Mueller report is finished and done. If Ukraine needed to do anything, that was the job of Mueller, FBI, etc. who had all the tools and proper channels at their disposal to check on things.
This is just "only the people I like are allowed to investigate". Like, Democrats in congress continued investigating after Mueller was done. Should that be forbidden? Also, the is no way you can possibly say that Mueller had more proper channels to investigate corruption in Ukraine than the President of Ukraine does. That's an absurd suggestion.
These aren't two average joes talking about their average, totally unconnected jobs on a park bench, are they? This is the classic sort of exchange you'd expect from people in power telling others what they want done without having to do so explicitly. It's how a mafia don would talk: they don't tell someone to murder Luigi or to hire Santino, they say it would be a shame if something happened to Luigi, or how Santino's a really good worker and maybe if he got a job their business would flourish. No-one's under any illusion as to what that mafia don is really saying unless they are deliberately obtuse. (The mafia connection of course is strangely appropriate, given rumours of Trump's mob links.)
Those rumors are dumb. Trump is not a mafia don.
No, I think you're treating me like some bizarre composite of numerous people you argue with.
I'm not. It was you specifically that argued with me about the Democrats actually impeaching Trump. Most of it disappeared along with R&P, but I'm quite certain it was you. It's rare we have such a stubborn clash so it was noteworthy to me.
you predicted impeachment on an entirely different assumption (the Mueller probe) from the one it's actually going ahead on.
Also, you seem to remember it happening, so I'm not crazy here.
I actually do think he's more an incompetent buffoon than he is corrupt. I actually think his venality is a pretty mundane self-aggrandisment, with a major problem he's too incompetent to have any idea where appropriate conduct stops and corruption begins. But even if he's only corrupt because he's too ignorant and arrogant to know where the line lies... he's still corrupt.
Then why are you treating him as a literal mafia don? The mafia don isn't missing where the line of appropriate conduct is. Hell, you have to know what's unacceptable to even want to attempt the "I'm not telling you to do this but you know what I mean" game.
Aaaaaand, in case people missed it, the whistleblower complaint is available here [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/26/us/politics/whistle-blower-complaint.html]. My favorite part, by far, is snuck in at the very bottom of the appendix of the original complaint (a little more than halfway down the linked url) where it says "As of early August, I heard from U.S. officials that some Ukrainian officials were aware that U.S. aid might be in jeopardy, but I do not know how or when they learned of it." Says the person alleging that Trump threatened to withhold aid in July. Beautiful.
