Trump's approval rate increases to 49%

[JamesStone]

To all the performance Resisters in this site who kept pushing for impeachment, who kept singing to the media's tune and throwing an unplanned shitfit at every little "Drumpf is finished" newspiece that kept coming along, I have just this to say, since despite being offline from these forums for a while I've been saying this as many times as possible:

I fucking told you so

Trump's approval ratings at this time of the year is higher than Obama was, inflated by his lucky strikes with the economy and more likely than not the absolute pathetic sham that these impeachment trials have been, which anyone with half a critical mind could figure out would just be a theatre to cleanse Trump of any wrongdoings in the eyes of the system that was perfectly ok with thousands of dead civilians overseas by incessant drone strikes, the sabotage of South American nations who swerve slightly to the left and the turning of a blind eye to the tyranny that unfolded later because of it. What a surprise.

Trump would never be defeated by activating the tools of the broken system that even allowed to become president. A grassroots movement is the best solution to deal with this, and the lack of strategic planning and proper organization has played right on Trump's hands.

If you actually give a single iota of a shit about defeating Trump, pay attention to what's happening on Iowa. The ratfucking that the DNC is attempting to do cannot go unheard, nor unpunished, because that's more manifestations of the broken system that will only protect Trump.

The people NEED to organize and protest this. Even if it turns out nothing illegal or immoral happened, the sheer incompetence and bureocratic rot that this Iowa displayed shows that the system needs an overhaul, but until then the people need to be completely on top of every caucus, every election. The fact that the malfunctioning and crashing app that was supposed to count this election was financed by Pete Buttigieg's campaign, who curiously enough declared himself a winner before any oficial reports could have been had, shows that the powers-that-be are beginning to stop giving a fuck about being subtle. Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and until we the people realize this the broken system will continue to spin meatgrinding the folks caught in its wheels.

Trump has a high approval rate not because Republicans are organized (even though they are) but because Democrats have been acting like the tools of the establishment they are. These four years should have been spent looking inwards demanding change, and yet they've been spent gazing at the freakshow. If you want to beat Trump, we need to look upon the people that are trying to beat him and demand more of them.

 

[CaitSeith]

I said it before, I'll say it again: if polls meant anything, Hilary would be president.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

It's a bit unclear, what exactly is going down in Iowa? Am not American, and that sounds way more interesting and useful than another hot air poll.

 

[JamesStone]

I said it before, I'll say it again: if polls meant anything, Hilary would be president.

That's true in most circunstances, but the polls are still indicators of trends, especially when not analyzed alone and compared to previous results. Trump's approval rating matters when contrasted with the approval rating of former presidents; ignoring the fact that he has had a recent and powerful surge of popularity is foolish.

 

[JamesStone]

It's a bit unclear, what exactly is going down in Iowa? Am not American, and that sounds way more interesting and useful than another hot air poll.

At this point, the results have been severely delayed, there have been many inconsistencies so far, and one of the candidates who hadn't been particularly popular and whose on-site numbers weren't looking too good has declared his victory before the results came in and he seems to have taken a good number of votes. Incidentally that very same candidate had his campaign finance the company who developed the app to count the results, a company called Shadow.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

It's a bit unclear, what exactly is going down in Iowa? Am not American, and that sounds way more interesting and useful than another hot air poll.

At this point, the results have been severely delayed, there have been many inconsistencies so far, and one of the candidates who hadn't been particularly popular and whose on-site numbers weren't looking too good has declared his victory before the results came in and he seems to have taken a good number of votes. Incidentally that very same candidate had his campaign finance the company who developed the app to count the results, a company called Shadow.

Ah shit, yeah I just noticed the info in the other thread which successfully remained invisible until a minute ago. Not good at all. Too many assholes.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

It's a bit unclear, what exactly is going down in Iowa? Am not American, and that sounds way more interesting and useful than another hot air poll.

At this point, the results have been severely delayed, there have been many inconsistencies so far, and one of the candidates who hadn't been particularly popular and whose on-site numbers weren't looking too good has declared his victory before the results came in and he seems to have taken a good number of votes. Incidentally that very same candidate had his campaign finance the company who developed the app to count the results, a company called Shadow.

The only reporting I can find on that is coming from the conservative Washington Examiner [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/buttigieg-campaign-paid-firm-that-developed-voting-app-blamed-for-iowa-caucus-delays], and even then the link is extremely tangential in that the campaign bought a software licence for text messaging services to reach supporters (essential for any campaign) for a little more than $42,000 from a company that also invested in the app development, though it is unclear when that investment took place and if the app was even still in development when the campaign paid for the licence.

Considering the amounts of money involved, I would genuinely be shocked if any investment fund could be bought for such a small amount of money. Sanders spent more than that in a single transaction [https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00696948&two_year_transaction_period=2020&min_date=01%2F01%2F2019&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020&disbursement_description=software] for a single piece of campaign software (which is only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands he spent on various other software services during that same reporting period). $40k is not even couch cushion change in digital development.

Can we maybe not just spread conspiracy theories willy-nilly?

 

[crimson5pheonix]

It's a bit unclear, what exactly is going down in Iowa? Am not American, and that sounds way more interesting and useful than another hot air poll.

At this point, the results have been severely delayed, there have been many inconsistencies so far, and one of the candidates who hadn't been particularly popular and whose on-site numbers weren't looking too good has declared his victory before the results came in and he seems to have taken a good number of votes. Incidentally that very same candidate had his campaign finance the company who developed the app to count the results, a company called Shadow.

Don't forget the aforementioned Shadow is headed by an ex-Hillary staffer. Something that means very little, I'm sure, but damn does it just look bad.

 

[JamesStone]

It's a bit unclear, what exactly is going down in Iowa? Am not American, and that sounds way more interesting and useful than another hot air poll.

At this point, the results have been severely delayed, there have been many inconsistencies so far, and one of the candidates who hadn't been particularly popular and whose on-site numbers weren't looking too good has declared his victory before the results came in and he seems to have taken a good number of votes. Incidentally that very same candidate had his campaign finance the company who developed the app to count the results, a company called Shadow.

The only reporting I can find on that is coming from the conservative Washington Examiner [https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/buttigieg-campaign-paid-firm-that-developed-voting-app-blamed-for-iowa-caucus-delays], and even then the link is extremely tangential in that the campaign bought a software licence for text messaging services to reach supporters (essential for any campaign) for a little more than $42,000 from a company that also invested in the app development, though it is unclear when that investment took place and if the app was even still in development when the campaign paid for the licence.

Considering the amounts of money involved, I would genuinely be shocked if any investment fund could be bought for such a small amount of money. Sanders spent more than that in a single transaction [https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00696948&two_year_transaction_period=2020&min_date=01%2F01%2F2019&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020&disbursement_description=software] for a single piece of campaign software (which is only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands he spent on various other software services during that same reporting period). $40k is not even couch cushion change in digital development.

Can we maybe not just spread conspiracy theories willy-nilly?

It's not a conspiracy theory since so far I've only exposed facts. It's suspect and the timing is very convinient that the candidate who has contributed more has declared victory with no actual results; combine that with the fact the few candidates that have taken precautions and taken notes report consistent results amongst themselves and dissimilar to the Shadow, Inc. company and you got yourself a hot plate.

Criminal investigations started for less. Can we actually keep our conversation topics open and not do the typical Dem song and dance of ignoring things happening right in front of our faces like we're puppets because it doesn't look good?

 

[Agema]

Trump has a high approval rate...

Never judge on one data point: it could just be an outlier.

On the other hand, I generally agree about the Democratic Party. They're a shower of shit. It's a strangely common thing about centre-left parties in many countries: their sheer, utter, fucking uselessness. France, Germany, UK, USA, it doesn't matter: the right can put up venality, incompetence and gibberish, and the centre-left still do their best to fuck themselves up.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

It's not a conspiracy theory since so far I've only exposed facts. It's suspect and the timing is very convinient that the candidate who has contributed more has declared victory with no actual results; combine that with the fact the few candidates that have taken precautions and taken notes report consistent results amongst themselves and dissimilar to the Shadow, Inc. company and you got yourself a hot plate.

I swear the phrase "I am just stating facts" is usually the sign you're spouting a conspiracy theory [https://www.fastcompany.com/90458795/humans-are-hardwired-to-dismiss-facts-that-dont-fit-their-worldview].

Here are the facts you espoused:

1) Buttigieg spent money that went to a software parent company, $42,000 approximately in July 2019 according the FEC filings.

2) That company is a partial investor in another company that developed the app that was designed to assist with the Caucus reporting on Monday.

3) Pete Buttigieg made a victory speech last night.

That's it. That's the only thing that you are using to base your conspiracy theory on, which conveniently ignores the following facts:

a) The software in question was discarded in favor of the hard-paper back-up system the state party had in place.

b) There's no indication the output was skewed in favor of any campaign.

c) The amount of money in question is well within normal parameters for an organizational software purchase.

d) His speech wasn't even first. Amy Klobuchar started the series of victory speeches, followed by Warren. Buttigieg was the third speech of the night.

e) There doesn't appear to be any stronger link between the Buttigieg campaign and the app developer.

f) The firm that Buttigieg paid the licenses for also provided what appears to be similar services to the Biden campaign, former candidate Kristen Gillibrand, and the state Democratic parties of Texas, Wisconsin, and Nevada [https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?data_type=processed&recipient_name=Shadow+Inc&two_year_transaction_period=2020&min_date=01%2F01%2F2019&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020]. So it's not exactly just being used by Buttigieg.

g) That the app developers likely were told that there would be a paper back-up system to audit the results (especially given the previous caucuses that pretty much required such a back up to be in place because of the concerns over Iowa's reporting system), meaning that the $42,000.00 had to outweigh multiple contracts with state parties as well as basic business sense to provide a product that they could sell the product to other states/campaigns and would almost certainly need to conform with the results of the paper audit?

h) Iowa has a history of caucus results getting chaotic and weird.

i) That no one has explained what the Buttigieg campaign actually would get if this whole conspiracy turned out to the true.

g) No results have been released, so pretty much everything is conjecture until about 5p Iowa local time today.

Here's a more likely theory as to why he was declaring victory does not require leaps of logic:

Polling suggested that he was above his average in Iowa in December [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html] and most reporting from last night has indicated that Biden under-preformed (possibly extremely badly). Given that, under caucus rules, any precinct that had a candidate with less than 15% of the caucus goers devoted to one candidate had to make a second-choice pick, any moderate voters would likely be going to either Biden or Buttigieg. Given Biden under-preformed, it's likely Buttigieg was the one who picked up a good chunk of the 2nd-round caucus-goers (his campaign is releasing numbers putting him at 25% at the end of the second round, which would make him the likely winner of the Caucuses, but given the lack of official result, I'm inclined to not believe it until I see something independent of them produce something similar).

Seeing the opportunity to justify continuing to New Hampshire, Buttigieg calls an above-average performance a victory (similar to Clinton in New Hampshire 92 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries]) and moves on to try and distribute a narrative that he's still in the race, just like Klobachar, Warren, Steyer, and Yang did.

Again, they're doing a hand count now, so the conspiracy theory is moot regardless.

Criminal investigations started for less. Can we actually keep our conversation topics open and not do the typical Dem song and dance of ignoring things happening right in front of our faces like we're puppets because it doesn't look good?

Can we not take leaps of logic that would outdo Olympic ski jumps?

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Trump has a high approval rate...

Never judge on one data point: it could just be an outlier.

On the other hand, I generally agree about the Democratic Party. They're a shower of shit. It's a strangely common thing about centre-left parties in many countries: their sheer, utter, fucking uselessness. France, Germany, UK, USA, it doesn't matter: the right can put up venality, incompetence and gibberish, and the centre-left still do their best to fuck themselves up.

Tell me about it, its getting to the point for the Australian Labor Party that they?d have a better chance of winning if they exhumed the corpse of Gough Whitlam or Bob Hawke and ran them as party leader.

 

[Agema]

Tell me about it, its getting to the point for the Australian Labor Party that they?d have a better chance of winning if they exhumed the corpse of Gough Whitlam or Bob Hawke and ran them as party leader.

Granted it doesn't help that most countries now have a Green Party (or equivalent) that chiefly serves the function of splitting the centre-left across two parties and ensuring neither wins.

The other problem is that every centre-left party seems to either a) move left and loses the centre to the mainstream right or b) moves centre and loses a chunk of the left to the far right / far left. Which is another way of saying they're intrinsically boned because they're trying to marry two demographic blocs that seem to be significantly incompatible. Unless someone super-charismatic turns up as leader to sufficiently paper over the cracks.

 

[JamesStone]

snip

Campaign results released from minutes ago, showing buttigieg in the lead despite the candidates who counted the votes and registered photographic evidence of such (Warren, Bernie, Klobuchar, etc) being consistent with one another and showing him behind Bernie, but sure, let's keep on saying I'm just a conspiracy theorist.

You just witnessed a failed attempt at fraud, and a very ballsy and stupid one at that. If you ever wonder how countries get to the point where they just let corruption happen in the open, you have the answer: it's because people like you who attempt to shut down any critical analysis and step by step let the powers-that-be get away with more and more brazen acts of defiance of democracy. It was already bad in 2016, but 2020 seems to be rearing up to be a whole new low for the DNC. Hope they don't get to the GOP's level, but at this point I wouldn't hold my breath against it.

 

[SupahEwok]

snip

Campaign results released from minutes ago, showing buttigieg in the lead despite the candidates who counted the votes and registered photographic evidence of such (Warren, Bernie, Klobuchar, etc) being consistent with one another and showing him behind Bernie, but sure, let's keep on saying I'm just a conspiracy theorist.

You just witnessed a failed attempt at fraud, and a very ballsy and stupid one at that. If you ever wonder how countries get to the point where they just let corruption happen in the open, you have the answer: it's because people like you who attempt to shut down any critical analysis and step by step let the powers-that-be get away with more and more brazen acts of defiance of democracy. It was already bad in 2016, but 2020 seems to be rearing up to be a whole new low for the DNC. Hope they don't get to the GOP's level, but at this point I wouldn't hold my breath against it.

C'mon, dude. Take a chill pill. Tireseas brought up a good series of points, and all you've done in response is rave.

I'm fairly settled on being a Bernie man, but I can also recognize when the most likely explanation for a situation is organizational incompetence. Over-reliance on a half-assed app that everybody assumes will "just work" and thus don't train people on? I dunno how many companies you've worked for, but man, that happens every single dang day. You know what I think is the most that happened? Ex-Hillary staffers got in on an app to help election counts as figureheads, then used their connections with state-level party reps to sell it and profit. You can charitably call this networking, less charitably call it soft corruption. But it's not sinister to the public at large.

 

[Overhead]

Phew, good to know. I was worried that I would have to apply critical thinking to Trump's actions or judge him on the evidence of his actions or apply my moral values to him but knowing that a number has gone up means I don't have to do that and can just unconditionally support him! By the way OP can you please confirm at what number I should start criticising Trump and calling him a loser for having low popularity if his approval rating is what we're going by?

 

[JamesStone]

snip

Campaign results released from minutes ago, showing buttigieg in the lead despite the candidates who counted the votes and registered photographic evidence of such (Warren, Bernie, Klobuchar, etc) being consistent with one another and showing him behind Bernie, but sure, let's keep on saying I'm just a conspiracy theorist.

You just witnessed a failed attempt at fraud, and a very ballsy and stupid one at that. If you ever wonder how countries get to the point where they just let corruption happen in the open, you have the answer: it's because people like you who attempt to shut down any critical analysis and step by step let the powers-that-be get away with more and more brazen acts of defiance of democracy. It was already bad in 2016, but 2020 seems to be rearing up to be a whole new low for the DNC. Hope they don't get to the GOP's level, but at this point I wouldn't hold my breath against it.

C'mon, dude. Take a chill pill. Tireseas brought up a good series of points, and all you've done in response is rave.

I'm fairly settled on being a Bernie man, but I can also recognize when the most likely explanation for a situation is organizational incompetence. Over-reliance on a half-assed app that everybody assumes will "just work" and thus don't train people on? I dunno how many companies you've worked for, but man, that happens every single dang day. You know what I think is the most that happened? Ex-Hillary staffers got in on an app to help election counts as figureheads, then used their connections with state-level party reps to sell it and profit. You can charitably call this networking, less charitably call it soft corruption. But it's not sinister to the public at large.

At some point incompetency becomes nearly as bad as malignant behaviour. This is incompetency to the national level and could harm the democratic process. I don't claim to know if it was sabotage or just organizational incompetence, but to deny talking about it is just asinine. An investigation needs to be launched, and even if it's just incompetence punitive measures of some sort need to be implemented. It doesn't even matter if it turns out Buttigieg won fair and square and no one even tangentially related to him had anything to do with it, the momentum he gained by this mess will have real world consequences (albeight if they're impactful or not remains to be seen) and as such this mess can't be treated as just another typical case of corporate mischief.

And I didn't engage with her points because there's really nothing to engage with. She's taking this completely and face value, and considering that all we know so far is all there is. I'm not, and I think it's worth a check. She thinks it isn't and is telling me I'm a conspiracy theorist. Please do tell what else I can say that won't merely devolved into a "he said, she said" back-and-forth that is so typical in this forum?

 

[JamesStone]

Phew, good to know. I was worried that I would have to apply critical thinking to Trump's actions or judge him on the evidence of his actions or apply my moral values to him but knowing that a number has gone up means I don't have to do that and can just unconditionally support him! By the way OP can you please confirm at what number I should start criticising Trump and calling him a loser for having low popularity if his approval rating is what we're going by?

... What are you even talking about? When have I ever suggested you shouldn't critizice Trump? What I said was that you shouldn't fixate on Trump because most of the weird seemingly lunatic stuff he does is a ploy for attention. Again, you fall for exactly the same thing that let Trump win in the first place, focus on the clown while ignoring the abysmal effort that's being made to contain him, and the corruption that's not allowing the people who's job is to contain the clown to do their job.

But hey, thanks for fundamentally missing my point and proving it at the same time! Saves me time when I don't need to find strawmen since they manifest from thin air.

 

[Avnger]

Phew, good to know. I was worried that I would have to apply critical thinking to Trump's actions or judge him on the evidence of his actions or apply my moral values to him but knowing that a number has gone up means I don't have to do that and can just unconditionally support him! By the way OP can you please confirm at what number I should start criticising Trump and calling him a loser for having low popularity if his approval rating is what we're going by?

I think you may have misread his posts. James isn't a Trumpy; he's a Bernie Bro. Though I can see how you'd mistake the culty vibes given off by both.

 

[Kwak]

I swear the phrase "I am just stating facts" is usually the sign you're spouting a conspiracy theory [https://www.fastcompany.com/90458795/humans-are-hardwired-to-dismiss-facts-that-dont-fit-their-worldview].

But this is a pretty funny presentation of those facts regardless....