Then he’s going to alter the law which won’t be a quick process but even if he does, won’t Biden just re-alter it as President or just sack them as Trump has done with anyone who hasn’t agreed with him?

I’m sure Biden, if he wins, is going to clean house at the WH and DOJ, and anywhere else there is any stink of Trump remaining.

If necessary, I’m sure he could abolish then recreate a particular role under another name.

“The method of executing democracy in the States is truly baffling”

Trump has been doing an excellent job of executing democracy by strangling the life out of it.

trump, according to the Indy report, is preparing to remove very large numbers of permanent and independent civil servants and replace them his political placemen.
That can be done at any point right uptown the inauguration.
Removal of experience and independence in a deliberate attempt to cripple a Biden administration – if he wins.

One person I’d be glad to see go if trump loses is Kayleigh McEnany. How can someone so intelligent defend his constant blatant lies?

frankconway
Full Member

trump, according to the Indy report, is preparing to remove very large numbers of permanent and independent civil servants and replace them his political placemen.
That can be done at any point right uptown the inauguration.
Removal of experience and independence in a deliberate attempt to cripple a Biden administration – if he wins.

OK fine, but if a president can remove permanent civil servants and replace them with his own dudes, what stops Biden from just swapping them all back? With a nice simple list of “everyone to kick out on day one” provided by Trump?

convert
Full Member

Inauguration of a potential President Biden on Jan 20 2021 if he were to win AND Trump were to concede swiftly.

Has there been a defeated president in history as predisposed to generate vindictive carnage for 2.5 months on a nation (and specific states and voter groups) that rejected him?

How would you tell the difference? When in power he killed a quarter of a million citizens and destroyed entire departments and filled every post with brown-nosers, incompetents and lunatics. He hasn’t got a lot further to go except for maybe a bombing campaign.

OK fine, but if a president can remove permanent civil servants and replace them with his own dudes, what stops Biden from just swapping them all back?

I read that report in the paper, and couldn’t fathom the exact problem either.

You’re assuming that any/all of them would still be available and would want to return having been kicked out unceremoniously.
One day in post would be too long for any of trump’s polyps.

There’ll be a lot of handover stuff,

Given how opposed to doing anything that doesn’t directly benefit himself (and how committed his appointees are to doing what he says, no matter how bollocks) how likely do we think it is he’ll put any effort into that, if at all? I reckon Biden will be lucky to get given a front door key as a handover.

The reports of how little he and his team did when coming in are eye opening.

Won’t need a front door key once the military has booted the front door down and dragged the orange pleb out*

*only joking I’m sure he’ll leave buy his own admission if he loses.

A year ago today:

We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores. https://t.co/1qqpgayUEX

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 25, 2019

That aged well….oh, actually, it did. 🙁

One person I’d be glad to see go if trump loses is Kayleigh McEnany. How can someone so intelligent defend his constant blatant lies?

Because she is just as evil as he is.

Also never feel sorry for Melania for the same reason.

Looking at the fivethirtyeight poll forecast, it seems like it’s pretty much in the bag for Biden:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

But some interesting reading here suggests that the fivethirtyeight model might be bit weird:

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/10/24/reverse-engineering-the-problematic-tail-behavior-of-the-fivethirtyeight-presidential-election-forecast/

if Trump wins New Jersey, his chance of winning Alaska is . . . 58%???

More. Covid in the White House plus an attempt to cover it up.

The presidential campaign was roiled this weekend by a fresh outbreak of the novel coronavirus at the White House that infected at least five aides or advisers to Vice President Pence, a spread that President Trump’s top staffer acknowledged Sunday he had tried to avoid disclosing to the public.
With the election a little over a week away, the new White House outbreak spotlighted the administration’s failure to contain the pandemic as hospitalizations surge across much of the United States and daily new cases hit all-time highs.
The outbreak around Pence, who chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force, undermines the argument Trump has been making to voters that the country is “rounding the turn,” as the president put it at a rally Sunday in New Hampshire.
Further complicating Trump’s campaign-trail pitch was an extraordinary admission Sunday from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the administration had effectively given up on trying to slow the virus’s spread.

But some interesting reading here suggests that the fivethirtyeight model might be bit weird:

I haven’t read that article yet, but I think people often don’t understand what “model” means. A model is basically a theory about the world that simplifies reality to make it easier to understand some aspect of it. There’s an old saying that goes something like, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

A big problem with election forecasting is predicting who will turn out to vote. Polls can determine who people say they would vote for, the problem is that the sampling of the population needs to match the overall voting population. This is quite complex, so different polls conducted by different groups will have different results. The fivethirtyeight model seems to attempt to average across different polls, but also introduces some other sources of variance.

One thing I do know for sure about it is that it is designed so that the modeled unpredictability decreases as the election gets closer. The majority of voters will have made up their minds now, and it’s clear that Trump is historically unpopular, so the question is really whether those voters actually cast a vote against him. There are quite a lot of low-probability things that could work in Trump’s favour, so when all those are added together, he has a non-trivial chance of winning.

So, Biden has to be a very strong favourite, but models will never be able to reflect the true complexity of the real world. It won’t be over until all the votes are counted and the winner confirmed.

You’re assuming that any/all of them would still be available and would want to return having been kicked out unceremoniously.

Biden could simply state “apologies for the manchild. You will be reinstated and his placemen thoroughly investigated for criminal behaviour”.

In other news some of those clips from the 60 mins interview are staggering. Such a whiny child.

In other news some of those clips from the 60 mins interview are staggering. Such a whiny child.

Yeah, lots of interesting clips on their Twitter feed. McEnany at work…

President Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, gave us a heavy book that she described as the president’s health care plan. It was filled with executive orders and congressional initiatives, but no comprehensive healthcare plan. https://t.co/Mn6HRAOwHL pic.twitter.com/WmsoRQP2WJ

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 26, 2020

Looking at the fivethirtyeight poll forecast, it seems like it’s pretty much in the bag for Biden:

We’ll have none of that talk. I won’t believe until I see him being carted out of the WH.

I won’t believe until I see him being carted out of the WH

Pretty much this.

But in a very real sense people such as Stahl and Fauci actually are the chief opponents Trump must contend with in the campaign’s final days. They are the figures he perceives to be standing in the way of his effort to conduct this campaign in an entirely invented universe that he’d hoped to manufacture for this very purpose.

Trump is reportedly raging at Lesley Stahl in part due to her tough questions on the fake Hunterghazi and Obamagate scandals. He hoped to conduct this campaign in a fictional universe of his own creation. But that's collapsing, and he's in a fury over it:https://t.co/d056eDwjTj

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) October 21, 2020

@thols2 it’s worth having a read of the linked article about the 538 model oddities. It doesn’t make me doubt the usefulness of the model but I do think some of the choices made are in hindsight hard to defend. (And that they’ve only left them in so outcomes can be consistently tracked over time)

I won’t believe until I see him being carted out of the WH

Got to agree.  This is a fight and he only really has to land one knockout that is in voters minds just before they vote.  Thankfully a lot of votes are already cast but I’m glad to see there isn’t a shred of complacency anywhere this time.  Everyone knows what is at stake

Further complicating Trump’s campaign-trail pitch was an extraordinary admission Sunday from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the administration had effectively given up on trying to slow the virus’s spread

Jesus…

Jesus…

You’ve got to the heart of Pence’s secret weapon against the virus now.

Got to agree.  This is a fight and he only really has to land one knockout that is in voters minds just before they vote.  Thankfully a lot of votes are already cast but I’m glad to see there isn’t a shred of complacency anywhere this time.  Everyone knows what is at stake

No premature counting of chickens, please….

Remember, Trumpy got where he is by appealing to people’s inner asshole. Events in the last four and a bit years show there is more of a festering undercurrent of nastiness in your average person than first thought.

Did you see the story last night (Washington Post I think) about the failed plan by the Trump administration for a big vaccine publicity drive using Santa, Mrs. Santa and his elves? It was going to cost $250 million and the Santas had cut a deal that they got the vaccine first.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54686844

He’s getting more and more shouty…

Cases up because we TEST, TEST, TEST. A Fake News Media Conspiracy. Many young people who heal very fast. 99.9%. Corrupt Media conspiracy at all time high. On November 4th., topic will totally change. VOTE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2020

The Santas turned it down in the end. Must’ve checked the Naughty List.

interesting clip from the senate…

i think trump has done the damage, I do Hope Biden wins, Brexit talks are apparently on hold until after the US election, so looks like we have skin in the game too…Hard brexit is Trump wins, softer brexit if Biden wins..

Did you see the story last night (Washington Post I think) about the failed plan by the Trump administration for a big vaccine publicity drive using Santa

So much of the last 4 years has read like an article from The Onion but that one really takes the biscuit. I mean WTAF? They’re living in a clown world.

Biden’s campaign wasted no attempt in using mark meadows’ comment that the trump admin have given up trying to control the virus spread.
Stark contrast – contradiction, really – with trump’s continued lies about controlling the virus, turning a corner and a vaccine being just about ready to drop.
It may not have been part of trump’s education but…keep on turning corners and you return to your original start point.
Doh – any fule no that.

twitter link

Further complicating Trump’s campaign-trail pitch was an extraordinary admission Sunday from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the administration had effectively given up on trying to slow the virus’s spread…

While I too would love to see Trump led out of office and into jail, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that everything that has caused post-2016 American society to fracture isn’t just because of some emotionally and intellectually compromised rogue president. In fact, there’s a vested interest from the GOP in allowing an emotionally and intellectually compromised rogue president run amok tweeting about locking people up while appointing key industry lobbyists to oversee the departments that they’ve been lobbying against, elevating blatantly unsuitable people to the Supreme Court in a concerted effort to undermine the rule of federal law and of course the abandonment of any semblance of the welfare state.

Simply put, the GOP has been co-opted by immensely wealthy people who not only believe that normal rules shouldn’t apply to them, but that they are fully entitled to redefine society into something that works for them at the expense of the rest of us.

Booting the useful idiot out of office does nothing to redress the structural degeneracy of the GOP as it stands.

To put it bluntly, those who fund the GOP have absolutely no interest in people’s lives or indeed spending any money to save lives during a pandemic.

Simply put, the GOP has been co-opted by immensely wealthy people who not only believe that normal rules shouldn’t apply to them, but that they are fully entitled to redefine society into something that works for them at the expense of the rest of us.

Where the USA leads we follow.

Where the USA leads we follow.

Succinctly put. The Conservative Party has been co-opted by disaster capitalists, fringe lobby groups and financiers with the same aim – erode regulation, the rule of law and invite authoritarian rule by the wealthy, for the wealthy.

The terrifying this is that Trump(ism) feels like an experiment that only went a little bit too far. 2018 Trumpism was a dangerously powerful thing. In 2020, people are seeing behind the veneer and it’s all falling down a bit. People are seeing Emperor Trump’s bare flabby ass (sorry for the visual), not because the tactics were bad, but because he’s perhaps too much of a narcissistic ogre who simply can’t stick to the script.

But all the other factors that have lead to the rise of Trump are still there. Indolent racism, manipulation of Facebook / Twitter groups, sowing distrust, fabricating narratives – those things can all happen again. There is nothing to strop a respectable candidate with more restrained tactics from running in 2024. And that’s the real worry.

But all the other factors that have lead to the rise of Trump are still there. Indolent racism, manipulation of Facebook / Twitter groups, sowing distrust, fabricating narratives – those things can all happen again.

Like for example a senior board member of Facebook being linked to various far-right groups and “big data” analytic Palantir, who subsequently donated to various libertarian and Republican causes.

There is nothing to strop a respectable candidate with more restrained tactics from running in 2024. And that’s the real worry.

It can and will happen again. IMHO The only real defence that we have against the manipulation of the media is to follow the model set by Scandinavian countries and teach critical thinking skills from an early age. Unfortunately, public education in both the US and UK is very much at the whim of libertarians who seek to dumb down, not educate.

The Conservative Party has been co-opted by disaster capitalists, fringe lobby groups and financiers with the same aim – erode regulation, the rule of law and invite authoritarian rule by the wealthy, for the wealthy.

And how did they manage that? They’ve always been there, they’ve always wanted that. So why are they getting it now?

follow the model set by Scandinavian countries and teach critical thinking skills from an early age.

We to to some extent; what we don’t teach is philosophy, politics, media studies or economics.

And how did they manage that? They’ve always been there, they’ve always wanted that. So why are they getting it now?

That’s an extremely good question. This article (from 2014) goes some way to explain the polarisation in modern American politics – Spend more to win more.

And here from the LSE (from 2010) 50 donors supplied more than half the Conservative Party’s donations

Political parties see little gain in taking pocket-fulls of cash from small donors, hence why billionaires with fringe views are making larger donations.

I think Facebook has helped. I don’t think Republicans (or Tories) all do dirty tricks, however IF you are someone who is happy to play dirty then you are highly likely to be Republican. And Facebook is ripe for exploitation by such people.

I think Facebook has helped

No question, but the signature tool of the modern (far) right is to use social media to misrepresent and/or to spread outright misinformation. An (infamous) example is the use of Russian sponsored botnets to spread misinformation during the referendum campaign.

Brexit botnet

Also, ostensibly “respectable” new news outlets like Breitbart are following the exampleFrom the NY Times.

I recall being sent a Breitbart article and accompanying picture photo by an angry (now former) friend ostensibly showing massed migrants at a railway station ostensibly on their way to claim asylum in the UK. Not surprisingly, that turned out to be false. That wasn’t enough for my former pal though, even though she knew that the image and article were false, she still wanted something done about it. The seed had been planted by one malicious article.

Tactics of Breitbart

The aim is absolutely clear – to reinforce the notion that we are not in control of our borders and that migrants are taking jobs, causing crime and even starting forest fires in California.

Naturally, the solution to all of this is to close borders, roll back globalisation and repeal supranational legislative alignment, which has the added fringe benefit of making it easier for corporations to lobby for deregulation. They’re not doing it out of misplaced patriotism, even.

If you feed angry people the notion that everything that is wrong with their lives is because of some tangible thing then people want to lash out at it “…he’s not hurting the people he needs to be…”.

These people will happily forgo state subsidised healthcare just because they want to make sure that people they don’t approve of also forgo it too.

I don’t think Republicans (or Tories) all do dirty tricks…

So why don’t the governing conservative governments on both sides of the pond simply explain their justifications for cruel and hugely divisive policies in detail instead of tweeting about “lefty do gooder lawyers” for example?

So why don’t the governing conservative governments on both sides of the pond simply explain their justifications for cruel and hugely divisive policies in detail instead of tweeting about “lefty do gooder lawyers” for example?

Because some of the people who are happy playing dirty are also in the top jobs. Perhaps because they play dirty.