This is the level of delusion we’re up against:
https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1317572583382872064
They are all brainwashed cult members bowing at the feet of their conman leader.None of these people should be allowed to come out of their house ever again.
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There will be a follow-up tweet in like one day which says like “when I said Trump had clear policies I was actually performing a persuasion experiment” or some bullshit.
This is a great video, but also shows how Trump supporters just straight up lie about their lives being way better under Trump because they know its a thing to do that makes Trump look better and gives you a reason to support him that isn’t racism. Sure debt collector guy is true, but I’d be willing to bet the majority of them are lying. Like all those still trumpers who lost the farm would tell you their lives are better under Trump.
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Was curious about how my views have or have not evolved, so reviewing some old posts. Trump may win this thing, cause the universe can be an evil, but it’s nice to see that my views from a year ago line up with 538 two weeks before the election. This is from Aug 2019:
I mean my back of the envelope calculation regarding Trump not winning is that he had razor thin margins in three states, such that if the same voters voted today he would lose, because more of his voters are now dead and the new 18-22 y/os who will be voting (alas, not enough of them) will likely vote dem.
Add that to the additional fact that the dem nominee is likely to be more popular than Hillary and that Trump is no longer an unknown to Trump-curious voters, often not to his advantage, and I see his odds of winning as quite low. There are just damn few “new” Trump voters.
So, that gets him to a 5-10% chance of winning, and the other 10% is an add-on in case something freaky happens, like his opponent dying in a plane crash or choking on a McNugget (and even then, he’d probably lose) or some kind of new “Comey Surprise”. Also, the economy “looks good” for him now, but if the dow drops 10-15% then he’s in deep trouble. He’s behind already and has to fade a ton of outs.
Also, the NRA spent like $75 mil on Trump in 2016, and this time they’ll probably spend $0. I think the Kochs have also pulled back on spending, and Adelson may be dead by then. Also, GOP fundraising is always taxed by the significant grift component. These folks aren’t retiring from Congress because they think 2020 will be a cake walk. Remember, GOP had a pretty substantial House victory in 2016. What are they odds for them to retake the House? Can trump win if Dems win the house, even with a lower majority? That seems unlikely. The GOP got there asses out to vote in 2018, they were just swamped by the wave. There are a lot of passionate anti-Trumpers who will order their friends and family not to vote Trump. That may not be a huge effect, but Trump BARELY won in 2016, and he basically needs to run the table again. Finally, most people surrounding Trump are incompetent grifters. I don’t expect him to hit another 2 outer. He’ll probably campaign in like Alabama where he can get adoring crowds.
If I am wrong about this I’ll probably be posting from like New Zealand in 2021, but I’m pretty much all in on a Trump loss.
In some ways my analysis was based on the state of play pre impeachment and pre covid. I can’t tell that impeachment cut one way or another, but covid appears to have cut into Trump’s win equity.
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I mean the main reason you might be right though is Covid which you couldn’t have predicted, without Covid this race is almost certainly a flip, favorable to Trump because of cheating. Prior to Covid this race was a flip, maybe even Trump a legit favorite. You can probably even attribute his insane debate performance to being down big because of Covid, and desperation.
So basically I think you would have been horribly wrong without Covid. The main reason Trump is polling so badly is old people have abandoned him over covid.
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Disagree, but I did make a nice post (one like) that could be read as foreshadowing Trump’s response to Covid.
A funny thing is that when you work with complex organizations, especially in leadership, whether politics, the military, law, engineering projects (e.g., Apollo,. a bridge), and a whole bunch of other stuff, you have to be truthful and trustworthy and basically accurate, because your actions or commands are part of an interdependent chain of actions or commands, AND EVERYONE HAS TO BE ON THE SAME PAGE. Statements, to say nothing of commands, have significant consequences for the endeavor being undertaken.
However, because Trump is a conman who inherited his wealth, his only efforts to actually run something larger than a McDonald’s have gone bankrupt. He hates reality. He really doesn’t understand that you cannot govern or enact policy that’s basically BS. All you can do is hire toadies who won’t push back and hope they can somehow implement, or make it appear they are implementing, your BS and inconsistent and/or illegal dictates.
I mean there are many other paths beside being a competent leader, things like failure, massacres, mass starvation, losses at war, etc. Trump’s strategy in part is just to say a lot of BS and pretend and not do most the things he says unless (ideally) other people give him permission.
This is not very well stated, but I think complex systems simply aren’t designed to handle people like Trump, because systems have to operate on the constant communication of information that reflects reality in order to function properly. (Otherwise you get thigns like the Iraq war and global warming). [or Covid]
link: The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: ORANGE Gettin' PEACHed, Nation Goes BANANAS - #407 by simplicitus
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Having a job or not having a criminal record wouldn’t make some of these ppl happier than triggering the libs and Hillary not being in office.
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I’ll add that I had the same exact view as you after the election. I started to change my opinion though as Trump was polling as a flip with pretty much everyone, and he’d be running on what most dummies consider a great economy with record low unemployment and booming stock market. As incumbent, that would have been hard to beat. I don’t see how most undecideds don’t break for him in that scenario without covid.
And I think all of us saw Trump fucking up Covid because he’s literally fucked up everything he’s ever done, it just hadn’t really affected a large portion of voters yet so they didn’t give a fuck.
Maybe you’re right and I was right initially and shouldn’t have changed my mind, but like I said I disagree. I don’t think people would have given a shit about him being a corrupt asshole if the unemployment was low and their 401ks were banging.
That’s +5 nationally, dem was always a favorite to win popular vote obv. National polls don’t matter at all. Unless its like +10 I guess, how was he doing in the swing states?
I think if no covid the anti fracking shit lands. The reason none of Trumps shit is landing is because people are fucking tired of covid, but if people were bored and happy some of this shit would be landing like in 2016. Plus like I said cheating, +5 nationally is still probably Trump a favorite if he’s a flip in swing states because of said cheating.
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I understand this and it has some plausibility. OTOH, Trumps’ approval has been basically a straight line for 4 years, and it hasn’t been on the winning end of things absent serious voter suppression and major surprises. IMO, he’s now drawing to 2-3 October surprises, and the Hunter Biden stuff doesn’t count.
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Trump was at best a flip with the economy looking good. A generic Democrat had a good chance of beating him. Hillary was the nut low against Trump. Pretty much anyone else was going to improve on her numbers, which put Trump in a tough spot.
What has changed is what a post-election interpretation of what a Trump loss means. Whereas before it would have been seen as a rejection of Trump’s racism, now it will be seen as a referendum on COVID and future elections will have more pundits opining about whether Dems can afford to alienate too many of the persuadable bigots.
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And I guess my baseline is that with Trump reality just doesn’t matter much, and that the main change from 2016 is that more Trump voters have died and therefore won’t be voting. But with just that I would expect the dem to win by like 4% nationally and barely take the EC. Other factors, including covid, and Trump is now the “devil you know” instead of a vessel for hope and less hatred for Biden than Hillary have probably led to another 4% shift for the dems.
Dude, the only reason Trump is 13 percent to win the presidency is because of a black swan event (COVID) that you had no idea would happen. The fact that he’s badly mishandled the worst crisis to hit the US in 80 years and still has a 43 percent approval rating is pretty strong evidence that he’d be the favorite to be re-elected if not for COVID.
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Which explains why Biden is leading by 23 points in PA. Oh, wait, he’s only leading by 7 even with COVID? Hmm, how can that be?
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If Trump loses I expect there is going to be a number of “would Trump have won without Covid” articles. I think the answer is no for the reasons I’ve outlined (and outlined in Aug 2019). The statistical analysis may come out differently depending on what happens on election day (or what is happening now and ends somewhere around election day). Hell, he may win with Covid. Maybe Covid has helped him because people who would vote for Trump aren’t good at finding out actual facts about how he has screwed up and Covid has masked an otherwise expected economic downturn that Trump wouldn’t have been able to blame on a pandemic.
I don’t think COVID did much to change how people were going to vote, but it changed how willing people were to vote. Likely voters became certain voters.
Before COVID, Trump was still losing in the polls and had approval ratings that suggested he would be a one-term president. Saying that he would have been a favorite without COVID ignores data that we actually have. He’s gone from a small underdog to a big underdog.
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