Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Concerning prediction for the COVID-19 pandemic

It would appear THE CORONA has been making the rounds within the WH .... aides to VP Pence and Mr Trump as well as SS agents.

Maybe these folks should have followed CDC protocols????

Well, what good is it, it keeps missing Great Targets of Opportunity.

Warnings about Clinton surfaced in Feb of 2016 when two different polls showed 56% of all Americans, all Americans, independents, Republicans, Democrats wanted the Democrats to nominate someone other than Hillary. That right there showed anyone paying attention that she would have a rough time winning. That over half of all America, America as a whole didn't want her.

Now all of America, America as a whole doesn't choose the Democratic Nominee, Democrats do. On another site I said at that time the Democratic chose her at their own peril. A very dumb choice going by the numbers. Of course I still expected her to win only because the Republicans chose Trump. I was wrong there. I had resigned myself to a Clinton presidency. I was really surprised Trump won. I got that forecast wrong.

So what do those who aren't party loyalist, the non-affiliated, what do they do when they don't want want either major party candidate as their next president? There were two choices, you could vote for the lesser of two evils, the least worst candidate among the two major party candidates, the candidate you want to lose the least, not win, but lose the least. Or you could vote against both since you don't want neither one to become president. That is what 9 million people did. Keep in mind those same 9 million people told the Democrats they didn't want Clinton back in Feb 2016. The Democrats didn't care and told those 9 million people to go pound sand.

So there's no reason to blame them. Their intentions and feelings about Hillary were known 8 months in advance of the election. Basically, the Democrats said we don't need you, we don't want you, stuff it where the sun don't shine. So don't blame the 9 million for following through with their convictions which the were well known by the Democrats.

Also keep in mind they didn't vote for Trump although they didn't like and didn't want Hillary near the White House. They also didn't want Trump. When you told by the democrats they don't want your vote and told big time they don't care one iota about you. Which was the Democrats right. Don't cry into split milk because you didn't get their vote. You could have, you could have won going away had you listened to 56% of all America. It's not 56% of all America fault Trump won because you ignored them.

For your info, back in Nov 2016 party affiliation was 33% Democratic, 27% Republican, 40% independent. 70% of independents, the largest voting block, larger than those who identify with the Democratic party or the Republican party disliked and didn't want Hillary, 57% didn't want Trump. Who do they vote for?

Questions 10 and 11

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/l37rosbwjp/econTabReport_lv.pdf

Maybe we need to revise and change how we select the candidates. When 40% of America has no say in who will be the candidates, maybe a change is due. Independents have risen from 30% of the electorate in 2006 to 40% today or a point or two higher. Perhaps the two major parties need to try to find the reason folks are deserting the two major parties? But they have all the power, I don't think they care. I actually think both parties are glad about it, they're losing moderates while retaining their hard core. So we're entering an era where independents will vote 60% for one party in one election, then 60% for the other party the next. This is what will and is happening when both parties ignore this particular group of voters.

Independents do have a say, as most primaries are open, just a few are closed to registered partisans only. Still, with that say, the people voted for Hillary over Sanders by 3.7 million votes. You can't change that fact.

I'm an independent. When I go to the precinct in the primaries, they ask me, "do you want a Republican or a Democratic ballot?" I can pick either primary. I usually pick the Democratic ballot, so I'm a Democrat-leaning independent. I do have a say in selecting the Democrat nominee.

Would Sanders fare any better? Doubtful, because once the anti-Hillary vote is no longer in play, you've just seen how the Sanders crowd is actually much smaller than 2016 made it look. Like I said, only 10% to 15% of all Americans want Sanders as president. Most think he is too radical and America is not yet willing to accept his ideas.

Bernie or Bust types kept whining that in a couple of polls, Bernie was polling better than Hillary in a hypothetical match-up against Trump. But this is very misleading. First of all, polls can be wrong. Second, this was at a time when Bernie wasn't being attacked by anybody. He had the luxury of running a campaign without attack ads against him. Hillary didn't want to attack him, afraid of alienating his followers and thus losing in November (which ended up happening anyway). Trump didn't want to attack him (was actually praising him at any opportunity, remember?) because Trump who is not politically stupid, knew that Sanders wasn't a viable candidate and wouldn't win the nomination, but he was hurting the one viable candidate so indirectly he was helping Trump, so, why attack him?

Now, let's suppose by miracle Sanders won the nomination. Well, that would change immediately. Trump and the right-wing PACs would unleash all the attack dogs against Sanders. He'd earn a nice Trump-created nickname like Camarade Bernie. The big bad wolf of communism/socialism (most Americans don't even know the difference and don't understand what Social Democracy is, especially those who might be persuaded to vote for Trump) would be hammered in hundreds of attack ads. Then, attacks on his character would start, too. They'd be highlighting how his wife was suspected of embezzling money. They would call him a pedophile thanks to a couple of weird moves: he once said that he could understand why grown men could lust over 12-year-old girls, and he once voted in Vermont against toughening up laws intended to curb pedophiles. They would highlight his essay mentioning that married women dream of being raped by strangers when they make love to their husbands (that would endear him very much with suburban housewives... NOT!) and would accuse him of being a misogynist. They would highlight his support for Sandinist Nicaraguans who marched while chanting "Death to the Yankees, Death to America." They would talk non-stop about his praise for Fidel Castro (bye-bye, Florida) and his honeymoon in Moscow.

By the time Trump and the right-wing PACs finished their job on him, those polls would change. I suspect - which is confirmed by his very poor showing in the 2020 primaries without the anti-Hillary vote - that Sanders would have lost to Trump much worse than Hillary did.

So, could the Dems have picked someone better than Hillary in 2016. Sure. But that wasn't one of the other three who were running at the time - the misguided Senator Sanders, and two Joe Nobodies. It would have to be someone else. Biden should have tried then, not now. His chances would have been much better in 2016. He didn't because he was depressed over his son's death. Actually that would have bought him a wave of sympathy. Biden not running in 2016 was a mistake. Michelle Obama would have won against Trump blindfolded and with her hands tied behind her back, by a landslide, but we know that she never wanted to do that, unfortunately (she would win now, too, but still doesn't want it; pity). Other than these, Sherrod Brown would have been the obvious much better choice than Hillary. I never understood why he didn't want to run in 2016, and in 2020, such a waste!

Still, the Dems went with Hillary. That was unfortunate, but remember, she still beat Trump by 3 million votes in popular votes. Picking her wasn't necessarily a huge mistake because she could have won if not for the most statistically improbable combination of ten to fifteen factors that all aligned in Trump's favor. What were the odds for all of these to align the right way for Trump? Minuscule; it seems like the plot of a bad, unrealistic fictional political novel, but then, life is stranger than fiction sometimes.

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Now, regarding the 9 million you are talking about, yes, they are to blame. Yes, patriotic Americans should pick the lesser of two evils when they are confronted with an extinction-grade event. Having Trump for one, maybe for two terms, did and will do unthinkable damage to this country. The idiots who didn't see it and decided to teach the Democratic Party a lesson by going third party or switching sides, are imbeciles who didn't see what was coming.

Was Hillary a better choice than Trump, regardless of her shortcomings as a campaigner? Absolutely; no comparison. She would be 1,000 times better as the 45th president than the pathological narcissist wannabe dictator corrupt head of a crime family xenophobic racist anti-democratic aberration we as a people committed the folly of installing into the most important role we have to offer.

Whoever didn't see that and didn't realize the importance of stopping him from grabbing power, pardon me, but is a full-blown idiot. I blame each and every one of these 9 million people more than I blame the Trump followers. Trump followers at least believe (as mistaken as they are) that Trump is good for America. It's hard to understand why they think that a callous and selfish billionaire has their interest at heart, but they are foolish enough to be convinced of it. So I pity them more than I blame them. I mean, the well-meaning ones. Of course there are the deplorable ones too, the racists and xenophobes and misogynists and white supremacists. Those I don't pity. Those I blame too. But I think the majority of Trump supporters were actually the fools who could be fooled, and who shot themselves in the foot. They are to be pitied more than blamed.

But the more lucid 9 million who didn't want to take a stance even though they did realize that Trump was no good? No, I don't pull any punches when I think of them. Bunch of idiots.

A responsible and patriotic voter has an obligation to pick the lesser evil, when the bigger evil is so big. If the person abstains or goes third party, he/she is enabling the even bigger idiots to make the choice (the deplorables).

Not to forget, most of what people blame Hillary for is not even true. The Clintons have their warts and all, but the right wing has engaged in a concerted effort to bring down their reputation, through blatant lies that they repeated long enough and often enough to make them stick, and conspiracy theories. Take the Clinton Foundation for example. They made it sound like a pay-to-play scheme and some sort of illicit means to make the Clintons rich. Well, the Clintons have never pocketed a cent of the money their foundation received. There is no evidence of pay-to-play. Actually the foundation is rated a perfect 5 in a scale of 1 to 5 that is used by organizations that rate foundations in terms of what they do with their money; if the money is actually used for their causes. Compare that to the Trump Foundation... which was slapped with judicial sentences for corruption.

And Hillary's email server? Give me a break. Colin Powell did the same and no Republican made a fuss because Powell had an R attached to his name.

Benghazi - the Republicans spent years and millions of dollars in a fishing expedition trying to find Secretary Clinton in some sort of wrongdoing. They came up with absolutely nothing. Even one of their biased committees had to file a final report saying they couldn't find any wrongdoing. Still, somehow they managed to say that she didn't care that 4 Americans died. Well, look at Trump. He obviously doesn't seem to care that dozens of thousands of additional Americans will die of COVID-19 because he keeps pushing for a premature re-opening in order to try to get favorable economic numbers for his re-election. In the smallest of calculations, let's say, the most quoted model was saying 61,000 deaths if we kept following the social distancing guidelines. Let's suppose we get to double that without following them, 122,000 (it will actually be a lot more, but let's stick to this for a while, just for the sake of the argument). So, that's 61,000 additional American deaths, more than in the entire Vietnam war, and Trump couldn't care less. But OH MY GOD, Hillary didn't care that 4 Americans died in Benghazi!!! (although there is no evidence that it was the case).

I mean, whoever couldn't see that Hillary with warts and all was a worse campaigner than she would be a president, and was 1,000 times better than Trump, again, pardon me, but he/she is an idiot who enabled the worst disaster to hit America since World War II. We emerged victorious from World War II and went into a 70-year stretch of prosperity and world leadership... But we may emerge from one or two Trump terms in a state of disarray that is an extinction-level event for our democracy and our world leadership... Likely we won't ever recover, or will take decades to recover our stance in the world.

And 9 million idiots couldn't see it. Yep, I definitely blame them! And also the millions more who actually wanted the Dems to win but stupidly didn't show up, thinking she had it in the bag. More idiots.

I never particularly liked Hillary. I voted for Obama in the 2008 primaries. But in 2016 I pinched my nose and voted for her, because I'm not an idiot like those 9 million people are.

I agree completely! And I didn't even have to hold my nose for Clinton. She is a social democrat at heart and we really would have been tired of all the winning if she had been elected.

But that's spilt milk under the bridge.

You left one out. Her decision to be above it all and refusing to actually fight back. I figured that one out when they were debating and the Jackass was wandering around her so he could get up close and personal and threatening (and she allowed that to happen!) by the time they were through demonizing her there were people believing she murdered people, ran sex slave operations out of Pizza parlors, etc.

I suspect Biden might find himself in the same position unless he actually starts to fight back. He might start by asking CNN and MSNBC to give him, at least, 2 hours of free exposure every week as they are now gift Jackass Trump with 2 hours a day!

Hell, even 1 hour a week would be better than what he has now which is, basically, nothing!

No, it's not spilt milk under the bridge, which in a sense would imply that there is no point in thinking about it. We do need to pay close attention to this piece of History, not to repeat the mistake. Idiotic Bernie or Bust types are *already* repeating the mistake.

On Debate Politics there are even rational, smart, and well-informed Bernie fans like Surrealistik who started by saying they'd vote for anybody but Bloomberg (understandable) against Trump, but now that Biden beat their guy, they are saying they won't vote for Biden who is "the establishment" and "stole if from Sanders who would have won the nomination if Amy and Pete hadn't dropped out before Super Tuesday with their arms twisted by the evil establishment." This is of course preposterous because of various reasons:

1. One third of the Super Tuesday votes were already in through early voting before Amy and Pete dropped out.

2. Pete and Amy were polling in single digit numbers in almost all Super Tuesday states except Minnesota for Amy; they would not have made the 15% threshold and wouldn't have influenced the delegate count even if they had stayed in the race.

3. Biden was already ahead in popular votes by 65,000 votes after South Carolina and before Super Tuesday. His spectacular win in South Carolina would have repeated in many South-Carolina-like Southern states (like their sister state of North Carolina) regardless of Amy and Pete dropping out.

4. When Biden did so well in South Carolina and moderates everywhere realized he was the horse they had to bet on, Natan from 538 was already showing the huge bump he was getting in all Super Tuesday states, and that was before the drop-outs which only happened late the day before the election.

5. Not a single Bernie fan failed to vote for him simply because Amy and Pete dropped out. There wasn't even a demoralization factor because other pollsters not as smart as Natan from 538 hadn't even realized yet that Biden was in a huge upswing (as it all happened very fast and there was no time to conduct, tally, and publish polls) so Bernie fans were fully counting on a victory on Super Tuesday and had no reason to be demoralized and to not show up, since only at 8PM when the polls closed and the numbers started pouring in, it became clear that Biden was routing Bernie by hundreds of thousands of popular votes. By electoral law, not even exit polls showing a preference for a candidate can be aired before the polls close.

6. Bernie's campaign was *already* faltering before Super Tuesday; it's just that it wasn't so apparent and he had been anointed the front runner when he was anything but. Think of it: in the first two states, homogeneously white (he never polled well with blacks), he was for all purposes tied with the moderate gay mayor of a small Indiana town with little national name recognition. In both states he did worse than in 2016, including barely winning by a tiny margin in his neighboring New Hampshire. Then he won a caucus in Nevada; he always did better in caucuses where he counts on young activists who can spare the 4-5 hours it takes to frequent a caucus, while working moms and dads can't take off for that time to try to cast their preference. They can do so in primaries (and early vote to or vote by mail) but they can't do that in caucuses; so caucuses favor a candidate with a young and activist voting base. Still, Bernie got only 33% in first alignment in Nevada; not an impressive win when you think that 67% of voters didn't want him. And when you add all moderates in all three early states they had a strong majority. Even if you add progressive Warren voters to Bernie, he was still badly beaten by the full set of moderates, and there is no guarantee that Warren followers would have backed Bernie who berated her during the debates. Warren followers resented a sexist comment Bernie allegedly made that women can't win the presidency, and his campaign officials said that Warren's followers were elitists (yes, Bernie, you reap what you sow - you are a master in alienating people).

7. Bernie fans are usually arrogant (it's a generational thing with Millennials, isn't it?). The day after the South Carolina primary I had to travel by car out of town to run an errand and I drove 7 hours (3.5 each way); I listened to politics talk radio on satellite radio for all 7 hours. Arrogant Bernie fans called in and berated Biden voters in South Carolina as stupid, ignorant, and brain-washed by the Democratic establishment. Huh, folks, that's not the way to earn people's hearts and minds and convince them to vote for your guy. Following the barrage of arrogant Bernie fans callers, there was a backlash with another barrage of Biden fans callers, basically saying "how dare you?" - people said "nobody is brainwashing me, nobody is holding a gun to my head to vote for Biden; I voted for Biden because I like Biden and I don't like your cult leader Bernie Sanders, and don't you dare call me stupid or ignorant because I know perfectly well why I don't want Sanders to be the president." You keep calling someone stupid and brainwashed, and the result is that the person will say, "Oh, really? Just watch me; I'll teach you a lesson, arrogant Bernie fan; Super Tuesday is coming; my state will be voting, and it will be my pleasure to vote for Biden and beat your guy."

8. Bloomberg was still running on Super Tuesday and he siphoned out votes that would have been Biden's, because no Bloomberg supporter would ever prefer Sanders to Biden. So, if anything, regarding the issue of candidates stealing votes from each other, Biden was more hurt than helped, on Super Tuesday, as compared to Sanders.

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The bottom line is, no, it's not some cabal, some conspiracy, some smoke-filled backroom deal that stole a Super Tuesday victory from Bernie, simply from the fact that two non-viable, single-digit candidates dropped-out the day before Super Tuesday (with one third of early voting already in).

EVERY election cycle has consolidations. NO primaries get to the end with 8 or 10 candidates. It's always only two left standing, then one.

So, consolidation would have happened anyway. It always does. Pete had virtually zero support from blacks, and he only did well in the first two states because there were no blacks there, and he poured all his money and resources there, hoping for momentum. He did poorly in Nevada(3 delegates), and when South Carolina came in and he failed miserably there too (0 delegates), it was clear that he had no path to the nomination, so why is it strange that he dropped out?

Amy NEVER left the single-digits lane. She was even afraid of losing her own state, had she stayed, which would be a political blow to her future ambitions, so it's not that strange that she dropped out, either.

I'm sure they were both encouraged by party elders to be good soldiers and drop out as soon as possible, but even if this happened, it's the normal political process. It's not illegal or nefarious or unethical for a party leader to call Pete up, and say, "Mayor Buttigieg, we all appreciate your effort and commitment to the party and we are sure in the future you'll do better than in 2020, but come on, you can't win, so as a good moderate, the longer you stay, the more you favor the progressive wing that is otherwise a minority in our party, so, would you please consider dropping out and endorsing the one moderate candidate who is viable?"

What's wrong with that? It's normal politics. It happens all the time. Like I said, Politics is the game of influence, consolidations, alliances, coalitions, endorsements, etc. If Bernie Sanders and his followers can't stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen.

But still, EVEN if Pete and Amy hadn't dropped out the Monday before Super Tuesday (instead of the inevitable drop-out they'd HAD to do on Wednesday after Super Tuesday after not scoring any delegates due to the 15% threshold), Biden would have still won Super Tuesday, contrary to earlier polls and expectations. It was NOT two non-viable candidates getting inevitably out that made him win Super Tuesday. It was rather the fact that Bernie's campaign was shrinking and his crowd, even among the young, was significantly smaller than in 2016 (young Bernie fan turnout, as shown in exit polls on Super Tuesday, was SMALLER than in 2016 - so not even his own people were showing up to vote for him).

The thing is, Bernie NEVER achieved 50%+1 as compared to the sum of moderates, so it was utterly inevitable that after consolidation of too many candidates, he would lose the primaries.

So, NOTHING was ever stolen from him. Like I said, you need to own something first, for that something to be stolen from you, and Bernie NEVER owned the nomination, even when he was (FALSELY!!!) viewed as the front-runner.

Look, Bernie tied with the obscure gay mayor of a small town (I'm saying gay, not because I care the least for Pete's sexual orientation one way or the other, but because many Americans still do) in two early states, then won a caucus with one third of voters in first alignment... then got shellacked in South Carolina to the point that his whole 3-state advantage got completely erased, resulting in his being behind by 65,000 popular votes already...

If the early states were, say, North Carolina, Virginia, and Massachusetts instead of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, we wouldn't even be having the conversation that Bernie Sanders was once briefly seen as the front-runner. He was only a front-runner for the briefest of times, because of the specific sequence of states. But who didn't know that once the race shifted south to more diverse states, the narrative would be radically different?

And then on Super Tuesday he was cut to his real size, which is... small.

No conspiracy necessary. Bernie is simply not someone the American people want to elect president. Period, full stop.

But still, Bernie or Bust idiots are about to repeat their mistake from 2016. People don't learn from History. Or at least, idiotic people don't, and Bernie or Bust types are nothing but arrogant idiots.

I have nothing against non-Bernie or Bust people who are Bernie supporters but are mature enough to move on and support another Democrat if their preferred candidate doesn't win. Those are not idiots. They are idealists. They believe in healthcare for all, affordable college tuition, protection for the environment, fairer wealth distribution. Nothing wrong with that.

But Bernie or Bust types? Pfft... Those are full blown cultist idiots, not any better than Trump cultists.

True. Clinton is a very capable administrator. She would have been a great American president. But she was a pitiful campaigner, and yes, she allowed Trump to walk all over her.

A simple "back off, big guy; respect my personal space; do you think you can bully me???" would have won her lots of points in that debate.

Let's see .... Nate Silver says precisely what you say about Sec Clinton being a poor candidate .... I agree she was a poor candidate .... gee everyone agrees she was a poor candidate

butttttt

it doesn't explain the rapid drop off in her polling following the Comey letter .... Silver sees it ... I told my mom when it happened ... but you continue to marginalize it .... this is precisely how Mr trump talks about Russian interference in the 2016 election .... as if it didn't happen

I think your failure to recognize the importance/impact of the letter tarnishes your otherwise savvy number generated political analysis ... too bad

Regardless of what people think about the "wet mop", she was a far more competent public administrator than the puzzy grabber. I guess competence is not held in high regard in modern America ... ergo Mr Trump