US Elections 2020

[blackchubby38]

Two questions:

1) What happens to people in Oregon and California who have lost their homes in the dreadful fire storms? Can they vote if they no longer have the address on the register because it burned to the ground and they are in temporary accommodatiion elsewhere?

2) I read that the NYPD Union has declared it supports the President. Is this legal? In the UK police officers can vote, but they are not allowed to make any political statements or be seen supporting a political party or movement. I also wonder how this makes people in a Precinct feel knowing their local cops support a politician they don't approve of, and in particular when/if there are issues of trust between the citizens and the police which through the public support for a President who now belives in 'retribution', make them fear for their lives?

Would it not make more sense for the Police to be re-named the Republican Guard?

1. I don't know the answer to that.

2. Unions are allowed to endorse candidates in elections. If I'm not mistaken, my union endorsed Bernie Sanders during the primary. Which I thought was weird because the way I understand it the Medicare for All position sort of frowns upon employee health plans.

As for how the people in a precinct feel, probably no different from the other times when the PBA has endorsed other Republican candidates. Its just something most people accept. I also think a majority of the rank and file of the NYPD can separate who their union endorses and/or who they vote for and the job they have to do.

[Stavros]

I think there is a diffculty here. I assume there are law enforcement officers whose political views are too extreme even for the so-called Republican party, and that a lot of people know this without the Union declaring its support for the President. The difficulty is in knowing if 2020 will be the most contested on the ground, if, for example, armed militias decide to 'stand guard' outside polling stations with their fingers on the triggers of their AR-15's, their bodies festooned with ammunition belts, wearing hats and t-shirts with provocative slogans -knowing that local law enforcement will not make any attempt to move them away. A more outrageous scenario with armed militias taking possessio of ballot boxes would also not be challenged by the sympathetic police.

The basis for the scenarios in which armed militias become part of the visible fabric of elections is provided by the increase in support for the terrorist who travelled to Kenosha to murder people, who is now described as a hero-

"Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, who this month was charged with committing intentional homicide in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has instead found himself being defended by Donald Trump, and hailed as a hero by rightwing punditry and an assorted bunch of Republicans and conservatives.
Experts warn that Trump’s embrace of Rittenhouse, who sat in the front row at a Trump rally in January and was in Kenosha as part of a rightwing militia nominally there to protect property, could pave the way for more vigilantism in Trump’s name – and have catastrophically violent results come November.
“Trump has made the election about the idea of citizen paramilitaries, federal forces and the government administration, against looters, rioters, demonstrators and Democrats,” said Joe Lowndes, professor of political science at the University of Oregon.
“With [Trump’s] continual messaging that there is election fraud, that mail-in ballots are going to be a form of election theft, what happens on election day, or the days that follow that? What happens if there are states where it’s unclear for a few days who the winner is?”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...mp-republicans

The key point is that a partisan police force cannot be trusted, precisely because it has taken a stand for one candidate against another, with the assumption that the Attorney General on recent form, will also take sides with the armed militias against City and State authorities, and that the purpose behind this is to ensure a second term for the incumbent, who cannot lose the election, because he never loses. At the very least, chaos is the ladder on which the man who today a the White House embraces wth passion the unelected dictatorships of the Middle East -in this case Bahrain and the UAE- seeks to climb back into an office he has defiled and does not deserve to occupy.

It mght sound hysterical, but is the USA on the road to civil war? What happens when a sitting President refuses to accept the result of an election he loses, or appears to lose, with contested results in more than one State- and the Attoney General and the Supreme Court support his claims?

[Stavros]

"Of all of Trump’s authoritarian moves as president, it’s his approach to the 2020 election that serves as the clearest signal that America is on the brink of an institutional democratic crisis, and on the verge of becoming the sort of hybrid regime that Vladimir Putin created in Russia or that Viktor Orban put in place in Hungary."
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/trump-repu...210055864.html

[MrFanti]

She would indeed, if she had the courage to tackle that legal thing you have in he US called Child Marriage- set aside the volume of 'cute kids' on American tv in soaps, gymnastics (ban all under-18 year-olds from competitions), dance documentaries and so on, and focus less on Netflix and more on your own corrupt Union where this is concerned-

Are Biden/Harris tacking this?
I still stand with Gabbard....

[MrFanti]

Nobody's arguing that point. Not one single person said the Black community is monolithic or implied it.

Here is a fact for you since an you seem only able to repeat yourself and don't have much interest in the election generally: an overwhelming majority of the Black community will vote for the Democratic Party in November. In fact, of minority communities the division here is about as lopsided as it for any. Compare this to Cuban-Americans. Compare to Mexican-Americans. Compare to Asian-Americans. Compare to Jewish-Americans. Compare to LGBT. No minority community is monolithic and no vote is ever unanimous. 90% is a fairly large number though. I wasn't going to include Muslim-Americans only because I assumed the percentage would be similarly lopsided but in the first article I found it said 13% of Muslims vote Republican. Anyhow, there you go. No community is monolithic.

I'm just adding balance.
If you're going to mention someone on the fringe and then "call it a day", then I can do so just as well....
Most successful presidents (Clinton for example) hover within the middle ground and not on the far fringes of either side.

[MrFanti]

You can read the posts above to see what I think about polls. They're not perfect and they may miss some Trump voters but I don't have anything other than data to go on.

In 2016, the polls had Hillary smashing Trump....

[MrFanti]

I think there is a diffculty here. I assume there are law enforcement officers whose political views are too extreme even for the so-called Republican party, and that a lot of people know this without the Union declaring its support for the President. The difficulty is in knowing if 2020 will be the most contested on the ground, if, for example, armed militias decide to 'stand guard' outside polling stations with their fingers on the triggers of their AR-15's, their bodies festooned with ammunition belts, wearing hats and t-shirts with provocative slogans -knowing that local law enforcement will not make any attempt to move them away. A more outrageous scenario with armed militias taking possessio of ballot boxes would also not be challenged by the sympathetic police.

The basis for the scenarios in which armed militias become part of the visible fabric of elections is provided by the increase in support for the terrorist who travelled to Kenosha to murder people, who is now described as a hero-

"Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, who this month was charged with committing intentional homicide in Kenosha, Wisconsin, has instead found himself being defended by Donald Trump, and hailed as a hero by rightwing punditry and an assorted bunch of Republicans and conservatives.
Experts warn that Trump’s embrace of Rittenhouse, who sat in the front row at a Trump rally in January and was in Kenosha as part of a rightwing militia nominally there to protect property, could pave the way for more vigilantism in Trump’s name – and have catastrophically violent results come November.
“Trump has made the election about the idea of citizen paramilitaries, federal forces and the government administration, against looters, rioters, demonstrators and Democrats,” said Joe Lowndes, professor of political science at the University of Oregon.
“With [Trump’s] continual messaging that there is election fraud, that mail-in ballots are going to be a form of election theft, what happens on election day, or the days that follow that? What happens if there are states where it’s unclear for a few days who the winner is?”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...mp-republicans

The key point is that a partisan police force cannot be trusted, precisely because it has taken a stand for one candidate against another, with the assumption that the Attorney General on recent form, will also take sides with the armed militias against City and State authorities, and that the purpose behind this is to ensure a second term for the incumbent, who cannot lose the election, because he never loses. At the very least, chaos is the ladder on which the man who today a the White House embraces wth passion the unelected dictatorships of the Middle East -in this case Bahrain and the UAE- seeks to climb back into an office he has defiled and does not deserve to occupy.

It mght sound hysterical, but is the USA on the road to civil war? What happens when a sitting President refuses to accept the result of an election he loses, or appears to lose, with contested results in more than one State- and the Attoney General and the Supreme Court support his claims?

Do you know what percent of Law Enforcement officers are Republican/Democrat/Independent?
Pretty bold guess/assumption by you considering that most Law Enforcement Unions have traditionally backed Democrat mayors.

[Stavros]

Are Biden/Harris tacking this?
I still stand with Gabbard....

Not as far as I know, as I think this is a taboo subject, unless the QAnon hysteria over California's SB145 Bill provokes a serious amount of thought but crucially, debate. The Bill concerns relations between teenagers where a relationship straddles the age of consent, and seeks to remove the criminal penalty an older boy or girl (but mostly male) might suffer for having relations with, say, a 15 year old, but also with regard to gay relations which had previously been exempt from reform-

"Wiener’s proposed law dealt with people who are convicted of having non-forcible sex with minors above the age of 14 and who are themselves no more than 10 years older than the minor. Judges in such cases were able to exercise discretion when deciding whether or not to place a convicted offender on the registry if the sex act was penile-vaginal sex but not if it was anal or oral sex or non-penile sexual penetration. The bizarre status quo stemmed from a 2015 California supreme court ruling which reasoned that if the victim in such a case became pregnant, placing the offender on the registry would make it harder for them to provide for the child.
To Wiener, this inequity was part of the legacy of the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people. “It used to be much more explicit and obvious in terms of anti-sodomy laws,” he said. “This is one example where the judge can keep straight kids off the registry, but the gay kids have to go on the registry. It’s mortifying that in 2020, in California, this discrimination continues to exist in our penal code.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...e-the-children

What might appear rational to you and me, has been transformed by QAnon into a conspiracy in which California becomes a paradise for paedos, thus-

"One such attack came in January 2020, when the website Law Enforcement Today (LET) published an inflammatory article headlined: “California lawmakers introduce bill to protect pedophiles who sexually abuse innocent kids”. “If you’re a pedophile and want to rape sweet, innocent, young children, then California is the state for you,” the piece began, before blatantly mischaracterizing the provisions in the bill."

So it seems to me that there is an hysterical campaign being organized that demonizes the rational approach to teenage relations, but gives a free pass to the more suspect relations between older men and teenage girls -as in over 35-40+ which can result in a legal marriage. It may be part of the campaign to demonize the Democrats as 'radical left' and thus by definition, immoral, and I believe the President's Junior has waded into this controversy knowing little about it, but it does nothing but distract conversation on real problems merely to convince people to vote for a man who says in the same statement that he 'under-played' the potential impact of Covid 19 on the US and then upped it.

Tulsi Gabbard appears to me to be voicing concerns without thinking through the issues, which suggests she never was Presidential material, but is an old fashioned blue stocking who prefers to spend her weekends taking tea with the Daughters of the American Revolution.

[filghy2]

You can read the posts above to see what I think about polls. They're not perfect and they may miss some Trump voters but I don't have anything other than data to go on.

There are certainly people who don't want to admit they support Trump but I'm not sure polls don't try to assure participants their privacy is somewhat protected. Nevertheless it might be a factor.

The RealClearPolitics poll average just before the 2016 election had Hillary Clinton with a 3.3% margin in the popular vote. The actual margin was 2.1%, which is well within the normal margin of error. That hardly seems consistent with the claim that the polls missed large numbers of Trump voters; eg because they were reluctant to reveal their true intentions. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...tein-5952.html

I think I posted this before, but this analysis by Nate Silver sugggests that the polls were no more inaccurate than they had been in the past. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...are-all-right/

[filghy2]

It's interesting that the same poster who is continually criticising Joe Biden and complaining about the Democratic Party moving to the left seems to have had quite different views only two years ago.
http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...ove-Her/page22

"And it's my opinion (yes everyone has one) that Sanders stood a better chance of defeating Trump than Hillary."
"I think Joe Biden would have been the better President."
"Oh and speaking of Biden....Had he ran, I also believe he would have defeated Trump also......"