🦄 The Casual 2024 Presidential Election

[teleos]

I don't think Biden has any realistic chance of winning TX?

 

[teleos]

meanwhile I just saw my first Kennedy24 bumper sticker yesterday. On a Tesla.

I guess buying a Tesla doesn't mean what it used to mean...

 

[teleos]

There are so many Tesla in SF Bay Area. They are likely Pius from 15 years (20?) ago.

Are you in the Bay Area as well? Definitely true as I'm always surrounded by Teslas wherever I go.

 

[teleos]

Back to the topic though—think Kennedy support may be some type of hipster contrarianism. He's got a snowball's chance in hell of winning.

I think you're right that he might appeal to a certain type of hipsters.

 

[teleos]

There are definitely worry about automation would remove ports related jobs. Per the article, one of the sticking point is no reduction of jobs due to automations.

That's a much larger issue that the whole world will have to deal with, I don't see any good solutions other than radical ideas like UBI.

 

[teleos]

Any speculation on Harris' VP pick?

 

[teleos]

On the VP front, from what I have been gleaning it really seems like PA is key so Shapiro seems kinda like the most logical selection. The Isreal/Gaza issue, as bad as it is, I don't think is a particularly effective attack vector by the repubs however given their base likely couldn't point out Israel on a map and are more concerned about gas prices and inflation. As such, he seems to be the strongest candidate to me at the moment.

I agree that Shapiro appears to be the strongest candidate. And based on the 2000 election, Joe Lieberman's Jewishness was not a real factor based on what I remember, so I think we are ready for Jewish VP.

 

[teleos]

As an ex-rural person, I think it's the religion overlap with rural that makes it primarily conservative vs Bernie-esque rural communities. Religion in rural communities is often the most conservative of the religions (evangelicals) with a feedback loop. The religion is conservative so they tend towards conservative politics which then modifies the religion to be more conservative which makes the politics run to the right, etc.

Agreed.

My question is the rural population should only be about 3%, how could it have such a large impact?

 

[teleos]

I think Walz works well for the ticket because Harris is, in addition to the perception issues of being a mixed-race woman, easily portrayed as a coastal smarty-pants lawyer. Walz is like central casting blue-collar Midwestern, state school type, plus a long time in Army National Guard enlisted. He was apparently promoted to Command Sergeant Major of his battallion but left the guard before completing the required school for it.

Given that the VP's portfolio is basically Senate tiebreakers and whatever diplomatic or domestic issues POTUS assigns, Walz is a good choice when a charm or warmth is needed.

Agreed that he is quite complementary to Harris; my primary concern is for the Democrats to win the election and Walz appears to give her the best chance of doing so.

Thinking a bit longer term, there is hope that Harris/Walz can do more than Biden/Harris did over the last four years. So it's all good.

 

[teleos]

As someone who grew up very near Eau Claire, I've been watching some of today's rally (my dad is there now: had to stand in the sun for at least 4 hours, they couldn't bring water or chairs in, is still waiting in his car to leave!), my biggest problem with Walz is that he sounds way too much like some of my high school teachers. That's 100% what this campaign needs, but it's a (very minor, and I'm not a "vibes" voter anyway) negative point for me. There's reasons I left the midwest!

What didn't you like about your high school teachers?

 

[teleos]

Capitalism and Mega Capitalists don’t need Democracy and in a lot of cases don’t want Democracy.

I would like this to be true but is it true?

 

[teleos]

They're talking about price gouging, and having the FTC define and enforce it in the food industry.

I hope so.

Even though I am supporting Harris/Walz 100% for this election and I also support far-left proposals like UBI, price control doesn't seem to have worked well in the past.

 

[teleos]

It takes more than one electoral disaster to end a party in the US. Otherwise the Democrats would have disbanded and been replaced after 1984. It takes a string of disasters. And much as I think it's fair to say Trump cost the Republicans elections in 2018, 2020, and 2022, sadly none of them were on the scale of disasters. And it's unlikely 2024 will be either. Mondale failed to reach 41% of the vote in 1984. Trump will get somewhere between 44% and 47%, you can take that to the bank.

Definitely agreed, I also believe the popular vote difference would be less than 10% between the two candidates even given the momentum of Harris' campaign, and it is rather unfortunate.

Short term, I also agree with a number of posters above that the goal is to prevent Trump from winning this election. But for the longer term, my desire for a more "left" Democrat party seems to be very unlikely, partially given the constant need to choose the lesser of two evils.

 

[teleos]

Mesa has a big LDS population (and Giles is LDS). That is a bloc that did tend to vote for Trump the last two elections, but supposedly more in a hold-their-noses-and-vote-for-the-Republican way, at least compared to religious Republicans more broadly. I'm not surprised Mesa would produce an anti-Trump Republican of such an ilk. As an example, Romney is also LDS.

Mesa was dubbed the most conservative city with over 250K population in a 2014 study.

 

[teleos]

You are correct but there can't be a 'free' press when they're beholden to advertisers and money-men.

How that gets fixed? No telling.

I believe politics was always beholden to money but it seems to be more blatant now?

I don't know how to fix it either....

 

[teleos]

Looking at recent poll data, WI/MI/NV look pretty safe, AZ/PA look like tossups, NC/GA would be icing on the cake?

 

[teleos]

Why is Harris trailing in AZ? It seems AZ should be easier for her than PA/NC/GA.

 

[teleos]

Yeah, he started at a community college and then transferred to Penn.

To be fair, he started at Fordham, which is a decent four-year college.

 

[teleos]

When an election is a referendum on Fascism vs Democracy, if you don't explicitly vote for the only realistic candidate representing Democracy you're saying it's okay if Fascism wins this round.

I agree 99% But for every presidential election, the other choice seems so odious that mentally I feel I'm forced to choose the Democrat...

In reality I live in California, but still I don't like the feeling.

 

[teleos]

Interesting economic and environmental news...

NBC - Led by the South, clean energy sector added more than 150,000 jobs last year




Not that this is going to change the opinions of those critical of Biden's handling of the economy, or green energy jobs, or government...

I can confirm that the IRA is having a huge impact on the clean energy industry.

 

[teleos]

New set of Altas polls. Its a high quality pollster showing a very close race, with Harris losing most of the battleground states by a few points. Other polls show Harris doing better in some of these states like PA, but atlas is a good pollster so its worth paying attention to.

It makes me a little suspicious to see Harris trailing in WI and MI; I think she is relatively safe in those two states.

 

[teleos]

Well, they got one thing right. If Hispanics and 18-29 year olds break hard for Trump, Harris will definitely lose. Pollsters generally add a secret sauce to make the raw polling results match their likely voter model... and in most cases, today that means adding extra weight to the Trump voters to account for undersampling in 2016 and 2020.

I'm not saying Harris is definitely going to win, but this poll seems pretty broken.

Agreed that if Harris can't win the 18-29 group she'll lose.

 

[teleos]

Nevada has under 10k votes registered. Not a good baseline on that yet.

Arizona Dems have to make up a deficit for sure. I find it odd that Kari Lake is losing between +5 and +12. But Harris is -1.6 right now.

Nevada looks like a Harris win, Arizona is a likely loss....

 

[teleos]

I'm not looking at polls anymore, just votes now.

I'm of course very happy to see your numbers, but isn't it true that the early voters are historically mostly Democrats?

 

[teleos]

This being a technical site, I wrote a simple program to calculate the probability of Harris winning. Assuming the winning probability for MI/WI/NV/PA/AZ/GA/NC at 90/90/80/60/20/10/10%, I get 57.65% for the overall probability.

So PA is still key.

 

[teleos]

What is wild about this is checking his credentials. He's an attorney and politician. Not saying that laymen have no basis for weighing in, but what evidence-based information is he basing his assertions on. Sure, some of his proposals make sense, but others are off the charts. In particular, his COVID-19 misinformation.

Again—it's all well-and-good to make bold assertions, provided there is solid evidence to back it up. He doesn't appear to have it. Instead, he has a number of questionable motives. Are we looking at Lysenkoism 2.0?

I think RFK Jr. is beyond redemption already.

 

[teleos]

There are currently no national Democrats politicians who are known as bullies though, right? I assume ever the right would call Trump a bully. There are probably other GOP politicians would be known as bullies.

Adam Schiff?

I'm voting for him