US Elections 2020

[filghy2]

I am curious what the postmortem is on the accuracy of the poll numbers for the last election. I recall on election night 538 gave Trump a 30% chance of winning and Nate Silver was being harangued by some Bernie Bro journalist who kept insisting Trump really had something like a 2% chance of winning. I'm pretty sure the guy pulled the 2% figure out of his ass and basically just wanted to call Silver a right wing shill.

It's hard to believe the chance for one side could ever be as low as 2% in a well-established two-party system where the Presidency changes hands regularly.

The current popular narrative about polls not being reliable stems mainly from the twin surprises in 2016 - Brexit and Trump. That seems to be an example of the common human tendency to over-extrapolate from the most prominent recent events. This 2018 article by Nate Silver shows that polling errors in the 2016 election were actually around the average for Presidential elections. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...are-all-right/

All polls have some risk of being wrong because they are based on a small sample of the population. If people claim that these errors are systematic (rather than random errors that could go either way) they need to have some explanation for why they would systematically miss people with certain views. At the end of the day, pollsters make money from having a good reputation for accuracy, so they should have an incentive to try to get it right. Of course, they sometimes find shortcomings with their methodologies after the event, and when they do they fix it, which they've done since 2016 (eg giving more weighting to education levels).
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/2...p-2016-2020-7?

[broncofan]

Another thing I want bring up when it comes to education. We need begin to realize that college isn't for everybody and there really is nothing wrong with learning a trade. Because no matter how technologically advanced we get as a society, we still need plumbers, mechanics, and people to do HAVC work.

What I'm going to say may slightly derail the thread so I'll keep it short. I also think the way college education is structured should be re-thought. I went to a liberal arts college for undergrad and while I'm all for "enrichment" and reading the classics I don't think anyone NEEDS four years of it. Four years is enough time to be broadly educated AND at least lay the foundation for useful knowledge. Given how much time people waste in college I just think that the choice between enrichment and trade-oriented/career skills is a false choice.

[broncofan]

There is a better word: tenets https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic.../english/tenet

It's lucky for you that you are absolutely unembarrassable.

A while back a user created a screen name to pretend to be a shocked wife who had discovered his account on here. I remember the aha moment when I figured out that the word provardo was really bravado. Anyhow I think it's better the tenants govern themselves than the landlords.

[MrFanti]

Another thing I want bring up when it comes to education. We need begin to realize that college isn't for everybody and there really is nothing wrong with learning a trade. Because no matter how technologically advanced we get as a society, we still need plumbers, mechanics, and people to do HAVC work.

This is where the USA is falling behind.
In some instances, there are 6-figure jobs that are not being filled because no one knows how to weld, perform construction, etc......

[Stavros]

Mayors can't repeal the 2nd amendment nor should it be repealed. Also NYC has some of the strictest gun laws in the country and yet gun violence is still a problem.

I think if you legalize and control narcotics, it will have a trickle down effect that can solve some of the other issues that you have mentioned. First you remove a major source of income from the gangs and therefore it impacts their dominance on the streets. It will make the cops' job a lot easier and they won't feel like when they're on patrol, they're doing it in the middle of a war zone. It will also allow them to concentrate on more serious offenses as well as reduce the amount of street crime.

Second, it gives a municipality another source of revenue so they can invest in education and job training programs. If you also legalize gambling and prostitution, there is another source of revenue to draw from. This should make raising taxes unnecessary and you use the existing tax revenue for things like infrastructure repairs.

I think reimagining cities sounds good in theory, but you're still going to have companies that are going to be resistant to having their employees working from home on a permanent basis. So for the ones that want to keep their commercial buildings, make it more viable for them to do so. For the ones that do want to move out of the city, find something some to replace the existing structures with that is beneficial for the city. Like more hospitals, affordable housing, small sized manufacturing centers or an Amazon distribution center. Thanks alot AOC!

As for the garden cities, speaking as a New Yorker. We have done tennis courts, basketball courts, etc thing. Parks are continually being renovated. But its up to the individual citizens to help keep them clean. There is park across the street from house that has been renovated and still people treat it like a dumping ground and don't clean up after themselves when they have cookouts. Which happen to be against the law in the first place.

Having said all that, you still need strong leadership make it happen at the local level. Something that is severely lacking here in NYC.

I appreciate your feedback on what in my case were ideas floated to consider, given that I don't know how cities are organized in legal terms in the US. I think we can agree that the fundamentals are jobs and education, on the basis that people must believe they have a stake in their own environment, and a long term basis on which to develop as citizens, fathers and mothers, and so on, though this now appear to be an era of low-wages and job insecurity. I don't know why people have a lack of respect for local facilities, perhaps the 'Garden City' concept doesn't work if all that happens is that a neighbourhood is prettified but the 'gardeners' then leave to go somewhere else. And I can't believe in the 21st century planners smarter than me don't have better ideas on how to make urban environments better.

On guns the point you make illustrates the scope of the challenge- no matter how strict the laws are in NYC, if someone can drive to another state and buy weapons at a gun show, the availability of guns is not reduced. At some point as Americans, you have to decide if you are going to make a serious, nationwide effort to take the guns away, it is as basic and as necessary as raising taxes to pay off your debts and if possble fund more universal health care, and in education. These are not untouchabe, sacred cows.

It looks to me like the US is locked into a cultural debate which so narrows its frame of reference that instead of talking about an overhaul of the 2nd Amendment, its very existence is linked to some idea that it represents freedom, some unexplained original intention of the 'Founding Fathers' that cannot be changed without taking away something that 'defines' America, or that it is simply a non-starter as an election issue, the same being the case with the legalization of 'hard drugs' given that the outcome of the legalization of Marijuana has been mixed.

Like Abortion, Same-Sex Marriage, and Transgenders in the Military, the so-called 'Conservatives' can use these policy concerns as a warning that the foundations of the USA are being eroded, just as the President is probably provoking more violence in Democrat cities by sending in the 'troops' than if he did not do so. But is it not drugs and guns that fuel so much of the violence in cities like Chicago? I don't know about circiling the wagons, but circling round and around the same issues year after year must surely at some point make everyone dizzy and fall over? Yet nobody stands up and says 'let's do something different' -or such people are not listened to or written off as cranks.

I think you have dug yourselves into a hole, and you don't know how to get out of it. I think too, and it applies to the UK and Europe as well as the US, that people want a return to what we had pre-Covid but don't know how to do that, which is why we need some imaginative proposals for the future of our urban spaces, or we are going to see contractions in trade and business, which, aggravated by unemployment will make us all poorer.

Unfortunately, your last two sentences are bang on, as I don't know -certainly here in the UK- that we have the men and women of vision that can offer the kind of leadership required, indeed, we seem to be living in an era in which the leaders we have are distinguished by their incompetence and failure, and that is not something I expected to see in my lifetime, and I am not sure life will improve as I make my way to the Department Lounge.

[Stavros]

Sarah Cooper, shes done it again- (I couldn't find it on her twittter feed where there are other versions to enjoy)

[fred41]

Lol...does neither candidate really want to be President? Earlier in the year, with the economy chugging along just fine Trump looked like he would be tough to beat. But he totally botched the Covid response, simply because he wouldn’t just let his experts do it. He even screwed up the original briefings, by insisting (among other things) on squabbling with reporters. Then when he made the occasional rousing speech (usually best when keeping to his written script) he’d ruin it by immediately jumping on twitter and childishly arguing about god-knows-what. Unfortunately for the Republican Party - the man’s an idiot.
Now we have Joe Biden, who has a history of being ridden by gaffes, but now, at the age of 77 (78 in November) he clearly has a few less marbles in his noggin than he started with. It’s very much apparent to anyone with eyes and ears. His latest - “No sitting president has ever done this. Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has,” ....Really Joe?! No other racist Presidents? No Woodrow Wilson? No slave owners!?
Biden ‘should’ be a shoo-in at this point.
But the debates are going to be sad...they may turn out to be one of the most watched ever...at least the first one...but sad.
The highest office in the USA.

[MrFanti]

Lol...does neither candidate really want to be President? Earlier in the year, with the economy chugging along just fine Trump looked like he would be tough to beat. But he totally botched the Covid response, simply because he wouldn’t just let his experts do it. He even screwed up the original briefings, by insisting (among other things) on squabbling with reporters. Then when he made the occasional rousing speech (usually best when keeping to his written script) he’d ruin it by immediately jumping on twitter and childishly arguing about god-knows-what. Unfortunately for the Republican Party - the man’s an idiot.
Now we have Joe Biden, who has a history of being ridden by gaffes, but now, at the age of 77 (78 in November) he clearly has a few less marbles in his noggin than he started with. It’s very much apparent to anyone with eyes and ears. His latest - “No sitting president has ever done this. Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has,” ....Really Joe?! No other racist Presidents? No Woodrow Wilson? No slave owners!?
Biden ‘should’ be a shoo-in at this point.
But the debates are going to be sad...they may turn out to be one of the most watched ever...at least the first one...but sad.
The highest office in the USA.

I don't think Biden stands a chance in a debate with Trump - which is why it appears that he and his party trying their hardest to seriously restrict and/or omit debates and the parameters.
Biden is nowhere near what he was like when he was running in the primaries against Obama.

That being said, like I said in an earlier post, Tulsi Gabbard was my favorite of the Democrat primary candidates and she would smoke Trump in a debate.

[Stavros]

On the one hand if I were advising Biden, I would argue that in a public debate he should only say positive things about the US, and not even respond to the bitter and twisted rubbish the President has to say, when he is not praising himself for doing things no other President has ever achieved. The aim it seems to me, will be to depict Biden as senile and incapable, he may even go after Hunter Biden even though both he and Ivanka have had privileged access to China and Ivanka continues to do business with them regardless of what her father says, let alone Mike Pompeo on the basis of his 'Presidential' but ragged speech today. Probably best to not do the debate, or insist that before taking place the President apologize for calling Hillary Clinton a 'skank', and describing Americans as 'total scum, they're human scum' -at least settle the tone of debate before it starts.

I have said it before, the Democrats are afraid of change, and Biden is safe, but unimaginative, which may be why his VP is as important as Blackchubby38 says it may be.

[fred41]

I have said it before, the Democrats are afraid of change, and Biden is safe, but unimaginative, which may be why his VP is as important as Blackchubby38 says it may be.

Imaginative and wanting change?

I’ll settle for a leader that’s clear-eyed, rational and decisive.

Leave the rest to his staff and the legislative branch.