On that stage we saw the two things most capable of utterly destroying Trump: A prosecutor, and Trump.

She gives it one thumb up. Then down. Then up. Then down. Then up. Then down…

Apparently they don’t want to talk about it. The only post since the debate is an unrelated article fearmongering about Haitian immigrants.

I would expect the Trump supporters that are posting (particularly the ones posting as they watch) to post their support and approval for everything Trump says and does. Any that are disappointed or discouraged by what they saw are probably more likely to say nothing. People are quick to express the knee-jerk reaction they want to have, but it often takes time to process when they feel let down.

I mean, yes, absolutely, there have to be people who nodded in agreement at everything Trump said, who were excited when he brought up the immigrants eating pets, who felt that Trump was the only sane one there. But there also had to be some that were frustrated with what they were seeing, and who now have a little less energy to devote to the election. Will the latter group be large enough to have an impact? We’ll have to wait and see.

As others said, she would mainly be converting independent voters and potentially some Republican leaning voters that don’t actually like Trump but are hesitant to cross party lines.

But I also think it’s likely that his terrible performance and obvious weakness could be demoralizing to his more devoted followers. The people who buy into the stable genius strong man image he is so desperate to project got a chance to see just what a sad old wreck of a human being he is. Even if virtually none of them switch sides, a decline in enthusiasm likely translates into slightly fewer donations, slightly less engagement, and ultimately slightly less voter turnout.

To put it another way, did Biden’s debate performance convert his base into Trump voters? No. But, it sure as hell had an effect on them.

He’s probably just confused because he doesn’t understand what they mean by eating pussy.

Democrats have been struggling in Florida for a while now, and most predictions have been assuming it would be going to Trump. That’s why all the focus is on Pennsylvania and far less is on Florida.

If it were to go blue again this year, that would radically alter the electoral math, and probably turn a close race into a massive blowout.

Yes, polls are flawed, the only poll that matters is the actual election, everyone needs to vote no matter what the polls say.

But Florida steadily slipping towards swing state status is worth noting. And this is a much larger poll with a much smaller margin of error than some of the recent polls which have claimed to show Trump suddenly gaining ground.

I want Trump off the ballot (and planet) but I do think that another GOP candidate would have been much more likely to win.*

Public opinion on the current administration and the economy is negative to the point that one would expect the incumbent party to be facing an extremely uphill battle. But Trump is even more unpopular, brings a ton of baggage, energizes his opposition and alienates his allies by threatening democracy and the rule of law, says crazy nonsense that drives away independent voters instead of focusing on issues, and sabotages his own campaign through mismanagement.

* Of course, that would only have happened if Trump hadn’t run, since he would almost certainly have caused chaos and infighting if someone beat him in the primaries.

The problem is that declaring the debt gone doesn’t make it gone if the court blocks the executive order. It’s not like they can just hit a button and set all accounts to 0. There isn’t a paper ledger they can toss into a fire.

If we’re getting creative about it and want to use some existing legal authority to take actions that might actually be able to stick, the president does have the near limitless power to order the minting of coinage. As I understand it, he could order the treasury to pump out commemorative student debt coins in denominations ranging from $100 to $50,000, and send them out directly to student loan holders, or maybe to student loan servicers on their behalf. This would carry huge political downsides since printing money to pay for things is pretty well known to lead to inflation, and even if this had no real world effect, the attacks tying the forgiveness to inflation would be relentless and likely persuasive to a lot of voters. But once done, it couldn’t really be undone.

As with so many things, a realistic long term solution will require legislation. If the Democrats take the House and hold the Senate, that’s a possibility. But the current deadlock makes it impossible, because even if a bipartisan solution were to be negotiated, the leadership of the House will not allow anything to go through that might be good for the people or the country, because that could also be good for Democrats.

“No you don’t.” -SCOTUS

Being immune to prosecution doesn’t mean that any executive order can’t be overturned. He just can’t be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of an official act. He could execute the conservative justices that are blocking the plan, but he can’t just make any proclamation he wants and expect it to carry the force of law.

The Court granted immunity to prosecution (which is fucking insane) but that doesn’t actually give him the ability to forgive all debts. If a court says “no, the debt isn’t canceled” and the debt is still on the books somewhere, the problem remains unsolved. About the only way he can use presidential immunity to fix the problem would be to take out the judges that are blocking it.

Thanks, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.

A large portion of the shift towards Trump comes from two extremely unreliable sources Trafalgar Group, a republican funded polling agency, and Patriot Polling, which is only measuring registered voters not likely voters, and which doesn’t provide any additional details like demographic data (despite adjusting the numbers to account for demographics).

And the Arizona polls you cite are all from the same source. It’s actually kind of weird that they’re the outlier with the tie, because they’re sponsored by a pro-trump group.

Gerrymandering.

Senate seats can’t be altered much shifting the lines on the map because there’s two per state, what you take from one you give to the other because they are statewide. The House however can be radically altered by shifting districts around. This leads to fewer competitive districts, which means that in many districts the only part that matters is getting the nomination. That incentivizes running to the political extremes to get the support of your base, and appeasing the influential people since their support or opposition can make a big difference. There’s also an entire ecosystem of friendly propaganda outlets and social media platforms that allow politicians to gain attention (and donations) nationwide, and those echo chambers incentivize the most extreme attention grabbing behaviors.

The result of all this is that a large portion of the house was elected because they were the loudest and most extreme candidates in the Republican party. Many prefer dysfunction and even government shut downs if the alternative is bipartisanship (even for nonpartisan legislation or bills from their own agenda). They also like to target anyone in their own party who dares to be less extreme than them, even when doing so may weaken the party as a whole. The already tiny margin they held in the House has shrunk because of their own in fighting. But as long as they hold a majority, they can still control the agenda and prevent anything useful from being done.

Edit: Corrected idiocy about the senate.

Yeah, going off the polling averages in each state, Harris is currently leading in most of the swing states, with Georgia and North Carolina* being dead even.

* North Carolina is the only one that changes based on the inclusion or exclusion of third party candidates. Since third party candidates will be on the ballot, including Kennedy, I’m using that data instead of the slight lead for Trump that the head to head polls have.

I am extremely skeptical about this article’s conclusions. It doesn’t help that it starts out by bashing Harris and ignoring all the issues Trump has run into. Seriously, the news has been mostly pretty bad for Trump lately, there isn’t a lot of reason to expect his numbers to be improving.

When looking across all polls and breaking them down by state, the general trend has been either chaotic swings from one poll to another, or a steady shift from Trump to Harris. Arizona is pretty much the only swing state that has shown a clear move towards Trump. Hell, even Texas and Florida are steadily shifting away from Trump. There’s a reason why the Trump campaign has narrowed their focus and given up on several states they thought they could flip.

If anything, I would expect the main reasons for a shift to Trump would be Kennedy being removed from polls (even in states where he will still be on the ballot) and just a general tightening of the race as undecided voters choose either candidate.

That’s what push polls are for, to inflate the numbers for their own side while discouraging the opposing side.

And even those polls which aren’t intended to skew the results are going to be shifted to meet the expectations of the pollster as they try to adjust the data to reflect what they think is a representative sample of likely voters.

A major part of why Trump never seems to face consequences is because of judges (really the entire justice system) playing it safe. They tip the scales in Trump’s favor so that their decisions can’t be easily portrayed as being biased against Trump.

In this instance, the judge could do the legally expected thing and just follow a normal timetable without worrying about the election. But sentencing Trump in the lead up to the election is very likely to be portrayed as an attempt to influence the election, and that would maximize the amount of scrutiny the decision gets both in and out of court. Trump will appeal as he always does, and there will be angry nutjobs sending in death threats at the very least, with a very real possibility of actual violence of some kind.

On the other hand, delaying until after the election means that the decision can’t be seen as influencing the election. Instead, the outcome will either be known by everyone involved, or it will be in an extended dispute that will likely drown out any attention the sentence would receive. If Trump wins there’s probably no point in worrying about the sentence anyway since he will be above the law. And if he loses, there will probably be a lot fewer people looking to pressure the court, and the judge might even be able to give a real sentence without retaliation

I’m not saying this was the right decision, but I think it’s easy to see why the decision was made.

And even if these cruise missiles were completely undetectable, it would still fail unless the strike takes out 100% of the enemy nukes. If even one is able to survive, you risk a nuclear holocaust.

Being able to theoretically wipe our all the enemy nukes without using any of your own is strategically nice to have, but on its own it isn’t enough to negate the threat of a nuclear exchange. At best, it should make your enemy more reluctant to retaliate with a nuclear launch, assuming they realize that they aren’t getting nuked and that a launch would potentially change that.