2024 ELECTION THREAD

Ok, you can have your own proprietary definition of what you think left and right mean, but you'll just be incomprehensible to people who are using them in ways that they are used in ordinary language. If you want to explain to me your proprietary definition of left and right, I'm open to it, but when I use the terms "left" and "right" I am using them in the ways that people will understand them generally.

Plenty of people understand that the both parties in the US serve the right. It's hardly some idiosyncratic definition I'm using.

That's true, many people do claim that both parties in the US serve the right. Unfortunately that's a complete non-sequitor for what we're talking about here, which is that left and right are generally used as relative terms. If anything, it would be an empirical indication, though underdetermined, that left and right are used as relative terms.

When the democrats are called the left and the republicans are called the right, it's because those two terms are being mapped out onto the event space of American politics. That's why we call them left or right in the context of the two party system, not in the context of all political systems that could ever exist.

On the other hand, the people that are saying they are both right wing parties are mapping them onto the international political spectrum. In that event space, people argue that Democrats are actually right-wing even though they claim to be the left of the US.

So in actuality, if we define left and right in relative terms, these disparate uses of terms makes a lot of sense. It maps onto how people use these terms in ordinary language. On the other hand, in your more rigid definition where political parties are left or right without respect to their relative positions to each other, the different ways that we use left or right don't make sense.

So you're losing two utilities here. You're losing the utility of the relative definition wherein we can use these terms in different ways in different contexts that all make sense, making it so that we're going to equate parties that are at odds with each other in the ways that left and right elucidates. You're also losing utility in the sense that now you are shutting yourself off to ordinary uses of the language in favor of a proprietary definition.

Now you have to show that your proprietary definition is somehow more valuable than the utility you lose, and you also have to provide your proprietary definition for the purpose of evaluation. Which you may do, and people have attempted to do so. One very popular alternative to the left vs right spectrum would be the political compass, which would add a further dimension of libertarian vs authoritarian. However the political compass has been criticized by many because of its left-libertarian bias, basically wording questions to induce a certain reaction. So it's not clear that when you set out on this project that the utility there isn't still in comparing where you land on the political spectrum to where others land on the political spectrum...

I love that Republicans don't even have hurricane creation tech and think they'd win a civil war.

Full 1-hour Howard Stern interview with Kamala Harris. Regardless your impression with Stern from the past, he has always been a great interviewer and that's on full display here.

You think Trump definitely would be president now if Pence had done what Trump told him to do?

You are wasting your breath on this point. Whenever anyone refers to the left or the right in relation to American politics, Luckbox pops in to say that both major U.S. parties are right-wing.

Unless you add the words "by American standards" or "in the context of American politics" to every single post in which you discuss a left-right spectrum in American politics, you will elicit this response from him, even if everyone involved in the discussion understands that the Democratic party would not be regarded as "leftist" in many areas of Europe, South America, etc.

I guess this is the American left. Strangely their main focus seems to be supporting violent, repressive, authoritarian theocracies. So if this is what leftism is, maybe not having much of it is a good thing.

Yeah, if Pence delays there would have been more MAGA riots for sure. But beyond that hard to say. No court saw any merit in any of the claims. I guess it's down to just straight up stealing it at that point and hoping the country goes along with it to heal or whatever.

I'm not suggesting that it would have been a risk-free situation. There is always risk when you precipitate a constitutional crisis. And it would have been an immensely destructive move whether it worked or not. But I'm far from convinced that it would have resulted in another term for Trump.

Nobody can say for sure because this is something that has never been tested outside of a house of cards season (which I don’t rule out the people who were behind jan 6 watching and saying ‘hey there’s an idea’😉

Taken to its conclusion on face value trump would have overturned the election because of the guardrails that existed and this ridiculous 1 state 1 vote clause. Could it have actually gotten to that point if pence did what trump asked? Possibly. I don’t see what could have stopped it. Even the most idealistic person can’t say with 100% certainly that’s not how it ends. And if you want to counter that with ‘well the Supreme Court would have put a stop to that’ I’ve got a bridge to sell you

I don’t think kamala wins without the Dems taking the house but the absolute true nightmare scenario is kamala wins and the republicans keep the house. I trust johnson with absolutely nothing and would fully expect him to create the exact constitutional crisis required for doomsday

It's a point of massive importance because you have all of these people who are like "yay I'm a good person I'm on the left and not like evil Republicans"...meanwhile they support war, corporations, entrenched power, etc. Not understanding it is literally killing people.

Do you consider yourself a leftist?

I'm always fascinated by people who believe a group of 1k unarmed people can overthrow the most powerful country in the history of the world.

Does anyone know of a documentary that follows these people around in their daily lives just to see how they function? If there isn't one yet, I think it would be an interesting watch.

The doc should skip, or give a very brief descriptions on, how each participants thinks overthrowing the US could have occurred: if x happened then y happened then the dinosaurs come back and then finally trump announces "I am the president still" then it could have worked. The focus on the doc should be how these people make it through a normal day: do they make their own breakfast, do any of them drive cars, how they socialize with society, do they have any Velcro shoe recommendations?

Oh look, it's dumbdumbmickey, back again to pretend for the 100th time to be perplexed by something that has been explained to him 100 times already in words of 2 syllables.

Yes, it was pretty dumb of them to use intimidation and force to try to prevent or delay the peaceful transfer of power. Dumb and also evil. People can be both at the same time.

Luckbox I’m really bad at logic remember? So can you please correct me on how I’m wrong about how the terms left and right work in our language? For someone as intelligent and logical as you, it should be really easy.

If Kemp and a few governors went along and "found" enough fake votes for Trump to win, why wouldn't that have happened?

This framing is beyond disingenuous. No one thinks that 1,000 unarmed people could overthrow a United States government that was determined to resist those 1,000 people.

The question that is actually being asked is what the actual risks would be if a sitting president convinced a VP to refuse to certify an election. There was no precedent for the plan that John Eastman and others devised or the actions that Trump took.

As I've said many times, I strongly suspect that Joe Biden would still be president today even if Pence had capitulated. But relying on this SCOTUS to act adversely to Trump in a situation where jurisdiction is arguably uncertain is not a risk-free situation. And even if the SCOTUS had concluded that it had jurisdiction and had ruled against Trump/Pence, the entire situation would have been quite damaging to U.S. democracy.

Pretending as if the risk was zero or that the entire plan was harmless fun so long as it did not succeed is contemptible imo.

Obviously by the time it got to Pence nothing could be done other than him delaying and MAGAs burning down DC. But if Governors and State election officials listened to Trump's orders, added fake Trump votes and said "well actually Trump won", of course stealing the election is possible.

I would classify the American lefts main focus as "anti-Trump". ~175 million people who think Trump and all of his followers are absolute morons

Noble cause imo

I could write an essay here but I'm in a live tournament so short answer is that while I have a lot in common with them, I'm too critical of collectivism to be an actual leftist.

lol I don’t believe anyone believes you can write an essay on anything