Silver “Got It So Wrong” Says Trump
.@NateSilver538 “The Trump 2016 Victory was the most shocking political development of my lifetime.” That’s only because you got it so wrong. This time there is far more ENTHUSIASM even than 2016. Winning many States much more easily than people understand. BIG CROWDS!!!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2020
Silver Responds
There’s a vaguely similar sentiment expressed here. However, the point of that passage was that Trump’s win actually *wasn’t* much of a surprise based on the polls, at least according to 538’s model. https://t.co/AaeqjeGR7G pic.twitter.com/dCMXLbRhr4
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 11, 2020
Silver Reply Thread
- There’s a vaguely similar sentiment expressed here. However, the point of that passage was that Trump’s win actually *wasn’t* much of a surprise based on the polls, at least according to 538’s model. Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else
- If you want to read about why 538 consistently *did* give Trump a decent chance in 2016 when almost nobody else did, we go on at great length about that in this series. The Real Story Of 2016
- One other slightly weird aside: the fact that there’s been a fairly abrupt 3-point swing toward Biden shows that late polling swings still can occur and so might make you slightly wary of the notion that Biden’s had this all in the bag the whole time.
- What if there had been a 3-point swing toward Trump instead? Then we’d be at Biden +4 nationally, and likely at Biden +1/+2 in the tipping-point states. That’s a very competitive race, obviously.
- Ordinarily a major national poll showing a candidate 12 points ahead would be huge news, but it’s just sort of par for the course these days. A mini-thread with a couple of quick observations, though. [Mish Comment: Main thread ends at point 6. Mini-thread starts at point 7]
- Also, it’s worth noting that Biden is now at 52% in national polls and at 50-51% in PA/WI/MI. And there are few undecideds left. So Trump either needs something *major* that causes decided voters to re-evaluate Biden, or a *big* polling error.
- Biden’s lead in our national polling average is up to 10.3 points. There’s no sign that things are getting better for Trump; the ABC/Post poll showing him -12 postdates his leaving the hospital. The USC tracker has also been getting worse for Trump.
- One silver lining for Trump: the state polls still mostly seem to be in line with an 8-9 point deficit, rather than 10-11 as in national polls. But, there’s also been a real lack of high-quality state polls for the past several days, so that may just be a matter of time.
- Our *forecast* of the popular vote is Biden +8.2. That’s mostly based on state rather than national polls. And it still prices in a tiny bit of tightening/mean reversion.
- However, Biden’s win probability (now 86%) will continue to rise unless we begin to see tightening soon. My guess is that in an election held *today*, the model would have him with a 90-95% chance. It’s a big lead that would be pretty robust to some pretty serious polling errors.
Revisionist History?
I panned Silver on numerous occasions in 2016.
- December 10, 2015: Attitudes, Attitudes: Dear Nate Silver, Regarding Donald Trump, You Are Missing Something Big!
- January 31, 2016: Nate Silver’s Continual Underestimation of Donald Trump’s Chances
- June 29, 2016: Here We Go Again: Nate Silver Says “79% Chance Clinton Wins”; Battleground Bloodbath
- August 4, 2016: Peak Hillary
- August 7, 2016 Nassim Taleb Blasts Nate Silver About Election Odds in Series of Tweets
Key Points
On August 4 I commented, “Supposedly, Trump had a 50.1% chance of winning in November on July 31, just four days ago!“
On August 7, I commented
Silver is clearly taking the news of the day and projecting it out to November when voters clearly have a time span of about three days. Social Mood is clearly in control here.
Silver is totally clueless about what social mood will be in November, just as he was totally clueless about social mood the entire Republican nomination process.
Silver does not understand social attitudes.
He does not know how to put attitudes into his model, and his wildly changing numbers prove that statement.I do not know what the odds are, but I do know they are not (at the moment) 83.1% for Hillary as Silver projects today.
Silver underestimated Trump’s chances every step of the way.
538’s Final 2016 Forecast
Silver did have many words of caution in his Final Election Update on November 8, 2016.
Our outlook today in our final forecast of the year. Clinton is a 71 percent favorite to win the election according to our polls-only model and a 72 percent favorite according to our polls-plus model.
So what’s the source of all the uncertainty?
First, Clinton’s overall lead over Trump — while her gains over the past day or two have helped — is still within the range where a fairly ordinary polling error could eliminate it.
Second, the number of undecided and third-party voters is much higher than in recent elections, which contributes to uncertainty.
Third, Clinton’s coalition — which relies increasingly on college-educated whites and Hispanics — is somewhat inefficiently configured for the Electoral College, because these voters are less likely to live in swing states. If the popular vote turns out to be a few percentage points closer than polls project it, Clinton will be an Electoral College underdog.
The track record of polling in American presidential elections is pretty good but a long way from perfect, and errors in the range of 3 percentage points have been somewhat common in the historical record.
In three of the last five presidential elections, in other words, there was a polling error the size of which would approximately wipe out Clinton’s popular vote lead — or alternatively, if the error were in her favor, turn a solid victory into a near-landslide margin of 6 to 8 percentage points.
In our national polling average, about 12 percent of voters are either undecided or say they’ll vote for a third-party candidate. While this figure has declined over the past few weeks, it’s still much higher than in recent elections. Just 3 percent of voters were undecided at the end of the 2012 race, for example, according to RealClearPolitics.
If there’s a 3-point error against Clinton? That would still leave her with a narrow lead over Trump in the popular vote — by about the margin by which Gore beat Bush in 2000. But New Hampshire, which is currently the tipping-point state, would be exactly tied. Meanwhile, Clinton’s projected margin in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado would shrink to about 1 percentage point, while Trump would be about 2 points ahead in Florida and North Carolina. It’s certainly not impossible that Clinton could win under those circumstances — her turnout operation might come in really handy — but she doesn’t have the Electoral College advantage that Obama did in 2012
I suggest that is excellent analysis except for quibbling over Silver’s 71-72 odds of Hillary.
I Backed Trump in 2016
Please recall I openly supported Trump in 2016.
One word: Vote!
Two words: Vote Trump!
Sentence: The only hope for change is Trump.https://t.co/YXlVBLX0Zw— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) November 8, 2016
Claims Hillary “won” based on popular vote is like protesting the results of a soccer match based on rules of rugby. https://t.co/3SqedFm8u2 pic.twitter.com/eWtiXqWRMt
— Mike “Mish” Shedlock (@MishGEA) November 27, 2016
Hillary, Not Comey, Casts Cloud Over Election
Please recall my November 1, 2016 post Hillary, Not Comey, Casts Cloud Over Election
Once again, and at the last minute, this election may come down to a one swing state differential.
The setup now is quite similar to the setup heading into the first debate. Trump needs all the must-win states plus one more. He cannot afford any mistakes now.
Realistically, I still have Hillary ahead if the election were held today. One week from now, that story may look different.
Go Trump!
I expected Trump to lose in 2016, but I had things much closer.
Social Mood
I am willing to make an assessment of social mood and where mood will will be at election time.
That is something Silver does not do, and it causes all kind of accusations against me.
I was accused of being an “Obama Loving Socialist” just because I predicted he would win.
I did not vote for Obama.
This time, as a Libertarian, I cannot stand either Trump or Biden and will not vote for either of them.
Trump Will Easily Be Defeated in 2020, Perhaps a Landslide
Please recall my December 30 2019, post Trump Will Easily Be Defeated in 2020, Perhaps a Landslide
That call was based on social mood. People do not like Trump.
He won in 2016 because people disliked Hillary more.
Still, it took a last second Hail Mary pass by Comey for Trump to win.
This Is Not 2016
Trump keeps sticking his foot in his mouth over Covid. In general, women generally cannot stand him.
Importantly, whereas the polls in 2016 were within margins of error, this time they are not.
And the number of undecided voters is a mere few percent now vs 10% in 2016.
Silver Has This One Correct
Add it all up and Silver has this one correct.
Trump has about a 13% chance of winning and if the election was tomorrow it would be about 5%.
Things can happen. Biden could keel over. But it’s more likely Biden gets over 400 electoral college votes than he loses.
Not an Endorsement
I expect Biden to win, easily. That is not an endorsement.
I did not like the candidates in 2016 but I disliked Hillary so much that I did endorse Trump.
I don’t like the candidates in 2020 either. This time I am voting Libertarian.
Trump’s trade policies, war-mongering, threats against allies and enemies alike, narcissism, and military spending are too much for this Libertarian to take.
What a pathetic set of candidates, again.
Mish
Voting is a waste of time, but if I was gonna do it, it’d be Jorgensen.
The only hope for a Libertarian party candidate is if they force Dems/Repubs to allow participation in the debates…otherwise they mostly remain unknown to an electorate focused on MSM driven narrative and earning a living.
Oh my god….The author doesn’t understand probability. He doesn’t know the difference between the percentages of votes a candidate gets is different from the probability the candidate will win.
That’s why he thinks Silver had “revisionists” history. The 50.1% chance he sites as the chance he believed Trump would win proves this.
Good god. You should be embarrassed by this article.
You will be wrong on your prediction because you mysteriously can’t figure out what has been going on with the anti-establishment phobia all over the world. Yes, there may have been some that voted against Hillary in 2016, but one does not draw the crowds that Trump gets because they are against the other candidate. Also, I think many Dems will be as ambivalent toward a senile Biden, as they disliked Hitlary.
Actually, claims that Hillary won based on popular vote is more like protesting the results of a tennis match based on rules of soccer. Because in tennis, it’s not the total number of points, it’s the individual games won that matter.
Opinium/Guardian (UK) have a new poll out: Biden extends lead over Trump to 17 points
It could be off by a full 7 points and Trump would still have zero hope of winning or pulling off a challenge to the will of the voters. He gets only 40% of the vote in this poll. That is a major landslide; we will never see the likes of FDR verses Hoover again, but this is going to be huge. It will be very close to the win by Reagan over Mondale.
Using a hypothetical 160 million votes cast (and assuming that is the residual after third party/wasted votes are eleiminated) would give Trump 65.6 million votes to Biden’s 94.4 million votes.
Given such a win Trump might as well start shopping for orange jumpsuits today, might catch a break on Prime Day if he hurries.
These are lagging indicators. Trump is trending higher in swing states again including Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Arizona. I think Trump will win Wisconsin because the electorate is mad at the Democratic Governor there and the legislature is heavily Republican. I’m skeptical of the landslide some are predicting for Biden. To me, Trump has enough time to come back enough so that he can challenge the election in courts and get enough ballots invalidated to win.
I think not, the whole Fox CON thing, $4 billion cost to the state and they have only employed less than 300 people. Sometimes people put other values ahead of their partisan instinct, Trump has a robotic zombie following but not everyone is that depraved.
Mish votes either in Illinois or Utah. What difference does it make who he votes for? Shouldn’t the point be to vote one’s conscience, else why vote at all?
Not that I believe substantive change is possible by voting, but how is anything supposed to change via utilitarianism?
“I don’t like the candidates in 2020 either. This time I am voting Libertarian.”
I think you mean you don’t like either party. I don’t think you would vote for either party irrespective of who their candidate was. 2016 was an exception and not the rule because Trump was different. We need the rise of a third party that splits the two parties in half but we won’t get it. To me there is enough sentiment in America to break both parties up for good if the right people were willing to form a third party.
“I expect Biden to win, easily. That is not an endorsement.”
Define “win”. I think Trump has a good a shot of winning through the court system as Biden does if they count the ballots.
So what are your thoughts on this ?
You may not like either candidate but I’m still gobsmacked that you think they are both equally bad for this country. I have my misgiings about Biden. I”m not happy that he won’t be supporting TPP to name one item. I’m still uncertain who will drive his foreign policy too but there’s no way it can be as bad as Trump’s
foreign policy establishment will be driving, as always
Fear more mishaps and no relenting on existing traps
There will be a fight after the election . Progressives will make some noise. I expect they will lose. I further expect Biden’s priority will be repairing relations and not following a progessive agenda.
Three weeks to go. People have already started to cast votes. We can begin to project. Trump will most likely lose.
What could change that? A surprise development.
Could the shift in the polls be wrong. Perhaps a little. I’ve noticed among the Trump supporters I know they are withdrawing. One blocked me on FB , another no longer is confident and doesn’t want to discuss it anymore. What does this mean? They may not be responding to polls. But the polls showed Biden ahead earlier, just by not as much.
Trump barely won the election in 2016 if you look past electoral votes. In some swing states he won by the slimmest of margins. Since then he’s clearly lost elderly , suburburban women, military and college educated white male voters. He’s not found many shoes to fill that void. There’s some suggestion that he’s gained some Hispanic voters. Trump is now campaigning in states he was expected to solidly win. He’s not attacking on Joe Biden’s turf. He’s playing defense, trying to shore up Texas and Florida. He’s pulled out of some states he won by strong margins. I’ll quote someone else’s number but it sure feels like his odds of winning are around 15%. And with three weeks to go he needs to act quickly. Money has dried up and we’re seeing the begining of Republicans cutting him off so they can focus on their own races.
I think the courts could change everything. Trump has filed cases in multiple states to invalidate voting by mail.
Mish I wish you would reconsider your vote for a candidate that you know cannot win; but unlike other folks who claim a vote for libertarian Jorgensen is a vote for Trump because it deprives Biden of a vote he needs to beat Trump, I say that is a non argument, if all republicans who are disgusted with Trump vote Jorgensen, or for that matter just a fraction of them, then Trump loses, Biden wins. And if you look at the USA of Nov. 2016 and the nation now we will see that it is difficult to even imagine how much worse Trump could have broken it. Though I am sure it could be worse, his management style has sunk this nation so far so fast I really wonder if or how long it will take to claw our way back.
We will be finding out soon enough:
In the meanwhile I am having quite a lot of fun with your VP candidate and his mentor Parasite Supreme or whatever his name is, he thinks he is harrassing me with condescending and insulting tweets, while I point out in reply that his party is about as genuine as a TV evangelist channel where proof of fraud is all but impossible and that one would have to be deranged to send them cash considering they cannot and never will win. The fact that Mr. Supreme (the old guy with the boot on his head) has the time to bandy insults with me on Twitter is proof they do very little else aside from cashing the checks of the easily gulled.
“Mish I wish you would reconsider… deprives Biden of a vote he needs to beat Trump”
Not in Utah.
If JoBiden loses Utah by one vote—because of Mish—then …
Yeah, sort of like when I lived in Oregon, where blue outvotes red 2:1, now in Florida where my vote will actually have some impact.
I agree that Nate Silver blew it in in 2016. I was following him all the way and got blindsided by the Trump win. It showed me that polls can be wrong….and just how wrong they can be.
You might be interested to know that I hated both candidates in 2016. I would not have voted at all….or might have written in someone (I wrote in Ron Paul in 2012).
But….my world view was so wrong at the time that I voted for Hillary just so that I could contribute to what I figured would be a super-majority. Like this time, I worried about what Trump might stir up if the election were very close…Guess I was ahead of my time.
Earlier in this election cycle I referred to Biden as Hillary in white male drag……I was not thrilled by him…or any of the two dozen Dem candidates.
The best of them were “status quo” candidates…and some of them were in support of ideas like “ending the white male patriarchy” and “reparations” and preaching “white fragility” and all that leftist academic Maoist bullshit. Scary. Bad ideas are popping up everywhere these days. No critical thinking skills left…and the universities are bent of abandoning real science in favor of social justice agendas of various stripes.
We’ll just have to see if Silver gets it right. I expect Biden to win now…..but we are far from being in a position to breathe freely….Not until Trump stands down and packs his bags and heads for home…or heads to a country where he can’t be extradited.
Biden was not my first choice either, I am a centrist, moderate who admires Roosevelt and feels we NEED a JFK.
My first choice really would have been Mayor Pete based upon his intellect and command of issues, his abilty to argue positively on any matter of state or society from a cold start and to assess the viability of solutions, because if you have problems but your solutions are not viable, then you have Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter. Kind and likable men who presided over a nation in trouble but who had no viable solutions. Carter’s answer to deadly and sustained inflation and joblessness was to fight for human rights in Chile, South Africa, and Argentina. This was my first experience with voting for a republican, Reagan who I knew as governor of California was a bit of a jerk sometimes, but also did manage the state fairly well and at least was unlikely to do great harm. And there simply was no way I could support another term for Carter under whose watch I lost precious years of starting my adult life when I left the air force in 1979. The unemployment rate in my home county in California was 33% and prices had risen by 50% during his presidency while wages had declined.
But, even though I am a gay man and see no reason why that should matter to the office of president, I did not support him for THAT office, thought he would make an excellent cabinet member though. I know this because I still see every single day the true feelings of so much of the country towards gay people, and most hide it well but believe me when I say it is ugly when you do glimpse it. I am pretty sure most of you already know this even if you consider yourself immune.
I liked the energy of Beto but I am not a socialist and while he seems not to be either I dropped any support for him when he went to a meeting of “progressive” candidates and left a supporter convinced that slave reparations was the right thing to do. That announcement vaporized his campaign within a week. And I am glad because anyone that wishy washy on major policy issues should not be in any public office.
Of the remaining field of candidates my least favorite was SANDERS of course, I seriously would be voting for Trump had Sanders got the nomination, after which I probably would have crawled in the bathtub and opened my own wrists but voting for Sanders would be worse than pushing the button on the nuclear football, at least the football would be a fast destruction while Sanders would put us through decades of Venezuelan style grief first.
Yang was pretty bad, that man could not think his way out of a wet paper bag. All he wants in life is white males punished for the errors of our ancestors.
Harris’s idea of a UBI which is not UNIVERSAL is just as bad really. It is not a UBI for the simple reason it is not U. It would have gone only to working people below a certain wage level, so what it really is would be a wage support. It would in essence raise the minimum wage to about 38 thousand and increase the wage of most workers to about 50 thousand, but even though that would cause towering inflation she intentionally left disabled veterans out of the scheme as did Yang both saying we already got assistance from the government. We would have been left to fend for ourselves in the new hyperinflation on what is already pretty inadequate income far below the median. We would become overnight the lowest paid people in America.
These people were unable to see that their crusade against discrimination was itself blatantly discriminatory, but since it discriminated mostly against white guys it is a good thing.
The Irony that she has about a 50/50 chance of becoming president in the next 4 years bothers me, but once in office I think she will learn a lot of realities pretty fast.
I would vote for a gay candidate but it remains an impediment…most people are not that tolerant. Especially many who call themselves Christian.
Until Trump…..I was convinced that our only huge problem was the corporate capture of the legislative branch…now I see that pervasive ignorance and poor education has made the executive branch subject to being subverted by a strong man type. This is very disturbing….but the US is not the only place that’s going on.
Pendulums swing.
I can remember when my father, who was not an educated man, told me that interest rates would one day fall as low as they were when he got out of the Navy in 1945….and I laughed under my breath. That was about 1990…..He was right of course.
Sanders and AOC have written large parts of Biden’s program and Biden will be totally controlled by the extremists in Democrat party.
FoJ; again I ask you to document your claims where they are speculative at best. I do not think he is entirely free of their influence, but to say he is essentially a puppet of the far left is absurd. That would be rather like me saying Trump is the lapdog of the extreme right of the GOP, turn out it is the polar opposite, the extreme right has prostituted itself to his cult of personality.
In year when it’s so obvious we need to get rid of a bad President for the sake of the entire system we run on……., I can’t agree with either those who are voting 3rd party or not voting.
In either instance, your vote will be wasted…at a time when it has the potential to do some outsize good.
I strongly encourage Libertarians and those who recognize that both parties are deeply flawed (and they are)…to pull the lever for Biden in the interest of preserving the Constitution and upholding what’s left of the rule of law
In the longer run we need very much to figure out how to get viable 3rd party candidates into the mix…but that is for after this election…
Trump is awful. And Biden is in hock to a wing of his party that is fundamentally anti-constitution. This wing is young, enthusiastic, growing and has the cultural bodies on its side. Biden doesn’t have the spine to resist them. (There has been no Biden “Sistah Souljah” moment.) In short, the Dems view the constitution as a constraint rather than a set of principles to be upheld.
I am not a fan of what I call the Democratic Party’s false narrative….and I call it that because that is what it is….but I don’t see Biden trying to subvert the Constitution….he is certainly not above feathering the nest of his family..that’s pretty obvious….but with Trump that’s going on at a much more serious and dangerous level…and he has no respect for any kind of tradition or any laws….he would be King.
I see this a little differently. This is a real opportunity for the Libertarians to get a large number of votes, drawn from people on both sides. If they draw equally from both sides, they won’t affect the outcome, but if they can get a large number of votes, perhaps in 2024 the Libertarian Candidate will get enough press to be admitted to the debates.
The last time the Libertarians really threatened to get into the debate was 1980, when George Clark was an impressive candidate. To prevent including him in the debate, John Anderson jumped into the race as an independent, and he was included in the 3-way debate instead. Make no mistake, neither party wants to give up their 2 party dominance. Clark, by the way, was the last 3rd party candidate to finish either first or second in any state, as he finished ahead of Carter in Alaska, still far behind Reagan, but in second place.
That “party” is a joke, they may get more votes this time for only one reason, protest votes and most of those taken from Jabba the Trump. But the party is not a viable political entity and I do not see them making any effort to change that.
Here is that party’s elder statesman and their current VP to Jorgensen is his protege.
Vermine Supreme really should call himself parasite supreme.
You do realize, I presume, that Vermin Supreme ran for President in 2008 as a Republican, and then in 2012 and 2016 as a Democrat. Hopefully in 2024 he will move on to some other party, perhaps the Greens, or go back to the Democrats or Republicans.
I am not a fan of the Libertarian VP candidate, for the exact reason you mention. I believe he got the VP bid because there was a bitter fight for the top spot, and when Jorgensen got the nomination, instead of some Republican retread, they tried to saddle her with a “difficult” person for her running mate. It’s sad, because she is a well-qualified candidate, and would have picked up support from the debates, had she been allowed into them.
I am not worried about the Libs taking votes from Biden, they mostly take votes from the GOP and I predict that a lot of disaffected republicans are going to do exactly what Mish says he is doing, the Lib party will surprise to the high side on share of votes, though as a protest vote against Jabba the Trump it will be a one off. The Lib party is simply not viable in it’s fundamental tenets. Bill Moyer did an excellent and very detailed essay on them a few years back, I will see if I can find it for you.
I see a third party vote this election as one less vote for Trump, he is the underdog by a very wide margin and cannot afford to lose even Mish, not one GOP voter that is to say. Yet MILLIONS of people who voted for him last time as a protest against HRC are beating themselves stupid since, Trump will of course get his brainwashed hater cult who by the way promise violence if their Fuhrer has this election “stolen” from him, and that alone should scare people into voting for Biden. The fact that Trump tacitly accepts the support of these people is unbelievable even for the lowest of common denominators.
But, that is all the support he will get and his base is nowhere near the 62.9 million votes he got in 2016. At least 12.9 million of those were from Hillary haters in the independent category, and a few million protest votes by Sanders supporters who carried out their promise of NEVER CLINTON. Fine with me, they got what they wanted, a Trump presidency and 4 years of corrosion that they thought would make a Sanders presidency inevitable in 2020, and they suffer more than any part of the nation for it so karma dude. Anyone with half a brain knows the democrats are not going to support a socialist that refuses to call himself a democrat winning nomination in our party, it was never going to happen. And the nomination of Sanders would just mean a landslide for Trump which would have ended the question of his legitimacy once and for all.
But do not mistake, this election will decide if the United States of America survives. So any voter NOT voting for Trump is a good thing, it lowers the bar Biden has to jump to attain office, and given the number of idiots with the right to vote that is crucial. I believe this election will see record turnout with more than 160 million peole voting and that Trump will be damned lucky to get 60 million of those. The big question for me at this point is what will be the impact on down ballot races. I think the senate will be at least 50/50 with Harris casting all tie breakers, but I do think the senate flips to the democrats and the house will turn bluer also.
I think and HOPE they enlarge the SCOTUS. The GOP will be sent to the corner for two years, and if they have not repented their disgusting cheating ways they will get sent to the same corner for another 2 years in 2022. This election is as much a referendum on their performance as on Trump himself, voters are going to punish Trump for being the sleazeball traitor he is and will take that out on his slovering support in congress too.
Herkie, I agree that pure Libertarianism is not viable in a global economy, and that some level of pragmatism will be required for them to become a truly competitive party. Nevertheless, I can’t support Trump, nor can I support the Socialist approach of the liberal Democrat wing.
A vote for Biden is support to the socialist wing of Democrats because after Biden gets through with amnestying all ILLEGAL immigrants Democrats will have power for the next 100 years and Supreme Court packing on top of that with extreme-left candidates AOC and Bernie approve of and there will be nothing holding Democrats back from going full-socialist.
It’s a shame that the Republicans didn’t nominate someone to run against Biden, then, instead of renominating the disaster that everyone knows. Trump has divided, and divided, and encouraged violence and rioting. The country has nearly been destroyed in four years. No sane person would vote for more than that. So, with no Republican nominee, that leaves the choice between Biden and Jorgensen. I plan to vote for Jorgensen, but you keep pushing me to vote for Biden.
Most DEMOCRATS do not support the socialist far left either and those people like Sanders and his ilk are not DEMOCRATS, he has never called himself a democrat, he caucused with democrats in exchange for the right to run on our party’s ticket, but he does NOT support the party platform and has never said he is a democrat. He claims to be a socialist, but since there is no socialist party he runs as an idependent.
I really thing that after Trump is disposed of the GOP is going to be in disarray with no control anywhere, and a schism in the left will also manifest with can only be called a dem centrist win. The result will be that both parties will break and the fringe right will calve off, and so will the far socialist left “progressives.” That will leave dem and GOP centrists/moderates in a four way political split and I think those moderates will cobble together a reasonable centrist middle. There does need to be a political entity in the US for moderates and right now there is not one.
Herkie, I think you are right, that there will be a lot of coalition building after the election, and that’s why I am not afraid of Biden. It’s clear that Trump will destroy the country, but we have reasons why we can believe that Biden won’t, and that instead he will govern as a moderate.
Not 2 or 4 years. It will be like California, w/ one party rule and almost impossible to attain office without endorsement from the machine.
What’s this Biden crap.
He won’t last a year as President
It’s a pretty good bet he’ll be a one term President, if he in fact gets elected. But a year? No reason to think he’ll drop dead, AFAIK.
Not dead. Incompetent. He’ll step aside or be forced to.
You know it would not surprise me if that was right, then again it might surprise you if he runs for reelection in 24.
Not wishing, or hoping, or even making a prediction, but I have serious doubts about him finishing a term, and that is just based on the odds given his demographic.
I respectfully disagree – and not because I have plans to vote 3rd party particularly, but because in states that are ‘solidly’ one party or another, it is the only way to register distaste for choosing a weak candidate. I have voted 3rd party in the past because I want another viable party/group to coalesce in the middle of the two current parties. A new party would be hungry and would listen to its constituents because it would be the only way it would survive.
Either of the two major parties could have corrected course to choose better candidates. Neither did because there is no consequence for choosing a crap candidate – where is anyone going to go to vote for someone else?
I do understand the reason someone would want to vote third party…..but this time a lot is on the line…..
Maybe a third party vote hurts Trump, as someone said…..but history tends to show most third party votes hurt the challenger and help the incumbent, afaik.
Libertarians are the party of “bankers did nothing wrong” and this is as true today as it was in 2016 with Gary Johnson.
Voting libertarian is a wasted vote and I suggest libertarians have more common ground with the democratic party, I recognize it is difficult to bridge the gap between the populist appeal of libertarian views on fiscal policy and democratic party values. The small government is better approach is increasingly failing to address significant global societal issues, resulting in growing risks to individual freedom. Thus, I think over the long term, democratic party fiscal policies will maximize and protect individual freedom for a greater majority. Individual responsibility is more dynamic than just looking out after our own immediate families, and encompasses paying taxes and contributing positively to the societies, country and world that we live in.
I cannot see why you believe Libertarians have more in common with Dems. Over the past 5-15 years the Dems have begun to abandon their support for free speech, due process, equality before the law (CRT is eating away at these). They don’t like the 2nd or 10th amendments at all and increasingly have problems with the 1st. And probably the saddest and most pernicious is their insistence to view every interaction as a manifestation of power imbalances, especially in racial contexts. They are marching towards destroying the last remaining hope of a harmonious multi-ethnic society. Trump can be awful and potentially dangerous. Yet I perceive the “woke” as representing 20-40% of the Democratic party (and most of its enthusiasm) is operating under fundamentally anti-American principles. (I say all of this without even touching economics – which obviously diverge too.)
I think that a wasted vote is to vote for something you don’t believe in when you have something you do believe in that you can vote for. I do agree that Democrats have moved away from important values, especially freedom of speech. Without freedom of speech, you can have no other freedoms for long. Republicans are no better. I do agree with the OP that between Trump and Biden, I’d vote for Biden any day.
Summary of nzyank’s position: Libertarians should vote D because [assertion that is contrary to all of our lived experience], [assertion that is contrary to our core political beliefs], and voting Dem is better anyway because [straw man of libertarian worldview]. Persuasion 101 right there.
Those who keep bringing up 2016 fail to understand is that in addition to the polling problems of that year 2016 was a six sigma black swan event. We had Comey, Russian interference, Wikileaks all joining forces last moment.
I have this devil’s argument with myself on why Trump is engaging in such poor strategy with three week remaining . I’m toying with the idea that Trump believes he won all on his own and is trying to repeat the magic sauce failing to appreciate he had a lot of outside help
Russian interference … last of the cold war stalwarts, mate?
I didn’t support either candidate in 2016, but seeing support for Trump was understandable. Hillary was a known commodity but Trump was not. Being a non-politician, there was hope he’d be different.
Fast forward to 2020 and there aren’t many reasons left to be enthusiastic about Trump. The Fed is still running the country into the ground and Trump cheered it on the whole way, in fact he wanted the Fed to cut faster and print faster.
This is in no way an endorsement of Biden, who will continue the status quo, but there isn’t much practical difference between the two, contrary to what Trump supporters/detractors would tell you. Has anyone noticed that neither candidate bothered to have a platform to run on?
It is now obvious that both parties are ruining everything. This does not require causal analysis, you just look at the state of the world, see who has been running things for umpteen decades, then add 2 and 2.
One can only hope that after breaking through the wall of pain that is “the lesser of two evils,” more and more will realize that both parties are running a con game and, guess what, you can vote for someone else on that final ballot.
I used to vote third party and it was a surprisingly unpleasant experience, particularly with coworkers.
I stopped voting after 2004 and I can’t remember a single person berating me for it. Not everyone is thrilled to see people sit out but responses were muted. However, back when I voted third party it was like people came out of the woodwork to criticize my decision. They were incredulous and it was almost like they took my lack of support for their candidate personally. It was really bizarre, especially back when politics weren’t supposed to be this divisive.
Tengen, you have a point. And Trump has egged on the Fed, rather than reign them in. This error is fatal. On the other hand, when both parties are against you, on how many fronts to you choose to fight?
What a hoot
FactsOnJoe you are clueless.
Libertarians do not support massive welfare for illegal immigrants.
Stop making an ass out of yourself.
In THEORY communism/marxism/socialism works.
In THEORY libertarians do NOT support massive welfare for ILLEGAL immigrants.
However in REALITY communism/marxism/socialism do NOT work.
However in REALITY allowing OPEN BORDERS and amnesty/US citizenship to all ILLEGAL immigrants like Libertarian politicians want and like Democrats and Joe Biden have PROMISED will ALWAYS and 100% lead to massive welfare for ILLEGAL immigrants in PRACTICE because they will be given amnesty and US citizenship and then they will be ENTITLED to all current US welfare programs and since they get the right to vote with the amnesty/US citizenship they will VOTE to ensure the welfare programs will continue and be expanded until USA has been destroyed by the current 29.5 million ILLEGAL immigrants and the TENS and TENS and TENS of millions NEW ILLEGAL immigrants that will come to USA after the Joe Biden amnesty/US citizenship giveaway to either get into the first amnesty by LYING they have been in USA before the cut-off date (whatever date Joe Biden and Democrats will set) or WAIT for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th,5th amnesty that will surely come while enjoying the FREE welfare many DEMOCRAT controlled states already give them (and which cause those states to have most ILLEGAL immigrants and therefore those states to get extra electoral college votes and extra house seats based on those ILLEGAL immigrants being counted in the census for the purpose of apportioning the house seats and electoral college votes to states and therefore benefiting Democrats, Republicans have also started competing in this field with some Republican controlled states tolerating ILLEGAL immigrants to get the same benefits in house seat and electoral college votes apportionment) and the free healthcare Joe Biden has PROMISED to all ILLEGAL immigrants and being SURE that they will get to stay because Democrats have promised to either abolish or cripple ICE and to increase the Sanctuary city/state policies and Democrats under Biden/Harris will probably even declare USA a sanctuary country.
This is the REALITY of what EVERYONE who is voting for Joe Biden or for 3rd party is SUPPORTING with their vote in this 2020 election.
Joe Biden is leading the polls so everyone who either does NOT vote or votes for third party is SUPPORTING Joe Biden becoming president as effectively as voting for Joe Biden.
In addition to that USA will become a ONE PARTY state and with ONE party controlling the judicial branch because Democrats will:
a) pack the Supreme Court with leftists (compared to whom RBG would have been a rightwing judge) to first make Supreme Court 13 justices creating 7-6 control for leftists and then put more leftists in if somebody Democrats put in turns out to not to be leftist enough.
b) 29.5 million current ILLEGAL immigrants (MIT-Yale 2018) will turn into Democrat voters with Joe Biden amnesty/US citizenship giveaway turning Texas, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan etc. PERMANENTLY blue/Democrat and the tens of millions of NEW illegal immigrants coming after the amnesty will either get into the same amnesty and vote for Democrats or cause those states in Democrat control by then to get more house seats and more electoral college votes in the next census further ensuring Democrat control.
c)So Democrats will have Supreme Court in their control through court-packing and house and presidency in their control through amnesty (29.5 million new voters) and new illegal immigrants lured after the amnesty (either by letting them in on the amnesty or giving a 2nd, 3rd etc amnesty or just by getting more house seats and electoral college votes for Democrat controlled states in the next census) for the next 100 years starting in 2021.
d) point b) will cause Democrats to get Senate in 2022 elections or latest at 2024 elections even if Republicans keep it in 2020 election. Then Democrats will have Senate, House, Presidency and Supreme Court for the next 100+ years and there will be NOTHING to stop Bernie/AOC and those who will be elected in 2020 and 2022 and 2024 and 2026 etc. who will be even more RADICAL than them.
After Reagan gave amnesty to about 5+ million ILLEGAL immigrants starting in 1986 (was supposed to be 2+ million but millions came and LIED they had been in USA before the cut-off date and courts sided with them and bureaucrats gave US citizenships to anyone who wanted one and could keep a straight face) USA has received 29.5 million ILLEGAL immigrants.
Giving current 29.5 million ILLEGAL immigrants (MIT-Yale 2018) amnesty and US citizenship (like Joe Biden has promised) would cause, if things go proportionally compared to Reagan amnesty, 45 million new ILLEGAL immigrants to come to USA and claim they have been here before the cut-off date (whatever Kamala/Biden set) and 150 million ILLEGAL immigrants to come to USA during the next 34 years.
This is the election where every vote really matters.
Trump is a buffoon in my opinion but he is not actively trying to destroy USA to get electoral power like Democrats are willing to do.
Open borders and welfare state are NOT compatible like somebody famous once said so people who support open borders want a future (whether they realize it or not) where less fortunate Americans will be literally dying in the streets because once the carrying capacity is surpassed the welfare systems will be either abolished OR the value of the currency from all the deficit spending will be such that you need stacks of 100 dollar bills to buy a loaf of bread.
Since demand for free stuff is exponential and world has billions of people who would move to a country that offers welfare if they could that leads to open borders causing hundreds of millions and then billions moving to countries that offer welfare if those countries allow that movement so when the carrying capacity is surpassed and the free-money-tree is no more there will be lots of different ethnicities in massive numbers distrustful of each others in the same place who need somebody to BLAME for taking away the free-money-tree and usually when it comes to finding somebody to blame for policies not working communists/marxists/socialists excel at that so USA’s future will be really bleak should Joe Biden and Democrats win this time.
The problem with Democrats is that they have NOT lost enough to chance their policies but instead they have always believed they were NOT leftist enough and amnesty-obsessed and open-borders-obsessed enough to win.
The ONLY way Democrats will HEAL and become a normal party again is by Trump winning in 2020.
We already have a one party system in the US. The Uniparty agrees on most issues, other than the useless social wedge issues presented to voters.
We’re a post-ideology society, just bickering over how to manage the debt apocalypse, basically shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
FactsOnJoe is working overtime, Mish, to persuade Libertarians not to vote for Jorgensen. Since obviously Trump has to go, I guess he wants us to vote for Biden?
this claim that its a choice between Trump and open borders is a canard. Trump is very clear. He doesn’t like non-white English speaking immigrants. Once you peel the rhetoric and look at what Trump is trying to achieve you see he wants to limit legal immigration too. He calls for skill based criteria but he lists speaking English as the criteria.
And you think it would be more beneficial to bring to USA workers that do NOT speak English?
English proficiency does NOT measure ethnicity or nationality it measures education level because well-educated people speak English all over the world and the integration probability and the probability of the immigrant becoming a contributing net-tax payer is higher when they know English and have higher education.
To allow tens of millions of ILLEGAL immigrants with no English language skills and no education is self-destructive for a country and likewise bringing uneducated low wage workers LEGALLY by the millions is self-destructive for a country because they crowd out Americans with low education levels by working cheaper and once they are entitled to welfare and government programs they use government programs and welfare thereby creating more deficit spending or more pressures to raise taxes both of which are bad for the economy and country.
Allowing ILLEGAL immigration has been a huge ROBBERY of working class by large companies and Wall Street and same applies for low wage LEGAL immigration.
The experience of this country refutes your argument. This country has had millions of German, Dutch, Italian , East Europenan immigrants all who came here without any skills other than being a farmer, a tailor etc learned English and became contributing Americans. Their chilren went to college and became doctors , lawyers and enginers.
And yes “speak English ” is code for white. Sure there are some who speak English and aren’t but we know what Trump means.
That was BEFORE there was Welfare, Section-8 housing, SNAP-EBT Foodstamps, federal tax credits, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.
People had to work and earn themselves all the money they got.
Now USA is getting closer and closer to Sweden/Germany/France style massive welfare and many think USA is already there.
who said anything about bringing in illegals. I’m just saying barring people because they don’t speak english is hidden racism and bad policy. why are you conflating opening the door to illegal immigration and an english langauge requirement for legal immigration.
There is nothing RACIST about requiring people to be able to speak english before moving legally to USA.
It is good policy because by doing that you filter out people who are unable/unwilling to learn english which means there will be less problems and larger percentage of the legal immigrants coming in will find their place in USA and become productive members of society more likely to fund their own costs with their own tax dollars than consume the tax dollars of others to provide them the multitude of welfare benefits and government programs that people in USA legally get when they can not support themselves.
he’s conflating an english language legal immigration requirement and permitting illegal immigration
There is no conflating:
1.
Allowing ILLEGAL immigration is destructive to society because 90%+ of them will be users of the system instead of funders of the system and those ILLEGAL immigrants steal jobs from millions of Americans and lower wages for tens of millions working class Americans
2.
Allowing LEGAL immigration for low wage workers is destructive to society because 90%+ of them will be users of the system instead of funders of the system and those LEGAL immigrants steal jobs from millions of Americans and lower wages for tens of millions working class Americans.
They are BOTH stupid and destructive POLICY CHOICES.
In my opinion ALLOWING massive ILLEGAL immigration is a RACIST policy toward American blacks and latinos and whites.
In my opinion ALLOWING massive LEGAL immigration for low wage jobs is a RACIST policy toward American blacks and latinos and whites.
The massive ILLEGAL immigration and massive low wage LEGAL immigration CREATED jobs “Americans just won’t do” by lowering the wages in those jobs.
FactsonJoe, If you’re goal is to convince people that there is a rational argument to be made against immigration (legal or otherwise), you are failing badly. Your unhinged rants are all it would take to convince someone that hard-working immigrants are needed to outweigh the effects of nuts like you on our political system.
So far as I know, no one debates that any of the following are true:
Therefore, it has long been known that countries which have net positive immigration have a net positive economic impact, while those from which people leave have a net loss to their economy, since they are left with the young, and the old, both of which are a burden on the economy, and no one in the middle to provide the income to support them.
On average elephant and mouse have a weight of half an elephant.
On average most LEGAL immigrants moving to USA to do low wage jobs CONSUME more government benefits than they pay in taxes during their lifetimes creating a need for either further deficit spending and debasement of money or the need for large tax increases.
When people are exposed to FACTS that question people’s worldview they usually label the person telling facts unhinged…
I have to stand up for FactsonJoe…much as I might live to regret that.
There is a very rational argument to made for limiting immigration. More than one, in fact.
My belief is that many who support open borders do so because of strongly held beliefs…..ones that don’t necessarily stand up to real scrutiny. It is a part of the liberal narrative that you’ve been sold….it’s tied up with your anti-racism. People who question unlimited immigration are too quickly labeled racists…..
You have been sold this bill of goods because unlimited immigration does benefit the Democratic Party. No doubt. The idea that it benefits us as a nation is far less clear.
Legal immigration benefits the Democratic billionaire donor class. H1B Visas…..Student Visas…amount to cheaper skilled labor for tech companies and our biggest universities.
We happen to live in a a time of mass exodus due to overpopulation and climate change. From Subsaharan Africa….from Central America. .
The people marching to the Texas border from Salvador and Guatemala right now…are in the thousands. They not only don’t speak English….they can’t even read and write Spanish….they don’t know arithmetic. It is ridiculous to think that we can assimilate them when we’re taking about UBI for native born people who aren’t educated enough to work in a 21st century technical economy.
Most of them are very young….and have kids. The average age in Salvador is only 26. In Guatemala it’s 22. The idea that they won’t burden our already crappy social safety net…is extremely naive. I know. I’m a part of that safety net. I’m on the front lines.
This is not 1870…..we don’t need your huddled masses all that badly…
You ever visit the Tenement Museum on Manhattan’s lower East Side? I’m sure some of you have. In the days when those buildings were built there were virtually no tax supported social services….no minimum wage….Immigrants lived, families of eight or ten, in apartments that were maybe 300 square feet. Water at street level. Toilet at Street level. Jewish immigrants eked out a living doing piecework for the garment industry. Kids too.
We aren’t allowed to treat people like that in this country any more. It’s exploitation….
But the system worked then because labor found its own price, and the price was dirt cheap…..and families stuck together through thick and thin. People knew their neighbors, and charity was largely administered (what little there was) through churches and synagogues.
Equating what we’re dealing with now, with that….is irrational. We are a mature empire on the decline now. It is a very different situation.
Geez, you might want to catch up on the drone wars and other atrocities, as well as the various parties that have been turned over to the tender mercies of the various dictators trump loves to love.
War mongering? You mean, as opposed to actual wars and war crimes, like the previous 4 administrations?
You nailed it. As a loose canon, you never need to fire a shot.
I mean actual wars
Trump is in one with Iran. It is nuts to deny it.
His economic blockade is worse on Iran than one with ships, a certain act of war.
War crimes, you bet. Trump’s tactics against Iran including assassinations qualify.
That aside, when did I say I supported the previous administrations? Can you read?
There is a reason he’s has 5 nominations for peace prize. His path may be the one of least resistance to the goal of peace. Alas, Gandhi, he’s not.
I’ll go with Dilbert’s Scott Adams on this: “Democrats have gaslighted themselves by scaring Trump supporters into silence and then believing the polls they made worthless by scaring Trump supporters into silence”
Anecdotal, but watch out: “I Didn’t Vote For Trump In 2016, But I’d Crawl Over Broken Glass To Vote For Him Now” from the Federalist,
LOL
Trump loves himself and money. That’s it.
Huh? No need to be President, if you’re right. Maybe you want to add something like Sociopath? Quite a few of those hanging in DC.
Didn’t Adams blast Trump after the first debate, saying he “lost his vote”? I don’t follow him so I’m not sure if he changed his mind since then, but he seems to have lost enthusiasm for the cause.
Scott Adams was mad that Trump did NOT use the opportunity in the debate to finally destroy the media/Democrat LIE that Trump had called white supremacists etc. vs Antifa etc. in Charlottesville “good people on both sides” when Wallace REPEATED that LIE in his question.
Even Joe Biden repeated that LIE in the Debate after Wallace had said that LIE and Trump just muttered “read the rest of the quote” or something because Trump specifically CONDEMNED nazis, KKK and white supremacists and Antifa too after Charlottesville but media and Democrats like Joe Biden have LIED and LIED and LIED for years that Trump thought white supremacists etc were “good people” based on out of context clip that has been heavily edited and distorted with pundits repeating the lie after the clip is played in the media to manufacture the LIE Trump called white supremacists good people when in reality Trump CONDEMNED them several times in that same press conference.
Later Scott Adams said that after Democrats attacked him on Twitter and called him nasty names and demanded he grovel he is returning to be a Trump voter and said something about it being also an experiment how many people he could expose to see that the “good people of both sides” statement being about white supremacists is a LIE like he has done for several years at a great personal cost and he was happy he was top-trending on Twitter for a while based on his statement of not personally voting for Trump (dude is in California).
You realize that this writing style makes you sound unhinged, right? It’s difficult to see how anyone can be this animated about either of the two duds running on the red/blue tickets.
After reading your posts on this article, I picture a guy with veins popping out of his head as he types. Take a step back, look at this election objectively and ask yourself how your personal life will change for the better/worse with either guy. The difference is much smaller than you seem to think, just like it’s been with every election in recent decades.
He gets paid by the word. DOUBLE for words in ALL CAPS.
I get paid nothing.
You on the other hand are clearly a Democrat party operative straight from DNC or some Democrat controlled thinktank.
Clearly, that’s why I post such long posts. More projection.
Adams recently said that Trump corrected his mistake, so all is good. People make mistakes, Trump dis-avoided later (and many other times, too), it’s the best humans can do.
Utterly delusional.
Good to see you are voting for who you would actually want to represent your views Mish!