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The US Presidential election prediction thread


ICTChris

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53 minutes ago, GordonS said:

...get a decent climate change plan going...

That will largely take care of itself at this point. The most easily exploited fossil fuel reserves have been largely tapped out so it is increasingly easy for renewables to compete without any state subsidies. Fracking has been a very bad investment for most of the people who got involved with it due to its extremely rapid depletion rates, so a post-COVID recovery for that sector is not going to be easy regardless of what Biden does.

If oil supply had peaked back in 2008, as it would have in the absence of fracking and other unconventional sources, the technology wasn't in place yet for a relatively smooth transition away from fossil fuels and the world economy would have been in dire straits with Vlad and OPEC very much at the controls. Since then grid parity has been achieved with wind and solar and that meant coal had no chance of a renaissance even with Trump in power because market forces now favour renewables backed up by natural gas.  Storage technologies are getting there to eventually remove more of the natural gas component even if they are not 100% there yet, and massive progress has also been made on electric vehicles with a range and performance that is genuinely practical enough to realistically get transportation off fossil fuels, so now if oil supply with fracking etc factored in really has peaked (as some believe but time will tell) the pieces are very much in place to slowly transition away.

Although the USA gets a lot of grief from climate activists, large portions of that have happened there because their flexible venture capital market makes it relatively easy for people to explore risky new possibilities and walk away unscathed financially when they don't work. There are always people trying to sell worst case doomsday scenarios as being the likely future if we don't hand over power to them, but overall there are actually plenty of reasons for optimism over what lies ahead right now. Much more so than 15-20 years ago when Iraq was being invaded as part of a scramble to secure the last large easily exploited conventional crude oil sources.

Edited by LongTimeLurker
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In the long run, if all Biden achieves in 4 years is to take the heat out of American politics, get the government functioning like a normal country, get a decent climate change plan going and shift Senate Republicans out of their Comrade Nyet behaviour, that could be enough. America's still in a dark place.
It might not be radical but getting their country back to something approaching normality would be an achievement - still a very divided country.

If he can marginalise the extreme fringes in both parties he might just do it.
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6 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

It might not be radical but getting their country back to something approaching normality would be an achievement - still a very divided country.

If he can marginalise the extreme fringes in both parties he might just do it.

Who do you regard as extreme left?

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18 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

No way did he write these. Wonder who the British Pollster is? Not that Belize shyster?

P.S. Wonder if he's got Steve Bannon back on tweeting duty?

 

 

Was about to say..neither of those tweets are written by Trump..

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3 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

The Libertarian agenda should really appeal to much of the fuckwit Republican/Trump supporters.

Abolishing immigration controls, legalising all drugs and free trade (abolishing tariffs) should really appeal to Republican/Trump supporters? 🤣

You really know f**k all about American politics! 😂

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48 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

The more extreme Defund the Police arseholes - those that want to disband police forces entirely.

 

 

Which elected Democrats, or Democrat candidates, want to do that? 

There's a very fair case that the police are over-funded, which leads to them driving around making up things to do. It also wastes resources that could be much more effectively spent elsewhere in reducing crime. But I don't think any Democrats are in the 'abolish the police' camp.

To me the single biggest difference between the two US parties is that the Republicans have their full-on wingnuts inside the party.

For someone to be described as extreme left they'd have to at least believe in the nationalisation of industry, the abolition of private property, salaries based on need, collectivisation of farms. No Democrat supports anything like that.

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7 minutes ago, Bishop Briggs said:

Abolishing immigration controls, legalising all drugs and free trade (abolishing tariffs) should really appeal to Republican/Trump supporters? 🤣

You really know f**k all about American politics! 😂

There's obviously plenty of differences but you can't argue that overall they're not much closer to Republicans than to Democrats. It's exactly the same for Greens on the other side of the spectrum. There's no doubt that in a French-style run-off election, forced to pick between the two, many if not most Libertarians would vote, and would break more for the Republican candidate than the Democrat.

 

Edited by GordonS
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5 minutes ago, GordonS said:

There's obviously plenty of differences but you can't argue that overall they're not much closer to Republicans than to Democrats. It's exactly the same for Greens on the other side of the spectrum. There's no doubt that in a French-style run-off election, forced to pick between the two, many if not most Libertarians would vote, and would break more for the Republican candidate than the Democrat.

Ron and, to a lesser extent, Rand Paul are the only Republicans have had a lot of support from libertarian activists. Ron was the LP candidate for President in 1988 and has since rejoined the party after leaving Congress. He is far more libertarian than recent LP candidates for President, notably Gary Johnson.

In practice, Libertarians are just as willing to vote Democrat if there is no LP candidate but most will abstain.

 

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