I am sure that Dura Ace will provide examples of people acting fearlessly but with common sense. Must be frequent in military situations!
Are you suggesting you're incapable of using common sense if you're not acting terrified?
That's a bit convoluted ....... too many negatives,............. but I think the answer is one is unlikely to use common sense if terrified. And equally unlikely to act in a common-sense way if acting in a reckless fashion!
Well indeed. I think the idea is to use common sense, not be either fearful or reckless. What's wrong with that?
The fact that "reckless" and "fearless" are synonyms, so it comes to a contradiction.
They're not.
They are. They both mean, objectively, discounting the likely consequences of an action when deciding whether to take it or not. The difference is purely in the hurray! vs yah! boo! connotation of each word.
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
Point 1 is pretty terrifying, the rest are just theories.
I'm going to look closely at the odds on Biden when market reopens. If i can cash out at ~1.4, reckon that might be good enough for me.
2 is not a theory. The polling has consistently shown the Hispanic lead for the Democrats has narrowed from 2016 both at the national level and for key states. A number of Democrats have expressed similar concerns. Look at the 2 links I posted to Edmund (I’ll post again if you want);
Biden is way too short. You are effectively banking on the polls being correct because there is not much other evidence suggesting Biden is sweeping to victory. And, as Robert said, polls can be wrong
Polls can be in error in either direction of course, and underestimating Bidens lead is as equally likely as overestimating it. Particularly as pollsters may have over compensated for last time (though like Brexit, that polling failure in 2016 was greatly exaggerated. There were many polls indicating a Leave win)
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
I got persuaded to go to the pub with a couple of friends on Friday night "whilst we still can". Only in there for a couple of hours. A pub barely half full thanks to table spacing. Order drinks via a new app. Stick a mask on to go to the loo. Last orders at 9:30 and "can you drink up please" as they wanted the doors locked bang on 10.
I'm not doing that again. Aside from the obvious risk of people in a room it wasn't remotely fun. We were doing Zoom drinks when the pubs were closed, and with how they now are we'e going back to it next time. Same with a work leaving do - yes a few of us can gather in my mate's garden pub. The rest? A buffet in the office then everyone home for virtual drinks is the plan. As opposed to off into town for a night out.
I understand your concern. Daughter tries to do everything she can to make the experience pleasant: good food, friendly staff, a personal welcome etc etc.
What really really annoys her (and me) is that pubs and restaurants are bearing the burden of these measures. They are having their businesses being killed by attrition. The benefits are for everyone. They are socialised. But the costs are privatised. This is the wrong way around.
If the benefits are for everyone then so should the costs be. The hospitality sector should continue to be supported while these restrictions are in place. But they’re not being. They’ve been thrown under a bus while being threatened more and more each day with more restrictions, more fines, inspections etc.
It is quite wrong and unfair. And I hope it comes back to bite the government in the bum big-time.
I can see how they would work during the day when the focus is on food. But as a night out with friends?
Different business models. The only way she is surviving the loss of drinkers coming in to chat with friends is by having as big a food offering as possible - both eat-in and take-away.
If only going out with one household is brought in nationwide, then the business - like many others - will be finished.
The government does not have a fucking clue.
Presumably there is sod all covid in the edges of the Lake District?
It would be madness to bring in another national lockdown when swathes of the country have very low rates of covid.
The government has lost the plot on all this. They have got to get some sense of proportion and pull back from the Ferguson modelling (which incidentally looks like being wildly wrong again in the so-called second wave).
Thankfully, MPs are starting to wise up.
Suggestion on the Ferguson model: the Government should hire a number of City analysts to dissect in detail Ferguson’s model and go through all his assumptions and formulae that he has used in his calculations. I’m willing to bet that Ferguson’s model is a classic case of GINO (Garbage In, Nonsense Out)
We have no use of experts.
City modelers can forecast financial matters, but epidemiology requires a different skill set.
Far better for the data to be open sourced to other epidemiologists to look at and critique.
I don't think the suggestion was that the "city analysts" take over the forecasting. Just cast a critical eye and challenge the assumptions. Some of that may be from a position of ignorance. But there is nothing wrong with that in principle. In fact asking questions from a position of ignorance is often a useful challenge mechanism. Because sometimes assumptions from those producing the model can become baked in without serious review that can only come from outside challenge.
His work is already subject to peer review though, isn't it?
One would hope so. But still "peers" coming from a common set of underlying first principle assumptions that might benefit from challenge.
Cummings did brilliantly with Take Back Control, followed up strongly with Get Brexit Done, but is struggling big time on the third album. Is there such a thing as a two-hit wonder?
Cummings did brilliantly with Take Back Control, followed up strongly with Get Brexit Done, but is struggling big time on the third album. Is there such a thing as a two-hit wonder?
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
I like the idea of 750,000 citizen scientists! It is beautiful story!
You seem to me to be too ready to blame the lack of leadership. There is different leadership in Wales & Scotland, and they have followed more stringent policies. It hasn't done them very much good in terms of outcomes.
(In fact, Scotland is following a zero-civid policy, according to Sturgeon's stated aim. As is, I believe N. Ireland).
It is possible that Germany may provide a counter-example to my pessimism. I agree that the pandemic has played to Merkel's scientific strengths and training. Her leadership has been much better than anything these islands have offered -- and better than the rest of Europe. Though even here, I'm inclined to believe that she is just delaying the inevitable.
The only think that can really save the West is an effective vaccine very quickly. That is not going to happen.
It is the last rites for the Western liberal democracies.
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
Point 1 is pretty terrifying, the rest are just theories.
I'm going to look closely at the odds on Biden when market reopens. If i can cash out at ~1.4, reckon that might be good enough for me.
2 is not a theory. The polling has consistently shown the Hispanic lead for the Democrats has narrowed from 2016 both at the national level and for key states. A number of Democrats have expressed similar concerns. Look at the 2 links I posted to Edmund (I’ll post again if you want);
Biden is way too short. You are effectively banking on the polls being correct because there is not much other evidence suggesting Biden is sweeping to victory. And, as Robert said, polls can be wrong
The polling says that despite underperforming (vs. 2016) with Hispanic voters, Biden is well ahead.
That stuff about tone of language/PoC is just a theory.
Biden is value at >1.8 i reckon. Your approach seems to be to ignore polls entirely.
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
Tesco won though as we bought them on the walk back. The small one on Heath Street has a surprisingly decent selection.
Tesco isn't winning. Can I ask which kind of Tesco you bought the wine from? Because every format of Tesco is absolutely haemorrhaging shoppers. The best performing Tesco store format is superstore which has lost a mere 18% of shoppers compared to last year.
Won't a lot of business have decamped to Tesco online? We know they have added deliveries and recruited new drivers.
The Tesco share price is down since covid-19 but not so much as more discretionary spend industries. i think sales are overall fine (includes online) but extra costs for covid-19 and staff to police them means margins not the same. Tesco will survive but the likes of cineworld , waterstones,pubs etc will not unless we ditch the useless mask and 10pm curfew policy
I read somewhere that supermarket delivery operations run at a loss (although Tesco as the only one to actually charge for delivery may be different?) but they have to do it or lose volume to rivals. Perhaps Rochdale would know? (edit/ I see he says as much downthread)
Going forward that doesn't seem a sustainable model and at some point people are surely going to have to pay for delivery, or join some sort of annual subscription service like Amazon Prime.
Online makes a loss for everyone, even with a payment for delivery - average loss is around £5 per delivery. The problem is that the traditional supermarkets were already woefully bloated and inefficient in their trading models - too many product lines, not enough sales. And now there are additional massive costs on top of that as they pay members of staff to walk round a store picking your shopping.
It absolutely isn't sustainable, but the idea is that they build market share to make it profitable in the future - much in the way that Amazon Prime isn't profitable.
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
Apologies if this has already been discussed but with the vote on SCOTUS split 51/49 (2 Republicans voting with Democrats) and 3 Republicans down with C19 isn't this all up in the air at the moment? What is the state of the Judicial Committee re C19 currently? Can Senators vote remotely? Even if these ones are better by the time of the vote, will there be others? All seems a bit wobbly at present.
* Committee members can vote by proxy, provided the committee has a quorum * Dems can deny a quorum even without covid, they need 2 minority members to have one * GOP could probably change the rules, or just break them, they've done it before * Even if that fails GOP could just ignore the committee and bring a vote straight to the floor * Denying a quorum of the entire Senate might also work, but it's quite a big deal, you may need to hide the entire minority caucus, and it's harder to run for reelection if you're holed up in a hotel in Cancun trying to evade United States law enforcement
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
Tesco won though as we bought them on the walk back. The small one on Heath Street has a surprisingly decent selection.
Tesco isn't winning. Can I ask which kind of Tesco you bought the wine from? Because every format of Tesco is absolutely haemorrhaging shoppers. The best performing Tesco store format is superstore which has lost a mere 18% of shoppers compared to last year.
Won't a lot of business have decamped to Tesco online? We know they have added deliveries and recruited new drivers.
The Tesco share price is down since covid-19 but not so much as more discretionary spend industries. i think sales are overall fine (includes online) but extra costs for covid-19 and staff to police them means margins not the same. Tesco will survive but the likes of cineworld , waterstones,pubs etc will not unless we ditch the useless mask and 10pm curfew policy
I read somewhere that supermarket delivery operations run at a loss (although Tesco as the only one to actually charge for delivery may be different?) but they have to do it or lose volume to rivals. Perhaps Rochdale would know? (edit/ I see he says as much downthread)
Going forward that doesn't seem a sustainable model and at some point people are surely going to have to pay for delivery, or join some sort of annual subscription service like Amazon Prime.
Online makes a loss for everyone, even with a payment for delivery - average loss is around £5 per delivery. The problem is that the traditional supermarkets were already woefully bloated and inefficient in their trading models - too many product lines, not enough sales. And now there are additional massive costs on top of that as they pay members of staff to walk round a store picking your shopping.
It absolutely isn't sustainable, but the idea is that they build market share to make it profitable in the future - much in the way that Amazon Prime isn't profitable.
When I was growing up - both here and in Italy - shops (not supermarkets) routinely delivered.
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
So looks like Cineworld are closing and sacking all their staff this coming week.
Still in silly dispute with Netflix so not showing the best films available. No wonder their business model is fucked when their Unlimited CardHolders have to find Independent Cinemas to watch errr actual new films.
Went to see Trial of the Chicago 7 at the Light Cinema Sheffield. Good experience. Cancelling my Unlimited Card after about 5 years.
I cant see Cineworld reopening ever, certainly not in Chesterfield. Home Cinema and better Cinemas outweighs the need for a Multiplex Chain that thinks it still holds all the cards when it patently doesnt
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Lots of moaning about the government again this morning. I am not their greatest fan either but, let's get real for a moment.
We are facing a pandemic that is pretty much unprecedented in modern times. They are getting (poor) scientific advice that it will grow exponentially unless they take steps to inhibit it. So they have to make really hard choices: do you keep kids at school? Yes, having the schools shut was a disaster as was the exam cock up that followed.
Do we allow young people to go to University and have a life? Yes for the same reasons as one. Plus morally it would be wrong to destroy their lives for a virus that they are for all practical purposes immune from.
Do we need construction, public transport, retail to operate? Yes, we simply cannot go on not earning any cash.
Do we allow pubs, restaurants, cafes, cinemas, theatres to open (and by the way our computations show we are now likely to be exceeding R1 in at least some of the country)? Err...yes but we must reduce the risk as much as we can.
This is where we are and unfortunately its not really working. The rate of infection continues to increase (in a linear fashion but steady enough). So we end up bearing down on the last sector where infections are rising fastest.
What can we do about this? Well if track and trace worked better that would clearly help. The government got very, very bad advice about the importance of the accuracy of individual results early in the pandemic so our track and trace is entirely the wrong model at the moment, very accurate but slow testing with the results all too often too late as the infectious period has ended. The government is trying to fix this with faster tests but so, so late.
If we focused on actual superspreader events we could do a lot to reduce R. Personally, I think that this (which requires a different kind of track and trace) is the absolute key to so many of the difficult choices the government faces.
Do we subsidise the event industry, the entertainment industry, the food and drink sector, professional sport, until this goes away? I think that's really difficult. The "we" in this are current and future taxpayers. The subsidies in the first round were exceptionally generous but not sustainable over another 6 months. The government has cut back its support to a more sustainable level. Is this unfair? Yes. Are there any simple solutions? Not really.
I am not pretending Boris is the man for this. I think Hunt would have proved a better choice if we had known this was coming down the track but jeez, this is hard. Really, really hard and keyboard warriors should try to recognise the difficulties as well as the perceived incompetence.
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
Tesco won though as we bought them on the walk back. The small one on Heath Street has a surprisingly decent selection.
Tesco isn't winning. Can I ask which kind of Tesco you bought the wine from? Because every format of Tesco is absolutely haemorrhaging shoppers. The best performing Tesco store format is superstore which has lost a mere 18% of shoppers compared to last year.
Won't a lot of business have decamped to Tesco online? We know they have added deliveries and recruited new drivers.
The Tesco share price is down since covid-19 but not so much as more discretionary spend industries. i think sales are overall fine (includes online) but extra costs for covid-19 and staff to police them means margins not the same. Tesco will survive but the likes of cineworld , waterstones,pubs etc will not unless we ditch the useless mask and 10pm curfew policy
I read somewhere that supermarket delivery operations run at a loss (although Tesco as the only one to actually charge for delivery may be different?) but they have to do it or lose volume to rivals. Perhaps Rochdale would know? (edit/ I see he says as much downthread)
Going forward that doesn't seem a sustainable model and at some point people are surely going to have to pay for delivery, or join some sort of annual subscription service like Amazon Prime.
Online makes a loss for everyone, even with a payment for delivery - average loss is around £5 per delivery. The problem is that the traditional supermarkets were already woefully bloated and inefficient in their trading models - too many product lines, not enough sales. And now there are additional massive costs on top of that as they pay members of staff to walk round a store picking your shopping.
It absolutely isn't sustainable, but the idea is that they build market share to make it profitable in the future - much in the way that Amazon Prime isn't profitable.
Even worse are the restaurant delivery services, none of whom seem to have any idea of what a profitable business model looks like in the medium or long term - they all hope they get acquired by the next bunch of loss-making VC money startup, before they have to worry about actually turning a profit.
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
I got persuaded to go to the pub with a couple of friends on Friday night "whilst we still can". Only in there for a couple of hours. A pub barely half full thanks to table spacing. Order drinks via a new app. Stick a mask on to go to the loo. Last orders at 9:30 and "can you drink up please" as they wanted the doors locked bang on 10.
I'm not doing that again. Aside from the obvious risk of people in a room it wasn't remotely fun. We were doing Zoom drinks when the pubs were closed, and with how they now are we'e going back to it next time. Same with a work leaving do - yes a few of us can gather in my mate's garden pub. The rest? A buffet in the office then everyone home for virtual drinks is the plan. As opposed to off into town for a night out.
I understand your concern. Daughter tries to do everything she can to make the experience pleasant: good food, friendly staff, a personal welcome etc etc.
What really really annoys her (and me) is that pubs and restaurants are bearing the burden of these measures. They are having their businesses being killed by attrition. The benefits are for everyone. They are socialised. But the costs are privatised. This is the wrong way around.
If the benefits are for everyone then so should the costs be. The hospitality sector should continue to be supported while these restrictions are in place. But they’re not being. They’ve been thrown under a bus while being threatened more and more each day with more restrictions, more fines, inspections etc.
It is quite wrong and unfair. And I hope it comes back to bite the government in the bum big-time.
Agreed - and whichever way you look at the 10pm curfew, effective or ineffective, that is true.
Spare a though though for the events industry, which as furlough ends is simply being wiped out.
I will - events, theatre, music, hospitality, etc - all of them are being crucified by this government on the grounds that they are not viable when a large part of that “unviability” is a direct result of the government’s own actions.
It is utterly dishonest of a government which at the same time wants to be free to give state aid to some sectors, basically techie friends of Dominic.
Another version of the one rule for us, one rule for them theme which permeates everything this government does.
Its not just the rules though, it is the pandemic.
The only pub that I have been to since March has been my local for Sunday lunch on two occasions
Its not the curfew that bothers me, as if I do go it tends to be after work drinks. Colleagues don't want to go, and it simply doesn't look much fun.
Quite.
Now “govt restrictions” as some here are drawing attention to, are part of the hospitality industry’s problem but I really think not the main one, which is the fear of the disease.
Shutting the pubs at 10.00 pm has deprived the publicans of Cardiff of precisely zero £ of my custom, mostly because I can only think of one instance I was actually in the pub that late in the six months prior to March anyway.
I could book a table in the local and wander out right now in the next hour if I wanted but I’m not going to because a) it’s pouring with rain b) I’m hunkering down and being careful because there’s a potentially deadly virus out there, and though my odds are not at all bad if I catch it, they’re a lot better if I don’t. It’s a numbers game pure and simple. See fewer people improve your odds.
Now both a) and b) have nothing to do with the public policy and frankly if Rishi offered me free beer and sunny weather in the next hour I’m still not going, because I figure some sort of vaccine will likely be available in a timescale of months and laying low for a winter is a sensible thing to do. It’s not forever, it’s ( I hope) time limited sensible behaviour.
I’m sure I’m not alone.
Now hospitality has a good claim on targeted Govt funding IMO but I think its main issue is, sadly for it, people won’t change behaviour back properly till they feel safe.
This is starting to remind me a lot of some of the posts during the 2019GE. Throughout the polling indicated a comfortable Tory win, but right to the end people were posting “clever” explanations of why that wouldn’t be the case.
No 2019 poll had the Tory lead falling to just 3% as IBID TIPP had Biden's lead falling to last week and Corbyn lost even in 2017, Trump won in 2016
IBD/TIPP Had Trump winning the popular vote by 2% in 2016
Or to put it another way they had a 7 point miss on the Clinton vote.
IBID/TIPP's final 2016 tracking poll was Clinton +1%
What i don't get about the pubs/restaurants approach - both in "local lockdowns" and the "national measures" is that generally the thought seems to be it is spreading within private homes which is the problem. Any measures which reduce access to pubs/restaurants (operating responsibly) will lead to people organising more events in homes. It's just common sense. And this will happen whether there a rules/laws about what you can do in the home or not. Because breaches of the laws in homes, as people have pointed out are basically undetectable and unenforceable. Police need a warrant to enter people's homes, and they're not going to bother.
So measures restricting access to pubs and restaurants work badly in three ways. 1) They send a message that they aren't safe (why are pubs safe at 9.30 but not at 10.30pm?) - encouraging people into what they think are "safe" home environments where their only contact is with friends and family. People don't see friends and family as a risk. Only other people outside their social group. 2) They force people towards "home" socialising because of the reduced access (ie. a dinner party can go on longer than 10pm) 3) They wreck pub/restaurant trade unnecessarily
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
I like the idea of 750,000 citizen scientists! It is beautiful story...
Volunteers who might, to take a single example, have been used to support a national isolation/quarantine scheme in support of contact tracing (had we ever managed to do that effectively). Your ridicule is misplaced.
2 is not a theory. The polling has consistently shown the Hispanic lead for the Democrats has narrowed from 2016 both at the national level and for key states. A number of Democrats have expressed similar concerns. Look at the 2 links I posted to Edmund (I’ll post again if you want);
Biden is way too short. You are effectively banking on the polls being correct because there is not much other evidence suggesting Biden is sweeping to victory. And, as Robert said, polls can be wrong
In 2016, Clinton won the Hispanic vote 65-29 (that represented 11% of the total vote). The latest Economist/YouGov poll has Biden ahead 69-13 among Hispanics yet IBD/TIPP says 60-36 which is a huge discrepancy.
The White vote is still likely to be more than two thirds of all votes cast - last time Trump won that 58-37 yet in the IBD/TIPP article, it's claimed that was actually 54-39 and it's now 53-42.
Who are we then to believe when pollsters contradict each other?
You may be right and clearly there are a number of states where a stronger Hispanic vote for Trump could make a difference such as Nevada, Florida, Texas and Arizona.
Of course, polls can be wrong but what pollsters do (or should do) is learn from their mistakes and correct their sampling and methodology accordingly.
What do they say - "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me".
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
Point 1 is pretty terrifying, the rest are just theories.
I'm going to look closely at the odds on Biden when market reopens. If i can cash out at ~1.4, reckon that might be good enough for me.
2 is not a theory. The polling has consistently shown the Hispanic lead for the Democrats has narrowed from 2016 both at the national level and for key states. A number of Democrats have expressed similar concerns. Look at the 2 links I posted to Edmund (I’ll post again if you want);
Biden is way too short. You are effectively banking on the polls being correct because there is not much other evidence suggesting Biden is sweeping to victory. And, as Robert said, polls can be wrong
The polling says that despite underperforming (vs. 2016) with Hispanic voters, Biden is well ahead.
That stuff about tone of language/PoC is just a theory.
Biden is value at >1.8 i reckon. Your approach seems to be to ignore polls entirely.
No it's ignore the polls saying Biden is ahead because polls are rubbish, but don't question the (much less extensive) polling which is somewhat favorable for Trump (eg he might be doing better with Hispanics) because those polls are mysteriously not rubbish. It is not very consistent.
But it is typical of people who just want to believe what they want to believe.
Good to see the comments on the main website all loading and displaying coherently now. Even the Comments Are Closed banner disappears after it all loads!
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
I like the idea of 750,000 citizen scientists! It is beautiful story!
You seem to me to be too ready to blame the lack of leadership. There is different leadership in Wales & Scotland, and they have followed more stringent policies. It hasn't done them very much good in terms of outcomes.
(In fact, Scotland is following a zero-civid policy, according to Sturgeon's stated aim. As is, I believe N. Ireland).
It is possible that Germany may provide a counter-example to my pessimism. I agree that the pandemic has played to Merkel's scientific strengths and training. Her leadership has been much better than anything these islands have offered -- and better than the rest of Europe. Though even here, I'm inclined to believe that she is just delaying the inevitable.
The only think that can really save the West is an effective vaccine very quickly. That is not going to happen.
It is the last rites for the Western liberal democracies.
A rather exaggerated statement unless you believe all Western democracies are going to become Chinese or Russian style authoritarian states within a decade.
Note too the likes of India and Japan and South Korea in the East are still very much closer to the Western democratic model than the Chinese or Russian model and South Korea has managed to contain Covid via masks and track and trace without the economic damage of a full lockdown and without a vaccine yet being available
Cummings did brilliantly with Take Back Control, followed up strongly with Get Brexit Done, but is struggling big time on the third album. Is there such a thing as a two-hit wonder?
When the thing you are most famous for is reckless endangerment, it's hard to pitch the message to be reckless without endangering anyone...
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
Point 1 is pretty terrifying, the rest are just theories.
I'm going to look closely at the odds on Biden when market reopens. If i can cash out at ~1.4, reckon that might be good enough for me.
About point 1, all the article talking about how the GOP is closing the gap talk about net registrations. But net figures are unreliable as they depend on the cadence of how people drop their registration/when people fall of the electoral register. It is not even consistent by state, there is county by county differences within a state.
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
Tesco won though as we bought them on the walk back. The small one on Heath Street has a surprisingly decent selection.
Tesco isn't winning. Can I ask which kind of Tesco you bought the wine from? Because every format of Tesco is absolutely haemorrhaging shoppers. The best performing Tesco store format is superstore which has lost a mere 18% of shoppers compared to last year.
Won't a lot of business have decamped to Tesco online? We know they have added deliveries and recruited new drivers.
The Tesco share price is down since covid-19 but not so much as more discretionary spend industries. i think sales are overall fine (includes online) but extra costs for covid-19 and staff to police them means margins not the same. Tesco will survive but the likes of cineworld , waterstones,pubs etc will not unless we ditch the useless mask and 10pm curfew policy
I read somewhere that supermarket delivery operations run at a loss (although Tesco as the only one to actually charge for delivery may be different?) but they have to do it or lose volume to rivals. Perhaps Rochdale would know? (edit/ I see he says as much downthread)
Going forward that doesn't seem a sustainable model and at some point people are surely going to have to pay for delivery, or join some sort of annual subscription service like Amazon Prime.
Online makes a loss for everyone, even with a payment for delivery - average loss is around £5 per delivery. The problem is that the traditional supermarkets were already woefully bloated and inefficient in their trading models - too many product lines, not enough sales. And now there are additional massive costs on top of that as they pay members of staff to walk round a store picking your shopping.
It absolutely isn't sustainable, but the idea is that they build market share to make it profitable in the future - much in the way that Amazon Prime isn't profitable.
Wouldn't a delivery charge with the alternative of an annual subscription service and free delivery be a sustainable model? Once you'd paid the annual fee it would encourage sticking with the same supermarket. And they could use the "membership" model to throw in tons of other benefits (free magazine, special offers, etc.) beefing up their existing loyalty cards?
This is starting to remind me a lot of some of the posts during the 2019GE. Throughout the polling indicated a comfortable Tory win, but right to the end people were posting “clever” explanations of why that wouldn’t be the case.
No 2019 poll had the Tory lead falling to just 3% as IBID TIPP had Biden's lead falling to last week and Corbyn lost even in 2017, Trump won in 2016
IBD/TIPP Had Trump winning the popular vote by 2% in 2016
Or to put it another way they had a 7 point miss on the Clinton vote.
IBID/TIPP's final 2016 tracking poll was Clinton +1%
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
I like the idea of 750,000 citizen scientists! It is beautiful story...
Volunteers who might, to take a single example, have been used to support a national isolation/quarantine scheme in support of contact tracing (had we ever managed to do that effectively). Your ridicule is misplaced.
Ridicule? I am very much in favour of "citizen scientists". I like the idea.
Can you point to a Western democracy that has implemented this idea successfully?
I can't say I have any sympathy for Cineworld - plenty for their staff of course.
Their model always struck me as woefully inept. The ridiculous faux Americanism of candies and buckets of ice and cola at vastly inflated prices and under-staffed counters. They missed an opportunity for significant refreshment sales, you only have to look at how city centre independents did it to see that.
Off topic rant: It's so annoying that publishers don't let you buy ebooks in simple .pdf format. I like ebooks but I want proper pagination and typesetting damnit.
A rather exaggerated statement unless you believe all Western democracies are going to become Chinese or Russian style authoritarian states within a decade.
Note too the likes of India and Japan and South Korea in the East are still very much closer to the Western democratic model than the Chinese or Russian model and South Korea has managed to contain Covid via masks and track and trace without the economic damage of a full lockdown and without a vaccine yet being available
I believe the levels of surveillance to combat the virus in S. Korea are substantially in excess of anything in the West.
Off topic rant: It's so annoying that publishers don't let you buy ebooks in simple .pdf format. I like ebooks but I want proper pagination and typesetting damnit.
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
I like the idea of 750,000 citizen scientists! It is beautiful story!
You seem to me to be too ready to blame the lack of leadership. There is different leadership in Wales & Scotland, and they have followed more stringent policies. It hasn't done them very much good in terms of outcomes.
(In fact, Scotland is following a zero-civid policy, according to Sturgeon's stated aim. As is, I believe N. Ireland).
It is possible that Germany may provide a counter-example to my pessimism. I agree that the pandemic has played to Merkel's scientific strengths and training. Her leadership has been much better than anything these islands have offered -- and better than the rest of Europe. Though even here, I'm inclined to believe that she is just delaying the inevitable.
The only think that can really save the West is an effective vaccine very quickly. That is not going to happen.
It is the last rites for the Western liberal democracies.
Sturgeon might have a stated zero covid policy, but it's subordinate to her Independence policy. Incompetent/destructive leadership at a UK/England level does not preclude the same at different levels.
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
I like the idea of 750,000 citizen scientists! It is beautiful story!
You seem to me to be too ready to blame the lack of leadership. There is different leadership in Wales & Scotland, and they have followed more stringent policies. It hasn't done them very much good in terms of outcomes.
(In fact, Scotland is following a zero-civid policy, according to Sturgeon's stated aim. As is, I believe N. Ireland).
It is possible that Germany may provide a counter-example to my pessimism. I agree that the pandemic has played to Merkel's scientific strengths and training. Her leadership has been much better than anything these islands have offered -- and better than the rest of Europe. Though even here, I'm inclined to believe that she is just delaying the inevitable.
The only think that can really save the West is an effective vaccine very quickly. That is not going to happen.
It is the last rites for the Western liberal democracies.
A rather exaggerated statement unless you believe all Western democracies are going to become Chinese or Russian style authoritarian states within a decade.
Note too the likes of India and Japan and South Korea in the East are still very much closer to the Western democratic model than the Chinese or Russian model and South Korea has managed to contain Covid via masks and track and trace without the economic damage of a full lockdown and without a vaccine yet being available
An HYUFD post I agree with. Time to go for a brief walk.
What i don't get about the pubs/restaurants approach - both in "local lockdowns" and the "national measures" is that generally the thought seems to be it is spreading within private homes which is the problem. Any measures which reduce access to pubs/restaurants (operating responsibly) will lead to people organising more events in homes. It's just common sense. And this will happen whether there a rules/laws about what you can do in the home or not. Because breaches of the laws in homes, as people have pointed out are basically undetectable and unenforceable. Police need a warrant to enter people's homes, and they're not going to bother.
So measures restricting access to pubs and restaurants work badly in three ways. 1) They send a message that they aren't safe (why are pubs safe at 9.30 but not at 10.30pm?) - encouraging people into what they think are "safe" home environments where their only contact is with friends and family. People don't see friends and family as a risk. Only other people outside their social group. 2) They force people towards "home" socialising because of the reduced access (ie. a dinner party can go on longer than 10pm) 3) They wreck pub/restaurant trade unnecessarily
The issue with Covid spread in pubs appeared to be related specifically to late night rowdy town-centre venues, where excessive drinking was encouraged and social distancing would break down as the evening progressed.
What's not happening now is large groups of non-distanced people likely to infect many others in one night. People go their own way, or in small groups, after 10pm, there's no groups of 100 or more as was the case in the bars.
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
I got persuaded to go to the pub with a couple of friends on Friday night "whilst we still can". Only in there for a couple of hours. A pub barely half full thanks to table spacing. Order drinks via a new app. Stick a mask on to go to the loo. Last orders at 9:30 and "can you drink up please" as they wanted the doors locked bang on 10.
I'm not doing that again. Aside from the obvious risk of people in a room it wasn't remotely fun. We were doing Zoom drinks when the pubs were closed, and with how they now are we'e going back to it next time. Same with a work leaving do - yes a few of us can gather in my mate's garden pub. The rest? A buffet in the office then everyone home for virtual drinks is the plan. As opposed to off into town for a night out.
I understand your concern. Daughter tries to do everything she can to make the experience pleasant: good food, friendly staff, a personal welcome etc etc.
What really really annoys her (and me) is that pubs and restaurants are bearing the burden of these measures. They are having their businesses being killed by attrition. The benefits are for everyone. They are socialised. But the costs are privatised. This is the wrong way around.
If the benefits are for everyone then so should the costs be. The hospitality sector should continue to be supported while these restrictions are in place. But they’re not being. They’ve been thrown under a bus while being threatened more and more each day with more restrictions, more fines, inspections etc.
It is quite wrong and unfair. And I hope it comes back to bite the government in the bum big-time.
I can see how they would work during the day when the focus is on food. But as a night out with friends?
Different business models. The only way she is surviving the loss of drinkers coming in to chat with friends is by having as big a food offering as possible - both eat-in and take-away.
If only going out with one household is brought in nationwide, then the business - like many others - will be finished.
The government does not have a fucking clue.
Is there any sign of only going out with one household being introduced nationwide? As opposed to local areas where there are high cases?
That would be a very bad idea.
I don’t know. I fear that it will.
It is utterly dishonest of this government not to provide support for businesses which in theory can open but which have lost much of their business as a direct result of government measures. The government’s focus on furlough and closure is a sleight of hand. Impacted businesses need support because government restrictions are the same as closure of 50% of their business, no matter what clever words Sunak and others use to justify letting them go hang.
The Government has given billions in support to hospitality.
Good to see the comments on the main website all loading and displaying coherently now. Even the Comments Are Closed banner disappears after it all loads!
Yes indeed. Pat on the back for the (no doubt vast) PB development team
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
Morning all. Interesting header. Food for thought for sure. My view is Trump can only win as the incumbent if he stops being Trump and this has always been true. He was heading for defeat until Covid hit America and gave him a shot at salvation and a second term. The requirement was that in a national crisis he appeared empathetic, serious, competent. Not to actually be those things – obviously not possible – but to look the part. Look like a president.
I was scared he might be able to do it. Donald Trump is after all a showman. But either because he couldn’t or he wouldn’t he passed up the opportunity and instead dished up more of the same and dug himself into a hole whereby defeat at the polls became a near certainty. Excellent news. Still Toast. More Toast than ever in fact. But wait! …
Here comes that virus again to grant him a second (and final) chance to unplug the toaster before he pops up all brown and crisp. He has come down with it himself and assuming it remains a mild case he can milk the situation for drama and sympathy and (very importantly) use it to alter his tone and positioning for the election. He can do what I'm saying is the sine qua non for him to have a chance on 3/11 - stop being Trump. I’m hoping he again fails to do this, or if he does that it’s a case of ‘Keegan Brooking’.
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
Tesco won though as we bought them on the walk back. The small one on Heath Street has a surprisingly decent selection.
Tesco isn't winning. Can I ask which kind of Tesco you bought the wine from? Because every format of Tesco is absolutely haemorrhaging shoppers. The best performing Tesco store format is superstore which has lost a mere 18% of shoppers compared to last year.
Won't a lot of business have decamped to Tesco online? We know they have added deliveries and recruited new drivers.
The Tesco share price is down since covid-19 but not so much as more discretionary spend industries. i think sales are overall fine (includes online) but extra costs for covid-19 and staff to police them means margins not the same. Tesco will survive but the likes of cineworld , waterstones,pubs etc will not unless we ditch the useless mask and 10pm curfew policy
I read somewhere that supermarket delivery operations run at a loss (although Tesco as the only one to actually charge for delivery may be different?) but they have to do it or lose volume to rivals. Perhaps Rochdale would know? (edit/ I see he says as much downthread)
Going forward that doesn't seem a sustainable model and at some point people are surely going to have to pay for delivery, or join some sort of annual subscription service like Amazon Prime.
Online makes a loss for everyone, even with a payment for delivery - average loss is around £5 per delivery. The problem is that the traditional supermarkets were already woefully bloated and inefficient in their trading models - too many product lines, not enough sales. And now there are additional massive costs on top of that as they pay members of staff to walk round a store picking your shopping.
It absolutely isn't sustainable, but the idea is that they build market share to make it profitable in the future - much in the way that Amazon Prime isn't profitable.
Wouldn't a delivery charge with the alternative of an annual subscription service and free delivery be a sustainable model? Once you'd paid the annual fee it would encourage sticking with the same supermarket. And they could use the "membership" model to throw in tons of other benefits (free magazine, special offers, etc.) beefing up their existing loyalty cards?
It would be profitable if the annual subscription paid covered the cost of the deliveries made. And punters won't / can't cover the actual delivery cost. So the supermarkets have all been swallowing the increasing losses because the alternative is a loss in market share which might upset the stock market which might imperil the personal wealth of the board. "Technology" will find a way to fix the profit issue, until then look how successful we are being at gaining customers!
There is too much retail space. Way too much. And not just in supermarkets, in general. The pox is having a deleterious effect on high streets but this was frankly inevitable.
This is starting to remind me a lot of some of the posts during the 2019GE. Throughout the polling indicated a comfortable Tory win, but right to the end people were posting “clever” explanations of why that wouldn’t be the case.
No 2019 poll had the Tory lead falling to just 3% as IBID TIPP had Biden's lead falling to last week and Corbyn lost even in 2017, Trump won in 2016
IBD/TIPP Had Trump winning the popular vote by 2% in 2016
Or to put it another way they had a 7 point miss on the Clinton vote.
IBID/TIPP's final 2016 tracking poll was Clinton +1%
I can't say I have any sympathy for Cineworld - plenty for their staff of course.
Their model always struck me as woefully inept. The ridiculous faux Americanism of candies and buckets of ice and cola at vastly inflated prices and under-staffed counters. They missed an opportunity for significant refreshment sales, you only have to look at how city centre independents did it to see that.
The only thing they had going for them was Unlimited Cinema for less than a fiver a week.
They then decided to limit what you could watch with petty disputes and refusing to show the best films
Got an email thanking me for subscribing to the Atlantic. Its rather good:
"In the spring of 1857, a group of Boston transcendentalists gathered for dinner at the Parker House Hotel. After five hours of repartee, they decided to create a new magazine, one that would make politics, literature, and the arts its chief concerns.
They were united in three ways: their opposition to slavery, their love of American writing, and their tripartite names—including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Russell Lowell. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was invited, but she boycotted the dinner when she learned that alcohol would be served.
After everyone agreed on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s proposed name, a plan for The Atlantic was set. The founders wanted to be “fearless and outspoken” at the dawn of “a new era of human civilization.” In a manifesto, they promised to be “the organ of no party or clique”; to “honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea”; and to care for the “whole domain of aesthetics.” The manifesto was signed by, among others, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and yes, "Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe."
In November of 1857, the first issue was published, and we have never stopped publishing. Since its founding, The Atlantic has published everyone from the aforementioned Hawthorne (who served as the magazine's Civil War correspondent) to Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman; from Robert Frost and Helen Keller to W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington; from Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf to Mark Twain and Sylvia Plath; from a raft of future presidents—Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and JFK—to the great writers of the present, too many to even begin mentioning.
We know that the America of today would be unrecognizable to the founders of this magazine, but my hope is that they would take quickly to today's Atlantic. They would recognize in our journalism the stringent application of intelligence and analytic rigor to the great problems of the day; the devotion to the explication of not only the American idea, but also the nature of an unsettled world; and a great love of literature and culture in all of its manifestations.
I believe that the founders would be able to locate these values in our print magazine, on our website, at our events, in our podcasts, and in our documentaries. (I also believe that they would be confused by our Instagram account.)"
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
It should be noted that the previous 2 GOP nominees before Trump were both centrists ie McCain and Romney and both lost so if Trump lost the Republican base would probably say it was because he was no longer conservative enough and go for Pence or Cruz in the next election.
Nikki Haley is the best prospect of the GOP moderates at the moment though I agree, possibly George P Bush in a decade or two too
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I suspect, if Trump loses in 2020, then the GOP will not want to choose another older white guy but will instead decide it needs to embrace the changing dynamics of America. If he wins his Senate race (although if Trump loses, the chances are he loses the race but who knows), then I would keep an eye out for John James. Daniel Cameron is another one.
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
I like the idea of 750,000 citizen scientists! It is beautiful story!
You seem to me to be too ready to blame the lack of leadership. There is different leadership in Wales & Scotland, and they have followed more stringent policies. It hasn't done them very much good in terms of outcomes.
(In fact, Scotland is following a zero-civid policy, according to Sturgeon's stated aim. As is, I believe N. Ireland).
It is possible that Germany may provide a counter-example to my pessimism. I agree that the pandemic has played to Merkel's scientific strengths and training. Her leadership has been much better than anything these islands have offered -- and better than the rest of Europe. Though even here, I'm inclined to believe that she is just delaying the inevitable.
The only think that can really save the West is an effective vaccine very quickly. That is not going to happen.
It is the last rites for the Western liberal democracies.
A rather exaggerated statement unless you believe all Western democracies are going to become Chinese or Russian style authoritarian states within a decade.
Note too the likes of India and Japan and South Korea in the East are still very much closer to the Western democratic model than the Chinese or Russian model and South Korea has managed to contain Covid via masks and track and trace without the economic damage of a full lockdown and without a vaccine yet being available
India has become an authoritarian state where Modi is free to imprison people who disagree with him while his goons beat up people who disagree with him, and perpetrators of communal violence are given immunity.
I'm very interested in the next update to the YouGov MRP, which I think we can expect today. It showed a narrowing of the race by two points over September.
Off topic rant: It's so annoying that publishers don't let you buy ebooks in simple .pdf format. I like ebooks but I want proper pagination and typesetting damnit.
Yes, that is the way for them to escape the Amazon noose.
One of the few things I buy from Amazon are books, because both kindle and Audible are great products.
Morning all. Interesting header. Food for thought for sure. My view is Trump can only win as the incumbent if he stops being Trump and this has always been true. He was heading for defeat until Covid hit America and gave him a shot at salvation and a second term. The requirement was that in a national crisis he appeared empathetic, serious, competent. Not to actually be those things – obviously not possible – but to look the part. Look like a president.
I was scared he might be able to do it. Donald Trump is after all a showman. But either because he couldn’t or he wouldn’t he passed up the opportunity and instead dished up more of the same and dug himself into a hole whereby defeat at the polls became a near certainty. Excellent news. Still Toast. More Toast than ever in fact. But wait! …
Here comes that virus again to grant him a second (and final) chance to unplug the toaster before he pops up all brown and crisp. He has come down with it himself and assuming it remains a mild case he can milk the situation for drama and sympathy and (very importantly) use it to alter his tone and positioning for the election. He can do what I'm saying is the sine qua non for him to have a chance on 3/11 - stop being Trump. I’m hoping he again fails to do this, or if he does that it’s a case of ‘Keegan Brooking’.
2 is not a theory. The polling has consistently shown the Hispanic lead for the Democrats has narrowed from 2016 both at the national level and for key states. A number of Democrats have expressed similar concerns. Look at the 2 links I posted to Edmund (I’ll post again if you want);
Biden is way too short. You are effectively banking on the polls being correct because there is not much other evidence suggesting Biden is sweeping to victory. And, as Robert said, polls can be wrong
In 2016, Clinton won the Hispanic vote 65-29 (that represented 11% of the total vote). The latest Economist/YouGov poll has Biden ahead 69-13 among Hispanics yet IBD/TIPP says 60-36 which is a huge discrepancy.
The White vote is still likely to be more than two thirds of all votes cast - last time Trump won that 58-37 yet in the IBD/TIPP article, it's claimed that was actually 54-39 and it's now 53-42.
Who are we then to believe when pollsters contradict each other?
You may be right and clearly there are a number of states where a stronger Hispanic vote for Trump could make a difference such as Nevada, Florida, Texas and Arizona.
Of course, polls can be wrong but what pollsters do (or should do) is learn from their mistakes and correct their sampling and methodology accordingly.
What do they say - "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me".
What I'm scratching my head over is that the alleged demographic shifts don't seem to match the swing state shifts, ie Biden is supposed to be doing great with older white people and lower-education people yet he's having a harder time in the mid-west (relative to his national score) than Hillary, while he's supposed to be struggling with latinos yet he's competitive or leading in Arizona.
I think the solution is not to pay too much attention to either of these and just watch the national polls and assume the same EC deficit as last time minus maybe a bit of mean reversion.
This is starting to remind me a lot of some of the posts during the 2019GE. Throughout the polling indicated a comfortable Tory win, but right to the end people were posting “clever” explanations of why that wouldn’t be the case.
No 2019 poll had the Tory lead falling to just 3% as IBID TIPP had Biden's lead falling to last week and Corbyn lost even in 2017, Trump won in 2016
IBD/TIPP Had Trump winning the popular vote by 2% in 2016
Or to put it another way they had a 7 point miss on the Clinton vote.
IBID/TIPP's final 2016 tracking poll was Clinton +1%
CNN: It's possible that Trump's illness will benefit him politically through an outpouring for sympathy directed at a man who does not often extend sympathy to others. But it is also possible that some of Trump's anti-mask fans and assorted Covid-denialists will take the President's hospitalization for Covid-19 as a wake-up call. The one-time reality TV star has run smack into scientific reality. Maybe this is what it will take to make his supporters take the virus seriously and literally.
There is a common, underlying condition beneath the politics of sickness and the politics of personal destruction. Both flow from the sickness of hyper-partisanship, which too often elevates cruelty and justifies lies, through a vision of politics as a version of civil war.
It is always important to remember that the Beltway Media have been, and continue to be, desperate to write the "Today is the day Trump became president" article.
They written it a few times only for Trump to immediately pivot back to angry ranting but you can already sense they are poised to write the "humbled by his personal experience with Covid a sombre President in tune with the nations suffering emerges from the cocoon of Walter Reid"
Off topic rant: It's so annoying that publishers don't let you buy ebooks in simple .pdf format. I like ebooks but I want proper pagination and typesetting damnit.
Have Adobe missed a trick there?
I think it's that formats like .epub etc on the face of it make more sense in a digital medium - i.e. dynamic control of text size, etc. It's just so much less satisfying, especially when you're reading something technical and tables awkwardly cross over to different pages.
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
Point 1 is pretty terrifying, the rest are just theories.
I'm going to look closely at the odds on Biden when market reopens. If i can cash out at ~1.4, reckon that might be good enough for me.
About point 1, all the article talking about how the GOP is closing the gap talk about net registrations. But net figures are unreliable as they depend on the cadence of how people drop their registration/when people fall of the electoral register. It is not even consistent by state, there is county by county differences within a state.
I think that is trying to be too smart in trying to knock down the theory. Here is Pennsylvania. What is clear (if you scroll down to the middle of the article) is that the change in registrations corresponds to the changes in vote.
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
It should be noted that the previous 2 GOP nominees before Trump were both centrists ie McCain and Romney and both lost so if Trump lost the Republican base would probably say it was because he was no longer conservative enough and go for Pence or Cruz in the next election.
Nikki Haley is the best prospect of the GOP moderates at the moment though I agree, possibly George P Bush in a decade or two too
Absolute state of the GOP aside parties do seem to like to pick moderates against incumbents, this principle also correctly predicted Biden (or a similar moderate).
I'm very interested in the next update to the YouGov MRP, which I think we can expect today. It showed a narrowing of the race by two points over September.
Will that continue?
Yougov MRP 2016 had Hillary winning Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio. The UK MRP has a good record in 2017 and 2019 but in 2016 in the US it was wrong
This is starting to remind me a lot of some of the posts during the 2019GE. Throughout the polling indicated a comfortable Tory win, but right to the end people were posting “clever” explanations of why that wouldn’t be the case.
No 2019 poll had the Tory lead falling to just 3% as IBID TIPP had Biden's lead falling to last week and Corbyn lost even in 2017, Trump won in 2016
IBD/TIPP Had Trump winning the popular vote by 2% in 2016
Or to put it another way they had a 7 point miss on the Clinton vote.
IBID/TIPP's final 2016 tracking poll was Clinton +1%
This is starting to remind me a lot of some of the posts during the 2019GE. Throughout the polling indicated a comfortable Tory win, but right to the end people were posting “clever” explanations of why that wouldn’t be the case.
No 2019 poll had the Tory lead falling to just 3% as IBID TIPP had Biden's lead falling to last week and Corbyn lost even in 2017, Trump won in 2016
IBD/TIPP Had Trump winning the popular vote by 2% in 2016
Or to put it another way they had a 7 point miss on the Clinton vote.
IBID/TIPP's final 2016 tracking poll was Clinton +1%
This is starting to remind me a lot of some of the posts during the 2019GE. Throughout the polling indicated a comfortable Tory win, but right to the end people were posting “clever” explanations of why that wouldn’t be the case.
No 2019 poll had the Tory lead falling to just 3% as IBID TIPP had Biden's lead falling to last week and Corbyn lost even in 2017, Trump won in 2016
IBD/TIPP Had Trump winning the popular vote by 2% in 2016
Or to put it another way they had a 7 point miss on the Clinton vote.
IBID/TIPP's final 2016 tracking poll was Clinton +1%
Justin is not the best Left back at defending, and Jarrod Bowen is on the right wing. 10 for FGS seems good value in LCFC vs WHU. Leicester to win from behind at 19 too.
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I suspect, if Trump loses in 2020, then the GOP will not want to choose another older white guy but will instead decide it needs to embrace the changing dynamics of America. If he wins his Senate race (although if Trump loses, the chances are he loses the race but who knows), then I would keep an eye out for John James. Daniel Cameron is another one.
If the GOP loses it will likely move further right, I doubt it will even consider moving to the centre again and picking a non white or mixed race candidate until it suffers at least a further defeat or two as it took Labour 3 defeats until leftwing leaders (4 if you count Brown) to get to Starmer
A rather exaggerated statement unless you believe all Western democracies are going to become Chinese or Russian style authoritarian states within a decade.
Note too the likes of India and Japan and South Korea in the East are still very much closer to the Western democratic model than the Chinese or Russian model and South Korea has managed to contain Covid via masks and track and trace without the economic damage of a full lockdown and without a vaccine yet being available
I believe the levels of surveillance to combat the virus in S. Korea are substantially in excess of anything in the West.
But similar results in Japan, and the surveillance infrastructure here consists of an android app that nobody downloaded except me, and the technology to send faxes in colour.
I agree with DavidL that the situation is horribly difficult and that it's reasonable to cut any government some slack in trying to find a way through. There are however some consistent errors in the Government's handling of the crisis:
1. Failure to message clearly what the restrictions actually mean. Johnson in particular needs to recognise that he's not good at detail and either put the work in to become good or give the detailed comms job to Gove or another detail colleague. Having an amiable waffler giving you details in a crisis is just a bad idea, and it's not partisan to say so. 2. Relatedly, giving priority to reassuring PR instead of setting out the known facts and the unknown factors. 3. Token gestures that don't actually achieve anything or may even be harmful - the 10pm limit, and possibly Eat Out to Help Out. 4. Failure to offer vulnerable sectors either medium-term support (if they are considered to be important for the longer term or assistance in moving out of the sector.
For example re number 4, does the Government think that (a) pubs in city centres are going to be vital in the future and need to be helped through the crisis or (b) that pubs in city centres are going to fade away? If the answer is (a) then they should be subsidised in the public interest for as long as it takes. If (b), then they should get assistance to relocate, in the same way as people who have to move in the interest of building an airport or a motorway are compensated. Instead, the pubs are getting short-term fixes and short-term hassle, with periodic shutdowns. Personally I don't use pubs much, but I do think they're being treated unfairly.
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I suspect, if Trump loses in 2020, then the GOP will not want to choose another older white guy but will instead decide it needs to embrace the changing dynamics of America. If he wins his Senate race (although if Trump loses, the chances are he loses the race but who knows), then I would keep an eye out for John James. Daniel Cameron is another one.
If the GOP loses it will likely move further right, I doubt it will even consider moving to the centre again and picking a non white or mixed race candidate until it suffers at least a further defeat or two as it took Labour 3 defeats until leftwing leaders (4 if you count Brown) to get to Starmer
So how long will it take the Tories to learn the lessons of the current utter fiasco?
I also think a zero covid strategy should be reconsidered. If we'd been a bit more patient in the spring and driven the virus down further, and stopped international travel reintroducing the virus, we would have had a chance to extinguish it. We'd be seeing the rewards now in terms of looser restrictions.
A zero covid policy* is not possible in a large, western democracy without much more constraints on individual freedom and surveillance than is politically possible or acceptable.
Western liberal democracies have historically been very successful -- but they have finally met their match. They have met an inexorable & implacable enemy that feeds of their historical virtues and turns them into weaknesses.
If (as I think likely), this persists for 3-4 years, then we have met a tipping point in global history, a turning point in which global superiority heads dramatically to the East, and different form of Governments -- with much more governmental interference and surveillance -- are admired and are successful.
We in the West will have disaster delayed and prolonged over 3-4 years, and emerge finally with devastated economies and huge civil discord.
----- *NZ is very exceptional in terms of isolation, population density and self-sufficiency.
I find this attitude very sad. It's very defeatist.
I think what might be possible with an engaged, educated and well-lead citizenship that makes a collective effort. I think back to the 750,000 volunteers in the early days and rue the missed opportunity to involve the population in working together to solve this problem.
Instead we have a population that is threatened, chided and left leaderless.
I like the idea of 750,000 citizen scientists! It is beautiful story!
You seem to me to be too ready to blame the lack of leadership. There is different leadership in Wales & Scotland, and they have followed more stringent policies. It hasn't done them very much good in terms of outcomes.
(In fact, Scotland is following a zero-civid policy, according to Sturgeon's stated aim. As is, I believe N. Ireland).
It is possible that Germany may provide a counter-example to my pessimism. I agree that the pandemic has played to Merkel's scientific strengths and training. Her leadership has been much better than anything these islands have offered -- and better than the rest of Europe. Though even here, I'm inclined to believe that she is just delaying the inevitable.
The only think that can really save the West is an effective vaccine very quickly. That is not going to happen.
It is the last rites for the Western liberal democracies.
A rather exaggerated statement unless you believe all Western democracies are going to become Chinese or Russian style authoritarian states within a decade.
Note too the likes of India and Japan and South Korea in the East are still very much closer to the Western democratic model than the Chinese or Russian model and South Korea has managed to contain Covid via masks and track and trace without the economic damage of a full lockdown and without a vaccine yet being available
India has become an authoritarian state where Modi is free to imprison people who disagree with him while his goons beat up people who disagree with him, and perpetrators of communal violence are given immunity.
India is not an authoritarian state, it is a democracy with a free market economy, just because it has not become the Netherlands overnight does not mean it is China or Russia either
t’s a common refrain from the SNP that Westminster continually disrespects devolution and democracy, but it is here in Holyrood, where the First Minister, her party, and her government are seen to be denigrating the work of a vital committee attempting to get to the very heart of what can go wrong within government, with power. And with truth.
There were many who started this process as highly skeptical of a rumoured conspiracy against Salmond, but as always in these matters, it is the perception of a cover-up that is now doing the damage, and there is now undoubtedly a growing seed of doubt.
If I'm crossing the road I stop, look both directions first and only cross when its safe to do so. Common sense, not fear.
I don't just stand their as a quivering wreck thinking I could be killed if I cross the road and get hit and be too terrified to move, nor do I simply step onto the road into the path of an oncoming bus because I didn't bother to look first.
It means ‘Act like a grown up’ and is a plea for people to be responsible and use their own wisdom and judgement rather than a child like need for adult guidance from state authority figures
Some people want to be coddled like a toddler, drip fed everything.
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
Point 1 is pretty terrifying, the rest are just theories.
I'm going to look closely at the odds on Biden when market reopens. If i can cash out at ~1.4, reckon that might be good enough for me.
About point 1, all the article talking about how the GOP is closing the gap talk about net registrations. But net figures are unreliable as they depend on the cadence of how people drop their registration/when people fall of the electoral register. It is not even consistent by state, there is county by county differences within a state.
Yes and apparently there is evidence that younger voters prefer to be unaffiliated even though they are more likely to vote Dem.
A rather exaggerated statement unless you believe all Western democracies are going to become Chinese or Russian style authoritarian states within a decade.
Note too the likes of India and Japan and South Korea in the East are still very much closer to the Western democratic model than the Chinese or Russian model and South Korea has managed to contain Covid via masks and track and trace without the economic damage of a full lockdown and without a vaccine yet being available
I believe the levels of surveillance to combat the virus in S. Korea are substantially in excess of anything in the West.
I suggest you drive down the average motorway in this country or walk down the high street if you do not think we do not already have plenty of surveillance here, there are plenty of speed cameras and CCTV cameras
2 is not a theory. The polling has consistently shown the Hispanic lead for the Democrats has narrowed from 2016 both at the national level and for key states. A number of Democrats have expressed similar concerns. Look at the 2 links I posted to Edmund (I’ll post again if you want);
Biden is way too short. You are effectively banking on the polls being correct because there is not much other evidence suggesting Biden is sweeping to victory. And, as Robert said, polls can be wrong
In 2016, Clinton won the Hispanic vote 65-29 (that represented 11% of the total vote). The latest Economist/YouGov poll has Biden ahead 69-13 among Hispanics yet IBD/TIPP says 60-36 which is a huge discrepancy.
The White vote is still likely to be more than two thirds of all votes cast - last time Trump won that 58-37 yet in the IBD/TIPP article, it's claimed that was actually 54-39 and it's now 53-42.
Who are we then to believe when pollsters contradict each other?
You may be right and clearly there are a number of states where a stronger Hispanic vote for Trump could make a difference such as Nevada, Florida, Texas and Arizona.
Of course, polls can be wrong but what pollsters do (or should do) is learn from their mistakes and correct their sampling and methodology accordingly.
What do they say - "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me".
What I'm scratching my head over is that the alleged demographic shifts don't seem to match the swing state shifts, ie Biden is supposed to be doing great with older white people and lower-education people yet he's having a harder time in the mid-west (relative to his national score) than Hillary, while he's supposed to be struggling with latinos yet he's competitive or leading in Arizona.
I think the solution is not to pay too much attention to either of these and just watch the national polls and assume the same EC deficit as last time minus maybe a bit of mean reversion.
I think the key thing you have to remember is that the Hispanic vote is not monolithic both in how they view themselves (many Hispanics view themselves as white and there is a large degree of effective racism within the community based on how dark is your skin) and their antipathy to socialism. Florida is the example for the latter, Arizona is more immigrants from Mexico etc. Having said that, given the supposed demographic shifts in AZ and the loss of the white suburban vote, one surprise to me is that the AZ polling leads for Biden have been generally less than in places like PA>
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I suspect, if Trump loses in 2020, then the GOP will not want to choose another older white guy but will instead decide it needs to embrace the changing dynamics of America. If he wins his Senate race (although if Trump loses, the chances are he loses the race but who knows), then I would keep an eye out for John James. Daniel Cameron is another one.
If the GOP loses it will likely move further right, I doubt it will even consider moving to the centre again and picking a non white or mixed race candidate until it suffers at least a further defeat or two as it took Labour 3 defeats until leftwing leaders (4 if you count Brown) to get to Starmer
So how long will it take the Tories to learn the lessons of the current utter fiasco?
Given the Tories have just won 4 general elections in a row it would take them to be defeated first and then probably defeated 2 or 3 times more to change course signifiicantly, much as it took the defeats of 1997, 2001 and 2005 for the Tories to get to Cameron
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
Point 1 is pretty terrifying, the rest are just theories.
I'm going to look closely at the odds on Biden when market reopens. If i can cash out at ~1.4, reckon that might be good enough for me.
About point 1, all the article talking about how the GOP is closing the gap talk about net registrations. But net figures are unreliable as they depend on the cadence of how people drop their registration/when people fall of the electoral register. It is not even consistent by state, there is county by county differences within a state.
Yes and apparently there is evidence that younger voters prefer to be unaffiliated even though they are more likely to vote Dem.
But it is a worrying data point.
I'll post this again, for your benefit - scroll down to the middle and see how the vote shift in PA by county matches the changes in registrations. There is a strong correlation:
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I suspect, if Trump loses in 2020, then the GOP will not want to choose another older white guy but will instead decide it needs to embrace the changing dynamics of America. If he wins his Senate race (although if Trump loses, the chances are he loses the race but who knows), then I would keep an eye out for John James. Daniel Cameron is another one.
If the GOP loses it will likely move further right, I doubt it will even consider moving to the centre again and picking a non white or mixed race candidate until it suffers at least a further defeat or two as it took Labour 3 defeats until leftwing leaders (4 if you count Brown) to get to Starmer
So how long will it take the Tories to learn the lessons of the current utter fiasco?
Given the Tories have just won 4 general elections in a row it would take them to be defeated first and then probably defeated 2 or 3 times more to change course signifiicantly, much as it took the defeats of 1997, 2001 and 2005 for the Tories to get to Cameron
I mean 3 of those general elections were in a 5 year period. It isn't that impressive, nor particularly comparable.
Good article Robert. At the risk of getting more brickbats, I’ll give a few other pointers that might suggest the consensus is wrong re Trump and / or why the Democrats might not be doing so well:
1. Closing gap in registration numbers in swing states. I have posted this link before but it is worth checking out. I’m on a mobile so difficult to go back and forth typing in the numbers but in all 4 of the 6 swing states Trump won last time and which release voter registration trends by party (FL, PA, AZ and NC), the GOP has closed the registration gap since the last election with the Democrats. Article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1241674
2. Hispanic voters. We had a big debate on here a day or two ago about why Black voters would go with the GOP. What is probably more of an issue for the Democrats is that there have been consistent signs in the polling that their lead over the GOP has been shrinking. That’s important in states like FL and AZ but also in NV where the tone of language is suggesting the race is tightening (and possibly even CO at a push).
One big mistake the Democrats - and it’s a classic middle class white liberal one - is to lump Black people and Hispanics in as a one big “People of Colour” family so that Hispanics should be naturally on the side of BLM. That is far from the case and the vibes coming out of Hispanic voters is they feel the Democrats have ignored their concerns.
3. Change in the ground game. It’s a bit linked to 1 but the GOP has been continuing to go door to door to sign up voters whilst the Dems have focused on a virtual campaign. Probably the key reason why Obama won in 2012 was the strength of the GOTV operation and that works best when you can do physical canvassing. There had been disquiet for a while amongst some Democrats over the virtual approach and there is a switch to physical door knocking (interesting NV and NH are two of the first states), the question is whether is too late;
4. Voter enthusiasm: Trump rallies pull in crowds who are prepared to queue, Biden speeches don’t. It’s not a great way to measure but it can actually be a decent way of seeing how fired up people are.
If Biden does lose, the biggest mistake the Democrats can make is assuming it’s all down to “unfair” factors such as Trump getting a sympathy vote etc etc. There have been enough warning signals elsewhere.
Point 1 is pretty terrifying, the rest are just theories.
I'm going to look closely at the odds on Biden when market reopens. If i can cash out at ~1.4, reckon that might be good enough for me.
About point 1, all the article talking about how the GOP is closing the gap talk about net registrations. But net figures are unreliable as they depend on the cadence of how people drop their registration/when people fall of the electoral register. It is not even consistent by state, there is county by county differences within a state.
Yes and apparently there is evidence that younger voters prefer to be unaffiliated even though they are more likely to vote Dem.
But it is a worrying data point.
I'll post this again, for your benefit - scroll down to the middle and see how the vote shift in PA by county matches the changes in registrations. There is a strong correlation:
It’s wrong though. The mickey taking is coming from people who’s predisposed position is to assume that any new slogan is rubbish, and can’t be bothered to try to understand it.
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I suspect, if Trump loses in 2020, then the GOP will not want to choose another older white guy but will instead decide it needs to embrace the changing dynamics of America. If he wins his Senate race (although if Trump loses, the chances are he loses the race but who knows), then I would keep an eye out for John James. Daniel Cameron is another one.
If the GOP loses it will likely move further right, I doubt it will even consider moving to the centre again and picking a non white or mixed race candidate until it suffers at least a further defeat or two as it took Labour 3 defeats until leftwing leaders (4 if you count Brown) to get to Starmer
So how long will it take the Tories to learn the lessons of the current utter fiasco?
Given the Tories have just won 4 general elections in a row it would take them to be defeated first and then probably defeated 2 or 3 times more to change course signifiicantly, much as it took the defeats of 1997, 2001 and 2005 for the Tories to get to Cameron
I think that post shows that it will take a long long time to learn the lessons. The key lesson is that if you are the long term governing party winning elections is not enough. The Tories need to govern well for the UK to be a success, not win elections. Cameron and Thatcher understood that, Johnson does not.
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I suspect, if Trump loses in 2020, then the GOP will not want to choose another older white guy but will instead decide it needs to embrace the changing dynamics of America. If he wins his Senate race (although if Trump loses, the chances are he loses the race but who knows), then I would keep an eye out for John James. Daniel Cameron is another one.
If the GOP loses it will likely move further right, I doubt it will even consider moving to the centre again and picking a non white or mixed race candidate until it suffers at least a further defeat or two as it took Labour 3 defeats until leftwing leaders (4 if you count Brown) to get to Starmer
So how long will it take the Tories to learn the lessons of the current utter fiasco?
Given the Tories have just won 4 general elections in a row it would take them to be defeated first and then probably defeated 2 or 3 times more to change course signifiicantly, much as it took the defeats of 1997, 2001 and 2005 for the Tories to get to Cameron
I mean 3 of those general elections were in a 5 year period. It isn't that impressive.
10 years in power overall though, with 4 more guaranteed is reasonably impressive.
The lesson in the UK certainly of parties losing power in recent decades is they move to the extremes.
Eg when Callaghan lost in 1979 Labour moved left under Foot and then a milder left under Kinnock until they got to Smith and Blair.
When Major lost in 1997 the Tories moved right under Hague, IDS and Howard until they got to Cameron.
When Brown lost in 2010 Labour moved left under Ed Miliband and Corbyn until they got to Starmer
I would love to be fearless and meet a small group of friends in the pub, but the Government has decided to drip-feed me so I'm not allowed, by the full force of law.
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
I am not sure about the Pence/Goldwater comparison. Goldwater was seen as an extremist even within his own party, and leant into it in the campaign rather than trying to shake it off.
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
Yes, Goldwater was a libertarian, Pence most certainly is not but a conservative evangelical.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I suspect, if Trump loses in 2020, then the GOP will not want to choose another older white guy but will instead decide it needs to embrace the changing dynamics of America. If he wins his Senate race (although if Trump loses, the chances are he loses the race but who knows), then I would keep an eye out for John James. Daniel Cameron is another one.
If the GOP loses it will likely move further right, I doubt it will even consider moving to the centre again and picking a non white or mixed race candidate until it suffers at least a further defeat or two as it took Labour 3 defeats until leftwing leaders (4 if you count Brown) to get to Starmer
So how long will it take the Tories to learn the lessons of the current utter fiasco?
Given the Tories have just won 4 general elections in a row it would take them to be defeated first and then probably defeated 2 or 3 times more to change course signifiicantly, much as it took the defeats of 1997, 2001 and 2005 for the Tories to get to Cameron
I mean 3 of those general elections were in a 5 year period. It isn't that impressive.
10 years in power overall though, with 4 more guaranteed is reasonably impressive.
The lesson in the UK certainly of parties losing power in recent decades is they move to the extremes.
Eg when Callaghan lost in 1979 Labour moved left under Foot and then a milder left under Kinnock until they got to Smith and Blair.
When Major lost in 1997 the Tories moved right under Hague, IDS and Howard until they got to Cameron.
When Brown lost in 2010 Labour moved left under Ed Miliband and Corbyn until they got to Starmer
The 2010-2015 government is in no way comparable to the current administration. UKIP are currently in power essentially.
I agree with DavidL that the situation is horribly difficult and that it's reasonable to cut any government some slack in trying to find a way through. There are however some consistent errors in the Government's handling of the crisis:
1. Failure to message clearly what the restrictions actually mean. Johnson in particular needs to recognise that he's not good at detail and either put the work in to become good or give the detailed comms job to Gove or another detail colleague. Having an amiable waffler giving you details in a crisis is just a bad idea, and it's not partisan to say so. 2. Relatedly, giving priority to reassuring PR instead of setting out the known facts and the unknown factors. 3. Token gestures that don't actually achieve anything or may even be harmful - the 10pm limit, and possibly Eat Out to Help Out. 4. Failure to offer vulnerable sectors either medium-term support (if they are considered to be important for the longer term or assistance in moving out of the sector.
For example re number 4, does the Government think that (a) pubs in city centres are going to be vital in the future and need to be helped through the crisis or (b) that pubs in city centres are going to fade away? If the answer is (a) then they should be subsidised in the public interest for as long as it takes. If (b), then they should get assistance to relocate, in the same way as people who have to move in the interest of building an airport or a motorway are compensated. Instead, the pubs are getting short-term fixes and short-term hassle, with periodic shutdowns. Personally I don't use pubs much, but I do think they're being treated unfairly.
I agree with much of that. I am far from uncritical of the government's approach but I also think that the biggest hindrance has been the quality of scientific advice that they have received.
Taking your last point the main factor I think is missing is churn. There is a major difference between the structure that forms the pub and the current ownership. One of my clients had disputes with Sky about their showing their channels without a licence. What was ascertained in that case was that 8 different owners had thought that they could make a go of the pub in the previous 2 years. All had failed. These types of businesses fail all the time. If they fail now will there still be people who think that they can make a go of it when the restrictions are gone? Probably.
It’s wrong though. The mickey taking is coming from people who’s predisposed position is to assume that any new slogan is rubbish, and can’t be bothered to try to understand it.
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
Very well said - and I know you're not exactly a Tory so kudos to you for being a grown up about it.
It’s wrong though. The mickey taking is coming from people who’s predisposed position is to assume that any new slogan is rubbish, and can’t be bothered to try to understand it.
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
Very well said - and I know you're not exactly a Tory so kudos to you for being a grown up about it.
Except your position is total bollocks because you champion people "living life normally and judging their own risks" and then you also champion using the full force of the law to stop people socialising.
Your position is totally illogical, dishonest, and hypocritical.
It’s wrong though. The mickey taking is coming from people who’s predisposed position is to assume that any new slogan is rubbish, and can’t be bothered to try to understand it.
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
The extent to which people rely on govt advice as to what to do, and are prepared to blame the state for things going wrong in their personal life through choices they decided to make is a massive eye opener. The virus has shone a light on this, it is incredible.
We had people on here wondering whether it would be alright to go and see their parents! I cant think there would be anyone that could stop me if we wanted to see each other
If Trump loses narrowly he will likely run again in 2024 and probably win the nomination again.
President Grover Cleveland narrowly lost his re election bid to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 but came back to beat Harrison in 1892 and complete a second term so it has been done before.
Ivanka is too much of a RINO for the GOP base at the moment, if Donald does not run again they would pick Pence over her
I can't see Donald Trump trying again if he loses next month. Grover Cleveland was, with respect, a long time ago and Trump would be 78 if he sought the Presidency again in 2024 (Reagan was 77 at the end of his two terms).
The question is whether you think we are moving to a period of 1-term alternating Presidencies or whether the more "traditional" pattern of two or even three term dominance will re-assert. I see Pence as a 2020s Goldwater - fine for the conservative base but with no chance in a different America.
His defeat would allow the GOP to tack back to a more centrist position in 2028 - Nikki Haley would be 56 by then - and I think she is the first (or second perhaps) female President.
It should be noted that the previous 2 GOP nominees before Trump were both centrists ie McCain and Romney and both lost so if Trump lost the Republican base would probably say it was because he was no longer conservative enough and go for Pence or Cruz in the next election.
Nikki Haley is the best prospect of the GOP moderates at the moment though I agree, possibly George P Bush in a decade or two too
Absolute state of the GOP aside parties do seem to like to pick moderates against incumbents, this principle also correctly predicted Biden (or a similar moderate).
In recent years yes, but in 1964 remember the GOP picked Goldwater to run against President Johnson and in 1972 the Democrats picked McGovern to run against President Nixon, neither could be described as moderates on any definition
It’s wrong though. The mickey taking is coming from people who’s predisposed position is to assume that any new slogan is rubbish, and can’t be bothered to try to understand it.
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
Very well said - and I know you're not exactly a Tory so kudos to you for being a grown up about it.
Except your position is total bollocks because you champion people "living life normally and judging their own risks" and then you also champion using the full force of the law to stop people socialising.
Your position is totally illogical, dishonest, and hypocritical.
It’s wrong though. The mickey taking is coming from people who’s predisposed position is to assume that any new slogan is rubbish, and can’t be bothered to try to understand it.
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
Very well said - and I know you're not exactly a Tory so kudos to you for being a grown up about it.
It’s wrong though. The mickey taking is coming from people who’s predisposed position is to assume that any new slogan is rubbish, and can’t be bothered to try to understand it.
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
The extent to which people rely on govt advice as to what to do, and are prepared to blame the state for things going wrong in their personal life through choices they decided to make is a massive eye opener. The virus has shone a light on this, it is incredible.
We had people on here wondering whether it would be alright to go and see their parents! I cant think there would be anyone that could stop me if we wanted to see each other
If the government really wanted us to think for ourselves and to act independently, they wouldn't have made it illegal for people to see each other.
Whether people are prepared to break the law, and whether that's justified, is a completely separate discussion.
The news that Cineworld are to mothball their entire business is really bad. OK yes, they may be able to restart operations at some point next year. But I assume they will fire everyone barring a few in head office and maintenance. Their comment that their business is no longer viable can be said for cinema as a whole - will big studios invest in big productions if they aren't likely to get the return they are expecting?
The consequences of zero COVID policies. This was inevitable and will be for a lot of other businesses because older people are once again proving themselves as the most selfish generation.
No, cinemas are open. The problem is that no one is going, partly from covid fears and partly that there is nothing to see.
It is not government policy that is the problem, it is the pandemic.
In our local town there is a small theatre which is on the comedy and music circuit, particularly those who try out their acts before appearing at large venues. We get to see all the acts at half the price (at least) and in a more intimate setting.
It has reopened, with socially distanced seating etc. All the acts have been booked for the next few months and, like last night, they are sold out. People do want to go out and enjoy themselves and have some sort of social life, even with a pandemic.
Maybe Cumbrians are hardier folk than you soft Midlanders and Southerners. I dunno! But people do still want to have a life.
People absolutely want to go out here as well. The 9:30 last orders bell got a lot of groans last night and we all just ended up in my front room until 1am and finished off four bottles of wine between the six of us.
Yes - and the profits on those 4 bottles of wine is being lost to businesses like my daughter’s and others, every night. Those businesses suffer and the chances of those groups drinking in living-rooms practising social distancing and taking all the protective steps venues have to are probably lower than they ought to be. So we get damaged or dead businesses and continued Covid. Just brilliant!
Tesco won though as we bought them on the walk back. The small one on Heath Street has a surprisingly decent selection.
Tesco isn't winning. Can I ask which kind of Tesco you bought the wine from? Because every format of Tesco is absolutely haemorrhaging shoppers. The best performing Tesco store format is superstore which has lost a mere 18% of shoppers compared to last year.
Won't a lot of business have decamped to Tesco online? We know they have added deliveries and recruited new drivers.
The Tesco share price is down since covid-19 but not so much as more discretionary spend industries. i think sales are overall fine (includes online) but extra costs for covid-19 and staff to police them means margins not the same. Tesco will survive but the likes of cineworld , waterstones,pubs etc will not unless we ditch the useless mask and 10pm curfew policy
I read somewhere that supermarket delivery operations run at a loss (although Tesco as the only one to actually charge for delivery may be different?) but they have to do it or lose volume to rivals. Perhaps Rochdale would know? (edit/ I see he says as much downthread)
Going forward that doesn't seem a sustainable model and at some point people are surely going to have to pay for delivery, or join some sort of annual subscription service like Amazon Prime.
The model of patching delivery onto existing supermarkets is not sustainable. It requires a properly designed logistics chain, designed specifically for home delivery.
It’s wrong though. The mickey taking is coming from people who’s predisposed position is to assume that any new slogan is rubbish, and can’t be bothered to try to understand it.
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
Very well said - and I know you're not exactly a Tory so kudos to you for being a grown up about it.
Except your position is total bollocks because you champion people "living life normally and judging their own risks" and then you also champion using the full force of the law to stop people socialising.
Your position is totally illogical, dishonest, and hypocritical.
The message is sensible. Whether it remotely reflects the reality of confused and contradictory Government policy is another matter.
Comments
You seem to me to be too ready to blame the lack of leadership. There is different leadership in Wales & Scotland, and they have followed more stringent policies. It hasn't done them very much good in terms of outcomes.
(In fact, Scotland is following a zero-civid policy, according to Sturgeon's stated aim. As is, I believe N. Ireland).
It is possible that Germany may provide a counter-example to my pessimism. I agree that the pandemic has played to Merkel's scientific strengths and training. Her leadership has been much better than anything these islands have offered -- and better than the rest of Europe. Though even here, I'm inclined to believe that she is just delaying the inevitable.
The only think that can really save the West is an effective vaccine very quickly. That is not going to happen.
It is the last rites for the Western liberal democracies.
That stuff about tone of language/PoC is just a theory.
Biden is value at >1.8 i reckon.
Your approach seems to be to ignore polls entirely.
It absolutely isn't sustainable, but the idea is that they build market share to make it profitable in the future - much in the way that Amazon Prime isn't profitable.
* Committee members can vote by proxy, provided the committee has a quorum
* Dems can deny a quorum even without covid, they need 2 minority members to have one
* GOP could probably change the rules, or just break them, they've done it before
* Even if that fails GOP could just ignore the committee and bring a vote straight to the floor
* Denying a quorum of the entire Senate might also work, but it's quite a big deal, you may need to hide the entire minority caucus, and it's harder to run for reelection if you're holed up in a hotel in Cancun trying to evade United States law enforcement
... on the other hand both 538 and RCP have shown an increase in Biden's lead since 29 September. Overall there hasn't really been much movement.
I think we need to see how things move in the next two weeks on the back of Trump catching Covid.
Still in silly dispute with Netflix so not showing the best films available. No wonder their business model is fucked when their Unlimited CardHolders have to find Independent Cinemas to watch errr actual new films.
Went to see Trial of the Chicago 7 at the Light Cinema Sheffield. Good experience. Cancelling my Unlimited Card after about 5 years.
I cant see Cineworld reopening ever, certainly not in Chesterfield. Home Cinema and better Cinemas outweighs the need for a Multiplex Chain that thinks it still holds all the cards when it patently doesnt
Pence is clearly a firm, religious conservative. But he's a lot closer to what is now GOP mainstream. He's also got quite a conventional political mind, and is unlikely to revel in the extremism label, which was Goldwater's biggest error.
I don't think he'd get the nomination in 2024 anyway were Trump to lose in 2020 (but might well if he wins). If the Republican ticket loses after one term, that has to ultimately go down as a huge failure even from those who like Trump/Pence a lot. He'll have no elected position and is ultimately a rather boring, charisma-free zone who will be bypassed by newer, more interesting standard bearers. Having said that, I appreciate I've just described Walter Mondale, who did secure the Democratic nomination in 1984... I just don't see lightning striking twice, particularly given Mondale flopped so badly.
We are facing a pandemic that is pretty much unprecedented in modern times. They are getting (poor) scientific advice that it will grow exponentially unless they take steps to inhibit it. So they have to make really hard choices: do you keep kids at school? Yes, having the schools shut was a disaster as was the exam cock up that followed.
Do we allow young people to go to University and have a life? Yes for the same reasons as one. Plus morally it would be wrong to destroy their lives for a virus that they are for all practical purposes immune from.
Do we need construction, public transport, retail to operate? Yes, we simply cannot go on not earning any cash.
Do we allow pubs, restaurants, cafes, cinemas, theatres to open (and by the way our computations show we are now likely to be exceeding R1 in at least some of the country)? Err...yes but we must reduce the risk as much as we can.
This is where we are and unfortunately its not really working. The rate of infection continues to increase (in a linear fashion but steady enough). So we end up bearing down on the last sector where infections are rising fastest.
What can we do about this? Well if track and trace worked better that would clearly help. The government got very, very bad advice about the importance of the accuracy of individual results early in the pandemic so our track and trace is entirely the wrong model at the moment, very accurate but slow testing with the results all too often too late as the infectious period has ended. The government is trying to fix this with faster tests but so, so late.
If we focused on actual superspreader events we could do a lot to reduce R. Personally, I think that this (which requires a different kind of track and trace) is the absolute key to so many of the difficult choices the government faces.
Do we subsidise the event industry, the entertainment industry, the food and drink sector, professional sport, until this goes away? I think that's really difficult. The "we" in this are current and future taxpayers. The subsidies in the first round were exceptionally generous but not sustainable over another 6 months. The government has cut back its support to a more sustainable level. Is this unfair? Yes. Are there any simple solutions? Not really.
I am not pretending Boris is the man for this. I think Hunt would have proved a better choice if we had known this was coming down the track but jeez, this is hard. Really, really hard and keyboard warriors should try to recognise the difficulties as well as the perceived incompetence.
Now “govt restrictions” as some here are drawing attention to, are part of the hospitality industry’s problem but I really think not the main one, which is the fear of the disease.
Shutting the pubs at 10.00 pm has deprived the publicans of Cardiff of precisely zero £ of my custom, mostly because I can only think of one instance I was actually in the pub that late in the six months prior to March anyway.
I could book a table in the local and wander out right now in the next hour if I wanted but I’m not going to because a) it’s pouring with rain b) I’m hunkering down and being careful because there’s a potentially deadly virus out there, and though my odds are not at all bad if I catch it, they’re a lot better if I don’t. It’s a numbers game pure and simple. See fewer people improve your odds.
Now both a) and b) have nothing to do with the public policy and frankly if Rishi offered me free beer and sunny weather in the next hour I’m still not going, because I figure some sort of vaccine will likely be available in a timescale of months and laying low for a winter is a sensible thing to do. It’s not forever, it’s ( I hope) time limited sensible behaviour.
I’m sure I’m not alone.
Now hospitality has a good claim on targeted Govt funding IMO but I think its main issue is, sadly for it, people won’t change behaviour back properly till they feel safe.
In their headline 4-way poll which is the one they touted and put out press releases about on election night they had a 2 point Trump lead
Final IBD/TIPP Poll Results
Trump Holds 2-Point Lead Over Clinton As Election Day Arrives: IBD/TIPP Poll
So measures restricting access to pubs and restaurants work badly in three ways.
1) They send a message that they aren't safe (why are pubs safe at 9.30 but not at 10.30pm?) - encouraging people into what they think are "safe" home environments where their only contact is with friends and family. People don't see friends and family as a risk. Only other people outside their social group.
2) They force people towards "home" socialising because of the reduced access (ie. a dinner party can go on longer than 10pm)
3) They wreck pub/restaurant trade unnecessarily
Your ridicule is misplaced.
The White vote is still likely to be more than two thirds of all votes cast - last time Trump won that 58-37 yet in the IBD/TIPP article, it's claimed that was actually 54-39 and it's now 53-42.
Who are we then to believe when pollsters contradict each other?
You may be right and clearly there are a number of states where a stronger Hispanic vote for Trump could make a difference such as Nevada, Florida, Texas and Arizona.
Of course, polls can be wrong but what pollsters do (or should do) is learn from their mistakes and correct their sampling and methodology accordingly.
What do they say - "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me".
But it is typical of people who just want to believe what they want to believe.
Note too the likes of India and Japan and South Korea in the East are still very much closer to the Western democratic model than the Chinese or Russian model and South Korea has managed to contain Covid via masks and track and trace without the economic damage of a full lockdown and without a vaccine yet being available
Can you point to a Western democracy that has implemented this idea successfully?
That is utterly absurd.
Their model always struck me as woefully inept. The ridiculous faux Americanism of candies and buckets of ice and cola at vastly inflated prices and under-staffed counters. They missed an opportunity for significant refreshment sales, you only have to look at how city centre independents did it to see that.
Time to go for a brief walk.
What's not happening now is large groups of non-distanced people likely to infect many others in one night. People go their own way, or in small groups, after 10pm, there's no groups of 100 or more as was the case in the bars.
Whether it is enough is another matter.
If the GOP lose in November and look likely to lose in 2024 as the Democrats were in 1984 then I would say it is odds on that Pence will be the GOP nominee as Carter's VP Mondale was in 1984.
The Democratic Carter-Mondale ticket's loss after just a term in 1980 foretold a 12 year period out of the White House, I would expect a Trump-Pence defeat also after just a term would also be quite likely to lead to a lengthy period in which the GOP are out of the White House, in which case any newer, fresher GOP candidates will not bother to run anyway and try and build their CVs at state level or in Congress instead
I was scared he might be able to do it. Donald Trump is after all a showman. But either because he couldn’t or he wouldn’t he passed up the opportunity and instead dished up more of the same and dug himself into a hole whereby defeat at the polls became a near certainty. Excellent news. Still Toast. More Toast than ever in fact. But wait! …
Here comes that virus again to grant him a second (and final) chance to unplug the toaster before he pops up all brown and crisp. He has come down with it himself and assuming it remains a mild case he can milk the situation for drama and sympathy and (very importantly) use it to alter his tone and positioning for the election. He can do what I'm saying is the sine qua non for him to have a chance on 3/11 - stop being Trump. I’m hoping he again fails to do this, or if he does that it’s a case of ‘Keegan Brooking’.
There is too much retail space. Way too much. And not just in supermarkets, in general. The pox is having a deleterious effect on high streets but this was frankly inevitable.
The only sensible thing to do is to look at the overall averages weighted by each pollster's track record over many polls. Pretty much as 538 does.
They then decided to limit what you could watch with petty disputes and refusing to show the best films
Limited card not so much
"In the spring of 1857, a group of Boston transcendentalists gathered for dinner at the Parker House Hotel. After five hours of repartee, they decided to create a new magazine, one that would make politics, literature, and the arts its chief concerns.
They were united in three ways: their opposition to slavery, their love of American writing, and their tripartite names—including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Russell Lowell. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was invited, but she boycotted the dinner when she learned that alcohol would be served.
After everyone agreed on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s proposed name, a plan for The Atlantic was set. The founders wanted to be “fearless and outspoken” at the dawn of “a new era of human civilization.” In a manifesto, they promised to be “the organ of no party or clique”; to “honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea”; and to care for the “whole domain of aesthetics.” The manifesto was signed by, among others, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and yes, "Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe."
In November of 1857, the first issue was published, and we have never stopped publishing. Since its founding, The Atlantic has published everyone from the aforementioned Hawthorne (who served as the magazine's Civil War correspondent) to Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman; from Robert Frost and Helen Keller to W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington; from Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf to Mark Twain and Sylvia Plath; from a raft of future presidents—Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and JFK—to the great writers of the present, too many to even begin mentioning.
We know that the America of today would be unrecognizable to the founders of this magazine, but my hope is that they would take quickly to today's Atlantic. They would recognize in our journalism the stringent application of intelligence and analytic rigor to the great problems of the day; the devotion to the explication of not only the American idea, but also the nature of an unsettled world; and a great love of literature and culture in all of its manifestations.
I believe that the founders would be able to locate these values in our print magazine, on our website, at our events, in our podcasts, and in our documentaries. (I also believe that they would be confused by our Instagram account.)"
Nikki Haley is the best prospect of the GOP moderates at the moment though I agree, possibly George P Bush in a decade or two too
Will that continue?
One of the few things I buy from Amazon are books, because both kindle and Audible are great products.
alleged demographic shifts don't seem to match the swing state shifts, ie Biden is supposed to be doing great with older white people and lower-education people yet he's having a harder time in the mid-west (relative to his national score) than Hillary, while he's supposed to be struggling with latinos yet he's competitive or leading in Arizona.
I think the solution is not to pay too much attention to either of these and just watch the national polls and assume the same EC deficit as last time minus maybe a bit of mean reversion.
There is a common, underlying condition beneath the politics of sickness and the politics of personal destruction. Both flow from the sickness of hyper-partisanship, which too often elevates cruelty and justifies lies, through a vision of politics as a version of civil war.
It's got to stop.
They written it a few times only for Trump to immediately pivot back to angry ranting but you can already sense they are poised to write the "humbled by his personal experience with Covid a sombre President in tune with the nations suffering emerges from the cocoon of Walter Reid"
They are gaging for it.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-party-voter-registration-trump-biden-20200729.html
There are sure to be holes but (in PA at least) the results seem to match the theory
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2016/10/04/yougov-model-state-2016-election
Past performance is no guarantee of future success
Ask Martin KABOOM Boon
if it ever existed at all
1. Failure to message clearly what the restrictions actually mean. Johnson in particular needs to recognise that he's not good at detail and either put the work in to become good or give the detailed comms job to Gove or another detail colleague. Having an amiable waffler giving you details in a crisis is just a bad idea, and it's not partisan to say so.
2. Relatedly, giving priority to reassuring PR instead of setting out the known facts and the unknown factors.
3. Token gestures that don't actually achieve anything or may even be harmful - the 10pm limit, and possibly Eat Out to Help Out.
4. Failure to offer vulnerable sectors either medium-term support (if they are considered to be important for the longer term or assistance in moving out of the sector.
For example re number 4, does the Government think that (a) pubs in city centres are going to be vital in the future and need to be helped through the crisis or (b) that pubs in city centres are going to fade away? If the answer is (a) then they should be subsidised in the public interest for as long as it takes. If (b), then they should get assistance to relocate, in the same way as people who have to move in the interest of building an airport or a motorway are compensated. Instead, the pubs are getting short-term fixes and short-term hassle, with periodic shutdowns. Personally I don't use pubs much, but I do think they're being treated unfairly.
There were many who started this process as highly skeptical of a rumoured conspiracy against Salmond, but as always in these matters, it is the perception of a cover-up that is now doing the damage, and there is now undoubtedly a growing seed of doubt.
https://www.holyrood.com/editors-column/view,tangled-web
But it is a worrying data point.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/pennsylvania-party-voter-registration-trump-biden-20200729.html
There's a massive pandemic which one side is particularly scared of. So they might not turn up to vote!
The basic point is for people living life normally to take the view that the risk to themselves as individuals from the virus is pretty low - of evening catching it, let alone suffering from it, as long as they take sensible precautions along the way. Those who go out of their way to dance with the devil on the other hand..
The lesson in the UK certainly of parties losing power in recent decades is they move to the extremes.
Eg when Callaghan lost in 1979 Labour moved left under Foot and then a milder left under Kinnock until they got to Smith and Blair.
When Major lost in 1997 the Tories moved right under Hague, IDS and Howard until they got to Cameron.
When Brown lost in 2010 Labour moved left under Ed Miliband and Corbyn until they got to Starmer
Taking your last point the main factor I think is missing is churn. There is a major difference between the structure that forms the pub and the current ownership. One of my clients had disputes with Sky about their showing their channels without a licence. What was ascertained in that case was that 8 different owners had thought that they could make a go of the pub in the previous 2 years. All had failed. These types of businesses fail all the time. If they fail now will there still be people who think that they can make a go of it when the restrictions are gone? Probably.
Your position is totally illogical, dishonest, and hypocritical.
We had people on here wondering whether it would be alright to go and see their parents! I cant think there would be anyone that could stop me if we wanted to see each other
So other than that, you've got me!
I'm very anti-Johnson.
Whether people are prepared to break the law, and whether that's justified, is a completely separate discussion.